I received my bottle of S-eX (pronounced Essex?) yesterday, so I tried it out this morning. Despite the rather blatant, cash-cow name, it’s a very light fragrance that’s more quietly intimate than swingingly provocative.
I’d read on numerous other sites about how it smells of sexy leather, salty bodily fluids, sweaty skin, yada yada yada — I got none of that; rather, it opened on me crisp and bright, shiny, like I was shellacked in a tasteful citrus varnish. It then segued into a bantam-weight floral phase that was honestly quite pretty (though coolly dispassionate) and rather evocative of walking though a fresh spring garden where the buds are forming, the air is a pastel green, the grass is so new it barely gives off a whiff and any rosy-scented, heavy-hitting bloomers are way down the schedule.
The leather that soon makes its appearance has nothing to do with dominatrix fantasies or greasy biker bars and is, instead, the scent of a super-luxe handbag, clean and gracefully structured — like a saddle-hued Hermes Birkin straight out of the box (platinum hardware included). Its more masculine equivalent might be a brand new, reissued, fuel-injected Triumph Bonneville parked in a dust-free, air-tight showroom, chrome gleaming, its plastic-wrapped tires having never contemplated the asphalt.
Either way, it’s high quality, hand crafted, eminently desirable luxury with a tang of polished metal.
Then it moves into the alleged salty, skin, sweaty, bodily fluids phase, all to which I say, “pish posh!” I suppose if I squint my eyes real hard and crank my imagination into feverish overdrive, well then, yes, it smells like all sorts of carnal proclivities, but only in the way that a pop-diva’s wig resembles real hair from the 50th row of the concert hall. It would take a genuine leap of faith to actually buy into the idea.
What it does do, however, is quite literally embody the definition of transparency in a fragrance. I think the reason that words like “warm” and “flesh” and “salt” and “sweat” are used so frequently when describing S-eX is because, by two-to-three hours into it, the fragrance itself has become nearly sheer, and what you’re then smelling is really the saltwater evolution of your own skin, but heightened and corrected, as if you’ve been uploaded into Photoshop and tweaked — some abstraction of a superior being accentuating your natural positives while glossing over any minor flaws.
It’s pretty straight-forward from there on in, the usual sandalwood/musk/amber suspects rounding out the chamber ensemble, but they play together very nicely and about six hours later I have a light, golden note that’s sitting so close to my skin we may as well be Siamese (surgical intervention unnecessary).
If you’re looking for something knock-out, turn-heads, “Hello World!” potent, this aint it; but if you’ve been on the prowl for a unique, balanced, painstakingly formulated, high-concept fragrance that’s surprisingly everyday-wearable for being so ridiculously niche, well . . . voila!
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