Joop! Homme Wild (Joop!)

The marketing copy for this fragrance is, in a word, absurd. The marketers opted to make this ostensibly "wild" fragrance sound anything but. Pink pepper as the top note? Wow! What a deviant and impulsive choice! Followed by . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . rum absolute! What exactly is "rum absolute," anyway? An absolute is a reduction of a substance via the removal of alcohol and water. So rum absolute is simply . . . dried rum. Without alcohol. Or water. Rum paste. Rum briquette. The gummy stuff that cakes around the cap after years of neglect in the liquor cabinet. Or, more accurately, a synthetic molecule in no way derived from rum and sold at a premium by Robertet.

Finish it all off with "woody blond tobacco" in the supposed base accord. So there's fruity-spicy pink pepper on top, rum paste in the middle, and "woody blond tobacco" on third deck, "for a twisted masculine drydown." Burley, or "flue cured" tobacco, is the "blond" stuff of cigarettes and any other cheap smokes, and I'll tell you right up front, I get absolutely no cigarette tobacco at all in JHW. Definitely don't get any cigarette vibe from it. What irks me about this scent is that the stated pyramid is immediately false, and yet almost all reviewers adhere to it. Wake up, folks. Just because they say there's pepper and rum and tobacco, sure doesn't mean those notes actually reside in the composition. It just means they're trying to hide that this is a girly violet floral perfume for men. For whatever reason, they wanted to pitch it to men, possibly because more males purchase Joop! fragrances than females. I really don't know, but that's my guess.

I actually find myself liking the Joop! brand more and more with each new wearing of products in the range. I always had an interest in the original Joop! Homme, and for a while hated it. Then I gave it a few more chances, and came to really like it. Eventually I got around to trying Joop! Jump, and liked that one even more. Then I stumble across Joop! Homme Wild at a steep discount on the clearance shelf in Walmart. And I figure, what the heck? Might as well give it a shot, especially after Jump. I'm glad I did, because I really, really like JHW, even a touch more than Jump. The boys in the back room asked themselves what the least predictable spin on Joop! could be, and one guy raised his hand and said, "I know! Remember those simple parma violet colognes our grandmothers wore in the fifties? Let's make one of those, only better!"

Better means cheap but well made, and a whole lotta fun. The fragrance is loaded up with super-sweet ionones, which effectively make it a loud, near-edible violet. It smells like triple-milled violet-scented bar soap from a Victorian toilet, but the ionones alone aren't enough to build this beast - it requires more heft than that. Enter a pint of syrupy "fruitchouli," a pineapple/patchouli overlay, with subtle, salty-smelling lavender for lift, and a quiet, vaguely Coppertone-like jasmine, all atop a great big ambery tonka note. Underpinning everything are several fruity esters (an assortment of prune-like items in the figs-and-cherry axis), and a handful of ethyl-maltolesque musks. And there you have it, a pulsating fruity-floral fougère in a purple bottle, made for women, and inexplicably labeled for men. It's sweet, fruity, ambery, musky, and violetty. Someone in Joop!'s post-production team challenged the marketing director to a coin toss - heads, and the word "Homme" stays on the bottle - tails, it's "Miss Wild" instead. I'm thinking someone had a trick coin in their pocket, but if cheating on a coin toss for laughs is as wild as the Joop! people get, I applaud their conservatism.

Joop! Jump (Joop!)

Once in a blue moon, I'll encounter something that is excellent on every count. Is its fragrance good? Check. Is its bottle pretty? Check. Is its name interesting, perky, fun? Check. Is it a pleasure to wear, all day long? Check, and check. I kind of ran through that list with Joop! Jump, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the scent ticked off all the positive boxes that make some perfumes successful. In rare cases, a masculine comes along that defies expectations and transcends its genre. Joop! Jump is one of those cases.

When you get into perfume, you get into an interesting world of two binary gender definitions: "masculine" and "feminine," which are a short hop away from "heterosexual" and "gay." Whenever the question of gender identity is addressed in Western society, there is a distinct unease in the air, with every utterance tip-toeing around the notion that men and women ought to remain firmly entrenched in their roles. People's expectations are often used defensively. If you challenge a football jock's masculinity, he'd likely not counter-attack. He'd probably say, "Hey man, I don't swing that way." He's trying to shore up your expectations, and his own.

Michael Stipe once sang (and this has been translated a few different ways), "You wore our expectations like an armored suit," the implication being that wearing gender expectations, and ANY expectations like armor is something to reconsider. Expectations about gender are not protective. They're deceitful, they're porous blankets that shrink and fall apart when challenged. To some perfume connoisseurs, they're to be upended every day. If you're a man who loves perfume, you'll sometimes wear a "feminine" perfume to work. If you're a female fraghead, the occasional "masculine" cologne may find its way into your weekly rotation. Sometimes individual perfumes manage to throttle these invisible lines and create new gender territories. Sophie Labbé apparently knows this. Her 2005 fragrance for Joop! is both masculine and feminine, and probably appeals to both genders in different ways.

As a man, I find Jump's spicy fougère structure very attractive. The sweaty coriander, the soft lavender, and the woody fruits (apple, pineapple, grapefruit) are brisk, fresh, and allude to classical contemporary norms. That these brighter notes are placed upon a smooth tonka heart only adds to their appeal. Fougères often utilize the ambery-vanillic quality of tonka as a focal point around which other more-transient notes can move. Jump is no exception, and the tonka does a good job in grounding the fragrance. I can't think of any man who would smell the first three hours of Jump and think it's unwearable, but then again, I know better. To me, Jump's earlier stages read as expositions on the freshness of modern masculine style. The scent says, "This is the man who chases women, but does it discreetly, with humor, wit, and self-deprecation. He loves women, all women, and enjoys having them in his arms." You're kind of a 21st century Robert Redford with Jump's top and heart accord.

Then, a change. The base begins to open up, and yikes! Labbé's composition is not the traditional ladies' man you think it is. It suddenly seems more David Bowie than Rob Redford. The original Joop! Homme's decadent-sweet floral bouquet blooms from under the tonka, and it's airier, fresher, sweeter, greener, allowed to breathe more. It's a floral accord with a reach that crosses rooms. This aromatic fougère wears eyeliner. At this stage, I'm inclined to believe that it takes a bit of sexual self-confidence and security to wear Jump. As its name implies, a jump - or even a leap - has been made, and we're no longer in Kansas anymore. A woman could wear this, just as easily as a man could. But it's not unisex. It's not masculine. Not feminine. Not strictly anything. Is it asexual? Polyamorous? Bisexual? It simply defies explanation and labels. I suspect the man or woman who wears Jump is okay with that, if he or she gave it any thought. Many compare Jump to Allure Homme and Allure Homme Sport, which immediately jolts these odd associations away from controversy and into rote comparison.

I guess it smells a bit like Allure Homme, although not by much. And frankly, it doesn't smell a whole lot like Joop! Homme, either. Jump is its own animal, a very flamboyant, crisp, well-rounded floral fougère that changes a few times with each wearing, and never picks a side. There's a way to do that, and Ms. Labbé managed to find it. Kudos to her, and thanks for such a pleasant and interesting fragrance! One other thing - the striking blue glass bottle is cut like a man in front, and rather feminine and rounded in back. It definitely suits the scent!

Joop! Homme (Joop!)

What to make of Joop! Homme . . . let's see here. It's an eighties megahit. It joins Cool Water, Drakkar Noir, and Obsession as one of those Ultimate Men's Fragrances of the last thirty years. It is bold, aggressive, and a little obscene. An oriental coated in Ranier maraschino cherry sauce. There's a decadent quality to Joop! that transcends the oriental genre of the eighties, and moves into a territory of its own. It conjures memories of a Python-wielding Christian Slater from the movie Heathers. This guy might be all charm on the outside, but there's something waaaaay serious going on under the facade.

Meanwhile, the tagline is Real Men Wear Pink. This is obviously something that came from Europe, as no American guy would buy it. Indeed, the Old World sees sales of Joop! regularly through the roof, which keeps it alive in overseas markets, including ours here in the States. In New England it's a curiosity worn mostly by older men and black youths. Guys in their early forties remember when it was new and cling to it; hip-hoppers clubbing at midnight appreciate that it projects for miles and rubs onto lingerie and car seats. This stuff is a territory marker. It's possibly the strongest masculine scent ever produced.

Never has packaging been more fitting for a fragrance than it is for Joop! Homme. It smells pink. The juice is purply-pink (and gets darker as it ages). It isn't often that I say this, but I'm glad I purchased this old, ultra-sweet oriental today. I've been reminiscing about the eternal sugar of Joop! Homme lately, and had to snatch up a cheap bottle (with matching aftershave). Yeah it's synthetic, and yeah it's going to wear me, but everyone needs at least one frag like that in their collection. I used to think I hated Joop!, but now that I understand that I simply wasn't in touch with my inner pink.