It’s spring — the perfect time to release ambery, spicy, oriental fragrances full of coffee, musk, cocoa, patchouli, ambergris and vanilla…right? I used to complain about sparkly “resort” citrus fragrances being released in October and heavy, rich scents coming out just before or during summer, but this off-season system of fragrance debuts has been a money-saver for me. I hold off buying fragrances I can’t wear immediately, so by the time cold weather rolls around, this spring’s and summer’s warm, wintry-smelling fragrance releases will have lost their gloss of “newness” and I can look at them dispassionately, and buy only fragrances I love (not simply like).
Dolce & Gabbana’s The One for Men (developed by perfumer Olivier Polge) has a cool-weather vibe; it contains grapefruit, coriander, basil, cardamom, ginger, orange blossom, cedar, tobacco and ambergris. The One begins with a strong (and predictable) citrus-spice accord that disappears within five minutes. I was stifling a been-there-done-that yawn when something interesting began to happen: The One started to smell like freshly baked cardamom cookies. The One’s ‘cardamom-ginger snap’ phase lasted 10-15 minutes and was enjoyable. About 20 minutes after I sprayed on The One, a strong sweet-sweat aroma began to emerge; this sweaty accord went where few perfumes/perfumers dare to tread — into the onion patch.
I don’t shun musky, “dirty” perfumes, but when an accord reminds me of scallions, I scrub — which brings us to Matthew McConaughey, The One’s advertising model. McConaughey is not my type, at least from the neck up, but he looks well-groomed and unusually “fresh” in The One ads. Anyone who reads the gossip rags knows that McConaughey’s notorious (undeodorized) armpits are almost as famous as his biceps, abs and pecs. (His leading ladies have been known to beg him to wear deodorant.) I wonder if Domenico Dolce, Stefano Gabbana and Polge got a whiff of McConaughey and were inspired by his manly odors…?
After its Allium stage, The One returns to predictability and ends with a pleasant vanillic-woody-musk accord — the accord that’s been present in about 80 percent of the new men’s releases I’ve smelled over the last 18 months. Tobacco-haters: the tobacco in The One is subtle, but noticeable and may contribute to the unwashed/sweat-chive stage of the fragrance. The One for Men has more character than many of the recent mainstream/designer launches I’ve tried, but I know now, without waiting for autumn, that I don’t need a bottle. (But I’d love someone to utilize that spice cookie accord in another men’s fragrance.)
Dolce & Gabbana The One for Men has average lasting power and perfect sillage for men (i.e., minimal). The One comes in a bottle that’s as heavy as a brick (I like it) and is available in 50 ml ($55) and 100 ml ($70) Eau de Toilette. The One’s bath and body products include aftershave lotion and cream, shower gel and deodorant. As of this writing, The One for Men is a Saks Fifth Avenue exclusive in the U.S.
You and I are on the same page as far as Matthew is concerned. I've never been able to understand what the big draw is (Sean Connery c. 1963, on the other hand…) and I hadn't heard the bit about no deodorant!
Spritz him down with a good dose of The One, I say.
Angela: Spritzing him with The One might help…till it gets to the onion phase and accentuates the negative!
maybe in his case, 2 wrongs will make a right. One can hope.
Kevin, The One is here everywhere now. At every entrance of a perfume shop I see these oversized ads.
If only Gerard Depardieu had been on that photo… I would have walked in to at least try this fragrance.
MD: MAYbe!
Marianne: has Depardieu EVER been in a cologne ad? Just watched “Changing Times” and loved it by the way….K
Kevin, what a terrifically well-described scent!! Thanks. Doesn't sound like a gotta-rush-out-and-HAVE. Think of the $$$$ we've saved!!!
Good god, onions?! What, no lovely honey, no whiffs of ambery tobbaco? No go, eh? Agree on the One's saving-grace spices, though. Btw, although MM's stare in the ad seems a bit inebriated and probably bored, I do think he's quite good-looking.
Kevin, I'm afraid not. But he does have his own wines though…and I would love to see him in an perfume ad.
And I know how to spell tobbaco, see – t o b a c c o 🙂
Robin: I'm proud of myself this year…only one full bottle purchased in 2008 (so far)!
Dusan: been meaning to write you: I LOVE the Courvoisier you recommended and may even get a bottle SOON, but, alas, it is not the scent I smelled in Padova! KEEP SNIFFING! I have you as perfume detective in Europe and I sent a letter to the US “Perfume Detective” in NYC to find me some The, K
I just had to post this, taken from a post I made on Basenotes about my experience at Saks and this scent.
—–
The Saks in downtown Chicago was REALLY eager to push this one. My exchange went almost exactly like this last week:
Me: Do you have a tester for Pure Coffee?
SA #1: Umm…let me see. [doesn't find it] Let me ask one of the others. [speaks to SA #2, locates the bottle; SA #2 takes over completely]
SA #2: Here it is! But before you try it [stashing the bottle where I can't reach it] you simply MUST try this new one. It's called THE ONE [exaggerated emphasis by SA] by Dolce & Gabanna. It. Is. HEAVENLY.
Me: Um, OK. I guess I can sample it on a card, if you have one.
[A card magically materializes out of thin air. SA sprays the card enthusiastically and liberally, waves it in the air, and hands it to me. I barely even get the card halfway to my nose when SA #2 breaks in.]
SA #2: Isn't that WONDERFUL? It's the BEST thing I've smelled in YEARS! Here, here, smell it! [pushes card to my nose]
Me: [backing away slightly] Hmm. It reminds me a lot of Obsession for Men right off.
[SA #2 looks crestfallen and then gives me a look as if I dropped a turd on the floor.]
SA #2: It doesn't smell ANYthing like Obsession! It's got this and that and some other thing in it. [I don't remember the list of notes she rattled off.]
Me: Well, it's not bad, and it might be good for fall or winter, but —
SA #2: And look! [gesturing with a flourish to the counter display like a model on “The Price is Right”] It's Matthew! [Wink wink]
Me: Oh. Yeah. Wow.
SA #2: So, what do you think? We have it in stock, you could take it home today!
Me: Well, I never buy anything like this on impulse, so —
[SA turns off her 1000-watt face and deflates like a balloon. She dismissively sprays a card with Pure Coffee and hands it to me.]
SA #2: Here.
Me: Hmm. This is…sort of nice. [The Pure Coffee is SO strong I can't really deal with it right off.]
SA #2: Mmm yes, but it isn't…THE ONE.
[I fight the impulse to run and instead walk briskly out of the store.]
He is not my type from neck up either 🙂 Loved you review, the first sentence made me laugh out loud.
Tim: wow, that's a hard sell…usually I get a mini-tutorial at Saks on perfume sampling: “First, you'll smell ALCOHOL…but wait!..next comes the fleeting notes! You have to WAIT for the real scent to emerge.” Exhausting! And they are STINGY with samples.
Thanks C…I'm having to remind myself of last winter's releases so I can find some summery stuff to sample….
Oh yes, I got that too on something else at Saks on a subsequent day. I don't know if this is characteristic of Saks — we don't have one in the Twin Cities anymore — but they are very overbearing in the three that I've shopped (Chicago, St. Louis, and especially San Francisco).
I've gotten to where I tend to skip the fragrance counters unless the SAs are helping someone else…
What a totally fabulous review – thanks for that. I am liking the coffee-vanilla-amber-woods-spice thing in men's fragrances so far, but I think I will skip the onions and stick to New Haarlem. Not your type from the neck up – hah!LOLperfumes!
This sounds interesting – must go and have a look at the department stores with A, and see what our respective chemistries make of the onion note!
Hmm I may have to convince the beloved to try it and see if the oniony bit is managable. I might fail to mention that bit to him beforehand.
Also not a fan of McConaughey, he's just a big boy appropriate for some Hugo Boss thing, not a man. Dirty armpits or not, a dirty man scent needs a proper musty filthy (in spirit) man to advertise it.
smelltheglove: Thanks, and I like all those notes too…but just not in spring!
thrpschr: maybe that accord will smell more like “BO-Plus” than onion on you…?
IngestedKitten: yes, one with a hairy chest…for this one, maybe a hairy chested man baking spice cookies?
Julian Mcmahon would have been a good candidate; pre manscaping
Hmm, this actually sounds interesting enough for me to want to sniff… as long as I don't get much ONION. I've been known to like strange notes, but onion is not one of them. Even the idea of the tobacco in this doesn't scare me so much, but it definitely sounds more like autumn or winter. I'll have to search it out in a dept store.
As for McConaughey, he certainly doesn't look too bad WHEN he appears to be shampooed and had a shower/shave within a week or so. The video on the D&G site for the frag is rather slick:
http://man.dolcegabbanatheone.com/
I like the bottle — it looks to me quite similar to Terre d'Hermes with a different cap.
Tim, I'm aching to know which of my peeps ran you through that scenario, LOL! I love 'em to death but they can be silly when they're pushing the Scent of the Week, can't they? They almost ran me out of the store one time, pushing Max Mara! Their mgrs must be standing in the background with Tasers!
Matthew always lLOOKS clean (his BO is apparently legendary, though) but he looks sort of stoned…or…maybe like he's saying “can we just get this over with already?”
Mammabear: he looks more “with it” in the video advertisement…you can watch it on the D&G site.
Joe: the cap on this bottle is metal and I don't think I've come across a heavier bottle….
Kevin,
The first time I smelled this truly awful excuse for a fragrance I was in Selfridges in London.
You have to bear in mind that I love the female version of this frag on my soon-to-be-ex-wife smells great, so much so I was almost salivating to smell this for the first time.
Now, I don't know what it was that formed my opinion – it may have been that my last perfume counter had been Acqua Di Parma and my heart was sold on Intensa (far more than Assoluta or Colonnia).
Anyway, the SA sprayed the card. I smelled nothing. She sprayed again, still…. nothing. I left the store, came back half an hour later and… was spectacularly unimpressed.
Frankly this is just not very good. It's not animalistic enough to give the glorious and sex-on-a-stick wonder of Eau De Hermes and it's not well rounded enough a bright summer fragrance to take on the aforementioned Acqua di Parma.
If it were a school report I was marking it would get a C- and a letter home to the parents.
Matthew M. is among my LEAST favorite actors and that's putting it mildly. To know that he STINKS only annoys me further. I can condemn a scent based on extraneous factors (for instance I won't buy Tom Ford's stuff because his advertising campaign was ignorant and degrading.) So D&C The One will not be purchased by my for the simple fact that MM is the “face” (or the arm pit!) of this scent!!
Oh gosh, let me see if I can remember. This occurred in early April when I was in Chicago for my 40th birthday.
SA #1 was male, seemed helpful without being intrusive.
SA #2 had dark or black hair and an accent that I couldn't place. Does that help?
Lol…I got suck a visual of that one that I about spewed ice cream all over my moniter. Not cool.
I generally stay pretty under-educated when it comes to men's scents (my all-male classmates wear usually wear Axe and think that Diesel is waaay high end) and the only guy I've ever been around who truly smelled amazing- and I have a pretty strict definition of amazing in men's colognes- I am way to embarrased to question. This does sound interesting….maybe our hairy guy is making french onion soup while he's baking cookies? And if Matthew is advertising this one, he's probably baking them for Kate Hudson.
I don't see the appeal either. Not only is he rather too pretty for me (Either you're “rugged” or you're embracing the preppier side of things. Make up your mind) but the thought of that BO…ugh. Him and Patrick Demsey can just go live on a deserted island. McDreamy? Ha! Give me George Clooney in his ER days.
Doesn't ring a bell – were you at the men's store? If so, I'm lost – I just know the women's fragrance SAs. Shocking how little they know (or care) about the fragrances themselves but they are lovely to me (have been for nearly 20 years!). I wish you'd had a better experience – they really are nice people – but can do the hard-push with the best of 'em.
Nothing, though, compared to walking through Macy's Loop store. I would like to bring a Taser for that gauntlet! If I hear the words “it's new” one more time……
Nope, it was at the main store.
I know what you mean about Macy's, and that's just as true here in the Twin Cities. At most stores I try to browse from a distance. Not easy to do, but it usually works.
“Onion” is an unfortunate accord to include in any fragrance., though better it's coming from the perfume than from the man himself! (Aside: Wasn't perfume popular in the past in large part for its ability to mask the unsavory scents of the body?)
Kevin, your review reminds me of the opening scene of an episode of one of my favorite shows, the British comedy “Are you Being Served?” called “It Pays to Advertise.”
Eau de Hot Pot anyone? http://youtube.com/watch?v=yTJx5RyWrlc
Thanks for the fun review!
Rachels_musings: hey, life is too short and perfume counters are too scary: if you smell something you like on someone, ask what they're wearing! HA! I used to be shy about that too…but now, no.
HDS1963: I haven't smelled The One for Women…but do enjoy Colonia Intensa
Abigail: this being D&G, it's amazing MMcC is CLOTHED, isn't it? But The One has made an impression with its ads…already people associate it with its famous model ….
raisinred: thanks; I think I've seen every episode of “AYBS” multiple times…no doubt Mrs Slocum would have been all a'twitter around MMcC, not to mention Mr Humphreys!
Hehe, I certainly agree – chive smell or not! (and yeah for AYBS fans!)
Yeah that's the sort! Wildly under-represented in the world of perfume promotion, can't imagine why…
Ha…I should just ambush him next time.
“Your perfume's been driving me wild- what is it?”
Awkward much? Oh well. Like you said, perfume counters scare thecrap out of me. 😉
If only most fragrance counter SAs were as witty and endearing as the cast of AYBS, that's all I can say. I'd buy anything from Mrs. Slocombe any day.
Kevin, lovely review! Like all your reviews in fact. Even when our tastes differ, I still bow to your literary talent!
The One for men is better than The One for women – to me at least. Maybe because I occasionally enjoy wearing men's fragrances. M7 and Encre Noire for example.
The One for women is some sort of peach-plum syrup to me. And it sells, it sells … at least here in Prague all langurous women considering themselves too sophisticated for Touch of Pink by Lacoste wear this one. And the SA's chase you with a bottle and a paper strip.
Men in Prague largely prefer the following frags:
1. Czechs for the most part take a leaf out of McConnaughey's book and radiate BO. Those who use fragrance swear by Hugo Boss or if really hip, by Kenzo.
2. Eastern Europeans seem to cherish a fragrance icon of the time the communist system collapsed – Calvin Klein one (not THE one thank God). Even if they were in kindergarten at the time.
3. Germans and Austrians seem to have been left bottles of sickly sweet Eau de Grandad by beloved relatives – I'll leave you my flat if you wear my cologne seems a common arrangement. At least once they clear out Grandpa's dungeon.
4. Many Brits and Americans, especially young ones who exercise before work, seem not to wear any cologne. They work out, shower, wear deodorant but no fragrance.
5. Indians and Arabs sometimes wear the most fascinating honey, tobacco, wood & spice combinations, but they may be bringing these from their home countries. Now if I could get my hands on a bottle …
NG…I think you are stereotyping people !!
I wonder if we live in the same place.
No – just trying to write something humorous derived from sampling the fragrance preferences of my co-workers.
Depending on where you work, you may have a completely different experience.
Well, then with the fifth category, if you like tobacco, woods and oriental stuff then maybe you could try Andy Tauers fragrances…sounds like his scents 😉
Marianne, what I really like is Opium, but because it is my mother's fragrance I can not wear it and am desperately looking for something with the same powerful personality.
I thought of Andy Tauer too but am not aware of a shop in Prague, looks like I will need to travel to Vienna for that.
Through a Polish company I got a sample of Nuit Noire by Mona di Orio, I was sure it will be a keeper, but disliked it totally. The same happened with some of Montale's oud fragrances, therefore I must try before I buy.
What looks fabulous is Muscs Koublai Khan, but it lacks spice, it's only musky, needs to be layered.
I had the original Opium and I think that I know what you mean.
Andy Tauers fragrance are available online and samples too.
Hmm, I have to think about this one.
Poeme somehow has that same 'heaviness'. Jill Sander (from the '80s in a white ceramic bottle, still available in Amsterdam) has that 'spiciness'
I have a Montale sample of 'Ginger Musc' and 'Powder Flowers' and they are quite good but maybe too soft somehow.
Why don't you try a sample of Andy Tauer 'L'air du desert Marocain' or maybe 'Incense Rose”?
Nile Goddess: thank you…and we share some tastes that's for sure, I love M7 and Encre Noir. Wonder if you'd like Fumerie Turque/Miel de Bois by Serge Lutens? The commes des garcons Incense/Red series are worth checking out too.
I wanna smell this soooooooooo bad!!!
I think The One is the one fragrance I definitely will not be buying this year.
I've tried this twice on my skin and failed to be impressed on both occasions. The second time I'd put Gucci Homme II on the back of my left hand and The One on the back of the other. Which won? The Gucci, the nose to skin test was a hands down victory. I was looking for a nice light scent and the Gucci was just so much better. (As an aside, has anyone noticed how Gucci Homme II smells very like it could come from the Acqua di Parma line…?)
All of which is such a shame because the The One pour femme is delicious and a perfume I really admire.
The One will soon become The Gone I think. It has virtually no longevity, no sillage at all (you may as well just wear air).
A very disappointing fragrance indeed.
No one has mentioned the ginger in The One – it was very loud for me. I didn't like it at all.
bartamy: the “spice cookie” phase was the part I liked BEST in the entire fragrance…that ginger SNAP. But it didn't last long on my skin unfortunately.
Oh no – onion patch? 🙁
That, and Matthew, are such turn-offs.
Maybe I'm weird but I have been sniffing this religiously since spritzing and have gotten no onion. My nose must be developing, because I identified the cardamom and only came on here to look for the notes to see if I was right. Somehow this trip out I spent more time in men's than women's so all my samples save one are men's, including this One. I will enjoy my sample and then likely forget about it.
What on earth is going on with this one?? It still isn't at Macy's!
I smelled this in a Magazine and DID NOT LIKE IT! I just came from Macy's and I bought Rocawear 9IX and I sprayed this on me and it smells SOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD! I'm gonna go back and buy it
I don't know if it will make it to Macy's…it started at Saks and I don't know the distribution deal….K
Its at Macy's now. It got there 3 weeks ago
Oops. I mean last week
I want this SOOOOOOOO bad! I tried it on my skin yesterday and I'm in Freakin love with it! I like it better than the Rocawear!
I’ve just bought this today, after long deliberation and enticing friends’ approval of it on me. I’m not dissappointed in the least; a solid leathery, smell for when I need my senses warming up. It should go well with the A-Men Pure Coffee for dark sultry nights, in or out.