Versace L'Homme Versace 1984 Eau de Toilette

There are already a lot of good reviews about this great cologne, so I'll just mention a few more here.

1. The positive side of it is that it's incredibly sophisticated and high quality, priced at just over $20 for 100ml. I personally consider Versace L'Homme like the 2000s version of Cartier Santos with soapy water instead of sandalwood cream, or Armani Eau Pour Homme with green grass instead of lavender.

2. It was released in the mid 80s, but has some vibes of the 70s. In particular, the opening of Herbal Lemons, which would have been clearly considered old school in 1984 too. That's why it is decisively different from the colognes of the 80s what like muscular machos with exposed chest hair. I get images from Versace L'Homme like a casino and a black tuxedo, a long hairstyle that covers the ears, and a brightly lit chandelier.

3. The problem is the old school lemon and musk. Lemon citric acid can be found today in many areas of life, from dishwashers and toilet fresheners to anti-Covid-19 hand sanitizers. That's why the old school lemon on top of dirty musk are often reminded of the odor of toilet bowls or urine. Recently, I've been impressed a lot with Rochas Moustache Original (version 2018), and it also has the same problem. It smells like an old luxury hotel, but at the same time it smells like a toilet. Anyone who likes classic men's colognes will easily understand what I mean.

4. Anyway, Versace L'Homme is a cologne that is heavily influenced by season and weather. It doesn't always work in its best condition. In summer, especially on wet days in summer, the lemon comes out seriously too much and smells like a toilet bowl. On the other hand, on a very cold day when the temperature is below freezing, the herbal notes are clumped and the soapy water part is too prominent, and at that time it smells like a laundry detergent.

5. However, on days that are neither too hot nor too cold, it works very well. Based on South Korea where I'm living, it is around May, September, and October. When the temperature is around 10~15 degrees Celsius. At this time, you can clearly recognize both fine and rich green herbal notes, cinnamon that tastes almost delicious mixed with spicy carnation, woody notes that add mildness, and classic tonka vanilla. It is considered like a cologne that is five or ten times more expensive than the price. Of course there's no smell of urine at all.

6. The current version seems to have almost no oakmoss. Nevertheless, Versace L'Homme lasts quite a bit. Rather than just sticking on the skin, it has a type of scent that is absorbed in the body and gently emanated. If you think this cologne has a nasty smell of urine or something, leave it as it is, and try it again in another season. If limited to autumn (and a bit of spring), it scents like a timeless masterpiece.

P.s. Sorry for my insufficient English sentences.

It's a great scent , classic and barbershop style. One of the best Versace colognes for me. It opens up with like soapy citrusy then dry down is woody mossy . This perfume is a linear fragrance and perfect for the all seasons.It evokes a feeling in me of old memories. A perfume that should not be missing in your personal collection! If you like Armani Eau Pour Homme , you will like this one. I really enjoy it and I love Versace L'Homme EDT.
Longevity is good.
Bravo Versace !
Two Thumbs Up.

Rating : 8.5 / 10

I borrowed this at the gym from a friend after a workout (mental note: always remember your personal smells) and yes, he is about five years older than me. Anyway I gave two sprays of this beast to the chest and two to the neck and BAZINGA! : instantly I was Cologne Guy oozing man from the mid-eighties. This stuff should be labelled as nuclear. The lemon and basil opening slowly gives room to the rose and carnation mixed with a chemical cedar. I'm aware that several Versaces are soapy and powdery, but this is ridiculous : I smelt like I had smeared myself all over with my Grandmothers hand soap bar. This stuff is VERY masculine and only for adults. After 2-3 hours I had to give up and take a scrub.
Extremely oldschool - thanks, but no thanks.

I was shopping way too late into the evening recently and made a purchase I barely remembered. It was for a very inexpensive 50ml bottle of Versace L'Homme. I wasn't even expecting it to come with the box. What had arrived on my doorstep was a small, incredibly-yellow-gold bottle of V.L. in a brown box. I looked at the ingredients on the side and thought to myself "why aren't there any allergens?". Keep in mind I am in my mid thirties but I recently got into this. I ran the batch code and looked at the different box designs online. This bottle was from 1989. It had never been used or sprayed. I don't think it was ever taken out of the box. I had accidentally bought a fragrance that was older than me.

I read some of the reviews on here before writing this. Those reviews MUST be about a current formulation of L'Homme. This is not weak. It's not fleeting. It does not smell like a urinal cake or cat piss. There was still air in the downstem so I gave it a few pumps and sprayed it right onto my hand. This is the strongest smelling perfume substance I have ever smelled in my life. My mind immediately fought between curiosity, excitement, and sheer terror. My nose was adjusting to something it had never smelled before and my brain was scrambling failing to categorize it. It smells alive. Before this, the oldest fragrance I had ever smelled was from 2013. This is a different animal entirely.

First of all it smells like moss. Like you are outside and you stuck your nose into actual moss. I have a lot of modern fragrances with oak moss as an accord but they are NOTHING like this. Everything is structured around this moss. Then I'm hit with clove, but a new type of clove I've never smelled before: real carnation in high concentrations. And then the spicy musk. This is not a "white musk" or a "clean musk" or any kind of "musky" fragrance I hear people talk about. This is like dank musk. It isn't a bad smell. I think it's the uncanny valley feeling that it actually smells...human. It's so hard to explain. This is probably what people mean when they talk about "vintage animalics". As my nose was adjusting to these brand new experiences, in wafted complex warm spices and tanned leather smells.

Then the base really starts to creep in. There is a VERY strong natural amber smell--again, brand new to me. This amber smells waxy in texture, almost like a soft candle. I found it funny that another reviewer wrote "this is no candle scent" because it does actually smell candle-adjacent, it just doesn't smell like any candle made in the last 200 years. It's like a Florentine church candle mixing with frankincense. There is a subtle sweet tonka and vanilla smoothness that attempts to cut through. It's there, it's just not the star of the structure to me. This is not gourmand (thankfully).

This fragrance is alive. What do I mean by that? This gave me insight into the intent behind these older fragrances vs modern ones. Modern fragrances are designed to make you smell LESS human: cleaner, fresher, fruitier, than a human. Nothing wrong with that and I also love those but these guys in the 80s were trying for something different. They were trying to make a human-like smell, sexier. That must be what Kouros and others of that era were about. And they were doing it without any IFRA regulations to hold them back. There is nothing "clean", "fresh", "edible", or "effervescent" about V.L. It smells like a smell that came purely from nature and nature alone. And it's blowing my mind.

This fragrance is not weak. In fact, one spray to the arm nearly filled an entire bedroom. Is this how all fragrances used to be? The chemistry on this one must be way WAY more volatile in the air. While I enjoy this smell, I would not want to get inside an elevator full of people and force "their noses to adapt". After the first spray I went to eat so I washed my hands. I smelled my hand again and.....it still smells like L'homme? There's no way. I smelled again. It was the smell of the soap sitting on top of L'homme, and L'homme was winning the fight. I had a newer fragrance I was testing on the other hand. It had completely vanished. It's almost like the nearly 40 y/o juice was bonding to lipids on my skin.

If you like modern sweet fragrances you will hate this. If you are more like me and like anything but, you may love this. If you like modern niche fragrances--this is not it. This is a bright yellow powerhouse in a classy, understated bottle. This is unapologetically masculine: animalic, bitter, leathery, with some underlying faint sweetness to balance it out (but not nearly enough to call this sweet). This truly does come from a different era. I love the attention to detail they put into the bottle design: there are little curved frosted glass veins on both sides that actually help you grip the bottle. That's the hard way to do it. It's really a shame that some European body decided for us that they can't make stuff like this anymore because of some rare skin sensitivities. I read these reviews of the modern fragrance and it sort of breaks my heart. Not that these fragrances would do well today-- they likely wouldn't. It's just that we don't even have the freedom anymore to choose.

I will cherish this bottle that accidentally made it's way to me. It completely transported me into another time--a time that my 1-3y/o brain can only faintly remember. A time when people still smoked cigarettes indoors. A time when masculinity in a fragrance was the norm, in all of it's complexity. It opened my eyes to what a fragrance could be if it were made with better ingredients and under completely different guidelines. It taught me that eau-de strengths are completely irrelevant. I have modern extraits that don't do what this does. This is an EDT. This will easily last for multiple days on clothes. It will survive on skin after hand washes, after thousands of brushes against the inside of your clothes, after 9pm the following day if you leave it. It's a beast. The only problem is that this little 50ml bottle is finite and cannot be easily replaced. To others in the world accustomed to God of Fire or Invictus as the "masculine standard": 2/10 (no judgements either--every nose is different). To me it's a 9/10 fragrance easily. 10/10 projection. 11/10 longevity.

To put it bluntly, outside of Azzaro Pour Homme, YSL Kouros, and Aramis/Tuscany, this Oriental Chypre, Versace L'Homme, deserves to slide right in with these big boys. An 80s statement fragrance if there ever was one with tons of notes, miles of character and hours of longevity. This fragrance is tops with me because of the chemistry makeup and the fact that it's simply quality in a bottle. Though for the life of me I can't understand why this fragrance is not considered one of Versace's finest. I think I may know the answer but I'll keep my bashing millennial comments to myself. I proudly spritz this on and I'm good for the entire day and out of all the different fragrances I wear THIS ONE gets me the most compliments which is always nice to hear. This fragrance has it all and the only thing left to do is to find a bottle from the early 1980s because I'm a vintage collector and I'm guessing that's the best formulation.