In the boring fresh and clean wasteland that is the men’s department store fragrance counter, a perfume lover despairs on ever smelling something new. You wonder if any new perfumer will ever take a risk on something that is not “fresh and clean” which is made to appeal to the Axe generation. If you need an Exhibit A that this infects men’s fragrance at the masstige level go sniff the very boring Bleu de Chanel which cynically recycles every successful men’s fragrance trope of the last five years in one bottle. It has no distinct personality and that is the perfect description of nearly everything on the men’s counter these days. That is why when there is a new mass men’s fragrance release that dares to go in a different direction I want to stand up and applaud. When it is as excellent as Marc Jacobs Bang is, I want to shout “Halleleujah!”
Marc Jacobs was sure to get our attention with the advertising campaign which showed a nude oiled-up Marc Jacobs strategically covered up with an outsized replica of the silver Bang bottle. When I saw the picture back in May my skepticism was high at Bang being anything different. My first glimmer of hope appeared when I found out the perfumer who would be in charge of the team at Givaudan would be Yann Vasnier. M.Vasnier had collaborated with Calice Becker on Marc Jacobs Lola and that was the best women’s mass market release of 2009 in my opinion. For Bang he would collaborate with Ann Gottlieb. Then the press materials began to arrive and there was this quote from M. Vasnier that really got my hope soaring:
“I was inspired by the threesome of peppercorn notes that Marc had loved from the beginning. Pepper as a signature has never been explored before in fragrance. Bang is the ultimate peppery woody fragrance with a spicy twist”
The idea of pepper never being explored in a fragrance is a little overblown as those us of who love niche fragrances can point to the brilliant Lorenzo Villoresi Piper Nigrum as the first example of using black pepper as the core of a fragrance. Piper Nigrum was a sensation among the denizens of the fragrant life back in 1999. Few have ever smelled that fragrance and so M. Vasnier’s bombastic prose can be forgiven because for 99.9% of fragrance lovers this will be the first time they have come in to contact with black pepper in fragrant form. One thing I was sure of this was not going to smell like anything else on the department store shelf. In that I was 100% right Bang is a new direction in men’s mass market fragrance and with one very large caveat I’ll get to I hope it is wildly successful.
Bang opens with a mix of three types of peppercorns-black, pink and white. This is nose-tickling piquancy exotic and familiar at the same time. Exotic because this is something you don’t smell often in a fragrance; familiar because you smell it every time you add pepper to your food. It carries an intensity which leads straight into a heart of the aromachemical Iso E Super and most likely a couple of other proprietary woody aromachemicals from Givaudan. It makes the heart an indefinably woody sort of a mix of birch, cedar, and oak. It is kept light and very masculine and in conjunction with the spicy pepper thoroughly enjoyable. The base is a resinous benzoin, vetiver, patchouli and oakmoss. It is mostly the benzoin in front bolstered by the other three notes. In the late stages of Bang there is a moment where the pepper, woods and benzoin create an energetic synergy that feels like the best niche fragrances I’ve encountered.
Bang has outstanding longevity but here come the caveat, Bang has almost no sillage. As beautiful a fragrance as Bang is if you are a man who likes to leave a vapor trail of your fragrance behind you Bang will be disappointing. Of course, in this new fragrance sensitive society that is springing up around us Bang just might be the perfect solution because you have to be close to smell it. Using my wife as tester it took her to get within six inches of me for her to detect Bang on me. Which might make it the perfect office scent.
Bang is one of those all too infrequent joys I get when trying so many new fragrances. It is as creative as many new niche fragrances I’ve tried this year. As of right now I don’t see any contender coming which will keep it from being my favorite men’s mass market fragrance of 2010. I know it was better than any men’s mass market fragrance I tried in 2009. To Marc Jacobs, Yann Vasnier, and Ann Gottlieb Bravo! Take a bow I hope Bang is the big success it deserves to be.
Disclosure: This review was based on a sample of Marc Jacobs Bang supplied by Marc Jacobs.
-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor