Red for Men

I have wanted to try this for a while, but the only store around that has this had no bottles designated as testers (which is ironic because the bottles they have for sale are testers). I had to return a faulty bottle of another fragrance for credit and it just so happened to cost exactly the same price, so after a quid pro quo swap I left the store. As usual I couldn’t wait to get home to try it so I put some on in my car before I turned on the engine. Immediately I was struck with how unusual this is, but in a good way. Red is an appropriate name and colour for this fragrance, it is really ‘hot’. At first the notes were almost disconcerting: there were the rich culinary herbs and the sweetness of citrus but also there was a sweet pungent note, which was familiar, but which I could not quite identify. When I get a new fragrance I often see if I can list the notes before checking the listing on Fragrantica, to see how close I can get. The unidentified note was similar in some way to the sweet smell of mastic resin I have used in oil painting, but it wasn’t exactly the same. I knew I had recently smelled this note, or at least something very much like it. So I checked Fragrantica. The note was artemisia (wormwood). Aha... I had a lot of very direct experience with this note. About two weeks ago my wife sent me an SMS at work alarmed because she had seen a dugite (very poisonous Australian snake) crawl across the path to our door and disappear behind our overgrown wormwood plant. When I got home, it was my job to cut the plant back so that we could easily see underneath it. It was hot work. To be extra careful that I did not get bitten by the snake, I used a long handled spade to chop at the bush, that way my hands could stay a long way from it. That is not a very easy way to cut a plant back and so the smell of crushed powdery Wormwood leaves filled the air. My hay fever played up really bad that night! Never saw the snake. In this fragrance the sweet pungency of the artemisia is modified by the basil. By itself the Artemisia is really aromatic, but in a way good only for keeping moths away. The other herbs add dimension to the herbaceous aspect of the artemisia and the bergamot adds dimension to the sweet aspect. The multi-noted floral middle adds yet another layer of complexity and underpins the initial herbaceous blast. The herbal notes continue to last through the middle of this fragrance’s life. After about two hours it is still potent, though softer as the floral notes take the edge off the waning herbs. None of the base notes particularly stand out, they are a mixed bag, but are predominantly woody (I would call this a woody aromatic fragrance). This lasts over four hours on me. It is no simple fragrance: the floral and herbal notes as well as the woody/mossy base notes mean that this smells very natural and rather than fading very quickly it retains its character through out its evolution. This is a truly wonderful, unmistakably masculine fragrance.

****Update**** So yeah, a couple months later and the perormance has improved. Longevity was good from the start, but imo although it lasted a good 6 to 7 hours on skin, by hour 2 it would become a bit faint and I would need to put my nose close to where Id sprayed so I could smell it. Now 2 months later its more potent and it projects better. Its even smoothed out a bit as the opening was a bit astringent when Id first recieved my bottle. Again, it is truley MIND-BLOWING how freakin" fantastic Giorgio Red smells while selling for PEANUTS!! ---------------------------------------‐-----------‐- Original post What?! How?! Like fr tho!.. How does Giorgio Red STILL smell so freakin fantastic and with solid performance, yet it costs next to NOTHING!! I put off getting Red bc I was worried about performance/reformulation and after watching a few reviews on YouTube of folks saying that it smelled "Horrible" and like a "Creep's cologne" I didn't even want to spend the $16 asking price for it. Now, Id also watched some YouTubers say that it smells terrific and it had decent performance. I also recently acquired Giorgio Beverly Hills for men and even in its current formulation, it BLEW MY SOCKS OFF!😆 so I figured Id give Red a shot, and wWOWw! It does smell FANTASTIC and has really good performance even after just spraying my brand-new, current formulation bottle for the first time (No Maturation). Also YES! It does resemble Drakkar Noir, yet its somehow more complex and lasts much (and I mean MUCH) longer than the current formulation of Drakkar Noir does..I did a side-by-side, 3 spritzes of DN (3 months maturation) on left hand and 3 of Red (brand new) on the right.. The performance difference is VERY OBVIOUS! After only 2 hours the 3 sprays of DN have become a very faint, woody skin-scent while Red is still going strong having transitioned into a slightly powdery, green-aromatic with hints of something slightly animalic.. (Leather??) while being very present! I wish Drakkar Noire/Guy Laroche had taken a page out of Giorgio BH's book when it came to the reformulations man.. such a shame!.. anywhow.. Go grab a bottle of Giorgio Red ESPECIALLY if ya like Aromatic Fougeres in the vein of Drakkar Noire! Honestly, for being under $20.. Its a MUST HAVE-NOOO DOUBT! Ill be back with an update once this BEAST has matured a bit.

Boozy, honeyed, carnation, rich & complex, strong oakmoss, leathery, smooth cedar. This is the vintage Giorgio Red for Men made in USA, batch 5JB016. A sweetness starts developing with slight tingle of Rose, five minutes after application. The geranium starts coming through ever so softly, but consistently. There's a rich spiciness with the geranium, then the leather says peekaboo. This goes back in forth in a tug of war between the leather and geraniums and rose. Slight effervescence to it, slightly; probably the thyme or juniper berries. What then follows is almost a slight hint of 'milk'. Don't know if it's the caraway because I've heard caraway being described as more of a cinnamon type fragrance, but the 'MILK' could be the fainting backend of the carnations. Most beautiful & incredible opening, Man! This was the WAY. My bottle is not beastly because it's old, but it still has that 'magic'. Color is very good. The sprayer is atomized, it doesn't shoot a stream like the new EA versions do. EA Fragrances---Elizabeth Arden, is where fragrances go to die, so I'm told & I've experienced that to be true. What's been done to Red for Men; it was great when Giorgio Beverly Hills owned it. Hayman & Grant must be turning over in their graves if they're there. Closest imho is the drakar essence EDP with a tincture of Aramis Devin with that twangish country leaf of the fall season. Probably 2:1 mixture and you'll get vintage Red for Men. Vintage is the way to go. Comparing to the new EA version; night & day. Get the vintage & enjoy the luxuriousness of it---Smells Rich, feels Rich. 💰

Let me tell you about my Red collection... I have the smallest little remainder of my original vintage bottle, that I misered through the dark years when the scent was out of production. Then when they came out with the reformulation, I snapped up a new 3.4 bottle. And then hoarded away a second one - just in case they scotched it again. Tonight, I found a feller who had a unused vintage 3.4 - I snapped that up. He mentioned he had a second one, and I grabbed that too. Apart from the necessity of now labeling which ones are which, I have about 14 oz. of this stuff squirreled away. So, I guess you could say I like it. Yes - it is "aggressive." It will radiate off you like nobody's business, seemingly forever: The vintage stuff requires some careful taming to wear in public, especially nowadays. And yes - at this point, with several hoidy-toidy bottles under my belt, I guess I can safely say this particular stench qualifies as "dimestore cologne." But if I had to trash either my Creed or my Red... The Red would stick around. Why? Because, in the end, your signature scent isn't really something you can choose. It's something that fits you, a descriptor in scent. It's who you are - not who you want to be. I can smell grassy or citrus-y, or aqueus... but at best they become personas. But Red is me, with the gloves off. So, maybe I'm just a dimestore cowboy.

A definitive late 1980's/early 1990's power scent that sadly takes a beating over its roots alone. Haters aside...this super strong, classy, citrus/oriental/woody/spicy bomb is still just as viable as it was in the cultural and economic climate of its birth, and will likely always be my own signature scent. Cut from the same cloth as CK's Obsession (or, in a newer context, Viktor & Rolf's Spicebomb or Mont Blanc's Legend), and the masculine equivalent of YSL's Opium, the right personality, body chemistry and type will give this utterly worthy scent a fine showcase any day. A shame that the name Giorgio Beverly Hills doesn't have much resonance for younger markets, and that it's often more associated with the trendy 90210 flankers of the early/mid 1990's. This is a beautiful fragrance, particularly for those who lean towards power scents versus fresh-cleans. True, the newer formulation by Elizabeth Arden is noticeably lighter than the original vintage 1990's juice, but the current incarnation still packs a sexy, aromatic wallop, and is especially well donned in cooler, evening semi-formal settings. Easily obtained of late for $20 to $40 in the familiar 100ml bottle. Ignore the hate, forget when it came out, and just surrender. ★★★★ (out of ★★★★).