Viewer Mail: Which Perfumes Make Guys Go “Grrr”?

Hello!

Speaking of "sexy” (per your last Perfume Pen Pals),
I am just curious as to which perfumes actual guys think are sexy. I want to buy something that says, "Hello kind Sir, could you please be a dear and f$&! me...."

What do real, hairy, sweaty, smelly guys like? Is it the sweet candy-ness of a Victoria's Secret perfume or something more spicy-ish? I like certain perfumes but some guy friends of mine say they are too "old lady / grandma.” Thanks for your input on this!!

Stefanie

Stefanie, when it comes to encouraging a fellow to f$&! a lady, one needs to spend exactly zero dollars on perfume. Especially you, with those proper debutante manners of yours. “Kind Sir,” indeed!

But I smell what you're spraying, here: you want to cut through the horse pucky and PR bumf and line up some sure-fire hornifyin' fumes. 'Cause it's always fun to have your beautiful perfume trigger a Dance of the Seven Veils in a guy's head on your behalf, while all you're actually doing in real life is standing there, innocently engaging in demure small talk.


The problem is, asking menfolk “what is a sexy perfume?” will get you as many answers as asking them “what is a good food?”. Not only are there generational differences (as you've experienced with those uncultured galoots calling your lovely perfumes “too grandma”), but on top of that, there are endless variations on preferences, all formed by personal tastes and experiences.

One person's “obvious” sexy perfume can be a big fat “huh?” to another. Take the man who once tweeted me rather testily, “I don’t like perfume on anyone. What’s wrong with a light smell of strawberries for the ladies?”

Uh, sure -- you mean the light smell of strawberries that comes as a factory preset on the FemBot XD5000? FemBot's vinyl skin is soooo lifelike, too.

In Fruit Dude's version of the world, the most desirable women don't wear perfume. They simply naturally exude the smell of strawberries. Or perhaps they've tucked a Little Trees Car Freshener into their lingerie drawer?

On different tack, did you see Junelady's comment on the last post about how Armani Acqua di Gio triggers Pavlovian lust in her no matter who wears it, owing to imprinting from an old AdG-wearing flame? The take-away here is: whatever random fragrance an early beloved wore, wins! Which is an exceedingly hit-or-miss way to try and strike a person's olfactory fancy.

Jeez, all you're trying to do is to work a little “to smell me is to love me” mojo on attractive strangers, and it turns out you're up against what saucy Dee Dee Cox wore back in the 8th grade. Or what Great-Aunt Bernice used to spray on her truss to disguise the smell of joint liniment.

Before we twist our brains into a Krazy Straw trying to second, third and fourth-guess what real, hairy, sweaty, smelly guys like in a perfume, let's ask said guys to try this thought experiment:

Scarlett Johansson walks up to you in a club, drenched in Youth Dew/Mitsouko/Clinique Elixir/Grandma Perfume of Choice. She smiles tentatively and asks if you know the name of the song that's playing. Do you

a) shrug, irritated, then turn away. Dang, Scarlett smells like my Nana!

b) try not to make cartoon “Ka-HOO-gah” eyes while attempting to absorb “pretty...lady...talking...to...me....” Oh, she was wearing perfume, you say?


It's b), duh. Point being, if Wolfie is on your wavelength, he's already digging the You Pu-Pu Platter, perfume and all. Your favorite perfume is now his favorite perfume.

So let's review. Actual guys find the following perfumes sexy:

a) Strawberry ones.

b) Whatever saucy Dee Dee Cox wore in the 8th grade.

c) Whatever the pretty lady currently talking to them is wearing.

Which is an elaborate way of saying “everything”. And before I waste any more of your time, Stefanie, I'd like to throw it over to any blokey blokes out there (and the women who love them) to name names on their favorite hubba-hubba fumes.

I'll kick it off with an exchange I had with an actual guy, Perfume Pen Pal Dan Rolleri:

Dan,

I love what vuvie wrote about Burberry Brit Sheer on MakeupAlley:

“So for all the guys who love the way I smell and couldn't wait to undress me, here's what's making you stupid:

yuzu, mandarin, pineapple leaves, lychee, grapes, peony, peach blossom, sweet pea, nashi pear, white musk and amyris wood.”

Katie

Katie,

The poor saps on Basenotes are still searching for the one perfect scent that will make women want to undress them. (I think it's now a permanent subject in the male section.)

It's so much easier for women. Maybe it has more to do with being a woman. Maybe she's giving Burberry too much credit.

My favorite scent on my ex was this supposedly scentless gel she'd wear on her face at night that smelled like peat moss. No yuzu in that, I'm pretty sure.

Dan

Sex Robot via

Perfume Pen Pals: Robert Piguet Fracas and Ann-Margret

Dan,

Further to our indoles and “porny perfume” discussion, I smell indolic decay in Fracas. It's clammy and close and I think that's why it reads as sexy, rather than as "Yum! Fresh flowers!".

Katie

Katie,

See, I find Fracas is incredibly heavy and rich. And heady even, because it's so unapologetically strong. I feel dizzy wearing it. Or sometimes nauseous. But it doesn't read "sexy." (I know, I'm in the minority here.)

I understand how earthy scents smell sexy, and I agree, but even Fracas still smells of flowers to me. Clammy and close, yes, but clammy and close flowers. I guess I get my sexy from vegetal decay and not human decay.

Dan

Dan,

Well, even if you go to vegetal, oakmoss is that vegetal decay smell, but with its salty, leathery, "personal" qualities, it also reads as human decay. It adds a dirty friction to otherwise sunny or fruity/floral scents.

All roads lead to "personal", which is usually perceived as "sexy". But you sound like you have a different barometer -- maybe you appreciate oakmoss' salty leather, but don't connect it to unwashed skin. And maybe the thing that makes you go "mmm" are just happy, sweet, zingy, fresh jasmine and peach, no complicating factors required or desired.

Katie

Katie,

I think vegetal does connect to unwashed skin, but it's not as sweet as that indolic rotting flesh smell. Sweet isn't sexy to me. Although I like sweet very much, especially feminine sweet (as opposed to those gross Odori colognes). But it doesn't read as sexy. It's more comforting. Kind of like best friends versus sexy friends. Diane Keaton versus Ann-Margret. (Could my references be any more dated?)



"So...I'm not a 'sexy friend'?"



Now that you mention it, A-M does really pack some heat.


Alright, I have to shower and put on my new shirt -- I've got a party to attend.

Dan

Dan,

Ann-Margret was my beauty idol when I first dyed my hair red as a teenager. I was trying to channel her for years!



She's too much. She makes my pants itch!

Katie

Katie,

If I knew your phone number, I surely would've called you from the party. You are not going to believe this. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS! Guess who I hung out with at the party?

Okay, I'm not gonna make you guess, that would be dumb. I hung out with Ann-Margret's granddaughter. ANN-MARGRET'S GRANDDAUGHTER! Out of frickin' nowhere. You and I make the reference and there she is. And we talked about perfumes.

She was wearing Angel and something else I didn't recognize and then she talked about Ann, how Ann LOVES perfumes and has all kinds of theories about them. The biggest being she insists on going Coldstone Creamery on her own ass (your term not hers) all the time.

Ann says a woman should never wear just one scent or she risks smelling like another woman. And so she always blends two or more perfumes. And she always has her granddaughter smell her first thing! And then proudly announces what combination of things she's wearing. How amazing is that?

Dan


Viva Ann-Margret!

Hermes Eau de Merveilles

...smells like a cold day on a clean beach.

When I first stumbled across Hermès Eau de Merveilles at a mainstream perfume counter, I was surprised. Unlike its cronies jostling for position on the Windexed glass, here was a perfume that didn't shriek of strawberries or vanilla or white musk. The off-kilter bottle, dappled with stars, contained a fragrance that wasn't obvious, saturated, primary-colored. Instead, the fragrance sallied forth with a puff of orange, then quickly became contemplative. It started fresh, but got fuzzy. It was brisk, salty and serene, all at the same time. Amidst the clatter of junk-food fragrances that are fun for quick flings and youthful indiscretions, Eau de Merveilles is a big-label offering that offers couture class at mall prices. And best of all, when you wear Eau de Merveilles, you smell like you. Expensive you.

Eau de Merveilles is available from Amazon.com and Sephora.com starting at $40 for 50 ml.

Katie Puckrik Smells Tilda Swinton: Etat Libre d'Orange Like This

It's the night before the Golden Globes, where Tilda Swinton's latest movie, I Am Love, is up for Best Foreign Language Film. If Tilda were a proper movie star, she'd be spending the evening marinating in a bath of yak milk after having her face sandblasted, her colon irrigated, and her lips spiked with ass fat.

But Tilda is a delightfully improper movie star, which is why she's hanging out at LA's bijou Scent Bar, nibbling on ginger cake and talking to perfume fans about her Etat Libre d'Orange co-creation, Like This.

I tell Tilda I'm wearing Like This for the first time, and finding it unexpectedly vegetal. I'm a bit thrown because perfume's subtitle, Immortal Ginger, had me anticipating something mapley and spicy, and not the carrots I'm smelling.

“The longer you wear it the more you'll love it, I predict,” Tilda says, confidently. “Have you heard the spiel?”

Oh boy! Tilda Swinton is my sales associate!

“Spiel me, Tilda.”

“The spiel is, Like This is based on the smells I associate with Scotland, where I live. My grandfather's greenhouse, and whiskey, which is the smell of the earth there.”

“A peaty smell?”

“Yes. And of course ginger, because I'm ginger -- and everything that goes along with being a ginger.”

My mind whirrs -- what goes along with being a redhead? Naughtiness? Feistiness? Sauciness in the sack? Before I can formulate a question on the psycho-social impact of Titian tresses, I realize that Tilda's gone full-speed ahead on the spieling, and I'm in danger of missing essential details.

“My birthday's in November, so there's pumpkin in there,” she's saying. “And orange things generally: mandarin, carrots. Also, the smell of my dogs' paws, which smell like baking.”

“Your dogs' paws smell like baking? Not Fritos or Doritos?”

This elicits a baffled look from Tilda.

“No! Baking!” She's adamant. “In fact, the original idea was to do a perfume based on my dogs' paws.”

Paws?

A pause. Then we both crack up at the idea of Tilly's Paw-fume.

She continues, “But then we decided to broaden it out.”

“We” includes perfumer Mathilde Bijaoui and the good folks at Mane Flavor and Fragrance. Tilda elaborates.

“I don't speak the language of perfume. There's a whole language. I was in the room with the people from Mane. They're perfumers, but they're also philosophers and mathematicians.

“I was,” she pauses, considering her place in this new world, “the child. We'd talk about the associations I wanted for the perfume, and they'd have me smell raw materials like ambergris and civet. And when I walked out in the street afterward, I'd suddenly be aware of all the smells I'd never noticed before!”

The Scent Bar scene was like this

I comment that Like This is simultaneously warm and dry, while also being surprisingly fresh.

“Yes! There was a concern that given the elements, it could be too cloying, which I didn't want. But we put the vetiver in, and it cut the heaviness.”

Despite her protestations, Tilda's speaking “perfume” quite fluently. I ask her about her “scent bio”.

“The first perfume I was aware of was the one my grandmother wore, which was Joy. I started wearing that when I was 15. I was trying to be 'a lady'. And then for an embarrassing number of years, I wore Penhaligon's Bluebell.”

I inform her that Bluebell was a favorite of the unlikely trilogy of Princess Di, Kate Moss and Margaret Thatcher. Tilda's huge blue eyes widen alarmingly in horrified fascination.

“Margaret Thatcher? Really! Margaret Thatcher! Oh!”

Margaret Thatcher: Blue Belle

Mention of the UK's former Prime Minister triggers some conversational hopscotch from Tilda's teenage boarding school hardships (“They didn't allow music! And punk rock was happening!”) to the distinctive smells of different cities.

“There is a Los Angeles smell, isn't there?” She considers a moment. “It's in every hotel, and in people's houses. It's really sweet -- and strange. What is it?”

I venture that it's a combination of the local flora -- decayed jasmine, orange blossom, jacaranda, etc, combined with the ozonic odor of air conditioning.

“Whatever it is, it's cloying -- almost disgusting,” she summarizes, leading her neatly into a review of some of Etat Libre d'Orange's more, ahem, challenging offerings.

Have you smelled Sécrétions Magnifiques? It starts to make you...” she fans her throat in mock distress, miming the rising gorge. “But some people absolutely LOVE it!”

I go in for another sniff of my Like This'd wrist, which has now bloomed from its disorienting vegetal opening into a mellow and friendly scent. The carrots have made way for a soft-focus leathery floral where the ginger and sweet-ish immortelle blend into a gentle background burr.

Tilda notes my conversion with satisfaction.

“I really and truly love wearing Like This,” she says, warmly. “Not only do I wear it all the time, but I put it on twice a day.”

Tilda Swinton -- she may be an improper movie star, but she's a helluva sales associate.

Like This is available from Lucky Scent and Les Senteurs, starting at $99 for 50 ml

Scent Bar scene photo by Steven Gontarski. See more here.

Perfume Pen Pals: Porny Perfume - What is Smut?

Katie,

I just looked up a perfume on the Invisible Magnet blog and got caught up in a "you should wear the opposite of your natural smell" conversation. Which turned out to be misremembered.

But it's an interesting concept (even if it doesn't exist), because supposedly, men smell sweeter than women and the onion smell that Invisible Magnet Liz says is her natural scent is supposedly the natural scent of most women. Which, I guess, is why sweeter scents might work better on them. Though I love those sweet By Kilians on me, sweet as I already am. I might be off my rocker, but I'm convinced I pull off Love and Liaisons Dangereuses more successfully than any person on the planet.

Katie, what does "slutty" smell like? Seriously. Is it that musky, civety smell in Le Labo Oud 27? Or the unclean sweaty smell of Frédéric Malle Une Fleur de Cassie or The Party in Manhattan? Sitting here with my sweet bottle of Love and feeling good about my innocent self, I really don't know.

Dan

Dan,

Scent psychologist Avery Gilbert says that women's skin smells like onions, and men's like cheese. But one of my lesbian girlfriends authoritatively asserts that lady-parts smell like cedarwood. So am I to understand that when I douse myself in cedar-y Shiseido Féminité du Bois, I'm a walking "Hello Kitty"? With an overlay of onion skin? Sounds hard to digest.


Yeeesh -- get a room, Mr. Cheese and Ms. Onion!

When this same friend sampled my Santa Maria Novella Acqua di Cuba, she opined that it smelled like semen. Why does my unconscious want me to smell like a sex hunter who lives in a Winnebago?



As for slutty: Agent Provocateur and Jean Desprez Bal à Versailles both share an unwashed-in-close-quarters smell. But The Party in Manhattan really is the ultimate Sex-Hunter-in-a-Winnebago smell.

Katie

Katie,

Are you sure it's your unconscious? Because once you've put the words "sex hunter in a Winnebago" to something, you're clearly quite conscious of it.

Dan

Dan,

"Smutty" is my shorthand for my Le Labo Labdanum 18 animal-butt roll-call. But if you're going to split beaver hairs, I'd say it isn't as smutty as Bal à Versailles, Agent Provocateur, or The Party in Manhattan.

Katie

Katie,

Not to beat you over the head with this, but to me, The Party in Manhattan smells sweaty and a little dirty. But that animal-civet smell isn't quite the same thing, right? I know you probably think I'm joking, but I truly don't know. I feel like I'm always outside this subject. Everyone refers to sexy, smutty perfumes and I can't quite identify what they're talking about.

Dan

Dan,

I guess the definition of smut in perfume is a variation on the famous definition of porn: you know it when you smell it.

My friend Alison used to wear Vivienne Westwood Boudoir, which she describes as "pissy granny knickers". She said that men always seemed to go wild for it. I'd say when a fragrance smells smutty or "personal", it has a civet/indolic jasmine thing going on, and/or a honey/urinous tang. Sweaty helps, too.



"Do I smell hawwwt?"

Party in Manhattan is probably more of an olfactory statement than a perfume anyone can wear, so maybe that should stand apart from the others on my list. All the others are different combinations of, as the Brits coyly say, "front bottom", combined with, as my English friend Alan coyly and redundantly puts it, "back bottom".

Katie

Katie,

That actually helps. Thanks. Though I'm never sure of this indole/jasmine thing. Because when I smell jasmine in a perfume, it just reminds me of jasmine, the same jasmine I'd smell at 5 a.m. doing my paper route as a kid. Even something as potent as Serge Lutens A La Nuit. Which is crazy jasmine.

Luca Turin said something along these lines, that the connection is over-made, that when the compound comes with shit, it smells like shit, but when it comes with flowers, it smells like flowers. (Which I think is due to the lower concentration of indole in flowers.)

But pissy and honey/urinous I've definitely smelled. Those sweet Etat Libre d'Oranges specialize in it. But I only think "smutty" when I read how smutty various perfumes smell, not when I actually smell them. It's like I'm Margaret Dumont and I'm missing all the jokes.

Dan

Fumies, talk dirty to me. What are your smutty scents of choice?

Onion chutney grilled cheese sandwich via
Sexy civet via

Perfume Pen Pals: Le Labo Oud 27

Katie,

I need to check out Le Labo Oud 27. All of those wild claims of rank smells are contagious, methinks. Kind of like when someone in an office building gets a headache and claims it's the ventilation, and before you know it they're having to evacuate the entire building because everyone thinks they're sick.

Dan

Dan,

I tried a spot of Oud 27 at Le Labo today. After everything I'd read, I thought it was going to be harsh blast similar to their Patchouli 24. Something you couldn't begin to appreciate until after the fabled 10-hour mark.

But it wasn't! It was leathery, animalic, labdanum-y. With an intriguing moment of critter-invading-your-personal-space at the top. But not exactly diaper-pail territory, which I'd been lead to expect. I liked it fine, but have that area covered with my Labdanum 18, and would venture out to L'Artisan Parfumeur Dzing! for my leather/animal needs before I went to Oud 27, I think.

Katie

Katie,

I, too, tried Oud 27 today. And it's what you say it is: tough to take out of the bottle and on the skin for about five minutes, and then soft and leathery later on, almost tame even, especially compared to those Montales. It's alright.

But wow, this Oud 27 does kick some serious ass out of the bottle. Is it possible my Barneys guy accidentally put embalming fluid in there by mistake? Because this doesn't smell like something you'd put on your body while you were still alive.

Dan


Does Lenin "wear" Oud 27?

Dan,

Oud 27 turned out to be the perfect thing to wear on my trip to the Cat House Sanctuary out in the California desert. I knew the volunteers would be spraying Yves Saint Laurent Opium and Calvin Klein Obsession for Men on cardboard boxes for the leopards and jaguars to scratch, sniff and maul, because everyone knows big cats love their orientals.

I wondered how Oud 27 would compete for the animals' attention, and it turned out that smell-wise, I was the belle of the ball.



As I stood near, the cats' heads whipped around and their nostrils were a-flare, jaws slack in "dumb kitty" position to savor Oud 27 on the breeze. Looking at the state of their well-loved cardboard boxes, I was glad of the bars separating me from their paws and maws.

Oud 27: It's Wildcat-Approved.

Katie

Perfume Pen Pals: Frederic Malle Bois d'Orage

Katie,

Today at Barneys, my sales associate was as reckless as he was brilliant. We talked and talked about every fragrance under the sun, and every discussion reminded him of three more things I absolutely had to try, and before I left, I had sampled about 100 scents. It was like being at one of those all-you-can-eat buffets in Las Vegas. But without all the fatty starches and annoying children. (Or is it annoying starches and fatty children?)

I tried the entire Heeley line (perfectly pleasant but unmemorable: Travis, Nick Hornby, Jimmy Fallon, your pick), the entire Bois 1920 line (sharp and strong, but all of them smell sort of the same) and, unfortunately for me, the entire L'Artisan Parfumeur line.

This is where my sales associate and I parted ways: he loves L'Artisan and every time I rejected one, he had another ready to go. If this were a dating service and L'Artisan were my potential partners, I would've walked out and asked for my money back.



The one thing I will say for the line is, unlike Bois 1920, all of its scents seemed wrong in different ways. There was wrong blackberry and wrong spice rack and wrong licorice and wrong pepper.

And then I moved onto Frédéric Malle and smelled Bois d'Orage (French Lover outside the USA). Katie, it smelled EXACTLY like my father. Jesus.

At first, I couldn't place the scent, I just knew I was nine years old and my dad was standing there in his dirty overalls. And then it hit me: stale smoke. My father smoked cigars but never around the house, so he always smelled as if he had smoked a cigar two hours ago. And he smelled of dirt and sweat because he worked in hot greenhouses all day long.

And this is the smell of Bois d'Orage. It's completely unsweetened and unsentimental, just like my dad, which actually makes it quite sentimental. (My dad died when I was 18.)



I was heartened to come home and read Luca Turin's review in The Guide, in which he confirms Bois d'Orage smells of stale cigar smoke and sweat. There are times when smelling stuff that I can't tell what I'm smelling, and I'm certain I have no more of a clue than any other blockhead off the street. But Bois d'Orage is right in my wheelhouse, I'm an expert at Bois d'Orage, and so that's what I bought today.

Dan

Stepford Wives via
Greenhouse via

Perfume Pen Pals: Etro Messe de Minuit -- the Myrrh in Thyrrh

Dan,

I had a joyful time sniffing my way through the Beverly Hills Etro store the other day. Just about every one of their TWENTY TWO fragrances was really something!

Ever since you once mentioned the Haight Ashbury “scalpy smell” you noticed as a kid growing up in San Francisco, "scalpy-smell" has been buzzing around under my...scalp. And after I sprayed on a bit of Etro Messe de Minuit, I got to experience the full follicular glory of “scalpy” in a scent.


Messe de Minuit starts off spicy orange, then turns into proper, hardcore incense. It's not a variation on the Comme des Garçons Incense Series theme -- those nellies are woody and sheer and sweetish. Instead, the incense here is enjoyably harsh: almost soapy, but not quite. So far, so good.

Then, 40 minutes in: scalpy! A really personal, human smell. SO interesting! How do these guys do it? And in this Contac pill time-release fashion? It must be the myrrh in thyrrh. Myrrh equals scalpy. Messe de Minuit really is a midnight mass: from swinging censors to the hot heads in the pews.

The fume connoisseurs are always fuzzing and fulminating about the "mildew" in Messe de Minuit, but there's no mildew! I think what they're really responding to is myrrh's stealthy sebum. Tell them, Dan!

Katie

Katie,

There's something satisfying in knowing that if I were to pass away tomorrow, I'd leave behind the term "scalpy smell." At least with you.

Now as you breathlessly write about Messe de Minuit, you realize I recommended that one to you long ago, right? And you dismissed it out of hand. Out of hand, KP! Okay, I just searched and found this quote from you: "Messe de Minuit is of no interest to me."

I briefly owned Anice by Etro when I was on a licorice kick. And that one kicked me right out the door. It was so abundantly anise-y, wearing it wasn't like smelling licorice, it was like being licorice. It was like the "Violet, you're turning Violet!" scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.





Oh, and I tried Etro Lemon Sorbet ages ago. But I don't remember why. Nor do I remember the scent. Of course, if I now say, "Etro is of no interest to me," I know it'll come back to bite me on the butt. So I'll just say, "Hmm, Messe de Minuit, I thought you might like that one."

Dan

Dan,

Messe de Minuit -- well, clearly, it does interest me -- and I'm not afraid to say I've changed my mind. It's "my prerogative", as Bobby Brown once so movingly sang in the late nineteen hundred and eighties. But not to wear, personally. That part hasn't changed. I have no interest in owning it. I think....

Katie

Hippies via

Hermes Eau de Pamplemousse Rose

...a smart olfactory slap to the face.

Lately, I've been binging on a solid diet of high-calorie perfumes: Frédéric Malle Portrait of a Lady, Maison Francis Kurkdjian Absolue Pour le Soir, Chanel Coromandel. I could cite winter's chill as an excuse for my wanton consumption of these thick orientals, but only if I can cite summer's chill for wearing the same fattening fragrances in the dog days of July. Bottom line is, I like bottom-heavy scents, whether I'm in a snowstorm or sunshine. In order not to end up with a case of perfume-induced gout, from time to time I will wear the equivalent of a between-course sorbet. Something to provide a break from all the incense and animals and patchouli. And Hermès Eau de Pamplemousse Rose is a lovely sorbet of a scent. Pamplemousse Rose's zesty, invigorating grapefruit is butched up with a teeny bit of wood, and lashed up with a lace or two of leather. It's an elegant way to deliver a couple of smart olfactory slaps to the face, especially if like me, you're dazed from winter's -- and summer's -- rosy-amber overload.

Eau de Pamplemousse Rose is available from FragranceNet.com, Amazon.com starting at $50 for 100 ml