Black Tie for Men
Fragrance One (2020)

Watching the self-absorbed "FragBro" sub-section of the online fragrance community show its ugliness in reaction to Black Tie for Men by Fragrance One (2020) is probably more fun than smelling the scent itself, which admittedly isn't bad if you separate it from the enormous price tag. Really, this could be any off-the-shelf luxury brand like Parfums de Marly or Royal Crown, where industry perfumers are involved and a modicum of quality is applied to the overall composition, but still smells like it should cost less if not for the over-amped performance. Just like with many popular PdM fragrances, Black Tie for Men justifies its existence by adding a twist of the exotic then dialing performance to 11 so it blows out your speakers on the first bass drop, and with Jeremy Fragrance asking for over $300, Fragrance One is now butting heads directly against established luxury men's lines like those from Amouage. Of course, there is the little bit about this being an extrait de parfum, but when the rest of the packaging and presentation is the bog-standard black bottle and thin metal cap that slides over an uncollared atomizer, the kind of people expecting a $300 fragrance to look like one are going to snub their nose. The smell is really what will make or break you on this brand anyway, and I'm afraid that despite what Black Tie for Men offers, it doesn't quite pass muster in the league where it's trying to hang. The hardcore "Fragrance Army" types are probably already sharpening their knives at me, oh well. Your tears sustain me.

The opening is a bit sweet and bubblegummy, but nowhere near like with past Fragrance One efforts like Fragrance One: Date for Men (2019) or Fragrance One: Office for Men (2019). The same DNA is there of course, it's just dressed up in a bit more of a bitter citrus mix, claiming lemon, orange, and bergamot. The ethyl maltol in the mix gets buried under a high dose of guaiac wood and associated woody-amber compounds. Once again Alberto Morillas seems to know what he's doing, and he's delivering the perfect formal scent for the ur-FragBro of them all, Jeremy himself. Love him or hate him, Morillas knows his clients, or else he wouldn't be satisfied to lean so heavily on machine learning and AI tools at Firmenich. The spiky woods and the slightly skanky amber accords here remind me of Indian oud to a degree, and also the "Band-Aid" leather of another Morillas composition: Gucci Guilty Absolute pour Homme (2017), but they don't last long against the cardamom, tonka, denatured patchouli and ambrox that fill in the massive sillage of the fragrance. This is effectively the same base as all other Fragrance One scents, and claimed to be intentional so they can be layered on throughout the day as one moves from office, to date, to wherever. Purpose-built signature scents is pretty smart for the "one cologne guy" which is who Jeremy seems to target, so hats off there. Longevity is all day and projection is insane. Best use is as the manufacturer suggests, haha. If left up to me however, I'd say if you end up paying for this monster, use it sparingly in winter and ironically not to black tie events, because it's too tacky.

If every entry in this line was around $50 and you could pick up the entire kit and caboodle for about $200, I might be sold on this as the ultimate dumb-reach fragrance line for the dumb guy who doesn't want to think about how he smells, and I may have said this before. The slight ratcheting up of each new entry in price is the real horror show here, because it's luxury window-dressing on an ostensibly pragmatic line, not something made to veblen in nature. If Jeremy wanted to use etched crystal bottles, with big brass caps and ornate Arabic script and felt labels on the bottles, with maybe a rhinestone in the cap or something, maybe $300 would seem fair for the experience of ownership. I'd still balk at the scent for smelling like it does for the price, but at least I can entertain the notion that my trash here could be another man's treasure. The basic bottle, the mostly basic fragrance design which amounts to a drier woodier slightly muskier take on the same DNA Jeremy has always pushed in his fragrances, plus the "take out the guesswork" marketing just clashes with the price point, case closed. On it's own, Black Tie for Men (and oddly not Fragrance One: Black Tie), is just a leathery woody amber with a bit of leftover clubber and blue scent DNA tacked on for familiarity, and smells pretty good. It wasn't a total rehash of DNA with a small topnote change like Unisex for Everybody (2020), so I won't flunk it out, but Black Tie for Men is still very much out of its league. Neutral

Starts off fruity-candy sweet but there's also a dirty, almost animalic oud. As it dries down, it loses some of the fruity top but the sweetness remains as well as the oud.

Seems pretty heavy throughout the wear, which does last all day and projects really well, even with minimal sprays.