Book (Commodity)

Palo santo is an unusual material. While it has an appealing scent, its pure form doesn’t strike me as something that would work in a personal fragrance. Sandalwood, cedarwood, and even oud have qualities that seem harmonious with human skin, but palo santo has this odd dill-pickle edge that dominates my olfactory experience, making it difficult to picture as a wearable scent. Commodity, however, changed my perspective.

Book is a fragrance containing a palo santo note that feels approachable, and I think it smells fantastic. Interestingly, Commodity doesn’t list palo santo in its note pyramid, and for the first few hours, you might not detect it. By the third or fourth hour, though, it subtly emerges, supporting the drier, “fresh” aromatics that came before. Book strives to recreate the experience of turning a dusty page. It’s a conceptual fragrance that evokes the scent of inky, well-loved paper, and I believe it succeeds. Book smells beautiful.

Yet, it raises the question: would I want to smell like an old, dusty book? This is where the niche factor enters: fragrances like this appeal only to a small subset of aficionados who yearn for the ambiance of an antique bookshop, surrounded by shelves of calfskin and vellum. Notes almost feel irrelevant here; Book simply smells like a book. Anyone who loves books enough to want to wear their scent will find joy in it.

Harvest Mouse (Zoologist)

The oriental category of fragrances ("oriental" meaning "of the East" in classical perfumery terms and not a slur, contrary to the idiocy of the language police) has never been my favorite. If you've been reading me long enough, you know that I tend to wear them the least, generally avoid buying them, and despite all that has happened since the 1930s, Old Spice is still my favorite oriental scent, and the most worn. So I approached Harvest Mouse fully expecting to feel about it as I do about all expensive fragrances in its price bracket: impressed, but not enough to buy or wear. 

As it turns out, I'm not even impressed. This 2023 fragrance is by Luca Maffei of Houbigant and Jacques Fath fame, and my expectation was it would smell like something that belongs in the Pineward range, only better. Well, I was half right. It belongs in the Pineward range, only it isn't any better, and might even be a little worse. It starts out promisingly enough, with a pleasant burst of warm citrus (bergamot studded with cloves), sweetened a bit by a floral orange blossom and chamomile that eventually gets sweeter and more vanillic, to the point of feeling strident. I think it's the novel accord of "Beer Extract CO₂" that ruins it. It smells biting and sharp, malty-sour but also sweet, and it evokes the feeling you have after having one too many. I give it points for uniqueness, though. 

The base, which arrives about five hours in, is a more balanced and enjoyable ensemble of woody notes, namely cedar, some light balsamic accents, the tonka-like plushness of hay absolute, and the aforementioned vanilla, which has lost the disturbing angles and now simply smells smooth and edible. If you are not like I am, and you absolutely love woody-fresh oriental fragrances, I think Harvest Mouse will appeal, but for those of you who already have anything like a Pineward or Bogart or vintage Lagerfeld fragrance in your collection, you probably won't need anything here. 

Fragrantica Advertises Trump's New Fragrance, Members Lose Their Sh!t

While I can certainly understand why the average Joe on the street might hesitate to say a good word about Donald Trump, I find endless humor in the outrage machine that Trump generates online. Recently, the 45th President released his latest self-aggrandizing marketing gimmick, this time in the form of another fragrance, called Fight Fight Fight, which has a photo of him with upraised fist emblazoned on its otherwise unremarkable square bottle. As you may have guessed, this didn't go down well on Fragrantica. 

My take on Donald Trump and the fragrance community is this: we wouldn't have to worry about Trump if the West weren't so badly calibrated that it gave rise to the fragrance community in the first place. Let's face it folks, we're part of the problem. We spend all day, every day obsessing over very expensive perfumes that most lower and middle class people could never in a million years afford, and most Americans wouldn't buy. As upward mobility has decreased in my country, the 1% have lined their pockets and studded their wardrobes with the latest from Malle, Parfums de Marly, Creed, Guerlain, and Chanel. Designer price brackets have all but disappeared in the last eight years, with ranges that were once tagged between $75 and $95 now in the $125 to $175 range, and any "exclusive" offerings bumped sixty to a hundred dollars over that. 

This isn't strange to us because we're desensitized to it. We see it and read about it every day. We live it. Most Americans are struggling to afford diapers and children's clothing and rent. The last thing they're thinking of buying is the 2025 release of Guerlain's Muguet. Creed's new Kering offerings, Centaurus and Delphinus. Malle's Acne Studios. Chanel's Allure Homme Sport Superleggera. Parfums de Marly's Palatine. It isn't that hard working people don't want them; they simply can't have them. 

These privileged fragrance reviewers flaunt wardrobes that cost more than a new Toyota Corolla, then turn around and virtue signal when Elena Knezevic writes about Fight Fight Fight, as if the usual hand-wringing will change anything. It's 2024, people. We've been living with Trump in the sociopolitical culture for nearly a decade now. Enough already. He was President once. Was it the greatest four years in America's history? Hell no. Covid took care of that. But was he Orange Hitler? Was he Orange Mussolini? Were there citizens being lined up behind the outhouses and shot because they weren't wearing Trump Sneakers? I ask this with the utmost sincerity: how much longer must we pretend that Donald Trump is the antichrist? 

Just look at some of the comments under Elena's article, starting with "Trixie Salamander": 

"How the hell do I delete my account? 

Then there's "SaulGoo":

"When someone's shooting at you and there are innocent people standing behind you, you stay down if you're the target. Why? Because as long as the person firing sees you, they'll keep shooting. Standing up again to pump his tiny fist for what he KNEW would be a great photo op, was an opportunity for new merch GALORE." 

Or perhaps we should listen to "istvan.budda.779":

"Who is the perfumer? And 200 dollars, even Chanel doesn't charge this much and Chanel is well known for being a greedy company." 

And last but not least, my favorite comment by "FiaM":

"Is it time to count the balloons yet?" 

My responses to each in kind: Trixie, you don't have an account. Nice try, though. SaulGoo, to quote Janosz from Ghostbusters II: "Everything you are doing is bad. I want you to know this." To istvan.budda.779: sorry about your Chanel fail, your consolation prize is a $325 bottle of Comète. And to FiaM: don't count them before they pop, sweetie. Trump Derangement Syndrome is clearly a problem for all of you. The sad thing is, it makes you look stupid, because it makes you say stupid things that nobody really believes, or even takes seriously. Eighty million Americans support Trump. I'd wager the majority of them don't have Fragrantica accounts. Time to look in a mirror.

I don't know if these complainers are Americans, real people, or just sophisticated AI bots planted by the Chinese government, but whatever they are, they're not winning, and they still haven't realized it. Their endlessly whiny and logic-free complaints about one man, a man who cut every American's taxes and protected the border as well as he could, is exactly why he's up in the polls. It's 2016 all over again. 

If people want to make the energy monster go away, they should stop spewing their aggrieved energy at him. It's the strained pearl-clutching and the endless whinging that strengthens the case against them and for him. They never learn. 

Replica Autumn Vibes (Maison Margiela)

It seems the "wood" note of the twenties is palo santo, making oud feel like a relic of the last decade—well, not quite, but it often comes across that way. This week alone, I’ve encountered two niche fragrances featuring palo santo, neither of which officially acknowledge it. One of them, Autumn Vibes, released in 2021, is a charming woody-spicy blend with autumnal accents that wraps the wearer in a warm, cozy aura for nearly eight hours. It’s pleasant enough, and actually smells expensive.

Yet again, Maison Margiela's Replica series has me questioning how closely a fragrance can mimic a room candle before crossing a line. This one opens with an aromatic burst of cardamom and pepper, which takes on a duskier tone within five minutes thanks to coriander and nutmeg. This gourmand-like opening lasts a solid fifteen minutes, its savory tones almost edible. Then, a smoky palo santo note emerges, remarkably free of the pickle-like nuance I often associate with it, yet it dominates the pyramid, leaving little room for the other elements to shine. I might be particularly sensitive to it, but the base of cedar, labdanum, incense, and a faint juniper halo does little to restore balance.

That said, Autumn Vibes is undeniably a pleasant woody scent, just a step away from being a room fragrance. It also carries a certain autumnal sexiness, with a smoothness that hints at a mature, well-constructed scent. I can picture men in their forties and fifties wearing this to bars with their wives on Friday or Saturday nights, adding a touch of sophistication to October festivities. For that kind of vibe, though, I’d prefer something with more texture (and no palo santo), like Oud Mosaic, or even Red for Men.

This Fragrance Did Not Slip Out Of 'Cool' and Into 'Old-Fogey'

An Original 1988 Cool Water Print Ad

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend among YouTubers, posting about Davidoff’s Cool Water, the original 1988 release, and to be blunt, I’m not impressed. It grates on me to see so many in their twenties and thirties deem it “Old School” and “Mature.” The prevailing sentiment is that this landmark release, Davidoff’s third perfume, has become outdated and cheap, reduced to a meaningless “shower fresh” relic. The implication? No one finds it relevant anymore. Apparently, Cool Water is no longer wanted by the young.

There’s something bizarre about watching a YouTuber standing in his bedroom, pontificating on how his older brother used to wear Cool Water to death, and how he vaguely appreciates it for that reason alone, while also proclaiming it inferior to Cool Water Intense. That’s where it becomes surreal. Standing there in a baseball cap and a little bro goatee, shrugging away on camera, while dismissing the single most significant perfume in the history of masculine perfumery—no competition, no close second, full stop. To simply say, “Yeah, I mean, it’s okay. I like it, but I don’t wear it,” is truly surreal.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that everyone should love or like Cool Water. There are plenty of people who loathe the stuff, and that’s fine by me. Tell me you hate Cool Water, that you’d never dream of wearing it, and I’d shrug right along with you. I’m not all that enamored with Dior’s Fahrenheit myself, and that fragrance inhabits the same legendary neighborhood as Cool Water. If my cool indifference to Fahrenheit ruffled a fan or two, I’d completely understand. Tastes differ; life thrives on contrast.

But what really gets under my skin is when people treat Cool Water like some mere footnote in the annals of fragrance, a scent that may have been cool once but that real FragBros outgrow. They then feel entitled to go on camera and wax lyrical about how trivial it is compared to modern competitors like Sauvage or Luna Rossa. These guys sound like self-proclaimed car buffs scoffing at the Ford Model T for not being an Acura TLX. In the case of Cool Water, a more fitting analogy might be swapping out the Model T for a Buick Grand National and whining that it’s no Tesla.

You don’t hold up a bottle of Cool Water and say, “This just smells played out now,” and expect that to slide. No, Cool Water is anything but played out. It single-handedly redirected the trajectory of the entire perfume industry, and it did so when the trajectory was so deeply entrenched that no one imagined it could change. Cool Water is the work of a perfumer who submitted a rough draft to an obscure niche house, which then made it their masculine flagship, which is now hailed as a masterpiece in its own right. Cool Water is the refined realization of that original masterpiece, the ultimate manifestation of Pierre Bourdon’s vision, the scent that, even today, he still ponders and savors. It is the perfect aromatic fougère. It is the only truly "modern" fougère in my collection. 

Now, I’m not blind to reality. Times change, and older fragrances inevitably get labeled as just that: old. I can even admit that Green Irish Tweed, once the scent of cutting-edge modernity, now carries a whiff of the eighties. And yes, Cool Water has its ties to the shopping mall. I live in the real world; I understand. I have my own associations, remembering friends and family wearing it, myself as a teenager not quite grasping its appeal. It took me years to come around.

But as 2024 draws to a close, I can look at Cool Water and recognize that true greatness doesn’t fade with time. Its pristine design endures. Cool Water’s brilliance sparkles undimmed, a glimmering abalone in a sea of limpets.

Hummingbird (Zoologist)

Shelley Waddington of En Voyage Perfumes is the nose behind this 2015 creation. To date, only Squid rivals it as the Zoologist fragrance that required a full body scrub—and a shirt hurled straight into the washing machine. Here's the twist: I actually like it. This is a niche reimagining of Joop! Homme, that iconic Bourdon fragrance with the pink juice and purple box. As such, it fascinates me, answering a question I didn’t know I had: what would Joop! smell like, all dressed up in luxe materials and compositionally refined?

The answer is Hummingbird. Joop! Homme is intensely floral, but in a particular way—super sweet, heavy, yet somehow evocative of delicate petals. That buoyant sweetness, I realized, comes primarily from lilac, mimosa, and heliotrope, all crammed together into an unfocused 8-bit version of a spring bouquet. In Hummingbird, those notes are far more distinct, with greater textural finesse. Every flower stands out, yet works harmoniously to create that unmistakable magenta sweetness. The lilac is especially bright and clear, nestled with rose, a honeysuckle reconstruction, a few grams of heliotropin, mimosa that actually smells alive, and warm ylang-ylang, all cushioned atop a thermonuclear musk accord powerful enough to rival national defense systems.

As lovely as it smells, like Joop!, it’s simply too strong. So strong that neither my girlfriend nor I could tolerate it for long. The moment we got home, I jumped in the shower. Even after a vigorous scrub with Irish Spring, the fragrance clung to my skin. I’m convinced it has a half-life of eleven thousand years after just a tiny spritz on clothing—and half that on skin. If you love sweet florals and don’t mind that the rest of the block might have mixed feelings, go for it. Otherwise, for the love of all things, proceed with caution.

Mercedes-Benz Intense (INCC Group/Mercedes-Benz) and A Question: Should We Summarily Dismiss Fragrance SAs?

I don't want to rattle on at length about this, so I'll cut to the review and then drop in my rhetorical questions, accompanied by a personal anecdote. Mercedes-Benz is a car manufacturer. Want a luxury car of German origin? Mercedes is an option. It wouldn't be my choice, but I can see why people like them. Most are stylish, fast, comfortable, and undeniably a status symbol, at least in the U.S. Sure, their luxury cache has dwindled in the last twenty years with stuff like their A Class and C Class "Kompressor" sedans, but they still speak to the quasi-wealthy among us. 

Sadly (for Mercedes), the cars weren't enough to boost their self-image, and at some point they turned to contracting out their own signature perfume line, with a surprising number of fragrances, most of them rack store bargain-basement offerings that cut against whatever exclusive vibe the Mercedes fanclub of testosterone-kompressed men are after. It's sort of like what happened to Montblanc; go from selling $4,000 pens to $40 perfumes, and eventually you start questioning the pens more than the perfumes. If I were Mercedes, I'd scale back on the number of frags on offer, limiting it to one or two, and focus more on the cars, but what do I know? Apparently their Burlington Blitzkrieg strategy works for them, so I guess they should keep on rolling. Enter Mercedes-Benz Intense for Men. 

Released in 2013 as a follow up to the original of the same (sans Intense) name, the brief is crystal clear: Do Fahrenheit, but closer to the Aqua version, with a shot of "New Car Smell" somewhere in with the gassy violets and grassy vetiver. If you want Fahrenheit with the petrol dialed down a notch and the marine-ambergris element of its flanker tuned-up in the base, this is a no-brainer fragrance to own. It's not quite as complex in its florals, but it doesn't smell "cheap" in comparison to its template, and I think it's close enough to replace the original Dior if you're tired of shelling out a Ben per bottle. It's that good. 

Now for my anecdote, still fresh in my memory. I bought this fragrance at the mall as a birthday gift for a family member. Upon entering the perfume shop, I was greeted by a polite Indian woman around my age. I asked if she had any Dior fragrances, specifically looking for a Fahrenheit flanker. She directed me to the Dior section—no flankers in sight, just the usual suspects: Fahrenheit, Sauvage, and Dior Homme. What followed was a series of obscure fragrance recommendations, one of which claimed to be an Arabian brand but was made in New Jersey. Needless to say, it didn’t smell like Fahrenheit, or even Sauvage, for that matter. Then, she pitched me an Israeli brand claiming London heritage that bore no resemblance to anything by Dior. I really didn't feel like playing this game, so I pulled up Fragrantica on my phone, hoping it would steer me toward a better option.

This was a big mistake. She quickly got rude with me, borderline insulting. I showed her the Fahrenheit page as it loaded and asked if she knew the site, and she said, "No, why would I look at that? Yes, I see, there's Fahrenheit. So what?" I then explained that they have a feature where fragrances are compared by votes, and pointed to the first thing that showed up: Mercedes-Benz Intense. She didn't say anything at first, as if processing that I was ignoring her useless suggestions in favor of the almighty internet, and I wondered if she was going to kick me out of the store. Instead she visibly gathered herself and said, "Yes, I see Mercedes-Benz there, we have that one." She beelined across the store for it, with me in tow. She sprayed it on a strip, still looking pissed, and I took a sniff. Bingo! 

Two minutes later, I was out the door with the fragrance, and not a word passed between us. The truth is, we had both gotten under each other’s skin. In hindsight, I can see that I may have been a bit dismissive. I asked for her help, entertained a couple of suggestions, and then promptly pivoted to my own internet search. Honestly, that might have annoyed me too, had I been in her shoes. But listen, I tried to be friendly. I asked if she was familiar with the site I was using, I kindly showed her what I was doing as I navigated it, and even spared her the hassle of rummaging through countless bottles to find what I was after. What's the beef? 

It makes me wonder if we should just skip the friendly sales interactions altogether and get straight to the point: "Give me [x]." I don’t need to smell a dozen knockoff brands no one’s heard of, and frankly, I don’t care that your feelings might be hurt because I’m bypassing your advice. Your suggestions are awful. Your store is fantastic, but your role in it? Not so much. If you’re going to be that consistently bad at your job, then yes, I’ll happily and summarily dismiss you, no questions asked. Real talk.

Chipmunk (Zoologist)

I often hang a Little Trees air freshener in my car called "True North," and after a long workday, I find its crisp, snowy, slightly piney aroma soothing. It’s one of the longer-lasting Little Trees scents and smells more authentically pine-like than the classic green tree, which always reminds me of a rubber Halloween mask. Whenever I catch a whiff of "True North," I wonder if it’s cold, foresty aromas in general that calm me. It’s hard to say. Push pine notes too far and you end up with something like Stirling Soap’s Evergreen Forest, which can be downright jarring.

Pia Long’s 2021 fragrance for Zoologist, Chipmunk, leans more into hazelnuts but carries a few other notes that give me a "True North" vibe in the best possible way. For starters, the fragrance’s note list is one of the most accurate I’ve ever seen. Not sure about the quince, but I definitely detect a crystal-clear accord of pink pepper, mandarin orange, cardamom, and nutmeg at the top. This quickly settles into a grassy chamomile-hazelnut heart, layered over fir balsam, oak, and what they call "earthy notes"—really just synthetic oakmoss with a drop or two of natural patchouli oil.

The weakest link in matching the pyramid to the notes list is the base, which cites amyris, cedar, benzoin, vetiver, opoponax, guaiacwood, and "animal notes." Honestly, I mostly get the benzoin and opoponax, with maybe a soft touch of animalic musk, nothing like the assertive stuff found in other Zoologist creations. The overall effect is earthy, piney, and nutty-woody, with cold air swirling over warm campfires and hazelnut toast being passed around. It feels painterly, like something out of a Pieter Bruegel the Elder scene. On the strip, the terpenic notes sing out more. Chipmunk is one of Zoologist’s better fragrances, and it’s perfect for a crisp fall day looking ahead to winter. 

Tommy, Reformulated (Hilfiger)

In the late nineties, this was my summer fragrance, a staple I packed for family trips to our holiday home in Ireland. Wearing it felt like a tether to the buzzing New York Metropolitan area I’d left behind, which, to an eighteen-year-old, seemed important. Back then, the formula was crafted by Lauder's Aramis division for Tommy Hilfiger, but by the 2000s, fragrance trends shifted from ambery-sweet masculines to herbal-aquatics and blue-bottled ozonics, and somewhere between my college years and the shifting tides of scent trends, my beloved Tommy was adopted by a secondhand owner. “SA Beaute” in Europe makes it now. So imagine my trepidation when I spotted a bottle at a local rack store for twenty clams—a steal, considering it used to set me back at least forty-five. The new box design felt ominous, and I braced myself for disappointment.

From the first spritz, I was appalled. The opening was a prickly, alcohol-laden assault of synthetic chemicals and paper-thin citrus accords, mostly grapefruit and lemon aldehydes, and for a moment, I thought Tommy was dead, a faint ghost of its former self. But at the fifteen-minute mark, a small miracle occurred. Out of the haze, Old Glory began to emerge, almost as I remembered it. The familiar richness of cardamom, lavender, sage, tonka, sweet apple, and musky-woody undertones appeared, with a plush ambery base under it all. It was warm, modern, comfortable, nearly the Tommy I knew. Still, something had changed. Since its 1994 debut, much has happened in the world of fragrance, and several scents have pilfered the DNA of Alberto Morillas's composition. Montale’s Fougères Marines (2007) took Tommy’s basic structure, added extra fruit syrup, and threw in salty ambergris for that desert heat appeal. As I wear this new version of Tommy, I can’t help but wonder if it’s borrowing from Fougères Marines as a clone of its own clone, so to speak. There’s a noticeable marine quality now, with a salty Ambroxan note that wasn’t present in the original. This aspect supplants the thick and shimmery apple-musk beauty of the Aramis formula, and lends the fragrance a more aquatic edge. 

Another curious shift is in how the reformulation handles its greener aromatics; it leans into a Drakkar Noir-like vibe, with a hit of dihydromyrcenol and none of the nuclear Calone and ethyl-maltol-driven sweetness it used to have. This dialing down of the fruity sugar rush gives the heart of the fragrance a subtle throwback to the eighties, something I never associated with the original’s heady nineties redolence. Hilfiger once hyped the scent’s “apple pie” note, and while I definitely got that from the vintage version, the reformulation feels both thinner and more balanced—cardamom, spearmint, and lavender now frame the apple in a woodier, less cushy, and much less edible way. So, while I'm happy that the cheap top eventually mellows and allows some of the richness of the scent I once loved to shine through, it’s hard not to miss the magic of the original.