Is Halston 1-12 the Most "Natural" American Cheapie On the Market?

Quite an impressive list.

This particular Halston is one that I've had a troubled past and present with. The first bottle I owned back in 2011 had treemoss in it, and I developed a bit of an allergic reaction to it. This seemed odd to me, because I've worn other treemoss frags without trouble. Having recently spotted 1-12 in a Burlington, I decided to give it another go, 14 years later, and wow, what a fiasco! The first bottle I purchased didn't have an atomizer stem, which made it impossible to spray, so I returned it. Defect bottle, no big deal. I knew they had other bottles, so before going to the cashier I grabbed another one and asked to exchange it. For some indecipherable reason, Burlington insists on putting its fragrances in those stupid clear plastic anti-theft boxes, and none of the cashiers could open it. Defect anti-theft box, no big deal. The cashier said, "Well, you paid cash so it makes it easy, go grab another one if you can find it." So I did, and when I came back I smiled and said, "Third time's the charm." Indeed, it was. Bottle #3 was retrieved, and it works. 

I repurchased 1-12, not because I was particularly interested in owning it again, but because I happened to get a glimpse of the ingredients list on the back of the box, and did a triple take. I've never encountered a mass market fragrance with this many exotic (emphasis on that word) natural materials in it. I've also never seen one with this many anti-UV materials, 3 by my count (tell me if you spot more). My guess is the high number of naturals necessitated the high number of anti-photosensitizing skin-protectant chems in the formula, or perhaps this is just the standard EA approach, I don't know. Anyway, let's break it all down, and then I'll get into the implications of wearing something like this.

Ingredient		Why It's Used
Alcohol Denat.	Solvent, carrier	Helps dissolve fragrance oils and evaporates quickly, delivering the scent.

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

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

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

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

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

Ocean Rain (Mario Valentino, 1990)

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

Yohji Homme (Yohji Yamamoto, 1999)

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

Aqua Quorum (Antonio Puig, 1994)

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

Fendi "Donna" (Fendi, 1985)

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

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

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

Relax (Davidoff, 1990)

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

Unbound for Men (Halston, 2002)

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

Nobile (Gucci, 1988)

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

Touch for Men (Fred Hayman, 1995)

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

Agua Lavanda Puig, Green Glass Bottle Version 

(Antonio Puig, 1940)

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

Green Valley (Creed, 1999)

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

Z-14 From 06-14: Back To The Future

Halston's masterpiece has again endured reformulation, although this most recent formula is a return to the Z-14 of seven or eight years ago, at a marginally lighter concentration, with no dramatic change to the scent itself. I've owned four bottles of Z in the last ten years: one from 2002, 2008, 2011, and 2014, the last purchased a few weeks ago at Marshalls for $12. The code on the bottom reads "4HJ1," and checkcosmetic.net cites its production date as June of last year.

Internet chatter about this fragrance has declined in recent years. Last summer there was a thread about its variances over four decades, with many guys predictably lamenting the removal of oakmoss from the formula, and some even lamenting the removal of vetiver, which is a note that never really jumped out at me, not even in the 2002 formula, which did have a very slight vetiver note, but only the faintest suggestion of it. I actually got more of a "wet tobacco" note in that version, along with an intense cinnamon aldehyde explosion in the top notes. That was my first experience with Z-14, and I disliked it so much that I tossed it in the garbage.

My subsequent bottles revealed extremely subtle variances in the scent, with the overall fragrance almost 100% identical in each, barring mild shifts in focus between oakmoss, treemoss, aldehyde, and lavender. I chalk up the hugely unbalanced cinnamon bomb in the 2002 bottle as being the result of deterioration rather than reformulation. The 2008 batch contains smooth lavender and a distinct oakmoss effect in the drydown, but often smells a bit too bright, as if the mosses were given their own aldehyde. The 2011 batch contains a smidge less lavender and only treemoss, which I prefer by a slight margin. The difference is very small, but the treemoss is drier, darker, and the aldehydic effect is toned down, making the wearing experience starker and not quite as "fresh." The 2014 returns to the fizzy shimmer of the 2008 batch, with infinitesimally more lavender and a drop of extra aldehyde, but the concentration has been somewhat reduced here, to the point where it really does perform like a cologne rather than an EDT. It's gone in two hours, unless very liberally applied, which is a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, I like that it's not as apt to offend anyone with its intense piney citrus notes. This quieter Z-14 has low throw, which makes it office friendly. On the other hand, if they dial the concentration back any more, the scent will disappear altogether. Might as well just release it as aftershave and forget calling it a cologne. I doubt they'll tamper with the concentration any more, but one thing I love about it is that the smoothness of the herbal effects in the 2008 batch is reiterated, yet smells rebalanced and more successful in the lighter juice.

I've read that the 2014 batches contain intense cinnamon, but I smell no more or less cinnamon in the 2014 formula. The cinnamon in the 2011 batch is a little "flatter" than the same note in the 2014, which is a bit more textured, but again, that can be considered the effects of age and freshness. To my nose, the cinnamon note is dosed the same in the 2008, 2011, and 2014 formulas. 

The bergamot and pine notes are very fresh in the newest bottle, and the lemon aldehyde is clearly derived from citrus. The 2014 batch is definitely a natural-smelling "woody citrus" scent. I was a little disappointed, because I hoped the cinnamon would be more intense. I guess if I want a cinnamon fix I'll have to stick with Individuel.

I highly recommend the latest version, but be warned that it's subtler than prior versions of Z-14. If you were a fan of Z-14's formula from roughly ten years back, you'll probably enjoy the newest version quite a bit. This fragrance continues to smell like one of the more natural compositions still on the market, a combination of outdoorsy notes that play off themselves and complement each other beautifully, despite the formula being largely synthetic and dirt-cheap. It's just too bad EA never thought to make this stuff in a perfume concentration, and call it "Z-14 Now Intense." That would probably smell incredible.

Halston Z-14, Revisited

Although I did not eviscerate it in my original review, I made it pretty clear that Halston's signature masculine wasn't for me. I blamed cinnamon, and remarked on how this particular "oriental chypre" did not jive with my cinnamon sensitivities. It struck me as being peculiarly dated, very much a seventies lounge-lizard cologne. I must say, my bottle must have either been: (a) a bad batch, completely possible given the threads online with guys complaining about a fuzzy cinnamon element that cloys, or (b) simply a corked bottle that was off before I ever opened it. The Marshalls in my neighborhood is guilty of selling soured colognes, and Z-14 wouldn't be the first I've purchased. I recall buying Azzaro Pour Homme once, and wondering when the hell they put civet in there.

I saw a cologne/aftershave set of Z-14 on clearance in Walgreens today, and figured for nine bucks, what the heck. It's almost a new year, perhaps it's a good time to give Z a second chance. I'm glad I grabbed it, because what currently wafts from my wrist is very nice. Let's not beat around the bush here - there's a cinnamon note in this fragrance that, however subtly integrated, just doesn't work for me. I could do without it. But for whatever reason it's not screaming up at me, and I'm getting far more mossy, citrusy woods instead. In fact, the entire fragrance seems to be a poetic take on lemon.

There's nothing better than a good spicy-woody citrus fragrance. Citrus is common in perfume, and there are two roads, the one traveled, and the one less taken. The first is Juicy-Froot; the second, dry woods. Grey Flannel exemplifies the greatness of the latter approach by husking lemon into a super-dry, intensely bitter note that nearly collapses in on itself. Z-14, from the exact same era, aims just as high, marrying that dryness to tree moss, labdanum, cedar, and pine. It stays bitter and aromatic, never quite leafing up like its counterpart 1-12, and maintains a masculine balance for three or four hours, before fading quietly away. It's not a masterpiece, it's not going to weaken female knees, but it's really good, and smells classy. Try it if you don't mind sacrificing current trends for a forgotten, well-made chypre, one needing nothing but its oakmoss back.

Halston Alcohol-Free Cologne (Halston)

It's hard to argue that Halston's brand is anything but the definition of "cool." The fashion, the fragrances, the man, all contoured the hazy, drug-addled blur of Studio 54's 1970s. Much of the designer's clout has faded with time, but current trends in fragrance are the clearest sign that Halston's fragrances are still cool - no one really wears them anymore, yet they endure. Elizabeth Arden holds the licenses for them, and I'm glad. EA Fragrances has generally done a conscientious job resurrecting yesterday's classics and keeping them as true as possible to their original formulations. Grey Flannel and Red for Men are wonderful, and Halston Classic meets the same high standards. My only gripe is its alcohol-free formulation . . . its oily solvent has a somewhat dirty feel and transports me to a patchouli-laden netherworld full of dead disco dancers. Weird.

A perusal of store shelves is a challenge to stay calm, to not get angry. Bottle after bottle of endless chemical musks crowd the field, olfactory equivalencies of plastic feathers, brilliant pinks, reds, blues, neon lettering everywhere, overwrought and aimless decors, and total dependency on calone, sugar cubes, and fruity esters. Apparently today's mature woman is still a 16 year-old girl. The sight of anything with organic elements like oakmoss (gasp! what's that?) and treemoss (eeew, I think it's fungus?) renders a 37 year-old fragrance completely alien, utterly out of touch with the current aesthetic, colorless, vague, and a little scary. To this point: the Marshalls that I frequent is run entirely by women in their 20s who are constantly re-stocking the fragrance shelves, and they have yet to figure out which gender Halston Classic is meant for. I got my bottle from the men's section, but I've seen bottles in the women's section. I expect to see it in the men's section again in the future.

I guess I can understand. Halston's box is a refreshingly blank beige, and its lettering offers no hints. The usage of "cologne," a term generally applied to men's scents, seems to suggest that it's a men's fragrance, but if you're an employee who likes to peek, the bottle inside certainly leans feminine with its narrowly curved neck and softly rounded glass. If you're an employee who likes to sample, you'll end up just as confused as before you ever opened the box; Halston's peachy top notes and dry mossy base are smooth and amiable, but altogether unisex. It's too floral for men, and too earthy for girls. Yikes, just put it in both sections then. Guys will buy it and give it to their girlfriends, girls will buy it and give it to their grandmothers. Their grandmothers will wear it for a while, decide it's too sexy, and resume wearing their dusty old bottles of Charlie Blue instead.

My take is much less flummoxed. I like that the scent has survived the decades, but understand that the alcohol-free cologne is a pale shadow of the original perfume. Still, it's a clear shadow, well defined in the glare of all that white musk surrounding it in the store. Perky bergamot and soft peach mark the opening. It's feminine, a little girlish even, but concise. Eventually the flowers and mosses push through the semi-sweet intro and sweep Halston firmly into a bitter chypre territory. Everything is blended and the green notes are abstract impressions of grass, leaves, muguet, and oakmoss. Treemoss is used to tinge the drydown's fuzzy edges with a gentle sweetness. It's comforting, and easy to wear.

Androgyny was thematic to fashion and pop culture in the '70s, and the best chypres of that time are very androgynous. Halston is no exception - it's probably a little too floral for most men, but it's no more feminine than Calice Becker's tea floral, Tommy Girl. Any guy who is comfortable in his own skin can wear Halston and get away with it. I can wear Halston without qualms because I often wear green fragrances, and this is one incredibly green chypre. The rose, marigold, and mint notes are offset by a leafy mossiness that fits me perfectly. Thank you Mr. Halston, for making this fragrance and building it to last. And thank you Cindy Crawford, for all your nakedness. I'm much obliged to you both.

Unbound for Men (Halston)

Before I set about reviewing Creed Millésime Impérial and Acqua di Gio, I think it's a good idea for me to familiarize you, should you need familiarizing, with the dirty little secret about these scents: Unbound for Men is the truest clone of Acqua di Gio, which is the truest clone of Millésime Impérial. Therefore, Unbound is the best choice for cash-strapped 22-year old skirt-chasers. Unfortunately, 99% of the aquatic audience are cash-strapped 22 year-old skirt-chasers, making Unbound the most useful and culturally prescient brine-themed scent. I say "unfortunately" because Millésime Impérial is more beautiful, and Acqua di Gio is more appealing, so most youngsters will miss out on this scent. Ideally, in a perfect world, 22 yr-olds could shake their Bens for 8 oz flacons of Millésime Impérial, and use them to their sexual advantage until they turn 30. I must pinch myself now and remember that this is not, contrary to what my daydreams tell me, a perfect world.

But it's good enough, thanks to Halston's cloning apparatus. An unlikely company to successfully pull off an aquatic copy, Halston somehow roped the market with their original Unbound for women, and then translated the scent into a remarkable doppelganger of AdG. At $20 for a 3.4 oz bottle, you can't go wrong. I'm the sort of person who doesn't want to spend much on aquatics, so if I can find one that does what it's supposed to for under $50, I'm happy. Unbound ticks those boxes, and - surprise surprise - smells expensive. Many aquatics employ calone as a fresh burst of heavy fruitiness which penetrates the scent's entire lifespan before degrading into a hollow white musk. The members of the board seem to think that if it smells fruity and "fresh," it's an aquatic. Uhhh, no. A proper aquatic employs truly aquatic accords, namely notes of salt, any variation of weedy brine, wildflowers, spices, and something green for balance. There should be an impression of catching misty sea air on the bow of a sailboat, with glimpses of shoreline peeking over the whitecaps. Unbound gives this impression with minimal effort, and the sort of panache found in fragrances five times its cost.

It opens with a well-blended lime, an odd juniper note, and tomato leaf. The tomato leaf dominates, and grows stronger as the scent dries down, but the juniper, presumably the "Bombay Sapphire Gin" accord listed on basenotes, is intriguing. It smells wet and hazy, like it's wafting over high tide. The top threatens to fall flat, but this note saves it and adds significant punch to the salty greenness that follows. Eventually the tomato leaf blares past a polite arrangement of pink pepper and sage, with the latter slowly trumping the former as everything moves into the drydown. The woody base doesn't try to be intense and super-masculine, but instead opts for transparency. It smells realistic, dry, and full of salted timbres. The juniper remains prominent, and I almost feel a piney aspect to the drydown, which I think puts it above that of Acqua di Gio. I really enjoy Unbound, and can respect how it develops because it doesn't do the usual thing. It stays true to its concept - sailing unfettered across salt water - while holding the integrity of each individual note.

Oddly enough, I have problems with Millésime Impérial and Acqua di Gio that I don't have with Unbound. MI is awfully headstrong for a Creed, and its heavy iris/melon top notes pierce its delicate salty ambergris base. It's beautiful, but headache material for me. AdG smells good, but I find myself wishing it were greener. It has the potential to be, yet never goes there. Unbound is neither cloying, nor lacking in greens, and illuminates the essence of being seabound as deftly as it conveys the sensation of being free.

Z-14 (Halston)

The realm between cinnamon orientals and leathery chypres is a dangerous one for me, mainly because I dislike the first kind and like the second. Leathery chypres are usually woody, dark; spicy orientals are often sweet, green, ambery, and dry. 

Z-14 opens with a pungent lemon, bergamot, vetiver, and oakmoss arrangement that rapidly warms into a woody accord of lavender, amber, and cinnamon. To my nose, the cinnamon balances against the dry citrus of the resinous heart accord, and is a subtle note. Interesting, because Z-14 isn't that different from its sibling, 1-12. Both fragrances feature elements of pine, carnation, patchouli, and tree mosses, yet both are remarkably different in design and performance. 

I do like the bottle, designed by Elsa Peretti, who designed all of Halston's classic fragrance bottles. It's simple but artful, in accordance with Peretti's "simple is better" aesthetic. This is a try-before-you-buy if you're attracted to retro colognes, but it's indisputably a classic that has survived the years intact.

1-12 (Halston)

Green as a color doesn't do much for me, but as an olfactory facet, it's the most important quality something can have. If it smells green, it's in. The less embellished green notes are by other "colors" in the olfactory rainbow, the better. Taking this into account, Halston's second masculine release, 1-12, is terrific stuff.

1-12 opens with the brightest lemon and galbanum I've ever smelled. The galbanum is front and center, sending a bracingly herbal chill down the scent's spine. About thirty seconds after application the pine shows up, complimented with the verdant spiciness of lavender, carnation and juniper, and bolstered with light touches of cedar and the earthiness of oak moss, tree moss, and more galbanum. All are very much there and identifiable, blended, but with excellent separation. 

1-12 is proof that masculine perfumery can be of Ivory Tower quality at Bohemian prices, and the size of the price tag isn't always correlative to caliber. It's also a great option for he who wants to smell original without sacrificing his sense of class and sex appeal. This frag shares the same box and bottle aesthetic as Z-14, so take a good look at what you pick up in the store when you go to buy!