Versace Man
Versace (2003)

A blend of fresh tobacco and saffron on a peppery bed of warm labdanum. There is a dark vibe to it, similar to that of Escada Magnetism For Men. Unlike most reviewers, I don't get any sweetness - thank goodness.

Versace For Man is far from the usual "manly man" stuff I usually enjoy wearing, and it might not be for me nowadays, but it's better than 99% of modern designer releases.

Projects well and lasts 8 hours easy.

Masculinity Level: Jeremy Irons as the billionaire in Margin Call.

This fragrance combines saffron and tobacco notes, resulting in a simple and pleasant scent. While it's often categorized as masculine due to the tobacco note, I would consider it unisex because the saffron, amber, and overall sweetness balance it out. It's important to note that this fragrance has nothing to do with the Eau Fraiche version and deserves its own unique bottle design.

An opening that combines the bright with the slightly sett and soft.The brightness stems from the bergamot and an unusually bright neroli, whilst the pepper I also get is actually more sweet than spicy on me. The angelica that is also featuring in this initial stage is rather unusual in its expression of this plant, and the result is quite and original opening phase.

Quite soon after the beginning a gently spicy undertone is developing, with a soft cardamom the main component noticeable here. A darker elements in the form of a saffron arises a bit lataer, which is quote a slim version that lacks any depth and richness on me.

A touch of labdanum appears just before the base phase commences, and then the cashmere wood is moving in the foregronud, accompanied by a very faint ambery sidekick. I get very little of the labdanum promised by the company, but some sweet tobacco aroma arrives towards the end - a very non-committal tobacco but veering towards weak nondescript pipe tobacco.

I et moderate sillage, good projection, and a longevity of nine hour on my skin.

An intriguing spring creation with an original touch indeed, but, unfortunately, the second half is rather anaemic and more generic. 3.25/5

Versace Man has greatly moved up in my estimation since first sampling it. This is an unofficial sequel to The Dreamer, giving us The Dreamer's elder self with a bit more age and introspection. Here, the Dreamer has moved on from smoking cigarettes outside of Miami nightclubs to smoking cigars during lazy afternoons.

It's smooth as silk, with a shadowy tobacco-amber blend that is rich without displaying any hint of jagged edges, and a green, grape-y edge that gives it a fresh, dewy quality. The ambiance is perfectly expressed by the purple bottle.

Tragically discontinued, but it does lean mature and restrained in a way that doesn't sit well with the more exuberant public image of Versace today, unlike The Dreamer.

Ordered a sample of this one because others have said it reminds them of grape Swishers. Sounded lovely to me. The grape is there but I don't get much of it. It's a pretty good sweet and ambery tobacco. Pleasant and definitely worth a try if that sounds like your jam. But it didn't wow me.

A truly magnificent, underrated outing from Versace!

Versace Man really pleases with that opulent tobacco and scintillating herbal saffron. Mmm! Cardamom and pepper make me an instant sucker for this and many other men's colognes.

A nice blend of spices, florals, tobacco, amber, and wood. Although it came out only a decade and a half ago, Versace Man feels like a relic from an earlier era which is still easy to sport today. Great casual occasion scent that seems to work better in cooler temperatures, and overall a decent cologne for most of today's men.

Versace had a troubled time as a house after the slaying of Gianni Versace, and it's perfectly understandable. Donatella Versace stepped up from her Vice President role to share managerial duties with her brother Santo Versace, the latter of whom handled the men's lines, and abolished the Versus fragrance sub-label she had run prior to Gianni's death (given to her by Gianni because she loved perfume). The women's lines, perfume included, continued to do well; but Santo didn't really have much of a nose for fragrances like his sister, so the men's fragrance lines became a lot of show, but no go. Several flankers to the "Jeans" line came and went, the bizarre freshie Versace V/S (2000), gaudily-packaged boring musk that was Versace Jeans Couture Man (2002) alongside yet another freshie in Versace Time for Action (2002), showcased a house that didn't really know what men wanted. To be fair, the early 2000's was a strange time. Retro-revival styles sat alongside licorice and caramel gourmands, ultra-modern experimental Iso E Super bombs or radioactive grapefruit ozonics with club-friendly ambery musk bases, contributing more to the tribal division of vintage, niche, and mainstream camps amongst male fragrance buyers that started fleeing to their corners as growing internet access facilitated echo chambers of thought. Donatella took position as chief designer and became hands-on with the men's perfume lines as well, launching Versace Man (2003) as a do-over of sorts after all the fabulous missteps. Versace Time for Action and its flankers would continue a while, but everything outside the primary male lines Gianni himself once oversaw were dropped in favor of Donatella's new aesthetic, which was even more "stereotypically Versace" than before. Versace Man wasn't the savior in the male sector Versace hoped it to be; and indeed a great many men don't even realize this exists, as the flanker Versace Man Eau Fraîche (2006) would completely overshadow Versace Man like Drakkar Noir (1982) did to the original Drakkar (1972), but in much less time.

I feel Versace Man is just so strange that it was doomed from the start, outside of the initial early adopters upon the scent's release or Versace home turf. Versace Man is a quirky semi-oriental/semi-gourmand amber and woods fragrance with a light tobacco in its base, which keeps it from becoming too rich or sweet. Domitille Michalon composed this, and is also responsible for the orange creamsicle that was Hugo Boss Boss In Motion (2002), but taking Versace Man in an even more peculiar direction by having a synthetic approach to recreating the smell of... wait for it... grape leaves. This isn't a note very palatable to tastes outside Europe, and the US market - which was the most conspicuous consumers of Versace at the time - being blindsided by it, Versace Man subsequently fared well only in Europe. Versace Man accomplishes its odd task of being a synthetic grape leaves scent by using aromachems with a top note intro of neroli, bergamot, black pepper, and angelica, which itself rarely appears in a masculine. Sillage is deceptively low at this stage so don't be tempted to apply more, since Versace Man has a round middle that sneaks up after 15 minutes. Cardamom and saffron do some brief talking before the sweeter meats of the scent take over. A tobacco leaf note similar to Versace The Dreamer (1996) arrives, but a composite amber, "cashmeran woods" note and labdanum submerges it, pulling Versace Man in a supple, androgynous direction which foreshadows MFK Baccarat Rouge 540 (2014). Part of the fragrances post-discontinuation appeal now is probably that resemblance alone. Versace Man then becomes a tobacco-dusted take on a style that would dominate in a decades time at much higher price points than it initially sold. Longevity is decent for a day, but this is too playful for a work scent, and too quiet for a play scent, plus A lot of things in this vein would be dropped when the second wave of aquatics started hitting in the latter half of the 2000's. Sillage is moderate once Versace Man opens up, and I do remember smelling this scent on a lot on guys in the mid-2000's (not knowing what it was myself), so it saw a brief flurry of use and developed a cult following. Best use is probably in fall or winter, although not in a deep freeze.

Noses in American and Asian markets reasonably gravitated towards the more-conventional Versace Man Fraîche, which sort of became the unofficial Versace Man pillar in those markets once sales of this one sharply sloughed off. Retro-chic heavy-hitters like Rive Gauche Pour Homme (2003) and Gucci Pour Homme (2002) held the attention of mature guys, and the youth were still busy rolling in super-fruity ozonics, so Versace Man had a very limited target of the pre-recession post-college career millennial who wanted a Calvin Klein Obsession for Men (1986) with an effeminate "metrosexual" style which appealed to his own generation's fashion sense. Once Dior Home (2005) and Yves Saint Laurent L'Homme (2006) hit the streets, Versace Man was replaced. More directly, Prada Amber pour Homme (2006) seemed to buttress neroli and labdanum facets of this scent to DIor Homme's vanilla and iris. I do like the smell of grape leaves, having experienced them plenty in food, and for those who haven't, they might get an unshakeable impression of grape Swisher sweets or Dutch Master cigarillos (matching the bottle color) for just a few moments before the rest of the bouquet kicks into gear. There isn't enough tobacco to make this a choice for a tobacco scent lover, but anyone that likes the fruity-sweet understated vibe of this era's unique fragrance trends will find little fault in Versace Man for trying to augment it with a heavier base, which in modern times gives it decent transgender and unisex flexibility. Availability of this in stores evaporated after Versace Pour Homme (2008) created a new male flagship line to replace Versace Man; while Eau Fraichê lived on as if this never existed. No official discontinuation news exists for this, but Versace Man just fell through the cracks, making it inadvertently cult in status once it became obvious due to stock depletion that it was gone. A vexing acquired taste of a scent, but far more original than most male-marketed 21st-century Versace output, Versace Man is the furthest from being blind-buy worthy, and then only explored by people interested in the dark horses of the oft-maligned 2000's. Thumbs up

Soft and sweet tobacco scent that has a subtle grape note that matches the color of the bottle.

This is one of those very versatile scents that doesn't excel or stand out in any one thing but is good for many occasions.

I definitely get the sweet, florally tobacco that reminds me of Dreamer throughout, but I also noticed the citrusy bergamot in the opening. The drydown is more an emphasis on the creamy amber notes.

Projection is okay for the first hour but then it softens to a close-quarters scent only.

Used to love this one, got in europe hard to find in the purple one in united states. The soft tobbaco smell makes this one great for evening wear. Love it.

I am firmly convinced that if a niche brand came up with this very fragrance in the past season, probably many would be raving about it. “Smooth tobacco gem”, “luxury modern Oriental”, “classy underwear killer” and so on, they'd say. I would even dare to think Creed could easily make something like this and sell it for ten times the price, but I'm too young and handsome to burn in hell yet. Anyway I say all of this because Versace Man has them quite all: it's elegantly sweet, it's really easy to like, it smells quite above most of other Versace offerings quality-wise (it didn't take much), and it's mild and light enough to keep it classy. So either this fragrance is quite underrated, or perfumery has gone down to the point any average-quality designer from a dozen years ago smells like today's finest. Most probably it's the first for me. Either way, Versace Man is really nice – and only that matters. I think it anticipates many “smooth and sweet-smoky metrosexual” scents based on similar notes, and to some extent, also floral-musky sweet fragrances with a shade of dusty dark like Dior Homme (I am not saying they smell similar; just that it anticipates some of Dior's key features and the overall concept). It bears quite some similarities with Versace Dreamer as well, but it smells decidedly more modern and with some significant differences, notably more warm, spicy-musky powderiness and a typical “sweet-plushy nondescript woodiness” which so many scents from the 2000s had.

If you're wondering how it smells, well: saffron and tobacco are quite the main notes here, surrounded by a warm, a bit synthetic but cozy enough accord of amber, clean musk, mild peppery spices and a tad of citrus-infused light flowers. So basically a warm, smooth, aromatic and slightly “dusty” blend with a fresher-gentler feminine touch, but also a whole “classy, kind of dark masculine sense of confidence” due to amber, tobacco and spices. It also quite linear though, evolving towards a disgracefully short-lived ambery-woody-musk drydown still with nuances of saffron and spices, mostly cardamom. As for tobacco and saffron, which dominate the first couple of hour or so, I surely don't get any difference with several more expensive or praised saffron or tobacco scents from today – from L'Artisan Parfumeur to Santa Maria Novella Tabacco.

Overall this fragrance is really decent to pretty much all extents, and I'd mildly recommend it; there's nothing astonishingly outstanding and it surely smells a bit artificial, but has definitely some nice “deep moments”, it is surely classy and versatile, it's decidedly discreet so it can perform fine in any situation, and it doesn't smell (overly) cheap or derivative – on the contrary, as I said, I personally see it as a neglected precursor of more recent trends. The longevity is tragic though.

6,5-7/10

Heady. A nice deep purple swirl of tobacco and spicy saffron keep this on the darker, sensual side. A powdery cloud texture projects with more than ample strength and gives way to a well composed amber note in the base. The amber is superior in quality to others found in typical designer scents. Spicy florals accent the edges and you're left with a solid option for fall and winter evenings. Somewhat opulent, more oriental than woody, and probably best when worn a little dressed up, Versace Man is the perfect compliment to Versace Pour Homme and a very good value for its price. I tend to shy away from opulent orientals, but the spiciness and comforting amber in the latter stages makes this one very appealing to me. Projection and longevity are superb.

I love Pour Homme, and this is nearly as good. THe blend of citrus and tobacco is wonderful It has a sweet note too...probably the cardamom. Reminds me a tiny bit like YSL L'Homme Libre.