Kouros (1981)

        

Kouros is not for the faint of heart. If you only wear soft, quiet fragrances, you should run away from this beast. Seriously, start running now because the sillage of King Kouros spreads like The Fog.

 

Kouros just might be the most extreme and polarizing designer scent ever released. To some it is the divine nectar of the gods; to others think it smells like a goat peed on the carpet and you tried to cover up the stank with air freshener.

I can see why it's detractors hate it, the mashup of clean and dirty notes can come off as way too funky and foul, especially when worn in the wrong setting. Kouros is such an unusual scent that is like nothing else that's ever graced the market; a mix of honey, floral musks and aldehydes blended in with a big ole blast of civet, leather and oakmoss. I've heard that honey can come off animalic when used in excess and I suspect that is the case in Kouros as this is a highly musky and animalic fragrance.

Kouros macho to its core; it is one of the most decidedly masculine scents I've smelled. I can't imagine a lady ever pulling this off, but kudos to the lady who would wear this mythical beast, she has got my respect. I picture Tony Montana in Scarface smelling of 6-8 sprays of Kouros. That's the kind of scent Kouros is; it's for a loud, boisterious, type A masculine man who oozes confidence and a certain animalistic ferocity. Because of this, Kouros is a hard scent to pull off, you really have to own it and own the room. If I'm honest it's one that I struggle to wear proudly in public at times.

I own a late 90s bottle and a 2017 bottle and normally I don't go in for comparing vintage and current formulations but because Kouros' reformulation is so heavily torched online, I decided I was going to compare and contrast the two of them.

Right out of the gate I will say that the current formula is significantly muted; 7-10 hours of longevity versus 12-16 and the scent is noticeable within a 10 foot radius versus the vintage formulation which filled the entire room. The current formula is mainly softer because the civet note is turned way down. In the vintage bottle, the civet note smells quite natural and hits like a swift punch in the face, whereas the current formulation still has a civet-like smell, but it is dialed back significantly and smells more synthetic (probably in large part due to IFRA regulation changes).

That said, the reduction in power is not necessarily an awful thing. Because the civet note is turned down and more muted, modern Kouros is much more wearable and . It doesn't scream nearly as loudly and those who don't appreciate the smell won't be overcome by it.

As far as scent differences, I'll break it down into the opening, mid and base and which I prefer:

Opening: The vintage is much more natural smelling and packs a punch right out of the gate. The current formula smells a little too synthetic on first spray and is missing Kouros' noteworthy power. It's still in the same ballpark as the vintage, but smells a bit cheap in the first few minutes.

10/10 vintage, 8.5/10 current

Mid: The vintage gets far too "pissy" for me in the mid as the civet really shines and overpowers everything else in the mid. I find the 15 minute to 1 hour mark of the vintage to be the least appealing and the least wearable. As such I only put on vintage Kouros if I'm not planning to leave the house for at least an hour. In the current formulation, the mid has less civet; its still there and its beginning to shape the drydown, but the civet doesn't stand out like a sore thumb and make it smell like you might've pissed yourself.

8/10 vintage, 9.5/10 current

Base: The base of the current formulation smells very close to the vintage to my nose. The only reason it gets knocked back a bit is it doesn't have the staying power of the vintage nor the overwhelming sillage. The current formulation is still powerful, especially compared to modern fragrance releases, but it just lacks in the performance department compared to how it used to be. Smell wise, however, it is very much on point.

10/10 vintage, 9.5/10 current

As far as I'm concerned, Kouros, both in its current formulation and vintage, is a fucking masterpiece like no other. Clean barbershop-style notes blended with a wallop of animalic funk create an experience unlike anything else I've come across. If you are a hardcore fanboy of vintage Kouros, you'll probably want to stay away from the current formulation; it just doesn't quite get you there and you die-hards will be disappointed. If, however, you've never smelt the vintage, or at least haven't in some time, pick up a bottle of the current formulation; it's still a great fragrance and is comparable to nothing else being sold on the market today. The current formulation being a little softer and less animalic makes it is significantly easier to pull off today than the vintage. Give the new stuff at least 10 wearings and you are in love, then grab yourself a bottle of the juice that still has silver shoulders and head down the rabbit hole.

Long Live The King!

10/10

Leave a Comment Aromatic Fougere, Fougere, Powerhouse, Reformulations, Yves Saint Laurent

Tuscany Per Uomo (1984)

Aramis knocked it out of the park when they decided to name this fragrance Tuscany per Uomo. When I smell Tuscany per Uomo, my mind immediately goes to summer in northern Italy: a younger Italian gentleman walking through a piazza in Florence, wearing Persol sunglasses, a button down shirt and a pair of well fitted slacks. Although Tuscany per Uomo is now a 35 year old fragrance, I still picture a young man wearing it as it does not smell nearly as old fashioned as the majority of it's contemporaries. The lavender/anise combo has aged quite well as Tuscany and it's cousin Azzaro pour homme don't smell nearly as retro as quintessential 80s fragrances like Kouros, Oscar de la Renta Pour Lui or Drakkar Noir.

For those familiar with Azzaro pour homme but not with Tuscany per Uomo, the two scents are quite similar. The major difference to me is that Tuscany is a citrus forward scent. Azzaro's blend focuses heavily on lavender and anise with oakmoss and leather backing it up to provide some power; Tuscany on the other hand is a more muted scent, all of the main players from Azzaro are there, but they are toned down and brightened by a dominant lemon note. The closer you get to the drydown, the more similar the two scents become, but Tuscany still has an ever-present lemon that fades, but never fully disappears. It's Tuscany's lightness that makes it really come alive in the warmer months.

Tuscany has become my go to summer choice when I want to smell like Azzaro pour homme. Azzaro can be worn in any weather, but Tuscany is by far the better choice during the high heat. The lemon note really takes off the warmer you become; I sat on a beach in 30°+ heat and the warmer my skin got the more Tuscany came alive. The lavender and anise are soft enough that they never become too cloying or out of place during the high heat. It's got some staying power too; Tuscany never projects as loudly as Azzaro but it stuck around quite admirably even after I went for a dip in the water.

What stops Tuscany from being a 10/10 fragrance is the opening. I find the first 5 minutes or so to be pretty rough. At the initial spray, Tuscany is too pungent; the opening is a blast of lemon, caraway and anise and the way they combine comes off smelling almost like bad body odour. If the rest of the fragrance smelled as pungent as the first 5 minutes, this would have headed to the trash bin. Thankfully, once you give Tuscany a few minutes to settle down it turns in to a masterpiece.

If you pick up a bottle of Tuscany, be prepared to be in for a rough first few minutes, but if you have the patience, let it dry down and bask in its summery, barbershop glory.

8.5/10

Leave a Comment Aramis, Aromatic Fougere, Barbershop, Fougere

Acqua di Parma Colonia (1916)

I've never been to Parma, but when I think about summer in Italy, it smells like Acqua di Parma Colonia. I know Parma is landlocked and in the north of Italy, but when I get a whiff of Acqua di Parma Colonia, I picture immaculately dressed Italian men and women sitting on a patio next to the sea in the Amalfi coast drinking a nice bottle of wine while sharing bread and calamari.

Acqua di Parma has vibes of a classic Mediterranean-style after shave. I picture this as the sort of scent a barber will splash onto your neck after a shave in Italy, Spain or Greece. Of course they wouldn't actually use ADP Colonia because it is way too expensive for that, but it is the same kind of scent. The scent is clean and fresh, an invigorating blast of Italian lemons and bergamot backed by a clean soapy lavender, a touch of rosemary and floral musks.

Although Acqua di Parma is likely more worn by men these days rather than women, it is a wholly unisex scent and can be worn easily by any person of any gender. As for age, it smells it a little bit old school. ADP Colonia was apparently a favourite of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn and it feels like the kind of scent that someone from their era would wear. It reminds me of Eau Sauvage in the way it feels, old school and classic, but also timeless. The floral elements make it feel like a scent from yesteryear, but it is elegant and fresh enough that it can be worn by anyone past their teen years who has a penchant for vintage things.

Price is one of the bigger issues I have with this scent. The scent is very nice, but not all that complex and is rather expensive for an eau de cologne concentration. The price wouldn't be so bad if it had fantastic performance, but ADP has below average performance even for a citrus freshie. Normally I don't give a shit about performance, but I also don't usually pay $100+ for fragrance. Depending on the day I get anywhere from 3-5 hours before it's completely gone from my skin and for the entire wearing it's very faint and light. If you want to have any sort of projection at all you'll need 6+ sprays and given it's price point that will make each wearing rather pricey.

Acqua di Parma Colonia is a fantastic scent that will have you smelling classy, sophisticated and mature. Wear it with pride in the summer months and you'll feel like a wealthy, suave Italian gentleman.

8/10

Leave a Comment Acqua di Parma, Barbershop, Citrus Fragrances

Oscar De La Renta Pour Lui (1980)

Pour Lui by Oscar de la Renta is a powerhouse unlike any other. A floral, green, leathery chypre with an abundance of aldehydes, Pour Lui feels distinctly from the 1980s, yet smells like nothing else from its time; or from any other time for that matter.

One of the things that makes Pour Lui feel so unique is that it is an aldehydic bomb that is unabashedly masculine. Aldehydes are a tricky note to pull off in masculine perfumery; a small amount can make a fragrance aromatic, clean and effervescent, too much, however, and the fragrance comes off overly floral, sweet and quite feminine. We probably have Chanel No 5 to blame for the association of aldehydes with feminine fragrances, but typically when you think of a fragrance that has an overdose of aldehydes, your brain doesn't associate that with an uber masculine, alpha male type scent. Yet some how we have Pour Lui, an aldehydic overload that is a hairy-chested, unmistakably masculine scent.

It's the way Pour Lui blends the sweet, aromatic aldehydes with a healthy dose of dark, green herbal notes that ensure this scent comes across uber manly. Pour Lui balances its sweet aldehydes with oakmoss, patchouli, juniper and leather. Next to the aldehydes, the note that jumps out the most to me is oakmoss. Pour Lui is an oakmoss bomb. It has so much oakmoss in it that it makes me wonder just how incredible the vintage bottles were before authentic oakmoss was banned.

Given it's oakmoss heavy nature, Pour Lui reminds me of Paco Rabanne pour homme. Pour Lui feels like a nighttime companion scent to Paco Rabanne; I picture the kind of guy who wears Paco Rabanne during the day or at work would reach for a bottle of Pour Lui when going out to nightclub or for a night out on the town with his special someone.

Pour Lui often gets compared to a favourite of mine, Antaeus. I must say, however, that to my nose they smell nothing alike. Pour Lui and Antaeus are from the same era, are both dark masculine fragrances and both fit the same reach category, but they don't smell anything alike. Pour Lui is also often compared to Van Cleef & Arpels pour homme, which don't smell alike to me either. VC&A pour homme smells classier and more brooding, whereas Pour Lui comes more as a macho, assertive sort of scent.

When I picture Anteaus I think of a demure younger gentleman in the 80s taking his special someone to dinner and the theater, with VC&A pour homme I picture a mysterious European gentleman in the 70s and 80s who may or may not be Dracula and when I picture Oscar de la Renta Pour Lui I picture a young Miami drug lord in the 80s flashing around his money and success at a neon soaked nightclub with Heart of Glass by Blondie playing in the background.

Oscar de la Renta Pour Lui is an uber masculine, slightly sweet, soapy scent that I would recommend to any fan of oakmoss, green herbal scents or 80s powerhouses. The most recent formulation out today is still a fantastic scent that'll put some hair on your chest and will make you feel like a lion among men.

8.5/10

Leave a Comment Chypre, Oscar De La Renta, Powerhouse

Cool Water (1988)

When I first started getting into the hobby, one of the first fragrances I picked up was Cool Water. Cool Water was a scent I was familiar with; I had a bottle of it back when I was in high school, but I hadn't worn it in roughly a decade. Back in high school I thought Cool Water was too expensive to wear everyday, so I saved my bottle for special occasions like going to a party or a date and instead reached for Swiss Army when I wanted that sort of fresh, aquatic vibe. Flash forward to my days as a fraghead and Cool Water is now one of the cheapest scents in my collection, especially for the prices it can be had for at discounters.

Cool Water is one of those fragrances that you'd probably recognize the smell of even if you've never worn it. Just about every young man who wore fragrances in the 90s rocked Cool Water and its still quite popular to this day. I'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't find the smell at least somewhat familiar.

The backbone of Cool Water is an oceanic sea salt accord blended with a powerful, synthetic, lavender. I get a sharp mint in the initial spray that helps to project the scent and makes it smell vibrant, but the mint dissipates rather quickly. Cool Water is a very synthetic scent. Although it involves aromas of salty water mixed with lavender, it doesn't feel like anything you'd smell in the natural world. That's not a knock on the scent, something doesn't have to smell natural in order to smell great, but don't go into Cool Water expecting to smell something very natural. Cool Water is a refreshing, aquatic scent that is perfect for a day out on the golf course, a picnic in the park or windy day sitting at the beach. I don't think I'd reach for it on the scorching days of summer, but this is a warm weather scent through and the through that highlights the uplifting vibes of spring and summer.

Cool Water reminds me heavily of 90s shaving products; particularly the kind of shaving gel that came in a can and the aftershave sold as a product tie-in/scent match. I'm not sure though if Cool Water reminds me of 90s shaving products because it was designed to smell like shaving gel & aftershave, or if it smells that way because shaving companies like Gillette tried to make products that smelled like the immensely popular Cool Water. For better or for worse, the scent of Cool Water has become forever intertwined in my scent memory with 90s aftershaves and shave gel.

I also wanted to address the concerns over reformulations. In this blog, the picture you see associated with a fragrance will indicate which bottle I own, and for the most part you will see that I tend to own the most recent formulation the majority of the time. Cool Water is a fragrance where all over the frag-com you can read review after review detailing the "death of Cool Water". Complaints are aplenty that when Coty took over, they reformulated it into oblivion and what we're left with now is a screechy, chemical mess. First and foremost I want to say that is not exactly true. I hadn't smelled Cool Water in a decade and when I got my nose on my new Coty bottle it immediately smelled like the Cool Water that I remembered. It did smell a bit cheaper than I recalled, particularly the opening; but make no mistake, this is still absolutely Cool Water.

I admit, all those reviews about Cool Water's death did make me crave a vintage bottle. I still loved my Coty bottle, but maybe I would be over the moon with a vintage. After some searching and patience I managed to score a Lancaster era bottle for a reasonable price. Is the vintage better? - Yep, I will confirm that the vintage is indeed better; but is it really that much better? Honestly, it depends what you pay for it. I got my vintage bottle for $40, a little more than $0.50/mL based on what was left in the bottle. If you can find a bottle for around that price, go vintage, but I'm seeing vintage Cool Water commonly going for over $1/mL and I just don't think it is worth it when you can get 125mL bottle of the new stuff for around $25. The Coty version smells cheaper and more synthetic than vintage but they are not worlds apart. The opening is where I feel the Coty version lacks the most. The opening of the Lancaster version is easier to pick apart; the salty-aquatic notes are easier to distinguish from the lavender and it gives you a more transparent understanding of what notes went into the composition of the fragrance. The Coty version, by comparison, is harder to pick out discernible notes, the aquatic notes and the lavender meld together in a way that is opaque and harder to decipher. After the first 10 minutes, the two scents dry down very close to one another; close enough that they'd be nearly indistinguishable in the air. Vintage is better, not worth 4-5 times the price of a new bottle.

New or vintage, Cool Water is a treasure. A versatility machine that shines in warm weather, Cool Water is a scent that every man should experience.

10/10

Leave a Comment Aromatic Aquatic, Davidoff, Reformulations

Brut (1964)

                        

As the inaugural review for this blog, I figured there's no better fragrance to review than the one that started it all for me, Brut.

As a child, I spent lots of weekends and summer holidays with my grandparents, Oma and Opa. The youngest of 3 grandchildren, I always had a special bond with my Oma and Opa. I loved spending time with them, learning from their wisdom and hearing all of their stories. Opa and I used to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning, we'd watch nature shows and he'd tell me all about his life growing up as a child and teenage during WWII and about his struggles as an immigrant to Canada in the early 1950s, a country where he couldn't speak the language. 

I looked up to my Oma and Opa, they were the kind of people I wanted to become when I was their age. Opa was a well put together older man; a man who dressed sharp, was always well groomed and smelled immaculate. Opa's two favourite fragrances were Brut and Old Spice. Whenever I was over, I would always sneak a few splashes so that I could smell amazing and gentlemanly just like him. To a young and impressionable me, Opa was the pinnacle of masculinity and smelled exactly how a refined, mature man should smell.

My Opa passed away recently and whenever I smell Brut (or Old Spice), I immediately think about him, it feels like I have a part of him still here with me. A few sprays of Brut and I'm transported back to my childhood and all of the wonderful memories that he and I shared together come flooding back. On days when I really miss him, I grab my bottle of Brut and put on a couple of sprays so it feels like he's right there with me.

As for the scent itself, chances are you know the smell of it even if you've never had a bottle. Brut is a classic barbershop, aftershave-style, aromatic fougere. Lavender is the driving force of the scent backed up by a dose of powder, tonka, anise and a touch of citruses (only in the opening). If you've never worn Brut but have had Clubman Pinaud, you have a pretty good idea of what Brut smells like, although, in my opinion Clubman smells cheaper and brasher. Brut does smell inexpensive; and maybe that's 

I keep a full beard and rarely shave any part of my cheeks or neck, but when I do I toss on some Brut aftershave and spray on Brut Special Reserve and bask in its sweet, powdery, barbershop goodness.

One thing I'd like to note is that if you plan to buy a bottle of it today, I highly recommend you skip the bottle of aftershave or EDC available in a plastic bottle at your local drugstore and instead order a bottle of the "Special Reserve". It's about the same cost from discounters and smells far better. The plastic EDC bottle in particular smells awful, a chemical and synthetic mess that barely manages to capture any of the true spirit of Brut. I picked up a bottle of it last year to give to Opa but it was so bad I hucked it in the trash and ordered him a bottle of Special Reserve instead. If you've tried Old Spice since it went into the plastic bottle it's the exact same kind of mess as that. The Special Reserve may not smell as incredible as the vintage stuff from the 60s, but it does a really good job of capturing the feel of classic Brut and is an absolute bargain at its price.

They better keep making this stuff because I don't want to go through this world without a bottle of Brut at my side.

10/10

Leave a Comment Aftershave, Aromatic Fougere, Barbershop, Faberge, Fougere