CK Everyone Eau de Toilette Calvin Klein perfume – a fragrance for women and men 2020

In my CK One review, I said that while it was a perfectly acceptable unisex scent at a reasonable price point, if you want truly amazing versatility, go for CK EveryOne. Those who know both of the aforementioned scents might be wondering exactly what the hell I’m talking about, so let me break it down.

Unisex scents are fascinating things to me. The concept of something as abstract as a scent or a note in a fragrance being gendered seems pretty ridiculous when you think about it for long enough. A scent is only as masculine, feminine, or nonbinary as the person wearing it, at least in my opinion. This leads most unisex scents to be some of the most wild and experimental fragrances on the market, and I’m always down to review one from a male point of view when they come down the pike. Just this past year, I’ve been fortunate enough to review one of Histoire de Parfum’s This Is Not A Blue Bottle series as well as Tom Ford’s Ombre Leather, both of which are billed as unisex scents. In the last week, I was able to sample another of Ford’s productions, Bitter Peach, at an airport duty-free shop, and there are simply no words to describe the level of creativity and mind-blowing singularity contained in that one bottle. If it didn’t cost a month’s rent to even think about buying, I’d have carried off their entire stock of the stuff. Unisex scents allow perfumers to throw off the tired tropes and strictures of years and years of style guidelines and make something new.

This brings us to CK EveryOne, a scent as difficult to describe as it is fun and rewarding to wear. What we have here is something of a cross between the original CK One and one of its direct disciples, Davidoff Cool Water. From Cal’s side of the family we get an emphasis on clean and bright notes, with aquatics, citrus, and tea leading the charge, and from the Cool Water in the metaphorical gene pool we get heavy aquatics and some more ancillary fruitiness. There’s almost no trace of the base notes in this, it’s all clean water and aromatics- which I find a welcome change from the saturation of amber/cedar/musk combos on the market that drag down the latter stages of a fragrance’s lifespan. Cutting out the base notes entirely does mess with the longevity a bit, but not in an entirely bad way. Instead, this fragrance relies on sillage and very light projection to create a more restrained, businesslike aura of scent around its wearer. If something like Dior Sauvage is the equivalent of a suit of Halo power armor, this is more akin to a simple flak jacket and heavy jeans. It perfumes you without necessarily broadcasting that you’re wearing it. It’s a scent that will make the person you were just talking to say “wow, who was that guy?” with intrigued reverence. What vaults it over CK One is that while that scent doesn’t feel as special now that its copycats and disciples litter the marketplace, EveryOne manages to draw on what made One so famous to begin with while maintaining its status as a unique scent. In a word, it’s simply more memorable.

Despite not having a strong base, the longevity is quite solid for a CK One descendant. I’d say it lasts about 6 hours and change with only one spray of reapplication. The fruity notes hang onto the end long after the “fresh out of the shower” aquatic bite has faded. It costs about the same as CK One, maybe a tiny bit more expensive given the retailer, so it’s really just a matter of personal taste whether you like this or that better. As billed, it is an entirely unisex scent; I could see just about anyone wearing this with confidence. Its understated projection also makes in perfect for post-workout spritzes or even as something to keep in your desk drawer at the office. It can lend a quick burst of freshness and sunshine to even the dreariest of days.

One more thing I’ll say about this scent before I wrap this review up is that the bottle design is nothing short of genius. I think this may actually be my favorite bottle in my collection, even more so than the gorgeous Eros bottle or Toy Boy’s massive teddy bear. The waistband nametag is cheeky and fresh without being corny, and the integration of the number 1 into the CK logo has that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cleverness that only true genius marketers slip in.

CK EveryOne is a triumph, plain and simple. This, in my opinion, is what we will look back on in a few years once the unisex fragrance revolution has truly taken place and we’ll be able to see old favorites in new lights. Its professional freshness and tight, controlled delivery is a masterclass on how good fragrances don’t need a gimmick or a eye-catching hook to be good, they just need to smell really freakin’ awesome.