Hero
Eau de Toilette, Burberry (2021)

This is vile. It's sharp, poorly blended, really just smells of chemicals. It's not put together well so you just smell pungent individual aromachemicals that never settle and give you a headache. It's cloying, the kind of cloying where it feels like you can taste it in the air, and just unpleasant in every way really.

A poor man’s Dior Homme 2020? I want to like Burberry Hero. I enjoy understated styles and can appreciate the Dior’s touch of class, but Hero is just worse (and I don’t much care for Dior Homme 2020 to begin with - see my review).

The Dior is the kind of fragrance I could pick up at TJ Maxx and be happy with the $35 I spent. I’d be hard pressed to justify a similar purchase for Hero. From the box to the bottle to the scent itself, everything screams plain. White bread and water have more gravitas. Performance on my skin is poor, to boot.

For an office-safe fragrance from the house of Burberry, there is no shortage of great (inexpensive) options. Hero just isn’t one of them.

Strong cedar with a spike of bergamot and a huge wash of Screamwood (whatever that rubbing alcohol note is. Screamy wood. Screamwood.) Not aquatic despite the bergamot/cedar correlation but kind of same-y and boring. And that shrieky note, argh.

Basically just synthetic woods mixed with ammonia or chlorine. There's a green apple candy note on top that fades quickly, but that's about it.

The combination of apple and woods could have been interesting if executed better and if it weren't paired up with that ammonia note, which is clearly only there to make Hero feel comfortable and familiar to fans of discounter aquatics. Toploaded, boring, and intentionally commonplace. Thumbs down.

Burberry Hero (2021) is a lazy fragrance, and although that doesn't necessarily make it an awful one, it is very hard to ignore just how lazy it is. Burberry's creative director Riccado Tisci must have been extremely specific in what he wanted for this fragrance line, choosing the "everyman" appearance of actor Adam Driver over the usual "heroin chic" models, or the square-jaw beefcake übermensch you sometimes see; but coupled to this plain look comes an equally-plain bottle that houses a plain fragrance, which feels designed to be the bare minimum all around. Maybe that's the point with Burberry Hero, to be unmistakably plain, to imply that Burberry's ideal of a hero could be anyone. Or maybe the marketing campaign was created to cover for the fact that Burberry looked at Dolce & Gabbana K (2019) and Dior Homme (2020) then said "I'll have some of that". Aurelian Guichard did as he was told here, and simply fused the two, adding something "ostensibly British" to the mix so Hero stays in line with the Burberry tradition of understated middle-class Londoner style. Union Jack and tartan patterns thankfully witheld this go-around, but along with them went the focus on traditional British men's fragrance subjects like violet, lavender, or tobacco. Stuff like Touch for Men (2000), Brit for Men (2004), or London for Men (2006) at least had unique character unto themselves.

The key difference between Hero and those other three, is the aesthetic focus on three types of cedar, all of which I can tell you are not actually in here. I know what cedar smells like, and while there may be three different molecules that go under the trade names of atlas cedar, virginia cedar, and himilayan cedar, none of them much smell like actual cedar chips or oil to me. More than anything else, this scent is about vacuum-distilled bergamot essence, juniper, and an overcharged woody-musky base just like Dior Homme (2020) and D&G K eau de toilette. The opening gives you a big hit of juniper, which steps out of its place at the heart of the scent to really be the top note. In this brief moment, I get vestiges of Maison Francis Kurkdjian Gentle Fluidity [Silver] (2019), but then the sour-sweet bergamot takes over and joins with something peppery. Burberry calls this black pepper but it smells just like the pimento in K, before the cashmeran and vetiver nü-chypre vibe of Dior Homme (2020) reasserts. If you're a fan of this style, you'll undoubtedly like this, as it keeps in that perfectly pleasant and unwaveringly masculine mode, avoiding sweetness and massive overdoses of tonka, plus not relying on scratchy aromachemicals or ambroxan warheads. Performance is "just fine" and this could be used year-round. I'll leave it at that, since someone's likely to think you're wearing something else anyway.

There isn't anything wrong with a "me too" fragrance from a technical standpoint. When Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche (1982) hit the market, it was such a game changer that it had dozens of "me too" fragrances from other major designers or perfume labels chasing down its spotlight. Even now, decades removed from that frenzy, clone operations in the Middle East still copy this one; and many of the things that embellished or modifying the original DNA of Drakkar Noir I actually like more, such as Houbigant Duc de Vervins (1985) or Givenchy Xeryus (1987). So with that in mind, I don't instantly deduct points for the "gimmie some o' dat" mentality shown in Burberry Hero, since it's only logical to chase the money Dior makes and to a lesser extent, Dolce & Gabbana makes, with their latest pillars. However, this is so lazily slapdashed and crowned with a bit of the old British gin vibe, that it feels too cynical for me. Add the equally-lazy bottle to boot, and thrust the rather normal-looking Mr. Driver out there front and center, then say: "it's plain on purpose, because you're plain, and that's how we see our heroes". Bam, got'em. Check please. Okay look, this isn't bad and is perfectly serviceable for the guy who doesn't really care and just wants something to kick around in when he feels obligated to, but is that really something Burberry wants as an artistic direction? Neutral

Hero is all about its cedar accord, and there’s absolutely the natural oil as well as synthetic facsimile contributing here. The juniper and pepper play supporting roles, whilst the bergamot is a rather fleeting citrus shadow at the opening.

By the standards of many designer releases today this is relatively subdued and approachable. Subtle projection and soft, well rounded structure, it’s nicely ‘engineered’ to provide a broad close quarters appeal.

The longevity is decent - Several (mostly linear) hours. Its versatility is a strong point too; close to an all occasion, all seasons day wear option. It’s neither wholly original or remarkable, but it is nicely done. Recommended to anyone wanting a solid modern woodsy blend that will slide easily into regular daily wear.