Euphoria Men 
Calvin Klein (2006)

I just got this in the mail today. I won it in an eBay auction with some other colognes. This wasn't one that I wanted, so I figured I would sell it off to recoup some of my expenses. My expectations were low because of the ratings and because I don't really find Calvin Klein fragrances particularly intriguing.

What a surprise. This is not boring to me. It is interesting. It reminds me of a modern, high-end retail shopping mall. It smells fruity without being sweet. There's no thick, suffocating vanilla in it (which is unfortunately ubiquitous these days). It is light and polite.

Brazilian redwood offers some coniferousness I seek, but it is very subtle. That's okay in this case because it helps to keep it from being too fruity. I like this very much. I'm not a beast-mode seeker, so this is right up my alley. Unexpected and delighted. Keeping it.

Euphoria Men by Calvin Klein (2006) is one of a pair developed by no less than four perfumers and one outsourced evaluator-for-hire (Ann Gottleib), based around the idea of "unstoppable passion" in Calvin's own words, and little else. Klein's notoriously vague briefs and even more-abstract names would be not unfamiliar to most by 2006, as decades of Calvin Klein jeans, underwear, and t-shirts democratizing Prêt-à-Porter fashion by reducing it to a name printed on a waistband or shirt pocket had become the new standard of fast fashion for much of the world by then, with many other houses following suit. This, along with likewise-vague fragrances in futuristic bottles gave Calvin Klein an air of futuristic utopian (or dystopian) chic that would make any reader of Philip K Dick or lover of Cyberpunk jealous. As for the smell of Euphoria Men, it fits right with what was cool in the world of designer men's fragrances at the time, blending a bit of fruity, spicy, sour-candy-sweet, balsamic, green, and musky; just make sure to blur the lines between all these adjectives to the point where you can't even identify what you're smelling at first glance, and probably won't after the second or third, either. This is a hazy window into the age in which it was born, which is part of the charm.

The opening of Euphoria Men is very much of its period, featuring fruit-candy tartness like Abercrombie & Fitch Fierce Cologne (2002), Kenneth Cole New York Men (2002), Ralph Lauren Polo Black (2005), Carolina Herrera Chic for Men (2004), and countless others. After this, Euphoria Men starts walking its own path with subtle rounded spice a la ginger and pink pepper, adding some body without smelling actually piquant. Sage and an amalgam of synthetic musks lay over clearwood and some other early woody-amber stuff in the days before they became absolute hate on the nose, giving more nondescript body that competes with the odd sour citrus cherry Jolly Rancher opening and flits of spice. Eventually patchouli, a subtle suede, and a "rain accord" that brings a sort of fresh transparency to the scent just like Truth Men by Calvin Klein (2002) had. Euphoria Men is nowhere near as bombastic compared to Fierce or Chic, being more of a youthful "sexy" semi-ozonic fruity/woody musk thing that lingers for a considerable time without smelling like it's trying to be noticed. Best use for something like this would be a romantic evening, or casual wear in a settling where temperatures are moderate. They made an intense version of this the following year if you want your Euphoria with a kick to the gonads. Some think there was a bit of bait and switch to get people to buy both bottles, but I can't say.

I used to be pretty indifferent to this fragrance, and part of my reasoning was echoing the old FragComm "bloggosphere" in the days before YouTuber cults of personality began dictating taste in the hobbyist spaces; I called this release vapid and insubstantial, a clear cop-out to trend and too many cooks stirring a single pot resulting in muddled stew. I see now that Carlos Benaim, Jean-Marc Chaillan, Long Doc, and Dominique Ropion under supervision of Ann Gottleib weren't trying to follow a commercial recipe for success and taking turns chipping away at it, they were all just trying to figure out how to make "unstoppable passion" into scents for him and her, coming up with a fragrance line quiet enough to be seductive, but easy-going enough for the come-hither charm to even get off the ground. In essence, they were sorta doomed from the start, and made something so plasticene, so abstract, so of-the-moment yet non-committal to that theme, they made the equivalent of a Banksy piece in scent form. This isn't Fierce or Chic, but someone's flawed memory of those scents, who hasn't actually smelled them in 15 years. That's why I like Euphoria Men now and think it's worth perusing, as it's fallible Human memory of 2000's men's fragrance, bottled. Thumbs up