Touch for Men
Burberry (2000)

On Fragrantica there's an AI generated comment that calls this a 'unique' scent, and quite a few voters agree.
I guess it might have influenced modern perfumery...
With its davana, vetiver and ginger, Touch for Men may anticipate the flora-spiciness of Idole d'Armani EdT.
And the peppery ozone and sweet woody musk seem to foreshadow Sauvage and the Spiky Woods.
So Touch for Men gets credit for being ahead of the curve, but it’s still the sort of thing I would change trains to avoid.

Touch (for Men) is my favourite Burberry fragrance by far, and has been for a good few years now. It's a violet leaf covered in a gigantic cloud of talcum powder; a very likeable and comforting aroma. Good performance, too, for a seemingly soft fragrance it projects strongly. (I just wish that the cap on the bottle clicked into place securely! Be careful when picking it up, readers...)

Touch was ahead of it’s time.

I’m thinking about the clean, sweet, spicy, woody, fragrances so prevalent today. Things like Dior Homme 2020. K, Sauvage Parfum, Burberry Hero. These are all riffs on Touch IMO.

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Edit 8/4/22: A big difference to the above is that Touch is very powdery, while the aforementioned are not. Akin to The Dreamer in this way, as well as in the sweetness (tobacco leaf?).
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I have really come to love and respect Touch. Bottom line it’s a great fragrance. And the best description is timeless. Indeed

It’s a smooth, refined 4 season scent, with good sillage and decent duration. And zero bubblegum. 😀

The look and vibe of the bottle is cool too but dated. It looks and feels passé. That clean, minimalist and modern look so ubiquitous in the 90’s and early 2000’s kind of (unfairly) traps Touch in that timeframe. And relegates it to the discounters and rack stores (not a bad thing for the person looking fir cheapie gold). But Touch smells nothing like most colognes from that time period (with the exception of The Dreamer). Touch smells like now. It probably will always be in the moment.

I really think if Burberry repackaged it and put some marketing behind it Touch would find a whole new - and mass - audience.

It’s that good.

Bitter

Its a mishmash. Opens airy, bitter and herbal. I was trying to place it blind, and kept thinking citric, but bland bitter citric. I was thinking cheap fake yuzu, but it says mandarin. Rough. Fairly powdery and floral. Cheap tonka, vetiver, and laundry musks in the base. The base feels less composed, more just dumped after a decision, which if built from the ground up is fine, but it seams to not coellese into a singular voice.

That artesima in the opening is the not pleasant to me. It feels poorly blended in. The citris is of poor quality. The base is ok for a cheap fresh aromatic. But the base seems amatuerish. Feels like it should be a car company fragrance or something.

Lalique White comes to mind in the same vein. White is higher quality, better blended, but thinner in the base. Thumbs down.

Touch is a light yet ever present trail of a scent that transitions from a brushing sweet feel into a sensual embrace of freshness. It opens with a watery violet, a sharply bitter artemisia and a pulpy orange rind of a trio that is sweetly pure, purely light, and beautifully ozonic; before dashes of pepper and dry cedar bring forth a warmth to the blooming powder puff, only to be further cozy-upped by a doe-eyed and pretty white musk leaning over for a tonka bean whisper. What comes to mind is an aura of genteel cleanliness of barbershop talc, clothesline laundry; fresh and perfectly set for spoiling. This woody-musky aromatic of soft, sweet powdery caresses is all love and cuddles past and present.

Burberry Touch for Men (2000) must have seemed downright mellifluous to the nose after the rather plain-spoken pure 90's freshness that was Burberry Weekend for Men (1997), which along with Ted Baker Skinwear (1998) and Penhaligon's Quercus (1996), more or less encapsulated the popular lemon-powered "sons of Blenheim" neo-barbershop style British masculines were going through in the latter half of the decade. It was time for a change, and although not everyone was on the same page for what that change should be come the year 2000, Burberry thought it should be more in line with the new vibe straight men were borrowing from portions of the gay community with their "metrosexual" style: an urbane and bookish vibe with a touch of feminine flair that made it safe to play with things like perfume notes perceived as "for girls". Part of this trend continued into the mid-2000's, which is where we get several overbearingly sweet gourmands for men, and the exceptionally good iris-heavy classic Dior Homme (2005), but for Burberry's part of the trend, we get what is basically a light men's ambery musk. Burberry wasn't the first to this theme, and the underrated house of Moschino arguably did it better with Uomo? Moschimo (1997), which didn't utilize a violet note as the dominant accord like Burberry has on display here, but the Burberry name attached to this juice ultimately made their take on the style more popular. Compared to Weekend for Men or even the previous (second reboot and third overall) eponymous masculine Burberry for Men (1995), Burberry Touch for Men has a bit more individuality, feeling less like an inclusion on a common trope like those other two, and more like something signature to the house itself, if you ignore the close comparison to the aforementioned Moschino scent.

Burberry Touch for Men has the same sweet citrus opening of Uomo? Moschino, but swaps out that nice iced lemon cake hedione vibe of the Moschino for a richer mandarin opening, but the real star of the show is violet. The violet note on display in Burberry Touch for Men sits somewhere between the dryness of Geoffrey Beene Grey Flannel (1975), and the voluptuousness of Dior Fahrenheit (1988), sans the gasoline "barrel note" that makes the Dior feel scandalous. Ozonics were also reaching a headache-inducing crescendo so this wasn't even close to the loudest thing on the planet at the turn of the millennium, but compared to the previous decade's glut of fresh this and aquatic that, a violet note in a masculine felt almost like a relapse into the wild 1980's. From this violet jump-off point, Touch takes us on a piquant roundabout with black pepper and cedar, which makes this semi-powdery and appropriately masculine enough for the ascetic "down the nose" classic British interpretation of the upright gentleman, but the feminine violet never fully lets go. There is also supposedly an oakmoss note in the middle, which is an unusual place for it, and my experience smelling many oakmoss-heavy chypres from days gone by tells me that there is indeed a peck of it here, but I guess it is just for diffusion of the cedar, since oakmoss is good at projecting flanking wood notes (surprise). Vetiver, tonka, and what smells to me like an unlisted ghost note of fresh tobacco leaf greet the nose last, on a bed of ambery musk, which is where Touch becomes almost like an amalgam of the twice mentioned Uomo? Moschino and Versace The Dreamer (1996) with touches of Kiton Men (1996) or Creed Green Irish Tweed (1985) in the heart. Wear time is just within tolerances for an eau de toilette at about 7 hours total time with modest sillage, but Burberry doesn't really make screamers anyway, so this is expected from the onset of the first spray.

I'd use Burberry Touch for Men as an office scent, as it has somewhere between a dress casual work vibe and a casual romantic "second date" kind of feel, meaning somebody might find this romantic because of the amber and musk, but the stiff violet or starker elements in the base steer it away from being a night prowler just enough to keep it safe for the cubicle. I like Touch for Men, but I have so many things that could scratch this same itch more effectively that I can only recommend it as a semi-unisex violet experience for the man that wants to walk into an Ulta or Macy's and buy his fragrance without shopping around. Anyone a little more invested in "The Game" as the dudebros call it, can do much better in their hunt for something more distinctive and attention-getting, because for as challenging as this might have been in the apologetic fragrance mindset of the 90's, it feels very staid several decades removed from launch. This lack of daring in the long term is a larger problem of house Burberry itself in the masculine fragrance arena, since they didn't start taking marginally larger but still-calculated risks until Burberry Brit (2003) and Brit for Men (2004) came along, followed by the excellent Burberry London (2006) and London for Men (2006). Since then the house has mostly fallen back into its safe ways, which is unsurprising considering the motif of their apparel, so perhaps the key to truly enjoying Touch for Men or any of Burberry's offerings is to have a desire for conservative style that only flirts with the bold. Such is the way of the "tamed violet" in Touch for Men, which while interesting in premise, isn't bold enough in execution to get beyond a recommendation as a functional office or casual weekend scent, but go see for yourself since it's easy to test the stuff in stores. Thumbs up.

Yeesh

This smells just like the perfume my grandma would douse herself in

A sweet, powdery-floral scent, leaning feminine but then brought back to masculine with the clean musks and woods.

Reminds me of Very Valentino and Zirh Ikon.

Pretty good performance, kinda impressed. It projected nicely for 5-6 hours and hung around all work day after it stopped projecting.

The fruity citrus improession in the opening is combined with a violet that is later light and on the bright side.

The base adds a soft white pepper that is not particularly spicy on me. The base goes down the trodden path that Burberry's perfumers seem to like: a nonspecific woodsy tone bathed is bland white musks.

I get moderate sillage, adequate projection and five hours of longevity on my skin.

This spring scent is quite pleasant, but quite pale and watery and very synthetic and generic in its ingredients. Middle-of-the-road indeed. 2.75/5.

Ok, listen up folks, this is a spicy/peppery powder floral. So imagine a violet flower, sprinkled with baby powder and pepper.


Ok, Goodnight! LOLLL

MikeyLikey.....Perfect for spring if you can pull off a tight T shirt and the muscles are on pop! If not, I dont know what to tell you. But this will suit you well if you are able. Its a cheap Casual scent to have in the arsenal. Thats it, no Huff and Fluff, Just Facts Bro!

I love touch for Men by Burberry. It has a great "sweater" smell with a hint of Fahrenheit by Christian Dior. It is very warm and is the perfect fragrance for colder months. I couldn't stop sniffing the sample on my wrist and went back later that day to purchase a full bottle. I've been through 9 bottles and continue to purchase it. I would put this one in my Top 5 and it tends to be my signature fragrance a lot of the time.

This is a violet-woods-tonka composition with some musks.

It takes the tradition that starts from Grey Flannel, and provides a safe modern interpretation. Nonetheless, it is too safe, in the middle and not very memorable. Anyone interested in Touch for Men would do well to try Gucci Pour Homme II, Narciso Rodriguez for Him and Fahrenheit as alternatives.

It does carry a metro appeal, but is not as attractive as the Gucci. Average sillage and duration - based on a liberal application.

2.5/5