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| Brand-new is left; Early '90s is right |
Of all the fragrances in my regrettably ever-growing collection, Davidoff's Cool Water is the most widely misunderstood.
Let me explain.
Those who actually enjoy and read about perfume make the inevitable comparison between Cool Water and its predecessor, Creed's Green Irish Tweed, as "Fragrance A" and "Fragrance B." In other words, two entirely different fragrances from very different brands that just happened to have been authored by the same perfumer. This is understandable, but a flawed view.
Consider this: a perfumer on the rise has an idea based on Pierre Wargnye's 1982 masterpiece, Drakkar Noir. It's 1985, and Drakkar's generous use of dihydromyrcenol and Dimetol is a New Wave revolution for the nose; everyone, from Giorgio Beverly Hills, to Givenchy, to Francesco Smalto, to even Alain Delon's celebuscent brand, is trying to build off its framework to cash in on the sales momentum of Guy Laroche's surprising flanker hit. The perfumer knows that roughly 10% of Drakkar's formula is comprised of DHM, and figures he can take the dry, smoky, deceivingly complex juniper-patchouli idea and rework it into something bigger and fresher. He calls his idea "A New Freshness."
He tinkers with, toys with, and eventually pitches to Lancôme what he feels is a fairly well-conceived version of his vision, but sees it rejected. When an obscure niche brand's emissary appears and offers to use it, he decides it's better that somebody enjoys it, rather than nobody, and basically gives it away for a relatively small fee. That emissary is the late Olivier Creed, and the fragrance is GIT. It's a modest success for Creed. GIT becomes their bestseller, and it propels the brand through the decade. The perfumer is pleased (and likely surprised) by this, but he isn't entirely satisfied with the composition. While GIT is certainly groundbreaking, it suffers from two issues. The first is that Creed, despite its growing popularity, remains invisible to the mainstream high street buyer, and what the brand considers its resounding success is what behemoth designers would consider a paltry failure. Put simply, the fragrance is finding a small and devoted audience, but it's truly a tiny niche, and Bourdon's idea is yet undiscovered by the general public.
More pressingly to this perfumer, the composition itself isn't quite what he has in mind. While GIT takes a considerable and Drakkar-comparable dose of DHM and thrusts it into the sinuses of bank executives and Wall Street trading tycoons, it feels too simple, almost unfinished. Yes, the green apple and lemon verbena of the opening accord help to temper the spiky burst of grassy, DHM-fueled greenish-yellow noise, and yes, the intensely rich violet esters and iris irones that comprise the heart smell distinctive and quite lovely to virtually anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex, and also, yes, the base of genuine Mysore sandalwood oil and Creed's clever little blend of natural ambergris tincture and Ambroxan is insanely smooth and expensive smelling, and the perfumer should be proud of all of it. But because GIT exists, the perfumer feels he now knows what's missing. He vows to continue working on the same fragrance, not to change it—change isn't the goal of someone who makes a living by creating limitless blends to find the right one—but to improve it. He knows he can make it better. And now he knows how.
Or, at least, he thinks he knows. He tries adding civet. Nope, that's not it. He dials up and down on various pieces of GIT, adding and subtracting various notes and synthetics, and wonders if maybe he just needs to crank the DHM up to eleven and hope for the best. So, he does. And he is hit by a seismic realization: he can make Green Irish Tweed again, only this time far more crisp and fresh, far more revolutionary, and far more complex, yet just as balanced, just as green, and just as expensive, formula-wise, by also cranking the Ambroxan, a very expensive synthetic in the 1980s, up to near-DHM levels.
So, he out-Wargnyes Pierre Wargnye, and doubles the Drakkar-like DHM ratio in his own fragrance to a whopping 20% of the formula, and also pushes the Ambroxan to levels not seen in any mainstream release. He swaps out iris for violet and violet leaf, letting ionones do the speaking in GIT 2.0, rather than iris butter, octyn esters, and irones. He swaps out Granny Smith apple for crab apple bitterness, dialing down the sweetness. Peppermint replaces lemon verbena. Calone 1951 is microdosed in tandem with the Ambroxan overdose to add a salty, sea-breeze airiness to the traditional herbal tones of lavender, which is in turn added to help give body and weight to what would otherwise be an evanescent violet concoction that most would struggle to detect.
Coumarin fleshes out this herbal mid, with additional notes of neroli, Valencia orange, and jasmine creating a subliminal greenness that is, to the perfumer's mind, more sophisticated than the overly simplistic two-step of octyn esters and irones in GIT 1.0. The biggest challenge is replacing that gorgeous sandalwood in the base. It can't go in, not because it's too expensive (let's remember, Ambroxan), but because it's too heavy. Luckily, Davidoff comes along, and its German execs request a follow-up to Zino, their 1986 breakthrough patchouli fougère. Being an international purveyor of fine cigarettes and cigars, the perfumer sees the perfect replacement for sandalwood in a mineralic cured tobacco note, which becomes the grounding base material.
The perfumer, of course, is Pierre Bourdon. He is the connective tissue to why GIT smells similar to Cool Water, but he's also the only perfumer in history to create a formula that overdoses two fairly rare and expensive synthetics for the general public in a mainstream release. Cool Water succeeds where GIT floundered; Davidoff, while not a Chanel-level designer, manages department store distribution on a mass production scale that reaches Europe and the Americas. Millions of bottles sell. His wish for his idea to be enjoyed by all is fulfilled. And his goal of building upon and improving the Drakkar Noir idea is satisfied not just on a material level, but on an artistic level. To Bourdon, Cool Water isn't better than Green Irish Tweed. To Bourdon, Cool Water is Green Irish Tweed. It's Green Irish Tweed in an eau de toilette concentration, i.e., lighter, fresher, and not nearly as stereotypically '80s, nor as purple and loud. It's the same idea, perfected. And upon its release, Bourdon is done with it. He can take it no further, and doesn't want to.
I recently acquired a deep vintage bottle of Cool Water, pictured above. It's a 75 milliliter bottle, and it's beautiful to look at. It's truly an artifact of its time. The script font of both the brand logo and the fragrance name is gorgeous. The greenish-hued liquid adds depth to the blue glass of the bottle. The oversized black cap is very late '80s, feeling akin to shoulder pads or a pompadour hairstyle. The bottle dates to the early '90s, pre-1994. I'll have to take a look at the code again, because as I write this, I simply can't remember it, nor can I be bothered to push myself up to look at it again. But we're talking deep vintage, and with that in mind, I fully expected the fragrance to smell somewhat wrong.
If you were to ask me, "Bryan, is deep vintage Cool Water worth it in 2026?" I'd answer with, "It depends on what you want to get out of it." Do you want to smell better than reformulated Cool Water? That's a tricky one. There have been a few different formulas of Cool Water, and the current formula is actually Coty Prestige dialing things back to the early 2000s. The late '90s millennium formula of Cool Water has been revived, but at a cost—the concentration has been drastically reduced. The current version is semi-vintage Cool Water at eau de cologne concentration. Regular application of four or five sprays will last you maybe an hour. But being a complex blend with several reinstated hi-octane synthetics, you can "stack" the current by spraying like a maniac, anywhere from fifteen to twenty times. Doing this actually gets you to ten, maybe even twelve hours of longevity, and the amazing thing is, it smells like you're wearing O.G. Cool Water. It's truly great stuff. Shame they compensated for the increase in formula cost by watering it down, but it's better than crapping out on the materials.
So, if the goal is to one-up the current formula with 2000s vintage, I'd say it's a maybe. But not with deep vintage. Deep vintage has gone too long. My bottle was brand new, with an unprimed atomizer, despite being over 30 years old. This is as fresh as a deep vintage can be. Its top notes still smell wrong. Almost like glass cleaner, weirdly washed out and alcohol-ridden. This passes within fifteen seconds, and the familiar apple and peppermint accord appears, and it smells beautiful and very familiar. But generally, the formula feels faded and translucent. This is a matter of taste; you may prefer this version, but I prefer the late '90s and early 2000s vintage where the brand name was in block font and the fragrance name was in cursive. That formula, which can still be found online, isn't as old, and therefore smells more potent and dynamic.
Deep vintage Cool Water is worth it if you're a collector, and you appreciate the reality of what Cool Water is. The deep vintage bottle represents a fragrance that is synonymous with Green Irish Tweed in a way we've never seen before in any other fragrances by the same perfumer. It smells closer to vintage Green Irish Tweed from the late '90s, which I've also owned. Deep vintage Cool Water also smells like a work of art. The art piece is in two parts, and both parts are great but slightly different, representing different stages of the artist's expression. This is unique, singular, and has not happened since.
One thing I've noticed is the formula that preceded the current Cool Water has begun to smell like the 2000s vintage, adopting the same ashy Ambroxan and tobacco accord in the base, and a slightly unbalanced opening accord. The truth is, Cool Water doesn't keep especially well, and anything past ten years runs the risk of smelling undeniably "off" for a beat or two. The question of owning a deep vintage bottle is really this question: Who are you? If you're like me, an insane person, then it's worth owning, for all the reasons and all the evolutionary arcs and idiosyncrasies I've written about in this article. If you don't value your money as much as you value perfume, by all means, you ought to spend the $200 (I didn't pay anything near that, but I easily could have) for that deep vintage bottle with the all-script font and slightly oversized black cap.
If, however, you're just a guy like all the other guys who wear fragrance to impress girls, and your true loves are video games and football, then no, owning deep vintage Cool Water is not worth it. If you've only ever owned two or three bottles at one time, and you blow through the same signature fragrance bottle after bottle and are perfectly happy with that, like most normal, healthy people, stay clear of spending the big bucks on this Davidoff. Not worth it. Not a good use of your time. Just move on. I envy you.