Aqua pour Homme
Bulgari (2005)

I love this but with a caveat.

Bulgari Aqua was my first real introduction into the world of fragrances and I wore the hell out of it in the late 2000’s.

It’s very fresh and light but has good projection and would last me anywhere from 8-12 hours on three sprays. It starts off with citrusy mandarin before mellowing out with freshness and drying down into a more masculine scent. The whole thing is light and not overstated at all.

My caveat is this, I recently found a bottle of it and used it but it smells outdated now, similar to wearing Tommy for the 90s or Noir for the 80s. It has a very “2000s” vibe to it. I still wear it in the spring or summer but that’s mainly for nostalgia reasons.

I do think it’s one of the better aquatics from that time period and stands apart from Voyage or Cool Waters. You could get it to mix things up and I think it’s a good beginner’s fragrance.

Pink and Blue fragrances.

Are they like baby clothes? - this one's a girl and that's a boy.

Or does it mean Candy and Sporty?

This one is Blue in both senses of the word:
a sporty aquatic cologne with a note of seaweed;
its colour is teal - like an iceberg.

Either way - it's utterly predictable: cheap and nasty, fading to bland.

Watery, grapefruit-like citrus comes through, a little synthetic, mandarin, salty wet sea air, it's definitely one of the better aquatics, but you will smell like 2005-2010. I would say that we moved on from this kind of scent, it was really overdone at the time, but back then, imo, this was the best option. Sad to say, but would not buy this anymore, it's just not worth it. Maybe high school guys still like this, wouldn't blame them.

I love this fragrance, in fact it’s one of my favorites! Most definitely my favorite aquatic fragrance, it has so much of the essence of the actual sea - it brings me back to my childhood on the beach. You can really smell the brine of the sea air with this one, I’d say it’s definitely masculine and sexy, but sophisticated and not sophomoric like some aquatics can be.

I really wanted to like this because Jacques Cavallier is behind it, and even in boring genres like aquatics he tends to excel; just look at Acqua di Giò pour Homme (1996) or L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme (1994) for examples of him turning something that could have been a dullard into a classic, but it just isn't so with Aqva Pour Homme by Bvlgari (2006). The 2000's was at first ruled by the fruity ozonic and candy-sweet gourmand, neither of which were very good options for guys wanting to smell like guys, or at least how guys used to smell in decades past. This is why I think aquatics began experiencing a second wind, especially after Ralph Lauren made a "dressy" aquatic in the form of Polo Blue (2002), which basically gave some much-needed respect to the genre that had up until that point been narrowly-defined as beach/vacation/summer fragrance for basic guys that don't know better. Aquatics still had a battle against all the melon and grapefruit nose rape or caramel coffee patchouli gourmand destruction being shoveled onto perfume counters, but Aqva Pour Homme helped further bridge the 90's staple genre with modern tastes by using a drier style merged with a "seaweed" note that feels inspired by Ralph Lauren Polo Sport (1993), which also used such a note in its construction. The big failing here of course isn't the concept of the fragrance, but the execution, right down to the bottle itself. I also hope that if you blind buy this, you're not a fan of Bvlgari's house tea note, since if you are, you will certainly be disappointed as neither this scent nor any of its flankers possess that lovely tea.

Before we get to the presentation of Aqva Pour Homme, we'll cover the smell: this is generic dry aquatic locker room juice with almost zero redeeming personality like most of the self-absorbed arrogant meatheads that always seem drown themselves in this stuff or Nautica Blue (2006) after a workout in lieu of a proper shower. We're talking the kind of guys that unironically use the word "alpha" to describe themselves in regards to their peers without having a BDSM pup hood in their closet to justify use of the word in that context, and flip off pedestrians in the crosswalk from their BMWs for making them yield the right-of-way in a right turn. You're more likely to smell this mixed with profuse sweat than you are neat and tidy on the shirt of a passerby, which also might explain the paucity of the composition overall. There's mandarin and a bitter petitgrain in the opening, which is a slight nod to older citrus styles since petitgrain isn't exactly a trendy note, but it doesn't stay old-school for long as that teltale dihydromyrcenol and cascalone ocean hit your nose. The Santolina or "cotton lavender" comes in, and is an ochre-colored plant with an equally pasty dry smell unrelated to lavender whatsoever, anchoring the green feeling of the "Posidonia seaweed" note in the heart. I do see some of the comparisons to Polo Sport, but this has none of the roundness or moss of that actually-good aquatic, coming across as a pale shadow at best. Amber, clary sage, Iso E Super and other scratchy "woods" notes finish this out with a peck of musk. Thankfully Aqva Pour Homme released before the widespread abuse of ambroxan, so it doesn't have endless volume, which would send it right into negative standing with me, as the saving grace here for Aqva Pour Homme is its own mild temperament and short lifespan. Obviously a sporty fresh scent, this is best for summer to those who enjoy it, but for me it is just too phoned in. Avon did a lot of stuff like this in the mid 2000's as well, but they charged peanuts for it and at least had some nifty mint or cypress notes floating around to make their dry aquatics interesting.

Perhaps what angers me most about this besides the beyond-boring composition is the pebble bottle, which is hard to hold or apply with its built-in sprayer and needs its own special plastic cradle to be displayed because it just sits there awkwardly hogging shelf space, like a giant skipping stone fished out of a creek. The success of Aqva Pour Homme was such that Bvlgari has pumped out 5 additional flankers, with all but one of them basically small tweaks of the original and with no personality of their own either. Aqva Amara (2014) is the only one of these pebble-shaped paperweights with any real distinction, and it's the only entry not explicitly an aquatic.... go figure. I kinda know why this sold so well, but the thought really irks me, and it's more or less because Aqva Pour Homme was a return to familiar territory for basic dudes who were teens in the 90's and wanted something comfortable yet "new", with a novel bottle that sealed the deal for most buying whatever caught their eye at the department store counter. This fell into the clutches of gym bro culture like most sporty aquatic things do, but what makes it more annoying than your typical Addidas scent is the way the upscale Bvlgari name inspires these same backwards baseball cap types to make Aqva Pour Homme pull double duty outside the gym, meaning I run into this too much on the streets and the smell is always traced to a sweaty neckless wonder in a shirt two sizes two small to show off his "goods", and while I am quite smitten by a nicely-developed form, it's what usually comes out of the mouth once they start speaking that fouls my mood, and the poor Bvlgari gets dragged along for the ride. I can't hate this stuff, because really it's "just another aquatic", but considering who penned it, who uses it, and where I keep running into it, I can't really do better than a neutral here.

Aqua pour Homme has a nice, salty, citrusy, aquatic opening. Later the drydown is all floral aquatic and kinda cloying due to its very strong projection. This may be just my skin but these "calone" or "blue" scents really take off with a little body heat and become very annoying. If I had a spray redo, I'd probably only do 2 sprays, and that's from a sample.

Very clean and casual, best for daytime.