A Big Announcement

Starting in 2026, From Pyrgos will move to a dot-com address, and will no longer be updated here on Blogger. On January 1st of next year I will officially redirect all traffic from this address to the new one. The new site is already up, and you're welcome to go there now and enjoy the new layout, but it will take me a few months to get all the content transferred and updated. 

Some brands will see new (shorter) reviews that have been rewritten to better reflect my current opinions. There will be tweaks to the existing site with possible new pages added, so if you're already there, bear in mind that things will likely change. The new domain was created out of a perhaps irrational fear of mine that one day Blogger will be no more. It occurred to me that Blogger is an outdated platform that gives serious Y2K vibes, and it's entirely possible that in the next five years or so Google will retire it. If that happens, I want to be securely relocated where I have total control. 

There will be an update to this before Christmas, so stay tuned. Fear not, dear readers -- From Pyrgos will continue onward, here for the next 4 months, and there for the rest of its existence. Websites are curious things, with their own mortality (Old Spice Collectibles recently died) and I'm well aware of how attached people get to their good reads. My hope is to keep providing good reads for years to come. For now, content will continue to be published here. I expect to be done with the content transfer and site design by Thanksgiving, but that might be ambitious. 

Is Dunhill Fresh Creed's Green Valley on the Cheap?

Green Valley is my favorite fragrance. It’s the most beautiful scent I’ve ever smelled, and nothing else has truly come close. Creed’s Original Vetiver is in the same neighborhood and gave me a similar sense of awe, but Green Valley went further: richer, lusher, denser, more expansive, more complex, and unforgettable.

Since Creed discontinued it back in 2010, cruelly in my opinion, I’ve been searching for something comparable. Nothing really measures up. Paul Smith Man is maybe halfway there if you squint, but it’s still a stretch. Dior Fahrenheit (the original, not the flankers) also shares some grassy-floral, green qualities, but its defining petrol-violet “barrel” accord dominates too strongly for real comparison. I’ve read Dua Brand’s Vert Instinct is the closest clone, but it’s pricey, and I don’t trust Dua. They don’t seem like true perfumers, and I’m not comfortable buying from a company that outsources its wares.

Recently, though, I pulled out my bottle of Dunhill Fresh. This one’s odd. Released twenty years ago by Maurice Roucel, the name suggests citrus brightness, soapiness, maybe aquatic freshness. Instead, it opens with a muted violet accord reminiscent of Fahrenheit, only blurred, as if Roucel draped a foggy green filter over it. And here’s the twist: it reminds me of Green Valley. At first, I thought it was just the Fahrenheit overlap, but when I went back to my empty Green Valley bottle and sniffed the atomizer, I noticed something uncanny. The residue, oils clinging to the glass, gives off a rich violet and tea-like aroma that matches the heart of Dunhill Fresh almost exactly. It feels as if Roucel captured that hidden aspect of Green Valley but left out its grassy-bright overture, likely because Dunhill wasn’t paying Creed’s budget for natural materials and there was no realistic way for him to replicate them. Since he's a true genius, Roucel didn't even try. 

Dunhill Fresh doesn’t smell like Green Valley -- let’s be clear about that. What it does smell like is the semi-evaporated dregs of Green Valley. There’s something in its structure that carries a mysterious resemblance. In the far drydown, ten hours later, when I smell where I sprayed, a familiar fruity cadence emerges, followed by a soft grassy lilt. It’s faint, a ghost of an accord, but it brings the comparison into focus. At that point Dunhill actually does echo the Creed.

It’s a tricky comparison because Green Valley has often been likened to other Creeds, especially Green Irish Tweed and Silver Mountain Water. Back in 2011, when I was still wearing my bottle of GV, I understood the SMW comparison but never the GIT one. To this day, I can’t see the resemblance. GV and GIT are worlds apart. With SMW, the link is clearer: GV carries an accord of blackcurrant and warm citrus, just as SMW blends currant with mandarin orange. But in GV that accord is just one thread in a much larger tapestry, while SMW remains leaner and far simpler.

Dunhill Fresh is also lean and simple, though it handles its plush accords sparingly, which is rare in perfumery. Somehow Roucel bottled the soul of Green Valley, but the soul alone isn’t enough. To understand what GV truly was, you need the bitter wildflowers rising through fields of tall grass, the gingery-bright shimmer breaking through a misty morning of sunlight in liquid form. Roucel couldn’t capture that, and perhaps no one could. Yet one has to wonder if he wasn’t the shadow hand behind GV itself, since to this day no perfumer has ever been officially credited for its creation.

Violetas Francesas Cologne, Adult Formula (Affa Corp.)

The blurb on the box for this stuff claims it's made from the "oils of violets," which is, of course, complete bullcrap, as no such material exists, not even "imported from France." My real question though is for the Latin communities of Southern Florida and Miami: What's with all the violets? 

For some inexplicable reason, violets are a Cuban and East-Coast Latin American thing. I own both Agustín Reyes's Royal Violets and now also Violetas Francesas's cologne by the Affa Corporation, located in Miami, and both are manna for violet lovers. Judging from the way the boxes are printed, only the former sells internationally, while the latter appears limited to the Americas (much shorter, non-IFRA compliant ingredients list). "AFFA" stands for the Alfonso Family, which immigrated from Cuba in 1974 so Fermín Alfonso could create his violet cologne for babies. This story closely matches Agustín Reyes's. Of the two fragrances, I prefer Violetas Francesas. Royal Violets is very good, and I've used a fair bit of it, but it takes the gasoline approach to the petit purple flowers, and a little goes a long way. Affa Corp.'s formula is sweeter and a bit candied, only slightly gassy, and ends on a more pleasant powdery accord, reminiscent of baby powder. The company asserts that its own "Baby Formula" cologne (which bears the disturbing image of an infant girl wearing a brassiere) is even simpler and shorter-lived, while the "Adult Formula" above is the longest-lasting, and I get maybe thirty minutes of soft powder from it with generous application, so I can't argue. That's all I expect from a cheap cologne. 

What does Violetas Francesas remind me most of? This is going to bug you, but it's the truth, and heck, I own and wear a bottle, so I should know -- Creed's Love in Black. It's like they took the opening accord of LiB, watered it down tenfold, called it a cologne. Virtually identical violet materials, and it makes me question my life choices.

Green Energy (Givenchy)

I first learned about this fragrance in 2008, the year I became interested in perfumes, and had wanted to buy a bottle ever since, but somehow never got around to it until now. It was discontinued even then, and eBay prices were exorbitant, but they’ve since come back down to a respectable twenty dollars an ounce or so. This must have been a duty-free, airports-only release, as most bottles are the smaller 50 ml size. I grabbed one, half-expecting it to be semi-spoiled and underwhelming, but it turned out to be brand new and unsprayed, with an unprimed atomizer. I totally lucked out. A perfectly fresh bottle of a 25-year-old unisex Givenchy that I never see in brick and mortar shops. 

Many reviewers describe the fragrance as a “disappointing” green, lacking in true green notes and leaning instead on fruity and floral hues. Green fragrances generally fall into two categories: bitter-vegetal or sweet-floral (sometimes fruity-floral), and the consensus here points to the latter. Indeed, Green Energy -- aka the portmanteau “Greenergy” -- opens like a synthetic spin on Green Irish Tweed, with a lush accord of basil, cardamom, mandarin orange, lavender, Iris pallida, violet leaf, spearmint, and dihydromyrcenol, accented by traces of natural galbanum for sweetness. It smells surprisingly crisp and rich for the style, and promises great things. Also, the smoothness of the blend is somewhat reminiscent of the also-discontinued and now impossible to find Xeryus (1986). At this stage of the fragrance, it is without argument utterly and entirely "green" in smell. 

Within three hours, most of these green notes have stepped back, bridged by an unusual French marigold accord -- uniquely resinous-green and bittersweet, with spicy and ambery nuances. This is where I find Green Energy most interesting. Alberto Morillas and Ilias Ermenidis built a fairly simple base of synthetic sandalwood, cardamom seed, and coriander, with faint traces of basil and vanilla for herbal sweetness. To my nose, the coriander dominates. It reminds me somewhat of Paul Smith, but the fragrance as a whole also recalls Pino Silvestre Green Generation Him, itself distantly related to GIT by way of a more herbal take on the lavender/orange blossom of Eternity for Men. For this type of green fragrance, the dihydromyrcenol, violet leaf, and iris accord is everywhere.

I get a full workday out of Green Energy, and its base of “cool” spices is simple yet distinctive enough to satisfy my yen for abstract greens. Paul Smith is simpler and more cardamom-forward, with more vegetal, grassy-green facets in the top and middle, while Bowling Green and the original Pino Silvestre aim for a more rustic herbal take. Green Energy, like many of these, is entirely unisex, though women tend to opt for even more overtly floral or fruity compositions instead, which is kind of a shame. I’m happy to nurse my 1.7 oz bottle while it lasts; the supply will likely dry up, and prices could again soar into the upper ozone, but I’ll probably reach for the other scents I’ve mentioned before the Givenchy when I want a true green-out.

Grass (Lush)

Fifteen years ago, I found an Adidas fragrance called Sport Field, released in 1994. It was so fresh, green, and grassy that the only thing I could compare it to was Green Valley by Creed, not because they smelled alike, but because both leaned fully into the scent of cut grass. After 2014, I stopped looking for anything similar. Most perfumes aim for balanced, layered accords, and that kind of raw simplicity is rare.

Then I discovered Grass by Lush, which is a UK-based firm founded in 1995 by Mark Constantine and Liz Weir. Lush made a pretty penny on Grass as a shower gel back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but the product line has slipped in and out of availability over the years. To my knowledge, the only thing Lush still makes today is the Grass perfume, reviewed here and launched in 2020. Well, it was actually relaunched, with the original formula issued in 2018, but I never tried that one. Constantine is the primary perfumer for Lush's scents, and you have to know what his schtick is: crude, mostly natural and "vegan" fragrances, soaps, and cosmetics. When you buy into Lush, you're not buying into Keira Knightley covered in pink veils with rounded bottles and some overlapping letter Cs. You're buying into Kate Moss with powder. Jean Rollin movies. Bottles of Slivovitz and cigarette stubs. This is Bohemian Chic to the nth power. 

Grass perfume contains natural New Caledonian sandalwood oil, bergamot oil, and neroli oil, with violet ionone and coumarin for that familiar hay-like effect in the base. The violet is a little petrol-like. And the whole affair just smells like Sport Field, if it were made with the highest quality materials possible. A niche version of Sport Field, to put it bluntly. There are no fruit notes, so that's one difference, and it's more like a field of uncut hay rather than grass (although the first five minutes are pretty green), but, hell, it smells great and lasts forever. Recommended for earthy green lovers everywhere. 

Grey Flannel Without Oakmoss and Treemoss

I’d heard Grey Flannel had been stripped of all moss, a topic fragcomm was buzzing about as far back as 2015. I’m well stocked in Geoffrey Beene’s 1975 chypre, with French Fragrances, late-2000s EA, and Jacqueline Cochran formulas. In brief: FF is the mossiest, smooth, and powdery-green with muted florals; EA is sharper and only slightly harsher, with more hyacinth and gardenia but otherwise 98% like FF; JC is the smoothest and woodiest, with the largest violet–sandalwood accord, resembling Green Irish Tweed if Bourdon had skipped dihydromyrcenol in favor of galbanum and alpha ionone.

Curious how this legend smells post-IFRA and without natural moss, I bought a new bottle. Surprisingly, it’s not much different -- less plush, but barely so. It opens with bitter greens, like snapped green beans and old lemon rinds, then sweetens as a coumarinic cloud of violet leaf wraps around me. Vegetal, hay-sweet, and dry, yet evocative of cold humidity under a scraggly April rain-soaked bush, Grey Flannel remains the most distinctive green masculine I own. No wonder I wore it exclusively for a year. A landmark fragrance, it pioneered a crisp, fresh, green style that defined the eighties and nineties.

I recommend Grey Flannel in all its vintages, but with a note of caution on vintage hunting. If you want a smooth, woody violet akin to a more natural Green Irish Tweed, seek the Jacqueline Cochran or, better yet, the first Epocha version. For a rich, green, mossy take, go for Sanofi or early French Fragrances. To boost brightness, find early Elizabeth Arden bottles, and for the most direct violet leaf, the latest EA versions (sans moss) deliver well. Grey Flannel turns fifty this year, and I hope it lasts another fifty.

"Professor" Dave Explains That He's a Fool: Why Truthseekers in Fragrance and All Other Popular Interests Should Avoid YouTube

I've long contended that YouTube is the wrong place for getting reliable information about fragrances. The problem is baked into the culture we now live in: quick-clicks and internet clout reigns supreme over objective facts and nuance. To avoid sullying specific YouTubers in the fragrance community, I'll refrain from calling any of them out by name in this article, because even the grifters and know-nothings flesh out our community in ways that arguably make it more interesting and educational. Instead, I'll focus on a recent exchange I had with Dave Farina of the popular channel "Professor Dave Explains," in which I challenged his contentions on his recent video about Avi Loeb (link here). 

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. His endeavors seem to target the low-hanging fruit of flat-earthers and creationists. But 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.

Aura for Men (Jacomo)

This is one of those fragrances that hits differently depending on how experienced you are with obscure zombie brand masculines from the eighties and nineties. If you're not that guy, then trying Aura by Jacomo, which was released in 2000 and authored by Henri Bergia, will feel novel and interesting. As evidenced in reviews by prominent members of the fragrance community, like Lanier and Rich Milton, this is a striking fragrance that smells of a corner in Paris, or of manhood incarnate. I must say, though, I'm a little surprised neither reviewer mentions how grossly anachronistic it is. Aura smells good, but about fifteen years too late for what it offers, and certainly doesn't impart a Y2K vibe. 

A look at the lesser-known reviews shows a pattern: words like “spicy,” “green,” “airy,” “fresh,” and “citrusy” come up again and again. Most don’t tie the scent to anything concrete, and that’s fine; not every fragrance needs a direct comparison. But then I wear it, and it doesn’t take long to realize: Aura is essentially a remix of three earlier scents -- Davidoff for Men, The Dreamer by Versace, and Vermeil for Men (also sold as Guepard), with Vermeil being the closest match. It's worth noting that when it was released in 1995, Vermeil for Men was itself outmoded by about ten years. Aura opens with a bright, fairly clean herbal-citrus accord, highlighting lemon, ginger, juniper, and especially sage. Then comes a fleeting note of cigarette tobacco, dry and subtle, but unmistakable.

After ten minutes, the destination is clear: fermented tobacco leaves. This is an unlit cigar -- like standing in Flatiron’s Eataly between a barrel of olives and a working torcedor. His leaves are spread out on the table; he’s clipping, ripping, rolling. A small box for discarded shake sits inches away, and now and then he tosses something in, releasing a rich whiff of brown leaf. Aura strongly resembles Vermeil for Men -- in fact, it reads as a much lighter, fresher version. They’re close enough in scent that you wouldn’t need both; one will do. What sets Aura apart is its smooth sandalwood base, which settles in an hour and carries the cigar accord through a full workday. Very nice stuff. Crap bottle, though. 

Is Halston 1-12 the Most "Natural" American Cheapie On the Market?

Quite an impressive list.

This particular Halston is one that I've had a troubled past and present with. The first bottle I owned back in 2011 had treemoss in it, and I developed a bit of an allergic reaction to it. This seemed odd to me, because I've worn other treemoss frags without trouble. Having recently spotted 1-12 in a Burlington, I decided to give it another go, 14 years later, and wow, what a fiasco! The first bottle I purchased didn't have an atomizer stem, which made it impossible to spray, so I returned it. Defect bottle, no big deal. I knew they had other bottles, so before going to the cashier I grabbed another one and asked to exchange it. For some indecipherable reason, Burlington insists on putting its fragrances in those stupid clear plastic anti-theft boxes, and none of the cashiers could open it. Defect anti-theft box, no big deal. The cashier said, "Well, you paid cash so it makes it easy, go grab another one if you can find it." So I did, and when I came back I smiled and said, "Third time's the charm." Indeed, it was. Bottle #3 was retrieved, and it works. 

I repurchased 1-12, not because I was particularly interested in owning it again, but because I happened to get a glimpse of the ingredients list on the back of the box, and did a triple take. I've never encountered a mass market fragrance with this many exotic (emphasis on that word) natural materials in it. I've also never seen one with this many anti-UV materials, 3 by my count (tell me if you spot more). My guess is the high number of naturals necessitated the high number of anti-photosensitizing skin-protectant chems in the formula, or perhaps this is just the standard EA approach, I don't know. Anyway, let's break it all down, and then I'll get into the implications of wearing something like this.

Ingredient		Why It's Used
Alcohol Denat.	Solvent, carrier	Helps dissolve fragrance oils and evaporates quickly, delivering the scent.

The Outer Limits of Perfume Orthodoxy

"The Greatest Green Scent"

I'm just back from a refreshing Maine trip, during which I visited the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, which are absolutely gorgeous and a requisite destination if you ever head up that way. The last time I visited was in early June, and the gardens were very "bloomy" that time of year, with countless varieties of hyacinths, tulips, irises, roses, peonies, and you name it. This early August visit was about echinacea and all shades of coneflowers, bee balm, lilies, phlox, yarrow, and hosta, among others. A less "bloomy" and colorful experience, but peaceful and inspiring nonetheless. 

The verdant gardens got me thinking about my love of green fragrances. I started out in my pursuit of all things perfumed with an unalloyed interest in pursuing green scents, and perhaps I've strayed a bit since then, but still marvel at the concept of wearing a garden. I combed through my collection and remembered Geoffrey Beene's Bowling Green and its many laudatory reviews, many of which claim that it's the best "green" fragrance money can buy. Of course, this got me thinking of how much I disagree with that sentiment, and I realized that I'm at odds with the orthodoxy of popular perfume reviewers. It's not that I disagree for the sake of it, but that I simply don't come to the same conclusions. 

It is indeed quite difficult to find reviews of Bowling Green that are less than glowing; the fragrance has long been considered the gold standard for inexpensive masculine/unisex green, thanks in no small part to its well regarded lemon verbena accord. I've had a 4 oz. bottle of it for a few years now, and have worn exactly half of it. I'm wearing it today. I got off to a rough start with this scent because the first bottle I tried was a bit turned, but not enough to be obvious, which negatively influenced my review. The bright citrus element had all but vanished, leaving only the "herbal amber" element at the scent's core, which alone smells okay but haggard. Later I bought the reissued reformulation, which didn't change the scent, and learned that it's really bright and airy, a springtime green. 

But is Bowling Green the gold standard for "green" in perfumes for under $100? Yes and no. Yes, if you're looking at it purely subjectively, and you happen to love Beene's rendition of lemon verbena, which comprises about 75% of the fragrance pyramid here. No, if objectively you put it up against the hordes of other green frags out there, both in and out of production. I mean, Bowling Green is very good, don't get me wrong. If you're a college kid with $100 to spare, and you're looking for a lemony-green fougère idea that vaguely recalls Drakkar Noir (a weird thing for today's college set to seek), Bowling Green is a perfect solution. It's currently retailing for between $90 and $120 on eBay, and chances are the bottle you buy will smell great, as the packaging for this stuff is fantastic -- solid cardboard tubing that blocks light and protects against the elements. 

If you're a college kid looking for this, I applaud you. I also don't expect you to be interested. And you'll probably meet my expectations, and be completely oblivious to Bowling Green, instead pursuing some sweet Hawas flanker or one of the Eros frags. I'd say you're missing out, but you're not so much missing out on Bowling Green as on the better stuff. From Beene's line, Grey Flannel is the superior fragrance, so I can start there. Beyond the brand are many superior compositions, ranging from Creed's Green Valley (discontinued and a fortune) to Jaguar for Men (still in production), Paul Smith Men (DC'd), Jacomo Silences (DC'd) Acqua di Selva (in production), Pino Silvestre (ditto), and any number of Green Irish Tweed variants, with GIT itself high on the list. If I want grassy green on a budget, Adidas Sport Field is still a good option. Even more of a budget, and something like Brut is, amazingly, still a respectable bet. For an inexpensive and truly unorthodox unisex fragrance, Vicky Tiel's Ulysse is excellent stuff. Silences sits next to Green Valley as the GOAT of green. I could go on and on. My point is, I find these to be preferable to Bowling Green because they smell better and (mostly) cost less. 

If I test the outer limits of perfume orthodoxy on "green," I come up against some interesting philosophical tensions between nature as an ideal and nature as an illusion -- between what smells alive and what merely suggests life through carefully composed artifice. For example, Montblanc Starwalker is a suggestion of life, a fresh but brazenly synthetic precursor to Dior Sauvage with chemical "bamboo" overlaid with a bucketful of woody Ambroxan. It smells peaceful and zen-like in small doses, and works in a pinch, but if I really want the sensation of placid natural zen in an organic, living grove, I'm more likely to reach for Banana Republic's Cypress Cedar -- quite an interesting thing, considering the BR frag isn't exactly "natural." Perspective is useful here, because today's young buck might reach for any one of his designer frags and think, "I like how this smells," but a sizable number of people around him might think he smells like a chemical spill. Sure, Hawas smells good, but it doesn't take me to nature. It takes me to eighth grade.  

And why hasn't Rasasi been a contender in the quest for a natural "green" fragrance? They seem to be taken with the current mode of commercial wisdom, which suggests that releasing fifteen new fragrances in a year is the way to go. I would say that the public rewards this approach; reviews of their new releases, some of which haven't even hit stores yet, are broadly positive. If I were running Rasasi, I would acknowledge this financial reality, as their choices are assuredly generating remarkable sales, but I'd temper it with my own advice: go for quality, not quantity. Take Al Haramain's example -- this brand releases quite a few fragrances each year also, but unlike Rasasi, they seem interested in refining ideas that they had worked on previously, in the interest of pursuing new levels of quality. I haven't smelled L'Aventure Blanche, but I've been led to understand that it's an okay clone of Silver Mountain Water, but only that. It doesn't win brownie points over something like Armaf's Sillage, for example. 

But then put your nose on L'Aventure Fraîche, and what do you smell? The current formula of Silver Mountain Water with petitgrain and fir accords amplified, and in a slightly higher (i.e., "oilier") concentration. A split-hair shy of SMW, but hell, if you can't afford the Creed, L'Aventure Fraîche will get you 99.99% of the way there if applied sparingly. I'd argue it does a better job of cloning the current Creed formula than Sillage does (Armaf famously targets vintage Creed formulas, and does a bang-up job). The attention to detail in Al Haramain's work is obvious, and it's also clear that they're not wasting time and resources spewing out flanker after flanker after flanker of some designer-grade template. Far from perfect, but I'd wager that the brains behind Al Haramain's operation are cognizant of the mark of quality one feels in their fragrances. Sure, you pay a bit more for an Al Haramain perfume than you do for anything by Rasasi, but not much more. These brands are in the same league. Why is one so much better than the other? 

Another weird thing about perfume lately is how many fragrances are being shoved on the consumer. It's as if the "art" of perfumery were akin to five-and-dime comics. We're currently experiencing thousands of new releases per year. There were around 6,000 new fragrances released in 2024. That's a staggering number, even on the global market. Back in 2000 there were only about 700 new releases, so in 24 years we've seen a roughly tenfold increase in the number of new offerings. If you're a fragrance lover like me, this might seem like a wonderful thing. And sure, you won't find me complaining, as I like the thought that there is a veritable universe of perfumes to be explored. However, I sound a note of caution. This kind of market is unsustainable in the long term. Short-term, maybe the next five years or so will continue to see unparalleled growth in output. But long-term, the heat generated by this many releases will finally overwhelm the customer bases that designer brands established several decades ago, and we'll see a sudden and rather violent collapse of the fragrance market, with hundreds of brands going bye-bye. 

Consider the market. In the last twenty years, we've seen inexpensive perfumes all but disappear. Every Western brand is now aiming for the luxury market, the wealthy customer, or the customer with so much disposable income that they can manage buying two or three $400 perfumes without fearing insolvency. I'm not wealthy, but I make a decent middle-class salary and I don't have any children, which puts me in that weird realm of being someone who can afford two or three expensive perfumes per year without feeling the pinch. This doesn't make me the market's core clientele, however. Chanel and I aren't friends. Dior and I rarely contact each other. Creed hasn't seen an online boutique purchase from me since 2014. I and all other collectors like me rely on chance and good financial acumen to score whatever pricy frags we can manage, and I'm well aware that the more serious collectors use their collections as self-sustaining leverage in the acquisition of new items. Want that new Francis Kurkdjian release? Sell his last one and use the proceeds. That's how the non-wealthy big-timers do it. 

That approach works for the crazed collector set, of which I'm a member. It doesn't work for the average joe. The average guy or gal is not that interested in perfume. Women are marginally more interested, and the average middle class woman might accrue something like five or six bottles in a semi-regular rotation, and one or two of those are probably "body sprays," which I'll never fully understand. Men are more "signature scent" prone and usually buy one or two fragrances that are rarely worn. They wear what their wives or girlfriends give them, or approve of, and they might only wear fragrance on special occasions or on their "date nights." Right now, with this seemingly unending Renaissance of perfume, they might actually own -- wait for it -- three or four whole bottles. Which means their need for anything else will arrive sometime around 2060. 

Here's the thing: this isn't what the market is doing. The market is shelling out new fragrances like there's an enormous swath of men and women who house 300+ bottle wardrobes that are ever-expanding. This simply isn't the case. Their target audience is literally 1% of the population. Every designer and niche brand in America is targeting about 3,400,000 people. Of them, there might be 1% who are actually lovingly dedicated to collecting perfumes, so we're talking 34,000 people here. That's right, you're reading this correctly. The income bracket of the 1% of America's population that are inarguably "wealthy" covers only a few million people, and of them, maybe 1% are obsessed with perfume enough to amass respectable wardrobes and be repeat buyers, but their number is staggeringly small, fewer than the amount who attend the Superbowl. 

So why does the market keep churning things out at this breakneck pace? Right now many of the Western brands are competing against the Eastern brands, so there is a collective push against the market's answer to bad socioeconomics. Arabian and UAE brands are that answer. They are overall cheaper and better distributed than their Western counterparts, now appearing everywhere in the USA in discount stores and mall kiosks. Where once it was entirely an internet game to buy anything by Rasasi or Armaf or Al Haramain, now it is a matter of stopping at your local Burlington or Ross and seeing what new array of Middle Eastern releases are available. You hop on Fragrantica, check it out, then put away your phone and buy the thing that seems the most promising. It costs you anywhere from $10 to $45, and the quality is often on par with that $170 designer fragrance being distributed only at "authorized retailers" like Neiman Marcus or Sephora. The Eastern brands are putting things out at an impossible pace, swamping the global market with releases, and many of these are offered within the value parameters of the wider population. This is a hot market that might very well sustain, because there are far more than 3.4 million customers for them here in the USA.  

If you're reading this and thinking, "Bryan, that doesn't explain why Western brands are churning out tons of releases and pricing them at five or six times the going rate," you're not wrong. It doesn't explain the shift to the wealthy. But what it does explain is the shift in equality. The bare truth of the matter is that most people in America are making less than $45K per year, if they have a job at all. Meanwhile, those who are wealthy aren't just a little wealthy. They're very wealthy. They are enjoying eight, nine, ten digit bank accounts. And within those circles is the expectation of choices and options. Western brands are attempting to keep up with that ethos by shoveling dozens of new frags per brand at jaw-dropping prices onto the market, rarely pricing anything under $50 per ounce, all in the attempt to lock the majority out of buying, more than to welcome the wealthy in. The problem with Veblen goods is that they lose their cachet the minute any non-luxury client makes a purchase. If you're Louis Vuitton, the last thing you want is for me in my blue jeans and sneakers to come sauntering in to buy a suitcase, and the absolute worst case scenario is for me to actually buy it. 

But okay, say I do buy one of their $38,000 suitcases. Not likely, but maybe I'm just dumb with money. They make the sale. They're not thrilled, because after talking to me for five minutes they figure out that I'm a schlub in the wrong store, but money is money. No biggie. I go on my merry way. The real nightmare begins with the next guy who walks in. Is he wearing a baseball cap on backwards and jeans from Walmart? Is he also buying a suitcase? And the next guy? And the next? If any percentage of the middle class is encroaching on the luxury status of a brand, that brand will lose its coveted ivory tower spot and begin to slide "downmarket." The more middle class buyers walk in, the more you have to cater to them, which means offering deals, and advertising for them, and actually giving a shit about them, none of which is desired. By keeping prices very high, Louis Vuitton might see one Bryan with his middle class salary walk in and actually buy something once every twenty years. That's exactly how they like it.

But the luxury leather goods market isn't nearly as saturated as the perfume market. It takes months to develop a high quality leather luxury good, and years to refine it. It can take as little as a few weeks to both develop and refine a perfume, and then use its rejected mods as flankers to be rolled out six months apart. There is no danger of overheating in the luxury suitcase market. But there is a grave danger of overheating in the luxury perfume market. In their mad dash to keep people out of buying their perfumes, many Western brands are spending capital on products that are seeing diminishing returns, as evidenced by the rapid discontinuation of releases that are often in stores for only a year or two. Some have pointed to this as the secret weapon in the fragrance industry's war chest, but I see it as a sign of chronic illness; healthy brands keep products alive because they've done the work of figuring out what their customers actually want before foisting products on them. The fragrance industry is flailing haplessly after customers it isn't sure even exist, often without gaining purchase. 

What would a fragrance industry overheat/meltdown look like? It would start with a whimper, and end with a bang. At first it would look like business as usual -- a few small indie/niche brands go kaput, a couple of fairly prominent but B-list designers would discontinue their entire perfume ranges like Jean Patou did a few years back. A collective shrug would follow, with no expectations of further decline. But then something strange will occur, there, in the corner . . . a major niche brand will suddenly vanish. No explanation. This will be followed by another. And yet another. Like dominoes, the niche brands will suddenly shutter, one by one. The buzz will claim that these were "planned" shutdowns and all sorts of convoluted reasons will ensue, from things like, "our financiers are restructuring" and "the market has shifted and we are realigning ourselves to stay true to our mission." In other words, don't hold your breath, because we've discontinued everything. From there, the rot will spread to designer, and indeed may be even more rapid there. In attempting to curry favor with the wealthiest of the wealthy, names like Chanel and Dior and Prada may discover that younger generations are usurping the trends of older, wealthier generations and simply putting their moolah with the mullahs instead. Why spend $176 on 100 milliliters of Coco Mademoiselle when you can get Club de Nuit Woman for $150 less with barely any difference in quality? 

What effect will this have on giants like Chanel? Look at this way: in 2003, a 3.3 oz. bottle of Platinum Égoïste was $50. Reddit morons would have you think otherwise, with some claiming it went for $70 back then. I'm here to tell you, no, no it did not. I wouldn't have been able to afford bottles of it in college if it were that much. I went through at least two or three large bottles of PÉ by graduation. The same size costs $135 now. This is simply ridiculous. Armaf Legesi is $27 and silly reviewers say it's "a metallic Platinum Égoïste," as if the adjective denotes a difference (PÉ is metallic as fuck). If Armaf can convincingly clone Green Irish Tweed, to the point where I don't need to buy and wear GIT anymore, do I doubt they can handle the super-synth Chanel? 

When several thousand Bryans start to multiply around the bottom line of PÉ, Chanel will realize, perhaps too late, that they're losing money hand over fist to Armaf, and a few other clone brands. They'll be forced to either (A) lower its price, or (B) axe the fragrance. Knowing how these designers operate, my money says they'll choose B. But that'll only be the start of their problem. Seeing blood in the water, Armaf and Al Haramain and several other Arabian brands will circle the Chanel wagon, picking off their exclusive couture fragrances, one by one, and gradually they'll have to disappear once-cherised classics, to the point where all they'll have left will be that old aldehydic Marilyn Monroe mess that nobody likes but everyone feels obligated to say good things about. 

With niche, the deaths will happen en masse. With designer, the fatalities will be slower, one cut at a time, until rapidly and without recompense there will no longer be options. The wealthy will be left with tiny selections, the very thing they hate, while the rest of us will have donned turbans and developed a taste for sipping motor oil before heading off to our low-paying jobs. Prada, Gucci, Armani, all will fold their flanker mills, one discontinuation after another, until all that are left are a few core scents. Consider Thierry Mugler's fate as an early indicator, a canary in the coal mine here. But even the Saudi market will whither, as the glut of options for the average buyer takes its toll on public perception. The UAE is relatively unfamiliar with the dangers of over-leveraging a brand. 

They could use a few crash courses on what happened to Roy Halston, Liz Claiborne, and Pierre Cardin. Americans understand that even when a brand offers quality products, a preponderance of said products results in overexposure, never a good thing. While many Arabian brands don't have designer names attached, sometimes with no brand name visible at all, the sheer number of perfumes will both self-poach sales and foster a sense of cheapness and disposability that will curdle the budget buyer's enthusiasm faster than designer and niche blunders sap the millionaire's. 

When the Arabian fragrance market collapses, which is also coming, the burnout will be complete. So I finish with a warning to the fragrance industry as a whole: Do not squander your wares on misallocated capital and dilute your brand cachet with bloated ranges. Think quality, not quantity, and think realistically about who is dumber with their money in the long run -- it ain't the people who have it. Stop pricing the middle class out of the market, when it was the middle class that made the market possible in the first place. We're all okay with fewer options, if those options take us back to the halcyon days of perfumes that smelled rich and were $10 at Walgreens.

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.