Vacation

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Jungle Homme Pour Homme (Kenzo)

By Thomas

Color me mystified. Here we have a bottle from a Japanese firm (Kenzo), called Jungle (no jungles in Japan that I’ve heard about), and the bottle has a zebra motif – and we all know that the one place you can always find a zebra is the jungle…in Japan, right? Hmmm.

I have a garden with rosemary and thyme, but no matter how long I wait to mow the grass, it never becomes a jungle. In fact, of all the Texas roads I’ve traveled: no jungles anywhere. But I can hazard a guess here and there, and based on the zebra-motif bottle, I’m thinking veldts and grassy plains and open spaces, not rainforests. Does it really matter anyway? I think not.

Kenzo Jungle opens with a modest sigh of lime and fruity woods. Fairly appealing, although the lime really could have had a bit more oomph. Kind of a powdery barbershop lime. The whole thing feels dialed back, actually. Was this a sotto voce mating call? Within minutes, like a lost opportunity, it had vanished. I could not find this anywhere on my arm.

My disappointment faded as the curtain came up for the second act: a powdery greenish nutmeg. Maybe a bit of sweet hay folded in there for interest, reasonable presence in the first hour, fading back to skin again within an hour or so.

Finally, a few hours later we are left with a dwindling vetiver nutmeg vanilla – very little throw, not much really to talk about at this point. Good for the office, fine in the summertime, but for my money I’d pick Guerlain’s Vetiver over this. It’s good, I guess, for what it is (a warm-weather scent), but it feels kind of green, overgrown, and messy. I guess Jungle was an apt name after all.

Year: 1998
Perfumer: Olivier Cresp
Notes: Lemon, Bergamot, Cinnamon, Cardamom, Pepper, Amber, Carnation, Nutmeg, Cedar, Vetiver, Benzoin, Guaiac Wood, Sandalwood

One-liners

By Dane

1. Missoni Acqua (Missoni) - Same as the original minus the chocolate (and the magic that came with it.) Still a step up from Be Delicious.

2. 24, Faubourg (Hermes) - I remember this smelling much richer. Today, it feel like a nondescript mishmash of synthetics. Too bad.

3. Pure Poison (Dior) - Impeccably tame floral (unlike the savage original).

4. Champs-Elysees (Guerlain) - 5 minutes of polite, fruity mimosa followed by hours of impolite, synthetic mimosa.

5. Green (Morgane Le Fay) - Cucumber. They charge how much for this? Get the Marc Jacobs rendition instead (or neither).

6. Blue (Morgane Le Fay) - Peppered citrus fruit, followed by a typical laundry-clean drydown. *yawn*

7. Safari (Ralph Lauren) - Lovely green chypre that could easily compete with the likes of No. 19.

8. Blanc (Paul & Joe) - Why does everyone compare this to L'Eau d'Hiver? I find it more of a re-tooled Bois Farine.