More of the Same: Calvin Klein Euphoria for Men

It's been a long time, it seems to me, since Calvin Klein has launched a really good men's scent. Twenty-five years, in fact. His original men's scent, Calvin, was an instant classic: sexy, robust, thoroughly masculine. His follow-up, Obsession for Men, was simply too strong--what I call an attack fragrance--and everything since then (with the exception of the unisex CKOne and CKBe) have been treading water, merely following the trends of the day rather than setting them.

I don't know why I hoped for better from Euphoria for Men, but I did, and I didn't get it. The women's version of Euphoria is at least interesting, with its juicy pomegranate note and its creamy underside, but Euphoria for Men is tiresome and done: it smells like just about every other mass-market fragrance release of the last five or even ten years.

The opener does have a juicy note which is supposedly sudachi, a Japanese citrus fruit, but it briefly calls to mind that pomegranate note. It combines this with ginger, pepper, and a "raindrop accord", whatever that might be; the overall effect is just blandly fresh, like, well, far too many other scents out there. It quickly turns into a woody-oriental scent, and the drydown is pleasant enough, mostly leather and ambergris with a whiff of patchouli, but there's nothing--not one thing--in it that sets it apart from the crowd.

It smells as if it was created for a first-time fragrance user: in fact, for someone who's never really smelled a high-end commercial fragrance before. For that man, it might be a winner. For everyone else, it's same old same old.