8/25/12

Jōvan Black Musk for Men (Coty)



The word "nondescript" comes to mind. I know a couple of my regular readers shudder at the sight of this cologne, but if you asked me what it smells like, I'd have to say it's nondescript, to the fullest extent of the word. It's as forgettable as a Chinese arithmetic problem, sans the thrill of a real challenge. To smell like something, anything, wear anything else. Jōvan Black Musk is not for fragrance connoisseurs.

Who is it for? Simple answer: people who like how it smells. And it is a smell, more than a fragrance, a light, linear, one-note olfactory blurb, a sniff equivalent of something Justin Bieber might say. It's truly that bad - devoid of meaning, with no redeeming accents or inflections - something the likes of which no man should ever have to see on his side of the fragrance aisle. The bottle is dull, cheap-looking, although hefty glass, and one gets points for choosing glass over plastic. The juice? Flat, greyish-purple in color, silvery cool on contact, the languid smell of fruity suede, touched by a standard white musk. It's like one of those hologram stickers - shiny on one side, dull on the other. Sometimes it smells cool, fresh, luxurious. Other times a grapey blobby thing wrecks the romance, dragging the little pretties out by their bottle-bleached locks, leaving smears of cheap chemicals and a perfume-shaped hole in the heart. 

Jōvan Black Musk is a vile disaster, the worst of the worst, ill-conceived in every conceivable way, and it probably doubles as nail-polish remover for goth boys. Jōvan Black Musk is a rancid crime against all of humanity, plus a few other species, too. And I absolutely love it.