Gilgamesh2003 wrote:

g- wrote:

Gil, I think you are almost better in this thread than the inane post or others.  Very funny stuff.  Can you give us top five picks and pans?  Thanks.

Who could refuse a request like that?

PICKS

Grigio Perla (La Perla) - this is synthetic, inexpensive, and supposedly discontinued, but it's a very nice, oddly unambitious cologne. It's one of the many, many Cool Water knockoffs of the 90s, and like most of them it's much better than the current Cool Water, which is headache-inducing. Kind of a toothpaste and shower gel mood, with some Italian herbal suggestions. It aims for studious blandness and misses.

Eau du Coq (Guerlain) - This would obviously be worth it for the name alone but it's also a spectacular traditional eau de cologne. Du Coq carries a faint undertone of perverted evil that makes the happy, brainless citrus of the top all the more enjoyable (it's civet, apparently). Lasts about fifteen minutes.

Le 3eme Homme (Caron) - In the big perfume book Tania Sanchez loses her mind over this sour jasmine floral thing, which is masculine in the David Bowie mold. Like Chanel pour Monsieur but with an aura of brooding, saturnine weirdness. Does not evoke the sewers of Vienna, or Trevor Howard's awesome duffel coat.

Bowling Green (Geoffrey Beene) - This is a slightly piney take on the Chanel pour Monsieur formula, and has been discontinued in favor of its near-toxic cousin Gray Flannel. If you want it, be prepared to scour the grimy demimonde of gray-market perfumery. In March it was going for $20 and now it's well over $100.

Homme (Alfred Sung) - A big purple bottle that will set you back as much as $15, this smells like an artistically perfect bar of Irish Spring soap and lasts 48 hours without slowing down. Totally 80s, actually rather refined and pleasant though high-volume. Sung also makes Hei, which is supposed to smell like Aqua Velva but absolutely does not.

NEITHER PICK NOR PAN

Secretions Magnifiques (Etat Libre D'Orange) - The bottle is decorated with an ejaculating penis and the fragrance smells like the inside of another person's mouth. It is also almost impossible to eradicate, even with soap and water. It makes me happy that we live in a world where people can buy this, although I'm sure I wouldn't.

Zagorsk and Avignon (Comme des Garcons) - part of the "incense series," Avignon smells exactly like a block of sealing wax that I bought at a Renaissance Faire when I was a little kid, and Zagorsk smells like a fire-damaged castle. Satanists and Battle of Hastings re-enactors take note!

PAN

Black (Bulgari AKA BVLGARI) This is supposed to be some kind of weirdly protean rubber-and-flowers mindfuck suitable for men or women. It smells like a He-Man action figure does when you press your nose to it (as all decent people do frequently).

Fleur du Male (Jean Paul Gaultier) I really want to like this whole line - Gaultier's Le Male has become something of a joke, but it's not really a bad fragrance - it's a kind of ultra-cute lavender and vanilla, like if Caron pour un Homme had a baby and the baby grew up and wore eyeliner and girl jeans and worked at the Gap. Fleur du Male goes for a dandyish, gender-bending weirdness but ends up smelling cheap and a little diapery, and it's also weak and transient, which is shocking.

Encre Noir (Lalique) Basenotes loves this dour, boring failure of a scent. Encre Noir is an earthy vetiver (as opposed to a fresh vetiver, as in Guerlain's transcendent Vetiver) and it comes with some aromatic, synthetic topnotes that make it smell a little bit like India ink. Then it subsides into a headachey, astringent, bitter mess, as if you fell into a marsh while duck hunting and didn't have time to change clothes. Beautiful bottle though.

Terre D'Hermes (Hermes) The ultimate iGent scent, Terre D'Hermes promises to evoke sweeping vistas, mysterious fires, and the particolored beauty of a raging sunset, while still being snappy enough to wear with a suit to your job in finance. It smells like watered-down Fruit Stripe Gum, with a little generic mouthwash. Terrible and embarrassing, also very expensive. Like a gray gingham shirt.

Breath of God (Lush) Turin and Sanchez love this weirdo scent from organic cosmetic company Lush, a firm that employs many young women who Shoeey and Tony would find intriguing. It's pretty awful, like burning crayons, and it's EXTREMELY strong. Avant-garde yes, good no.

Rive Gauche pour Homme (Yves Saint Laurent) Another Basenotes favorite, this is supposed to smell like minty shaving cream, but all I get is a huge blast of cheap, tarry patchouli. Not great, not awful.

Thanks for answering the question, Gilgamesh.  I am giong to try some of these scents--the picks of course.  I love the visual of a gray gingham shirt--can't say I have ever seen one though.

I think I poached the gray gingham shirt idea from Buffy, who said that you would have to be a mondo pervert to wear one.

I noticed that the Aussie fragrance site sells the official cologne of Spongebob Squarepants, which surely proves the existence of a just and loving god. $7 for the Bowling Green aftershave is a very good price (probably more than it used to cost retail, but still); the Creeds looked a little high, but they always do.

Sanchez's description of Bulgari Black makes it sound amazing, so maybe I just got a bum bottle, or am an actual bum.

The official hobby of Basenotes is buying Creed colognes on ebay and then agonizing over whether they're fake or not. There's some kind of Creed-specific cuneiform that the Basenoters have learned, and they can read the scent's virtue by examining its inscriptions and the metal bands in the sprayer.

If the scent you want is big-name, expensive, and beloved by clubgoers and Asian superconsumers then you run a high risk of getting a fake. I would never buy Green Irish Tweed, A*Men, Acqua di Gio, Platinum Egoiste, Dior Homme or Gaultier Le Male from ebay, or really any Creed or Chanel fragrance. On the other hand no one is ever going to fake old steady Eddies like Sung Homme or the Caron men's scents.

The other issue with ebay is you might get a very old or heat-damaged scent (of course if the formulation has declined then getting a very old scent is actually good), or the person selling might be some kind of inhuman monster who stores his fragrances in direct sunlight.

The websites beautyencounter and fragrancenet are both OK for fragrances; they don't sell fakes, and their prices are pretty good (fragrancenet has a running BASENOTES coupon code 15% off thing). Luckyscent sells many of the weirdo niche perfumes and is totally reliable and totally expensive.

If you want samples before you buy bottles there's The Perfumed Court, which is two weirdo ladies who make a living decanting perfumes into little spray bottles (not a sex thing). They have a HUGE library, including lots of vintage and impossible-to-get fragrances, although I wouldn't want a sample of something I could never have. It's like crouching in the bushes outside Olivia Wilde's house - I get why people do it, but it's not for me.

g- wrote:

Throwing this out to Gil, but easily answered by one and all, have you ever bought a scent off of ebay?  What do you think?  I have found some of the more hard to get things there but am concerned with fakes and quality.  Any thoughts?

I wouldn't get perfumes of eBay, for the reasons that Gil says. To risky.

Interestingly, Creed in the UK does not allow any of its stockist who have online stores sell it online, you have to go to the Creed website.

That is weird.  This guy is really a baller!  His hoop background could inspire the names for all kinds of clubbing scents:  "Nothing But Net," "Throw It Down!"  "Crossover" (for the, uh, adventurous), "Fast Break", "Post Position,"  "On the Block," "Handle," even "Airball" (for the man who never scores). 

eg wrote:

This kid played high-school basketball for me in the mid-90s.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/beauty … -of-byredo

http://byredo.com/en/content/view/about

When I knew him he was a crazy-athletic, 6'5" human-highlight-reel dunking machine. Always a different cat, but if you had told me he was going to be a perfumier some day, I'd have laughed you out of the gym.

Too weird. http://serve.mysmiley.net/confused/confused0050.gif

Gilgamesh2003 wrote:

Some delightful perfume iGentry here, as the Dutch equivalent of Foo! almost gets into a fistfight at Sephora:
http://www.basenotes.net/threads/285368 … -The-Hague

These botttle-nosed iGents do seem obsessive to a degree that even Andymen would envy.  Your online fieldwork will one day be celebrated, Gil.

That's strange - Guerlain Vetiver is unusually long-lasting for a vetiver. Did you get the bottle that looks like a stack of little frosted glass rectangles, or the tall, thin clear glass one?

In cologne news I just tried L'Occitaine's Eau de Baux today, it's pretty good, reminiscent of both Le Male and Bogart pour Homme but much richer and less tawdry than either of its referents. Their vetiver (Vetyver) was OK, more barbershoppy, sweeter, and much less sophisticated than the Guerlain.

That's still odd. I have found that the first few wearings of a cologne are sometimes a little off; I don't know if this is a reaction with the spray tube, the outside air, and the nozzle or an adjustment taking place in the nose (or both, or something purely psychosomatic). But your Vetiver might smell quite different in a week.

If only we were cool enough to follow Foo!'s lead and wear nothing but Acqua di Parma, the Allen Edmonds Park Avenue of fragrances. We would be so happy!

g- wrote:

formby wrote:

4F Hepcat wrote:

^I might give that a go. Vetivers are just pure class, the plebs don't get it and you won't find any in the duty free.

Vetivers are fabulous, utterly masculine scents.

Geurlain's Vetiver is very nice, even though it was reformulated a few years ago. It's a sophisticated vetiver.

Both Creeds Vetivers are also nice. Original Vetiver, which strangely isn't the original and the older one.

I received my Geurlain Vetiver today.  It is a very nice scent but it fades quickly.  Good for the environment I work in but not the best scent for evening.

Hmmm, remember because you can't smell it doesn't mean others can't.

g- wrote:

formby wrote:

g- wrote:

I received my Geurlain Vetiver today.  It is a very nice scent but it fades quickly.  Good for the environment I work in but not the best scent for evening.

Hmmm, remember because you can't smell it doesn't mean others can't.

Yes.  I have it on again today and asked my assistant if she can make out any scent.  She said only if she is in direct contact with me (minds out of the gutter :: ).  Anyway, probably good for the more conservative office.

Well, some would say that is the very essence of a good scent, that is; that you have to come close to smell it. Still...

Vetivers are my favourite scents, followed by citrus scents for summer.

g- wrote:

formby wrote:

g- wrote:

Yes.  I have it on again today and asked my assistant if she can make out any scent.  She said only if she is in direct contact with me (minds out of the gutter :: ).  Anyway, probably good for the more conservative office.

Well, some would say that is the very essence of a good scent, that is; that you have to come close to smell it. Still...

Vetivers are my favourite scents, followed by citrus scents for summer.

Formby, that's a good call--I like your style.  Anyone have any experience with the other Guerlain scents?

I tried Jicky once, which has a strange smell out of the bottle. I've heard it described as fecal. Nice to now that I was spritzing my face with Eau de Civet sh*t.

Mrs F. likes Samsara which is a potent Jasmine/oriental concoction that certainly isn't discrete. Nice though, in that crazy 80's way.

Guerlain make a bewildering range of scents and unlike Creed have a real history of perfumery. One of the greats, if not the greatest.

Here, from our favourite resource. The ever reliable Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerlain

Last edited by formby (2011-11-08 10:45:36)

Ban Wikipedia and imprison Jimmy Wales and his band of old guys.

g- wrote:

NJS wrote:

Ban Wikipedia and imprison Jimmy Wales and his band of old guys.

Ok . . .  but that is really not apropos to the thread or question above.

Are you against harmless diversions?