When I was just beginning my life as an adult one of the fragrances on my dresser was Azzaro pour Homme. It was a creature of its time; a powerhouse fougere. Even when I smell it today I want to unconsciously unbutton my shirt a few extra buttons and go looking for my gold chains. Even though it is out of style it is one of the great fougeres ever. I was talking with one of the reps from Clarins and they sent me bottles of the four new men’s releases for 2016. One was a reworking of Azzaro pour Homme by perfumers Olivier Pescheux and Quentin Bisch. They went too far in stripping down the original to appeal to modern tastes really leaving only grapefruit, lavender, and cedar behind. Solarissimo Levanzo was a slightly more complex fougere with a bit more fruit and basil present. Chrome Summer 2016 is a summer flanker of the original Chrome which does exactly what it needs to do. What left me unsatisfied with those three was the need to use very few notes keeping everything light and clean. When I picked up the last one, Wanted, It turns out perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin also felt like today’s fragrance consumer could take a little more oomph in their perfume.
Wanted has the typical press jibber jabber using words like “hedonist”, “rebellious”, “charismatic”; “desired by women, envied by men”. It is all packaged in a truly tragic bottle which evokes the spinning bullet chamber of a revolver. Despite all of this I found Wanted to be a pretty solid mass-market fragrance with some atypical choices than its compatriots on the department store counter.
Fabrice Pellegrin
There must have been a special on citrus raw materials because all four of the Azzaro perfumes opened with that. Wanted employs a solar lemon full of energy to start things off. One of my favorite parts of Azzaro pour Homme is the basil, cardamom, and fennel combination which elaborates on the lavender in that fragrance. In Wanted M. Pellegrin uses an equally interesting trio of cardamom, ginger, and cade. The cardamom is the most prominent note. The ginger provides that sort of zestiness it seems to be prized for. The really interesting choice here is the cade which provides a curl of smoke interspersed with the cool spices. When I wore Wanted just as the cardamom and ginger were about to lose my attention the cade appeared and brought it right back. The base is a very typical vetiver sweetened with a modicum of tonka.
Wanted has 8-10 hour longevity and average sillage.
Of the four new Azzaro releases I tried, Wanted is the direction I would like to see the brand trend more towards. The use of an interesting raw material for a mass-market release can be challenging if consumers find it too odd. If there was a theme among the four new Azzaros it was that they are seemingly trying to evolve from their powerhouse beginnings. Wanted succeeded for me because it nodded a bit more obviously to that past.
Disclosure: This review was based on a bottle provided by Clarins.
–Mark Behnke
