Remarkable. This is my second Al Rehab, I’ve been playing around with Silver for a few months, with uniformly mixed feelings even for the price, but I finally ordered a huge box of single samples. (I believe roughly three dozen roll-on oil samples cost, in total, about eleven dollars and change. Ok, that’s probably an exaggeration, but that’s how it felt.)

First out of the box was Secret Man. Initial impression: they’ve done a really remarkable job of simulating, for about three dollars, the sort of christmas-cookies-and-turpentine accord that I’ve previously always paid a lot more to be put off by. I put it on shortly before wading out into the city smog to go shopping.

While I was shopping, something strange happened… as I made my rounds, amidst the ambient background of car exhaust and eau de vagrant, I began to detect faint whiffs of something nice-smelling.

Fast forward an hour, I get home and smell my wrists and there’s no cookies. There’s no turpentine. This thing has done a complete right turn.

Now all I’ve got is very mild citrus, a little soapiness in the pleasing way some green scents are, a hint of woodiness. I’m not going to say it’s an amazing fragrance, but it’s definitely nice, and for a tiny fraction of the cost of, well, just about anything else, it’s much more than a small fraction as nice.

Coincidentally, I recently discovered Kenzo Pour Homme. One of my goals in my fragrance journey — some of you are going to think I’m crazy, but some of you know and will fully understand — has been to find a more conventional fragrance that is a good substitute for the scent of Old Spice Captain deodorant. We’ll leave the reasons for that aside, but Kenzo Pour Homme is so far the leading candidate, by a country mile. KPH is very much in the same family as Captain, very close in it’s green/marine/woody accords, but, it’s missing a certain soapiness. Layering it with other, soapier colognes hasn’t been a notable success (like my belovedly soapy Mugler, a reliable dumb reach for me, but sometimes unfortunately dicey in less-than-careful combination with other favorites.)

But Secret Man…

I wouldn’t even have thought of KPH until I came here to leave a review and saw the mentions. But, yes. No, it’s not the same fragrance. But it’s in the same ballpark, and better, seems weak in the things KPH is good at, and stronger in the soapy department KPH doesn’t quite have. Together, these might form complimentary halves of the long-sought fragrance substitute for Captain, and spare me any further urge to slather myself head to toe with a stick deodorant every day.

And even if not, ok, Silver is a mixed bag by me, but Al Rehab has scored a relative hit on my second outing with them. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a $3 roll-on bottle that, at least after the strange initial gourmand opening thankfully disappears without a trace, lingers on smelling as nice or nicer than other bargain favorites that cost more.

UPDATE: On second wear, just a day later, I got an overdose of roses that I detected not even a hint of the first time, and which lasted literally through the next day, and no woodiness at all. Funny how olfaction works.

UPDATE DE LA UPDATE: Four days later, I gave it a third try. I don’t know if this stuff just needs air for a few days or what, but this time, I opened it and was hit instantly with a huge bloom of rose and woody accords, and, I feel strange saying this about a $3 bottle of fragrance, but today, somehow, magically, it’s not just nice, it’s not just good for $3, it’s _gorgeous_, full stop.

The whole thing is a mystery to me. But boy does it smell fantastic today. I shpritzed some Kenzo Pour Homme on top of it and let an hour go by, and, let me tell you, I am a happy and very good-smelling camper right now. I might even leave my house.