V/S for Men
Versace (2000)

Not a very masculine scent to my nose. To me, personally, Versace V/S strongly reminds me of my grandmas living room. I realize that is a subjective position from which to form an opinion, but I choose to stand by it, firmly. This one is just not good boys. Pass this one over. You deserve better.

A rather busy, at times confusing, cologne experience from Versace. (Looking at the fragrance note triangle induces cross-eyed dizziness in me, yikes!)

Not that having too many notes dooms a scent to mediocrity or failure. However, V/S for Men has always come across to me as synthetic, alienating, and uneven in its bright, clean effect.

I've given a fair shake to trying out Versace's scents for many years, vintage or modern. V/S is one that I could never click with, and I wonder what it was MEANT to be and do?!

Nope, can't do it captain.

A scent that's not for everyone hence the rather lukewarm reviews. I stumbled upon a tester bottle of this at a discount store that was having a closing down sale. I blind bought it for next to nothing for two reasons. 1) I generally love the Versace scents especially during the Gianni era (The Jeans Line, Dreamer, Versace Man, etc.) and it's created by one of my favourite perfumers, Mark Buxton.

If you love that transparent, heavily synthetic, and contemporary style Mark is know for with his Comme des Garcons creations - you'll most likely enjoy this.

I find it heavily resembles the aesthetic Mark went for when he created CdG 3. "What would a flower that didn't exist smell like?" It's sort of an abstraction of fresh and floral notes that are heavily synthetic. It almost also smells a little fizzy like soda pop.

Avant-grade and the fact that the diagonal spray mechanism was faulty, it left stores as soon as it arrived.

Quite a fun, almost fascinating oddity from the dawn of the second millenium. As most of Versace scents from the Nineties/2000s, V/S smells heavily synthetic, but unlike for most of their offerings back then, it manages to turn that into a positive and creative feature. In fact V/S is basically a really clean, and I mean ghastly, aseptically clean sort of “empty flowers” galore, modern and archaic at once (Kenzo Power's kind of futuristic floral notes meet Guerlain's Héritage decadent dustiness) with patchouli, fresh basil and at least another fresh-fruity... “thing” I can not identify (some peachy neroli?), musk and ambroxan, surrounded by a ton of nondescript spices which smells as vibrant as completely abstract to me, and some equally nondescript woody base – smooth, clean woods (cashmere/cedar), with a distant yet perceivable whiff of dark-mossy herbs. Something that would almost fit “avantgarde” lines like nu_be, Humiecki & Graef or Andrea Maack, or other modern masters of turning nothingness into “art”. V/S smells “mineral”, grey and dusty, flat and aloof like perfectly polished concrete, with a desaturated, kind of melancholic accord of herbs and floral notes which smell pastel, powdery, cold and detached, floating in a lukewarm sea of industrial-like watery cleanliness with a subtle gassy, almost “toxic” smoky vibe. Sort of a bleached alien nephew of a typical Oriental floral scent from the Nineties. That's it, and I admit that it takes some will and fantasy to take its extreme syntheticness as an added value, so for many people this may just be a screechy artificial mess (and partially – actually, mostly – it is), but still it's a fun ride worthy a sniff.

6,5/10

A synthetic mockery of what a fresh fragrance should smell like. It smells exactly like a urinal cake. It's very rare that I find a summer fragrance so offensive but all I can think of when I smell this is a New York City subway men's room.

One of the few fragrances I have ever scrubbed off after only 5 minutes.

I used to love this as a teenager. I found this going through my old stuff. I put it on, no bueno. It's definitely a buxton it has his signature peppery woody smell. One problem and its a big one, its unbelievably synthetic and cloying. One basenoter had it right, this has way too much going on and it's not even close to being believable. The only reason this doesn't get a huge thumbs down, is because of the great memories I had wearing it ;)