Varanis Ridari recently released a video on YouTube in which he states his "Unpopular Opinions" about the fragrance world. One of them was (I'm paraphrasing), "People don't smell with their noses." He astutely pointed out that branding, price, "vibe," and even looks (packaging, etc.) are what most people defer to when assessing if they like or dislike something. The actual fragrances? Secondary in importance.
On a separate channel, "The Perfume Guy," Sebastian Jara reviews the original Lapidus pour Homme and three flankers, including Sport, which is his least favorite. He says flat out that he hates it, which I found interesting, because it seemed to me that his opinion was formed by everything but the scent. To me, Lapidus Sport is an almost exact clone of Creed's Orange Spice, one of their spectacular (and now discontinued) "grey cap" EDTs. But what would make the Bogart Group delve that far back into the Creed catalogue, and nearly eighteen years after the original Lapidus? Talk about random!
While Orange Spice was simply intense, civet-tinged oranges for nine solid hours of wear, I get a lighter and less beastly six hours of the same before Sport dies out, albeit with a ghost of animalic funk in its wake. It's more sheer, more modern (some weird soapy florals in the first ten minutes), and a tad "fresher" than its YSL/Creed predecessors, but still rooted in a musty 1950s neoclassical revivalist idea of aristocratic male grooming. It reads as a basic and unerringly tenacious combo of civet, orange, and neroli, so umistakable that I can't believe Bogart was doing anything other than cloning the Creed. Good stuff.