My husband has had the same bottle of Old Spice since before we got married, almost 17 years ago. He’s just not a cologne wearer. As long as he doesn’t stink, he doesn’t care what he smells like.
I, however, adore cologne on guys. So he’s agreed, for my sake, to start wearing cologne. Problem is finding one that will suit him without wasting a bunch of money on stuff we both hate.
Hubby is a very down-to-earth, bright, comp geek type guy. He’s a guy’s guy; it took me six months to convince him to buy a pink shirt because it was the color that would best match his new suit. He’s pretty conservative, and would not want something too strong.
So, I turn to the Dopers. What cologne do you or the man in your life love? Bonus points if it’s inexpensive.
mrAru wears Drakkar Noir, because his scent of choice Bacchus went out of production long ago.
It is a fairly sharp smell, wood overtones. Very common to find in department stores.
Why not just go down to the mall, and into one of the big department stores and to the mens cologne counter/overall makeup area [some stores separate out the mens products, others dont] and have him give the sniff test until you find 3 that you mostly like, then dab a little of each [one on each wrist, one on the neck] and give it half an hour to work with his body chemistry then have a sniff-fest. Why 3 you ask? Because parfumiers all agree that you can essentially sniff 3 before your nose goes into overload and you get less sensitive to the smells overall. After dabbing the stuff on, walk out of the store and go somewhere else away from perfumes and wait.
Please for the love of all that is holy do the dab test…perfumes CAN be affected by body chemistry. If you and the scent react badly, you might as well go get a can of axe and hose yourself down. My mother lurves Emeraude but it smells like ass on her after her chemistry goes to work on it. I think she must amplify the musk in the base or something.
Not a bad idea, but the only department store around here is Bon Ton, and their cologne is mad expensive. And I’m pretty sure it’s no better than half the stuff you could buy from Avon.
Then again, if we found a dept. store cologne we both liked, we might be able to get a deal on it on eBay.
Paco Rabanne After Shave. It’s a very clean-smelling scent, not perfumy. My wife swoons over it. It ain’t cheap, though, $35 for a bottle. But that will last for months if you don’t use too much.
The problem with cheap cologne is that it smells… cheap.
On the other hand, a $35-$60 bottle smells good, and it’s strong. I honestly have never run out of a bottle of perfume, and I only have about 5 bottles. They last forever - I doubt if you worked it out that it would be more than $5-10 a year for really nice cologne.
Bay Rum is usually a pretty decent scent.
Guerlain Imperial was Ian Fleming’s cologne of choice for James Bond, which is about as much a guy’s-guy endorsement as I can think of right at the moment. It’s a little hard to find, though. Look online; I think I’ve seen it only once or twice in real life, and those times in specialty shops.
Well, he’s already got a mustache; putting on anything so fancy as jewelry counts as “too much trouble for not enough benefit” for his taste. Also, he doesn’t smoke, although he says if he lives to be 80, he’s taking up a pipe!
One of my favorites that I still wear is actually by the Gap called “Om”. It’s got this fresh outta the shower kind of smell. It’s subtle and not that common but cheap and I do get a lot of compliments on it. I replenished my stock at a Gap outlet store for about $10 a bottle.
If you know what you want, I’ll suggest going to fragrancenet.com to order as they’re likely to have much better prices than your local department store. I’ve ordered the following from them before:
Zirh: FRAGRANCE NOTES - ginger, nutmeg, lime and musk.
Mont Blanc Presence FRAGRANCE NOTES - cinamon, musk, teak, apple and ginger, manly and appealing.
Calvin Klein Truth FRAGRANCE NOTES - green tea, jasmine and musk, lush and natural.
Angel FRAGRANCE NOTES - mint, coffee, caramel, lavender, and tar.
If you’ve got a Ulta store around you, check them out, they’ve usually got a pretty large selection. (Make sure to sniff the coffee beans every once in a while for a clean sniffer).
