What Fragrances Did the Men of the Golden Age Wear? | Steve McQueen. The King of Cool Wore Nothing

I once bought a man a bottle of something French and watched him hold it like it might go off, so I told him it was aftershave. It was not aftershave. It was perfume, and I lied to his face to let him wear it, and I have been thinking about that lie for thirty years. The men of Hollywood's Golden Age did not wear perfume. They wore an alibi, the same liquid as a woman's scent renamed so no man had to admit he scented himself for pleasure. Like the Decade episodes, I build this through five forces, but this time each force gets the one star who carries it best. Steve McQueen, who wore nothing at all, opens the psychological force, the armoured male body in a decade when the new naturalistic men were putting the male wound on screen. Cary Grant, the most invented man in Hollywood, carries the political force and the Lavender Scare, the years when a refined, fragrant man was a security category and his Acqua di Parma was an alibi with the excuse sewn in. Frank Sinatra, the free agent who outlived the studio collapse by becoming his own corporation, carries the economic force, with Clark Gable as the studio-made god he replaced. Elvis and his drugstore Old Spice carry the social force and the 1964 moment when Brut and Aramis split men by class in a single year. James Bond, who never wore a thing in Ian Fleming's text, carries the cultural force and the collapse of the censor. Then Marlene Dietrich walks on with a man's leather and aims it, and the whole thing inverts. The men panic. The women aim. #theperfumedperspective #perfumepsychology #stevemcqueen #aramis #acquadiparma 0:00 I taught a man shame 0:46 The lie: perfume for her, aftershave for him 1:55 The Rule — and the barbershop temple 3:40 Steve McQueen wore nothing 7:30 Cary Grant and the Lavender Scare 11:20 Frank Sinatra, the man who became his own brand 15:00 Elvis, Old Spice, and the 1964 class fork 18:40 James Bond never wore a thing 22:00 The inversion: Marlene Dietrich takes aim 24:00 The alibi never ended niche perfume, fragrance review, perfume psychology, fragrance education, smell and memory, perfume history, fragrance industry, olfactory science, fragrance chemistry, perfume culture, reformulation, niche fragrance, fragrance analysis, perfume analysis, fragrance community, luxury fragrance, independent perfumery, fragrance ingredients, perfume ingredients, natural perfumery