Old Man Smell

[luvmysuper]

I have a pet theory about how some aftershave scents are perceived by people.

Is there an aftershave you have tried and you don't want to wear it because it "smells like an old man" or has that "old man smell"?
Does your significant other have such a reaction to something you liked or to something you didn't like yourself?
Can you share what age group you and your partner are in and what aftershave it is that triggers that reaction in you/them?
No need to be specific, even young adult, middle age, codger, crusty old guy would be fine. If you're comfortable with "mid-30's" or "early 50's" that would be fine too.
I'm just trying to get an idea of age group, not to try to track down how old someone specifically is.

If I get enough posts with some names and ages of both wearer and spouse, I'll share what my pet theory is, and whether the data tends to support or refute my theory.

Feel free to share your experience and where you stand with those dreaded "old man in church with hair growing out of his ears" aftershaves!

 

[Columbo]

those dreaded "old man in church with hair growing out of his ears" aftershaves!

You talking about me?

If it wasn’t formulated before 1975, I’m not wearing it. I’m not smelling like some young brat.

Now get off my lawn.

 

[Eric_75]

If it wasn’t formulated before 1975, I’m not wearing it.

I was born in 1975.

 

[TinkersDam]

I would much rather smell like oak moss and tonka bean than I would a cucumber.

 

[Barbarian80]

Old spice is the definition of old man smell to me. Old man smell isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[shave/brush]

I really like the smell of Bay Rum aftershaves. Although no one has said anything about it to me, because it is such an old scent, I'm afraid that some young people might think of it as an "old man" scent.

 

[luvmysuper]

I'm really interested to get an idea of age for the folks (you or others) that think a particular scent smells of "old man" and what that scent is.
I don't really have an issue with any particular aftershave and don't think of any of them as "old man" smelling. I'm in my mid-60's, but honestly I felt the same way when I was in my 30's.
I'm kind of going on the gut feeling that if you asked a native tribesman who had never smelled an aftershave before if a particular scent smelled like an old man, they would laugh and tell you of course not.

 

[Eric_75]

I grew up in the 80s and my grandfather was in his 60s then. He wore Old Spice and Skin Bracer often. My father was in his 40s then and he wore Old Spice and Skin Bracer as well. I guess I don't know what the term old man smell means.

 

[Dtownvino]

I am 46, dad has always had old spice. He will always be what I measure this too. He also uses English Leather. He’s 80 now, the only time he shaves without a Norelco is when i am in town. Then he gets a real shave. I have had a barber chair in his basement since 1993.

 

[Mr. Shavington]

I guess our perceptions are mostly based on associations. Old Spice is what I think of as an old man scent, and it is what old men I knew in the UK tended to wear when I was young. Perhaps Acqua di Parma or Santa Maria Novella could be an old man smell to an Italian but they weren’t common where I grew up and they smell perfectly contemporary to me now, even though they’re more than a century old.

I asked my wife, who is German, and she said Farina, Old Spice and Tabac are what she thinks of as old man scents. She and I were both born in the late ‘60s and our perceptions are based on what people wore in the ‘80s.

 

[luvmysuper]

I guess our perceptions are mostly based on associations. Old Spice is what I think of as an old man scent, and it is what old men I knew in the UK tended to wear when I was young. Perhaps Acqua di Parma or Santa Maria Novella could be an old man smell to an Italian but they weren’t common where I grew up and they smell perfectly contemporary to me now, even though they’re more than a century old.

I asked my wife, who is German, and she said Farina, Old Spice and Tabac are what she thinks of as old man scents. She and I were both born in the late ‘60s and our perceptions are based on what people wore in the ‘80s.

This is pretty much what I think.
I believe that people say a scent is old man smelling because they are reminded (consciously or not) of an older gent in their past who wore such a scent.
Someday at some point in the future, someone will post here that their wife said their Axe body spray smells like an old man.

 

[Columbo]

I believe that people say a scent is old man smelling because they are reminded (consciously or not) of an older gent in their past who wore such a scent.

I think you nailed it.

 

[luvmysuper]

I think you nailed it.

Smells are processed differently than other senses. Smells are routed directly to areas of the brain that control memory and emotion. This direct route to the limibic system bypasses reason and calculation.

 

[Darth Scandalous]

Mrs. Scandalous and I are in our mid-40s and she really likes the classic scents on me. Old Spice, the Veg, Clubman, Clubman Special Reserve...she does note that Old Spice reminds her of her dad, but she doesn't mind, even though they don't have a great relationship.

The other time I got a "wow, you smell like my dad" was with a soap sample that smelled like a freshly opened pack of Camels. And she's not wrong, he does smell like that. (And Old Spice).

Stetson is a scent that I associate with old guys.

 

[Whisky]

According to my wife I smell like an old man when I wear Old Spice (reminders her of her grandfather) and Clubman. I can do without the Old Spice if I need to but I will always have Clubman in my rotation. The only scent that I associate with being “old” is Quorum cologne. My dad used to wear it it in the 80s when one spritz could be smelled 3 blocks over, and he’d spritz it 2-3 times. It would drown out the smell of any aftershave he was wearing.

 

[Alum Ladd]

Smells are processed differently than other senses. Smells are routed directly to areas of the brain that control memory and emotion. This direct route to the limibic system bypasses reason and calculation.

Excellent.

Male, born September 1961. London. 61 years.

I suspect the 'Old man smell' idea is something more common in those 50 and under. The use of scents has exploded in the past 40 years on men I think. To those older there may be no frame of reference.

the initial question left an indelible blank in my mind. I cannot recall any memory of aftershave smells at all until I bought my first (plastic) bottle of Brut aftershave in 1978. The only perfume smells I recall are the makeup scents and perfumes that my mother and grandmother wore. I can only assume from this that aftershave use in adults that I encountered as I grew up to be unknown. I do remember a sweetish smell that men had often though. I think it was Brylcreem.

However I strongly associate certain smells with early childhood. The wafting scent of a long ago acquired 'smell memory' triggers powerful emotional reactions that are beyond the power of language to convey.

The smell of fresh rubber tyres really gets me. I lived near to the huge GoodYear tyre factory in Nottingham, mid 1960's. It reminds me of summer heat and small alleys and still some cobbled streets, and a child that had a permanently flourescent green line of snot running from his nose. That's the memory.

The smell of doughnuts frying and candyfloss and the intense smell of ozone from the sea. Any of them, or in combination send me into a temporary trance of revisitation of raw, unprocessed memory. Again, early, mid 1960's, Southend, Essex.

The almost overpowering scent of real leather upholstery and polished wood (?) in a high-end car. I think it was my grandfather's funeral in 1964. I was 3. An early one.

Train stations. Some seductive blend of old coal dust, machine oil and something else. Maybe cigarette and pipe tobacco. I do recall pipe smoking being common. Again, it must be early 60's.

Oddly, I was transferring trains in an old unrefurbished east London station in about 2009, and just for an instant I got the early memory train smell. Just like a ghost drifting past. It felt like an emotional punch in the guts. I had to lean against the wall for a bit. Intense rush of uncontrolled and unarchieved primitive memory ran through what passes for my mind. I actually went back to the small area it had came from, sniffing, like I wanted that sensation to return, but It had disappeared.

My strongest Marcel Proust moment I think.

However, I don't recall aftershaves.

 

[DEgeezer]

My dad always used Old Spice, and when I started shaving at 16 that was what I used as well, and at 81 years old I still do. However, since the advent of the internet I've expanded to 8 or 10 aftershaves.
But my wife likes the scent of Old Spice the best because it reminds her of when we were dating.

 

[Columbo]

Smells are processed differently than other senses. Smells are routed directly to areas of the brain that control memory and emotion. This direct route to the limibic system bypasses reason and calculation.

This is indisputably true. And I think it is a very strong factor with generational habits such as fragrances, and our other avocation, pipe smoking. “Smells like grandpa” is something I’ve heard for decades, even puffing away as a much younger man. It nevertheless is attractive to those nearby.

But I do think individual age and relative maturity (of both wearer and those smelling it) play at least a small part in the case of personal fragrances. While I am now not a young man, neither do I wish to smell like one. While I might have tolerated a light scent like Canoe as a very young man, it just doesn’t fit who I am now, or even who I was at 25 or 30. So the connection of memory runs in reverse, too.

And Mrs. C now enjoys the fragrances associated with a traditional, accomplished, man, and many of the newest scents don’t fit that image or impress her so. I’m told a lot of more mature women feel similarly, and they prefer their men to smell like “men”, and not cucumbers or body wash scents. That apparently involves certain base notes that have been well mastered in some of the classic fragrances.

So there seems to be the issue of pheromones involved, too. And that also runs both ways.

The converse is true with us men, and women’s fragrances. Mrs. C no longer wears the light, powdery or citrus based perfumes she did in her 20s. Nor is she quite wearing tea rose just yet. She continues to wear Opium, a mature women’s scent that goes back to the mid 1970s. And I still like it.

For the most well considered and oldest fragrances, perhaps it’s part of the reason they have endured across many generations, and in some cases, centuries. At some point, the generational linkage starts to dissipate, and it is either rediscovered anew, to be reconsidered on its merits and those other factors, or becomes socially and not generationally associated.

I more often hear “barber shop” now with Clubman than I do grandpa at this point … even though our grandpas’ grandpas wore the stuff.

And increasingly, with the very youngest ladies, they seem intrigued by novel scents they’ve never smelled before … and I’ll tell them it’s English Leather or British Sterling, something my father once wore over 50 years ago. It’s easy to see that their fathers did not wear it, probably thinking them ”old man”. So the association was broken, and the girls seemed to enjoy it on its own merits. Rediscovery anew. Maybe some young man got a bottle of it this past Christmas from their girlfriend because of that.

And the young Marines (some of who were amazingly born in this Century) are still buying Aqua Velva at PX and using it. Granted, it is the later ice blue formula, but it is still nearly 90 years old. And their girls seem happy with it, or so I’ve been told by family members.

 

[Alum Ladd]

This is indisputably true. And I think it is a very strong factor with generational habits such as fragrances, and our other avocation, pipe smoking. “Smells like grandpa” is something I’ve heard for decades, even puffing away as a much younger man. It nevertheless is attractive to those nearby.

But I do think individual age and relative maturity (of both wearer and those smelling it) play at least a small part in the case of personal fragrances. While I am now not a young man, neither do I wish to smell like one. While I might have tolerated a light scent like Canoe as a very young man, it just doesn’t fit who I am now, or even who I was at 25 or 30. So the connection of memory runs in reverse, too.

And Mrs. C now enjoys the fragrances associated with a traditional, accomplished, man, and many of the newest scents don’t fit that image or impress her so. I’m told a lot of more mature women feel similarly, and they prefer their men to smell like “men”, and not cucumbers or body wash scents. That apparently involves certain base notes that have been well mastered in some of the classic fragrances.

So there seems to be the issue of pheromones involved, too. And that also runs both ways.

The converse is true with us men, and women’s fragrances. Mrs. C no longer wears the light, powdery or citrus based perfumes she did in her 20s. Nor is she quite wearing tea rose just yet. She continues to wear Opium, a mature women’s scent that goes back to the mid 1970s. And I still like it.

For the most well considered and oldest fragrances, perhaps it’s part of the reason they have endured across many generations, and in some cases, centuries. At some point, the generational linkage starts to dissipate, and it is either rediscovered anew, to be reconsidered on its merits and those other factors, or becomes socially and not generationally associated.

I more often hear “barber shop” now with Clubman than I do grandpa at this point … even though our grandpas’ grandpas wore the stuff.

And increasingly, with the very youngest ladies, they seem intrigued by novel scents they’ve never smelled before … and I’ll tell them it’s English Leather or British Sterling, something my father once wore over 50 years ago. It’s easy to see that their fathers did not wear it, probably thinking them ”old man”. So the association was broken, and the girls seemed to enjoy it on its own merits. Rediscovery anew. Maybe some young man got a bottle of it this past Christmas from their girlfriend because of that.

And the young Marines (some of who were amazingly born in this Century) are still buying Aqua Velva at PX and using it. Granted, it is the later ice blue formula, but it is still nearly 90 years old. And their girls seem happy with it, or so I’ve been told by family members.

A superb post!

 

[Shaveprentice]

When I was in my late teens - early twenties I used to equate Brut Aftershave with "Old Man Smell" because that is what my Granddad used to wear and he would really pour it on. Now that I am in my early 60's I like the smell of Brut and it reminds me of my Granddad when I use it. I now wonder what other people think of me when I am wearing Brut? "Old Man Smell"? Don't really care though!