Wave for Men
Anucci (1990)

Wave for Men by Anucci (1990) is Anucci's first and so far only attempt at an aquatic fragrance, coming hot on the heels of the original 1989 men's launch fragrances of Anucci Man (1989) and Anucci Sport by Anucci (1989). Anucci Wave for Women (1990) would oddly be the first feminine fragrance for the brand, and not the eventual women's version of the flagship golfball scent, which wouldn't come until three years later in 1993. I really don't know what thinking was going on with this house, if much of any at all was going on, but I do like this stuff. Like many early attempts at an aquatic fragrance, this really doesn't smell aquatic at all, despite the name and packaging of the perfume. Even two short years after Davidoff Cool Water (1988) invented the template to follow, many brands struggled with producing an adequate competitor because the heavy doses of dihydromyrcenol and ambroxide/ambroxan used in Cool Water's formula were very expensive, so only cash-flush houses were really willing to spend that kind of coin. Other brands would cheat by using aromatic fougère or chypre bases and then pile the aesthetically-aquatic top and hearts over it; Anucci was such a brand.

Anucci Wave for Men has a nice fruity bergamot, lemon, and jasmine hedione opening with a puff of minty geranium and a sliver of calone for that aforementioned fruitiness. From there a bit slug of clary sage and rosemary comes into view, with with a virginia cedarwood note to add more dry aromatic heft (juniper-adjacent), before finishing in oakmoss and dry tonka. There is nothing really aquatic about Wave beyond the first five minutes, and then it becomes pretty much like a classic Italian citrus aromatic that you might find in a drugstore, like Acqua di Selva by Victor (1949) or Pino SIlvestri by Vidal (1955) minus the pine. Wave is quite good, and the dry down is subtle, but long lasting. However, someone picking this up thinking they were getting something like the still-new Cool Water were sadly mistaken, and this isn't even all that beachy or tropical, which New West by Aramis (1988) at least managed to do by merging an herbed chypre dry down with big doses of cantaloupe melon up top. This sits somewhere between a classic Italian cologne and something like the later Nautica by Nautica (1992), with bits of the herbal finish New West has, but only those bits. I can easily see why this quickly fell through the cracks.

The other odd thing about Anucci Wave is the big metal can it comes in, something that they were actually quite early to, but would eventually be adopted by brands like Versace, Liz Claiborne, Façonnable, and others into the 1990's. The can is pretty significant, but once you see the wave-shaped bottle and how easily the cap pops off (taking the spray head with it if you're not careful), you soon realize why you have to keep this perfume stored in that can rather than toss it out like you might with the rest. Wave for Men (and its feminine counterpart) also seem to be the only Anucci releases from their classic era that do not have screw-off atomizers; and with only the word "Wave" printed on the bottle, no Anucci logo, no bottom bottle label, no markings at all beyond the can that houses it; one can be lead to believe that the pair of fragrances might have actually been composed and bottled for a different client that bailed at the last minute, allowing Anucci to come in, buy the lot of them, and whip up a tin can with their logo on them to ship it out for sale. If this is in any way true, it would totally fit the fast and loose narrative behind everything else this brand did on their meteoric rise to fame, then comet-like plunge back to obscurity. A decent aromatic freshie, but nothing for the "serious" collectors among us. Thumbs up