A designer flanker, a perfumer with a disputed masterpiece and the best clean fragrance I’ve smelled in a long while.
If you’re a guy who wants to smell attractive, you could do far worse than to smell clean. Most men, left to their own devices, do far worse. As the saying goes, cleanliness is next to godliness, and nowhere is that more true than in men’s fragrance.
Davidoff Cool Water, composed by Pierre Bourdon in 1988, laid much of the groundwork. But one of the first designer fragrances to do clean exceptionally well, and on a massive scale, was the original Giorgio Armani Acqua di Giò EDT, which went on to become one of the best-selling fragrances of all time.
It is difficult to overstate how hard Acqua di Giò hit the fragrance establishment when it reached department stores in 1996. Created by a dream team of perfumers (Alberto Morillas, Annick Menardo, and Christian Dussoulier), it was one of the first blockbuster designer fragrances to combine citrus, aromatic and aquatic elements, the cornerstones of smelling clean. For a while it seemed half the men in North America smelled identical, and nobody minded.
Acqua di Giò is still loved, but the world has moved on, though not from the idea of clean. One of the best recent takes on it is Viktor&Rolf Spicebomb Metallic Musk. Metallic Musk is much hyped, and for once the hype is justified. I would even take it over Amouage Reflection Man.
As you’ll soon see, I’m standing by it.
Having heard so much about Metallic Musk, I went to my local Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada’s answer to Walgreens or CVS, to try it before buying. The kind lady who helped me had never heard of it, though it had been out for more than a year at the time of writing.
This is the part of the fragrance game I sorely miss. In the ’90s, before social media, we had word of mouth, scented magazine inserts and the people behind the counter, who knew what was new, what was good and what suited us. They helped us try on fragrances the way we would try on a shirt. Today that knowledge lives on the internet, where it is free, worth every penny and, so far, impossible to smell.
My local fragrance stores were sold out, so I did exactly what I just finished lamenting and asked the internet, specifically the fragrance groups on Facebook. The feedback was so positive that I bought a bottle, privately, from a member of the same group. Blind buys are one of the worst things a person can do, legally. Unless a fragrance is very hot, reselling it can take months, and an unwanted bottle becomes a roommate who never pays rent. But Metallic Musk was well regarded enough that I could likely offload it if it failed. More importantly, I trusted its perfumer.
That perfumer is Jean-Christophe Hérault. Most fragrance databases credit him alone, though I found Vogue Singapore’s launch coverage named Carlos Benaim as his co-author. The pairing would not be new: Viktor&Rolf credits the Eau de Parfum version of Spicebomb Infrared to Hérault and Benaim, together with Nicolas Beaulieu. Hérault is also credited with Spicebomb Extreme, another of the line’s best-loved flankers, one that I’ve heard several people say is the best, at least until Metallic Musk came along. Fittingly for a clean fragrance, Hérault trained under Pierre Bourdon, the man behind Cool Water.
Hérault is not a household name, but he should be. He is widely regarded as the perfumer behind Creed Aventus, one of the greatest fragrances of all time, though who really made Aventus is one of perfumery’s favourite whodunits. Creed’s own website, as Luca Turin noted last year, credits Olivier Creed, but fragrance databases list Hérault alongside Olivier’s son, Erwin Creed. Turin has written that it is common knowledge in the industry that Hérault composed Aventus at IFF, and Hérault himself has described working directly with Olivier Creed and being given free rein. Gabe Oppenheim’s 2021 book, The Ghost Perfumer, lays out the backstory in detail. Exactly who deserves what share may never be settled, but Hérault’s central role is well documented. Ghost perfumers, like ghostwriters, rarely get their names on the cover.
I wasn’t familiar with Hérault himself, but a perfumer with that body of work deserved a chance. The best perfumers are like great novelists: if you’ve “read” one of their works and found it sensational, odds are good the rest of the shelf is worth your time.
So I bought Metallic Musk and waited for it with the hurried impatience of … well, a man who has just paid for a fragrance on Facebook. I worried it wouldn’t be good. I needn’t have. This is one of the best clean men’s fragrances I have ever smelled: exceptionally well crafted, modern and exquisite.
Let me explain.
The fragrance
The first thing everyone knows about the Spicebomb family is that the bottles look like hand grenades. To spray one, you pull a pin that keeps the sprayer from moving, which may be one of the only times in history pulling a grenade pin has improved everyone’s day. The silver bottle sits right on the line between interesting and tacky. I try to ignore it, but I have owned worse-looking bottles. The sprayer itself is pressurized, which I definitely appreciated.
Anyway, you’re here for the smell. Metallic Musk is an EDP. I can’t compare it with the rest of the line: my entire experience of the other Spicebombs is a single spray of Spicebomb Extreme on my hand at Sephora. I liked it, but personally when I want spice, I reach for Middle Eastern compositions with hundreds of years of lineage behind them, where spice is a complete language rather than a dialect. Which may be exactly why I was surprised how thoroughly Metallic Musk won me over. It is fabulously fresh, spicy and still very likeable to my nose, and not in the manner of a gym bro who has just discovered body spray. This stuff is so good.
It opens with a fresh blast and a smooth, cooling profile. The black pepper Viktor&Rolf leads with is a small surprise, a subtle, unexpected tickle in the nose with nothing gourmand about it. Yet it cuts through every other smell around me at once, as if to say: listen, I’m here to say something important. The musk is there and of greater quality than I expected at the bottle’s price point. It carries a faint whiff of dryer sheets, which is the finest compliment a laundry product will ever receive. It is so clean and so effervescent. The spices are there too (it wouldn’t be a Spicebomb without them), but there are no animalic or dirty notes at all, not even a bit of cumin, the spice that unfortunately makes some fragrances smell like a stranger’s armpit. I think cumin might have introduced a little contrary energy here, which could have been interesting, but leaving it out makes sense. Underlying it all are hints of cinnamon and lavender, which add a very subtle barbershop vibe.
Viktor&Rolf makes much of a “silver suede” accord, and the published pyramid lists leather, ambrette and labdanum in the base. If they are there, they have been buffed so smooth that nothing animalic to my nose survives. This is suede that has never met a cow.
What I did expect was more metal, the bite of steel I get from Serge Lutens La Fille de Berlin or Creed Silver Mountain Water and its countless copycats. Truth be told, I get very little metal at all from Metallic Musk, which surprised me, since the fragrance is clearly packed with aldehydes. Metallic Musk, it turns out, is a name, not a promise.
Aldehydes are chemical compounds, some found in nature and some made in labs. Perfumers use them to make fragrances effervescent, metallic, or even waxy. Here they make the fragrance clean and very fizzy, like sniffing a just-opened can of Sprite.
Aldehydes are often the culprit when a fragrance is said to smell old-fashioned, because so many fragrances of the early and middle 1900s were built around them. Overdone, they smell like a grandmother’s handbag at a funeral. Metallic Musk does not smell old-fashioned or even traditional in any way. This is utterly modern perfumery, composed in a way I can only call intelligent.
That is also what separates it from Acqua di Giò. I haven’t worn Armani’s EDT classic recently, but the EDP flanker I owned a few years ago leaned so heavily on aromatic herbs that it was more herbal than aquatic, while the original sits squarely in citrus-aquatic territory. Either way, Acqua di Giò built its idea of clean from citrus, herbs and the sea. Metallic Musk builds it from aldehydes and musk. On paper, there is not a drop of water in it. Acqua di Giò went to the beach. Metallic Musk went to the laundromat.
Performance on my skin is fine, nothing to write home about, which is just as well, since nobody writes home anymore. The fragrance is linear: the drydown is simply the opening, only fainter. It projects for 2–3 hours, then becomes a skin scent for about three hours more. I don’t think I go nose blind to it, and others clearly don’t either: I have gotten compliments and interested questions even after five hours of wear. But not everything needs to last 12+ hours, I still greatly enjoy it despite it not being beast mode.
The last word
I am a total niche snob, but I have never once felt that buying Metallic Musk over a niche version of the same DNA was a mistake. I meant what I said at the start about Amouage Reflection Man, one of the most celebrated clean floral musks ever made. Reflection performs no better on my skin than Metallic Musk, and it costs far more.
When I used to buy from Amouage, I expected the Middle East in the bottle. Although Reflection is an older release, it has more in common with many of Amouage’s latest wares. To me, buying Reflection or many of the recent releases from the Omani house is like flying to Muscat and ordering a cheeseburger: fast food, not Saturday night at the gourmet kabob house. Yes, Reflection may sell extremely well, but little distinguishes it from a crowded field of musky fragrances. I think collectors still chase Reflection the way people chase a first edition, for what it was rather than what it is. I also think its reputation has outgrown the fragrance. I owned it for awhile, so I say this based on first hand wearing; it got boring so I passed it on to someone who still found it fascinating. That should never be the case with a fragrance, no matter if it is known to be designer, niche or something nebulous in between.
I am pleased to say I’m not getting bored by Metallic Musk. It is what I once hoped Reflection would be for me: a modern, versatile musk that I don’t get tired of. I’m shocked that a designer house can still make every spray feel like a revelation, and it shows what one can do when it makes up its mind. I have been waiting for so long for designer brands to do this. Alongside Boss Bottled Absolu, which I reviewed last week, Viktor&Rolf Metallic Musk is everything I wanted, and I have no regrets about buying a full bottle. The same I could say of Guerlain’s 100 year anniversary of Shalimar, the L’essence flanker coming to my mailbox this week. (Will I review it? We will see.)
It is refreshing to find a Spicebomb flanker that, nearly three decades after Acqua di Giò, brings something new, modern and unexpected to the clean genre. Flankers are usually where good ideas go to be watered down and sold again. Metallic Musk builds on what the giants of the clean, fresh space achieved, in a way I can’t get enough of. It could easily be a signature scent for the right person, and although it is marketed for men, anyone of any generation or gender could wear it.
I can’t imagine my collection without it, and I will be buying a second bottle when my first runs out. In a hobby built on hype, that is the only review that really matters: my own money, not a sponsor’s, spent twice.
𝐕𝐢𝐤𝐭𝐨𝐫&𝐑𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐦𝐛 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐤 (𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓, 𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐧-𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐞́𝐫𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐭) Notes: Top: aldehydes, black pepper, bergamot, elemi. Heart: cinnamon, pepper, lavender. Base: musk, leather, ambrette, labdanum. (Per fragrance databases; Viktor&Rolf publishes only three key notes, black pepper, silver suede and white musk. Some listings give lavandin for lavender and cistus for labdanum. Most databases credit Hérault alone; Vogue Singapore’s launch coverage adds Carlos Benaim.) My nose: A peppery tickle that cuts through, then clean, fizzy aldehydes, like a just-opened can of Sprite, over high-quality clean musk with a faint whiff of dryer sheets. Hints of cinnamon and lavender add a subtle barbershop feel. Little metal and nothing animalic. Linear: the drydown is the opening, only fainter. Performance: Projection for 2-3 hours, then a skin scent for about three hours more; still drawing compliments at five hours. Gender: Marketed for men, but anyone could wear it. Recommended sprays: 3-5 on skin, adjusted as the occasion requires.
Ali Bokhari is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Ali Perfumewala.
