Soul by Curve for Men (Liz Claiborne)

There are rumors that Soul by Curve was discontinued for being racially insensitive, and too obviously targeting people of color in its name and package design, but I have my doubts. I find it to be far more evocative of hippies and headshop oils, and anything else is purely incidental. The free-love credo, "Love, Passion, Truth, Hope," cements the vibe for me, but maybe I'm just naive. Anyway, this 2005 release isn't as much of a departure for Curve as its image suggests, and that isn't a bad thing in the least. 

It's easy to overthink the composition of Soul, and get sucked into the "notes trap" of thinking you smell weird stuff like shea butter and saw palmetto in the blend, but I've been at this too long for that. Soul opens with a fairly standard green citrus accord, bright but not blinding, like warm juice with all the pulp strained out after it's been swirled in a blender and made ready to meet ice. The first five minutes are smooth, sweet, fruity, but not nearly as fizzy and buoyant as other iterations in this line. The muted aspect of Soul's intro suggests that this is a different tack for the brand. But what direction is it aiming for? As it dries into the heart, a translucent violet leaf and iris emerge, smelling sweet but not cloying, vaguely herbal and woody, and it becomes clear that Claiborne was trying for a Chez Bond creamy-floral thing (Laurent Le Guernec is the perfumer, hint, hint).

I sat smelling my sample, wondering at the woodiness, when the person who offered it reminded me that the top had an interesting green quality, and that's when I remembered Soul contains a bamboo note. I immediately recognized the same weirdly woody citrus quality as smelling nearly identical to the top of Montblanc Starwalker, which also has a shy bamboo note, and I laughed. I guess that's what bamboo smells like? Live and learn. That's where the surprises end, though. From the thirty minute point onward, Soul begins to smell more and more like the original, or rather like Claiborne Sport. Sweet, fruity, evocative of things in dark purple. It's slightly more floral and boasts a higher fidelity woodsy base, but overall it smells like a quieter version of its predecessor. It's worth seeking out, but perhaps only for a serious Curve enthusiast.

Curve for Men (Liz Claiborne)

I attended high school from the fall of 1996 to the spring of 2000, so I managed to graduate in the final year of the twentieth century. I would have tossed my cap in 1999, but my folks held me back a year. This made me a little older than everyone in my class, from first grade onward. It also led to an odd bifurcation of my teenage experience; my personal sensibilities were sometimes aligned with those of my peers, and other times not so much. My taste in perfume was unoriginal (i.e., aspirational), and I gravitated to my French teacher's Chanel, but many of my friends liked Claiborne - and I understand why.

Curve for Men was released in 1996, freshman year, and contrary to what some of the talk on the interwebs suggests, it wasn't exactly "cheap" that year. I recall seeing it exclusively at Macy's and J.C. Penney: $45 for a 2.5 oz bottle, $65 for a 4.2 oz. These were standard Connecticut prices, but if you toured the malls of the Eastern Seaboard in the late nineties, you would be hard-pressed to find Curve for much less. Liz Claiborne was still very much alive and in the game, and although she had adopted the same mass-market strategy as brands like Pierre Cardin and Michel Germain, the newness and cultural success of fruit-fueled Curve kept it on the pricier side until the early 2000s. 

I mention this because the quality of the original Curve and its first unofficial flanker, Claiborne Sport (1997), is strikingly good. Jean-Claude Delville borrowed some of CK Eternity's pyramid and used the same heart accord of lavender, citrus, and sandalwood, but filtered it through Lisa Frank-like tones of neon greens, a drop of sweet pineapple, and dewy ginger. Accompanying the requisite dihydromyrcenol and violet leaf in the mid are very nineties notes of ginseng and soapy black pepper. Is it cheap in 2023? Yes. Does it smell good? Yep, and like its sport variant, it's still worth every penny. To wear the true nineties formula, look for Claiborne Sport on eBay. My vintage bottle is verrry potent. 

The Curious Case of Claiborne Sport

No Longer A Bargain.

The other day I happened across my bottle of Claiborne Sport for Men, a super-cheapie that I purchased two or three years ago for a grand total of $13. I had seen this perfume often at discounters like Marshalls and TJ Maxx, and had always avoided it because it's a Claiborne product, and Claiborne products generally suck. Eventually I relented and dropped a few pennies on it, only to find it derivative, but relatively well made, and a pleasant scent.

On Monday, and just out of curiosity, I Googled this scent to see if it's still bargain basement-tagged. Turns out, it's not. No, Claiborne Sport is now on sale for up to $80 a bottle. That's right, eighty dollars a bottle. That's a 515% price increase.

Now, I have to ask myself, in all seriousness: What the fuck?

This is clearly a case where I have the direct experience of purchasing an already-cheap fragrance at an even steeper bargain, only to find, in an aspirational sense, that its value has skyrocketed in the merest span of twenty four months. Theoretically, I could take my 70% full bottle and sell it on eBay for at least a two hundred percent price increase. Ebay is claiming that its "Top Rated Seller" of Claiborne Sport sold forty-five bottles for sixty dollars apiece, a 361% price increase. Of course, assuming his sales picked up in the summer of 2013, which is around the time I noticed this scent had become scarce, that's still only about two bottles per month being sold, or $120 worth of merchandise.

Are they selling to Claiborne Sport fans? How likely is that?

Not likely. Let's consider why.

Serious fans of Claiborne Sport, people who genuinely love the perfume enough to frequently wear it, would have taken advantage of its dirt-cheap price during the five or six years that it was on sale for five bucks an ounce, and stocked up on it. At least two or three extra bottles would have been purchased. I do that with the fragrances I'm a fan of. I've read accounts by other people who do the same. A 3.4 oz bottle of Sport for $13 at Marshalls? Hard to buy just one. And you know, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, they throw a half dozen bottles of the same fragrance on their shelves at any given time.

So if you've got a handful of bottles from when Sport was still available at those prices, why would you spend four times as much for one more bottle now? I thought the point of buying a cheap fragrance was that you could buy enough to avoid worrying when supplies ran low.

But that's just basic common sense. Let's think about "supply and demand." Is the supply of Sport so limited, and the demand so high, that people are willing to shell out up to $80 for a bottle? Where does that number come from? Even $60 is ridiculous.

Another merchant selling bottles on eBay for $40 has supposedly moved thirty units so far, fifteen fewer than his competition, because he's not a "Top Rated Seller." But even $40 is too much for Claiborne Sport. It's a decent frag, but for twenty or twenty-five dollars, tops. If you like Sport THAT much, you're better off buying Curve, or maybe CK's Eternity for Men. Even Cuba Paris Grey, which is still in production and of equal quality, is a more than worthy substitute. CP Grey is arguably even a bit better than Sport, because it's a softer, fresher, "sportier" blend, and the Perfume Palace here in Waterbury gave me a one ounce bottle for free with my purchase. That's zero dollars spent, and a whole bottle at my disposal. Should I ask sixty dollars for CP Grey when that one goes extinct?

If the demand is so high, why was Sport only worth four dollars an ounce in 2013? Marshalls could have easily gotten sixty dollars for it, if people wanted it that badly. The lizard of logic eats away at its own tail.

Then there's the basic question: Where's all the internet chatter about Claiborne Sport? If this fragrance is sought after by ardent fragrance "aficionados," wouldn't there be lengthy conversations about it on Basenotes and Fragrantica? Alas, there's nary a single word about it. The last Fragrantica review was written in August of last year; the last Basenotes review was penned in September of 2013.

A last-ditch argument is that people who are unfamiliar with Sport are springing for it now, because it's discontinued. It's simply being perceived as "rare" and "collectible." If you're familiar with Sport, you know that it's neither. If you're unfamiliar with it, and spending sixty dollars on a bottle, chances are you're a complete idiot.

I can only conclude that this is a classic case of fantasy pricing in a fantasy marketplace. Whoever is buying Claiborne Sport at a 361% mark-up in 2015 is either

A) Looking to commercially resell for even more money, or

B) A complete idiot, or

C) Both A & B.

Most of the eighty dollar bottles will never sell. They'll remain up on eBay as automatically renewed ads, long after the merchants have forgotten they even tried to sell them. The illusion of value lives. Meanwhile, I still have my bottle, and it's worth about four dollars an ounce to me today, just like it was when I bought it.

Update, 9/5/15:

Another curious thing has happened with this particular fragrance, on eBay at least - prices have come down again.

I've talked about this on Fragrantica in a thread, saying the following:

"These things happen frequently. A couple of months ago, Claiborne Sport was going for no less than forty dollars per 3.4 oz bottle. Most were going for $50 to $80 per bottle. This was in June, on eBay. Also on Amazon, where there were only two or three listings for Sport, all at outrageous prices.

Then, sometime over the summer, the prices suddenly dropped again. Suddenly it's back to its usual $17 per bottle. My theory on this is simple. Sport was discontinued a while ago. It was never a big seller, and most people didn't really know about it. Those who did might have purchased a bottle once or twice, but its numbers weren't good. This kept prices low. Really low.

Then, after its discontinuation, independent sellers decided to get greedy. Up shot the prices. Close to niche level, but more on par with high-end designer, at twenty-five dollars an ounce.

And nobody was buying it. Disregard all the supposed 'sold' listings. eBay is loaded with scammers who manipulate their sales stats. There are also plenty of aspirational price-gougers who buy from each other, then relist the merchandise at even higher prices.

This is what happened for a few weeks with Sport.

Then it occurred to them - nobody else was buying the scent at these prices. Literally nobody.

So down came the prices. And surprise, surprise, the sales are moderate, and the scent still isn't that popular."

I stand by this theory, and also can state with total confidence that this Claiborne Sport phenomenon is proof of what I've been saying all along: they'll try to get away with price gouging if they can, but only until they realize they're just fooling themselves. Eventually, when absolutely nobody pays what they're asking, they're forced to reduce prices back to their correct level, and hope people haven't written off the fragrance entirely. In this case, I think it all happened within a relatively short period of time (no more than three or four months), so people may not have even noticed. With more expensive frags, like Gucci Nobile, for example, people will occasionally bite and sucker up big money, but just enough to keep the fantasy alive in the heads of greedy sellers.

Claiborne Sport (Liz Claiborne)

Jean-Claude Delville is not a major household name in the fragrance community, yet his work is fairly ubiquitous - he is the nose behind Clinique Happy, the masculine and feminine Wings for Giorgio, Organza Indecence by Givenchy, Cabotine by Gres, and Lucky You for Men. He's also responsible for Claiborne's little-known fresh fougère from 1997, Claiborne Sport.

I generally find Liz Claiborne products to be low-quality and disappointing. I've had Claiborne clothing literally fall apart, right on my body. Their signature masculine has always been nasal-searing and synthetic to me. So I approached Claiborne Sport with low expectations, inspired solely by this Fragrantica review:

"This is not really 'green,' but rather smells like wine, most likely due to the amber and spices, which simulate a 'dark' fruity quality, as well as the tomato leaf. This is rather dry and just a little sweet. It's reasonably natural smelling and it has a mild woody 'backbone.' Overall, this is rather interesting, and not that far from a niche idea."

The fragrance is a pleasant surprise. What strikes me first about Claiborne Sport is that it actually smells fairly natural, considering its price-point ($13 for 3.4 ounces). I'm not saying it's the work of an all-natural perfumer, not by any means, but there are clear, easily separable notes, which all smell pretty much like whatever they're meant to be - in this case a sturdy arrangement of citrus, spice, lavender, tomato leaf, hawthorn, sage, coumarin, and amber. The top accord is a burst of lemon and bergamot, very sharp and somewhat "grey," as is the tendency of inexpensive citruses, but it very quickly segues into a well-balanced lavender/coriander accord. Within five minutes the coriander is gone, the lavender intensifies (it's basically a laundry-soap lavender, but it smells good), and tomato leaf, sage, ginger, and coumarin combine forces to convey a pleasant herbal-green feeling for several hours.

The drydown is clean, mostly soapy lavender, a dry tannin-like fruity element, cedar and amber. The "wine-like" quality mentioned by the other reviewer is probably attributable to a subtle blackcurrant note, which is quietly blended in with the herbs, and imparts a bitter, semi-metallic fruitiness. Nothing earth-shaking, but still strikingly well-balanced, and amiable enough to wear without regret. Still, there are a couple of small points about Claiborne Sport that I feel I have to make: first, and despite all the embellishments, this is a clever adaptation of Eternity for Men by Calvin Klein, except that unlike other Eternity-inspired fragrances (like Cuba Paris Grey, for instance), this fragrance does a few of its own little twists in mid-air before diving into the shallow end of the familiar. I'm reminded of Eternity in the first ten minutes of wearing Sport, but don't expect to smell like Eternity for the duration of the drydown. Things change. Delville uses a deftly-dosed Calone note to freshen up some of the heart notes, which lends the composition sweetness and strength. The blackcurrant and hawthorn notes that follow create a smooth, almost leathery fruitiness that is not present in Eternity, but perhaps more reminiscent of Creed's Green Valley, or even Dior's Fahrenheit.

Second, and with the exception of the Calone note, Sport smells classier and much more natural than it needs to. What's interesting about Eternity for Men is just how synthetic it smells - the lavender/amber accord is clear and pleasantly rich, but nowhere close to natural. Cuba Paris Grey and Claiborne Sport both use synthetics that feel fresher, airier, and gentler than those of their template, and in Sport's case the ingredients are on par with those of Fahrenheit, albeit at a lower concentration. This gives the impression (probably an illusion) of naturalness. The use of coriander, tomato leaf, and ginger is an attempt to differentiate Sport from its congeners, but because Claiborne's lavender is so pervasive (like Eternity's), the familiar nature of Sport endures, and you feel like you've smelled this composition, or at least something like it, a dozen times before. Despite that, I actually like Claiborne Sport, and I appreciate its spicy-fresh characteristics. If you're going to draw from the success of major masculines, it helps if your formula smells as good as, if not better than the competition. In that regard, this fragrance is a success.

Lucky You For Women (Liz Claiborne)

Although I am not a big fan of Liz Claiborne's fragrances (or any of her company's products), I think I understand what is happening with Lucky You. The masculine was a pert little shampoo-green thing, completely lacking in complexity and sophistication, and given that masculines are cheap to begin with, this blatant devaluation of the most banal discount-downmarket structure seems lazy and pointless. Why make a soapy floral for men on a budget barely adequate enough to make a bar of floral soap? Better label it "deodorant" and stick to functionality. Any adult guy who wears Lucky You is both clueless and careless - you can get a quality violet leaf in Grey Flannel for the same price, and for ten dollars more you can get Cool Water and surpass everything. Being in the market for a fresh-green masculine means studying the basics of fresh-green masculines - I suggest a brief perusal of the Leffingwell chart. Guys, just use the general cheapness and durability of men's frags to your advantage by getting one of the classics. The older the fragrance, the better its chance of smelling good: genuinely crappy scents rarely survive beyond a few years because people don't want them. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Lucky You for women is a different story. While men need their fragrances to enhance their masculinity, women need fragrance to enhance their personas. Your average lady actually doesn't need fragrance at all, because a pretty woman in a smart outfit already has all her bases covered, merely by existing and having the sense to dress well. Perfume is superfluous. Yet many women have distinct personalities, with noticeable complexities, and even streaks of darkness that beg for accessorizing. Enter feminine fragrances, with all their floral-musky sweetness and brightly-colored bottles. Unlike the basic mantra of "I Am Man," feminine fragrances aim for specifics: "I Am Easy To Spend Time With Once You Get To Know Me," "I Can Build A Basement More Efficiently Than You," "I'm Not Interested In Sleeping With My Boyfriend," "Work Is My Life," etc. For a girl, choosing a fragrance means choosing a character identity within a gender identity.

When a woman chooses something like Lucky You, it suggests that she's in touch with the more casual and breezy aspects of her femininity, and doesn't mind putting it out there. This fragrance says something like, "I'm approachable, but so is the next girl." It smells friendly in a blank-smiley way, a facelessly-bright aldehydic fizz of grapefruit, peony, and creamy synthetic woods, with an almost dandified drydown to white musk. It's inoffensive and perfect for office use. The fresh-floral characteristics of Lucky You's formula are balanced by solid synthetic sandalwood, and an admirably dense, musky base. If I'm not mistaken, a female co-worker of mine wears this. There are literally five hundred thousand feminines out there that smell like Lucky You. I think that's just fine.

Still, given that Lucky You is a cheap thrill that broadcasts its sunny cheer via short-wave, I find myself wondering why the world's female twenty and thirty-somethings don't pass it by, and just wear Canoe instead. Maybe I'm old-fashioned or something. I'd be keen on anyone wearing an old-school floral-fougère in lieu of a traditional fruity-floral. But hey, that's just me.

Claiborne For Men (Liz Claiborne)

The more fragrances you collect and wear, the less tolerant you become for things that fall short of true love. At least, that's how it is for me. As everyone who regularly reads my blog knows, I happen to be a huge fan of Irish Spring soap, and well-made soapy fragrances in general. Things like Grey Flannel, Sung Homme, and Taxi really tickle my fancy. Sung Homme in particular is a truly amazing fragrance. Yesterday I got out of bed, showered with Irish Spring soap, applied the new Irish Spring deo-antiperspirant stick to the pits, and then spritzed myself a few times with Sung. The overall effect was simply incredible. If you're an Irish Spring fan, it's a must-try experience.

Claiborne for Men, an oldie from the same year as Sung, is also a fresh, soapy chypre with a good reputation for using synthetics to achieve a briskly-clean effect, with some masculine darkness in the eighties tradition. I was eager to wear it and knew my local Marshalls had a few bottles, so I went there and stole a day's worth for myself. It's gotten to the point where I don't even buy certain fragrances anymore if I know Marshalls has it, because the place is staffed by teenagers and college students who could care less if you try without buying. I knew what to expect with Claiborne, and went forward with some biases. I'm not inclined to like Liz Claiborne products because I've owned a few Claiborne shirts, and they always wound up tearing or staining in the wash within a week after purchase. In four words: Claiborne products are cheap.

Claiborne for Men gets fair marks from several highly respectable noses in our post-Perfume Renaissance blogosphere and on Fragrantica, and I'll qualify my review by saying that everything written here is subjective to the hilt. I can see outside of my own experience and expectations, enough to realize that Claiborne for Men is appreciated for being fresh, smooth, green, a little leathery, mossy, and soapy. People recognize it is synthetic and not top shelf in ingredient quality or construct, but they like how it moves, they don't mind its synthetic nature, and appreciate its musky-woody drydown as a fine cheap thrill. Kudos to them, but I just don't like this one at all. To me it smells harsh, chemical, raspy, sometimes very thin, and like the epitome of bad "cheap."

It opens with a grandiloquent array of synthetic citrus and herbal notes, which are powerful and stick around for a while (much longer than citrus notes should). Everything is sanded down and buttressed together to form a very slick chemical accord of so-called "fresh" things. The lavender is blue, fresh, scratchy. The green notes are a little powdery (read: chalky), but I'll admit that they lend the early phase of this fragrance some much-needed appeal. There's a sense of experiencing a cold bucket shower while camping in the mountains of Maine. The brisk fruits, eighties-styled lavender, and soapy greens work pretty well together. But then the heart stage appears, and the bucket empties, the water runs out, the cold-shower effect fades. Hello weird, plasticky rose-jasmine note, and an odd, ambery laundry musk thing that won't go away. Pretty shabby.

People have commented that Claiborne is one of those masculines that has been through the wringer with reformulations. That might be, but I get the feeling that whatever this was before they cheapened it still wouldn't speak to me. It's soapy, yes, but for a soapy chypre I'd rather wear Grey Flannel, Tabac, or Sung Homme. If I want a more complex green experience I'll reach for my bottle of Silences, or my generous sample of Chanel N°19 EDT. As far as Claiborne for Men goes, I see no personal reason to wear it, but you never know, it might appeal to you, so the next time you find it at a discount store, give it a try. Whatever you do though, don't buy a Claiborne shirt, unless the Fred Flintstone look is what you're after. Just saying.

Lucky You for Men (Liz Claiborne)

Let me get this out of the way - I'd be lying if I said Lucky You smells bad, in the generic sense, because it doesn't. It smells good, also in a generic sense. It's the sort of stuff you might consider if you're just looking for an inoffensive, "modern-smelling" type of bottled nothing. Am I damning it with faint praise? Yes. The truth is, to anyone who is serious about perfume and craves the backstory and cultural context to everything he smells, Lucky You is dull, faceless, and utterly soulless. It begs no comparisons with anything because there's an ocean of anything it can be compared to.

Lucky You is little more than the standard (and redundant) blueprint for classic fresh fougères like Cool Water, Green Irish Tweed, and Aspen. I'd say it resembles Aspen the most, although without any of Aspen's meat to flesh it out. This fragrance is thin, wane, exceedingly pale from start to finish. There's a brief hit of alcohol and nonadienal on top, which replicates wet grass and violet leaf accords in the most expressionless way possible. A remote melon note melds with a half-hearted white musk base. Nice enough if you're fifteen; anyone older who wants to smell of postmodern greenery should skip this scent and either wear - well, you know what, you know what, or Aspen. 

Lucky You inhabits a challenged scent category, and there's no point in using a half-assed fresh fougère. At least with the other three you get what you pay for. Lucky You isn't even worth the $13 on its sticker, unless you're fifteen, and wearing it gets you somewhere with the gorgeous strawberry blonde in Mrs. Crumwitz's biology class. If that's the case, then I have but two small words to say: lucky you.