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).

Azzaro Pour Homme = Bottled Machismo (In the Best Possible Way)

Azzaro Pour Homme isn’t bad … Not bad at all! My first sniff reminded me of my dad's Old Spice, but it mellowed on my skin to something less over-the-top testosterone-y. It was still spicy and clean smelling, and the Old Spice resemblance never completely faded, but there are much worse things than smelling like Old Spice.

In addition to the spiciness, there's a definite sweetness there, too. Vanilla? I think so. I’m noticing that my skin (or nose?) seems to pull out the sweetest notes in almost anything I wear. Scents that guys review as “animalic” or “woodsy” smell almost gourmand on me. That’s an interesting trend for me to note.

I enjoy this well enough, but I don't think I would buy a bottle. It's not something I would wear on a regular basis. It would be too rugged for me to pull off, I think, unless I were in deep drag ... blue collar drag, not the awkwardly, scruffily, dandified boi I like to pull out on occasion. If I did ever want to smell like this – and the possibility isn’t out of the question – I might just save myself a few dimes and opt for the Old Spice, instead.

Image note: I think the kind of guy who would wear Azzaro Pour Homme is the same kind of guy who might have a poster of this pin-up girl hanging on his wall. Heck, who could blame him …

UPDATE: I've since revised my opinion that one would be just as well off buying Old Spice. See my follow-up post.