Burberry for Men
Burberry (1995)

For the vintage formula:

Very similar to vintage Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme, with apple in the opening instead of pepper and cardamon.

Very clean, classy, and elegant fragrance, with good longevity and decent projection.

8.5/10

Have not tried the vintage formula--this review is for the current formulation. Was looking for something to match my vintage Escada Pour Homme, without just having one of the folks on eBay whip up a clone. Looking at the note pyramid, you would assume that this is in the ballpark. Not a chance. I may not be as sensitive as most folks on here when it comes to discerning notes, but all I got was lemon and eventually, cinnamon. It was a bad, artificial lemon, at that. Like lemonheads candy, or cloyingly sweet poor-quality lemonade. And not a very good cinnamon.

The awfulness seemed to vary based on the temperature outside--some days, I thought I could detect a wider variety of mini-scents popping up beside the two notes that I could discern, rightly or wrongly. Other days I thought it would better serve as something to clean the faucets with. Sold it on eBay to get back funds to seek out and explore brave new scent frontiers. Burberry Men is a planet that I will not visit again.

Sweet spicy, slightly gourmand yet masculine.
A well blended adult fare for men.
Fair warning: the new formulation is a shell of the vintage stuff. I would only mess with the vintage, and they are abundant as of this writing. Easiest way to differentiate is the vintage's cap has ridges at the base whereas the new version is a simply cylinder.

Many associate this with fall, and they are not wrong - this is when this shines the most. 18 Clesius/mid 60s Fahrenheit. Shirt and tie, thin sweater. Nice.

This is a review of the vintage formulation, with box and bottle name as "Burberry's".

First let me say that I have tried the current formulation, and it is, without doubt, one of the worst fragrance I have ever smelled. This is coming from someone who smelled the current formulation first, and not the vintage. So I was not spoiled by the vintage, and then giving a negative review to the current, like a lot of people do. I am someone who tried the current first. The vintage is world's better.

Let me start by talking about the quality. There is just no comparison. The current stuff smells cheap, plasticy, weird, chemical, through and through. The vintage smells great. Modern, masculine, that old school Burberry accord you find through many other Burberry fragrances. Classy, refined, sophisticated. Sandalwood note is on point. Opening is a combination of a tart blueberry note, (which is completely gone in the current formula) citruses, and tagetes. The middle, a little mossy, a little minty, smooth and creamy sandalwood, a touch of florals. The base, more sandalwood, sweetness from vanilla and tonka, and a little musk tying everything together. Transitioning through notes is flawless, and the smell of this (vintage) is absolutely perfect. A benchmark in men's fragrances, and sadly reformulated so far beyond recognition that it makes me sick.

DO NOT buy the current formula of this, because vintages are still available and at good prices. You wanna find the Burberry's bottle, not Burberry. The bottle on the vintage will be mostly red, with a band of traditional Burberry plaid along the bottom of the box. You can find 1 oz bottles for $20-$30, and although it might be the same price as what you can get a current formulation 3.3 oz bottle for, the difference is night and day. This fragrance underwent a horrible reformulation, I am not sure when exactly, but it was when they changed the name of it, so the box should be the key factor when trying to locate this. Yes, you are getting less than 1/3 the amount for the same price, but take my word, you won't regret it.

As for current formulation. There is nothing redeeming about it. I owned the bottle on 2 separate occasions and sold it both times. I will never buy it again, unless they reformulate it.

I get a classic base of lavender, a little bergamot, and a soft application of musk. I catch apple mixing with a little amber for a sweet and spicy smell that reminds me of fall. Hints of sandalwood, blackcurrant, and vanilla. All of this is filtering through a transparent/watery layer that's mildly accented with mint...it reminds me of an approach with a sport scent.

Burberry for Men is just a smooth office/casual wear scent with low projection but I like it. This is way cheaper yet blows away Versace Eros in design if you're comparing apple based fragrances. This is still clean enough to wear in warm weather. The base of Burberry for Men also borrows from classic men's fragrances like Black Suede or Jovan Musk for Men so it's an interesting collaboration of vintage and modern.

So there's a bit of an interesting story to this one, and in fact, that story is more interesting than the fragrance itself, not that it's actually bad, mind you. Burberry the store originally was called as it is named now, after founder Thomas Burberry, but later picked up an "S" to become "Burberry's of London" due to customers just calling the original shop that, and under this pluralized name, gave birth to the design house that also was called "Burberry's", which is the name used to launch the original 1981 "Burberry's for Men" scent. This 1995 follow-up was thus just given the name of "Burberry's for Men", and replaced the original composition, but later changed to "Burberry London" when the original fragrance dropped from the name because the whole company did around 1999, reverting back to just "Burberry" company-wide as they were when founded. The original masculine was long gone, and this 1995 fragrance became the official eponymous line. Then, they decided to change the name of this scent from "Burberry London" back to it's launch name without the "S", making it "Burberry for Men" because the original masculine wasn't using it anymore and they had a new "London" clothing line emerging. To make matters more confusing, they reused "Burberry London" for an entirely different scent in 2005 at the same time all this was happening, meaning anybody owning this scent from 1999 to 2005 will have a hard time figuring out what to buy if they replace it, and anybody owning the discontinued original from 1981 to 1993 may buy this by accident to replace it since they both shared the "Burberry's" name at different points in time. Now how does this thing actually smell? Well I'm glad you asked!!

Burberry for Men (1995) capitalizes on the fresh fougère movement began with Eternity for Men by Calvin Klein in 1989. In fact, this rides dangerously close to that seminal scent, which makes me wonder why I actually enjoy it so much, because I shouldn't by rights. I think if I were to try and really dig deep, it's because of the traditionalism, much like Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme from the same year, resulting in Burberry for Men trying to be a much rounder and more honest fougère that plays closer attention to it's heritage. Burberry for men has a lot of top and heart notes, more than base notes actually, and more notes than can readily be detected in a wear. I won't list them all in the review here since I spent an entire paragraph discussing the train wreck that is the naming history of this juice, but it's a lot of fruits, including green apple, black currant, peach and lime with some bergamot and marigold (that last one being a really odd choice). The heart is not full of gourmand goodness like the top, but comes with jasmine, sandalwood, cedar, moss, lavender, and mint. I can really smell the lavender the most, and the mint second, with the woods third, and all that fruit blurring together as just generic sweetness to me. The base is pretty textbook with musk, vanilla, and tonka, which when united with the lavender and cedar of the middle, almost forms that vintage Canoe (1936) smell, making this some sort of fougère within a fougère. It's fougèreception!! In all seriousness, perfumer Michael Almairac did here what he did with Zino Davidoff (1986) nearly a decade earlier: he reinterpreted an older fougère with newer ingredients and style to please the market or client. In Zino's case, he was really retelling the tale of the original Fougère Royale of 1882 with powerhouse gumption, but with Burberry for Men, he's gussied up the classic barbershop formula of Canoe with a bunch of extra fruit and wood notes so fans of "freshies" would fall for it. That Almairac fellow is a sneaky guy I'm telling you. Longevity is average here but sillage isn't super powerful, so Burberry for Men is more of an inside office fragrance than one made for use in any kind of weather that might affect its projection.

Bottom line here is this: Burberry for Men (or Burberry London Red for you middle-vintage owners), is just a plain, simple, honest, traditional fougère at heart, with a bunch of sweet and sparkly fruit notes on top that make it feel fresher and more modern than it has any real business being. It might very well be the last such fougère made from a designer that isn't niche, so don't over-complicate things more than Burberry has already done renaming it a whole bunch by trying to figure out where this sits in the grand scheme of things. It's the fougère equivalent of the late-generation early 90's fox-body Ford Mustang: same old car underneath but with refreshed cosmetics on the outside because they weren't ready to develop a new platform. Michael Almairac wasn't ready to move on from traditional fougères, as evidenced by his work on Zino, but he probably had to conform to the client's requests (being Burberry) so he stuck some nice new body panels on an old design, fooling everybody. Most younger people say this is a semi-oriental best for winter because of the vanilla, but they haven't smelled vintage Canoe. This is an all-around all-season traditional fougère with a very effervescent opening, much like most of it's competition of the day. After it settles in, Burberry for Men sheds the disguise and just hums along as the plain-spoken English gentleman. It won't excite you, and it won't really inspire you, but it won't let you down either. Definitely for the mature man and not romantic due to it's conservative crisp dry down, but really just pleasant for anyone anytime. It won't set the world on fire, but no classic barbershop scent does. This is comfort food for the nose, just with a zany history.