I work in a Polo store and EVERY employee who works in the store, no matter the age or sex, from 16 to 60, hates this smell, and dreads when someone tries it on. And so do the customers who have to shop in the store after it’s sprayed. It smells like the leather jacket of a man who chain smokes cigars, rides his horse through the woods to his house where he cooks middle eastern cuisine over an open fire. And it lasts ALL DAY LONG. If it were toned down a little, and mixed with a little more of the floral, I’d probably really enjoy it.
The 2019 bottle I tried yesterday seems to have sorted that out. It was much more of a fresh-pencil-shavings cedar/pine opening and quite pleasant the whole way through. All the nastiness was gone and replaced with a smooth, creamy, earthiness that progressed logically into the drydown that we all know and love.
Every time I purchased a bottle, I would be gifted Polo bags and other gifts . I still have several of those bags in the classic green canvas to this day. I used the canvas briefcase for my first job out of college in 1984.
I loved it for its masculine juniper and pine as a child, and now I appreciate the subtle backbone of leather. This is a clean, older-style scent, and is very much in my wheelhouse as a result. I’ve always appreciated my barbershops, old schools, and pine scents have always appealed to me.
For quality that lasts, and a timeless preppy look, choose Polo Ralph Lauren for men from Belk for your wardrobe.
Solids are good, but be sure to pick up a few stripes as well. A couple of wide striped classic fit cotton tees will always be a great choice. Never mind the country club image here folks, Polo, because this isn’t gentlemanly games on the Chelsea commons of West London circa 1910. This fragrance is brutal, earthy, dark and danky pine woods like the ones that used to cover all of Northern Europe before the 12th century. Those woods are wet and mossy from the constant fall rain and drizzle, capturing the misty cool morning and the decaying leaves on the ground.
I get the juniper berry, the pine, basil & artemisa, all of which make this very dark, green, and herbal. The other spices and notes are blended together beautifully. This is a very good fragrance and a grown-up classic for sure. There is very little out there today that smells like this.
Ralph Lauren’s Polo created an American department store fragrance market for middle-class men to distinguish itself from the drug store banality and the overpriced “classic” French specialization houses. Polo lent an air of legitimacy to American made fragrance releases and reasserted it with its clothing line. A truly American original that put American fragrances on the same par with European colognes and re-defined the barriers of the industry. the first time I ever smelled this fragrance was when I was a little girl, about 4/5 years old. The big talk about this one is reformulation.
When I was in my teens, I loved it. To me, it smelled like nothing else. However, as I recall polo dress shirts there was a sweet aspect to it back in the day. I have no idea what notes I smelled.