Alpha Noir

Alpha Noir takes its cue from Jean Paul Gaultier Ultra Male, opening with the same juicy pear rush cut through with cool mint that made the original a modern icon of the sweet-fougere genre. Warm spice pushes through almost immediately, with cinnamon and a touch of caraway sitting alongside soft lavender in the heart, keeping things aromatic rather than purely gourmand. It's in the base where the gap to the original shows: Ultra Male builds a rich, boozy vanilla-amber-woods finish that clings for the better part of a day, while Alpha Noir's vanilla and amber settle faster and sit closer to the skin, with a light tonka sweetness standing in for the fuller wood and rum accord. The trade-off is a scent that's louder and sweeter in the first couple of hours, great for turning heads on a night out, but one that won't chase you into the next morning the way the original does. Marketed as unisex, it wears with the same confident, slightly mischievous energy as its inspiration, just with a shorter arc.