Acqua di Gio

Giorgio Armani Acqua di Gio, created by Alberto Morillas in 1996, built the modern aquatic category around a blend of lime, bergamot and mandarin over a marine-jasmine-freesia heart, finishing in white musk, cedar and patchouli - an effortlessly clean, versatile scent that's remained a bestseller for decades. Clean Shaven's dupe captures that immediate citrus-marine impression convincingly; the opening spritz is a fair likeness of the real thing. It doesn't hold up as well through the middle stage, though - Armani's calone-based sea-air accord has a subtlety that's hard to replicate cheaply, and here it reads as a simpler, slightly sharper aquatic note without the same airy depth. The white musk and cedar base that gives the original its soft, clean-skin finish is present but thin, so the whole thing fades to almost nothing well inside a couple of hours where the genuine Acqua di Gio, even at its most modest, tends to linger a little longer. As a cheap, fresh spray for a summer day or the gym it's a decent facsimile of that iconic Mediterranean idea, just don't expect it to last from morning meeting through to evening.