JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
Ultra Male
2015
PERFUMER
Francis Kurkdjian
pear
black lavender
mint
bergamot
cinnamon
clary sage
CARAWAY
woody vanilla
‘Ultra Male, the rogue sailor who will have you lost at sea! This Eau de Toilette Intense is an arm wrestle between power and greed. The irresistible combination of dark lavender, woody vanilla, pear juice and mint. An Eau de Toilette Intense, between power and greed. More contrasted and spicier than the original. Ultra Male opens with bergamot notes, blended with pear juice, mint and lavender.’ – Jean Paul Gaultier
I have to be honest and after Le Male Elixir which I loathed and Le Male Le Parfum which was okay, I wasn’t too exciting to dive into more of the Le Male DNA. But a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do. Luckily, this one I like a little better yet again.
Similar as with Le Male Le Parfum, this Ultra Male lets the aromatic qualities shine a bit more. It feels less cloying, less stuffy, especially compared to the Elixir. Albeit it still too sweet for me to mix well with the fresher components, but I’ve since accepted that this DNA is just not for me.
You get the fruitiness of pear, but without much acidity. It’s quite understated, mixed with the the aromatic notes (no longer listed as official notes on the JPG site aside from mint). Not overly minty to me though, it lacks a certain brightness and freshness level to really get into that space.
Instead, as it gets sweeter, someone mentioned a pear desert and I can see that. Before it goes there, we do stick around in the aromatic world some more. I get visuals of a forest at times, but executed in a generic shampoo/shaving foam way.
This gets as sweet as Le Male Le Parfum, but it works a little better for my taste. It’s still this (un)happy medium between bubblegummy and spicy/vanillic gourmand that ultimately doesn’t satisfy me.
There’s this indie release that unfortunately few people will have smelled, Frederick Robin No.8, which does this desert-minty-sweet-pear a million times better.
I think I like this better than Le Parfum, but they are in the same ballpark for me. A lot of people seem to find Le Parfum less sweet and more mature, but in my testing I found the difference in that to be negligible in the drydown.