The Cologne Blind Buy That My Wife Called 'Aggressive'

I fell down the fragrance YouTube rabbit hole. This is a thing that exists — thousands of videos of men holding bottles and saying words like 'projection,' 'beast mode sillage,' and 'compliment getter.' After watching 30 minutes of a guy named something like 'Jeremy Fragrance' tell me Versace Pour Homme was a 'must-have,' I bought a full 3.4oz bottle for $62. Without smelling it.

This is called a 'blind buy' in the fragrance community. It's exactly as smart as it sounds. You spend $62 on a liquid based on the recommendation of a man on the internet who has never met you, doesn't know what you smell like naturally, and makes money selling you fragrance.

The Versace arrived. I sprayed it on. It smelled... fine? Fresh. Mediterranean. Like if a lemon had a LinkedIn profile. I wore it to dinner. My wife leaned in, wrinkled her nose, and said 'that's aggressive.' Not 'you smell nice.' Not 'what is that?' Just: aggressive.

Sixty-two dollars of aggressive.

Cologne sample sets exist. Ten samples for $30. You spray one each day. You find out what you like, what your partner likes, what your skin chemistry does to different fragrances (this is a real thing — the same cologne smells different on different people). Then you buy a full bottle of the winner.

I blind-bought a full bottle based on YouTube. My wife thinks I smell aggressive. I have 85% of a bottle of Versace Pour Homme sitting in my bathroom cabinet. I've used it twice. That's $31 per use for a scent my wife doesn't like.

I research companies for months before investing. I watched one YouTube video before buying cologne.