From Pyrgos
8/9/25
Grass (Lush)
8/8/25
Grey Flannel Without Oakmoss and Treemoss
8/7/25
"Professor" Dave Explains That He's a Fool: Why Truthseekers in Fragrance and All Other Popular Interests Should Avoid YouTube
In the video, former SCUHS instructor (not professor) Dave contends that theoretical physicist Avi Loeb is a “fraud.” First, I want to comment on who I think Dave Farina is. California, it seems, has devolved into a swirling toilet bowl of intellectual and moral debris, as evidenced by the fact that this man managed to be hired as a teacher at a private college there. From June 2010 to October 2013, he was an instructor in organic chemistry at Southern California University of Health Sciences. After that, his career thins out. He rebrands himself as a “science communicator” with a YouTube channel. I imagine he’s making six figures more than he ever did as a teacher, so more power to him. I hope he continues to succeed on YouTube -- at least for the sake of his family.
However, I hope he fails spectacularly at slandering undisputed geniuses like Avi Loeb. In his video, Dave drills down on Loeb’s claim that Oumuamua -- the interstellar object that passed through our solar system on a hyperbolic trajectory in 2017 and has since vanished into space -- was possibly, and more likely than anything else mankind has ever encountered, an alien artifact of non-natural origins. Dave suggests that in the years since this unique phenomenon occurred, Loeb has trafficked in widely debunked claims about the object’s origins in a cynical cash grab that defies the scientific community and serves mostly to inflate his own public profile and bank account.
I’m going to surprise my readers, and possibly even Dave himself (hi, Dave), by saying that the organic chemistry guy's contentions aren't entirely out of bounds. Loeb is a public figure, and he holds controversial scientific and social science views that make him fair game for pointed criticism -- even when those critiques are thin and poorly conceived. This is America, and here we allow for public dissent on all reasonable and rational arguments. Therefore, I have no problem with Dave saying he disagrees with a theoretical physicist who has made a few million dollars on his notoriety as a supporter of the extraterrestrial explanation for Oumuamua. If I were a fellow traveler physicist in elite scientific circles, I’d probably have a basketful of my own criticisms of what Loeb has been doing since 2017. Loeb would probably expect that of me.
My problem with Dave’s video stems from a conversation I had with him in the comments section -- since deleted for the second time -- in which it became disturbingly clear that he had done very little reading on Oumuamua prior to posting his video and likely knew even less about Avi Loeb. Let’s be clear about who Loeb is, starting with Wikipedia:
"Loeb is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2015, he was appointed as the science theory director for the Breakthrough Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. He is an Israeli and American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology. Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, where since 2007 he has been Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics.[1][2][3][4][5][6] He chaired the Department of Astronomy from 2011 to 2020, and founded the Black Hole Initiative in 2016."
And from Loeb's 2021 book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth:
"At the time of this writing, I serve as chair of Harvard University's Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, chair of the Board of Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies, a member of the advisory board for the digital platform Einstein: Visualize the Impossible from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in Washington, DC.
In his book, Loeb posits that the reaction to Omuamua in the scientific community was a bit slapdash and inconclusive, to say the least. He writes:
"Indeed, mere weeks after the object's discovery, in mid-November 2017, the International Astronomical Union -- the organization that names newly identified objects in space -- changed its designation for 'Oumuamua' for the third and final time. Initially, the IAU had called it C/2017 U1; the C was for comet. Then it switched over to A/2017 U1; the A was for asteroid. Finally, the IAU declared it 1I/2017 -- the 'I' stood for interstellar." (Loeb 5)
All of this is well established in the scientific community, but apparently not in Dave's world. In his video on Loeb, Dave confidently claims that Oumuamua is “widely considered” by experts to be an exocomet. I asked him, “If Oumuamua is widely considered to be an exocomet, why isn’t it officially classified as one?” He shot back: “It is.” I replied, “No, it isn’t,” and cited the actual evidence.
That’s when Dave’s composure cracked. He resorted to name-calling, declared that none of what I said was true, and that I was stupid. I doubled down with the facts. Then, in the interest of accuracy, I called him a complete moron, because at that point, it was irrefutable. If you make a whole video purporting to “debunk” Avi Loeb, a Harvard scientist with endless credentials who has worked with the US government on international defense projects, and simultaneously botch the most basic classification facts about the object in question, you’re not just wrong -- you’re proudly, performatively, Olympic-level wrong.
Predictably, this sent Dave into full damage-control mode. What does an idiot say and do when confronted with basic facts? He began deleting my comments, then went silent for half an hour, probably to Google “Oumuamua” like a college freshman cramming for a quiz he forgot was tomorrow. When he returned, still having scrubbed most of my replies, he opened with: “Hey worthless shitstain, Google ‘Oumuamua is an exocomet,’ see that every single source says yes, it is, and then come back and apologize. There is no ‘C1’ designation. That’s not a thing. You’re the dumbest loser alive.”
This was… unwise. Yes, if you punch that phrase into Google, the algorithm helpfully regurgitates the “widely considered” myth, and leaves out the fact that official classification tells the whole story. But switch to any other AI engine (I used Grok), and the result is the opposite: Oumuamua is not considered to be an exocomet, although one hypothesis suggests it might be. Those sources -- the same ones Loeb references in his own book -- also explain exactly why, and none of this has changed since 2021. Oumuamua remains classified as an “interstellar object,” with no consensus on what it actually is.
I posted all this back in the comments, roasted him for the error, and told him I expected an apology, though I figured he’d just delete everything again. Instead, after a strange pause where I imagine him staring blankly at his screen, he undeleted the entire thread. Maybe he thought it made me look bad. Spoiler: it didn’t. At least for that evening, the exchange stood. Since then, surprise surprise, it’s mostly gone. I could go back and dismantle him all over again, but why bother? He’ll just hit delete, pretend it never happened, and keep his deeply flawed Loeb video up for the next unsuspecting viewer.
You might wonder why Dave Farina is so invested in attacking a theoretical physicist. I have a theory, supported by his own video. Near the end, he drifts from criticizing Loeb’s scientific claims into criticizing Loeb’s ethnicity, launching into a pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic screed against the “Zionist physicist” he believes Loeb to be. I was waiting for this moment, because as Dave went on and on about Loeb supposedly grifting the public with his views on Oumuamua, I realized the video never actually addresses the fact that Oumuamua isn’t categorized by astronomers as a comet. Instead, he sidesteps the interstellar object entirely and goes straight to ridiculing Loeb for getting frustrated that other scientists aren’t as eager to embrace his extraterrestrial theories.
The video’s thin treatment of Loeb’s actual science tipped me off that Dave’s animus likely has little to do with comets, aliens, or scientific integrity. Dave appears, at least to me, to have a problem with this particular Jew. Why else bring up the war between Israel and Hamas, and go on a tangent about how monstrous Israel supposedly is (and Loeb by proxy) for “murdering children” in Palestine, when Loeb has nothing to do with the war? Why even bother mentioning it? I think Dave’s entire video is built on an underlying hatred of Israel, a misguided romanticizing of Palestine, and perhaps even a soft spot for Hamas -- though I can’t confirm or deny his views on that, because he’s been too vague, at least in this video (and I’m not about to dig through his channel to find out). My suspicions seem supported by the fact that he’s been banned from X for antisemitic content (link here). Pretty sad for a man his age, and a searing indictment of my generation.
Here’s what I'm getting at with all this: if you know nothing about Avi Loeb and then watch Dave’s video, you could easily walk away thinking you’ve been educated about a dangerous fraud looking to scam you out of your money and intellect. Dave frames Loeb’s career and views on Oumuamua through a very selective lens, cherry-picking moments where Loeb is arguably at his worst in debates with peers, and then claiming the entire scientific community rejects him outright. If you’re unfamiliar with Loeb’s actual claims, or why he holds them, you’ll probably buy it -- Dave is good at looking like he knows what he’s talking about. Hucksters usually are.
But if you know even a sliver about Avi Loeb before hitting play, the cracks in Dave’s argument show within the first five minutes. My exchange with him would still be up if he’d actually won, but I mopped the floor with him. He seemed so embarrassed by my comments that he didn’t know what to do -- faced with people reading, in real time, how I’d exposed him on the simple facts of comet prefixes (sorry Dave, they’re real), he couldn’t decide whether to delete my comments or leave them up in the hope someone might think I looked stupid. Funniest of all was when he told me to Google my information and apologize -- only for me to come back with countervailing evidence so specific to Oumuamua that it was impossible to refute. The specific “C” designation I mentioned in our conversation applies to anomalous comets that pass through the solar system only once -- which is exactly what Oumuamua did. It's right there on Google!
This problem isn’t unique to Dave Farina. I’ve subscribed to and regularly watched many prominent fragrance YouTubers over the past decade. Plenty of them are harmless personalities with respectful content, so skepticism is unnecessary. But many are young men in their early to mid-twenties who pontificate about fragrance “notes,” “longevity,” and “best seasons.” While you can take that with a grain of salt, you should also be wary of the context -- just as Dave’s viewers are misled by his juvenilely misinformed content, an endless diet of inexperienced reviewers spewing unfiltered opinions can misdirect an uncritical audience. Much of it is unintentional, but the effect can still be damaging.
I would extend my experiences with Dave and these unnamed fragrance YouTubers to pretty much any popular YouTuber. Take “Babish” (Andrew Rea), for example, who "reviews" everyday food items like Campbell’s Soup and extra virgin olive oil. In his EVOO video, he covers dozens of brands (with a few conspicuous omissions), and I settled in hoping to learn something. Within five minutes -- my standard metric for spotting nonsense -- it was obvious “Babish” doesn’t know a thing about olive oil, and worse, he’s teaching his ignorance. He tells viewers you shouldn’t cook with EVOO because its smoke point is too low (false), and jokes about not swallowing samples because he wants to “live longer than a week” -- implying, falsely, that EVOO is unhealthy.
He then spends most of the video swishing and spitting mouthfuls of oil, pre- and post-reviewing each sample with comments like, “And here we have another yellow olive oil that smells the same,” and, “Okay, that one tastes just like the last one -- these all taste the same.” Between awkward fits of giggles -- oddly effeminate for a grown man, and sometimes forced for effect -- he ends up ranking the oils like a blind man, conveying no useful information at all. For entertainment, fine. For actual education, worthless. He’d have done far better hiring an EVOO expert to taste and explain.
As I said at the start, we live in an online culture dominated by know-nothings with just enough talent and tech to keep their clickbait channels afloat. I don’t care what Dave Farina does with his channel -- this is America, and he can run it however he likes. But that doesn’t absolve him of the responsibility to tell his viewers the truth. Spreading falsehoods, edited and reframed to serve personal (and political) opinions against all available data, isn’t just irresponsible -- it’s damaging to everyone who buys into it. Think about how many viewers leave “Professor Dave Explains” believing he’s a real professor delivering researched facts. Think about the crap being spewed into the world.
Based on his Avi Loeb video, I’m left with one conclusion of my own -- entirely subjective, but worth stating: I think Dave Farina is the fraud. If he ever debated Avi Loeb face-to-face instead of sniping from the comfort of his living room, he’d be exposed as uninformed. And I suspect Google might think twice about letting his content pollute the public sphere.
8/6/25
Aura for Men (Jacomo)
8/5/25
Is Halston 1-12 the Most "Natural" American Cheapie On the Market?
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Quite an impressive list. |
Ingredient | Why It's Used | |
---|---|---|
Alcohol Denat. | Solvent, carrier | Helps dissolve fragrance oils and evaporates quickly, delivering the scent. |
8/4/25
The Outer Limits of Perfume Orthodoxy
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"The Greatest Green Scent" |
7/27/25
Jōvan Musk for Men Signature Edition (Coty)
I've always felt that Jōvan Musk for Men smelled like narcissus, but I was never able to find anyone who confirmed it, so I kept the thought to myself. Smelling it again today, I'm reminded of the cultural reset buttons we press when we need a break from ourselves. For example, I've become a staunch believer in the Mediterranean diet and generally stick to the rigors of vegetables, lentils, olive oil, and fish. Yet every once in a very blue moon, I veer off course to indulge in a cheeseburger or two and have my faith in humanity restored. Likewise, one might adhere with religious fervor to the echelons of vaunted niche, only to seek solace in stealing a sniff of some drugstore elixir that time forgot.
Jōvan Musk for Men Signature Edition is a fragrance with no traceable identity, like a hitchhiker without an I.D. who simply stepped out of his dimension and into ours. There is no internet record of this fragrance, and I have no idea when it was released. Even Parfumo doesn’t have a page for it. The seller of my bottle didn’t include the box, and from what I’ve gleaned on eBay, the box doesn’t tell you anything anyway, so that’s a dead end. I imagine this was a 1990s or early 2000s special edition release for the holidays or something similar, perhaps with only one or two runs before being phased out, but who knows? On skin and on paper, Signature Edition smells very close to my 2017 bottle of Musk, almost imperceptibly different. It has a slightly deeper, richer, and more animalic nuance, but only by a hair. This richness feels like the core components of chemistry-lab musk, flower-child florals, and apothecary soap are better balanced, fused in a way that creates a smooth, mellow, retro experience: that slightly tarnished brightness of an olfactory brass gong catching the rays of a setting sun.
Signature Edition reminds me of how far afield from the original formula Coty has taken Jōvan Musk for Men. It sits somewhere in the intersection of the raunchier 1970s version and the soapy-clean 2000s one, straddling qualities of both without fully embodying either. This style of fragrance has become incredibly difficult to wear nowadays, especially around women. But then again, I can think of several luxury brands that would pay good money to release something this legibly raunchy, so it’s hard to knock Jōvan. A bottle of Musk Oil cost $25 in 1973 when adjusted for inflation, so it was still a cut above Old Spice and Brut, making it the accomplished dad cologne of the era. The difference is that a '70s dad could get laid wearing this, while I’ll probably repel every woman in town.
7/24/25
Lovely (Sarah Jessica Parker)
Having just read the backstory to this fragrance, I can safely say that what I smell makes sense. Burr described the day he spent with Sarah Jessica Parker as enlightening; they ended it with a visit to her Manhattan home, where she confessed her love for Bonnie Belle Skin Musk (actually called Bonne Belle). She contrasted the scent of grade-school cologne with Incense Avignon by Comme des Garçons and some no-name Egyptian fragrance oil she buys from a guy on the street or something. (Apparently, Burr couldn't be bothered to actually track down who this guy was or what he was selling to the biggest TV star of the time. True journalism is dead.)
The story behind Lovely is interesting, but maybe not in the way the author intended. Following its evolution, from SJP's original idea, which Coty immediately ditched, to the eventual release of Laurent Le Guernec and Clément Gavarry's formula for the global market, I found a few things rather odd. First, SJP’s original concept was rejected, even though it wasn’t all that out there for a feminine fragrance. She liked the idea of "body smells" in a sexy way and wanted something dusky, earthy, and a little dark. In other words, she envisioned a classical French feminine from the 1940s, updated for the 21st century. For Coty to balk and steer her toward whatever they thought would sell seemed counterintuitive. But then again, what do I know?
The second oddity is that Burr never actually describes what Lovely ended up smelling like. It’s as if he wants the reader to go out, buy it, and discover it firsthand. That’s fine, I suppose, but it feels like he sacrificed some much-needed narrative connective tissue in the process. The story remains a vague sketch built on the idea that SJP was "learning" about perfume and its creation while developing her brief on the fly. And really, that’s all the story is: a brief. She tells the executives what she likes and doesn’t like, then offers up imagery of Easter eggs, ribbons, hat boxes, and other random things. None of it is particularly enlightening, because what truly matters is how Le Guernec and Gavarry interpret her direction and turn it into an actual fragrance. Unfortunately, that part was left out, and I'm left wondering what their creative process was like.
Lovely is greener and more floral than I expected. I’ve never smelled Narciso Rodriguez for Her, so I can’t make the comparison myself, but over 2,000 people think they’re similar, while only about 400 disagree. That’s Armaf-level stealth cloning. Le Guernec is especially skilled at reinterpreting popular commercial hits; his 2003 Chelsea Flowers for Bond is clearly a riff on Calice Becker’s Tommy Girl from 1996. I would argue Lovely is just as beautiful as Tommy Girl. This brings me to the third oddity, which is that no one seems to mention the massive hyacinth in this. It’s right there, screaming through a megaphone for the entire wear. The fragrance is incredibly strong. And yet, it’s also delicate, with a straw-like texture that anchors the sweet floral brightness, all wrapped in a soft cloud of white musk. It’s basically Skin Musk for rich people.
Except, thankfully, this fragrance isn’t expensive. I paid fifteen bucks for a 3 oz tester. And for the record, it looks and feels quite classy. The bottle is heavy glass, with a pretty grey ribbon tied around the base of the atomizer. Gold lettering. A soft pink tint to the bottle, tasteful and not overdone. The sticker and box don’t mention Coty at all. I’m not sure if they still distribute Lovely or if “The Lovely Distribution Company” is just a faux brand name Coty uses to distance itself. Maybe SJP asked for a rebrand. Coty tends to scream "cheap," and SJP isn't exactly a discount-bin celebrity. Just another odd detail in the story of her debut scent.
Lovely isn’t complicated. It comes across as a sweet floral musk, likable, easy on the nose, and refreshingly free of the usual crutches: no transparent fruits, no sugary syrup, no fake aquatic shimmer. There’s nothing trite or formulaic here. It just smells gauzy and relaxed, like a sheer spring floral framed in soft cotton.
Hey, for a tenner, you can’t go wrong.
7/23/25
Book Review: Chandler Burr's Year in the Fragrance Industry (Cough!) 17 Years Later
Summer reading: It was either this or The Emperor of Scent, and since I’m a little weary of Luca Turin and Burr’s sycophantic worship of him, I went with this. Why am I reviewing it nearly two decades after publication? Don’t ask. I get to things when I can. With my schedule, I’m lucky to get to them at all.
First, a quick personal note on Mr. Burr. He followed this blog from 2012 to 2015. During that time, I’d published some carefully crafted pieces refuting his thesis on perfume as an art form. I disagreed with him loudly, even posted a photo of him (captioned “this guy”), and suddenly I was on his radar. Burr is famously litigious, and I suspect he followed me not out of interest, but to see if I’d give him a reason to sue. That didn’t pan out. My interest in him evaporated around the same time The New York Times’s did, and he unfollowed. In 2025, I doubt he remembers I exist.
Still, it left a bad taste. The idea that some elitist doofus making six figures in Manhattan doing fuck knows what thinks he can rattle me by appearing in my subscriber list is laughable. It didn’t intimidate me. I still think he’s an elitist doofus. And in my opinion, the Times is better off without him. I don’t know Burr personally, but he reads like someone who believes his own hype, and I find it strange that people like him make so much noise for a short period of time, only to vanish when the public collectively shrugs.
Which brings me to The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. Against all odds, it was a terrific read. I can’t remember the last time I tore through a book this fast. Started it last week, finished it today, epilogue pending.
So, what is this book? It’s a dual narrative set in 2005–2006. One track follows Jean-Claude Ellena’s entry into his new role as in-house perfumer for Hermès, culminating in his creation of Un Jardin sur le Nil (A Garden on the Nile). The other follows Sarah Jessica Parker’s involvement in launching her first celebuscent, Lovely. Oddly, the book made me want to smell Lovely, so I bought it, but just as oddly didn’t do the same for Un Jardin sur le Nil. Of the two arcs, Parker’s is more compelling, though less developed. Burr gives far more oxygen to Ellena.
On the Ellena side: the prose is smooth but laced with French dialogue and its translations, clearly meant to signal worldliness. There’s no reason to pepper an American English book with French unless you're trying to show off. It’s annoying. That said, Ellena’s story is unintentionally funny. Three Hermès execs basically drag him to Egypt to stand by the Nile and magically become inspired to make a perfume that had already been named A Garden on the Nile. You can’t make this stuff up.
Does it work? Read the book. I’ll just say Ellena’s story aligns with his style: introverted, minimalist, and paradoxically dull. Watercolor perfumery is only as interesting as the materials used, and Ellena refuses to use more than 30. The result is often thin. Even Turin only gives Un Jardin sur le Nil three stars and skirts criticism, probably to avoid litigation (kidding, sort of). Is Ellena overrated? Maybe. But he also made Terre d’Hermès, which I consider one of the greats.
The SJP storyline had more promise. It shows the full industry pipeline, from a celebrity knocking on every corporate door, getting rejected across the board, then finally landing a meeting at Coty. I was surprised by how snobby the industry was. Parker was at peak fame, Sex and the City was huge, and everyone agreed she was incredibly nice. Burr confirms this but also paints her as a bit naïve, which made the read interesting. His day spent with her, meant to “pick her brain” (but really to boost his cultural cachet), was some of his best writing. No pointless French. Just clean, vivid narrative. Her creative process for Lovely was worth the page time.
Burr also breaks down the economics of the industry well. I appreciated the section on “The List” of top sellers -- it clarified a lot. He explains how fragrance houses like IFF and Givaudan actually function. He covers margins, supply chains, in-house vs. freelance perfumers. There were a few moments where I actually said, “Finally. That makes sense.” If you’re in the perfume world and have questions, this book answers many of them.
Now, the real criticism: Burr contradicts himself, just like his idol Turin. These guys love to moan about how perfumers are unappreciated artists slaving away in obscurity, and then, on the next page, they trash the very work these “artists” produce. Turin does it constantly in The Guide, panning most of Pierre Bourdon’s work while making a handful of exceptions. Cool Water and Kouros are brilliant, but Joop! Homme is “floor cleaner”? EROLFA is “thoroughly nasty”? Burr is even worse. Every mainstream masculine pre-1995 is either gasoline or Raid. He ridicules dihydromyrcenol like it's the olfactory equivalent of wearing sweatpants to work. He trashes the entire Hugo Boss line, including Number One, which is still one of the best fresh masculines around.
The common denominator? Price. If it costs under $0.50 per milliliter, it’s garbage. If it’s over $2 per milliliter, it’s a masterpiece. That’s not criticism, that’s classism disguised as connoisseurship. Burr loves to praise perfumers as underappreciated geniuses, then drags their work if it isn’t expensive or niche. Pick a lane.
His descriptions of molecules are bizarre. Everything smells like someone’s ass, armpit, or crotch. It all reads like a monologue from a sex comedy. “Nutty breath.” “Ammonia-like penis.” It’s gross, gratuitous, and not helpful. I’m pretty open-minded, but this was just off-putting. Burr might be the last person I’d ask to describe how something smells.
He also has a weird vendetta against lavender. He calls it cliché and says perfumers should stop using it. This is simply idiotic. Lavender has been foundational to perfumery for centuries, especially in masculines. Lavender is cliché? Tell that to Antonio Gardoni.
And more to the point: Burr unintentionally undermines his own thesis that perfumery is an art form. He shows, in vivid detail, how artless the process actually is. Ellena is flown to Egypt to cruise the Nile for inspiration and ends up settling on a mango accord. Mango trees are native in over 90 countries. You don’t need to visit Egypt for mango. It is only associated with the Nile in Ellena's scent because Hermès printed “A Garden on the Nile” on the label. If this is art, then Paris Hilton for Men is Egyptian modernism. I'd argue Hilton has the better mango scent, but I'll have to smell the Hermès first. Turin left Paris Hilton for Men out of The Guide, even after reluctantly giving Un Jardin sur le Nil three stars. Burr side-eyes Hilton’s perfumes in his book, without mentioning her signature masculine. Funny how that works.
The SJP storyline is even more damning to the “perfume is art” claim. Real artists don’t need corporate meetings, market research, or celebrity handlers to decide what to make. Burr never really engages with the perfumers who actually created Lovely. He spends more time on the meetings than the making. The story just peters out. I finished that section not even knowing what Parker thought of the finished scent. That’s a problem.
And finally, the epilogue-to-the-epilogue. Burr wraps things up with a check-in on Ellena and SJP’s perfume career. Then we get a bloated “thank you” section where he thanks everyone short of the Dalai Lama. It reads like an Oscar speech. Unnecessary. You don’t end a nonfiction book with a victory lap. One page, tops. Keep it tight.
7/20/25
Zip Codes and Milliliters: Another Old Bottle of English Leather, But Still Not Old Enough . . .
In a recent post on Badger & Blade, I asked if anyone had come across English Leather bottles that predate the 1960s. After some friendly back and forth with a couple of members, I came up empty. One member, however, clarified something useful: older bottles are more likely to list their size in ounces only, not milliliters. That detail led me to consider Shulton's Old Spice. After 1967, Shulton began listing both ounces and milliliters on their bottles. It's reasonable to assume MEM followed suit around the same time—though it's unclear whether MEM did it first or copied Shulton.
The other day, I received the third English Leather bottle I’ve bought off eBay. It’s another 2-ounce cologne, nearly identical to a previous one, but with minor differences. The text is smaller, there’s no dividing line between the fragrance name and its concentration, and the colors are slightly darker. Most notably, the size is listed only in ounces. That suggests it predates 1967. But it also has a ZIP code on the label, and ZIP codes were first introduced in 1963. So it was made sometime after that year. This puts the bottle’s age between 1963 and 1967. Old, but not old enough. And that’s what baffles me.
The lotion I have also falls into that same post-1963, pre-1967 window. All my bottles are, at most, 62 years old. But I’m looking for one that’s 76. There’s a 14-year gap in English Leather’s early history. Where are the bottles from that period? Every example I’ve seen online includes a ZIP code, so none predate 1963. That’s remarkable.
Even more curious is the inconsistency in how the cologne smells. The post-1967 50 ml bottle I featured in my last article smelled flatter and less citrusy, less dimensional. That didn’t surprise me. But the older bottle pictured here? It’s crisp, bright, fruity. The citrus sings. The mossy base feels balanced. What’s going on?
I’m starting to wonder: is English Leather the first mass-market fragrance to fake its release date, and get away with it? Everything points to MEM fabricating the 1949 launch year. But why? What would they gain by lying about it? Or maybe MEM never mentioned a launch year? Maybe someone else just randomly invented 1949, made the claim to the public, and it stuck for no good reason?
To be clear, I’m not searching for a bottle that might predate 1963. I’m looking for one that definitely does. No ZIP code. No milliliters. Just "English Leather Cologne," the size in ounces, and maybe a short New Jersey address, if any.
7/18/25
H24 (Hermès)
The H24 line makes perfect sense to me. Hermès hadn’t released an original masculine-leaning fragrance in years, and Jean-Claude Ellena had stepped down from his role as in-house perfumer. In his place is his protégé, Christine Nagel, formerly of Jo Malone, tasked with inviting the 21st-century man into the world of Hermès leather and luxury. She had every reason to feel confident, having crafted successes for Dior, Armani, Cartier, and John Galliano. But how does one follow Terre d’Hermès? Her challenge was formidable.
H24 debuted in 2021 and smells like a postmodern fougère. To me, it smells exactly like the image above. Cold, metallic, faintly green-woody, vaguely fruity, and unmistakably industrial, it reimagines the classical aromatic fougère of the late 20th century. Lavender and herbal notes are cleverly disguised beneath a forbidding, austere base that recalls the freshly inked pages of a glossy fashion magazine from 2003. Nagel’s follow-up, H24 Eau de Parfum (2022), deepens the mossy-woody dimension, while H24 Herbes Vives (2024) explores the green-fruity angle. There’s something in the line for everyone, but the original EDT is my starting point. So, here we go with a brief review.
The internet has buzzed with a handful of recurring descriptors: metallic, sharp, aldehydic, pear, banana, bitter, boring, simplistic, forgettable. Some of these I agree with. Yes, it is slightly metallic. That effect comes mostly from how the snowy aldehydes have been pared down to their coldest essence and arranged like olfactory spines across the sterile calm of the opening. I catch a trace of what I can only call a “fantasy fruit,” not quite pear and not quite banana, but something green and fruity that offers a soft, ethereal sweetness. There’s also a whisper of narcissus, the honeyed scent of yellow daffodils drifting in on a stale breeze. And sage. Lots and lots of synthetic sage, resting on an elegant mineral-amber base. Very "designer frag," but still compelling.
Some reviewers call H24 boring or uninspired, and I can understand why. It’s a fragrance for grown-ups. No sugary bombast, no candy, no aquatic freshness, no obvious spice. Nagel’s instinct was to take the traditional fougère structure, built around lavender, coumarin, and musk, and pair it with something that smells nothing like any of them. Then she let the unfamiliar take over. This isn’t a fougère in the traditional sense so much as a meditation on the quiet dignity of modern decay. H24 evokes the image of an abandoned office tower, sealed so tightly it feels airless. Evening sunlight filters across the concrete floors and drywall, casting a tranquil prism of green, blue, and gold. In the first hour, it smells like looking out a window at rain falling on leaves. It’s peaceful, nearly spiritual, and you linger there, thoughtless. You feel no desire to move.
By hour three, the light shifts. That same sun casts a paler, colder yellow, throwing green shadows into sterile blue rooms. By hour six, the scent becomes a memory of the world before the fall: metal paperclips, bitter and dry; publishing ink and glossy magazine paper warmed by a vent, releasing their chemical perfume. It smells like living inside an issue of Italian Vogue. I must be an ink addict, because I can’t get enough of it. And here, it’s not just the ink. It’s the paper, too. Every glossy magazine has its own scent, no two quite alike. Some are faint and clean, others bold and slightly rancid, the ink sterile and the paper faintly alive. Some are delicate, others hit you with a glorious wall of aroma, even tinged with a whisper of binding glue.
I come away from H24 thinking it’s excellent. Challenging, yes, but excellent. This is not your crowd-pleasing Terre d’Hermès. This is something new, a distinct shape. It echoes the past but offers something entirely original. Lavender becomes a solar chill that feels synthetic and abstract. Yellow florals merge into a bittersweet paper accord. Sage straddles the line between herbal and chemical. A soft woody amber and mineral base molecule ties it all together into an olfactory glyph for forgotten spaces. Perfume as poetry, bottled in a minimalist flask with a hidden atomizer stem, refillable, efficient, and unmistakably Hermès. Was this what the brand needed to make waves again? Maybe, maybe not. But I’m glad Nagel made it, and I really, really like it.