CH Men Prive opens with a benzoin sweetened, nose tingling synthetic grapefruit accord before quickly moving to its heart. As the composition enters its early heart, the faux grapefruit morphs into a varnish-like synthetic spiced whiskey accord, flanking vague synthetic tobacco-laced woods. During the late dry-down the synthetic booze vacates, leaving moderately rough leather as star through the finish with remnants of the vague woods in subtle support. Projection is minimal but longevity is outstanding at well over 15 hours on skin.
In the more objective portion of the review, the words "faux" and "synthetic" seem to popup all too frequently. In truth, most compositions contain a large amount of synthetics, and smelling synthetic can be a good thing in many cases. Unfortunately for CH Men Prive, smelling synthetic this time is not a good thing at all, and really makes the composition come off as unbelievable and rather cheap smelling. The grapefruit starts things off really poorly, as very few would really believe this was grapefruit they are smelling, instead you get some weird approximation of the citrus, unfortunately sweetened to an annoying degree by benzoin found in the composition's base. Speaking of "annoying," the most annoying aspect of this disappointing effort is its liberal use of all too common and never welcome "vague synthetic woods," throwing in some fake tobacco and whiskey for good measure, just in case you didn't notice how fake the rest of this thing smells. In truth, the only redeeming quality of this dud is in the late dry-down, as much more believable leather finishes things off rather nicely. It is far too little, too late, however, and by the time you reach the leather many may have already scrubbed this sucker off. The bottom line is the approximately $80 per 100ml bottle CH Men Prive is a considerable departure from its relatively decent smelling, easy-to-wear predecessor, but a highly unwelcome one, earning a "below average" 2 to 2.5 stars out of 5 and an avoid recommendation to all.
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