CK2 Calvin Klein perfume – a fragrance for women and men 2016

CK2 by Calvin Klein is one of the most tragic discontinuations and is also the first fragrance i ever bought in panic after its cancellation was rumored in the fragcom, and is also one of the most treasured fragrances in my collection, not only because it’s an absolute banger and a very unique and (perhaps formerly, depending on when you’re reading this) affordable designer perfume, but also because of some significance it holds to me and my development.

see, CK One was my signature fragrance when i was young. like, 4 years old young. actually, it wasn’t CK One, it was U by Designer Imposters because at that point (1999, for reference) i don’t think CK One had reached it’s bargain basement cheapie price yet and my working-class single mother would probably rather not buy a designer fragrance for a grubby toddler because she’s a sensible woman. i loved that god damn bottle of synthetic trash. it smelled GREAT. i took it everywhere in my powerpuff girls backpack and i sprayed it on every day before i went to my pre-school and it made me feel VERY cool and grown up. perhaps that it’s due to this memory that CK One still has a deeply beloved place in my heart.

this of course makes CK2 the sequel to something that was incredibly important to me as a child. it could turn out to be a Kingdom Hearts 3 situation where sequel was actually good enough to justify the wait and the potential putting-off of your established audience from back in the day, or it could be an Incredibles 2 and be a heartless ploy to snatch money from the wallets of nostalgic and now-employed millenials that sucks out loud.

it isn’t tho! CK2 is, thankfully, a fresh fragrance in a way that not many other freshies dare to be fresh. it smells like an arboretum after it’s rained in the spring: green, floral, a touch woody, and very, very damp. refreshingly damp! the ozonic wet stone note reminds me of the life-giving rains of spring, and also (as a former South Coast resident) the relief of a hurricane having rolled over without putting a tree in your roof. it’s a relaxing and uplifting scent through and through.

other big players here are violet leaf, which adds some bright fresh greenness, and wasabi, which adds some peppery fresh greenness. the vetiver adds a bit of woodiness to make the fragrance more “sturdy” i suppose, it’s already quite light and i can only imagine it’d be only half the strength it is now without it. it’s woody and pleasant and does not lean this fragrance in a masculine direction which is what i tend to think when i hear “vetiver.” the florals are here and you CAN smell them (unlike the alleged incense note which is AWOL from the start to the end of CK2’s duration) but i could not pick one of them out if i tried, they all sort of blend together, much like thescent of a rained-on flowerbed. the mandarin and pear add the obligatory citrus/fruit pop at the start of the fragrance but don’t really hang out for long, the mandarin might add a TOUCH of sweetness past the opening but that’s it.

i’m not gonna even bother doing bullet points for the boring review stuff like usual because there’s not much to say: it performs okay for a fragrance in it’s style for about 4 to 5 hours, it’s perfectly unisex but if you’re a guy and flowers terrify you you might say it leans feminine, and pricing is/was good. i got a 100ml for 30 bucks, and prices still seem decent provided you can find a bottle. i’m currently looking for a jumbo just so i never run out. this is, like most freshies, a summer/spring daytime fragrance but i can see wearing it in winter for a blast of cold watery goodness.

The Point Of All This is that CK2 is the Kingdom Hearts 3 of fragrances and is a very unisex walk through a soaking-wet botanical garden in full bloom. it is probably the finest of all of the Calvin Klein unisex fragrances in my opinion and it’s discontinuation should qualify as a hate crime towards me and me alone. it would have been nice to actually smell that incense tho.

9 long-awaited sequels to 90’s children’s media/10 – 博