It's fascinating for me to imagine this fragrance being worn in the mid-to-late 1960's. I'm a child of the 80's, so I can only look back and wonder how people reacted to Aramis when it first hit shelves. Was it shocking, bold, and daring? What sort of person wore it?
I ask these things because Aramis strikes me as a scent that should be very comfortable in the company of the typically bombastic fragrances of the 1980's. Aramis is an exclamation point, not at all shy, and even a bit challenging to some noses. Mine in particular.
When I first smelled Aramis, it was the early 1990's and I was very into fragrances like Obsession, Eternity, Escape, Cool Water, Giorgio for Men, Azzaro, and Fahrenheit. The unifying theme in those scents is that they all have a sweet edge, to some degree at least. Aramis, to my nose at the time, had no sweetness at all.
In fact, on the contrary, Aramis was sour. It smelled like armpit sweat to me. I hated it, and even though I'd come back to it every few years and see if maybe I was just misremembering how bad it was, I never liked it. If you had asked me at any point from 1989 through 2016 what my all-time least favorite cologne was, I would have said Aramis.
And then I tried it again in 2017, and I can't get enough of this stuff. The sour note there is no doubt coming (partly, at least) from the bergamot citrus element, and the way that element is woven together with the bitter edges of the sage, vetiver, and moss. A bit of patchouli lightens things up just a bit, but that bitterly sour shape is still there.
Perhaps the newer formulas dial up the patchouli a bit more than in the original recipe. I don't know. I just know that I enjoy this mixture now, in the way that I might enjoy a sour lemon candy precisely because it is sour, and I like the way it makes my mouth water.
Aramis is sort of like that. It's not for everyday use, in my opinion. It's not for work, or even necessarily for a date. But once in a while, maybe for the kind of party that requires a suit and tie, or perhaps for an evening spent alone in front of a fireplace, Aramis could be a nice choice.
7/10 stars.
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