When it comes to men’s suits the top of the line is the Italian label Brioni. Their suits begin at $5,000 and can go much higher depending on the fabric chosen. A Brioni suit is said to take 183 steps over 18 hours to be made by one of 900 tailors in the Brioni factory in Italy. Like many other men’s clothing lines Brioni wants to create a fragrance to pair with their luxury threads. Unlike many other fragrance lines based on clothing I expected the same quality control that goes into their suits to apply to their fragrance and I was rewarded for that belief.

Brioni is not the first foray by the label into fragrance, back in 1958 they made a fragrance named “Good Luck” which was marketed in the US and was enclosed in a red canvas case. While Brioni was just an idea in then Brioni CEO Andrea Perrone’s head he was looking through his grandfather, Brioni co-founder, Gaetano Savini’s personal possessions and ran across a bottle of “Good Luck” in its red canvas case. He would use the discovery as his launching point to develop Brioni in 2009. The nod back to “Good Luck” would be replicating the canvas case of “Good Luck” but in leather. The remaining task was to put juice in the bottle that would also live up to the name on the bottle.

Brioni Cologne is a combination of classic masculine fragrance notes that are expertly balanced. In many ways it feels like a fragrant form of a Brioni suit as it allows every one of the notes listed on the pyramid the opportunity to participate in creating a sophisticated elegant masculine fragrance.

The top of Brioni is all citrus led by a sparkling lemon which is supported by a high-quality bergamot and a woody verbena. It feels spritely like a citrus accord should be. The heart is centered on lavender and it is combined with the sweetly spicy nature of nutmeg and a lightly resinous olibanum. The choice of nutmeg as contrast to the olibanum makes for a very interesting interplay underneath the lavender. The base lets oakmoss pick up the lavender and tonka add to the sweet nature of the nutmeg. Patchouli and vetiver finish Brioni off. In another fragrance those two notes would dominate the ending phases, in Brioni they add the final stitches to Brioni cologne, each in their place.

Brioni has excellent longevity and slightly above average sillage.

ZZ Top tells us that “every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man” and if you are a man in a Brioni suit you can’t get much sharper dressed. It is nice to know that you can smell equally sharply, as if you were wearing a Brioni suit, just by spraying Brioni the fragrance on.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor