If you are looking for a new scent to add to your male grooming repertoire, I have tried out a new fragrance from Italian fashion brand Trussardi. It’s called Uomo, and comes in a stylish black bottle trimmed in gold. It’s a real classy and elegant bottle, simple in it’s style with the gold top and writing.
Trussardi say ” Its notes are inspired by leather and Italianity: lemon, bergamot, galbanum, violet, geranium, salvia sclarea, musk, leather, and patchouli”.
What does that smell like? Well it’s a classic, manly smell, a hint of woody musk “man smell” as I call it, but not overpowering. It’s a one for the night, whether you’re out with the boys or with a lady, this works.
If you are looking for a classic men’s EDT and want something different from everyone else, this could be it.
I got the set which includes the shower gel and aftershave balm.
You have heard me talking about this for a little bit, but yes, I finally got my Sony SRS-BTX500, and could not be happier 😀
First of all the look; It looks fashionable, trendy, premium, high end, and it’s all of these. The brushed aluminium on the sides, the lovely front grill and glowing blue light on the front to the rubber feet on the base to ensure it doesn’t slip around, everything about it is really nice and well put together.
Sound
Well it sounds like you may expect, it’s great 😀 Obviously far better than the Beats Pill I had. It is loud, crisp, plenty of bass, and works well quiet or loud. I have tried this in my bedroom and living room, and the sound more than fills the room. Outside in the garden it’s plenty loud enough for a usual situation.
Connectivity
It does have NFC, but since I have no NFC devices I can’t talk about that. It has a USB port on the back which you can use to charge your phone, no need to hunt around for the adapter just plug your phone in here and it will charge.
The biggest draw is obviously the Bluetooth. I connected my iPhone effortlessly, and I love this idea of having my phone control all the music or volume without being anywhere near the speaker.
I wanted something to connect to my PC too. I have lots of music and videos on my computer so I wanted to play from there as well as having the choice of using my iPhone. So I bought a Bluetooth dongle for it to connect. In all honesty, I thought it would be a pain to set up, so much so that I bought a wired AUX in cable, just in case I could not get the Bluetooth setup.
Once again it was easy! Connect the Bluetooth dongle to my PC, install the software/drivers and then discover the BTX500; Start playing music through my PC and it comes out the speaker 😀
As mentioned above there is an AUX in port (3.5mm) so you can connect through that if you have something which does not have Bluetooth.
Portability & Battery Life
It actually seems smaller than when I first saw it online. It comes with a softcase to take it places, and it is not so hard to transport around. It’s probably too big and heavy if you want to take this abroad or if you plan on travelling around, but it’s perfectly capable of being taken to a friends house or party, or some other place.
Since I have just got it I have not had a chance to test the battery life, it’s only quoted at 6 hours which is not so good.
The downsides
If you want to hunt around for downsides to this speaker I can come up with a couple, but it’s being really picky.
No supplied 3.5mm cable – You don’t get much in the way of accessories; Only the speaker, power adapter and softcase as a matter of fact.
Power adapter is big and bulky – In the age of small plugs with USB connectors this has quite a big adapter/plug to go in the wall. It can be impractical if you are using a 2-way adapter socker for example.
Battery life not the best – Even though I have not had a chance to use the battery fully, the quoted 6 hours is not very long, there are other speakers such as the Bose which quote a much better battery life, in fact the little brother of this (The BTX300) quotes 8 hours.
Conclusion
The downsides are really quite small, and really don’t make much difference if any for me. This is a great speaker, it does everything I want it to do, sounds great and looks the part.
I got a sample of Salvatore Ferragamo Acqua Essenziale to try, and it smells pretty good. First of all I like the little sample bottle, it’s quite amazing how much detail and effort goes into some brands samples, and this is no different.
The smell itself is quite a fresh water, yet woody type of smell. It’s a grown up, refined masculine type of smell, definitely not fruity or any hint of citrus.
Just to show you the size difference in the bottles
I have been on Pinterest for a while now, which has been really successful in the U.S. and is one of the most favoured social media sites for fashion bloggers, because of the ease of sharing pictures. Recently it has launched in the UK, and I am proud to say that Michael 84 is part of the launch! 🙂 But what exactly is it and why should you use it?
It differs from Facebook and Twitter, the other two big social media and sharing sites because this is more aimed at sharing images, pictures or other types of art. The idea is you can create collections of things you love, called boards (think mood board or more appropriately, pin board) and share them with the world. You can be creative and share your own photos or images, or share what you have found on the world wide web. Follow your friends and favourite boards you find, and re-pin cool things you find on others pin boards on your own.
You can create as many boards as you want, so you can organise your favourite things really easily; Add a fashion board for all your fashion related photos, add a gadgets board for cool gadgets, and whatever else takes your fancy.
Pin your amazing finds on the go!
There is of course an iPhone app, which means you can save your pictures and pin them on your Pinterest board on the go, so if you are on a holiday it’s the perfect way to share your holiday snaps with your friends.
If you are looking for some inspiration and want to know some other boards to follow on Pinterest then you could try looking at Jenny’s bake board here. You will find over 200 pins with some mouth watering cakes, biscuits and other baked goodness.
Newcastle Fashion Week 2013 – Mercedes Car Boutique took place on Friday, and it kicked off Fashion Week in Newcastle for this year. Check out the pictures below.
I have been looking to get this fragrance for quite a long time. It’s called Santal by Floris London, and I have to say it smells amazing.
If you read my blog then you will know my favourite ever scent is Gucci Envy by Gucci, and they have now discontinued Gucci Envy, in fact they did quite a while ago. That means trying to find a bottle is very hard if not impossible, and when you do they are silly prices. I did some researching online and most people said that Floris Santal was most like it. I read one reviewer who said it was “A more refined Envy“. The problem was that this was not so easy to find either, not in store anyway. I wanted to smell it first before buying since it’s quite an expensive one (£75 for 100ml) and my parents happened to be in London and got me a sample. I loved it and now know why someone called it a “more refined Envy”, because that makes perfect sense.
After smelling it I ordered it online via their official site, and it came quickly, well packaged and with a sample of Night Scented Jasmine for women which I must say smells really good too.
I do love the bottle too, a proper old school bottle, and it’s made by a proper British perfume maker rather than just a fashion label who just happen to have released a fragrance which I also like.
So I think I have found my new #1 favourite scent. I said that I will only buy this from now on, but if you see my collection you probably know I will still buy more for variation 😛
Welcome to Michael 84 – A men’s fashion blog and lifestyle guide from the UK. You’ll find the best in fashion, style, male grooming, fragrances, travel, tech and modern living.
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