Product Recall: Drakkar Noir

February 10, 2023 Forever 35 Podcast

This week, we’re recalling a product that reeks of eau de school dance and might leave you with a small headache: Drakkar Noir. Join us as we discuss the fragrance that men had to have and women couldn’t get enough of, changed the landscape of scent ads, and paved the way for Axe Body Spray.

See this content in the original post

Mentioned in this Episode

Click here to shop all of Forever35's ShopMyShelf recs.

To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.

Visit forever35podcast.com for links to everything they mention on the show or shopmyshelf.us/forever35.

Follow the podcast on Instagram (@Forever35Podcast) and join the Forever35 Facebook Group (Password: Serums).

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

Transcript

Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.

Doree: And I am Doree Shafrir.

Kate: And we're not experts.

Doree: No. But we're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.

Kate: And today we are bringing you another episode of Product Recall. This is a weekly episode where we dig deeper into the history of an iconic product and its impact. And we are doing it every Friday here on Forever35.

Doree: And we are taking requests. So if there's a product you'd like us to recall, call or text us at (781) 591-0390, or email us at Forever35podcast@gmail.com.

Kate: You also can visit our website, Forever35Podcast for links to everything we mentioned on the show that includes in these product recall episodes. So if we reference a video or a source, they are all linked under the episode tabs.

Doree: We are not just reading Wikipedia articles. okay.

Kate: I mean we are, but we're linking to them and also doing a little more research than just that. But I'm not going to lie. It does start often at Wikipedia.

Doree: For sure. I know

Kate: You can also follow us on Instagram @Forever35podcast and join the Forever35 Facebook group where the password is serums. We've got our newsletter Forever35podcast.com/newsletter is where you go to sign up and you can shop products that we Love at shopmy.us/Forever35.

Doree: And Kate, I just want to remind everybody that our live show is less than two weeks away.

Kate: It's really happening.

Doree: It's really happening. It's on Wednesday, February 22nd at 5:00 PM Pacific, 8:00 PM Eastern. You can get your tickets at moment.co/Forever35. The tickets are $10. The show is also going to be available on demand for a week after it airs, which means if you can't make it live, you can still watch and enjoy. And there's also going to be an after party. So we're going to be getting kind of cozy with some final thoughts, some intensies

Kate: Some digital snuggling,

Doree: Digital snuggling,

Kate: But in a consensual, only consensual digital snuggling.

Doree: And that'll be at the after party in the hotel lounge, and you can get tickets for that as well. Those tickets are $5. And we will also be selling some exclusive Forever35 Live merch

Kate: Just at this event.

Doree: Just at this event. So if you want to get it on that, get your tickets now.

Kate: Doree, friendly reminder to all our New York listeners slash Tri-State area listeners, I will be appearing in a panel at the Strand Bookstore in New York City on February 15th. A link to that in the show notes. You can grab a ticket, come say hi. I'll sign your book. It'll be great.

Doree: It's very exciting.

Kate: It'll be great. I'll complain about how cold it is, and then I'll fly back to California, where I'll also be cold.

Doree: So Kate, what are we recalling today?

Kate: Doree, I'd like to start things off a little different today.

Doree: Okay. Okay.

Kate: I'm going to start things off honestly, with some mood, music justice. Really set the scene.

Doree: Alright, I'm ready.

Kate: Ready. Here we go. So Doree listeners, I want to take you back to 1992.

Doree: Okay. All right.

Kate: I'm in seventh grade.

Doree: Yep. Mm-hmm.

Kate: I'm at a middle school dance in my school's cafeteria. It smells like the chicken nuggets we had earlier today for lunch.

Doree: Okay.

Kate: I'm wearing a white turtleneck. Cuffed jeans.

Doree: Yep. Yep.

Kate: With scrunched white socks and penny loafers and inexplicably Doree. I am wearing a suit vest I borrowed from my dad.

Doree: Oh, okay.

Kate: True story, true outfit.

Doree: Great.

Kate: Now I'm five foot 10 at this point, Doree, and thus I'm taller than everyone in the room, including the teachers who are chaperoning. And now I want you to imagine as the Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch song ends and the DJ puts on a slow song like this. Couples begin melding their bodies together, swaying to the music and through the shadows, a petite young gentleman saunters up to me. He's wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt, tucked into his acid washed jeans, and his acid washed jeans are tucked into his Reebok pumps.

Doree: Oh My God.

Kate: And his hair is crusted and LA looks hair gel. And as he wraps his arms around my waist as the music plays, and I shift very awkwardly closer to him and rest my chin, on top of his head, I catch an overpowering whiff of quite possibly the most glorious thing I've ever smelled. And that is the Men's Cologne Drakkar Noir.

Doree: Oh baby.

Kate: The song goes on for 30 minutes.

Doree: Alright everyone. Wow.

Kate: Just let that sax take us away. So Doree, today on Product Recall, I am bringing you Drakkar Noir.

Doree: Oh Wow.

Kate: Doree's already overwhelmed by the smell that awaits her

Doree: I've overcome. I'm Overcome

Kate: Because I have a bottle of Drakkar Noir eau de toilette by Guy Laroche Paris in my hands. Now, I want to assume that not everyone knows what Drakkar Noir is. So this is a legendary sent for men. It was created in 1982, which makes it 41 years old.

Doree: Wow.

Kate: Yeah, it's an elder millennial at this point.

Doree: It is.

Kate: And it was created under the French brand Guy Laroche. Now the Perfume Mayor, it was a gentleman named Pierre Wargnye.

Doree: I have a question

Kate: Bring It.

Doree: Was Guy Laroche a real person?

Kate: You know what I believe so, but I didn't Google him. Yeah. He was a No. I did Google him. Guy Laroche was a real person. He was a French fashion designer. He died in the late eighties, but Dakkar had already been created at this point. Now, how influential was he in the actual creation of the specific scent? I don't know. Because it was created under the brand. And I actually think in kind of reading about the way sensor created, there are really these master perfume air creators who are, many of them are responsible for, I mean, they're like chemists. They are. They're creating sense. I mean, this guy Pierre, who created DRA Noir, he also worked on Pleasures for Men by Estee Lauder Lai Delo, which is by Eve St. Lauren, which apparently is a very, very well known and well loved men's scent. And also won by diesel called Only the Brave. So he was iconic in his own.

Doree: He had an iconic nose.

Kate: He did. And this is technically like a sibling fragrance to the original Drakkar, which was an ascent that was introduced in 1972, which you never hear about.

Doree: No. You just hear about Drakkar Noir

Kate: Noir. Now, I did not know this, but the name Drakkar is derived from a word drekar that means that's a type of Viking ship. So all

Doree: Interesting. Okay, so we're getting some imagery here.

Kate: Already we're invoking big beefy, white warrior men.

Doree: Manly. Yep. Yep.

Kate: We're invoking the ocean, body odor, wood, all those kinds. Which is interesting because this is actually not a woodsy scent. So, Drakarr Noir. According to this description, I read in a book on Google books called Sentence Aversion, you would identify Drakkar noir if you were categorizing it as a green scent. This is also known in the scent world as a fuer, which is French for Fern. Fuer is apparently a very well-known kind of olfactory category I had never heard of. I've heard Green scents, but I had never heard of Fuer, which I'm saying with a true American accent. So when people describe this in the many videos and reviews I watched to this green is often what comes up. Another word that people use to describe the smell is a barber shop. So it's got that kind of clean, almost astringent smell. But the way that it really differentiates it itself from the original scent Drakkar is that it also has tones of pettcholli and leather. Now, Fuer Sense, apparently, I'm not really familiar with men's sense. I have since watched many male scent reviewers online, and there are just so many fragrances and really famous ones. And I'm not familiar if a person walked by in a men's cologne, I wouldn't be able to identify it. I'm not even sure I could identify Drakkar. And this Drakkar noir, this is one I know. So it's part of this family of Fuer a green scent. So what ended up happening with Drakkar is that the advertising in the mid eighties for this scent really helped propel it to a kind of iconic status level. And what's interesting to me in kind of reviewing old ads from that time is how the advertising for Drakkar Noir coming out in 1987 really flipped the genre on its head. So what I want to do is I would like to share with you, Doree, a commercial from the earlier eighties, 1985 for a men's scent called Canoe. And we're going to watch that together. If you could describe to our listeners kind of what's happening.

Doree: Yes, sure.

Kate: And then we'll watch together a 1987 ad for Drakkar Noir. We'll describe that so you can really get a sense for what happens. Buckle up is all, I'm going to say

Commercial: Splash.

Doree: Okay. The very conventionally handsome, white, preppy guy in a canoe, literally a canoe going to a nightclub. And now he's in his bathroom getting ready and oh, now he's in black tie outfit. He's picking up his very pretty date and picking her up and putting her in the canoe. Now they're sailing away.

Kate: Both times the canoe was in the middle of the street.

Doree: Yes.

Kate: And you heard the music on that ad. You heard the music on that ad?

Doree: Yes. I did.

Kate: It was pretty goofy.

Doree: Yeah. Upbeat, cutesy.

Kate: I mean, it literally goes go by canoe dootdadoo

Doree: Yeah.

Kate: Well, Drakkar Noir was about to fuck that up. standby while I pull this up. Doree. Now this is the ad that Drakkar came out with that kind of changed everything. Again, your narration is appreciated. Okay.

Doree: Ski boot at an archer, a boxer, very, very boss man. Putting on a shirt, Very pretty woman in a evening gown, a lighter, Dice, A man in a tux

Commercial: Feel the Power, The sleek Drakkar Noir telephone, just $21.50 with any $16 purchase. available at Lazarus.

Kate: Okay.

Doree: It's much more kind of James Bond-y.

Kate: Ooh. That's a perfect way of describing it. So in the canoe ad we have this guy who showers then gets in a floating canoe, floats to a nightclub, but

Doree: But also he's dressed like he walked out of a John Hughes movie. He's in a collared shirt and a sweater, and he is blonde and he looks like a preppy co-ed

Kate: If you've ever seen the TV show Family Ties. He's a real Alex P Keaton who was like,

Doree: Wait, No, I completely disagree.

Kate: You don't think he's an Alex P Keaton.

Doree: Alex P Keaton was kind of a dork. The guy, the canoe guy is a hot jock.

Kate: So he is kind of like a frat boy from the early eighties.

Doree: Yes.

Kate: Okay. Alright. Okay. The Alex P Keaton fandom is going to come for you. So then we have Drakkar, which is black and white. Another thing to notice, except for when a woman runs on the street in a red lacy gown to this shirtless man who puts on a ski boot boxes, plays pool,

Doree: He's doing very cosmopolitan things.

Kate: So by 1991, Dakkar Noir was quote, this is from a New York Times article among Prestige Scents sold in department stores for $28 or more a bottle. Drakkar Noir is among the three top selling brands in the United States and number one in the world.

Doree: Wow.

Kate: Number one. Now, I took this to mean, when it says among the top selling three brands, I believe that scents across the board. So it's interesting to me, there's always been a market for men's colognes and men's scents, but this is kind of when it begins to reach peak scent time.

Doree: Yes. Now, Kate, before we go any further, let's take a break and because we have a lot more to discuss, so we'll be right back.

Kate: Oh, it never ends.

Doree: So before the break, you mentioned that in 1991, it was the number one scent in the world. And I mean, this kind of tracks for me because I was 14 in 1991, and I do, I mean, I remember becoming aware of Drakkar probably a couple years earlier when I was around seventh grade, when you were in seventh grade a couple years later. But that was when I first kind of feel like I noted boys wearing it. And so it had definitely already trickled down into, the middle school aged contingent. And what I don't know is like were people's dads wearing it.

Kate: That's really interesting because I ended up watching some YouTubers and Tiktoks about Drakkar. And a lot of them describe it as a lot of the younger people who I would assume are either younger millennials or Gen Z, describe it as a grandfather's cologne, which is fascinating to me, having grown up with the scent being worn by people my age. So I do think it is now looked upon in that way. I think at the time it became a cultural phenomenon because of the way in which it was advertising this idealized version of hyper-masculinity, this very narrow version of masculinity. And what I see in kind of looking at the brands that followed in its legacy is they continue to perpetuate this idea. And I think it starts, I'm sure it start, it started, it's been going on since inception. I think this came up when I was researching Noxzema and looking at their shaving cream ads. But the constant frame and point of view in advertising for these men, men's beauty products is that, women will want to fuck you. That is. That is the messaging over and over and over again. Whereas it's completely different on things marketed for women. So it's interesting also that you say that because I came across this piece in The Atlantic and it was Ta-nehisi Coates writing. He had written earlier, there had been a conversation on the Atlantic about AXE Body spray, a piece about axs. And in the comments people really started talking. And so he did a follow up kind of piece and mentioned Drakkar and then shared a comment that someone had written on the original piece. This was a commenter, they wrote, Drakkar is significant for me because it was my very first fragrance ever. I wore this when I was in college in the late eighties when Drak was what they called it was at the peak of popularity. The smell was everywhere back then, especially at college parties, which wreaked of the stuff I liked the way it smelled. But back then I didn't give a damn about fragrances. I wore Drakkar for one reason only, to meet girls.

Doree: Yeah. I think there was an affrodisical quality to Drakkar.

Kate: Yeah. I don't disagree. So what's kind of interesting, and we'll link to this ad, but the sound was quality is very weird. So we're not playing it, is that they start to shift. They recognize that there is a need to shift advertising that happens when they've kind of reached their peak in 1991. And actually in this article I was reading, this person, Robert, the Vice President in general manager Europe, Cosmo European Designer Fragrance Division, talks about kind of how the nineties man, he says the nineties man is somewhat different and less removed and detached as well as left se self-centered than the eighties, man. So they start changing the advertising. And the ad that comes out in 1992 features Stephanie Seymour, another Legend of the Supermodel era. And it still features this super hot ripped white man boxing. But then there is a film director who's also a super hot white man shooting the boxer. And Stephanie Seymour comes in and the story it's telling is that she is there for the older, more sophisticated director.

Doree: Oh, Interesting.

Kate: Although it's, when you watch it, and I've watched it five times to try to get the story right, it seems like she could be there for either dude.

Doree: Right.

Kate: But what I think the messaging they were trying to get across is that like, oh, no, no, no. Hold up. Drakkar is for the older sophisticated set,

Doree: Which I actually wonder if that was a misstep

Kate: Trying to,

Doree: Yeah, I wonder if they had done what AXE Body Spray later did.

Kate: Oh, we'll get there.

Doree: They might lasted longer. Cause I feel like they became a punchline by the end of the nineties.

Kate: Not only that, but they've, I mean, Drakkar Noir is still mentioned in pop culture as mostly as a punchline today. I watched a clip from, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that had Drakkar Noir punchline. It's a touchstone and a reference point, I think for a lot of folks who grew up in that time so much. And I'll play a little clip from a YouTuber in a bit, but a lot of, I watched this whole YouTube and the guy was like, this fragrance has made fun of a lot, and people talk a lot of shit about it. Let's find out what it's like. And then by the end, he's like, I actually really like this. So I think the reputation of Drakkar Noir has actually overshadowed

Doree: For sure.

Kate: The fragrance.

Doree: What you said about being, being a touchstone for a certain generation, I think is so true. And I told you this, Kate a couple days ago, because I saw a friend, a good friend of mine who is 10 years younger than me. I started the other day and I was telling her about this new series that we're doing, and she was asking what products we were going to be talking about. I said, oh, well, one of the ones that's coming up is about Drakkar Noir. And she was like, what's that? So she had never even heard of it. And this is a, well, she

Kate: Is well-versed in pop culture,

Doree: Well versed in pop culture person. And she is 10 years younger, which I think kind of jives with what we're saying. So she would've been in seventh grade in the late nineties, which by then Drakkar was gone from the cultural consciousness,

Kate: I think so. So what happens is you have, I think a bunch of imitators. So what happens is you have fragrances that kind of come out in the same feur air, scent family, and also that use the same angle of marketing. So you've got cool water, which I always think of as kind of,

Doree: Is that Acqua di Gio?

Kate: No, that's Armani.

Doree: Oh, okay.

Kate: Cool Water. Cool Water is by Cody. Oh, okay. And the ads feature the actor who later goes on to play Sawyer on Lost.

Doree: Oh, Interesting.

Kate: And they're similar. And a lot of the advertising, if you remember the old Calvin Klein advertising, I mean, we will probably do a product recall on CK one.

Doree: CK one.

Kate: Oh my God. But there was this kind of shift into black and white and this kind of sophisticated marketing.

Doree: But also that was kind of what Drakkar was doing in the eighties. Yes. That that initial ad that you showed me was in black and white and was leaning into being sophisticated.

Kate: I did just want to note, in that original ad I showed you from 1987, I didn't get to mention, my favorite part of that ad is that it's for this specific drugstore, oh, not drugstore specific department store where they're giving you a phone with purchase, a sleek black landline phone for an additional $20, which really made me chuckle.

Doree: I was curious about that because I feel like that could have just been a bumper. You know what I mean? And that was an ad that ran locally and different jurisdictions.

Kate: It did different things. It, and that's why I kept it on, because it just reminded me so much of the great department store culture. Totally. Of my mom coming home and she bought a lipstick at clinic and then got a bag of a million treasures.

Doree: Yeah.

Kate: Oh, okay. So what this I think leads to, and what I think the lineage that we need to see with Drakkar Noir is that this leads us to AXE Body Spray.

Doree: Oh baby.

Kate: And AXE Body spray is kind of a fucking nightmare. So AXE Body Spray came out in 2002. So for our friends who were in high school, middle school that time, this might be your fragrance, this Touchstone fragrance. So AXE, the brand has actually been around since the eighties, but in 2002, they launched AXE Body Spray, which was essentially, it was a scent that you could put on your body. It wasn't, but it wasn't a necessarily Cologne. It was kind of marketed as body deodorant. And it was, you could get it at the drugstore. It was a drugstore brand. Exactly. And AXE was specifically marketing to teenage boys who were spraying this all over their bodies. And in their defense, when you're a teenager, one, you don't never want to shower. And two, you smell weird.

Doree: Totally.

Kate: I don't blame any person who was putting AXE all over themselves. But what is interesting to me is the way that the AXE marketing is so, it reeks of the early aughts, like overt sexism, which I think kind of was all in this weird American pie genre of

Doree: Raunch

Kate: Raunch humor. And in the AXE commercials that I watched, I'm going to play one it's all so sexual. And in all these ads, women are whittled down to props like Arm candy and Fuck Dolls. But AXE really takes it to this weird new level because the way they are promoting their fra, this fragrance is basically using unquote dorky looking guys who then spray on AXE and then women lose their fucking minds. So I'm going to pray. I'm going to play you one final, and excuse me, I'm going to play you an AXE commercial front. This is from 2002. And the challenging thing with commercials is that there's not a lot of dialogue. So we do need to kind of

Doree: Yes, yes, yes.

Kate: Guide you. But again, these will be available on our website so you can gasp and horror at this nightmare too. So Doree, let me know when you're ready.

Doree: Oh, I'm ready.

Kate: Okay.

Doree: Okay. Hot man. Getting ready for work.

Commercial: AXE, deodorant, body spray for men

Kate: In his elevator. He was half shirtless. And now with dorky guys gotten in. And then a woman, the first guy has sprayed AXE on himself, so the elevator still smells and woman's getting turned on. She stops the elevator and has sex with the guy.

Doree: He kind of looks like Topper Grace.

Kate: And then another woman gets in, looks at him, she's going to also have sex with him.

Doree: So he's never leaving this elevator.

Kate: This man who didn't even, excuse me, this guy who didn't even spray the AXE on his body, it was the other man who got into the elevator with his shirt unbuttoned because he was so late for work or what have you, sprayed AXE. And then the smell lingered.

Doree: I was just going to say, that's the thing. That was the thing about AXE, the smell really lingered in the air.

Kate: Oh, it was almost offensive.

Doree: I mean, I would say it was offensive.

Kate: It was so much so AXE. By 2006, they had sold 71 million worth of product.

Doree: And you think that they kind of picked up the mantle of Drakkar?

Kate: Yes. I think Drakkar, and I'm, again, I am sure there were other scents that teen boys were spraying all over themselves prior to the mid eighties. But I think Drakkar kind of made it an accessible thing, even though it wasn't a quote, prestige fragrance. And then AXE kind of took it and ran with it. Right. Okay. Let's take a break.

Doree: Yes.

Kate: And then we'll be back with just a couple more tidbits.

Doree: Alright. Be right back. Okay, we're back.

Kate: So the thing that's really kind of interesting to me is that Drakkar still sells. I could not for the life of me find current sales, roundups for drakkar and how much,

Doree: But you can still buy it.

Kate: Oh, it's everywhere. And I think people still wear it. And I have a bottle in my hand that you and I are going to smell. Do you want to grab paper towels so we can spray it on there so we don't give ourselves headaches?

Doree: No. I want to spray it all over your office.

Kate: Doree. Sorry. Pause. Sorry to make you get up and get the paper towels. But let's do it this. There we go. Perfect. So this what was so interesting to me about. Joy. Oh God. Ooh. Smells good. It does have that barbershop, kind of man's barbershop smell.

Doree: Oh yeah,

Kate: Right. It's not bad.

Doree: It's like not how I remember it.

Kate: I, I'm not going to lie. It's actually kind of nice

Doree: Now that it's settling,

Kate: Waving this and

Doree: Now it's a little bit more what I remember.

Kate: Oh, it's not bad. No, it's not bad. And in fact, I would dare to say that if I canoodled with someone wearing, I wouldn't be like, Ugh, Drakkar Noir. I'd like. You smell nice.

Doree: Okay. Yeah. So I like it.

Kate: I like it too. So I do think that the scent,

Doree: Are you going to get it for Anthony?

Kate: Anthony has never worn a fragrance.

Doree: Oh, okay.

Kate: So I could just leave this for him on his bedside table.

Doree: Do you think he knows what it is?

Kate: Oh my gosh. I'm sure. And it's possible. He might have even had it. I, I didn't know him then.

Doree: Right. Totally.

Kate: Here's what this fragrance reviewer fragrance hunter on YouTube said after doing a whole segment on Drakkar Noir.

Commercial: Pretty much, I do think this fragrance does get a lot of hate. I don't know if it's because it's been overdone or what, or if they just hate the scent profile in general. But to me guys, I actually do not hate this fragrance. I actually quite enjoy it. It is kind of a different fuer fragrance kind of unique in my collection. At least. I'm sure this fragrance has been clone many, many times.

Doree: So see that's the thing. I feel like, yes, I do feel like the notes of this fragrance show up a lot in contemporary fragrances.

Kate: Well, and I think this kind of green Family of Sense is a very popular smell for men's fragrance and for women's. Again, fragrance has come to the point now where so much of it is genderless.

Doree: Yes, totally.

Kate: We're talking about men's fragrance, which was really, it's almost using it in that, framing it in that way is dated. The other interesting thing to me that I did not know is that Drake got a tattoo of a Drakkar noir bottle in 2017. It is allegedly a fragrance that he wears and loves.

Doree: Wow.

Kate: And I didn't know this either. His original Twitter handle was Drakkar D Noir @DrakkarDNoir.

Doree: Now Drake is 42. How old is Drake?

Kate: Drake is ageless.

Actually He's only 36. Huh? He's much younger than I thought he was. That's interesting. Because he's basically the same age as my friend who had never heard of it.

Doree: Well, possibly. I would love to hear from mask folks who grew up in that time. And if this was aspirational, if this was one of those products that made you feel like if you had it, quote.dot. If it was one of those aspirational products, which I mean, again, totally every product is positioned as aspirational, I think. But it was not quite as accessible as, like you said, AXE, which you could just get at CVS

Right

Kate: Now. I did order this, I'm pretty sure from Walmart. So. It's not only a fancy department store brand. So Doree, that is,

Doree: Wow.

Kate: That is the journey of Drakkar Noir. I'm not going to lie. I'm starting to get a headache from the smell in here.

Doree: Are you?

Kate: A little bit, and I like scents. But it's starting to kind of hit me in that weird part of your brain where you're like, ugh. Mm-hmm. Kind of nauseous.

Doree: Yeah. That is another thing that I remember about it. And actually the that I think is something that AXE Body Spray commercial really brings home, which is Drakkar was strong. It was a strong scent. You did not have to spray a lot of it to have it feel like very overpowering. It was a very intense scent. And I feel like it stayed, it had great staying power.

Kate: Well, and it also kind of created this practice of dousing yourself.

Doree: In Cologne.

Kate: In Cologne. And I wonder if that crosses over from the way after Shave is used.

Doree: Oh, interesting.

Kate: I just had these vivid memories of my grandfather's aftershave. And you'd like s It'd be all over his face.

Doree: Yes, yes, yes. Were there other Drakkar products? Did they make an aftershave? Did they make a soap? They, cause I feel like today everything is a million different things.

Kate: That's a great question. I think you can get some sort of body wash. I'm not sure. Let me actually just see.

Doree: Now imagine washing your body in Drakkar.

Kate: There's a body spray. I don't know if there actually is a soap. There's deodorant. It looks like

Doree: There's Drakkar deodorant.

Kate: Yea. Which I bet, see that actually would be, I would be more into, because then you get the kind of smell mixed with the must. The must? The Musk.

Doree: Musk,

Kate: the must, the dusty armpit. Let's see, there's also, yeah, it looks like there have been products, I'm sure at the time,

Doree: Would you light a Drakkar candle?

Kate: So here's a question for you. I don't think I would light a Drakkar Noir candle. Would I light a Le Labo? If the Dakkar candle had a Le Labo sticker on it, would I light it? How much of our feelings about things like drakkar noir now are just lingering judgments?

Doree: I mean, that's branding, right?

Kate: If you bottled this scent, put it in like what's a fancy candle? Like a dip tea candle? Yeah.

Doree: Well that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that the notes of this fragrance,

Kate: yeah, they're not bad.

Doree: They're not dissimilar to other ones that I have smelled. It's not something that's totally outside the norm.

Kate: And I actually think the bottling of this, so it's in a very small, kind of thin black bottle, matte black with just Drakkar Noid written in white. It's actually kind of sophisticated and sleek looking and kind of in line with a lot of the way brands do their marketing. Now you were ahead of your time Drakkar Noir. You were ahead of your time. And yet also behind

Doree: Well Kate, I have learned a lot. Thank you for taking me down this road.

Kate: If anyone wears Drakkar Noir now or knows someone who does, I would love to hear from you about your thoughts on the brand.

Doree: Yeah. Or if you have memories about Drakkar.

Kate: Oh yeah. Were you also five foot 10 at a middle school dance in seventh grade? You know what? For that intro, Doree, I kind of created a fantasy in which I was asked to dance most of the time. I wasn't asked to dance.

Doree: Oh, so that person was not real?

Kate: No, he was made up in my head, kind of based on Mark Paul Gosselaar.

Doree: So basically you just took us to Kate's middle school Dance Fantasy.

Kate: Yeah. My fantasy. Middle. Yeah, my middle dance fantasy.

Doree: Alright. Noted.

Kate: I'll work on that.

Doree: Alright everyone,

Kate: Thanks for listening. Bye.