cK one Platinum
Calvin Klein (2018)

Well, ck One Platinum (2018) isn't a total train wreck, but coming from a house that seems complacent with tossing out mediocre releases to pad a catalog that is literally a seven nation army of flankers, I'm not the least bit surprised. What I am surprised with however, is the fact that such a listless release would fall under the usually exemplary ck One line of fragrances. You have to understand, Calvin Klein defined so much of what a modern designer fragrance is, from "his and hers" pairs of fragrances under the same title like Obsession (1985) and Obsession for Men (1986), to helping reset the entire industry by weighing in with a hugely significant fragrance that coined the term "fresh fougère" with Eternity for Men (1989), it really goes without saying that everything not already in development from 1990 on was inspired at least in part by the creative direction of Calvin Klein. Their biggest achievement in fragrance was the cK One (1994) line, which openly and ostentatiously denounced gender barriers by being a painstaking exercise in then cutting-edge synthetic perfumery that sought to imply no sexual identity one way or the other, and the controversy which ensued is the stuff of legend. Love or hate the olfactive gray musk cloud that is cK One, we wouldn't have a proliferation of intentionally-unisex fragrance without it. Calvin Klein has been very mindful of this fact, and have almost treated the ck One line as a golden child, with arguably the house's most creative efforts coming out under it, while the main lines received an army of chemical Frankenstein's monsters that have been entertaining at best, or embarrassing at worst, with varying degrees of commercial success. Unfortunately, that long streak of unmitigated success in the cK One line comes to an end with ck One Platinum. What we have here, is an extremely lazy and super-fruity re-purposing of the primary accord from ck One Gold (2016), but without anything that made ck One Gold special.

The fruit over ambroxan and guaiac wood returns with ck One Platinum, but none of the richness or herbal qualities make an appearance in ck One Platinum, as if Calvin Klein wanted to try redoing ck One Gold without any of the personality, following the most minimum of modern fruity fresh requirements. Admittedly, ck One Platinum also feels like the first fragrance in the series that really tips over the gender line to the feminine side, whereas ck Be (1996) was the first (and so far only) unisex entry that seemed to sway a little too masculine, although it has been embraced by the LGBTQ+ community alongside the original cK One so it dodged being seen as the unnecessary capitulation to straight men afraid of ck One that it really was. ck One Platinum on the other hand, feels like the equal oppposite: the core aesthetic of ck One Gold rearranged into a modern feminine fruity floral for ladies who may have felt too conflicted with past entries, containing just a tiny speck of anything masculine in the base to justify the ck One moniker. We open with grapefruit, green apple and apricot here, very sweet fruity anything-at-the-Macy's-counter in design, that dusts off with a bit of cardamom and something called "modern aldehydes". Well, at least the "Kleinisms" are still in full effect, but while you go and figure out what a modern aldehyde is, I'll keep going with this review. Pink pepper, cinnamon, and lavender are supposedly here, but all I get is the white floral core borrowed from cK All (2017) but without the dustiness or citrus, and finally a base of vetiver over cashmeran synth woods aka that ambroxan and norlimbanol dream team with a dollop of soft amber, which is the only thing making this even remotely appealing to someone looking for a unisex fragrance. Seriously, the vetiver at the end over the fake woods mumbo jumbo is the only link to any sort of masculine trope in the whole deal, and reminds me in part of Oscar de la Renta Gentleman (2016) with the execution of citrus and vetiver, even if the citrus here is accompanied by a fruit basket that will scare a lot of people away from ck One Platinum. I like collecting ck One fragrances, but this one is a huge stretch even for me, but I will likely end up getting it just because one of my personality quirks demands it, even if I can't really give this any higher than a neutral rating.

Oh well, it's not like I don't have several Calvin Klein scents I gave a neutral rating to in my collection anyway, so I guess I'm just a sucker for the house after all. Even among Calvin Klein's somewhat checkered history of taking synthetic notes to dazzlingly abstract heights or pumping out senseless numbers of flankers just to hold the buying public's attention, ck One Platinum registers pretty low in the standings. This is the first cK One scent I have actually been disappointed in, and although I don't hate it, I get the feeling this was an unused formula for a feminine perfume redressed by perfumers Ilias Ermenidas and Pierre Negrin into a cK One formula to recoup development costs of an unlaunched perfume, which is the same suspicion I've made of several other ck One scents, including ck One Shock for Him (2011), which is an amazing tobacco fragrance that really should not have been put into a cK One bottle. If you're a collector of the line, I can't stop you from buying this, but if you really want a good starting point into the cK One dynasty of enforced-unisex fragrances, you should at least start back with cK All if you don't want to go all the way back to cK One itself (which is where I would tell anyone to start otherwise). Fans of fruity florals, imagine your favorite genre laced with warm ambrox and grassy vetiver, and you'll get an idea of what awaits you in a bottle of ck One Platinum. I also find the marketing of a "platinum" scent to be a little bit out of step, since platinum itself was rather popular in the 90's and early 2000's as a precious metal for jewelry in the hip hop community, but seeing something that isn't a credit card marketed as "platinum" in the late 2010's just feels like it spawned from the head of an old guy in the marketing department who still thinks the kids play Sega or listen to Korn on their Sony Discman portable CD players. Jeeze man, this really is just a hair's breadth away from being a train wreck, if not for that final dry down. Recommended use is casual for this if you pull the trigger on a bottle. That's all I got.

Sparkling, fruity bubble gum opening. As it starts to dry down, I start to smell peppery florals. It's all just okay, nothing amazing. Leans a little feminine to me but I wouldn't mind smelling this on anyone, quite pleasant.

Yet another Ck One flanker.
A totally new juice, following the nomenclature of the 2016 Ck One Gold release.

Bottle is chrome and does not say Platinum on it which is strange, though the Gold bottle does not gold on it either.
Both boxes do say Platinum Edition and Gold respectively.

Other notes is the fact that Calvin Klein is capitalized on the bottle and box. Interesting.

On to the juice. If you liked Gold you should like platinum. Leans far more feminine than unisex until the dry down which features a pretty prominent woody vetiver.

The opening and mid notes are juicy cherry-berry, very much like something Escada would launch. Noticeably synthetic and sweet.

Calvin Klein Women is much better.