When I first started getting into the hobby, one of the first fragrances I picked up was Cool Water. Cool Water was a scent I was familiar with; I had a bottle of it back when I was in high school, but I hadn't worn it in roughly a decade. Back in high school I thought Cool Water was too expensive to wear everyday, so I saved my bottle for special occasions like going to a party or a date and instead reached for Swiss Army when I wanted that sort of fresh, aquatic vibe. Flash forward to my days as a fraghead and Cool Water is now one of the cheapest scents in my collection, especially for the prices it can be had for at discounters.
Cool Water is one of those fragrances that you'd probably recognize the smell of even if you've never worn it. Just about every young man who wore fragrances in the 90s rocked Cool Water and its still quite popular to this day. I'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't find the smell at least somewhat familiar.
The backbone of Cool Water is an oceanic sea salt accord blended with a powerful, synthetic, lavender. I get a sharp mint in the initial spray that helps to project the scent and makes it smell vibrant, but the mint dissipates rather quickly. Cool Water is a very synthetic scent. Although it involves aromas of salty water mixed with lavender, it doesn't feel like anything you'd smell in the natural world. That's not a knock on the scent, something doesn't have to smell natural in order to smell great, but don't go into Cool Water expecting to smell something very natural. Cool Water is a refreshing, aquatic scent that is perfect for a day out on the golf course, a picnic in the park or windy day sitting at the beach. I don't think I'd reach for it on the scorching days of summer, but this is a warm weather scent through and the through that highlights the uplifting vibes of spring and summer.
Cool Water reminds me heavily of 90s shaving products; particularly the kind of shaving gel that came in a can and the aftershave sold as a product tie-in/scent match. I'm not sure though if Cool Water reminds me of 90s shaving products because it was designed to smell like shaving gel & aftershave, or if it smells that way because shaving companies like Gillette tried to make products that smelled like the immensely popular Cool Water. For better or for worse, the scent of Cool Water has become forever intertwined in my scent memory with 90s aftershaves and shave gel.
I also wanted to address the concerns over reformulations. In this blog, the picture you see associated with a fragrance will indicate which bottle I own, and for the most part you will see that I tend to own the most recent formulation the majority of the time. Cool Water is a fragrance where all over the frag-com you can read review after review detailing the "death of Cool Water". Complaints are aplenty that when Coty took over, they reformulated it into oblivion and what we're left with now is a screechy, chemical mess. First and foremost I want to say that is not exactly true. I hadn't smelled Cool Water in a decade and when I got my nose on my new Coty bottle it immediately smelled like the Cool Water that I remembered. It did smell a bit cheaper than I recalled, particularly the opening; but make no mistake, this is still absolutely Cool Water.
I admit, all those reviews about Cool Water's death did make me crave a vintage bottle. I still loved my Coty bottle, but maybe I would be over the moon with a vintage. After some searching and patience I managed to score a Lancaster era bottle for a reasonable price. Is the vintage better? - Yep, I will confirm that the vintage is indeed better; but is it really that much better? Honestly, it depends what you pay for it. I got my vintage bottle for $40, a little more than $0.50/mL based on what was left in the bottle. If you can find a bottle for around that price, go vintage, but I'm seeing vintage Cool Water commonly going for over $1/mL and I just don't think it is worth it when you can get 125mL bottle of the new stuff for around $25. The Coty version smells cheaper and more synthetic than vintage but they are not worlds apart. The opening is where I feel the Coty version lacks the most. The opening of the Lancaster version is easier to pick apart; the salty-aquatic notes are easier to distinguish from the lavender and it gives you a more transparent understanding of what notes went into the composition of the fragrance. The Coty version, by comparison, is harder to pick out discernible notes, the aquatic notes and the lavender meld together in a way that is opaque and harder to decipher. After the first 10 minutes, the two scents dry down very close to one another; close enough that they'd be nearly indistinguishable in the air. Vintage is better, not worth 4-5 times the price of a new bottle.
New or vintage, Cool Water is a treasure. A versatility machine that shines in warm weather, Cool Water is a scent that every man should experience.
10/10
0 comments:
Post a Comment