Indeed as it's either love or hate. It has a bit of a throwback/retro vibe but, surely not dated. At least not to my nose. I think in today's perfume landscape the overwhelming vote is for something sweet, cozy & sexy, which is ok by me. But, I believe that today's young fragrance noses fail to appreciate what to me was in my time of growing up the masculine to feminine line of fragrances. Let me point out that I have no issue with gender specific fragrance creations whether they lean towards one side or the other, let alone unisex fragrances that are geared to both sexes. I have quite a few and a some that lean feminine that work wonderful for me. Yet, I'm still rooted in my old ways in the fragrance game. Men should smell like men and women should smell like women. That's how I grew up with the wonderful aromas of the 70's & 80's in my home featuring 9 other brothers and 5 sisters. I smelled it all. From Coco Chanel by Chanel which was my mother's signature to my Old Man's Clubman Pinaud & Macassar by Rochas and all the others that my siblings sported from Drakkar, Kouros, Aqua Velva, Old Spice, Anteus, Pour Monsieur, Eau Sauvage, Jicky, Oscar Pour Lui, Chanel No5 and countless others. There was a distinction and a beauty to it that unfortunately I will never experience again in its full glory. It's good to have lines of distinction between masculine created fragrances and feminine ones. Today though, it's just a mish-mash of 2 general scent groupings, it's either fresh, clean and aquatic or it's gourmand and sickly sweet. Gems do pop up from time to time but, they are getting more scarce these days. A true bummer on what fragrances once were a time ago....
That was a great post, thanks for sharing.
We are on the same page, well I guess not that different in age either. I see positives and negatives with the whole unisex thing, you nailed the negatives, fragrances are converging and even though ironically there are more fragrances out there than ever, with new appearing at an astonishing rate, it does feel like a lot of shades of grey.
Back in 'the day' it seemed like there was a big difference between fragrances, and you could find one that was you. I liked English Leather, half my high school was drenched in Brut. Stetson was my grandfather's favorite and all of them vastly different.
My mom was a perfume lover, she didn't have much money, so would go to the dime store every afternoon and spray White Shoulders from a tester.
Later, I'd buy patchouli and sandalwood oil from the local headshop. Maybe that was my first taste of unisex, because it seemed mostly girls bought it, but I just loved the smell of the stuff, and it was affordable. I was a skinny kid, and anything too hair chested didn't feel right for me at the time, but for sure I didn't want to smell like something other than manly, just my take on it what that meant. To me, unisex is something that smells womanly on a woman, and manly on a man, though the occasional truly androgynous scents is ok for me too. It does feel like a lot of it, from a man's POV; is about making masculine fragrances more feminine. Then again the other side of masculine fragrances is loud, brash, and blue.
Later in my youth, I got into Musk, and gosh I still wish I could figure out what the cheap musk I had was and get it again. It had some weird skunky smell that I just loved, and might have been the first thing I thought was me and felt like a conscious move to find my scent identity.
Next was Grey Flannel, I thought I needed to be classier, and at the time that was grey flannel.
What I like now that I'm back into fragrances, is I don't feel them as identity thing, though of course wearing them is a huge part of my current identity, and one of my favorite parts. It's much more about the smells, than the assumed persona, if that makes any kind of sense at all.
