cK one Shock for Him (2011)
by Calvin Klein

I absolutely love it on paper strip and the first minutes on my skin. It's a tobacco gourmand, yes - but never too sweet. The opening is perfectly unisex. Later it dries down to a more masculine scent - a beautiful woody tobacco and spices + some lavender and greenery - I still could pull it off and it's quite nice on me, and I'd gladly wear it if I had it, but I don't feel the need to buy it.
Would be great to smell it on a man - so getting it for your significant other and then snagging some spritzes here and there seems like a really valid option indeed!

If natural perfumery were veganism, this would be junk food. The sort of thing you may crave even though it's bad for you.

It's a gungy-sweet, high calorie mix of concrete, furry pine, fat and tobacco; clever and enticing but none too healthy.

***

Great opening as others have said. Much like Burberry London but this is Chocolate Tobacco whereas London is Vanilla Tobacco with some hints of pine. Both are exceptional.

Dries down to nothing within an hour or two on me. 6.7 oz can be purchased for around the same price as 3.4 oz, so look carefully at what you're getting. You'll definitely want the big bottle.

Insane to make this a flanker of CK One. They could have called it "CK NOT One" because it has zero to do with One and should have been called "Dark Seduction" or something. This is by far the most interesting CK fragrance in many years.

Definitely worth the blind buy. If you don't like it, I guarantee the first person you give it to will. A crowd pleaser for sure but not for days over 65°F (18°C).

I've long known that CK One Shock for Him has had its fans, but the brand's history and the bottle design don't exactly inspire enthusiasm, so I took my first sniff with some skepticism. Now I'm a believer.

We've seen a glut of gourmand-y tobacco fragrances over the past two decades, and this is one of the few very good ones. Beyond its somewhat curious and brief (but not unpleasant) opening, CK One Shock offers a rich and intoxicating blend of spiced cocoa and particularly well-rendered tobacco. It's elegant and warm and inviting, sweet without becoming cloying (it is, however, heavy enough that it's best suited to cool weather).

If they'd given this fragrance a different name and put it into a more suitable bottle, this might've been a contender and might not have ended up in the bargain bin wilderness like so many other CK fragrances. The upside is that it's now a boon to bargain hunters.

Calvin Klein Cosmetics was nearing the end of it's rope with the synthetic "fresh fougère" category by the end of the 2000's. They released CK Free for Him in 2009, 20 years after the fragrance Eternity for Men (1989) really became the cornerstone that shifted masculine paradigms. Eternity moved masculines away from mossy, musky, or stiff floral scents towards a second coming of the simplistic barbershop citrus colognes of the prior century, but with high-tech captives replacing naturally-sourced bases. CK Free for Him was nowhere near as important, but just proved how out-of-gas this thinking was. When the "freshie" became the accepted norm, and the watchdog IFRA organization gradually made impossible a return to fuller styles, Calvin Klein probably felt boxed in, and it really was their own damned fault. Granted, they still make "fresh" fragrances, mostly in the form of flankers for past pillars, but since the turn of the decade, their new masculines outside of these flankers have attempted treading down richer and more organic-smelling territory, starting with this release in 2011. You're probably thinking "but isn't cK One a unisex line?" and the answer is yes, but the point of the cK One Shock line was to do something shocking by making a his and hers composition, coinciding with the more important shocking fact that this isn't an aquatic, ozonic, "fresh fougère", ambiguous white musk, or anything else one might expect from Calvin Klein at this point. Instead, the cK One Shock line is a pair of gourmand/oriental hybrids, rich and deep by CK standards.

The male iteration of cK One Shock is particularly puzzling, as it presents itself as a rather formal cocoa and tobacco scent, with only a citrus and fruit top lending any casual flair to it. Ann Gottlieb and Loc Dong work together here, and after seeing these results, I'd suggest a reprise. Clementine, "purple" lavender and a cucumber note claim the top of the pyramid, alongside an "energy drink note" which is the token "Kleinism" one expects these days from the house. It's a sweet, semi-syrupy start that is the only real potential turn off to the stuff, but luckily fades in minutes. Cardamom, black pepper, basil, and osmanthus proclaim the middle, but it's really the cardamom and pepper that comes through the sweetness of the top. The main bulk of the wear sees tobacco and cocoa emerge early, making the scent a pleasant semi-sweet tobacco glow reminiscent of Yohji Homme (1999) but a bit leafier like Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme (1994), and maybe a bit in the direction of the original Michael for Men by Michael Kors (2001) with the fruit top. The smell of cK One Shock for Him sits squarely between them all but tosses in that cocoa for darkness, then finishes with musk, patchouli and woody aromatic chemicals at the end to distinguish it's more-oriental side. I find cK One Shock for Him to be an exceptionally well-crafted scent and an easy replacement for the above named, as all but the Dolce & Gabbana entry have become extinct, which means slowly becoming fiscally out of reach except for all but the most dilligent and financially-blessed collectors. Calvin Klein's take on the subject is easily had in 3.4 or 6.7oz bottles and for around $20, making it pound-for-pound the most guilt-free tobacco indulgence to be had in masculine fragrance, plus a real winner for the house that normally faces upturned noses from perfumistos.

The real clincher here was the marketing. If cK One Shock for Him was called anything else and marketed as a new stand-alone pillar, it might be as popular as something along the lines of the preceding Dolce & Gabbana The One (2008) or even Dior Homme (2005), but alas. Rather than that, Calvin Klein chose to put this wonderful smell in a standard cK One bottle, paint it black, and spray it with bright green graffiti lettering to give it the appearance of a youth-aimed scent; very shocking 'til the very end, I suppose, was the aim of the marketing team behind this. I hope that marketing team was either demoted or at least severely reprimanded, but this is likely to fall by the wayside just like the nice cK One Scene (2005) and then slowly creep up the aftermarket ladder, joining it's tobacco brethren in discontinued "unicorn" heaven as unobtaimum to be venerated and worshiped. In the meantime, it's cheaper than a meal at Applebee's and arguably smells better, so double and triple stock this one if round, sweet, earthy lavender and tobacco sounds good, just please do try to ignore the bottle. By the way, this flanker received it's own flanker (a flanker-flanker?) in the form of cK One Shock for Him Street Edition, that heads in a much-fruitier direction and is worth a sniff, just expect to pay a bit more and have a tougher hunt for it. All in all, a Hell of a return for Calvin Klein, and easily one of their best masculine outputs of the 2010's, just really named and bottled all wrong. Recommended for use in median climates, for office, romantic, or formal use. Pretty versatile but not the best for hot days. Thumbs Up