Hero
Parfum, Burberry (2024)

Hero Parfum by Burberry (2024) has just about nothing in common with any past entries in the series, and has three listed notes that do not smell like anything actually in this perfume. Where is the cypriol? Where is the cedarwood? What is this "amyris" accord? I don't smell anything that reminds me of any other "amyris" materials I've encountered, including the eponymous release from MFK. Instead, this is a phoned-in "picklewood punch" created by Aurélien Guichard, who should have called in sick instead of besmirching his own name by taking credit for this awful monster.

What can I say? You get this sweet ethyl maltol and coconut disaster opening, stuffed full with musks and amber materials, something more and more designers have been playing with in the wake of several Jean-Paul Gaultier fragrances that have been successful with the notes. The usual "me too, follow the money" composition here marries them with the seventh son of the seventh son of a marriage between Alien Man by Thierry Mugler (2018) and Santal 33 by Le Labo (2011), dropped on its head by John Varvatos. Adam Driver needs to drive far away from endorsing this fragrance. Performance is nagging, of course.

I mean sure, if you want to smell like someone sprayed a bottle of Axe on a pile of dillweed, then rolled it up inside of a hamster cage filled with bubblegum, go right ahead and wear this. Better yet, be a real hero and toss the bottle afterwards. Burberry was previously known for rather reserved, perhaps unexciting, ostensibly British fragrances that exuded good if conservative taste; but this is like pulling off the mask in a Scooby-Doo episode to reveal that posh gentleman was actually the ghoul plaguing the townspeople all along, and he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for us pesky reviewers. God awful stench. Thumbs down