Tommy
Tommy Hilfiger (1994)

I missed the Tommy bandwagon of the 1990s (I was wearing Xeryus de Givenchy) - and only just tried it out and bought a bottle. It's great! Warm, punchy, versatile, uplifting, energetic, and short-lived. Pleasantly green in this age where everything seems blue.

In the $20 range it's a great deal and for many people, this fragrance is an old friend.

A very light summer scent that you can't smell after an hour. It is the "cotton candy" of colognes - insubstantial, sweet, fun and gone very quickly. Just too much work.

A masterful fragrance made up of notes that are Americana. This was my signature fragrance in my 20's in the 1990's. It's still among my favorites.

A subtle frag that should be treated more like an aftershave. Overall, a Neutral rating for me because it was absolutely everywhere and unapologetically over-sprayed by everyone in the mid-late 90's. In this case, less is way more.

Released the same year (1994), and ironically by the same house (Aramis), I personally prefer to reach for this timeless gem of men's perfumery - "Havana".

2 stars.

I wore this fragrance all thru middle and most of high school and boy when i get a whif the memories that come back. its fresh and clean and just a feel good frag. My buddy still rocks this at 40 and it smells just as good as always. perfect casual chill frag for lounging around hanging out.

Close to a Neutral, but a great scent as a teen in the mid-late 90's. Lasted a little longer on me than Polo Sport, this was great for hanging out as a youth. Very mild & pleasant for casual events.

As for today, maybe a great gift for a teenager?

Haven't smelt any current formulations, but if I could find my vintage from High School it would be a great time travel smell.

Simple, youthful and fresh. This fragrance is ideal for teenagers and young adolescents. It doesn't develop much throughout the day. The scent stays pretty much the same. The dry-down is pretty weak. It doesn't last very long so you may have to reapply it once or twice during the day. I would say it's a pretty unproblematic fragrance. Overall, I think its smell would be best described as fresh and clean. If I had to rate it I would probably give it a 6 out of 10.

P.S.: This is a typical 'casual hanging out with friends' fragrance. It's ideal for casual circumstances.

Yeah, it smells a little cheap and thin but this is one of the best time machines in fragrance for me. I didn't even wear Tommy in the 90's but this does take me right back to that time. The bluegrass note in it is probably the main nostalgia driver for me since there was a similar note in Michael Jordan cologne, something I did wear in the 90's and was in abundance around me at that time, having worked at a store that sold it.

It's casual, youthful and cooling. Very decent stuff and still smells nice today.

Projection is not bad during the first couple hours and then it still hangs around a little better than skin scent for 4-5 hours.

I remember wearing this back in the day. I was 17 or 18. Really pleasant fragrance that lasted a good few hours. Gained numerous compliments .

Fresh and young.

The scent itself is edible. I'm not even going to bother trying to breakdown the different notes or whatever as it all blends beautifully into this linear wear that last all of about an hour. Wore this often in Junior high and for good reason, it's the cleanest and most seductive scent a fifteen-year-old boy can wear.

Shouldn't be applied once you obtain a high school diploma though. I wish someone would somehow someway create a more mature rendition of this.

Let me start by saying I really like Tommy by Tommy Hilfiger (1994). It's sweet, crisp, clean, almost the perfect job interview or "be presentable with a hint of inviting" scent. It's good indoors 24/7 365, and it is almost usable in all weather save the dead of cold. But... It's also the Creed (band) of men's fragrance. It was everywhere, everyone used it, and it was the "must have" for the sleazy date prowlers of the late 90's and early 2000's, whilst other things like Curve (1996) or Lucky You (2000) were the workhorses, until Tommy Hilfiger failed to really follow it up properly and the scent joined them in the modern-day "Workhorse Force" that all 90's-chic fragrances have seem to gone into of late. The scent was originally created by minds at Aramis, and it shows. Anne Buzanthian, who helped transform Tea Rose (1972) into something The Perfumer's Workshop could mass produce by 1974, won the contract alongside Alberto Morillas, who would also deliver quite a few prolific 90's scents. Aramis had just released Havana in the same year as this, and the two could almost be siblings, except Havana was the far more complex and timeless of the two with it's boozy tobacco structure. Tommy comes across like a more ozonic tobacco-less version of Havana, with some of the woods and spices supplanted with gourmand-like fruit notes, and the official note pyramid had some bonkers stuff on it like "apple pie" and "rain" to make you question who they were trying to kid. I get how some think this is appropriate only for a teenager, because teens in the 90's beat this one to death, but I was a teen then too and I still say it holds up against the modern Sauvage (2015) and it's ilk.

The scent opens with grapefruit and lavender/bergamot mixed with some ozonic element that I guess is what the "rain" is supposed to be, with a touch of barely noticeable mint. Calone is here as well, because everything designer that was anything worth sniffing in the 90's had it, but we're not talking New West (1988) levels of the stuff. The heart of the fragrance is the oft-quoted "apple pie" accord, and indeed there is some semisweet "granny smith" type of green apple in here, not quite sour but tart enough to not disturb the shiny/fresh vibe of the top. From there, it goes down into fresh linens that I guess the "cottonwood" is meant to represent, maybe an early Iso E Super composite, who knows? Some resinous accords that are some form of synthetic woods with usual amber fixative are also spooled in here. It's not a fougère and not quite an aquatic, but neither is it fully a gourmand (a category which didn't quite exist yet at that time), so it's a fully abstract ozonic scent. Clean, sweet, sharp, a bit warm, and sparkling with a slight ozonic nose tinge, this has 90's written all over it in the biggest way a fragrance can. It's not quite candy sweet, but I feel the aforementioned Aramis Havana that this feels close to does this style better by being more balanced and a tad drier. I can see how this may have been seen as sexy back in the day because the "delicious" vibes of the fruit and how they subtly weave through the other ingredients and the stark ozone just come off the shirt collar like tendrils of "come hither", but far more sultry scents than this exist. Much like Eternity for Men (1989), Tommy shows a rare display of warmth without the heaviness or reliance on musk.

Ultimately, this scent like the aforementioned band Creed, has seen it's best years already, and has mellowed down to much less ubiquity, where it is used by new people discovering it's nice middle ground for work wear, and nostalgic guys "who were there" that are now a few decades older and like keeping this around for memories, or still think it can get them a date 20+ years on. Tommy does share the "clean yet slightly sensual" DNA that newer male fare also still abused, so maybe they're right. Some things are seductive enough to become "panty droppers" among the basic bro population in fragrance community, but not this, and I just can't shake the image of overcompensating guys marinaded in this walking into a bar with their shirts unbuttoned and flirting with the barmaid who had seen (and smelled) far better. Aramis still does work for Mr. Hillfiger, but judging by the gimmicky and flaccid compositions, they're just bottling rejected Estée Lauder formulas now and not composing it bespoke for Mr. Hillfiger anymore, with the stuff turning up in discounters like Walmart all the time instead of the fragrance counters where this one debuted. Once again like a popular 90's alt rock band, a few more minor successes came and went alongside Tommy, but this poor fella remained and slid into the realms of "remember when" or "oh guys still wear that?" which is that most dangerous middle ground a fragrance has to traverse before being old enough to finally attain a "classic" status. In a nutshell, this crisp ozonic fruit basket is perfect for the appliance salesman at Best Buy or the supervisor of concierge service, but that's about the limit of it's power outside casual use.

Just a great classic scent from the 90's. If you wear it today around 90's high school generation women, they will lapse into memories and talk about 90210 and other 90's memories. This one is a fresh but dressy smell and projects nicely.