Perfume / Cologne

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.

for reals tho i was gonna get my own acteur but it's already gone from the discount sites. you can't dither about these things, it was discontinued but then there were some available and then there was none.

also! he has aubusson homme, which i looked up, and it's 70% the same notes as drakkar noir, except it doesn't have the same dihydromyrcenol overdose that taints drakkar and cool water. it's very indeterminant; its very much a 90s holdover from the 80s: it's like the inside of a merry-o-round a few years before it went out of business and became a hot topic. every review on frarantica compares this to belanciaga pour homme, but i don't know what that is. i think i remember ppl referring to versace versus uomo as something dylan mckay would wear; this reminds me of david silver for some reason, it's a hypercopt t shirt with acid-ashed jeans, it's the consummate mall-scent if you live in 1992.

hypercolor and acid-washed, i mean

dang this must be the truth

nothing i wpuldn't back down from immediately if challenged, but it's the truth as i see it.

I love it, I didn't mean it as a knock

belatedly, no problem, good sir or madam, i just mean to reinforce the notion that these drunken fragrance reviews are for entertainment purposes only and do not express the opinions of ilxor.com or any affiliated corporations, which whom cannot be held financially liable for any ruinous or detrimental outcomes resulting from any and all actions pursuant to the allegedly prescribed recommendation of, and subsequent engagement with, including but not restricted to the purchase of, use of, or interaction of any kind including but not limited to the prescribed application of the consumer products aforementionedly indicated.

my brother also now has yatagan. it's kinda too late in the season to be getting this but it's mostly just gonna sit there on the dresser anyway. i'd say this is for lovers of serious stank. it's piney, plus quorum-level dense oakmoss, with the forest-animal-nutsack thing that oscillates between primordial sex pile and put some deodorant on that. i was disappointed when i first got a sample, because i had already smelled quorum, kouros, and ralph lauren polo original green original polo, and this is the confluence of those things, as it always is with everything, you never smell anything really new, but it does smell like a masterpiece of fragrance compositionery. by comparison i was in sephora and smelled the tom ford noir, which is black-tie skank, damn, son, you must have serious bank, and also the john varvatos dark rebel, which is skank-lite for the contemporary man who dares to project that mature vibe, that's what varvatos is, and i'm quoting a youtube reviewer who i believe is scandanavian but has a socal look and accent, varvatos' output def has that "daddy vibe," which, means over-35s can pull this off without coming across as the old guy in the club or under-35s can pull this off without actually smelling old, but still play the sugar-daddy role if that's how you prowl.

i got a small bottle of gucci by gucci i found discounted. it's not great, but i get a decent cypress note off the top and i like cypress. it's a wearable version of better things that aren't as wearable.

james franco was the face of the gucci by gucci ad campaign. the best review on fragtantica was that this is an apt metaphor; he's not quite as handsome as he's supposed to be but hey, who the hell are you to turn that down.

dark rebel is totally a daddy scent, but too polite to be really skanky. i was hoping for more smokiness from reading the notes -- i get pleasant church incense, resins, car leather and powdery tonka

do you mean dark rebel or dark rebel rider? dark rebel has a castoreum note but it's very slight, more of a suggestion than a dominating presence.

i got dark rebel rider in the interim between this and my previous post. i didn't mean to, but i had to go out and there was a marshalls and they had a bottle of this and now i have it. it's not in macy's or whatnot anymore so i hadn't smelled it yet and blind bought it.

i agree with both the hoping for more and pleasant remarks -- it could be smokier but that could be a bit too much for the target demographic, not that i think that's a bad thing. per the name it's dark and dangerous, but like, about as dark and dangerous as the cult's electric, which was metal that got played between songs by new order and the sugarcubes, who were probably more so dark and dangerous in a different way. it's tempered-badass, like the bad boy or manic girl you're hoping won't behave according to the attributes that made you attracted to them in the fiest place and this time they don't, which is great, because you can just spray them on and wear them for daily use without worrying if they're not suitable for office use or general social occasions whereas a girlfriend or boyfriend like midnight in paris might get wasted and act out in front of your boss.

varvatos is generally regarded as having poor longevity and this one seems to be in line with that. the regular dark rebel sample i had seemed to project longer; the rider comes and goes. off the skin i'm now getting the cacao; it's not as deep as the l'instant de guerlain (the ockham's razor of elegance! meaning, any more elegance would be superfluous, which by definition is inelegant!) but it gives the rider a tasteful dry sweetness where normally in a designer there'd be way too much vanilla, i'm sick of too much vanilla.

actually at this point in the drydown i'm reminded of kokorico, if only for the cacao, patchouli, and cedar. remember when i said kokorico smelled like what people who live inside david lynch movies smell like? that was a great line. where do i go to get my royalty check. this phase of drr is like the normal world version of that, except i can't smell it in the air ambiently, just on skin because apparently varvatos sells mostly to young people who think it's declasse if your scent passes the boundry of liminality and is detetable in the least. boo. boo varvatos. boo john varvatos. boo varvatos. boo.

i sprayed more on. yay varvatos.

nb i'm off tomorrow; it's ok i had a few and did the bourbonated review thing.

i think my sample of jpg kokorico went off because no mainstream fragrance could be that strange, but then again i don't think so. such a weirdo scent for a mainstream house, which is weird in itself because gaultier as a presence is too weird but his fragrance house is not. i was in a speedway gas station and the burly construction worker in line in front of me getting his morning bitter, flavorless coffee was wearing le male and it reminded me of all the times he got laid in the 90s and i was like, get some, dude, and this is in rust-belt ohio so that's how outre gaultier is. when i look at conceptual art i assume it's a comment on and a reaction against whatever else was going on in the art world just a moment ago that i'm not clued in on, and i get it, that's kokorico, it's a negative presence, it's not for you, it's for the person next to you who gets it, but you want to be them, so it's for you so you can be them, and the same for them, they don't get it either.

nb the other person in the latter scenario is an artsy thin person looking at the conceptual art piece, not the burly construction worker in line getting coffeein the previous scenatio, although there's no real world reason they couldn't be the same person, except they never are. one is le male and the other is kokorico.

I’m wearing Aqualis Origin today and it has seen me through some office meetings from hell. Initially seems like a dialled-down, much less opulent and luxurious, take on the same rose / patchouli theme as Le Mat but it has its own charm as the vanilla and jasmine come through. It’s doesn’t have the enveloping, warm-blanket / cashemere sweater effect but it doesn’t cost $300 either.

I have a decant of another Mendittorosa fragrance - Sogno Reale - and it’s a puzzle, flitting between an extremely high-quality amber and a weird rum and iodine/sea salt. It’s intensely relaxing.

I ended up not buying anything in the UAE as the local brands that looked interesting (Hind Al Oud) etc, were fiercely expensive but I’m going to Turkey tomorrow so will keep an eye out for interesting rose fragrances.

Very enthusiastic about this month’s sample set from Bloom as well.

https://s31.postimg.cc/5v9jln9rv/A731_B043-9_D1_B-467_D-831_A-_A41_C6_AB13_A2_F.jpg

those all seem beyond my ken so i can't comment. grossmith seems irretrievably rooted in archaic sensibilities, when i hear the name i think of the old-lady-scruchface from the bbc documentary. some of their offerings are original kfc recipe; some, including golden chypre, from what i read on the internets, are modern creations from a nose who is still alive. did you like it? i need to smell mitsouko because i need to, and gc gets compared to mitsouko extract.

lavs unum, how do you like it?

in downmarket news, i went into a banana repubublic to see if they had any casual linen or linen-blend shirts on sale. they did. i tried their new icon collection of fragrances and they weren't half-bad, which means they were also about half-bad. i got the 78 vintage green. i was going to get a guerlain homme l'eau boisee sample but this has a strong green note that works for me, tea and general green leaf and some bergamot and vetiver. the 06 black platinum has some stinky jasmine and patchouli, and the 17 oud mosaic has good enough funky oud and rose notes. i was surprised they'd let out some stank a bit considering their demographic. the cypress cedar and linen vetiver i thought were ok. the cypress cedar has some orangey, pink peppery top notes, and a vaguely woody base, so for a lot less you could replicate the new dior homme sport, with its blood orange and sandlewood. i mean, i think these are a pastiche of high-end designer or low-end niche, but dior and ysl and chanel are going wide, sauvage edp and y and another allure flanker, br is aiming high, and not getting there, but making gestures in that direction, which is something. i mean, when i'm in macy's and sniffing things all i get is accords, like generally sweet or citrus-fresh or powdery-fresh or powdery-sweet or spicy-sweet or whatnot; the icon series seemed primarily note-based, like i could make a half-decent guess at how the individual notes composed the resultant structure.

the first time i was there getting a shirt the young gentleman in attendance was more than willing to discuss the vaguaries and specifics of perfumery. as per usual i told him everything i had read off the internet and we agreed that br was doing god's work in the world. when i went back to get the 78 vintage green the young lady just coughed a lot when i was spraying test strips and didn't defer to my awesome backstock of knowledge. she asked me for my email and i assured her br still had it since i was getting a half-dozen sales updates a day.

in conclusion and in summary, br's new shit is pretty ok, in that you can skip the mall stuff because this is better, but if you want better, this is still not too bad for the price, unless price isn't an issue, in which case just ignore this because it's a lower-level approximation of what you were getting anyway.

really, though, the 78 vintage green isn't horrible, i like it about as much or more than the lalique white or diptyque philosykos, and about 80% as much as hermes' un jardin sur la nil which is all-conference honors, or tom ford grey vetiver, which is green af but also kinda straitlaced office-manager starched-shirt kind of thing.

Grossmith is absolutely old-lady-scrunchface but kind of fits with the Luca Turin quip along the lines of smart guys raid their grandmothers’ fragrances rather than their dad’s. Golden Chypre is good but tbh I find most expensive chypres redundant when I have Mitsouko, Habit Rouge, L’Heure Bleue, etc.

LAVS is nice but not an absolute knockout. I think I prefer Opus 1144, which is a big, gothic amber by the same house.

(small voice) I really want to like mitsouko since it is the kid of thing I would like but it just 100% disappears on me and I don't know if I just keep buying watered-down fakes or bad reformulations or what

(today I'm wearing delrae's bois de paradise which is kind of nice, maybe like something by serge lutens except with fresh rather than strong fruit)

azzaro chrome is the ne plus ultra of normcore scents. i don't know what to do with this information, but i'm assured of its veracity. natural's not in it. dare to be stupid.

and by that, i don't mean chrome is the best normal or mainstream scent (fahrenheit!), i mean it best embodies the early-mid teens normcore aesthetic, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. high-waisted jeans, nike golf caps, 90s nautica or hilfiger t-shirts, new balance running shoes, that sort of thing. whenever joey is onscreen during a friends episode, that's chrome. yahoo chat rooms smell like chrome.

I realise when you write that I have no idea what normcore 2010 fragrances would smell like.

got my partner fathom v by beaufort and we both love it -- heavy notes of flower stems, white florals, oceanic salt-laden air and wet earth

Excellent. Yes, it’s wonderful.

Interesting samples this month but probably wasted in 28 degree heat.

https://s15.postimg.cc/oicwj6mij/B6_E4_B986-4467-4_CBF-_AEBC-308_C7_C06_DADA.jpg

I realise when you write that I have no idea what normcore 2010 fragrances would smell like.

depends on what you mean by normcore, if you mean normcore mainstream probably like Flowerbomb or something, if you mean mainstream niche probably like molecule 01

All my Christmases have come at once:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07F2LWTZJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530163785&sr=8-1&keywords=perfumes+the+guide+2018

The Kindle edition of Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’ new perfume guide is out. Paperback to follow shortly. 1200 new fragrances from the decade since they wrote the original guide.

nuclear take

I got a sample of Guerlain's Jicky, the oldest perfume still in production (1889), and every time I raise my wrist to my face a new and even more horrible thing happens.

— Dr Sex Dracula, M.D. (@dubsteppenwolf) July 6, 2018

It had never occurred to me how cats would respond to vintage civet fragrances until reading that thread. I can’t think of many things I’d like to smell of less in hot weather.

i got some things from online because i was bored.

first, aubusson homme. it's a little reminiscent of drakkar noir, but updated for the 90s. if drakkar is too dated for your tastes, try aubusson homme. the old-school guys say it's a good replacement for their beloved, late great balinciaga pour homme, but i don't know what that is. aubusson has a good juniper note and some fir which are things i like; it's half lol-90s i'm wearing and old thing and half i actually dig this.

second, guerlain homme l'eau boisee. guerlain homme l'eau is a flanker of guerlain homme, and guerlain homme l'eau boisee is a flanker of that flanker. the guerlain homme was a bit too boozy with the rum note but this one dials that down and is appreciably woodier/ vetiverier as per the name but the refreshing lime and mint are less pronounced. maybe i'll try layering them together and see if i can achieve a perfect ratio of this to that. anyway, it's a solid fragrance for a mature man of serious intent, who handles his business and brooks no frivolity. not as grassy as promoted, but nothing ever is. i'm on a mission. if i had a time machine i'd forego the killing baby hitler thing and just go back to 1995 and buy a buttload of gap grass.

third, i got carolina herrera chic. i blind bought because on sale and certain reviewers i used to trust who lead me to believe it's one of those hidden gems type of thing. like when you hear a really poppy unknown band and you think in an alternate universe they'd be a huge hit, that's what this was supposed to be. i'm as dumb as they come but i at least expect a fragrance to pass the spray it on and put yer nose to yer wrist test, in which you get decent note separation and it doessn't smell like chernobyl. this is only good if i forget about it and then get ambient whiffs on occasion, in which i can detect the fresh watermelon, contrasted with the spicy cardamom, pepper, and cinnamon, and hints of suede. it's one of those friggin magic-eye things that you used to see at the museum store in the mall that you could never focus in on. a good designer should POP!, not dick around and never achieve like it was tarrence trent d'arby. things that are similar in the fresh spicy mainstream category that get to it are ferragamo puor homme and ken\zo jungle.

also, my brother got samples and they're all ok but the standout is hermes rocabar. this shit is too good to be from a prestige house like hermes. if it were from a populist house like gucci or dolce and gabbana this would be the king of the world. sell your car and use the proceeds top buy all the bottles of this.

also the answer to 2010s normcore is dior sauvage.

so far this summer have been wearing etat libre d'orange cologne (fresh, bright neroli and jasmine), mitsouko edt and aramis

Eau de Cartier is my default in hot, humid weather. Of which we have a lot.

it's friday night, i'm full of maker's mark, and i've got nothin' new to go on about.

i sprayed on some of my brother's terre d'hermes and it's pretty good, as far as designers go. but hermes isn't a real designer, because i attribute cultural valence as integral to that calculus, and, while i admit we've crossed that rubicon where there is no more such a thing as a monoculture that collectively the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, and dickheads all recognize and draw from, it behooves me to say that all these constituencies necessarily must come together to form a consensus in order to bestow hosannas and laurel wreaths upon deserving corporate offerings. where is the love for hermes? however you look it's clear to see that i love you more than you love me. if hermes loved me as much as i loved hermes, there'd be hermes logo t-shirts rocked by all the aidens and olivias all across the suburbican landscape. there is not that. terre d'hermes should be today's polo green, but that spot goes to dior sauvage, or maybe bleu de chanel, which is ok, but not really. i don't mind terre d'hermes coming here, and wasting all my time, because it's just what i needed, yeah, yeah. i feel like i went through this with rocabar. i don't particularly hate sauvage and invictus or one million, but they're all frosting and no cake. the grabbing hands grab all they can, but there's nothing to grab for. it's a competitive world; everything counts in large amounts. just sayin' tdh is pretty mainstream as far as it smells, but not nearly enough to matter as far as it sells.
i just wish that there was stuff that was both populist and zeitgeisty but also defensible.

fahrenheit! that was some shit. if michael hutchence even glanced sideways at you, it smelled like fahrenheit. terre d'hermes wants to emulate that but its tie is knotted too tight and it can't effect that louche and dissolute air. but it's dependable and will chop firewood for a romantic after-dinner wine-and-conversation moment by the fireplace so that's pretty good.

Hermes’ cache come from the perceived exclusivity of its world - from handbags to soft furnishing to horse bridles. It’s only the fragrances that are accessible. People rave about Twilly - which I should probably try again. I have a Russian drugstore dupe of Terre d’Hermes called Koldun, which smells close enough for $8.

I got a bottle of Idole by Lubin a while back. It smells like an upscale bar cocktail based on Kola Kubes. It’s good but fades incredibly fast, though hopefully will come more into its own as the weather gets colder.

I have been wearing Saint Julep by Imaginary Authors, which is a fairly literal sugary mint julep - thin but pleasant.

Io Non Ho Mani Che Mi Accarezzino Il Volto by UNUM has been my favourite new thing to wear, though not to remember how to spell, recently. It has cinnamon, incense and sage and smells like it could be used to cleanse cursed houses of their demons.

Zoologist has a new one out next week by the guy who runs Bogue Profumo, called T-Rex, which the perfume place I go let me try at the start of the month. First impressions were positive. Lots of champaca.

I will say I have a soft spot for Hermes’ absurd eighties dusty-rose oriental Rouge, which is overpowering in ‘Eau Delicat’ formulation and could probably bring down an elephant at perfume strength. I just dug out an old bottle of Hiris as well, and it’s pretty lovely.

I’ve not been enormously impressed by recent Hermes stuff but the older fragrances, or older formulas, were good.

I know I only ever appear on this thread to say "Miller Harris" but I treated myself to some of her Vetiver Insolent this week and it's a joy.

My "go to", work day "regime" is Musgo Real Cologne - no. 1 Orange Amber. But with the MH, there's something about how it *feels* expensive and stays for much of the day.

Despite having failed to buy anything in UAE earlier this year, I’ve started to take an interest in domestic Arabian fragrance houses like Rasasi recently. Outside of the Gulf, they seem to attract a higher than average proportion of the kind of people who do direct-to-camera YouTube reviews shouting about ‘BEAST MODE PROJECTION’ but that shouldn’t put anyone off.

A lot of European / American fragrances seem to have been formulated to smell great on the testing strip but disappear within about half an hour when worn (Imaginary Authors seems particularly bad at this) but perfumes designed for hot weather need to have more longevity, without necessarily being heavy or overpowering.

Rasasi’s La Yuqawam is a very good raspberry-leather with a smoky incense note underneath. It’s apparently suspiciously similar to Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather. I’m keen to try some of their rose-oud ones as well.

Zoologist has a new one out next week by the guy who runs Bogue Profumo, called T-Rex, which the perfume place I go let me try at the start of the month. First impressions were positive. Lots of champaca.

I got a decant of this and have been wearing it today. It’s quite something. There is a heavy resinous frankincense bolted on to leather, rose, civet, geranium, black pepper, patchouli and that big champaca note. The longer it goes on (and it seemingly goes on forever) the smokier it gets but it never loses that spicy floral element or the slight suggestion of the stable. My favourite incense fragrances, like Zagorsk and Avignon, tend to be a little austere and churchy, Tyrannosaurus Rex is the absolute opposite. Luca Turin wrote that smelling one of Antonio Gardoni’s handful of other fragrances (Maai, I think) is akin to sitting in the front row of the Vienna Philharmonic after months of listening to ringtones and this is no different. It smells like it was designed to cover up the fact that it’s 1930 and your face cream is giving you low-key thallium poisoning. Gardoni is pretty interesting - he is an architect who seems to have started making fragrances as a hobby.

It’s possibly not something I would buy a bottle of, and probably shouldn’t have worn on a plane journey today, but idk, it’s certainly impressive and very enjoyable.

Anyone tried: Musgo Real Cologne No. 5 Lime Basil?

Update: it's *okay*. Not as nice as Orange Amber. One to wear for work rather than a special occasion.

a sample of amouage gold for women has shown up in the office lost and found. and while the owner is overwhelmingly likely to be me, I don't remember whether I actually brought it, and I don't want to steal someone's $300 perfume. (especially since I don't even particularly love Gold) this has gone on for like a week.

i got hermes rocabar, hermes eau d'orange verte, and varvatos vintage for christmas. the rocabar is probably better for fall rather than winter as it doesn't project enough in the cold, dry air but other than that it's a-ok and pretty damn good. i get the hay/ horse blanket vibe, so bring on the dancing horses, wherever they may roam. it's mostly benzoin and fir, so it's similar to the laura biagiotti roma, but less resionous. the verte, i dunno if that's a greenish orange that's not quite ripe or orange with green herbal notes, but it's jean-claude ellena all the way and wherever his dart lands is where he meant to throw it so i just wait for springtime so i can spray this shit on my carcass and revel in its sublime glory. it's precise and simple. i get orange and basil, with a bit of mint. i would have preferred the concentree version, as it lasts longer than the edc version, but a gift's a gift. the varvatos reminds me of that bit in the joy division movie where whatsisface tells stephen morris to speed it up and slow it down. varvatos goes way old skool and then way modern. varvatos puts some guts into his fragrances then dilutes them homeopathically so no one can smell the guts. you gutless bastard, john varvatos. it's still a pretty good designer fragrance. tobacco and fir, which seals the deal, and rhubarb pie.

i got my brother narciso rodriquez for him and comme des garcons 2 man. if fahrenheit is violet leaf in a kerosene fire then for him is violet leaf in an october rainstorm. yang, meet yin. the 2 man is prolly the apex of extant designer fragrances since gucci decided no one needs modern classics like envy, gucci ph, or rush anymore. so i've heard. i've never smelled those. i'm not angry, cause there's no such thing as original sin, says elvis costello. still, things suck in the designer realm.

also! i want to try the musgo real line, especially since my brother likes barbershoppy things, but i have no access. there's no online resource for samples and i'm not in a decent metro area that gives credence to basic human needs.