Carolina Herrera
Carolina Herrera
28.0k votes
Best for
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The dual pepper attack lands immediately—prickly, almost aggressive black pepper softened by white pepper's creamy heat, with bergamot providing a brief citric flash that's gone before you've properly registered it. There's an aromatic quality here, slightly green and sharp, that hints at the sage waiting in the wings. Within minutes, the spice settles into something warmer, more inviting, as if the fragrance is deciding whether to behave or misbehave.
Cedar emerges with proper presence now, bringing a pencil-shaving dryness that grounds the composition just as the cacao begins its slow reveal. Sage and geranium weave through the middle, the former adding herbal clarity, the latter a touch of soapy floralcy that feels almost out of place—until you realise it's the only thing stopping this from becoming a chocolate shop. The sweetness is building, unmistakable but not yet dominant, held in check by the aromatic woods.
This is where Bad Boy shows its hand: a plush, enveloping cloud of tonka and vanilla with cacao running through it like a dark ribbon, all wrapped in amber's resinous warmth. The woods have receded to mere shadows, the spices long gone, leaving a skin scent that's unashamedly sweet but surprisingly smooth. It's the olfactory equivalent of expensive leather upholstery—soft, slightly indulgent, and lingering far longer than expected.
Bad Boy opens with a crackling pepper duet that's far more interesting than the bottle suggests—black and white varieties sparring against bergamot's citric brightness like static electricity before a storm. This is the fragrance equivalent of a sharp suit with trainers: Christophe Raynaud has built something that straddles the line between boardroom cedar and late-night indulgence, where aromatic sage and geranium provide a fleeting moment of respectability before the composition slides headlong into its true nature. The heart's slightly soapy geranium acts as a bridge, keeping things from tipping into outright gourmandry, whilst the cedar adds just enough structure to stop the whole thing collapsing into syrup. But make no mistake—this is a fragrance that wants you to notice the cacao-tonka axis at its core, a rich, almost fudge-like sweetness that's been given a warm spicy backbone and an amber glow. It's unapologetically modern masculine: loud enough to fill a room, sweet enough to attract attention, but with sufficient woody-aromatic bones to avoid smelling like a dessert menu. The man who wears this doesn't apologise for taking up space. He's probably younger than he acts, older than he dresses, and entirely comfortable with that contradiction. Evening wear, certainly, but also for anyone who's decided that subtlety is overrated and that vanilla can, in fact, be a power move when it's wrapped in enough pepper and cedar.
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4.3/5 (22.0k)