Unbound For Men by Halston

There's really not much more that I can add except that I absolutely LOVE this fragrance!
Unbound For Men by Halston beats Acqua di Gio by leaps and bounds. It's fresh, clean, crisp, aquatic, juicy and salty simultaneously - a fabulous Spring/Summer cologne. It is quite marine and beachy without the sand or suntan lotion, more of the oceanic aromas; plus it is only 1/3 the price of AdG. Fellas, you most certainly cannot go wrong purchasing this cologne!

I discovered this terrific men's scent a few months ago while parsing the internet for something aquatic. Having been through the somewhat blah Acqua di Gio experience, I felt the need to find something that outmatched both its quality and price. Doing one or the other seemed easy, but doing both seemed almost impossible. After all, if Giorgio could charge $55 for its trademark men's cologne, who could possibly usurp the universally-popular ADG for under $20?

Halston, that's who. Believe it or not, Unbound for Men is a clever little masterpiece that has flown under the radar since 2002. What it accomplishes is nothing short of amazing - a sophisticated and complex aquatic fragrance with designer-quality silage and longevity. I read reviews on this product incredulously, with an "I'll believe it when I smell it" attitude. Which, because of its distinct lack of popularity, meant having to blind buy. Trust me, if you want something lightly aquatic, summery, yet unique, masculine, and expensive-smelling, this is one blind buy that is totally worth it.

First of all, it crushes ADG like a grape in the basic aquatic fragrance category. Where ADG languishes in a synthetic lemon netherworld, Unbound unfurls confident notes of lime, Bombay Sapphire Gin (yes, that's right - Bombay Sapphire Gin), watermelon (yes, that's right - watermelon in the top notes), tomato leaf, black pepper, and a detectable trace of salt water. These linger after 2 or 3 spritzes for a solid 90 minutes or so before evolving into beautiful violet, peppercorn, and iced melon. Basenotes mentions purple sage, and I find that this note depends on how much you apply - the more you use, the more sage you get. Eventually, after a good 5 hours you get light woods notes, mostly close to the skin, but still present enough to booster your sex appeal from across the dinner table.

The use of tomato leaf in Unbound is a little miracle of its own - anyone who knows tomato leaf knows that it isn't the greatest scent out there. Somehow Halston managed to bottle this scent in a way that works very well and in harmony with all the other ingredients. As for the watermelon - personally I hate the smell of watermelon, and I've met many other guys who hate it as well. Which is why the Bombay Sapphire Gin in the top note is so important: combined with the watermelon, the two become one great, wet, green fragrance, with the gin preventing the watermelon from becoming too sweet, and the watermelon preventing the gin from becoming too botanical and juniper-forward. Bear in mind that this sort of artful complexity is carried off in what is altogether a light aquatic fragrance, and so nothing about it is cloying.

I have no idea why Unbound isn't more widely known, but I think perhaps price has something to do with it. At $14 for a 3.4 oz bottle (you can even find the same size online for around $9) many misconstrue this fragrance as being low-end and therefore low-quality and cheap-smelling. Nothing could be further from the truth; despite the low price tag, Unbound smells like a designer fragrance, better than Acqua di Gio in many ways, and the perfect aquatic for any season. Maybe Halston released Unbound in the lower price bracket with the quiet hope that it would catch on and warrant being increased to $50 a bottle, but obviously that never happened. All the same, they didn't skimp on the formula, and the result is a rare product of very, very good quality for practically nothing.