Revisiting ‘80s Fragrances
Meet the 25-year-old who collects 50-year-old perfume.
Hi WNVM-ers,
It’s Cheryl here, and this week I slid into the DMs of a member of the Gen Z ‘80s fan community to chat with him about how and why he got into collecting fragrances from the era. Hopefully these scent names will bring you back to a good place. (I stuffed it full of old perfume ads, too, so happy nostalgia diving!)
Then, J.Lo is making the press rounds, and Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have a big fight on their hands.
Per usual, you may need to read the entire newsletter in your browser. And, if you’re feeling generous and happy in your cloud of Exclamation, please give us a heart at the bottom of the post.
A Scent and a Sound, I’m Lost and I’m Found
By Cheryl
If I were to ask you the first scent you wore, I bet you could name it instantly — and, as soon as you do, conjure up the smell. For me, it was flowery Anais Anais, which I thought made me the most sophisticated 7th grader at my Chicago Catholic school, an easily disputed delusion. My best friend wore Lauren by Ralph Lauren, in the chunky dark purple cube. I can still smell that one, too. The nature of scent is that it’s indelibly mixed up with memory.
That’s why I was dying to talk to Roman, a 25-year-old who collects 50-year-old fragrances. He’s part of the community of Gen Z ‘80s enthusiasts — like Violet Sky, who I profiled in our very first issue — who are chasing after nostalgia for a time they never lived through. (I adore them and we must protect them at all costs.) He relies on our memories to help him understand the scents.
Roman owns about 200 vintage fragrances, like Exclamation (or Ex`cla-ma`tion, as it styles itself), Love’s Baby Soft, Charlie, Halston, Camp Beverly Hills (with that little chain!), and all the others whose essences floated down our high school hallways. He posts about them under the handle @8tracktape to his over 17,000 Instagram followers and 33,500 TikTok followers, mostly Gen X-ers.
Roman first got interested in the ‘80s when he was about the same age as I was when I started stealing my mom’s Jean Naté.
“Things like [the video for] ‘Last Friday Night’ by Katy Perry had a very romanticized ‘80s aesthetic to it,” he says. That song was released in 2011, when he was 11. “And a lot of the songs had ‘80s motifs in them — callbacks to the ‘80s, sampling ‘80s songs. And it just made me start romanticizing the ‘80s as a kid.”
For a while, he ran a “Jem and the Holograms” fan account. He collects tech from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and his two most popular videos are his demos of an old-school sliding credit card machine and a laser disc/projection TV set-up. He also owns a classic car, a 1959 Edsel, and collects ‘80s bedding. But fragrances are his passion at the moment, mostly from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s. Roman had owned Debbie Gibson’s Electric Youth fragrance before he started collecting in earnest, because he was a fan of hers. But Halston was his gateway vintage perfume. He was inspired to pick up a bottle after watching the “Halston” miniseries on Netflix.
“I got it, and I kind of fell in love with retro scents. And then my mom would tell me about all the scents she wore,” he says. He brought home a bottle of Charlie from a vintage shop and showed her a picture of a classic red triangular Liz Claiborne perfume that he’d seen. She said to him, “Oh my god, you didn’t get that? I had that one. Everyone had that one!” So he went back and bought it. (Who also had the logo purse? It had a stranglehold on my high school.)
Roman sources fragrances from Facebook Marketplace, vintage stores, eBay, and estate sales. He says bottles average about $15-$20 each, but the rare ones can fetch hundreds of dollars. Some fragrances have been discontinued, and some return in zombie form, with new formulations and wonky packaging. So the originals are always desirable.
It turns out that my old bff’s fave, Lauren, is a rare find. Roman has an empty bottle of it, but still hasn’t found a deal on one with some juice still inside. I found one listed for $695 on eBay. First by Van Cleef and Arpels is still around, but hard to find, so the vintage versions are popular with collectors. Most surprisingly to me, some early ‘90s drugstore scents, like Tribe by Coty and Malibu Musk, are also rarities; I saw Tribe for $200 on eBay. Roman’s own lowbrow rarity that he scored recently? Evil by Elvira, released in 1990, which he spotted in a larger lot someone was trying to sell on Facebook.
Roman’s Gen X fans help guide a lot of his purchasing and contribute to his knowledge.
“I love getting to meet people and talk about their fragrances. I love putting context to these fragrances,” he says. “People are like, ‘All the cheerleaders wore Primo!’ or ‘Poison was big in my high school’ or ‘I used to steal my sister’s Exclamation!’ It’s really cool getting to connect people to all these fragrances.”
Thanks to crowdsourcing like this, he made a video about the most popular ‘80s middle school and high school brands:
It features both Giorgio Beverly Hills and its Designer Imposter version, Primo. As an aside, the best piece I’ve ever read about Giorgio comes courtesy of Rachel Syme, a current New Yorker writer and longtime fragrance aficionado. In 2019, she wrote in her Substack newsletter, The Drydown, about the fascinating marketing techniques that launched it into Reagan-era ubiquity. It was the first perfume to use magazine tester strips.
Roman also told me that he went in search of Babe, by Fabergé because a follower had asked him to find it. That one’s famous for being on the vanity of my very cool older next door neighbor in the ‘70s, and also because ads for the classic drugstore scent in the ginormous bottle featured Margaux Hemingway. She was the first model to be paid $1 million for a fragrance campaign. It’s another one that goes for over $200 on eBay, but Roman found his for $25 on Facebook. “I wore it, I took a shower, and the next day I woke up and it was still strong on me. I could not believe it,” he says. Bring back Babe, you cowards!
In the ‘80s fragrance community now, some of the same fragrance conversations we were having in the olden times are still happening. One scent in particular draws some strong opinions.
“A lot of the people are like, ‘Oh, yuck. I hated that scent.’ That would be Calyx by Prescriptives1,” Roman says. “That’s one of the craziest ‘80s scents. It is unlike anything else I’ve ever smelled. It’s just such a weird scent.” Fun fact: Perfumer/nose Sophia Grojsman is behind both Calyx and Exclamation, as well as Vanderbilt, Eternity, Beautiful, Trésor, and tons more. A legend.
Roman is on the hunt for men’s fragrances, too, but it’s trickier.
“Women had millions of scents. [For] men, it was either Polo or Drakkar Noir,” he says. But he’s discovering more beyond the Big Two. He’s picked up Obsession for Men, Giorgio Beverly Hills for Men, and is looking for an affordable Fahrenheit by Dior.
He also recently grabbed Brut’s Hai Karate aftershave, which I had never heard of. Launched in 1967, it apparently came with instructions on how to fend off women using martial arts. Its marketing was definitely culturally appropriative, as you can see in this 1970 commercial. It’s also really campy, the precursor to Axe’s hypermasculine ads, which I wrote about a few years ago. The daughter of the original perfumer relaunched it recently.
I was also really curious about whether the fragrances actually held up after being kept for decades in people’s bathrooms. Roman said some are pristine, and others definitely are compromised. Citrus top notes are notorious for going off, but he says sometimes he will spray a scent that smells like pure alcohol or seems rancid at first whiff. But then the drydown reveals the beautiful original base notes of the fragrance. You just need to get past the funk.
Roman appreciates how different the fragrances of yore are compared to the sweet, baked-goods notes, like vanilla and caramel, that are popular with young people now.
“You can’t judge [vintage perfume] based on what we like now, because it’s just from a different time,” he says. “And in a way, it’s really like time traveling.”
We are two Gen X journalists who celebrate people of our generation doing cool things, as well as analyze all the ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia in current pop culture, fashion, and beauty. Read more stories like this one here!
You Oughta Know
The best headline to come out of this break-up news: “Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban Begin Arduous Task of Dividing Up Their Hair Straighteners.” (OK fine, it’s from the Australian version of The Onion.) -CW [The Betoota Advocate]
Unfortunately, though, this is a headline from a real story: “Student-Loan Debt Is Strangling Gen X.” -CW [WSJ]
The stars have aligned and my queen Jennifer Lopez stopped by Las Culturistas to chat with Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers about Kiss of the Spider Woman — which I loved! — and I can’t wait to hear her IDTSH. -FSH [Las Culturistas]
I looked into the origins and appeal of those ‘90s-inspired bootleg t-shirts — like the “Bertha Russell” one that Morgan Spector from “The Gilded Age” wore sans pants. My findings were really interesting, and sometimes surprising, and the continuing popularity threads back to the ‘90s spirit of the originals. (Plus, a sweet Matt Damon and Ben Affleck story.) -FSH [Gloria]
Michael Mann’s follow-up to his 1995 classic, Heat 2, is picking up steam and word on the street: Leonardo Di Caprio is in early talks to play Chris Shiherlis, the role originated by the late Val Kilmer. Far be it for me to skip over a Gen X-er for a Millennial, but Austin Butler is the clear heir apparent to play the self-destructive, romantic outlaw. (Rewatch Heat!) -FSH [Deadline]
“Stranger Things” kid (he’s also a musician), Finn Wolfhard, is adapting the 2016 Replacements biography, Trouble Boys, into a film. -CW [Spin]
Does anyone remember the original Colors by Benetton? Apparently it was since reformulated and now discontinued. I’m obsessed with finding it!
Omg what a walk (or a sniff?) down memory lane! I had Exclamation and Anais Anais but my favorite was the Laura Ashley perfume in the floral bottle. I kept the empty and the bottle still smells like sweet sweet middle school angst 😂