I will not hold these words back: I do not like a huge chunk of what is on offer in modern mass-market perfumery. This is reflected clearly in the blog. I do not touch the stuff. The reality is that niche fragrances and the upper-level output of designer fragrances hold the majority of the market today (if you don’t believe me, Michael Edwards will utter near-identical sentiments). Niche is, in fact, mainstream, as niche continues to be the unending future of perfumery (also an Edwards quote).

It makes you wonder how bottom-of-the-barrel stuff continues to be produced into the healthy market.

Fragrances like the newly released Wanted by Azzaro happen to effortlessly capture everything that is to be hated in mass-market perfumery. I suspect masculine-orientated fragrances suffer this to a greater extent than female-orientated works, relying on simply terrible clichés to appeal their audience. Oh, a revolver cylinder, how masc! Let’s just squeeze ourselves into the continuing debate on gun violence, related homicide, and discussions of its prohibition! Vulgarity at its finest.

Photo by Azzaro

Dipping my foot into the mass-market pond of mainstream perfumery was an eye opening experience. There’s an expectation on their end that one is totally infantile in perception: for instance, if everlasting flower and cumin were plotted on a spectrum they would be close to each other, for sure, but it is plainly wrong to assume the consumer cannot recognise these stylistic similarities. Rather, it is unfair to blurt these notes out (as they like to do). I will suggest, coming from both experience and from thinking practically, that analogy is the perfume salesman’s greatest strength … seldom utilised.

And, what the hell is up with the tendency for salespeople to use musk as the immediate accord for when they’re either: stumped, lost of things to say, and/or are asked what the base is? And on that note, why is musk a byword for a sexy scent? Using that as a selling point indicates an absolute void of taste and a skillessness, for sexy is never an appropriate adjective unless it is grappled in the right context.

Describing Eau d’Hermes as sexy is fine, doing so for Aventus comes across as rehearsed and soporific. The difference between the two? A difficult question to answer, as it edges closer to my partially answered philosophical bend. Tension is sexy, and the barnyard against cologne in Eau d’Hermes is stupendous. Subjective, surely, but the closest I can get to qualifying this at this stage.

The scent itself is insipid. It’s pineapple juice with a splash of aromatics and all the tonka bean you’d expect. It lasts forever, too. Yay!

Subjective rating: 1/5

Objective rating: 1/5