Smellavision

It is not a scent for dressing casually. It is not a strong projector. It is not overly masculine due to the tuberose.

What you get instead is a great male floral cologne for suiting up, especially if you are working in a professional environment. It could be useful as a romantic dating scent and under any circumstances it is elegant and not your run-of-the-mill product. Spicy, heady tuberose with tobacco and leathery suede. A smell for colder weather indeed, sophisticated and long lasting. To be fair, the labels above are all interchangeable, but SR is very complex and yet well blended.

Whatever memory you may have of a high street gentlemen’s store or area, this will fit nicely.

Imagine closing your eyes…now, when you open them again, you are standing in a green oasis of blood oranges, mint, geranium and lemongrass.

BdV is a very nice scent available at a great price : an excellent fresh and clean fragrance with a woody base. It’s a crisp and lighter take on vetiver with a semi creamy sensation ; instead of the earthy Vetiver that we know from staples like Guerlain’s Vetiver, this is a brighter and gentler take on vetiver that has a lemongrass-like feel to it. The opening of blood orange combined with grapefruit is just lovely, juicy and slightly fruity with a touch of mint. Enter the vetiver and geranium that are blended seamlessly and finally settling on a base of warm white musk, amber and patchouli with just a hint of woods and ambroxan. The secret of BdV is that at the same time it is discrete, herbal and extremely easy to wear which makes it a great dumb grab and works very well in spring as well as summer temperatures. This also makes it a nice deviation from the typical aquatic and citrus based summer freshies.

Moderate sillage and projection, well suited for office work as well as casual occasions. Christophe Raynaud, who’s also the nose behind the excellent Davidoff Leather Blend and Annayake pour Lui, did a great job here.
The bottle is also a lovely, sturdy piece of work and I find this is an excellent choice for the cheap price.

Fun fact : Jacques Bogart actually released a male fragrance called Bois de Vetiver already back in 1982 !! Unfortunately I cannot compare as the Bogart seems to have been discontinued a long time ago.

Rochas have been stepping up their male fragrance game recently, Moustache EdP was a fine example and they continue down the same excellent path with this release.

The virtue of L’Homme lies in the basics of it’s simplicity. It comes across like a classic barbershop fougère up-dated for the 2020s : The fresh citrus opening and the green notes from geranium and basil with a slightly soapy powderiness, the twist comes from the tonka in the base which makes it more contemporary. I find the fruitiness of the opening to have a bit of comparison to K by D&G EdT, with the blood orange and citrus only without the signature pimento that K has, which is instead replaced by cardamom. This opening ascends to a heart of geranium, basil and juniper (and I seem to detect some sage as well?) with just a touch of ambroxan. Finally, the base of patchouli and the sweet tonka come through – in the listed notes it also says moss, but I get more of an amberwood impression?

If you’re a fan of Bois de Vetiver by Karl Lagerfeld, this is somewhere in the same ballpark but more dense and concentrated. You can use it in most settings, but this would fit perfectly on a medium cool spring night, and it would be natural to put it in same category as the original D&G Pour Homme. Longevity and projection are both satisfying without being a beastly in any way. Very well composed by Bruno Jovanovic and job well done Rochas!

I find it really weird that this has such an abundance of dislikes. When it was first released I had a quick test at a local retailer and must admit my first thought was that this is not too bad. Having tested it over several weeks now, I agree that the general impression is that of a slightly generic “out of the shower” blue scent, but still I find that K has a certain “je ne sais quois” compared to others in this genre. No doubt, I am also biased as D&G used to be a pillar in male fragrances is my youth with releases like Masculine, Pour Homme, By and The One for Men – all of them fragrances that I found, if not excellent, then at least very enjoyable. Unfortunately, for the last decade or so D&G have only released male flankers so my expectations may of course have been high in unnecessary ways by a new male solo release.

The scent itself is built on an opening of citrus and blood orange mixed with juniper berries. After this, the pimento enters the scene and makes out a pleasant heart combined with lavender, clary sage and geranium. Finally, the notes settle on a base of woods, patchouli, vetiver and a hefty dose of Iso E Super. Nothing unpleasant here and the overall feel is as “sporty” and office friendly as it is refreshing – a woody aromatic that I would imagine most adult western males would find pleasant to wear. While neither projection nor longevity are overly impressive, I think that Natalie Lorson has done a pretty decent job with K.

The bottle itself is quite a piece of work – a cool blue bottle but admitted, at first glance the crown cap does comes across as an over the top kind of “see me, hear me” statement in the vein of PRs 1 Million gold bar, but I find it also to be kind of tongue-in-cheek and quite fun to release a bottle like that in 2019.

In my opinion it may not be a masterpiece but overall it’s not bad at all !

First off, Riflesso is not something that has not been seen before - slightly fruity, slightly dry, slightly powdery and leaning to the mature side, it comes off as a suede-like composition for fans of La Nuit de l'Homme with added leather. The scent has a very appealing mix of apple, bergamot, lavender, musk and vetiver mixed up with some florals and a good dose of spices and while neither cardamom or tobacco oddly enough are listed, the base mostly consists of woods and tonka.
Suitable for most occations and seasons, but I think it will shine in springtime and will be useful both for day and nighttime wear. Longevity unfortunately is not very impressive, I get about 4 hours before reapplication is necessary and projection is moderate.

To sum it up : a very good and versatile fragrance that could use a little more oomph - an intense version with better performance could be interesting, but I'm also aware that this might of course ruin the overall impression.

Overall, if you can look past the not so impressive bottle, this is a solid release from Trussardi.