Blue Jeans (Versace)

To clear up any lingering confusion: some bottles say "Versus Versace" while others just say "Versace." Both versions are identical. Neither version is indicative of a vintage, as the fragrance has waffled between the two monikers for decades.

Since its release in 1994, Blue Jeans has been controversial. I think the main issue is it's cheap. It's always been cheap. Versus was the downmarket Versace brand of the 1990s and 2000s. You could spend upwards of a hundred dollars on other Versace frags in department stores, but Versus was the discount section, the stuff you'd find in Filene's Basement instead of regular Filene's. By this point you can get 75 mls for under $20, which is enough to send Basenotes snobs running for the hills. Hell, you can buy a tester of Blue Jeans for $10 if you apply yourself. It's cheap.

You know what else is cheap? Youth Dew by Lauder. And you know what Blue Jeans conjures for me? The casual fougère version of Youth Dew. It's the cola accord. It hits me right from the atomizer, and remains with me for eight hours, during which I get pleasant wafts of a crisp, fresh, woody sweetness that isn't exactly gourmand, but perhaps gourmand adjacent. What idiot YouTubers refer to as "overwhelming lemon cleaner" actually just smells similar to the herbal-citrus component of something like the original (cane sugar) Coca-Cola in the green glass, or even the more piquant opening of Pepsi. It's a weird, cola-like fruitiness, and it's always been intentionally difficult to pin down. In Blue Jeans, it feels like that same generic cola freshness, but given extra lift via lavender, which makes it smell quite shimmery, smooth, and perfect for summer. It's very nice.

To my nose, the drydown of Blue Jeans is the most surprising part. There's a musky finish, and it's a familiar early '90s musk, but not something found in any "blue" frags from that era. Instead, it's cut from the cloth of Balenciaga pour Homme and Joint by Roccobarocco, smelling fatty and musty, a sub for a banned nitro-musk that feels solid nonetheless. I have no clue what it is, exactly, but I like it. It lends the base a very masculine and woody feel, without going overboard. Blue Jeans is relatively light and airy, and it takes extra sprays to give it serious presence, but even with light application, I get whiffs all day. There's an oriental twist in the heart that bridges the fizzy top to the musky base, a mélange of gentle kitchen spices and hints of things like anise and jasmine, but the blending obfuscates everything, which is fine. With something this laid back, I don't need textured complexity, nor do I need to prove anything to anyone, so a simple pleasantness suffices.

Blue Jeans does smell very '90s, but I think it actually leans more into the '90s of Balenciaga, Bogart Witness, and Red for Men than the '90s of ck One, L'Eau d'Issey, and Acqua di Giò. It smells sorta sweet, sorta musky, sorta citrusy, and kinda-sorta casual, but like Youth Dew before it, it possesses a human element, a carnal off note that lends it sexual currency. I don't find it to be overbearingly sweet, like many other people do, nor do I think it's a "freshie" in the normative sense of that term. This is a unique perfume, and I know few others like it, so I think it's something every serious collector should have, in either version. Good stuff, and great bottle.

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. 

Eros Parfum (Versace)

Versace's Eros EDT (2012) always struck me as a disappointment—cheap, crass, weak, overly sweet, and cynical. Some hailed it as "groundbreaking" upon its release, but I wasn’t convinced. It felt like an interesting fougère concept hampered by poor execution and a budget that fell short of its ambitions. Whatever Aurelien Guichard intended to achieve was lost in the lackluster production. I couldn’t help but wonder what the future held for the Eros DNA. Nearly a decade later, the future has arrived, with a suprise.

Eros Parfum, launched in 2021 with an unnamed perfumer, feels like the polished realization of the original. With a better budget and a higher concentration, it refines Eros's core idea and upgrades it for a mature man. The opening is familiar but elevated: crisp apple, zesty lemon, cooling peppermint, and aromatic geranium, recalibrated with less mint, more citrus, and a gentler dose of green apple, while a synthetic lavender note adds a silvery sheen. The result is still brash but far more balanced, as the sunny aromatics seamlessly change to a heart dominated by woody tonka and freshly-trimmed sage that lingers for hours and projects maybe four or five feet from my body. 

This all rapidly dries down to what Eros Parfum remains for the duration of its twelve hour lifespan, an apple-infused rosy amber. Its slightly floral quality is attractive. At this stage, it’s hard to deny—Eros Parfum smells fantastic. Is it $150 fantastic? No, and full disclosure, my 3.4 oz bottle from Sephora was free. This should cost Versace customers $90, but inflation. The amber/apple accord offers vague whiffs of something that came in a similar shade of blue-green and was composed by Pierre Bourdon. But perhaps an even more apt comparison would be to Sophie Labbé's Joop! Jump (2005 vintage), which frankly is nearly identical to this stuff for an eighth of the cost, and sadly for Versace, might even smell a little better. I still have 4 ounces left out of a semi-vintage 6.7 ounce bottle of Jump, and it has aged into something positively gorgeous.

Despite that, I like Eros Parfum. It's expensive, and dare I say, a little sexy. But what kind of fragrance is it, really? Is it casual? Office-friendly? Night-out material? The playful prominence of apple and greens suggests a casual, carefree scent, yet the smooth, silky woodiness in the drydown hints at something more refined—business chic, even. It’s a fragrance for men born around 1980, those who grew up on Drakkar Noir, Cool Water, and Allure Homme, and now want something familiar yet forward-looking. For them, Eros Parfum fits the bill perfectly, if they don't already have a vintage bottle of Joop! Jump sitting around, that is. I may comment further on that in the year ahead.

Versace L'Homme (Versace)

Going Old-School

If you have any doubt about the classification of Versace L'Homme, just look at its bottle. Its glass shoulders are sculpted to look like ferns! Yet this is one of the most chronically misidentified fragrances out there. How it could be called a chypre or an oriental is beyond me, although even the H&R Genealogie chart gets it wrong. This is the very definition of a traditional fougère, as old-school as it gets.

It's also an odd duck in that it's from Italy, and should represent an Italianate style after Krizia Uomo, yet smells impeccably French. It reminds me most of Rochas' underrated Moustache, a classic mossy fougère from the forties. It opens with a similar barrage of lucid citrus notes (lemon, bergamot, lime) with a seamlessly blended lavender chord, and rapidly dries into a spiced floral heart, very clean and bitter, with distinct jasmine and gardenia notes. After a few hours the green notes soften to a powdery tonka, with a pinch of mild tobacco to round it off.

The current Euroitalia version is good, and likely preferable to vintage, at least for me. Older vintages had heavy oakmoss, but frankly I think a preponderance of moss would be overbearing in this style, teasing it into being chypre-like. Euroitalia's version has no moss at all, yet it still smells adequately mossy. It also has delicate nuances of basil, cinnamon, patchouli, cedar, labdanum, castoreum, and petitgrain, all of which are easily separable in the top and heart, but none of which are loud enough for a vulgar "aromatic fougère" vibe. Their subtlety is exact, for L'Homme's sharp focus is on an orthodox three-tier ensemble of lavender, tonka, and mossy musk.

There has been quite a bit of talk about the reformulation of this fragrance, including conversations about how vintage L'Homme's color is darker than current. I suspect this is a fragrance that gets darker with age, but I'll have no way of knowing until I've had my bottle for a few years to compare. I can say that these kinds of "green" compositions are changeable, because my EA formulation of Grey Flannel has darkened noticeably in the last few years. Now, citrus-heavy fragrances are often criticized for smelling "synthetic" after reformulation. In my experience, vintage citrus notes smell very "perfumey" and deep, but that's not exactly a good thing.

The reformulation's citruses are crisp and bright, and the lemon note actually has that sour muskiness of real lemon rind, so I can't complain about the citrus smelling synthetic. However, if I were to give this bottle fifteen years of room temperature storage, I wonder if the citrus notes would blush out and get "perfumey" on me. Some guys like that. I'm not one of them.

Is this the best traditional fougère to come out of the eighties? I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it deserves fair praise. Its longevity is perfect (about six hours), its sillage is very limited, its construction is solid (nothing chemical or unbalanced here), and it has that dry, powdery afterglow of a classic masculine for fastidious men. My favorite part is its rather sheer green tobacco note, which lingers long after the citrus and floral notes have faded. This is a nice one.

Eros Eau de Toilette (Versace)

My original Fragrantica review of Eros said:

"Anyone who finds this cheap, thin, synthetic fragrance erotic should unload their baggage and see a sex counselor."

About two minutes after I published that, someone on "Team Fragrantica" exercised freedom of the press and deleted it, forcing me to re-write my current review for this scent, now on the Eros Fragrantica page. I guess they weren't amused!

My feelings for Eros have not changed, of course. I approached Eros with The Dreamer and Red Jeans in mind, thinking it would at least rival those two in quality and respectability. My bad. Should have remembered the totally-forgettable Versace Pour Homme instead. This brand is just as capable of putting out total garbage, which is exactly what Eros is. Bear in mind that I walked into Macy's fully expecting to smell a department store amber with tons of sweetness, and your predictable citrus-minty top notes.

What I experienced in lieu of that was astonishing. Cheap, barely-there citrus of no discernible origin - what the hell fruit is it supposed to be, anyway? Bergamot and apple? It's a little sweet, a little sharp, so I guess that's what they were aiming for. It doesn't smell very good. Plus, I have to shove my hand against my nostrils to get any of it. And oh yeah, there's just the faintest hint of menthol in there, pure aftershave-grade menthol, standing in as "mint." Then a scratchy amber, semi-woody, semi-musky, pretty much dominates the show for the rest of the scent's short duration on skin. It gets very sweet for about fifteen minutes as it crosses the bridge from top to heart notes, then simmers down to a low buzz of nondescript chemical nastiness.

Three hours in, and Eros is all but gone, with just a murky musk remaining as a sad afterglow to one of the saddest ambers in all of contemporary perfumery. To say I feel a sense of ennui about Eros is an understatement. I want them to cancel this terrible abomination of a fragrance and replace it with something, anything, be it a Dreamer flanker, another colored Jean, or even an "intense" version of the somewhat-bearable Versace PH (make the juice purple, just for kicks). Please, please Versace people, atone for your sin. I'm afraid the next time I catch sight of your trademark Medusa head, my heart really will turn to stone.

The Dreamer (Versace)

This review is for the older version of The Dreamer, with the nebula cloud on the box, as opposed to the even, star-patterned packaging of the re-release. Not that it matters much, as I hear the new version is pretty faithful to the original, with perhaps a touch more tobacco in the opening. This is a very nice fragrance. It's a unique concept, executed with loving directness, possessing an intelligence and three-dimensional intellect few designer releases strive for. I've read all sorts of comparisons and analyses of The Dreamer, and almost none of them do it justice. It wouldn't be surprising if mine fell grossly short as well. This 1996 creation is not an easy fragrance to wear, especially on a daily basis, and isn't by any means your typical, saccharine, tonka-heavy nineties masculine. In fact, it doesn't smell of any one decade's style at all, but instead has a strangely timeless character.

The Dreamer is basically a soapy green fragrance overlaid with the smell of un-smoked cigarettes. You know that first whiff of a freshly-opened pack of Marlboros? That's the tobacco note in here. It's treated tobacco, not the raw leaf. It has a very brownish, almost raisin-like hue, with a tender balance between sweetness and spice. It smells at once clean and sooty. Framing that is a little ditty of muguet, lavender, pine, and orange citrus. It's perhaps not the intended effect, but to me this facet of The Dreamer smells like Zest Aqua soap. It's a snappy, partly floral, partly herbal affair. When patched to the tobacco, it creates the essence of a freshly-scrubbed guy who just stepped out into the woods for a moment of absent-minded solitude with his ciggies, that precious moment before lighting up in the wilderness ever-so-lucidly captured in perfume.

People complain about The Dreamer's "cacophonous" opening. The opening is a bit unusual, with its green top note vying for attention over an otherwise-linear tobacco accord, but I don't find it to be especially over the top. It's sharper and less defined than what follows, but it smells clean and strangely refreshing. Comparisons to JPG's Le Mâle also abound, but I smell no similarity. Le Mâle has no tobacco, and precious little green-soapiness (it does have a more powdery-vanillic lavender soapiness), so I can't find the connection between these two. But I do admire The Dreamer's ability to replicate the physical space surrounding a hypothetical, wilderness-bound smoker who leans against oak trees before lighting up. I'm not sure I want to smell of that headspace often, but when I do, I'll wear this one-of-a-kind EDT from a brand that usually dabbles in commercial dreck. At least there's one Versace worth wearing, and it's a real dream.

Versace Pour Homme (Versace)

Someone somewhere is having a very difficult time getting citrus top notes to smell good. A sizable number of recently-tested masculine fragrances suffer an oddly sulfurous off-note that wrecks whatever impression of "fresh" the perfumer was going for. Versace Pour Homme's top continues this trend. It sticks out like a sore thumb, a bitter metallic sourness that clearly doesn't belong. The fact that Alberto Morillas, the Master of Fresh, is responsible surprises me.

What also surprises me is that most reviewers consider Versace PH an aquatic fragrance, and I get nothing of the sort. It has an aqueous-metallic opening, very reminiscent of Azzaro Chrome, but this gradually dries into a woody-spicy heart and base that feels more in line with CK One Shock for Him. In fact, I consider this a fresh oriental. Many compare it to Allure Homme Sport, and there are some similarities, but Versace is less refined, "spikier" in feeling, a scent-within-a-scent. Actually, it's more like a scent under a half-dozen blaring laundry musks, which is pretty sad given how much Sephora asks for a 3.4 oz bottle of the stuff.

Under the ill-judged citrus accord lurks a nice spicy melange of pink pepper, cardamom, rose, black pepper, cedar, carnation, and geranium. To my nose the cardamom, pink pepper, and cedar are most prominent in the heart stage. Ninety minutes after application, the scent unravels and disseminates its olfactory information via broad strokes of blurred freshness, rather than a legible composition. It isn't a five-star masterpiece, but it smells better than one would expect, particularly coming from a bottle of blue fluid. Fresh-blue fragrance fans should check this one out, but if you want a better alternative, try Allure Homme or the aforementioned CK One Shock.

Red Jeans (Versace)

When I think of the nineties, memories of discontent abound. America Online, dial-up internet, The Spice Girls, and Seinfeld pretty much defined the decade. Oh, and Shania Twain music videos. Culturally, it was a time where once-awesome things started wimping out. The edgy rock of the eighties, acts like Peter Gabriel, Scorpions, the Greg Kihn Band, all got wiped off the table and replaced by The Gin Blossoms and Oasis. The Great American Slasher Flick also took a hit, getting a dose of reverse-adolescence with tepid teasers like Scream and Ice Cream Man. Quite a far cry from Prom Night and the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Anyone who had ever been a bad-ass growing up suddenly became a dork, or was forced to apologize. 

It was, however, an interesting time for fragrance. Everything got . . . sweeter. As the decade progressed, the basic classical structures remained, but old-standby notes like sandalwood, rose, clove, and civet were replaced with fuzzy ambers, sugared fruits, and as much ginger as Jamaica could harvest. Even flowers were remade into blatantly chemical amalgamations. Which brings me to Red Jeans by Versace.

Both Blue and Red Jeans were released in 1994, with the latter the feminine scent. Red Jeans opens with a bright burst of nondescript fruit and aldehydes, which rapidly transition into heart notes of jasmine, violet, and water lily. Don't for a moment think that these flowers are accurately represented. I was disappointed that the jasmine didn't hold up longer. It's relegated to a supporting role under an explosive Parma violet accord. An hour into Red Jeans has the floral elements receding into a chamber orchestra of vanilla, lily, sandalwood, and a surprisingly well-blended dose of amber, musk, and a fig-like dry fruit. The fruit and lily tinge the base with shades of green, while the vanilla and sandalwood, both frighteningly synthetic, cover everything in a layer of syrup. The overall effect is youthful and fresh, with a touch of earthiness tucked under a sugary overture. Red Jeans is the definition of a fruity-floral eau de toilette.

I'm struck by the idea that this fragrance is a precursor to a slew of like-smelling products, things like Ralph, Incanto, and even Paris Hilton. You could gather every fruity-floral teen spritz made since 1995 and attribute some aspect of it to the headstrong composition of Red Jeans. While certainly not the first in the genre, Red Jeans was a standard-bearer for bringing feminine perfumery into contempo-casual sweetness. Even Tommy Girl takes cues from it.

Red Jeans is suitable for the under-25 crowd of college girls, those who possess the strange knee-jellying power that ladies under 25 have. For those who remember the eighties (i.e. those who were alive in the '80s), I encourage you to stay strong. They say fashion is cyclical . . .