Lotusmaglite

Ignore the complaints that Noir Extreme doesn't "perform." It performs just fine from where it's supposed to. Noir Extreme is a bit of a misnomer, because it's not the sort of scent that shouts at you from across the dance floor. It's a scent that hangs back in its chair with simmering confidence, until you lock eyes with it, and come in close enough to catch the drydown on warm, pulsing, silky-soft skin, and oh my, is it hot in here?

The first time I tried this, it was a single spray from a sampler, on a small piece of cloth. It was okay. Soapy, rich, a woody sweetness, maybe. Then I brought it to my BFF's, and we sprayed ourselves with fragrances we wanted to try. I got Jazz Club, she got Noir Extreme.

Twenty minutes later, I put her wrist to my nose, and when I looked up at her, she laughed, blushed, took her hand back, and said, "Get back, with that look!"

She wasn't wrong. Get this stuff on skin. Nummy nummy num-nums. What else do you need to know?

Tom Ford may name his fragrances like they're one-note wonders, but they're frequently complex and often divisive. Except for Tobacco Vanille, you old charmer, you. Anyway, Rose Prick is so aptly named, I hope whoever thought of that got a raise. If you're worried about being deluged in a downpour of petals like Mena Suvari in that one scene in American Beauty, fear not. Rose Prick is exactly that; it pricks your nose with opening notes of rose, then quickly moves on to its peppery-tart compliment, a blend that doesn't hit you immediately, but keeps bringing you back around to sniff it again.

That's what happened when my friend brought samples back from her trip through a duty-free shop. We kept coming back to Rose Prick, at first not giving it much for props, but eventually admitting we couldn't stop sniffing it.

Though (like many Tom Ford fragrances) it doesn't project like a beast, I'd keep this one out of the office. It's a *declarative* scent, and unless you're gonna yass qween your way to the top of the pecking order, maybe keep it reserved for when you want to make a statement. A sly, winking, knowing statement. You don't worry if their head didn't turn; you know they'll be back, noses pricked for whatever that intriguing fragrance is.

Okay, not *all,* because I'm going to keep talking. Criminally underrated. Is it an undergarment-remover? No, but it's also not a 6.4 out of 10. Stop hatin', haters.

This is a great summer fragrance I won't over-describe; others have done that job for me. It stays fairly close to the skin and is inoffensive enough to wear at work, bringing the scents of spring and summer green into the sterile environment of the office. You won't bog people down in a cloud of perfume, but perk up anyone who gets close enough, with the bright, clean allure of the great outdoors. You have vim and zest and verve! And you smell like it!

If you want to knock it, it's not exactly a complicated fragrance. It's fresh and green-on-green, and it pretty much stays that way. If you want something simple and fun, Truth is no lie.

There is absolutely no way this many people like this... fragrance. Imagine your younger sister sprayed bug spray all over your older sister's car tires, and your older sister decided to burn off the bug spray by doing donuts in a Home Depot parking lot where their entire garden store of flowers were decaying after a massive case of some plant-borne disease.

That's the opening notes.

I wish I could describe the drydown to you, but I couldn't wait for it. I went outside and hurled the sample vial into my garbage bin so hard it accidentally broke open. Instantly, my bags of garbage began to leap out of the bin, to get away from the smell, including the bag with all the soiled clothing from my 6 year-old's bout with rotavirus.

Seriously, if that was "Sicilian Lemon," then there is a humanitarian crisis going on in Sicily, and nobody should ever drink Sicilian lemonade. This explains why there are no skunks in Sicily; they all departed due to the smell of Sicilian lemons, which were later used, I believe, in several war crimes. And if *that's* what frankincense and myrrh smell like, then those were *not* three wise men, bringing gifts to baby J. They were assassins.

Even as a free sample, this stuff cost me too much. I can never un-smell that smell, man. I've seen some things, now. Bad things. You don't wanna go where I've been, man! You don't wanna go there!

This is about Versace Eros, but bear with me, because I need to talk about Drakkar Noir first. For the past couple decades, Drakkar Noir has been seen as a scent from an increasingly distant past, a loud, youthful mess of callow, overbearing, blithe self-assurance, the kind you find in the halls of American high schools and in clubs around the world, young men bathing in the perfume that clings to your memory long after their names have faded.

If it isn't already, Versace Eros will one day be thought of in the same way. You can already see embarrassed older men walking away from it, as if to bury the mistakes of their youth with their bottle of Eros. Frag heads - many of them the same men - are joining them, dissing Eros because it is/was popular. Hey, remember when ear tech was only for d-bags? Well now everyone is walking around with earbuds all day. Taste-makers are often just gatekeeping b-holes. They think Layton is too mainstream, even though no one outside the frag community even knows what Layton is.

Like Drakkar Noir, Eros got so popular for a reason. It frequently beats all comers in blind tests of scents women prefer to smell on a man. It's fresh and sweet, a combination most people enjoy. It's fine to smell like other people. Your fragrance doesn't make you an individual. You do. You'll never find that niche fragrance no one has heard of, that will make you popular yet unique, because everyone is already wearing it. It's fool's gold. A snipe hunt. Quit trying to outpace the tragically hip; their entire raison d'être is to be soooo over whatever you're doing.

Get Eros. It smells great, performs well, projects a little, and for a designer fragrance, is pretty affordable. What more could you ask for?