Revisiting Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men

I recently purchased a new 120 ml bottle of Obsession for Men for twenty dollars and felt compelled to revisit this still formidable oriental relic of the 1980s. Even now, four decades after its debut, Obsession for Men remains the flagship masculine fragrance of the Calvin Klein portfolio. What strikes me most upon smelling it again is not merely its persistence, but its undiminished beauty. After a fallow period in the 2000s and early 2010s, when the scent seemed attenuated and somewhat coarse, my nose finds the current formulation restored and once again worthy of its reputation. Small mercies, indeed.

I recently watched a video review by Eau d’Erica that I found unintentionally revealing. Born at the tail end of the 1990s, she has no lived relationship to the cultural moment from which Obsession for Men emerged. Her initial reaction is ambivalent. She notes, correctly, that the fragrance is more animalic than expected, but quickly pivots to describing it as smelling like an “old man,” invoking nursing homes and decline. The response is understandable, if ultimately misguided. Obsession for Men is not a neutral or contemporary composition. It demands a certain temporal literacy. At minimum, one needs to be in their late thirties or forties to grasp that this fragrance is not simply “from the 1980s,” but is suburban America in the 1980s, rendered liquid and sealed in glass.

From the moment its citrus-spice opening meets skin, Obsession announces itself as an emissary from another era. There are no smartphones or ride-sharing apps where it comes from. Nights glow with neon. Streets hum with conversation rather than notification tones. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air, omnipresent and unquestioned. Women wear dresses and heels; men wear sport coats and slick their hair back. Synthesizers sound futuristic rather than dated. Movies are events, not content. You do not attend them casually; you experience them. Everything feels alive, in part because attention has not yet been fractured by devices and the constant undertow of the internet.

And everywhere, the air smells faintly of Obsession for Men. From 1987 onward, when the fragrance reached critical mass among American men, it seemed to permeate daily life. You encountered it in cars, in homes, in classrooms, on sidewalks. It was an experience in itself, the Sauvage of its day, only denser, louder, and more unapologetic. The advertising campaigns of the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the now-iconic imagery featuring Kate Moss, sustained its prominence for years. Not since Drakkar Noir had a fragrance so cleanly and powerfully signified its era, an era that understood itself as irreducibly cool.

My father always kept a bottle on his dresser. He wore it often enough to matter, but not so often that he finished it. That bottle lingered for decades, gradually becoming more and more vintage, until one day he inexplicably discarded it. There was perhaps thirty milliliters left, the liquid darkened and sedimented, the splash top crusted with resinous residue. It was, by any modern standard, gnarly. And it smelled that way too: a funky, civet-heavy oriental that defied convention by grafting itself onto a fougère skeleton, layering smoky lavender over balsamic resins and woods. It was not polite. It did not attempt to be.

To call Obsession for Men nostalgic is accurate, but insufficient. I cannot pretend to evaluate it objectively. Yes, I think it smells wonderful, but when I inhale it, I am flooded with place and time. Dark kitchens. Earth-toned interiors. The lingering aesthetic of the 1970s. Big hair, broad shoulders, boxy cars with expansive windows. My parents visiting friends, their homes saturated with distinctive domestic odors, and threaded through all of it, Obsession for Men. The black-and-white, artfully severe commercials of the era aimed for timelessness even as they became inextricably bound to their moment.

Calvin Klein’s subsequent fragrances have largely been exercises in abstraction and synthetic minimalism. CK One, the 1990s counterpoint to Obsession, deserves equal respect. Most of what followed, however, feels like a meditation on elevated cheapness: competent, vaguely interesting, chemically fresh, and durable enough to persist on shelves without inspiring devotion. Obsession stands apart. The difference is immediate. The materials feel richer, more vibrant. The blending is more assured. Bob Slattery’s original conception, a reworking of the feminine fragrance infused with a heavy dose of lavender soapiness and animalic bite, may be lost to history, but the stewardship of subsequent reformulations has been surprisingly faithful. When I smell it closely, each constituent note asserts itself with clarity, and the whole feels alive. Wonderful stuff. 

It is evident that Calvin Klein still takes pride in this fragrance, and the current version is excellent. One final point deserves mention: Obsession for Men ages exceptionally well. It can be worn freely, given its modest price (it was far more expensive back in the day), but if used sparingly and left to rest, the liquid darkens and the composition grows smoother and more resonant over time. Oxidation performs a quiet alchemy here. I am struck by how good the present formulation already is, and I plan to keep one bottle in regular rotation while allowing another to mature undisturbed. When I return to it years from now, it will function as a genuine time capsule: musky, resinous, and deeply familiar, the scent of a vanished world and of my own childhood suspended in amber.