cK One Summer 2021
Calvin Klein (2021)

Absolute winner. Watery, inky, fruity, floral and luscious. As wet an aquatic as you'll find. It's vivid, like a Disney animated tropical sea or underwater kingdom. It smells just like the bottle looks. And the bottle looks bitchin'.

It's to Armaf Milestone what Milestone is to Miliseme Imperial. It took me a number of wearings and tests to work up the courage to write that. But this stuff has character. I get more tropical fruit than citrus. The watermelon, sea spray and ink draw the Milestone comparisons, but this is also its own thing, with vibrant white florals and then the white woods in the base. I don't catch the rhubarb at all, but I think it's exactly what keeps this from become too cloying.

But there's a catch. You gotta really spray this stuff on heavy. 3 good sprays in the same spot where you really want it to reveal itself. I do this in about 5 places, so I'm basically rocking 15 sprays. At this saturation it's quite juicy and sweet, so you'll need to like that.

The CK One atomizers are garbage, pure and simple. They are the most anemic I've seen. If you spritz yourself a few times with them it won't do anything but disappoint. It will smell faint and uninspiring. They barely emit anything!

But jeez o peet, blast it in the same exact place a few times and smell the magic happen. The juice will then appear like a dense mist of eau de parfum on your skin. Frankly, I feel the exact same way about CK Shock*. Unless I douse myself in it, I can barely smell anything, and therefore can't appreciate it. This juice requires saturation.

I'm sure some folks will say that this is headache inducing synthetic garbage. And maybe I just don't know any better. But IMO this punches way above its weight (which for me was $20 at Burlington).

*Curiously, CK One Summer 2019 doesn't require overspraying at all. It must be a stronger concentration, because the atomizer is similar. The 2019 flanker is also quite nice, with a mango/papaya top end that's also juicy and refreshing.