Suede (Bath & Body Works)

Fragrantica user "Robinsda" wrote of Suede:

"This may seem weird, but I get a similar vibe from this to Aqua Di Gio Profumo."

Now, if you're familiar with AdGP, you know that it has a reputation for smelling not like a flanker to the original, but like the actual original formula of Acqua di Gio from the 1990s (Essenza ticks that box, too). This suggests that Suede smells like a floral citrus aquatic scent, which is counterintuitive for anything professing to focus on leather.

To me Suede smells like a basic citrus cologne with an English Leather-style dyrdown, except with an oversized white musk standing in for EL's wood notes. Is this worth $35? Yes and no. If you're looking for a tenacious cologne with a fairly harmless (non-animalic) drydown, and you can't afford to spend $85 on 100ml of AdG, I suppose you could get Suede. However, I can think of better citrus scents: Adam Levine's signature masculine is an excellent grapefruit cologne with a bit of a clean woodsy base, Ed Hardy's Love & Luck is still a great dupe of Creed's MI (by proxy a dupe of AdG), and Aqua Quorum has a piney richness under all the calone that makes it infinitely more "suedy" than Suede for half the cost.

My issue with fragrances like this is that there are too many similar comparatives to make a purchase worthwhile. Why should anyone drop $35 on an average citrus-woody cologne when there are better colognes for the same price or less? Bourbon is at least a somewhat unique concept, but "citrus leather" barely registers anymore.

Noir (Bath & Body Works)

There is no shortage of young men who are eager to smell of vanilla, and in the nineties it was Givenchy Pi that satisfied the collective sweet tooth. A zillion reincarnations and extensions of the theme have since come and gone, and B&BW's current interpretation is no better or worse than the lot.

While smelling this fragrance, I was struck by how minimalistic it is. I expected it to be a soapy fougere like Drakkar Noir, and was pleasantly surprised. I'm accustomed to encountering mid-shelf designer frags that attempt to impress, with at least two or three notes that aren't necessary and don't quite pass muster, but Noir knows its limits. It opens with a cardamom and burnt sugar accord that is at once sweet and robust, a rather nice spin on the ethyl maltol cliché, and rapidly dries down to an arid vanilla with a healthy dollop of white musk. Much like the Bourbon scent, Noir thins out pretty quickly and hangs close for about three hours, but it's nice while it lasts.

For a simple and cheap vanilla oriental, I'd say you're still better off getting Pi. It costs the same (or less) and smells richer and more interesting than Noir, plus it lasts a solid seven hours or more. But I guess if you're interested in being consistent and wish to use the cologne in tandem with the body lotion and deodorant, Noir is Noir.

Bourbon (Bath & Body Works)

In my opinion there are two kinds of fragrances: intellectual perfumes, like Ocean Rain, The Dreamer, Chanel N°5, Diorella, and Green Irish Tweed, and functional hygienic fragrances, like everything found in The Body Shop and Bath & Body Works. The former category contains hundreds of complex concepts executed with attention to form; these are efforts to create new scents not found in nature.

The latter category is devoted to mimicking known smells in nature and combining them into simple and pleasing compositions. They are aimed at casual fragrance wearers who want to recognize everything they smell, and associate positive attributes to smelling "good." People who primarily wear B&BW fragrances take pleasure in selecting specific scents based on identifiable materials, and rarely attach abstract meaning to how they smell. They don't wear peppermint body lotion to make a statement. They wear it to smell clean and inviting while snuggling by a fire. Nobody dons White Citrus to impress upon coworkers a citrusy identity. It is worn to keep your cubicle fresh while you're in it.

Of the five fragrances in B&BW's Men's Signature Collection, I found Bourbon to be closest to an intellectual masculine. It has distinct notes of white pepper, oakwood, amber, and musk, and if I focus on the fragrance in the first twenty minutes, I get good note separation. But when I let the composition speak for itself, an interesting thing happens: the notes coalesce into a smooth, dry, corn-fed bourbon liquor, warmed by a soft musky amber, which gets stronger over the course of three hours. Longevity and projection are a bit meek, with the first clocking in at about four hours, and the second getting you maybe five inches of attention beyond the limits of your shirt collar, but still, this fragrance is unique, well made, and a good value at about $10 an ounce.

Another bonus to this fragrance is that it comes in a variety of forms, ranging from a shea body lotion (which my girlfriend got me), to a shower gel and deodorant spray. If you intend on using the body lotion and don't have the EDT to go with it, fear not. Any number of old-school, woody, "cigar box masculine" fragrances should go well with it. If you're a fan of The One by D&G, this is probably for you, as it is most often compared to that scent on Fragrantica.

Country Chic (Bath & Body Works)

In 1999, Creed released its ill-fated supergreen chypre, Green Valley, to some critical acclaim, bringing to its logical apex the trend of fruity-green chypres that flooded the unisex fragrance world of the late nineties. Hundreds of similar feminines came before it, but only one masculine seemed to presage Olivier's masterful creation with any true prescience, and its name was Sport Field, by the maison athlète of Adidas. Isn't my French sublime?

I'm not suggesting Sport Field was the only precursor - Insensé was far more complex, and was released one year before Adidas' understated chypre. But Insensé was a startling essay on the masculine appeal of green floral notes, a failed cultural experiment about which one could write volumes, while Sport Field was an ultra-focused ginger-grass budget scent that somehow transcended its bargain basement pedigree by maintaining a hyper-realistic green profile without any embellishment. 

The framework for Green Valley was perfectly represented in Sport Field: bright, bitter, grassy accord on top, touched with a shimmer of ginger, and a sweetened berry-like fruit note, all of which dried down to an analog of warm hay. Simple, fresh, and snappy, it's a wonder Sport Field wasn't more widely used and appreciated, although Adidas has recently resurrected it, and it seems to be holding its own within their range.

While Green Valley perfected Sport Field's structure with violet leaf, oakmoss, blackcurrant, ambergris, and vanilla, it was almost too much of a good thing, and the market rebelled. When done well, the ubiquitous fresh-green cologne is almost impossible to variegate with any regularity. The theme must have become redundant and played out, because most of the bitter-grass experiments of the nineties were discontinued, Insensé included. But then the tacky mall-house of Bath & Body Works got creative, and released Country Chic. Presumably, this was another ditzy fruity-floral with no lineage, other than a legion of other ditzy fruity-florals. When I first smelled it, my eyes screwed up, my nose closed, my throat tightened. The sting of alcohol and aldehydes was pretty Kilgorian.

Then, something wonderful happened. My nasal cells pulled everything together, and presented me with a crystalline, feminine version of that archetypal bitter ginger-grass chypre of yesteryear. Bits and pieces of the nineties emerged, but streamlined for current tastes, with a brilliant fruit accord. Hints of berry, crab apple, and pear, welded and bundled together with floral notes like reams of spare piano wire, all hit the mark perfectly, and I couldn't help but grin. Its ingredients are admittedly cheap, and Country Chic lacks the focus of Sport Field, and the refinement of Green Valley, but its overdosed aldehydic opening and tenuously well-centered green heart stakes its territory in the grimly-underpopulated category of modern chypres. 

There are times when I smell Country Chic and think, "this is cheap and dull." Yet my nose always coerces me to give it a second chance, and on the exhale, Chic is beautiful, and reminds me of how brilliant even the most budget-bound fresh chypre can be. This fragrance is quite an achievement, and well worth seeking out.