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10/27/2018
Duftbursche
6 Reviews
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Duftbursche
Very helpful Review
8
The spell is gone....
I hesitated for a long time whether I should write something to this "old" venerable smell.
But I wanted to pass on my experience with today's version of this genre classic. And yet doubts arose as to whether I should or am allowed to express myself critically towards such a fragrance, as I am not a perfumer or a perfumer at all.
There are so many childhood memories of this fragrance that I become almost melancholic and reluctant to destroy them.
The scent came into our little house in the sixties. My father had no special relation to fragrances, but for that time, in contrast to his colleagues, he already had several shaving waters, where one and the same thing was completely enough for most of them for a lifetime. Men and scents- what is that? After all a small village, there is stable and sweat smell still THE true sign for masculinity.... - so I only really got off on it later when I started with my scent pin - my mother always liked to have a different scent on her man, so she saved the money from her occasional farm work. She has read somewhere about the magic Russian leather in a magazine and it was certainly a difficult undertaking without a car to get to the nearest town, almost 25 km away, where she could also purchase the scent.
A time without car, without Internet and other order possibilities, with meagre possibilities for the purchase around it, can imagine certainly few of you still.
And so on father's birthday Russian leather came into our humble house. I still see the astonished eyes of my father about it, because he had probably already heard about it. Now everything waited for the "To be allowed to have a little of it on the skin" - NIX! - that's how his grandmother used to say, "That's only for good!" And those were special days.
On the first Sunday after that my father came down the stairs and a little later I noticed this unforgettable scent everywhere in the house where father had gone. Like an invisible trail, he pulled himself to the living room. We are talking here about aftershave, nowadays only as an after-shave on everyone's lips, no EdT. The mother's eyes beamed, she did not let go of her father to "breathe" the scent. He also seemed completely enthusiastic. For me it was an experience, which weeks later should have an increase of the special kind. Father called me to his bathroom on Sunday morning, where we were never allowed to disturb him. Well, my son, would you like a shave? I was about 10 years old, beard free of course, but how that seemed to me. The father soaped me with his shaving foam and "shaved" me with the blunt side of the razor. At the end the most beautiful moment for me: with his index finger, which he had previously wetted on Russian leather, he put some of it on my earlobes and a swab on my nose. I was so proud! How I must have smelled...
Yeah, it's been a long, long time. My father had to "go" early.... I have kept the characteristic white flat bottle, today probably called bottle. The same goes for his beloved white but round bottle of Tabac, the irreplaceable bottle of Irish Moss, refillable and with bellows atomizer!
Sometime in the past years I have dared, with great skepticism, to acquire a bottle as vintage, for a lot of money, as I feel it. Tipped over for my sake.
So now I've bought the new one from Farina. Also available as AS. What a difference from before. Even the bottle in its completely transparent design, like a jam jar, doesn't make a difference. Does everything that was once good or beautiful have to be reformed today? Tabac or Old Spice have kept their old appearance! Especially since this vintage is so "in", or am I wrong now? Completely disappointed but I'm from the fragrance. He has nothing of the former space-filling aura. Often I have put on the past weeks again and again Russian leather after the shave. Neither my wife nor my acquaintances reacted positively to it. Nothing. Nothing Disappointment pure.
Is it just the childhood memories that left me so hung up on it? This aura, the whole expected "Hoi! Great" didn't come. No father who "appeared" behind me in the bathroom mirror and said: "But my son, today uses this scent, it's only for good...
No, Father, the spell is gone. I am completely disappointed before the shards of a (hoped and desired) memory that will never come back like this.
-?Too bad Russian leather has gone like my childhood....?
And the new version? I sold it without a moment's hesitation...
You have to recognize when something is finally over.
But I wanted to pass on my experience with today's version of this genre classic. And yet doubts arose as to whether I should or am allowed to express myself critically towards such a fragrance, as I am not a perfumer or a perfumer at all.
There are so many childhood memories of this fragrance that I become almost melancholic and reluctant to destroy them.
The scent came into our little house in the sixties. My father had no special relation to fragrances, but for that time, in contrast to his colleagues, he already had several shaving waters, where one and the same thing was completely enough for most of them for a lifetime. Men and scents- what is that? After all a small village, there is stable and sweat smell still THE true sign for masculinity.... - so I only really got off on it later when I started with my scent pin - my mother always liked to have a different scent on her man, so she saved the money from her occasional farm work. She has read somewhere about the magic Russian leather in a magazine and it was certainly a difficult undertaking without a car to get to the nearest town, almost 25 km away, where she could also purchase the scent.
A time without car, without Internet and other order possibilities, with meagre possibilities for the purchase around it, can imagine certainly few of you still.
And so on father's birthday Russian leather came into our humble house. I still see the astonished eyes of my father about it, because he had probably already heard about it. Now everything waited for the "To be allowed to have a little of it on the skin" - NIX! - that's how his grandmother used to say, "That's only for good!" And those were special days.
On the first Sunday after that my father came down the stairs and a little later I noticed this unforgettable scent everywhere in the house where father had gone. Like an invisible trail, he pulled himself to the living room. We are talking here about aftershave, nowadays only as an after-shave on everyone's lips, no EdT. The mother's eyes beamed, she did not let go of her father to "breathe" the scent. He also seemed completely enthusiastic. For me it was an experience, which weeks later should have an increase of the special kind. Father called me to his bathroom on Sunday morning, where we were never allowed to disturb him. Well, my son, would you like a shave? I was about 10 years old, beard free of course, but how that seemed to me. The father soaped me with his shaving foam and "shaved" me with the blunt side of the razor. At the end the most beautiful moment for me: with his index finger, which he had previously wetted on Russian leather, he put some of it on my earlobes and a swab on my nose. I was so proud! How I must have smelled...
Yeah, it's been a long, long time. My father had to "go" early.... I have kept the characteristic white flat bottle, today probably called bottle. The same goes for his beloved white but round bottle of Tabac, the irreplaceable bottle of Irish Moss, refillable and with bellows atomizer!
Sometime in the past years I have dared, with great skepticism, to acquire a bottle as vintage, for a lot of money, as I feel it. Tipped over for my sake.
So now I've bought the new one from Farina. Also available as AS. What a difference from before. Even the bottle in its completely transparent design, like a jam jar, doesn't make a difference. Does everything that was once good or beautiful have to be reformed today? Tabac or Old Spice have kept their old appearance! Especially since this vintage is so "in", or am I wrong now? Completely disappointed but I'm from the fragrance. He has nothing of the former space-filling aura. Often I have put on the past weeks again and again Russian leather after the shave. Neither my wife nor my acquaintances reacted positively to it. Nothing. Nothing Disappointment pure.
Is it just the childhood memories that left me so hung up on it? This aura, the whole expected "Hoi! Great" didn't come. No father who "appeared" behind me in the bathroom mirror and said: "But my son, today uses this scent, it's only for good...
No, Father, the spell is gone. I am completely disappointed before the shards of a (hoped and desired) memory that will never come back like this.
-?Too bad Russian leather has gone like my childhood....?
And the new version? I sold it without a moment's hesitation...
You have to recognize when something is finally over.
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