11/10/2015
ColinM
516 Reviews
ColinM
Helpful Review
3
Spicy metrosexual tobacco
I am firmly convinced that if a niche brand came up with this very fragrance in the past season, probably many would be raving about it. “Smooth tobacco gem”, “luxury modern Oriental”, “classy underwear killer” and so on, they’d say. I would even dare to think Creed could easily make something like this and sell it for ten times the price, but I’m too young and handsome to burn in hell yet. Anyway I say all of this because Versace Man has them quite all: it’s elegantly sweet, it’s really easy to like, it smells quite above most of other Versace offerings quality-wise (it didn’t take much), and it’s mild and light enough to keep it classy. So either this fragrance is quite underrated, or perfumery has gone down to the point any average-quality designer from a dozen years ago smells like today’s finest. Most probably it’s the first for me. Either way, Versace Man is really nice – and only that matters. I think it anticipates many “smooth and sweet-smoky metrosexual” scents based on similar notes, and to some extent, also floral-musky sweet fragrances with a shade of dusty dark like Dior Homme (I am not saying they smell similar; just that it anticipates some of Dior’s key features and the overall concept). It bears quite some similarities with Versace Dreamer as well, but it smells decidedly more modern and with some significant differences, notably more warm, spicy-musky powderiness and a typical “sweet-plushy nondescript woodiness” which so many scents from the 2000s had.
If you’re wondering how it smells, well: saffron and tobacco are quite the main notes here, surrounded by a warm, a bit synthetic but cozy enough accord of amber, clean musk, mild peppery spices and a tad of citrus-infused light flowers. So basically a warm, smooth, aromatic and slightly “dusty” blend with a fresher-gentler feminine touch, but also a whole “classy, kind of dark masculine sense of confidence” due to amber, tobacco and spices. It also quite linear though, evolving towards a disgracefully short-lived ambery-woody-musk drydown still with nuances of saffron and spices, mostly cardamom. As for tobacco and saffron, which dominate the first couple of hour or so, I surely don’t get any difference with several more expensive or praised saffron or tobacco scents from today – from L’Artisan Parfumeur to Santa Maria Novella Tabacco.
Overall this fragrance is really decent to pretty much all extents, and I’d mildly recommend it; there’s nothing astonishingly outstanding and it surely smells a bit artificial, but has definitely some nice “deep moments”, it is surely classy and versatile, it’s decidedly discreet so it can perform fine in any situation, and it doesn’t smell (overly) cheap or derivative – on the contrary, as I said, I personally see it as a neglected precursor of more recent trends. The longevity is tragic though.
6,5-7/10
If you’re wondering how it smells, well: saffron and tobacco are quite the main notes here, surrounded by a warm, a bit synthetic but cozy enough accord of amber, clean musk, mild peppery spices and a tad of citrus-infused light flowers. So basically a warm, smooth, aromatic and slightly “dusty” blend with a fresher-gentler feminine touch, but also a whole “classy, kind of dark masculine sense of confidence” due to amber, tobacco and spices. It also quite linear though, evolving towards a disgracefully short-lived ambery-woody-musk drydown still with nuances of saffron and spices, mostly cardamom. As for tobacco and saffron, which dominate the first couple of hour or so, I surely don’t get any difference with several more expensive or praised saffron or tobacco scents from today – from L’Artisan Parfumeur to Santa Maria Novella Tabacco.
Overall this fragrance is really decent to pretty much all extents, and I’d mildly recommend it; there’s nothing astonishingly outstanding and it surely smells a bit artificial, but has definitely some nice “deep moments”, it is surely classy and versatile, it’s decidedly discreet so it can perform fine in any situation, and it doesn’t smell (overly) cheap or derivative – on the contrary, as I said, I personally see it as a neglected precursor of more recent trends. The longevity is tragic though.
6,5-7/10