4711: Still Better Than Farina, Still the Best

Gorgeous Bottle, Gorgeous Contents

I just bought my second 27 oz bottle of this wonderful elixir, after finishing my first about six years ago. It still possesses an autumnal crispness and summery freshness that surpasses anything else I've ever smelled, including many niche "freshies." Its simplicity and timelessness prevail when I'm in need of olfactory air-conditioning, and the beautiful blue and gold label remains a symbol of Old World charm. I consider it a masterpiece of 19th century graphic design.

How many logos have lasted 200 years? Not many. How many products have waded into an ocean of time, survived two Antichrists (Napoleon and Hitler), dozens of wars, numerous pandemics, decades upon decades of economic turbulence, and emerged smelling of fresh fruits and sweet flowers? Well, Jean Marie Farina Cologne by Roger & Gallet did that, too. Except something about Farina's cologne water doesn't quite work, and it's hard to pinpoint what it is. Is it too sharp? Too literal? Not floral enough? Too musky? I don't quite know why I prefer 4711, but if I needed an alibi, I'd say it's the rosemary and neroli in Wilhelm Muelhens' cologne water that wins the day.

Farina's blend doesn't take 4711's "mélange" approach to cologne: bright citrus, woody herbs, and mellow white flowers. Instead, it needlessly dwells on impressing you with an intense blast of natural citrus. It then uses an excessively desiccated orange blossom to segue into a smooth woody amber and white musk base. The amber is attenuated to avoid the "designer cologne" effect of modern fare, and it's well done, but the sharpness of the top, bordering on sourness, and the minimization of herbal notes and cheerful floral chords, makes it an antiseptic and monochrome experience. It's a pointlessly masculine spin on what ought to be an entirely unisex fragrance.

Whenever I bring this up in conversations about cologne, outraged defenders of Farina's version invariably shout, "Muelhens was a huckster who stole Farina's name to sell his inferior plagiarized formula!" To which I say, "That's completely irrelevant." They usually retort with, "4711's citrus smells blatantly synthetic, and its drydown is equally cheap. Farina's citrus is HANDS DOWN the best." To which I say, "Tell that to Tom Ford." This is my roundabout (but unfairly effective) way of telling Farina's defenders that attacking the quality of 4711's citrus notes is the loser's way of telling me 4711 is a failed fragrance. The citrus isn't the point of 4711. Citrus notes, even when done perfectly, are just not that impressive. Sorry, it's the truth. That's why Muelhens' formula pulls my nose past the citrus, and into a handful of rosemary sprigs, which eventually expand into a lovely neroli, and neroli is what makes 4711 the winner.

When Tom Ford farted out Neroli Portofino, he wasn't aping Farina's cologne. Neroli Portofino is by all measures a redux of 4711, down to the color of its bottle. Weirdly enough, after benefitting from far more cash in its formula, Ford's fragrance lacks the gentle charm of 4711, and winds up smelling a bit strident to me. It's still an excellent frag, and likely the only Ford scent I would buy, but with the current Mäurer & Wirtz cologne at around $2 an ounce, it's a little hard to see the point. My point, however, is that Tom Ford recognized that 4711 is about neroli, not citrus.

Besides, the claim that Farina's citrus is better isn't even true. Farina's citrus is excellent, but it focuses on lemon and bergamot, while 4711 uses far more lime. After the explosion of lime-scented drugstore aftershaves of the 1960s and '70s, many of which were surprisingly well made, people unfairly associate even the best of lime notes with "cheap." My guess is 4711's lime was emphasized to lend a better intro to its rosemary middle, as these notes play off their green and woody qualities. 4711 also has a very good bergamot note, and one might argue its lemon is a touch weak, but again I say, who cares? It escapes smelling like lemon Pledge, it's quite a bit better than most of the lemon notes found in your average $50 designer, and it blends very well, so a less-than-photorealistic lemon note doesn't keep me up at night.

There's been no reformulation to 4711, as far as I can tell. If I had to guess at a tweak, I'd posit that the lime note has become a touch more prominent in the last ten years, but that could just be my imagination. Beyond that, I can't smell a lick of difference here. I've owned a few 3 oz spray bottles since 2014, and they all smelled identical. So we should consider Mäurer & Wirtz a very successful purveyor of a fine fragrance. They haven't mucked up a good thing. It smells fresh, natural, and entirely like what a classical eau de cologne should be. My ten year old bottle, empty now for years, smells like I've used it to store rosemary, so that speaks to the quality of the herbal note. It's excellent.

We live in scary, complicated times. It's comforting to know that 4711 has seen much worse. It smells like a guiding light, and in the heat of summer it's the only thing I feel like reaching for. Side note: the "gold" color on the current label is about a full shade paler than the same shade on my older bottle. Whoever makes the label has clearly trimmed some expense there. My message to Mäurer & Wirtz: No biggie, but quit while you're ahead. If you think we don't notice these things, think again.

Chelsea Flowers (Bond no.9)

This is the first Bond fragrance I've ever owned a full bottle of. I bought it blind, on the premise that it gets compared to Creed Spring Flower, and it generally gets positive reviews. It's also one of Bond's "foundational" offerings, released as part of their original lineup in 2003. I bought the 3.3 oz bottle for a little less than half of what Bond wants for it, so not a terrible deal. And I needed to know what Bond can do with a fruity-floral. A good brand will take an otherwise staid floral and raise it to new heights, so I was hoping to smell this in CF.

What I got was a gorgeously-packaged perfume that smells 90% like Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger. What happens in the other 10%? Let me start with the notes - there's a fleeting chamomile tea note in the opening, instead of Tommy Girl's green tea, and no blackcurrant note. The lack of blackcurrant is the most obvious difference, as Hilfiger's scent has distinct elements of currant and cassis leaf throughout its evolution. There are fruity notes in CF, but I can't name them. They smell like a berry of some sort, and maybe a peachy-melon thing, as they're quite sweet.

Another difference is the ingredient quality. Tommy Girl's price averages at $50. What you get for that money is a bright and somewhat sweet tea floral that is just dry and dusky enough to be unisex. Its gender barrier is broken by an aquatic overtone, which refocuses the theme on freshness, rather than florals. The drawback is that TG smells pretty synthetic. Chelsea Flowers is also synthetic, but the quality of its synthetics is fully one notch higher than those used in the Hilfiger. Imagine if Chanel did Tommy Girl instead of Estée Lauder, and that's pretty much the quality of Chelsea Flowers. That sounds bad when you first read it, I know. But read on.

Chelsea Flowers smells satisfyingly good. It's a weird good, but good nonetheless. Its chamomile is tart and short-lived, and transitions into a very abstract white floral accord, with all the flowers blended into one living bloom, which occasionally smells greener and a bit more realistic than I thought it could. Its aquatic overlay is virtually identical to Tommy Girl's, but done with an aroma chemical that seems a touch more delicate and "dewy." There's a soapy freshness to it, and I've been told I smell like I just came out of the shower an hour after applying Chelsea Flowers. It oscillates between smelling like shampoo, and a serious study in floral abstraction. Laurent Le Guernec gave Bond its 1990s-style fresh floral, and they ran with it.

Price is an issue here. As good as it smells, it doesn't smell grey market Creed good. Spending what I spent on this is a ripoff, although not by a ton. It would be fairly priced at about $110. Chanel would charge that much, and like I said, this smells like a Chanel. I happen to think Chanel's prices are fair. But $300 from Bond? Well, you decide, folks. It's not 2003 anymore, and the brand has at least 900 floral perfumes out of their 1500 perfume lineup. So it's not like this is the only stop on the ride. But my main takeaway is that the packaging is stunning, the perfume is quite good for what it is, with good longevity and decent throw, and it's just as fresh and unisex as Tommy Girl, if Tommy Girl were taken to the next level. Is it what I hoped it would be? No, I wanted a variation of Creed's Spring Flower. But if you like this kind of thing, it's worth a sniff.

Derby Clubhouse Blanche (Armaf)

Silver Mountain Water clones are weird. Two years ago, I bought Rasasi's Al Wisam Day, expecting it to be a dead ringer based on everything I was reading, and at best it approximates its template by maybe 60% (or less). So I had to stow expectations for Armaf's Derby Clubhouse Blanche, given its cheaper price point, and less than stellar reputation. I have never received a compliment on AW Day, and figured DCB would also be underwhelming.

Armaf's interpretation is fresher, lighter, and subtler than Rasasi's, and these differences are immediately obvious at first spray. It's also a much simpler composition. Al-Wisam Day is full of sparkling herbal notes, supported in the base by tea rose and synthetic sandalwood. Armaf eschews complexity and employs a quartet pyrmaid: fleeting citrus, green tea, sweet berry, and aqueous musk (presumably a stand-in for ambergris). Though somewhat basic, I think the nose for DCB calibrated its limited palette wisely, choosing a dusky green tea aroma chemical that darkens as it evaporates, respectably mimicking the "ink" in the Creed. The scent's musk was also a good choice, as it radiates an odd, somewhat watery freshness later in the dry down.

I'm not sure what the point of the citrus is, as it lasts twenty seconds off the top, and the "berry" note, which is meant to be blackcurrant, just smells vague and sweet (this is probably one of Creed's captive molecules, which no clone can imitate), but everything feels decently balanced, performance is reasonable, and I think I got a bit more than I paid for here. It's good to note that these kinds of scents are very high-pitched, making olfactory fatigue common, so longevity can be difficult to gauge.

Rasasi's fragrance is more complex, far richer, and probably a better scent all around, but I did receive two compliments from a woman who said she wanted to wear the Armaf herself, and after a week of unbroken wear, I've yet to tire of it. If you're on the fence here, all I can say is, try it. Given its $20 price tag, you can't go wrong. I'm looking forward to smelling how Franck Olivier's Sun Java White compares.

Exploring Silver Mountain Water Clones, and Why I'm Going Climbing

Silver Mountain Water is a weird one. Twenty-four years ago, Creed released a Millesime that has since been relentlessly studied and copied by a multitude of obscure brands, most of them Middle Eastern. These are fragrances you would never hear about if you aren't into fragrances. What makes Silver Mountain Water (SMW) weird is that no mainstream high fashion designer brand has ever picked up on the concept and copied it. Despite having a respectable place in the Creed canon, and being a widely discussed fragrance amongst fragcomm aficionados, SMW remains a "niche" artifact, with no direct link to popular culture.

Why aren't corporate leaders at Chanel, YSL, Gucci, Prada, D&G interested in ripping off this Creed? It's a proven money maker. Creed has openly cited it as one of their top sellers since its release. And it's a considerably easy fragrance to sell. Its fresh composition, loaded with crowd-pleasing fruity-green notes, is relatively timeless. Despite its age, SMW feels as bright and new as it did in '95. Adding to the mystery is the fact that several Middle Eastern companies have recognized the commercial potential of Creed's concept, and successfully monopolized the market with a variety of competent progeny. Why has the West failed to follow suit?

I suppose these questions wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't for Aventus. When Creed released Aventus in 2010, it hit the niche market with a whimper. Basenotes and general fraghead consensus was that Aventus smelled kind of "designer" and "generic." Many were surprised Creed went in that direction. It wasn't until around 2012 that guys began hyping it as liquid Spanish Fly. And it wasn't until 2014 that the term "panty dropper" became synonymous with it. There is some speculation that Pierre Bourdon was the author of Aventus, and I'll get into that in another post this year. But my quick take on it is that Aventus is a very good Creed, but not the most "Creedy" of Creeds. To me, SMW fits that bill much better.

The reason I bring up Aventus here is simple: designers want a piece of the Aventus pie. And why wouldn't they? They've wanted a piece of the Millesime Imperial pie, the Green Irish Tweed pie, the Himalaya pie, etc. That's a lot of pie. Mount Blanc recently issued their version of Aventus. Pineapple notes are popping up everywhere. Established niche and designers are paying tons of attention to it, despite its being ten years old already. And rightly so - it's a great scent. But so is Silver Mountain Water. Why hasn't anyone bothered with little old Silver Mountain Water?

I'm going Silver Mountain climbing in the next few months, to explore some of the offbeat brands from downmarket Western companies, and from Dubai, that have given SMW the time of day. I've been wearing these fragrances for months, and have fully formed opinions of their varying degrees of quality and accuracy. In my opinion, SMW is an interesting, thoroughly postmodern, and utterly compelling fragrance, and exploring its clones has been a lot of fun.

Hopefully my interest in this Creed will help spur along some imaginations in the designer world. Come on, Chanel, come on Gucci, come on YSL, where's your Silver Mountain Water frag? It might seem trite to release a tea and blackcurrant scent in 2020, but given the abundance of smoky oud orientals on the market, I think it's time to switch gears and return to the nineties. Let's go.

My Thoughts on the Molton Brown Line

In 2019 I had the chance to try out some of the Molton Brown fragrances, and reviewed them on Fragrantica. They weren't all that impressive, and I don't feel like spending more than ten minutes on them, so here we go:

Tobacco Absolute: Tobacco is a tough one for any brand to do successfully. You can't use natural tobacco absolute in perfume because of the whole nicotine thing, so reconstructions are necessary. This one takes a sweet honeysuckle accord, a gathering of the floral and green-stem notes, and embellishes it with heavy shakes of black pepper, basil, oregano (yes, oregano), with a hint of something camphor-like, perhaps a kind of ginger effect, at the very top. Smells okay, but I would have vastly preferred a straightforward honeysuckle. It's an underrated note, there aren't enough honeysuckle soliflores out there, and the last one I smelled is the now-defunct Chèvrefeuille by Creed, which I dearly miss.

Russian Leather: Not bad. Lots of synthetic birch tar (IFRA correct birch tar, presumably), imparting a deep, rich, super-smoky bitterness that smells a lot like cigar tobacco. So Russian Leather smells like it could have been MB's Tobacco Absolute, at least for the first fifteen minutes. The drydown brings a bit of a floral sweetness, but it's vague, more ambery, and doesn't hurt an otherwise pristine depiction of the star note. It's hard to find a great leather for under $150. I wouldn't call this great, but if you like smooth leather, you might love this.

Re-Charge Black Pepper: Black pepper? Where? This smells more like white pepper, which is quite different in both taste and smell (and amazing in scrambled eggs). White pepper is creamier, subtler than its darker counterpart. I find this one to be the most "generic guy" of what I've tried from this brand. It's a simple woody amber with peppery overtones, and a cologney-baloney drydown. "Re-Charge" implies that I've purchased on credit one too many of these dull and forgettable designer scents. Definitely not for me, although fifteen years ago I might have considered it.

Geranium Nefertum: Otherwise known as "Geranium Lotus." This is a pretty good one. It's very green, very bitter, as geranium scents typically are, and actually smells fairly natural. Expect a big blast of galbanum and peppery geranium on top, followed by a gradual dusking effect of dew-covered meadow with nondescript floral tones. It's a cool amber, very unisex, and probably an alternative to whatever well-worn fougere you were thinking of wearing instead. Worth the money if you truly love geranium, but if you already have things like Grey Flannel and Jacomo's beautiful Silences, try before buying.

My takeaway is that this is one of those brands that a fraghead will enjoy sampling, but will probably walk away from, unless they're hard up for an affordable upscale designer scent, a scenario I can't imagine myself in. And that's the problem with designers nowadays. So much has been recycled that the inherent need to wear any of them has all but vanished. Hopefully the next decade will bring about some remarkable innovations in themes and structures that make the designer world exciting again. But right now Molton Brown is just holding someone's beer.

Asian Green Tea (Creed)

Usually with Creed fragrances, it's easy to smell where the money went. But with Asian Green Tea I'm, well, wondering where the money went.

I know it's part of the "cheaper" Acqua Originale line (you pay $300 instead of $500, a real bargain), and I get that it's a spring spritz with limited strength. Its strength isn't the problem. This performs very well on me. What bugs me is its quality. I don't smell a $300 shimmering summer perfume. I'm not sensing months of old-world maceration techniques, infusing hundreds of complex naturals and high-end synthetics. I'm not really getting much in the way of development, or note separation. This is definitely not a Millesime, or even a "grey cap" EDT.

Asian Green Tea is a one-trick pony of one standout natural "tea" note for about ninety minutes off the top, which my brain affirms is of the "green" variety. My mom said it smells like fresh celery, and she's not wrong. But hey, *sniff sniff* - my brain also tells me the tea is conjoined to the odor of the metal tin in which it's housed. Realism. A bit later a sweet chord emerges, embodying a tight interplay of blackcurrant, violet, freesia, and heliotrope, with perhaps a teeny-tiny rose, and distant smidgen of jasmine for texture. And the "texture" here is creamy, soapy, clean. When I think of Creed, I think of perfumery in motion, the sixth sense of olfactory bliss. Here, I'm forced to think of shower time in a luxury hotel.

Creed should consider the Acqua Originale line rough drafts of Millesimes. This one is linear, like an $80 designer on discount at Marshalls.

Notes on a Pandemic . . .

My War Room.

So this sucks, doesn't it? As I sit in my living room (nicknamed my "war room"), the sunlight streams in, shedding little light on what has been a relatively opaque subject, the coronavirus pandemic.

The last three weeks has seen me move through various stages of grief and acceptance. The first week was mostly panic, intense anxiety, working out in my little in-house gym (basically an empty bedroom), smoking hemp CBD cigarettes (no tobacco) at night on the back porch, trying to work out my future prospects for paychecks and personal safety. I live in Connecticut, and my state is getting hammered by this thing. Since yesterday there are 1,200 new cases of coronavirus, and over 200 dead. I'm fairly certain that if I were to catch it, I'd become a statistic. It feels as though the air itself is trying to kill everyone. No amount of internet-streamed movies or reassurances from placating parents and family members can neutralize the fact that the Spanish Flu of 1918 is about to replay itself 100 years later in my backyard.

Week two was a series of "get a grip" days, which entailed me pretending to have a new routine. I'm lucky in that I work in a school district, and the governor has mandated that all districts maintain payroll during this crisis, so I'll continue to be paid for essentially doing a bare minimum of work. I can't complain. There are over two-hundred thousand unemployment claims in the state since the end of March. I'm extra lucky to not be joining the ranks of the jobless. But somehow that doesn't take the sting out of things. There's still an overarching sense of uncertainty, of bleak prospects in the future should this crisis continue indefinitely. Connecticut residents tend to think they're invincible, so we may be on the slow boat to peak infection rates, and might not see the beginning of the end until late May or early June, if we're lucky.

Meanwhile I'm in quarantine, with my only two environments being my house (chiefly chilling in my "war room"), and my parents' house fifteen minutes south. They're also in quarantine, so the three of us only see each other. I haven't seen another soul since the middle of March, other than a brief excursion to a pharmacy, and I don't even intend on repeating that. All of my prescriptions, groceries, anything I need will be delivered from now on. When I drive around I see people everywhere. People on the streets. People walking their dogs. People in small groups. I wonder if they're ok. I wonder if I'm ok. If this drags through the rest of the calendar year, it will be a generation-defining situation, akin to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

Week three saw the beginning of acceptance. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere in the faceless days of isolation I began to expect the same for weeks to come, and felt less alarmed and more resigned to it all. When I turn on the news or the talking heads, it's as if I live in a dystopian future novel by George Orwell or Harry Harrison. I switched on Jimmy Dore's livestream Saturday morning at around a quarter to one, and Jimmy and his wife were basically blowing bubbles into their microphones, high as fuck, their every word addressing illness, death, or unemployment. When I switch over to Joe Rogan or Scott Adams it's pretty much a variation of the same deal. Nobody knows what will happen a month from now, but everyone is damn sure of what's happening this minute, and none of it sounds good.

As I slide into the fourth week of quarantine I find myself wondering what will happen to me. Will I survive this? Will my family survive it? My brother still goes to the office twice a week. He and his partner are a little less alarmist about it, and make occasional non-essential trips to places like grocery stores and Home Depot. Will New York City hold up? Will Connecticut maintain? My best friend is immunocompromised beyond anyone's wildest imagination, so if he gets it his goose is cooked. How will he fare in the coming days? All of this uncertainty has me playing chess with myself. I have enough content to publish on my blog for the rest of the year, but what will the fragrance world look like in nine months? How many brands will go under? Who will do ok? Something tells me the fragrance industry will be fine.

To all of my readers, wherever you may be: take caution, and be well. I want all of you to have a happy story to tell by the end of this fiasco, and I want to be there to hear it. This pandemic may be blip on our radar, or it may be like WW3, with the possibility of a second Great Depression looming if industries continue to struggle and perish. But whatever happens to us, I hope we are together for it. Strength in numbers, even if those numbers must be counted alone.

Colgate Aftershave Talc (Colgate-Palmolive-Peet)

I was in an antique shop recently, and as usual I lost time while I was in there. It was about twelve-thirty when I stepped inside, knowingly leaving my watch in the car, and when I returned it was three o'clock. In fairness to myself, this isn't your average little broom closet antique shop. This is a massive Walmart-sized bazaar of anachronistic oddities, so steeped in various dust-covered items that it would likely take a year to account for them all.

It was an hour into my visit when I spied this little tin of Colgate shave talc sitting on an ancient bookshelf, its yellow and blue label shining in the sunlight through an open door nearby. I figured it would be empty, but I was wrong. The damn thing was practically full, and I could tell it was the original talc because it smelled of Skin Bracer and rusty nickels. I dropped one scalding hot Hamilton on it and took it home. The talc has been in my bathroom ever since, a room which I recently repaired and re-painted by the way (it is now solidly and unerringly pink).

What struck me was the company insignia on the back, which says "Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co." Apparently a Missouri-based firm run by the Peet family purchased the Colgate Company in 1928, added their name, and eventually dropped the "Peet" in 1953. So my tin was manufactured sometime after Coolidge, but before Eisenhower. I figure it falls into the Truman years, roughly between 1945 and 1953. Its condition is too good to be any older than that, and Colgate's Helvetica font is suggestive of early 1950s postwar stoicism. Still, the packaging is bare enough and worn enough to be from the war itself, so who knows.

The powder itself is just talc, simple and unembellished. It works well on freshly-shorn skin, but I have my Clubman talc for that. I figure I'll just hold on to this item as a conversation piece, and given its condition, I really lucked out on that front!

Lauder for Men - Vintage 1980s Gold Cap Formula (Estée Lauder)

Here's one that I've enjoyed for a while, and yet I've neglected to mention it. Released in 1985, Lauder for Men was the American answer to Europe's vaunted Jules (1980) and Kouros (1981). It's perhaps a day late and dollar short to review such a monumental fragrance in 2020, decades after its time, and that far behind society's collective familiarity with it. However, the 1990s and 2000s saw a significant reformulation, and I thought it might be nice to reconsider the "vintage" gold cap formula that signifies the true gold standard of the brand.

Lauder for Men is what every aromatic fougère should be: a rich lavender and citrus accord, buttressed with a tonka note so complex it could be its own perfume. It reminds me of Moustache and Monsieur Rochas Concentrée, two fougères with expansive, natural-smelling coumarin notes that imbue their compositions with soft, grassy, hay-like aromas. Midcentury masculines relied on a careful balance between naturals and synthetics, with lab chemicals extending the silky freshness of citrus past the five minute mark, while also allowing lavender's opalescence into a dusky, oakmoss-extended base. In Lauder's scent a rather expensive burst of animalic honey and Meyer lemon is conjoined with lavender, petitgrain, anise, and juniper, which travel together through a vibrant, mellow, and truly beautiful coumarin. As if the tonka effect weren't enough, Lauder layered a luxurious bouquet of florals across this gorgeous wreath, with noticeable hints of jasmine and carnation wafting through.

As the aromatics settle, they coalesce into a mossy tobacco accord, which smells quite tailored and understated. This doesn't scream "TOBACCO!!!" like Havana does. It quietly radiates, an austere unisex tobacco leaf peeled from the cap of a pricy cigar. For me, Lauder for men conjures images of 18th century aristocrats lounging in a field, their powdered wigs reflecting warm spring sunshine. This is a languid, poised, and very rich composition, and it smells refined and natural, like what a fougère would have been in the 1700s. Perhaps Houbigant could learn a thing or two.

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.

Dakar (Al-Rehab)

It's been a while, so I'm revisiting my Drakkar Noir clones. I ran out of the real stuff a year ago, and never restocked it for reasons that elude me. Yesterday I wore Taxi for the first time in over a year. I'm not sure if it macerated in the bottle, or I just never noticed its strength before, but it's a beast! I got fifteen hours and ridiculous tenacity out of it, and still smell it on the inside of my jacket. It's a lot better than I ever gave it credit for; Drakkar is a smooth, smoky fougere with near-perfect balance and adequate projection, but Taxi is smoother, at least compared to Drakkar's current formula. It's great stuff.

People have been asking me to review Al-Rehab's version of Drakkar Noir for years, and I never got around to it. Called "Dakar" (no relation to the capital of Senegal), their clone is a pale shade of green, and comes in roll-on and EDP spray. I bought the 50ml spray for ten bucks off Amazon, but that isn't the greatest deal. Parfums Belcam sells 75ml of their clone for eight dollars, and it smells surprisingly close to the original. And when I want something similar and at the same price-point as Drakkar Noir, I reach for Francesco Smalto's excellent version. Given how successful these are, I had high hopes for Dakar.

And Dakar did not disappoint! It's an interesting variant of the theme: all drydown. From top to bottom, it smells of an aged (and intensified) Drakkar Noir, conveying its wood-smoky characteristics with near perfect accuracy. The only noticeable changeup is a distinct cumin note, which adds exoticism to the otherwise familiar milieu. Its weakest phase is the top notes, very brief, unfocused, flat, and cheap. Nonetheless, this doesn't detract from the wearing experience. Dakar smells directly on point after two minutes on skin or fabric, and really blooms in its drydown. Vintage, full-throated Drakkar Noir is alive in this fragrance.

If you're into collecting Drakkar clones like I am, I highly recommend giving Dakar a try. After going through a few different versions, I've come to believe that Drakkar Noir is a remarkably easy formula to imitate. I suppose it's a straightforward case of GC analysis, with the understanding that roughly 10% of the main course is dihydromyrcenol. Dakar has a fairly complex ingredients list, with oakmoss included pretty high up the ranks. So yeah, this scent is about 98% identical to vintage Drakkar Noir from the 1980s, and maybe the 90s. It's strong, fresh, and smells like it belongs in a John Hughes or Joe Dante movie.

With that said, if you're someone who just wants a handful of Reagan-era classics, and you don't obsess over fougeres, just get Drakkar Noir. It's like $40 on Amazon, and you can get the 7 oz bottle, which should last you a hundred years. In any case, if you do opt for Dakar, just know that you're getting a powerhouse fern from a bygone era. This is going to raise eyebrows if you wear one spray too many, and even if you don't, you sure as shit won't smell "au courant." To me, that's a major plus!