"Professor" Dave Explains That He's a Fool: Why Truthseekers in Fragrance and All Other Popular Interests Should Avoid YouTube

I've long contended that YouTube is the wrong place for getting reliable information about fragrances. The problem is baked into the culture we now live in: quick-clicks and internet clout reigns supreme over objective facts and nuance. To avoid sullying specific YouTubers in the fragrance community, I'll refrain from calling any of them out by name in this article, because even the grifters and know-nothings flesh out our community in ways that arguably make it more interesting and educational. Instead, I'll focus on a recent exchange I had with Dave Farina of the popular channel "Professor Dave Explains," in which I challenged his contentions on his recent video about Avi Loeb (link here). 

In the video, former SCUHS instructor (not professor) Dave contends that theoretical physicist Avi Loeb is a “fraud.” First, I want to comment on who I think Dave Farina is. California, it seems, has devolved into a swirling toilet bowl of intellectual and moral debris, as evidenced by the fact that this man managed to be hired as a teacher at a private college there. From June 2010 to October 2013, he was an instructor in organic chemistry at Southern California University of Health Sciences. After that, his career thins out. He rebrands himself as a “science communicator” with a YouTube channel. His endeavors seem to target the low-hanging fruit of flat-earthers and creationists. But I imagine he’s making six figures more than he ever did as a teacher, so more power to him. I hope he continues to succeed on YouTube -- at least for the sake of his family.

However, I hope he fails spectacularly at slandering undisputed geniuses like Avi Loeb. In his video, Dave drills down on Loeb’s claim that Oumuamua -- the interstellar object that passed through our solar system on a hyperbolic trajectory in 2017 and has since vanished into space -- was possibly, and more likely than anything else mankind has ever encountered, an alien artifact of non-natural origins. Dave suggests that in the years since this unique phenomenon occurred, Loeb has trafficked in widely debunked claims about the object’s origins in a cynical cash grab that defies the scientific community and serves mostly to inflate his own public profile and bank account.

I’m going to surprise my readers, and possibly even Dave himself (hi, Dave), by saying that the organic chemistry guy's contentions aren't entirely out of bounds. Loeb is a public figure, and he holds controversial scientific and social science views that make him fair game for pointed criticism -- even when those critiques are thin and poorly conceived. This is America, and here we allow for public dissent on all reasonable and rational arguments. Therefore, I have no problem with Dave saying he disagrees with a theoretical physicist who has made a few million dollars on his notoriety as a supporter of the extraterrestrial explanation for Oumuamua. If I were a fellow traveler physicist in elite scientific circles, I’d probably have a basketful of my own criticisms of what Loeb has been doing since 2017. Loeb would probably expect that of me.

My problem with Dave’s video stems from a conversation I had with him in the comments section -- since deleted for the second time -- in which it became disturbingly clear that he had done very little reading on Oumuamua prior to posting his video and likely knew even less about Avi Loeb. Let’s be clear about who Loeb is, starting with Wikipedia:

"Loeb is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2015, he was appointed as the science theory director for the Breakthrough Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. He is an Israeli and American theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology. Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, where since 2007 he has been Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} He chaired the Department of Astronomy from 2011 to 2020, and founded the Black Hole Initiative in 2016."

And from Loeb's 2021 book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth:

"At the time of this writing, I serve as chair of Harvard University's Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, chair of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, chair of the Board of Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies, a member of the advisory board for the digital platform Einstein: Visualize the Impossible from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in Washington, DC. 

In his book, Loeb posits that the reaction to Omuamua in the scientific community was a bit slapdash and inconclusive, to say the least. He writes:

"Indeed, mere weeks after the object's discovery, in mid-November 2017, the International Astronomical Union -- the organization that names newly identified objects in space -- changed its designation for 'Oumuamua' for the third and final time. Initially, the IAU had called it C/2017 U1; the C was for comet. Then it switched over to A/2017 U1; the A was for asteroid. Finally, the IAU declared it 1I/2017 -- the 'I' stood for interstellar." (Loeb 5)

All of this is well established in the scientific community, but apparently not in Dave's world. In his video on Loeb, Dave confidently claims that Oumuamua is “widely considered” by experts to be an exocomet. I asked him, “If Oumuamua is widely considered to be an exocomet, why isn’t it officially classified as one?” He shot back: “It is.” I replied, “No, it isn’t,” and cited the actual evidence.

That’s when Dave’s composure cracked. He resorted to name-calling, declared that none of what I said was true, and that I was stupid. I doubled down with the facts. Then, in the interest of accuracy, I called him a complete moron, because at that point, it was irrefutable. If you make a whole video purporting to “debunk” Avi Loeb, a Harvard scientist with endless credentials who has worked with the US government on international defense projects, and simultaneously botch the most basic classification facts about the object in question, you’re not just wrong -- you’re proudly, performatively, Olympic-level wrong.

Predictably, this sent Dave into full damage-control mode. What does an idiot say and do when confronted with basic facts? He began deleting my comments, then went silent for half an hour, probably to Google “Oumuamua” like a college freshman cramming for a quiz he forgot was tomorrow. When he returned, still having scrubbed most of my replies, he opened with: “Hey worthless shitstain, Google ‘Oumuamua is an exocomet,’ see that every single source says yes, it is, and then come back and apologize. There is no ‘C1’ designation. That’s not a thing. You’re the dumbest loser alive.”

This was… unwise. Yes, if you punch that phrase into Google, the algorithm helpfully regurgitates the “widely considered” myth, and leaves out the fact that official classification tells the whole story. But switch to any other AI engine (I used Grok), and the result is the opposite: Oumuamua is not considered to be an exocomet, although one hypothesis suggests it might be. Those sources -- the same ones Loeb references in his own book -- also explain exactly why, and none of this has changed since 2021. Oumuamua remains classified as an “interstellar object,” with no consensus on what it actually is.

I posted all this back in the comments, roasted him for the error, and told him I expected an apology, though I figured he’d just delete everything again. Instead, after a strange pause where I imagine him staring blankly at his screen, he undeleted the entire thread. Maybe he thought it made me look bad. Spoiler: it didn’t. At least for that evening, the exchange stood. Since then, surprise surprise, it’s mostly gone. I could go back and dismantle him all over again, but why bother? He’ll just hit delete, pretend it never happened, and keep his deeply flawed Loeb video up for the next unsuspecting viewer.

You might wonder why Dave Farina is so invested in attacking a theoretical physicist. I have a theory, supported by his own video. Near the end, he drifts from criticizing Loeb’s scientific claims into criticizing Loeb’s ethnicity, launching into a pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic screed against the “Zionist physicist” he believes Loeb to be. I was waiting for this moment, because as Dave went on and on about Loeb supposedly grifting the public with his views on Oumuamua, I realized the video never actually addresses the fact that Oumuamua isn’t categorized by astronomers as a comet. Instead, he sidesteps the interstellar object entirely and goes straight to ridiculing Loeb for getting frustrated that other scientists aren’t as eager to embrace his extraterrestrial theories.

The video’s thin treatment of Loeb’s actual science tipped me off that Dave’s animus likely has little to do with comets, aliens, or scientific integrity. Dave appears, at least to me, to have a problem with this particular Jew. Why else bring up the war between Israel and Hamas, and go on a tangent about how monstrous Israel supposedly is (and Loeb by proxy) for “murdering children” in Palestine, when Loeb has nothing to do with the war? Why even bother mentioning it? I think Dave’s entire video is built on an underlying hatred of Israel, a misguided romanticizing of Palestine, and perhaps even a soft spot for Hamas -- though I can’t confirm or deny his views on that, because he’s been too vague, at least in this video (and I’m not about to dig through his channel to find out). My suspicions seem supported by the fact that he’s been banned from X for antisemitic content (link here). Pretty sad for a man his age, and a searing indictment of my generation. 

Here’s what I'm getting at with all this: if you know nothing about Avi Loeb and then watch Dave’s video, you could easily walk away thinking you’ve been educated about a dangerous fraud looking to scam you out of your money and intellect. Dave frames Loeb’s career and views on Oumuamua through a very selective lens, cherry-picking moments where Loeb is arguably at his worst in debates with peers, and then claiming the entire scientific community rejects him outright. If you’re unfamiliar with Loeb’s actual claims, or why he holds them, you’ll probably buy it -- Dave is good at looking like he knows what he’s talking about. Hucksters usually are. 

But if you know even a sliver about Avi Loeb before hitting play, the cracks in Dave’s argument show within the first five minutes. My exchange with him would still be up if he’d actually won, but I mopped the floor with him. He seemed so embarrassed by my comments that he didn’t know what to do -- faced with people reading, in real time, how I’d exposed him on the simple facts of comet prefixes (sorry Dave, they’re real), he couldn’t decide whether to delete my comments or leave them up in the hope someone might think I looked stupid. Funniest of all was when he told me to Google my information and apologize -- only for me to come back with countervailing evidence so specific to Oumuamua that it was impossible to refute. The specific “C” designation I mentioned in our conversation applies to anomalous comets that pass through the solar system only once -- which is exactly what Oumuamua did. It's right there on Google!

This problem isn’t unique to Dave Farina. I’ve subscribed to and regularly watched many prominent fragrance YouTubers over the past decade. Plenty of them are harmless personalities with respectful content, so skepticism is unnecessary. But many are young men in their early to mid-twenties who pontificate about fragrance “notes,” “longevity,” and “best seasons.” While you can take that with a grain of salt, you should also be wary of the context -- just as Dave’s viewers are misled by his juvenilely misinformed content, an endless diet of inexperienced reviewers spewing unfiltered opinions can misdirect an uncritical audience. Much of it is unintentional, but the effect can still be damaging.

I would extend my experiences with Dave and these unnamed fragrance YouTubers to pretty much any popular YouTuber. Take “Babish” (Andrew Rea), for example, who "reviews" everyday food items like Campbell’s Soup and extra virgin olive oil. In his EVOO video, he covers dozens of brands (with a few conspicuous omissions), and I settled in hoping to learn something. Within five minutes -- my standard metric for spotting nonsense -- it was obvious “Babish” doesn’t know a thing about olive oil, and worse, he’s teaching his ignorance. He tells viewers you shouldn’t cook with EVOO because its smoke point is too low (false), and jokes about not swallowing samples because he wants to “live longer than a week” -- implying, falsely, that EVOO is unhealthy.

He then spends most of the video swishing and spitting mouthfuls of oil, pre- and post-reviewing each sample with comments like, “And here we have another yellow olive oil that smells the same,” and, “Okay, that one tastes just like the last one -- these all taste the same.” Between awkward fits of giggles -- oddly effeminate for a grown man, and sometimes forced for effect -- he ends up ranking the oils like a blind man, conveying no useful information at all. For entertainment, fine. For actual education, worthless. He’d have done far better hiring an EVOO expert to taste and explain.

As I said at the start, we live in an online culture dominated by know-nothings with just enough talent and tech to keep their clickbait channels afloat. I don’t care what Dave Farina does with his channel -- this is America, and he can run it however he likes. But that doesn’t absolve him of the responsibility to tell his viewers the truth. Spreading falsehoods, edited and reframed to serve personal (and political) opinions against all available data, isn’t just irresponsible -- it’s damaging to everyone who buys into it. Think about how many viewers leave “Professor Dave Explains” believing he’s a real professor delivering researched facts. Think about the crap being spewed into the world. 

Based on his Avi Loeb video, I’m left with one conclusion of my own -- entirely subjective, but worth stating: I think Dave Farina is the fraud. If he ever debated Avi Loeb face-to-face instead of sniping from the comfort of his living room, he’d be exposed as uninformed. And I suspect Google might think twice about letting his content pollute the public sphere.

Aura for Men (Jacomo)

This is one of those fragrances that hits differently depending on how experienced you are with obscure zombie brand masculines from the eighties and nineties. If you're not that guy, then trying Aura by Jacomo, which was released in 2000 and authored by Henri Bergia, will feel novel and interesting. As evidenced in reviews by prominent members of the fragrance community, like Lanier and Rich Milton, this is a striking fragrance that smells of a corner in Paris, or of manhood incarnate. I must say, though, I'm a little surprised neither reviewer mentions how grossly anachronistic it is. Aura smells good, but about fifteen years too late for what it offers, and certainly doesn't impart a Y2K vibe. 

A look at the lesser-known reviews shows a pattern: words like “spicy,” “green,” “airy,” “fresh,” and “citrusy” come up again and again. Most don’t tie the scent to anything concrete, and that’s fine; not every fragrance needs a direct comparison. But then I wear it, and it doesn’t take long to realize: Aura is essentially a remix of three earlier scents -- Davidoff for Men, The Dreamer by Versace, and Vermeil for Men (also sold as Guepard), with Vermeil being the closest match. It's worth noting that when it was released in 1995, Vermeil for Men was itself outmoded by about ten years. Aura opens with a bright, fairly clean herbal-citrus accord, highlighting lemon, ginger, juniper, and especially sage. Then comes a fleeting note of cigarette tobacco, dry and subtle, but unmistakable.

After ten minutes, the destination is clear: fermented tobacco leaves. This is an unlit cigar -- like standing in Flatiron’s Eataly between a barrel of olives and a working torcedor. His leaves are spread out on the table; he’s clipping, ripping, rolling. A small box for discarded shake sits inches away, and now and then he tosses something in, releasing a rich whiff of brown leaf. Aura strongly resembles Vermeil for Men -- in fact, it reads as a much lighter, fresher version. They’re close enough in scent that you wouldn’t need both; one will do. What sets Aura apart is its smooth sandalwood base, which settles in an hour and carries the cigar accord through a full workday. Very nice stuff. Crap bottle, though. 

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

Quite an impressive list.

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

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

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

The Outer Limits of Perfume Orthodoxy

"The Greatest Green Scent"

I'm just back from a refreshing Maine trip, during which I visited the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, which are absolutely gorgeous and a requisite destination if you ever head up that way. The last time I visited was in early June, and the gardens were very "bloomy" that time of year, with countless varieties of hyacinths, tulips, irises, roses, peonies, and you name it. This early August visit was about echinacea and all shades of coneflowers, bee balm, lilies, phlox, yarrow, and hosta, among others. A less "bloomy" and colorful experience, but peaceful and inspiring nonetheless. 

The verdant gardens got me thinking about my love of green fragrances. I started out in my pursuit of all things perfumed with an unalloyed interest in pursuing green scents, and perhaps I've strayed a bit since then, but still marvel at the concept of wearing a garden. I combed through my collection and remembered Geoffrey Beene's Bowling Green and its many laudatory reviews, many of which claim that it's the best "green" fragrance money can buy. Of course, this got me thinking of how much I disagree with that sentiment, and I realized that I'm at odds with the orthodoxy of popular perfume reviewers. It's not that I disagree for the sake of it, but that I simply don't come to the same conclusions. 

It is indeed quite difficult to find reviews of Bowling Green that are less than glowing; the fragrance has long been considered the gold standard for inexpensive masculine/unisex green, thanks in no small part to its well regarded lemon verbena accord. I've had a 4 oz. bottle of it for a few years now, and have worn exactly half of it. I'm wearing it today. I got off to a rough start with this scent because the first bottle I tried was a bit turned, but not enough to be obvious, which negatively influenced my review. The bright citrus element had all but vanished, leaving only the "herbal amber" element at the scent's core, which alone smells okay but haggard. Later I bought the reissued reformulation, which didn't change the scent, and learned that it's really bright and airy, a springtime green. 

But is Bowling Green the gold standard for "green" in perfumes for under $100? Yes and no. Yes, if you're looking at it purely subjectively, and you happen to love Beene's rendition of lemon verbena, which comprises about 75% of the fragrance pyramid here. No, if objectively you put it up against the hordes of other green frags out there, both in and out of production. I mean, Bowling Green is very good, don't get me wrong. If you're a college kid with $100 to spare, and you're looking for a lemony-green fougère idea that vaguely recalls Drakkar Noir (a weird thing for today's college set to seek), Bowling Green is a perfect solution. It's currently retailing for between $90 and $120 on eBay, and chances are the bottle you buy will smell great, as the packaging for this stuff is fantastic -- solid cardboard tubing that blocks light and protects against the elements. 

If you're a college kid looking for this, I applaud you. I also don't expect you to be interested. And you'll probably meet my expectations, and be completely oblivious to Bowling Green, instead pursuing some sweet Hawas flanker or one of the Eros frags. I'd say you're missing out, but you're not so much missing out on Bowling Green as on the better stuff. From Beene's line, Grey Flannel is the superior fragrance, so I can start there. Beyond the brand are many superior compositions, ranging from Creed's Green Valley (discontinued and a fortune) to Jaguar for Men (still in production), Paul Smith Men (DC'd), Jacomo Silences (DC'd) Acqua di Selva (in production), Pino Silvestre (ditto), and any number of Green Irish Tweed variants, with GIT itself high on the list. If I want grassy green on a budget, Adidas Sport Field is still a good option. Even more of a budget, and something like Brut is, amazingly, still a respectable bet. For an inexpensive and truly unorthodox unisex fragrance, Vicky Tiel's Ulysse is excellent stuff. Silences sits next to Green Valley as the GOAT of green. I could go on and on. My point is, I find these to be preferable to Bowling Green because they smell better and (mostly) cost less. 

If I test the outer limits of perfume orthodoxy on "green," I come up against some interesting philosophical tensions between nature as an ideal and nature as an illusion -- between what smells alive and what merely suggests life through carefully composed artifice. For example, Montblanc Starwalker is a suggestion of life, a fresh but brazenly synthetic precursor to Dior Sauvage with chemical "bamboo" overlaid with a bucketful of woody Ambroxan. It smells peaceful and zen-like in small doses, and works in a pinch, but if I really want the sensation of placid natural zen in an organic, living grove, I'm more likely to reach for Banana Republic's Cypress Cedar -- quite an interesting thing, considering the BR frag isn't exactly "natural." Perspective is useful here, because today's young buck might reach for any one of his designer frags and think, "I like how this smells," but a sizable number of people around him might think he smells like a chemical spill. Sure, Hawas smells good, but it doesn't take me to nature. It takes me to eighth grade.  

And why hasn't Rasasi been a contender in the quest for a natural "green" fragrance? They seem to be taken with the current mode of commercial wisdom, which suggests that releasing fifteen new fragrances in a year is the way to go. I would say that the public rewards this approach; reviews of their new releases, some of which haven't even hit stores yet, are broadly positive. If I were running Rasasi, I would acknowledge this financial reality, as their choices are assuredly generating remarkable sales, but I'd temper it with my own advice: go for quality, not quantity. Take Al Haramain's example -- this brand releases quite a few fragrances each year also, but unlike Rasasi, they seem interested in refining ideas that they had worked on previously, in the interest of pursuing new levels of quality. I haven't smelled L'Aventure Blanche, but I've been led to understand that it's an okay clone of Silver Mountain Water, but only that. It doesn't win brownie points over something like Armaf's Sillage, for example. 

But then put your nose on L'Aventure Fraîche, and what do you smell? The current formula of Silver Mountain Water with petitgrain and fir accords amplified, and in a slightly higher (i.e., "oilier") concentration. A split-hair shy of SMW, but hell, if you can't afford the Creed, L'Aventure Fraîche will get you 99.99% of the way there if applied sparingly. I'd argue it does a better job of cloning the current Creed formula than Sillage does (Armaf famously targets vintage Creed formulas, and does a bang-up job). The attention to detail in Al Haramain's work is obvious, and it's also clear that they're not wasting time and resources spewing out flanker after flanker after flanker of some designer-grade template. Far from perfect, but I'd wager that the brains behind Al Haramain's operation are cognizant of the mark of quality one feels in their fragrances. Sure, you pay a bit more for an Al Haramain perfume than you do for anything by Rasasi, but not much more. These brands are in the same league. Why is one so much better than the other? 

Another weird thing about perfume lately is how many fragrances are being shoved on the consumer. It's as if the "art" of perfumery were akin to five-and-dime comics. We're currently experiencing thousands of new releases per year. There were around 6,000 new fragrances released in 2024. That's a staggering number, even on the global market. Back in 2000 there were only about 700 new releases, so in 24 years we've seen a roughly tenfold increase in the number of new offerings. If you're a fragrance lover like me, this might seem like a wonderful thing. And sure, you won't find me complaining, as I like the thought that there is a veritable universe of perfumes to be explored. However, I sound a note of caution. This kind of market is unsustainable in the long term. Short-term, maybe the next five years or so will continue to see unparalleled growth in output. But long-term, the heat generated by this many releases will finally overwhelm the customer bases that designer brands established several decades ago, and we'll see a sudden and rather violent collapse of the fragrance market, with hundreds of brands going bye-bye. 

Consider the market. In the last twenty years, we've seen inexpensive perfumes all but disappear. Every Western brand is now aiming for the luxury market, the wealthy customer, or the customer with so much disposable income that they can manage buying two or three $400 perfumes without fearing insolvency. I'm not wealthy, but I make a decent middle-class salary and I don't have any children, which puts me in that weird realm of being someone who can afford two or three expensive perfumes per year without feeling the pinch. This doesn't make me the market's core clientele, however. Chanel and I aren't friends. Dior and I rarely contact each other. Creed hasn't seen an online boutique purchase from me since 2014. I and all other collectors like me rely on chance and good financial acumen to score whatever pricy frags we can manage, and I'm well aware that the more serious collectors use their collections as self-sustaining leverage in the acquisition of new items. Want that new Francis Kurkdjian release? Sell his last one and use the proceeds. That's how the non-wealthy big-timers do it. 

That approach works for the crazed collector set, of which I'm a member. It doesn't work for the average joe. The average guy or gal is not that interested in perfume. Women are marginally more interested, and the average middle class woman might accrue something like five or six bottles in a semi-regular rotation, and one or two of those are probably "body sprays," which I'll never fully understand. Men are more "signature scent" prone and usually buy one or two fragrances that are rarely worn. They wear what their wives or girlfriends give them, or approve of, and they might only wear fragrance on special occasions or on their "date nights." Right now, with this seemingly unending Renaissance of perfume, they might actually own -- wait for it -- three or four whole bottles. Which means their need for anything else will arrive sometime around 2060. 

Here's the thing: this isn't what the market is doing. The market is shelling out new fragrances like there's an enormous swath of men and women who house 300+ bottle wardrobes that are ever-expanding. This simply isn't the case. Their target audience is literally 1% of the population. Every designer and niche brand in America is targeting about 3,400,000 people. Of them, there might be 1% who are actually lovingly dedicated to collecting perfumes, so we're talking 34,000 people here. That's right, you're reading this correctly. The income bracket of the 1% of America's population that are inarguably "wealthy" covers only a few million people, and of them, maybe 1% are obsessed with perfume enough to amass respectable wardrobes and be repeat buyers, but their number is staggeringly small, fewer than the amount who attend the Superbowl. 

So why does the market keep churning things out at this breakneck pace? Right now many of the Western brands are competing against the Eastern brands, so there is a collective push against the market's answer to bad socioeconomics. Arabian and UAE brands are that answer. They are overall cheaper and better distributed than their Western counterparts, now appearing everywhere in the USA in discount stores and mall kiosks. Where once it was entirely an internet game to buy anything by Rasasi or Armaf or Al Haramain, now it is a matter of stopping at your local Burlington or Ross and seeing what new array of Middle Eastern releases are available. You hop on Fragrantica, check it out, then put away your phone and buy the thing that seems the most promising. It costs you anywhere from $10 to $45, and the quality is often on par with that $170 designer fragrance being distributed only at "authorized retailers" like Neiman Marcus or Sephora. The Eastern brands are putting things out at an impossible pace, swamping the global market with releases, and many of these are offered within the value parameters of the wider population. This is a hot market that might very well sustain, because there are far more than 3.4 million customers for them here in the USA.  

If you're reading this and thinking, "Bryan, that doesn't explain why Western brands are churning out tons of releases and pricing them at five or six times the going rate," you're not wrong. It doesn't explain the shift to the wealthy. But what it does explain is the shift in equality. The bare truth of the matter is that most people in America are making less than $45K per year, if they have a job at all. Meanwhile, those who are wealthy aren't just a little wealthy. They're very wealthy. They are enjoying eight, nine, ten digit bank accounts. And within those circles is the expectation of choices and options. Western brands are attempting to keep up with that ethos by shoveling dozens of new frags per brand at jaw-dropping prices onto the market, rarely pricing anything under $50 per ounce, all in the attempt to lock the majority out of buying, more than to welcome the wealthy in. The problem with Veblen goods is that they lose their cachet the minute any non-luxury client makes a purchase. If you're Louis Vuitton, the last thing you want is for me in my blue jeans and sneakers to come sauntering in to buy a suitcase, and the absolute worst case scenario is for me to actually buy it. 

But okay, say I do buy one of their $38,000 suitcases. Not likely, but maybe I'm just dumb with money. They make the sale. They're not thrilled, because after talking to me for five minutes they figure out that I'm a schlub in the wrong store, but money is money. No biggie. I go on my merry way. The real nightmare begins with the next guy who walks in. Is he wearing a baseball cap on backwards and jeans from Walmart? Is he also buying a suitcase? And the next guy? And the next? If any percentage of the middle class is encroaching on the luxury status of a brand, that brand will lose its coveted ivory tower spot and begin to slide "downmarket." The more middle class buyers walk in, the more you have to cater to them, which means offering deals, and advertising for them, and actually giving a shit about them, none of which is desired. By keeping prices very high, Louis Vuitton might see one Bryan with his middle class salary walk in and actually buy something once every twenty years. That's exactly how they like it.

But the luxury leather goods market isn't nearly as saturated as the perfume market. It takes months to develop a high quality leather luxury good, and years to refine it. It can take as little as a few weeks to both develop and refine a perfume, and then use its rejected mods as flankers to be rolled out six months apart. There is no danger of overheating in the luxury suitcase market. But there is a grave danger of overheating in the luxury perfume market. In their mad dash to keep people out of buying their perfumes, many Western brands are spending capital on products that are seeing diminishing returns, as evidenced by the rapid discontinuation of releases that are often in stores for only a year or two. Some have pointed to this as the secret weapon in the fragrance industry's war chest, but I see it as a sign of chronic illness; healthy brands keep products alive because they've done the work of figuring out what their customers actually want before foisting products on them. The fragrance industry is flailing haplessly after customers it isn't sure even exist, often without gaining purchase. 

What would a fragrance industry overheat/meltdown look like? It would start with a whimper, and end with a bang. At first it would look like business as usual -- a few small indie/niche brands go kaput, a couple of fairly prominent but B-list designers would discontinue their entire perfume ranges like Jean Patou did a few years back. A collective shrug would follow, with no expectations of further decline. But then something strange will occur, there, in the corner . . . a major niche brand will suddenly vanish. No explanation. This will be followed by another. And yet another. Like dominoes, the niche brands will suddenly shutter, one by one. The buzz will claim that these were "planned" shutdowns and all sorts of convoluted reasons will ensue, from things like, "our financiers are restructuring" and "the market has shifted and we are realigning ourselves to stay true to our mission." In other words, don't hold your breath, because we've discontinued everything. From there, the rot will spread to designer, and indeed may be even more rapid there. In attempting to curry favor with the wealthiest of the wealthy, names like Chanel and Dior and Prada may discover that younger generations are usurping the trends of older, wealthier generations and simply putting their moolah with the mullahs instead. Why spend $176 on 100 milliliters of Coco Mademoiselle when you can get Club de Nuit Woman for $150 less with barely any difference in quality? 

What effect will this have on giants like Chanel? Look at this way: in 2003, a 3.3 oz. bottle of Platinum Égoïste was $50. Reddit morons would have you think otherwise, with some claiming it went for $70 back then. I'm here to tell you, no, no it did not. I wouldn't have been able to afford bottles of it in college if it were that much. I went through at least two or three large bottles of PÉ by graduation. The same size costs $135 now. This is simply ridiculous. Armaf Legesi is $27 and silly reviewers say it's "a metallic Platinum Égoïste," as if the adjective denotes a difference (PÉ is metallic as fuck). If Armaf can convincingly clone Green Irish Tweed, to the point where I don't need to buy and wear GIT anymore, do I doubt they can handle the super-synth Chanel? 

When several thousand Bryans start to multiply around the bottom line of PÉ, Chanel will realize, perhaps too late, that they're losing money hand over fist to Armaf, and a few other clone brands. They'll be forced to either (A) lower its price, or (B) axe the fragrance. Knowing how these designers operate, my money says they'll choose B. But that'll only be the start of their problem. Seeing blood in the water, Armaf and Al Haramain and several other Arabian brands will circle the Chanel wagon, picking off their exclusive couture fragrances, one by one, and gradually they'll have to disappear once-cherised classics, to the point where all they'll have left will be that old aldehydic Marilyn Monroe mess that nobody likes but everyone feels obligated to say good things about. 

With niche, the deaths will happen en masse. With designer, the fatalities will be slower, one cut at a time, until rapidly and without recompense there will no longer be options. The wealthy will be left with tiny selections, the very thing they hate, while the rest of us will have donned turbans and developed a taste for sipping motor oil before heading off to our low-paying jobs. Prada, Gucci, Armani, all will fold their flanker mills, one discontinuation after another, until all that are left are a few core scents. Consider Thierry Mugler's fate as an early indicator, a canary in the coal mine here. But even the Saudi market will whither, as the glut of options for the average buyer takes its toll on public perception. The UAE is relatively unfamiliar with the dangers of over-leveraging a brand. 

They could use a few crash courses on what happened to Roy Halston, Liz Claiborne, and Pierre Cardin. Americans understand that even when a brand offers quality products, a preponderance of said products results in overexposure, never a good thing. While many Arabian brands don't have designer names attached, sometimes with no brand name visible at all, the sheer number of perfumes will both self-poach sales and foster a sense of cheapness and disposability that will curdle the budget buyer's enthusiasm faster than designer and niche blunders sap the millionaire's. 

When the Arabian fragrance market collapses, which is also coming, the burnout will be complete. So I finish with a warning to the fragrance industry as a whole: Do not squander your wares on misallocated capital and dilute your brand cachet with bloated ranges. Think quality, not quantity, and think realistically about who is dumber with their money in the long run -- it ain't the people who have it. Stop pricing the middle class out of the market, when it was the middle class that made the market possible in the first place. We're all okay with fewer options, if those options take us back to the halcyon days of perfumes that smelled rich and were $10 at Walgreens.

Jōvan Musk for Men Signature Edition (Coty)

I've always felt that Jōvan Musk for Men smelled like narcissus, but I was never able to find anyone who confirmed it, so I kept the thought to myself. Smelling it again today, I'm reminded of the cultural reset buttons we press when we need a break from ourselves. For example, I've become a staunch believer in the Mediterranean diet and generally stick to the rigors of vegetables, lentils, olive oil, and fish. Yet every once in a very blue moon, I veer off course to indulge in a cheeseburger or two and have my faith in humanity restored. Likewise, one might adhere with religious fervor to the echelons of vaunted niche, only to seek solace in stealing a sniff of some drugstore elixir that time forgot.

Jōvan Musk for Men Signature Edition is a fragrance with no traceable identity, like a hitchhiker without an I.D. who simply stepped out of his dimension and into ours. There is no internet record of this fragrance, and I have no idea when it was released. Even Parfumo doesn’t have a page for it. The seller of my bottle didn’t include the box, and from what I’ve gleaned on eBay, the box doesn’t tell you anything anyway, so that’s a dead end. I imagine this was a 1990s or early 2000s special edition release for the holidays or something similar, perhaps with only one or two runs before being phased out, but who knows? On skin and on paper, Signature Edition smells very close to my 2017 bottle of Musk, almost imperceptibly different. It has a slightly deeper, richer, and more animalic nuance, but only by a hair. This richness feels like the core components of chemistry-lab musk, flower-child florals, and apothecary soap are better balanced, fused in a way that creates a smooth, mellow, retro experience: that slightly tarnished brightness of an olfactory brass gong catching the rays of a setting sun.

Signature Edition reminds me of how far afield from the original formula Coty has taken Jōvan Musk for Men. It sits somewhere in the intersection of the raunchier 1970s version and the soapy-clean 2000s one, straddling qualities of both without fully embodying either. This style of fragrance has become incredibly difficult to wear nowadays, especially around women. But then again, I can think of several luxury brands that would pay good money to release something this legibly raunchy, so it’s hard to knock Jōvan. A bottle of Musk Oil cost $25 in 1973 when adjusted for inflation, so it was still a cut above Old Spice and Brut, making it the accomplished dad cologne of the era. The difference is that a '70s dad could get laid wearing this, while I’ll probably repel every woman in town.

Lovely (Sarah Jessica Parker)

Having just read the backstory to this fragrance, I can safely say that what I smell makes sense. Burr described the day he spent with Sarah Jessica Parker as enlightening; they ended it with a visit to her Manhattan home, where she confessed her love for Bonnie Belle Skin Musk (actually called Bonne Belle). She contrasted the scent of grade-school cologne with Incense Avignon by Comme des Garçons and some no-name Egyptian fragrance oil she buys from a guy on the street or something. (Apparently, Burr couldn't be bothered to actually track down who this guy was or what he was selling to the biggest TV star of the time. True journalism is dead.)

The story behind Lovely is interesting, but maybe not in the way the author intended. Following its evolution, from SJP's original idea, which Coty immediately ditched, to the eventual release of Laurent Le Guernec and Clément Gavarry's formula for the global market, I found a few things rather odd. First, SJP’s original concept was rejected, even though it wasn’t all that out there for a feminine fragrance. She liked the idea of "body smells" in a sexy way and wanted something dusky, earthy, and a little dark. In other words, she envisioned a classical French feminine from the 1940s, updated for the 21st century. For Coty to balk and steer her toward whatever they thought would sell seemed counterintuitive. But then again, what do I know?

The second oddity is that Burr never actually describes what Lovely ended up smelling like. It’s as if he wants the reader to go out, buy it, and discover it firsthand. That’s fine, I suppose, but it feels like he sacrificed some much-needed narrative connective tissue in the process. The story remains a vague sketch built on the idea that SJP was "learning" about perfume and its creation while developing her brief on the fly. And really, that’s all the story is: a brief. She tells the executives what she likes and doesn’t like, then offers up imagery of Easter eggs, ribbons, hat boxes, and other random things. None of it is particularly enlightening, because what truly matters is how Le Guernec and Gavarry interpret her direction and turn it into an actual fragrance. Unfortunately, that part was left out, and I'm left wondering what their creative process was like. 

Lovely is greener and more floral than I expected. I’ve never smelled Narciso Rodriguez for Her, so I can’t make the comparison myself, but over 2,000 people think they’re similar, while only about 400 disagree. That’s Armaf-level stealth cloning. Le Guernec is especially skilled at reinterpreting popular commercial hits; his 2003 Chelsea Flowers for Bond is clearly a riff on Calice Becker’s Tommy Girl from 1996. I would argue Lovely is just as beautiful as Tommy Girl. This brings me to the third oddity, which is that no one seems to mention the massive hyacinth in this. It’s right there, screaming through a megaphone for the entire wear. The fragrance is incredibly strong. And yet, it’s also delicate, with a straw-like texture that anchors the sweet floral brightness, all wrapped in a soft cloud of white musk. It’s basically Skin Musk for rich people.

Except, thankfully, this fragrance isn’t expensive. I paid fifteen bucks for a 3 oz tester. And for the record, it looks and feels quite classy. The bottle is heavy glass, with a pretty grey ribbon tied around the base of the atomizer. Gold lettering. A soft pink tint to the bottle, tasteful and not overdone. The sticker and box don’t mention Coty at all. I’m not sure if they still distribute Lovely or if “The Lovely Distribution Company” is just a faux brand name Coty uses to distance itself. Maybe SJP asked for a rebrand. Coty tends to scream "cheap," and SJP isn't exactly a discount-bin celebrity. Just another odd detail in the story of her debut scent.

Lovely isn’t complicated. It comes across as a sweet floral musk, likable, easy on the nose, and refreshingly free of the usual crutches: no transparent fruits, no sugary syrup, no fake aquatic shimmer. There’s nothing trite or formulaic here. It just smells gauzy and relaxed, like a sheer spring floral framed in soft cotton.

Hey, for a tenner, you can’t go wrong.

Book Review: Chandler Burr's Year in the Fragrance Industry (Cough!) 17 Years Later

Summer reading: It was either this or The Emperor of Scent, and since I’m a little weary of Luca Turin and Burr’s sycophantic worship of him, I went with this. Why am I reviewing it nearly two decades after publication? Don’t ask. I get to things when I can. With my schedule, I’m lucky to get to them at all.

First, a quick personal note on Mr. Burr. He followed this blog from 2012 to 2015. During that time, I’d published some carefully crafted pieces refuting his thesis on perfume as an art form. I disagreed with him loudly, even posted a photo of him (captioned “this guy”), and suddenly I was on his radar. Burr is famously litigious, and I suspect he followed me not out of interest, but to see if I’d give him a reason to sue. That didn’t pan out. My interest in him evaporated around the same time The New York Times’s did, and he unfollowed. In 2025, I doubt he remembers I exist.

Still, it left a bad taste. The idea that some elitist doofus making six figures in Manhattan doing fuck knows what thinks he can rattle me by appearing in my subscriber list is laughable. It didn’t intimidate me. I still think he’s an elitist doofus. And in my opinion, the Times is better off without him. I don’t know Burr personally, but he reads like someone who believes his own hype, and I find it strange that people like him make so much noise for a short period of time, only to vanish when the public collectively shrugs. 

Which brings me to The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. Against all odds, it was a terrific read. I can’t remember the last time I tore through a book this fast. Started it last week, finished it today, epilogue pending. 

So, what is this book? It’s a dual narrative set in 2005–2006. One track follows Jean-Claude Ellena’s entry into his new role as in-house perfumer for Hermès, culminating in his creation of Un Jardin sur le Nil (A Garden on the Nile). The other follows Sarah Jessica Parker’s involvement in launching her first celebuscent, Lovely. Oddly, the book made me want to smell Lovely, so I bought it, but just as oddly didn’t do the same for Un Jardin sur le Nil. Of the two arcs, Parker’s is more compelling, though less developed. Burr gives far more oxygen to Ellena.

On the Ellena side: the prose is smooth but laced with French dialogue and its translations, clearly meant to signal worldliness. There’s no reason to pepper an American English book with French unless you're trying to show off. It’s annoying. That said, Ellena’s story is unintentionally funny. Three Hermès execs basically drag him to Egypt to stand by the Nile and magically become inspired to make a perfume that had already been named A Garden on the Nile. You can’t make this stuff up.

Does it work? Read the book. I’ll just say Ellena’s story aligns with his style: introverted, minimalist, and paradoxically dull. Watercolor perfumery is only as interesting as the materials used, and Ellena refuses to use more than 30. The result is often thin. Even Turin only gives Un Jardin sur le Nil three stars and skirts criticism, probably to avoid litigation (kidding, sort of). Is Ellena overrated? Maybe. But he also made Terre d’Hermès, which I consider one of the greats.

The SJP storyline had more promise. It shows the full industry pipeline, from a celebrity knocking on every corporate door, getting rejected across the board, then finally landing a meeting at Coty. I was surprised by how snobby the industry was. Parker was at peak fame, Sex and the City was huge, and everyone agreed she was incredibly nice. Burr confirms this but also paints her as a bit naïve, which made the read interesting. His day spent with her, meant to “pick her brain” (but really to boost his cultural cachet), was some of his best writing. No pointless French. Just clean, vivid narrative. Her creative process for Lovely was worth the page time.

Burr also breaks down the economics of the industry well. I appreciated the section on “The List” of top sellers -- it clarified a lot. He explains how fragrance houses like IFF and Givaudan actually function. He covers margins, supply chains, in-house vs. freelance perfumers. There were a few moments where I actually said, “Finally. That makes sense.” If you’re in the perfume world and have questions, this book answers many of them.

Now, the real criticism: Burr contradicts himself, just like his idol Turin. These guys love to moan about how perfumers are unappreciated artists slaving away in obscurity, and then, on the next page, they trash the very work these “artists” produce. Turin does it constantly in The Guide, panning most of Pierre Bourdon’s work while making a handful of exceptions. Cool Water and Kouros are brilliant, but Joop! Homme is “floor cleaner”? EROLFA is “thoroughly nasty”? Burr is even worse. Every mainstream masculine pre-1995 is either gasoline or Raid. He ridicules dihydromyrcenol like it's the olfactory equivalent of wearing sweatpants to work. He trashes the entire Hugo Boss line, including Number One, which is still one of the best fresh masculines around.

The common denominator? Price. If it costs under $0.50 per milliliter, it’s garbage. If it’s over $2 per milliliter, it’s a masterpiece. That’s not criticism, that’s classism disguised as connoisseurship. Burr loves to praise perfumers as underappreciated geniuses, then drags their work if it isn’t expensive or niche. Pick a lane.

His descriptions of molecules are bizarre. Everything smells like someone’s ass, armpit, or crotch. It all reads like a monologue from a sex comedy. “Nutty breath.” “Ammonia-like penis.” It’s gross, gratuitous, and not helpful. I’m pretty open-minded, but this was just off-putting. Burr might be the last person I’d ask to describe how something smells.

He also has a weird vendetta against lavender. He calls it cliché and says perfumers should stop using it. This is simply idiotic. Lavender has been foundational to perfumery for centuries, especially in masculines. Lavender is cliché? Tell that to Antonio Gardoni. 

And more to the point: Burr unintentionally undermines his own thesis that perfumery is an art form. He shows, in vivid detail, how artless the process actually is. Ellena is flown to Egypt to cruise the Nile for inspiration and ends up settling on a mango accord. Mango trees are native in over 90 countries. You don’t need to visit Egypt for mango. It is only associated with the Nile in Ellena's scent because Hermès printed “A Garden on the Nile” on the label. If this is art, then Paris Hilton for Men is Egyptian modernism. I'd argue Hilton has the better mango scent, but I'll have to smell the Hermès first. Turin left Paris Hilton for Men out of The Guide, even after reluctantly giving Un Jardin sur le Nil three stars. Burr side-eyes Hilton’s perfumes in his book, without mentioning her signature masculine. Funny how that works.

The SJP storyline is even more damning to the “perfume is art” claim. Real artists don’t need corporate meetings, market research, or celebrity handlers to decide what to make. Burr never really engages with the perfumers who actually created Lovely. He spends more time on the meetings than the making. The story just peters out. I finished that section not even knowing what Parker thought of the finished scent. That’s a problem.

And finally, the epilogue-to-the-epilogue. Burr wraps things up with a check-in on Ellena and SJP’s perfume career. Then we get a bloated “thank you” section where he thanks everyone short of the Dalai Lama. It reads like an Oscar speech. Unnecessary. You don’t end a nonfiction book with a victory lap. One page, tops. Keep it tight.

Zip Codes and Milliliters: Another Old Bottle of English Leather, But Still Not Old Enough . . .

In a recent post on Badger & Blade, I asked if anyone had come across English Leather bottles that predate the 1960s. After some friendly back and forth with a couple of members, I came up empty. One member, however, clarified something useful: older bottles are more likely to list their size in ounces only, not milliliters. That detail led me to consider Shulton's Old Spice. After 1967, Shulton began listing both ounces and milliliters on their bottles. It's reasonable to assume MEM followed suit around the same time—though it's unclear whether MEM did it first or copied Shulton.

The other day, I received the third English Leather bottle I’ve bought off eBay. It’s another 2-ounce cologne, nearly identical to a previous one, but with minor differences. The text is smaller, there’s no dividing line between the fragrance name and its concentration, and the colors are slightly darker. Most notably, the size is listed only in ounces. That suggests it predates 1967. But it also has a ZIP code on the label, and ZIP codes were first introduced in 1963. So it was made sometime after that year. This puts the bottle’s age between 1963 and 1967. Old, but not old enough. And that’s what baffles me.

The lotion I have also falls into that same post-1963, pre-1967 window. All my bottles are, at most, 62 years old. But I’m looking for one that’s 76. There’s a 14-year gap in English Leather’s early history. Where are the bottles from that period? Every example I’ve seen online includes a ZIP code, so none predate 1963. That’s remarkable.

Even more curious is the inconsistency in how the cologne smells. The post-1967 50 ml bottle I featured in my last article smelled flatter and less citrusy, less dimensional. That didn’t surprise me. But the older bottle pictured here? It’s crisp, bright, fruity. The citrus sings. The mossy base feels balanced. What’s going on?

I’m starting to wonder: is English Leather the first mass-market fragrance to fake its release date, and get away with it? Everything points to MEM fabricating the 1949 launch year. But why? What would they gain by lying about it? Or maybe MEM never mentioned a launch year? Maybe someone else just randomly invented 1949, made the claim to the public, and it stuck for no good reason?

To be clear, I’m not searching for a bottle that might predate 1963. I’m looking for one that definitely does. No ZIP code. No milliliters. Just "English Leather Cologne," the size in ounces, and maybe a short New Jersey address, if any.

H24 (Hermès)

The H24 line makes perfect sense to me. Hermès hadn’t released an original masculine-leaning fragrance in years, and Jean-Claude Ellena had stepped down from his role as in-house perfumer. In his place is his protégé, Christine Nagel, formerly of Jo Malone, tasked with inviting the 21st-century man into the world of Hermès leather and luxury. She had every reason to feel confident, having crafted successes for Dior, Armani, Cartier, and John Galliano. But how does one follow Terre d’Hermès? Her challenge was formidable.

H24 debuted in 2021 and smells like a postmodern fougère. To me, it smells exactly like the image above. Cold, metallic, faintly green-woody, vaguely fruity, and unmistakably industrial, it reimagines the classical aromatic fougère of the late 20th century. Lavender and herbal notes are cleverly disguised beneath a forbidding, austere base that recalls the freshly inked pages of a glossy fashion magazine from 2003. Nagel’s follow-up, H24 Eau de Parfum (2022), deepens the mossy-woody dimension, while H24 Herbes Vives (2024) explores the green-fruity angle. There’s something in the line for everyone, but the original EDT is my starting point. So, here we go with a brief review.

The internet has buzzed with a handful of recurring descriptors: metallic, sharp, aldehydic, pear, banana, bitter, boring, simplistic, forgettable. Some of these I agree with. Yes, it is slightly metallic. That effect comes mostly from how the snowy aldehydes have been pared down to their coldest essence and arranged like olfactory spines across the sterile calm of the opening. I catch a trace of what I can only call a “fantasy fruit,” not quite pear and not quite banana, but something green and fruity that offers a soft, ethereal sweetness. There’s also a whisper of narcissus, the honeyed scent of yellow daffodils drifting in on a stale breeze. And sage. Lots and lots of synthetic sage, resting on an elegant mineral-amber base. Very "designer frag," but still compelling.

Some reviewers call H24 boring or uninspired, and I can understand why. It’s a fragrance for grown-ups. No sugary bombast, no candy, no aquatic freshness, no obvious spice. Nagel’s instinct was to take the traditional fougère structure, built around lavender, coumarin, and musk, and pair it with something that smells nothing like any of them. Then she let the unfamiliar take over. This isn’t a fougère in the traditional sense so much as a meditation on the quiet dignity of modern decay. H24 evokes the image of an abandoned office tower, sealed so tightly it feels airless. Evening sunlight filters across the concrete floors and drywall, casting a tranquil prism of green, blue, and gold. In the first hour, it smells like looking out a window at rain falling on leaves. It’s peaceful, nearly spiritual, and you linger there, thoughtless. You feel no desire to move.

By hour three, the light shifts. That same sun casts a paler, colder yellow, throwing green shadows into sterile blue rooms. By hour six, the scent becomes a memory of the world before the fall: metal paperclips, bitter and dry; publishing ink and glossy magazine paper warmed by a vent, releasing their chemical perfume. It smells like living inside an issue of Italian Vogue. I must be an ink addict, because I can’t get enough of it. And here, it’s not just the ink. It’s the paper, too. Every glossy magazine has its own scent, no two quite alike. Some are faint and clean, others bold and slightly rancid, the ink sterile and the paper faintly alive. Some are delicate, others hit you with a glorious wall of aroma, even tinged with a whisper of binding glue.

I come away from H24 thinking it’s excellent. Challenging, yes, but excellent. This is not your crowd-pleasing Terre d’Hermès. This is something new, a distinct shape. It echoes the past but offers something entirely original. Lavender becomes a solar chill that feels synthetic and abstract. Yellow florals merge into a bittersweet paper accord. Sage straddles the line between herbal and chemical. A soft woody amber and mineral base molecule ties it all together into an olfactory glyph for forgotten spaces. Perfume as poetry, bottled in a minimalist flask with a hidden atomizer stem, refillable, efficient, and unmistakably Hermès. Was this what the brand needed to make waves again? Maybe, maybe not. But I’m glad Nagel made it, and I really, really like it.

My English Leather Investigation Continues . . .

The Lotion's Bottle Reads "Bottle Made in West Germany"

I received two of the three English Leather bottles that I purchased on eBay, pictured above, and the outstanding bottle is identical to the one on the right, so I don't expect much enlightenment there, with possibly only a mild difference in scent between them. The bottle on the left, the "All-Purpose Lotion," is apparently the older of the two, and from the scent alone I can tell that. It's a bit weaker but smells like there's an old and likely banned nitro musk in it, although strangely the scent dies pretty fast, so who knows? 

Aside from the concentration and aesthetic differences between the two, I can't tell their ages on looks and smell alone. Big, fuzzy first-gen nitro musks were in widespread use during the 1950s, '60s, and even the '70s, so the bottle on the left could be from any of those. It does have "Bottle Made in West Germany" embossed on the bottom, so that's a clue the product is from a much earlier era than any other I've encountered. Strangely though its label is pristine, while the newer 2 ouncer on the right looks more worn and scuffed. So if the lotion is older, it must've been kept in a relatively air-tight and dry spot for decades, away from heat, moisture, and sunlight. Honestly, it looks like it was printed yesterday. It's spotless. I'm impressed. 

The cologne is much stronger and basically as I remembered it. The thing about English Leather that most people don't realize is it's the scent of my childhood. English Leather was the one cologne I actually wore as a kid, albeit infrequently. I remember wearing it on more than one occasion to church and to family functions, and we're going back to when I was eight, nine, ten years old. Pre-teen years. Back then I remember this stuff being incredibly dense and powerful, and frankly I disliked it. But my parents encouraged me to wear it, and my dad had his father's 1980s bottles (then brand new) sleeping under the bathroom sink, so English Leather it was. I even remember my mother teaching me how to apply it: a little tiny dab behind each ear, and a couple on the throat, of all places. 

My nose has likely been worn down over the years, but perhaps the vintage fragrance has also weakened over time, because the cologne smells less intense than it used to. I could wear this -- lightly wear it -- and not get a headache like I used to. But that makes aging these bottles difficult. I'm confident the cologne is from the late '70s or early '80s, before MEM did their 75th aesthetic change-up on the labels and caps that my father's bore. My guess on the lotion is it's from the late 1960s or early '70s. Legend has it English Leather was originally produced in Europe and named Russian Leather, and MEM operated out of Germany. It's entirely possible my lotion is a "missing link" bottle of English Leather, a rarely-seen 1950s vintage, somewhat "deep vintage," if you will. 

But I still think there's a "dark vintage" element to English Leather, bottles that are entirely missing from the conversation because nobody has ever actually seen them. I view English Leather as being more important to the pantheon of masculine perfumery than even Ivory Tower fragrance writers like Luca Turin and Chandler Burr believe it to be. I trace the lineage of this type of citrus chypre through to things like Tabaróme Millésime, Dirty English, and Bleu de Chanel. Those fragrances wouldn't exist if it weren't for English Leather's unique burled woody-citrus scent. But another factor is the anonymity of English Leather's perfumer, which ChatGPT credits merely to a midcentury "oil house." One might view it, by the AI's description, as something MEM took extra profits from by essentially marketing a premade base as a finished fragrance, while also selling it to third parties for use in more complex compositions. 

That's how English Leather smells to me -- more like a base than a truly finished scent. It has a dense muskiness to it that feels like it's all about the base, or "bass," Meghan Trainor style. There's a lick of bitter citrus in the top, but it mellows and pervades through to the far drydown, feeling more fixed and foundational than like an extra layer. Beyond the citrus there's a woody sweetness that feels like a clear call-in on whatever musk is used, and the woodiness is very flat and one-dimensional. There isn't much of a leather note, but one might smell something of saddle soap in MEM's formula. I have a much newer bottle of this stuff that I reviewed many years ago, a massive bottle that has darkened over time, and that version, despite all the crap it took in the forums at the time, smells even more like the stuff I wore as a kid than these vintage bottles do. Brighter, heavier, soapier. 

I'll continue to play with these in the days ahead, and will look into the lotion. ChatGPT puts the lotion in the late 1960s to early 1970s, and the cologne in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just like I did before I even asked it. It suggests that the rounded wooden cap of the lotion was more the style of the late 1960s vintages, while the darker and more cylindrical style was what MEM was putting out a decade later. Both predate the 1990s and the reunification of Germany. So, really not telling me much there, as that much was obvious to me. The question still lingers in my mind . . . what did a 1950s bottle look like? Does anyone out there own one? Has anyone out there even seen one? 

Anything that predates 1963?

Where Are All The 'Deep Vintage' Bottles of MEM English Leather?

A 1963 print ad, the oldest I could find.

One of the many things that plague the fragrance house of Creed is the argument that "deep vintage" bottles that predate the 1970s don't exist, despite Olivier and Erwin's claims to the contrary. Indeed, an internet search fails to yield imagery of anything particularly antiquated, beyond perhaps a few very early iterations of the contemporary flask bottles, all of which read "Olivier Creed." This of course exposes them to constant criticism. 

As I've argued in the past, Creed has a built-in excuse for this problem that, to me at least, actually washes: their pre-seventies output was primarily bespoke. If you're only in the market for individualized orders, there will be no examples of those products for the public to see, not unless any of Creed's clients offer them up. If I'm a multi-millionaire who hires the Creed company to make me a bespoke cologne, and I pay $100,000 for a 17 ounce flacon (with a bonus refresh flacon), the outside world won't see those bottles. They'll never see what I privately commissioned for myself, because, well, it's private. 

Very few people seem to accept this logic, however. So, Creed continues to get hammered on the issue, and likely always will be. But strangely enough, the benefit of the doubt is very readily given to another fragrance that sneakily claims to have a wizened lineage that also is not supported by any available sources, at least not online. The fragrance in question is English Leather by MEM/Dana. MEM had cited English Leather's release date as 1949, with tales of it originally being launched as "Russian Leather" sometime in 1930s Germany, then discontinued, then relaunched after WWII, again as Russian Leather and again in Germany, before being renamed "English Leather" and marketed to Americans throughout the 1950s and 1960s. 

If you look on Basenotes, Parfumo, and Fragrantica, they all cite 1949 as English Leather's release date. This is curious, because 1949 is a long time ago, but not that long ago. There should be an abundance of print ads dating back to the 1950s available online, much as there were for Old Spice, which predates it by nine years. Yet when I search for those print ads, nothing comes up. The oldest ad I can find online dates back to 1963. And, also quite curiously, there is no record of MEM Company, Inc. ever existing on 347 Fifth Avenue. It's like the fragrance and the company behind it were legacy inventions for 1960s consumers, and that invented legacy continued to transition along unchallenged through the subsequent five decades, all the way up to today.

Today, I'm challenging it. Where are all the "deep vintage" bottles of MEM English Leather? A search online yields results that again only date back to the early 1960s. I've purchased the oldest vintage "all-purpose lotion" bottle I could find on eBay, with a label marked "MEM Company Inc., Northvale, NJ" and a bottle marked "Bottle made in West Germany for MEM." The product is clearly from the early or middle 1960s, and it's even possibly a little newer given its pristine like-new condition and blond wood cap. One thing I do know -- it's definitely not a 1950s bottle. I can't find one of those, nor can I find an ad for one.

Neither can Chat GPT, for that matter. I asked the A.I. to utilize its research mode and find me links to documents that prove English Leather predates the 1960s. After conducting an exhaustive scouring of the internet that took just under an hour to complete, it admitted to me that it couldn't find any evidence of English Leather ever predating 1963. There are zero documents, zero patents, zero bottles, zero print ads, and zero photographs to back up the claim that English Leather was released in 1949. Not one single spec of information to support the claim that MEM produced English Leather as "Russian Leather" in the 1930s. No documented proof that MEM ever marketed English Leather to anyone other than postwar Americans. No proof that MEM manufactured English Leather prior to the 1960s. I've scoured eBay for "deep vintage" bottles, and 95% of the deepest deep vintage bottles available are from the 1980s. 

I also purchased the bottle pictured below, after searching "1950s Vintage English Leather," and finding this among only a few bottles. The fancy metallic leafing on the label's border and lettering suggests to this commercial design major that it's an early 1980s bottle of cologne. 

And this is the other bottle I purchased, a late 1960s to mid 1970s vintage:

As with Creeds, the only thing consistent about MEM's production and packaging of English Leather are its inconsistencies. From year to year there are wildly varying graphic designs for the labels and types of wood caps used. No two bottles look alike. Bottles from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s are all very difficult to match, and neither of the bottles shown in this article resemble the 1980s vintage bottles I used growing up. But all bottles have one thing in common -- they all say "English Leather." Where are those first-issue "Russian Leather" bottles? 

What does this dearth of documentation mean for English Leather? Hard to say for certain. It's possible that there are simply no surviving bottles or print ads for deep vintage 1950s English Leather. No surviving "first issue" bottles from 1949. No "dark vintage" bottles of the original prewar release. ("Dark Vintage," by the way, is my term for fragrance vintages that are exceedingly rare, borderline extinct, or possibly never seen.) These bottles simply were used up and thrown out, and nobody has access to them anymore. The print ads? Lost to the annals of time. The documentation of MEM Company's residency on Fifth Avenue in NY City? Also lost. This is all totally possible. 

Or, it could be that MEM did not make English Leather prior to the 1960s, and someone at MEM coughed up a random release date of 1949 to give the brand the postwar luster that so many real postwar fragrances enjoyed. This fib would give it a rosier history than the Vietnam era could offer, and make it substantially more romantic in the eyes of vintage hounds. What guy doesn't want to envision square-jawed mad men of the 1950s powering through their martinis and secretaries while reeking of vintage MEM English Leather? Better that the Silent Generation than the Baby Boomers lay claim to the stuff.