Shagfrag

After more than a decade of not wearing any fragrances, I began a side-quest in life to rediscover fragrances and to eventually curate a small collection for myself. Approximately 300 samplings and a couple months later, I discovered some things. I discovered I enjoy fresh scents and gourmands. I discovered I couldn't comprehend the hype about certain fragrances like Sauvage, Bleu, or Aventus. And I discovered that there is no fragrance more foul than Tom Ford's Tuscan Leather.

I sampled Tuscan Leather at a Sephora in June 2021. I sprayed a tester strip, and as with all my others, I smelled it and then put it in a Ziploc bag so I could smell it again after the dry-down. Because, who cares about top notes (sorry, not sorry ?)? My assessment upon smelling the opening was that this was an absolutely repulsive scent. Harsh, repugnant, and overpowering. But I figured, Tom Ford has worked magic with other scents like Lost Cherry, so I just need to give this spell time to formulate. Alas, additional time offered no redemption for this fragrance. During and after the dry-down, it retained its unbearable scent. It is not an understatement to say that out of the ~300 fragrance samplings I have done, this scent is easily the worst of them all. Sure, there were some heavy ouds and musks that could be overbearing, but Tuscan Leather seems to be intentionally offensive. This is not "car interior" leather. This is not "bad boy biker jacket" leather. This is "sleeping in a barn with the cows and manure" leather. This is a vomit-inducing, kill-it-with-fire, shit-in-a-bottle offensive.

I am open to the possibility that I sampled a bad bottle. Maybe someone tampered with it or transported the atomizer across the border in their anus, sans plastic bag. It is nearly incomprehensible that based on what I smelled, this fragrance could have an average of 8.5/10 across 1,107 ratings to date. Once my gag reflex has abated and I'm ready to give Tuscan Leather another try, I'll revise this review if I believe I did not sample an authentic bottle. Until then, this is my benchmark of "Worst. Fragrance. Ever." and is one of the worst smells I have had the displeasure of experiencing in my entire life.

Tl;dr: There are haters who are giving this fragrance an unfairly low rating, but if you set aside your preconceived notions, you just might find you really like Ultra Mâle.

After more than a decade of not wearing any fragrance, I got the urge to curate a small collection of fragrances for my personal use. I set out to examine fragrances independently, without regard to brand renown or general popularity -- in other words, to do like Toucan Sam and "follow my nose." Because when you're out and about giving meaning to the existence of your fragrance, allowing yourself and others to experience and enjoy it, they neither know nor care what shape bottle it came from or even which brand it is. All they care about is what their nose is telling them about the scent you exude. That's the simple fact of wearing and enjoying fragrances.

My methodology was to sample each fragrance at the opening, put each tester strip in a separate Ziploc bag, and sample it again after the dry-down. And so it went with approximately 300 samplings over the course of a couple months. As the samplings went on and my confidence in my favorites grew stronger, I began forming my collection. Special thanks to big sales before and after Mother's Day and Father's Day 2021 in the U.S., such as 30% off sales from Lancôme, YSL, and Mugler, as well as a couple 40%-50% discounts on other individual fragrances. Which as a side-note serves as a reminder that patience and strategic/opportunistic buying can save you a lot of money while curating your collection, especially if you buy from retailers.

Back to my review of Jean Paul Gaultier's Ultra Mâle. I loved it. Before I even sampled it, I immediately hated the bottle. I mean, the dick bulge is just too much -- what heterosexual male wants to hold that bottle and have his fingers brush up against a dude's crotch? But again, I didn't allow myself to care about the bottle because that was only for the eyes. And in this olfactory journey, the nose was to be judge, jury, and executioner. The judgment: an overall 9/10 on the scent. Both during the opening and dry-down, it was sweet and inviting with no trace of questionable or off-putting smells.

So, why is this not rated more highly in the Parfumo community? My theory is that there are two reasons. First, many people don't like the bottle, so they exact revenge on the fragrance for a marketing issue. Not fair. And second, people overreact to hype in a negative way. Maybe if you never heard of the fragrance, you would have given it an 8/10, but because everyone else said "OMG 10/10 MUST BUY!!!", you feel the need to take it down a peg so you rate it 6/10. Again, not fair to the fragrance itself.

In case you want to re-examine whether you have fairly rated Ultra Mâle, maybe you can take a look at the nose behind the fragrance. Did you ever think about who created this? Hm... it's Francis Kurkdjian. Of Baccarat Rouge 540 fame. And like 540 and dozens of Kurkdjian's other fragrances, Ultra Mâle is a high-quality work of art. Maybe you can perform the mental exercise of disassociating the fragrance itself from its bottle, from its alias ("The Clubbing King"), and from its hype, and simply let your nose decide. I guarantee the reviewers who gave this fragrance an unbelievably low 0.5 rating for the scent would realize they were just "taking it down a peg" and would admit their rating is artificially suppressed. And hey, maybe overly-sweet isn't your thing and it's only a 6/10, but you are doing others an injustice by fraudulently manipulating the ratings by giving it a 0.5/10. Because as a statement of objective fact, a rating of 0.5/10 would apply categorically to the worst smells you can possibly imagine -- literally raw sewage or worse -- and I cannot conceive of a human who would ever rank this fragrance as being anywhere near the worst smells on earth.

In summary, it is my opinion that the ratings should be higher, and each individual should try this fragrance for oneself. Forget about the bottle, forget about anyone else's opinion (unless you're wearing it primarily for your "special someone"), and just let your nose decide. Beyond that, you might already be aware that the sillage and longevity are considered to be on the higher end of the performance spectrum, so you merely need to determine whether the price/value proposition is right for you. Already have five other sweet frags? Maybe skip this. But for me, starting from zero, I happily added this to my collection.