Molto Smalto (Francesco Smalto)

Although it was the mighty Green Irish Tweed which set the stage for the chaos that ensued in the world of masculine fragrance, Drakkar Noir launched the fashion campaign for GIT. Its bitter, lavender-fueled aromatics presaged the dihydromyrcenol-mosses of Creed and Davidoff. In its day, Drakkar was considered a leathery fougère, but I always suspected people had it pigeonholed wrong; there is a distinctly calone-like, men's-aftershavey freshness edging it, which makes sense, given its classification.

The interesting thing about this timeline is how the dense, chewy aromatics of fougères like Drakkar and Lomani Pour Homme gave way to the airier compositions of GIT and Cool Water, only to be followed by markedly denser fragrances like Eternity for Men, Horizon, and Molto Smalto. Despite the template for a New World Order being set, good chemists stubbornly held onto nose-stinging pyramids, until the last yuppie gave up and joined the '90s. Francesco Smalto's 1993 release was one of the holdouts.

Sniffing Molto Smalto is an exercise in nostalgia, one likely to conjure memories of high school for today's dad. Its opaque bottle is made of clunky black glass, and only hints at the complexity of its contents. Softer in nature than either Drakkar or Horizon, Molto follows their lead with a transparent burst of lavender, dry citrus, coriander, sage, and geranium. It's a civet-less Kouros, with re-calibrated lavender. Rapidly the citrus burns off, the lavender becomes dry and gummy in a "fresh" way, and a familiar bouquet of clipped florals, pungent herbs, and precious woods makes an appearance. Underpinning everything is a massive woody amber and musk.

These '80s-styled aromatic wetshaver fougères are never a bad choice for men, and always impart that hairy-chested manliness so many yearn to embody, but I think it's high time the ladies gave them a go. I'd advise against them wearing Drakkar Noir or Lomani, but it would be refreshing to smell GIT, the original Smalto, Cool Water, Eternity for Men, Horizon, and Molto Smalto on a thirty-something female in 2012. There's nothing wrong with a gal in dried flowers and herbs - if it wasn't intended to make men celibate, dihydromyrcenol was meant to be the great equalizer in postmodern perfumery.

Marc Jacobs Men

There are some fragrances out there that make me question my sanity. They're widely loved, enjoyed by men and women alike, boast interesting notes lists, and hearken from reputable houses. Yet when I smell them, I get nothing of interest. They're usually not bad per say, but they don't smell very good, either. Marc Jacobs Men is one such fragrance.

People say they smell green notes, vanilla, coconut, gardenia, fig, even cedar and moss. What do I smell? Nondescript sweetness, citrus, some vague "green" aroma chemical, and lots of gauzy powder. Everything is dense; everything is very loud. Each element is its own blob of color - yellow, lime green, beige, white. It's a comic book in scent: all melodramatic flourish, zero intellectual content. And people wear this all day? I'm lost.

I'm tempted to say MJM is a disaster, but that implies it works for no one, which isn't true. It's a well-liked scent. I don't hate it, but I'm not feeling any love. There are $9 fragrances at Walgreens that smell much better than this. Perhaps one day I'll meet a lipstick lesbian who makes this bottled charlatan smell like Chanel N°18. C'est la vie.

Pleasures (Estée Lauder)

If you have an opportunity to visit Japan, as I do, consider your fragrance choice carefully, and only pack one. The Japanese aren't keen on scents that act like anything more than an extension of soap. Loud fragrances are taken as insults, and should be avoided at all costs. If given a choice between an eau de cologne and an EDT, go with the cologne. It'll pay off because Japanese people like fragrance, but only when tuned to very low volumes, with zero longevity and sillage.

I'll be bringing Eau Sauvage with me to Osaka in December, which is cheating a little because technically it's an EDT, but of course it's a light variant on the cologne theme, so it'll work fine. Another possibility is Pleasures by Estée Lauder, which is an essay on soapy "clean" aldehydes and floral notes. Pleasures is also an EDT, but again it resembles a cologne. Its bright, fresh, snowy character is anything but offensive, and delicate enough to pass muster at a crowded sushi bar. I think it's a good scent, but this sort of nineties translucent-floral style never seems complete to me. It tends to smell like something very important got left out. In most cases I'm not sure what that "something" is, but in this case I know exactly what got left out.

Pleasures is basically Intuition without the warmth. It is decidedly "cleaner" in feel than Intuition, completely unisex, and boasts a limited but garrulous array of green florals, including honeysuckle, geranium, freesia, and tuberose. The tuberose is dialed back to the extreme, lending the construct just a touch of earthiness. The geranium, on the other hand, stands in for violet leaf and/or iris in cooling down the composition. I think they would've been better off using either of the other two ingredients instead; Pleasures smells a little too fresh and clean and lacks any real definition in its greenery. The whole thing dries down to a slightly-sour musk. It's okay, but I'd go with Intuition instead - even though it's a touch louder, it's still quiet enough, and has a certain je ne sais quoi that puts it in another league of soapy Lauder perfumes altogether.

R.S.V.P. (Kenneth Cole)

Yesterday I went to Marshalls and found a 4 ounce bottle of Cool Water for $40, so I grabbed it. I wore it yesterday, and I'm wearing it again today. I'm always struck by how good Cool Water's composition is. Even though it's made with designer-grade synthetics, those elements are perfectly used. Cool Water is the Corvette of the fragrance world - inexpensive, flawlessly made, capable of sweating similar vehicles in higher classes without losing its center of gravity. 

That tantalizing combo of green apple, woody citrus, lavender, mint, cedar, jasmine, tobacco, and musk is brilliantly arranged, very legible, and timeless. Tobacco is essential to Cool Water's construct - without it, the whole thing would smell like Aspen, i.e., smooth, green, sweet, and flat. Nestled in its sweet base, the crisp green tobacco note lends Cool Water a darkness, a masculinity, that certain something every great beauty possesses but doesn't flaunt, akin to a borderline-ugly mole over a pretty woman's full lips. It's nature's nice finishing touch. Bourdon did a good job with Cool Water's.

It is important to stay true to a good formula if you want to imitate it. Frank Voelkl, who is responsible for several Le Labo scents, and the much-maligned Zirh Ikon, crafted R.S.V.P. for Kenneth Cole in the early 2000s; it saw its release in 2006. Some say this scent is based on Gucci's Envy for Men, but I don't really smell that. I'm getting a cross between Calvin Klein's Eternity for Men and Cool Water, with emphasis on the latter. Let's look at the similarities: R.S.V.P. opens with woody-citrus, lavender, red apple, cardamom, and pepper. Cool Water opens with woody-citrus, lavender, green apple, and mint. There isn't enough in Kenneth Cole's offering to distract me out of my Cool Water reverie.

The Eternity comparison comes into the picture later, as "Répondez S'il Vous Plaît" dries down. The lavender strengthens, the citrus notes sweeten, the cardamom fuses to the apple, creating a fuzzy wood accord, but it's too overbearingly blobby to discern separate wood notes. Hints of Cool Water still abound as the pepper ratchets up the spice factor, hinting at a darkness in the base that never fully manifests itself. This thing loses sight of its own plot-line long before it fades away, but just late enough in the game to fool me into thinking I liked it. My response: Screw you, Ken. I'm not another rookie who buys things based on top notes. But the wooden box is a nice touch.

Agua Lavanda Puig (Antonio Puig)

In the early 1940s, America was a strange country to live in. The majority of its male population was overseas, fighting on any one of several fronts in Europe and Asia. Left behind were women, children, and the elderly. Perfume releases were few and far beteween; men had no women to impress, and women had no men. Those who wore perfume were wearing it for nostalgia's sake, for love of husbands battling the enemy, or to celebrate their successful avoidance of conscription. 

Many Hollywood actors were given the generous option to enlist, and I imagine more than a few of them lived it up while their fellow countrymen got shot at. One of the many reasons I admire Jimmy Stewart is that he was willing to serve his country, when he could just as easily have kicked back at home and enjoyed his money. Fragrance was probably something he had no interest in at all.

Agua Lavanda Puig was released in 1940, which makes it a bit of a mystery. Who was it marketed to? Was it strictly a European release, worn by the war-torn men and women of Spain and France? Not likely, although I understand it is currently very popular in Spain. Was it imported into America for the Left-Behind generation? Perhaps, but I can't figure out exactly why. There were certainly some middle-aged men left in America, mostly successful businessmen in the upper middle class. I suppose they might have been given to wearing something like Puig's lavender water. The thing is, it doesn't smell like something any American male of the 1940s would wear. It is unremittingly Mediterranean. It is fresh, mossy, loaded with lavender, basil, and a beautiful woody lime note, which became much more popular in the 1960s. 

Agua Lavanda is, without exaggeration, the greenest example of early twentieth century perfumery, save for Coty's Chypre, Guerlain's Mitsouko, and Green Water by Jacques Fath. It does not get any greener, fresher, or southern European than Agua Lavanda Puig.

Puig's original formula has survived the decades and can still be had today at a whopping $20 a bottle. However, a word of caution: the fragrance comes in two different forms, one in a plastic shampoo bottle, the other in a seven ounce glass flask. Get the one in glass; the plastic version smells like a 33% concentration.

R de Capucci (Roberto Capucci)

Leather fragrances are an odd bunch because most of them don't smell anything like leather, at least not to me. English Leather comes the closest, but my over-sensitive nose has no problem dissecting EL's simple structure. There's really no such thing as a "leather note" and EL certainly doesn't have one. It uses a clever leather analog of dry lime, wood, and pine to create the olfactory illusion of treated hide. 

Quorum does the same, with grapefruit instead of lime. Luxury brands resort to sophisticated blends of birch-tar and floral notes to get there. Avon utilizes a blatantly synthetic suede note in its leather scents, which I suppose is somewhat accurate, but then again suede never smelled like leather to me, either. When I was a kid, I visited the gift shop of a Native American museum, and purchased a rabbit skin. It smelled amazing, and has been my standard for leather ever since.

R de Capucci is right up there with English Leather as coming closest to the leather illusion, without relying on synthetic nuances. Released in 1985, this classically composed chypre bears a resemblance to other chypres of its era, including Z-14, Fendi Donna, and Antaeus, but doesn't share their distinctiveness. RdC's characteristics extend from the bergamot-labdanum-oakmoss framework of older references like Coty Chypre and Mitsouko, with masculine flourishes of lemon, lavender, carnation, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, and the faintest touch of rose. I was fully aware of RdC's complexity prior to wearing it, but was a little disappointed by the result.

The freshness of lavender and citrus on top of R de Capucci has promise, but my chief complaint is that it doesn't hold. After five minutes, the bracing aromatics give way to sweet powder and sandalwood, with a hint of moistureless greenery on the periphery. Some say the powder is tempered by the greens; I find the plush heart too overpowering. Its dryness yields a smooth animal-skin effect, a commendable rendering of leather, but its density kills RdC's appeal. This is the definition of "perfumey" to me, albeit a pleasant scent. 

If I want lavender that slips into softness, I'll use Pour un Homme de Caron. Its lavender is better rendered, and its vanilla-musk closing feels classy, not dated. Meanwhile, R de Capucci is very dated, but has appeal for being structurally faultless, obscure, and classically composed. I guess it's good for the office, but I think you run the risk of being labeled "cologne guy" by your coworkers.

Royall Spyce (Royall Lyme Bermuda)

Modern perfumery styles have come a long way. Back in the old days (anytime before 1850) a man smelled "fresh" if he was covered in citrus oils and flower absolutes. The eau de cologne did then what aquatics do now. Likewise, if a man wanted to smelled refined and sophisticated, he doused himself in extracts of kitchen spices, which was akin to wearing an oriental. Was this real perfumery? Yes. It was crude design. Citrus and spice, with dashes of floral oils, were pretty much the only available building blocks. Today we have things like Calone, ionones, burnt-sugar orientals, and neon fruity-florals. We've also dispensed with ruffled collars, from what I understand.

Royall Lyme Bermuda has prided itself for years on the skillful re-capture of Old-World styles in updated glass flacons of good quality. Royall Lyme was its first foray into fragrance, and to date their most famous. The simple concept of taking lime extracts and making it into a tonic was as popular in the 17th century as it was in the 20th. I'm glad they upheld that tradition, as limes are my favorite fruit. It's hard to beat the clean, woody smell of limes. (See also English Leather.)

Shortly thereafter a series of Royall scents emerged, and Spyce was one of them. Launched in 1961, it adopts the "fresh-spicy" profile of other fragrances in that style, like Old Spice, and Coty's L'Origan. Royall Spyce is considerably simpler than either of those two, featuring a bracing and short-lived burst of lemon oil up top, followed by a warm drydown of black pepper, clove, and cinnamon. The pepper/clove accord is central, and creates a cool, piquant aroma. Cinnamon is an afterthought, seemingly added to keep the composition from being too simple and dull. It adds some heat, and does a good job of propping this mundane style up. I can't recommend Spyce in lieu of Old Spice - P&G's classic oriental is far more complex and satisfying - but when you need a little noncommittal kick after a shave, this gets the job done nicely.

Castile (Penhaligon's)

Everyone knows the House of Creed is a polarizing one, capable of generating fist fights between basenoters (no mean feat, considering basenotes is an online community), tears, and even the gnashing of teeth. Some feel it's a great company; others despise it for its perceived dishonesty. Those who are bluntest about their distaste simply feel Creed fragrances don't smell very good and aren't worth the sticker shock. Those guys annoy me, but I can relate, because I feel the exact same way about Penhaligon's.

This brand mystifies me. It's an old company - like Creed, claiming to go back hundreds of years - and they've produced a royal warrant or two to publicly uphold their pedigree. They're expensive: a 3 oz bottle will run you about $140. Stylistically, they're very stodgy. You can almost smell the bookshelf dust before the perfume. It's as though each fragrance were crafted with hand tools in a candlelit shop to the sound of Mendelssohn. By all rights, such a legacy should inspire fragrant beauty of unmatched proportions, works that would bring the staunchest Francophile to his knees. Penhaligon's fragrances ought to smell amazing. Why then do they smell like crap?

Allegedly derived from the Spanish soap of the Castile region, this fragrance was a true challenge for its maker, because it's to closely match a very specialized product. Quality of ingredients is essential when replicating a certain heritage toiletry; a skilled nose would gather necessary components, selecting only the highest-grade materials, and intentionally avoiding redundancy with a new accord, made of three or four original elements. A touch of Mediterranean citrus perhaps, and maybe some Spanish lavender. Only the finest naturals would do.

Mediocre, designer-grade materials were used to make Penhaligon's Castile. It smells chemical and waxy, like truck stop restroom soap. I'm unfamiliar with the smell of real Castile soap, but if it's anything like this, I'm sticking with Irish Spring.

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.

Silver Mountain Water (Creed)

Basenotes.net, which is little more than a male fragrance frathouse, has entire forums and subforums devoted to one topic: Creed's batch variations. I can only imagine how tiresome these conversations must be for female BN members. If there are female BN members - I count around six that participate in forums, and only irregularly.

I say it must be tiresome because Creed isn't popular with women. They offer a whole line of "Femme" Millésimes, some of which are unisex, many of which are too stodgy for modern tastes. But Creed's overall marketing approach and perfume range is geared toward male tastes, with the ladies seemingly an afterthought. The girls don't get their own Green Irish Tweed. They get Love in White instead.

So it must be a drag to have to endure all the batch variation chatter. The notion that Millésimes change from year to year, with stark differences per batch, has many men in a cold sweat. It actually puts them off when looking at Creeds online. Inevitably the question arises: "I called Fragrancenet and asked them what batch of GIT they had in stock, and they said """"""". Can anyone tell me if it's a good one or not?" Which leads to pointless code comparisons, arguments over quality, and whole threads devoted to de-coding numbers and letters. Here's the kicker - Creed batch variations are a myth. 

What does exist are age cycles for Millésimes. This is what confuses people about Creed. A guy will purchase a brand new Millésime from Neiman Marcus, take it home, spray it on, and immediately complain that it's not as strong as the tester was. Sometimes the item is returned. But he's mistaken. Let's take Green Irish Tweed. When brand new, fresh into the bottle, Green Irish Tweed is a rather weak perfume. It smells very green and crisp, but has limited longevity, and almost no sillage. But if you notice, Creed bottles aren't airtight. They're actually very poorly made. My last bottle of GIT used to leak from the atomizer base. That means air is getting inside the bottle, and mingling with the fragrance. It also means alcohol and water is evaporating out.

After a few wearings, let a bottle of Green Irish Tweed sit for six months. Then come back to it. When you spray again, you'll be blown away by its strength. Suddenly, this perfume is an eighties powerhouse. Full-blown violet. Huge verbena. Sweeping sandalwood. One spray will do ya for a good six hours, no problem. Of course, given enough time, GIT (and likely any Creed) will age past its prime, and begin to smell a little skunky, as did my 1 oz bottle of GIT from 2001. The scent was basically the same as my 2011 bottle, except the musk in its base was actually a little stinky. Its balance was definitely off.

The age cycle applies to all Millésimes. Except Silver Mountain Water.

With SMW, age is just a number. It is to date the only Creed in which I have distinctly detected a batch variation - or more accurately put, a reformulation. Earlier vintages yielded a very pungent mineral-like green tea note, married beautifully to blackcurrant to create a uniquely dark freshness. It opened with clear citrus, touched with currant, and slid rapidly into that tea-centered heart, which was bolstered by a sizable dose of ambergris. Lurking in the mix was a blatantly synthetic ink note, somewhat similar to those Hitachi inkjet cartridges. It sounds disgusting, I know, but it smelled pretty terrific. The balance was right, each note was proportionate to its role in the composition, and Silver Mountain Water evolved on skin as a very masculine fresh fragrance, with just a touch of the weird.

I sampled a new bottle, and was disappointed. Gone are the citrus top notes. Gone is the pebbly tea note. Gone is the generous ambergris base. In its place is a limpid ambergris, barely enough to keep the synthetic berry top afloat. Once the pink-smelling top evaporates, there is only a combination of ink and amber. The tea, however muted it may have been, now seems absent from the composition, with its synthetic companion as a stand-in. That's a shame, because on its own the ink note doesn't cut it. It smells too stark and strange, and is poorly wedded to the fruit-punchy top. That top has become awfully screechy, by the way. It isn't the playful lemon-lime 7-Up of yesteryear. It's Snapple on steroids, no longer "made from the best stuff on Earth."

Gentlemen readers (those new to Creed), I don't mean to throw the scare into you. I know you're already feeling a little flighty about Creed, what with all the static about batches. Rest assured, all Millésimes are solid offerings, are consistent from year to year, and so far only one has been obviously reformulated. Until further notice, stay away from Silver Mountain Water. We don't need new threads about it. We don't need anyone's feelings hurt. Just get Green Irish Tweed instead.

Boucheron Pour Homme Eau de Toilette (Boucheron)

There's a whole category of powdery dandy fragrances out there, and many legendary perfumes fall squarely into it, but I'm not a fan. I don't know what it is, but the prospect of wearing scents like Hammam Bouquet or Floris No.89 with any regularity makes me queasy. It's like the idea of wearing a top hat to work. That type of retro style is fun in very small doses, like Halloween. But beyond that . . . not so much.

Boucheron Pour Homme is part of the powdery retro-dandy crowd, but unlike its peers, seems far more modern and wearable. It's also made better than the two mentioned above, is significantly cheaper, and boasts superior longevity and sillage. I haven't tried the EDP version, but the EDT is lovely. Ladies, take note (particularly those of you who consider masculine perfumery uninteresting), Boucheron for Men is unisex, often straddling the feminine moreso than the masculine, and would be a real stunner on a woman. She just needs to look past the first five minutes of somewhat-manly citrus and lavender. But even that opening accord isn't strictly masculine. It's more like your standard eighties feminine in drag. This is Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo. 

I went into lengthy verse on this fragrance in my Fragrantica review, and won't repeat myself, but I'd like to emphasize a few things. Boucheron is soapy. VERY soapy. I actually smell a lye note simmering under its velvety florals and woods. Oh, that's another thing - Boucheron is very smooth. It's the perfume equivalent of Bailey's Irish Cream. It wins some sort of prize for smoothness, even beating Creed's Green Irish Tweed. You're wearing liquid silk with Boucheron, only one cool layer, so there's no scratchiness. The sweetness of lavender, rose, jasmine, and geranium are represented, with touches of spicy carnation. Later, a massive sandalwood note appears, comprising most of the base. It's finely-textured, fresh, and charming.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the citrus top. Boucheron is, for a good five or ten minutes, a citrus fragrance, bellowing its rich lemons and oranges for miles around. They're sharp for only a few seconds, and then rapidly tone themselves into sweet powder, reminiscent of Habit Rouge. The citric edge never disappears, and remains into the far drydown. If you want a sharp, juicy citrus fragrance, this isn't your man. Go give Monsieur Balmain a sniff instead. But if you'd like something that uses citrus as a template for plush luxury, Boucheron is the last stop.