Arnold Zwicky's Blog

*postings on fragrances for men / colognes and on the scent of the male body

(excluded: perfumes for women, fragrances of flowers, spices, etc., unless they play some role in men’s fragrances)

5/25/11 Scent and masculinity:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2011/05/25/scent-and-masculinity/]
candles with masculine scents, the scents described in some detail

The idea is that some scents are masculine (and some feminine), so that when you’re manipulating scent (by colognes/perfumes, deodorants, soaps and shampoos, and the like) or merely broadcasting scent that can be gendered — the scent of flowers or home cooking (feminine), the scent of wood fires, leather, grilling meat, or piney woods (masculine), etc. — you’re sending gender messages.

… the classic Scent of a Man is, of course, male sweat, as generated by work, exercise, or sexual arousal, and accumulated in men’s clothes and in places like locker rooms…

Preparations that claim to be based on pheromones offer the possibility of capturing this scent — hints of musk and testosterone — as an allure to women or gay men, depending on your inclination, but I don’t know if these work for that purpose, though they might facilitate male bonding.

5/24/13 News on the edible penis front:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2013/05/24/news-on-the-edible-penis-front/]
#12 penis-shaped bottle for Pierre Cardin Man’s Cologne, “intended to convey a sense of intense masculinity for the product, as if wearing this cologne will make you more of a man”

6/29/14 Name that product:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2014/06/29/name-that-product/]
from a men’s fashion site: “The fragrance for all of AXE’s hair products was formulated using a cedar wood base with distinctive fruity tones and the relaxing aroma of birch leaf. ”

11/11/14 Sweetgum:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2014/11/11/sweetgum/]
from NOAD: “balsam an aromatic resinous substance, such as balm, exuded by various trees and shrubs and used as a base for certain fragrances and medical and cosmetic preparations.”

1/24/16 Morning name: John Varvatos:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2016/01/24/morning-name-john-varvatos/]
#4 Varvatos ad for Artisan Acqua “the new fragrance for men”

6/21/16 Getting Go:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2016/02/21/getting-go/]
gay actor and go-go dancer Matthew Camp: “Among the things Camp designs are custom leather jackets and perfumes, and especially fragrances for men (like his fragrace 8.5, with the scent of cocoa butter, leather, and tobacco, reproducing something of the experience of going to a gay bar).”

3/5/17 Body work, part III: Axillary Delights:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2017/03/05/body-work-part-iii-axillary-delights/]

The axillae (and pubes). The mix of bacteria in these areas is more or less constant. Washing cleans things off, but plenty of bacteria remain — to yield a more or less constant smell for each of us, a smell that othera are pretty good at recognizing (even in blind tests). And we have preferences in these smells: some people we’re attracted to, some we’re wary of, some we’re repelled by.

As the Wiki on axilla notes, “These odorant substances [in the axillary region] serve as pheromones which play a role related to mating.”

… Erogenous axillae. Armpit guys like to bury their faces in other men’s armpits, nuzzle them, lick them, get the other guy’s smell all over their faces.

4/15/17 A scent of man:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2017/04/15/a-scent-of-man/]
Bizarro caveman cartoon, with an ad for a men’s fragrance A Scent of Man (“Fragrance of the Fittest”)

7/25/17 From Tex-Mex to naked rugby:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2017/07/25/from-tex-mex-to-naked-rugby/]
ad for INVICTUS fragrance for men, from Paco Rabanne

11/6/17 Exercises in commercial style:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2017/11/06/exercises-in-commercial-style/]
about the Oath company: “The scent of Oath, Empowered, channels our authenticity and optimism with a fragrance structured by natural cedarwood, cardamom and iris, brightened with notes of juicy grapefruit and salty ozone.”

8/18/18 Morning names: Hai Karate, Dirk Diggler:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2018/08/18/morning-names-hai-karate-dirk-diggler/]
Hai Karate, a budget aftershave. From Wikipedia: “The fragrance was originally developed by the Leeming division of Pfizer and launched in 1967. As well as the original Hai Karate fragrance, versions named Oriental Lime and Oriental Spice were soon introduced. It competed successfully with such other brands as Aqua Velva, Old Spice, Jaguar, English Leather, British Sterling, Dante, and Brut before fading away in the 1980s.”

3/18/19 Cum, sweat, and broccoli:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2019/03/18/cum-sweat-and-broccoli/]
“cumin [with a scent often likened to sweat] is used as a musky note in many fragrances, especially for men”

1/4/20 It’s a tree! It’s a song!:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2020/01/04/its-a-tree-its-a-song/]
the poinciana tree: “A tropical flower with its magic perfume; it has a pleasant grape-like scent, and the flower is in fact used as a fragrance note in a number of perfumes.”

5/20/20 Minimalist, and sometimes anti-bacterial:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2020/05/20/minimalist-and-sometimes-anti-bacterial/]

Sex sweat meets skin bacteria. And yields the smell of a body. Which anti-bacterial substances are designed to defeat (and fragrances and deodorants are designed to mask).

I’ll use sex sweat as a technical term here (cruxisudor would have been a Latinate coining for the purpose), to refer to the sweat produced by the apocrine sweat glands in the crotch and the armpit, which is chemically distinct from the sweat produced elsewhere.

then reference back to my “Axillary Delights” posting

6/20/20 Duolino’s Latin cheese:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2020/06/20/duolingos-latin-cheese/]
Boss, by Hugo Boss (created by the Firmenich company)

8/10/20 The pleasures of role reversal
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2020/08/10/the-pleasures-of-role-reversal/]
“A note in passing that I have always smelled like Priapus: a sexual partner once described my sex sweat — very strongly musky — as smelling like a distillation of locker room. A lot of guys (including, fortunately, my guy Jacques) have thought this is fabulous, but there were occasional guys who were really put off by it.”

9/7/20 Le Male, the men’s fragrance
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2020/09/07/le-male-the-mens-fragrance/]
from Jean Paul Gaultier

10/15/20 cubeb
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2020/10/15/cubeb/]
cubeb as a scent agent — in the men’s fragrance Vintage, from John Varvatos

1/24/21 It started with a kiss
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/01/24/it-started-with-a-kiss/]
ads for Gaultier’s Le Male again

1/27/21 Fleurs des males:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/01/27/fleurs-des-males/]
Fleur du Male, from Jean Paul Gaultier

1/30/21 Cologne tease:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/01/30/cologne-tease/]
Fierce, from Abercrombie & Fitch (with steamy image on the bottle)

2/16/21 Hello, sailor:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/02/16/hello-sailor/]
ad for Gaultier’s Le Male

2/20/21 Three remarkably named men’s fragrances:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/02/20/three-remarkably-named-mens-fragrances/]
Fucking Fabulous, Testosterone Original Fragrance Paris, Testostérone; pheromones; perfumery ingredients

2/23/21: Notes of cade oil, spikenard, and labdanum:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/02/23/notes-of-cade-oil-spikenard-and-labdanum/]
Imaginary Authors fragrances and their “notes”

4/30/21: Musk, leather, and the lumberjack forest:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/04/30/musk-leather-and-the-lumberjack-forest/]
Tom of Finland men’s fragrance

6/16/21: Annals of commercial naming: Boy Smells:
[https://arnoldzwicky.org/2021/06/16/annals-of-commercial-naming-boy-smells/]
unisex fragrances from the Boy Smells company