Polo Ultra Blue (Ralph Lauren)

"I'll take a pack of Ultra Blues, please."

If you're gonna go fresh, you need to know your options. There aren't many. Not if you want to go fresh, and still smell good, that is. Of course there are hundreds of freshies out there, most of them crap, but it takes a multifaceted understanding of perfume to make sense of them all. Market dynamics, the reality on the street, and the hierarchy of choices complicate things. How does one pick something shampoo-like and ubiquitous in nature, yet also truly beautiful to wear? 

Ralph Lauren issued his first Polo Blue in 2002, and since then has thrown a few others at the wall, hoping something will stick. We got Blue EDP, Gold Blend, Sport, Parfum, Red, White & Blue, and Deep Blue. Ultra Blue quietly joined the club in 2018, which is a funny story. Lauren seemed a bit unsure of Ultra Blue, and for several months released it only in 1.6 oz bottles, with fairly limited distribution. I saw maybe two or three of them, and not much on the internet. I think it was being road-tested at places like Macy's and Neiman Marcus. It was as if the brand wanted to know if this formula would sell before committing to the regular 4.2 oz size. I'm not even sure you could buy them directly, or if they were just bait for sales stats on pre-season preorders. 

It must have done at least okay, because by the fall of that year the bigger bottles were everywhere. Ultra Blue is the lone Polo in my collection, and I only own it because it's exactly the kind of thing that appeals to women. If you read reviews, you know the guys who like to sing the Polo Blues about blue frags. They're "boring," they're "safe," they're "not for me." Well, the joke's on them. The sad truth is that these are the fragrances that today's women want to smell on their men. They were raised around boys who wore this sort of generic stuff, their dads wore it, and the overpriced deodorant aquatics are the only things that really turn them on as adults. Believe me, every woman I've dated has insisted on my wearing the freshest thing in my wardrobe, whatever it was. 

The cool thing about Ultra Blue is it's the most unisex of the Polos in this line. A woman could easily wear it without anyone even questioning it. It's in the same wheelhouse as D&G's Light Blue, which is of course a big hit with the ladies. But Ultra offers something interesting: a minimalist approach to the aquatic, with heavy emphasis on a couple of high quality synthetics. Someone suggested that original Polo Blue, with its melons and cucumbers, could be just as compelling in an austere and streamlined state. It was made quite a bit colder with the complete removal of the melons and cucumbers and woody notes, and using only lemon verbena, heaping doses of salt, and a few sprigs of fresh basil as garnish held the temperature. It would be a lot cheaper to make, but also a little harder to market. What if this level of simplicity was just too weird?

The opening smells cheap to me, as if the bareness of the pyramid is struggling to cover the scent of alcohol. This only lasts about ten seconds before the lemon saves the day, smelling brackish, but, you guessed it, fresh. There's the mineral limestone tanginess of dry sea salt, undergirded with crisp lemon verbena and a pert basil that happily peeks through the chems. It's clean yet tony and mass-appealing, and most importantly, it's well made. It takes skill to make something this basic smell good, but they pulled it off. The citrus is ghostly, floating in and out of my consciousness, taking turns with the rich accents of pure salt and delicate herbal greenness in commanding attention. 

If you have the money, you'd probably rather buy something like Heeley's Sel Marin or Creed's Erolfa, both of which employ similarly direct aquatic-themed pyramids with only a handful of notes. But I'd caution you there. Sure, you'll get better top notes with those more expensive fragrances, but you won't get significantly better fragrances overall, and Ultra Blue destroys them in the longevity department. It's also more likely to appeal to your significant other, who might raise issues with the overly realistic low-tide effects found in high-concept niche. Buy all the macho musks and woody orientals that your bank account can bear, but leave at least one spot on the shelf for Saturday night. 

Polo Black (Ralph Lauren)

I have to quote this review, which was written on basenotes. It's one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. It's a bit juvenile, but so is being a fragrance reviewer:

"Pros: Smells amazing.

Cons: It is not a sillage monster. Oh I don't care, really.

What? 'You need 6 sprays for it to last, oohh'.... 'It smells American.' 'It reminds me of a laundry gel (????)' What the F&%* is wrong with (some) reviewers here? Are you this kind of snobbish DOUCHEBAGS that you complain about the AMOUNT of sprays? Is SIX sprays too much? You sirs, are complete morons and losers. This fragrance is great. I wasn't actually gonna rate it, but hey, 5 stars, take that and suck it up."

This guy really likes Polo Black, and can't understand why others do not. I agree that the number of sprays needed to get good longevity from a fragrance should never be a factor in recognizing greatness, but I have a theory on what drives the naysayers.

Polo Black is not a darker version of the original Polo. People who approach it with that expectation might be better served to skip it altogether. If anything, it's closer to Polo Sport. Counter-intuitively, Polo Black is actually a bright, fruity fougère with a mellow, tropical acidity in lieu of lavender and pineapple. Its top accord is fresh and spicy, with what is ostensibly mango (super synthetic) and mandarin (even more outrageously synthetic) lending greenness to its dusky patchouli/coumarin heart. There's a synthetic analog of woods and musk in the base, which compliment each other in one of those polite department store drydowns we've all encountered a gazillion times.

Despite its banality, Polo Black is svelte and charming, qualities fragrance enthusiasts can get at better value from the original Polo (minus all the happy-happy, joy-joy fruitiness). The original is smoother, better rounded, and well, original. People who like perfume enough to read about it aren't going to spend all that much time on Polo Black, an outlier in the weird crossover trick that RL attempted to pull off here. Going from earthy chypre to fresh fougère isn't worth revisiting when you've already reinterpreted the main theme that way once before, and with success.

Polo Crest (Ralph Lauren)

As a general rule I really try to avoid reviewing discontinued fragrances on this blog. They're often a bitch for readers to find, and even when found, are not always reliable for sampling, due to improper storage and degradation of ingredients. There's nothing worse than a bottle of something formerly great that now smells like an old shoe, thanks to decades of heat, direct sunlight, and carelessness on the part of the merchant. Also, top notes are the first to go, and with many fragrances the top notes are so integral to the full experience that losing them is a massive disappointment. I keep wishing I could get the citrus (what used to be orange and lemon) from my sixty year-old bottle of Max Factor Signature. It's fun to use as reference for nineteen-fifties "barbershop", but because of its degradation, not something I'll ever wear.

In the case of Polo Crest, I have to make an exception. This fragrance is so good that to avoid mentioning and recommending it feels criminal. Besides, bottles can still be found at reasonable prices. Unfortunately, it's a hit-and-miss situation in that regard, with brick-and-mortar stores more likely to offer deals than anyone on the internet. I got my bottle for a surprising discount because the guy who sold it didn't know what it is, and he even shaved a few more dollars off his sticker price for me because I'm a regular customer. Polo Crest is one of the few discontinued masculines from the early-nineties that is truly worth seeking out, twenty-two years after its release. Ralph Lauren wisely integrated a substantial number of synthetics into the formula, which buttress the naturals (of which there are many), and prevent degradation of the fragrance. Unlike many releases from its time period, Crest possesses many hallmark notes of its era within a modern, leathery chypre structure that somehow manages to smell timeless.

Polo Crest is essentially the original Polo in miniature, with a dash of Herbs de Provence up top, and natural cedar in the base. Its opening is brisk and balanced, a masterwork in itself. Whoever created it so adequately judged the proportions of lemon, rosemary, and caraway, that the resultant accord, though lacking in sweetness and warmth, brims with a freshness that always makes me smile. The ensuing minutes carry artemisia to the fore, with a heart accord of lavender, patchouli, and oakmoss in tow. When dissected by this nose, its note contrast is sublime: hints of sweet jasmine, velvety rose, minty geranium, bitter thyme, and piercing wormwood to squelch the sugar of the flowers and patchouli. It's similar to Red for Men and Yatagan, but without the dissonance of the former or the snarl of the latter. Polo Crest is a vast improvement on the original (itself no slouch), and the epitome of masculinity in a polite, low-sillage form - a hot-blooded thoroughbred in a world full of Clydesdales. Try Modern Reserve for the update.

Polo Blue (Ralph Lauren)

In the words of Don Henley, "Summer's out of reach," but that doesn't mean fresh, clean, aqueous fragrances are off limits. If you're one of those people, one who likes extending your shower experience by other means, then it's likely aquatics feature heavily in your rotation. I'm always phrasing things badly when it comes to aquatics because I hold them in relatively low esteem, not for any arch shortcoming, but for their inability to transcend the basic idea of elemental water, which can smell clean, musty, briny, and even dirty, depending on how it's depicted. Some folks love the smell of water in multiple incarnations - I am not one of them. At best I like it, enough to live with it without much complaint, but I rarely, if ever, yearn to smell it, and avoid aquatics.

Polo Blue represents the middle of the road in aquatic masculines, smelling neither earthshaking or bad. It exits the atomizer with a splash of sweet melon and an ozonic, somewhat chemical rendition of cucumber, which isn't a note RL should dabble with in the future, given its lackluster performance here. Cucumber smells very crisp, a little green, with a musty-water quality, the off-note of which resembles the scent of glossy paper. As it dries down, this fruity-fresh thing gets somewhat green and piney, but only remotely, with perhaps sage or geranium gently hinting at the original Polo. It's a fleeting effect, and before two hours have passed, Blue is little more than a woody-fresh skin-scent. I should add that generous application extends the scent's lifespan considerably, and there's something of an anosmic's nightmare to Blue; this fragrance can reach an olfactory pitch that overloads the wrong sniffer, creating a white-out of little more than watery-ozone and remote woodiness, and little else.

Quality of materials is lacking here, and the packaging is as dull as it gets, but trivialities aside, Blue is a competently formulaic cucumber aquatic that could only challenge someone who has smelled nothing of other scent genres. If you're a James Bond fan who wilfully ignores James Coburn's brilliant In Like Flint, this is probably your signature.

Ralph (Ralph Lauren)

My apologies for referencing The Guide so frequently lately, but it's the natural result of having finally taken the time to read it all the way through. There are some pivotal talking points in there that I either agree with, or can relate to, and I'd like to apply them to my own experiences with fragrances. One of the ideas that Luca Turin posited was that feminine perfumes change, with time and reformulation, into masculines. That's an interesting notion. I partially agree, and partially disagree, but I'm entirely on board with it as a plausible theory that deserves investigation.

The problem with Turin's analysis is that he couches it in essays about perfumes that could have been masculines during their heyday. Time and reformulations are beside the point when discussing massive florals and chypres like Joy, Mitsouko, Arpège. These fragrances had, in their youth, the same boldness and heaviness that they possess today. Men were not culturally inclined to smell of flowers back then, unless those flowers were lavender, geranium, maybe carnation. But it's not such a leap to imagine a heterosexual city boy, a dandy, wearing Mitsouko in the 1940s. I could see that happening without stretching credibility. And The Great Gatsby could have easily worn Joy. This idea that they're more masculine now, as opposed to then, seems to be based on a false premise: contemporary masculine perfumery is aligned with current formulas of old feminine classics.

However, I think it gains traction when applied to more recent perfumes. The fragrances of the late 1990s and early 2000s were often eclectic, strange, sometimes wildly misguided and mis-marketed. Don't believe me? Guys, give the feminine flanker for Cool Water a day of your time. Go ahead, it won't kill you. You'll be surprised by how incredibly unisex it smells. Yes, there are some fruity-floral elements, but they're behind a flowing wall of coolness, like viewing a matronly gift basket through a waterfall. That aquatic aspect neutralizes any perceptible girlishness. What was staunchly feminine then is surprisingly unisex now, when archetypes are dead.

Ralph Lauren's 2000 feminine fruity-floral, comically named "Ralph," is another good example of this gender trick. Ralph is a simple little fragrance, built on a single accord of green apple, chemical freesia, and a little nuance of peach. It's very sweet, and what I mostly smell is an apple note. Apples figure into postmodern fresh fougères, like Cool Water and Aspen, but in a very slight, peripheral manner, and are never the center of attention. Ralph nods to this aspect of masculine fragrance, borrows it, and inflates it into a nuclear mushroom-cloud fruit note. This is no ordinary apple. It's big, it's bright, it's loud, it's neon-green. I should by all rights hate it. I do not.

Why does it work on me? Why can I see myself wearing something so utterly "girlish" and banal? Because in all actuality it doesn't smell very feminine, nor very banal, but rather refreshing, pleasant, very happy, and with such a dominant apple note, unique. One of my quibbles with classics of masculine perfumery is that they tend to sway toward the grim end of the spectrum. Things like Drakkar Noir, Quorum, Polo, are very dark, ominous, full of foreboding pines and tobaccos and sexual repression. They're perfect for the quiet desperation of modern man, but they're also a bit "Eau de Bolshevik." You can rock Polo and Grey Flannel all you want, and smell incredible wearing them, but if you're the kind of guy who watches The Three Stooges, you might feel a little dissonant, and others could justifiably perceive you that way.

It behooves today's men to beware of smelling overly serious. This is hard to manage when current masculines trend so far into Angel territory, full of sweet gourmand notes and heady musks. There are several thousand guys who could do without their Le Mâle flankers, and try Quorum instead. But at the same time, a man could get lost in the woods, literally and figuratively, and go overboard with sugarless chypres and fougères of yesteryear. It's not such a bad thing for a man to smell sweet, fresh, light-hearted. This is possible to do without "sprouting a ruffled apron."

If you're a man who is interested in something that doesn't take itself too seriously - and you don't take yourself too seriously - give Ralph a try. Its delightful little apple and fresh-floral construction is just what the undertaker ordered.

Polo Sport (Ralph Lauren)

It's hard to know which of the aromatic fougères of the '90s are still good, and which have had their day. Cool Water really started a megatrend, a tidal wave of "fresh," "green," "cool," "aquatic," and "blue" tonics that range from smelling heavenly, to reeking of Jim the janitor's cleaning chemicals. I spent many years as a janitor; I have a good point of reference for this.

I will give an objective review here, because I think it's important to keep aromatic fougères in fair standing against other genres, and not blindly join the bandwagon of fresh fougère haters. It's true, the commercially understood definition of a fresh fougère yields fragrances that are far from my ideal, but good citrus/green/lavender fougères (things like Cool Water, Tsar, Sung Homme) are among my favorites - perhaps my own subgenre of "fresh" fougères - and ought to be given respect. The popularity of calone-based constructions brought us Polo Sport, which was probably the most successful designer offering, at least until Acqua di Gio came along.

The "sport" tag is something of a redundant clause in perfumery. If it's got "sport" in the title, it may as well have "marine," or "fraiche," or "acier," or even "blue" in there. It's all the same stuff. Think fresh, citrus, herbal, spicy, woody, ambery - and if nothing else, clean, clean, clean.

My theory on why Polo Sport was such a hit rests on its opening notes. The reference fougère for Polo Sport is Mennen's Skin Bracer - both fragrances employ a startling mint in their openings. Skin Bracer's mint is pert, green, and very sweet (not to mention utterly synthetic), while Polo's is very sharp and herbal, more naturalistic. Watercolor strokes of lemon, grapefruit, "water notes," and lavender swiftly move Polo into a very lush heart phase, setting the stage for the white floral/musk finish. The feeling is quite fresh, but also very dense. This is what dates Polo a bit - its rich array of elements are piled upon each other, all very similarly conjoined into one deep greenish-blue hue.

Polo's "sportiness" isn't the minimalist interpretation of current "sport" scents. You're not getting lemon, mint, naked calone (usually some nondescript berry-melon hybrid smell), a thimbleful of Iso E Super, and white musk. This fragrance assumes its wearer is accustomed to heady fare like Kouros, Iquitos, Acteur, and would therefore find find bitter citrus, mint, cloudy lavender, and a massive glob of old-school calone, 1960s-style calone, to be refreshing. That's essentially what stuff like Cool Water, New West, and Polo did - they updated the barbershop calones of the '60s and '70s, things like MEM's English Leather Wind Drift. In this case, it was done very nicely.

History is never kind to things like Polo Sport. Sniffing it today, I can't help but think the same effect can be garnered using a Gilette gel-stick deodorant, at a fraction of the price. Indeed, any one of your Gilettes and $10 drugstore aquatics approximate the exact same effect. This may bode ill for Polo Sport, but it doesn't really change the fact that it smells good. It hasn't changed much in the decades following its release, and wearing it today means attracting youthful female attention, feeling clean, and going easy on noses around you. If this is your goal, then Polo Sport, Cool Water, Skin Bracer, Wind Drift, and a myriad of similar products will get the job done.

Chaps (Ralph Lauren)

Cheap cologne is often pigeonholed as the crass working man's accessory, a crudely-executed and aspirational representation of whatever is in vogue at the moment. With few exceptions, the juice found for under $15 a bottle usually needs no help being stereotyped. Aqua Velva, Brut, Skin Bracer, Preferred Stock, and Gravity have been worn for generations by middle and lower-income guys who just want to smell good in a very basic way without getting into the finer points of more expensive fare. There's nothing wrong with being an Aqua Velva man, or the player who bathes in Gravity when Friday evening rolls around. Those guys spend their money on other things, and fragrance is only an afterthought to them.

Of all the cheapies in the oh-so extensive catalog of masculine cheapies, the original 1979 version of Chaps is the one cologne in disguise. I recall visiting CVS as a teenager and finding bottles of the usual stuff there, with Chaps hobnobbing alongside other sale items. It seemed to be right at home next to the Brut and Gilette aftershaves, sporting an uninspired brown glass bottle and a gaudy, paper-thin plastic cap from some sub-minimum wage Chinese factory, a very sad silver fleck job rimmed with jagged edges. Chaps ran for about $15 a bottle, depending on its size, and seemed on the outside to be the one item worth less than its asking price. Surprisingly enough, the cologne inside that hideous bottle smells like it's worth at least four times the amount on the sticker.

Powdery barbershop fougères are a popular scent category for cheapies because the basic ingredients that comprise them are readily available and very inexpensive - all you have to do is throw some limonene, linalool, coumarin, and a drop of oakmoss in there, and you have the basic framework for something that could potentially be much fancier. Chaps is one such powdery barbershop fougère, and ranks among the best of those cheap and "basic" masculines. It opens with an invigorating burst of lemon, orange, and lavender, each note surprisingly clear and well-blended. 

Within twenty minutes the patchouli - which is a little heavy-handed - steps forward to compliment an ever-present sandalwood. The wood is made somewhat leathery by touches of oakmoss and bitter spice (is that sage in there?), yet Chaps powders considerably as a dry vanilla/musk accord overtakes the aromatics. Dry patchouli and musky powder is all that remains of the scent after a few hours, and isn't particularly distinguished, but one thing can be said about it: Chaps smells very mature. It never smells like cheap teeny-bopper cologne. One can envision Steve McQueen as Tom Horn, or even Burt Reynolds as Malone wearing Chaps while being a major bad ass. This stuff is made for men - BIG men. It has the fast appeal that compliments a guy who lives his life hour to hour, full of excitement and intrigue, never stopping to look back or form regrets. You may not like him, but you have to respect him. And you have to respect his cologne.

Alas, this version of Chaps has been discontinued and replaced with some sort of Kohl's exclusive gimmick that represents all that has gone wrong with men's cologne since 1979. The vintage version works, if only because it is simple, concise, and utterly masculine. Nothing to lose sleep over if it can't be found, but really worth purchasing if it is.

Big Pony 1, 2, 3, & 4 (Ralph Lauren)

The Big Pony series has me wondering why Ralph Lauren hasn't caught on that redundancy is a cheap thrill. You capture the public's attention for all of two weeks, rake in some extra holiday-season profit, and eventually wind up discontinuing, discontinuing, and discontinuing some more. There's no big picture here. I thought the 1980s were supposed to teach us about the Big Business Big Picture. Apparently I was mistaken. Each of these fragrances tries to put a spin on something that's already been done a million times, and they fail miserably. I would never wear them, but I suppose if teenagers are faced with the choice of any of these, or Justin Bieber's new scent, they're better off picking a number. Here's my take:

Big Pony 1: The perfect example of what not to buy, for two reasons: 1) you'll wind up smelling like a cheaper version of Polo Blue, and 2) Everyone smells like Polo Blue. This is a thin watercolor sketch of that tried-and-tired "blueness" that has pervaded perfumery since Cool Water. Not to say that it comes anywhere close to the specific nature of Cool Water itself; BP 1 is a rather air-freshened and abstract blue sky concept, with a dryer ozonic texture. I'm fairly certain that Polo Blue has already failed at making this type of fragrance anything more than a teenage diversion.

Big Pony 2: I don't get the dark chocolate that supposedly distinguishes this scent, and I certainly don't get anything specific out of Big Pony 2. It reads to me like a spicy, cinnamon-type musk. It's rather nondescript. There's a heated amber lurking around in there. Oh, I get it - red bottle, hot scent. $65 for this? Really?

Big Pony 3: I probably shouldn't be doing it, but I'm giving Big Pony 3 a pass because it's the most likable of the BP lineup. Some ginger-mint and an incredibly synthetic greeny heart. The fresh notes are slathered over a faceless white musk. I'm a sucker for green, even when it's as soulless as this. I suppose if I were 17 and sexually frustrated, this would be my spring spritz. Anyone even a smidgen further along in life should just man up and wear the original Polo.

Big Pony 4: Amazingly, this is the most faceless scent in the series. It has an orangey, ambery, raspy wood & musk essence. The scent feels a bit like a Chanel in its muted affability, yet lacks refinement, distinction, or anything to set it apart from the mindless league of colored Polos. If scratchy wood is your thing, you're better off with Polo Blue, Black, or Double Black. Me? I'll steer clear of Ralph Lauren's 21st Century fragrances altogether, with more emphatic route diversions thanks to Big Pony 4.

And there you have it. They're better than any of the Calvin Klein scents of the last ten years, but that's not saying much. I'm thinking Lauren's fragrance department is downwind of the lavatories, and their Glade air fresheners aren't working so well.

Polo (Ralph Lauren)

Polo by Ralph Lauren. Carlos Benaim's 1978 formula was never intended for skirt-chasers. It wasn't meant to amp up one's "clean" factor, or convey to women a sense of impeccable personal grooming. Mr. Lauren's first major masculine scent was specifically designed to be a magnifier of one's inner macho. 

Polo captures this essence perfectly. It's a leathery chypre, bordering on freshness, but truly ensconced in an earthy rawhide. The incredible opening of basil, caraway, pine, artemisia, and patchouli is so indelibly green and earthy. The greenness is enhanced by a very pronounced patchouli note, which hoists the pine needles and degrading leaves over its shoulders of dry soil and spice. After a while, the bitter greens begin to recede, and the fragrance becomes a leathery affair. This leather is full of the aromatic riches that come with vetiver, sage, bergamot, and oakmoss. The mossy notes eventually dominate the sideshow, flanking the leather until the furthest reaches of the drydown. The whole show is truly beautiful, understated, unforgettable.

It's also a little menacing. Polo is like Yatagan, but with all the shadows and none of the bite. Nothing leaps out and shakes you, but the arrangement of evergreen, herbs, spices, discreet floral naunces, and mosses leaves its mark in one's scent memory. By aquatic standards, this doesn't smell good. This is the definition of smelling bad, of smelling uncouth and dirty. But I don't live by aquatic standards. I live by masculine standards, and I reserve the right to maintain my sexiness while smelling of fresh-cut grass and tree bark.

Polo deals in the smells men follow: cut grass, tree clippings, gardening gloves, stale tobacco, the great outdoors. Sure, it's 2011, and there are millions of metrosexuals out there whose last encounter with a pine cone was back when the Macintosh II was released. But every woman I know here in Connecticut refuses to cut her own lawn, and expects the man of the house to take up that chore. As far as I'm concerned, the way I smell after that chore is the way I want to smell, the way I should smell, and the way she expects me to smell. Polo conjures scent associations of a strong, physically healthy guy, a conscientious man who always follows through, a true adult. Images of drama-less masculinity, like the Marlboro Man, abound.

On a superficial level, Ralph Lauren's brand has moved far beyond the original Polo, and committed the multiple sins of its Blue, Black, and Double Black flankers. But make no mistake - Polo is never going to fade into irrelevance. The scent is a piece of American culture, American identity, and is sometimes overbearing, often difficult, but always part of the conversation. Ladies, the next time you pass a bottle on a tester shelf, give it a spritz. The earthy, dark scent that it produces will transport you back into the arms of a lover from long ago, one you may have temporarily forgotten. Hold onto that feeling, and remember it whenever some detergent-scented, gel-haired mimbo leans in to give you some cheesy line. You'll find yourself wanting to turn back the clock and make love to the man of your memories. And you'll be the better for it.