CH Men
Carolina Herrera (2009)

It sounds like you were not able to fully appreciate the fragrance during your initial testing. Returning to it with a clear nose and an open mind could potentially give you a different experience. Sometimes our olfactory senses can be overwhelmed when we test too many fragrances in one go, leading to olfactory fatigue and difficulty distinguishing individual notes.

I really understand why some of the youtube reviewers are hyping this one. Very elegant, smooth, sugared without actually being sweet. Almost amazing.

Albeit well known and around for a while, it's still rarely mentioned and is quite off the radar. It shares the idea, concept with Chic for men, but Chic is less sugared and more spicy.

CH Men is warm, elegant, mature and serious. Hidden gem and for those who know and "know".


Originality 5/10
Scent 8/10
Longevity 6/10
Projection 7/10
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65%

Thumbs up on the vintage version.

Great sweetness and a small dose of slightly smokey, spicy vetiver in the opening. Later, the drydown gives me more of the leather but still sweet throughout.

First time I sampled this must have been the vintage version because this new version becomes thin and synthetic after the 2-hour mark. Prior to that, it was very enjoyable and projected nicely.

The vintage version had strong projection and longevity.

Syntho-proandro-
Choco-norbacco cake with
Cherumoid is served.

Based on scent alone I would give it a big thumbs up and a 9/10. Unfortunately the performance lets it down. It is bad. 90 minutes of decent projection, 90 minutes of skin scent and then gone!!!! It's cheap but when you buy a fragrance you should expect at least 4 hours of decent projection.

Carolina Herrera CH Men is my first try from the house, and first off, I've not the slightest idea whether it's vintage or reformulated, or when my sample (via Decantshop) is from.

It's a mixture dominated by leather, sugar, vanilla, and amber. I get more leather in the opening and when it dries down, it's sweeter and the vanilla especially is more front-and-center.

The leather makes it masculine, the sweet notes make it comforting, and somehow it does still feel like a fragrance created for men, even though a woman could just as easily pull this off.

It's certainly more for cold weather wear, even with only moderate performance, given the rather heavy note breakdown. This isn't for the heat or beach, in my estimation, but of course anything possible.

The leather/vanilla pairing reminds me a lot of Scentstory 24 Go Dark, which leans heavily on this mix as well.

At $50 for 100ml (FragranceNet, though comparable at other secondary market sites), CH Men is moderately priced enough to a consistent winter scent for men, borderline signature scent-worthy in the realm of say, Burberry London, where the sweet meets spicy, as the sweet meets leather in CH Men.

This isn't a fragrance that I need or want but it's nonetheless quite well-balanced and agreeable.

7 out of 10