The Icon Antonio Banderas | Fragrance Review

The other half returned from a work trip with a delightful surprise, a bottle of The Icon by Banderas (Antonio). It does feel like these good looking actors can never leave a single buck on the table. Depp for Dior Sauvage, Tom Holland for Prada Paradigme and so on. Can't we just get normal ordinary construction working guys, have them flash their builders bum, advertising a fragrance called 'Ordinary' and the tagline 'anything BUTT'. They can't all be winners but that one is.

Launched in 2020, The Icon by Antonio Banderas is a Oriental Woody fragrance for men. Note Portfolio

Top notes are Grapefruit and Black Pepper; middle notes are Lavender and Sage; base notes are Sandalwood and Oakmoss. By the way don't you just love how these fragrance producers fluff it up by calling it a Note Portfolio. I imagine the bottle to be walking down New Bond Street with a cane and top hat carrying a leather briefcase containing all its ingredients in vials like a touring potioneer. I digress.

The Bottle

Possibly my most favourite thing. The cap is branded AB, and is a little pasticky but at least it has that reassuring click sound when pressed shut. The shoulders are straight and concave, the back cut away flat and the rounded edges on the side meet another block of flat plastic on the front. There is a metallic coin embossed on the front, and if you squint you can read the words on the lower circle 'success is an attitude'. Because of the two flat front and backs, it sits easier in the palm and you have a better grip for the application of the scent, (the atomiser) which was fantastic and confident.

The word on the street

It’s true when they say dynamite comes in small packages. I found this fragrance to be a smoothened out version of Dior Sauvage, I also got hints of Versace Dylan Blue, but for me I found this fragrance to be the perfect signature scent. Good for any setting- the office, school or the gym. For anyone who wants to blind buy a good blue fragrance, I say go for this fragrance, I will be buying a 100 ml bottle after this one (50ml). Jorrel, Fragrantica

Top 3 Antonio Banderas films

First of all we should never forget Antonio's finest film, The Skin I Live In. A brilliant plastic surgeon, haunted by past tragedies, creates a type of synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession. It's absolutely a bunch of crazy-great Spanish plantains.

He does the voice for Puss in Boots and I will never laugh as hard as I did in the cinema when he tells Shrek and Donkey to run as he fights off the guards, 'today I repay my debt'. On YouTube of course.

And in Bronze The Mask of Zorro, but mainly because Catherine Zeta Jones is a complete smoke show in that film.