Sex Appeal for Men
Jōvan (1976)

Two fitting reactions that I received to this were "something smells like a tearoom here!" from a young teenager and "it smells partially like a grandpa and partially like a really hot woman" from a female friend of mine.

This was my only blind buy ever, apart from the ultra-low price because I thought I might like it based on reviews and honestly because I love the marketing. It's silly of course, but I'd prefer it to current ads any day. The blind buy was a success.

It does feel dated. Less dated than say Obsession (which I think is overall better), maybe because it's older and people don't remember it that much (but that might also be because I'm from a country where western perfumes were generally not available before 1990), maybe because it's slightly less distinct. I'm in my mid 30s and it does feel slightly out of place on me. The fact that it imo has a slight feminine twist to it helps, it doesn't exactly evoke a hairy chested grandpa in a leather jacket.

The start reminds me of shaving foam at first, but that quickly settles into spices, amber and musk. The spices especially are quite sharp from up close and stay that way for a while. It projects! This is a perfume I use when I go to the christmas market and it's below zero, two sprays behind the neck and people around absolutely will smell it (and the style and slight eccentricity and loudness fits the occasion). The "something smells like a tearoom" remark is fitting as well, the spices and patchouli may remind people of various incense sticks, but incense sticks' smells tend to be much heavier than this.

It lasts about 6 hours on me despite being an edc. I don't think I'd buy it if it sold for 40€, but I was happy to pay just over 8€ to get something fun and loud and slightly out of the ordinary for occassional use.

Sex Appeal is knotty pine wood paneling. It is the dashboard of a Ford Pinto. It's Lee dungarees and a western-style shirt with pearl snaps. It's the opening Minimoog riff in Gary Wright's "Love is Alive." Released by Jovan to appeal to the mid- (or lower-mid?) market of consumers, it is one of the few hold outs from this time period, and it does smell like a time machine of sorts, especially for those who lived through a time when something like this could be detected in the ether. I was born in 1978, but I do recall this hung around well into the 80s and even early 90s courtesy of its loyalists, and for it to still be produced well into the 21st century is nothing short of a miracle.

It is about as modern as an eight-track tape, but it kicks major hiney. Make no mistake, there has never been a big budget for this chestnut, but it smells like it's own special slice of heaven, redolent of old Gold soaps and an olfactory equivalent of analog synthesizer spices ("rare" ones, mind you, the box says it!). There's a gloriously fat and fusty carnation smack dab in the middle and a plastic aromatic ready-for-the-discotheque lavender. This is all rooted in a labdanum-heavy, dry patchouli, "time to musk up" kinda musky musk. It's one of the best of the cheap and cheerful, and will please those who enjoy such classics as Pierre Cardin Pour Monsieur or Karl Lagerfeld original/classic.

Big-time Nostalgia for me!
Picked up a 3.3 sprayer of this. It is certainly the same as I remember from the 70's though Materials used now don't quite have the punch.
I wore this from a 2 oz Splash as well as the Jovan Musk for a short time in the early 70's before Givenchy Gentleman became my juice for suaving the Women Folk.

Sex Appeal was the Poor Boy's Pierre Cardin Pour Monsieur which was a step up at the time.
As Varani says one can recognize the Genre in Creed's Bois du Portugal.
In any case I don't think this will be a Regular Wear unless I can pick up a Wild Coloured Acetate Shirt and High Top Bells and a Faux Gold Chain. But then I'll need to dye my now Greyed Chest Hair.

I've really changed my mind on this, especially since the weather has turned chilly. This is an unbelievable scent. It IS sexy, very sexy, but you have to wear it in the Fall or Winter. In Summer it smells like an old barbershop. Once the leaves start changing, it smells like a French cathouse.

Meh, not bad, not great. If I'd have received it as a father's day gift 20 years ago or whatever, I certainly wouldn't have binned it. But that's the problem with delving deeper into fragrance as a hobby, no? You quickly learn there are levels of superior choices beyond what was once considered fine and good.

This is a Pierre Cardin doppleganger and not too far removed from the likes of Old Spice. Aldehydes & spice with a bit of amber. I much prefer those with a rougher personality from the category, like Equipage, Havana, and Montana pd'h.

Jovan was on top of the world when they released Jovan Sex Appeal for Men (1976). The company had formed in 1968 under Bernard Mitchell and Barry Shipp, deliberately taking its name from the phonetics of American entry-level competitors like Revlon and Avon. These transparently gimmicky hucksters used oozing sex appeal ever since they started peddling synthetic musk oils to five and dime stores and broke hippies that didn't need sophistication nor believed in the usual social class nonsense of high-end perfume marketing. Some of the later fragrances like Sex Appeal for Men became downright classics, but most of them were abominable, and since they made their ways into so many homes only to be used up, the large array of rightly discontinued ones which survive command insane prices that belie their actual value as fragrance. Sex Appeal for Men had become a diamond in the rough for the budget disco-goer back in the day, and has since somehow passed the test of time. A lot of people unfairly compare this to Pierre Cardin Pour Monsieur (1972), as both fragrances have a huge lean towards sweet and spicy, but I think where the major difference lies is in the way each scent balances them out. This doesn't feel out of place in a collection that contains the eponymous Cardin masculine, as I find them wearable in different moods, albeit the much-cheaper Sex Appeal sees more use because it's easier to replace. Sex Appeal for Men was for the Saturday Night Fever fan that could barely afford the cover charge to the club, but wanted to fit in with all the guys "musked up" in designers. Flavor chemist and unofficial house perfumer Murray Moscona was starting to get decent at making scents by the time this came about, and is honestly the best of the original 70's bunch on which he worked.

Jovan Sex Appeal for Men opens simply enough with bergamot and lemon oil, but then quickly mellows down to a stew of lavender, geranium, carnation, vetiver, patchouli, and a sandalwood note in the middle. Here in the heart of the fragrance is where the most confusion is caused; and for me actually compares more favorably to a hybrid of Yves Saint Laurent Pour Homme (1971) with its labdanum-heavy musk, and the yet-to-exist Giorgio Beverly Hills for Men (1984) with its sweetened patchouli, than it does to Pierre Cardin. It's fair that this gets accused of copying something, especially in light of how Jovan followed the Avon and Revlon trend of acclimatizing the artistic breakthroughs of the high-end designers of the time to the budgets of the mass-market; it simply is less like Pierre Cardin's fragrance than most think it is. Ultimately, it boils down to experience with perfumes and direct side-by-side comparisons to see that it actually sits closer to a hybrid of citrus chypre and spicy oriental than as an semi-oriental fougère, mostly due to Sex Appeal's labdanum replacing the amber in the Pierre Cardin. I mostly get a very smooth masculine spicy green lavender and patchouli over that "yellow" musk in the dry down, but your mileage may vary. The most important thing of all is to consider how resonant and long-lasting this is despite it' price and cologne concentration, which is the hallmark of any Jovan vintage, discontinued or current: you simply won't find a more potent juice at these laughably low prices, unless you shop at Goodwill and get lucky. Best in fall through early spring, Jovan Sex Appeal was a statement fragrance then, and still is now, so beware when you spray or splash it on that people will look at you. Best news of all: this stuff seems bullet-proof against reformulation outside a little oakmoss lost and added sweetness in newer bottles, so just buy any bottle you see.

The 1970's mass-market opinion of sexy probably wasn't gathered in focus groups or beta testing like modern R&D procedures, and the folks at Jovan probably just thought "lets make it zesty and inviting in the opening, then bring in the sweet stuff the ladies like (or what boneheaded white dudes thought they liked at the time) before making it all warm and cozy for snuggling later", like a three-step hook-line-and-sinker process. I mean that's what I imagine must have gone on in the heads of the marketing guys when they were instructing the perfumer, who then just phoned in the accords based on stereotype and blended it until it was the approximation of what they were asking for, which worked better than anyone could reasonably expect considering he was a flavor chemist. Is this amazing? No. Is this complex? Certainly not on this budget. Is Jovan Sex Appeal for Men strong? Definitely. The key here is this one comes across like a bedroom lit by candlelight, but not just one gentle candle, about 2 dozen, so the combined glow of all that melting wax is earnest in intent but a little creepy in execution. I feel Sex Appeal only survives today because despite its amazingly dated feel, it still somehow casts it's spell on the morbidly curious like original Old Spice (1937) still does. Jovan Sex Appeal for Men is a presage to other oriental hybrids that started appearing in the 80's and 90's, when stuff like Creed Bois du Portugal (1987), and Guerlain Héritage (1992) would come to pass, just rude and crude by comparison. If you're looking to smell "like the 70's" for a themed dinner party or night club event, and don't want to spend a bank roll on a vintage designer, Jovan Sex Appeal for Men will help you do the hustle, for less than the price of a rhinestone cowboy hat. Thumbs up