01100011011011110110010001100101

As most of you know, Nicole, the Chief Bag Lady of Bagful of Notions, is currently on the road.  I felt a bit bad that regular readers weren't going to have as much new content, so I've decided to contribute an article of my own.  Nicole isn't aware of this, and she'll likely want to delete this MAC and Mecca and Essie-less post, but until she notices, let's have another contribution for the gentlemen out there. You may not have recognised it, but the title of the article is the clue to the review.

Wait for it...

Code!  Armani Code, the fragrance for men.

It's the binary representation of the ASCII text "CODE"...

Code Label

Okay, anyway, moving on.

As with my review on Allure, it's difficult to put into words scents for men without the proper vocabulary.  If this were a red wine I could go on about the tannins, the hint of leather on the palate, perhaps the forrest fruits on the nose, but I don't have the right words for scents yet.

What I can say is that Nicole likes this as much as, if not more than, Allure.

First, what does the bottle look like?  (Cause, yeah, somehow to someone this matters, I guess)

Code bottle

Yep.  A black bottle.  With words.  Sold yet?

I'm going to do my best on a description of the scent - first of all, what it isn't:  It isn't sleazy.  It isn't Leisure Suit Larry with or without Lounge Lizards.  It isn't insulting, overpowering, or eye-watering.

As for what it is, well, if I were to close my eyes and try to describe it, I would probably say the following:

A melon (probably ripened honeydew) based fruit salad in a bookstore.

Yes, you read right.  Melon.  Bookstore.

There's a crispness, a clarity to the scent which reminds me of honeydew melon (the light green kind).  It's slightly watery as well, meaning, to me, that it doesn't leave a taste in your mouth, nor your nose.  You get it, it registers, it moves on.

The bookstore bit, okay, I admit that's a bit peculiar, but its the slightly dusty, but not musty, scent of paper, some new, some old, that I'm trying to capture here.

Perhaps the best advice I can give you here is that you've learned a lot about Nicole and the aesthetic she has, you know she's not one for cheesy, overwhelming or pungent.  She appreciates the subtle, and she loves this scent (on me) -- so, go out, grab a sampler from your polite Armani representative (in other words, not the one at David Jones in Melbourne who annoyed Nicole) and try it on for size.  See what you think, what he thinks, and who knows, maybe you'll have a new scent on the shelf, as we do!