In life, one can lose many things. Money, time, shame or credibility, but one of the most unexpected, and no less tragic, is the smell. A few months ago that happened to men around the world when the Old Spice company decided to stop marketing one of its oldest products, Old Spice Eau de Toilette Original. The cologne, which in its original version had appeared in 1938, had lent its combination of spices and wood to the smell (and therefore, the personality) of several generations.
It was used by men as different from each other as Elvis Presley or Woody Allen, when the world of men's perfumery was limited to a few fragrances impervious to the passage of time. It was one of those labels that we associate with what could be called “father smell”: the same fragrance that accompanies him throughout his life and becomes part of his personality and was transmitted from one generation to another, so sometimes It was also the smell of grandfather.
One of those men who was suddenly orphaned of scent is the journalist Fernando Palmero. Like others, his relationship with her comes from childhood. “It's the cologne my father used. When I started shaving, he did it with Old Spice products and I started using it too,” he recalls. For him, the importance of a perfume does not lie in itself, but “in how it adapts to you.” “The same cologne on another body, on another person with other types of physical characteristics, smells differently. I had found in it the point of not only feeling comfortable because of how I sat, but also because of the reception of others. “People liked how that cologne looked on me.”
This is how a classic dies
Why is a product that still had followers spread all over the world stopped being marketed? Cristina Garcia, business leader from the Personal Care division of Procter and Gamble, the group to which Old Spice belongs, explains: “We eliminated it from the catalog a few months ago because we saw that in Spain and Europe it was no longer so relevant. We are a brand of deodorants, of shower products, and that is what we are focusing on and what we are strong in. Basically, it stopped being a priority.” However, the brand is aware that the colony still had followers. “We have a after shave It smells the same, and we know that there are people who use it as a cologne. He pours it into his hand and applies it to his neck.”
This solution of convenience, in the case of Palmero, cannot make up for the absence of the colony. “I am literally searching and hunting for new aromas, for new colognes that remind me a little of that one,” he says. “What I liked about it was that mixture of wood and cinnamon. I'm finding things that are reminiscent of cinnamon, on the one hand, and others of wood, but I can't find anything that combines those two essences.” Inevitably, this loss is also influenced by changes in the tastes of today's public. “There is a younger audience to whom colognes like this smell a little more old-fashioned, so to speak,” says Cristina García. “People are now turning to other types of more youthful scents, or we even see deodorant being used as a cologne.”
Rise, fall and nostalgia of the “father's colony”
The description of the original Old Spice cologne tells us about top notes of nutmeg, lemon or orange, heart notes (those that are perceived after a few minutes and are more persistent in a perfume) of cinnamon, and carnation, cedar or vanilla in the exit ones. “Wood and citrus have traditionally been the two main trends in men's perfumery,” explains Daniel Figuero, author of the essay. Counter perfume (Editorial Superflua), in which he explores both the evolution of perfumery and the way in which a smell is associated with memory and the construction of identity. “They are fragrances either very close to cologne as such, which is a classic formula that has been used since the mid-19th century and is very fresh, with the typical clean smell that is related to citrus fruits, or very woody.”
Not too many decades ago, those were the only options that the industry offered for the male audience. “In general, the male customer is much more loyal to a fragrance, I don't know if because of comfort, laziness or simply because once he recognizes himself with a scent it is very difficult for him to change. That happens with these classic fragrances we are talking about,” explains Figuero. “Making a parallel with fashion, there are men who wear what they already know works. To go to an office, for example, they usually always opt for blue or brown. With fragrances it is more or less the same. They look for one for every day, that works and they continue with it.”
That classicism in perfume, associated with an image of the masculine, remained almost unchanged for decades. “You have to keep in mind that, at that time, there were not many options,” noted Priscilla Presley at a meeting with fans of her former husband, Elvis Presley, in which someone asked what her favorite scent was. Colognes such as Brut and Aqua Velva were other ubiquitous in bathrooms, and were almost always associated with the ritual of shaving, as the final touch of the process. “Although it is not a particularly well-known fragrance, Fahrenheit It has a very loyal clientele. Variations were launched, such as Fahrenheit Cologne or Fahrenheit Parfum, but it didn't matter, the demand continued. eau de toilette original out of pure fidelity,” says Figuero.
That constant in men's perfumery began to change between the late nineties and early 2000s. “I don't know exactly which was the first, but I do remember that Opium, for example, released a version of perfume water. That the concentration of a fragrance changes is already a step, because perfume water was normally aimed at women. In addition, they began to enter the amber family a little, to come out of the wood a little or mix them, introduce some flowers… “
Another precursor was CK One, a youth classic by Calvin Klein. “In Spain he continues to be a best-seller. It was the beginning of that unisex minimalism, without distinctions for men and women, and it inherited a bit of the idea of the classic citrus cologne, but with a marine touch, with a different touch. Then Acqua di Gio came out [de Giorgio Armani] and the door opened to experiment a little more.”
However, trends have not managed to put an end to classic colognes, at least not completely. Associated with memory and the construction of personality, smell is something a little more complex than replacing shoes with sneakers. This is what happens to ICON's web editor, Guillermo Alonso, which explains his fascination with less sophisticated colonies. “I love those sporty, fresh and cheap perfumes that are always in a dingy and half-hidden section of drugstores,” he says. “I guess they remind you of your adolescence. If your adolescence was wonderful, they take you to a safe and better place, but if it was torment, they often remind you of the smell of the friend who made you feel safe or the smell of the person you liked. There is an erotic drive in it, although in reality all perfume advertisements appeal to that drive. That doesn't mean you have to buy them or wear them forever, but sometimes I go to those sections, smell those affordable colognes and I just remember, for a while. Then I go back to my formal, functional adult perfume, with cardamom and chilli and a woody background.”
“It is a personal point of view, but I think it is quite shared, the fragrance is another expression of oneself,” defends Figuero. “It's not that it becomes your personality, but it is an expression of personality just like the clothes you choose, which send a message to the rest of the people you are with. But also, the fragrance has a very high emotional component, because it is closely associated with emotions and memory. In fact, the part of the brain that processes smells is practically in the same area as the memory system. Associating your family, your father or your grandfather, with a specific fragrance is very common. Another thing is whether you dare to wear that same smell or not.”
In this way, wearing the perfume that your father used can be comparable, Figuero continues, with “wearing a watch or a jacket that we have inherited from him, which is something that I am noticing that the new generations do a lot. Now you see a lot of young guys with very old jackets from the eighties. In a way, I think wearing a fragrance that is considered traditional today can be a subversive gesture. A way of saying: 'I can take this and give it a new vision, perhaps more ironic, or perhaps more modern, of how it was originally.'
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