Sorry Reddit Trolls, Parfumo Isn't Happening. (And Basenotes Is All But Dead.)

Who has the best online fragrance database?

Recently I partook in a debate on Reddit's frag forum as to which site has the best fragrance database. Naturally there were three contenders: Basenotes, Fragrantica, and Parfumo. For the last twenty years, these three sites have been (to varying degrees) the most reliable go-to resources for information on perfume. 

I was surprised to see that a large number of participants in this discussion had major problems with Fragrantica. My unwavering opinion is that Basenotes is the crappiest. Eleven years ago, I was banned from Basenotes because I dared to make one complaint on Fragrantica about how badly the community had been treating me, and so naturally Grant's response to a public declaration of abuse was to further the abuse via a brazenly punitive ban. It was predicated on an unsupportable claim that I had violated his site's terms of use, even though his terms said nothing on the matter. 

When I attempted to rejoin, the url redirected me to a page that read: You no longer have access to Basenotes forums. Banned once, banned for good. I never forgot that. The mods made a major boo-bo when they banned someone with a fairly clear voice. Turns out that when you ban the author of a popular fragrance blog, word gets out. How's Grant's site doing today? Not great -- it's struggling. I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with the name of a city located at the coordinates of 44.8015° N, 10.3279° E. 

Reddit's thread revealed an interesting animus toward Fragrantica, which its trolls have apparently been cultivating for a while now. We live in strange times. I call it the Age of Funhouse Mirrors. For example, since 2016, we've been subjected to images of masked criminals dressed in black who attack civilians and destroy neighborhoods in the name of protesting "facism." We, the quiet ones, are the facists. Funhouse. Global bureaucrats fly their private jets and ride their limousine motorcades to assemblies where they decry "global warming." We, the folks who commute to work in cars we can barely afford, are held responsible. Funhouse. And Fragrantica, an online fragrance magazine with the most functional perfume database on the internet is "aesthetically stuck in the 2000s" and harbors "bad politics," and thus Parfumo is the place to go. Funhouse.

The charge on Reddit is that Fragrantica's politics are really terrible. That Fragrantica's editors and owners are very awful no-good people who are politically conservative and really really bad. That the site disseminates far-right messages via threads and articles and comments that are egged on by admin and spread by white supremacists who pose as members but are there to peddle hate, and thus the whole atmosphere on the site is "toxic" and very, very, very bad. And we're all just supposed to read these complaints and agree with those who are making them, and also agree that because of its politics, it's best to avoid Fragrantica altogether and go use Parfumo.com instead. 

These arguments were further bolstered by claims that Parfumo's database is far superior to Fragrantica's, and here is where I sat up in my chair. Parfumo's database is superior? News to me! Since when? Parfumo, the site with so few reviews that you literally have to advance-search for a perfume that someone has taken more than three seconds to comment on? Parfumo, the site with scads of useless pie charts that ostensibly reveal all sorts of useful info about each perfume? Parfumo, the site that lacks pictures for at least a third of the perfumes in its database? Parfumo, the site that just mimics the notes lists on Fragrantica with smaller pictures? Parfumo, the site that claims to have more than double the number of perfumes as the other sites, yet when you search for something relatively commonplace, it doesn't show up? That Parfumo? 

Here's the bitter truth about Parfumo, which the Reddit crowd didn't want to hear: it's been around as long as Fragrantica, and almost as long as Basenotes, and yet it has never taken off in the fragrance community. Go on YouTube and listen to the top reviewers there, and they invariably refer to Fragrantica for note breakdowns and release years. Look at some of the more "indie" writers and reviewers, and you'll find they have extensive reviews on Fragrantica. And if you do a basic search of something on Fragrantica, you'll find the perfume on a page that often has several pictures of the fragrance and enough info to tell you what you want to know. Even if the page lacks a release date and reviews, at least you'll know what the product looks like. 

Does Parfumo have a vaster database with more fragrances listed? Possibly. I have seen a discrepancy in the number of hits I get on Parfumo vs. Fragrantica, and often the latter doesn't have a fragrance, or has the fragrance in the wrong place, and sometimes with the wrong year. Fragrantica's database is very far from perfect, there's no arguing that. It has plenty of problems, and often those problems are so basic that they would take admin five minutes to rectify, yet they don't. So that's another valid complaint. But then there's just the practical fact of the matter: Fragrantica is more useful than Parfumo when referencing what a perfume is like. If I look up Coty's Truly Lace on Parfumo, I get one picture of the perfume, four pie charts that tell me nothing (apparently Truly Lace is 10% of everything to everyone, and ranks at 33% for three of the four seasons, whatever that means), and that's it. No reviews. No comments. No user-submitted photos. Nothing.

I hop on Fragrantica, call up Truly Lace, and voila! Two pics of the perfume, plus an ad for it, a clear notes list, easy-to-read bar graphs created by users, and twelve decent reviews, with several written by prolific and experienced members. If I search for Coty's Wild Citrus, it doesn't come up on Fragrantica, and that's a problem. It should be there. I shows up on Parfumo, sure, but when I click on the page, aside from one picture, what do I get? Nothing, not even the useless pie charts! So yeah, Parfumo's database fills in holes for various brands by having pages for more obscure fragrances, but without reviews and basic user-submitted data, what good does that really do me? I may be looking at a page for Wild Citrus, but it isn't telling me anything about it. It's utterly useless.

As for the supposedly terrible and awful and very bad politics of Fragrantica, I'm at a loss. I've been a member there for over ten years, and have been a faithful reader of their articles. I've never witnessed a single political exchange on the site. Not one. When the abortion debate was reignited in American politics, Fragrantica's home page banner read (and still reads) "Free to Choose," which is obviously a feminist reference to a woman's right to choose. Yet the Reddit crowd is going on about how it's code for an issue in the Ukraine war, and Julian Assange, and the Trucker Convoy in Canada, which doesn't make a lick of sense. "Free to Choose" to get the Covid vaccine? That's a stretch. 

"Free to Choose" is a center-left mantra, and certainly not a far-right catchphrase. All the flaming going on about how Fragrantica's administrators "spread hate" is typical left-leaning noise with nothing factual behind it. Tellingly, none of the accusations were backed by direct links to pages on Fragrantica where the hate is happening. I guess they don't have a database for that? Funhouse!

Green Tea (Alyssa Ashley)

For some unknown reason, the 1990s was the decade of tea fragrances. Jean-Claude Ellena's iconic Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert (1992) famously combined ionone beta with hedione to form the scent of green tea, and it was a smash hit. Bulgari's scent was elegant and refined, but its imitators were often less so. Alyssa Ashley's Green Tea Essence (release date unknown) was born sometime after Arden's Green Tea (1999), but before the 2000s ozonic trend took off. Basenotes suggests 2002; Fragrantica says 2003. I say it was probably released between 2000 and 2002. Why? It looks and smells like it. 

It's odd, getting old. I remember thinking as a teenager in the late nineties and early 2000s that the world was full of "fresh" fragrances that blew old school frags out of the water. Think CK One overtaking Paco Rabanne Pour Homme. Now, as an adult, when I smell a nineties or pre-2003 fragrance, I'm often struck by how weird "fresh" was back then. Millennium freshness isn't 2020s freshness; it's a different animal. Imagine Christmas Shopping in a mall in 2002 and asking the clerk to smell the latest "fresh and clean" scent, and being handed a tester of Alyssa Ashley's Green Tea Essence. You spray it, and your nose is blasted by a searing flash of lemon and ginger, blended in a cloud of cheap aldehydes for a "fizzy" effect. Frigid, bitter, biting, unfriendly. 

This might sound conventional for a fresh tea scent, and it is, to a certain degree. But when the top notes fade off, are you left with a clean shower gel aquatic thing? No, this is 2002. What remains on your skin is the smell of stale water with an algae-like greenness and a whisper of citrus, a lemon wedge floating in a mug. The camphor quality of the ginger lingers without any of its aroma, and it's almost like you're wearing pond water. It's green, it's a little metallic (thanks to a thin lavender note), it smells sort of like tea, but also like a chlorinated swimming pool. It's devoid of sweetness and vaguely sophisticated. You ask your shopping buddy: Doesn't everyone wear tea things these days? Yes? I'll take it. 

This detached rendition of green tea is spa-like and aromatherapeutic, without actually offering any clear floral or woody notes, which is rather rare. Tea, citrus, a hint of lavender, and a super sheer jasmine in the barely-there base, and that's it. It's a prototypical late nineties "fresh" fragrance concept that somehow survived. Alyssa Ashley no longer calls it "Green Tea Essence," and the redesigned box and bottle look even more basic without the unisex symbol, but the scent hasn't been tampered with. It takes me back to my salad-eating college days. Three ounces goes for six bucks on eBay. 

The Brutal Truth About "Wet Shaver Scents"

Your lady may send it back.

I was amused to read a thread on Badger & Blade in which the OP stated that "None of the women in my life like [Pinaud] Clubman." He complained that his apparently majority female family members have summarily and repeatedly rejected his choice of Pinaud Clubman as SOTD. His problem has even expanded to extended family members, coworkers, and friends, with comments being made and sideways glances being cast whenever he wears Clubman aftershave. He wears it, he gets blowback. The poor guy. 

The respondents in the thread offered varying degrees of sympathy and compassion, and the heart strings do tug for this man, but I was struck by the feeling that he had stumbled upon an inevitable truth about life: women do not generally like old-school wet shaver aftershaves and colognes. I've written about this before. I mentioned it in comments (here and elsewhere) about Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez's Perfumes: The Guide, in which both authors repeatedly tell their readers to "just say no" to sporty "blue" fragrances, some of the worst fragrance advice I've ever seen. Many times on this website I've stated that women genuinely like fresh fragrances -- they want to smell fresh, and they want their men to smell fresh, and anything that challenges their postmodern (metamodern?) concept of freshness will either be seriously questioned or outright denied. 

In my review of one of Pineward's perfumes, I pointed out that men and women have vastly divergent tastes in fragrance, with men gravitating toward animalic aromatics, and women toward shampoo florals. This isn't a conspiracy against men, it's just reality. And for the guy who feels compelled to opine about how his wife loves raunchy old-school stuff, my answer is that the exception proves the rule.  

Does this mean men should abandon all their powdery wet shaver stuff? No, because objectively, Clubman and its congeners smell good. Guys should wear the stuff whenever it's appropriate. Two things can be true at once, a man can wear something that smells great, and the woman he's with can dislike what he's wearing. The key is to know your audience, and align what they like with what you like. Save the powdery stuff for after a private shaving session when you're not around anyone you know, running errands, etc. Wear your fresher, cleaner, lighter fragrances when you're in female company, particularly when you know your company prefers those kinds of fragrances. You can enjoy your fragrance while those around you enjoy it, too. 

This is why I always encourage men, especially young men, to diversify their fragrance portfolios and seek out things they might like in the "blue" corner of the fragrance shop. Enjoyment of what you're wearing isn't a zero-sum game. There are plenty of "fresh" and "modern" EDTs and EDPs that are perfectly unisex and widely enjoyed by men AND women. So finding a freshie that both you and your partner like shouldn't be mission impossible. I discourage men from narrowing their tastes down to strictly "old-school" or "barbershop" fare, simply because this doesn't give you much wiggle room if and when your wife or girlfriend starts wheezing next to you. Saying, "Oh, sorry honey, it's either Bay Rum or Lilac Vegetal" isn't helping after she pointedly tells you she hates Bay Rum. Have an arsenal of soapy-clean aftershaves and fragrances on hand to mitigate any negative feedback, and have at least five or ten options, because even fresh fragrances can fall short, and you might not score instant rebound points. 

I practice what I preach here. My girlfriend has made it crystal clear that she's not into old-school woody frags, especially the ones loaded with spices and musks. This is challenging, because about seventy-five percent of my collection is old-school woody frags. But that other twenty-five percent is fresh, clean, modern. Blue bottles, white bottles, transparent bottles. Stuff that smells citrusy, stuff that smells metallic-fresh, floral-fresh, aquatic and "blue," and I wear that fraction of my collection more often than the rest because I'm around her more than not. The other stuff can wait for when I'm at work, or she's at work, or I'm alone grocery shopping, or doing a midnight run to Newark to buy drugs. There's a time and place for every perfume. A smart man knows that, and is ready for it. 

DKNY Be Delicious Fresh Blossom (Donna Karan)

The 2000s was the decade of the Be Delicious range by Donna Karan, under her rack store DKNY label. I remember the first two Be Delicious frags when they appeared on shelves in 2004 (one feminine, one masculine), but I could not keep up with the endless onslaught of little glass apples. They weren't really flankers, they were simply perfumes in a uniform line, all sharing the same aesthetic, all eschewing a unique identity. They were perfumes for people who don't want to think about perfume, but would rather just spritz on some random fruity floral, and be done with it. If it's pink, all the better.

Fresh Blossom (2009) was aimed at the Japanese customer, who prefers soft and coy over big and bold. This is an example of that, a lite puff that barely registers, even after generous application. There's a wan but transpicuous apple and peach top note, followed by six or seven hours of greenish apple blossom and peony, over a base of (stifles a laugh) "woodsier" Honeycrisp and Red Delicious accents, which is really just more of the same silky-pink organza wispiness. It's polite, you can wear it in close quarters without offending anyone, it smells a lot like expensive shampoo, and it's as fresh as it gets without going full-bore aquatic. If there is some platonic ideal of cleanliness, it's Fresh Blossom. 

My girlfriend hasn't commented on it, although it reminds me of Bond's Chelsea Flowers, which she says smells "perfumey," her way of saying it's too loud. But Fresh Blossom has the timbre just right. It's present and accounted for, but easy to ignore. Freshness, shower-gel soapiness, transparency, all of these qualities make for a fragrance that your girlfriend can tolerate sitting next to you on a love seat. Women enjoy wearing this stuff, but in my experience, they prefer it on their boyfriends instead. Freshness rules.

Domenico Caraceni Milano 1913 Eau de Parfum (Domenico Caraceni)

Domenico Caraceni's eponymous EDT was first issued in 2007, and I learned about it on Badger & Blade, where it was the subject of frequent discussion. It then vanished for a few years, only to reappear in 2015 sporting new packaging, and what I presumed was a formula refresh. In 2022, the brand released an EDP formulation, and so far it's been well received. Shaving enthusiasts prized the original for being a rose-centered barbershop scent that paired well with any number of soaps and aftershaves, so when I read that the EDP upped the ante on the rose, I had to try it. I love me a good rose fragrance.

It opens with a petitgrain and geranium greenness that feels brusque and cold, so it's surprising when these bitter greens blossom into a saccharine rose. Gradually the flower loses its sweetness and allusions to femininity, and becomes a duskier Bulgarian rose with vague woody underpinnings. This heart phase remains linear and hums straight through the day; expect no fewer than ten hours of longevity. It's pretty strong. Some folks have commented that it resembles rose soap, and I get that, but it reminds me more of the also-soapy Van Cleef & Arpels pour Homme, except it has a much clearer rose. Where VC&A gets abstract, sour, and synthetic, DC 1913 maintains its focused and languid character. 

Eventually those vague woody underpinnings reveal themselves to be pipe tobacco, tonka, and just a smidgen of incense for a smoky edge, and everything harmonizes to a rich musk to imbue the wearer with a sense of invulnerability. Rose is typically a feminine theme in Western perfumery, but thankfully there are Europeans who, like the Saudis, consider it a masculine one. That the house of Domenico Caraceni has stayed true to it is a testament to the consistency and dedication of the brand, and to the enduring greatness of its flagship masculine. Note: the EDT appears to be discontinued again.

Sel Marin (Heeley)

When you chew the fat with fragrance enthusiasts, they tend to lose interest in the conversation when it touches on the "aquatic" genre. Something about the words "fresh," "blue," "salty," "clean," seems to irk them, and if you start rattling on about stuff like D&G's Light Blue and Nautica Voyage, they get up and leave. Aquatics have long been considered a boring topic, although why is less clear; there's nothing wrong with harnessing the feel of the ocean and interpreting it via scent. 

Heeley's Sel Marin was released in 2008, at the height of the 2000s aquatic wave (pardon the pun), and it immediately made a splash (pardon the pun). What I found interesting was that it was the first aquatic that many enthusiasts seemed pumped about. I find it to be a flawless exemplar of the theme, with a salty seaweed accord that smells vaguely fishy, overtly briny, and a bit like low tide. It begins with a crisp lemon and bergamot snap that fades into the salty ozonics typically found in aquatics, except here the effect is very literal, devoid of sweetness, and evocative of the sea. If you want a fragrance that will have you smelling like you spent a weekend at the shore, Heeley gives you your money's worth.

A true aquatic isn't fresh and soapy, but sharp and funky. It contains facets of mollusk shell and rotting dulse, sea spray and salty air, cold stones and wet sand. If you want a user-friendly fantasy aquatic that will make your girlfriend snuggle up, go for Cool Water or Voyage. But if you're looking for an expression of nature, something that smells like the ocean crashing against rocks, you'll need to check this stuff out instead. It's timeless, impeccably crafted, and arguably the best aquatic ever made.  

How to Navigate the Endless Spiral Galaxy of Niche and Designer Releases

Ever go on Fragrantica, and wonder what the fuck you're doing there? You're not alone. I've done it many times, and every one of them leaves me with brain fog. The sheer magnitude of the spectacle makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and shut my eyes to block out the light. It's like how I imagine I would feel if I boarded a starship and traveled to the Andromeda galaxy: terrified and overwhelmed. 

Fragrantica is a fragrance database first, and an online "magazine" second. Its database is dwarfed only by NASA's catalog of observable stars in the universe. There are now so many perfumes, most of them new, that it's impossible to keep track of them all. It used to be just the perfumes that were infinite, but now even the brands themselves have grown in numbers that are difficult to parse. For example, the headline on Fragrantica when this article was written features a fragrance by the house of Gritti. What the fuck is Gritti? Whatever Gritti is, wherever it's from, it exists, and I had no idea until a minute ago. 

If you're a newbie to the fragrance scene, this universe of releases, new and old, is beyond daunting. Where to start? But if you're a seasoned enthusiast like me, you know some old tricks to help manage the onslaught of commercial releases that steadily flows past your computer screen and into your consciousness. There are ways to navigate this spiral galaxy of niche and designer perfumes, and I'm here to help you go about it. But first you need to remember something very important. You're not "smelling things" when you get into perfume. If you want to smell stuff, go to your local Converse-sneaker convention health-food grocery store and inhale deeply. That place has all the smells you need.

Your nose isn't the main instrument in this endeavor; your brain is what you must depend on. You discover a "fresh" fragrance, but smell musks and powders? Know what you're smelling, and learn to ignore the note pyramids they give you ('they' being the corporations). A fragrance smells out of balance, but still good? Learn to find and read batch codes to identify the year of release. A $30 scent smells as good as (or better than) something priced at $500? Get familiar with brand histories, brand legacies, and the power of subliminal persuasion. Perfume isn't about smelling. Perfume is about reading.

Once you learn that, you can navigate the world. Read first, then smell. Read about classical fragrance families, as they were defined in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Chypre, Fougère, Oriental, Hesperidic. If you are in danger of being sidelined by "woke" railings against the oriental category, just remember this article, and that it told you to jettison any attempt to align the term "amber" with "oriental," as not all orientals are "ambery," and not all "ambery" fragrances are orientals. "Oriental" is not a racist term, it's an English word that Westerners developed to suggest that explorers of foreign lands needed to "orient" in a new direction to proceed, i.e., the East. 

When you've successfully pushed past linguistic misdirection, focus on what each category represents. Study the historical representations of each. For example, if you're interested in chypres, try to get your nose on the oldest available batch of Coty's Chypre, and then get a bottle of Mitsouko by Guerlain. If you're interested in fougères, get acquainted with Houbigant's Fougère Royale, Trumper's Wild Fern, YSL's Kouros, and Caron Pour un Homme. If you're into masculine orientals, look no further than a pristine bottle of vintage Old Spice. For a hesperidic cologne that has survived centuries, 4711 is cheap and readily available. All of the touch points for understanding these realms are at your fingertips with the internet, and if you're lucky enough to live in a metropolitan area, you can probably cross the street to a department store and find them behind the counter. 

After you've covered the basics, you're in a prime position to branch out. Understand and internalize everything you've learned, and follow your interests. Now that you've experienced the best exemplars of each fragrance family, you know what you love, and what you don't. You love chypres? There are survivors that were released in the last forty-five years that are still terrific chypres, and the fragrance forums will help you find them. People talk about the stuff they wear, not what Fragrantica puts on its front page. Get to know the community. Get to know the talk. Read what your fellow enthusiasts, many of whom are more experienced, have to say. Collect the aggregate data over the course of several months of reading, and recognize which fragrances are getting the most conversation, the most praise. Go from there.

Whatever you do, don't get stymied by incompatible data. For example, if a fragrance is getting overwhelming praise, and yet there's roughly 25% of respondents who say they hate it, don't let that minority percentage dictate your verdict. Pro-tip: there's always 25% of people who hate what the other 75% of us love. There are little "pro-tips" in the perfume world that you'll eventually figure out. Into Creed? Like how Creeds smell? Great, you're in the majority. But what are the majority of Creed lovers saying, vs. the legion of keyboard warriors who happen to know that Creed exists, and just want to spout off about the brand on the internet? Chances are a huge chunk of the Creed lovers are actually drifting toward an Arabian brand called Armaf, which sells Creed dupes that are deadly close to the originals for an appallingly slight fraction of the price. 

Follow that drift, don't fight it. Explore alternatives. Explore the "popular" stuff. Go ahead and try all the A*Men flankers by Thierry Mugler. Give Cool Water's 600 flankers a go. Happy with CK One? Get your nose on as many "summer editions" as you can. In love with Creed? Visit the boutique and sample every single Creed there is. When you've had enough, take a jaunt down a few lonelier paths, some unpaved byways that branch off of the food court at the mall and lead you to dusty forgotten shops full of junk, with the occasional hidden treasure. Indiana Jones that shit (without Phoebe Waller-Bridge). 

That's where niche is, real niche, and if you poke around long enough, you'll find that rare hidden gem by some unknown brand that even Fragrantica barely acknowledges. Take the highway to get to secret rooms. You'll find them faster, and you'll save gas. When exploring a galaxy, that kind of savings comes in handy. 

Eye, Hatshepsut (Charenton Macerations)

Charenton Macerations opines on its website that customers should "disobey the rules of olfaction," and that it strives to "create fragrances that make a statement . . . The final ingredient is always you." Yikes. Anyway, this conceptual perfumery has one thing on point, which is its interest in ancient Egyptian perfumes and smells, something that has captured my imagination since I was a child. When I was five, I had a View-Master with a color reel of King Tutankhamun's tomb shortly after it was discovered, full to the brim with every manner of ornate furniture, bottles and pots, and statues. For those who weren't around, the 1980s saw a huge revival of interest in King Tut and Egyptology, and The American Museum of Natural History led the charge with an explosion of shows around the lost civilization and its rulers. You never quite grow out of that. 

It was thus mandatory that I wear Charenton Maceration's 2016 release, Eye, Hatshepsut, which was composed by Cecile Hua. The brand says it's "an olfactive homage to one of history's most notable gender rebels: Pharaoh Hatshepsut of Egypt." Good grief, who writes this stuff? The perfume opens with a dazzling snap of bright green and smoky incense notes, which modulate off of their opposing frequencies to create a bracingly resinous impression of a "fresh" oriental, something I typically enjoy. This accord is not unpleasant but contains a slightly pickled accent that makes me wonder if palo santo is in the mix, and it's a little distracting. Swirling around in the ether are hints of fruity and floral notes, which only increase the curious draw of Hua's composition. After fifteen minutes the incense backs off and lets a distinct labdanum and patchouli accord step forward, with a notably powdery orris and musk to balance the resins, and it feels rich and civilized, but also overwhelmingly masculine to my nose. I guess that's the influence of our gender-bending female Pharaoh? I get serious seventies men's cologne vibes here. 

Eye, Hatshepsut buzzes along on this trajectory for six or seven hours before the musk fades out, with only gentle spices remaining (cinnamon, coriander). This fragrance is traditional, but it doesn't make me think of ancient Egypt and its female Pharaoh glass-ceiling smashers. Instead it has me reminiscing about Jimmy Carter-era aftershaves, things you would've paid $1.99 for at Woolworths in 1979. It does have superior clarity and blending, which is good, because a bottle of Eye costs a C-note, plus tax, the price of entry for anything expertly crafted. However, I'm struck by a strong feeling that this one is riding the waves of its bizarre marketing, and I think it's an egregious example of an ad campaign/product misalignment. 

M for Men Eau de Toilette (Banana Republic)

Jean Claude Delville should be recognized alongside Alberto Morillas and Francis Kurkdjian as one of the three most influential perfumers of the nineties. Cabotine, Curve, Pleasures for Men, and Banana Republic's forgotten M are all noteworthy for shaping the olfactory landscape of the period. If you want a fresh and friendly fragrance to wear while kicking it at the mall, Delville's got your back. His specialty is sneaker juice. 

M for Men (1996) has been through several iterations over the past 27 years, and has currently settled on what appears to be an eau de parfum concentration, which is much lauded on the interwebs. I can't be bothered to go out of my way to drop coin on that, but recently I did stumble upon the EDT formula on a discount rack, and figured that a Banana Republic fragrance isn't the gamble I once thought it would be (thank you, Icon Collection). The box for M cites Gap EU as a distributer, itself a major nineties throwback. It turns out to be a pleasant valencia orange scent, an intense blast of sweet and juicy orange zest that skirts floor cleaner by dint of smelling surprisingly natural, followed by a mellow and unapologetically chemical woody-musk drydown, suggestive of department stores. 

M isn't the statement-maker nineties scent that Cabotine and Curve were, nor is it particularly complex and exciting, but it's an easy, sunny sort of smell that lifts spirits and conveys the neon-lit optimism of the time. I don't often encounter fragrances that focus on orange fruit, and when I do, the Italian in me perks up and gets excited, so I personally enjoy M as a gentle warm weather spritz for casual wear. For the bad boy version of this scent, try Juicy Couture's Dirty English, which adds terpenes and animalics.  

Moon Carnival (Vilhelm Parfumerie)

Vilhelm Parfumerie brands itself as a sort of nostalgic perfumery, one that builds fragrances elicited by memories, a worthy exercise. Founder Jan Ahlgren aims to capture the zeitgeist of the twentieth century's earlier years, and update it into fragrances to wear while listening to Miley Cyrus and Bebe Rexha on Spotify. 

Moon Carnival was released in 2018 and costs $2.45 per milliliter. My understanding prior to smelling it was that it's a modern white floral with a generous Ambrox and vanilla base, which has appeal. Wearing it, however, was a let-down. It smells like body wash. A good body wash, mind you, but body wash nonetheless. It opens with a citrusy pear and freesia accord that is very familiar (reminded me of Valaya) and quite comfortable, but unexciting. This segues into a decently sturdy structure of tuberose, gardenia, a hint of jasmine, tonka, with a skin-musky vanilla finish that we've all encountered before in far cheaper and better fragrances. Why belch out big bucks for this?

Niche brands need to remember something: we're not stupid. Yes, we overspend on perfume, and yes, we're willing to look past the cornerstone "crowd-pleaser" fragrances that every brand is compelled to release to secure their bottom line. But if you're charging $200+ for a bottle, it better smell mind-numbingly great, and not like the stuff we lather on and rinse off after work.

Club de Nuit Sillage (Armaf)

I should start with an updated review of Silver Mountain Water by Creed. I'm smelling the current iteration of that scent as I write this, and since it's from Lucky Scent and it comes in a carded Creed 2.5 ml spray sample, I assume it's the most recent batch, or at least one of the most recent. What surprises me about it is that it opens with a very synthetic and sweet accord that smells almost identical to the clones -- almost. The only difference is that it's noticeably smoother. But if I were to smell it in a hurry, I wouldn't really pick that out. I'd just assume it's another SMW clone. That's how unremarkable the top is. The real thing lacks "wow" factor, and that surprises me. I expected more citrus, more naturals. 

Silver Mountain Water rapidly dries into an "inky" blackcurrant note, and it smells dry, quite dark, and rather flat. My girlfriend thought it resembled cinnamon and vanilla, which is interesting. To me it smells like the many clones of SMW that I've owned over the years, only smoother, and not as sweet. It's nice, but that's it. So there you have it. If you want the "smoothest" version of SMW, get SMW. It maintains this subtle inky blackcurrant note for ninety minutes before fading off into a light musk. It's pretty linear, pretty soft, and just pretty. I guess I can chalk it up to BlackRock fucking with the formula, but to be perfectly honest, it smells almost identical to the last pre-BlackRock SMW sample I had, which was also a synthetic berry over musk, and as transient as a fart in the wind. 

This brings me to Armaf's Club de Nuit Sillage. I'll get the bad news out of the way first: It smells a little harsh in the first thirty seconds. But the more I smell it, the more I think that might be on purpose. Again, as I mentioned in the previous article, Armaf was supposedly aiming to clone a much earlier formula of SMW with Sillage, so the weirdly metallic citrus I get off its top accord might be how the Creed used to smell. It quickly segues into a more robust "inky" blackcurrant note, which smells to me like it has more depth, and also an undergirding of bergamot. My girlfriend confirmed it was "sharper" and "more citrusy" but felt she liked the Creed a little more (and confessed she wasn't wild for either of them). Maybe it's because I can smell it better, but I think Armaf, as it smells today, does a nicer job at rendering blackcurrant. A much nicer job. 

There's a hint of tea alongside it, which develops about twenty minutes into wear, and frankly I got zero tea out of the Creed. Literally none at all. The current formula is really basic to my nose, with just a soft blackcurrant that fades into nothing. Armaf smells juicier, richer, and a little greener, and it's silly to pretend that there's any serious attempt at a tea note, but that hint of greenness is probably it. Just like real SMW, Sillage remains pretty linear, with much better longevity and waaay better throw (one or two sprays will catapult eight feet across the room, easily), and the fact that there's no ambergris note isn't a problem, because the current Creed has no ambergris note in it, either. 

Let's be serious about SMW for a second: people, what I'm smelling isn't worth $500. It's synthetic, super-duper weak, and there's no reason to shell out for it. A more natural and realistic version is found in the $30 Armaf. Sorry guys. I said it. Verdict in. But with that said, I think Armaf's clone is the smoothest, the roundest, the deepest, but it's not wildly different from the other clones in my collection. It's definitely the most refined, and I can see how people would argue it's a SMW killer, because let's face it, it is. If you've smelled Silver Shade, Al Wisam Day, and Sun Java White, you're familiar with how ubiquitous this has become. This is the most cloned Creed in existence. Turns out the clones are pretty good. Club de Nuit Sillage just happens to be the best.