When I started my fragrance journey back in 2008, I was in possession of 1980s vintage Old Spice aftershave and cologne, made by Shulton, but had not yet acquired an appreciation for them, and sold both bottles on eBay for about twenty-five dollars. I've regretted it ever since.
Recently I repurchased vintage Old Spice, this time from the 1970s, and I haven't looked back. In the intervening years, I've explored every nook and cranny of the fragrance world, and it's been quite an interesting trip. My collection is roughly one hundred bottles (maybe closer to eighty-five "proper" fragrances), and most of them are fragrances I truly enjoy, or else I would never have kept them. One thing has bothered me though: it gets complicated when you own this many EDTs. All sorts of factors are considered. Is it too cold outside for this fragrance? Too hot? Is it the wrong occasion to wear this? Is this too loud? Is this too feminine? Am I sending the wrong message if I wear this to a cookout? At times the scale of choice, the sheer immensity of variety begins to feel like a hindrance rather than an advantage, and I've been keenly aware of how often that feeling occurs, and how pervasive it has become.
I've been a member of Badger & Blade for ten years, and the wetshaver community has many overlaps with the mainstream "fragcomm." Wetshavers are into colognes and aftershaves and eau de toilettes, but naturally the primary focus is shaving. A good shave requires all sorts of extraneous skin care, and the average diligent wetshaver, even a minimalist like me, has at least a half dozen products that work in tandem to keep shorn skin healthy and glowing. Witch hazel, balms, talcs, various kinds of alcohols and alcohol-based aftershaves, all are useful tools in the pursuit of the perfect shave. But even in this community, variety has taken over. Obama's second term saw the rise of "small batch" aftershave companies, an industry not unlike that of craft beer. Suddenly there are tons of inexpensive glass bottles with home-printed labels carrying liquids called "4:20," and "Red Hot Jeeper-Creeper," and all sorts of zany names, and when I dipped back into B&B a few months ago, I hardly recognized the landscape.
The fragrance industry as a whole has exploded to a size where Big Bang analogies are apt. I’ve watched Youtubers with collections that suggest a mall kiosk swallowed their homes. Some of these guys have around $100K worth of fragrance, all carefully organized on custom shelves, all averaging $250 a bottle. If thieves broke in with grocery carts and loaded up, they'd take a loss big enough to equal the cost of the newest Corvette. Even my collection, modest as it is, has a few valuable oldies that I could probably make a grand on. I can't even imagine what it must be like to have the entire Tom Ford range stacked under the entire Creed range, under the entire Guerlain range, and on, and on. How does a guy with that kind of collection get a chance to stop and actually enjoy any of it?
I began noticing something about myself. I would watch a Charles Bronson movie, or a Steve McQueen movie, or any pre-1980s movie, with the sort of testosterone-laden, ultra-masculine star that Hollywood is no longer allowed to cultivate, and I'd find myself thinking, "That guy wasn't obsessed with cologne. That guy was an Old Spice guy." Sure, Bronson danced around in those Mandom commercials from Japan, but in real life he probably used whatever drugstore cheapie was available, and didn't give it a second thought. He was more interested in spending his millions on cars and women.
These men depicted characters that were simple and direct. They perform heroic feats that defy imagination. They bed gorgeous women without a glimmer of self doubt. They aren't real life. But they were templates of the ideal that men once admired. Today they're victims of cancel culture, the toxic zeitgeist of perceived misogyny, symbols of the "patriarchy," and probably considered bigots and racists by humorless, self-hating upper middle-class white people. Bronson, McQueen, Lee Van Cleef, all are lucky they're dead. Last year on WNPR (a public radio network), a black woman said she considers the movie Gone With The Wind a Confederate monument. Clark Gable wouldn't stand a chance with her. But Clark Gable was probably an Old Spice guy. I can't imagine that he would bother with anything stronger, anything more expensive, or anything less American than the Shulton classic.
Then last June I got a promotion at work. The new position has me working in closer quarters with two women who are very olfactorily aware of their surroundings, and I realized that sheer necessity would switch my macro frag world down to something micro. I needed something I really liked, something easy to wear, something cheap enough to bring and leave in the car, and most importantly, something that wouldn't piss anyone off. My position is a sort of "middle management" role, which means people are looking to me for some leadership. It didn't take long to figure out what I needed. The only oriental I ever really liked was Old Spice, and the only drugstore frag that doesn't smell "cheap" is vintage Old Spice. So I hopped on eBay and found what I needed, an aftershave that dates between 1973 and 1980, and a cologne that predates 1973. I wasn't buying vintage for their contents, however.
As much as I appreciate the vanilla smoothness of vintage Old Spice, I think the current formula is actually quite good. Proctor & Gamble did an excellent job maintaining the overall quality and identity of the scent, despite the odds. They royally fucked up the packaging though. It has gotten to the point with those godforsaken plastic bottles, with their godawful "patch" logos, where I couldn't abide them anymore. That P&G thought it necessary to switch to plastic is one thing, but to strip the plastic of the beloved Grand Turk is another level of stupid. So back to the Wheaton-style milk glass, with their beautiful script font, and those glorious ships. If I'm wearing something every day, I want to like the bottle I'm reaching for.
Am I done with fragrance? No. I still enjoy fragrance, I still value variety, and I still see exploring the fragrance world as something worthy of pursuit. I'm not through with fragrance, but I'm through with a "rotation." I'm working on developing a very small wardrobe for regular use. But for the time being, I'm enjoying simplicity. I don't want to be an overly perfumed Millennial jerk anymore. I don't want to smell like a fourteen year-old girl, or spend four hundred dollars just to piss off a woman fifteen feet away. I want to smell like a man. I want to smell like a man from the past. And I want to smell discreet. In this day and age, discretion is key to my survival, and also the key to my success. With Old Spice, discretion is handled very, very well. Thank goodness for small favors.