I thought it might be good to take a few scents crafted and labeled exclusively for men and see how they stack up against each other. Our lovely contestants: Tom Ford for Men, Mark Birley for Men, Balenciaga Pour Homme and Patou Pour Homme.
I’ll start by dividing them into two camps — the English and the French (well, Tom Ford is actually American, but he speaks English, so bear with me). Launched in late 2007, and despite its godawful advertising campaign, Tom Ford for Men survives the comparison test as the better of the two.
Tom Ford for Men reminds me of the blatantly commercial and very successful mainstream luxury house fragrances that were so popular in the 80′s — Armani Eau Pour Homme and Ralph Lauren Polo spring immediately to mind, which makes perfect sense when you consider that Ford is the love child of oversexed adolescence and bespoke snobbery. A whiff of the well-groomed stallion, mane slicked back, suits his standard operating procedure, even should it feel about twenty years late to the party.
But rather twenty years late than a hundred, like poor Mark Birley for Men. Overly mannered and old-timey, this is stiff upper lip and British upper crust without a pot to piss in. If this by the numbers bottle of wan, citrus-infused juice is the best a modern British socialite has up his sleeve, then I’ll take the faux posh-by-gosh of Tom Ford for a hundred, Alex.
And now we move to the Frenchies (yes, I know that Balenciaga was originally founded by a Spaniard, but it’s now owned by French multi-national corporation PPR, so get off my back). Balenciaga Pour Homme was created in 1990, and while it may have been treading the curve at the time of its release, it’s of only marginal interest eighteen years later.
A reviewer at BaseNotes called it “Kouros Lite” and he’s not far off, for where YSL Kouros kicks in with some spice and bite, Balenciaga Pour Homme just sits there, a one-trick pony of honied florals and way too much sandalwood. Perhaps this was a deliberate attempt to troll for consumers that turned away from the spicy drama and big 80′s sensibility of Kouros (for even the bottle design shows similarities), but there’s simply not enough there there to warrant further inspection.
And Patou Pour Homme? Fuggedaboutit. If I wanted to smell like a musky, waxy laundry detergent, I’d set up camp in my Maytag, thank you very much.
Both Balenciaga Pour Homme and Patou Pour Homme have been discontinued (PPR and Proctor & Gamble, bless you!), but you can still find them for sale online. Patou Pour Homme, despite its sudsy nature, has a devoted cult following and bottles of the juice (when you can find them) sell for upwards of three to five hundred dollars.
Obviously, there’s still a sucker born every minute.
Tom Ford for Men wins by a mile, with the other three trailing so far behind as to not even register, but if you’re really going to slap down some cash for a Tom Ford fragrance, I’d suggest giving his Private Blend series a once over, first. You can do (and Ford himself has done) a lot better than the Armani-knockoff of Tom Ford for Men.
