Author Archives: Lord Jim

Men’s Cologne — Pasha de Cartier by Cartier

Pasha de Cartier is a very interesting, reasonably daring but, at its core, classic and conservative men’s fragrance. Created in 1992 by famed nose Jacques Cavallier, auteur of such varied artistic and commercial successes as Bvlgari’s Aqva Pour Homme, L’Eau d’Issey Pour Homme and a yin-yang duo for Yves Saint Laurent, the archetypal male oriental, Opium Pour Homme, and the throwback wet-shaver fougère, Rive Gauche Pour Homme (among many others), Pasha is variously listed as a Woody or Fresh Aromatic but is more of a typical fougère top grafted onto a somewhat Oriental-style heart and base. That twist is where the interest lies for this yellow juice in the ornate, ribbed, bullet-shaped flaçon. As others more knowledgeable than I have noted, Pasha seems like a kind of bridge between old school barbershop scents and the last gasp of pre-aquatic, spicy masculine semi-but-not-really-powerhouses like the boozy Ungaro pour L’Homme III and the spice-rack-in-a-bottle that is Halston’s Catalyst. Pasha is frequently compared to YSL’s much admired Jazz from 1988 and I can see that — they both share a very classic citric/lavender opening zipped up by spices. But Pasha is altogether sharper, with Cavallier favoring a more focused and pared down offering of mint and mandarin orange to mate to the bracing lavender, as opposed to Jazz’s very busy mix of bergamot, artemisia and basil plus several more culinary spices like coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. The spices in Pasha are also not so well behaved and gentile as they are in Jazz, with caraway seed paired with anise giving a hint of licorice skank playing just below the surface of the brighter top notes for a classic dirty-clean trick of the nose. I also get just a hint of the notorious Kouros in the far dry down for what that’s worth, which may be due to a still-present oakmoss note laying down the bass for those aforementioned high notes. But Pasha is definitely more well behaved and user friendly than the famously difficult and iconoclastic Kouros, so no need to steel yourself for decidedly mixed reactions to that extent when you apply the Cartier.

I also hear Pasha described as sweet an awful lot but I don’t really get that in any honey or fruity sense of the word. In fact, there is a bit of austere dryness to the heart of aromatic rosewood and coriander that seems to suck out any of the juiciness of that initial burst of mandarin orange rather rapidly, leaving just the more bitter and oily peel. By the time this fine eau de toilette evolves into its base of labdanum and a creamy but not cloying sandalwood, buttressed by rather faint hints of patchouli and that fizzy and genuine-smelling oakmoss, you’ve experienced the sort of pleasant olfactory journey of something akin to a good amaro, with pronounced natural citrus fruit and sharp mint melded to slightly funky herbal-spice-woody accords. Pasha also gets compared frequently to Van Cleef & Arpel’s formerly cheap but now discontinued and coveted classic, 1989’s very forest green Tsar, perhaps due to both scents’ perceived “soapiness”. But that seems like more than a stretch to me, as there are no evergreen notes in Pasha whatsoever and it is far more refined and less in-your-face than the rather prickly, pine-juniper/oakmoss bomb that is Tsar. I’d say a more apt analog would be Dunhill’s Edition, which mines a similar hybrid aromatic fougére vein to Pasha in the way they meld traditional bright lavender-citric tops with heavy doses of spiciness, nutmeg and clove in Edition’s case, caraway, anise & coriander in Pasha’s. So, if you like the style of Edition you’ll probably also enjoy Pasha.

Pasha is strong but it’s not loud, screechy or overbearing by any means a la today’s Sauvage EDT, which could actually be considered a descendent if you squint real hard. Somewhat laughably, the famed Leffingwell/H&R Geneology chart of masculine perfumes puts Pasha in the “Fresh Fougére” category in essentially the same column as the key exemplar of that style, Drakkar Noir. Maybe in 1992 Pasha could register as “fresh” compared to, say, bruising chypres like Anteaus, Yatagan and the original, ominous Van Cleef & Arpels Pour Homme. But nobody in 2022 is going to think you smell particularly fresh per se when you’re sporting Pasha. Well-groomed certainly, but Pasha completely eschews any airy aldehydes, florals or really any green, forest notes whatsoever, not even coumarin, which is how you know you’re dealing with an unusual take on a fougère. In fact, it’s a little challenging to contemporary tastes upon the first few wearings, the well blended but diverse notes a bit difficult to get a handle on, not to mention its rather unsmiling and all-business manner. But the quality of the ingredients, the refined nature of its composition and its overall hearkening back to classic masculine tropes in perfumery with a creative twist should win over anyone not solely addicted to ambroxan or vanilla-laden modern “freshies” or ” blue” scents.

There’s none of that contemporary style in Pasha and it definitely skews more old school formal regarding the situations where one might wear it, be that at the office or for a fancier night out at a fine restaurant. But I also feel it works particularly well in cool weather and in outdoor situations due to the bracing nature of its overall citric spiciness and warm, creamy woodiness, both of which frankly make it unsuitable for warm weather. As mentioned above and as with so many iconic men’s fragrances, one definitely can get a “soapy” vibe off of Pasha, which perhaps is where the misguided comparisons to Tsar come into play. But for me, Pasha is the sort of luxury soap found in a fine English hotel; Tsar is a pine resin soap at a lumberjack’s camp. Both have their merits but they’re really nothing alike. Wear time is quite impressive on my skin at a solid eight-plus hours with, like Edition, notable development throughout. Projection is moderate but its subtle sillage is certainly consistently noticeable from about two feet away at its peak and you will get wafts of this from beneath your shirt until the bitter end. At the price point, about $85 on the secondary market for the larger 3.3-ounce bottle, Cartier’s Pasha is not cheap but you get what you pay for quality-wise and it’s pretty much a no brainer for the fan of traditional men’s fougères with just a bit more going on than simply lavender-bergemot-coumarin-oakmoss. While I haven’t tried any of the myriad flankers, I don’t think you can go wrong sampling the original. Pasha is a bit of an acquired taste in today’s world but one that many mature and secure guys will have no problem getting into, even if it should take a little time to do so. The potential rewards from Pasha are essentially too good to pass up giving it a few cool weather wearings to see if you can connect with it.

Men’s Cologne — Explorer by Montblanc

First off, let’s discuss the elephant in the room when it comes to Montblanc’s Explorer, namely that it is widely considered one of the best “clones” of Creed’s genre-defining blockbuster, Aventus. That’s certainly part of the reason I bought it blind: because I wanted something more economical than Aventus. I enjoy that high-end fragrance but seeing as Aventus retails for somewhere north of four hundred bucks for 100 ml and Explorer can be had for around $100 (and often less than that via discounters like Fragrancenet.com) it seemed like a no brainer to give the Montblanc a tumble. But now having tried them both, applying the Aventus clone label to Explorer seems a bit damning with faint praise in a snobby kind of way. Yes, there are certainly similarities between Explorer (created 2019) and Aventus (2010). But there are enough differences for me to say that Explorer is not so much of a clone per se but rather a designer offering that utilizes the same modern and somewhat minimalist style that has essentially redefined masculine perfumery the way the inexpensive Davidoff Cool Water and the pricey Creed Green Irish Tweed did for the “aromatic aquatic”/”fresh fougere” in the late 1980s (although those two really do smell virtually identical).

From the Montblanc Explorer ad campaign

Instead of the rather heady and photorealistic sweet pineapple top notes of Creed’s Aventus, Explorer opens with a more astringent but still slightly sweet bergamot note which is much more fleeting than the lush tropical fruit of the Creed. It is paired with that ubiquitous pink peppercorn note now found in virtually all flagship masculines like Bleu de Chanel and Dunhill’s Icon, putting Explorer firmly in the same easy to reach for, easy to wear category as those two modern classics. They say there’s clary sage at the top, as well, but I don’t really get a lot of that and Explorer will never be mistaken for classic sage-heavy ballbusters like Antaeus and Maxim’s Pour Homme. Rather, Explorer is always a very polite and office friendly offering. Some have even claimed that it’s a more versatile cologne than Aventus, since it lacks the smoky birch tar/incense note that certain batches of that endlessly fetishized juice seem to emphasize more than others (trust me, you don’t want or need to go down that rabbit hole of Aventus batch micro-analysis — that’s its own weirdly obsessive demimonde). Instead Montblanc and the trio of perfumers who apparently worked by committee to develop this Eau de Parfum opt for a very pleasing vetiver in the heart to pair with the rather seductively salty ambroxan/Ambrofix/ambergris note that also makes Aventus such a joy to wear and such a consistent compliment getter. In some ways, I actually prefer the vetiver-ambergris pas de deux in Explorer, as it comes across like a real exotic beach experience with both the smell of the ocean and the fizz of Haitian vetiver — the coming together of the sea and the land — complimenting each other marvelously. So kudos to the creative team at Montblanc for pairing these two classic notes and blending them so well.

Where Explorer is decidedly inferior to Aventus is in terms of performance. While it gets knocked a lot for smelling “synthetic,” this is a facile criticism to make because Explorer proudly touts the use of artificial scent molecules like Ambrofix and Akigalwood. In fact, Explorer smells just as “natural” as the Creed icon and is never screechy or loud in the vein of another ambroxan-laden poster boy, Dior’s polarizing Sauvage. But frankly Explorer could use a bit more of Sauvage’s swagger because, while it is altogether classier and easier to wear, this “eau de parfum” concentration struggles to perform like even a decent eau de toilette. It could be the way it wears on my skin or perhaps I become anosmic to its scent molecules but I get only about four hours of noticeable wear time and the latter half of that is pretty much entirely as a skin scent. The promised patchouli-Akigalwood base sadly never really materializes, at least from the brand new bottle I have, making this purported “woody aromatic” actually fit the mode of an aquatic aromatic instead with a slightly soapy a very faint finish. I don’t think it is peculiar to me, though, as I can’t really smell it in on my clothes the following day when my nose has been refreshed, a test nearly all colognes that I’ve owned usually pass with flying colors.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Explorer. I think it’s not so clone-like that if you already have Aventus you would never need or want the Montblanc, especially if you’re particularly fond of this modern style of men’s scent but don’t feel like burning through the high end Creed quite so rapidly. But Aventus thrashes Explorer in terms of longevity and sillage, as do such other modern pillars of perfumery like the aforementioned Bleu de Chanel and Terre d’ Hermès. And while the price is easy enough to afford a backup bottle since you’re going to need to reapply a couple times of day if you want it to stick around, that’s still disappointing. For something that should be an ideal work or casual scent, good in all weather except the very coldest and a definite compliment getter, the poor performance really lets this juice down in the end. I keep waiting for the aeration of the recently acquired bottle — which is a really beautiful flaçon, by the way — to bring a little more punch and power to Explorer, much as time seems to benefit Aventus’s complexity and performance. But I have my doubts. Maybe you’ll have better luck, though, and on just pure wearability and enjoyment of the overall fragrance I still have to highly recommend Explorer to any guy out there looking for a can’t miss crowd pleaser at a fair price. The brief top and heart is so pleasing and frankly addictive you’ll probably forgive Explorer’s rather anticlimactic disappearing act.

Men’s Cologne — Invasion Barbare by MDCI Parfums

I don’t often write outright negative reviews — what’s the point in that there is usually something to enjoy in most offerings out there so why take time to dwell on the negative? But for Invasion Barbare, I’ll make an exception. Because anything both this hyped and this expensive should be exceptionally good and it just isn’t to my nose. I’m not even going to go with the damning with faint praise “it’s solid but nothing special.” I’m saying that I do not like the way Invasion Barbare smells at all. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this reaction places me in the extreme minority of opinions about this highly regarded niche fragrance from the very lux MDCI Parfums. Perhaps swayed by the retail price of $250 per 75ml via Lucky Scent ($375 if you spring for the over-the-top Roman bust flaçon) or grand guru of perfume reviewers Luca Turin’s 5-star rave, people can’t seem to help gushing about this 2006-created “oriental fougère.” But I really don’t like it. For all the talk about the incredible blending of ultra-natural ingredients, IB smells highly synthetic to my nose, as well as unbalanced and flabbily “spicy” until the reasonably pleasant woody dry down. There is a notable lack of greenness in the composition with a lavender that is barely there, subsumed by violet, ginger, cardamom and vanilla notes that provide an almost oppressive warmth and sweetness. I suppose this is what makes Invasion Barbare skew “oriental” but simply put this is not how I like my fougères.

Invasion Barbare starts out with a very heavy violet accord — a note I don’t dislike at all in a many classic men’s scents from Grey Flannel to Morabito’s Or Black — but here it is somewhat flaccid/withered and paired pretty much instantly with ginger, cardamom and a very persistent vanilla, which I admit is a note I usually don’t love and I certainly don’t love it in this. If this parfum-strength juice did actually have more of that promised lavender — or more kick and brightness from the very fleeting grapefruit/bergamot top notes — it might rescue it from the claustrophobic feel I get when wearing it. But the “sharpness,” such as it is, comes from a kind of cedar note buzzing in the background through the dry down, which is pleasant enough on its own, paired with a very realistic but incongruous thyme that just adds to the overall sense of a construction out of balance. It’s also not helped by an utterly generic musk in the base that, paired with the persistent vanilla, really clings to the skin for hours on end for a kind of clean laundry meets woodsy-spiciness plus powder effect. How anyone could perceive these accords as “ultra-natural” and “of the highest quality” is beyond me. Frankly, they smell cheap and artificial and that’s with trying it in winter, undoubtably showing this fragrance in its best light. In warm weather I think it could well be unwearable.

If you want something in this vein but one hundred times better and more distinctive (again, my opinion only) search out an original bottle of vintage Gucci Pour Homme. Yes, the cedar, patchouli and general pencil shavings feel that it shares with Invasion Barbare are dialed up way higher in the lamentably discontinued Gucci PH, perhaps due to a greater concentration of Iso E Super (an ingredient I would bet is also in IB in some quantity). But that is a good thing as it doesn’t allow the ginger that they also share to become so stiflingly prominent and more patchouli would, in fact, have really helped Invasion Barbare to counterbalance its cloying vanilla/musk base notes. At least Guccci Pour Homme has a real masculine personality and doesn’t come across like it was designed by committee out of the most clichéd and synthetic aroma chemicals available after being planned on a white board in some conference room, as well as containing no unisex vanilla. Sure, Gucci Pour Homme may also be nearly as expensive on the secondary market as a brand new bottle of IB but I will take the vintage, out-of-print designer frag over this over-hyped niche offering any day of the week. For a more economical analog you could go with the original Burberry for Men, although in its current formulation it is undoubtedly less refined, more minty and less bold than either the Gucci or the IB, but does share a lot of the same general vibe and can be had for very little money.

So there it is — I don’t like Invasion Barbare. A lot of people do, however, and will praise it to the skies as one of the best fougères in the modern firmament. For me it is neither “fresh” enough or “fougère” (i.e., green) enough to be a pleasant wearing experience, much less deserving of a full bottle purchase at that extremely high price point. Worst of all, it lacks cojones and is altogether generic smelling. Your mileage may vary, of course, so I suggest sampling before you buy, as you probably should with any cologne, especially an expensive one like this. You may well like it a lot, as most reviewers seem to, and find it one of the best, most masculine, most gentlemanly scents out there. For me, it served as a fine motivation to have a vigorous workout so I could justify a second shower on the day to wash it off. So I suppose it wasn’t a total loss after all.

Men’s Cologne — Ungaro pour L’Homme I by Emanuel Ungaro

Ungaro pour L’Homme I was the first of three Emanuel Ungaro masculine fragrances released in successive years between 1991 and 1993. Of the three, only the unapologetically macho and boozy Ungaro III is still in production, which is a pity as I and II have plenty to offer the omnivorous frag-head. That said, it’s not hard to see why the first two Ungaro pour L’Hommes were discontinued rather abruptly shortly after Salvatore Ferragamo acquired the brand from Chanel. This first one is described as an Oriental Fougere, a term that seems somewhat like an oxymoron but I suppose because there is a bit of lavender, bergamot and lemon in the composition that is the justification for this hybrid categorization and it is placed close to the infamous Zino from Davidoff on the definitive H&R Genealogy of Masculine Fragrances chart, which makes sense both conceptually and in terms of their similar styles. Like Zino, Ungaro I is primarily an Oriental scent, though it is thankfully much less musty/heavy than Zino. What you get with Ungaro is a heady rose/pathcouli/oakmoss blend with a hard to pin down musk in a base that mainly features sandalwood with hints of amber, tonka and honey. Perhaps because the bottle I have is likely from the early-to-mid-’90s (though not the first batch since it has the Roman numeral on it to distinguish it from it’s successors) I don’t really get a lot of the bright citrus top notes originally listed, though there is definitely some cool lavender up front. Mainly this is one of the most rose-forward men’s fragrances I’ve ever come across, much more so than another ostensible rose powerhouse, Van Cleef & Arpels Pour Homme. The Ungaro is altogether brighter than the gloomy VC&A Pour Homme with an almost photo-realistic rose accord as opposed to Van Cleef’s impression, which is submerged in massive amounts of oakmoss, spices, woody notes and leather. Sure, the oakmoss is quite prominent in Ungaro I, and since this is a vintage potion I assume it’s the real stuff, but here it seems to be dancing a pas de deux with the rose and not overwhelming it. There is a touch of sage, artemisia and pine giving this juice a forested if not really a green feel and I also get some sort of cedar-like woodiness that doesn’t seem to be in the notes. But these heart notes are fairly fleeting and quickly become submissive to a rather impressive and refined patchouli that emerges to the fore in the dry down alongside a pleasantly creamy but subtle sandalwood and just enough amber and honey to keep Ungaro I from getting overly somber.

Now, as you can probably tell from that description, the original Ungaro pour L’Homme can be a tricky scent for the uninitiated and there is something definitely throwback-gentlemanly about it that will make a younger guy raised on aquatics and sport scents run screaming for the hills at first sniff. This is a man’s eau de toilette and specifically a rather well dressed and even formal man. I wore this on New Year’s Eve and I think those sorts of special occasions are where it shines most brightly. You’d be hard pressed to pull off Ungaro I in jeans and a T-shirt or a casual meet-up for brunch with friends. This is essentially a nocturnal scent and not suitable for the office unless you are the boss and want to make a power statement to strike fear into the hearts of the millennials who work for you. It’s not even doable for your average date night unless you happen to be going to a fancy French restaurant that still has a dress code and a wine list like an encyclopedia. Undoubtedly one of the main reasons for its short time in production was that this first Ungaro pour L’Homme was asking a question that was becoming increasingly irrelevant in the ’90s when it debuted and certainly even less so as we progressed into the 2000s and beyond. That would be: What should the well-dressed man wear during some of life’s more formal occasions? There just aren’t enough of these sorts of black tie events in most people’s lives to justify something as over-the-top conservative slash dandified as Ungaro I. I enjoy wearing it but this is no one’s idea of a signature scent — it’s simply not versatile enough for that — and I probably reach for it a mere handful of times in any given year. I’m fairly sure my 3.5 oz bottle will last longer than I will. In fact, it almost feels more 1890s than 1990s and you could easily see Sean Connery’s suave, cigar smoking, ruffle-shirted rogue in The Great Train Robbery wearing this rather majestically anachronistic masculine concoction.

Ungaro pour L’Homme I does smell very, very good and if you have acquired the taste for a dominant rose note in your colognes it’s definitely worth sampling. The problem being, however, that it is discontinued as mentioned and the prices on the secondary market are quite high, like well into the $200s for full size bottles. You can find somewhat pricey decanted mini-samples on eBay from time to time, so that might be the best route to try before you really buy and spend niche money on what was always just a very good quality designer frag. Alternatively, I don’t see the comparison anywhere else but to my nose Ungaro I smells reasonably similar to Guerlain’s Heritage, at least to the latter’s current EDT formulation. For me the two share a similar bright rose note with fizzy oakmoss/patchouli/sandalwood vibes, though there isn’t any of the famed “Guerlainade” vanillin base of Heritage in the Ungaro. Heritage is also somehow more versatile even if still an acquired taste for most modern men and lends itself to casual as well as formal situations once you’ve gotten into a groove with it. But the original Ungaro pour L’Homme is simply too jarringly out of time for that kind of everyday wear. While I don’t find it as gloomy or overly dark as many people seem to and I think comparisons with animalic ball breakers like Salvador Dali Pour Homme and Balenciaga Pour Homme are misguided — de la Renta’s brooding Pour Loui this is definitely not — this eau de toilette performs more like a parfum, projecting quite strongly for the first four hours or so and then settling down to a still potent moderate phase where the patchouli really kicks in until dying down to a pleasant skin scent at around the 8-9 hour mark. I’d say it’s for a relatively mature man who is secure in his own skin, as this one will perplex most men and women under 35, if not 45. It’s definitely masculine and a borderline powerhouse but has a classiness that pulls it back from the brink of loud and uncomfortable. Given the right occasion, Ungaro pour L’Homme I is a rather stunning addition to one’s gentlemanly presentation. It’s just that finding such an occasion and an appreciative audience for this fascinating and rare out-of-print Oriental Fougere can be more of a challenge than actually finding a bottle.

RIP Sir Sean Connery, 1930-2020

As if 2020 wasn’t already a rotten enough year, legendary Scottish actor and screen icon Sean Connery passed away on October 31 at the ripe old age of 90. The New York Times obituary is here.

The iconic incarnation of Bond…James Bond but also so much more.

While it’s only natural that the majority of tributes for this great man focused on his career and character-defining creation of James Bond on the big screen — a role that he will forever be linked with through his singular excellence even though he had not played the part in 37 years — Connery was at best ambivalent about this seminal pop culture cinematic contribution. He worked hard both during and after his time as 007 to establish a screen persona distinct from the debonair and dangerous secret agent. While Bond was undoubtedly his ticket to the big time, as early as 1964 Connery was looking to expand his horizons as an actor with his intriguingly complex role as Mark Rutland in Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964) breaking down a neurotic and sexy Tippi Hedren. Even as his career-defining work as Bond turned him into a 1960s pop culture icon on a level with the Beatles, Connery bristled at the confining nature and potential career cul de sac of such a monolithic character. Indeed, he was right to worry that his entire career would be defined by Bond and he would never be able to be perceived or accepted by the public in any other manner. Famously unhappy during location filming in Japan for 1967’s You Only Live Twice and the suffocating and hysterical adulation of his fans and paparazzi there, Connery shockingly renounced the role and passed on making the next film in the series, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. While 1969’s OHMSS is actually one of the greatest Bond movies in terms of plot, featuring complexities of character that wouldn’t be plumbed again until Timothy Dalton’s brief, unsuccessful tenure in the late ’80s and then the rampaging success of Daniel Craig’s current edgy and penetrating portrayal, and one-off Bond George Lazenby did a perfectly capable job, one still wonders what kind of special performance Connery might have given in that final scene mourning the death of his new bride Tracy (the lovely, late Diana Rigg), a victim of Blofeld’s vengeful drive-by shooting.

Alongside Michael Caine getting carried away with their success in John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King

After Lazenby self-destructed, Saltzman & Broccoli lured Connery back into the EON Bond fold by means of the then-unheard of amount of $1.25 million dollars for the somewhat tacky but enjoyable Vegas romp, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Pocketing his money like any good Scotsman, Connery bid adieu to Bond and the requisite toupee for the remainder of the 1970s, embarking on a career no longer entirely beholden to the super spy. With his receding hairline a near declaration of liberation, Connery built on the grittier realism of Bond-concurrent performances in The Molly Maguires (1970) and especially Sidney Lumet’s excellent The Anderson Tapes (1971), to craft an equally charismatic but much more jaded and cynical character on screen, particularly the latter’s swaggering, unrepentant thief at large in 1970s New York City. Sure, Connery was still bigger than life, as witness his game participation in the bonkers sci-fi of Zardoz (1974) running around in only a red loincloth for most of the picture; the fantastic Kipling-derived adventure of John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975), finding the perfect partner for fortune hunting in Michael Caine but getting fatally carried away as a pretend god; and a very Scottish Berber bedeviling Theodore Roosevelt from afar in The Wind and the Lion (1975). But his finely crafted performances, natural as ever, now revealed men with serious flaws and character defects that made them all the more interesting, most notably delusions of grandeur and a true and sometimes self destructive soft spot for the ladies (unlike Bond’s love ’em and leave ’em ethos).

With the beautiful Audrey Hepburn as aging legends in Richard Lester’s poignant Robin and Marian

Connery embraced his middle age with Robin and Marian (1976), Richard Lester’s touching and elegiac reimagining of a post-Crusades Robin Hood returning to find Maid Marian, played by the wonderful Audrey Hepburn, a devoted nun and Nottingham unacceptably under the thumb of his old foe, the Sheriff, played by the always compelling Robert Shaw. Shaw was that rare match in equalling Connery’s natural machismo and toughness, as he had been back in the From Russia With Love days when he was a homicidal defector trained by the Russians to kill Bond. Sir Sean was back at his lighter, mischievous best in Michael Crichton’s excellent 19th Century heist extravaganza, The Great Train Robbery (1979), wonderfully paired with the always unique and equally roguish Donald Sutherland as two particularly brilliant and stylish thieves. After notable cameos in the star studded but bloated A Bridge Too Far (1977), one of several possible suspects for Poirot to consider in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and the very trippy and enjoyable 1981 Terry Gilliam opus, Time Bandits, where he was perfectly cast as a fatherly Agamemnon, Connery gave another terrific lead performance in the criminally underrated space “western” Outland (1981), laying down the law against long odds Gary Cooper-style, only with a mining station orbiting  Jupiter as the scene of the showdown instead of a dusty frontier town. In 1983 he gave in to the siren song of a return to Bond in the “unauthorized’, non-EON Never Say Never Again, a remake of Thunderball, the rights of which were not controlled by the Fleming estate. While the film and Connery’s return as an aging but still peerless Bond have their undeniable pleasures, not least of the them very worthy opponents in Klaus Maria Brandauer’s flamboyant Largo, a lethal, leather-clad Barbara Carrera as femme fatale Fatima Blush and a delectable Kim Basinger as Domino, it was a strange lateral and some might say spiteful move by Connery. By making a Bond movie in direct competition with not only his old mates Broccoli & Saltzman but also then-current Bond, Roger Moore, it may have satisfied audiences for a double dose of 007 but it did nothing for his reputation as a somewhat irascible star prone to view producers as rip-off artists — certainly with some justification — and to cling to long-held resentments even against those who had helped launch his amazing career.

As a seasoned Irish cop instructing Kevin Costner’s green Eliot Ness on The Chicago Way in The Untouchables

Never Say Never Again was the last time Connery would revisit Bond and not only was he truly done with the legendary character but he embarked on an arguably greater chapter in his career, embracing his age to evolve into a kind of grand old man of Hollywood complete with gravitas and prestige to deliver to any larger than life role. After a fun, swashbucking turn in the silly but enjoyable fantasy of Highlander (1984) — as a Spanish swordsman, no less — Connery found the greatest critical success of his already highly accomplished career as the veteran Irish cop Jim Malone, teaching Kevin Costner’s green Eliot Ness “The Chicago Way” in order to hunt down Al Capone in Brian De Palma’s mega-hit The Untouchables (1987). The role, which the great film critic David Thomson noted culminates with his character “dying a samurai death,” won Connery that year’s supporting actor Oscar, his first and only Academy Award. It also opened up the floodgates of terrific parts to close out the ’80s and provided serious momentum well into the ’90s. He was Indiana Jones’s amusingly cantankerous dad in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), a skillful Soviet submarine commander matching wits with Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan in the smash hit The Hunt for Red October (1990) and a British publisher involved in Cold War intrigue and wooing Michelle Pfeiffer in the smart and intricate film version of Le Carré’s The Russia House (1990). As if that wasn’t enough of a third act, Connery also starred in and was executive producer on 1993’s Rising Sun, schooling Wesley Snipes in the ways of the Yakuza; likewise star and executive producer of the Simpson/Bruckheimer/Michael Bay summer blockbuster extravaganza The Rock (1996), as a long-imprisoned British commando freed to team up with Nicholas Cage to stop a group of rogue soldiers from turning Alcatraz into ground zero for a biological terror attack; and showing a lithe, cat-suited Catherine Zeta-Jones the ropes as a suave veteran thief planning a very high concept — and very high! — skyscraper robbery in Entrapment (1999). Even his last real film role, 2003’s very promising but troubled The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, offered a treat for Connery fans with his resonant portrayal of legendary adventurer Alan Quartermaine in twilight.

Connery’s cunning Soviet sub commander matches wits with Alec Baldwin’s Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October

So Sir Sean Connery’s passing offers us an opportunity not only to mourn the man who defined James Bond for decades of enchanted fans but also an actor of great daring and bravery who was not content to be solely pigeon-holed by Bond and actively worked to slip the potential trap of such a career-making role. That he succeeded so brilliantly is all the more proof that he was a film actor and a true movie star of the highest order, one of the last of that rare breed who was able to dominate cinema for a multi-decade span by the strength of a very fixed but adaptable screen persona. To revisit the Connery Bond films is always a pleasure and a delight of almost childlike enjoyment; to revisit his other great roles is to see the craft and skill of the mature actor whose joy in more complex parts was always evident on screen and therefore contagious to the audience, a multi-generational audience that never seemed to get enough of the great Scotsman. Godspeed, Sir Sean, and thank you for a lifetime of special performances. While we won’t see your like again we will always have your wonderful films and those many magnificent moments on screen to remember you by.

Men’s Cologne — Dunhill for Men (1934) by Alfred Dunhill

Talk about a golden oldie! The original Dunhill for Men dates all the way back to 1934… and yet it wears just as well today. I suppose a classic is a classic and Dunhill for Men has stayed immune to the whims of fashion and fad so that it simply remains a very good smelling gentleman’s fragrance here well into the 21st Century. Very much in the English style, as one would expect, Dunhill is currently found in Eau de Toilette strength and is big on a masculine arrangement of flowers, with lavender, geranium and jasmine being the most prominent of them to my nose, though rose and iris are also listed in the notes. It goes on clean and bright without a lot of pumped up musks or other scratchy elements but with a rather juicy lemon kiss up front. You can tell that Dunhill for Men is still crafted with natural, high quality oils despite being around for a million years. The yellow juice inside its classic squat, clear spiraled glass and heavy, ridged black plastic cap flaçon has a decidedly less synthetic feel than even very good modern colognes like Bleu de Chanel and Armani’s Acqua di Gió Profumo, both of which I like very much. But then Dunhill for Men has zero relationship with today’s aquatics or aquatic/fougère hybrids. Rather, it is focused not just on those very pleasant floral/citrus top notes, which are reminiscent of a scented hot towel at the end of a shave or haircut from a particularly good barber, but also on a supporting lattice featuring subtle base notes of woods, vetiver and slightly creamy sandalwood that anchor and give depth to the composition. With that hit of lemon and a touch of clary sage it actually adds up to a rather pleasant and easy to wear leather fragrance even though it is categorized as a “woody spicy” scent. Yes, there are some vague hints of spice but I think Dunhill kept most of those in reserve for their much more nutmeg-y Edition some 50-years later.

What you realize while wearing the original Dunhill is how it became a touchstone and inspired a whole distinct lineage of men’s colognes further down the road. There is definitely something in the composition of Dunhill for Men that leads directly to the floral powerhouses that crop up and dominate men’s cologne in different eras. Despite the absence of violet, I look at Dunhill as the progenitor of classics like Geoffrey Beene’s Grey Flannel, Dior’s Fahrenheit and Morabito’s Or Black. The flower powered Hemes Equipage also bears a bit of resemblance and you could even make a case for similarities to Eau Sauvage and Monsieur de Givenchy. When you smell these and then get a whiff of Dunhill I think you’ll know what I’m talking about. The Dunhill is altogether more restrained than most of them, however, without the moss & violet overload of Grey Flannel, much less of a petroleum vibe than Fahrenheit and Or Black (though the jasmine does add just a touch of that) and altogether less dandified and sort of borderline unisex than Equipage. It’s definitely more in tune with the everyday wearability and restrained masculinity of Eau Sauvage and Monsieur Givenchy, albeit an even better performer than those two stalwarts.

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Men’s Cologne — Vetiver by Guerlain

In much the same way that Givenchy’s original Gentleman is essentially a pure pachouli fragrance, Gurlain’s masculine classic Vetiver is, as you would expect, headlined by a sharp and spicy-clean vetiver note above all others purported to be in this Eau de Toilette’s deceptively cluttered-looking fragrance pyramid.  Yes, if you try really hard you can pick out a bit of nutmeg and cedar undergirding the construction of this well made and timeless offering from the legendary house of Guerlain. And perhaps there is a hint of classic fougere citrus-herb-wood notes floating in and out of this woody aromatic beauty, as well as a subtle civet that was probably much more in your face when this benchmark men’s cologne was introduced way back in 1961. But in the modern iteration the civet is nothing more than a subtle binding ingredient and Vetiver gives of zero funky vibes from that famed catlike mammal’s often challenging but prized secretions.

No, what you get is green, grassy, slightly smokey vetiver at its finest, a clean scent easily splashed on after a shower and a shave with polite sillage and projection but a strong manly, outdoorsy quality. Guerlain’s Vetiver should probably be in the fragrance arsenal of any stylish man because it is so pleasing and pleasingly versatile. While particularly appropriate in the warmer months where the lack of sweetness and the juice’s overall bracing astringency is welcome, it is also easily worn in cooler temps. And while the sharp and smoky earthy grassiness characteristic of good vetiver are stimulating to the senses, Guerlain’s Vetiver lacks the sometimes unpleasantly strange and pervasive sharpness and amplified woody overkill of other highly regarded modern descendants like Lalique’s murky Encre Noir and Commes des Garçons aggressive Wonderwood that make those two much more difficult to wear on a regular basis (or maybe there is something about their shared cashmeran accord that I just don’t love). Instead Guerlain’s original is highly versatile, good for the office or the weekend. In fact, if you’re only taking one cologne on an out of town trip with you this Vetiver is a great choice. Continue reading →

Men’s Cologne — Monsieur de Givenchy by Givenchy (Original)

This is a review for the original Monsieur de Givenchy, which was in production for about a million years before being reformulated and moved to the Les Mythiques line of classic Givenchy fragrances from years gone by. I don’t have any experience with the new Les Mythiques version, although I do know it is certainly streamlined and tweaked ingredient-wise and complaints about its sillage and longevity are prevalent amongst the cognoscenti. That said, the original Monsieur de Givenchy is not exactly a powerhouse either. Nor was it meant to be.

One of the granddaddies of masculine perfumery, Monsieur de Givenchy was the famed designer’s first offering for men and debuted way back in 1959. Along with Chanel Pour Monsieur (1955 ) and Dior’s Eau Sauvage (1966), Givenchy’s Monsieur could be said to form a perfect triptych of “modern” mid-century aromatic citrus fragrances from which all successors have borrowed and taken inspiration. Interestingly nowadays not quite as highly regarded as those other two icons of masculine perfumery, for my money Monsieur de Givenchy is certainly more wearable today for the average guy than the more senior Pour Monsieur, which has a much heavier powder vibe to go along with its lemon-floral mix. It is also decidedly less sweet than Eau Sauvage, leaning less on fruity citrus than the Dior and more on bracing lemon and lemon verbena for its top notes. Monsieur de Givenchy’s other real signature element is its reliance on a crisp and classy carnation that fills out the heart after the initial eye-opening lemony astringency of the top notes.

There are also the traditional lavender, sandlewood and oakmoss accords very subtly undergirding the base of what is really a very bright and invigorating composition overall. Interestingly, the nose behind this mid-century masterpiece was Francis Fabron who was primarily a woman’s fragrance composer. But Monsieur de Givenchy is unmistakably masculine with its aura of restrained elegance and overall high end barbershop vibe. It’s just about the perfect morning tonic after a shower and a shave and is particularly good in warm weather when heavier colognes become unpleasant to wear. In fact, while labeled an Eau de Toilette, Monsieur de Givenchy is similar to Eau Sauvage in that it essentially performs at a traditional Eau de Cologne strength while maintaining superior natural ingredients and a beautifully structured overall composition. So sillage and projection are moderate and unintimidating while longevity is relatively fleeting at around 4 hours, the last 1 hour as pretty much a skin scent. But then if you are looking for power there’s always Monsieur’s patchouli-soaked bad boy brother Gentleman. It’s notable that Givenchy cleverly played up the concept of a different scent for day and night in their marketing by pairing the two bottles in the ads after Gentleman was introduced in the more ballsy ’70s.

If you’re looking for a sophisticated masculine that pairs well with a crisply ironed cotton shirt at the office or at brunch with friends and family or perhaps a new flame, Monsieur de Givenchy is a classic choice that really hasn’t aged a bit in its long life. It makes a great changeup from most modern masculines, as there isn’t a hint of sweetness or the aquatic and yet it is still “fresh” in the best sense of the word. And since the original is my only experience with it, I’d recommend picking up a vintage bottle on eBay, where they are generally under $80 for a 2 ounce spray and less for a splash. You certainly could try the new Les Mythiques interpretation and at around $40-something for 3.3 ounces from discount retailers like Amazon it’s definitely much less pricey. But I’ll be sticking with the original version for as long as it doesn’t get too crazily expensive on the secondary market. I like Monsieur de Givenchy just the way he always was. Why mess with a classic?

Men’s Cologne — Icon by Alfred Dunhill

Dunhill Icon is definitely more than just a pretty flaçon. Contained within the exceptionally heavy and cool textured steel-jacketed bottle, which resembles one of their vintage Deco or Mid-Century table lighters, is a very fine modern take on the classic fougére.

Described by the house as a “woody-aromatic” what comes across on first sniff is more like a new riff on Dior’s original Eau Sauvage, with a less sweet but still fizzy neroli/bergamot combo exhilarating the senses while a nice black pepper note plays against this enticing semi-fruity opening. The orange-pepper vibe also brings to mind (or nose) Terre d’Hermes, though Icon is no where near as earthy as that influential composition. And the spicy pepper in Icon works just as well as it does in Chanel’s more grapefruit-oriented Bleu, undergirding the composition beautifully to let the citric notes, especially the very orangey neroli, do their thing in pleasantly bright and naturalistic fashion.

Where Dunhill falls short of Bleu de Chanel and my other favorite classy modern crowd pleaser, Acqua di Gio Profumo, is in its lackluster performance. Officially classified as an Eau de Perfum, this moniker can only be referring to the quality of the ingredients and the concentration of natural oils in the juice because it certainly doesn’t project or last like a Parfum. More like an Eau de Cologne or, in fact, like the utterly pleasant but notoriously weak Eau Savage EDT.

While the note pyramid is almost comically overstuffed with wishful thinking ingredients like oakmoss, leather and the ubiquitous note du jour, oud, I get little to none of these. Continue reading →

RIP Burt Reynolds, 1936 – 2018

The death of Burt Reynolds at the age of 82 a few weeks ago has been a real bummer. Burt was one of our heroes here at MFL, so much so that no one could bring themselves to write the tribute. Looks like I drew the short straw…

If you grew up in the 1970s or ’80s Burt Reynolds was about as close to a vicarious favorite uncle as you could get. With his swagger, hairy chest and mustache, not to mention a varying assortment of ever-changing custom toupees, Reynolds dominated the box office through a series of increasingly Dixie-centric action films that featured fast cars, hot & spicy women and real stunts. If the plots were a little less than Mensa-level they were redeemed by Reynolds’ knowingly wry performances, bemusedly observing some of the more ridiculous antics in a self-depricatingly humorous way that rarely failed to connect with his audiences. All Burt had to do was let out one of those high, hyena-like laughs and you knew that he was having as much fun making the movie as you were watching it.

Reynolds had a very long career and was already a known, working actor in the 1960s and at the dawn of the ’70s, with prominent parts on TV in Riverboat and Gunsmoke leading to title roles on the short-lived police dramas Hawk and Dan August. Somewhat burdened by his physical resemblance to Marlon Brando in his early career it took his performance as a macho businessman on a rafting holiday gone horribly wrong in 1972’s Deliverance to sear a distinct screen identity into the national culture and catapult Reynolds to the top of the Hollywood A-list. That role cleverly exploited the limits of the self-styled man of action when faced with uncontrollable circumstances and the shifting nature of the alpha-male within a small group under siege. The film itself, directed by that keen observer of male codes and primitivism, John Boorman, has gone down as one of the all-time classics, if a grim one. As if to undercut the somberness of his career-defining role in Deliverance, Reynolds became equally famous that year for posing semi-nude on a bearskin rug in Cosmopolitan magazine. Although he never failed to mention how much he regretted the publicity stunt even in the last interviews of his life there is no doubt that it gave a major boost his overall popularity if not his standing as a serious actor (and if he regretted it so much why did he also put out a risqué paperback called “Hot Line” that featured him bottomless in a football jersey among other playful beefcake photos?). His Cosmo centerfold in all its hirsute glory became one of the most iconic and subversive images of the ’70s, right up there with Joe Namath posing in pantyhose.

That was always the yin-yang with Burt Reynolds. He was the ultimate crowd pleaser but yearned to be taken seriously, capable of expounding on his personal foibles in unvarnished detail and then prowling around a studio audience of middle-aged ladies like a sex panther. Beginning with White Lightning (1973) and then its sequel Gator (1976), the first film he directed, Reynolds perfected the reliable screen persona of a good old boy out to stick it to the man, one that drew on his southern roots and proved enormously appealing to moviegoers both above but especially below the Mason-Dixon line. This character and formula found its apotheosis in the immensely successful Smokey and the Bandit, which was second only to Star Wars in 1977 box office gross receipts. Smokey and the Bandit brilliantly tweaked the Reynolds man-of-action character with a more comic slapstick approach and fused it with a host of ’70s zeitgeist touchstones like trucker CB culture, contraband Coors beer, Jerry Reed’s killer theme song “Eastbound and Down,” a feisty young Sally Field and Burt’s black and gold T-top Trans Am all while being pursued by a fat, tan and uproariously foul Jackie Gleason. But enjoyable as his redneck gearhead protagonists were, Reynolds most interesting work was often in more challenging and uncategorizable movies, parts more in the Deliverance vein that were propelled by some inner hurt within Burt that he worked so hard to gloss over most of the time.

He was particularly productive with director Robert Aldrich, another keen observer of flawed macho behavior, with the morally ambiguous and very moody L.A. neo-noir Hustle (1975) and even better as the footballer behind bars in The Longest Yard (1974). His Paul “Wrecking” Crewe in Yard is one the best roles Burt ever had, funny, cocky, sensitive and rebellious in all the best ways, outwitting the guards and a corrupt warden by whipping his misfit cons into a cohesive football team and cleverly finessing a seemingly no-win situation. His background as a serious amateur ballplayer was put to good use again in Michael Ritchie’s Semi-Tough (1977) alongside Kris Kristofferson and Jill Clayburgh in a very funny and very ’70s send up of football, its wealthy patrons and the patently ridiculous self-realization craze of the time. Other notable films of this era are Hooper & The Cannonball Run, more antic action frolics helmed by Bandit director and Reynolds’ pal Hal Needham, the ace stuntman & his former housemate; and The End directed by Burt about a man with a terminal prognosis determined to end it all in ineffectively hilarious fashion with the unwanted and homicidally zealous aid of Burt’s frequent sidekick during this era, Dom DeLuise.

Despite the star-studded guilty pleasure success of Cannonball Run, Burt was essentially running both the car chase genre and his grinning good ol’ boy persona into the ground due to a series of weak sequels — Cannonball Run II, Smokey and the Bandit II & III — finally bottoming out with the poorly received Needham-helmed stock car farce Stroker Ace in 1983. He had ridden this particular wave as far as the public wanted it to go and it had broken. He had also tried diversifying his screen persona with relationship comedies like Paternity (1981) and the very good Starting Over (1979). And he also explored relatively humorless tough-as-nails cops in the Clint Eastwood vein in crime thrillers like Sharky’s Machine (1981) and Stick (1985), both of which he also directed, as well as the rather more tepid Heat (1985). But even though those films hold up well now for the most part the reception at the time was decidedly mixed. The public was suffering from Burt Reynolds fatigue.

Worse still for Burt he was injured during the making of the Prohibition period pic, City Heat (1984), in which he co-starred with Eastwood himself on something of a Hollywood macho man action star dream team. His laudible penchant for performing as many of his own stunts as the insurance companies would allow, which earned him tremendous respect from the stunt man community, boomeranged on him when he was accidentally hit in the face with a non-prop chair, shattering his jaw. His recuperation would see him drop a scary amount of weight, leading to ugly rumors, and a debilitating dependance on sleeping & pain pills, which unfortunately would recur later in life. But he came back strong on the small screen with an appealing homage to small-town life, Evening Shade (1990-94), which won Burt an Emmy. Better yet was his auteur director of smut Jack Horner, adult entertainment impresario and surrogate father figure to a group of misfits in the porn industry, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic Boogie Nights (1997). It was perhaps his best acting since the early to mid-1970s, a fully realized portrait of an honorable man with artistic leanings in a scuzzy business, a professional with X-rated standards who resists the move to cheap, plotless videotaped carnality performed by amateurs and serves as the protector and enabler of his porn family’s dreams. It was a stunningly rich performance with a palpable backstory that not only earned him an Oscar nomination but also newfound respect in the industry for his acting chops.

His bewildering reaction to the success of Boogie Nights illustrated the conflicts raging beneath the surface of this seemingly glib stud. Despite its critical success Burt disowned Boogie Nights, claiming never to have seen it straight through. He feuded with prodigy director Anderson, although it seemed like a one-sided grudge as Anderson was willing to cast him in his next picture, Magnolia. But Reynolds turned him down. It’s unclear whether Reynolds didn’t really understand Boogie Nights, not only one of the best films of the ’90s but certainly one of the best performances of his career, or simply found the end product distasteful. But, like his reaction to the Cosmo centerfold that came on the heels of his breakthrough in Deliverance, Reynolds seemed intent on undercutting one of his greatest successes with needless public second-guessing and airing his discontentments. It was as if within the man there was an unresolvable conflict between being taken seriously as an actor to earn the respect of his peers and the absolute need to subvert that potentially pretentious goal by treating so much of his work as a series of mistakes or purely mercenary undertakings, often even the good stuff. His loudly professed dislike of Boogie Nights cemented his reputation as a difficult star to work with and short-circuited his comeback. Perhaps it even cost his that year’s Oscar. Along with his epically complicated relationships with women, including Dinah Shore, Sally Field and Loni Anderson, it all pointed to a strangely restless and unsatisfiable soul.

But in his best work on the screen — and in hours of old talk show clips still viewable on You Tube — Burt channeled those deep waters into the pursuit of having the best possible time, inviting the audience along with him for the ride and letting them in on the jokes like a lucky passenger in that famous speeding black and gold Trans Am. His physicality and daring were perfectly suited to action romps but behind the mustache and hairy chest was also the deft touch of an expert light comedian, a nearly unique combination in such a macho dude perhaps only paralleled during that era by the sly Roger Moore in a suave English version (and with some echoes today in Ryan Reynolds’ impressively deft action-comedy performances). He successfully escaped the massive shadows of Brando and Eastwood to create an entirely unique screen persona, self-mocking but capable, tough but romantic, anti-establishment but with his own code of honor, always a faithful friend. He was, above all, an absolute charmer, as self-effacing and yet as confident in his excellence and good looks as a Southern 1970s Cary Grant, the cackling laugh substituting for Grant’s untraceable accent. Like Grant, he was massively complex in real life, often dissatisfied and full of self-doubt. But in front of the camera he was a master and a “natural” by way of hard work and experience. To ponder all the happiness Burt Reynolds leaves behind through his extraordinary and prolific career, the omnipresent drive-in movie and videotape/cable TV background for those of us who came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, is precisely why his passing leaves us so bereft. There are a ton of Burt Reynolds movies out there to continue to watch and enjoy. But to think that he will never make another, never laugh that hyena laugh again while he burns out and outfoxes the law is more than a little bit sad. It’s more like losing a wry older friend from childhood and a masculine role model than simply another movie star. But isn’t that the mark of this special man and his particular quality of stardom? Adios and via con dios, Burt — you were always a great amigo.