The Most Wanted Eau de Parfum Intense (Azzaro)

This is a perfume that does not warrant any long exposition in a review; the fragrance is as generic and by-the-numbers postmodern as it gets. I like it a little more than The Most Wanted Parfum, but only by a hair, and while I enjoyed Quentin Bisch and Nicolas Beaulieu's original parfum concentration, I had hoped that Azzaro would eschew the twenty-first century tendency toward unfocused mish-mash. In this case, the brand offers customers a more conventional ambery oriental with less ginger-citrus and more powdery-sweet lavender, which eventually coalesces into a toffee-liquer accord resting on amberwood, Ambroxan, and a few detergent musks for volume. 

Many have bemoaned the death of what fragheads call "generalist" fragrances, which are one-size-fits-all releases that cover all bases of occasion, season, and seduction, without veering too far in any one direction. An example is Polo Green (1978), which feels formal and yet works in casual settings, fresh but also rich and woody, bright enough for summer and deep enough for winter, and abstract enough to attract either sex. The Polo Greens of the world have faded from the zeitgeist, and in their place are what I dub "specialist" fragrances. Where once I could reach for a Polo Green or an Allure Homme or a Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme, and wouldn't have to worry about where I was going, what I was doing, or who I was doing it with, now I must select a specific fragrance for a specific milieu of life, be it work, play, dinner at a restaurant, dinner at a bar, an evening at a nightclub, a day at the beach, a few hours at the library, a run to the corner store, sexual encounter with my partner, etc. You get the idea -- there's a perfume for each. 

Why this has occurred is beyond me. What made the market stratify? Is there more money in it? Azzaro's The Most Wanted Eau de Parfum Intense comes in a black box and bottle, with an image of "night time" darkness, bordering on gloom. There's a bit of a Batman vibe. The scent's smoothness, its approachability, its loudness, and its sweetness all imply it is a clubbing fragrance. Yet perfumers Bisch and Michel Girard have perhaps accidentally created something that feels rather "generalist" to me. I find the cardamom and lavender top notes to be standard "guy stuff" in the nineties mold; the toffee-like heart is sweet but only invitingly so and not overbearing; the amberwood base is as standard all-seasons as it gets, feeling lush in heat and dry in the cold. If you're looking for a basic and inoffensive work scent that will come home ready for dinner and a movie, look no further.