Brut Classic (Fabergé/Unilever)

My bottle of Brut Classic by "Fabergé" is the 1990s formula that was only sold from circa 1989 to circa 2000, after which point Unilever sold the North American license exclusively to Helen of Troy/Idelle Labs. I had never smelled this formula of Brut Classic until recently, having only owned several bottles of the 2000s stuff, which I was always a bit wary of. I'd spent years hearing older guys reminisce about how the current Classic smells like the original stuff from the 1960s, but I always questioned it. The fragrance smelled much better than the plastic bottle version sold in drugstores, but I felt it lacked something and seemed suspiciously thin in the drydown, a wispy white musk and powder vibe. 

The first five minutes of Fabergé's Classic smells very similar to the Idelle Labs reformulation, but the main difference that jumps out at you (if you have experience with the newer stuff) is that the vintage version has way more depth in its lavender and geranium accord, with brighter, mintier aromatics, and a sort of sparkling quality to the citrus and greens. The stearyl acetate accord really glows in Unilever's older version of Classic, and as it dries down the lavender remains lucid, guiding me through an array of powdery white florals and into a musky sandalwood and patchouli base that smells classy and overwhelmingly "adult" and sophisticated. Wearing it, it's hard to believe Brut was once the "cheap cologne" that anyone could grab at a Woolworths or K-Mart. Its projection exceeds the safety zone of three feet by at least another three, and its longevity is nuclear at 15 hours plus. Classic indeed, especially when you consider my bottle is the cologne and not the eau de toilette spray that was also available at the time. The Idelle Labs formula doesn't come close to touching this one in quality or strength. (The Parfums Prestige formula, also Unilever, is a different story.) 

It's interesting that Unilever kept the Fabergé marquee going for another decade after it was all but moot to associate the name of a Baltic jeweler with an inexpensive American barbershop scent, but I guess when a British multinational firm of its size buys something as iconic as Karl Mann's 1964 fougère, the incentive to maintain is there. Of note to me is how their post-'89 formula doesn't smell the least bit cheap or simplistic -- there's quite a stew of notes at work, and all of them smell sprightly, dimensional, and, for lack of a better word, solid. It stands apart from its powdery post-shave brethren, reminding me more of Trumper Wild Fern than Pinaud Clubman. If you have the cash, I say get this. 

Brut EDT, Gold Vs. Silver (Unilever)

I've always wondered why Unilever's Brut EDT comes in two shades, as shown in the image above. Are they distinct in scent, do they offer unique benefits, or is it just marketing through arbitrary packaging? I owned the silver-capped version (with a matching medallion) and bought the gold-capped one to investigate.

The truth is, there's no difference between the two beyond the metal color and one minor detail specific to my bottles. The silver bottle's clear plastic box had a manufacturing sticker lacking any company information—no Unilever "U" logo, making it hard to trace its origin. The gold bottle's box, however, bears a Unilever logo on a more detailed sticker. Otherwise, both bottles are identical in appearance and scent.

Despite the identical fragrance, I’m left wondering why Unilever offers two colors. My theory is that silver targets the Asian market, while gold is aimed at Europe—a notion I vaguely recall reading somewhere, though unverified. Like much of Brut’s branding, this choice remains a mystery, although a scam has surfaced on platforms like eBay and YouTube, where Indian resellers package genuine or fake Parfums Prestige silver bottles in Fabergé Brut Classic boxes, passing them off as vintage. At least one YouTuber fell for this, reviewing a current bottle in a vintage Fabergé box, which is unfortunate.

Buyers should beware of Brut Classic boxes with the Fabergé logo, especially from sellers omitting bottle photos. Many of these boxes are likely counterfeit, part of a petty Indian scam. It’s baffling why resellers don’t just use the clear plastic packaging typical of '70s vintage Fabergé bottles, but there you have it.

Brut Special Reserve (High Ridge Brands)

It's Back

Brut Special Reserve is no longer discontinued. Sorry, eBay scalpers. You'll have to forget about charging $125 for 89 milliliters of this stuff, because it can be had for $18 again. And, I have more bad news for you: the $18 formula, new from High Ridge Brands, is better than the old version from twelve years ago. So go fish. 

Is there a lot to say about this new Brut? No, not really. I finally understand what High Ridge Brands is doing, and it makes me feel a lot better about my life. Back about four years ago, they reissued Brut 33 (the plastic bottle drugstore version) with a beautiful formula that took Brut back to 2000. I was awestruck by it, because I never expected anyone to buy an old, over-reformulated legacy drugstore cologne and "fix" it. But that's exactly what they did, and it smelled great. I bought two backup bottles. 

Then HRB did the unthinkable, and quickly reformulated it, cheapening the top notes and messing with the warm, ambery finish by adding shrill white florals. Not terrible, and still miles better than what Helen of Troy had brought us to, but why? Well, now I know why -- they decided to take their first formula, increase the concentration by 10%, and put it in a glass bottle, to be marketed as the new Special Reserve. This new stuff smells rather similar to Brut Special Reserve 2013, but it's smoother, drier, more put together, and a bit less crude in how it impacts the nose. I like it better, let's put it that way. 

Brut remains one of the most difficult fragrances for me to pin down, given its myriad incarnations and the simple fact that it's been around for 61 years. I find myself obsessing over Brut in much the same way I obsess over Creeds, and indeed, I have a bottle of the original glass Fabergé cologne on the way, so I'll be taking my obsession to its logical endpoint. Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you're someone who has been gnashing his teeth over Special Reserve's discontinuation, and you had not, until now, heard of its re-release, well, you're very welcome. 

This One Is Now Officially "Cheap"

It has always bothered me that Drakkar Noir is so expensive. Online, hard to get for under $25. In discount retailers, even harder to get for under $30. At retail? Ridiculous, naturally, typically $45 for 50 ml, and don't even know what they ask for 100 ml bottles. I'd scratch my head and ask myself, what gives? Why is this old foghorn from the early eighties still commanding a premium price, when nobody really wears it anymore? 

Even on eBay, it was difficult to source a big bottle for less than $30. Many would fall under that price, but they'd come without a box, which always put me off. If you can't get Drakkar Noir with its box, one wonders what you're really getting. The other day, this all changed -- I hopped on eBay and found what I'd always hoped to find -- Drakkar Noir has now slid into clearance bin prices. I just bought a 100 ml bottle with its box for $16, free shipping. This stuff is now cheaper than Cool Water. Finally! 

But the question is, why now? Why didn't this happen twenty years ago, when the fragrance was still well past its expiration date? There's no clear reason, but I have my own theory, and I think it's kind of obvious, once you get past the shock of seeing the market turn on a famous men's cologne to the point where it prices it under Coty's Aspen on some sites. Drakkar Noir is a sharp, crisp, bitter, soapy, somewhat peppery, somewhat green/grey lavender-centric fougère. You know what isn't popular today, and hasn't been popular for over ten years? Sharp, bitter, greenish fougères. 

But not being popular (in the high school cafeteria sense of the word) isn't enough to drive a fragrance's price down by ten dollars or more. There are plenty of fairly esoteric frags that go for big bucks. If Drakkar Noir was the first to go against the grain, it'd never lose its retail value. No, the thing that put it out to pasture is what is popular: extremely sweet and cloyingly saccharine olfactory sugar bombs. Liquid candy that you can spray everywhere, even on your crotch, and suddenly feel hungry. Everyone and their cousin is into these extreme derivations of Le Male and Joop! Homme that have evolved from those relatively modest semisweet masterpieces into nefariously nectarous beasts. 

Against this gourmand tableau, Drakkar Noir smells all the more bitter, peppery, smoky, unapproachable, and downright intimidating. Drakkar Noir is too much of a contrast, and a bridge too far for the budding Gen Z crowd of saplings who now smell Le Male and Joop! Homme and wrinkle their noses. The thought that anyone who was born after 2000 would find Drakkar Noir an easy wear is increasingly laughable. Not so in 2015. No so in 2005. Certainly not so in 1995, when virtually every other fragrance that was released riffed on Guy Laroche's signature masculine. One forgets that Drakkar Noir was once the Dior Sauvage of the fragrance world, inspiring countless imitations, clones, and smell-alikes that barely hid what they were trying to do. For nearly two decades, Drakkar Noir was the cornerstone of masculine perfumery, shaping its trends and defining its essence. How distant and even bizarre that very fact has become now. 

I'm sure there were legions of men who revelled in the discovery that Drakkar Noir had officially lost its premium department store cache, and was no longer going for Macy's prices. I imagine the hen-pecked Gen X guy who walked into a Walmart in 2003 and happily discovered Drakkar Noir priced at $38 instead of $48. Fast forward to today, when finally, after extra innings, it isn't even worth Walmart prices anymore, and can be had for less than $18, consistently less than Avon fragrances. It probably means nothing to the youngsters out there, but I'm overjoyed. Finally I can stock up on a few bottles of Drakkar Noir, and wear it with abandon. 

1 Million Royal (Rabanne)

Did the world need this? It's not really the fragrance I take issue with, although that also sucks, but what's with the price? They're asking $145 for 100 ml of this, retail. I'm sorry, but if I have $145 to spend on a fragrance, I'm going to look into an upscale Guerlain, or Tom Ford, or even an aftermarket Creed. The last thing I'd do is drop that kind of cash on Paco Rabanne's 1 millionth 1 million flanker. Especially when I can get 1 Million Royal's scent profile for $120 less and done a gajillion times better by Lataffa's Qaa'ed (2018). 

This one opens with, you guessed it, bubblegummy vanillic notes, supersweet and cloying, not to mention insanely chemical. It rapidly mellows into a sort of sweet woody/foody thing, the cardamom, before sticking a woody amber landing of mostly benzoin, cedar, patchouli, and vanilla. Rabanne attempted a sage or lavender note here, but it just smells of nakedly chemical sclarene. There's also a bit of a scratchy quality to the amber, suggesting garden variety amberwood/Ambroxan at play. Meh. You could go wild and buy a bottle of this, but only if you happened to love all things Rabanne and had a limitless budget. 

As for the comparison to Baccarat Rouge 540, all I can say is I haven't really gotten into that one, and often wonder if Francis Kurkdjian single handedly ruined perfumery forever with it. In our post-Baccarat world, the landscape is awash with bubblegum-laced quasi-gourmand fragrances, and I'm really starting to hate the world because of it. If you want to smell like this, but prefer to smell interesting, wear Qaa'ed. If you desperately wish to cement your NPC status by losing all unique identifying traits and wandering with the herd repeating pointless memes on X, this is for you.  

Linen Vetiver (Banana Republic)

The Banana Republic Icon Collection fragrances, the originals in the black boxes produced by Gap’s sister brand, are increasingly difficult to find. These scents aren’t budget buys -- retailing around $100, with online prices hovering near $45. For deals, discount retailers like Marshalls, Ross, and Burlington often stock them at roughly $20 for a 75 ml bottle. Recently, my local stores have had an abundance of Dark Cherry & Amber, Gardenia & Cardamom, and Cypress Cedar, with occasional sightings of 06 Black Platinum. However, 90 Pure White, Linen Vetiver, and 78 Vintage Green are becoming scarce, especially Vintage Green. Fortunately, I recently scored a bottle of Linen Vetiver, and it’s a standout fragrance.

It's good because it's obviously an unused mod of Julien Rasquinet's Asian Green Tea, released by Creed in 2014. It opens with a lively bergamot and petitgrain accord, tinged with a spiced sweetness that evokes crab apple. This apple-like note lingers, framing the scent with subtle fruitiness. The heart reveals a blend of iris, hyacinth, and watery jasmine, closely mirroring Asian Green Tea’s profile. Despite its name, Linen Vetiver lacks vetiver, making it a remarkable, streamlined take on what Creed could have achieved with a simpler floral chypre. The vetiver-shaped hole instead of the note suggests that Banana Republic’s perfume team has a wry sense of humor, repurposing a potential Creed scent with a nod to Olivier’s habit of naming fragrances after absent ingredients.

The key distinction lies in Linen Vetiver’s lack of a tea note, relying entirely on its florals to carry the composition—a choice that works beautifully. In Creed’s version, the tea note felt sharp and astringent, almost celery-like, as my mother once noted. Banana Republic’s decision to focus on the floral structure, sweetened by a green apple haze, results in a fresh, mass-appealing fragrance. It’s unclear why Creed passed on this formulation, but their loss is my gain. At Banana Republic’s accessible price point, Linen Vetiver is a gem I’ll happily keep in my rotation for years to come.

L'Aventure Fraîche (Al Haramain)

For reasons that continue to elude me, Silver Mountain Water clones seem to be the yardstick by which Dubai perfumers measure their worth. There are so many variations on this one Creed fragrance that I sometimes wonder if Pierre Bourdon struck a secret deal with a sheik. It’s as if every brand is legally obligated to release its own version of his scrapped L’Eau d’Issey brief. At this point, I’ve lost track of them all. I already own a handful—Ajmal’s Silver Shade, Rasasi’s Al Wisam Day, Al Rehab’s Silver, Armaf’s Club de Nuit Sillage, Afnan’s Supremacy in Heaven, and now this latest entry from Al Haramain, L’Aventure Fraîche.

I’d be lying if I said it was easy to keep these fragrances straight. You’d think that owning SMW itself, plus half its clones, would help build a mental map, but no. This is only my second Al Haramain fragrance, and Amber Oud Carbon Edition was a bit of a letdown for me. Its take on Cool Water was a splice between that and Coty’s Aspen, and I’ve always preferred Cool Water, so its faint pine note threw me off. Interestingly, that same pine note shows up again in L’Aventure Fraîche, and this time, I like it. Silver Mountain Water has a whisper of pine anyway -- unlike Cool Water, which contains none -- so it’s not a stretch to see how a perfumer might lean into that aspect. And here, it works. Instead of fizzy orange and metallic aldehydes, the top notes present bergamot, pine needles, and that same sharp metallic shimmer, blended into a smooth and surprisingly high-quality accord that smells nearly as good as the original Creed. On a budget, this passes muster. 

But like most SMW clones, L’Aventure Fraîche turns a little sour in the drydown. Its crisp metallic brightness eventually gets muddied. The synthetic ambergris, which is popular in UAE perfumery, lends a faintly dirty comb effect that becomes more noticeable about six hours in. Compared to SMW or its closest clone, Sillage, this scent is much simpler. It builds a base around green tea, ginger, and violet leaf, which hums along for hours under the frosty veil of bergamot and pine. There's nothing to complement the whale vomit when it arrives, making it feel out of place. In comparison, Sillage also uses Ambroxan, but balances it with a salty accord that L’Aventure Fraîche lacks. Still, it's beautifully built, it smells expensive, and it’s perfect for sweltering summer days.

If you love the Silver Mountain Water profile, Sillage, Supremacy in Heaven, and the Creed itself are all you need. Add L’Aventure Fraîche only if you’re like me: fully obsessed.

Moth (Zoologist)

Tomoo Inaba is the author of both Moth and Nightingale, and I found the latter beautiful, if strained and derivative. It draws heavily from antique chypres, chiefly Mitsouko, with a whisper of modern flair. It smells lovely, and I’d wear it -- except, well, Mitsouko. Inaba clearly lifted from it, and did so skillfully, but in the end, Guerlain does it better, and for far less. There’s no sense in paying a premium and waiting for an import from Canada (or California, if you’re a Luckyscent customer) when you can find a superior rendition on eBay or Amazon and have Mitsy at your door the next day for $200 less.

Moth, however, is another story. I wouldn’t wear it even if you paid me --  and if you offered a million-dollar check, I’d hesitate. It opens promisingly: nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, pepper, saffron, cumin, with each note distinct and vivid for five fleeting minutes, and a lemon aldehyde lifting the whole into clarity. I almost believe I could enjoy it. Then the curtain drops. Florals: mimosa, rose, iris, heliotrope, and jasmine well up sweetly, but are yoked to a synthetic oud accord that crushes every bit of their natural dreaminess. It smells like damp wood, dried mouse droppings, and mothballs. It doesn’t evoke a forgotten drawer; it shoves you into a rotting attic, like something from a gothic horror movie set. Oh, and it fleetingly reminds me of how my great grandmother's house used to smell, back when we'd visit her in the very late 1980s and very early 1990s, shortly before her death. Her house reeked. Truly a dismal memory. 

For the first hour, I hoped to love Moth. It lingered in that peculiar space of possibly being another Cockatiel, i.e., a Zoologist I'd consider buying. But at ninety minutes, Moth crossed the point of no return. The oud, the faux ambergris (not Ambroxan, as it smells like Inaba needlessly attempted to go the long way around and do his own painstaking reconstruction), the honey, the unwashed patchouli -- all of it grotesque, like a brutalist portrait of decay. It conjures the stench of wood saturated by decades of human hands, like old church pews blooming on a humid summer's day with their own unholy spirit. That’s Moth, for no less than twelve suffocating hours. Ugh.

Cypress Cedar (Banana Republic)

In recent years, I've come to embrace perfume as a gateway to Zen. I seek fragrances that feel meditative, compositions that soothe the body and spirit into stillness. It turns out that the powerhouse chypres and fougères of the seventies, eighties, and even early nineties rarely offer that kind of serenity. Their dense arrangements of caustic fruits, pungent woods, intense musks, and heavy spices feel more theatrical than tranquil. When I want to feel at peace, I reach for scents with softer textures, muted tones, and a calm connection to nature. These are perfumes that don’t shout from the bottle but instead whisper gently, inviting quiet rather than commanding attention.

Cypress Cedar is one such fragrance. Interestingly, the perfumer behind it remains unnamed, a rarity for Banana Republic’s Icon Collection. Often compared to Terre d'Hermès (2006), Cypress Cedar offers a greener, quieter experience. Where Terre d'Hermès leans into orange, grapefruit, and a mineral flint heart, Cypress Cedar plays with bergamot, lemon, and a touch of spearmint for a brisk opening. It introduces rhubarb in the mid-notes, offering a green twist before settling into a base of cedar, vetiver, patchouli, and white musk. The result is less fiery than its Hermès counterpart, lacking the warmth of benzoin and black pepper, but delivering a sense of cool restraint. It won’t dazzle in a crowd, but it might leave you feeling unexpectedly grounded and calm, like a well-tended bonsai on a windowsill.

Fragrances like this are about simplicity and intention, creating accords that stay true to their promise. Like Jo Malone or Yardley offerings, Cypress Cedar doesn't aim to surprise, but it offers quiet depth. There's a chance the perfumer used Iso E Super in a style reminiscent of Jean-Claude Ellena, with a nod to the aesthetic of a Japanese pebble garden. The citrus notes aren't Guerlain quality, but they avoid the sharpness of cheap aldehydes. They smell fresh, juicy, and green—an ideal setup for what follows. The woody notes are smooth and never get too deep or funky. This is what Montblanc Starwalker wanted to be: a cool, misty morning in a grove of cypress, where tension dissolves in the hush of rustling branches. Not extraordinary, but quietly beautiful.

Limonata (Narcotica)

With notes like red currant, grapefruit, ginger, pink pepper, mango, fig, Ambroxan, and musk, you'd think Limonata would be a slam dunk, but I have some issues with it. Claude Dir's 2025 release doesn't open with that appealing melange, instead falling back on the familiar bubblegum note found in mid-market designers of the past decade -- a surprising choice in an expensive niche scent. That bubblegum accord lasts for just five or ten minutes before giving way to a more naturalistic blend of the listed aromatics, but still, why lead with something so uninspired? Familiarity breeds contempt. 

From there it becomes fruitier, with grapefruit, mango, and fig taking the lead, backed by a salty sea-breeze twang of Ambroxan and white musk. It smells good, if a little linear, and the saltiness turns faintly sour over time. I can appreciate the realism of the fruit accord, something Dir clearly excels at, but the grapefruit in Guerlain's L’Homme Idéal Cologne is vastly superior, thanks to Thierry Wasser’s genius addition of piney terpenes that lend both dimension and longevity. Dir’s version is saltier, sweeter, and it lingers for hours, but it lacks the ripe juiciness expected at this price. Blended so closely into sugary mango and fig, the grapefruit loses some of its brightness. Judging by online reviews, though, most people don’t seem to mind, and the fragrance overall gets high marks. 

Limonata’s biggest strength is its aquatic overlay, which gives it its clearest sense of place: salinated beachside air, warm eddies of a rising tide, the scent of a fruit cocktail with salt on the rim as waves crash in the distance. Based on the chatter I'm seeing, I think the fragrance appeals mostly to young women who apparently enjoy sweet and fruity aquatics with bubblegum top notes, a trend that makes me question where perfume culture is heading. At this price point, Narcotica’s summery citrus should come across as super fresh and very natural, not bogged down by unnecessary olfactory calories.

Tommy Girl or Chelsea Flowers? What Is the Specific Connective Tissue Between These Two Floral Scents?

At long last, I finally have these two fragrances side by side. My story with Tommy Girl is a bit tiresome (crib notes: I developed an allergy), and I abandoned it in 2014, then gave my pre-IFRA bottle to a girlfriend at the time, and it took her all of five minutes to wear half the bottle down to empty. This kind of thing doesn't often happen to me, but I recall being annoyed that it did with Tommy Girl, especially since I genuinely love the fragrance.

Imagine that you enjoy tea-based fragrances, you enjoy blackcurrant notes, you love green fragrances, and you happen to have more than a passing appreciation for bucolic florals. Then imagine finding all of these traits in a single inexpensive fragrance by an American designer brand once all the rage in the 1990s. Then take that a bit further, and picture the day when you realize you simply can't wear the stuff. You can be near it, on someone else, but your sinuses forbid you from wearing it yourself. What a dreadful feeling that was. At the time, I didn't really blame anyone or anything but myself. I told myself that it had happened because I was too sensitive, and couldn't handle the composition, and also that I had absolutely awful luck, which like a perverse slot machine in some infernal casino meant getting all three pineapples on a whiff of Calice Becker's masterpiece. 

The truth was less dramatic than that. My bottle was made before the IFRA really kicked their aroma chemical censorship regime into high gear by restricting and banning floral materials, and the Lauder formula at that time (late '90s or early 2000s) definitely used a few things on their list. I don't often thank the IFRA for restricting and removing perfumery materials, but in the case of Tommy Girl, I'll just lay it on the line: they did a good thing here. The old formula was gorgeous, but it was also overpowering. There was a denseness to it, a radiance that was nearly blinding, and at some point whatever floral components were responsible simply overpowered my immune system and triggered an overreaction. It wasn't the tea base with its papery green svelteness, or the abstracted blackcurrant haze under all the white floral and rose materials, but some element in the bouquet itself, some floral note that was overpowering me. 

Fast forward to 2025, and suddenly I find myself faced with a peculiar choice. I'm in a discount retail store perusing the seemingly endless array of "budget" fragrances on offer, many of them actually quite expensive and in some cases egregiously overpriced, when I spot a few bottles of Tommy Girl. It's in the new packaging with red stripes, and it's obvious that the Hilfiger fragrance division has pawned itself off to someone else, with Lauder no longer producing their wares. Why this happened is beyond me, and I don't really care enough to look into it, although I'm sure someone like Derek or Andre have already dug into and explained it, and if they haven't, I'm just as sure that someday they will. But the plain fact is that these fragrances have been reformulated, and are now living in a post-IFRA world. The wheels start to turn, and I reckon that there's a good chance whatever was in Tommy Girl in 2000 is very likely no longer in Tommy Girl today. 

So I take a chance and buy a bottle, knowing full well that if I spend the $27 on it and it still gives me a massive headache, I'll have burned that $27. But I suspect that the fragrance will be chemically altered to enough of a degree that it likely will not mess me up, and upon bringing it home and giving it a spritz, am pleased to report many days after the fact that indeed, the floral materials that once comprised the supernova of "fresh" petals are no longer the same, and I can wear Tommy Girl with no after effects. This gives me a chance to do something that I've wanted to do since 2020: figure out in a side by side comparison why exactly Tommy Girl and Chelsea Flowers smell so similar? Laurent Le Guernec's 2003 "niche" floral doesn't share all that many similar notes, yet at the very first spray, I recognized and said out loud, "Tommy Girl!" But why? 

Chelsea Flowers doesn't have a tea note. There's no blackcurrant in the mix, and there's a soapy-green aspect that resembles the starched floral bouquets in drugstore refrigerators. But the sweetness of its florals is muted, with its damp, green, stemmy facet dialed up instead. Meanwhile, Tommy Girl is all about green tea, intensely blossomy florals, and blackcurrant, which smells more focused, rounded, and juicy in the new formula (actually miles better than vintage). Becker's composition isn't as finely textured as Le Guernec's, but its texture flows in broad, wonderful strokes, with each whiff of a blossom followed five minutes later by a slightly nuanced whiff of another beside it. Chelsea Flowers, in contrast, smells of grassy greens in a humid environment chilled by artificial rain drops and a cooling unit on high. The faint sweetness of the blossoms exists not becuase these flowers are aromatic, but simply by virtue of their numbers -- there are a hundred of them crammed into a little space, and if you could climb in with them, their collective odor would eventually make an impression. Undergirding all of this is a weirdly nondescript soapiness where in Tommy Girl there is green tea, green tea, and more green tea. 

With all of these differences, why is the comparison inevitable? Why, when I smell Chelsea Flowers, does my mind immediately leap to Tommy Girl? No single material or cluster of notes can be isolated and used to identify the olfactory similarities that I experience with these two fragrances, yet it's there. I can only speculate. Perhaps Chelsea Flowers contains a cleverly hidden green tea note? Maybe there's a speck of blackcurrant in there, too, which somehow tilts the overall balance into Tommy territory? Le Guernec's fragrance came out seven years after Becker's, so clearly he was using her work as inspiration when he authored this floral marvel, but what, other than the smell of grocery store bouquets, was he after? Did he imitate the soapy amber and give it just enough of a sweet floral lilt to be evocative of the designer tea floral? Is there a note in Tommy Girl that eludes definition, and is the secret god molecule for making any "fresh" floral smell like Tommy Girl? I may never know. The fragrances are very much abstract meditations on the quietude that surrounds flowers, and in that headspace I zen out, so perhaps it's simply a shared psychological effect gleaned from both compositions. 

So, too, might I find answers in noticing what is different about them. Tommy Girl is radiant, but it's also dusky and dry, save for the blackcurrant note. Chelsea Flowers is also radiant, but dewey and wet all the way through, and I can't not think of cheap clutches of hothouse flowers sitting in buckets of water on the floor of a glass fridge in a Price Chopper or Big Y. Tommy Girl is sweet; Chelsea Flowers less so. Tommy Girl uses green tea for most of its "green" vibe, while Chelsea Flowers seems to eschew any obvious tea note in favor of less exotic stems and leaves rubber-banded together. There's a kind of pollen-like quality to Chelsea that Tommy lacks, while Tommy's more blatant watery florals are louder and grander and in no way as peripheral. 

It's clear that both fragrances share a fundamental skeletal structure, but in Chelsea, this core is layered beneath elements that set it apart from Tommy. Between the two, I definitely like Tommy more, which is weird considering the price difference. I mean, if I were to pass on paying retail for Chelsea, I could buy about ten bottles of Tommy Girl and have a lifetime supply. With that said, I actually think owning Chelsea Flowers has been worth it (granted, I paid a third of what the going rate is), and I like it very much, and would repurchase it if the price was right. Now that Creed is getting ridiculous with its pricing, and now that tariffs are about to jack those prices even higher (not really, but everyone likes to pretend there's a good reason to increase prices), Olivier's biggest competitor might have an edge, even with me. In any case, I want the world to know that owning both of these is not redundant, but owning one, the cheaper one, is really all you need. 

Tommy Girl, Reformulated (Hilfiger)

I’d forgotten how good this fragrance is. Released in 1996, Tommy Girl was the preppy brand’s answer to the original masculine scent that launched a few years earlier, arriving at just the right moment in the height of the 90s when everyone was wearing bold, fruity, and sweet fragrances. While the masculine version focused on citrus, apple, cardamom, and sandalwood, Estée Lauder tapped Calice Becker to craft the feminine counterpart. Her brief captured the decade’s obsession with green tea and watery florals, resulting in a luminous, airy composition that set the standard for tea florals.

I had a vintage bottle in the late 2000s, and it felt made for me -- a bright blend of lemon sencha, camellia, blackcurrant, honeysuckle, jasmine, and lotus, grounded in a cool, aquatic green tea and sandalwood base. It was smooth and radiant, and I loved it until I developed a mild allergy to something in it, probably a lily of the valley material. After an hour with it on, I’d get lightheaded and feel pressure in my chest. Eventually, I passed the bottle to a girlfriend, feeling a bit embarrassed that a “girly” scent had been too much for me. I still missed it, though, and wondered if I'd ever get to enjoy it again, which sounds like a minor concern, and it would be, except that I really, really liked it. 

Fast forward to 2025, and I decided to give the reformulation a fair shot, thinking it might be gentler now that many of the old-school materials, like hydroxycitronellal, lilial, and lyral, have been banned or restricted. To my surprise, it smells just like I remember. Same crisp lemon tea opening, same tart blackcurrant and green tea swirl, same floral mist. No allergic reaction, no compromises. It’s as if the formula had been rebuilt note for note using modern components. Whoever reworked it—maybe Becker herself—deserves major credit. And as for whether a guy can wear Tommy Girl? Absolutely. It’s not overly sweet early on, and frankly, it’s better than the masculine version. Why settle for less? This fragrance is still stunning and very much worth wearing today.

Carmina (Creed)

In 2019, Banana Republic released Dark Cherry & Amber in its Icon line, a wonderful table cherry and praline composition by Claude Dir that is as majestic as it is austere. It smells great, and wears well in most situations and seasons, but I find that its praline and cherry blossom accord is easily its best feature, with the cherry merely a top note that segues well into the florals. It's a cheap fragrance that doesn't smell cheap, and could easily pass as something by Montale or Etat Libre d'Orange.

Carmina is one of the first Kering Creeds, released in 2023 shortly after their acquisition, and is thus subject to the latest version of “Let’s Shit on Creed,” formally titled “Kering is Driving Creed Into the Ground.” The premise is simple: Kering is a big company full of suited gorillas who wouldn’t recognize a proper perfume if it popped them in the schnoz. Naturally, their ownership of Creed means that all future Creeds will officially suck and not smell like Creed. Every NPC from here to the Kerguelen Islands will consider themselves privileged to impugn the legitimacy of a brand that has forever eschewed its former base blend of natural ambergris tincture and Ambroxan for new, “scratchy” Norlimbanol and safranal bases that smell generic and flat. Since Carmina comes in the new 75 ml Kering bottle and boasts a pyramid suspiciously similar to Dark Cherry & Amber, it must be an unused Claude Dir mod that was simply appropriated and given a luxury makeover.

Not so fast, cynical NPC. I've finally had a chance to wear Carmina and spend some quality time with it. As an owner of Dark Cherry & Amber, I can tell you that Carmina is similar about three hours into its drydown, but the differences from top note to eleventh-hour base make owning both far from redundant. Carmina smells gorgeous at every stage, shimmering for hours with a remarkably radiant accord of sweet Bing cherry preserve, fruity pink pepper, Fahrenheit-style violet, and jammy Turkish rose. This is all atop a stunning blend of safranal, Cashmeran, Norlimbanol, and Ambroxan. The material quality is Creed level, and the scent is reminiscent of Creed Love in Black (2008). The fragrance resembles Love in Black just as much as it does Dark Cherry & Amber. Frankly, I think Kering didn’t pay Dir's formula much mind at all; they took an easier route, using a forgotten mod from Creed’s own feminine line from 15 years prior and “updating” it with contemporary tropes of cherry and overly sweet florals. Carmina feels like a rush job by Kering, relying on a pre-existing Creed formula that they merely gave a facelift.

Anyone who gives this a thumbs down needs to explain why, as I find it hard to believe anyone could smell this and think it's just another overpriced cherry fragrance. There’s a reason Carmina has become popular among women; it has effectively become Creed's feminine Aventus—ironic, since Aventus for Her exists. Carmina smells amazing. I don’t miss the ambergris; Love in Black didn’t use it either, likely because it doesn’t suit this scent. It's addictive, with crystalline cherry and rose as its standout features. Unlike Dark Cherry & Amber, Carmina captures the essence of cherry from top to base. Creed has a new masterpiece, and as always, the only question is: who is the perfumer?

Sakura Snow (d'Annam)

My interpretation of Anh Ngo's name for this fragrance may differ from the public's; I don’t take Sakura Snow to imply notes of cherry blossom and snow. Rather, I believe Ngo was being poetic, likening the falling blossoms of the ornamental cherry tree to snowfall. 

The fragrance reflects this perfectly -- there’s nothing snowy about it (if you want a snowy floral, try Snowy Owl by Zoologist). Instead, it highlights juniper berries and cherry blossoms -- an intriguing combination, if I may say so. The juniper berry is bright and dimensional, offering a cool, aromatic texture that blends seamlessly with the benzyl acetate and Hedione HC of cherry blossom. Sakura Snow’s almost gin-like opening soon softens into a feathery cherry blossom scent -- light, airy, and expansive, yet surprisingly potent. It’s one of those rare compositions that seems to grow stronger as it dries down, amplifying rather than fading. Supporting this delicate floral core is an ambery structure that feels radiant yet refined, with a touch of woodiness that never fully materializes into a recognizable bark or branch note. There’s a familiar twang, subtler than the usual Ambroxan -- perhaps Cetalox? Whatever it is, it lends a mineralic but gentle quality, with a hint of salty animalics -- clean without being soapy, cozy without being sweet.

After ten hours -- yes, it lasts that long -- Sakura Snow settles into a quiet hum of everything that came before, its refined Ambroxan-like base still whispering echoes of juniper and ethereal florals. Does it smell rich, dimensional, and naturalistic? In a way, yes. It smells expensive. And it is expensive. But if you love cherry blossom and the zen-like serenity of its airy florals, that dulcet olfactory tone, Sakura Snow is likely worth it. I enjoyed it, and if cherry blossom were a note I adored, I’d own a bottle.

I am Trash - Les Fleurs du Déchet (Etat Libre d'Orange)

Etat Libre d'Orange isn't the niche brand to go for if you're looking for "natural." Unlike the offerings of Amouage, Xerjoff, Creed, ELdO's frags rarely inspire a sense of realism or depth; they clearly use synthetics, and appear to be very proud of it. I recall wearing Antiheros a while back and being struck by its harshness. It was like I'd lost a fight with a bottle of lavender hand soap from a truck stop restroom. 

I Am Trash – The Flowers of Waste goes all-in on its soapy-chemical tones, delivering a composition that wouldn’t feel out of place in the haircare aisle of a drugstore. I think ELdO was trying to emulate the smell of scented trash bags, but I could be wrong. Daniela Andrier seems to have drawn from her CK Contradiction archive of Y2K “fresh” profiles and leftover submissions when she handed this to Etienne de Swardt’s firm in 2017 or 2018. The result? A fruity-floral shampoo accord, drenched in the overly sweetened “fresh” aesthetic. A silvery flicker of tuberose, neroli, and green apple opens the fragrance before quickly dissolving into juicy fruit esters. The drydown settles into a crisp-woody base, courtesy of Iso E Super and Akigalawood. There are floral nuances that echo Tuberose Overdose, along with a heavy dose of apple, calling to mind just about anything from Donna Karan.

Fragrances like this are why the niche realm and the perfume industry in general have grown far beyond the bounds of what the market can ultimately sustain. There are too many products out there now, swamping the sub-sectors of what the average consumer will buy, with the gross overrepresentation of various segments exacerbated by needless designer-level entries in the niche realm. I Am Trash isn't really trash or trashy, but it's unnecessary, especially for a fragrance priced at over $50 an ounce. If you're in the market for something that smells like this, look to the aforementioned Calvin Klein, Banana Republic, or Donna Karan and save yourself time, money, and heartache.

Phantom Parfum (Rabanne)

Having never smelled Phantom EDT, I can’t fully assess the parfum’s place in the lineup, though, to be fair, Rabanne isn’t a brand I have much experience with anyway. (It was once called Paco Rabanne, after its founder, but in today’s world, gendering a company is practically a mortal sin—so begone, first name!) I’ll admit, I underestimated this scent. It’s actually quite pleasant.

The original Phantom, Rabanne’s first openly AI-generated formula, is a slightly bizarre hodgepodge of counterintuitive notes. The parfum, however, is a human-handed flanker, which raises the question: why not go all in? If you’re going to let the algorithm bless us, commit. Instead, Rabanne handed this one over to Dominique Ropion, Anne Flipo, and Juliette Karagueuzoglou, and it shows—Phantom Parfum smells “safe,” meticulously curated to fit every current trend: sweet, warm, soft, and loud. The opening is the same post-Invictus bubblegum top note I’ve smelled a dozen times this year. The transition? Predictably swift—an aromatic jolt of robust lavender, then the inevitable base of patchouli, vanilla, and woods. Familiar to a fault, though it does nod to Thierry Mugler’s A*Men (1996) and a handful of late-’90s and early-2000s gourmands.

Its best feature is the lavender heart, sharpened by what Rabanne claims is rhubarb—though I don’t detect it outright, more as a textural effect. As a starter fougère for men under thirty, it’s solid: well-balanced, versatile, and safely within the bounds of its target audience. Loud and sweet enough for a club night, but not so cloying as to repel anyone past that phase. I enjoyed it, but unsurprisingly, not enough to reach for my wallet.

Born in Roma (Valentino Uomo)

A prominent fragrance reviewer describes Born in Roma (2019) as opening with “fruity musky tones,” claiming these “nostril-tingling notes will recall the early 2000s Y2K dynamism and pop.” Yet, I find myself utterly perplexed about which fragrance he’s referring to. To my nose, this scent feels like a tired echo of the past five years—little more than a derivative riff on Invictus, akin to Hawas, but lacking its charm.

The perfume unfurls with that all-too-familiar sweet, pseudo-bubblegum accord—a synthetic medley of "froot" flavors that swiftly collapses into the predictable Ambroxan-driven heart. It’s a synthetic slog, a chemical haze that lacks any spark of originality. What elevates Hawas, in contrast, is its ambergris reconstruction, crafted with above-average, designer-grade materials. That salty, flattering ambiance lends Hawas a whisper of natural depth, a lifeline for someone craving even a hint of authenticity in their fragrance. Born in Roma EDT, however, doesn’t even attempt such finesse. While Ambroxan does appear in its expected dry-down slot, it sits there nakedly, exuding a stark, metallic saltiness with no effort to mimic the nuanced warmth of true ambergris. The result is a cheap, chemical midsection that feels oddly flabby and uninspired. It’s difficult to fathom why anyone would shell out the extra money for this when Rasasi’s Hawas delivers a superior experience at a third of the cost.

Perhaps Invictus, one of those early 2010s fragrances, was more influential than it first appeared, joining the ranks of Bleu de Chanel and Sauvage in shaping an era overrun with imitators. My issue lies in their sameness—they all seem to be chasing Invictus’s shadow. Born in Roma isn’t a bad fragrance, per se, but its “been there, done that” aura saps any joy from the wearing experience. I can’t recommend it. You want this? Reach for the original Invictus, or better yet, grab Hawas and revel in something with a bit more soul.

Gold+ (Commodity)

I'm pleasantly surprised by this fragrance. It consists of three main notes—nutmeg, saffron, and patchouli—and that’s exactly what I get. My issue with Gold+ is that it forgoes the vanilla freshness of its namesake in favor of a spice mélange that resembles Prada Luna Rossa Ocean EDP and Parfum, without adding anything new to the conversation.

Gold+ opens with an incredibly realistic nutmeg note, as if I had taken a McCormick shaker and dusted the spice directly onto my skin. The only other detectable note is a slight shimmer of ISO E Super to smooth the edges. Within ninety minutes, the nutmeg shifts to safranal, intensifying the fragrance with a quality reminiscent of Luna Rossa Ocean Le Parfum—but without the same depth or complexity. Still, it’s impressive.

The patchouli finally emerges, six hours later, though it’s weak. The nutmeg-saffron duo is so dominant that little else breaks through, leaving the scent locked into a simplified Italian designer profile. It remains static and unchanging until you do laundry or take three or four showers. Whatever these materials are, they’re nothing short of nuclear. With Ocean, even after four wash cycles, I can still smell it. Gold+ is just as clingy. If you want to drench yourself in liquid gold and never smell anything else again, this is for you.

Gucci Guilty Pour Homme Eau de Toilette (Gucci)

Frida Giannini

Gucci eventually surrendered its catalog of fragrances when Tom Ford parted ways with the brand in 2004, turning creative control over to Frida Giannini of Fendi fame. I sense her Italian influence in the original Gucci Guilty EDT from 2011 and sometimes wonder if Giannini's art direction, both during and after Ford's tenure, was shaped more by her years at Fendi than by Ford himself. At least she started out with promise; the myriad of offerings from Gucci in the years that followed are hit and miss. 

Guilty Pour Homme opens with a blast of crisp lemon, lavandin, and laundry musk, all undergirded with ethyl maltol as homage to the fruity-sweetness that every designer scent seems to need at weapons grade volume these days (it's rather quiet in Guilty).  The citrus and lavender manage to overcome the sugar in what becomes a suprisingly austere herbal/woody heart accord, something that plays well to both the unimaginative teen this is aimed at and the thirty-something who appreciates the zest of a cologne structure wedded to a base of modern musks, patchouli isolate, and the requisite 2010s wallop of Ambroxan. Also flitting in and out of perceptibility are notes of orange blossom and vanilla. 

There's a slight nod to Creed's Aventus in Guilty, although that's debatable. I smell a kindred stylization of pert fruitiness over dusky woods, and to be perfectly frank, the overall composition smells like it was an old mod of something from the early 2000s that was tweaked in a hurry to jog closer to Creed's new flagship fragrance. With that said, one is no substitute for the other, and if you think Guilty will get you to Aventusville, you're sorely mistaken. Where it does take you is to the ultimate middle-of-the-road designer hotspot of the mid-to-late 2010s, smelling fresh, clean, and, of all things, masculine. 

Eau de Protection (Etat Libre d'Orange)

Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back at my least favorite decade, the 2000s, I now see it was a time of freshness and metallic sourness, which is vastly preferable to the dessert-cart sugared ambers that dominate today’s fragrance landscape. Eau de Protection (2007), created by the Two Antoines, Lie and Maisondieu, house perfumers for Free Orange State, smells both fresh and sour, with a gorgeous rosy sweetness. Green and pert, it undergirds the ozonics. How does this read in 2025? Is it wearable?

Wearing a bittersweet green floral like Eau de Protection in today's world presents three issues. First, those too young to remember that era will think you smell weird. Second, the public may misinterpret the scent. Third, those who do remember might find it dated. Gen Z simply won’t understand, so if you’re a guy hoping to attract young women, good luck. Wearing a fresh green floral as a man also invites scrutiny from the gender discourse brigade, always eager to apply labels. Then there’s the occasional comment: “You smell like a girl I knew in college.”

Setting aside the social pitfalls, I really like Eau de Protection. It is unisex, leaning feminine, and reminds me of Banana Republic’s Peony & Peppercorn. This version, though, is far more refined, with better materials and a more subtle approach. This should be the defining masculine fragrance of 2025, if only because women have moved away from floral scents. Meanwhile, the Ambroxan-and-patchouli-isolate trend of Sauvage and Bleu de Chanel is played out. Eau de Protection is an ode to freshness, greenness, and floralcy, a gilded beauty in an olfactory Garden of Eden. I’m here for it. Full bottle worthy, though I tend to procrastinate with niche.

Burberry Hero (Burberry)

If you ever look back at the early 1970s, you’ll see a world that embraced excess with a certain kind of reckless pride. Films were bawdy, vulgar, and all sorts of other things that begin with the letter “v,” but they were competently made and carried an undeniable vibrance. Even the most outrageous productions had craftsmanship behind them, and people took pride in their work—no matter what that work was. You didn’t watch movies in the comfort of your home; even the most risqué entertainment had to be viewed in public theaters, often in major metro hubs like Times Square. After the show, you could step out for a hot dog and then spend the rest of the afternoon shopping at Bloomingdale’s.

Perfume was that way, too. Brut. Jovan Musk. Pierre Cardin Pour Monsieur. Bawdy, bare-chested, ready for anything at any moment—brutal and assaulting the senses as olfactory assailants in their private romances. Yet they were produced on generous budgets using skilled perfumers, and despite their downmarket appeal, they were respectable and widely loved, not unlike the raunchy, provocative films of Jean Rollin. America and Europe had their many differences, but they could agree on their love for indulgence, and perfume was no exception. This was good for culture, good for art, good for society. People were freer, their sense of intellect was deeper, and their senses were attuned to finer things. I dare say that although it was a time before the digital age, it was a time when people were more advanced in their understanding of life.

Today, none of this is true. We have jettisoned art, jettisoned the vulgar, abandoned the wanton excesses of yore, all for the restrictive safety of risk-free sure-things. Movies are pallid ghosts of their former selves, devoid of humor, seduction, and sin. Perfumes have also shriveled up into little shivering weaklings, created not by people of knowledge and power but by scared little runts in off-the-rack suits who think that, because they’re European, sophistication is innate to them and need not be cultivated. They churn out the most focus-grouped garbage, boring sweet ambers, a dime a dozen, simply because an A.I. app tells them it will sell, and they sprinkle in whatever organic note the A.I. is kind enough to recommend. In Burberry Hero Eau de Parfum’s case, it was pine.

Sloth (Zoologist)

I often wonder if rich people actually wear these perfumes. If I were a millionaire, would Sloth by Zoologist be my signature scent? Then I hop into my downmarket Toyota Corolla and drive to Woodbury, where I drop $100 on seven grocery items at New Morning Market, inhaling that unmistakable “health food store” aroma—spices, grains, and wood. And that’s when it hits me: Sloth is right at home in a millionaire’s lair. This is the premier fragrance of choice for the Connecticut blue blood who drops $500 on groceries that barely last the weekend. Why not?

There’s no use romanticizing this fragrance. Sloth smells like spicy body odor, and wearing it feels like a social experiment gone wrong. It reminds me of a grad school professor—another lefty blue blood—who spent half a class reminiscing about visiting India, where crowds of poor people reached out and touched her clothes, which she somehow recalled fondly. I imagine that scene smelled exactly like Sloth. Prin Lomros (the nose behind Bat and Rhinoceros) created this one, but I just don’t get it. Perfume is supposed to make you smell good. Sloth does the opposite.

What anyone sees in this is beyond me. The stench of unwashed skin is precisely what I’m trying to avoid, and if I’ve just showered and shaved, the last thing I want is a fragrance that instantly reverses my progress. This won’t get you a date. It won’t impress your significant other—because there isn’t a woman in America who wants her man to smell like this. It doesn’t even work as some highbrow intellectual exercise, because no amount of Ego can override the lizard brain screaming that this smells spoiled and vaguely hazardous. Sloth isn’t just a bad perfume—it’s a joke. Dollar store body spray is more useful, more desirable, more respectable.

Quorum Silver (Antonio Puig)

Cedar? I smell ginger. Nearly all ginger, in fact. Quorum Silver hits with a massive wallop of it in the top notes -- brisk, spicy, a little sweet -- and rapidly segues into an aromatic mixture of lavender and herbal notes to buttress the longevity of that gingery freshness. Eventually, as in after six or seven hours, a light cedar woodiness is apparent, but it's not like I'd call Quorum Silver a "cedar scent." It is certainly a ginger fragrance.

Has this been reformulated? For twenty years, I've been reading people's chatter about how Quorum Silver is a one-note cedar bomb from top to bottom, yet my experience is sharply divergent from theirs. When I think of cedar, I think of Krizia Uomo. That's a cedar fragrance. Intensely woody, all the way through. Puig's scent is what I had hoped Creed's Tabarome Millesime would be (but wasn't), an intense blast of ginger that softens into greener notes in the drydown. There's a light tea-like effect in the base of QS, and the quality of materials is high enough that I can envision this as a niche offering.

I'm not sure I understand what everyone has been experiencing with this fragrance, but I have a thought. There's a known phenomenon that when one person of repute says something, everyone follows. It's The Emperor's New Clothes, only here it's a note, and not magical clothing in question. At some point someone influential shouted "cedar!" and the whole world scrambled to echo it, fearing that an opposing take would rattle things. Well, I'm the little boy pointing at the naked man: "GINGER!" 

Elephant (Zoologist)

Released in 2017, Elephant is one of Chris Bartlett's compositions, he of Pell Wall Perfumes, and I have to say, it's not bad. It also happened to be an Art & Olfaction Awards Finalist of 2018. The notes listed are tree leaves, darjeeling tea, magnolia, cocoa, coconut milk, incense, jasmine, woods, amber, musk, patchouli, and sandalwood. I can detect every single one of these notes with clarity. Well done, Chris. 

The good: Elephant wears nicely. It opens with an aggressive accord of bitter greens, pungent cedar, magnolia, and jasmine, with a slightly sweet/skanky balance calibrated just right. The dominant note to my sniffer is jasmine blossom, a beautifully indolic and very floral-ambrosial nuance that penetrates every level of the fragrance's pyramid. Eventually the grounding notes of cocoa and coconut milk appear and smooth out the rough edges, leaving some of the smokiness of the tea and jasmine, which then morph into an incense and patchouli accord for depth. Rich, green, woody, relaxed. Very nice.

The bad: This stuff is linear as hell. After the first half hour, everything hits a stasis point, and the dynamism fizzles. I'm left with a woody-floral coconut musk that holds for hours and never dries out. Sounds okay, but you may find yourself wishing you could get your nose on the rather good sandalwood undergirding everything. Bartlett is a prominent member of Basenotes and a competent perfumer, but Elephant suffers from being a bit of a one-trick pony. Wrong animal there. 

She Was an Anomaly (Etat Libre d'Orange)

This smells like something Prada would put have put out fifteen years ago, a bready/carrot iris followed by a semisweet powdery musk. The irones and ionones are restrained and tempered by a massive dose of white musk and Amberfix™ in the base, a salty nuance that perpetually wavers between ambergris and sandalwood. The first ten minutes have me wondering if this is going to be a full-throated iris fragrance, but once the synthetics start to buzz around, it gets pretty vague in intention and a little nondescript in overall smell. To my nose, the notes that stand out are a slightly floral iris and orris accord, which ends up reminding me of a much stronger and more resolute scent at less than a quarter of the price: Deauville Pour Homme.  

Daniela Andrier claims that she asked AI to generate a formula for her, and it gave her the bones of this scent, with an expectation that she would (paraphrasing) "overdose on two materials." She obliged the algorithm, so to speak, but made a few human adjustments along the way to produce She Was an Anomaly. I find it interesting that she admits to relying on AI for a formula, because we all know that if she did it with this perfume, she's done it with a bunch of others as well. Once you rub that lamp, there ain't no putting the genie back in. Andrier used Givaudan's Carto, a program perfumers can use to develop a perfume within a month, neck-snapping in perfumery terms, even for the designer flanker mills out there. Time is money, and Carto likely saves a ton of cabbage. 

To my nose, this scent smells like an AI formula that was corrected. I'm not sure how long it took to compose, and suspect Andrier spent a more traditional length of time on it after that initial Carto suggestion. I like She Was an Anomaly, but I certainly don't love it, and I fall into the camp of people who feel that it's a bit too discreet and one-dimensional for something at ELDO's price-point. I mean, if I can spritz on a little of my Deauville and have a more satisfying experience with the same set of notes (plus a few that Andrier didn't use), why would I deviate from the ten dollar scent? Big brand cache only works when the story behind the perfume implies hard-won gains. I think ELDO would've been better off keeping the backstory to She Was an Anomaly to itself. 

Jaguar for Men (Givaudan)

Jaguar for Men is one of those frags that falls prey to reformulation anxiety, the fear that grips dyed-in-the-wool fragrance fanatics whenever they get their hands on something they've never smelled before. Crafted in 1988 by Thierry Wasser, now of Guerlain, the first version was apparently a musky-woody powerhouse in true '80s fashion. Then the '90s came a-knockin, and at some point in the ensuing decade a perfumer from Mane named Dominique Preyssas reformulated it and stripped out the musky bits, which resulted in something a few ticks closer to the original Polo from '78. I've never smelled either of those formulas; my first experience with Jaguar is from a 2021 bottle manufactured by Lalique Beauty, via a post-Preyssas formula that smells nothing at all like Polo (you can keep Polo) and a heck of a lot like the original Krizia Uomo (thank God). 

Well, three parts Krizia Uomo, that is, and one part Sir Irisch Moos, that neon-green stuff from Germany in the little geometric bottle that is all but impossible to find in America nowadays. At this point it's safe to say that the only entity one can truly attribute this fragrance to is the manufacturer, Givaudan, which has supplied the majority of Lalique's perfumes for many years now. Preyssas's formula likely survived the years with minor focus-grouped tweaks here and there. I find it interesting that it smells so dimensional and well made for something so out of fashion (not cheapened), and even more intriguing that it so closely resembles a revered discontinued gem like Krizia Uomo. Why is nobody talking about this? Ever since Krizia went bye-bye, its many fans have been gnashing their teeth, needless given that Jaguar exists. The rich cedar and mossy-resinous textures of the Italian scent are here as well, only Lalique's fragrance is brighter, spicier, with a woody orange citrus note that dominates the profile, something Uomo never had. 

There's a bit more vintage Irish Spring Soap to Jaguar, something fresher and more forward-leaning in its style that has me feeling glad I took the plunge on it. The problem with owning this is that I wonder when I'll ever wear it -- my girlfriend dislikes these old earthy masculines, and I don't really blame her. I can imagine what it must be like to spend a few hours around the guy who sprays this one time too many. But then again, there's no denying Jaguar smells fantastic. I don't care that the '80s are over. You know what's never over? Smelling crisp and clean. This isn't a Millennial aquatic or ozonic "blue" thing. This isn't your brother's bottle of Fierce. This won't get you laid on Saturday night. This is the sort of thing you spray on to fight the invading Turks. Masculine, virile, rich, clean, a little heroic, the box and bottle even come in Sherwood Green. Simply perfect. 

Y Eau de Parfum (Yves Saint-Laurent)

I’ve never been inclined to delve deeply into the Y range. Everything I’ve read, coupled with the uninspiring look of the bottles, suggests a concoction designed to appease a focus group of Gen Z consumers. It seems like an attempt to be all things to all people, without committing to anything meaningful. Still, I’ll admit I have a soft spot for juniper notes, which prompted me to give Y EDP a try. While I wouldn’t say it left a lasting impression, I don’t regret the experience.

In the 1980s and 1990s—especially the latter—there emerged a category of fragrance that can be described as the “generalist” scent. These were versatile compositions that fit seamlessly into almost any setting, whether professional or casual. They embodied all the prevailing olfactory trends of their time without dwelling too deeply on any single facet. Fragrances like Allure Homme Edition Blanche, the original Allure Homme from 1999, Green Irish Tweed, YSL’s Jazz, anything by Vince Camuto or Jimmy Choo, the Polo Blue range, and even Xeryus by Givenchy are classic examples. These scents served as olfactory multitaskers, scratching itches without committing to one narrative.

The concept of the generalist is inherently adaptable, but it takes decades for its evolution to become apparent. In the 2000s, generalists included offerings like Dior’s Higher and Kenneth Cole’s Black, which still reflected the legacy of the 1990s. In that earlier decade, the generalist DNA was shaped by the dihydromyrcenol revolution ignited by Paco Rabanne Pour Homme, mingled with the musky-spicy tropes of the 1980s. This era gave rise to creations like Nautica (1992), Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme (1994), Smalto (1998), and even Creed’s Green Valley (1999). These fragrances were designed to be all-encompassing, appealing to a time when most consumers weren’t inclined to amass extensive fragrance collections, and "niche" was still virgin territory.

By the 2010s, the generalist evolved again, this time shaped by advances in technology and shifts in taste. Affordable gas chromatography and the declining costs of previously expensive materials—such as Ambroxan and Hedione—enabled perfumers to craft sophisticated, mass-market generalists with relative ease. Yet, paradoxically, we now inhabit an era of commercial insecurity, where creative ventures are often stifled by a relentless pursuit of guaranteed profits. Fragrance houses hedge their bets on name recognition rather than risking originality. The result is a wave of sanitized, featureless designer scents engineered to appeal to the widest possible audience, their compositions vetted by focus groups and algorithms for maximum market penetration.

As of 2025, the prevailing template for a generalist fragrance includes faintly aquatic, slightly woody, and subtly white-musky elements, often coupled with a conspicuous sweetness and vague gourmand undertones. These blends, meticulously homogenized, aim to mask any creative or budgetary limitations. Y EDP fits this mold almost to a fault. It opens with a pleasant burst of green apple and ginger, transitioning to a juniper and amber heart that feels unexpectedly aromatic and mature. However, the dry-down succumbs to a generic, semi-sweet "candle amber" accord that resists further dissection. My mind, frankly, tunes out. Kind of a letdown after the initial promise here.

You could wear Y EDP and get by just fine. Technically, it’s a well-made fragrance. There’s nothing wrong with it. But it leaves you with a question: Am I wearing this because it resonates with me? Or is it simply a “safe” choice, destined to be forgotten? If it’s the latter, you’ve already answered the question Yves Saint Laurent posed: Y?

Pino Silvestre - New Formula (Parfums Mavive)

Gone is the crappy built-in atomizer that used to dribble and spit excess fragrance all over my fingers with every spray, replaced by an ordinary plastic cap atop an ordinary atomizer that works just fine. The first feature of the reformulation of Pino Silvestre is already a big plus in my book! The return to vintage 1950s graphics on the box is another, although I wish they would ditch the sticker on the front of the bottle and just paint the name on the glass, but that's probably asking too much.

Why Pino Silvestre was reformulated is beyond me. I find it interesting that a cologne from seventy years ago is still given this much love and attention. To date, I am familiar with three iterations -- the clear label "recent vintage" version from roughly fifteen to twenty years ago, perhaps even stretching a bit back to the '90s; the previous version with the forest on the box and the opaque sticker on the bottle; the most recent version, pictured above. Of the three, this third one is definitely my favorite. The first version that I mentioned, which I bought back around 2010, was good but too weak. Great lemon/basil opening, followed by a crisp assembly of green herbal notes that loosely resembled Christmas tree pine for about ninety minutes at a low thrum, before a near-total fadeout to a very soft honeyed amber. The second version was a vast improvement on the longevity front, an intense blast of the aforementioned top notes, followed by a more robust cedar-infused heart and base. But the base lacked the honeyed grace of its predecessor, a frustrating example of an unnecessary overcorrection. 

This new stuff rectifies that by stripping down some of the woods in favor of the more vintage herbal arrangement, with lavender and minty notes sparkling in impressive fidelity amidst the honeyed amber drydown that I've missed. It does lose a bit of the previous formula's punch, and peters out after three or four hours, but I think with a few extra sprays you could get a solid five or six hours of detectable sillage. This is a return to Pino Silvestre's past, albeit with what is still a slightly louder cedar that has been tapered back to allow that piney goodness to shine. Still great, still recommended.