I was browsing in a Paris antique shop one winter afternoon when a fitted leather train case caught my eye.

It contained silver-handled brushes, boot hooks, a straight razor, several silver-stoppered glass bottles...

One bottle was different. Encased in yew-wood, with a handwritten date: 1903.

Inside the bottle, there was still the faint, intriguing aroma of a gentleman's cologne. A "prescription" cologne, custom-made for a rich traveler a century ago.

Curiosity was eating at me.

I bought the case (the price was shocking) and sent the bottle to a laboratory for analysis. They broke down the residue by gas chromatography. Identified its fingerprint through spectro-photometry.
The report said: an “old woody fougère.” Clean citrus notes, bergamot, “green notes.” The middle notes: clary sage…cardamom. The dry-down: leather notes, smoky labdanum…elemi, tabac, frankincense.

The detective work was impressive.

So is the thing itself.

Women like the way it smells on a man. Like a symphony that begins loudly, then soon slides into subtle, entangling developments that grow on them.

Or so I've been told.

1903 Gift Set (N^o. 2500). He'll appreciate the bottle-green Bentley, but you can't get by with just one gift, can you? Balance things out with this boxed collection of 1903 Spray Cologne, After Shave Balm, and Shaving Cream, plus my Badger Shaving Brush. Everything needed to start days off on the right foot for months to come, at a saving of 20 per cent off what you'd pay for the items individually.
Can not be shipped internationally.