The One Grey (2018)
by Dolce & Gabbana

The grapefruit and orangey according the is pleasant, and underlined with a touch of spice. The drydown adds a floral note and touches of vetiver and whiffs of a very restrained hesperidic tone.

The base nonspecific woods and watery amber - well....

I get moderate sillage, adequate projection and six hours of longevity on my skin.

An agreeable start of this spring scent soon spirals down into the realm of mediocrity, being generic and blatantly synthetic.

Neither black nor white, just middle-of-the-road grey. 2.5/5.

Having tried several other "The One" outings - the original and the flankers, that is - I approached The One Grey with an open mind, seeing how unique and distinctive it is on its own merits.

The One Grey has its own character that is shaped from the combination of lavandin (sharp herbal effect) and the vetiver (the damp, bitter variety). The requisite amber, tobacco and cardamom mimic the basic The One dna fairly well, which acts to surround the pronounced bitter herbal lavandin + vetiver combo. Grapefruit seems to interact with the duo, synergizing its own bitter hesperidic quality with them. Grey woods? Can't say I know what that smells like.

Overall, it is a wearable casual version of The One original. I see that it won't please everyone; definitely give this a test before deciding to buy a bottle, as the lavandin and vetiver combo may not be to everyone's liking.

I really like this. I think it’s quite sexy. And although it does smell similar to the original The One, I can still appreciate it as a distinct scent that stands on its own. Grey is woodier and spicier, whereas the original is more sweet and watery.

Dolce & Gabbana have really nosedived in the 2010's with their masculines, and are either run by robots, or are letting the robots design their perfumes with algorithms designed to make olfactory Kool-Aid out of the most-trending fragrance notes of the decade, since The One Grey (2018) smells neither particularly interesting, original, nor like it was even composed by a Human being at all. I've heard this argument lobbed at Dior Sauvage (2015), and while I won't deny the possibility that some IBM-grade science wasn't used for that scent, it really must have been exclusively deployed here. Furthermore, only a machine would think to make such inane flankers like Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme Intenso (2014), or additions to established lines like Light Blue Pour Homme Italian Zest (2018), that bedazzle with marketing themes or packaging graphics only to deliver something so tepid, so uninspired to smell, that it's literally angering. At least with The One Grey, you can see that this is a boring also-ran with literally zero personality or originality before you even smell it. Is this some kind of satirical social commentary on the state of mainstream white collar male business culture? If it is, bravo Dolce & Gabbana, you really got me good with this one, now please get back to making decent fragrances again. This stuff is designed like they almost wanted to capture the "grey" of an office cubicle in a dead-end data entry position where supervisory positions are always outside hires with business management degrees fresh out of community college, and the training you were promised to get that promotion is just a dangled carrot to get more productivity out of the same pay grade. Bleh.

To make matters worse, The One Grey seeks to be the "cheaper alternative to Tom Ford" for the guys in those same hired-from-a-job-fair positions who want to smell like the Grey Vetiver (2009) their bosses wear but don't want to cross into triple digit price territory to do so, and have exhausted all their free samples from Nordstrom, so they get in under $100 by buying this and "make it work". Granted, cheapo alternatives are a matter of business for some houses, just ask Avon, Armaf, or Lomani about that, but at least they have enough self-awareness to put a unique and enjoyable spin to their usually-respectable downmarket homages. The One Grey opens with a truly enjoyable hesperidic vetiver note, probably the best part of the whole fragrance, but like many mediocre designers in this same category, the top notes are all it's got. The grapefruit and vetiver eventually merge with some dry lavandin (a more medicinal variant of lavender), then some cardamom to muddle things up a bit, which is actually bad because fresh vetivers are usually soapy and clean, not brown and spicy. For me, it's this clash of values which sets the tone for the rest of the scent, and the biggest sign that this was potentially made by IBM's Wattson and not a perfumer, since cardamom is popular in many designers now. Amber, norlimbanol and Iso E Super posing as "grey woods accord" (yeah right guys, give me a break), and a fake "tobacco" that's little more than tonka and trickery are the final stages of the scent, with the grapefruit coming back in the end to be made unpleasantly sweet by the amber, drowning out the vetiver. Luckily performance is on par with the original The One for Men (2008), so very quiet, even if longevity is decent enough.

I don't know, I try to give a lot of designers a fair chance to show their inner beauty in spite of being juiced up worse with chemical enhancement than an Olympic bodybuilder or professional wrestler, and there have been a great many which have been unfairly thrashed by fragrance community snobs when they actually have some merit, accounting for taste of course. However, there isn't even a slight sliver lining to this very "grey" cloud, one that is looming ever greater over the house of Dolce & Gabbana if stuff like this is the future of their creative direction. We've already seen a decade of inane flankers for older lines, and their last new masculine pillar is from the 200o's, which is stretching into Chanel-length development cycles, but without the Chanel reputation for quality and originality. Honestly, if this really is an attempt to cash in on renewed interest in vetiver, there are so many better options at the same or lower prices than this, it's existence is irrelevant, and if it is indeed meant to be a cheaper take on Tom Ford's Grey Vetiver, guess what? It's only maybe half again cheaper at retail unless buying from a discounter, which is where stock of this is likely destined anyway. Huge Thumbs down, and if you end up with this as a gift, just bring it to the office for the next Secret Santa, just don't blame me if they fire you for your sardonic sense of humor. This is a veritable flusher for me, but I won't discount that a lot of you folks really into vetiver might actually be interested in something like this despite its huge flaws, or just something "perfectly boring" to wear when you have the pragmatic urge to smell like little extra besides deodorant. Make sure to sample this first, which shouldn't be too difficult at department stores, who will literally thrust something like this into your hand at warp speed, especially during sales events. This holds not a single candle to the original The One for Men, which is worlds apart and actually a good gourmand fragrance.

If it's not bad enough that D&G denude the original, they then give us this latest offering, following the latest lavender and vetiver trend by numbers. No tobacco and nothing interesting here. And underpowered in a big way. Liable, I'm sure, to be a hit at Christmas time, but I can think of literally nothing to commend it.