Cheap smells for men that don't smell cheap - suggestions please for a reader on a budget!

Grooming Tiger ~ Source Wikimedia Commons (byKoshy Koshy)

Most of the blog-related mail I get these days is from perfume houses inviting me to try their range, or from PR companies trying to get me to write to order on this or that product for money, or to develop 'collaborative synergies' with brands, that you just know would amount to the same thing. These I bat off pretty sharpish, as you can imagine.

Then just as I was sitting down to marshal my thoughts about Angel Muse, an email came in from a male reader, whom I shall call P, inquiring about budget scents for men that I would recommend.

"Can you recommend a good value men's fragrance? Quite a short question I know, but one which is ever so perplexing when on a budget."

I liked P right off the bat for his use of 'perplexing', as you can also imagine. P didn't say what styles of fragrance he wears at the moment, but maybe his taste is a broad church and price is the main driver.

P's approach to me is quite timely as it happens, as only the other day I found myself moved to comment on a post entitled 'Shared Atmospheres' on A Perfume Blog about the rights and wrongs of curbing the wearing of fragrance in public spaces. I came down on the side of freedom, even at the expense of being personally affronted by other people's perfume choices.

"And I do smell a LOT of things I don't care for in the general ambient air, as much on men as women it must be said."

Source: Harper's Weekly via Wikimedia Commons

The distinction I would make is that whereas there is ample choice out there for women, so in theory it is easy enough to smell delightful on a shoestring, I wouldn't say the same is generally true for men. There is a lot of what I would call 'sport colognes' or 'gym & tonic'-type men's colognes, in the same general vein as Chanel Bleu, but nowhere near as classy. A chap serving in my local Coop was wearing one such scent the the other day, and his sillage in and around the checkout area nearly drove me to do my grocery shopping online! So my point is that it is harder to pick out decent options in the men's category that are also a real bargain.

And it seems Blacknall agrees:

"A larger proportion of men seem to be wearing aggressive fragrance (actually it's not fragrance properly speaking so much as olfactory artillery)."

So while I am not for a minute suggesting that any of the colognes P currently owns are remotely of that ilk, the relative scarcity of non-offensive options at the less spendy end of the spectrum makes the search that bit more of a challenge. But I immediately recalled a few fragrances I have sniffed on male friends and liked, only to learn to my surprise when I asked them what they were wearing that they were in fact pretty darn cheap, and clearly punching above their price tag. Examples of this are Activist by the Body Shop and Lynx Excite, which I even felt moved to blog about, here and here respectively!

So I wrote back to P this morning with the preliminary results of my brainstorm, and of a quick google of men's style/grooming blogs.

"Thanks for your email - that's a short but big question, hehe, as it depends so much on what styles of perfume you like and how much you want to pay.

And to be honest, I mostly cover women's fragrances, but I could ask around for you from the male blogging community. Or if you are a member of Basenotes, which is mostly populated by men, you could lob in a question there.

I personally like L'Occitane Eau des Baux on men (a vanillic woody amber number), and have smelt one of the Body Shop's range on a friend that impressed me - Activist, also an oriental. See, that is the style I like. ;) Also thought Lynx Excite (Axe in the US) wasn't bad on another friend. 

If you like Oud, there's one in the Library of Fragrance / Demeter range that is cheap, and Jovan Intense Oud is a drugstore scent that smells like a poor man's Roja Dove at a hundredth of the price.

Bottle kindly donated by Liz Moores

I have heard good things of the Paul Smith range, but I can't tell you which.

And it is worth cruising the perfume aisle of T K Maxx for discounted scents from Penhaligon's or L'Artisan.

Check out this link - it mentions Activist I see! And a Paul Smith! I can endorse the 4711.

Also I have seen a few mentions of Grey Flannel by Geoffrey Beene, and remember that as good. 

Good luck in your hunt and let me know if you would like me to approach anyone else."

Source: Wikimedia Commons (by Nevit Dilmen)

So that is where I am up to so far, and on a whim I decided to share P's inquiry with readers in a blog post to see if anyone has some more suggestions. Roger & Gallet Jean-Marie Farina just popped into my head, and P could of course also play around with the Library of Fragrance / Demeter range for days, on account of its enormous selection...featuring everything from oud to marshmallow to wet shed and beyond!

Oh, and if P likes Hugo BOSS the original, Lidl's X-Bolt by Bellini is a fantastic dupe at £3.99. Here's my review of that one, that caught the attention of the Daily Telegraph, no less. ;)

Then I see Old Spice is also mentioned in the link I sent P - the one and only scent I ever remember my father wearing, or at least keeping a bottle of the stuff on the bathroom shelf. I wasn't at all close to him, mind, so there was no question of me ever sitting on his lap and inhaling the smell. He wasn't a smoker either, so you can forget any Proustian pipe tobacco associations, that other friends associate with their fathers. So yes, nothing retro and paternal to bring to the party.

Editor's note: I cannot believe I have just spent an hour googling pictures of three childhood homes in Belfast, one with an epically bad avocado suite, above which Father's Old Spice bottle would have been perched - sadly I am unable to fetch up any photos from Rightmove or Lettings sites that do justice to its monstrous green splendour.

And I am assuming that P would prefer colognes that are overtly marketed to men. I say that, for we might otherwise collectively think to recommend some feminine fragrances a man could carry off with panache and aplomb, especially once you get into the realms of niche, though for cost reasons we are of course not going there. ;)

Aha, I see Panache is also an aldehydic perfume!, formerly by Lentheric, and reviewed by I Scent You A Day. I don't believe there is a fragrance called 'Aplomb' or 'Budget', or I would be tempted to pop them on the list too.

Further festive falling things and Christmas crises, plus an Excite-ing Lynx discovery!

Well, it isn't long since the tree felling and Fille en Aiguilles spilling incidents, yet I have managed to clock up a slew of additional mishaps - enough to warrant this 'festive malfunction' sequel post.

Though 'crises' may be overstating it for some of the things that didn't go to plan. Like the fact that I was too late to catch the particular brand of mince pies that came top in a Good Housekeeping tasting test, for example (Iceland, if you're curious - they are apparently 'astonishing'-ly good). But the substitutes I picked up on Christmas Eve from Sainsbury's served perfectly well in the end.

Other incidents had wider repercussions, like accidentally putting an egg in vegan stuffing I made for a friend, who was giving me some spare nut roast in return. Actually, it turns out that her two sons are currently merely vegetarian, however, it had quite slipped my mind that my friend herself is allergic to egg, so she ended up having to make her own stuffing. I have since made it up to her in parsnip and apple soup.

I also did that annoying thing - which in fairness can happen at any time of year - of going to the supermarket without the '£4 off when you spend £20 or more in store' voucher, only to go and spend £20.08. So of course I had to go back specially on the last day of the coupon's validity to spend another £20 and get my discount. Which in practice, to comfortably qualify, only needed to be a bottle of Olay Regenerist serum and one of dry white.

Back up curry that was not actually needed in the end

The Christmas meal itself - for my two dinner guests, Clare and her Man City Santa-hatted husband Tony - went like clockwork. Or a clock that is running a bit slow, say. For they arrived at 6pm and I didn't plate up the turkey and trimmings till 9.30pm. Though in that time my friends had enjoyed a pretty substantial starter (did they sense what was (not) to come? ;-) ) supplemented by an emergency saucer of something that had already cooked, to take the edge off their returning hunger. The problem was the parsnips, which for space reasons were late going into the oven, and then took forever to go golden. The turkey, meanwhile, had long since come out, and was relaxing on the worktop under a blanket of foil. It was so relaxed in fact that it was fast asleep, only to be rudely awakened by the jab of a carving knife (which Tony - who had stepped up to help me at this point - candidly declared to be 'a bit blunt'). I must say those parsnips look remarkably nonchalant in the photo, despite having massively held up proceedings.

There really is some gravy on there...

Also during the meal preparations, I managed to bang the back of my hand on the edge of the utility door and burn my finger, which swelled and throbbed for a day or so afterwards. But the main malfunction by far was my unerring knack of knocking glasses over. Or do I mean 'erring'? Anyway, it proved to be a comical leitmotiv of the evening. The first full glass (of champagne) went over the edge of the table, triggering a four handed flurry of floor mopping over quite an extensive area. The second full glass I sent flying prompted the complete removal of the gold tablecloth, which was absolutely soaked in red wine, and in turn started to drip down onto the same section of newly mopped floor. I swear I wasn't drunk or anything - why, I had knocked over most of the available alcohol, apart from anything! - it was just that there were a lot of hidden table mats under the cloth, making for different levels and an accident waiting to happen, basically. By the end of the night we were all agreed that it wasn't so much a table as a mezzanine. Then within minutes of my guests leaving I had spilt half a can of Diet Coke and rescued two tea cups that were perched at a very perilous angle. To be honest it was a minor miracle they didn't also hit the deck.

After a promising start, it all ended up on the floor.

My lack of a dishwasher could also be construed as a malfunction, as I washed up afterwards for two days straight...though that acquisition will have to wait until I revamp the kitchen one day. I was, however, comforted by the realisation that, contrary to what I think every time I open my utensil drawer, you can in fact never have too many spatulas.

So what perfume did I wear on Christmas Day, you may be wondering? Well, I did toy with putting on Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess, you know, to help the turkey along - it also has a hint of myrrh, even if it might not be seasonally appropriate in any other sense - but I went in the end with Bois des Iles, by way of a thank you to my generous donors, Val and Tara.

The other notable perfume-related thing to tell you about the holidays is that I sniffed a friend at a party the other night and was very taken with the discreet woody oriental scent he was wearing. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I learnt it was Lynx Excite of all things! Further research on the Interwebs confirms my impression that Excite is punching above its weight. The men on Basenotes also give it a thumbs up. I was certainly impressed at the olfactory gentrification of this hitherto cheap and cheerful 'yoof' range. Excite (just based on my hazy recall of my friend's neck) reminded me a little of a lighter version of L'Occitane's Eau des Baux, which I encountered in Germany earlier this year. The perfumer is Ann Gottlieb and this is all I could find by way of description - on Amazon!:

"This sophisticated scent starts with a clean and fresh leafy green accord, then develops to smoother, caramel based notes and finishes with woody base notes, laced with amber and vanilla." 

Source: lynxeffect.com

So on that surprising note, it just remains to thank Bonkers readers everywhere for your interest and support in 2014, and to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! A special thanks is due to follower No 168 (Sarah), who recently replaced one I lost the other day for reasons I will probably never know. I have said it before, but I can't over-emphasise how nice it is to see the avatar of a new follower pop up in my side bar. As I understand it, you still have to consciously follow a Blogger blog to be counted amongst its official audience, so I do appreciate people taking that extra step.

Clare & Santa-Tony, a born again Man City fan who almost matches the sofa

Bonkers 'on tour' in Germany again: The scented bit

This post rewinds to the beginning of my recent German trip, charting its various scented aspects (more or less) as they occurred...

Semi-comatose airport sniffing

Following the crushing disappointment of the fried bread impersonating French toast incident, I decided to self-soothe in the perfume section of the Duty Free, as you do.  Mind you, at this plateau stage in my perfume j****ney and at that ungodly hour of the morning, I was a little zombified and milled around aimlessly, completely blanking the latest Marc Jacobs or Issey Miyake flanker - assuming I have even correctly remembered that it was those brands that had one.  There was a flanker in a jagged bashed concertina-type bottle - you would think I would remember whose that was - but no, nothing penetrated the mental fog of a semi-saturated sniffer who had been up since before she went to bed, or so it felt.

Then I had an idea: 'Why, I'll check out the Dior Collection Privée!  Give Mitzah another spin - I might be ready for it now!', before I remembered that Birmingham airport stocks the Chanel Exclusifs range, not Dior. And then Birgit's personal mantra of 'If in doubt, seek Hermès out' came to me, and I trotted off to that fixture, where I was able to try Jour d'Hermès again on skin, together with B's new scented squeeze of Eau de Narcisse Bleu. Jour d'Hermès I thought striking, in a tart yet sweet, rhubarb and pretty floral kind of a way, but it was too specific a scent to impress me.  Too singular, even.  Not remotely comforting, and the weather was still cool enough for me to crave that quality in a perfume.

Source: fragrantica.com

The Eau de Narcisse Bleu, meanwhile, opened with a fresh and bracing whoosh of galbanum, but the musky woodsy drydown came a tad too quickly and the green aspect was rendered indistinct - I don't normally complain about perfumes being 'fuzzy' in character, but I wanted the narcissus note to hang around a bit longer.

Channelling Geza Schoen!

So....as noted in Part 1 of 'The travel bit', the first gig was at Monarch, a chic but smoky club in edgy Kreuzberg.  I wore Ormonde Jayne's Ta'if as my SOTE, just because I reach for it more or less on auto-pilot when I am going out.  Imagine my surprise when Anka, a Berlin-based reader, wrote this comment on my post:

Monarch (upstairs) - in Geza's 'hood!!

"And the Monarch is a place I know quite well, too.  About a month ago I was there and listened to a 'fake' talk show; one of the guests was perfumer Geza Schoen who lives round the corner."

Whoo! I had unwittingly picked a Geza creation to wear that night, with no clue about the venue's connection to one of my favourite noses...;)

And Anka went on to tell us more about the event she attended, also confirming Monarch's offbeat charm and gloomy ambience:

"Yes, Monarch is a funny, dusky place!  This particular evening with Geza Schoen was, as an exception, a non-smoking event and we all had a great laugh when the perfumer reported later on that he himself occasionally enjoys a smoke....And I learnt that his most detested smells are coriander, oysters and truffles."

Wow, if I had known that Geza Schoen - to whom I feel a particular bond because he once scented my home city of Belfast (full report on that novel project here) - was a Kreuzberg resident, I would have spent longer hanging out in the falafel parlours on Skalitzer Strasse.  I did have a couscous in a tagine restaurant on Lausitzer Platz, and a mushroom pancake in a cafe on Oranienstrasse, but there was no sign of his distinctive rangy form in either eaterie.

The Méharées handover, and the focus group in a kebab shop 

That first night in Berlin also saw the handover by Jane (who FYI rocked Gorilla Perfumes' heady floral, Sikkim Girls, all week) of the bottle of L'Erbolario Méharées, which they had kindly bought for me in Bologna the previous weekend.  Thus it was that when I adjourned with the band to the kebab shop near their digs, I still had the bottle of perfume in my hand, and it was ceremoniously plonked on the table, next to the condiments - before I had the idea to ask them what they made of it, and passed the bottle around, inviting them to sniff the nozzle.

Guitarist: 'It's quite sweet.'
Bass player: 'It's nice - is there really just myrrh and dates in there?'
Singer (in a slightly incredulous tone): 'Whoever thought to put myrrh in a perfume?!'

Later in the week, the bass player suggested that I - or someone - should invent a perfume and call it 'Incorrigible', adding brightly: 'That's a good unisex name - you'll be onto a winner!'  Givenchy take note.....

L'Occitane Eau des Baux and the fragrant Friedrich Sunlight singer

In Augsburg, at the 'secret gig', I got chatting in between sets to the singer from the support band Friedrich Sunlight, whose name was Kenji.  I think I opened the conversation by boldly remarking on the fact that he smelt rather lovely, and he revealed that he was wearing L'Occitane Eau des Baux - a masculine scent that was completely off my radar - and kindly let me lean in and sniff him more comprehensively.  Reader, for all vanilla fans especially, this one is utterly swoonworthy and easily wearable by a woman.  I urge you to watch Katie Puckrik's video review of Eau des Baux here.  It is a woody, incensey, softly spicy, warm and vanillic fragrance that I see the (mostly) men on Basenotes have also given a resounding thumbs up.  Along with cardamom (which always reels me in), there is meant to be a cypress note in there which I barely detect, and on my skin the vanilla drydown is the most striking part of the scent's development. I imagine Eau des Baux might read as too sweet for some men, but I couldn't get enough of it.

Les Baux-de-Provence ~ Source: ignis via Wikimedia Commons 

Oh, and in the course of my research about Eau des Baux, I discovered this review by a blogger who was new to me, and whose blog rejoices in the name 'Villainous Smells and other Olfactory Decadence'.

As it happens, I have actually been to the village of that name - Les Baux-de-Provence - and clapped eyes on the ruined hilltop castle which inspired the fragrance, but it was..er...35 years ago when I lived on the Riviera, and the memory is sadly dimmed with time.  Kenji's signature scent continued to haunt me for the rest of the trip, and at the airport on the way back I made myself a tiny sample to take home. Should have just bought the bottle and been done with it, but there you go!  For even though I picked my daily perfume throughout the tour with studied care, it is Kenji's sillage of Eau des Baux which is the standout scent highlight of the week.

Visiting Parfümerie Naegele, Augsburg, with nary a sniff

The Friedrich Sunlight guitarist - who I later learnt was called Florian, though I had been calling him Brian throughout my visit - gave some of us a lift back from the 'secret gig', and on the way I asked if he could suggest a high end perfumery in town.  He was unsure himself, but promised to put out feelers.  And how! The inter-band bush telegraph must have been positively humming, because by lunchtime on the following day the keyboard and bass players in Friedrich Sunlight had received messages from Florian and taken up the challenge of finding me a Parfümerie commensurate with my exacting standards.  But it was Kenji who finally came up with the name Naegele, and by mid-afternoon I had struck out on my own to the humorously named Fuggerplatz area to suss out the selection of niche fragrances this exclusive perfumery carried.

Well, quite a few, as it transpired, including a whole wall of By Kilians and the bespoke line of Keiko Mecheri - which I don't believe I have seen anywhere, but at 282 euros a pop I couldn't bring myself to try any of them. Unfortunately, I was listless and tuned out to scent again, and ended up just taking a few photos, inquiring after a particular Bobbi Brown eyeshadow (predictably discontinued), and heading across to a cookware store to buy a comedy chicken for my friend's husband's birthday.  He is called Chick, for one, plus I was sure I could pass it off as a poultry-shaped executive stress ball on account of its satisfyingly squidgy bottom.

But going back to my temporary indifference to perfume, I had a similar experience in Berlin in 2012, when I drifted round KaDeWe, only actually smelling the April Aromatics line in the end.  I thought then - and think now - that because of the whole premise of the tour I was suffering from sensory overload already of the auditory kind, and I just didn't have the headspace (no pun intended) to focus on the olfactory as well.

Mr Chick's birthday present ~ Source: Clare Chick

Berlin - epic fumehead trail fail - times two!

I fully intended to make up for this lacklustre attitude on my return to Berlin.  I had the whole of Sunday and half of Monday on my own after the others had gone back, which should have been ideal for a complete re-immersion in Berlin's high end perfume scene.  But I had forgotten that on Sunday all the shops are closed(!), while by Monday I was so tired I used the morning to catch up on some much needed kip (as per the sign at the bottom of this post).  So instead, on the Sunday I mooched around the trendy quarter of Prenzlauer Berg, whiling away the hours in a variety of eclectic cafes.

And it was in one such cafe that I had another scented epiphany - not with a perfume this time, but an 'extra extra virgin top of the range high premium cat's pyjamas' olive oil, called Ladi Biosas.  It was fragrantly floral like no other oil I have ever sniffed or tasted (I had a little bowl of it for dipping the bread that came with my soup - what an inspired marketing ploy).  Reader, I walked out with a 14 euro bottle proudly tucked under my arm.  But this Ladi Biosas stuff is amazing - I would neck it straight from the bottle if it wasn't so darn expensive! Seemingly, the cafe in question is the only stockist in Germany, but if you can get hold of it somehow it truly is liquid gold.  And that means a lot coming from someone like me who is not remotely foody, and perfectly happy with a 99p loaf with the odd pumpkin seed on it, as opposed to balsamic garlic and parmesan flatbread or artisanally hand kneaded spelt focaccia with walnuts and gohji berries and what have you.

Here is some info about the oil - I wish I could gain such 'clear-sightedness' after 'remaining undisturbed for 50 days'.