Versace Versense (Versace)

Released in 2009, Versace’s feminine-marketed unisex Versense feels like a 1990s throwback that arrived a decade too late. I say this because Versense is a figgy floral that could easily be mistaken for any one of the dozens that perfumed the air in 1998 or 1999. Its appearance on shelves when it did is something of a curiosity, and I’m not convinced the category needed another entry.

It opens well enough, with a bitter, pithy bergamot and lime accord that smells reasonably natural and avoids the waxy citrus aldehydes that tend to push feminine fragrances toward drugstore territory. Many reviewers on Fragrantica wax poetic about the citrus, but I’m less persuaded. Yes, it smells good, but it's thin and somewhat weak. To my nose, it lacks dimension. From there, a lemongrass accord emerges, again faint and difficult to clearly discern. Eventually, vague white floral notes appear, lending a soft green sweetness. This is where the fragrance veers into unisex territory, as the notes that might've sent it firmly into the ladies department are incredibly restrained. And then comes the fig.

It’s a fig accord with discreet vetiver and oakmoss, or something standing in for it, and it’s here that Versense performs best. Fig is an agreeable, nostalgic note. Versace presents it plainly, without complicating the structure, a restraint appreciated. Still, Versense wears like an Italian-style eau de cologne built from mid-grade materials, where one might wish for refinement. Ennui in green, if you will. 

Fougères Marine (Montale)

The box arrives in marine blue, the bottle in Montale’s signature silver, but that’s the last you’ll hear from me about “presentation.” What matters is the scent, and online the chorus is deafening: Fougères Marine smells “just like Tommy,” only richer, smoother, longer lasting, and therefore—according to the internet’s most excitable NPCs—worthy of immediate purchase. I understand the impulse. I smell it too. Yet I can’t quite join the chant, because I was there. I wore Lauder’s vintage Tommy when the nineties were still happening, not yet a nostalgia industry. I loved that fragrance. And this is not that fragrance.

This is the brief for that fragrance—a parallel-world scenario in which Tommy Hilfiger’s team bypassed Lauder entirely and instead tried to slip Olivier Creed a suitcase of Euros to work his unofficial “Creed magic.” In this imaginary scenario, Olivier remembers he isn’t a perfumer and dutifully outsources the job to an S-tier ghost: someone with the skill and precision to construct Tommy’s bone structure using top-flight materials, and lace its freshness with dusky herbal aromatics, Calone 1951, and a massive synthetic ambergris accord (Cetalox, Precyclemone B) for that "marine" piece. The result behaves like the finest Creeds once did: rich yet airy, diffusive yet tingling in cold air, gliding forward with the self-assurance of a fragrance that lasts twenty hours on skin and nearly forever on fabric.

Wearing it, I’m reminded that formulas age even when nostalgia doesn’t. Today’s Tommy cologne still resembles its former self, though a juniper-seaside inflection has crept in, muting the gauzy sweetness of its youth with a hint of lavandin-fueled marine bitterness, as if quietly borrowing a page from Montale’s book. If you must compare Fougères Marine to Tommy, compare it to this reformulated Tommy, not the original one worn with striped crewnecks and Caesar cuts in 1995. Montale’s version is too complex, too polished, too gleamingly synthetic-ambergris aquatic to truly resurrect the spiced-apple style of the nineties, a genre unlikely ever to return.

What it does revive, however, is a rarer pleasure: the sense that a fragrance can be both supremely wearable and quietly spectacular. Tommy was always a good idea, but Montale perfected it. To quote the NPCS: "S-Tier." Even my fiancée likes this one, and she doesn't like anything.

A Drop d'Issey Essentielle Eau de Parfum (Issey Miyake)

I've not smelled the original Drop from 2021, although it looks like it'd be right up my alley—lilac, powdery notes, fresh musks? What's not to like?

The only reason I own the Essentielle flanker is an eBay seller offered a deal I couldn't refuse on a 100 ml bottle, so there you have it. All three of Miyake's Drops feature a prominent lilac note, my favorite floral in nature and perfume, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with any of them. Essentielle is beautiful and ethereal, with a lovely lilting lilac accord that permeates the entire structure, but I'm struck by one undeniable reality: it smells a helluva lot like the original Tommy Girl (Calice Becker, 1996).

It's like the perfumer took an unused Tommy Girl mod, swapped lilac in for green tea, and amped up the synthetic green magnolia accord. Smells great, albeit softer and a little better quality than its nineties progenitor.

Very Saturday-at-the-mall casual, but good stuff!