Jimmy Choo Man Blue
Jimmy Choo (2018)

Middle ground

If you want a lower level designer blue, this is a good way to go. When going up against its contemporaries, such as Calvin Klein and Michael Kors, this is pretty good. I like the bottles. The price is fantastic, at like $35 dollars. This would be a great one for a person who is not into fragrances to pick up and use as a daily driver. The base is some beh woody ambers, but can't avoid that these days.

Neutral

You new Choo bleugère
Match Givenchy if you dare
Gentle manly heir

Lest Lorson's latest
Lend of lightly leathered luxe
From lady-leaning

Gent-ly glandstanding
Gentleman Givenchy (new)
Gent-ly brandfragging

Through thinly thoughtly
Throuple naughtly yetly in
Threedundant boughtly

Daft in deft devoid
Proclaim, that this then therefore
Through some sameful shame

Throw worthy warrior
Onto Gentlemanly pyre
Then thusly thisly

Thinking thee require:
For foxy fougèrity
Crafty clarity

And any Arts and
Sciences in perfume served
Let any money

Spent on shoe Choo Blue
Be pronounced per se deserved
For woody chalky

Recently boughtly
Sniffile sample snuffly told
Of franker flanker

Hip flask for hanker
On the line then Red be sold.
Thus rejoice boy blues

In our Jimmy Choos
As the girls to die for theirs
Grandish and standish

Tip-toe wares, spray we
Choo amigos free, low sparks
Of our vanity.

A pleasant, clean, fresh, synthetic, office-friendly scent.

Not near as headachy as Dior Sauvage EDP or Bleu De Chanel, but I was ready to get rid of this one by the end of the day. Not that this is similar to either, but that the modern synthetics that appear in the new Dior, Chanel, etc. "blues" makes a similar, albeit faint, appearance in Mr. Choo's Man Blue.

Nothing memorable here, the samples are off to another home.

I could write a really short review of this saying something to the effect of, "Another generic 'blue' mall fragrance with a redundant blend of an aquatic ambroxan-laced heart, a synthetic vanilla/suede combo in the base, and typically fresh top notes to get things started off," and for certain people, this would probably suffice in describing it and give them enough that they need to know to stay away from it. In fact I don't disagree with the reviews here which basically say this. For the most part, that's what Choo Man Blue is. If you're the type who dislikes modern mall fragrances, especially of the "blue" variety, and have grown tired of the ambroxan craze, particularly when it's used to create an aquatic effect of some sort, then stay away from this stuff. You'd probably find my description above apt and true to your experience. That's fine. I get why people don't like these scents and why they may be sick of them also. But there are still people out there who appreciate this genre of men's fragrances (am I among them? not really, but I don't hate them either) and would like to know the real differences between the various "blue" releases out there. This review is for those people. From what I've noticed, the Jimmy Choo brand doesn't exactly command respect or attention from fragrance enthusiasts. Therefore it would be very easy to cast aside Choo's "blue" release in favor of a brand with better name-recognition, like Versace or Armani, but to do so would be a mistake. There are some things about this one that I believe make it better than some of the leading brands out there, and reasons why it's worth exploring it if you're in the market for this type of scent.

Choo Man Blue is actually one of the better "Blue" fragrances I've smelled recently. In fact it's a hell of a lot better than Versace Dylan Blue which I finally sampled for the first time last month. While I don't think it's a great fragrance, and it's certainly not anything particularly new, if you were a guy looking for one of these "blue" sorts of scents and didn't want to spend a whole lot, you could certainly do a lot worse than Choo Man Blue.

Here's why this one is good: 1) The accord that sits at the top of the fragrance is nice. It's an interpretation of sage leaves and it has a pleasant aromatic balance between herbal-sweet and fresh. The notes have a rather crisp feeling and they maintain it for some time. Top notes often fade very quickly, but they hang on for a good amount of time here, about two hours at least, extending into the heart of the fragrance, and keeping that fresh, crisp top afloat. This is a good thing, and one reason why Choo Man Blue could be described as having decent structure. 2) The ambergris element is treated well here. Blue has a slightly salty, marine-like quality that becomes more evident in the heart and it pairs with the sage accord from the opening very well. The ambroxan or "ambergris" if you want to call it that, wasn't overdone, and instead it's used to give Blue a balanced proportion of salt and oceanic likeness. Some fragrances overdo the ambroxan in attempting to recreate a sea-like atmosphere and it ends up becoming to salty and sticky feeling, and clashes with the fruity top-notes they often employ. Choo Man Blue doesn't do this. It uses the ambroxan sparingly enough to keep things pleasant and uplifted, (and if it uses a lot of ambroxan, it at least blends it very well among the notes) and it blends it with an aromatic sage accord rather than a sticky fruity note, avoiding the clash that can result when that combination occurs. Finally, 3) Blue's dry down isn't terrible. It's pleasant even. So many perfumers choose to load up their bases with harsh synthetic woody aromachemicals these days, like norlimbanol (and call them cute words like "akigalawood," and "cashmeran"), and as result these fragrances have horrible, scratchy, abrasive bases that can just ruin a scent. At least here Lorson went in a fairly soft and somewhat smooth direction instead, employing an easy going synth vanilla, a smooth if not abstract interpretation of suede, and sandalwood, which just kind of smells like some general variety of synthetic wood. Anyway, while the base isn't great or anything, it doesn't ruin the scent and is a fairly soft cushion for the fresh aromatics from the top and the ambergris heart to fade into. It even smells pretty nice.

Overall, while this scent is one that has probably been smelled before in some variation or another, among the many "Blue's" that are out there, it's actually pretty decent. Seeing how it now goes for about $35 per 100ml I can definitely see how someone could do a lot worse than Choo Man Blue, and it could even make a solid choice for a man or young man looking for something modern and clean, but also a touch sensual or romantic. While I do think that something like this epitomizes the smells that are wafting out of your local mall fragrance section, that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. It's also a nice fragrance because it smells a bit more mature than some of the other stuff that's out there right now, like Sauvage or Invictus...and that's because of the sage top notes (as opposed to something fruity) and restrained vanila/suede base (as opposed to "intense" woods). So yes, there's even a degree of elegance or sophistication here. Thumbs up, with a final rating of 7.5/10. Longevity is good, so is its projection.

It's very easy to overlook something like Choo Man Blue, and I can totally see why you would--we've seen enough of these types of scents and are bored with them by now--but it's important to point out that this is at least one of the better ones. While I'm not rushing out to buy a bottle, I enjoyed my sample of it.

Final note: Another "blue" fragrance that reminds me of Choo, in the sense that it's not one of the top brands but in fact executes its theme really well is Ferragamo Acqua Essenziale. This is more of a light, woody-aquatic than Choo Man Blue, which has more oriental qualities in comparison, so they're not exactly in the same genre, but it's still out there among the "blue" crowd, like Choo, battling it out with more popular brands. I've always though Acqua Essenziale was better than it's credited for, and poorly recognized due to the saturation of its genre and its brand-name, and I believe Choo Man Blue will probably have the same fate. Neither fragrance is ground breaking or exceptionally good, but both are above average in their heavily-populated genre and better than some of their competitors with much more prestigious names.

Jimmy Choo Blue is just your average, modern fresh/sweet scent. It's not aquatic, maybe Blue means it's just a little lighter than the original Jimmy Choo Man? I like Intense better than the previously mentioned other two and the Ice version is the best of all four versions, being that it's the least cloying and powdery. Also, Blue is one that smells better in the air than on skin.

The sweet, powdery feel reminds me of Armani Code. The later stages of the drydown reveal a pleasant, soft vanilla.

I get really good projection during the first 4-5 hours. Longevity is in the 8-9 hours on me.

Alright Mr. Choo, I see you! It appears that after a litany of mediocre retreads parroting 20 years worth of "safe and clean" choices, Jimmy Choo decides to join the 2010's "marine ambergris" gang by upping the ambroxan ratio to dizzying heights. It's a move just like Dior Sauvage (2015), Versace Dylan Blue (2016), or Y Eau de Parfum (2018), the latter of which launched concurrently to this. However, what those scents do right which this does wrong is pair that ambroxan with something memorable (or shocking) to make a modern "ambroxan bomb" that actually stands out on its own merits. Sauvage has that extreme "desert-like" demeanor thanks to overcharged ambroxan and norlimbanol with little else to blend them, while Dylan Blue revisits early 2000's fruity notes and the Y eau de Parfum mixes plenty of warmth into it's faux ambergris late in the drydown to make a dynamic switch from cool aquatic top to cozy base. With Jimmy Choo Man Blue (2018), we get a personality closest to Y Eau de Parfum, but midway between it and the abysmal Y by Yves Saint Laurent (2017) eau de toilette version from the previous year. If you know anything about that travesty, you'll know how irredeemably scratchy and itchy it becomes when it tries to fold powdery barbershop elements into it's mix, and the distinct lack of those elements in the EdP version (replaced with oriental notes) are what makes that iteration actually quite good. Jimmy Choo Man Blue kicks its feet by trying to serve up "half and half" with some barbershop elements mixed with some oriental ones, and that ambroxan playing traffic control for it all before giving into the synthetic woods base. Sorry, but it just doesn't work for me.

Jimmy Choo Man Blue opens with bergamot, clary sage, black pepper, and some aquatic elements, but unlike the original Jimmy Choo Man (2014), Jimmy Choo Man Intense (2016), or Jimmy Choo Man Ice (2017), there isn't a huge focus on fruit, calone, or anything that feels like a throwback to the 90's or early 2000's. With Jimmy Choo Man Blue, it's a thoroughly-current affair for better or worse, with little fruity sweetness. This inadvertently makes Jimmy Choo Man Blue the most mature offering, at least until the base sets in and destroys any respect one might have for this slight improvement overall. Nathalie Lorson has done some good work for Lalique and others when commercialism isn't the aim, but with this and her previous mainstream masculine effort Gentleman Givenchy (2017), it feels like she just phones in the accords the market research team prescribes to her, rather than do anything creative with it. The heart is a bit surprising, as this is where the ambroxan sits alongside a bit of leather, meaning the final dry down isn't actually a big glob of the stuff, but it's the only other pleasant quirk besides the dry opening before a "Designer 101" base of synthetic woods, vetiver, and a bit of vanilla settle down to a scratchy and cloying base of meh. Wear time is about 8 hours of medium projection, and the whole development happens in the first hour, so this is pretty linear to boot. I can't see somebody offending with this, but just like other entries in the line, it's unremarkable to an extreme, with the added no-no of a cloying scratchy base that could have been better-rounded or padded out with something to avoid that eventuality.

I find Jimmy Choo Man Blue to actually be a bit more annoying than the original Jimmy Choo Man, with the Jimmy Choo Man Ice so far being the most wearable, even if that one is just a Dior Homme Cologne (2013) remix, so the track record for the house is not too hot, at least in my eyes. Of course, your mileage may vary, and if you end up liking the marine ambergris over leather, woods, and vanilla goulash that is served up by Nathalie Lorson, then by all means enjoy. My reception of the stuff should be a guidepost for an educated choice at most, not a deterrence to sample, so definitely cruise into an Ulta, Sephora, or Macy's to give this a sniff, especially if this genre is a fave. As for me, I've exposed myself to a lot of what the 2010's has to offer in the mainstream masculine veins, and although the unprecedented lack of variety has caused real market shifts (and needs correction before it's too late), there are still a few diamonds in the rough, but this just ain't one of them. In fact, I've not even heard or seen much on this until stumbling across the tester, almost as if this was released in a compulsory "me too" fashion and not actually meant to be promoted. Is Jimmy Choo just "keeping up with the Joneses" with this? Well, that would certainly explain the public access television-quality of the composition, and if that's the case, why even bother making masculines at all? You don't see Balenciaga putting out another men's fragrance, and although I do miss all the old ones, I'd rather them stay out of the game than make something nobody wants to wear, which is something Jimmy Choo doesn't seem to understand.