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ColinM
Helpful Review
4
Cold, classy & creative
Fruity-minty metallic fizziness, translucent soapiness, azure water, crystal and glass, a sparkling fruity cocktail, with a subtle, sophisticated sort of “synthetic leather chair” feel. The smell of cold metal, rubber, fresh air. Both formally gentle, and almost arrogant with its cold cutting sharpness, especially at the beginning. What instantly got my attention here is that Z by Zegna manages to stay connected to a certain type of “middle class mainstream” references, which in the end would be, I guess, more or less aligned to Zegna's customers' world, while smelling almost avantgarde, decidedly “niche” and different enough from other similar designer scents: it smells sharp, crisp, minimalistic, “cold” and synthetic, but by no means “cheap” or generic – not at all. If that makes sense, on the contrary it smells “high quality synthetic”. Both for the quality and the creativity involved. An azure-black scent: if you take a look at the bottle, that’s the perfect visual depiction of the fragrance. Glass, azure water, grey metal, black rubber. This may be classified as a fruity-spicy-woody aquatic scent, as it basically seems composed by tart citrus notes, something fruity and bittersweet like apple or blackcurrant, soft woods, sharp spices, green notes and a very hint of patchouli; surely on the “fresh & office-safe” mainstream side, but this doesn’t prevent it to be classy and above all, something on its own creativity-wise. It does not really remind me of anything else, and I quite disagree about considering this a copycat of Aqua di Giò or similar fragrances. It clearly belongs to that same family in broad terms, but this doesn’t make it a redundant blatant copy. While the concept of “sport/aquatic/office-fresh” fragrance is surely involved, in my opinion Z by Zegna sits actually quite away from most other fragrances of those genres. It conveys those clichés, but in a unique way – colder, fruitier, sharper, with a really peculiar feel of “icy futuristic elegance”. It smells sophisticated, formal and sporty at once, cold and synthetic yet somehow slightly “warm” in a really natural way – the warmth of lukewarm crystal water and sea breeze. This "warm" feature will emerge clearly on the drydown, more centered on extremely subtle dusty-powdery-woody notes. Kind of yuppie, a bit light and a bit too linear to be entirely compelling, but in my opinion surely fascinating and more than pleasant to wear.
7-7,5/10
Top Notes 
Heart Notes 
Base Notes 
Katzevogel
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