Calvin Klein – cK one perfume reviews

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Reviews of cK one by Calvin Klein

There are 155 reviews of cK one by Calvin Klein.

Mysticman
Show all reviews by Mysticman

I don’t actually consider CK One to be a fragrance. To me it’s more of an after-shower refresher (not unlike 4711, which famously marketed itself as “the refreshant cologne” for many years). On my skin it’s barely detectable after ten minutes — which is fine, because then I can apply a real fragrance with some staying power, if I’m so inclined.

As a fragrance, it’s too bland and unobjectionable to dislike. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “there’s no ‘there’ there.” On a hot day or after a shower — sure, but again, it doesn’t last, and doesn’t really smell like anything except a generic “fresh” for a few minutes.

Spicemeister
Show all reviews by Spicemeister

It smells good. A balance of what seems like white florals, some citrus/fruit, some light wood, and slight musk, though I can’t really pick out any individual notes. A little powdery and clean but not soapy or musty. Soft and comforting; cohesive and well-balanced; atmospheric. Despite some reviews that say “synthetic”, fairly natural smelling for me. Unisex and somewhat indistinctive, but also inoffensive. Moderate longevity. On me it doesn’t project much/stays close to the skin.

That said, I don’t know if I’ll be wearing it too much, as I prefer scents that make more of a statement, are stronger, or have prominent notes–more character, and frankly, more masculine.

FSOCI3TY
Show all reviews by FSOCI3TY

For the price, it’s pretty good. However, the Lily of the Valley note didn’t really impress me, so I sold the bottle soon after purchasing it. Green and slightly powdery, with some generic citruses to keep it bright. It’s light so respray it as often as needed.

It’s just boring. Perhaps this brings nostalgic memories for those growing up in the 1990s. It’s definitely not a bad scent, but it didn’t really live up to its hype. It’s more of an expectation mismanagement that’s to blame.

Jon_Remy
Show all reviews by Jon_Remy

This came out in 1989, not 1994. I was on a plane to Munich when another passenger said she worked for the Calvin Klein company and was incidentally carrying a sample of CK One in her purse, which she gave to me. She said it was a unisex fragrance (something new at the time). I thanked her, and have loved CK One ever since 1989.

Ne Plus Ultra
Show all reviews by Ne Plus Ultra

As far as fragrances that were released during the 90s (I’m not including frags released in the late 80s; like Cool Water, Joop, or CK’s Eternity in this one) there were a handful of fragrances that achieved ubiquitousness in an era they were made in – Calvin Klein’s One, being one (no pun intended) of them. In fact, I think the only other fragrance that beats CK One as a time capsule of the 1990s is: Acqua di Giò.

Like Acqua di Giò, this scent was everywhere in the 90s. Probably even more so, because it was (as it is now) cheaper than Acqua di Giò.

Disclaimer: this review might be a little biased due in part to nostalgia. Smelling this fragrance again; I can hear Ace of Base’s “The Sign” bouncing along in the overhead speakers while walking around in the mall when I was a kid.

I don’t know how long past formulations lasted. But, in it’s current form; 6 hours, at best.

First notes to greet the nose; is a lemon/citrus smell, very comparable to a gin & tonic smell. Accompanying the slighty boozy citrus smell is a vaguely synthetic smelling floral scent – think of roses or tulips. There’s also a very subtle feminine tone underlying the floral/citrus/fresh smells; to me, it reminds me of a women’s salon shampoo.

Projection lasts about an hour. After that, the citrus notes taper off, and the floral scent plateaus.

Hour 3-4: the citrus takes a back seat to the green tea and sandalwood. By this point, it is a fresh/floral scent.

Hour 4-5: Basically, a skin scent at this point. Citrus smell is mostly gone.

Hour 6: Whatever sillage left on the skin, has evaporated or been absorbed, by this point. Any residual smell left, now lingers on your clothes; your shirt will smell vaguely of dryer sheets.

And that’s about it; It’s neither very remarkable, nor very bad. It’s just…your basic, safe, clean, inoffensive (for the most part), scent…and, that’s part of the problem with it.

CK One suffers from a couple of problems:

1. It’s a people-pleasing fragrance from Calvin Klein; so it’s going to be a somewhat of a milquetoast, synthetic, middle of the road fragrance to some people – especially after 25+ years of being on the market.

2. It’s a unisex fragrance; it ends up straddling a fence between feminine/masculine which makes it smell more generic than it otherwise would have.

3. It could end up being either too masculine or too feminine on you; depending on your body chemistry and what sex you are. On me, I find it to be a little on the feminine side within the first hour: it’s the floral scent mixed with women’s haircare product smell.

To me, this is a daytime scent; wear this at the office or casual weekend afternoons. Technically, this might be considered an “all-season” fragrance. But, I would classify it as a spring/summertime scent. Again, it’s just a workhorse fragrance for the office or running errands on a spring/summer day below 75°.

I would recommend this people who are new to fragrances, and basically want a cheap, inoffensive, safe scent they can use everyday.

3.25/5 stars. Just barely above a neutral rating for me.

Brisso
Show all reviews by Brisso

One third Z 14, one third Tuscany, one third CK One. Hello Aussie summer!!

Abbiss
Show all reviews by Abbiss

This review is going to be a bit contradictory. So was the fragrance.

I shared my boyfriend’s bottle when I was 18 and he was 38. That’s 13 years ago. I still have the memories of a fresh fragrance with citrus and woods, that I found cool in my pseudo-feminist young and free years, but also too masculine for what I was thinking I should smell like. It felt like the notes were chosen to balance each other, to the point of zero, like opposite-coloured lights would make the sum of them look white.

Varanis Ridari
Show all reviews by Varanis Ridari

Reviewing generalist scents always brings up the problem of not only setting the facts strait amongst all the unintelligible and extreme two-liner reviews that either skyrocket or tank the scent’s ratings, but also of accurately describing them with enough specifics to make them seem distinct to the reader without smelling them, since generalists are not meant to be distinct by their nature, with cK One (1994) being the ultimate generalist. The hot take version of this review is cK One is essentially an Alyssa Ashley Musk (1968) 2.0, but for more, read on. The mass-appeal fragrance model always existed but not until the 90’s did it cast such an impossibly wide net, with new creations resetting all the levels on things from the past and striving to be as inoffensive and unspecific as possible, in an attempt to reclaim respect and acceptance lost by the very brash and ostentatious 1980’s. This process began in earnest first with masculine fragrances as male “powerhouse” scents were often the most bizarre and virile, while female-marketed scents were no less loud but commanding in a more charismatic way than by brute force, so they didn’t transition into the “fresh revolution” until later on. Calvin Klein is much to blame for this entire changing of the guard, as they were among the vanguard of perfumers offering a new generation of unassuming olfactory pleasantness, but kept going further and further in that direction by using increasing numbers of nondescript custom synthetics (often with fantastic names in the note pyramids) until their perfumes smelled like nothing recognizable in the real world. Removing nature from perfume was relatively easy, as enough blending can achieve that even without synthetics, but the next step in Calvin Klein’s efforts to “smell like nothing” would be to remove gender as well, which led to the creation of cK One in 1994. Now to be clear, unisex fragrances actually predate all other kinds of perfume, as fragrances did not have gender, despite being favored mostly by women in western culture for centuries, and only received sexual assignment after insecure guys made it clear they needed their own special scents with reassurance of masculinity if they were to wear any fragrance at all. Many niche and high-end perfume houses have never really taken to labeling their creations by gender until exclusive “for men” fragrances came about, and some still don’t assign gender even to this day. However, in regards to mainstream perfume, Calvin Klein deliberately marketing cK One as “unisex” by design became a huge deal and mind-blower to those who didn’t know better. The “Age of Eternity” was in full-swing by the advant of cK One, and it’s “One for All” attitude spawned a wave of unisex clones from other houses throughout the decade, plus created a cult following that to this day buys up every flanker and seasonal alternate version released.

Alberto Morillas, who even by 1994 had an impressive portfolio of creations, was brought in by Calvin Klein to spearhead the cK One effort, with Harry Freemont, who is also known for a lot of winners in the designer segment. Together, they created a scent that is basically so intent on being gender-neutral from a perfume aesthetics perspective, that it literally comprises notes that act to neutralize each other, making the most anonymous and androgynous of beige pleasantries ever smelled at the time. cK One is constantly fighting itself in the dry down, creating a silent maelstrom of opposing forces that smell both like a dozen things you’ve smelled before and also none of them simultaneously. This amazing and admittedly confusing feat begins with bergamot, lemon, mandarin, pineapple, papaya, and cardamom, which is a “we are the world” of citrus minus maybe lime, counterbalanced by rounder fruit choices and a meaty spice. The next level of Dante’s Inferno in a bottle comes in the form of jasmine hedione, violet, rose, muguet, freesia, and nutmeg, which swings the the composition feminine from all the florals at first but soon swings the pendulum back to the guy side with nutmeg. Green tea, oakmoss, cedar, sandalwood, amber, the only synthetic “Kleinism” in the form of “green tree accord” and finally white musk bring the base into territory inhabited by unisex musk perfumes of the 1960’s, without the hippie sweat factor of heavy aromatics. The conflict these accords undertake with each other is less of a free-for-all and more of a standoff a la trench warfare of the first world war. You catch a glimpse of something like citrus, then the fruit holds it in check. Violet and rose begin painting a dainty and dusty feminine picture until nutmeg stamps it out. Cedar and oakmoss begin to anchor the base in barbershop territory until the sweet amber and laundry musk neutralize the effort. The whole thing is literally just checks and balances from top to bottom, which is both exhausting to parse, and ultimately blurs into the perfume equivalent of “apartment white” carpeting. It goes on sweet, bright, then goes floral, and finally ends in clean musk that’s hard not to like. High school teens everywhere throughout the 90’s obsessed over this, thanks to pictures full of despondent 20-somethings in grungy jeans, white shirts, and edgy haircuts that plastered every subway, bus stop, airport, and magazine insert in the US. Ironically, I remember some total chauvinists back in the day refused to wear cK One because to them, a scent that was unisex was tantamount to just being women’s perfume anyway, which was their loss.

cK One set another precedent for Calvin Klein, who already ushered in the serenity that was Eternity for Men (1989), then came along with this scent so everyone and their sister, brother, cousin, or mother could smell clean, unobtrusive, and completely alike. I know it sounds like a fragrance trying to smell like nothing would be terrible, and for many a purist this was blasphemy, but those folks subsequently moved either into vintage scents or niche depending on their economic upward mobility anyway, leaving the designers behind to court the masses, which may have been their end game all along. Who’s to say? One thing is certain, there’s so much effort and creativity worked into this scent by Mr. Morillas and Freemont, plus so many nearly-imperceptible sides to cK One as a result of it’s highly-synthetic blending, that it’s hard not to appreciate the artistry here even from a hobbyist standpoint, if not the style of the scent itself. For those who love the puzzle box in the frosted medicine bottle that is cK One, wearings in different temperatures will reveal a great deal of versatility. Like most generalists before and after, you don’t really have to think about wearing cK One, and it becomes the “dumb-grab” for the person in a hurry, which itself has moved more units than probably any other reason that can be found in this review. Safe and sexy in one package is the way to sell units, and designers learned from this going forward, gendered or not. The smell of cK One will yield many a compliment by men or women, as was by design, if that’s something which interests you, but it is not a very distinguished nor distinguishable smell, so people wanting to be credited for their good taste are looking in the wrong place here. I find cK One to be the height of Calvin Klein’s innovative perfume art through artifice approach, and although later 90’s output was also nice, including the unisex sequel cK Be (1996), a certain nadir would set in by the mid-2000’s that would culminate in their attempts to relearn diversity by the 2010’s with mixed results. cK One is still the best of it’s line to me despite being the first, because it is still the most sophisticated, well-blended, gender-neutral, and rounded of the cK scents. It’s attempts at minimalism is something it’s sequels achieve more successfully, at the cost of quality or true unisex appeal. I also like to think the use of cK One encourages moving outside the comfort zones and exploring other possibilities, because one thinks “if I can wear this, what else can I do?”. It’s cheap, it’s pallid, and ends in a simple musk finish, but it’s also quite liberating. Cheers!

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Ijustwannasmellgood
Show all reviews by Ijustwannasmellgood

I’d say I approached CK One with the lowest expectations possible. Judging by the reviews, it had been an overdone and highly unoriginal smell that had lost its initial glory to what came after it.

I’m happy to say that isn’t true in the least. CK One is a surprisingly fresh and versatile fragrance with pretty strong sillage and good longevity. The citrus-y opening with a hint of pineapple and bergamot is somewhat sweet and leads into a semi sweet floral bouquet with Jasmine and violet as it later quiets down into a soft woody accord that smells like walking fresh out of the shower.

This is the perfect juice for anybody who wants to just spray and go without worrying about the smell. It’s the penultimate symbol of easygoing softness and freshness that so many fragrances strive for and never quite grasp. This is the most compliments I’ve gotten from a fragrance.

Even after all this time, CK One is a winner. Well done, Mr. Morillas. Absolutely recommended.

Longevity: 6-8 hours
Sillage: High

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tenaedivionnis
Show all reviews by tenaedivionnis

TAKE IT FROM ME:
The cologne smells OK, but whatever ingredients companies use for Women’s Purfume, You will smell that in “The One”

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Mel B
Show all reviews by Mel B

I have just recently finished a bottle of CK One that I have had for quite some time. I decided to go out today and buy another one as I totally loved the smell. Just got home and gave myself a quick squirt and am totally disappointed. Calvin Klein have totally changed the way that is smells.
Gone is the wonderful fruity aroma that would last almost all day. In place of it is something I struggle to describe.
I can barely make out any smell on my wrist and have just spent £40 on a bottle of perfume I may never use again because of the difference in its smell.
Truly sad and disappointed. 🙁

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ASKJ
Show all reviews by ASKJ

I have nothing bad to say about CK One because it is so inoffensive. It’s an elegant fragrance of a natural freshness in a subdued and balanced blend. It’s not too sweet, not attention seeking, fresh, features natural smells, long lasting and stays close to the skin. So far so good.

With that in mind, my first impression of CK One is that it belongs in the same fragrance family as laundry soap, it’s a most luxurious laundry soap – but still a laundry soap. I can only speak for myself when I say I love clean smelling clothes. The kind of clothing smell which radiates a calm feeling throughout the day. Except that the fabric softener I use is much cheaper than CK one.

I like CK One, I don’t love it, and it’s never the wrong choice of fragrance in any situation.

Brian Buchanan
Show all reviews by Brian Buchanan

cK One : that unmistakable smell of ‘citrus’, green tea and muguet; luminous, aloof, androgynous and hard.
With its motto of ‘clean is the new sexy’ cK One squared the circle and became the first major puritan perfume. No mean feat : some mean ‘fume.

jtd
Show all reviews by jtd

A friend brought up CK One yesterday in a discussion. The Calvin Klein names sound the same to me and it only clicked which CK perfume this was when I remembered the advertising campaign. The teenage faux-grunge advertising. Oy.

I’ll tell you how it is that I’ve never smelled CK One before: target marketing works. In 1994 and I was 30, or twice the age of the target audience. I lived in New York and CK One advertising was public. In 1994, before social media, targeting simply wasn’t very precise. Rather than aiming, Calvin Klein flooded. Billboards, television, magazines and newspapers, subway posters. I had to swerve to avoid it. If CK One launched today I’d simply never see it. It just wouldn’t show up in any of my feeds.

CK One was intended for a young audience, but the images were in everyone’s face, so a sort of self-recusal took place on-by-one. The perfume appealed to you or not, depending largely on whether the story being created included you. Imagery that read as cool/aspirational to the 21 year old who found the ads exciting didn’t appeal to me. Thin, world-weary teens playing Peter Pan meets Lord of the Flies? It screamed significance in fashion patois, but the post-grunge styling was years late and a shoddy attempt to cop a style from a subculture. The CK One campaign started a few months after Kurt Cobain killed himself. The notion of Calvin Klein trying to catch some momentum from grunge at this particular time was repugnant.

So I opted out. I was obliged to continue to see the images–I mean, I rode the subways–but that was the end of my participation. The contempt wore off after about a week. Then I just navigated the images until the next thing came along and replaced them–a classic New York experience of my time.

I remember a couple of details about the perfume. It was ‘unisex.’ I was surprised that they made a big deal of it–was unisex that novel an idea? Also, the fragrance was supposed to be contemporary and clean. SO contemporary and SO clean that it was somehow beyond scent.

So I tried CK One ‘cold’ yesterday for the first time. I’ve never read about the perfume itself. I have a bottle of CK One and some 25 year old recollections of the launch.

CK One smells like it was intended to convey hygiene yet go unnoticed. It’s there, but it claims not to intrude into your consciousness. There’s been years of discussion about the contradiction and denial involved in fragrances trying to smell like nothing, so I’m sure applying the notion to CK One is nothing new. But CK One smells like a very specific nothing. It’s conceptual: a ‘clean’ fragrance + a masking fragrance = an impulse of purity. It allows you to feel invigorated without the invasiveness and effort of having to exhibit a clean scent. From the angle of 2017, hygienic fragrances seem very ’90s-specific, but for all I know, CK One invented the approach.

Of course the premise that two opposing olfactory forces will nullify each other doesn’t actually work on a practical level. Instead, you’re left with the remnants of a scent, like dry-cleaning chemicals that cling to your clothing. The perfume ends up locked in a cycle of constantly trying to invalidate itself. It might have been intended to be uncomplicated and undemanding, but it’s no surprise that it smells like effort and tension. (Cute bottle, though.)

It also smells like diet soda and Febreze, which wouldn’t exist for another another 4 years. I give CK One enormous credit for its methodically synthetic tone. It comes across as calculated and legible. I had never smelled it before yesterday, and yet it instantly smelled like an era. If CK One’s goal was to create a new style of fragrance, my experience points out how successful it was.

from scenthurdle.com

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Maddy
Show all reviews by Maddy

I could’ve sworn I reviewed this already. Since it seems that I haven’t, I’ll do so now.

What else is there to say, but wow? Back in 2015, before my first semester at college was over, I found this at a Burlington. I had only ever used one fragrance prior to getting this, and this is what got me into the fragrance game (I now have at least a dozen fragrances).

I had no idea what this would smell like, but I knew about Calvin Klein because my dad has worn two of their fragrances: eternity and obsession. I had no idea how to tell if it was a “cologne” or “perfume”, but I decided to go for it. I tried it on in the car and realized that I had smelled it before. It was (and is) a very popular fragrance. Most of its users are women, but this is also a hit among younger men (like myself).

I think what I smelled was a combination of musk, green tree accord, pineapple and violet. Those scents are what stick out to me. It’s a very casual and relaxing scent. As another reviewer has said, it has “90s” written all over it.

vinaccio
Show all reviews by vinaccio

A really good scent, very crowdpleasing.
Sadly overused and thus not a real compliment getter anymore (I enjoy wearing parfume, I enjoy them a lot more when I can get compliments from them!).

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The sent of rotten tacos
Show all reviews by The sent of rotten tacos

Ahh mid 90’s every guy had ck one every girl wore tommy girl. I love this smell prolly mostly because of what it reminds me of more than the actual smell. It was clutch in its prime tho! Super fresh scent just makes you wanna gel up your frosted tips, throw on your favorite pair of silvertabs, some addidas superstars!

Kaizen1972
Show all reviews by Kaizen1972

Amazing how Calvin Klein managed to have green tree accord at every level of the fragrance triangle in cK one. It’s a living legend of a scent, controversial and an acquired taste.

Wearing it, I feel sensations of confidence (no doubt from the citrus notes) and comfort. It’s a head turner that still sticks out after all these years.

I haven’t tried to explore the dizzying array of cK One flankers that have come out since the original came out in 1994 – and I won’t knock them until I try them. But cK One is one to check out, man or woman.

Shifty Bat
Show all reviews by Shifty Bat

I actually grew to enjoy One after owning a mini for several years. Surely it is synthetic and a little crowded, but it is refreshing and unisex, which is exactly what it claimed to be, and I like that. Perhaps it’s the changing climes and trends making masculine florals so rare which changed my mind on this one, but I really like lily of the valley in fragrances, and to me, it is the most prominent part of One’s composition. If the base wasn’t so blurred and fake smelling this might have crossed the line from good to great.

Edit: The line has been crossed. I have finally acquired a vintage bottle and am happy to report that it is warmer, more natural-smelling, and that the sourness of the opening is more like aldehydes than chemical tartness derived from added citruses, and the nutmeg is actually noticeable. Admittedly, the difference in vintages is a small gap, and the current formulation is still far more enjoyable than most designer releases over the last two decades, but that little difference in texture and authenticity bridged the gap for me.

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cake-love
Show all reviews by cake-love

I love it. I was a little too young to have worn it when it was in fashion, and probably would’ve hated it, anyway. Now I love it, a kind of techno-citrus that screams a kind of otherworldly calm. Like it would be saying “relax, it’s the 90s” if it cared to speak, but instead it just gives a smug look to everyone it saunters past walking down the street back to its translucent plastic spaceship.

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TheonGreyjoy
Show all reviews by TheonGreyjoy

It’s light, not too feminine, and unoffensive. I’ve kept it around for years, and still enjoy wearing it to work, where it doesn’t sweat off.

Something doesn’t have to be the end-all and be-all of cutting-edge perfumes to we worth a buy and a wear. I enjoy it!

paulancheta
Show all reviews by paulancheta

This was one of the go-to fragrances for very young urban professionals (like me) back in the nineties. It ruled an era when aquatic scents took everyone to the middle of the fragrance sea.

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meliscent
Show all reviews by meliscent

I did not wear this scent in the ’90s, as it was too trendy. Two decades later, I really enjoy CK1 — especially for everyday wear, to the office. It is clean yet not astringent like many water-inspired scents. With my body chemistry, CK1 takes on a slightly floral, powdery, feminine tone. It is not a sexy scent on me, nor it does it inspire a sense of adventure. But I select this scent when I want to feel fresh, professional, and feminine. I realize that CK1 is famous for being the first gender-neutral fragrance; but it smells feminine (floral/powdery) with my body chemistry.