Eternity Aromatic Essence for Men
Eau de Parfum Intense, Calvin Klein (2024)

Eternity Aromatic Essence for Men by Calvin Klein (2024) has a name that gives it promise and potential; but as we all know, both of those terms are merely portent, and can still amount to nothing. How many athletes, politicians, artists of all walks, or military leaders have been stated to have promise throughout history, and then went down unceremoniously in flames, or faded out after a single ignominious event of record? Furthered by the fact the adverts for this scent feature Idris Elba on them, and Calvin Klein is literally setting itself up for another big-time failure. Perhaps by living in the shadows of Le Beau by Jean Paul Gaultier (2019) CK can find some safety in conformity, make some shameless sales, and scrape on by in it's homeland as the brand for dads who remember the underwear from Back to the Future, or people with not enough money to buy Chanel and Dior, which was admittedly once me. I'll always have a soft spot for their erstwhile cyberpunk futurism too,

The opening has a bit of whispery, watery floral mint and citrus, suggested by bergamot and juniper, although this best part of the composition by far is immediately inundated with sweet nonsense of gummy tonka and coconut, which is where the Le Beau parables come into play. From there, the usual vanillic patchouli and amber xtreme blob takes over, as if Klein had summoned the ghost of Quentin Bisch or just frankly bought a mod off Givaudan, his parent oil house employer, and had some anonymous uncredited shmuck tinker with it by making the opening lighter and shoving lavender into the heart. As a "parfum intense", you know this is going to be strong and cloying too, although thankfully Calvin Klein isn't ready to whip the "Elixir" horse just yet it seems. The fact this tries to be between both lighter fresher fragrances and the thicker, soupier type of things desperate young men bathe in when going out, also does it a bit of a disservice in having an identity of its own.

After years of inventive, futuristic, avant-garde scent craft that was dully ignored by most mainstream buyers and online taste-maker collectives alike for being either not familiar enough, not traditional enough, or not showing of the natural world enough, Klein finally relented into the end of the 2010's with market-driven drivel, trading in their "the future is now" shtick for "the future is a constant of disposable duplicate distractions", especially as CK becomes ever more-popular in Asian markets where the past-encumbered pretense of French perfumery doesn't exist. I suppose CK is following the money with most of these me-too flankers and seasonal varieties, as the don't-blink hyper-trend doom-loop originated from that region of the world thanks to Shein and TikTok. Here they just languish at (failing) Macy's counters for a few months before being flushed into discounters. If you too believe that today is only tomorrow's yesterday, this one's for you. Thumbs down