Imagine CK One for the luxury shopper. So, yeah, Outrageous! really is a perfect fragrance for the Barneys Co-Op crowd.

The notes listed sound like a hot mess. The scent opens with an alcoholic caipirinha or more like a mojito – lime, mint, and rum – with fresh, out of the dryer towels. And there are aldeyhdes, tons of aldehydes. It sounds weird  and to some extent it is. To me, it’s like if Downy added a mojito scented fabric softener to their extensive line of scents and seriously, I could see them doing that. Or it’s like you’re doing laundry and drinking…and who doesn’t? The heart of the fragrance has an eau de cologne orange blossom and this green apple-white musk thing going on. It reminds me vaguely of Gendarme. The dry-down on me is a very clean, aquatic orange blossom, white musk and modern woods.

I do think that Sophia Grojsman did a great job with this salad of synthetics. She is a queen of functional fragrances and I almost see this composition as punk or like the de-evolution of fine fragrances:”Hey, you want to smell like androgynous anti-perfume? You want to sell it at a high-end retailer? I’ll show you. Here are some accords that I have in my linen closet that were too expensive to use for dryer sheets!”  I realize that I am not this fragrance’s demographic. This is a borderline anti-perfume in the CK One fashion. This is a modern CK One for today’s richer, younger, hip audience that spends even more on jeans and white t-shirts than the CK kids of the 90’s. I like perfume; I’m pro-perfume. I don’t mind wearing Outrageous! but I don’t go out of my way to wear it. The weird thing is that every time I wear it, I get compliments. I admit that because of this, Outrageous! has grown on me. People like this sort of thing. It’s familiar to them and not difficult to digest. The overall feel of this fragrance to me is like when a weird band with a rebellious temperament gets a Top 40 hit in the US (Eastern Europe and Australia don’t count, ya’ll). This may be the only perfume review in the world where you see a Malle perfume compared to Devo. I don’t even know how to process the ironic message of Outrageous! I’m trying. Is it camp? Is it irony?

Notes listed include caipirinha, clean laundry, green apple, orange blossom, amber, and Texas cedar. Launch date 2007. PERFUMER – Sophia Grojsman

Give Outrageous! a try if you like anti-perfumes or are looking for a casual perfume. Or if you like perfumes like CK One, Gendarme, D&G Light Blue for Women, Estee Lauder Pure White Linen and/or Moschino I Love Love. Yep, it’s unisex. And it’s something to wear with your expensive jeans. Or you can wear it with cheap jeans. I don’t care.

Outrageous! has average projection and longevity for whatever concentration it is. I called it an EDP. I made that up. I think it wears like an EDP.

The 3.4 oz bottle retails for $110 at Barneys. What a steal for a Malle! At this price you can use it on your linens 😉

Victoria’s Final EauPINION – Functional fragrance turned fine: a mix of mojitos, clean towels and linen water. A day in the life of the alcoholic housewife….To my surprise I like this synth combo of cocktails and cleaning products. It’s slightly punk for a pro-perfume person to wear an anti-perfume.  Lipstick Rose is a glorified functional fragrance but somehow it’s art reminding me of Warhol. Outrageous! takes the Warhol Factory approach but instead of screen prints, it throws up stencils outside the punk clubs. Art punk stencils. And it’s not like Crass punk, think more Devo Top 40. Or even the B-52s. It’s like when a weird band gets some popular hits. Or when the punks make fun of the masses using pop culture and camp and in the end it turns into an art movement. Give it 30+ years and the campy, sarcastic punks realize that they really are for the masses….de-evolution.

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*Sample came with a purchase from Barney’s. Product pic from Barneys.