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Discontinued cheaper scents you’d like to see available again

For everyone saying Jade East Vermont Country Store has it, but you might want to look elsewhere they are very expensive. For example they want $14.00 for the 6oz. Clubman
Agree about Vermont Country Store. How they survive in todays' retail world baffles me. Their prices are absurd on most items. Look on Amazon or Fragranc ex for Jade East. You likely will find it available at a much lower price than Vermont Country Store. That place has candy bars for three times the price you will pay at a decent grocery store. Just ridiculous.
 
Agree about Vermont Country Store. How they survive in todays' retail world baffles me. Their prices are absurd on most items. Look on Amazon or Fragranc ex for Jade East. You likely will find it available at a much lower price than Vermont Country Store. That place has candy bars for three times the price you will pay at a decent grocery store. Just ridiculous.

Their catalog and products certainly cater to a particular demographic... one that may not be too tech savvy or able to maneuver the internet for best prices. Fun to look at their selection to imagine what it was like living in the past but not practical to buy anything from them.

To stay on topic, I’d love to be be able to pick up the numerous discontinued scents that Old Spice, Skin Bracer, and Aqua Velva offered over the years.
 
Agree about Vermont Country Store. How they survive in todays' retail world baffles me. Their prices are absurd on most items. Look on Amazon or Fragranc ex for Jade East. You likely will find it available at a much lower price than Vermont Country Store. That place has candy bars for three times the price you will pay at a decent grocery store. Just ridiculous.

Their catalog and products certainly cater to a particular demographic... one that may not be too tech savvy or able to maneuver the internet for best prices. Fun to look at their selection to imagine what it was like living in the past but not practical to buy anything from them.

To stay on topic, I’d love to be be able to pick up the numerous discontinued scents that Old Spice, Skin Bracer, and Aqua Velva offered over the years.

Hate to say, but looks like they have NO issue raping the senior crowd..seems to be their target victim, as most reviewers are in the 65-74 bracket..I would never buy from them, or recommend them to anyone..
 
BRAGGI! I think it was $6.00 a bottle in 1972 when I bought my first bottle! It's been off the market a LONG TIME! Still, I would love a bottle of that!
 
I'll go with Jade East, Mennen Skin Bracer Cooling Blue and Hai Karate! Add Raw Vanilla to this list. Intuition smells a lot like Raw Vanilla you know.
 
Cool that Jade East is available. It used to be everywhere. I would not be surprised if it was gone for awhile and then some company or another brought it back.

Apparently now made by Regency Cosmetics and/or Songo. Apparently a lot of disagreement about how much it smells like the original, including from folks smelling the vintage and the new side-by-side.
I can't speak for vintage JE, but the Regency version lacks a little punch. I am considering adding some musk ketone and oakmoss to it. That's a pretty safe assumption as far as it's missing base. Lots of colognes of that generation had it. And those ingredients are very inexpensive and effective.

Brut, British Steling and others seem to be missing it.
 
<musk ketone and oakmoss>

Very cool. Where does one obtain such things?
You can find them at a website called Perfumers Apprentice. To make a good base for a Fougere like Brut or Jade East you will need to order

1. Musk Ketone (crystalized powder)
2. Oakmoss 10% tincture
3. Givco synthetic Oakmoss
4. Givco Sandalwood (synthetic)

IMO, you'll do better with both of the oakmoss ingredients. The tincture is earthy and the synthetic is sweet. Both combined create realistic oakmoss. Get a glass vessel to put your basic cologne in that you want to alter. Get two coffee cups filled with very hot water. Submerge your bottle of cologne and let it heat up. Let the vials of ingredients sit in hot water but don't allow them to submerge. When everything is very warm to hot, use a dropper to add ingredients.

There are a couple of ways to do it. You can add the ingredients to the bottle of cologne or pour out a portion of the bottle, add all the ingredients to the small portion, then pour it back into the full bottle.

I mixed brut into a 22ml bottle, added a quarter teaspoon of musk powder, a third of a dropper of oakmoss tincture (it's not all that strong), 4 or 5 drops of synth oakmoss, and 4 or 5 drops of Sandalwood. Shake it around for a while. Let it mellow for a few days. Then your cologne should have major power and base.

It works best for something old school like Brut, Canoe, Jade East, maybe even English Leather, something that was stronger back in the day. Old Spice may even benefit. Experiment with proportions. Start out small and add more later on if it needs it. The oakmoss might make your skin itchy, maybe not.

Another base ingredient you can try is Vetiver and Patchouli. These are potent so less is more. I also used vanilla extract to sweeten the Brut. Nutmeg may be great for old spice. I haven't tried tonka bean, but that's probably fantastic too. Any of this should bring the vintage spark back to weakened modern colognes.
 
This is great. Thanks for the detailed instructions. Seems to me real oakmoss and tonka might help a lot of modern scents, even expensive ones.
 
This is great. Thanks for the detailed instructions. Seems to me real oakmoss and tonka might help a lot of modern scents, even expensive ones.
You're welcome. I would think so. The thing about the real oakmoss is that it is weak, compliant with new regulations. After several days, it wasn't really showing up in the mix. That's why I got the synthetic.

You can go on Ebay and buy Oakmoss Absolute. It is a POWERHOUSE resin that is difficult to work with; gummy, messy, irritating to the skin. It bubbled out of it's container when I used it. Pain in the butt. But you could order that and mix it with some vodka or everclear. But its strength can easily get out of control.

I took the easy way out. The tincture and synthetic together smell the most like the absolute.
 
This is great. Thanks for the detailed instructions. Seems to me real oakmoss and tonka might help a lot of modern scents, even expensive ones.
Man! I just added Oakmoss, Sandalwood and Musk Ketone to my modern Jade East. The scent is already improved! I can't wait to see how it affects JE in a week. The greeny top notes fade kinda quick but it makes the base linger.
 
Thanks again. Interesting that "real" oakmoss is so hard to use. My impression is that that there has been a lot written that a major issue with the decline of/or at least changes in fragrances is the EUs ban on the use of oakmoss.

I personally am not a big proponent of "natural" ingredients in scents. ("Proponent" may not be the right word.) In fact I like these Molecule 1-4 scents (or knock offs there of) which are pure synthetics. However, given the current state of scents compared to the past, I would not have thought that they had come up with a synthetic oakmoss that really did the job. I do not think the synthetic sandalwoods are up to real Mysore standards, but real Mysore is a very rare and precious thing. I would have guessed the same about vetiver and tonka.
 
Thanks again. Interesting that "real" oakmoss is so hard to use. My impression is that that there has been a lot written that a major issue with the decline of/or at least changes in fragrances is the EUs ban on the use of oakmoss.

I personally am not a big proponent of "natural" ingredients in scents. ("Proponent" may not be the right word.) In fact I like these Molecule 1-4 scents (or knock offs there of) which are pure synthetics. However, given the current state of scents compared to the past, I would not have thought that they had come up with a synthetic oakmoss that really did the job. I do not think the synthetic sandalwoods are up to real Mysore standards, but real Mysore is a very rare and precious thing. I would have guessed the same about vetiver and tonka.
It does *a* job. I don't know if it does *the* job. My guess is that it functions much the same way as authentic and smells a lot like it. The problem is that good synthetics are pretty expensive. They're affordable in small quantities, but are still too expensive for really cheap scents like Brut. Oakmoss was pretty cheap but was severely restricted.

Take Ambroxin for example, synthetic ambergris. It's made by processing pine tar until it is chemically similar to ambergris. I don't know if it smells too much like real ambergris, since I have never smelled any. However, as a fixative it can amplify a scent in much the same way. I added some of that to Old Spice. Gonna see what happens.
 
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