I frequently receive emails and comments from readers asking me questions that are based on falsehoods. After a few years of this, I realized these falsehoods are propagated in fragrance forums by men who should end their morning fragrance ablutions with a splash of Sea Breeze and leave perfume connoisseurship to those who can actually smell things. The cultural damage caused by their misconceptions and misinformation is difficult to quantify, but I'd wager it's enough to sway future generations of fragheads away from the sorely needed truth.
Here's a rundown on the egregious falsehoods that have plagued by experiences since the inception of my blog:
"Indian Old Spice is like vintage Shulton Old Spice."
Really? I don't remember my early eighties vintage Old Spice having bright unmistakeable notes of pink pepper and black pepper. To my nose Indian Old Spice smells very much like its own thing entirely.
"Vintage fragrances smell richer and more natural."
Yes, and they also often smell unbalanced, weak, and flat.
"Fragrances don't spoil."
Wrong. They do. A few years ago, when I got into a debate about this with an ideological opponent, I did the one thing he couldn't do, and produced an industry insider who corroborated my argument. What happened afterward was intriguing. First, Jeffrey Dame's words were carefully interpreted here on this blog. The main takeaway was that most fragrances do spoil, at least technically speaking. They are often still "good enough," and usually still quite wearable, but a considerable number of them will blatantly go "off," and anyone whose nose is sensitive enough (and astute enough) to interpret these changes will probably be nonplussed by them. Dame also pointed out that the most durable and "preservable" family of scent is the classical oriental, whose resinous spice accords are least likely to suffer the ravages of time.
But then my opponent and a few of his readers attempted to discredit Mr. Dame by calling him a hack. This showed me that the "other side" is comprised of cherry-picking, fact-averse people. You can't have an intelligent dialogue with them, and holding their arguments to your higher standards is pointless.
Still, my points are crucial to anyone seeking to understand the realities of buying and owning vintage perfumes. The chatter in the forums is usually very "pro vintage," and it's tempting to buy into it. But the reasons these enthusiasts cite for their support are the reasons you should doubt what they say.
"Vintage perfumes used more natural ingredients."
This is simply untrue. But the untruth is more nuanced than you think. No, vintage perfumes did not contain more natural materials than current perfumes. But current perfumes don't use fewer naturals, either.
Ever notice how the argument about "naturals" evaporates faster than a lemon top note as soon as you start discussing popular contemporary niche perfumes? When was the last time anyone complained that Atelier wasn't using enough "natural" materials? Whenever I read people's thoughts about Slumberhouse, I try to find the comments lamenting their over-reliance on synthetics. So far I haven't had any luck. Perfumes don't go from being loaded with beautiful naturals to being bogged down by crappy synthetics. All perfumes contain some degree of "naturally derived" materials, things like linalool, geraniol, eugenol, limonene, etc. Where they differ is in the quality of synthetics. Atelier and Slumberhouse are using very good synthetics. Coty and L'Oreal are using mediocre synthetics. If you want to steer clear of the false narrative about the "quality" in perfumes, avoid talking about naturals and start discussing synthetics, and how they're being used and misused.
"Reformulations exist to cheapen perfumes and increase profits."
Christ, I hate this argument. Luca Turin recently wrote on his blog that a perfume's smell represents a whopping 10% of its budget. If I bought a bottle of Coty's Lagerfeld Classic a few years ago and started complaining that the original Lagerfeld Cologne smelled better, I'd be implying that Classic was a cheapening of the formula. But why cheapen an already cheap formula? My lamentation of the current formula of Cool Water is not that they cheapened the formula, but that they changed it altogether. They went from the EDT (still quite bold) to the deodorant (not nearly as bold), but they don't change fragrances like Lagerfeld and Cool Water because they want to save money. They change these frags because their sales are slipping, and they're not ready to discontinue them yet. Sales slip when trends change and buyers shift their interest to newer, more exciting things.
Right now, "newer" and "more exciting" means "lighter," "fresher," and "cleaner." The deodorant industry is booming, and brands are now tailoring perfumes to deodorants, a complete reversal from 20 years ago. Lagerfeld and Cool Water have been made lighter and fresher to stay relevant, not to save a buck on their formulas.
"Vintage prices on eBay reflect supply and demand."
This is getting truer as the years pass, but when I started this blog it was entirely untrue. Within the last four years there has been a major market "correction" to the pricing of vintage perfume in general. You can now go on eBay and get the long-discontinued Ungaro Pour L'Homme II for under $100. But the first Ungaro is still incredibly expensive. The first feminine Fendi is still more expensive than a Creed frag. And D&G By Man's prices are completely insane.
Notice the pattern? These fragrances are all discontinued. If there was high demand for them, they'd still be in production. And the "fan base" argument doesn't work either. If the "fans" were so ardently willing to snap up these remaining bottles, they'd disappear from eBay. But they don't; the Ungaros, the Fendis, the By Mans are always there, and the prices are always high. Time to call a spade a spade: eBay is a poorly regulated merchant site full of greedy amateur sellers who repeatedly slap the wrong prices on discontinued perfumes. They erroneously believe that just because they're no longer readily available, these perfumes are worth a fortune. And they have very little to lose by repeatedly gambling a few dollars every month that someone might be stupid enough to drop $475 on their bottle.
"Perfumes don't change."
Sure they do, and the changes are very noticeable. But think about it - if it's untrue that perfumes forever remain the same as the day they were bottled, the suggestion that vintages smell better than reformulations veers into a ditch. What if the changes that perfumes undergo exist in an "arc" rather than a straight line? What if they start out smelling thinner, weaker, more chemical, then macerate and improve after a few years, and finally weaken and disassemble? One could then argue that if true, such changes might make new batches of fragrance worth "waiting out," while very old batches might be "past their prime." You could compare new and vintage to each other and wonder if the vintage used to smell like the new, and if the new will eventually smell like the vintage.
"Everything is called a fougere nowadays."
Fougeres rely on the interplay of lavender and coumarin. Some are blatant about it (Drakkar Noir), others aren't (Moustache). To my knowledge the last blatant fougere on the mainstream designer market was Rive Gauche Pour Homme by YSL. Some folks are now suggesting that Dior Sauvage is a fougere. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the best way to sidestep the false notion that everything is a fougere is to just read. Most newbies have no idea what a fougere is, or that it even exists, and veterans know better. So it's tough trying to find where all the uncontrolled labeling is taking place. If you read the forums daily like I do, you'll find that fougeres and discussions about them are pretty infrequently raised.
Enjoy your Colombus Day weekend everyone!