Comme des Garcons 2 MAN

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Comme des Garcons is one o those beloved niche perfume houses that outputs a wide variety of excellent smelly specimens. While I don’t like the style of their haute couture, I do like the way their perfumes swing.

2 MAN

In Bottle: Smokey with this smooth nutty quality that I presume is coming from the nutmeg. There’s a strong woodsy presence to this fragrance too. Very masculine, very empowering too.

Applied: 2 MAN opens with a woodsey incense that makes me think of old buildings with creaky floorboards. It mingles in that area for a while before it grows a bit more complex, taking in this smooth nutmeg scent as it ages and starts to deliver a wet grassy feel to it that I hope is the vetiver at work. The fragrance itself remains masculine, projecting this sturdy old building quality to it. Despite its powerful notes and what I suspect is a blend of cedar, mahogany and a touch of sandalwood, 2 MAN does all this without amping up the cedar note and smelling obnoxious. It’s strong but light and subtle. It projects a presence instead of simply projecting a smell. It’s a bit difficult to describe except that people will notice 2 MAN but they’ll notice it in a subtle way like you were meant to smell like this instead of an, “Ah, you need to tone down your fragrance” kind of way.

Extra: 2 MAN was composed by Mark Buxton, who was also responsible for a fragrance line that bears his name. He’s also done other fragrances for Comme des Garcons such as Comme des Garcons’ White and Original. You can purchase 2 MAN for a, all things considered, reasonable $120 per 100ml.

Design: Comes bottled in this offbeat flat glass flacon with the fragrance name written on it complete with an upside A that you have to look at the bottle twice to notice. A haphazard ‘2’ is scrawled on the glass and somehow pulls the entire look of this fragrance together. The bottle itself, thanks to how it’s shaped, cannot be stood up like most perfumes, so you’ll have to lie this baby on its side. It’s off-beat. I like it.

Fragrance Family: Smokey Woodsy

Notes: Incense, white smoke, saffron flowers, nutmeg, vetiver roots, mahogany, leather.

On my travels around the internet researching this fragrance and how it reacted on other people I came across a woman bemoaning her husband informing her that the bottle of 2 MAN she got for him smelled like urine then proceeded to refuse wearing it. Her son, being an avid connoisseur of Axe body sprays similarly rejected her offerings. While I cannot account for the tastes of others, I can guarantee you all that 2 MAN does not in fact, smell anything like urine.

Reviewed in This Post: 2 MAN, 2008, Eau de Toilette.

Versace Bright Crystal

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Bright Crystal’s one of those designer fragrances geared toward younger consumers. It hits that purchaser’s sweet spot that’s totally into easy to wear, light and floral, and most importantly young and approachable.

Bright Crystal

In Bottle: Rather strong presence of sharp green grapefruit and tart pomegranate. The florals try hard to make an appearance in the opening but the top of this scent is rather two-dimensional.

Applied: The big fruity opening nets you in if you like fruity fragrances and the light floral heart will keep you around. This opens as a sharp yuzu/grapefruit with a strong flare of pomegranate before it digs into the mid-stage where a mixture of sheer clean florals awaits. The magnolia in this is particularly well done, it’s lush and pretty but not overpowering. There’s just enough of it to make you smell clean and flowery. That mixed with the cleaned-up girly lotus and the always girly and cleaned up peony and you get a mixture of some of the easiest to love florals in perfumery. The dry down is a cool green amber, kind of reminds me of sap, and a rather nice gentle waft of woods and clean musk.

Extra: I think the word of the day here is “clean”. Bright Crystal is highly approachable, highly likable, and will not make people clear a circle around you. It’s really easy to love, and I do like it quite a bit. It’s not the most interesting composition in the world, but you have to hand it to Versace if you’re looking for a youthful and clean scent.

Design: All right, I’m not a fan of the bottle. The color is pleasing, the shape of the bottle itself is simple and easy to like. But that giant, jewel-shaped cap is a bit too much for me. It does make the bottle stand out rather well, but it’s a tad too flashy in my opinion.

Fragrance Family: Floral

Notes: Pomegranate, yuzu, iced accord, magnolia, lotus, peony, plant amber, musk, mahogany.

Bright Crystal is a good choice for office wear or elevator wear. It’s just one of those fragrances that I have to lump into inoffensive and not much else. It’s one of the better inoffensive and not much else perfumes out there though.

Reviewed in This Post: Bright Crystal, 2010, Eau de Toilette.

Burberry Brit

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Burberry Brit, for me, is the fragrance a high school graduate who’s just decided she’s too good for a body mist and wants needs a perfume. Something a little more complex, something with a hint of maturity, and something that costs a little bit of green. Brit is a smooth woodsy gourmand with an impressive wear length that’s a couple dimensions beyond a body spray.Burberry Brit

In Bottle: Sharp citrus and vanilla almond. I get the lime right out of the bottle as it’s sitting up top but there’s also the woodsiness sitting there too. The woods are actually trying to trick my nose into labeling this scent as spicy. Despite all this, it is unmistakably a gourmand scent to me as the almond and vanilla will refuse to make me think any other way on that front.

Applied: Striking flair of citrus right on impact, it takes a few minutes but the citrus dissolves into this fruity, juicy pear and almond mix that carries the fragrance until the vanilla comes up. Brit’s vanilla doesn’t pull any punches, it’s sweet, domineering, and unapologetic. It amps up and mixes with the almond and eventually drowns the pear until all I get is vanilla, a touch of almond, and that tricky spicy but-not-really wood note. I’d have to say the wood note is what’s really saving this fragrance from being a vanilla single note. It adds a much needed and much appreciated depth that stands its own for hours with the vanilla. Overall, Brit is a warm, smooth vanilla fragrance with a wood base. A well-done and very young gourmand.

Extra: Over the years since the first iteration of Brit came out, there’s been three flankers; Brit Sheer, Brit Red, Brit Gold. I have only smelled Brit Sheer, which to me is a much sharper, citrus treatment that somehow managed to be even more inoffensive than the original Brit and I have always considered Brit to be quite agreeable already.

Design: I absolutely hate the bottle design for the Brit bottles. Big, heavy rectangles of clear glass covered in Burberry’s signature tartan. It was a tremendous let-down and the design, to me, seemed like an afterthought. It looks tacky to be honest. Holding the bottle feels a bit like holding a tartan striped brick. The cap is a plastic cube, forgivable in many instances, but it hurts the bottle design here even more. I can see they maybe have been going for the simple angle but missed it and landed in plain and utilitarian. This is one fragrance I think would really benefit from a bottle redesign.

Fragrance Family: Gourmand

Notes: Lime, pear, almond, mahogany, vanilla, tonka.

The original Brit is one of the more iconic and recent gourmand fragrances. With an inoffensive and pleasing vanilla note this should satisfy anyone looking for a more up-scale and complex vanilla scent than a body mist.

Reviewed in This Post: Burberry Brit, 2008, Eau de Parfum.