My mom would fill those suckers up with candy, cute gifts, and handmade items. Holidays are here, and it's time to SHOP! Growing up the Stocking was always my favorite thing to open on Christmas morning. I was compensated for my participation in this campaign, but all opinions are 100% mine. And how I feel is pretty damn fresh.This post was made possible by iConnect and Old Spice. It’s not about how I smell-it’s about how I feel. Then I realized: That’s not the point of Old Spice and never has been.
At first I was disappointed, being a man who habitually wears cologne and welcomes compliments about my grooming choices. I was even more surprised that after I had been splashing it on every day for a week, no one had commented on it. It’s a closely guarded secret whether the aftershave formula has been modernized, but the fragrance, the brand assured me, is the same. Once it hit my nose, however, I was surprised to find it lighter, subtler, and, yes, fresher than I remembered. Before I opened my bottle (now plastic, not glass), I thought for sure I remembered the smell. Like Coke, Old Spice is cemented in our cultural memory, but not always in the way we might imagine. Think of it this way: When I asked Edwards what other scent Old Spice was closest to, his answer was Coca-Cola. Old Spice captured this scent profile perfectly and uniquely.
“To Americans, the idea is almost sweet.” Think vanilla, spices like cinnamon, and lemon or orange. “The French idea of freshness is citrusy,” Edwards says. Somehow, in developing the scent, Schultz was able to tap into the exact idea of American freshness. Old Spice is cemented in our cultural memory, but not always in the way we might imagine.Īnd yet that fragrance is the ultimate legacy of Old Spice. They said, ‘This will make your day,’ ” says Lisa Mulvany, a historian for Procter & Gamble, which bought Old Spice in 1990. “The ads were all about being brisk and manly. Instead, Old Spice sales campaigns leaned into the idea of a clean post-shave feeling. Also, the amount of actual fragrance in the formula was small, Edwards says. In the first half of the 20th century, perfume was portrayed as something strictly for women, and to position Old Spice as a fragrance might have been bad for business. The key to Old Spice’s rise was that none of the marketing ever specifically talked about the scent. It was a runaway success: By 1939 sales of Old Spice reached $3.1 million (which would be about $60 million today). The next year he tweaked the scent, diluted it, and packaged it in a white glass buoy-shaped bottle, and Old Spice aftershave was born. In 1937 he had developed a women’s perfume inspired by the scent of potpourri called Early American Old Spice. It’s the actual Old Spice slogan: “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.”Īll those men shaving at home needed aftershave, and the options were limited to Listerine and Bay Rum. When they came back from the war, they kept shaving, partly because “we saw the rise of corporate America, along with the question, What did a corporate man look like?” The answer: beardless. “You had a whole generation of young men who became accustomed to shaving for the first time,” Edwards says. The armed forces required men to be clean-shaven for both hygienic and practical purposes: A shaved face ensured a close fit for a gas mask. World War I changed that, says fragrance historian Michael Edwards. Before the invention of the double-edged safety razor, men had to brave a barber shop to shave. To really understand why Old Spice became iconic, one must consider its historical context. Old Spice is the official scent of generations of American men, but what would it be like to wear it in 2021? Does it still smell good? I clicked "Buy Now" on Amazon to find out. Hell, it’s the actual Old Spice slogan: “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.” In the 80 years since its invention, Old Spice has become the object of pastiche, one of the rare brands, like Kleenex, Post-It, and Jacuzzi, that transcend the shop shelves and becomes shorthand for an entire category-or, in this case, a smell. I don’t think my grandfather actually wore Old Spice aftershave, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
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