Giorgio Armani I WILL Review: The Second Wear Changed Everything

Full-size bottle kindly gifted by Armani Beauty as PR. As always, the opinions and impressions in this review are entirely my own.

This Giorgio Armani I WILL review was never going to be a one-wear verdict. Some perfumes reveal themselves immediately. You spray them once, understand more or less where they are going, and the relationship is established within minutes. Giorgio Armani I WILL was not quite like that for me.

The first time I smelled it, I remember thinking that the opening was pleasant but perhaps a little too familiar. It certainly wasn’t bad, and I was already much more interested once the fragrance moved into its heart and drydown, but that first encounter left me wondering whether I WILL was going to be one of those perfumes I admired more than I actually wanted to wear.

Then I sprayed it again.

Maybe it was the cooler evening. Maybe my nose was simply in a different mood. Perfume has an annoying habit of refusing to behave like an equation, after all. Whatever the reason, the second wear changed my perception almost immediately. What had initially seemed like a fairly conventional bright opening suddenly felt much more interesting, because underneath the citrus freshness I could already perceive a softness and warmth that made the whole thing considerably more seductive.

And this time, I WILL got me from the beginning.

Familiar, but Not Stuck in the Past

There is something slightly vintage about I WILL to my nose, although I mean that entirely as a compliment.

It occasionally reminds me of masculine fragrances I used to wear when I was much younger, not because it smells dated or because I could point to one particular perfume and say this is what it reminds me of, but because there is something in its structure that feels strangely familiar. Perhaps it is the contrast between aromatic freshness and a warmer, smoother base; perhaps it is simply the way the composition carries a certain sense of traditional masculine perfumery without ever becoming old-fashioned.

That familiarity is then polished into something much more contemporary. The official composition moves through bergamot, lavender and violet leaf before developing around vanilla and the woody-leathery accord Armani calls Woodleather, and on my skin the transition feels gradual rather than sharply divided into obvious stages.

That is probably one of the things I enjoy most about I WILL. It does not smell as though someone took a classic masculine perfume and desperately tried to modernize it. Nor does it feel like a current trend wearing a respectable suit. Instead, there is a balance between the two, and I suspect that is why the fragrance became much more interesting to me with repeated wear.

Where I WILL Really Wins Me Over

The heart and drydown were the parts I loved immediately, and after spending more time with the fragrance, they remain the reason I keep wanting to smell it again.

As I WILL develops, it becomes considerably softer and warmer. Vanilla becomes much more noticeable on my skin, but thankfully it never turns into the sort of aggressively sweet, dessert-like vanilla that seems determined to convince everyone within a five-metre radius that you have recently fallen into a pastry shop.

Here it feels smoother, darker and more luxurious.

There is sweetness, certainly, but something woody and slightly leathery keeps it controlled. The overall effect is warm without becoming syrupy, enveloping without becoming heavy, and polished in a way that feels very Armani to me. It is the sort of vanilla that makes me think more of texture than sugar: soft fabric, warm skin, something elegant rather than edible.

And apparently my skin enjoys this aspect enormously, because it seems to pull those creamy, vanillic facets forward while leaving enough structure underneath them to prevent the perfume from collapsing into sweetness.

This is also why I am particularly curious to wear I WILL properly during winter. I have only tested it as temperatures have started to fall, but already I get the impression that cold weather could make that contrast between brightness, warmth and softness even more satisfying.

Which is unfortunate news for the bottle.

The Cherry That Apparently Exists Only in My Head

There is another detail that I keep noticing during the evolution, and this is where we leave the official note list and enter the considerably less reliable territory of my nose.

At a certain point, I WILL develops an almost juicy nuance that makes me think of sour cherry.

There is no cherry among the materials Armani highlights for the fragrance, so I am not suggesting that I have heroically discovered a secret accord everybody else missed. It is simply the association my brain makes when I smell that particular phase of the perfume: something dark, slightly tart, juicy and almost red in character.

Why sour cherry?

I have absolutely no idea.

But perfume would become rather boring if we all restricted ourselves to identifying only the materials printed on a press release. Smell is also memory, association and imagination, and sometimes your nose decides that a woody amber fragrance contains cherries even when nobody invited them.

I am not a perfumer. I am simply someone who has spent far too many years smelling perfumes, buying perfumes, talking about perfumes and apparently deciding that the logical next step was to build an entire website so I could continue talking about them to anyone patient enough to listen.

The arrangement seems to be working.

Giorgio Armani I WILL Review: A Full Day on Skin

For this Giorgio Armani I WILL review, I wanted to test performance over an entire working day rather than judge it from a few hours on my wrist.

One morning I applied I WILL at around 6:00 a.m. and deliberately left it alone for the rest of the day. By 11:15, it was still clearly present, with a medium projection that I could perceive around me without having to actively search for it on my skin. What remained at that point was particularly beautiful: a soft, warm and slightly vanillic cloud, but again without the flat sweetness that often makes vanilla-heavy fragrances blur into one another.

I had used only a couple of sprays, and that was already enough.

Which leads us to an obvious note to self: do not overspray I WILL.

This advice would be considerably more useful if there were any realistic possibility of me following it.

By 6:13 p.m., roughly twelve hours after application, the fragrance was no longer projecting and was barely detectable directly on my skin. What remained was more of an impression than a fully defined perfume, a warm and soft trace of what had been there earlier in the day.

For me, that is still a very good performance, particularly because the first several hours are not exactly discreet. I WILL creates a genuine presence around the wearer, but I never found it harsh or exhausting. It has volume, yet the softer character of the drydown keeps that volume from becoming aggressive.

That balance matters much more to me than simply chasing a record number of hours.

The Second Impression Was the Important One

What I find most interesting about this Giorgio Armani I WILL review is how much my opinion changed between the first and second proper wear.

Had I written about it immediately after smelling it for the first time, I probably would have said that the opening was competent but not especially exciting, while the heart and base were excellent. That would not have been entirely wrong, but it would have been incomplete.

A few wears later, I understand the opening much better because I can see where it is going. The initial brightness is not there simply to provide the obligatory fresh introduction to a masculine fragrance. It creates contrast with everything that follows: the warmth, the soft vanilla, the woody depth and that slightly retro character I keep finding so appealing.

Alberto Morillas and Nathalie Lorson have created something that feels familiar without feeling derivative, comfortable without becoming boring and sweet without surrendering to gourmand territory.

Most importantly, I simply enjoy wearing it.

That sounds almost embarrassingly obvious, but with perfume we sometimes get so caught up in analyzing ingredients, perfumers, concentrations and performance that we forget the simplest question: do I actually want to smell like this?

With I WILL, the answer has become increasingly clear every time I wear it.

Armani Beauty kindly gifted me the full-size bottle used for this review, something I obviously appreciate, but PR or not, there is only one minor problem left.

I suspect this bottle is going to empty rather quickly.

Fortunately, I WILL is refillable.

For once, somebody thought ahead.

Need another perfume to think about instead of the ones you already own? Head to my Fragrance Reviews.