Gucci
Gucci
819 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Violet leaf's peppery greenness cuts across bright bergamot in the first moments, almost herbaceous and brisk. There's an immediate freshness here that feels almost medicinal—like the sharp snap of a green tea leaf between your teeth—before the composition settles into anything warmer.
The black tea emerges as the focal point, its dry, slightly tannic character providing the backbone whilst cinnamon and pimento dance around it with restrained spice. This phase is where the fragrance reveals its sophistication: the spice feels genuine rather than sugary, and there's a subtle conversation happening between the warm spices and the cooler tea that keeps it from becoming predictable.
Tobacco and olive wood form a quietly woody base that's more about whisper than shout, the myrrh adding just enough sweetness to prevent the dry-down from becoming austere. What remains is intimate and contemplative—a gentle skin scent that smells less like fragrance and more like a well-chosen fabric.
Gucci pour Homme II arrives as a bracing contradiction—a fragrance that insists on freshness whilst simultaneously wrapping itself in the warm embrace of spice and tobacco leaf. Karine Dubreuil-Sereni has constructed something genuinely unusual here: violet leaf and bergamot do their expected citrous work at the surface, but the real substance emerges in the heart where black tea meets cinnamon and pimento in a rather sophisticated collision. This isn't a sweet spice bomb; instead, it's the aromatic tension between astringent tea tannins and the sharp bite of peppery spice that commands attention.
The base layers add deliberate complexity—tobacco and olive wood create an almost savoury earthiness that prevents the composition from ever feeling foppish or overly groomed. There's a subtle myrrh sweetness threading through, never quite dominant, acting more as a connective tissue between the spice and the woody dryness of the olive wood. The white musk anchor is conspicuously restrained, which is precisely what makes this work.
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4.0/5 (103)