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.

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!

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

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