This One Is Now Officially "Cheap"

It has always bothered me that Drakkar Noir is so expensive. Online, hard to get for under $25. In discount retailers, even harder to get for under $30. At retail? Ridiculous, naturally, typically $45 for 50 ml, and don't even know what they ask for 100 ml bottles. I'd scratch my head and ask myself, what gives? Why is this old foghorn from the early eighties still commanding a premium price, when nobody really wears it anymore? 

Even on eBay, it was difficult to source a big bottle for less than $30. Many would fall under that price, but they'd come without a box, which always put me off. If you can't get Drakkar Noir with its box, one wonders what you're really getting. The other day, this all changed -- I hopped on eBay and found what I'd always hoped to find -- Drakkar Noir has now slid into clearance bin prices. I just bought a 100 ml bottle with its box for $16, free shipping. This stuff is now cheaper than Cool Water. Finally! 

But the question is, why now? Why didn't this happen twenty years ago, when the fragrance was still well past its expiration date? There's no clear reason, but I have my own theory, and I think it's kind of obvious, once you get past the shock of seeing the market turn on a famous men's cologne to the point where it prices it under Coty's Aspen on some sites. Drakkar Noir is a sharp, crisp, bitter, soapy, somewhat peppery, somewhat green/grey lavender-centric fougère. You know what isn't popular today, and hasn't been popular for over ten years? Sharp, bitter, greenish fougères. 

But not being popular (in the high school cafeteria sense of the word) isn't enough to drive a fragrance's price down by ten dollars or more. There are plenty of fairly esoteric frags that go for big bucks. If Drakkar Noir was the first to go against the grain, it'd never lose its retail value. No, the thing that put it out to pasture is what is popular: extremely sweet and cloyingly saccharine olfactory sugar bombs. Liquid candy that you can spray everywhere, even on your crotch, and suddenly feel hungry. Everyone and their cousin is into these extreme derivations of Le Male and Joop! Homme that have evolved from those relatively modest semisweet masterpieces into nefariously nectarous beasts. 

Against this gourmand tableau, Drakkar Noir smells all the more bitter, peppery, smoky, unapproachable, and downright intimidating. Drakkar Noir is too much of a contrast, and a bridge too far for the budding Gen Z crowd of saplings who now smell Le Male and Joop! Homme and wrinkle their noses. The thought that anyone who was born after 2000 would find Drakkar Noir an easy wear is increasingly laughable. Not so in 2015. No so in 2005. Certainly not so in 1995, when virtually every other fragrance that was released riffed on Guy Laroche's signature masculine. One forgets that Drakkar Noir was once the Dior Sauvage of the fragrance world, inspiring countless imitations, clones, and smell-alikes that barely hid what they were trying to do. For nearly two decades, Drakkar Noir was the cornerstone of masculine perfumery, shaping its trends and defining its essence. How distant and even bizarre that very fact has become now. 

I'm sure there were legions of men who revelled in the discovery that Drakkar Noir had officially lost its premium department store cache, and was no longer going for Macy's prices. I imagine the hen-pecked Gen X guy who walked into a Walmart in 2003 and happily discovered Drakkar Noir priced at $38 instead of $48. Fast forward to today, when finally, after extra innings, it isn't even worth Walmart prices anymore, and can be had for less than $18, consistently less than Avon fragrances. It probably means nothing to the youngsters out there, but I'm overjoyed. Finally I can stock up on a few bottles of Drakkar Noir, and wear it with abandon. 

Drakkar Essence (Guy Laroche)

I can see it now, the entire arc of Drakkar Essence's lifespan, encapsulated in the blink of an eye. This relatively mundane, shampoo-like designer offering is welcomed briefly by North American and European consumers, who find it competent enough to stand beside their bottles of Bleu de Chanel and Bvlgari Aqva, until it is all used up. Then the majority of first-time purchasers decide not to become second-time purchasers, and Laroche's sales figures for this product nosedive dramatically in the fourth quarter. There are some in the fragrance community who actually do like the stuff, and go to buy back-up bottles of it, mostly Guy Laroche completists whose girlfriends wear Fidji on special occasions, but when they get to the department store perfume counter, uh-oh, just kidding! Drakkar Essence is discontinued, sorry.

A couple months go by, and the threads on the online boards have by now lit up with some mild chatter about the scent's fleeting presence on the legit market of "authorized retailers" (in most cases, Macy's), and some wonder where they can still score a bottle at a reasonable price. That's when the grey market retailers on the internet catch wind of the scent's limited availability, and the hawks swoop in to buy up whatever stock remains. Those that are late to the party network on it non-stop until they have at least a few dozen bottles to sell. But of course, when these bottles are posted, their price has been increased forty, sixty, eighty percent. Then one hundred percent. Then two. Those who are actually familiar with how Drakkar Essence smells see the gouging and tell themselves, "You know, it was nice enough, but not worth these prices. Guess I'll have to pass on more Drakkar Essence." Oh to be a unicorn breeder . . .

But those who haven't smelled it yet and who have money to burn - real money to burn - pony up. They take one wearing of the stuff out on the town and decide they wasted their money, so they attempt to turn the loss around on Ebay and, just to sweeten the deal for themselves, jack their asking price about twenty percent higher than what they paid for it. The same hawkers that had a go at it the first time snatch up these second-round rejects, and the number of Drakkar Essences that sell on the Bay appear to be terrific, at exhorbitant prices. Two hundred and twenty-five bucks for three ounces? Sold. Of course, by this point the buyers are just people looking to resell at an even higher mark-up. Like many discontinued perfumes, the sales are between sellers, a fragrance trading hands. The sparse fan base for this fragrance dried up long ago. It's a stunningly mediocre and uninspired arrangement of synthetic mint, citrus, lavender, cheap woods, and white musk, little more than a shower gel at Walmart. But it's discontinued, and it's a successful brand name. You may never score another bottle of Drakkar Essence again. It must be worth a mortgage payment.

Having smelled it, I can save everyone the trouble: it isn't.

Revisiting A Classic

I'm sure many of you have had occasion to take advantage of good deals in fragrance sets, and I got lucky at Marshalls the other day by finding a 3.4 oz Drakkar EDT, aftershave balm, and deodorant set for $40. I usually see the 2.5 oz and deo stick together for about half as much, but I've never encountered the larger set with the balm. I'm struck by how much better the atomizer is on the larger EDT than on the one ounce bottle. That shouldn't be too surprising of course, but the quality of the spray is definitely way above average. Perusing threads on basenotes, I found a conversation about the many different reformulations of Drakkar, with the OP stating that he felt the latest formula returns to the original's strength and longevity. That's not really the case - the latest Drakkar is lighter and a little less complex than yesterday's version - but the 3.4 ounce bottle does something interesting: dispenses enough fragrance to make the formula seem different from the one contained in the smaller bottle.

I've owned smaller bottles of several fragrances before trading up to the larger sizes, with Azzaro Pour Homme a recent example, and never really noticed any difference in strength or sillage, but I agree with whoever says Drakkar's larger bottle size yields a stronger wear. It's a small thing, but it's significant enough if you're feeling let down by today's version and only have the smaller size. I recommend giving the larger bottle a try. It's the same formula, but two sprays feels like eight or nine from the small bottle, and I'd think twice (or three times) before applying half that many from the larger bottle. Drakkar is, by all measures, still a powerful old-school beast.

So far I haven't had a chance to try the deo stick or the balm, but I'm thinking of giving them a shot this week. I'll definitely be using them in the course of the next three months, and will get back to you with my opinions. I'd like to leave off by reiterating what I wrote in my original review of Drakkar - this is a fresh, green, bitter, and eminently dark aromatic fougère. But my opinion on it has changed a bit. I don't find it nearly as dull as I did last year (or the years before that), nor do I feel that it's something a magnum-wielding Charles Bronson would wear. In recent months I've had some success with Drakkar, as it has garnered compliments. It works well on cool, rainy days. It's complex enough to feel mature and sophisticated, but direct enough to avoid being stuffy and dated. The latest formula is full of spike lavender, mint, juniper, and fir, with a little hint of tangerine. It reads as naturally green and soapy, which rates well with me, a bonafide green lover. But there's something else about it.

Drakkar Noir, with its 10% dihydromyrcenol and cleverly integrated laundry musks, feels like it has aged nearly as well as Cool Water. I've always felt that Drakkar and Cool Water were related, and the more I read about it, the more I see that I'm not alone in that regard. When Drakkar came out in 1982, it must have felt like a completely new animal, with its fresh, woody structure piercing through people's patchouli-laden preconceptions of what popular fragrances should smell like. If you refer to the Leffingwell, you find that Drakkar stands in historical isolation, just far enough away from precursors like Agua Brava, Paco Rabanne, and Monsieur Rochas, as well as near-contemporaries like Azzaro PH and Lauder for Men. Few other masculines lay claim to that much free real estate. My guess is that the use of dihydromyrcenol (introduced in smaller quantities to the mass market as early as Paco Rabanne) must have lent Drakkar a unique edge in a market full of European herbal elixirs and powdery orientals. Drakkar wasn't about barbershop powder or Mediterranean zest. It was about modernity - a new sort of clean, bright, piercing soapiness that seemed to be of nature, but not from it. It continues to feel just as bracing and well-wrought thirty years down the road.

Good stuff.

My Spring Picks

May is the loveliest month. It's not too hot, sometimes even cool outside, with occasional showers coloring everything forty shades of green. And man oh man, do I like me some green - the greener the better.

This month I've used a steady rotation of all the greenest stuff in my arsenal. Mind you, I consider anything with heady florals and herbs to be green, as well as pure greens featuring citrus and grasses. The season for green is surprisingly short - by August I've switched to muskier fare. But it's beautiful while it lasts. The past two weeks have seen repeated applications of the following:

Tsar (Van Cleef & Arpels) - Simply an amazing fougère. Such gorgeous bergamot, lavender, artemisia, oakmoss, and many other dark, spicy green notes. It's more refreshing than a walk through a forest in the rain.

Sport Field (Adidas) - This is Creed Green Valley Lite. A pop of lemon and ginger, then hours of air conditioned coumarin playing the grassiest one-note I've ever smelled. Divine, and criminally affordable.

Silences (Jacomo) - Perfect for rainy days. Starts off with a punch of galbanum, and slips through the reeds into flowers and bouquets of cut stems. When I smell this on my shirt the day after, I totally understand the meaning of "true green" in perfumery. This is nature in a bottle.

Sung Homme (Alfred Sung) - A good spicy, soapy, and unerringly green chypre with the soul of a fresh fougère. Nice on Thursdays and Fridays when Irish Spring 2.0 is the desired effect.

Horizon (Guy Laroche) - Bright grapefruit, mint, lavender, crushed herbs, dihydromyrcenol, ambergris, and cedar, all bundled in a seaweedy aquamarine-colored bottle. I don't reach for it as often as the others, but I never regret it when I do. Another good one for the rain.

Brut (Helen of Troy) - White floral powder. Not good for high heat, but when there's still a cool breeze to cut the sun, Brut works wonders, especially with light application.

Pour un Homme de Caron (Caron) - I'm never really sure when to wear this scent. Its frigid lavender top is too cold for winter; the warm and powdery vanilla-musk base is too heavy for summer. Spring is a good season I suppose. Autumn too, but we have Yatagan for autumn. Anyway, you can't go wrong with hyper-realistic bouquets of French lavender. The fragrance for gentlemen, this stuff is.

Just as an aside: Am I the only one who finds Kristen Stewart attractive? My guy friends think she's mediocre, even unattractive. As a movie buff I'm familiar with all the current beautiful female stars, and there's certainly a slew of more traditionally-beautiful women coming out of Hollywood, but I dunno . . . Ms. Stewart has always captured my imagination in ways the other gals couldn't. Although I hate most of her films (except The Runaways), I often find myself watching them just to see how she moves through the frames. The girl's got something going on. Anyhoo . . . thanks for reading.

Drakkar Noir (Guy Laroche)

Oddly enough, the "black" flanker of Drakkar perseveres in an ever-changing market, while the original is now defunct, and has been for years. As ubiquitous as Cool Water, Drakkar Noir has, over the years, been reformulated into a lighter scent, no doubt to better conform with changing trends. The bittersweet citrus, rosemary, and lavender opening is still quite soapy and recognizable, but it rapidly dries into a darker juniper, patchouli, and oakmoss accord, with hints of fir. Very nicely blended, very masculine in temperament and movement, and very conservative by today's standards, although current 2020s bottles under L'Oréal seem to have regained some of the aggressive growl of Pierre Wargnye's original formula, so you might want to glance at batch codes with this one. 

Drakkar Noir is the fougère that set the tone for fougères of the 1980s. Things had been chugging along with plentiful doses of earthy pines and spices for some time, but this one came to the party, plunked down its armloads of oakmoss and patchouli, yanked the curtains shut, beelined for the turntable, and cut off Blondie to play The Cure. Drakkar Noir was perfectly tuned into the zeitgeist of its era, and was a massive smash hit among folks of either sex. It was the essential '80s prowler scent. Straight men loved it. Gay women loved it. Everyone else? Not so much. Or at least, that's what I'm told. To me, it smells suburban, like the most expensive shaving cream you can buy at the drugstore, the one with rosemary instead of anise, and an excessive amount of dihydromyrcenol carrying everything on a metallic New Wave. Joel Goodsen goes to the barber.

These days it's associated more with business than pleasure. Times have changed, and the smoky and aggressive perfumes of yesteryear now conjure boardroom instead of bedroom. For a good time, we have other, newer toys, things like Sauvage EDP, YSL Y, and Armani Stronger With You Intensely. In other words, things Tom Cruise or Patrick Swayze would've never worn. For those who yearn for a manlier time, a time where coolness was serious and Wayfarer sunglasses were worn at night, Drakkar Noir is still on the market and selling well. While there aren't many straight women under 50 who would go for it nowadays, those who would are probably hot as hell.  

Horizon (Guy Laroche)

I chuckle in good humor when reading fragrance reviewers' chief complaint about Horizon by Guy Laroche: its incredible strength. Before even sniffing this scent, I knew it would be heavy. Most of the proto-aquatics of the '80s and early '90s (pre-1994) tend to pack a wallop. Stuff like Drakkar Noir, Molto Smalto, and Insensé Ultramarine make their presence known, and Horizon is no exception. In light of this, unless you intend on making it your signature, I recommend sticking to the 1.7 oz. bottle, as it will go a very long way.

Now, on to the scent. Horizon opens with a bitter accord of grapefruit, lavender, pine, mint, and a "marine" note that is as bracing as it is heavy. The lavender - which is stunning - is the first horse out of the gate, followed by a minty grapefruit note. After ten or fifteen minutes, these elements meld into a more herbal and peppery fennel midsection, although the grapefruit continues to blare away. It's at this stage that things go from an evergreen color to a mellow, abstract, and fruity shade of blue. 

As the herbs settle, the abstract blue "marine" note, which is ostensibly Calone, mingles with a warmer sandalwood and patchouli base. Horizon's grapefruit finally sweetens (and thankfully never sours), lending a certain brightness to the proceedings. Its drydown is more civilized than its opening, and the scent is artistically all the better for it. Keep your nose on the drydown and see if you can get a sense of the ambergris note in there - it's actually pretty good, and smells surprisingly natural for such a cheapie!