Thumbs Down

Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme Intenso (2015) is a very late-coming “intense” version of their famed eponymous masculine, and a fair bit of “too little, too late”. First of all, the scent isn’t really more intense, especially in view of the vintages available of the original, plus is too late because an intense version of a scent already a decade old at the time seems irrelevant since D&G have long since moved on from pushing the original. What is actually bestowed in the bottle is a “rounder” version of Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme (1994), filling in the tobacco bottom with cistus labdanum, plus smoothing the top with aquatic notes, to make a far more linear experience than the original offers. The only thing perhaps more intense about “Intenso” is the sweetness tacked on, which makes the dry down feel a bit cloying and uncomfortable. I’m not sure who this was marketed for, but it just feels like “hey let’s make a flanker for something we should have years ago because we have flankers of everything else” in a bottle.

The opening of the scent is dihydromyrcenol and lemon with marigold, and some barbershop notes like geranium and basil. It’s pretty much Jack in the Box Bathroom smell at this point, and nothing like the original Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme. I don’t blame the perfumer for being unlisted here, as this was clearly a rush job. “Milkwood” (alstonia) is claimed to be in the middle, with lavender, “Hay absolute” (really?), “Bran absolute” (are we making breakfast cereal here?), and tobacco moved up from it’s place in the base to the middle. This last note is an important difference from the original Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme, which dries down to a beautiful tobacco finish, but with that note in the middle instead of forming the base, it burns off before we reach skin scent levels and this version end up smelling entirely like something else at the end. Cistus labadanum, cypress, a fake sandalwood note (like composited with whatever norlimbanol is there), plus tonka and musk form the end of this. I like labadanum, which is why I’m a huge fan of oldies like Wind Drift (1970) and Duoro Eau de Portugal (1986), but it’s rolled into some coumarin and white musk funk glued together with “karmawood sandalwood fusion” that comes across scratchy, sweet, and gross.

Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme Intenso is anything but, as it’s wear time of maybe 4 hours and mild sillage mean it can’t even hold a candle when oversprayed to the original. Granted, reformulated versions of D&G PH are a bit sharper and weaker than older ones, with the tobacco note more standout at the end due to the synthetics disappearing faster in the dry down, but it’s still better than this. The only slight nod of praise I can give this is that is does seem a tad more appropriate for romantic use, but there are a million other things that would be better in a situation calling for that kind of atmosphere than an aquatic lavender tobacco labadanum karmawood stew with tonka bean crust, so don’t dare serve this up to your love interest on the first date or you’re unlikely to get a call back. Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme Intenso should have the subtitle “If You Say So” added to the name, because that’s what this really feels like to me. Smelled good on paper though! A hard pass for me. Sorry Dolce & Gabbana, I’m usually a fan of your non-aquatic output, but there’s just too much wrong here, so not in this case.