N471v3

I have Coach for Men (by the way, I would NEVER have referred the name to the coach... for me it was always a sport mentor, coach...) Ordered for him because of the hypes. I am always very curious about sweet/aromatic-fresh woody crowd pleasers. You can wear them well when it's hot (or you get sweaty), they please a lot of people and you always feel comfortable, fresh and not overdressed. On the other hand I think it's not so easy to find something generic enough to be "pleasing" in this sector, but individual enough to make you stand out and not smell like everyone else, and then the whole thing should be made olfactory-aesthetically beautiful. By the latter I mean high quality ingredients, well balanced, etc..

And I know you can't overestimate the opinion of the people on the Interweb, but in that case I had the feeling - I want to know! ;)
And yes, it's a mainstreamer, so nothing that makes us throw party hats around in the first place because it sweeps us out of the water in an avant-garde way. (as "Le Male" would have done it with me in 1995 definitely... if I would have been there already 30 ;P )

But when I tested it for the first time, I was immediately SO RIGHTly disappointed. My first impression was that it smells like trying to create a fragrance that just smells like SUPER artificial. Like a cheap alcoholic top note.
But I quickly understood why this is so: The pear. For me, pears in fragrances often have an artificial touch, it's the kind of sweetness that a pear has naturally! (Except the ones we screw into the lamps.. :D) And in the top note there are 2 different kinds of bulbs... screwed together, and another Kumquat. Well, there must be a lot of pears in the area! ;P

It annoyed me so much that I forced myself to test him again and again during sports or before showering full-on. He was so popular with so many people, there had to be something to it! And lo and behold, I got used to the bulb, and find it now really cool!

To the scent, to the preserves.
The mentioned fruity, slightly sweetish peary-stoneoby top notes, are fanned out by the spicy heart notes, especially the cardamom that I so appreciate and love! The leather in the base gives you a gentle opponent that makes the whole thing a bit softer and gentler.
The pear-vetiver axis makes the perception slightly sharp when you bury your nose in your arm. However, in the Sillage this only makes a concise impression, i.e. it looks beautifully accentuated and is not disturbing, but makes it interesting to smell. A really pleasant, and sometimes a bit different, more modern, and yet independent fragrance.

Don't let the first impression fool you, because it can be very trivial and mainstream as described.

Clear test recommendation, up to blind buy recommendation! Because with what it costs, you can still give it to your nephew / brother to someone else, if the pear does not go into the pear after all.

And I have the feeling that only a few of us wear it, because it is not available in the big European shops.

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I have a ritual to test scents like this: The current test persons usually stay on my living room table, and I re-test them every now and then when it's "about nothing", comfortably in the evening, in the morning before showering, during sports or something...

This often reveals the funniest aspects, and you don't run the risk of misstamping the fragrance by testing it once (daily condition and so on...)

Anyway, I don't want to work on the commi below, because it was my first impression, and certainly shows many already the direction well he is going. But when I re-tested it, I came across something.

I was increasingly able to free myself from the false association with Invictus Aqua and became more open to new insights. And on a long evening, more precisely in the middle of the night during a walk, I suddenly found it: The scent has something slightly addictive, beguiling about it that I was familiar with. Something that you have to let work longer to deal with it I find.
Versace's Eros DNA. I now think that's what Icon Racing most closely tracks, a mix of 70% Eros and 30% Ferragamo Casual Life. With this new association I like him better now... funny, but true.
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On the Interweb some people and communities claim that this fragrance reminds of Invictus Aqua 2016.

So for me it has as much in common with Invictus Aqua as a pimped Opel Manta with a Lamborghini ':D

Icon Racing smells more like Ferragamo's Uomo Casual Life to me, but less fruity and sweeter. You could, especially in the Sillage of the Opening, think of the Invicuts series for a moment... but so undefined that I don't think I would have thought of it myself. But it smells like something to me. So nothing specific.

More precisely, it smells like orange, vanilla, and a little spice potpourie. And so he also dies on the skin, - quickly and unspectacularly.
The admittedly really horny bottle, visually as well as haptically, I think fits to almost every other fragrance better. British Racing Green? That would have been really perfect with the original icon, it reminds me pretty much of Green Irish Tweed ;) (Does anyone think so like me?)

Dunhill, you should brainstorm in the sweat lodge where you come from and where you could go. I don't think many people who are attracted to this bottle in the store will like the taste of the fragrance.

"Gentleman Only" (2013) was one of the last fragrances I had bought before my perfume existence. Before I became aware of the longing for my olfactory completion, so to speak. :) In the months and years that followed, the fragrance with still good levels caught more and more dust in my collection.

But when I saw the stealing white "Gentleman" (2017) bottle in the shop some time ago, I became curious! Had Givenchy possibly moulted, overhauled the cool, somewhat too linear scent and transferred the DNA into our modern time? Is the new fragrance as superior and refined as the figurehead of the last iteration, actor Simon Baker, known from "The Mentalist" as Patrick Jane? Always one step ahead? ;)

During the test still in the shop the iris caressed me so massively (I am an iris fanboy of the 1st hour as many here ws. already know... ':D) that I couldn't help but buy him right away and put him through an exact test... he almost had "Dior Homme" Vibes.

Disillusioned at home I had to find out that my nose in the shop seemed already tired and I had noticed a very distorted picture of the scent. Because the smell which I recognized now immediately, and which also held itself was that of the smell "Invasion Barbarian" of MDCI.

Invasion Barbare has for me such a Barbershop sharpness, which I think results from the ginger, grapefruit, bergamot, lavender mixture. When I say "sharpness" I mean more so in the sense of penetrating point, or perhaps also real sharpness by the ginger, - who knows..

Gentleman 2017 has this sharpness by definition not, but creates a penetrance similar to the pear note; and by overlapping with barbarians in the notes cardamom, iris, lavender, vanilla, the fragrance affects me like a very similar mainstream version of it

I often do myself with pears, but much more often with sharpness in general rather difficult with smells.. what surprises me however is, how Barbare can hold such a high rating (at present 8.3), and Gentleman mumps up with 6.2. Admittedly, I would rather personally give a 7 to both of them, because I recognize the beauty and good craftsmanship in them, but this direction somewhat misses my taste. And I don't let the aesthetics be denied here, because Gentleman wipes the floor purely from the class, with some new smell for the mass market.

Well, that was my 5 cents again. If you feel serious, like to walk around in suits with "Prada L'Homme" and want a fruity alternative, you should give this fragrance a chance! Also Invasion Barbarian fans I must urgently (!) recommend to let Gentleman once unbiasedly at itself.

when I smelled Sean John for the first time, driven by my curiosity for new character scents I don't know yet, I immediately had this feeling "Oh no... I already know that from where! Boring!"

I just prefer to be flashed by new olfactory impressions than to discover one cloned sheep after the other..

And who does this scent clone now? In much-to-much... i'm reminded of the Montblanc emblem. Where the emblem enters the room with a sweet, slightly fresh pineapple in the head, it is substituted by Sean John's aftershave mandarin. But the sweet-woody-slightly fresh heart chord, and the basis are then very similar with both smells. (Violet Tonka Musk Something blah... or so)
He's also on a track with the Carolina Herrera 212 Vip line, you could say he's a bit like 1 million only without power... so let's say 0.5 million ;P

I would like to know how it comes that this fragrance is currently declared as "fresh green" here... for me it is sweet-woody in the first place.

It's really such a fragrance that you give away because it doesn't hurt anybody, but nobody who gets this far to read these lines really needs it ;P

EDIT: The fragrance actually has some light La Nuit de L'Homme borrowings, I smell that now more since Mazze told me in the commissions :D And I have to admit the more often I test it, the better I find it. He won't shoot at my new rating of 7.5 (just "good"), but he's not concrete enough and obviously too mainstream. There are certainly quite a few people here who would punish him for something sweet and sticky, you can believe me. ;P