Cool Water Intense
Davidoff (2019)

Smells nothing like the original Cool Water. It has more of a cool, minty, airy vanilla, similar to Versace Eros mostly, a possible a little like Le Male. It's more subtle and wearable than both, so if you want a less intense (despite the name), work-appropriate and possibly more refined version of Eros, this could be a good find.

Projection is good but not beastly. You can smell it from time-to-time coming off your skin but it does not fill the room. I got all workday longevity, 8-9 hours.

Davidoff Cool Water Intense (2019) is not an intense version of Davidoff Cool Water (1988), so if you came here for that, you should turn back now. In fact, nothing about the scent profile of Davidoff Cool Water even feels cool, watery, or particularly fresh, so it fails even at respecting the legacy of it's best-selling namesake alongside not having any of its DNA. Cool Water Intense is such a failure of concept that I'm not sure perfumer Annick Menardo even realized she was making an intense flanker to the Pierre Bourdon-composed classic when she designed this, and may have just made a completely different perfume had she known. This is just speculation of course, as is my suspicion that what is actually housed in the bottle may have been an unused formula from the vaults of Firmenich that was bought at discount by Davidoff just to have something they could use to keep banking on the legacy of the Cool Water name. Annick Menardo wasn't even revealed by Davidoff as perfumer at first, but was only discovered later on down the line, telling me all of this was done seat-of-the-pants style. To add further insult to injury, little to no advertising was done for this, and soon Run Wild (2020) emerged as the big men's push that was featured everywhere at counters carrying Davidoff, as if Cool Water Intense was under rug swept. Ouch.

The opening is sweet, a whole lot of sweet. Thankfully, this isn't the candy ethyl maltol sort of sweet you're used to in clubbers or some Paco Rabanne Invictus (2013) wannabes, but it definitely has that "latest banger" sort of Instagram-obsessed compliment monster vibe that checks off all the douche-bro boxes with smoking finger guns and smarmy grins. The massive shower gel dose comes next, with some green cardamom and mandarin orange over galaxolide laundry musk-ish sort of tones, very synthetic and uber-safe. Davidoff claims a coconut note here, and there are tiny wisps if you really strain hard to see it, but I don't get anything that slaps me in the face with pina colada like Creed or Tommy Bahama does with their tropical getaway scents. The thickness of coconut, sure, but not really the resemblance. The biggest thing here is the amber xtreme note, mega-dosed to absurd levels, being woody amber Hell for anyone that hates scratchy sharp nose-piercing itchy dry downs that seem to be all the rage in the late 2010's and early 2020's. The dry down is like being walloped with Comet cleanser, asbestos, and broken glass shaken up in a pillow case, just pure nasty that lasts forever. Wear time is until you beg it to stop and projection is oh God please help me like Ozzy Osbourne sings in the eponymous track by Black Sabbath. Best use is probably fall through spring, but the sweetness here would kill in summer heat.

I guess this stuff is trying to be sort of like an over-powered office fragrance in the style of Fragrance One: Office for Men by Jeremy Fragrance (2019) that nobody in their right mind would actually take to an office, because it has that similar overly-extroverted and polite vibe but with a handshake that can shatter carbon fiber and a scent trail that will remind you for the rest of the day that the wearer was there. I'd rather take Office for Men over this, since least the fragrance from the YouTube celebrity is actually pleasant when all is said and done, despite it's volume. I can see the appeal for guys that need to announce their virility and prowess in the corporate jungle at every opportunity, or the guy that wears one fragrance for everything and would like something that can make the leap from work to dance floor without re-application, but this once more has absolutely fuck-all to do with Cool Water. Luckily, Cool Water flankers have this unerring tendency to go straight into discounters no matter how they are received, so you can find out like I did by sneaking a spray (that I regret) from a bottle at your local Ross where it will end up, or you can get a decant from splitters on eBay for under $10, which is probably the better deal for the morbidly curious because trust me, 5ml is a lifetime supply once you realize how this smells. Pick up some Excedrin for the migraine you're going to get after sampling, you'll need it I promise. Thumbs down.