Michael Jordan Legend of New Harlem: A Review

So let's get the elephant out of the room, does Michael Jordan Legend smell like New Haarlem, yes, yes it does. New Haarlem is denser, as one would expect from an EDP, but Legend has the vanillic coffee note down pat. I imagine New Haarlem owners will feel about this the same way GIT owners feel about Cool Water, a cheaper version which takes the essence of the original diminishing its eliteness and inaccessibility causing no small measure of resentment for the guy or girl that just dropped 200 on a bottle of the Bond #9 original. People also compare Legend to Rochas Man, that comparison is a tad more problematic. While there are similarities, the lavender and floral overload in Rochas ruins it for me and makes it dissimilar to both New Haarlem and Legend in appreciable ways especially on the drydown.

Now let's talk about Legend on its own terms, this thing smells heavenly, I love the coffee note that is tempered by a leather note that keeps it from becoming overly sweet and cloying. It allegedly has green tea, anise and patchoulli, but I can't smell any of those, I get coffee, vanilla, leather and lavender. It is linear, but that's not necessarily a bad thing when the smell is this good. How about longevity? Like most gourmands, great; considering this is an EDC, the fact that it gave me 8-10 hours on multiple wearings was quite the pleasant surprise. If I had one critique, and his is for the bottle/sprayer fetishist, the bottle is atrociously cheap looking and the sprayer is complete rubbish, but given the cost, it's understandable.

Considering the cost, this thing is a no-brainer purchase for fans of coffee scents or New Haarlem fans without means. It can be had for 1/10th the cost in many places and it's just a lovely fragrance all around. While marketed to men this can be unisex and lady fans of New Haarlem could pull this off without a problem.

Bigsly: I find the lavender in this far more tolerable, that said, if you don't like New Haarlem, you won't like this, it's very very similar, especially on the drydown. I actually find this less lavender laden than either Rochas or New Haarlem, but is the lavender detectable? yup, absolutely. The base of this, however, depends as much on leather and vanilla.

Fair point, but there are those who simply buy status symbols rather than fragrances. I'm merely suggesting that Legend provides a very similar fragrance for a fraction of the cost and that's bound to upset those who've just spent some large amount on the scent from the niche house. A lot of aspersions cast on Cool Water for example stem from this phenomenon. As mentioned, outside of connoisseurs, very few people could discern a difference between New Haarlem and Legend.

BigTruck: Agree and actually it's $230

http://www.bondno9.com/shop/eau-de-p...ew/new-haarlem