I'll get right to the point here. I've worn a lot of fragrances in the past few years, but Wings for Men rates as one of the worst I've ever encountered. This bad news comes in one heavy little bundle, tied with noose-rope: Wings is a reference for "chemical mess" in contemporary perfumery. Its structure, from top to bottom, feels two hundred percent synthetic, and beyond functional - it's industrial. A quick comparison proves that Wings on one wrist and the original Windex on the other leads to instant olfactory fatigue, a sign that there are few divergences in how the two carry themselves. This thing is a mess.
The better news is that Wings is a reference for the value of oakmoss. I've grown weary of reading about how irreplaceable oakmoss is, because I wear fragrances that contain it, and find little to no extra benefit in either the overall quality of their scents, or their compositional strength compared to similar non-oakmoss formulas. Oakmoss is not a magic bullet. Brut aftershave contains none, but smells great, while Pinaud Clubman contains oakmoss and treemoss, and is equally competent but overbearing, sometimes even headache-inducing. The current version of Eau Sauvage contains zero moss, yet elicits positive responses all the time, while Grey Flannel is a virtual Nabokov novel about oakmoss, and barely registers with anyone (although I love it).
Last month I compared two different versions of Halston Z-14, and found that the truth behind oakmoss in a formula is pretty simple - when the composition is conceptually good to begin with, the presence of moss adds freshness and mossiness, which is a good thing if you happen to be someone with an intractable need for mossy effect, but otherwise inconsequential if the perfumer remained true to the fragrance's original concept in the reformulation. Oakmoss is an allergen, and for me the older formula of Grey Flannel (and Halston 1-12, for that matter) causes occasional bouts of labored breathing and raspiness. The quantity of moss in EA's second-to-last Grey Flannel is large enough to sometimes have my lungs tickling all the way to work, a severe, unpleasant side effect, and an unnecessary price to pay for smelling great. The latest Grey Flannel scales back the moss, but holds true to what the moss is a part of, and now I can wear it without any side effects, while enjoying the same design as before.
Because of its allergenic properties, and in light of the fact that many comparisons of moss-laden to IFRA-compliant formulas are usually biased and skirt the points made here, I point to Wings for Men as the golden idol for "oakmoss moderates" like myself. You can smell reformulations and gnash your teeth all you want, but the truth is that it isn't oakmoss that made your love - it was the design of the fragrance as a whole. Wings contains both oakmoss and treemoss, yet smells awful. Why does it smell awful? Because the design is awful. Comparisons to Aqua Quorum and Cool Water are not very apt. Two of the three use Calone to different effect, and woody spices to vaguely similar effect, while one (Cool Water) bears no relation whatsoever, and never needed oakmoss to begin with anyway. If the moss were taken out of the current formula of Wings, it would still smell atrocious. So where does that leave me?
It leaves me with no choice but to declare that oakmoss, as an allergen and a cheap crutch for cheap formulas, needs to be viewed with the rose-colored glasses off for a change. While moss certainly lends depth and longevity to a great many classics, its removal isn't a deal-breaker in reformulations. The deal-breaker is whether or not whatever remains can stand up to scrutiny after the moss is removed. If you think of a great, oakmoss-laden perfume as a beautiful woman in a pretty dress, and she takes that dress off, is she any less beautiful? If it was being used to hide something misshapen and flabby-looking, then yeah, you want that dress back on. But if it was simply accessorizing a gorgeous body, then its removal is not, deep down in your heart, something you're really missing.
We need to love conceptual designs, and not just on a material level. The materials are always changing, but if the concept stays true, then you will not be cheated. If your bias about certain materials gets in the way of recognizing the success of a design, then you are cheating yourself. And nothing about this blog post will make any sense to you if you hold the deeply-seated belief that perfume is a form of art, and therefore majestic and transcendental in some abstract way.
Fine fragrance is, first and foremost, something that should simply smell good, and is therefore always a part of the functional world, which arguably puts it above art, depending on your orthodoxy (which you need only divulge to yourself).