Thursday, March 12, 2009

Bvlgari Blv is a Schizophrenic Stinkbomb!


I realize I’m still a newb at this fragrance reviewing business, so my horizons are still a bit narrow, but Bvlgari Blv Pour Homme may well be the absolute worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my entire life. It’s worse than skunk, worse than burnt rubber, worse than shit … To be fair, it may rank just below a cocktail of all of those things in terms of repulsiveness.

Bvlgari Blv is just a complete trainwreck of a scent that is at turns loud and spicy, like an obnoxious open-shirted 70s guy, then soft and powdery, like a little old lady in a pink frilly dress. This scent is trying very hard to be something ... The trouble is, it can’t seem to decide what it's trying to be.

For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, this stuff leaves a picture in my head of two men having sex in the bathroom of a very loud, grossly trendy nightclub … And they’re not attractive men, either; they’re greasy, over-tanned men dressed like extras on Miami Vice.

Image note: Wearing Bvlgari Blv made me wish I owned a gasmask. I’m not sure what the origin of this picture is. I found it on someone’s Myspace page. It reminds me of the old Sandman comic - not Neil Gaiman’s Dream King, Morpheus, but Wesley Dodds, the gasmask-and-fedora-wearing hero from the Golden Age of comics. He used to put villains to sleep using a special gun filled with knock-out gas (thus the gasmask).

6 comments:

BitterGrace said...

Ha! Nothing like reading a first-rate hatchet job on a popular scent to start the day. I thoroughly enjoyed that. I hope you won't mind if I play the jaded perfumista and say--Don't throw away your sample of BB. Anything you hate that much has a good chance of seducing you in years to come. At least, that has been my own experience. I dread the day that my vicious assessment of Euphoria comes back to haunt me. Of course, if I'm lucky I could die before that happens...

jmcleod76 said...

You know, the contents of this review are pure hyperbole. I don't think my loathing of this fragrance is quite so intense as all that. But vitriol can be so fun ... I can't really pull off cruelty in my real life. Too sensitive. But when it comes to something so harmless - and face it, Bvlgari isn't going to go bankrupt over a bad review from some lowbrow lesbo in central Maine - sometimes unabashed bitchiness feels wicked good!

TMC said...

I'm not any kind of perfume-wearer (except a little bit that Julie sent me... I wear it around the house to cheer me up; and patchouli of course, also at home. Come to think of it, Julie might've sent me the perfume to get me to stop w/ the patchouli. Hmmm.) but can your opinion of a fragrance (scent?) change depending on mood? Like you could hate it now but for some reason on a warm Maine evening following a thunderstorm it smells delish?

jmcleod76 said...

Hey TMC, welcome! I'm still new to perfume, too, but my understanding is that that's exactly how it works. I know that, among the things I like, there are times I love them and times I don't so much. My three favorites each have a different character, and it really depends on what I'm in the mood for at the time. That said, I can't imagine the circumstances under which Bvlgari Blv could ever smell "delish" ...

Julie H. Rose said...

Is it impolite to leave comments for other commentors? Nonetheless, I will: TMC, I sent you Safran Troublant for no other reason than I thought it was a particularly unperfume-y scent that I love. No ulterior motive.

As to Bulgari Blu. Another case of my recommendations to you being a disaster! But, I didn't know there was a MEN's Blu and a WOMEN's Blu! The women's scent seemed intriquing to me, but I only tested it in TJ Maxx, on the sly.

Anyway, your hyperbole is a great deal of fun!

jmcleod76 said...

Not impolite at all. Consider this a conversation salon ... nah, too hoity ... consider it the counter at a greasy spoon diner.

As for your recommendations, I appreciate them very much. They got me started.