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| Your lady may send it back. |
I was amused to read a thread on Badger & Blade in which the OP stated that "None of the women in my life like [Pinaud] Clubman." He complained that his apparently majority female family members have summarily and repeatedly rejected his choice of Pinaud Clubman as SOTD. His problem has even expanded to extended family members, coworkers, and friends, with comments being made and sideways glances being cast whenever he wears Clubman aftershave. He wears it, he gets blowback. The poor guy.
The respondents in the thread offered varying degrees of sympathy and compassion, and the heart strings do tug for this man, but I was struck by the feeling that he had stumbled upon an inevitable truth about life: women do not generally like old-school wet shaver aftershaves and colognes. I've written about this before. I mentioned it in comments (here and elsewhere) about Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez's Perfumes: The Guide, in which both authors repeatedly tell their readers to "just say no" to sporty "blue" fragrances, some of the worst fragrance advice I've ever seen. Many times on this website I've stated that women genuinely like fresh fragrances -- they want to smell fresh, and they want their men to smell fresh, and anything that challenges their postmodern (metamodern?) concept of freshness will either be seriously questioned or outright denied.
In my review of one of Pineward's perfumes, I pointed out that men and women have vastly divergent tastes in fragrance, with men gravitating toward animalic aromatics, and women toward shampoo florals. This isn't a conspiracy against men, it's just reality. And for the guy who feels compelled to opine about how his wife loves raunchy old-school stuff, my answer is that the exception proves the rule.
Does this mean men should abandon all their powdery wet shaver stuff? No, because objectively, Clubman and its congeners smell good. Guys should wear the stuff whenever it's appropriate. Two things can be true at once, a man can wear something that smells great, and the woman he's with can dislike what he's wearing. The key is to know your audience, and align what they like with what you like. Save the powdery stuff for after a private shaving session when you're not around anyone you know, running errands, etc. Wear your fresher, cleaner, lighter fragrances when you're in female company, particularly when you know your company prefers those kinds of fragrances. You can enjoy your fragrance while those around you enjoy it, too.
This is why I always encourage men, especially young men, to diversify their fragrance portfolios and seek out things they might like in the "blue" corner of the fragrance shop. Enjoyment of what you're wearing isn't a zero-sum game. There are plenty of "fresh" and "modern" EDTs and EDPs that are perfectly unisex and widely enjoyed by men AND women. So finding a freshie that both you and your partner like shouldn't be mission impossible. I discourage men from narrowing their tastes down to strictly "old-school" or "barbershop" fare, simply because this doesn't give you much wiggle room if and when your wife or girlfriend starts wheezing next to you. Saying, "Oh, sorry honey, it's either Bay Rum or Lilac Vegetal" isn't helping after she pointedly tells you she hates Bay Rum. Have an arsenal of soapy-clean aftershaves and fragrances on hand to mitigate any negative feedback, and have at least five or ten options, because even fresh fragrances can fall short, and you might not score instant rebound points.
I practice what I preach here. My girlfriend has made it crystal clear that she's not into old-school woody frags, especially the ones loaded with spices and musks. This is challenging, because about seventy-five percent of my collection is old-school woody frags. But that other twenty-five percent is fresh, clean, modern. Blue bottles, white bottles, transparent bottles. Stuff that smells citrusy, stuff that smells metallic-fresh, floral-fresh, aquatic and "blue," and I wear that fraction of my collection more often than the rest because I'm around her more than not. The other stuff can wait for when I'm at work, or she's at work, or I'm alone grocery shopping, or doing a midnight run to Newark to buy drugs. There's a time and place for every perfume. A smart man knows that, and is ready for it.