Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.

Today is Friday, April 25, and we had a lovely Easter with family last Sunday. My husband’s brother, his wife, their older daughter, her husband and their baby joined us and our three children, so it was quite festive. The roses in my garden cooperated by producing many blooms, and the weather cooperated by staying sunny!

I don’t normally comment much here about masculine fragrances, because my own taste and collection are much more floral than most “masculine” scents (which anyone can wear, of course). But our twenty-something son was wearing a fragrance he had requested and I gave him for Christmas, and he smelled so good! It is Azzaro’s The Most Wanted Parfum, and it came out in 2022. I don’t know who the perfumer is. Top accord is ginger, middle accord is “woody notes”, and the base is Bourbon vanilla. It smells warm and just a bit spicy, with soft sillage. Downright cuddly, without being sweet.

I’m very happy that our son has developed a nose for nice fragrance. He only has a couple, that he wears in rotation depending on his mood and the occasion, but he always smells appropriately nice, in a preppy sort of way. His first fragrance, which I picked out for him, was Davidoff’s Cool Water, which suited him as a teenager (and he could afford to buy it himself if he wanted to, an important consideration). He still wears Chanel’s Paris-Edimbourg. And now he has The Most Wanted. I just wish its bottle wasn’t made to look like the chamber of a revolver, sigh.

Do you have any recent new favorites among more masculine-leaning scents?