Designing Your Own Custom Scent Is Harder Than It Sounds

About a month ago, I did a cologne purge. I wear fragrance every day and consider it a treat, but I’d noticed that a few of the dozen or so bottles in my collection had grown seriously dusty. So I retested them, reminding myself what the unused ones smelled like and noting how my taste has evolved.

I realized I had to toss the classics: CK One, Burberry Brit, John Varvatos, and Bang by Marc Jacobs. Like Acqua di Giò and Drakkar Noir before them, these were mass colognes marketed to boys who wanted desperately to smell like men—or at least an imaginary, magazine version of a man.