Jōvan Musk for Men Signature Edition (Coty)

I've always felt that Jōvan Musk for Men smelled like narcissus, but I was never able to find anyone who confirmed it, so I kept the thought to myself. Smelling it again today, I'm reminded of the cultural reset buttons we press when we need a break from ourselves. For example, I've become a staunch believer in the Mediterranean diet and generally stick to the rigors of vegetables, lentils, olive oil, and fish. Yet every once in a very blue moon, I veer off course to indulge in a cheeseburger or two and have my faith in humanity restored. Likewise, one might adhere with religious fervor to the echelons of vaunted niche, only to seek solace in stealing a sniff of some drugstore elixir that time forgot.

Jōvan Musk for Men Signature Edition is a fragrance with no traceable identity, like a hitchhiker without an I.D. who simply stepped out of his dimension and into ours. There is no internet record of this fragrance, and I have no idea when it was released. Even Parfumo doesn’t have a page for it. The seller of my bottle didn’t include the box, and from what I’ve gleaned on eBay, the box doesn’t tell you anything anyway, so that’s a dead end. I imagine this was a 1990s or early 2000s special edition release for the holidays or something similar, perhaps with only one or two runs before being phased out, but who knows? On skin and on paper, Signature Edition smells very close to my 2017 bottle of Musk, almost imperceptibly different. It has a slightly deeper, richer, and more animalic nuance, but only by a hair. This richness feels like the core components of chemistry-lab musk, flower-child florals, and apothecary soap are better balanced, fused in a way that creates a smooth, mellow, retro experience: that slightly tarnished brightness of an olfactory brass gong catching the rays of a setting sun.

Signature Edition reminds me of how far afield from the original formula Coty has taken Jōvan Musk for Men. It sits somewhere in the intersection of the raunchier 1970s version and the soapy-clean 2000s one, straddling qualities of both without fully embodying either. This style of fragrance has become incredibly difficult to wear nowadays, especially around women. But then again, I can think of several luxury brands that would pay good money to release something this legibly raunchy, so it’s hard to knock Jōvan. A bottle of Musk Oil cost $25 in 1973 when adjusted for inflation, so it was still a cut above Old Spice and Brut, making it the accomplished dad cologne of the era. The difference is that a '70s dad could get laid wearing this, while I’ll probably repel every woman in town.

Lovely (Sarah Jessica Parker)

Having just read the backstory to this fragrance, I can safely say that what I smell makes sense. Burr described the day he spent with Sarah Jessica Parker as enlightening; they ended it with a visit to her Manhattan home, where she confessed her love for Bonnie Belle Skin Musk (actually called Bonne Belle). She contrasted the scent of grade-school cologne with Incense Avignon by Comme des Garçons and some no-name Egyptian fragrance oil she buys from a guy on the street or something. (Apparently, Burr couldn't be bothered to actually track down who this guy was or what he was selling to the biggest TV star of the time. True journalism is dead.)

The story behind Lovely is interesting, but maybe not in the way the author intended. Following its evolution, from SJP's original idea, which Coty immediately ditched, to the eventual release of Laurent Le Guernec and Clément Gavarry's formula for the global market, I found a few things rather odd. First, SJP’s original concept was rejected, even though it wasn’t all that out there for a feminine fragrance. She liked the idea of "body smells" in a sexy way and wanted something dusky, earthy, and a little dark. In other words, she envisioned a classical French feminine from the 1940s, updated for the 21st century. For Coty to balk and steer her toward whatever they thought would sell seemed counterintuitive. But then again, what do I know?

The second oddity is that Burr never actually describes what Lovely ended up smelling like. It’s as if he wants the reader to go out, buy it, and discover it firsthand. That’s fine, I suppose, but it feels like he sacrificed some much-needed narrative connective tissue in the process. The story remains a vague sketch built on the idea that SJP was "learning" about perfume and its creation while developing her brief on the fly. And really, that’s all the story is: a brief. She tells the executives what she likes and doesn’t like, then offers up imagery of Easter eggs, ribbons, hat boxes, and other random things. None of it is particularly enlightening, because what truly matters is how Le Guernec and Gavarry interpret her direction and turn it into an actual fragrance. Unfortunately, that part was left out, and I'm left wondering what their creative process was like. 

Lovely is greener and more floral than I expected. I’ve never smelled Narciso Rodriguez for Her, so I can’t make the comparison myself, but over 2,000 people think they’re similar, while only about 400 disagree. That’s Armaf-level stealth cloning. Le Guernec is especially skilled at reinterpreting popular commercial hits; his 2003 Chelsea Flowers for Bond is clearly a riff on Calice Becker’s Tommy Girl from 1996. I would argue Lovely is just as beautiful as Tommy Girl. This brings me to the third oddity, which is that no one seems to mention the massive hyacinth in this. It’s right there, screaming through a megaphone for the entire wear. The fragrance is incredibly strong. And yet, it’s also delicate, with a straw-like texture that anchors the sweet floral brightness, all wrapped in a soft cloud of white musk. It’s basically Skin Musk for rich people.

Except, thankfully, this fragrance isn’t expensive. I paid fifteen bucks for a 3 oz tester. And for the record, it looks and feels quite classy. The bottle is heavy glass, with a pretty grey ribbon tied around the base of the atomizer. Gold lettering. A soft pink tint to the bottle, tasteful and not overdone. The sticker and box don’t mention Coty at all. I’m not sure if they still distribute Lovely or if “The Lovely Distribution Company” is just a faux brand name Coty uses to distance itself. Maybe SJP asked for a rebrand. Coty tends to scream "cheap," and SJP isn't exactly a discount-bin celebrity. Just another odd detail in the story of her debut scent.

Lovely isn’t complicated. It comes across as a sweet floral musk, likable, easy on the nose, and refreshingly free of the usual crutches: no transparent fruits, no sugary syrup, no fake aquatic shimmer. There’s nothing trite or formulaic here. It just smells gauzy and relaxed, like a sheer spring floral framed in soft cotton.

Hey, for a tenner, you can’t go wrong.

Revisiting Jōvan's Ginseng NRG: Is It a Masterpiece, or a Cheap Gimmick?

Vintage N⬝R⬝G 

In 1975, Jōvan released its masculine and feminine Ginseng fragrances, which seemed to endure for the remainder of the decade before their eventual discontinuation. Jōvan is one of those weird drugstore brands that I often think could have been the stuff of greatness, if only it had held on to its best products. I mean that seriously. Grass Oil. Frankincense & Myrrh. Ginseng. Fresh Patchouli. Does any of this sound like crap to you? I guess it could have been, but a brand grows by offering quality to buyers. And Jōvan has grown, which is significantly better than just "surviving." Every few years it has something new to offer, and Coty has cradled Barry Shipp and Murray Moscona's now-fifty year-old baby with love (no awful reformulations, cheesy seventies image intact). 

Jōvan released Ginseng N⬝R⬝G in 1998, and I've often wondered if it was a reissue of the original masculine Ginseng fragrance, repackaged for the GNC health-nut nineties. This fragrance snuck onto KMart and Walmart shelves, and I was endlessly curious about it, always stopping to sample it. I thought it was hilarious, and a little clever, that Jōvan packaged it in miniscule 1.6 oz bottles that seemed crafted to resemble the similarly-diminutive herbal/caffeinated energy shots that were becoming all the rage. I also thought it was an interesting perfumery concept; no other company was dabbling with ginseng, and Jōvan used "ginseng extract" in the formula, so buyers knew they were serious, or as serious as a tongue-in-cheek brand like Jōvan could possibly get. This was a ginseng fragrance, souped-up for Millennials who were too young to remember the original. 

At some point in the 2000s, Coty discontinued it, only to reissue it a few years later with slightly different packaging. Gone was the holographic box and the 1.6 oz bottle size (only the 1 oz size remained). Gone was the framed label on the bottle, now made smaller and plainer, with only the name of the fragrance in holograph. The new look was obviously a budget cut, but the fragrance smelled exactly as it used to, so it didn't worry me. What does Ginseng N⬝R⬝G smell like? I reviewed it a few years ago, and mentioned that it reminds me of chlorinated swimming pools, that stinging feeling when you get water up your nose at the local YMCA. A more generous interpretation would be that it's a pleasant nineties "freshie" with notably nineties accords of green tea, violet leaf, fig leaf, tonka, woody amber, and musk. Oh, and ginseng, definitely ginseng. 

Ginseng N⬝R⬝G manages to do something interesting, however. The central accord of bitter-woody ginseng against a soft backdrop of pallid florals and musks plays like a harp from olfactory heaven when you catch it just right. The fragrance is surprisingly strong, which may account for why it's in such small bottles, yet the green notes, usually the sharp-vegetal piece of any bucolic fragrance theme, are invariably sweet and smooth, while the typically genteel ensemble of "buzzy" woods are the aggressors. The tea note is nuclear strength, yet also floral and sappy in its bombast, and the somewhat dank woodiness of ginseng seems a background player. At first sniff you would think it's just "cheap," but give it time and things start to seem a bit off-kilter. Why is the fig blended so tightly? Normally fig leaps out at me and becomes the only thing I can smell, but here it vanishes into the abstract paperings of nectarous greens. 

Likewise, drugstore musks are usually "fuzzy" things that overtake whatever finesse a cheap frag might offer and change it into a monotone blah. Ginseng N⬝R⬝G's musk is fuzzy all the way through, yet its pyramid of complex materials never really loses ground. The tea, citrus, leafy florals, and ginseng are quite coherent throughout the ten hour lifespan of the drydown, poking through the musky fog to remind me of who's calling the shots. I don't subscribe to the religion of reformulations, or attend the church of batch variations, so my view on how consistent the ginseng extract is in Ginseng N⬝R⬝G on a year-to-year basis is as neutral as it gets. But forfeiting an ecumenical stance doesn't eradicate the need to know more, and I'm dying to know who put this fragrance together, what their motivation was, and how something so weirdly dated and passé could survive the decades with nary a missing note. Who is the untapped genius behind this budget marvel? 

One could view the "Panax ginseng extract" as a gimmick, but it's really not. Let's face it, a perfume that advertises itself as containing a material should contain the actual material, and this one does. Not only that, but the fragrance doesn't resemble anything else on the market, then and now. I don't sniff Ginseng N⬝R⬝G and say, "Okay, another Cool Water," or "Yep, there's Acqua di Gio." No other fresh Millennial sneaker juice comes to mind when I smell this stuff. It's like I'm experiencing a fragrance in a cultural vacuum; there are no obvious comparatives, and thus the impossible was inexplicably achieved. 

My Thoughts on Scent Beauty's Purchase of Preferred Stock & Stetson

At some point last year (or was it the year before?) Coty sold two of its legacy brands to a relatively unknown Firmenich affiliate company called Scent Beauty. Interestingly, it was the Preferred Stock and Stetson portfolios that transitioned, and are now available on Scent Beauty's web site at newly-elevated price points. 

From what I've been reading online, it appears Firmenich was tasked with reformulating both fragrances, and also creating a new Stetson cologne called Stetson Spirit, which is apparently some sort of citrus-woody scent. The whole lot has been issued at prices that reach about ten dollars above what they were when they were made by Coty, so still quite affordable, but no longer "budget." A 2.5 oz Preferred Stock is now $35. That's quite a hike. I bought the same size for about $25 back in 2013, and that was when it was still offered at Walmart - on the shelf, not behind glass. 

But let's revisit Preferred Stock. This is a fragrance I don't wear very often. In fact, I haven't worn it in at least five years. I'm leery of using it up because I've viewed it as a fragrance that could go extinct and vanish altogether. I never trusted Coty with it. And now my suspicions have been realized! The Scent Beauty reformulation has changed the scent into a more citrus-forward woody variant of its former self. I haven't smelled it yet, but believe what I read in this regard. It's likely the heads at SB wanted an "updated" version that would appeal to younger buyers without putting off veteran buyers, and wound up with something similar but different.

Naturally this will send the price of Coty's formula to the unicorn stables on eBay, which means even my partially-used old bottle will increase in value. I gave it a sniff this morning, and can still smell it on me this afternoon as I write this. When I sprayed it I knew immediately that it had macerated in the bottle since the last time I smelled it, roughly 2016 or 2017. The wormwood top note was arresting in its depth and clarity, the lavender had grown dark and "dusty" in feel, and this dry woodiness extended into the heart, where notes of sage, cypress, patchouli, oakmoss, and vetiver combine to form a sort of "autumn leaf pile" smell with just a hint of green sweetness thanks to a soft brushing of chamomile in with the patchouli. The whole affair is surprisingly crisp, loud, complex, with very good note separation, and a discreet woody drydown that lingers for five or six hours after the opening act. Very impressive for a drugstore fragrance, and even more so after nearly ten years of sparse usage. I wish I could wear this all the time!

But what does it mean when a brand that also owns Amouage and Montale buys Preferred Stock and Stetson? It's strange, but smelling my bottles today, I realized it makes sense. These two drugstore classics have spent decades suffering from being grossly mis-marketed by their parent company. Coty never knew how to pitch them, with their upper-tier designer quality belied by their lowbrow commercial image. Preferred Stock was given a flimsy colorless box and an equally dull looking bottle, and Stetson was forever tied to its schlocky cowboy schtick with only slightly better packaging. When you look at them on a shelf together, it's almost impossible to get a "feel" for what kind of fragrances you're looking at. One is dyed grey and the other is a plain amber, and they both have cheap plastic caps. Preferred Stock is especially nondescript, to the point where any attempt to describe it to someone unfamiliar with it is impossible. "It's the one that looks like isopropyl alcohol, only it smells way better." 

Inexplicably, Coty chose to use good materials for both fragrances. My splash bottle of Stetson cologne is a bit older and has been growing noticeably darker in color year after year, with the powdery woods and bright jasmine note increasing in richness. It smells like an old-fashioned Parisian feminine with an Art Deco flair to its orientalism. The intriguing thing about my bottle is how the jasmine and white floral notes "bloom" in the drydown, becoming more sheer and expansive with time. Coty didn't cheap out with this stuff, yet they were insanely miserly with how they positioned the fragrance, opting to give it a blue collar pickup truck driver image, which is forever puzzling. I almost wish Scent Beauty would discontinue the Stetson brand and revive the formula as a completely new luxury feminine. And side note: I still have a nearly-full bottle of Stetson Sierra, which is just as well made and closer in character to Preferred Stock than its namesake is. 

Hopefully Scent Beauty is able to keep these fragrances alive and well as we head into the twenties. I plan on holding on to my bottles of PS and Stetson, though my break from wearing the latter this past winter means I'll likely use it more next season. I also have a bottle of Red for Men, which is similar in overall feel to PS, and also macerating in the bottle, so I expect to enjoy that one from October onward as well. 

Stetson (Coty)

I reviewed Stetson back in 2013, but it was an awful review. I recently bought a bottle, and decided it was time to do it right. So let's get into this.

Stetson is an oddity. It's a cheap oriental marketed to men, but it smells like an old-fashioned feminine. Its top notes of malted lavender and citrus rapidly burn into waxy, candle-smoked jasmine and powdery woods. Simple pyramid, meritorious execution, efficient, plain, economical packaging. I've noticed that cheap masculines are often packed with notes, but Stetson harkens from a brief moment in perfumery history when companies were pushing budget formulas with compact pyramids, possibly because they realized it was better to render a few notes well, rather than many notes badly. The execs behind frags like Chaps, English Leather, and Stetson embraced this philosophy in the early 1980s, and it paid off.

But the 1980s are long over. How does Stetson work in 2020? Nobody will ever accuse it of being a great fragrance, but the jasmine note at its core is interesting. I love a good floral, and jasmine soliflores are among my favorites. The aldehydic jasmine in Chrome Legend is what shuttled it firmly into the "love" camp for me. Tea Rose Jasmin was another good one, now sadly gone. And that overripe, fruity, ethereal jasmine in Ocean Rain is truly incredible. So an old-school oriental with such an intense white floral note is endearing. Universal themes of cool morning dew (the fruited lavender) and afternoon warmth (leathery woods) create a successful sense of contrast in what would otherwise be flat gas station fare.

A fun thing to do when wearing a thirty-eight year-old fragrance is to envision the world in which it was released. Were young guys wearing Stetson to attract the local Phoebe Cates? Ms. Cates was our national treasure at the time. Disco was dead, The Cars and Tom Petty were on the radio, and Burt Reynolds was in his Charles Bronson Lite phase. But Stetson doesn't really smell like the eighties. It smells like the forties. It's a rip on Chantilly (Houbigant, 1941), and by proxy on Shalimar. So even in 1981, Stetson was an anachronism. Its quality made it a good value, and its marketing erased the potential for stigma. People were clever back then.

I wear Stetson more often than I thought I would. I figured I'd buy it and wear it once a year. I've used it about fifteen times in the past three months. It smells good. It wears beautifully. Its floral note carries solidly through the day, never losing clarity or balance. It's subtle enough to escape coming across as "perfumey." It's good stuff.

I recommend Stetson to any guy who wants a well-made oriental that won't break the bank. There are better orientals out there, but not for the money, and if you enjoy jasmine, few fragrances exploit the note as well as this one. Two thumbs up.

Nautica Classic (Coty)

Fragrantica attributes twenty-one notes to the pyramid of this fragrance, yet when I smell it I get roughly three: synthetic citrus, synthetic woods, and white musk. One would argue that this makes the fragrance simple to the point of smelling "cheap," but I would counter with an impression of something stereotypically nineties in the post Drakkar and Cool Water style that led the industry from 1983 to 2003. Nautica Classic doesn't smell complex or original, but it smells good in a bland handsoap sort of way.

There are fragrances for "connoisseurs" of fragrance, and then there are EDTs that people just wear because they want to wear something. Think of job interviews, informal Friday night dinners with the in-laws, taking your children to weekend birthday parties (that require you to stay), and even just doing chores around the house in your blue jeans. In these cases you could reach for any fragrance, but if you reach for Clive Christian, Acqua di Parma, or Creed, you have more money than brains.

I am reminded of Drakkar Noir and Cool Water in the same way that Passion for Men reminds me of Old Spice. All the same basic elements of this fragrance type are there, but they're tweaked a bit differently, and the result is inferior to its template. I get a blast of hand-soapy lavender, window-cleaner citrus, and a touch of that dry, smoky pine and patchouli accord found in Drakkar, but this basic woody dihydromyrcenol effect is enveloped in an opaque (and sweet) Cool Watery cloud of fruity white musk.

On a side note, people are claiming that Coty reformulated this into utter swill. It's hard to imagine that any concern could take such an abject failure to be original and make it even less original. My super vague recollection of nineties Nautica matches what I smell today, and if sharp chemical citrus top notes and scratchy chemical sandalwood basenotes were rich Grey Flannelesque citrus and Creed-like sandalwood in the nineties, I stand corrected. I suspect though that this was just as boring then as it is now.

Rethinking Jovan Musk (As An Aftershave)

About six years ago I got into the two big Jovan masculines: Musk and Sex Appeal. I liked and enjoyed both, but preferred Sex Appeal by a wide margin. Its rich patchouli-herbal twang, bolstered by a surprisingly mellow lavender note, simply worked for me. It helps that its fragrance profile is closely aligned to more classical orientals of its era, namely Pierre Cardin Pour Monsieur and (a bit later) Ungaro Pour L'Homme II. I can wear either of those two fragrances and use Sex Appeal aftershave without conflict.

Musk for Men was always a tougher sell. For one thing, it doesn't match well with anything, except maybe Lagerfeld Classic, and even then it's risky. Musk is also an unreliable performer; I've worn this fragrance enough to know that it can be like wearing three different fragrances, a gamble not entirely welcome when personal insecurities accompany me to my wardrobe in the morning. The stuff changes between wearings. Some days it's a grassy floral musk, and others it's a skanky, semi-animalic beast. And every blue moon it smells like the freshest, cleanest laundry detergent money can buy. That kind of split personality is a little unnerving.

It's been about four years now since I smelled it, and I recently happened across a super cheap bottle of Musk in aftershave concentration, so I decided to revisit my memories of the fragrance. My prior bottle was just the cologne concentration, and I always wondered about the splash. I have to say, I'm not disappointed. As an aftershave it performs exactly like Sex Appeal, with a gentle alcohol snap and bracing herbal camphor.

Jovan is, contrary to popular belief, a decent brand. They make surprisingly complex fragrances with good performance and longevity, they're adequately priced, and most importantly, they're memorable. Once you smell Musk for Men, you can't forget it. Ditto Sex Appeal. (I guess Black Musk is discontinued - I haven't seen it in a while.) Ginseng NRG isn't too bad either, although it really only works in the summer. Musk for Men's aftershave splash smells like I remember the cologne on its best days - rich, sweet, citrusy, slightly floral, with a shimmery skin musk in the old world tradition of Aqua Velva and Max Factor.

I don't consider this a must have fragrance for musk lovers. If you're really into musk, and you're interested in the incredible places it can take you, Kouros, Azzaro Pour Homme, Paco Rabanne, and vintage Brut will get you there faster. My feelings for this Jovan have gone from a half-hearted "like" to a whole-hearted "like a lot," by virtue of the aftershave concentration. Something about the extra dilution and sturdier carrier oils eases up the scent structure and allows the best aspects of the pyramid to relax and shine. You wear Musk for Men not because you want the best musk, but because you want an easy musk.

The retro seventies packaging and fragrance style are an added bonus, but then again that's why I like Jovan. I feel like William Holden in Breezy whenever I splash this sort of stuff. And that's not a bad thing.

VIP For Him (Playboy/Coty)

Looks cheap and kinda fun. Smells the same.

I was watching one of my favorite Youtube channels the other day, "Fragrance Bros," and it got me thinking. In reruns of the channel are reviews by Daver and Jer that denigrate "cheap" fragrances like Royal Copenhagen and Brut, with the prevailing sentiment being that after experiencing a broad range of pricy designer and niche perfumes, your taste "trends up." It's the proverbial "your" being used in this case, because I certainly don't understand their point, but I understand what they're trying to say, at least to a degree: when you've smelled the good stuff, you can't go back to drugstore.

There may or may not be a kernel of truth to this for some folks, but it stymies me. First, why would smelling a three figure fragrance like the new Fougère Royale dent my opinion of five dollar Brut? Taking it a step further, why would it effect how I feel about any fragrance under fifty dollars, if that fragrance objectively smells at least good enough to wear repeatedly without offense? Sure, Fougère Royale smells great, and I'd love to have a bottle that I could use every day, but I don't. And I don't for a reason - it's hard to justify buying it when something as inexpensive as Brut smells just as good to me.

Now I won't argue that Brut's quality is on par with Fougère Royale. It's not. It's just soapy lavender with powdery, semi-animalic musk in the base, and the ingredients are as pedestrian as it gets. But the composition is incredibly deft. Using only a few hundred super-cheap synthetics, the perfumer managed to make lavender and herbal aromatics come alive for ten minutes, truly sparkling and shimmering, before settling with dignity into a warm, burly glow of woodsy wannabe Musk Ambrette. It's fresh, it's intentionally raw, it's clean, it's streamlined, and it works. For five dollars. This is dollar store material that smells great. Furthermore, it lasts a good eight hours with liberal application. Many guys complain about Brut disappearing after fifteen minutes, but I can smell faint whiffs of it all day long.

Do I lump it in with Fougère Royale as being a great fern for the modern man? Yes and no. It's apples and oranges in the quality department - the Houbigant scent is simply divine on every level, the liquid apartheid of doubt and true love, with photorealistic accords that define true olfactory beauty - and certainly it's more presentable at weddings. But if something smells good, then price, guesswork about ingredient pedigree, and adhering to old stigmas regarding "old man" scents should get dusted into the can. Brut smells good. If I want to wear it to a wedding, I will.

So tastes don't "trend up." Because there is no "up." There's only "good," and "not good." And it's almost always subjective. I can't tell you how many times I've wished that Creed would just forget about these postmodern fresh concepts and simply compose a traditional wetshaver fougère. They're the kings of cloning (and improving upon whatever they clone), so why can't they just remake Brut or Canoe in the Creed image and call it a day? This is evidence that I don't believe Daver and Jer's contention. If what they're talking about were true, I wouldn't be wishing for more interpretations of five and ten dollar perfumes. I'd be wishing those super-cheapies would disappear.

There is one word that creeps into perfume dialogues from time to time, and it's "aspirational." When a perfumer tries to make his concoction smell fancier and more expensive than it could ever possibly be, he's falling into the aspirational pitfall of inexpensive fragrances. It's fine to embrace cheapness and make the most of it, as Karl Mann did in 1964. But it's another thing to embrace pretense and attempt the impossible, as countless perfumers have done since Mann's time. Luca Turin famously dubbed Carlos Benaim's 1989 entry into the Calvin Klein catalog "aspirational," and he's right.

Which brings me to one of the recent Playboy colognes, a fragrance formulated and released by Coty. They've done something that is neither slack-jawed, nor aspirational; bucking convention, Coty referred to one of the oldest masculines on the books, and re-tooled it ever so subtly for a much more current generation of unwashed masses. The hilarious thing about VIP is that it's basically the scent of Skin Bracer, that eighty year-old whiskered-codger aftershave that guys under thirty avoid like the plague. But I guess if anyone could sell a classic wetshaver fougère to twenty-first century youngsters, it's Hugh Hefner, the God of Manliness (in the cheesiest, most cliched sense imaginable). What surprises me even more is that Coty actually improved upon the idea by adding a sweet lick of red apple and a dab of smooth white chocolate, both notes accenting lavender and coumarin respectively. It's quite well done!

Interestingly, VIP is not the first fragrance to further stretch Skin Bracer's archaic formula. Several years ago, a small French concern called Jeanne Arthes issued a lovely woody fougère called Cotton Club, which has a very simple and clean lavender, coumarin, vanilla, and sandalwood structure. The sandalwood, though very synthetic, is more prominent in CC than it is in VIP, but the latter boasts a richer coumarin note, well-rounded with gourmandish flourishes not found in its progenitors. Fragrantica claims there's rhubarb and rum in there, but I honestly smell only a vanillic hint of something akin to powdered white chocolate. It smells very good, very clean, not quite gourmand, but close enough to be affable and comfortable. This sort of scent smells cheap, but it's supposed to. Skin Bracer never smelled expensive; men wear this kind of fougère to broadcast that they're solid, sturdy, no-frills guys that women can depend on, and VIP accomplishes this well enough.

A friend of mine has been eschewing designer fare, usually going for at least twenty dollars an ounce, for cheapies like VIP. He's been saying that he can't imagine why anyone would want to spend on pricier fare, when it's unlikely to accomplish anything more than something like VIP, the 1.7 oz bottle of which currently costs sixteen dollars at Walmart. I honestly don't see the comparison between VIP and something like Bleu de Chanel, for example, which I think is also related to old-school aftershave smells. The same size of Bleu costs about seventy dollars, but it just smells better. Its ingredients aren't top notch, but they're of a higher grade, with much better dynamism. Also, it retains clarity and performance for eight solid hours.

VIP, despite smelling good, eventually muddles out after an hour, becoming a very two-dimensional semi-sweet "fresh" scent, essentially all you can ask for from this type of fougère. (Skin Bracer is the "proto-Brut," much less assertive, quite a bit simpler, and significantly flatter performance-wise; anything as closely related to it as Cotton Club and VIP are bound to feel just as simple and underwhelming in the performance department.) I find it interesting that Skin Bracer costs six dollars, and is the simplest of this type, basically super cheap mint, lavender, and a vanillic coumarin and musk.

For five dollars more, you get Cotton Club, an even smoother blend of caramelized lavender and synthetic woods, but still super cheap. And for five dollars more than that, you get VIP, which elevates similar super-cheap notes to a level where you can discern fruity, gourmand, and floral nuances, but only just barely. So each scent is cheap, but incrementally more expensive, with their quality commensurately improving.

To me, it goes too far to suggest that any competent department store fragrance like Bleu de Chanel or Dior Sauvage would have nothing to offer in the face of VIP, Cotton Club, or Skin Bracer. The latter three certainly can't eclipse the intrigue that more complicated compositions in the fifty to eighty dollar range offer. However, I would point out that a fragrance like VIP is not eclipsed by more expensive fragrances, either. If you expect a shorter experience, and are okay with that, then it's likely that VIP will be just as satisfying as a good department store fragrance, at least in terms of the smell. But I would never consider a fragrance like VIP a replacement, or apt substitute for a good department store scent. The prices for department store fragrances are not so high that they don't warrant fair judgment on quality and value against cheaper fare. With Fougère Royale, I avoid buying because I can't really justify the splurge. With Bleu de Chanel, the value at seventy dollars for a small bottle is much better, especially for what you get.

If you're into the proto-Brut fougère, and just want to have more fun with it, then I recommend VIP. I suggest using it as an aftershave, diluted with water. Or using Skin Bracer, and pairing VIP as your SOTD. Or even using Cotton Club as your aftershave and pairing with VIP. Don't expect designer quality material here, but enjoy the cheapness! Hey, it smells good, and something that smells "good" doesn't really smell "cheap" as a negative. Smelling good doesn't have to be expensive!

Jōvan Ginseng NRG (Coty)

I'll be blunt - this scent smells like a woman's floral-perfumed skin after a dip in a heavily chlorinated swimming pool. It's basically muguet soap and musk oil diluted in pool water. Ginseng NRG was released in the late nineties, around the time I graduated from high school, and at that time it was something I seriously considered wearing. I considered it, and passed. Why, you ask? Hard to say. For one thing, it's not particularly exciting, or groundbreaking. It smells "fresh," and "clean," and "soapy." Typical nineties fare, especially with its hint of sweetness, thanks to all that musk. I guess I liked its perkiness, that hit of natural ginseng blended in with bitter citrus and soft amber. It's nice.

It's also a "sporty" frag (hence the "NRG"), the sort of thing that lasts three hours max, maybe a little longer after a rigorous, sweaty workout. At that time, I wasn't a "sporty" guy. I'm actually a hell of a lot sportier now, in my thirties, than I was in my late teens, and given my penchant for couch-potatoing with popcorn and movies, that's saying a lot. But no, in the late nineties I was not a "sporty" dude. I was naturally stick thin and led a fairly (moderately) active lifestyle, just doing day-to-day chores, so working out and then dousing myself in transparent, citrusy colognes wasn't on the schedule.

This is a youthful scent, and as Tania Sanchez says, it smells very soapy, and perhaps a little generic (she made a good GNR joke in The Guide), but it's altogether a solid offering from Jōvan that I'll continue sampling every time I pass it at Walmart - nobody buys this stuff. If you intend on buying it, get it while supplies last - rumor has it Coty discontinued NRG, and I expect to see inane price increases in the near future.

Stetson Sierra (Coty)

The subtlest victories of masculine perfumery come as nods to femininity. The violet prettiness of Cool Water and Green Irish Tweed. The sugary toffee rush of A*Men. The candied yuzu of Caron's Third Man. Each masterpiece contains an element of bisexual appeal. Most American guys don't wear any fragrance at all, but those who do generally approach them with subliminal consciousness, choosing what "smells good," without realizing their choice may very well smell surprisingly close to a girly-girl's perfume. Those who recognize these contradictions wear such scents as code.

Stetson Sierra is a frag that I've passed a million times at Walgreens and Walmart, and the former always has a tester out, alongside the original Stetson and Stetson Black. Every time I spray Sierra, I recognize a classical twentieth century masculine structure, ubiquitous, unadventurous, yet brilliantly subtle in its message. Released in 1993, it was a departure from its namesake, which is an unglamorously feminine oriental (not so subtle, that one), the "outdoorsy" Stetson, at long last. Rugged men, pine needles, herbs, woods, mosses, musks. Five o'clock shadows, leather boots, blue jeans, pick-up trucks, Winchester repeaters, buxom girlfriends named Dawn who cashier at the supermarket. Real men don't wear cologne, so this one has to be a real cologne - light, transparent for most of its duration, and rather aftershavey, that hint of "clean" and "musky" that classier guys don't mind spending a few dollars on.

That's exactly what Sierra delivers, until you get to the base accord, the very thing that is supposed to cement its direct masculinity into the workday and be forgotten by lunch. It starts off very directly, and very much an early nineties scent, bright and fizzy bursts of fresh bergamot, pine needles, lavender, and near-odorless aldehydes, morning in a Maine forest. The piney hi-fidelity aftershave effect segues into a mélange of herbal notes, mainly wormwood, caraway, rosemary, juniper, black pepper, basil, and geranium. I'm reminded of the long discontinued Polo Crest, and for about ten minutes Sierra smells like a somewhat cheaper copy of Crest, a good thing, given that Crest is a beautiful scent. Then the manliness gets patchouli heavy, and an accord similar to Preferred Stock creeps in and hangs around for about five minutes, before introducing the main attraction.

That main attraction is jasmine. Hello, sweetheart. How'd you get here? I thought this was an inexpensive testosterone fest? But is it really that inexpensive? Twenty bucks for 1.5 ounces? Almost thirty for two ounces? This is pricier than the original Stetson, and frankly the quality of its craftsmanship is on par with the dollar increase. The far drydown yields an understated musky, piney jasmine note, delicate, sweet, sheer, still quite "fresh," but now interminably "floral." Incredibly, Sierra's jasmine note is of better quality than things more famously floral, like Tea Rose Jasmin, for instance, which has a very literal rendition of jasmine, (perhaps too literal), Tommy Girl, with an overly luminescent synthetic jasmine accord, or even Anaïs Anaïs by Cacharel, a sublimely dry white floral blend.

How to account for this? I couldn't tell you. Forget the fake male swagger. There's plenty of that in the first twenty minutes of this scent. Embrace the crystalline beauty of the simple jasmine accord that follows, and recognize why you like it, wear it, and observe. The men and women in your world will pass by en masse, but every so often, one will read your code, and remind you that the phrase "it's a man's world" has several subtextual connotations. From that power flows the beauty of this little scent from Coty.

Cool Water Coral Reef (Davidoff)

I'd say that I don't understand Davidoff's need to issue annual Cool Water "summer" flankers, but it's not really true, because I know exactly why they do it: Cool Water, like other classic eighties masculines, has a fan club. A very LARGE fan club. Fragrances like Cool Water, Eternity for Men, Joop! Homme, all have yearly reissues in some new style to cater to the hundreds of thousands of hardcore, sales statistically verifiable fans, those guys and girls who repurchase the namesake again and again. This stands in stark contrast to those perfumes that are discontinued after just one release, yet appear online at wildly inflated prices. Fan clubs, like any buying demographic, should inject the commercial shelf-life of a product with numerous spin-offs and continued success.

This is the second Cool Water flanker I've put my good money down on, and I don't regret it. The first was Cool Water Into The Ocean, which is a very pleasant, somewhat briny, Calone-infused aquatic variant of the original. I won't get into purchasing all the summer flankers, nor will I adopt the mindset of a "Cool Water completist" who must have every single bottle ever made, but I thought it would be interesting to delve a little further into this seemingly endless commercial phenomenon. Cool Water Coral Reef is an odd one, not because of how it smells, but because it continues to perpetuate the false notion that this fragrance is first and foremost an aquatic. It's really a green and somewhat woody fresh fougère, with a few clever aromatics in play, dihydromyrcenol and Calone among them.

Coral Reef is in no way representative of an aquatic, but is actually a near exact replica of Coty Aspen for Men, itself a bit of a Cool Water clone, although lately it's more often compared to Green Irish Tweed. I respect the collective opinion of those who smell GIT in Aspen, but I've never been one to see the connection, mainly because Aspen is far woodier than its Creed and Davidoff progenitors, boasting a sizable wintergreen mint note, a brusque pine sap effect, and a warm, cedary amber that is more reminiscent of lumberjacking in the woods than drinking martinis on a gorgeous woman's veranda. Coral Reef possesses the exact same mint-heavy top, charmingly fresh pine notes, and a slightly more textured woody amber drydown, with strong hits of lavender, jasmine, and violet. Other than those extra florals, it's Aspen through and through.

Why own Coral Reef when you can own Aspen for fifteen dollars less? There's no great reason, except that Davidoff's scent uses slightly higher quality synthetics that don't fuzz out after thirty minutes on skin, which helps it retain its complexity and minty nuances for an extra ninety minutes or so. Also, Coral Reef has some of the original Cool Water's lavender and neroli lurking under all the mint and pine. To smell it is to experience the cold mountain air freshness of a postmodern fougère, filtered through a Russian forest. Ironically, it's also a good choice for the autumn and winter seasons, thanks to its evergreen elements. Nothing original, not going to turn heads, but timeless, very masculine, and very nice.

Preferred Stock (Coty)

Ten years ago I smelled this cologne at a CVS and thought it was the worst thing on the market. I was like that about drugstore fragrances back then, not really considering that there's more than just "college cologne guy" juice out there. Here I am, a little older and a little wiser, and I've revisited Preferred Stock with a new nose. Like with Jovan Sex Appeal, Coty went ahead and put a little blurb on the box:

"For the man with a sense of style - Preferred Stock. A sophisticated blend of sandalwood and vetiver with a citrus twist. It's what preferred men prefer."

This fragrance is currently the most expensive masculine by Coty, priced at $25 - $27 for 2.5 ounces at discounters. You can get one ounce on Amazon for about $15. Distribution of Preferred Stock has been scaled back, with limited quantities at retailers, and for a while there I couldn't figure out why. Had it been discontinued? No, stores in my area continuously re-"stock" it. I bought a bottle to find out if there is more to this drab little thing than meets the eye.

The answer to my price question is in the fragrance itself. This is a mellow aromatic fougère with relatively high quality synthetics for a Coty scent. It's about on par with Sex Appeal, but I feel it's even a little better. So let's pose this basic question about Preferred Stock: Does it smell good? The answer is yes, it smells very good actually. You're really getting more than you paid for with it. The composition is tight and smells natural, the note separation is pristine, and the balance is perfect. It starts off with a soft citrus and lavender accord of fizzy grapefruit, mandarin, and lemon, with just enough dihydromyrcenol to lend it a Drakkar effect. It's fresh and clean, yet dry and accented by a leathery element that never fully takes form, yet always remains close to the lavender note.

Give it about ten minutes, and a dirty patchouli note emerges, flanked by juniper berry and sage. Eventually the sage/juniper accord overtakes the patchouli and melts into dry tonka and vetiver, with the vaguest hint of synthetic sandalwood and a discreetly earthy musk. The whole affair is so well composed and aromatic that I really don't know what to make of it. Nothing smells cheap, downmarket, "fuzzy," or generic. Longevity is impressive at five hours, and sillage is considerable enough to warrant judicious application. Preferred Stock is a cologne from 1990 that was named as a throwback to Coty's own 1955 Preferred Stock fragrance and toiletry line for men. I'm glad they brought it back, and glad I came around to it. This stuff is good.

Emeraude Cologne Spray (Coty)

As far as I know, Emeraude is a baby name, with some gobbledy-gook about being in harmony with nature as its meaning. It's really a French expression for "green," or "emerald." I imagine the name came after the French definition, and was likely popular in early twentieth-century France. I won't go into the long story behind Emeraude because that's been done to death elsewhere, and to be honest it doesn't interest me. What does grab me is how old it is: 1921 is its birth date! With that many circles in its bark, you'd think Coty would put some effort into preserving whatever majesty earlier incarnations possessed, and keep the drugstore brand smelling at least competent enough to match their finer drugstore masculines, like Aspen and Sex Appeal for Men. But no dice - the current cologne spray smells awful.

Coty is capable of rendering cheap green notes very well, so I'm disappointed in the chemical veil of galbanum-esque noise that precedes the fragrance. The haze settles into a powdery abomination of crude white flowers and peach, with the suntanned-creamy vibe of Vanilla Fields wedded to a dry, woody-resinous base. Every note is spare and unbalanced, every accord is piercing and shrill, and a preponderance of aldehydes threatens to destroy all olfactory perception before dissection can even begin.

Coty can do much better, and should reformulate this screeching mess up to a remote semblance of what it was in the seventies and eighties (at least). Whatever it may have been, Emeraude is no more.

Is Price Correlative To Quality?

When we see movies and photos with Cary Grant, we automatically think, "he's a high-class guy." I mean, look at him, with the chiseled features and the perfectly-combed hair, the pressed suits and ties. He's long deceased and forgotten (even unknown) by many people in the current generation of twenty-somethings, but for those who have some culture and knowledge of classic films, he remains an unforgettable Hollywood icon. How many men aspired to achieve Grant-esque levels of suave masculinity in their youths? How many women secretly wished they could happen upon someone with his looks and his charm? With Grant, the Robert Palmer song lyric directly applies: "there's no tellin' where the money is." He just had IT, whatever IT was, and this IT-Factor propelled him from the circus to international stardom.

The only problem with this assessment of Mr. Grant is that he himself wished he could be Cary Grant. Someone once said to him, "Everyone would like to be Cary Grant," and he said, "So do I." Grant projected wealth and luxury to the masses, but the truth is that no one on earth is as smooth and unruffled as his screen persona was. Millions paid money to see the fiction of Grant move in silvery wisps across a wall, but would millions pay as much to live with him if they knew how few of those wisps could be found in Archibald Leach? Archibald, unlike Cary, blew his nose, got spinach stuck in his teeth, stunk up portions of the house after using the john, and put his pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of humanity. I'm sure he was still a great guy, but the stuff of legend? Maybe not.

When it comes to the subject of this blog post, I often feel that the same rosy thinking Grant's fans applied to him gets applied to today's perfumes. We want to be romanced by our fragrances before we buy them. We want to think that a bigger financial investment in this romance will yield more satisfying returns in the long, leisurely relationship that ensues. We tend to believe the promises sold to us about the quality and appeal of a perfume if it comes from a place that exhibits a finer pedigree, a honed commercial image, and are angry if the illusion doesn't hold up in the long-haul. But like people, perfume is complicated. Just because a brand puts one in fancy clothing, with a cool tagline, and an exclusive price tag, doesn't mean the liquid inside matches these external trimmings, and this is simply a fact of life.

Tania Sanchez, in her review of Aspen by Coty, remarked that Aspen's successful smell was surprising, until you remember that the only appeal of the non-luxury brands is their smell. This comment is arguably the most insightful one in her book. We get caught up in the idea that perfumes with high prices MUST be better, because they cost more, but the reality is that price is in no way directly correlative to how good a perfume smells. This truth is evident in a simple analysis of several factors, ranging from whether or not a fragrance subjectively suits one's taste, to whether a brand objectively reaps as much profit from a perfume's formula as it does from its packaging and marketing. One must consider too whether or not a brand slaps a premium on its products because of the high costs of packaging and marketing alone. Many brands have done careful market studies on the best approach, and it wouldn't surprise me if they found fancy bottles are a worthier investment than fancy formulas.

Victoria at Bois de Jasmin weighed in on this a year ago:

"Last year the weekly French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur published an interesting article about perfume creation called La Guerre des Nez (The War of the Nose). It featured a candid interview with perfumers Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo and provided a table outlining the price breakdown for an average prestige brand perfume. The revelation is that in a bottle of perfume that costs 100 euros, the value of the fragrance concentrate is only 1-1.50 euros, or about 2-3 dollars. The rest is for marketing and distribution: 19.6 euros for value added taxes, 36 euros for distribution, 25 euros for ads and so on. I know all too well the economics of making a perfume, but seeing this table was still a shock."

Between the marketing, distribution, taxes, ad campaigns (part of marketing but not all of it), costs for perfume creation is high, almost out of necessity, just to have competitive market presence. The laws of business have a pressure-cooker effect on the perfume industry, because seventy-five percent of a brand's appeal to customers is visual, not olfactory. It's the reason Chanel went out of their way to find a unique, unparalleled shade of "Bleu" for Bleu de Chanel. It's the reason Cartier went all nineteen-thirties nouveau with the bottle design for Roadster. It's the reason Creed wrapped bottles of Aventus in strands of black leather. Fragrances, like people, require fancy Cary Grant suits if their manufacturers want to justify raising individual unit costs by twenty or thirty bucks.

So what about little ol' Aspen? It has no fancy packaging, no hi-falutin' bottle, and no advertising/marketing campaign. Of course it had a little campaign once, back when it was a new fragrance, but we're talking a couple of print ads here. There was nothing outrageously far-reaching about the Aspen campaign, just a few words and pictures to make people aware that it exists. Someone over at Clive Christian could look at Quintessence/Coty and understandably think, "Aspen might smell okay, but it couldn't touch us." But that supposition is based on image. How much better do CC perfumes smell? Is five hundred dollars and fewer ounces per bottle justifiable in the face of something selling for five dollars an ounce? If you know anything about postmodern perfumery, you know that yes, Aspen smells very good. No, it doesn't blow all niche brands out of the water in terms of fragrance quality, but it's probably worth at least a little more than five dollars an ounce, in a just world. But with Aspen, you have to wonder, is it worth wearing over Cool Water and Green Irish Tweed? Or is it just a budget alternative to those fragrances? And does CC have a good reason to ignore the market model Coty uses in selling Aspen?

Yes, it's worth wearing Aspen over CW and GIT as a budget option, if and only if you feel it smells better, which makes it a completely subjective call, but a viable one. The other two, being more expensive perfumes, are understandably preferable to many men and women, but that doesn't mean their advantage over Aspen equates to Coty's frag being of lower quality. Aside from concentration and complexity, Aspen is not really a lower-quality product. Some may feel that the minty-herbal freshness in Aspen is unique enough to make it a preferable fragrance, especially with its strong outdoorsy vibe.

And CC's market model is the very thing Victoria illustrates above - high overhead. Clive Christian No.1 is "The World's Most Expensive Perfume" because its fugly bottle is plated in precious metals and studded with a diamond. Strip the thing down to Malle proportions (still pricey, but not the same), and suddenly the justification for the high premium is gone. I can't speak to the perfume, having never tried it, but I can say that whatever it smells like, it isn't being shouted about from roof tops, so spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on it seems aspirational at best. The fragrance oils used to perfume the contents of whatever bottle No.1 is sold in likely cost little more than a dollar. If Aspen's oils cost fifty cents, and CC's cost two dollars, that's not a big enough difference. And I doubt the cost of the extrait for CC surpasses a mark that would cut a one-thousand percent profit margin.

Over on basenotes, a member started a thread entitled, Cheap Fragrances Are Rarely The Best. Typical sort of nonsense one sees out of BN, but the responses to this thread suggests that even basenoters feel this is a false sentiment. To simply sum-up the OP's position, he feels that "in most cases, you get what you pay for." He goes on to say,

"Most fragrances that you could get for $50 or less are not really good quality. I'm not saying fragrances above $100 are all worth the price either, because that's the niche priceline and niche fragrances tend to make hate-or-love fragrances that are peculiar and challenge people to expand their tastes. So, even if you spend $250 on a niche fragrance, you may hate it. But the chances of finding something you really really like above $100 is much greater than at under $50."

Now, I could go on, and on, and on, and on about how dumb this paragraph is. I don't really know what this guy was smoking when he posted this, and he's a smart guy who has written many very interesting and informative comparison reviews in the past, on basenotes and Fragrantica, so I don't directly question his intelligence. However, I do question, with love of course, his sanity. I mean, really? Most fragrances for fifty dollars or less are not really good quality? This is a thesis he is going forward with?

You can buy any of the Caron masculines for less than forty dollars. All are of superior quality and composition, to the point where I use Pour un Homme as the continuing proof that a quality raw material (lavender oil) need not jack unit prices into the stratosphere if used to simple effect. There's a whole army of men who would argue that fragrances in the Pinaud range outclass things three and four times as expensive, and Pinauds usually sell at around eight bucks a bottle. Rive Gauche Pour Homme can be found online for well under forty dollars, and is by most accounts, including Luca Turin's, a true classic that is very well made, and smells divine. Kouros can be found in any formulation for around fifty dollars, and stands the test of time as one of the freshest, most beautiful masculine compositions ever made. LustandFury and Shamu1 recently called my attention to Taxi by Cofinluxe. When I wore Taxi to dinner with my family one weekend, my mother told me it smelled amazing, and she almost never thinks fragrances smell "amazing," let alone compliments them. Taxi is by Mark Buxton, and goes for about ten adjusted-for-inflation dollars these days. Rochas Moustache can be had for thirty-five dollars at brick and mortars around the country, and is steeped in classical tradition, ala Edmond Roudnitska and his wife Thèrèse. The very fact that Thèrèse had a direct hand in Moustache's creation makes it worth so much more than anything anyone could scribble on a price tag, yet it remains absurdly affordable in the formulation pictured on my blog (which is the one I own - I took that photo). The list goes on, and on, and on.

But people bit back on this. One guy wrote:

"Disagree. Prices change following sales. A presumed great scent can be sold at 100 dollars or euros today, and at 25 after a few months. Some scents launched without any advertisement -and sold in supermarkets and small stores- have a very low price and real good quality. Animal Oud sold at 10 euros/ 13 dollars, and it's impossible to find in stores the next day. You have to buy it immediately."

This comment supports what I said above, and what Tania Sanchez wrote in The Guide, i.e., inexpensive fragrances can smell good enough to be in very high demand, despite having low prices and no ad campaigns. Another guy said,

"I think it all comes down to whether one believes that an objective assessment of a fragrance's 'quality' can be made independently from whether one actually likes the fragrance or not. Certainly most buyers would like to think that when they spend more they get a higher quality product where there is greater attention to detail and less cost-cutting."

This illustrates my comments about the subjectivity of finding something "better" than something else, and how this variable throws a little monkey wrench into accurately gauging the effectiveness of discerning fragrance quality based blindly on price. And it's true, most buyers WOULD LIKE to think that they get a higher-quality product when they spend more, based on the notion that there is greater attention to the manufacturing details. This is questionable, and is a subject leveled more at the integrity of brand management than perfumers themselves. How many perfumers wanted to create a masterpiece, but were only given a budget with which to create something that is only "good"? And don't personal associations factor in with the enjoyment of any fragrance? Another guy answered that question:

"What it all boils down to is how well a scent resonates with you. If Pino Silvestre at $10 conjures up great memories of family vacations spent camping in the woods, it will be worth more to you than a $250 bottle of Invasion Barbare if you think it just smells like fancy shaving cream."

Still another guy wrote,

"While maybe I personally *expect* more from a fragrance that sells at a relatively high price point, I personally have found little correlation of price and whether I will enjoy a scent or not. I also should mention I have found (and own) more than my fair share of relatively inexpensive fragrances that I would put up against others selling for many, many times their price points. In short, I respectfully disagree with your premise. "In many cases you get what you pay for..." And in many more, you don't."

This brings up the Aspen analogy. Indeed, paying for an expensive perfume may give you what you paid for, but there's always the inexpensive perfume that gives you much more than you paid for, and how do you decide which purchase was wiser? Rationalizing often occurs, and I don't doubt that there are many Lutens buyers out there who are stuck with half a bottle of Arabie, wondering when and how they'll ever get through the remaining half-ounce. "Wear-ability" should factor into these considerations! And still another guy astutely said,

"Common sense says that you get what you pay for, and as a general rule, it's a relatively safe way to make an uneducated decision. Price and "best" are based on so many factors that have nothing to do with quality. Do a bit of homework and you'll find bests in all price points. Best, in this case, is meaningless since you've given no qualifier to explain the scale. Best for? Best at?"

Such a great point! What exactly is "best" being qualified with? Best against the worst? It's an arbitrary way of skewing the factors to favor your argument by saying that cheap fragrances are rarely the best, when you think the "best" and "worst" of something reflects in its price. Prices, after all, are related to demand, even in luxury goods. The OP responded:

"There are a lot of quality ones at low price; not the BEST ones, but good quality ones. For casual wearers, they're really good. But for people looking to build a collection, save your money for until you smell more fragrances."

This is an interesting sentiment. Let me tell you how interesting I find this - it sneaks something new into the dialogue, something nefarious, something otherwise unspoken among fragrance snobs online and within fragrance communities. It sneaks the notion that "aficionados" are wiser to build a large (read: huge) collection of pricier perfumes, at a leisurely pace, instead of bum-rushing into inexpensive things just because they're easily affordable, because this can taint your comprehension of perfume, and your stamina in having a perfume-collector's hobby.

Naturally there are some people who share this misguided and hilariously fallacious notion in the blogosphere. It's like saying you can only understand quality automobiles not by driving one, but by owning a garage full of them. But if you own one Corvette and drive it half the year, then you'll know a high-quality, relatively inexpensive car better than the guy who has a garage of three hundred expensive cars that he only gets to drive once a year at a steady rotation. The guy with the Corvette is likely to have a more finely-honed sense of quality because he has become intimately familiar with a shining example of it, a true standard, and seeks to know more about it (a profound person does not rise up, after all, but goes deeper), while the Jay Leno personality will have difficulty culling basic facts about his vehicles from memory, due to having so many, and will need to constantly back-track and try to re-evaluate the complicated world he's built around himself.

Building a collection is in no way reflective of how astutely one can appraise fragrances and fragrance quality, and the process of building a collection should not be based on trying to assemble higher price-points. If collection size were key to success in understanding fragrance quality, and also in maintaining stamina in writing about perfume, then this blog could not continue to exist, as I only have about thirty inexpensive perfumes in my wardrobe. Yet I've been blogging now for the better part of two years. And if assembling higher price-points were important, then every perfume enthusiast from here to Macau would either be broke, or very rich to begin with, because in actuality fragrance collections are based on what interests the collector, just like any other collection. If your interest is in affordable and what Luca Turin might call "lethally-effective" perfumes, as Shamu1's seems to be, then you will collect fragrances without regard to price point, and you will collect them based on wanting to wear them and enjoy them, not because you want to point to a large collection and pretend that this somehow ensures your longevity in the world of fragrance writing and appreciation.

If we're thinkers and perfume collectors, we can take two or three inexpensive perfumes and write volumes about them, without needing to defer to higher prices or a greater variety in our wardrobes. And if we're intelligent perfume writers, we don't need to ponder prices in assembling a collection and enjoying it. There are great things at every price-point, for every collector. Someone astutely mentioned that on basenotes:

"Where, in your original post, does it say best for building a collection? Are you talking about a collection of fragrances to wear, or do you mean a collection of fragrances to own as art pieces? Assuming one is building a collection of fragrances to wear, there absolutely are bests among the bargains."

To quote mister Leach, er, Grant: "Beware of snobbery; it is the unwelcome recognition of past failings." In a word, Amen.

Vanilla Fields (Coty)

The cold chill of dry winter air is finally setting in, and it looks like we southern New Englanders have a finicky season ahead of us, full of unpredictable temperature shifts and mixed precipitation. The holidays are mostly over, and it's the perfect time for seasonal depression. Feel like shit yet? Don't. Winter is a time for cheering up. That's where perfume comes in.

There are a myriad of vanilla perfumes on the current fragrance market, many cheap and crude, others pricey and overdone. Guerlain is the reference brand for competent vanillas, but there's something inherently wrong with vanilla these days. It's a note that applies itself too literally. A bad vanilla smells like dessert, Friendly's ice cream melted on skin. A good one can smell deceptively fresh and green. A great one smells fun. Vanilla Fields is an underrated early-nineties vanilla perfume that not only smells great, but accomplishes something rare in postmodern perfumery - instant entertainment.

Coty's vanilla is ostensibly feminine, but forget it, it's thoroughly unisex. I'm amused by its packaging. There's a bit of awkward copy on the back of the box that warns customers of "color variations depending on batch," and "different ingredients depending on the harvest." Is this the first "Millésime" perfume? What hits skin is a little surprising: a woody floral, softly lit by lactonic brightness (remote hints of peach), a soft, nutty vibe, on a woodsy base that clearly shines through even the immediate top notes. In a rare instance of agreeing with The Guide and Tania Sanchez's assessment, I find this to be the elucidation of an old-fashioned summer scent, namely suntan lotion. It has mimosa sweetness, a creamy coconut-like accord in its heart, and a soft vanilla in the periphery that throws me onto an umbrella-shaded blanket in July. Nice stuff, and while nothing cerebral, more than enough to chase away those January blues.

Jōvan Black Musk for Men (Coty)

The word "nondescript" comes to mind. I know a couple of my regular readers shudder at the sight of this cologne, but if you asked me what it smells like, I'd have to say it's nondescript, to the fullest extent of the word. It's as forgettable as a Chinese arithmetic problem, sans the thrill of a real challenge. To smell like something, anything, wear anything else. Jōvan Black Musk is not for fragrance connoisseurs.

Who is it for? Simple answer: people who like how it smells. And it is a smell, more than a fragrance, a light, linear, one-note olfactory blurb, a sniff equivalent of something Justin Bieber might say. It's truly that bad - devoid of meaning, with no redeeming accents or inflections - something the likes of which no man should ever have to see on his side of the fragrance aisle. The bottle is dull, cheap-looking, although hefty glass, and one gets points for choosing glass over plastic. The juice? Flat, greyish-purple in color, silvery cool on contact, the languid smell of fruity suede, touched by a standard white musk. It's like one of those hologram stickers - shiny on one side, dull on the other. Sometimes it smells cool, fresh, luxurious. Other times a grapey blobby thing wrecks the romance, dragging the little pretties out by their bottle-bleached locks, leaving smears of cheap chemicals and a perfume-shaped hole in the heart. 

Jōvan Black Musk is a vile disaster, the worst of the worst, ill-conceived in every conceivable way, and it probably doubles as nail-polish remover for goth boys. Jōvan Black Musk is a rancid crime against all of humanity, plus a few other species, too. And I absolutely love it.

Sex Appeal For Men (Coty)

Some fragrances are seasonal; some are perfect all year-round. Jōvan's herbal oriental, humorously titled "Sex Appeal," is great in winter or summer. Its secret: complexity.

Jōvan's fragrances are usually underrated, and sometimes (rarely) overrated - Musk for Men deserves more attention as an affordable alternative to the strange designer musks that populate the shelves of Sephora; Black Musk deserves to stand alongside those very same upscale oddities; Woman should be the formula for the world's first official "Air Travel Shampoo"; Ginseng NRG ought to be the standard-issue fragrance for prisoners at Gauntanamo Bay. But the most underrated of this line is Sex Appeal. There's evidence that it was intended to be an aromatic fougère, with all that soapy lavender on top, the patchouli-laden coumarin-esque thing in the middle, and bitter spice in the base. Yet the real appeal here is that the general structure of this scent retains its core woodiness without sacrificing the emotively green opening sweep of sweet French lavender, or the cool aloofness of its clove, fennel, and sage drydown.

No, Sex Appeal is linearly complex, if such a thing can exist. The herbal top is permanently fused to an herbal/floral bottom, with a solid connecting rod of earthy patchouli to lend this banal formula some surprising oomph! In cold temperatures, Sex Appeal's vivid lavender sweetly blankets its smoldering heart. In high heat, this purple aspect air-conditions the bawdiest, most-fun-to-wear patchouli that can be had for a portrait of Andrew Jackson. Good stuff, and it furthers the notion that price is in no way correlative to quality.

Truth or Dare (Madonna/Coty)

Some of you may wonder why I mix feminine perfumes in with the masculine reviews. This is supposed to be a men's fragrance blog, right? I operate on the basis of what I think a man could wear in sophisticated company without recrimination. Many feminine perfumes smell feminine, full of raspberry sweetness and brown sugar. These fragrances rarely interest me for obvious reasons. Once in a while there's a perfume that employs traditionally feminine notes, but then I cross reference "traditionally feminine notes" with "universal appeal" and, if I'm lucky, find something to write about. Such was the case with Truth or Dare, Madonna's first mass-market celebuscent.

Madonna is actually not the Cheese Whiz celebrity that some people think she is. I can remember when I was four years old, swinging in the backyard with La Isla Bonita playing in my head. I loved that song. I still like it. Her music was pure pop, very bouncy and fun, but there was a maturity about it. She was perfectly in sync with her time.

I never thought she was as far out there as the media made her out to be. Yeah, she always underwent a style transformation with every album, and her dance moves got increasingly bizarre, but if you compare her to the Thompson Twins, or even Heart, her look was no more or less daunting. Lady Gaga is a space alien by comparison.

I always thought it was odd that Madonna hadn't released a fragrance. But smelling Truth or Dare, I realize that she was holding out for something that would have universal appeal, and classical poise in a perpetual "down" market. The scent trends more toward "Truth" instead of "Dare." There's nothing daring in the mix, but this is a sincerely-composed, well conceived perfume, something perfect for people of all ages. 

It opens with a beautiful bouquet of tuberose, gardenia (which isn't overbearing), and heady jasmine. There's a synthetic sweetness highlighting the indolic aspects of the flowers, which wouldn't work if these petals weren't so gorgeously stinky! Sugar gives it balance, but it isn't heavy-handed, and the natural richness of the floral notes are allowed to shine and dominate. On my male and somewhat oily skin, a pretty benzoin and vanilla accord appears, evolving from the nondescript sweetness in the opening. The benzoin smells very "true" and creates a warm nuttiness in the base. Strong, but playful stuff, very mature, very French in feel. Interesting bottle, too.

Can men wear this? Yes, but it depends on his geographical location. American guys can wear this when clubbing in New York City, but I wouldn't take it out for a Sunday drive through Litchfield County. European guys can wear it more freely; ToD isn't out of place at the Czech opera, on a tram in Vienna, or walking the streets of Urbino. White flowers have gender versatility because of their stinkiness - the indoles either smell crassly feminine, or mind-numbingly masculine. Think of the wildflowers in Kouros, and you have a good point of reference.

Good job, Madge!

Jōvan Woman (Coty)

Jōvan is a fairly prolific brand, one of Coty's workhorse manufacturers, and they've had their fair share of hits and misses. Sex Appeal is arguably their best, and Ginseng NRG is quite possibly their worst. Everything in between varies between being easily wearable on any occasion, to being situational scents with limited appeal. Jōvan Woman falls into the second group, neatly tucked between Island Gardenia and Black Musk.

One of the many quandaries of air travel (like going commando and then getting strip-searched at customs, or forgetting to pack enough inflatable condoms and dime bags, etc.) is personal fragrance - when flying long distance the question becomes, what works? What's appropriate? Something weak enough to not offend fellow travelers, yet strong enough to make the body smell fresh? A Japanese non-fragrance with lots of airy citrus and musk (I've been doing my research)? No fragrance at all? Maybe just really good soap and a slap-on cologne? The options are endless.

Situationally speaking, Jōvan Woman is a good one for air travel because its chemical components smell very clean, synthetic, and soapy, without being noxious or too in-your-face. Its top accord is a rich faux bergamot and kitchen spice explosion, and is perhaps the only part of the fragrance that comes on strong. Maybe apply it in the restroom to limit the damage there. The spice is mostly nutmeg, with a touch of cinnamon, and something analogous to carnation. The carnation introduces green, chypre-esque mid/base stages, and pulls JW's spiciness into a lighter realm. 

Each green tint incrementally deepens as the fragrance emits strong orange flower and sweet ylang-ylang notes, which settle on a nondescript musk foundation. It's smooth, sweet, clean, and totally synthetic. Jōvan Woman is another unisex fragrance that would have you think otherwise - really, anyone can wear it. I can't recommend using it as anything other than a quick B.O. blocker, but there is a population of wearers who seek fragrance just for that reason, and as far as that goes, it's not too bad at all.