Kenzo pour Homme Kenzo 1991Eau de Toilette

Kenzo pour Homme (Eau de Toilette) by Kenzo

Bottle Design Serge Mansau

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Kenzo pour Homme (Eau de Toilette) (Kenzo)

7.6 / 10 370 Ratings

Kenzo pour Homme (Eau de Toilette) is a popular perfume by Kenzo for men and was released in 1991. The scent is fresh-aquatic. It was last marketed by LVMH. Pronunciation

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Perfumer

Christian Mathieu

Fragrance Notes

Top Notes	Lemon, Green notes, Bergamot, Fruity notes, Clary sage
Heart Notes	Jasmine, Ozone, Iris, Lily-of-the-valley, Peach, Juniper, Rose
Base Notes	Cedar, Moss, Musk, Ambergris, Sandalwood

Ratings

Scent

7.6 (370 Ratings)

Longevity

7.7 (260 Ratings)

Sillage

6.7 (244 Ratings)

Bottle

7.1 (261 Ratings)

View Video of Kenzo pour Homme (Eau de Toilette) (YouTube)

Submitted by Sani, last update on 24.09.2020.

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Reviews

09/20/2020

8.5
Scent 7
Longevity 8
Sillage 8
Bottle

NativeHeart

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NativeHeart

A classic

There are a few classics in this wonderful world. Because of their special characteristics they not only stand out, they have an extremely high recognition value and they are inimitable. Almost everyone knows these special features and therefore recognizes them immediately.
What are you thinking about at this moment when you read these words? Nutella, Coca Cola, milk cut, Michael Jackson, white Nike Air Force One or Maggi?
Then you'll be like me For me, Kenzo pour Homme is one of the classics of the perfume world. First smelled as a teenager in the 1990s, I immediately fell in love with this powerful, sweet, masculine fragrance that can't really be compared to anything else. At that time it was a real men's fragrance for me, for the stylish man of the world and with taste.
Well, today I'm about that age and the world and the taste has worked out pretty well. And what hasn't changed in the last 20 years is my love for this fragrance I have to admit that I have not yet found the right occasion to wear Kenzo pour homme. Sometime in autumn or winter, that much is certain for me. But the fragrance always has a firm place on my shelf. On the perfume shelf, of course, because on the other shelves are the other classics.

2 Replies

07/30/2020

8.5
Scent 9
Longevity 8
Sillage 10
Bottle

HugoMontez
16 Reviews

HugoMontez

The image of a foggy day

A fantastic woody aromatic! This one is a classic and the second to use Calone in perfumery, after New West (Aramis). Aramis creates a scent that represent the West Coast with a green and marine feel. Super odd to be honest due to the amount of Calone used. Years later Issey Miyake used Calone one their L'eau D'Issey and was a success. The note was successfully used in many men's fragrances from the 90's i.e. Acqua Di Gìo. This Kenzo is very different from the other fresh aquatics of the 90's. It's much more woody, herbal, almost pine(ish). Doesn't have sweetness besides the melon-marine note of Calone. Insted, this calone note just creates a feeling of a fresh and foggy morning in a place close to the beach. It doesn't change much but it's very distinctive and super long lasting. It lasts a whole work day and you will smell it until the next day, especially on clothes. There's some fir balsam, sandalwood, cedar and hints of anis, which aren't notes often used in a fresh aquatic but what the perfumer Christian Mathieu wanted to do was to use the innovative and brand new note of Calone and create a unique woody fresh herbal scent. The result is brilliant! Although it could be a little cloying after a while, especially on heat. I recommend wearing this on foggy fresh days to full experience this one. 4/5

2 Replies

05/03/2020

10
Scent 7
Longevity 8
Sillage 9
Bottle

Elysium
366 Reviews

Elysium

It Goes Against The Grain

How many memories, how many emotions. In the era of the transition from the 80s to the 90s, Kenzo Pour Homme suddenly appeared, a woody-aquatic going against the grain and, despite having been dimmed by his predecessors as Davidoff Cool Water, a more fougère-aquatic, it still offered a comparable but freakish experience. And it is one of the few aquatic fragrances for men that have survived since the early 90s. Kenzo pour Homme takes me back in time, it was a late winter evening, and with some buddies, we were having fun in a club. When the waiter brought the order, he approached me, and a fresh, airy, watery, herbaceous and floral cloud enveloped me. I remember that for a moment, I was stunned by that sensation hitherto unknown, and when I recovered my senses, I asked the waiter what perfume he wore. "Kenzo Pour Homme, do you like it?" And the next day I ran to the perfumery to buy it.
Kenzo Pour Homme is so wildly different that I love it though. It's distant, abstract, desolate at times. It alternates between a precise representation of the sea, sand, seaweed, seawater, and everything else in between, and the curve towards the wild abstract. Just close your eyes and imagine a wood on the seashore. Kenzo Pour Homme captures the ocean in all of its murky, saline glory, kind of like a stormy night on the beach.

Since I don't have the most recent version, my review bases on memories of the original, which are still vivid if I imagine smelling the bottle cap. The opening is challenging. If you like l'Eau d'Issey Miyake, another Asian inspired scent, you'll be fine here, not because they have a similar smell. Rather the opening is profoundly disrupting, and both are androgynous. More, this is nothing like Bvlgari Aqva, a pure ocean with amber seaweed, nor CH Chic, a more melon aquatic calone. Don't think of a tropical beach but one on the cold baltic. Kenzo Pour Homme is no salty, fishy seaweed smell, sometimes rank, but a marine smell akin to human skin that has been heated by the sun and coated by salt water from the ocean. You'll detect the green bamboo leaves blending with soft bergamot, not too much lemon and a tad of aromatic sage. A few people say it smells like a mix of medicinal balm for muscle pain, brine, rubber and fleeting petroleum perhaps, a strangely real plastic bucket filled with seawater, like the kind in which a child would have kept her toys on the beach. If you are familiar with Mauboussin brand and ever had a chance to smell Pour Lui Time Out limited edition, that's it, the same vibe with the oceanic smell.

The fragrance then dextrously switches into a burst of flowers which destroys the stereotypes of the scent nicely. Opulent notes of jasmine support the creamy nature of the lily-of-the-valley. There is a very soft rose, and carnation petals that blend with the odour of iodine, a bit earthy, and rubber sneaks in the background along with a certain salty tinge, allegedly the ozone accord. I feel a lot of the juniper and the carnation. The latter has a peculiar dark green, bronze-like, metallic aroma. Instead, I did not catch the iris.

While the dry-down advances, a solid base enters the fray, with musk and moss leading the charge. The smutty oceanic notes are still present, along with the flowers, and now it has a musky power that dries. It's deep, is rich, earthy. There are notes of wood but very soft, the sandal is creamy and delicate, as well as cedar. The floral notes never go away. Neither does the iodine, phenolic and salty air note. The original version was amber based, and as far as I remember it was not an ambroxan bomb à la Dior Sauvage.

The performance was superb, I was about all day into the scent, and it was still chugging along strong. Maybe too much for the office since the sillage and projection were enormous, it suited better casual days. A cold season gem, during warm Spring and hot Summer nights out, it was terrific, and even when it was raining. Moisture intensifies the scent even more.
I think it has reason to stay on the shelves for a long time. A historic perfume but it is not yet time to retire in my opinion! It has to be one of the boldest and most creative scents out on the market. Sorry kiddies, this one isn't for you. You have to have an open mind and understand the art of perfumery to appreciate it. I think I wore it long ago, too long, and maybe it's time to repurchase it, after nearly 30 years.

Stay well; stay healthy.

-ELysium

1 Replies

05/02/2019

10
Scent 7
Longevity 6
Sillage 6
Bottle

LordAstra

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LordAstra

Helpful Review 10

Old love doesn't rust

Kenzo pour homme was pretty much the first fragrance that my sister gave me in my teenage years and the first one that I couldn't get rid of after spraying on my nose. I guess it must have been like that in the early '90s. Then, about 20 years later, over the weekend, we went on a city trip to Leipzig and bought me there, for whatever reason, the two heroes of my early perfume years. While Thommy Boy, whom I used to worship in a similar way, today actually only remembers "the good old days" and I don't wear him anymore, KPH is still a milestone for me. This mix of citric, flowery and woody is a favourite in warm spring and summer and still beats modern summer scents by far. Unfortunately it seems to me that Kenzo has never been able to continue these good scents like Power or KPH because the creations of the last years were at best average for me and often not even that. Power and KPH on the other hand are two of the very few fragrances that (with me) have survived time and that have become a serious relationship. Although I have to admit that to KPH with Bvulgaris Aqua Amara and Varvatos Artisan Blue two more lovers have been added in summer. Nevertheless KPH gets a not quite objective 10/10 with teenage eyes in love. They can also overlook the fact that the flacon design in the 90s was simply more beautiful than the much smoother one in the newer version

7 Replies

02/23/2019

10
Scent 10
Longevity 10
Sillage 10
Bottle

Interdit
21 Reviews

Interdit

Sailing dreams

I am known as a woman who likes sometimes to confuse people by means of the scent she uses.
Kenzo was love at first sniff and after so many decades I am still devoted to his charm and realiability.

Summer it's the season, I am about 28 at friends' house having had a sleepover following a massive party they have thrown the night before. My best friends stayed over as well and we wake up to realization that we have no make-up or scent to dress up with. As we are to have dinner with the hosts, we turn to them for help.

The friends are both men, with distinctly different tastes in scents. They provide Kenzo and Givenchy; I approach the former with my nose and immediately am spellbound. I grab the bottle and generously spray the cologne all over me.

Instantly, I am transported on a boat and am sailing on wild waves. The iodic nature of the waters pervades my nostrils, making me feel euphoric, in a very intoxicating way.
I smell woods here where I am, as if part of this dream boat were constructed with them: they are solid presences, as if the boat was built with them, but in the winds their scent is not overwhelming.

Suddenly a whiff of resin, comforting, gentle. And a faint scent of fruit and violet tickles my nostrils, as if coming up on the deck from the galley. It makes me hungry, my mouth watering at the thought of juicy fruit in the heat that can cook your skull.

So the four of us go eat finally, chosing a nice restaurant with view of the hills. Candles flickering, I am sitting at the table but my body followed the mind and we are both still sailing on that boat.

I am summoned back to mainland to order my steak and in taking the order the waiter comments "...that is an amazing fragrance you are wearing miss".
I smile and reply simply "it's that of sailing dreams".

My friends stare at me as if I am talking utter nonsense; but then they don't know am spellbound, kidnapped and taken on the sea.
I look back at them with an expression which dismissed their confusion over the raising of further questions, so we settle into chit chats on the previous night.

To these days, whenever I smell this cologne I feel as if am transported back to that boat, and boy, wouldn't I stay there forever and ever.....

2 Replies

10/19/2013

9
Scent 7.5
Longevity 7.5
Sillage 10
Bottle

GothicHeart
87 Reviews

GothicHeart

Helpful Review 5

Steel from the deepest fathoms...

"How do I smell like?" I asked my badass then girlfriend sometime back in the mid 90's. "Like a shirasaya through the heart of Cthulhu, if the damn thing has any, that is! And I can see you are still holding its hilt!" she replied...

The Father and King of all aquatics...
The most beauteous flacon ever...
The stuff of legends...

07/20/2013

9
Scent 7.5
Longevity 7.5
Sillage 5
Bottle

Apicius
220 Reviews

Apicius

Top Review 12

1000 Lilies In A Bottle

1000 black lilies go into one bottle of Kenzo Homme – a beautiful advertisement from 1991. It may not quite fit in with the ingredients but it hits the character of this fragrance right on the spot.

1991 was a good year for gents' colognes. Following the excentric Joop! Homme also others released courageous perfumes, and Kenzo Homme was one of those. It is just as unique and distinctive. But the distinctness of those perfumes also had its disadvantages. Just like Davidoff's Cool Water soon everbody was wearing it in the evening or at a night out, with devastating effects. Even a few drops of sweat on your skin were boosting it all over the dance floor. And when the DJ decided to switch on the fog machine, all you could do was run!

But these times are over. Today, it is possible to wear Kenzo Homme again, with all discreetness necessary. And Kenzo Homme was on the scene all the many years while Kenzo released smoothed and diluted summer editions or L'Eau's of this exceptional fragrance, one after another. However, no flanker ever came near to the dark, ethereal freshness of Kenzo Homme.

The released fragrance notes can hardly give you an idea about this perfume. Despite all its power and conciseness – Kenzo Homme is a summer fragrance, and summer only! I can only imagine wearing it with at least 30° Celsius, or in a tropical night.

Kenzo Homme basically incorporates a deep dark, vibrating ozonic freshness which sits in a powdery, slightly green floral environment plus dry and transparent woody notes. Using a term from the Far East, it has lots of chi. If you sense it, the mere presence might cause a slight slap on your solar plexus. To be surrounded by this fragrance in summer heat is a bit like having a big ice cube in your body. You may feel it from inside.

After the initial success of Kenzo Homme and also Cool Water, not only Kenzo decided to flood the marked with aquatics. Some are really horrible, and I can understand everybody who decides to better avoid this fragrance family. However, Kenzo Homme is a gem among the aquatics, so don't miss it.

After many years I had to buy a new flacon. The good news: I did not notice any change, it looks like we still get the vintage fragrance! The bad news: They changed the flacon. The beautiful dark frosted glass bottle with the engraved lily leaves is gone – we get plastic now. At least, the prices are low. There seems also a 30 ml bottle available which is sufficient: Kenzo Homme should not be worn on a daily basis.

It is good we still have this gorgeous perfume, but let's also hope it will never regain its former popularity. Like most aquatics, you can easily become fed up with it if you have to smell it too often.

2 Replies