Bad Boy Cobalt
Carolina Herrera (2022)

I was initially going to rate this as neutral, but considering it came out in 2022, it doesn’t really have an excuse for smelling this generic. The geranium, sage, and pink pepper combination feels like something you find in 90% of modern releases.

If I had to choose from the collection, I would probably go with Cobalt Absolute instead. I originally thought this was more interesting than Cobalt Absolute, but I’m starting to change my mind. This is a clean, fresh blue fragrance, but somehow even more generic than Sauvage and its many counterparts. Performance is also underwhelming. Overall, this is something I would skip. It’s not really worth testing.

That Bad Boy Cobalt
Sport coat right by the iron
Left on nickel night

Out for some good times
And Red is right there with him
At the country club

As one might call it
Cobalt not being a lie
In a blue frag way

Just enough of that
New mystery patchouli
To catch the big wave

Rather addictive
And fairly potent stuff to
This hunting dog's nose

By which one might add
A hint of Cocoa remains
From Bad Boy senior

As his tonkified
Cocoa/Pepperwood Complex
Remains like Bad Style

Intact but muted
Lightning bolts over Paris
In face-palm bottle

Have some chocolate
With the black patent leather
Of hot oohs and ahs

Whatevs these bottles
Bleu de Choco-Plum appeals
To the wife as well

I still can't buy it
But the small blue fountain pen
Suits me quite fine, boys

Some slick spy gadget
Of the free French Resistance
Provides sweet release

From sins of minor
Irresponsibility
That some find sexy.

Nice fragrance that last for two hours maximum therefore for me it’s a dud.

For an EDP, this is barely detectable when I spray it. The smell is very nice and a good departure from the Bad Boy EDT, which I do not like. This is a clean, blue freshie. The spray mechanism is good, however, I have to spray the crap out of it to get a weak hint of the fragrance. Very weak in terms of sillage and longevity. Performance is what gave this a thumbs down for me.

Not terrible but I don't enjoy wearing this...however, the similarities to the clary sage-heavy YSL Y could mean favorable reactions from the opposite sex.

Similar feel to Y but not as much of the harsh sage, it's more powdery. It is harsher than Coach for men, another typical comparison, especially in the dry down. Those two smell very similar in the opening but then separate in the dry down with Cobalt keeping that piercing, ultra-fresh chemical sage accord while Coach calms down and becomes much softer.

I find Bad Boy Cobalt to have very good performance, due to its combo of notes. It is sweet and fresh and will get noticed. It also lasts most of the day. EdP strength.

Let me start by saying there is something in this that makes me cough, so my time with Bad Boy Cobalt by Carolina Herrera (2022) was cut prematurely short since I was unable to even -stand- it after a little while. I'm not sure what that thing which my body found so offensive was, but it clearly steers my opinion of the scent into the negative since I clearly cannot enjoy it. That said, what Domitille Bertier (Michalon) was trying to do here is make a darker, richer, and more-aromatic aquatic take on the original Bad Boy by Carolina Herrera (2019), and I guess that would have been okay since it stands as competition for other "dark and fresh" fragrances like Ralph Lauren Ralph's Club (2021), which also tries to merge freshness with "clubber" levels of olfactive richess. Your mileage may of course vary from mine.

The opening notes of pink pepper, geranium, and sage do feel pretty screechy, being synthetic notes all around and not smoothed over one bit until the plum-sweetened lavender arrives. To my nose, this felt like TV static slowly being tuned away until a visible channel shows up that I can watch, for those old enough to remember analog TV signals and how they work. The lavender is also fairly artificial, but all of this scent feels deliberately so because it knows its market. The offending cough-inducing facet is actually that "static" I mentioned, being harsh, metallic, gritty, and irritating on my throat. The base lists vetiver and truffle with oak; but all I get is the usual woody-amber aromachemical soup meant to push projection and skin retention into space like one of Jeff Bezos' phallic-shaped rockets. That's all I got folks.

The aquatic elements of course come in from old standby materials like calone and dihydromyrcenol, but they fail to really significantly lighten and freshen the composition once those much-newer and more-aggressive aromachemicals that form this "TV snow" go on the attack and never let up. I'm not sure if Domitille intended this, or if the marketing guys pulled a Tim "The Toolman" Taylor and asked for "more power", giving a weird grunty noise afterword like Tim Allen used to on Home Improvement. Either way, there is a good aromatic lavender and fresh dark fragrance in here, like a new-age version of Polo Sport by Ralph Lauren (1993), it's just beaten to absolute death by a total imbalance of harsh and near-toxic aromachemical inclusions that think amplitude is a good substiture for high fidelity. Thumbs down