First Published on Riddle.com

The Sweet Airs of Autumn

There are not that many opportunities in life where one can do something to significantly change the first impression one gives on people. Height and voice are pretty much out of your hands so outside of dressing outrageously or growing some very ill advised follicles there is really just the way you smell. Considering most people are quite happy to admit that smells have a stronger effect on conjuring a memory than any of the other senses it is curious how often men have a laissez-faire or even acrimonious relationship with cologne.

Cologne has had a bit of an image problem over the last few decades to be fair, perhaps due to the outrageous monotony and stupidity of cologne ads. Everyone has invariably seen one: overpaid actors wandering around a desert or staring meaningfully out of a skyscraper window whilst indescribably generic music plays and the protagonist sighs. This before a woman, supernaturally possessed by desire like a rabbit in a bad Roger Moore film, wraps herself around said overpaid actor, camera fades out and for some reason that is supposed to make you want to smell nice and not make you want to just give up on what is evidently a completely futile existence.

It may also be that the whole word cologne just sounds a bit outdated, a bit 70s but less “The Get Down” and a little more The BBC, like dark velvet and paisley curtains. However there are still a few people sticking their well honed noses and well trained eyes into the cologne market to make something altogether more appealing and less mass produced than what you are going to find in an airport.

We've gathered together some of the most appealing, slightly autumnal scents, from perfumeries making wonderful scents and that won't be showing up on every high street.

D. S. & Durga – Burning Barbershop

Founded in Brooklyn around 2000 or “The turn of the century” as the slightly perplexingly write on their website D S & Durga is the brainchild of two people with a vision of transposing memory, item and thought into scent. Whether you really see it probably has quite a lot to do with the power o suggestion but you knowing the name of this one you would be in no doubt as to its origins. A highly woody and distinctively burnt smell, this is a truly intriguing perfume, unlike any other I have come across.

Frederick Malle – Monsieur

As would befit it's maker this is an upstanding, well crafted and elegant perfume masculine but not overpowering, incredibly well balanced and somehow familiar. Frederick Malle is the grandson of one of Frances most revered perfumers, and that is saying rather a lot in France, his Grandson now may be coming close to the same title with his eponymous house produces series of editions de parfume rather than a house style with possibly the greatest motto I have ever come across on a company's website: Out of respect for both clients and perfumers, Frédéric Malle is not interested in ephemeral creations.

Carved Oud- Thameen

Oud wood is something of an acquired taste, a strong, woody scent which seems stay indefinitely and can be overpowering. This offering from Thameen however has an unusual and appealing sweetness to it and doesn't come across as too traditional an oud which can be slightly too souk to be particularly chic. Having said that the scents are inspired by founder Basel Binjabr's boyhood trips to the perfume sellers of Saudi Arabia, but what he has chosen to do with them shows

Haeckels – 23.5 Rose

This offering from the much talked Haeckels: a brand which is very much at the forefront, at least in Britain, of changing the way we consider perfumes and skin care products. Aesthetically sharing a fair similarity with Le Labo, it's shop in Margate has become something of a Margate pilgrimage, falling somewhere in between Dreamland and The Turner Gallery, utilising both the fantastical British nostalgia for yesteryear in many of it's scents and a genuine, studied quality in their execution. Rose 23.5 is very pleasant, a strong, woody and again slightly burnt initial scent gives way to what is very much a rose tinted after glow, very unisex and very impressive.

Atelier Cologne – Tobacco Nuit