Perfume / Cologne

yatagan is brilliant but yeah it is not long-lasting

Currently wearing Bat by Zoologist. The whole range is influenced by animals but that is often in a semi-abstract way - Rhinoceros, for example, smells more like bay rum than anything. Bat smells like bat, or rather bat caves. It’s one of the only fragrances in the world to use a recently-discovered chemical compound indistinguishable from petrichor - the smell of bacteria in dry soil breaking down after rain. It’s ‘earthy’ in the most literal sense.

It’s overlaid with decomposing banana, fig and tropical fruit with a hint of musk and leather in the background. I’ve never been anywhere more tropical than the faux-jungle bit of Singapore Zoo but it’s evocative of rainforests and life / death supercharged by warmth, damp and richness.

Opinion is split on whether it’s something you could wear out of the house in good conscience but, applied with a light enough hand, I’d say so.

is it how you'd imagine batman would smell?

I want to believe Bruce Wayne will be undone one day by the pervasive dank / rotten fruit aroma that surrounds him when he is out of character, yes.

I have been wearing my own concoction. I put allspice and clove in a bottle with rubbing alcohol for a week and now I smell like a fresh, cocky sailer!

I was just fine with Drakkar Noir, despite its reputation as the scent of latent nazis. When a small bottle of that ran out after 2 years, I went on www.fragrantica.com looking for other inexpensive colognes with few detractors, to expand my range a bit. Wound up with Antonio Puig Quorum Silver (cedar + nutmeg), Perry Ellis M (cinnamon + vanilla), and Mr. Blass (leather + church incense). I use them in moderation (one spray), they're all fine, but I haven't been complemented on them either.

Still much prefer the scent that lingers after sitting downwind of some middling Indonesian aloeswood (oud) incense.

even the slightest whiff of drakkar noir triggers every bad feeling i have
i congratulate you for moving on

From the Fragrantica, ‘people who like Drakkar Noir also like...’ thing, Encre Noir by Lalique is quite good. It’s a dark, inky vetiver.

drakkar noir smells like bullying, prepubescent shadow mustaches, and awkward boners to me

terrible

I've recently rediscovered Cool Water, which has a lot of the same negative eighties connotations, and it's pretty great imo.

omg cool water is another bad one
add fahrenheit and you will have the unholy trinity of triggering scents

YES

:(

I have never consciously smelled fahrenheit (a generational thing, maybe) but it is worryingly similar from the notes listed to a lot of leather scents I like/wear

this is the peril of wearing scents i guess
i smelled most of these in the early 90s fwiw

it's also possible my taste just sucks (the big one, generationally, is that I love Poison -- the first fragrance I really, truly loved, as opposed to just found OK -- but realize that anyone alive during the '80s despises it)

i remember when i was wearing chanel #5 in hs and someone complained that i smelled like old people
i was mortified!

still, smelling like old people >>>>>>>>> smelling like a sexual predator
at least old people are friendly and cool sometimes

it's a classic, might not even make me *scrolls up thread to figure out what emotion I associated with it* angry anymore!

teens can't tell the difference between "old" and "cultured" anyway

https://y.yarn.co/abf77722-317b-44d5-b42e-9b1048439029_text_hi.gif

also xxp -- I have a luckyscent order coming in and a byredo sample is in it -- it's Bullion, which I kind of suspect is going to be near identical to eau de velours and/or cuir amethyste (which are already pretty similar) and I have a large bottle of the former already, but we'll see

Which of the review sites do you all like best? Luckyscent, fragrantica, basenotes? Like, if you had to choose one, which one?

normally I go by fragrantica -- I only really use luckyscent to buy stuff and basenotes is just there

also I just realized yesterday why I like poison so much despite an entire generation of people hating it, it's the ladytron of perfumes

Basenotes probably has the highest percentage of dorks who post about fragrance as though they're on the Steve Hoffman forums but that can be kind of useful sometimes.

Fragrantica wins for me because of the crowd-sourced notes / longevity / sillage voting, though. People ranking which elements predominate (1000 people say iris is prominent, 210 say they can smell tuberose strongly, etc) is much more useful than knowing that the fragrance contains 23 notes, including iris and tuberose - which you could find out from the marketing materials.

Given the tendency to reformulate and water down classic fragrances, it's also great to be able to see what proportion of people felt the scent was weak / middling / strong / huge.

speaking of tuberose, I keep meaning to try Adjatay, given my last analogy I am expecting it to be more like the Client of perfumes

Have you tried Fracas? Possibly the Eartha Kitt...

I haven't -- I'm not a huge fan of just straight-up florals

oh man i love fracas
one of my all time favorites

i really want a bottle of arpege

going through aforementioned samples; frapin 1270 is a remarkably accurate recreation of the experience of taking a bath in a bulk-food bin, mostly candied pineapples

Someone gave me Burberry Brit for a late Christmas present. I hate it. It has a long-lasting fake vanilla note that makes me feel nauseated.

I still have a a bottle of Burning Leaves and an Earl Grey Lavender water based scent from I Hate Perfume. It's so hard to find scents that aren't cloying or make you want to die if you are trapped with a heavily scented person in a small space.

I see on this thread that I was wearing Annick Goutal's Petite Cherie 13 years ago. Ha, so weird!

not to be gross but why is there no deodorant stick for ass cracks?

not to be gross but what's stopping you rubbing a deodorant stick into your asscrack?

it's legal, dude, go to town on yourself in the comfort of your own home

Couldn't you just use a regular one kept especially for that purpose?

here you go, LG
http://www.goldbond.com/blog/product/no-mess-powder-spray/

I haven't worn any fragrances in years. I'd love to get back into it at some point, but probably can't justify the expense at the moment.

BUT the other day my wife ordered a scented candle from Amazon. Buying scented candles over the internet can be hit or miss even if you're buying from a reputable place with other scents you know and like, but just randomly shopping candles on Amazon was a particularly, um, adventurous move on her part. I opened it up to take a whiff and I'm almost entirely certain that the scent of this candle is Contradiction for Men by Calvin Klein! It was my first scent, and I wore entirely too much of it for at least a year. I mentioned it to her and she was like "yeah, it's too perfumey..." I almost want to light this candle and a Marlboro Light (quit smoking over a decade ago, but it would have mixed in with whatever I was trying to do at the time) and see if it does any weird sense memory things for me.

I might try to hunt down a sample to confirm that it is indeed Contradiction, but I lived with that scent for a while so I'm pretty sure. My impression from my brief experience with the candle is that it's very overwhelming - like, way too much trying to go on and very sharp. Maybe it wears differently, idk. Probably not.

Anyway, just thought the perfume thread people might get a lol out of this.

entirely, entirely ffs

it's no more off-topic than deodorant for your ass crack

lol how's life that's funny

where nature sows stink, I shall sow peace.

killing time by reading fragrantica reviews of rochas femme, my favorite perfume and the one I'm wearing now actually, and nothing has been more "fucking @ me next time" than this:

"Rochas is the smell that remains of a lovely perfume, once harmonious and joyous when first applied but hours later has been marred by fear laden sweat and soul numbing sadness."

(the rest is some weird... WWII fanfiction...?)

you'd think after 15 years of posting LG would come up with something funny

I'm going to the Emirates next week. Does anyone have recommendations for Arabian fragrances or Arabian editions of international ones?

does "arabian editions of international ones" mean that, f'rinstance, amouage makes a version of bracken man that it exports to europe and the us that differs from what it sells to a local arab customer base or that non-arabian perfume houses like chanel or gaultier alter formulations of things like coco or alien for sale within arab countries? or are you referring to houses like armaf and rasasi, whose offerings often have a specific analogue in popular western releases?

in local news, my brother got versace versus uomo and azarro acteur. i think the uomo is a duff bottle; the citrus top notes have all burnt off, compared to the sample vial i got. i checked the batch code and this specific bottle is from 2010, so degradation is possible. shame, since i really think that transitional period from like 1988 to 1993ish walks the line between old man stuff and trying-too-hard youthful stuff from the eras that preceded and followed it. the sample was so fucking glorious! citrus, and peach! fir, and lavender, and all the other stuff! fresh, yet aromatic! peak versace, fuiud! sadly this particular instance betrays its platonic progenitor, it sinks right into my skin and i can't even smell it up close but then there's a slow release of an herbal, floral, coniferous melange that grudgingly gets released in small doses like a bank robber negotiating hostages for promises of a helicopter and pizzas. i'm still gonna get my own, but i'll have to pay more because the site he got it from is 10 bucks less than the next, but i don't want to risk getting the same wack batch. this would be my favorite designer shit; this is what dylan mckay smelled like, i'm positive. motorcycles and i'm too sad to fuck right now, brenda, i'm off to my family's spot in aruba for a season or whatever.

the acteur is also transitional, i think. there's rose, generic fruit notes, but over an classical azarro base of moss and leather. some ppl in fragrance communities always have to say that a certain rose in this or that cologne is a masculine rose, but i don't care. i don't feel that there's no gender in fragrances because it's all cultural associations; i don't know these people that exist acontextually. my feeling is if there's a discernible rose note, then there's an explicit assumption that there's a performative display of playing the dandy, which is more or less a cis-gendered appropriation of femininity, unless it's not. i think i'm piggy-backing on the struggles of those who lived through history, i don't know the way you feel inside, i don't know how much it hurts your pride, but there's a certain frisson in wearing a rose-based fragrance that geranium or carnation or lavender doesn't provoke, those things are dead butch. but anyway, the point is that love is a stranger in an open car, and i want you, so, it's an obsession, get in the car, it smells like roses.

he also has oscar de la renta pour lui, because basenotes is rife with the powerhouse 80s guys and they think everything from that era is must-have and that's what he reads while i'm all does this translate to someone who's still alive on this planet today. it's like all the classics in one thing. leathery, patchouilly, spicy, oakmossy, florally, all the things. aramis plus givenchy gentleman plus z-14 plus quorum or azarro ph and whatnot. ther's way too much aldehydes, which work really well in things like aramis new west or recent things like my beloved cgd man 2, which is great, but too much makes the millenials go meh, that's old-smelling. dial that shit down a bit, it'd be good to go.

he also has givenchy gentleman, the old one, not the new thing that has that mall accord, you know what i mean even if you don't know, and it is too old-smelling. he also has hugo boss no 1, which has that old-timey, bold-timey, patchouli thing going on but tastefully done and with honey and a very masculine rose note and it refrences a real new york gordon gekko type, slicked back hair and pinstripe suit and power tie that just touches the belt but not all the way down the crotch like some assholes i could mention that are also presedint.

i bought it ten years ago for sixty thousand dollars. the illusion has become real, and the more real it becomes, the more desperately they want it. i can sell it today for over six hundred. capitalism at its finest. i create nothing; i own. you got that killer instinct. stick around, pal, i still got a lot to teach you. hey buddy, are you with me? i need to know if you're with me. you don't have to live it but damn, it's all there in a bottle. hugo boss no. 1, available at macy's and other fine retailers right near where you live. a thing you know and understand conceptually completely distilled into a tangible consumer product that you can get, you can bend to the thing without becoming the thing, hugo boss no. 1, for the pinstripe in you.