The Dove Fragrance Fiasco and What It Says About American Greed

A few months ago, Unilever announced that it had heard the clamor and would finally deliver. For decades, women around the world have pined for a perfume version of Dove's original beauty bar, a creamy alternative to traditional soap that cleans mainly through synthetic detergents blended into a super-dense cream rather than through saponification. Unilever long ignored the pleas, choosing instead to stick to its beauty bars, and I think that was wise. A perfume version of an iconic soap like Dove, Irish Spring, or Coast is a compelling concept, but I understand why executives would balk at the prospect of losing a fortune on a marketing or distribution miscalculation. 

If your expertise is soap, you do soap. Still, Dove bars are hugely popular with women and far less so with men, and when women are faithful to a product, as they are to Dove, the circumstance is rare enough to demand special consideration. Men are usually the ones who glom onto a product and refuse to let go (my dad has been wedded to Irish Spring for fifty years), but we are less likely to accessorize across product types, moving from soap to matching deodorant and fragrance, and sales figures suggest that the return on investment in us is too uncertain. Women also rarely go matchy-matchy with cosmetics, but when they do, they really do, so a product that has made them do so for decades is special, and Unilever decided the risk was worth taking.

Dove Original Fragrance went on sale exclusively online on October 27 at noon ET, priced at $19.57 in homage to the soap's 1957 debut. There was a waiting list, then a queue: people hovering over their keyboards, sweating bullets, waiting for 11:59 to draw its last breath. Card numbers were pasted in and buttons pressed, and within 60 seconds Unilever informed millions of women (and perhaps a few thousand men) that the fragrance was sold out. I had predicted to friends and family that bottles would appear on eBay and Mercari for over $300 within forty-eight hours, and that is exactly what happened. The $19.57 fragrance suddenly cost as much as the latest Creed. 

One seller started an auction at $2,200, and the top listing price is currently $500, which is utterly insane for a 50 mL bottle, however collector-friendly its pretty white box may be, with a front flap that opens to reveal a shelf for the bottle. The few buyers who got one offer a reality check on Fragrantica: yes, it's good; yes, it smells like Dove soap; no, it's not worth hundreds. Several women find it less creamy than the bar and a bit more floral, or "sharper," which isn't great. The challenge in a Dove perfume is to capture a gentle floral sweetness enmeshed in a cloud of creaminess. Unilever seems to have come close but opted for a more traditional perfume treatment, amping up the floral at the expense of the cream, perhaps to hold down formula costs.

Several women argue that scalping should be illegal. I disagree. It's skeezy, but what kind of moron falls for it? Who in their right mind goes on eBay and pays $130, $160, or $500 for something that cost $19.57 five minutes earlier? I've said for years that the tactic is as transparent as Stretch-Tite wrap and just as thin: one scalper buys and marks up, then sells to another who marks up further, and so on until the last scalper finds that the fragrance has hit a wall and no longer sells at a profit. But the greed doesn't rest with the scalpers alone. Like me, Unilever knew exactly what would happen. It knew the fragrance would sell out in forty-five seconds, that most women would be left with an empty cart and a day's worth of disappointment, and that scalpers with VPNs would snatch up 75% of the stock and hold legitimate buyers hostage with ridiculous resale prices. This was predetermined, and Unilever set it up that way. Sold out? Better luck next time.

There is a rumor that Unilever will reissue the fragrance next year in far greater numbers. I'm skeptical, because a reissue wouldn't redound to Unilever's advantage. The money is made in the scarcity, and without it, a relatively unlimited supply sees the remaining buyers dry up and becomes a liability sitting in warehouses. The leftover bottles then migrate to downmarket discounters like Burlington and Ross Dress for Less, and with only so many women in the world willing to buy a Dove perfume, the endpoint is reluctant discontinuation. Hype like this can be red-hot for the five minutes anyone has a real chance of buying, then as cold as leftover pancakes. The perfume might sell briskly for six months, even a year, but in a global market, the sheer manufacturing numbers point to a slow, steady decline in revenue until oversupply is plainly the problem, by which point it's too late to reverse course. 

The gray market then stops being the dominion of the demented, as legitimate retailers like Beauty Encounter and ForeverLux suddenly overflow with bottles at a modest markup of perhaps $25. Imagine being the scalper who went apeshit buying a couple of bottles, only to watch ForeverLux undercut him with a $45 listing thirty or forty spots above his $250 Hail Mary. It has happened before: scalpers wanted up to $200 for Red for Men by Giorgio Beverly Hills while it was discontinued, until EA Fragrances reissued it, and the miserable bunch had to close shop within a week.

All of this illustrates a common misconception in the fragrance world: that a high price equals desirability. It's backwards. Quality is worth a high price, and quality products are desirable, so high-quality products tend to be expensive. Those that command a luxury premium are desirable but not necessarily attainable. A man who earns $32K with annual expenses of $29K can drool over such an item and never buy it, even at a discount, because the price keeps it permanently out of reach. That premium limits buyers to those who have recognized an item's worth and are willing to spend their hard-earned dollars on it. Ironically, those with money to spend tend to feel the pinch more than the reckless, broke influencer who just wants to up his rizz. When you're broke and stupid, you are the exception to all the rules here.

Everyone knows Dove Original Fragrance isn't especially high quality. It's not junk, but it's nowhere near the league of Roja Dove, Amouage, or Creed, and it retailed for under $20, for God's sake. So no, those bottles can sit on eBay and Mercari at absurd prices as emblems of American greed, existing only because a massive company like Unilever was clever enough to pull the oldest and greediest sales trick in the book. The irony is that anyone desperate to know what it smells like need only stop at the local grocery store and buy the beauty bar for $1.95.

Jaguar for Men Ultimate Power (Givaudan)

There isn't much to say about this one. It's sort of an Aventus-inspired freshie, except when you really put your brain to what you're detecting, almost none of it resembles Aventus. There's a bit of allyl amyl glycolate in there, which creates that familiar pineapple fruitiness, but that's pretty much it. No further Creed comparisons can be made.

The rest of Jaguar for Men Ultimate Power is just a minty-herbal arrangement, which smells green and fresh, but also weak and synthetic. I get some green apple esters and a drop of lemon, and there's a super thin base of patchouli fraction and white musk. It goes on skin smelling bright and sparkly, and credit where it's due—it's not very sweet. But it peters out quickly and unless you bathe in it, Ultimate Power loses power within forty-five minutes and is barely there. Even for a cheapie, this is disappointing. 

If you're interested in Jaguar (the fragrances) and haven't smelled any of them before, I would advise you not waste too much time or money. Most of the flankers get middling to poor reviews. Ultimate Power actually gets good reviews, but not here. The original Jaguar is the only way to go. That one is very crisp, rather potent, and possesses a brightness and complexity that is well worth it. This stuff? Forget it. 

Continuum [12:00 GMT] (Tumi)

I don't know what to make of Tumi fragrances. Atlas is very fresh, quite a bit woody and green, and reminiscent of a '90s masculine, with actual oakmoss in the formula. Yet I rarely feel like reaching for it. Continuum keeps turning up at a steep discount at rack stores, and it gets good reviews, with people like Derek (Varanis Ridari) saying it's excellent and complex, so for $30 (down from $125 retail) I picked up a 100 mL bottle.

Catherine Celig of Takasago perfumed Continuum [12:00 GMT] for its 2021 release. I will say that Tumi's packaging is exceptional; the box is solid and supports the bottle with stiff inner leaves, and the bottle itself is copper-hued glass, quite hefty and with an even heftier metal cap that locks in place. How these managed to filter downmarket is beyond me. On packaging alone, they should remain at or near their retail price point. The liquid is atomized in succinct little bursts, and I feel the sprayer could be a little more generous, but whatever, first world problems. The perfume opens with a puff of transparent mandarin, a dash of cinnamon, a speck of sweetness from pink pepper, and some resinous and woody-green depth from olibanum. Kinda reminds me of a super high-def interpretation of Hot Spice by Arion (see my 2017 review) in those first few minutes, but that doesn't last.

What unfolds after forty-five minutes is quite impressive: Virginia tobacco leaves, flue-cured and honeyed, dominate the drydown, which lasts for hours on end. I get over 12 hours out of Continuum, with modest application. The tobacco is bolstered by a bit of cedar, and a bit more by a healthy dose of frankincense. The ultimate destination here is rich tobacco and incense, and it hums along beautifully, smelling crisp and bright, only a little sweet, a little earthy, with hints of white smoke via the incense. Continuum is basically a straightforward tobacco fragrance, and a damn good one. Some compare it to vintage Amouages like Jubilation XXV, but I get none of that. Did Amouage do tobacco? Older Amouages were rich and complex. This smells simple but natural, a solid all-day wear. Something tells me I'll be reaching for Continuum quite often . . . 

Club de Nuit Maleka (Armaf)

"We worked with outstanding naturals, chosen for their purity and depth." So says Olivier Cresp, master perfumer, of Armaf's 2025 Club de Nuit Maleka, gesturing to what looks like crushed olibanum, pink pepper, and orris root on a table while violins play in the background. This perfume is "refined in every detail" and clearly aims for aristocratic women, despite being poured into a cheesy translucent-purple version of Armaf's fugly Club de Nuit bottle. Curb your expectations. Aristocrats are Gen Z now.

Maleka is the first truly original perfume in the line; it isn't a clone of anything. Adding to its mystique is the name behind it: Olivier Cresp, the man behind the 1989 Femme Rochas I reviewed a few days ago, and the original Angel for Mugler (1992). He's more than a master perfumer; he's a legend. From Champs-Élysées for Guerlain, to Dune pour Homme for Dior, to Kokorico for Jean Paul Gaultier, to Light Blue for Dolce & Gabbana, his credits are huge. So how did Armaf snag him?

It's unclear, but I have a theory: the formula preexisted Armaf's brief. Cresp proudly did PR for Maleka, including video shorts aimed at Middle Eastern and European clients (unlike the rest of the line, it was never widely channeled into North American grey markets), and by all accounts, including his own, it's his work. But I suspect that when Sterling Parfums came calling, he rummaged through his back catalog of unused mods and handed over the best match. Maleka smells high-end designer, a major departure for Armaf: soft, elegant, and devoid of the rougher edges typical of CdN. In a shapely Carolina Herrera bottle or wrapped in a Lancôme bow, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Only the rose construction ties it to Armaf: the same sweet-and-sour, syrupy, weirdly transparent rose found in CdN Intense for Women and Club de Nuit Élite, which Cresp may have been obligated to tuck in. But Maleka is more a modern iris perfume than a rosy Delina wannabe.

The iris is gorgeous: fresh, airy, and sweet, redolent of midnight-blue blooms on a cool May night, with a gentle, slightly powdery grape-sugar quality that pulls at my nose hairs. The "lychee" and pink pepper opening is sweet, pert, and rosy, but the iris steps forward within five minutes and never steps back. I get eight hours. By afternoon, the nondescript "praline" sweetness so many perfumers rely on asserts itself in the base, but it's discreet and beautifully blended. As the iris fades, the gentle woodiness of Ambroxan and synthetic sandalwood buzzes by, subtler and notably more expensive-smelling than the Ambroxan in any other CdN.

How did Cresp manage this on a low-end Armaf budget? At $55 retail, Maleka is cheap even by designer standards. I'd guess he had the mod ready and merely adjusted materials and proportions to fit Sterling's formula budget; time is money in perfumery, as in all business. Technology has also advanced so far that rendering notes like bergamot, raspberry, and iris, and making them smell realistic and coherently blended, is not as expensive as you might think. That Armaf charges so little speaks more to the grift of the big niche and luxury houses than to a product shorcoming. Luxury is now "fast."

My verdict: a soft-spoken fruity iris made with good materials, masterfully blended. Wear this one to relax. It isn't groundbreaking, which may be why Cresp had it sitting around without a haute couture buyer, but it avoids the powdery, lipsticky trappings of Prada Infusion d'Iris, Lancôme Trésor, Hermès Hiris, and Frédéric Malle Iris Poudre. It's a tender little piece of floral euphony, the sort of tune that draws you in long enough to close your eyes and savor the soft, sweet music. 

" Wolf " (Rayhaan)

I deferred to my fiancée on this one. Azzaro’s The Most Wanted EDP Intense came out in 2021, and around then I was gifted a 30 mL flacon that I never wear. Nothing is wrong with it; it’s a decent fragrance that smells good. But with its Batman bottle and ridiculous name, it is as “basic butch” as it gets. That’s right: Basic BUTCH. Clout-chaser clubbing juice.

It doesn’t get more basic. Intense bubblegum orange blossom opens the fragrance, with just enough cardamom to add a woody-spicy dimension. Next comes a toasted-sugar interlude that Azzaro calls “toffee” but that smells like more grapey bubblegum, all resting on an unabashedly synthetic, vanilla-soapy “amberwoods” base that drums along like the Energizer Bunny for hours. It’s less a fragrance than an olfactory texture: smooth.

But smooth gets boring, and the human brain, ever in search of meaning, starts combing that near-featureless landscape for anything that breaks the monotony. By hour six, the cheap chems Azzaro smudged together are jangling in your nasal canal like Marley’s chains on Christmas Eve.

For some ungodly reason, Rayhaan decided to clone it. Why? Who the fuck knows. A large bottle of the Azzaro runs about $70 if you apply yourself. That’s not cheap, but it’s hardly Creedy, I-blew-this-month’s-rent niche pricing. If I can hop on eBay and get it for the price of a discounted Montale, and it smells good (which it does), I’m solid . . . right?

Well . . . Rayhaan may have done the rarest of rare things and created a clone that is effectively superior. They aimed low and somehow bullseyed it. The fragrance has no printed name, only the striking relief of a wild canine on both box and bottle. It’s easily the most gorgeous bottle in my collection, and it deserves some sort of award. If I found it in a stranger’s luggage, I’d be slightly unnerved; it’s a container fit for Victorian vampires. Yes, the graphics are A.I., and yes, that kinda sucks, but it just works. It looks badass.

The fragrance? Basic Butch. It’s 99% Azzaro, minus the cardamom and with a more distinct toffee note in the heart. Without the cool spice, it’s smoother, more balanced, and warmer than its template. The top is little more than concentrated orange blossom and that same toasted sugar: sweet, a bit grapey, a bit floral. Expensive chewing gum.

My fiancée, who has a great sense of smell, called the Rayhaan “rounder,” “softer,” and, interestingly, “more complex.” She almost favored the Azzaro but found it too loud and piercing, and said she’d prefer it toned down. To her, the cardamom was indistinct yet detectable, a spice that enlivened things. The Rayhaan struck her as sweeter, more vanillic, and warmer, while the Azzaro, despite its spice, smelled cooler. She found that counterintuitive until I explained that cardamom is considered a “cool” spice. Her verdict: too close to call. The Azzaro is fresher and less sweet; the Rayhaan is richer, with a more resolute candy thing going on and a smoothness that never relents.

Here’s what Rayhaan figured out. When smoothness goads the brain into picking a fragrance apart, an unlikely spice like cardamom eventually addles that brain into submission. Keep it sweet all around, and the dissection becomes sensory quicksand. The more you fumble for something solid to grab onto, the deeper you sink into the sugary morass, only to realize that dying a smooth death is sweeter than living a spicy life.

The cardamom in the Azzaro is an interesting note, but because my brain seeks it out, it becomes THE note. Removing it leaves a simple chord of grape bubblegum, butter toffee, and woody amber that is truly coherent, the olfactory equivalent of a T-shirt and ballcap. I feel weird wearing it, since I don’t drive a tricked-out Subaru and I don’t call everyone “Bro.” But I still like it. It might just be the perfect clone.

Club de Nuit Iconic (Armaf)

Bergamot, Tobacco, Ginger, & Vetiver

I went into this one expecting a Creed clone, and I wasn’t disappointed. Club de Nuit Iconic (2022) hit YouTube and TikTok as a supposed Bleu de Chanel clone. Countless broccoli heads and fragbros made the comparison not because they believed it, but because everyone else did.

Having owned and worn Creed’s Tabaróme Millésime (2000), I saw Iconic in a different light. Tabaróme Millésime was important to the fragrance zeitgeist of the 2010s, arguably in Aventus’s league, yet nobody recognizes it as such, because it’s understated, pallid, and overlooked even among Creed fans. It’s also simple: bergamot, ginger, tobacco, and vetiver over Ambroxan, tied together by a watery melon à la Millésime Impérial. Bleu de Chanel (2010) is more complex, with pink pepper, nutmeg, mint, ginger, jasmine, grapefruit, labdanum, incense, patchouli, and synthetic sandalwood. It smells beefier, mintier, and far more woody-floral, with a flinty whiff of smoke from the incense. Vintage Bleu was Aqua Velva on steroids.

Weirdly, Tabaróme Millésime smells like a simplified Bleu. Whether it’s the interplay of bergamot, ginger, and slightly sweet tobacco leaf, or the way the nutty vetiver plays off the aromatics, it reads to me as a precursor to Polge’s Chanel. Likewise, Club de Nuit Iconic smells virtually identical to vintage Tabaróme Millésime, making it yet another Creed clone by Armaf, and a damn good one. It offers crisp lemon and bergamot, ginger root, light and grassy Virginia tobacco (tea-like in nature), and vetiver, with a restrained (for Armaf) Ambroxan and white musk in the base. It isn’t heavy or dense, and it’s just as watery and indistinct as Tabaróme Millésime. A nondescript melon note flutters somewhere in the heart, but it feels like a molecule and never resolves into a definite fruit.

Does it smell like Bleu? Only as much as Tabaróme Millésime does, so yes, sort of: a weaker, simpler, proto-Bleu de Chanel. The blue bottle makes everyone assume a Chanel clone, but I think it’s a successful misdirection by Armaf. Market it as a Tabaróme Millésime clone and fewer guys will bite. Make them think it’s cloning Bleu, and social media lights up as if Fragrantica’s review section were Kevin McCallister’s house.

Femme, 1989 (Rochas)

Femme has a long and storied history as Edmond Roudnitska's breakthrough chypre. According to legend, it was created in a dusty old warehouse that doubled as a lab in war-torn Paris, 1943. One imagines perfumer's alcohol being stored in used bottles of Vichy water, but I digress—one spray, and my first thought was, Mitsouko!

Except it's Mitsouko with warmth and carnality. Instead of Guerlain's laser-focused bergamot, I get cumin, fistfuls of cumin. There are conflicting accounts of how the cumin accord came to pass. Some sources claim that Olivier Cresp of Quest International singlehandedly added the cumin when Femme was reformulated and reissued in 1989, which led to Roudnitska crying, "They stole my Femme!" Other accounts suggest that Cresp worked closely with Roudnitska on the '89 formula, and that the Master Perfumer asked him to utilize a cumin accord similar to what Roudnitska had formulated decades earlier for Eau d'Hermès. I tend to think that this story makes more sense. Roudnitska was still working in the late '80s, and there's no reason why Cresp wouldn't have deferred to him. The cumin is both skanky and fresh; the citrus, bergamot and mandarin, smells rich and perfectly rounded, offsetting the sweaty spice just enough to keep the top of Femme smelling subversively French. Think freshly washed vagina in perfume form. 

Armchair historians also claim the cumin was never in the original formula of Femme, but I'm not entirely sure that's accurate, either. There is no definitive description of the formula for Roudnitska's Femme, and given that he explored cumin as a "fresh" note, I wouldn't be surprised if 1940s bottles contained some. Perspectives on vintage Femme are somewhat indirect and inconclusive, and anything is possible. Once the superlatively spicy top begins to evaporate and melt into the aldehydes c-14, c-18, and the Prunol base, Femme gets very vintage Guerlain in vibe, and a familiar (and rudimentary) chypre accord emerges and dominates. Yet, where Mitsouko feels cold and aloof, Femme feels warm and personable. Mitsouko is a marble mausoleum in the misty woods of a forgotten cemetery; Femme is a hunter's blind at midnight in the same woods, with a roaring campfire illuminating a russet chiaroscuro of reds and browns and burnt greens. The chypre forest of Guerlain is haunted and silent, save for a subdued peach light from deep in the gloaming; the woods of Femme glow creamy and sweet, and are redolent of a post-summer harvest. 

I own two bottles of Femme, both nearly identical to the version pictured above, with the only major differences being that mine have black caps, and their liquid is much darker. More of a reddish-brown than a golden amber. There is no oakmoss in either bottle, and I detect that a patchouli accord was used to compensate for its absence. My bottles are the 1989 formula, and the cumin is dirty, but good dirty, evocative of how women smell on an intimate level. Were Cresp and Roudnitska attempting to replicate the natural perfume of a young woman's loins? Seems like a "yes" to me. Having had my fair share of sensual encounters, I recognize, with some amusement, that the first 30 minutes of Femme nails her deep musk. Then Prunol steps forward, and the fruitiness of the composition explodes on skin, a veritable basket of plum, prune, peach, and apricot, with the zest of mandarin still whispering in the wings. The edibles are joined by flowers: of chief importance are Bulgarian rose, jasmine, ylang, and immortelle. The immortelle lends the heart a curried sweetness, not unlike raw honey. And, of course, there's labdanum. 

In lieu of oakmossy powder, the base instead hews into cedarwood and birchwood, with a faint smoky angle from the birch, a brightness from the cedar, and that dollop of patchouli to smudge everything together. Benzoin and a dash of vanilla further cement the chypre structure, and Femme endures as a woody-sweet glow for well over 20 hours. This is a classic of French perfumery, ideal for cool autumn days and evenings. It's so good that if, like me, you are loath to replace your bottle of Mitsouko when it's finished, there is no cause for worry, for Femme is the sexier, friendlier, and more complex chypre.

La Petite Robe Noire Black Perfecto EDP (Guerlain)

This is a short review because there's really only one thing I can say about Black Perfecto that doesn't bear much in descriptive excess. I think you know where I'm going with this. For everyone out there who likes Creed's original 2008 Love in Black (LiB), but can't afford it, well, here's your fragrance. Guerlain's 2017 release in the seemingly endless La Petite Robe Noire (LPRN) line is very affordable these days at roughly $45 per 50 mL bottle, and it is 99.9% Love in Black. And, like '08 LiB, it's discontinued. 

The only difference between the Creed and the Guerlain is in the choice of fruit. Love in Black contains a somewhat abstract blackcurrant and cranberry accord that doesn't quite elucidate either fruit. Guerlain opts for a black cherry accord that smells perhaps a tick sweeter and a few ticks clearer, but which basically does the same thing. The rest? Virtually identical to LiB. I mean, these two are really, really close to each other. But the kicker is that Black Perfecto actually smells more natural, and thus feels a bit more luxe, and I can't believe I'm writing this, but I actually prefer it. 

The niche for this scent profile is hard to pin down. Guerlain's PR pushes Black Perfecto as the LPRN line's "rock chick" flanker, with supposedly clear accents of leather. I don't really get any leather. Instead, I get violet, iris—a ton of iris—and that dry, powdery, gothic gloaming of wilted roses and cedar chests. A haunted mansion somewhere in the hills, with a gorgeous widow forever grieving, still wearing the funeral dress from when her beloved died 140 years ago. Her dress, her hair, and her breath, all reek. 

But her perfume? To die for.

La Petite Robe Noire Eau de Parfum Absolue (Guerlain)

At the age of 44, I've finally developed a full appreciation for Guerlain. It took a while. For many years there, I wasn't convinced of the supposed quality behind their perfumes and was perhaps a bit blinded by the outrageous quality of 2000s vintage Creeds. We can't expect people to spend ungodly amounts of time macerating micro-batches, nor can we demand that they spend insane amounts of money on unnecessarily premium materials to make said micro-batches, so a little maturing on my part was in order.

I came around to the La Petite Robe Noire (LPRN) line when I realized that my bottle of Love in Black (LiB) was running low and I didn't feel like coughing up $140 for another one. If you're familiar with LiB, you know that it's a gloriously synthetic concoction of cheap-smelling violet ionones and all the sweet musks required to achieve an intense violet/iris accord, and that this unmitigated trashiness is the appeal. It's so cartoonishly "goth" and dark in its brooding floral sweetness that it works perfectly on a guy. No Guerlains promise that exact vibe . . . but a few come pretty close. La Petite Robe Noire Eau de Parfum Absolue, released in 2023, is one such Guerlain. (There's another that actually comes even closer to LiB, but that one is for a future review.)

LPRN EDP Absolue is "rich college chick" juice. She's 20 years old. She's working toward her psych major. Gorgeous, not because of any inherent qualities, but because rich people can afford to be genetically choosy. And she bathes in LPRN fragrances. The EDP Absolue is just her latest love, and she gushes about it to all her girlfriends and wears it to class religiously. But here's the thing: this fragrance is complex and really well made. Like LiB, it uses the Biolandes orris extract to render its slightly bready iris accord. But unlike LiB, it elicits a wide array of comments from people around the wearer, ranging from "a nice fruity smell" to "smells like pancakes and syrup."

I even had someone tell me it smells like Axe body spray. This speaks to the loudness of the fragrance more than to any deficits it may have. While I wouldn't call it "top tier" Guerlain, Absolue inhabits the Made-for-American-Girls category of dumb-reach fruity-florals that influencers can correctly characterize as "elevated." Yes, it's just another casual mall juice, something best worn for weekend errands. Yet Guerlain manages to infuse it with a level of material quality and blending that puts it in femme Creed territory. You'll get the same mileage out of this as you'd get out of Love in Black. It opens with bright, juicy cherry. Smells stunning. Laced through the juiciness is violet, which balances the tanginess with some floral sharpness. I also get the orris and a pleasant pink rose that doesn't smack you over the head. It slides like fine silk along steampunk sugared-cherry curves, a floral texture more than a living bloom.

There's a freshness that lifts the composition into another hemisphere, and that freshness is black tea. It's a touch tannic and smoky, even a little aquatic, in a freshwater way. There are subtle hints of licorice and not-so-subtle hints of marzipan, but then the heliotropin takes over, and a slightly leathery cherry-almond heliotrope accord carries the fragrance through the rest of the day. While not quite as pitch-black as Love in Black, Absolue feels sophisticated and sexually moody, sort of the way an indie French film from the '90s starring Juliette Binoche feels. Men can manage this fragrance thanks to its eerie aloofness, but wear with caution—this stuff fills large rooms.

Spectre Wraith Eau de Parfum (French Avenue)

A shot . . . of Espresso

Luca Turin once bluntly said, "Coffee fragrances don't work." This was after a year or two of waxing poetic about several fairly expensive coffee fragrances. It left me wondering if he'd been overly enthusiastic about the advent of coffee perfumes, only to realize with some chagrin that most of them smelled outré, chemical, unwearable. Thierry Mugler's A*Men was the world's first and only mainstream coffee frag, a mid-nineties attempt at saturnine gourmand accords that today reads as a bit harsh and crude, but back then was exotic and undeniably artistic. Its saving grace was an intentionally chemical interlude between its minty-bright opening accord and mocha-bean patchouli base, which manifested as a "tar" note of indescribably macabre weirdness. 

French Avenue, which is really just the label name for a company called Fragrance World Perfumes, operates out of the United Arab Emirates and has a small niche line of "clone" fragrances under the Spectre moniker. These include Spectre and Spectre Ghost (both 2023). While Spectre gets some cult love for its rendition of Matière Première's Falcon Leather, and Spectre Ghost gets oodles of heart emoji for being a damned close chromo of Ani, Nishane's brown study in wet oils, Spectre Wraith (2024) straddles the midline in popularity, garnering faithful adherents on one side, and dismissive regrets on the other. Ostensibly a copy of By Kilian's Black Phantom, Wraith aims to be a sultry coffee-based gourmand. I will say that its bottling presentation is one of the most creative I've ever seen. Wraith's matte black bottle, "shot" by a bullet that retained its casing, is striking. 

The fragrance matches. Wraith opens with a semisweet cherry cordial accord, rather like one of those pricy dark chocolates with the even darker fruit filling, and in those first five minutes, Wraith smells quite mesmerizing. It's like Wayne Szalinski shrunk me down to the size of an ant, took a bite from just such a choco-cherry confection, and dropped a glob of it on my head. It surrounds me in a rich haze of mellow sweetness, and I have to admit, it's pretty amazing. If it stopped there, I'd say it's merely a unique but linear crowdpleaser, but it doesn't stop there. The whole things morphs into an esoteric niche frag of black coffee with buttercream, and smells like a smoother and more refined version of A*Men's tar. This is something that will appeal to a relatively small subset of fragrance aficionados, and it should—it's abstruse but beautifully made, and perfect for cold autumn and winter evenings. This coffee fragrance does work. 

Drakkar Intense (Guy Laroche)

Jason Dean: "I knew this stuff would be
Too intense for her." Heather Chandler:
"In-tense. Grow Up." 

Drakkar Intense is not a flanker of Drakkar Noir. I repeat: Drakkar Intense is NOT a flanker of Drakkar Noir. It is better thought of as a pseudo-modernization of the original Drakkar from 1972. "Pseudo" because, well, read on. I've never actually smelled the original Drakkar, so no flexing here. But a comparison of the pryamids suggests a closer kinship to that first Laroche masculine, and what I smell recalls the '70s more than the '80s. L'Oréal isn't aiming for the youngsters with this stuff, that's for sure.

They're also not aiming for the average guy, either. The opening blast is upscale '70s barbershop. European barbershop, if you will, and specifically Parisian. Scratchy greens, indistinct in identity, but sharp, and cool in effect. Certainly some lavender and rosemary, juniper and citrus, very tart and bitter, but the cacophony settles into a certain type of muddled, somewhat coumarinic sweetness that vintage fanatics who are familiar with old-school masculines will immediately recognize. It's sort of floral, sort of hay-like, and rather akin to the romanticized idea of a sunset in the countryside, if you could bottle it. Think forgotten gems like MEM's Racquet Club, and even Monsieur Rochas. Intense boasts the same coumarin wallop, but not a contemporary woody-amberassault "tonka" that smells like candy. Any sweetness is from patchouli, and it's a little spicy from carnation, of all things. I also get some beta-ionone for woodiness, tobacco-adjacent depth, and a modern analog of macrocylic musks for the human skin feel. And again, being real: I really like it. It's anachronistic, but good, a literal blast from the past.

Gentle wisps of vanilla and amber add warmth and roundness to the base, and Drakkar Intense smells like a drugstore fragrance from 1972, which is early enough in the decade that it borrows heavily from drugstore fragrances of the 1960s. Many reviewers have claimed that this fragrance is "boozy" and "sweet," but it reads more woody and only incidentally sweet, like the crudely-blended naturals and synthetics just happen to have approachable personalities. It bears virtually no resemblance to Drakkar Noir and has precious little dihydromyrcenol, if any. I see myself curled up in a papasan, smoking shake while reading Portnoy's Complaint with the Stones in the background . . .