Zinobvlgari

DERRICK misunderstood eccentric.
DERRICK (1974-1998) took us Germans through the 70s and 80s. A little scent never appeared there. Too bad, I would have really liked to know it in the original. Would have been a hit in Germany then.

Distinguishing a vintage from a current ReFo is almost impossible, at least if you try it over the Internet. DERRICK is just between 30-40 € on Ebay.
I ordered one and already had an older miniature.
Due to the mini DERRICK 7ml, I was able to add this spice resin wood to my ranks of really good resinous, cedar-pregnant bouquets.
Unfortunately, this nuance remains just on the surface of the ReFo and underneath it is already the oak moss substitute to smell, something like stale body lotion or cream. I already noticed this with other ReFos that at the end this really unpleasant smell remains on the skin. Where oakmoss in combination with the respective base notes left a typical finish, today almost all ReFo only flops Cremeranz.
Unfortunately also at DERRICK. It seems that the PH value of the skin plays a role here, the lower, i.e. more acidic, the more the rancidity remains. Is my theory ;)

And yet it was such a real cedar, this ethereal coniferous wood haze above everything besides vetiver and sandalwood. A slight hint of nutmeg, nothing more than that, a pinch of pepper and cinnamon, but the woods and grass (vetiver) remain dominant.
Exclusive unobtrusive masculine old DERRICK (vintage).
If Horst Tappert had stood well.

Flacon has similarity with old military petrol or oil tanks (Army/Bundeswehr). Wanted?

So we still need a vintage. The ReFo is only mediocre without cojones.

BLUE STRATOS is what you see.

Even after the revival (1995) by an enthusiastic fan, it has not lost its unique scent. This bouquet smells as it looks, a radiantly glistening white-blue moment on the Greek sea, seen from the top terrace, while the white seagulls circle in the aqua blue sky. Only a fine breath of wind sometimes whirls around the salty skin and the dream of the perfect Méditerranée has come true...

...and comes out of a sapphire blue bottle.

Lime, herbs, lavender and woods in a breathtakingly nuanced composition, leave even the man, who otherwise perhaps does not tend to the citric, all doubts blown away.

BLUE STRATOS is the aquatic experience par excellence, although nothing aquatic has been added here. This water is what others want to be aquatic.
A masterpiece of citric freshness, which hardly smells citric, because the mixture was so skilfully combined that from the beginning fragrances of lime, lavender, ylang and wood exclude one-sidedness.
The course then becomes soapier and when the albatross has long since flown across the sea and wakes up the next morning on a dune, BLUE STRATOS is still there, like a gentle kiss from Poseidon.

Adíosas,
zino

Now I have to make a break for ROCKFORD 1984 (not 1985!). Completely ignored and underrated 80's fragrance that can easily compete with Burberry's LONDON or BRIT. By the way, also a traditional British fragrance house.

At the beginning of the 80s I came from the province to Neuss/Düsseldorf, was a crisp 20 and sucked up with all my senses, the new big city world. What I found there were things I had never seen, heard or smelled before in the village where I had grown up.
Irish Spring was my first deodorant and soap. Even my first shave in early 14/15 was Irish Spring. I really liked this fresh soap.
In Neuss there was the department store (later Woolworth) and on my first forays into the world of fragrances, I could afford BRUT 33 EdT, BLUE STRATOS EdT and ROCKFORD EdT and was thrilled.
These weren't really "real" perfumes, rather more expensive drugstore fragrances, but they accompanied me for some years until my first SANTOS, KOUROS or KL Homme.

Nevertheless, these fragrances have remained unique to this day and have been accepted today into the ranks of the much sought-after vintage fragrances without any intention or awareness on the part of the producers.
One (n) must say in addition, in the 70s it began only with the perfumes for men. Only when we were young did we spray deodorants under our arms. Proper perfume was worn by grandma, the elderly lady and grandpa had TABAC or SIR aftershave.
This brought us all the mostly pleasant smell of grandpa or daddy shaving water as a memory, as a typical male scent (next to sweat bumps and body odor in the men's dressing room).

In the 80s then, the ROCKFORD EdT had its own noble class, quite delicately powdery/soapy with a hint of wood and lavender. This is how English gentlemen smelled, unobtrusive but skilfully placed male fine fragrance mark. With the scent I immediately have a Scottish flannel pattern in my inner eye, as BURBERRY markets it today.
Well-groomed English gentleman luxury with Scotch, a Davidoff and a fireplace in the English reading room. Atkinsons Ltd. already stood for the Beau of the "Parfum-Snobbery".

This fine mixture of cyclamen, vetiver, cedar, lavender and musk lingers for a long time and what starts off with a lively lemon colour goes on into a well-groomed soap and lingers until the next morning as a gentle touch of a lotus blossom.
An unobtrusive fine male long-lasting fragrance mixture.
That's what makes ROCKFORD EdT from 1984 to today.

I searched for a long time and only found what I was looking for in Italy. What has long since disappeared from German households or is in display cases as a collector's miniature is traded like gold in the traditional Profumeria in Italy. But you have to search and find your cookies, like a mushroom picker.

The originally deeply British brand Atkinsons (1800 J&E Atkinsons Ltd. in 24 Old Bond Street ), once purveyor to the court of the British Crown, has survived after a long successful tradition, from 1900, the takeovers and mergers to such an extent that today the company is again British, but the production has remained in Italy. All well-known cosmetic companies were once involved, from UniLever to Wella, Fabergé and Procter & Gamble.
More about this in the history of the Dufthaus Atkinsons, to which I will devote myself later in detail.

The bear, heraldic animal of Atkinsons Ltd., is unmistakable at the ROCKFORD. I think he had attracted me back then, when I didn't even know the scent. But at ROCKFORD it's a polar bear, really super logo!
Maybe even James Garner, the detective Rockford, was the inspiration for the creation of the brand.
Unfortunately, the bottle is typically square, practically 80s plastic. Nothing noble, just plump, like the embarrassing shoulder pads and carrot trousers and everything brightly colored. Here bright plastic red lid.
The outer packaging again has something, there was a better designer on it.
I'd like to know who created ROCKFORD in 1984, but I don't think that former drugstore scents will stain any perfume mortar.

SANTAL by R&G from 1978 is an exceptional fragrance. I haven't smelled anything comparable so far (that's why the 50ml bottle stays with me).
In the parfumo fragrance direction it says "spicy woody". Sorry, but absolutely off and far away. Rather fruity, grapey and floral with depth and this as a men's perfume! The fragrance needs courage for a man, but because of its exceptional nature it will fully satisfy the penchant for chypre.
SANTAL is so chypre. One of those scents, as well as CATALYST, MAGNÉTIQUE or GRAN VALOR that I'm standing in front of and can't define what it is at all.
SANTAL is above all honey-sweet, stunningly floral and has this "effervescent" (like Brause/Limo) like KOUROS and then I fall into an almost psychedelic frenzy.
But the central all-pervading scent is, LITSCHI! Yes, exactly, these little grape-sized flutschigen Japanese fruits with the dragon skin shell. So psychedelic, full of '70s, but fruity and not grandma-piefig! Where CATALYST becomes vegetable and herbaceous, SANTAL wafts into the sensuously fruity floral and loses itself in-a-gadda-da-vida, honey...

Roger & Gallet have produced extraordinary creations anyway. R&G, 150 years and purveyor to the court in Great Britain.

I guess the two negative comments to the Concentrée have a ReFo!?
I have an old version. It's not hard to tell by the bottle. The original looks like the pictures below. Noble brown-golden bottle framed by an anthracite-golden setting.
The Concentrée is even finer than the EdT. Where the EdT brutally bangs in and scares off many fragrance-sensitive people, the Concentrée is tender and more reserved from the beginning and develops this lovely, effervescent fragrance, which the EdT only emits at the end, early in the heart note and which lasts the whole day and is even still there in the morning.
Best SANTOS ever, even the Eau de Toilette doesn't come along. But if you're more animalistic, like with KOUROS, you should go for EdT, but without exception the old very, very rare version No.1.

I would also like to note that the picture above of the bottle of Santos (Eau de Toilette Concentrée) Cartier 1981, is the new version and does not actually belong there. I would provide photos of the original if someone could write me to whom I had to send them.