Anucci Sport
Anucci (1989)

Blind bought this after blind buying and trying the OG Anucci Pour Homme. I think Anucci Sport is better for cooler fall weather. I detect similarities to Deauville Pour Homme, Lalique Pour Homme, and OG Armani Code, and by that I mean Anucci Sport exhibits notes here and there that remind me of these others. This smells better on skin after :30 seconds. It's an "okay" for me, not a "love" or a "like."

Anucci Sport by Anucci (1989) is an odd duckling that has been so thoroughly overlooked, it wasn't even known to exist by a lot of people who enjoy the original Anucci Man by Anucci (1989). Part of this may be the much shorter-lived production of this sport flanker, released directly alongside the flagship scent the same year Anucci debuted with perfumes. Anyone with experience smelling anything Anucci will probably have an expectation of this fragrance barely resembling masculine market perfumery of the era, just like its better-known flagship cousin. It would seem Michael Khemlani had personal input on these, and preferred the sweeter, more-floral arrangements of what might have then been seen as conventional feminine market perfume in the west, as this sweet and floral-dandy through-line carries on in every Anucci release regardless of gender up through to the 2000's when Anup Khemlani took over for his father. Before you ask, this does not smell like a sport fragrance, it doesn't even smell like what passed for a men's sport fragrance in the 1980's; Anucci Sport is a true lark.

What you get here is a spicier, sweeter, more-ambery alternative to Anucci Man, with the florals toned down in favor of musk, resins, and citruses. No aldehydes in Anucci Sport, just a sweet orange and chamomile over a core of jasmine, carnation, cinnamon, and lavender, that then pours over a gummy amber, tonka, patchouli, oakmoss, vanilla, and sandalwood base. People smelling this in a blind test might swear Anucci Sport was some missing link between Futuros by Aubusson (1987) and Paco Rabanne 1 Million (2008), which is utterly insane considering it was (not really) marketed as the lighter sportier alternative to the proper Anucci Man. As you might suspect, the fat patchouli musk tandem here is the link between the two, along with the chamomile opening. The only thing sporty about Anucci Sport is the lower overall performance of the fragrance compared to Anucci Man, as if Michael Khemlani thought a heavier fragrance with a lighter concentration would be an adequate sporty alternative to an already-heavy fragrance that sings in hot weather as is, on virtue of the aldehydes and floral materials. What Anucci Sport does have in extreme longevity, and this will stick to sweat.

The rest of Anucci's brand history is told elsewhere in my other reviews of their fragrances, but you get the same heavy seemingly high-quality glass golf ball presentation here as with most early Anucci perfumes (or soccer ball in the case of 2002's Goal), you just won't get much of a fitting perfume for the bottle that contains it, being par for the course on this house (pun intended). The original aim was for millionaires-only ultra-luxury country club usage for Anucci products in general, but being as this brand over-manufactured for demand, the common "small folk" of the world have far enjoyed Anucci perfumes at steep discounts since the advent of online shopping, making people sometimes forget that they aren't likely the ones these perfumes were originally meant for, which I find hilarious. The ultimate hubris of a "Great Value Gucci" also-ran being responsible for the world's first bejeweled cellphone and a lofty World Cup endorsement the brand infamously squandered on dozen other business ventures the Khemlanis maintain globally, letting Anucci become the anecdotal brand it is today, spoken of only by weird old perfume collectors like myself. A clubber in a tracksuit is this. Thumbs up