Emporio Armani Stronger With You Parfum

Updated review, a couple months later: Today, I tried two of the other Stronger With You flankers: Absolutely and Intensely. I believe the Parfum takes the cake for the best of the DNA, so I guess I got lucky when I blind bought this for Christmas. It's possible I like Intensely more or just as much, but the two are so similar that it's not really worth exploring. I've worn this fragrance (the Parfum) dozens of times at this point, and while I still love it, I've tried so many new fragrances since first trying it that my perspective has changed. This is smoky, sweet but somehow dry at the same time, complex, and quite incredible, especially for an affordable designer fragrance. The chestnut, amber, vanilla, sage/lavender, the pepper in the opening, the sweetness of the dry down, it all makes for a wonderful fragrance. But there's something about it that has caused me to wear it less and less. It may be a bitterness, or one note that doesn't fully agree with my nose, but when the time comes for me to pick a fragrance to wear in the morning, I rarely find myself reaching for this anymore... Overall, my 9.5/10 has dropped to a 7.5-8/10. Original review: On paper, this is a fragrance that might be hit or miss for me - I like sweet, deep fragrances, but I'm not always a fan of peppery notes or lavender. I blind bought this for Christmas, not realizing that this could be a bit of a risk for me, at a time when I didn't take fragrances very seriously and just wanted something new. Luckily, I loved SWY Parfum immediately. This fragrance is blended perfectly, so well that the pepper and lavender notes add nuance and balance to the sweetness of this fragrance, instead of detracting from the smell. This fragrance is warm, strong, and perfect as a daily winter fragrance. It's also versatile enough that I'm expecting to be able to wear a light layer of this on some spring/summer days. It opens with a spicy, peppery, slightly sweet and warm punch, drying down to a syrupy, roasted-chestnut and vanilla scent with a hint of lavender, and eventually a touch of leather. It is also a little boozy. I haven't tried anything else from the Stronger With You line, but this fragrance is so good that I can't imagine improving upon the DNA, so I might blind buy a different flanker just out of pure curiosity, even if it would be redundant. Overall, with the powerful sillage and projection, fantastic longevity, fair price, and most importantly the wonderful smell of this fragrance, it is near-perfect: I give this a 9.5/10.

I kinda ignored the SWY line for years because of it’s reputation as a very youthful and playful scent popular amoungst teenagers. They mostly wear Intensley and I have smelled that sickly sweet scent in public many times before. As a 27 year old I didn’t wanna keep that same vibe going into my 30’s so I kinda wrote off the whole lineup. One recently day I was at the mall and I decided to smell this, the parfum and I’m very glad I did. It takes the skeleton/DNA of Intensley but massively tones down the sweetness and adds some drier notes to balance it. I ordered a 100ml as soon as I got home, the bottle presentation is very nice. When you first spray you get a very smooth opening of pink pepper and muted citrus, the roasted glazed chestnut, vanilla and lavender are apparent immediately and create a very pleasant, nutty and sweet but not exactly gormond backbone. After a few minutes a slightly smokey leather comes into play and adds an entirely new dimension to the DNA, giving it a badboy, sexual, attractive feel rather than a playful one like Intensley. Cinnamon adds a bit more spice throughout the drydown and sage is giving it a very slightly herbal edge. The smell is just great, it is super inviting and comforting yet mysterious and masculine. This is the SWY DNA refined and perfected, with an acceptable amount of sweetness for men over 30. The preformance is great and matches the quality of the scent, with 3-5 sprays you get 8-12 hours easily with skin scent for 24. Projection is 3ft for 4-6 hours, a very good projector for a parfum. I am totally satisfied in this department. If you are a little older, like darker scents or just want the best SWY I would recommend this one above all the others. I give it a 9.5/10 a near perfect scent for evenings, fall and winter (with low sprays you can pull off a cool spring day). I am so glad I gave it a shot at the mall, this reminds me to always go out of my comfort zone and I may find gold like this fragrance.

Warm, fairly sweet opening. Doesn’t quite match my memory of the original, but I guess that’s the whole idea with a flanker. The original is one of my favorite fragrances, so Stronger With You Parfum has a lot to live up to in order to please me. It smells a bit more grown-up, more mature than the original as I remember it. It’s also a little less sweet. It’s almost as if there’s something bitter at the core, and the whole fragrance has a dark, woody-peppery veil draped over it – in a positive way. Quite quickly it settles on the scent strip and lands in that slightly darker, more bitter shade compared to Stronger With You original. Otherwise, it’s very clear that this is the Stronger With You DNA we’re dealing with. Perfect for hot, intimate date nights during dark, cozy autumn and winter evenings. More versatile than other dark “cuddle scents” since it doesn’t bring Christmas to mind (like Khamrah and many others do). Test on my husband: the first test was in the middle of the hottest summer day. It smelled somehow out of place. And almost as if it was missing salt(!) You know that experience when you taste a wonderfully spiced sauce, but realize you didn’t use enough salt, so the flavors don’t quite shine. Exactly that, but the olfactory version. The second test took place on a dark evening now at the end of August, when it had already turned chilly where we live. Now the fragrance fit perfectly and it worked very well on my husband. Like a grown-up version of Stronger With You, simply put. But we both smell leather! HOW can there not be a leather note listed for this?! The fragrance started off very close to the skin, but after about half an hour it had settled and transitioned from leather to a spicy vanilla with better projection. Not a syrupy-sweet vanilla, but a safe, sophisticated and masculine vanilla.

Strong with You Parfum was a very surprising fragrance; it is an extremely mature and reserved. It’s a dark warm spicy opening with a strong vanilla and nutty background notes. As it dries down it keeps a very similar profile but a pleasent floral hint rises to the surface and the vanilla note lightens. The spice notes are extremely plesent as well, I really appreciate the lightness of the cinnamon in particular. The performance on Stronger with You Parfum is great but just slightly shy of incredible. On the longevity side I got right around 8 hours on my skin, maybe 8.5 at max. Interestingly Strong with You Parfum is sticking to my clothes incredibly well, lasting well over 24 hours so far but without much projection. A 7/10 for longevity. The projection on Stronger with you Parfum is very liner, decreasing from initial application to the end of its life. Starting off with immensely strong projection in the room I applied it but tapering down over the first how to projection a couple feet around me, just slightly inside my arms length. From there it slowly faded down to a skin scent by hour 7 and was gone between hour 8 & 8.5. A 9/10 for projection. Strong with You Parfum is incredible, it’s a very mature but not overpowering spicy dark nutty vanilla fragrance without a ton of sweetness. It feels like a very pleasent evolution of the sweet spicy vanilla fragrances. It’s a 9/10 overall for me and one I would definitely wear again, either in the winter or at night. It makes me very excited for the rest of the Stronger with You line.

Grabbed this up today. Have sniffed testers of a bunch of different versions of this, but this one is the first one that really stuck out to me. I was torn between Absolutely and this, but Absolutely reminded me a bit too much of Bad Boy Extreme, which would make the purchase, and my bottle of BBE feel redundant, so I went with this one. I also picked it up at retail for $135, compared to Jomashop at $120 + Shipping and then waiting literally a week to two weeks for shipping (this has been par for them lately), I didn't mind the extra 15 bucks. This was a very addictive and pleasant smell while sniffing it in store on a strip, getting the bottle home and sampling it here, it feels almost like a niche version of the SWY DNA. The opening has a little of that kind of boozy thing going on, with a huge peppery spicy blast that shines pretty bright, I also detect a distinct sweet leathery tobacco feel that only seems to shine more and more as it dries more. It gets more nutty and the sweetness is rather tame compared to others in the line. Lavender is definitely present along with a beautiful vanilla. Performance is what seems to be the most worth it for the price, pretty beastly all in all. I can't really give an adequate review of the performance as I won't really get to wear this until it gets a little cooler in the next couple of months, but I venture to guess this will be pretty powerful. Will likely re-review or edit this review after really getting to wear this.