- Nov 5, 2009
My somewhat-difficult to substantiate impression is that Luca Turin and others feel that Allure as a brand in general is an exercise in pointless marketing mediocrity, and the fragrances are just not that good, and not very sophisticated. But the notion that Allure Homme should only get 1 star while Cool Water gets 5 is beyond absurd. First of all, there's not much about Cool Water that actually works as a cologne, beyond just smelling "fresh" and nice. I don't feel that I need cologne to smell fresh or nice - I have soap for that. Cologne should be moving and carefully chosen. I think of Cool Water as a product for people who don't like, understand, or have much patience for fragrance, but feel compelled for whatever reason to wear something anyway. It's an inoffensive, nondescript, rather linear (in a bad way) wallflower of a scent. I'm not actually saying that there's anything wrong with Cool Water as it stands on its own - without comparing it to anything else, if I happened across Cool Water in a land without perfume, and did not know much about what my nose was actually capable of smelling, I'd think this tepid Davidoff juice was just fine.
But in the real world, and really comparing it to other things . . . if you want to talk about fresh lavender, why not Pour un Homme de Caron? So there goes the need for the easy to miss synthetic lavender on top of Cool Water. If you want wet oakmoss, why not Grey Flannel, and say goodbye to the joke of oakmoss that is supposedly lurking around in the midst of Cool Water? If you want more lavender, geranium, and sandalwood, why not the brilliant Azzaro pour Homme? These notes, though present in Cool Water, are present only in the sense that if you were taking their attendance in a classroom, you'd find them all asleep at their desks. And let's not even get into the fact that somewhere along the way, probably sometime in the last ten years, Cool Water has been reformulated into something even cheaper than what it was originally. Now there's this impossible cardboard note that suggests they've found some kind of poor substitute for many sadly-dismissed real things . . .
This breeds the argument that the great thing about Cool Water is that, love it or hate it, it manages to take all of the elements described above and combine them into something that smells clean and fresh and very contemporary. But does it really?
Then there's Allure Homme. It is one of the least pretentious fragrances I've encountered, in that it does not claim to do anything more than what it should - smell good and a bit expensive. There's nothing about its note structure that lacks interest: there are surprisingly spare citrus accords on top, with a smooth pepper heart (as smooth as pepper gets anyway) and a sandalwood and cedar base, sweetened by a generous dose of tonka and glowing labdanum, for an ethical if not slightly injudicious second helping of that mellow ambergris effect I've come to appreciate in many of the better fragrances out there. The gold-gilt but otherwise modest brown box and simple square bottle round out Allure Homme as something that is classy, modest, and beautiful.
Is Allure a perfect scent? Absolutely not - there are some problems with it. Everything in this fragrance is blended into what I think of as an "olfactory mush". It's certainly not an aquatic, and there's no calone in there, but it's very gooey and abstract. In other words, aside from the initial light citrus and the almost nose-stinging pepper middle, Allure becomes broadly warm and sweet without really getting into any particular territory and staking its flag. Yet I think there's a misconception out there that Allure Homme is supposed to be this rich, complex fragrance because it's Chanel. Yeah, it's Chanel, but Chanel, like any other house out there, is allowed to strip back its ambitions and sell something that's just a simple, sweetened chypre. Some would argue that they're not allowed to do this, but Americans like things that get to the point, and even a soft luxury can do that easily enough. When you think about how horrendous it could be, you realize Allure Homme isn't really anywhere close to being all that bad. To be fair I'll admit that that's not the way to measure the quality of a fragrance. However, if you try to find something offensive in it, in that it just smells hastily made and cheap, you'll come up short. Where's that cardboard that went into Cool Water? Nowhere to be found. Is there something here that's offensive? Not a single thing, unless you're especially sensitive to diffused Jamaican pepper (which is really a dried fruit - the allspice of Pimenta dioica, a plant that is only germinated through bird droppings). This little allspice trivia alone makes Allure Homme a product that, at least in conceptual terms, is far more interesting that anything about Cool Water, aside from the latter's astounding commercial success as a re-invigoration of the "fresh" fougere.
I can't speak for any of the other Allures, as I've only smelled and used Allure Homme. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Turin's rating of 1 star for this fragrance should be seriously reconsidered, and with due respect to Mr. Turin, so should his 5 stars for Cool Water.
But in the real world, and really comparing it to other things . . . if you want to talk about fresh lavender, why not Pour un Homme de Caron? So there goes the need for the easy to miss synthetic lavender on top of Cool Water. If you want wet oakmoss, why not Grey Flannel, and say goodbye to the joke of oakmoss that is supposedly lurking around in the midst of Cool Water? If you want more lavender, geranium, and sandalwood, why not the brilliant Azzaro pour Homme? These notes, though present in Cool Water, are present only in the sense that if you were taking their attendance in a classroom, you'd find them all asleep at their desks. And let's not even get into the fact that somewhere along the way, probably sometime in the last ten years, Cool Water has been reformulated into something even cheaper than what it was originally. Now there's this impossible cardboard note that suggests they've found some kind of poor substitute for many sadly-dismissed real things . . .
This breeds the argument that the great thing about Cool Water is that, love it or hate it, it manages to take all of the elements described above and combine them into something that smells clean and fresh and very contemporary. But does it really?
Then there's Allure Homme. It is one of the least pretentious fragrances I've encountered, in that it does not claim to do anything more than what it should - smell good and a bit expensive. There's nothing about its note structure that lacks interest: there are surprisingly spare citrus accords on top, with a smooth pepper heart (as smooth as pepper gets anyway) and a sandalwood and cedar base, sweetened by a generous dose of tonka and glowing labdanum, for an ethical if not slightly injudicious second helping of that mellow ambergris effect I've come to appreciate in many of the better fragrances out there. The gold-gilt but otherwise modest brown box and simple square bottle round out Allure Homme as something that is classy, modest, and beautiful.
Is Allure a perfect scent? Absolutely not - there are some problems with it. Everything in this fragrance is blended into what I think of as an "olfactory mush". It's certainly not an aquatic, and there's no calone in there, but it's very gooey and abstract. In other words, aside from the initial light citrus and the almost nose-stinging pepper middle, Allure becomes broadly warm and sweet without really getting into any particular territory and staking its flag. Yet I think there's a misconception out there that Allure Homme is supposed to be this rich, complex fragrance because it's Chanel. Yeah, it's Chanel, but Chanel, like any other house out there, is allowed to strip back its ambitions and sell something that's just a simple, sweetened chypre. Some would argue that they're not allowed to do this, but Americans like things that get to the point, and even a soft luxury can do that easily enough. When you think about how horrendous it could be, you realize Allure Homme isn't really anywhere close to being all that bad. To be fair I'll admit that that's not the way to measure the quality of a fragrance. However, if you try to find something offensive in it, in that it just smells hastily made and cheap, you'll come up short. Where's that cardboard that went into Cool Water? Nowhere to be found. Is there something here that's offensive? Not a single thing, unless you're especially sensitive to diffused Jamaican pepper (which is really a dried fruit - the allspice of Pimenta dioica, a plant that is only germinated through bird droppings). This little allspice trivia alone makes Allure Homme a product that, at least in conceptual terms, is far more interesting that anything about Cool Water, aside from the latter's astounding commercial success as a re-invigoration of the "fresh" fougere.
I can't speak for any of the other Allures, as I've only smelled and used Allure Homme. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Turin's rating of 1 star for this fragrance should be seriously reconsidered, and with due respect to Mr. Turin, so should his 5 stars for Cool Water.
)), which are all related and more or less personal preferences.
