Versace Man Eau Fraîche Versace 2005 Eau de Toilette

Last night my father wore this for his birthday party which involved a long drive into the city and back sitting down wind of him and also a hug, which transferred it onto my new sweater...and also it was every wear in the car. After several glasses of wine, oysters on the half shell, Duck L'orange, arugula salad with caprese and tomatoes, double espresso and a delectably smooth plum brandy at our favorite Austrian Restaurant...I nearly barfed inside my own wind shield on the way home...I was sure it was all coming up, and it was the smell of this fragrance driving my nausea on...taunting me, whispering..."how many oysters did you just suck down?" and , "Gee, isn't this a bumpy car ride?". First thing I did was shower...but my husband smelled like it to- a contact " Versace high", if you will. As I sat in the car with my Dad, I wondered why he did not hear my previous recommendation to find a more appealing cologne...over 2 years ago...also I wondered, what in the heck is the problem with this fragrance for me- let me deconstruct for a moment...this is synthetic my Egyptian musk- strongly adhered to the backbone, boldly asserting it's Manly funk...with a plethora of green herbal almost sweet tarragon, lemon and limeness. I do not, i principle dislike any of these notes on their own. but everything about this fragrance screams "I am trying to cover up either the awful smell of the world or the awful smell of the human body. " (that is the end of my psyche eval. on Dad) but really...this is a monster truck sillage of "sure fire" current winners Man-musk, citrus and synthetically derived cedarwood and rosewood---that smells, well, totally synthetic, like a rodenticide of some sort. Versace Man Eau Fraiche gives very little thought on the long-term implications for the rest of the kids buckled in for the long road trip. I thought when I found my own signature scent after nearly 10 years of hunting, my fragrance addition would subside...but no, no...I must take up the gauntlet once again. I am going to start with a couple by Byredo to address the sillage problem, then a couple by Serge Lutens or even Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille to get some more variety in the dialogue of skin and notes...finally, forbidding the synthetic musk and Cedarwood aspect- I will site "Migraines, nausea or Ebola" to justify this if necessary! I must find my father a less disgusting signature scent or I can never ride in a vehicle with him again without a full hazmat suit and ventilator. Summary: this fragrance nearly killed me last night.

My younger brother's relationship with fragrances is quite a strange and rather inexplicable one. Although he looks totally mesmerised every time he visits my house and sprays some antediluvian '70s or '80s powerhouse on him, he has never bothered to buy any. Not even in their current, way less potent formulations. On the contrary, he always falls for trendy and tremendously popular new launches, which I wouldn't buy even if my life was depending on it. So upon my last visit to his place, I found a bottle of Eau Fraiche on his desk and sprayed two spritzes on me just out of curiosity about how "fresh" is interpreted nowadays. The fact that the other two fragrances lying on his desk were 1 Million and CK One Shock should have alerted me like an apotropaic sign, but I ignored the prognostics and went home to evaluate the newly acquired entry in my fragrance encyclopaedia.
There, I took a quick glance at the fragrance's pyramid and I got completely befuddled by smelling something which was growing into something too outrageous to be true as time passed.

10 minutes mark: Why on earth do I smell green apples when the composition has none?
20 minutes mark: Why on earth does this smell so familiar?
29 minutes mark: Why on earth did someone put Light Blue in an Eau Fraiche bottle?

Yeah, that's right. It took me no more than half an hour to realise that this was definitely a hybrid that should be called either Dolce & Gabanna Man Eau Fraiche or Versace Light Blue.
And to get things straight, I'm talking about the original Light Blue, launched as a feminine scent in 2001.

Olivier Cresp must be either a serious case of selective amnesia or a con man. There's no other way to explain how he managed to duplicate one of his creations, sell it as a new one to a large and well acknowledged company, and get away with it. And I suspect that his amnesia falls in the selective kind because I'm sure he didn't forget to get paid.

I wonder whether it's possible that no one in Versace had ever smelled the hugely popular firstborn Light Blue that was launched only 5 years before and less than ten blocks away, since both companies are literally bumping heads in the center of Milan. Cause if that's not the case, then something is rotten in the state of Denmark (or Italy for that matter). And it's not the fragrance. The fragrance is what it claims it is. Fresh. A nice although mundane copycat, based on a concept that was repeated countless times, but fresh nevertheless.
I don't know what part CEOs are playing in the creation of a fragrance. I guess it depends on the house. So if the ones running Versace are not of the kind that's usually involved, I believe they had a helluva WTF moment upon smelling Eau Fraiche, while Olivier Cresp was already away counting his money.

I'm facing great difficulties to evaluate Eau Fraiche, and most of them belong to the ethical kind. I like Light Blue very much, thus I should like Eau Fraiche equally. The problem lies in how I define "generic". The abundance of near clones of an original fragrance that have come to dominate the market and therefore render the way that the said original smelled as "generic" because of its widespread use, doesn't mean that the smell of the original was generic when it was launched. On the contrary it might have been groundbreaking. And this has nothing to do with whether I like it or not. Davidoff's Cool Water might have a story or two to share about how these things work. So all I can say is that Eau Fraiche is quite a nice fragrance, but rather stale and no fresh at all when it comes to originality, since it's yet another example of a concept that was done to death, resurection, and death again. And this kind of karmic wheel will always be a far cry from immortality in olfactory terms.

This is the oldest perfume in my closet yet I hadn’t yet had a chance to write a review of it. It’s the perfect freshy. It’s like a fata morgana. You know, when you’re thirsty and you close your eyes you can just picture a glass of the best thirst-quenching juice. It’s not citrussy like most freshies but a bit sweeter. Must be the star fruit that makes it so tasty and succulent.
Sometimes when I’ve had a shower I apply a spray of this to keep with that clean feeling just a tad longer.
Also for the price this is a no-brainer.

I found this on sale for a great price and couldn't pass it up. The lemon in this is the star of the fragrance and keeps it from falling into the bland world of men's cologne. I find most men's designer cologne these days so boring and generic smelling. This scent has that "little something extra" which raises it above most of the others in the same category. Absolutely perfect for summer. No one is going to dislike smelling this fragrance on you! Very fresh, very pleasant and very inoffensive. The bottle is cool looking as well. Good, thick glass in a beautiful shade of blue. Every man should have a bottle of this in their collection.

Very fresh, not offensive in any way. Great office scent that lasts pretty well. I don't spray anything on my clothes, but I notice that if I spray this on my chest my shirt tends to pick up the scent and hold on pretty well to give it some extra longevity. Overall it's mostly a citrus scent with a slight woody characteristic.