Y Live Eau de Toilette Intense
Yves Saint Laurent (2019)

Nothing special. One more Invictus clone, no house can get rid of that trend. That being said, Y Live is less screachy than Invictus, Valentino Uomo Born in Roma and Davidoff Run Wild which is the most obnoxious of them all. Y Live has that typical bubble gum note that offers nothing "revolutional", but toned down to a degree that one can tolerate it.

Conclusion: more wearable clone of Invictus and clones from other houses.

Originality 1/10
Scent 5/10
Longevity 8/10
Projection 7/10

What do you get when you take Yves Saint Laurent Y Eau de Parfum (2018) and stuff it full of fruity sweetness, cranking up the orange blossom like typical Gucci Guilty Pour Homme (2011), then shove a bunch of shampoo/shower gel notes like Paco Rabanne Invictus (2013), then dime the knobs on projection to Versace Eros (2013) levels? Why, you get Y Live by Yves Saint Laurent (2019) of course! I can sort of see the appeal for having a Y for Men (2017) flanker tweaked with elements of the aforementioned EdP but made more club-friendly and youth-oriented, since capturing that upper middle-class teen impulse shopper who won't use his dad's Bleu de Chanel (2010) is the only way most other designers are survivng in a world of niche and prestige perfumes invading department store counters. However, Yves Saint Laurent is really grasping at straws here because the original 2017 eau de toilette was already pretty youth-friendly to begin with in that crisp white shirt Nautica kind of way, while the EdP took all the harsh norlimbanol scratch away to make something more respectable as a generalist office scent someone over 30 wouldn't be embarassed to wear, but where does an extra-youthful version of the EdP really fit in? I'm not sure I can really answer the above question, but what I can say is this smells like Dominique Ropion almost entirely composed Y Live by prescription from market analyists.

What those analyists were likely saying is that what the market needed was a less-mature version of the EdP (which already wasn't very formal if at all), so with a huge sigh of disappointment, here comes the notes. Sweet grapefruit, pear, and ginger open the top, sitting somewhere between Azzaro Wanted (2016), the aforementioned Invictus, and the opening from the Y EdP but mixed in an early 2000's way. The orange blossom and geranium almost seems to bond with ambroxan on an atomic level in the heart, which is where most of the clubber-friendly projection stems, although it doesn't quite burn the eyeballs like the original Y EdT. The base is the usual tonka Kool-Aid patchouli and laundry musk with woody aromachemical scratch, and some of the saltiness of the EdP left over to link back to the rest of the line, but it's a real mess when it dries. This fancies itself as some kind of cold weather gourmand hybrid in the note breakdown, but lacks the claimed juniper or cocoa notes in the final stages to really be that at all. Y Live smells like someone made a mashup of every Montblanc Legend (2011) and Jimmy Choo Man (2014) flanker on the market and gave the resulting beast a glaze of Y EdP to help connect the dots. Y Live is an "Eau de Toilette Intense", so with extra-projection to get the job of destroying your sanity done, it comes on like a bull in a china closet and overstays its welcome until scrubbed.

Y Live by Yves Saint Laurent ends up competing with Viktor & Rolf Spice Bomb Night Vision (2019) and Acqua di Giò Absolu Instinct (2019) for the title of the most unnecessarily-loud and insipid flanker of 2019. The well must be really running dry over there at Yves Saint Laurent, and more over the designer masculine perfume market at large for so many samey fruitchouli Kool-Aid ambroxan bombs with absolutely zero sense of identity being spewed forth onto shelves with such reckless abandon. Here I thought nothing would top Jimmy Choo Urban Hero (2019) for being the nadir of abusing trend, but not even the pretty face of Adam Levine on the ads for this stuff can save it from being the epitome of high-volume mediocrity, because why would even a completely indiscriminate mainstream perfume buyer choose this over the more-recognizable Invictus or even Dior Sauvage (2015) since it smells like everything yet nothing at once, with probably the most-annoying combination of mass-market accords yet assembled? Go test it if you want to, but don't go out of your way since there is nothing here you haven't smelled before and done better elsewhere. If you like the EdP as I do, just stick with that, since it's sweet enough to handle a night out but actually has some decent balance and warmth without smelling like it wants your phone number. Thumbs way down.