Lovelorn: Cacharel Amor Pour Homme

I would have voted for more of this, less of everything else.

A few days ago I got a sample of Cacharel's newest scent, Amor Pour Homme. (I'm baffled as to why the first part of the name is in Spanish and the rest is in French: I know French is the universal language of perfumery, and Cacharel is a French company, and the women's version is called Amor Amor, but wouldn't Amour pour Homme or Amor para Hombre have made more sense? Or aren't these things meant to make any sense? Stupid question, I suppose.)

The advertising copy inside the sample's jacket reads, "A man and the power of love. A scent of spiced rose built around purple wood and vetiver." I was delighted, because I've been looking for a decent men's rose scent pretty much forever; L'Artisan's Voleur de Rose just doesn't do it for me (the overdose of patchouli makes it smell, for lack of a better word, filthy). Finally, I thought: roses!

I should have known better.

The opening is black tea and lemon peel; it's very authentic-smelling, but wrapped around it is a fairly standard bright-fresh-synthetic smell that's common to fragrances aimed at younger men. Unfortunately, it's also fairly unpleasant, at least to my nose. This, I thought, doesn't bode well.

As we enter the heart of the fragrance, that synthetic freshness, thank goodness, boils away--but where are the roses? Damned if I know. There's a floral aspect to the scent, but it doesn't smell like any rose I've ever encountered. Mostly what I smell is a woody and, again, rather synthetic smell that I suppose must be the "purple wood", otherwise known as palisander, otherwise known as Brazilian rosewood.

Except for that brief fun moment at the top when a wave of lemony tea hits the nose, there's nothing about Amor pour Homme that remotely interests me. It may do well in the 18-to-25-year-old market; there's just not that much to distinguish it from many other youth-oriented scents out there, so someone might as well wear this as the latest Tommy Hilfiger or Azzaro.

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I'm taking a week off for some R&R and, if I can't control myself, scent-shopping. Back next Sunday.