Quorum Silver (Antonio Puig)

Cedar? I smell ginger. Nearly all ginger, in fact. Quorum Silver hits with a massive wallop of it in the top notes -- brisk, spicy, a little sweet -- and rapidly segues into an aromatic mixture of lavender and herbal notes to buttress the longevity of that gingery freshness. Eventually, as in after six or seven hours, a light cedar woodiness is apparent, but it's not like I'd call Quorum Silver a "cedar scent." It is certainly a ginger fragrance.

Has this been reformulated? For twenty years, I've been reading people's chatter about how Quorum Silver is a one-note cedar bomb from top to bottom, yet my experience is sharply divergent from theirs. When I think of cedar, I think of Krizia Uomo. That's a cedar fragrance. Intensely woody, all the way through. Puig's scent is what I had hoped Creed's Tabarome Millesime would be (but wasn't), an intense blast of ginger that softens into greener notes in the drydown. There's a light tea-like effect in the base of QS, and the quality of materials is high enough that I can envision this as a niche offering.

I'm not sure I understand what everyone has been experiencing with this fragrance, but I have a thought. There's a known phenomenon that when one person of repute says something, everyone follows. It's The Emperor's New Clothes, only here it's a note, and not magical clothing in question. At some point someone influential shouted "cedar!" and the whole world scrambled to echo it, fearing that an opposing take would rattle things. Well, I'm the little boy pointing at the naked man: "GINGER!" 

We'll Never Get These Back: Eleven Discontinued Fragrances That Are Gone Forever . . .

Fragrances are discontinued all the time, and it means nothing. When I hear that something is discontinued, my first thought is, okay, what is it exactly that was slashed? Are we talking about just another prosaic designer? Some obscure discount brand like Zirh finally let go of Corduroy? An old Italian house from the fifties finally buried one of its unremarkable citrus colognes? It is likely true that the discontinued product, whatever it was, is replaceable. Nothing to lose sleep over.  

But there are some discontinued fragrances that bum me and millions like me out. Invariably they were stylistically unique, undeniably well made (sometimes surprisingly so), and things I wish I could always own, price be damned. Back in 2013, I wrote an article (link) about the "Blog-Driven" resurrection of "Zombie Perfumes," i.e., fragrances that had lived on in people's hearts and on the review boards, despite their having been discontinued for some time. My point was that the power of popular demand, largely expressed by the best and the brightest fragrance writers at that time, had brought left-for-dead perfumes back to life via endless praise on Fragrantica and Basenotes.  

One example is Azzaro Acteur. This one was discontinued in the early nineties despite its 1989 release, as it was not an impressive draw for customers and lacked a convincing marketing campaign, probably due to its being out of step with the dihydromyrcenol and Calone 1951 times. It managed to lurk in the aftermarket for over a decade, and eventually the development of sites like Fragrantica allowed nostalgic Azzaro fans to wax enough poetics that they briefly reissued the darned thing. Ditto for Geoffrey Beene's 1986 aromatic-woody Bowling Green, which EA made a point to reissue for well over a year, making it possible for me to procure a bottle from Amazon for dirt-cheap. It wouldn't have been reissued if it weren't for all the singing about it on the internet, and ultimately it was discontinued again for selling just as poorly as it did the first time around. 

If Acteur and Bowling Green were granted commercial immortality, I and thousands of guys my age would be eternally grateful. Unfortunately their sales stats are on their tombstones, and it's understandably unlikely that they'll ever see the light of day again. Given that they managed to escape hell once, it's hard to say that we'll never see them again, but I'm not holding my breath. However, there are some fragrances that are special in ways that make their disappearances feel criminal. They are fragrances that had no easy comparatives, no peers in the canon of perfumes gone by, and things I would trade my left testicle to have again (for sane prices). Here are eleven discontinued fragrances that are truly gone forever, in no particular order . . . 

Ocean Rain (Mario Valentino, 1990)

Ocean Rain is Edmond Roudnitska's last commercial creation before his death at age 91 in 1996. Understand, that means he worked on Ocean Rain for Mario Valentino, obscure Italian peddler of luxury leather goods, when he was in his eighties. You'd be forgiven for expecting it to smell stodgy, given that the man who made it was likely running on sailboat fumes by that late stage of his artistic élan, but you'd be wrong. Ocean Rain is absolutely timeless and sublime, a dusky chypre that I personally interpret as an "oriental aquatic" of sorts, simply because its heart offers the sandiest amber accord I've ever had the pleasure of smelling. Ocean Rain is likely a splice-up of Roudnitska's "greatest hits," with bits and bobs of Diorella and Le Parfum de Thérèse thrown in, but it's easy to over-generalize Roudnitska's style after such a consistent and accomplished career. Ever the pioneer of new and exciting synthetics, the perfumer handed Valentino a fragrance that smells like the beach after a summer shower, a wet/dry petrichor only emitted by pulverized grains of quartz and silicon dioxide. Running parallel is an impression of a woman reclining on that beach, replete with whiffs of her fruity perfume and the weirdly universal sweetness of her kiss (healthy mean interpret the saliva of healthy women as tasting vaguely of Coca-Cola). Ocean Rain is probably the only perfume in my collection that seems eerily alive, as if the headspace of a sex-on-the-beach encounter was bottled by some dark magic. Long gone, this one will eventually vanish from eBay, and when it does, that's it. 

Yohji Homme (Yohji Yamamoto, 1999)

Of the fragrances on this list, this one is my least favorite. Still, I recognized it as a one-off freak of nature beauty when I reviewed it over a decade ago, and my opinion holds: The original unedited formula of Yohji Homme deserves a permanent resurrection. This was one of those nineties fragrances that captured the zeitgeist better than most, an era of profound optimism and ebullience that expressed itself with heady-sweet concoctions that eschewed foodiness in favor of freshness. Where most post-Cool Water fougères went with floral-aquatic accords, Yohji Homme adopted a far riskier coffee/lavender trick, with a heavy twist of licorice root and a silvery base of whiskey and woods. In the last ten years, we've witnessed the depressing rise of what the kids think is "fresh" these days: tons of ethyl-maltol and ooey-gooey sugary ambery crapola, a bad date for any nose. Rewind to the end of the Clinton administration, and youngsters were surprisingly sophisticated, wearing bonafide masterpieces like Tommy Girl and Le Male like they were nothing, which allowed something like this to be born. Why Yohji Homme's original formula was discontinued is anyone's guess -- I almost never believe the reasons given by the people involved in making the fragrance. Their input is interesting, but when something is dc'd and then reissued, it makes me wonder what's up. Now the reissue is also dc'd, making the whole thing moot. I think Yohji Homme was arguably a little thin and weak, but it was also a finely-tooled piece of sleek machinery, a summery lavender ensconced in herbal-sweet aromatics that belied the foibles of the year "American Pie" was a blockbuster. 

Aqua Quorum (Antonio Puig, 1994)

Let's face it: the original Quorum from 1982 should be sent to pasture. I'm not saying it shouldn't be worn, or that people who enjoy it are fuddy-duddies; I'm just pointing out that its era of overwrought brown-study powerhouses, full of burnt grasses and woods and fermented tobaccos and musks and screaming "I'M A MAN," has officially passed us by, and is now a distant speck in our rearview mirror. That doesn't mean we should abandon Aqua Quorum, however. When I bought my bottle a decade ago, I expected it to be a cheap and forgettable "blue" fragrance that hankered after Cool Water and Polo Sport, but I was mistaken. It's actually a riff on Lauder's New West (1988), but in my opinion it's better. Much better. Calone 1951 is the driver in the engine room that accidentally fell asleep on the throttle and pushed the ride up to eleven. It's a mysterious synthetic in that unlike typical perfumery chems that we perceive as growing ever weaker in proportion to increased exposure, Calone gets stronger instead. If on Monday you spray one or two puffs of Aqua Quorum and it smells like a light bay breeze, by Friday you will experience an hallucinogenic freshness that literally seizes your brain via your nose and sends jolts of pink lightning through it. They overdosed this molecule in the formula, and usually that would read as a big mistake, but not here. Shimmery aldehydes, briny driftwood, and crisp pine notes all lend crucial balance to what would otherwise be a catastrophic mess of a freshie, and by getting this equilibrium on the money, Aqua Quorum is instead a masterpiece of nineties freshness. This perfume is kinetic, like smelling a moving piece of nature, and is to date the only "cheapie" that has ever rivaled a vintage Creed. It's still available for pennies on Fragrancenet, but they only have a few bottles left. 

Fendi "Donna" (Fendi, 1985)

This was my mom's signature fragrance, right up until the day stores took it off shelves and it vanished forever. It has since been bottled unicorn tears on eBay, fetching prices in excess of $300. I'll be honest and say that if it were just my mom's old standard, I probably wouldn't care (sorry mom). But here's the thing about the original Fendi for women: there is nothing else like this stuff. Like everything else on this list, it is one of a kind. I once got her a bottle of K de Krizia as a substitute, hoping its similar overall aldehydic chypre aesthetic would hit the spot, but no. Not even close. And why did I ever think it would be? Fendi was peculiarly masculine for an eighties feminine, a trait no other big-boned hybrid of its era possessed. The world was awash in mink-and-pearls stuff like Chanel's Coco and Calvin Klein's Obsession, bawdy orientals that lavished customers with overdoses of syrupy florals and spiced ambers. One whiff of those and I immediately picture every woman I met as a child except my mom, who somehow, despite being a perfectly normal feminine woman, managed to pull off this illicit exercise in oakmoss and dry leather. This fragrance wasn't a spice bomb or a dowdy floral, nor was it a rosy thing like Lauder's Beautiful. Fendi was an austere leather, bone dry, with no obvious spice or floral notes, save for a gorgeous coriander and sage accord mated to something green and bitter and smoky, and just wonderful. There's no point in even directing you to remaining bottles; for everyone but the filthy rich, this fragrance is officially gone, and has been for no less than thirty years. I've hunted the world over for something, anything like it, to no avail.  

Ungaro Pour L'Homme II (Emanuel Ungaro, 1992)

There were three Ungaros for men, and the first one has eluded me, although only because I don't care to go out of my way to find it. I have the other two, and surprisingly found that I prefer III over II, if only because I'm a sucker for masculines with overt rose notes. II is a lavender fragrance, fashioned after Guerlain's original Jicky (1889), and for this reason is a holotype in the record perfumus obscurus; to date there are no other "clones" of Jicky that have ever surfaced. There are fragrances that owe a debt to Jicky (Guerlain's own Mouchoir de Monsieur), and there are those that are inspired by it, but II would not exist were it not for Jicky, plain and simple. I find the fragrance is introverted and anodyne compared to the muskier fougèrientals of the eighties and nineties, but its civet and fetid wood notes lend it a burlier countenance than it might otherwise have. One thing is for certain: If I ever stumble across I, my nose is going into comparison overdrive to see how and why Ungaro (technically Chanel) opted to veer into this rarest of rare parking spots. There were plenty of others that were closer to the door, yet they went with something that nobody would try again, and now my bottle is worth well over $100. 

Relax (Davidoff, 1990)

Davidoff fragrances are generally replaceable, and if they discontinued Zino, or Hot Water, or The Game, few would miss them. (By the way, for those of you who insist on yelling that Zino is discontinued, I direct you to eBay, where a 4.2 oz. bottle is two dollars cheaper than the same size of The Game. Can we just admit that the stuff is still being made, or do we have to keep pretending?) Even a discontinuation of Cool Water would suck more for Davidoff and Coty than it would for the buying public, which has largely moved on from the dihydromyrcenol-fueled nineties to all manner of awful oud and praline things. There are two fragrances that Davidoff discontinued that simply can't be replaced: Good Life and Relax. I can't comment on Good Life, except to say that I've never smelled it, but if and when I do, I'll probably include it in this list as well. Currently Good Life sets the records for most expensive vintage Davidoff; Relax is not far behind. And Relax is one helluva good fragrance, I can promise you. It boggles the mind as to why a company would put out something as true to its name, only to can it a couple years later, but that's exactly what Lancaster did, probably when Coty took over. Rumor has it Relax was available at Davidoff tobacco boutiques until the mid-2000s, but I recall searching for it in 2010 and finding nothing, with high-priced bottles on eBay even then. How does it smell? Simply beautiful, an ambery fougère with oriental underpinnings of velvety woods and sweet florals, with just a hint of cushy vanilla, this fragrance opens bright and fruity-fresh, then rapidly segues into what can only be described as a formal reimagining of Brut. Its unique blend of mint, citrus, lavender, jasmine, woods, and musks has never been replicated. I could hunt for decades for a replacement and come up empty, so I've stopped trying.  

Unbound for Men (Halston, 2002)

Roy Halston Fenwick is known for Z-14 and 1-12 because those fragrances are great. But Unbound for Men was released almost thirty years later to very little fanfare, as by that point the Halston brand had already faded into bargain-basement obscurity, due in no small part to how Roy had sold his name to all the wrong people over the course of five decades. My generation doesn't know how important Halston was to American fashion; he went global after he designed Jackie Kennedy's famous inaugural "pillbox" hat. Hats were his bag, until he branched out into the wider world of high fashion during the sixties and on into the Nixon years, when he eventually made the leap to perfume. EA Fragrances eventually acquired the perfume rights, and for reasons unknown they issued Unbound fully twelve years after the designer's death. Overlooked as a wonky Acqua di Giò clone, it's actually better than its template, and quite unlike anything I've ever smelled before or since. Imagine Acqua di Giò, but with a ton of tomato leaf in the top notes, followed by salty watermelon and cucumber, then dust it all with some coriander and let everything settle on synthetic ambergris and basil. Now imagine the ingredient quality is three notches above what it should be for a $25 fragrance, and you have Unbound for Men. Yeah, it seemed like another pedestrian "freshie" at first glance, but by about a third of the way through my large bottle, I realized I had something very special on my hands. The bright and bitter greenness of its tomato leaf, its zesty coriander, the juiciness of its watermelon, and its sparkly-salty base accord was addictive and cheerful and helped me through a particularly drab time in my life. But it was also one-of-a-kind in how its herbal spices were balanced against crisply fresh fruits and aquatic musks. Now that it's gone, I wonder what kind of soul-selling it would take to convince EA to bring it back. Somehow I doubt they'd be interested after their Bowling Green fiasco. Yeah, it's gone for good. 

Nobile (Gucci, 1988)

My best friend had a bottle of this. It smelled like the eighties had stepped out of a Crocodile Dundee movie wearing Kouros and Antaeus and Zino, then took a long hot shower with the original Irish Spring bar soap, all sudsy and soapy-clean but with lingering echos of those older and darker powerhouses. Nobile wasn't a masterpiece, nor was it avant-garde, but it was the best at what it did, which was represent eighties male virility in a style that encapsulated the marriage of Italianate green-piney old-world cologne to Bausch + Lomb-wearing Wall Street modernity. Everything is on offer -- lavender, citruses, florals, a bucketload of irones and ionones, cis-3-Hexen-1-ol (grassiness), oakmoss, sandalwood, with whispers of labdanum and other lyre chypre tones played by Orpheus for Eurydice -- and I could get into the nitty-gritty of how all of Nobile's notes fit together to form a big, soapy, super-green masculine that is extremely potent without smelling obnoxious, but what's the point? You get the point. This was that fragrance, but it was better than the rest. It's hard to say how, but Nobile possessed a quality of freshness and vitality that transcended green fougères and strayed into mythical beauty, the sort of scent you could smell once and never forget. It's been dead and buried for several decades now, and while many green aromatics for men have since been born and killed off, none have ever come close to emulating how great Nobile smelled. 

Touch for Men (Fred Hayman, 1995)

I interviewed Jeffrey Dame, the creator of this fragrance, back in 2013 (please dig into my blog archives for that), and to sum up, Touch was his labor of love. I'm talking the original Touch by Parlux with the black cap, not the silver cap reformulation by Victory International that came out many years later. I'm told the silver version is a different fragrance altogether. My bottle is from 1995, and I find that to be odd. Nothing about it says "I'm a nineties frag." Its box and bottle look like the late seventies or early eighties in both name and aesthetic, but that speaks to just how variegated the styles of the nineties were. Gen Z (Zoomers) think of the decade as being their dad's era, and when I spritz on Touch, I see their point. Often compared to Brut, Touch does smell remarkably similar, a powdery floral fougère with a hint of citrus brightness on top and mossy musk below. There are also shades of Avon's Wild Country, due to Dame's reliance on powder to create a dry barbershop aura. But Touch is even more similar to Neutrogena's famous $20 shower gel called Rainbath. It's almost the exact same smell. So I suppose you could argue that this discontinued gem lives on for Rainbath users, except, well, not so fast . . . Touch has a few things Rainbath doesn't. For starters, its lavender note is far more complex, weaving in and out of warmth and coolness, and most of its bitter herbal background players flit just beyond the realm of perceptibility. Touch is also sweet, with an ambery and vanillic drydown that ensconses the wearer for hours in a cloud of happiness. Brut is soapier, simpler, greener, muskier, but Touch is a sweet lavender mist, and when the last few bottles vanish from eBay, I'm sure I'll never find anything quite like it again. 

Agua Lavanda Puig, Green Glass Bottle Version 

(Antonio Puig, 1940)

I know, I know, there are two Puig fragrances on this list, and how can that be? Well, if Aqua Quorum represents a discontinued gem that did amazingly original things with amazingly unoriginal materials, Agua Lavanda Puig (or Puig's Lavender Water) symbolizes the passing of Old World tradition into the sands of time. Technically this fragrance is still in production, and very easy to find in Spain and Portugal, among other stretches of Mediterranean Europe, but there were always two versions, the one in green glass and the one in plastic shampoo bottles. The glass version is no more, gone for at least fifteen years, and probably longer. Lavender is one of those universally recognized notes that I'd be hard-pressed to consider unique in any way, but the version in this stuff was simply glorious in its simplicity and beauty, yet also maddening in its longevity. I would get maybe twenty minutes out of a very generous splashing before it evaporated into thin air and took its gorgeous scent with it. It wasn't one-note lavender; ALP was lavender with a vibrant rosemary note, and both smelled of natural essential oils in generous concentration. Sprightly and bitter geranium, tonka, cedar, and some sort of midcentury white musk all drew around the central lavender note, which smelled unique in its own right. It was less like stereotypical lavender and more like some kind of watery "eau" that smelled way ahead of its time. No other lavender cologne/after shower splash has come anywhere close to replicating the polished chrome diopside languor of vintage Agua Lavanda Puig. Given that it's still being watered-down and sold year after year in those tired plastic monstrosities, I nurture the fantasy that the company will go back to respecting their bedrock fragrance again, but I'm not holding my breath. 

Green Valley (Creed, 1999)

I'm gonna just come right out and say it: Green Valley is the best fragrance I've ever smelled. Out of the roughly 800 perfumes that I've put my nose on, this one beats all of them, and it isn't even close. This hurts me deeply, because it's been discontinued for ten years with zero availability in the aftermarket, save for a few obscenely priced survivor bottles that are probably spoiled by now and not worth the glass that holds them. The version pictured here, with the green cap, was the original release from 1999, which within six years was replaced by a transparent cap, for reasons that defy explanation, other than it was Olivier Creed being needlessly OCD about one of his products again. But here's the real kicker with Green Valley: there is literally nothing else on the planet that smells like it. With nearly every fragrance in history, you can assemble a small coterie of similar things that either riff on or blatantly copy each other, but not so here. This fragrance, despite conveying what seems like (on paper) a pedestrian fruity-green "fresh" profile, manages to smell so radically unique and brilliantly executed that it defies the laws of physics. I can describe Green Valley -- green minty/grassy top accord, bitter and slightly floral, some mandarin orange sweetness, followed by ginger, blackcurrant, vetiver, more mint, more grassiness, with ghostly notes of watermelon, coumarin, green tea, hawthorne, violet leaf, resting on ambergris and sandalwood -- but that doesn't really describe Green Valley. You can't understand it until you actually smell it, and you need to spray liberally, meaning you need a full 2.5 oz bottle to get the full effect. This suggests that you have $1200 to spare on a "vaulted" Creed. You can drop that kind of cash on an eBay seller's old dusty bottle, but buyer beware, as it will likely smell off. I don't have much hope that Kering will bring Green Valley back, for a few reasons. First, they can't really do it. The formula for it was super expensive and had grafted together bits of Millesime Imperial, Silver Mountain Water, Tabarome Millesime, and Green Irish Tweed, but also had original accords of bitter wildflowers and an intense green grassiness woven in. Another issue is material quality; Kering is all about cutting corners on formula cost, and now that Olivier is no longer obsessing over the very best of the best ingredients, it's unlikely that any reissue would smell right. Green Valley was a fragrance in motion. It would drift and waft and shimmer through my nose, the exact smell of a dew-covered field of uncut grass and weeds on a cool morning, with a gentle gust of air rustling through it all. I could actually smell the fronds of green moving and glittering with moisture, a sea of emeralds rippling to the horizon. Green Valley was magical, mystical, on another plane of existence. The perfume world seems to understand this, because almost no one has attempted to clone or recreate Green Valley, a fact I find both amusing and annoying. It's a little funny because it tells me that despite all the bitching about Creed, people have to give them this one. They created something truly new, truly beautiful, and truly one-off. But now that we've smelled it, why hasn't anyone at least attempted a clone? Well, DUA Fragrances, that weird scammy brand that sells one ounce bottles for stupid money, is the only company with the balls to put out a Green Valley clone (Vert Instinct), so I might as well try it. But make no mistake, this fragrance, like all of the fragrances I've written about here, is gone forever. 

Agua Brava (Antonio Puig)

There are moments in my seemingly endless fragrance journey when I know I have encountered something valuable: an idea, liquefied and bottled and worn by millions of people, yet still rare. Such perfumes are not accouterments to dress, or accessories in fashion, but mantles into which certain individuals are to step, to assume their roles as the world's Alphas and Omegas. Such is Agua Brava's coded message. This flawless gem declares its wearers as mindful of the earth on which they tread, acutely aware of nature's master plan for all blooded vessels, and ready to bequeath this truth to loved ones. It is a fragrance one can live comfortably in, and die happily in. It is the simplicity of verdant beauty, expressed in three simple accords - citrus, pine needles, and moss.

This fougère's best feature is its amazingly natural feel. It is structurally unremarkable, as there are thousands of woody-piney old-school masculines in a similar caste, and it lacks punch (it's gone in four hours), but the quality of its materials is humbling. Its bergamot and lemon top note is woven with enough skill to allow every one of its minuscule citrus molecules a chance to shine, and to pierce through the air with crystalline clarity. Its bay-laden pine accord is brisk, airy, and quite rich, a balancing act completely devoid of synthetic foundation and flourish. There are no white musks, no iso E-supers, no dihydromyrcenols, Calones, or Acetylenic esters. There are simply the expressed constituencies of 10 carbon alcohols, with vague wisps of lavender and mint interlaced into stronger notes of bergamot and raw fir, an entirely natural effect, complete with wood sap and dew. This is niche quality stuff. 

I'm inclined to accept the English interpretation of Agua Brava's name as "Brave Water," although there are variances in meaning, depending on where you look. It reminds me of Dior's Eau Sauvage, or "Savage Water." Is Eau Sauvage "savage?" Yes and no - it is savagely beautiful, but ultimately a tame composition. What about "Brave Water?" I think this is closer to the mark, not because it takes an act of courage to wear Agua Brava, but because attempts to explain it to bystanders requires a leap of faith. You have to believe that your melon/aquatic-wearing brethren will accept your headscratch-inducing embrace of bitter, indedible fruit and dusky pine, twenty-five years after the death of that trend in fine fragrance. Furthermore, once your explanation has been proffered, an unflinching faith in the continued existence of kindred spirits is needed to get you through the odd reactions ("it smells like soup," "it's herbal b.o.") that are sure to follow. In any case, Agua Brava remains a stalwart member of a triad of Mediterranean herbal-pines, and continues to stand beside Pino Silvestre and Acqua di Selva as a timeless classic.

Aqua Quorum (Antonio Puig)

Twelve years after the release of Quorum, the folks at Puig made a predictable move and conformed to the "fresh-aquatic" trend of the nineties by releasing its first flanker, Aqua Quorum. I have read a few things about this fragrance over the years, with most of the impressions positive, so recently decided to grab a bottle in preparation for the warmer months ahead. I'm glad I did, because Aqua Quorum is one of the loveliest fresh fougères I have ever had the pleasure of smelling.

Aqua Quorum's structure is fairly simple and direct, but the quality of ingredients is surprisingly high for a budget scent, and their integration is seamless. Its opening accord is one of the most beautiful openings I have encountered in many years, a fizzy combination of lavender, bitter grapefruit, and pine needles, with a healthy shot of freesia, clary sage, and salt. It transports me to a beach on a northeastern coastal state, perhaps Massachusetts or Maine, where cold ocean waters caress gritty sands on salinated breezes, and send shocks of blue air through patches of Eastern Hemlock and Atlantic White Cedar. It's a wild, free, outdoorsy aroma, blended to perfection.

The effect is citric, aromatic, and green, and is so bracing and clean-smelling that it nearly makes my knees buckle. Yeah, it's that good. I don't often come across such well-wrought "fresh" accords, and expected Aqua Quorum's top to possess its progenitor's gummier, less-pleasant grapefruit note, along with dihydromyrcenol-fueled ozonics via Guy Laroche's Horizon, but I was pleasantly surprised. My cynicism was totally unwarranted here. As it dries down, the saltiness comes forward, the lavender and grapefruit dissipate, and the breezy evergreen notes waft across a light array of blond woods and musk. I smell the melon-like sweetness of Calone in here, but it balances the bitter greens, and never gets overbearing. Couched in the beachiness is a pleasantly aromatic cedar note, Puig's precursor to Quorum Silver, to come eleven years later.

This fresh fougère version of Quorum has been compared on basenotes and Fragrantica to Cool Water and Polo Sport. I smell almost no similarity to Cool Water, beyond perhaps a similar usage of lavender (Aqua Quorum's might be a bit more natural), but there's definitely a family resemblance to Polo Sport. There's no pineapple and it's not as loud, but Aqua Quorum is just as peppy and fresh, if not a little cleaner. The only downside is longevity - expect two hours of reasonable sillage and projection, and not much else after that. It becomes a salty skin scent, albeit a nice one. I can't believe how underrated and underappreciated Aqua Quorum is, but I'm thankful that Puig still makes it, and makes it well. It's truly one of the greats in the "fresh" and "sporty" genres, proof that not everything in those categories smells boring and crassly synthetic.

Agua Lavanda Puig (Antonio Puig)

In the early 1940s, America was a strange country to live in. The majority of its male population was overseas, fighting on any one of several fronts in Europe and Asia. Left behind were women, children, and the elderly. Perfume releases were few and far beteween; men had no women to impress, and women had no men. Those who wore perfume were wearing it for nostalgia's sake, for love of husbands battling the enemy, or to celebrate their successful avoidance of conscription. 

Many Hollywood actors were given the generous option to enlist, and I imagine more than a few of them lived it up while their fellow countrymen got shot at. One of the many reasons I admire Jimmy Stewart is that he was willing to serve his country, when he could just as easily have kicked back at home and enjoyed his money. Fragrance was probably something he had no interest in at all.

Agua Lavanda Puig was released in 1940, which makes it a bit of a mystery. Who was it marketed to? Was it strictly a European release, worn by the war-torn men and women of Spain and France? Not likely, although I understand it is currently very popular in Spain. Was it imported into America for the Left-Behind generation? Perhaps, but I can't figure out exactly why. There were certainly some middle-aged men left in America, mostly successful businessmen in the upper middle class. I suppose they might have been given to wearing something like Puig's lavender water. The thing is, it doesn't smell like something any American male of the 1940s would wear. It is unremittingly Mediterranean. It is fresh, mossy, loaded with lavender, basil, and a beautiful woody lime note, which became much more popular in the 1960s. 

Agua Lavanda is, without exaggeration, the greenest example of early twentieth century perfumery, save for Coty's Chypre, Guerlain's Mitsouko, and Green Water by Jacques Fath. It does not get any greener, fresher, or southern European than Agua Lavanda Puig.

Puig's original formula has survived the decades and can still be had today at a whopping $20 a bottle. However, a word of caution: the fragrance comes in two different forms, one in a plastic shampoo bottle, the other in a seven ounce glass flask. Get the one in glass; the plastic version smells like a 33% concentration.

Quorum (Antonio Puig)

The box for Quorum states that the fragrance is made with alcohol of "vegetal origin." Kind of a funny thing to mention, but I guess some people prefer all-organic perfumes.

Anyway, this is yet another masculine aromatic from the early 1980s that has zero presence in the blogosphere, and again I ask - WHY??? What is preventing people from writing about this scent? It's from a reputable house, it's 30 years old, and it's still around for a whopping $15 a bottle. For many, Quorum falls into the unofficial "Powerhouse" category, i.e. it's a fragrance with tremendous sillage and longevity. I disagree with that assessment, however. While by no means timid, Quorum has average sillage on me, and lasts about 6 hours before fading. There are rumors that the original formula was more assertive, but at its current price-point, I can't see forking over extra dough just to compare. Quorum is one of the best deals in masculine perfumery - it smells like it could cost at least twice as much as it does.

If I had to summarize the scent of Quorum in one sentence, it would have to be: smells like burnt grass in late September. The first few seconds yield a synthetic grapefruit citrus note, intermingled with a light touch of bitter cigar tobacco and a heavier dose of pine. At the three-minute point, the grapefruit recedes, and the pine steps forward, along with a very spicy arrangement of carnation, cyclamen, patchouli, cumin, and oakmoss. The overall effect is one of sun-singed greens mixed with expired evergreen, akin to the aroma of long-dead pine needles wafting up to greet you as you stroll on a path in the forest. Only the ravages of rainless summer months could yield this effect, and usually it's the first few crisp autumn days that amplify it. As an aromatic woody chypre, Quorum celebrates the season where some greens turn yellow, red, and brown.

When applied judiciously, Quorum has excellent balance and a nice, dry-green aura. However, the artificial grapefruit gets super-sweet and cloying if you over-apply. If the citrus was handled better (perhaps made of better ingredients), Quorum would be a five-star masculine. It enters Green Irish Tweed territory as a scent with situational duality; you can wear this at home, at work, or at play. As it stands, the scent could use a little freshening, but I enjoy it as a worthy addition to my autumnal rotation. Everyone sniffs things differently, and you may or may not get a leathery vibe from Quorum. I don't really smell leather here, and I'm glad. I'll take a musty pine over leather any day of the week.