Silverfire

I've come to expect things from Hugo Boss. First mistake, I know, but with such a knockout scent as Hugo Boss Hugo (try saying that five times fast), I thought that the house had some fragrance mojo goin' on. Alas, it is not to be. Hugo Boss XY goes on like high-end hotel soap -- very clean, vaguely oriental, and slightly fruity. Then, depending on your fortunes, it may achieve another movie parody name -- Gone in 90 Minutes. Even if it hangs around, this scent is the king of intimate silage. Within an hour, it's a skin scent. Now it doesn't smell revolting, but neither is it interesting. It's like hotel soap meets harem oil with a few pieces of citrus arranged in the room for feng-shui power. Anyone want a slightly used sample?

Realities for Men goes on with a little bit of citrus, but within five seconds, you are keenly aware of a scent that can only be described as dishwashing liquid. You know those dishes that the dishwasher doesn't do a good job on and you have to put in a sink of hot water with Dawn or Palmolive? You know that smell? That's what Realities for Men is. (As a man, I've made peace with the fact that I know this smell. If one trip through the dishwasher doesn't clean the plate, I've learned that three more trips through the dishwasher won't clean it either.)

Technically, this scent contains citrus and patchouli, mingled with a soapy accord. Not-so-technically, it's dishwashing liquid accord, which means a sharp citrus note tries to attack something faintly rancid (decaying food particles?) smothered in S-O-A-P. It does nothing for me, and what's worse, my skin amps it. The annoyingly generous projection finally recedes after six hours, and by eight, it becomes a skin scent, but oh man, a pungent skin scent. My advice? Buy some Palmolive or Dawn and fill up the sink if you really want to know what Realities smells like; at least that way you can get last night's stuck-on ham off your plates.

Witness goes on with this heavy, oily blast that reminds me of the cleaning oil – the stuff that you’d use to clean blades in a barber shop. Underneath are spices. It projects an old-school, mature kind of vibe, but not a high-end one (which might have saved it for me). As it stands, I see this as the fragrance of the hard-boiled gumshoe, who lives out of a car, surrounded by fast food: it's functional, manly, but not involving. The projection is decent; the scent is linear; it survives light workouts. So don't get me wrong. Unlike many other scents, Witness does last 8 hours and doesn't sputter out, but I can't help but think of it as the older, less interesting brother of Onyx. I can't recommend this, except to fragrance collectors or perhaps older gents who want something reserved and not too fashionable or frou-frou.

I walked around the showroom, eyeing the spritzer bottle in the translucent black package that reminded me of a condom wrapper. Pause there for a moment. The showroom was my kitchen, and The Essence seemed pretentious contrasted to the hulking Rive Gauche box, the scrappy Witness, and even the other samples. For the life of me, I don't know why fragrance manufacturers package samples like that. It's cheesy and the parallels I prefer not to investigate too much.

The Essence has a color like windshield wiper fluid, but a little bit lighter. When you put it on, it does smell vaguely new car-ish, like fresh leather seats newly cleaned. I'd guess the freshness is the coriander, and there's a little bit of fruit, maybe bergamot. There's also something underneath it -- I want to say leather -- that gives it a grounded, expansive kind of feel. I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this scent, but the first 5-10 minutes certainly aren't bad. I am a bit leery of wearing this, because I certainly don't have the money, nor do I want the debt of getting into a Porsche. I sure hope that the marketing strategy wasn't "Let's get people into high-end sports cars by making scents that don't immediately suck." Bravo on the first part, guys, but I'm still not going to drop six figures on a car!

By three hours of travel, it is a skin scent. For the first two hours it had a pleasant but not large silage. Now if this is supposed to be the essence of a Porsche, then my brand-new high-end sports car has just lost a spark plug, and now it's limping along. It's still drivable, but its 80 MPH days are a distant memory.

Eight hours down the road, the scent has mingled in with the scent of my skin, but the car is still inching forward. This might actually parallel the whole experience of owning a Porsche in another way -- when you buy it, it's great, but the novelty wears off quickly because of the maintenance trips to the dealer. (Although isn't that what they say about Jaguars and aren't there Jaguar fragrances, too?) Maybe I failed Porsche 101 by not reapplying in hour three. To get the true Porsche experience, did I need to perform fragrance maintenance at the specified intervals? This all feels like too much effort to me, which is probably why I'm not a high-end sports car owner already.

To be fair, The Essence keeps going for 16 hours, and survives even light workouts. At the end it smells fresh like Rive Gauche, only without the class, and a bit sweeter. It's not a standout fragrance, and the quality seems to be on the level of Dunhill, although coupled with superior longevity. It's quite a letdown if you're expecting The Essence to be the perfumery equivalent of its namesake. However, if you expected the opposite, then you can enjoy it for what it is -- an ok fragrance.

Curve Crush took four sprays to activate -- three sprays apparently fails to ignite its scent engine. It began with a musky note mingled with baby oil, which isn't really my thing, but it became decent after mellowing somewhat. Personally, I found the baby oil note better blended here than in Zino. It was linear from there on out, and it lasted fourteen hours.

This scent also grows on you. It is a sexy/bad boy kind of scent, but not in a harem/whorehouse sort of way. In other words, it's not a cheapie version of Narciso Rodriguez For Him. There's still a slight edge to it, so I can wear it. I'm just not sure how often I'd wear it, though. Curve Crush is one of those scents that I like but I'm not crazy about.