| Your weekly wellness check-in. |
Your next cologne might just smell like paper, or a warm bulb. —Alyssa Bereznak, Wellness and Grooming Director |
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Why the Coolest Cologne Is One You Can Barely Smell at All |
For decades, men’s fragrance has been synonymous with excess. A single spray of something nuclear—Dior Sauvage, Le Male, whatever was locked behind the glass at Sephora—was expected to project across rooms, linger in elevators, and announce its wearer before he even arrived. The joke that men wear too much cologne has become so culturally entrenched it’s practically shorthand: frat house clouds, oversprayed dates, the guy who smells like “cologne” instead of a person. But recently, the most coveted men’s fragrances are doing the opposite. They whisper.
Call them anti-colognes: minimalist, genderless, skinlike scents designed to smell like nothing in particular. In the past five years, fragrance companies have shifted their offerings to include lighter-smelling scents. Think Byredo’s Blanche, DS & Durga’s Notorious Oud, or Commodity’s viral Paper: fragrances that evoke cold air, clean laundry, or warm skin after a shower. They’re subtle, genderless, and nearly imperceptible. As this shift in preference penetrates the world of fragrance, a new generation of consumers are learning to see scent less as an accessory and more as an aura. These anti-perfumes evoke familiar but rare smells, and bring you to a specific moment in time rather that batter you with stray, punchy, exotic ingredients. In this way, vibes come first.
“Fragrance is all about emotion and how something makes us feel,” says Christina Loft, writer of fragrance newsletter The Dry Down Diaries. “It’s so challenging to create a simple scent that smells like something we know so well. There’s a real art in bottling familiarity—like Warm Bulb from Clue. It makes you appreciate simple things we take for granted in a new way.”
Loft sees the rise of anti-perfume as part of a larger emotional shift in fragrance. “People are building fragrance wardrobes now,” she says. “Some days you want something strange and offbeat, and others you just want something quiet and reliable. I think it shows how playful and personal scent has become.”
Click here to learn more about how scent-makers are crafting more intimate, subtle fragrances for men. |
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