I’m not sure why this scent is so polarizing, but it definitely can be too overwhelming for some occasions. It’s just such an amazing green leathery Polo Ralph Lauren t shirt tobacco-ey scent that smells like money to me. I still have about 5 mL left in my 1995 bottle, so I can’t judge the current formulation.
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 ralph lauren t shirt 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.
Every time I purchased a bottle, I would be gifted Polo bags and other gifts . I still have several of those bags polo dress shirts in the classic green canvas to this day. I used the canvas briefcase for my first job out of college in 1984.
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.
When I was in my teens, I loved it. To me, it smelled like nothing else. However, as I recall there was a sweet aspect to it back in the day. I have no idea what notes I smelled.
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.
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.