Some fragrance note pyramids I take seriously, while others strike me as marketing ploys, packed with alleged notes that don’t exist in the composition, serving only to mislead or confuse. Black (2003), in my view, falls into the latter category. I won’t bother listing its pyramid (“watermint,” etc.), as I find it largely fictitious. I also disagree with peers who see Black as a forward-thinking precursor to Bleu de Chanel or the standout of the brand’s lineup. Notably, despite its success as a mainstream masculine fragrance in the early 2000s, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez omitted it from Perfumes: The Guide (2008).
My theory on this omission ties to my perception of Black: it’s essentially Davidoff Cool Water (1988), reimagined as an ozonic rather than aquatic scent. The resemblance to Cool Water is striking from the outset, surprising given how rarely this connection is noted. Black features a bold aromatic fougère accord of aldehydic lavender and green apple, with synthetics like Aldehyde C-12 MNA, Floralozone, and Helional creating a vague “fresh” profile that settles into a white musk aftertrail, dominated by the heart’s overpowering green apple. For six hours post-application, apple is nearly all I smell. It’s as if perfumers Harry Fremont and Sabine De Tscharner took Pierre Bourdon’s fougère formula, tweaked it to emphasize ozonic notes per their brief, and left the core unchanged. In 2003, Black may have felt trendy, but it always triggered a sense of déjà vu, as if I’d smelled it before.
In their book, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez dismiss fragrances that mimic Cool Water without adding originality, and consider them to be olfactory complications to Bourdon's simple plot. This likely explains their refusal to review Black. Coles's scent echoes Cool Water but swaps its minimalist elegance -- marked by neroli, tobacco, and mineralic sea-spray notes -- for a heavier blend of soapy apple, wormwood (the base here is clearly the inspiration for Steve DeMercado's Guess Man three years later) and musk meant to evoke a woody amber. While Black appeals to fans of apple-forward fragrances, its reliance on Cool Water’s template feels dated and redundant. Why choose Black when Cool Water offers a purer expression of the same idea?