For many men, the quest to find the ultimate personalized fragrance is unending. They know all about colognes, expensive and otherwise. They also go into this project with boundless curiosity, well aware of how much they’ll benefit from getting it right with the best men’s colognes, both personally and professionally.
In addition, they’re often actively involved in exploring food-based colognes and scents. This can open up a whole new world of personalized fragrances, so it’s well worth taking a closer look to see what works and how far you might want to go in your explorations.
Spices are a staple in the world of scents
Let’s start by dispelling one of the most common myths about food-based scents—they’re not new. Not by a long shot. They’ve been around for a long time, and many of the fragrance formulas are getting a lot more sophisticated.
Think about spices, for example, like vanilla and cinnamon. Vanilla might be considered, rather um, vanilla as a flavor, but as a fragrance, it plays a variety of roles. It’s obviously sweet and inviting, but vanilla also has calming properties, and it plays a vital role in fragrances like Dior Homme Intense and Yves Saint Laurent La Nuit de L’Homme.
Cinnamon isn’t quite as ubiquitous, but there are intriguing choices here, too. Consider La Nuit de L’Homme, which also features cinnamon and cardamom, or Carolina Herrera CH Men Prive, which adds whiskey and leather to the cinnamon/cardamom combination.
The sweeter side: chocolate, honey and caramel
For those who want to explore the sweeter side of food scents, what better way to do it than by trying these possibilities? Rochas Man combines chocolate and honey, adding coffee and vanilla to the fragrance formula, along with lavender to balance out the sweetness.
Similarly, Thierry Mugler A*Men puts caramel up front in a bold and daring way, adding coffee and patchouli to add earthiness and balance the scent combinations.
The universal appeal of coffee as a scent
If you’ve noticed that several of the fragrances above add coffee to the mix, you’re on the right track about what we’ll cover in this section. The basic scent of coffee has a well-established universal appeal, and it’s long been used as part of some of the most popular scent mixes.
To wit: Coffee plays a foundational role in Yves Saint Laurent’s Black Opium Eau de Perfume Intense. The other players in that particular scent include vanilla, orange blossom, and absinthe, with coffee playing an earthier role.
The aforementioned Rochas Man includes a variation where coffee is combined with vanilla and lavender, with sandalwood lending an assist to help provide an earthy anchor.
Burgers and donuts. . . really?
Yup.
This is the fun stuff. If you’re willing to venture further out toward the end of the Bell curve in your food scent explorations, none other than Burger King offers a scent called “Flame” that invokes. . .the scent of a flame-grilled burger. It’s a great novelty fragrance, but you may have to do a bit of hunting to find it, as it tends to be launched periodically in limited quantities.
Let’s switch gears a little. Okay, maybe a lot. If donuts are your go-to dessert item here—or if you simply love them all the time—Demeter has a scent concoction called “Glazed Donut” that combines the smell of sweet dough and a sugar glaze with basic vanilla.
Finally, Dunkin’ Donuts has also gotten in the act with its Boston creme donut scent, which is another one of those limited-offer scents that’s worth hunting down if you’re a fan and you’re intrigued.
Sushi and celery and peppers, oh my!
Demeter also offers a timeless ode to the appeal of sushi with Demeter Sushi Cologne, which adds rice and citrus scents to balance the seaweed and sushi to keep you from smelling like you’ve been moonlighting on a fishing boat.
Celery can be part of a more herbal scent. One example might be Caron Yatagan, which combines celery, pine, musk, and patchouli, with pine providing the woody grounding.
Pepper has long been a part of many men’s fragrance formulas, but the idea of a roasted pepper scent takes this concept one step further. Azzaro Hot Pepper, for instance, combines pepper and red berries, then adds cashmeran to create a warmer version of the basic pepper scent.
Celebrity mayonnaise??
No mention of food-based scents would be complete without an oddball celebrity scent, and in that spirit, we bring you Will Levis, the quarterback for the Tennessee Titans. Levis, who apparently adds mayonnaise to his coffee, upped the ante with Will Levis No. 8, which includes tart lemon, some coffee undertones, vanilla, and what’s described as a “mayonnaise accord.”
The good news is it’s only $8 a bottle, which makes it appealing as a novelty. The quarterback’s zen mayo commercials have gone viral, but you’d better get it fast when the next batch comes out, as Levis’s career has basically cratered after a bad season this year.
