Eternity Flame for Men
Calvin Klein (2019)

sweet blah

Its not good. It smells like something from the early 2000s not well done. Kenneth Cole Reaction melon, its sweet. They say pineapple, but its not pineapple. Its melon. Pineapple is sharper. Lasts well, sweet. Really cheap. Nothing flame or fire like.

Not a bad scent at all, just another trendy fragrance that follows the steps of things like Invictus intense. Sweet and spicy notes surrounded by some ambroxan. Unnecessary if you already own things like Spicebomb, Gentleman absolute etc.

Not awful, just horribly boring. A "rouge" theme filtered through the malign influence of the last half-decade's mainstream. Not worth discussing notes.

Eternity Flame for Men (2019) is both relevant to the trends and tropes of the late 2010's and also quite a tired style simultaneously, as it seeks to be another loud, spicy, and candy-sweet pickup line in a bottle for all the "beastmode" guys doing upside-down stomach crunches while watching fragrance reviews on YouTube. I can see this selling like hotcakes to all the zombies shuffling into a Macy's looking for a weekend clubber juice that isn't Paco Rabanne 1 Million (2013) or Versace Eros (2013), but this rides so close to them in style that it feels redundant to anyone owning them. Furthermore, this seems to be riding a new late-emerging "fire" flanker theme just like Versace Eros Flame (2019) but does little to distinguish itself from the crowded market segment it enters. Described by Calvin Klein as a "luxurious and addictive oriental-fougère composition", this Laurent de Guernec-penned fragrance is really just another sweet "ambroxan bomb" front-loaded with a lot of fruity goodness and spice, drying down into a heavy-handed "woodyamber" aromachem mash that feels like a goulash of Emporio Armani Stronger With You (2017), Montblanc Legend Night (2017), and Coach for Men (2018), but with none of the distinction any of them possess. I'm not entirely against this genre, but with so many choices that just end up feeling like the same choice, it takes a lot more for something like this than new scents from other categories to win me over.

Eternity Flame for Men opens with a claimed pineapple note which all the cult-like worshipers of Creed Aventus (2010)began freaking out about because anything with pineapple might be a clone, but this is the furthest thing from the pineapple/bergamot/blackcurrant trifecta in Aventus, and more like the super sweet "canned pineapple" vibe of the venerable Lapidus Pour Homme (1987), although without any of the old-school musky floral fougère charm to follow it up. Once you get past that Del-Monte pineapple, you go immediately into rosemary, sage, cardamom, nutmeg, and sweet lavender, pillowing out into a spicy blob that uses the pineapple like icing. The base is pure beeefcake with ambroxan, denatured "white" patchouli, vetiver, mastic, norlimbanol synth woods, and vanilla. It's thicker than molasses and feels like an amped-up Calvin Klein Reveal Man (2014) at the end, but without any of the complexity in the dry down and a much sweeter finish. Eternity Flame for Men can get quite suffocating if over-applied or used in any appreciable degree of heat, so I wouldn't wear this to a packed club unless you want to clear the dance floor. Obviously a night-out scent, Eternity Flame for Men is thankfully only moderate in lifespan but has monster performance during its time on skin. Just amplified yuck all around for me after about thirty minutes of pretty pleasant fruity spice, Eternity Flame for Men falls apart faster than a sloppy joe on a soggy bun, even if first impressions are actually rather positive; I shouldn't be surprised at something like this selling itself with top notes alone either.

I'm sure the emotionally-zombied dudebros this is squarely aimed at will take a liking to it based on the fact that everyone will smell them as soon as they exit their cambered V-TEC rides when pulling up at Club Sextacy on "house night" to troll for another notch on their belt. Anyone else looking for character beyond "performance" will likely just find Eternity Flame for Men to be another badly-constructed chemical soup phoned-in by a perfumer just looking to get a paycheck between real inspirations, which is how many of these last-minute designer trend-hopping things have gone anymore; see Viktor & Rolf Spicebomb Night Vision (2019) for another example of what I mean by that. I'm irked that such a soulless creation comes from Laurent de Guernec, but just looking at the portfolio of Alberto Morillas reaffirms that it's common for perfumers to have a lot of commercial pork stuffed between their real strokes of genius. In any case, it's sad to see this carry the Eternity for Men (1989) badge and bottle design just as so many inane flankers abusing the legacy of that scent have done, as it has about as little to do with the Eternity nameplate as it does fire. Feel free to sample this at your nearest department store counter, but if you have smelled anything coming out from designers at all in the 2010's, you've already smelled this before at least a few times, and likely done better even if you didn't like it back then. Thumbs way down.

Fruity-bubble gum, powdery-sweet opening. If there's any likeness to Eternity then it's distant. Decent scent but feels kinda juvenile or cheap, I can't decide which. If we're talking flankers, to me it's better than Eternity Now but I like Intense and Aqua better. Too many Summer versions to compare.

Projection is a little better than average, not bad at all. Longevity is even better, sticks around all day on my skin.

Has nothing to do with 'regular' Eternity or fire/flames.
Is flame the new buzz word in flanker-dom? Remains to be seen I suppose. Eros Flame from Versace also had nothing to do with fire or flame.
Perhaps flame refers to an old fling?
Dunno, but what I do know is that EF could have been a stand alone launch, tho it would almost instantly disappear into the sea of unnecessary releases.

What does it smell like? Sweet and spicy.