Sì Giorgio Armani 2015 Eau de Toilette

Let's just call her Simone. (If by chance a Simone is reading this - of course not you!) After every class test, Simone had her dramatic appearance on the schoolyard: 'Totally terrible, didn't know anything, definitely a four, honestly!' When you asked her about it two weeks later - and even if you didn't ask, the conversation somehow always ended up there - it turned out every time: 'Oh, a one minus - I would have never guessed, really!' While the other girls in her class practiced kissing with the boys from the higher grades during the summer holidays, she pressed creeping buttercup between her parents' encyclopedia and neatly glued it into an album - labeled in Latin: 'Ranunculus repens' - voluntarily for biology. Nevertheless, she was not unpopular, because despite her intensity, she was not unpleasant - and in an unremarkable way, quite pretty. However, she never belonged to the cool crowd - even if she sometimes regretted it - during the long drive home from the awards ceremony of the national competition for ancient languages.

Armani's Sì is a perfume like (and for) our Simone. You notice its ambition to be better and more high-quality than all the other pink fruit waters of its generation, of which almost every perfume house now has at least one in its portfolio. It leaves the initial fruitiness behind surprisingly quickly - almost as if it is ashamed of it - just like Simone, when she stayed out with friends until half past ten, even though chemistry was being tested the next day. To the fleeting berry note, it adds a distinctly ripe floral note, with rose more noticeable than freesia - just like Simone, who got up an hour earlier in the morning to review the alkali metals one more time - which it transitions into a soft woody base. Its scent progression feels strained and ambitious, almost rehearsed. Sì is the composed, ambitious one among the pink fruity scents of the 2010s, the distinctly non-teenage and non-girly one. It lacks calmness, lacks ease, lacks playful tenderness - even if the smiling Cate Blanchett promises just that.

Conclusion: a little overachiever who can't help being himself. Not entirely unsympathetic, but stiff and uptight - one who wants so desperately to belong to the good crowd that he completely forgets to live. Like our Simone - pardon: Sì-mone.