Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare (Creed) "Sour Rose"

Although publicly "discontinued," this Creed is still available via the boutique and official Creed merchants across the world, but supplies are dwindling with each passing day. If you're a rose soliflore fanatic, that means you'll want to grab the phone and call a Creed rep to see if you can snag a spare bottle, before it's too late. Creed habitually "vaults" their fragrances, meaning formulas get pulled from the line, buttoned into a back room, and occasionally enjoy brief returns at a premium mark-up, which is sinful given how marked-up Creeds already are. In any case, you can consider this scent vaulted until further notice, which is a shame for something so beautiful. 

The strange thing about Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare is that Creed used green tea notes in conjunction with Bulgarian rose extracts, instead of just using the pure essence of an actual tea rose, as The Perfumer's Workshop did in their infamous Tea Rose thirty some-odd years ago. I guess they wanted to imbue the scent with an earthy green flavor, but I think they went a little overboard. The opening is a strident burst of lemon, which rapidly simmers down to the smell of boiled water. Then, green tea. But the tea has been steeped a bit too long, and gets a little too strong. The effect is sharp, twangy, and loaded with crystalline green notes, wedded to a girlishly soft rose.

The tea becomes increasingly mineralic and bitter as it dries down, which helps make this scent a viable option for men, although I'd wager the only guy who'd willingly wear it would be safely married to a beautiful woman, or another man. Note to young bucks: avoid wearing rose soliflores while on the prowl in the Western world. Rose is strong enough to maintain a keen presence, even after a half-dozen beers. The ladies will either be freaked out by it, or will lie and tell you it's "cute" that you're wearing a feminine perfume. 

Either way, it's bad news. This isn't to suggest men can't wear rose - rose can be utterly masculine. But a delicate rose soliflore doesn't mix well with the hops at Fuddruckers, if you know what I mean. Working against this particular soliflore are various off-notes, which are found in all but the most exquisite rose constructs, like the slightly rubbery edge of real rose oil, and an occasional whiff of stale powder. I applaud Olivier for sticking with genuine raw rose materials in these soliflores (Fleurs de Bulgarie is the other), but I wonder if more buffering is in order: perhaps some aldehydes would enliven the blend, and distract from its razor-sharp linear nature.

Given its exorbitant price and recent discontinuation, I would skip Fleur and buy Jo Malone's lovely Red Roses instead. However, there is one sticking point - I usually get a headache wearing rose perfumes. I'm not sure why, but rose does it to me every time - except when I wear Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare. This is the only rose perfume that hasn't made me feel sick after two hours. It's perhaps a testament to the power of high quality ingredients, legibly arranged in a thoughtful, albeit off-kilter structure of little more than three discernible notes: lemon, rose, and green tea.

Acqua Fiorentina (Creed) "Sweet Water"

I have only worn three of Creed's "Femme" Millésimes, with Acqua Fiorentina being the first. Taking stock of each, I'd have to say that I understand why women aren't drawn to Creed, although I'm not so sure my reasoning aligns itself with reality. I suspect, rather strongly, that women find Creed's Femme range to be somewhat dull. There's a handful of stodgy florientals. The super-synthetic "Love In" duo. A few Royal Exclusives that are so ungodly expensive and impractical that even the richest of the rich should raise eyebrows. Nothing stands out as a breakthrough scent; Creed lacks a feminine version of Green Irish Tweed, Aventus, or a postmodern-gourmand floral, like Bond's Chinatown. They may want to buckle down, study the feminine market, and try giving the girls something to talk about. Things like Acqua Fiorentina ain't cutting it.

People have asked why this fragrance is named after Florence. It's actually named after an Italian football team. "Florence" in Italian is Firenze. So perhaps the perfume's name is cod French, or just something Olivier made up out of thin air. Wouldn't be the first time a niche perfumer picked a title out of a hat. Setting this little quibble aside, I was looking forward to an interesting melange of fruit notes in this one. I'd read about its luscious greengage plum accord, and hoped it was every bit as hyper-realistic as other Creed accords had been. Indeed, for the first two minutes of wear, the plum is beautiful. It smells sweet, delicate, full of complex stray notes that stretch from "grapey" to "pear-like," and back to full-on plum once again. It's a short and decidedly wonderful ride.

Then the plum exits, stage left. Enter synthetic Calone notes. I've smelled this before, a supple, nondescript, airy modern cologne, edged with expensive aroma chemicals, but banal nonetheless. Hints of cedar, dry citrus (grapefruit?), and a lightly spiced floral backdrop - presumably carnation - all comprise a silvery-grey sheen that is as forgettable as can be. It's surprising that something so well made could still smell so patently uninspired and tedious. Add to the dreariness the fact that AF lasts about four hours with generous application in high heat, and you have a perfume that ought to be an option only for the hyper-wealthy who don't know any better. 

The original version, reviewed here, is still widely available at merchants online, and via contacts at the Creed Boutique in NY or Paris. I haven't tried it yet, but I hope the "Encore" version smells a few nods better than its progenitor.

Orange Spice (Creed) "Technicolor Orange"

The baseless rumor, stoked by many, that Pierre Bourdon was the sole nose behind Creed's range, stems from the common comparison of Cool Water to Green Irish Tweed, and of Kouros to Orange Spice. Many feel it is far too coincidental that GIT and Orange Spice so closely resemble these designer offspring. I contend that Bourdon certainly had a small hand in GIT, but that GIT and Cool Water are sufficiently different enough for discerning wearers of both to spot massive divergences of personality in these scents. Likewise, Kouros feels reminiscent of Orange Spice, but is a dirtier, muskier, more complicated composition, one which focuses more on incense and wildflowers than citrus. Taken together, the differences between these scents are so stark that it's just as easy to wonder how on earth they were ever compared in the first place.

Luca Turin pointed out that Creed's fragrances employ generous mixtures of synthetics and naturals, and stated that Creed's naturals are "only slightly better" than what is used in designer brands. This misses the mark entirely. It implies that Creed overcharges for their compositions because their fragrances are more natural. To be fair, Creed's press usually feeds this strange fire. In actuality, the fat money shows not in the naturals, but in the synthetics, and anyone who doubts it should wear Orange Spice. This fragrance is, hands down, the most vibrant, durable, and crystalline synthetic composition in Creed's range, and showcases Olivier's talent in accepting the strengths and limitations of manufactured aroma chemicals. The reason to pay extra is in his ability to do it with the most difficult scent profile: the "dirty citrus."

You may think I'm blowing smoke up your ass. If so, stop reading, because I'm following this train of thought to its apex, and back again. I'd like to give you an example of just how well-made Orange Spice is. A few weeks ago, I was walking at the recreational field in my town. It was a scorchingly hot and humid ninety-degree day. Prior to my walk, I perversely applied a generous amount of Orange Spice to my chest and stomach. While walking, I noted that soggy heat was having no perceptible effect on the gorgeous orange and clove combo in this Creed's heart. But about a half-hour in, I had to use the bathroom. Unfortunately, there's only a porto-potty at the track. I tend to avoid portable toilets in the dead of summer, for obvious reasons. But in this case, nature was a bitch. So I took a detour and stepped into that little plastic room.

It had to be 135° in there. I sweat profusely in heat, but this was ridiculous. It was as though the sun's rays had eroded the plastic molecules enough to let their radiation enter that little chemical enclosure, and build up into a nuclear-strength reactor. In ninety seconds, my body had sweated so furiously that my shirt was thoroughly soaked. When I stepped back out into fresh air, it felt like an icy January wind. I paused, and realized that despite the torture I'd just endured, I still smelled fresh. I tucked my nose under my shirt and inhaled, half-expecting Orange Spice to have morphed into a sour monster. No such luck. The citrus accord of tightly-woven orange, mandarin, and neroli remained as crisp and fresh as ever. It literally smelled as though the sweat sliding down my body had been replaced with farm-squeezed orange juice. It continued to smell that way, ever so subtly, as the afternoon drew to a close.

So if Orange Spice is so citrusy and clean, why is it compared to Kouros? I suspect the reason is Creed's top note. OS opens with a blast of sweet orange, touched with a tiny dollop of synthetic civet. This little flourish accounts for why these fragrances are so frequently compared. Few masculine scents use civet, and those that do rarely attempt to foray into "dirty citrus" territory. Orange Spice and Kouros are unique in this regard, and share the same goals. But where Kouros becomes animalic, sweet, and floral, OS stays fruity, with a tenacity that belies its reinforced naturalism. You have to love the smell of civet, orange, and camphoraceous clove, and how they're underpinned by subtle green and spicy notes. But if you're enthusiastic about these things to begin with, Orange Spice is the Creed for you.

One last thing - many dispute the stated release date of this scent, and argue that it was made more recently than 1950. These suspicions hint at a certain shared ignorance among the doubters. The general character of Orange Spice is perfectly aligned to the fragrance style of the late forties and early fifties. If you swap the synthetics out for real civet cream and citrus, combined with a touch of some potent nitro musk, you get a good idea of how this would have smelled back then. It's actually not that far removed from Max Factor Signature for Men, which hails from the same era. Musky citrus fougères were all part of the barbershop tradition of wetshavers, now carried over to the present in this delightful (and painfully expensive) update.

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.

Jōvan Black Musk for Men (Coty)

The word "nondescript" comes to mind. I know a couple of my regular readers shudder at the sight of this cologne, but if you asked me what it smells like, I'd have to say it's nondescript, to the fullest extent of the word. It's as forgettable as a Chinese arithmetic problem, sans the thrill of a real challenge. To smell like something, anything, wear anything else. Jōvan Black Musk is not for fragrance connoisseurs.

Who is it for? Simple answer: people who like how it smells. And it is a smell, more than a fragrance, a light, linear, one-note olfactory blurb, a sniff equivalent of something Justin Bieber might say. It's truly that bad - devoid of meaning, with no redeeming accents or inflections - something the likes of which no man should ever have to see on his side of the fragrance aisle. The bottle is dull, cheap-looking, although hefty glass, and one gets points for choosing glass over plastic. The juice? Flat, greyish-purple in color, silvery cool on contact, the languid smell of fruity suede, touched by a standard white musk. It's like one of those hologram stickers - shiny on one side, dull on the other. Sometimes it smells cool, fresh, luxurious. Other times a grapey blobby thing wrecks the romance, dragging the little pretties out by their bottle-bleached locks, leaving smears of cheap chemicals and a perfume-shaped hole in the heart. 

Jōvan Black Musk is a vile disaster, the worst of the worst, ill-conceived in every conceivable way, and it probably doubles as nail-polish remover for goth boys. Jōvan Black Musk is a rancid crime against all of humanity, plus a few other species, too. And I absolutely love it.

L'Homme (Yves Saint Laurent)

The nineties were long gone by L'Homme's release date, yet this scent takes me on a trip down memory lane, as though its fragrance molecules can bend light and reflect past events. My surprise at learning it hails from 2006 was the first and last time L'Homme did the unexpected - it all went downhill after that. Let my criticism be attenuated by the more favorable things to say about it, because this isn't a bad offering from YSL. In fact, it's quite nice. But is it worthy of regular wear in the adult world? Perhaps, if you're someone who dislikes fragrance, L'Homme fits your lifestyle perfectly. There's nothing about its simple citrus/ginger/violet leaf/woods structure to suggest an affinity for sophisticated perfumery. Wear this, and smell boring, safe, professional, you get the message.

To my amateur, untrained nose, L'Homme smells remarkably similar to the original Allure Homme by Chanel, although some notes are starkly different. YSL's scent feels dodgier, more "metrosexual," prissy, ambiguous. L'Homme's synthetic dry-citrus opening has the requisite department store shimmer we've all come to expect from things in this price range. It smells good, but not like real fruit, and quickly loses its luster. The ginger note is spicy-sweet, and lends a cool edge to the piquant proceedings of violet leaf and cedar. After two hours everything has fuzzed into a sweet, gauzy, Chanel-like musky amber, and I half expect to switch the radio on and hear the Spice Girls, or turn to the news and see Clinton giving a speech in the Rose Garden. It's my high school days, all over again.

Is it wrong for major designer labels to release unimaginative fragrances? No, especially when you consider the profit being made. People who aren't interested in perfume should still have something decent to wear to work, and they seek out stuff like this. I'll submit to the audience that it's far better for a middle-class American male to don something without frills, like Caron for Men, than something without soul, like L'Homme. YSL's product might say, "I'm reliable ladies," but with Caron you're classically male: a man who loves women who love men. It's unfair, even morally suspect, but I'd hire that guy; with L'Homme, I'd question his resume.

Eternity Aqua For Men (Calvin Klein)

Calvin Klein is an interesting brand. Their fragrance concepts are usually ambitious, and sometimes they hire superstar noses to formulate their juice. They've made one of the nicest modern orientals around - Obsession for Men. Their latest successes include CK One Shock for Him/Her. This company is still in the game.

What irritates me a little about CK is that I'm fully aware of their potential for greatness, yet always let down by their offerings, not because they're intrinsically weak, but because they're usually appropriate for the teenage set only. Teenage readers, take note: if you're having trouble finding a well-made everyday fragrance that doesn't condescend, take a good look at the CK range. You'll be spoiled for choice. For you ambitious business-types, the guy who works at a McDonalds, but dreams of owning a Zagat-favored steakhouse, I present to you Eternity Aqua.

Aqua has all the usual bells and whistles of a postmodern aquatic. There's a juicy citrus accord on top, made cold by a pleasant cucumber note, which smells a touch better than expected. Lavender appears as the fruit burns off, and within five minutes segues to an strange aromatic wood note (guaiac wood?), accented by piquant Sichuan spices, which I suppose are meant to lend contrast to that cool beginning. What it accomplishes is no mean trick; Aqua's banal Calone promises yield an aqueous oriental effect, which kinda-sorta works. The pepper smells clean and mature, and is very appealing. You know what, boys? I take it back - you can have regular Eternity, and I'll wear this.

Dark Rose (Czech & Speake)

Quality of natural raw materials. Quality of patented synthetics. Quality of note separation. Of composition, legibility, the divisibility of accords, the breadth of chemical evolution, its arch across time. Quality of synchronicity. The beauty of the inhale; the thrill of the exhale. The scent memory left behind.

These are all things a connoisseur factors into the experience of smelling a reputable niche perfume. It's different from smelling designer fragrances. With ubiquitous offerings, my standards are broader. I want to know if what I'm smelling is good, or bad, with Kouros, Cool Water, and Old Spice as comparisons. If it smells like it could keep company with any of those, then it has a shot with me. I don't go to tiresome lengths dissecting each accord, separating each note, ferreting out chemical synchs over seven-hour time frames. I just stay cynical about the top notes, and suspicious of the base, and if the top pleasantly surprises me, and the base doesn't kill the buzz, I have a good scent.

Niche, on the other hand, gets micromanaged. Especially the better niche perfumes, things from Malle, Creed, C&S. I expect a lot of things from those brands. C&S frags rarely disappoint me, so I'm always nervous when I first try one. Dark Rose was one of those moments - I knew their Rose was good, and I had heard good things about No.88, but really wasn't sure about Dark Rose. It seemed it would be a love-it or hate-it scent. And it also seemed like something I wouldn't want to wear, even if I liked it. And I wanted to like it, and wear it. So I dragged my heels before trying this well-known rose/oud perfume.

I shouldn't have been worried. Dark Rose is enchanting. The top is a brassy incense accord, so rich and balsamic that I'm overcome with emotion just sniffing it. It's one of those, "Oh, Dark Rose, I want to live in your bottle" moments. I could definitely feel the quality in that intro, which was likely made of very high-grade synthetics with a generous sprinkling of naturals. It's persistent, but also shimmers, like fireworks that refuse to twinkle out. It's also long-winded, as I get ten minutes out of that top structure. Very, very nice.

Then, enter the rose. It's a velvety, deep, brilliant red, full of rubbery nectars. Flanking it is a silvery medicinal note, which at first resembles dew on petals, but rapidly reveals its darker earthiness: the dry specter of oud. These two notes form a rich, intertwined accord, with the delicacy of wine petals swirling against hi-gloss onyx. It's feminine, but then it turns, and I'm struck by how unisex it feels. It's gorgeous, simple, and direct, but so utterly beautiful that I'm at a loss for words, especially as its amber drydown, glistening with animalic sweat, closes the show. Dark Rose does fade out completely on skin within a day - at least it did on my skin, leaving no perceptible trace after nine hours. As Marilyn Monroe once said, "A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left."

Wise girl.

Unforgivable (M.A.C.)

My distaste for Puff Daddy ("P-Diddy, Sean 'Puffy' Combes, Sean John) was crafted at the dawning of his miserable career, back in the early '90s when he launched the careers of several well-known rappers, most of whom are now deceased. When he launched his own music career with 1997's No Way Out, he leeched fame off of other musicians' successes. His two biggest singles, I'll Be Missing You, and Come With Me would never have been recorded were it not for The Police and Jimmy Page. Puffy's songs generously "sampled" Every Breath You Take and Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, relying so heavily on both tracks that I severely doubted the man had an original bone in his body. When Puffy stepped into the world of fine fragrance more than a decade later, he continued to stoke those doubts by blatantly cloning Millésime Impérial.

Unforgivable smells nearly identical to Millésime Impérial, with a somewhat "greyer" citrus accord, and a thicker watermelon note clumsily welded to candy ozone and amber. I'm not surprised by this, because Puffy has made no secret of his love for Creed, and apparently wears Original Santal regularly. Unforgivable's strength and tenacity is admirable, as I get a good six hours out of it - twice as long as the Creed. 

Does it smell good? Actually yes, as its inspiration is a pleasant citrus-floral aquatic with a lovely overall demeanor. This scent is scratchier in execution, and lacks a true ambergris base, but is still a good copy. Adults with a nose for fragrance will easily smell the difference between this and MI, but if you're a college kid with little cash to spare, you're in luck: Susie in the dorm downstairs won't notice you're an aspirational klutz. It goes to show, if you're going to plagiarize, you might as well do it to the best of the best; good artists borrow, but great artists steal.

Acqua 330 (Emilio Pucci)

Acqua 330 came in a set of Pucci samplers that my ex-girlfriend had sitting among several million other forgotten things. She had a prodigious collection of junk, mostly leftover items from a life gone by. It felt sad to be surrounded by the lonely aftermath of her parents dying and leaving her with their house. Picture an acre of land, eight-tenths of it grass, and a 30 year-old man cutting it with a small push mower in 85° Connecticut heat, until the abused machine literally shakes apart. Then imagine a perpetually annoyed 31 year-old woman coming home, passing the newly-shorn lawn without noticing it, and stepping into the two-tenths of her acre that isn't overgrown with a freshly-minted rant about her co-workers prepared and ready to go. This was our dynamic for six months.

Throw into that unhappy little equation an unhappy little aquatic by the Italian fashion brand of Emilio Pucci, and you really have Paradise Lost. Ostensibly a modern floral in the aquatic style, Acqua 330 should, by all rights, smell nice. After all, Tommy Girl works pretty well. Why shouldn't this have equal success with the same basic formula (floral aroma chemicals, plus Calone, and a dash of white musk)? It's hard to say, and I'll concede that it isn't the worst thing I've ever smelled, but it's hard to like. 330 opens with a confident burst of marine notes, very salty, briny, fresh. It's a synthetic accord that seems to be a clever mixture of old and new Calone variants, which produce an off-key Atlantic-aquatic vibe. This hums along nicely, and I mentally compare 330 with the smell of the salty crust that forms on my skin whenever I get splashed by sea water.

Then the fragrance gets ambitious, and things take a turn for the worse. Jasmine makes an appearance, smelling very sweet and synthetic, followed by a soapy musk that threatens my senses with its overbearing strength. They egregiously mis-calibrated that musk. Eventually the synthetics become the only perceptible element, forming an unpleasant soap-lye drydown of no particular interest. This astoundingly disappointing ending is compounded by the realization that everything else about the fragrance is interesting, from its beautiful bottle, to its uncharacteristically corporate title. If only they'd focused on jasmine's indoles, instead of its freshness, Acqua 330 might have been worth the trouble. Bvlgari Aqva is a good example to follow. In the meantime, Acqua 330 is perfect for bitchy thirty-somethings who treat the important people in their lives like numbers, and amass incomprehensible piles of crap in inherited houses they can't afford. Thanks for filling that niche, Emilio!

Aqua Velva's Reformulation Is . . .

Most shave-conscious men over thirty are aware that Combe Inc. reformulated Aqua Velva a few years ago and transferred it from glass to plastic. I remember the gnashing of teeth on Badger & Blade like it was yesterday. Die-hard fans were outraged. They cited Old Spice as an example of what happens when giant corporations cut costs and cheap out on formulas. Of course, the problem with their example is that Old Spice hasn't been hurt by the change at all. The Guide made a note of its former transience; Old Spice isn't just top notes anymore.

Aqua Velva "Classic" Ice Blue used to be a disappointing fragrance for me. Before I get into that, I'd like to say this: conceptually, Aqua Velva is brilliant. You have to remember that this aftershave hit the market in 1935, long before chemists had powerful synthetics at their disposal. But there were some useful man-made tools in their arsenal, and they were utilized well here. Ice Blue, though icy in name and color, was originally a minty-herbal-leathery chypre. 

But "minty-herbal" doesn't sound as refreshing as "Ice Blue", and a stroke of advertising genius positioned the fragrance as just the thing to cool razor-ravaged mancheeks. AV made menthol a starring note, and in this regard it was commercially peerless. It shared its territory with nothing else. This is remarkable, given the number of classic masculine chypres that followed. Aramis, Monsieur Lanvin, and Signoricci are the only ones that come close, but they showed up to the party thirty years later. 

I've only ever known Ice Blue from the early '90s onward. Between 1990 and 2009, not much about Ice Blue had changed. It underwent some minor tweaks as the years went by, changing corporate hands, gradually getting tweaked down and cheapened, but they kept it in a solid glass bottle. I think the suits behind Aqua Velva thought the glass bottle was a license to keep the fragrance formula somewhat complex, as though walls of crystallized sand could make the cheapest aroma chemicals smell like a successful balance of mint leaves, petit grain, lavender, moss, amber, and leather. Wrong. It smelled fine for about two minutes, very minty, green, fresh. And then the supposed "leather note" showed up, and ruined everything. It smelled dark, off-balance, wrong. It was a cheap element in a cheap formula for a cheap aftershave. It didn't work at all.

Fast-forward a few years. Some bigshot over at Combe says to himself, "We can make more money without glass. Fuck it, let's do one more tweak, pare this thing down for plastic, and call it a day." The chemists (probably donning their white lab coats in China) get busy, for all of two hours. They sit down at a table with a sample of the old formula for Ice Blue and wrinkle their noses. Americans use this shit? Whatever. They basically sit around idly for thirty minutes, trying to figure out how they can possibly take an already cheap-as-shit formula and make it passable for seasoned customers. Finally, one of them lights up. "Let's take this nasty brownish note out," he exclaims excitedly. The others furrow their brows, "like, really? that's all you wanna do?" And Mr. Bright Guy nods eagerly, "Yeah, let's ditch the old-shoe note, and just leave in the minty-green crap. In fact, we'll turn the mint up a notch, to compensate."

Another hour goes by, they fax the new formula back Stateside, and go to lunch. Thanks to their little lazy-genius streak, I'm a happier person. Aqua Velva's reformulation is great! There's absolutely no plastic after-smell. It's minty, freezing cold on skin, and for the first time in its history, smells like a smooth block of ice. Now, if only they'd release the Sport version in a bigger bottle . . .