Tuesday 22 March 2011

The scent of a man 1

So a short while ago I said I'd be blogging on eau de toilette, aftershave, that sort of thing. And I've had a few samples in - too many to bore you with at a single sitting.

Here's the first batch, then. Starting with the rather upmarket Versace Pour Homme (pictured). We're talking long-lasting fragrance, clean notes of bergamot and citrus morphing into woody musk as the day continues.

Not entirely dissimilar and indeed similarly wallet-tightening is the one I'm wearing today, Loewe Solo Intense. If you know Loewe Solo (one of my favourites) then you can guess what a less subtle, less musky version would smell like. This is another one that goes on all day and either I've put too much on or it's getting just a little cloying.

By the way these are eaux de toilette rather than aftershaves. The difference is that a true aftershave should do something to heal the skin after the shaving process, which is why one of my favourites of the moment is Muhler Sea Buckthorn. Yes it smells fresh but it's actually more of a moisturiser than a scent, the smell goes away quite quickly and just leaves you feeling refreshed.

My barber at The Valet put me onto that one and it's one of the better moisturisers I've found. Equally he put me onto Taylor's of old Bond Street Victorian Lime cologne. At £18 it's more reasonable than the more upmarket brands I've favoured before (although we'll have more on those in the next post, I still have my favourites among them), it smells of limes as it says on the bottle and if there's a fault with it then it's that it's too discreet - subtlety is one thing but compared to several of the others I use it's the one I have to top up a bit later in the day. You pays your money...

Finally today there's Molton Brown Black Pepper Recharge. This matches the same company's shower gel of the same name perfectly, and if you use the shower gel (it's very popular) you might as well buy the eau de toilette as well, the gel's going to clash with everything else - although if you use the gel you might not need the edt as it's fairly overpowering as a scent in its own right.

Next post: Hermes, Armani nand why I'm annoyed with Dunhill.

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