The Cologne Podcast
EVERY MONDAY: Join best friends Myke and Ryan as they take on the world of fragrances with unfiltered humor and uneducated opinions. Each episode, they'll sniff out a new scent and give their honest, foul-mouthed review. From high-end colognes to drugstore bargains, no fragrance is off-limits. Brace yourself for an irreverent, no-holds-barred approach to fragrance reviews.
The Cologne Podcast
#244 - Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo) Gives Us Some Whiffs of Wisdom
What if you could immerse yourself in the intoxicating world of fragrances, guided by no less than a renowned expert? That's exactly what you're in for, as we chat with the insightful and unapologetically passionate, Dan the Fragrance Weirdo. We journey through his aromatic life, from his first foray into fragrances as a teenager to becoming the man behind Soma Parfums and Insider Parfums. Get ready to experience a captivating conversation that takes you behind the scenes of his hit podcast, Les Oderants, and uncovers the profound impact a certain Chanel perfume had on his adolescent self.
Prepare to have your senses stirred, as we navigate the complex world of fragrance clones and discontinued scents. Dan and we unmask the allure of Club De Nuit, a cost-effective challenger to Creed's Aventus, and reveal our encounters with various clone scents, including the elusive Club De Nuit Special Edition Parfum. We also share an amusing tale of an unexpected surplus of the Forbidden Plum perfume and a special gift for one lucky Patreon subscriber. Prepare to uncover the secret world of fragrance cloning and the wonders it can do to resurrect forgotten scents.
As we near the end of our scent-laden journey, we gaze critically at the fragrance community and influencers. Blind buying, a practice that's been monetizing the industry, gets under our radar as we share personal experiences and discuss the importance of mindful spending. We also discuss the art and science behind creating original fragrances or resurrecting extinct ones, and the intriguing concept of a 'super team' of top fragrances. So, sit back, relax, and let the fragrance notes of our conversation fill your senses.
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Ron:Hey, you two clowns Love the show, but I want to give you a heads up that episode you did with Aaron Terrence Hughes, onyx, the review you read from the fragrance weirdo I have a funny feeling that is actually Dan Rothschild. Dan goes under that handle on his Instagram page and he really is good, knows a lot about fragrances. Dan also owns Soma fragrances and here's where you really need to listen. Does an amazing podcast with like three other English folks who are really good. It's so much better than your show. No, I shouldn't say that I love your show.
Ron:It's awesome but like these folks really know their shit, so you should check it out. I think you'd love it. It's like the, you know. If you compare it to restaurants, they're like the per se and you guys are like, you know, a broken down Del Taco, but I love them both. All right, kids have fun. Don't break your nose.
Ryan:Hello everybody, Welcome to the Cologne.
Myke:Podcast. I'm Mike and I'm Ryan. We're two best friends. We're going on a fragrance journey and we're speaking with Dan the fragrance weirdo. Welcome to the show, Dan. Thank you very much. So you're a pro at podcasting, so we're just going to jump right in. You may have overstated the case then Thank you. Thank you. So just kind of give anybody who doesn't know who you are just a little backstory how you got into it, what you're doing over on Instagram. Let's just kind of run through the history.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Sure. So I started posting pictures on Instagram of perfume. I've been collecting perfume since forever really. I guess I'm 40 now and I was 13 when I remember my first fragrance, and it's been sort of a journey, if you like, since then. About maybe 10 years ago, I got sort of sucked really down the rabbit hole of the whole thing and then maybe it was just over five years ago actually I started thinking well, you know, I've got all these bloody perfumes. I like taking pictures of stuff. Perfumes are nice to practice. You know photography on. Why not got them on Instagram? And yeah, just five years later, I've got, I guess, a little over 40,000 followers. I also I have a couple of perfume brands that I run, one called Soma Parfums, one called Insider Parfums, and also I host a podcast, another podcast called Lezodorance. Lezodorance are currently on a break. We start recording again this Sunday for season three, which is very exciting. Yeah, I have listened to some of your podcasts. You know, obviously I like to pretend the competition doesn't exist.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I really like the format that you guys do. It's very different, though. So you know the format of Lezodorance tends to be. I mean, we can go on for kind of up to I think our longest episode was three hours, yeah and it's really fucking on and on and on, and you have to be quite committed to listen to it, whereas, you know, the thing I like about your guys podcast is it's super digestible. You know, you don't have to sit down and make a commitment to half a day's listening.
Myke:You can take this in on a walk to work, which is fantastic, yeah we actually had listeners writing and I think this is fairly accurate they I'm not going to remember exactly what they said, but they're like you guys are like sitting down fine dining and we're like a greasy hamburger drive through, you know.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):And there is a beautiful place in this world for both of us.
Myke:Exactly, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's awesome. Was there a certain fragrance, that kind of stuck out in your? Before? You were like, oh, I like these. And then you're like, oh yeah, no, I'm really into this. Now Is there one that really got you?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):So there were a couple that I started with. Like I started with some really kind of vintagey old school stuff because that's what was around when I was that age. So Quorum and Sibiris by Puyg were just like early kind of favorites and I still have kind of vintage bowls of both of those. But the one that really, I think, sort of said to me, yeah, fragrance is something special, was Chanel Aiguist and I just there was something for me about the convergence of the fragrance itself. But also, I don't know if you remember the TV advert. You guys are probably too.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):You look too young to remember this, but there was this fantastic TV advert with these kind of I don't know where the house was, it's like one of these big Amsterdam sort of row houses with hundreds of windows and it's just these women opening and shutting these bloody windows, screaming Aiguist. It was like this fucking like abstract car crash of a TV advert and it just made me think, my God, this is so cool. And yeah, so there was me, 15 year old boy, an all boys school, wearing Chanel.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Aiguist, so that was my pivotal fragrance, for sure, yeah.
Myke:I think it was a curve for men for me at that age. So I think you're a little bit more sophisticated. Yeah, quite a bit.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Well, just older, I think, rather than sophisticated. But yeah, I mean the one that I guess, and it's boring as fuck to say it, but event has had such a massive impact on me around, you know, 2011, whenever it was right, right, I remember trying it and I said to my wife at the time no, I said at the time to my wife, not my wife at the time, she's still my wife, you know.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):For the avoidance of any doubt, To the first wife, I said, but I said to my wife yeah, I said to my wife I think I want to smell like this forever, but of course you don't, because you get bored. There is no, there is no single one. And if you're into fragrance, that's the thing you have to accept very early on. I think, yeah, that you're never going to find the one People think they're questing for the one. It doesn't exist. You know it just isn't there. The whole reason you're into this is because you value the difference.
Myke:Right, absolutely.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):You know the different things.
Myke:It's kind of like a cinema right. Even if you find a movie that you may feel is like, wow, that was a perfect story told, it doesn't mean you're not going to watch other movies or, you know, it doesn't mean that you're going to watch that movie every day for the rest of your life. And in the same way it's like, in a way, this is very similar. You're experiencing something that lasts for a certain amount of time and then it's gone and it changes over time, much like a story in a movie, you know. So I feel like it is very similar, but there are some movies that I've watched a million times too, and same with fragrances Me too, but you know you're not always in the mood, for the dead are you Right, yeah, what's one that you, right now, are currently reaching for quite a bit.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):So I'm currently going through a bit of an obsession with I receive vanilla, I don't know why. Maybe it's starting to get a little bit cooler here. So there's a couple in that category. One is the Celine Duas du Mont I don't know if you've tried that and also a bodicella victorious called Harmonious, and they are both. I mean, you know, to give you some idea of what they like, they're both a little bit like the original Dior Rom from 2007. They're sort of slightly iris-y, slightly lipstick-y, bit of vanilla, bit of woods, quite masculine, maybe just a little bit kind of, maybe a bit feminine as well. You know, there's something a little bit, I guess, fluid about them, but then that's what was special about the Dior Rom in the first place. I can't work out whether I'm psychologically just trying to recapture the original beauty of Dior Rom or whether I really love these things for what they are, but I am absolutely rinsing both of those at the moment. So yeah, and Celine makes some amazing stuff, amazing.
Myke:Since, visually, you're doing quite a bit on Instagram with bottles and stuff, does that ever sway your opinion on the fragrance? If you just see, like God, that's a gorgeous bottle. I just can't wait to take a picture of that thing.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Uh, yes, yes, Unfortunately. Yes, I feel like such a fucking hack for admitting this. Yes, the bottle. I have quite a few fragrances that I just keep for the bottle. I also have bottles I photograph more than I should, because I photograph them more than I wear them, let's say because they are so beautiful. And particularly I find the Amourage bottles just amazing to look at. I think visually they are stunning, and I don't know if you've seen the new library range since so, or sequel Renault Salmon took over as creative director, but they're these sort of matte clay kind of bottles and they are just magnificent. I mean, they are an easier to photograph art, absolutely. I've sold bottles because I can't photograph anything with a round silver cap and fuck off, I'm not interested 100%.
Myke:Yeah, my day job is I do quite a bit of like commercial photography and product photography. Oh, really so one of my clients does metal picture frames and taking a picture of like a mirror finish on a picture frame is so difficult just because you're just taking a picture of yourself in something else you know. Yeah, so irritating.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I struggle with all of that. There are so many quality photographers on Instagram and my stuff is best amateur-ish. I mean, I've been doing it long enough that I think I've got my own sort of style. But you know, some of the photographers are just amazing, and anyone that's got a good working knowledge of like Photoshop and that knows how to stack photos properly they are way more advanced than me I can't do any of that shit, so I'm constantly sort of holding up bits of white paper trying to isolate kind of shadows and stuff.
Myke:That's what it looks like over here too, so you're in good company, for sure.
Ryan:I actually want to step back a minute. When we're talking about movies, I kind of want to take the approach of parodies in a way. I was listening to one of your episodes not so long ago I don't remember which one it was but kind of what do you think about the Armoff? Is it Armoff? Which one does the Creed of Ventus clone? Oh, the Club De Nui, sort of what do you think about that? Because you said you like Creed of Ventus. At what Club De Nui?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yes, Because it seemed pretty polarizing. I quite like you, I was opinions that day. Well, I mean, look, the thing about Les O'Drisis is don't ever seek consistency. We are like Octopi. We will just kind of argue in eight different directions simultaneously.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):The thing we hate one week, we're advocating for the next, so don't expect consistency. Well, Armoff, I think Club De Nui is a particular thing. Right, A Ventus clone serve a very specific purpose. Right, they are the antidote to the extremely greedy behavior of companies like Creed, who created a good thing and then systematically watered it down and made it more expensive. They've made it to the point that it is borderline unaffordable to the man in the street, and that is ludicrous. For what is essentially? It's costing them five, 10 pounds to produce at most. Right, them charging 300 pounds for 100 mil Fuck off. So Club De Nui, I think, fills a very specific gap in the market. I'm sort of relaxed about clones generally these days. I think they're an okay way of accessing stuff. But what blows my mind? Well, absolutely blows my mind about Club De Nui specifically. I don't know whether you heard this particular episode of the podcast, but I did go on about it. You know how, with Aventus, there are people who enthuse about different batches and their entire social communities dedicated to this.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):There are parallel communities dedicated to batch analysis of Club De Nui. What the absolute fuck is that?
Ryan:about. Yeah, you were like going on about it in there. I did listen to that when it was. You're talking about like them having a Facebook group of like 4,000 members. You're like blown away.
Myke:Yeah, that is crazy for a $30 fragrant. Who cares?
Ryan:I mean for me he ended up buying. I don't know which one it was, but he ended up buying one of them.
Myke:I can't remember. It was the one like last year. Everyone was like, oh, this is the one to get. And you know, I was like, okay, I'm going to make a $40 gamble here for the podcast and let's just see, is everybody out there telling the truth? And it's like I go back and forth too. Some days I'm like, yeah, I kind of get it, and some days I'm like, no, this is not good. So it probably depends on the weather and the humidity or whatever.
Myke:But I think consistency is lacking there as well. Was it the Urban Elixir one, club De Nui Special Edition Parfum, whatever that one? It was like everybody's like, oh, this is the one. It's smoother up top, you know, and it's like it's still pretty screechy, still pretty rough, you know it's. You know it's. Sometimes I grew up pretty broke and sometimes you can buy the off brand cereal and it's pretty close. And then sometimes you get the happy fruit circles and it's nothing like fruit loops, you know. So I think it just depends on clones and inspired fragrance depends on which one you get. Yeah.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, well, I can't quite relate to the cereal thing, but yeah, the rest of makes total sense to me, right, yeah, but I think it's fine. I mean it's a you know, clones fill a gap in the market. They provide an easy way for people to access stuff. There's a lot of people who can't afford to even try events, but they can pick up Club De Nui. Why should you not having money mean that you don't get to smell pleasant? I mean what the poor people have, to stink or something ridiculous.
Ryan:So what's been the closest clone you have smelled to where you're like? I'm actually pretty impressed with this. This is pretty close to the real stuff, that's easy.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Alexandria fragrance is nefarious. Is a clone of Nishane or Nishane? How have you pronounced that shit? Apparently it's Nishane, but I can't help saying Nishane, nishane, nefs, right, I think, is a Chris Maurice fragrance, brilliant fragrance. The Alexandria one, completely utterly indistinguishable in my view, like proper blind test. They are identical and one of them costs 500 pounds for 50 mil and one of them costs 40 pounds for 50 mil. Yeah, that's where you go.
Myke:Yeah, that's a gimme. The little bonus box we received from you guys inspired a fragrance or an inspired an episode, because the one in there was yeah, was forbidden plum, which was the inspired by the Tom Ford one, and it came in and was Japanese.
Myke:Yes, and I sprayed it and me and Ryan were both like God, this smells amazing. So then, you know, we were kind of wearing it around and talking about it and I was like, well, what is this? You know, it was inspired by and we had a decant of plum Japanese we got a couple of years ago and we hadn't done an episode on it. So that was the episode that went out for Monday. We're like, let's just smell that one, do an episode on it because it smelled so damn good and that one is discontinued now. So I think clones do kind of serve a purpose for that as well.
Myke:Like fragrances that have been long forgotten, some of the clones still live on.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, I should clarify. I am actually nothing to do with Alexandria Parfums. We share a building and so what happened was the shipping. People basically just put the wrong label on the wrong box and that's why you ended up with some fucking random order that was, I think, meant to go to bloody Romania or something Right, and they got all your lovely soma stuff. So everyone got double bubble yeah.
Myke:Well, we were a. Happily, You'll get yours.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):That's right yeah.
Myke:It's here in a few days, but but yeah, we posted that on the Patreon. We were like hey guys, we got this bottle, we're going to pull a decan out of it and we'll we'll mail it on out to somebody. So it was a fun little, it was a little bonus. We liked it.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, we like the fragrance and everything I love, all the discontinued Tom Ford Sorry.
Myke:No, no, you're good. Well, that's a better topic than what I was going to ask Ryan, is there one that that you're, that you're in love with, that you can't get your hands on anymore?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):You can't get your hands on most of them anymore, annoyingly. But Japan Noir is my personal favorite. I do have a bottle with like about I don't know 30 ml left or something, and I wear it, you know, every so often, just as a sort of just as a treat to myself. But I think that is one of the most perfectly crafted kind of dark, woody masculine fragrances and and and you know, most of my perfumes tend to have a good sort of woody edge to them. That's the only sort of consistency through my collection, I'd say. But some of the Tom Ford discontinued ones are amazing Moss breaches. I don't know if you've ever tried moss breaches, but people go loopy for that. It was only ever made for like one year, I think. And the bottle cell 50 ml bottle cell for like 1000 pounds now is fucking craziness, yeah, craziness.
Myke:Yeah, we. I think that's why we saw an eBay plumb Japanese. Yeah, it was $1000. Yeah, it was a spin. I was like I need to like take on a second job if I'm going to be thinking about, you know, buying bottles that expensive.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, I mean, it's an expensive hobby with fragrance and you know it's. You know you can do it inexpensively if you are careful about buying, like you know, samples and decants and stuff and if you're not sort of obsessed with the bottle. If, like me, you're an absolute moron and you insist on owning the bottle of everything just so you can take fucking photos of it, it's you know, in destroying your marriage, I could see where that could be a point of contention for sure.
Ryan:This may be a little taboo, but I just it makes me think about it and every now and then I rehash it in my head. But it's like what are your feelings towards, not necessarily like YouTubers, but a lot of the community? When we first got in, they pushed blind buying so much, and you're right as far as like not you know, people shouldn't really just be going out buying just to ask a lot of stuff because it can. I mean, I think you have a purpose for it, so I don't think it really hurts you. But what do you feel like about the community as a whole being like that?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I actually I've grown more cynical about the community as a whole and it bothers me so much now that we sort of have an environment where people are just constantly shoving discount codes down your throat. You know, this is my discount code, use my discount code, and it's invariably because they get a kickback on it. Right, this is how they get paid, and I'm not claiming to be holier than now. I have had and used discount codes in that way, but now when I get offered a sort of split revenue share type thing by company, I tend to say look, rather than me have a 10% discount code and me get paid 10%, why don't you just give me a 20% discount code and send me some bottles of perfume occasionally? Because I'd far rather do that.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I'm not really motivated by the money and I know that it will just compromise me ethically if I feel that I have to shove this shit down people's throats, and I think so many reviewers are fucking compromised in that sense and it is a real turn off, if I'm honest, and it never used to be quite as bad as this. You know, people used to just say chili shit to get free, to get free balls. Now they're saying it to get paid, and that's much more disingenuous, I think, and so many people are hiding it as well. You know, like um, the paid partnership labels that you meant to use. So many people don't use them. They don't disclose that stuff is free or that they've been paid by brands. So I'm deeply cynical about everyone at the moment. I just say that fucking gay self, a small be, you can, as cheap as you can, try it, and if you love it by all, it's easy.
Ryan:Yeah, I got the vibe from listen to your podcast address or like that, and I kind of want to pick your brain up a little bit because I mean, we've talked about this publicly on our podcast and sometimes we've come to terms with it and we feel good and go about our lives and and he'll tell you, I'm like you, I just started thinking about it really does bother me because we enjoy being to be honest, like look, there's some Roger dove stuff we really love. We just did one actually for our Patreon and we fucking hated it and I'm not going to change Really. Yeah, I'm not going to. I'm not going to say it was actually the Parfum Dayload of Week 1. Didn't I? What Garbage.
Myke:Uh, oh, here we go.
Ryan:Fuck, I love that perfume.
Ron:It smells like deer piss yeah no, you're right, you're right and I love it.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Those are not incompatible statements. Exactly, yeah yeah, yeah. We had a conversation, I think, about Delanoi 2.
Myke:We had that one to smell, but we haven't smelled it.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Okay, I love all three of those. I think they're brilliant. They're very animalic, though, and so they are a little bit. They're bit hard work right, but I love two. I actually bought it with my own money no fucking freebies there. I did buy it discounted, so I didn't pay full retail price.
Myke:but you know, that's kind of Yosemite right it never paid retail.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, it never paid retail, god, no, no, I mean why. But we talked about it and everybody else was so down on it like just hated it, like, oh, this is just a really boring amber For me. I don't know why, but I love them, and there's very few of the Roger ones that I don't like, but I spent a lot of money on those shits. They do send me some stuff for free, so I'm not going to pretend I haven't received some shit for free, but there's plenty that I've bought myself and I will continue to do so.
Myke:I think probably someday we'll circle back around. We did this with Mustravajar the first time we smelled it was very early on when we were very designer and we both did not care for it. And then recently we had a listener send us like some samples and that was in it and we were like, well, we've already done an episode on this, let's just spray it. And we did and we're like, oh my god, we fucking love it now. So I think for us at this particular point it's so challenging for us that we were like man, this little stankiness on it is like woo, that's not something we could wear. We could see how on the tester strip it had like this kind of boozy, fun type of like, almost like smell like scotch or something we're like that's pleasant. But on the skin it was so like animalic, like you said, is like god, I can't see where I would ever wear this. Not that it didn't smell like very good perfumery.
Myke:It was just like this is going to be so hard to wear.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I don't disagree with that. Actually. I mean, I don't find many occasions to wear them, if I'm honest, but I just I love the fragrance. But it's important to be honest and you know, sometimes I get sent stuff to me I just won't review because I don't like it and I can't think of good things to say. Sometimes I'll try stuff and I go well, I don't like it, but I can at least acknowledge the craftsmanship there, and so I'll think of good things to say about the perfume and say, well, you might like this if. But I won't ever put out a fucking fluff review saying this is brilliant when I don't think so, because you know, I don't know. You don't have many things in this world but bloody integrity and honesty. You can control those right and you should just stick with it. I think that's my take anyway.
Ryan:Let me piggyback on this then. Have you smelled Blue Atlas Atlantis? Have you smelled that yet?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I haven't, I have not. I've seen it and I'm sort of interested. I sort of nearly bought one because I nearly caught the hype about it. But there's something so insincere about the way that that is pushed in so many magazines and top X, many lists and hey, use my discount code and yeah that's what I felt, and I wonder.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I did a review of S boy by Draco. Draco, have you seen this? The soldier boy perfume that, oh, it's in, so it's in so many top 10 lists, right, and everyone's offering, everyone's offering $35 off, right, use my code for $35 off. By the way, they're getting paid $35 every time someone buys, every time someone buys a bottle of perfume. And they sent it to me and they said would you like a code? I said no, I wouldn't, actually, because I don't think I. Firstly, it's not going to generate enough money for it to be kind of meaningful for me and I'd have to feel like I was selling my ass.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):In order to do that and I didn't use those exact words, but I did say look, what I will do is commit to give it an honest review, and I did and I really like the perfume. You know nothing bad About that perfume at all. I thought it was really very pleasant indeed. So just because he is hyped and it's shield and people are fucking assholes about it, doesn't mean it's a bad perfume, right. But it certainly puts you on your guard, doesn't? I mean, I assume blue Atlantis is no good in your view, then In my view.
Ryan:No, we actually had Steve from the Sink Geeks. He came on and we sampled it all together. He had had it before us.
Myke:Yeah, he recommended it for us to try just because of there was so much hype out there that he was like curious, because we know you guys will shoot straight, let us know. And we did an episode and we blind smelled it on the episode. Ryan hated it and part of it is because of, like he said earlier, he is so cynical and he's like quick to bang the drum and be like everyone. Look, they're cheating, they're doing bad stuff. You know, for me I'm like I will acknowledge yeah, they're probably being shitty, but then I'm like I, you know, off off to my own thing.
Myke:You know, ryan lives, I've said before, in this utopia of everything has to be perfect and if it's not, then then you know we need to rally together and change. I'm like, yes, that's never gonna happen. Let's be realistic. You know, to me it's not like a bathroom body works sort of fresh. It wasn't great, didn't have great performance. It wasn't like everybody's like a Ventus killer, the next king of niche that you know they were saying that. I'm like I don't smell that at all, it doesn't smell bad, but it doesn't smell like that, like nobody is gonna miss out if they don't buy it yeah, I find some of those perfumes just so I mean the perfumes themselves are so deeply cynical in the sense that they are trying to just.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):It's like they sort of went through the last 15 years of like enormous selling perfumes and said, right, we want the top nose of that, the middle nose of that, a better base from that, I want the perfumer from that. You know, it's like trying to put together one of those all star sort of football teams or whatever you use, basketball, whatever you. But you know, it's like I reviewed a pack of phantom Robo bottle is disgusting and it basically from a football point of view, it's like having 11 strikers on the pitch. It's like all the best strikers in the world, but no actual fucking coherence. They can't play together, they don't work as a team.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):And that's how I feel about a lot of these kind of perfumes that come out of nowhere, like the BA one did, with a lot of money behind them, a lot of marketing budget, that's really all it is. And they are just, you know this, cynical from top to bottom. But the actual sentence cynical, it's a sort of hey, just get all the top 10 hits of the last six decades and throw them in a AI machine and vomit out the next track, and that's what we've got.
Myke:I feel like this is a good transition, because you do yourself have two different brands. What is then your approach to create new, inspired work that offers something to the marketplace but is still individual?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):So let's get the tricky one out of the way first. So Insider is basically recreations of discontinued stuff. So we take the discontinued Tom Ford's we're working on a few other bits and bobs, like a Dolce Gabbana one and some other stuff and we recreate them. Now what we don't do is sell fragrances that are already in production, or at least at the moment we don't. We're toying with the idea of doing an eventous one because they fucked up so badly. But the idea is to try and rehabilitate or bring back to life discontinued stuff, and we do that in very plain packaging. We do it as cheaply as we possibly can and we don't really make a lot of money out of it. We did it as a side project, just for fun. But get out of the way. I can use all the words in the world, but if someone says that's a clone business, yeah, I'm probably paying to realize that.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I'll give my hand. But Soma is original creations and we work with a perfumer in ways as a company in France. We provide a brief. They send us a couple of initial attempts at hitting that brief. We then go back and say, well, we like this, but we're not sure about this element of it. Could you try and change that? And we usually go through kind of two or three iteration cycles before we land on the perfume that we think works. And the initial series were just perfumes that I liked.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):It was pointed out to me that this was quite limiting, right, because I've got a particular style that I like and so if I only create perfumes, we only create and sell perfumes that I like. There's lots and lots of people who aren't going to enjoy much of the produce. So more recently we tried to sort of break that out a little bit more. So our recent releases, axiom and Theorem. Axiom is probably more my style. It's kind of fruity, ginger, orange, lots of cedar we use lots of cedar generally as a sort of backbone. But Theorem is, I guess, a little bit more.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I'd say unisex. It's not feminine, but a few people said, well, this is definitely unisex, right, and it's lots of iris, a little bit of leather, and it's just. It's quite different from anything else we've done before and it's not the typical sort of perfume that I would wear. But yeah, the inspiration tends to just come from me thinking about stuff that I like and styles that I like, that I think, well, what if we changed that a little bit? And there's a lot of bullshittery right In perfume. So I could tell you that this was inspired by, you know, the time where I was sitting on my grandfather's nap in Germany, in the 1970s.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):It's like is it a fuck? It's just stuff that I like.
Ron:I like that.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):What if we sort of went over in this direction with it? That's how it works, do you feel like?
Myke:some of the bullshittery is kind of needed, though. Do you think that adds to the experience?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yes, and I have been told that it's funny. You should say that we had a conversation with a fairly major distributor and they were saying, well, look, you know what's the backstory here, what's the story? What's the brand story? Well, you know what's the inspiration for these perfumes? And I was like, well, maybe, maybe, I want to make some perfumes. And I described the thing that I like to smell, and then they're like, yeah, that's not a fucking story, mate, you're not the idiot.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):So yeah, we do need to come up with some stuff. You know our friend who's an author, who wrote me some blurb for somers, and now we've got this kind of rather grand mission statement and stuff. But it doesn't come naturally to me at all. I'm almost kind of congenitally straight shooting in that regard.
Myke:Yeah, that was the one thing I felt like, because we had ended up messaging back and forth. We did the episode and we had immediately people were like, hey, you know who. That is right Not to downplay who you are.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):This was when you read my review.
Myke:Yeah, yeah, so a lot of people wrote in and we're just like no, we didn't, because we found early on that we the fuck is that? We, well, we, we did an interview with the fragrance apprentice taking a little side story here, and he was talking about ropes away and we had never. We were brand new, we didn't know anybody. So he was like, oh yeah we're always even only know him.
Myke:Yeah, well, I said, well, I don't know who the fuck that guy is, like, I just like kind of took 10 seconds to trash a guy I didn't know.
Myke:And then of course he hears it and we had some back and forth and I was just trying to tell him like hey, I was trying to be funny in the moment with George, but I was like you know, we wanted to have him on, and so this was like a very similar scenario where, after everybody wrote in and they were like, hey, this guy he's actually has a better podcast than you guys have.
Myke:Yeah, well, that's not even true, but thank you for saying that, look, we wouldn't think it was true if we hadn't had like eight people send the same message. So we were like okay. So then on the next episode I was like I got to jab this guy a little bit, you know, and luckily Steve kind of connected us enough to where we could talk it out, because I immediately knew like just from listening to you guys and seeing kind of what you do, I'm like we have a similar sort of way about us which is like let's just say the damn thing and it'll be done, you know. So I was like I think this guy can appreciate it.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I agree, and there's a lot of thin skin-ness. I think you know to make a serious point there. People are very brittle these days and certainly within the fragrance community there's a lot of thin skin-ness. I mean, I know there is some. There is some quite nasty, you know. So I don't know if you ever sort of look on Reddit at the jokes or whatever.
Ryan:Yeah, so that's.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):yeah, I mean that stuff. Some of it, I mean historically, has been quite amusing, but some of it goes way too far. It's very unpleasant. But you know there's a lot of thin skin-ness about criticism. People don't take criticism of their perfumes well and stuff I can't. Well, you know, if you're going to put yourself out there, if you're going to go to the trouble of doing it, then make sure that you're wearing a thick enough hat, because otherwise you're just going to get upset. And there are certainly perfumers who are very, very brittle in that regard. And I just I think, christ, if you can't take the feedback, don't put yourself out there in the first place.
Myke:It's pointless, yeah part of it too is like because I did this in another industry, but a friend and I kind of create a certain product that was very different from what was out on the market and we were very proud of it and we put it out there and we got tons of criticism just because it was different, and a lot of people are just like this isn't what I'm used to, it sucks, and we just, for whatever reason, we kind of blew up overnight and because of that we were just hit with a lot of great but also a ton of negativity, and it helped me kind of develop a pretty thick skin and sometimes when I see guys that put something out and they can't take a negative comment, it makes me wonder if they're not fully in that one thing. Like, if you're not proud enough to be able to go well, you're just wrong. Like you know, if you don't like this, you're just wrong. So whatever.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):So the one and I'll you know, as I said, I'll always argue against myself as well. The counter argument I'd make and I saw wanted to make this point earlier is I don't depend on any of this stuff for my salary. You know, I have a day job, right and. But there are guys like well, there's plenty of guys, I won't bother naming them, but there's plenty of fragrance reviewers right For whom this is their job, right, this is how they make money. Do they basically do live streams? They ask for people to pay them to do it. They launch their own brands. They rely on that being a success. Yada, yada, yada. Right, I'm lucky enough not to have that baggage right. If it's a success, great. If it's not a success, don't worry. I haven't quit the day job because this is all evenings and weekends. I don't do fragrance stuff during the day. I actually have a salary job and that's what puts food in the mouths of my kids.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I do sometimes wonder if I would behave differently about stuff like incentives and about stuff like reacting to negative feedback and stuff if my actual livelihood depended on it. Sometimes I think, well, I don't want to be the person doing the criticising here, because maybe I don't quite know how I would behave if I were in that situation. On the whole, I don't really ever want to be in that situation. I don't want it to be dependent on this because I think it drives the wrong sort of behaviors. Reality is, if I lost my job tomorrow, I would go and find another job. I would not try and make it as a perfume reviewer.
Myke:Oh, that's an interesting thing. Okay, because I would say you're quite established in this.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):That's pretty noble, because a lot of people Well, I don't make much money out of it. I mean, I say I make a little bit of money in the sense that sometimes brands send me stuff which I sell always for cheap as well, because I feel guilty about doing that as well. That's really the only source of income that I get from it. Soma and Insider don't generate. I mean, they barely cover their own costs, to be perfectly honest. So they're not going to change anything. I continue to do it in the hope that maybe one day I'll be a success, a big success, or maybe one day I'll just pack it in and say, well, it didn't work out quite as I wanted and that's life. But I certainly don't depend on them financially and so I have the luxury of being able to stand back and be super objective about it. If I depended on it financially, I do wonder whether I would behave in a very different way. So it's easy for me to criticize from the outside, you know yeah for sure.
Myke:That's a nice thing to say, because we tend to be a little bit more gruff about people who we feel are fleecing the flock, as we say Because Fuck them. We've tried to for the most part and we acknowledged an episode. If you've interacted personally with some of the people who run some of the brands, they treat you with respect and really well. It's hard not to have a positive, knee-jerk reaction towards anything that they do if they've been close friends or just really kind to you. So we had to say that initially in an episode that we did where I just like, look, this one brand has been especially supportive of us from the very beginning. So you're going to have to read into that that we may have a little filter on when we're looking at some of this stuff, but you know we're never going to tell you to go buy this thing or blind buy it.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):But I think that's perfectly fine. You know, customer service is part of what you are buying when you hand over your money. I mean, I've bought a few of the Zara fragrances in my time and I've spoken with George a few times. I find him completely charming. He's a bit bonkers, but I find him totally charming and he gets the idea of customer service. He has a very attentive brand. There are plenty of brands out there who just want to sell you something and move on to the next victim and I think you know I spend all my evenings and you know weekends doing perfume related stuff. A lot of that is answering bloody questions about perfumes on Instagram or you know our websites or whatever. I just kind of I don't know. I figure if you put I hate this, I'm not a positive minded person, I'm really not, but I figure if you are. Actually, if you try and put a positive sort of set of behaviors out there, you're likely to benefit from that. Coming back in sort of business terms, that's not me like being all fucking.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):You know kumbaya and stuff it's just yeah, it's just good practice to be sort of polite to people. Sometimes I'm, sometimes the mask slips.
Myke:That's good and it depends on the day. You know you do the best you can but sometimes they catch you and you know the waitress was mean to you and it costs more than you thought, and you're just in a bad mood and you get a comment and you just go. Eh well, you can fuck off.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, fuck off. Exactly, exactly.
Ryan:I think we should end on that, by the way.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):That would just be the whole thing. Yeah, we should definitely end on a fuck off. Yeah, yeah.
Myke:The way we'll paint this episode, too, will be like we tried to have them on. And here's what he said Y'all can just fuck off, yeah.
Ryan:Just edit it.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Edit it to sound that way, it'll be brilliant, yeah, good.
Ryan:Well, I feel like we've like barely scratched the surface with you. I'm kind of putting you on the spot here, but would you be willing to come back and do another episode and pass out?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):No, no, Sorry, I've hated it. It's been awful so yeah, of course, of course I mean, it's like literally, it's fucking sad to say it, but it's literally my favorite thing to do is to talk about perfume, right? So you say I would do this if we weren't recording a podcast.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I'd just say hey, let's talk about perfume. So the fact that we're recording and putting it out there, cool. But I'm up for talking about this whenever and, yeah, I'd be more than happy to, in fact, I tell you what. Try the perfumes. I have sent you some perfumes. Try them, let me know what you think and if you hate them then I probably won't come on.
Myke:But if you like them, then I'll come back.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):No, even if you hate them, I don't really care, you know?
Myke:Yeah, I do have to applaud you Honestly. Crazl, off air, you did say, and I feel like a lot of people would not say this. So I feel like you're living out what you're preaching in a way, but off air. You did say if you don't like them, you can still review them, and it won't hurt my feelings at all.
Ron:And.
Myke:I feel like a lot of brands would not say that and I'd have to commend you for allowing that to happen, even though we said if we didn't like them, then we probably wouldn't Thank you.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Thank you, we got sent. Just on a similar note, we got sent some perfumes by a guy called Carter Weeks Maddox, who's an American perfumer and he has I forget the name of the brand, maybe CronoTope or something, but anyway, he sent us some perfumes to review on the podcast and what he said I thought was lovely. He said I don't care if you love them or you hate them, as long as you review them with some passion. What I don't want is incipid kind of like I thought was perfect. Yeah, he just wants to see passion, either good or bad, and I love that. I think that's a good model to aspire to.
Myke:That's kind of what we've heard Rajah doves say as well, which is like I would rather make a fragrance that you hate than one that you're just like. Eh, you know, like, yeah, absolutely, that means there's some character to it.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, and the thing you hate is is going to be I guarantee is going to be the thing someone else loves, right, it might even be the thing that you come back to. You know the must-rave-a-jure. It might be the thing you come back to and subsequently fall in love with, but the thing that just makes you go, eh, you're unlikely to ever give it a second glance, and so I think polarizing stuff, stuff that's brave, stuff, that's creative far more interesting. That said, you know, even if you find my perfumes, yeah, just say so. You know, I'd rather. I think you know honesty above everything. It was one of the sort of values my dad cultivated in me from birth was just be honest. Right Doesn't mean be unpleasant, but be honest, and I think that's important. Love that man.
Myke:Well, closing out, tell the listeners where's one place you want them to go to follow you to check out what you're doing. It could be your Instagram, could be one of the companies you're running. What do you want them to check out?
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):All the links to what I do are on my fragrance weirdo page on Instagram. Every time I say fragrance weirdo, I feel like an absolute idiot. I had occasion to meet the Stephanie Bakou she created my favorite perfume ever, which is in Beijing Bar Bar, and we'd spoken a lot. But I met her and I said, oh hi, stephanie, it's Dan. And she looked at me and she goes Dan. I said fragrance weirdo. She goes oh, when you have to introduce yourself as a weirdo, it feels a bit weird.
Myke:Yeah, I chose that name a long time ago. I get that yeah.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):I still got email addresses that.
Myke:I'm ashamed to even mention that, but, dan, thanks so much for being on.
Dan (@Fragrance_Weirdo):Yeah, chunky lover. Thank you, guys, and I do look forward to talking to you again. Cheers, all right, thanks, man.
Myke:Appreciate it.