Cuba Grey

Cuba Grey is the other lavender fragrance that I used a lot this winter. And soon, I will be moving it to a home hidden from my greedy pulls. It is much like a couple of slices of cantaloupe. I would not say that I wore Cuba Grey but rather that it kind of filled in gaps for me. I am not sure that I even wore it outside of the house or that if I did that I did so intentionally. I am following my review of Dreamer with that of Grey. If Dreamer is a big bold pretentious scent with a Medusa head in front. Grey has a cheesy sort of cigar shaped bottle with a silver wrapper saddling its girth. The Medusa was an epic mythical story where you had a renowned and beautiful virgin serving in the Temple of Athena and an Angry Sea God came out of the sea and raped her. Athena turned her servants hair into snakes and any person that saw the snakes would lose their life and be turned into stone; and the end result of the Medusian life became Monstrous. Perseus adventured from place to place to get collect special items to kill the Gorgon and when he did it turned out that she was pregnant from Poseidon with the white winged Pegasus and it was born when she died. Later on Zeus was said to turn the horse into a constellation and the Dreamer box has stars on it. Cuba Grey is an older horse that you can still ride for awhile with a round brown bottle that hugs some silver and pretends to be grey. Now if Dreamer comes with a lot of pretension and you have to wait for the story to unfold into what is actually a good ending and dry down. Cuba Grey is more of a story of friendly trail ride with an old friend that is a bit long in the tooth. Sometimes, you dont even want a winged horse that will fly you to the stars. Grey seems a very odd name for a fragrance that features a note associated with a purple color. It is almost as if even the box wants to hide and gentle what you get. With Grey you get a softer lavender that like with many Cuba fragrances goes straight to the heart of the matter. The vetiver and to a lesser extend the woods gentle the lavender and it is far less loud and ready to buck you off and hand you a mouth of dirt. I have worn a few of budget lavender top note fragrances this past year and I like Grey the best and find it the only one worthy of a review. Im sure there are many others that I have not tried yet. Performance is 4 hours if you want it. I find this mildly disappointing even for a budget scent. You have lavender here with vetiver and uninterested woods and from the 5 minute mark when you get past the alcohol opening it immediately starts sloping off almost as if it starts with its dry down. I have sprayed it on my clothes and been able to smell it in the morning. But it is a far less rambunctious lavender and that is reflected in its short performance and sillage. I will admit to using extra sprays when I pop the cap. My use of Cuba grey this season has been extremely heavy. I sometimes wear it to bed at night and it relaxes me when I do. And sometimes, I put it on first thing in the morning and it energizes me when I wake. I have used it as a fill in scent to bridge me over from one scent to another when one fragrance ended too soon. And I have used it as a pick me up scent when I wanted a nap but needed to keep my eyes alert. I would not even define my usage as wears but rather as plug ins. This is actually a fragrance and it should be regarded as such rather than a body mist or sniffing a bar of Irish Spring or bottle of essential oil as a pick me up. But I use it a fair bit to fill in gaps when other fragrances die too soon. I have easily used close to half of a big 3.4 ounce bottle of Cuba Grey from a January purchase and these Cuba fragrances are often bought to get me to a free shipping level. I do not own a backup bottle of Cuba Grey and despite my like of it, I do not plan on purchasing another. I will probably move along to a different budget lavender scent and I have been eyeballing the 4711 fragrance. Overall, I am going to grade this one at 71. I am giving it one point above Dreamer. It gets maximum value for being a budget scent and it is a scent that I use and spray with heavy frequency. Performance is poor. But I like the put it on clap your hands and done vibe. Fragrances are meant to be worn and not merely admired on a shelf and this one gets sprayed on skin. Honestly, Lavender might be too big for me and too much for me to handle. With Dreamer, you have to work through a lot of drama to get to the dry down and the Pegasus to the sky. Cuba Grey lets me put it on and the loud opening immediately starts to settle down and the vetiver comes through nicely and then the woods and you realize the sky is beautiful and your horse has stopped to munch a bit on a patch of grass. I have been comparing these big bold scents to breakfast options and if Dreamer is steak and eggs and a huge bloated feeling then Cuba Grey is a small meal with some fruit that tides you over a bit but leaves some room for lunch. I hate to admit that I cannot really digest lavender well but its true and there are probably a lot of fragrance fans that can handle a large meal better than me. Even the bottle of Cuba Grey seems to want to distract you from subconscious realization of this being a loud lavender. Its grey with a bit of smoke, silver accents, and even the spokes model has his face half in shadows as if he has better things to think about and do than stare at you with snakes on its head. I guess that others have mentioned comparisons and with these Cuba fragrances you always get them. It is nothing like Animale. I do not have enough recent personal experience with Eternity to make any kind of a comment. I could mention other cheapies but I dont want to. I do not think Cuba Grey even wants to be fancy or try to imitate or find forms of flattery. It seems off in its own world munching some hay and could care less what the other equine are doing. To me this is a simple fragrance. You get lavender, the vetiver comes along to calm it down and make it more polite than others in the same race, and then the woods give it a hint of smoky edge that I like much better than the tobacco in Dreamer. Dreamer is a far better overall fragrance than Cuba Grey but I honestly like Cuba Grey as a choice to ride and I can put it on and enjoy it and sort of watch the lavender calm down quickly. With Dreamer I have to wait for it to find the beauty of its dry down base. Eventually Dreamer soars to the heavens; but Cuba Grey is the horse that gives you a nice quick ramble here on earth. I am not a lavender guy. And maybe I never will be. And lavender is in so very many fragrances. But I like it best as an accent rather than the star. I am not the best conductor when it comes to this note on my skin. Still, lavender can be relaxing when you want it to be and energizing when you want it to be and it is a player in the fields of fragrance. And sometimes a stable holds a horse that was an old friend and needs that rare escape from its stall. To me Grey wins the race slowly but I am a Dirt Dog and I bark at snakes. I buy fragrances to wear rather than to show effort of the impress and work to admire; and Cuba Grey is a lot smoother ride. Life can get hectic and lavender gives you a bit of fight amidst the fervid swirl. I probably will never sit a Pegasus but I have swung my legs over the back of a horse. Grey seems to tip its hat to that 17% realm of life to which all photographers meter. It is one of those rare lavenders that I like and it is an elegant black and white metered 17% grey photo of fields of purple color and perhaps even some elegance of grade of shade. Even as I pop a bit of cantaloupe to knock off the edge of a world full of no time for breakfast hurries as I run to the door.

Pros: - Nice soft lavender and vetyver notes - Basis and simple formula that somehow smells a bit more complex - Smells almost exactly like CK Eternity minus citrus notes - Very cheap to buy - Plentiful quantity - Light scent that is relatively inoffensive for office wear - Has a nice smokey note to it - Good longevity for the price - All around good scent Cons: - Some may not like the smoke like note - Some may not like the simplicty of the formula Cuba has always impressed me on how close their scents are to big name brand colognes. This is almost exactly like CK Eternity and would be the cheaper alternative to it. However some people may not enjoy the smoke note. I recently ran out of CK Eternity (which worked well for the office) so I threw this in my bag as an alternative. Overall I don't like spending to much time reviewing Cuba colognes as they really are meant to be simple. Its a good scent for the bargain hunter.

Just got this today. I got the small 1.17 Ounce cigar bottle for around $5. A budget scent for sure. I can't say that it reminds me of Eternity like some claim, but it's a fresh, clean scent of that genre and it's cheap enough certainly. It's okay, but I wasn't expecting much, I just wanted to try it because I was placing an order for other things on amazon and just threw this one into the order for the heck of it because it's so cheap. I haven't tested it out for a full day, just sprayed it to sample the scent, but from past experience with the Cuba Paris line, these fragrances don't last very long on me. I get anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of hours at most from their other fragrances. Not sure if I'll actually wear it or not just wanted to give it a sniff. If you're a fan of the Cuba line you'll probably like this one also.

I agree with other reviewers here- about the head being similiar to CK Eternity (lavender-herbal)- and there are other, older frags also not unlike it- but the heart adds a surprise, lacking in the others: currant, raspberry, and melon seem quite prominent to me... but somehow these elements all gel together with the warm base to make a nice spring or summer juice- especially for the price! Sillage: soft Longevity: turned trace at 8H (a profile which I happen to prefer in a day frag)

I bought it last night...it smells just like Animale For Men with a tinge of tobacco. Despite limited longevity and sillage, it's a really good fragrance for work and everyday use, and the price is great!!! EDIT: On second thought, it does smell more similar to Calvin Klein Eternity For Men than to Animale For Men; I also catch some whiffs that remind me of Perry Ellis 360° For Men.