To be (dis)continued: the story of the lost men's scents
Jules, for those who don't know, is a classic but almost impossible-to-find fragrance from the 1980s by Christian Dior, as well as being my all-time favourite man scent. How to describe it, apart from saying lamely that it's just, like, really nice? In my very well-thumbed copy of Perfumes: The Guide (Profile, £12.99), the authors and scent fiends Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez describe it as "one of the most adventurous, reckless fougères ever put together". "Its top note of sage on a background of cedar," they go on, "will either delight or shock depending on whether sage smells aromatic or urinous to you." Broad-minded and open to adventure as I am, I think I'll go with aromatic, thank you all the same, though colleagues sitting near me might beg to differ.
Aromatic and maddeningly elusive too, since Dior saw fit to stop selling Jules in Britain some time back in the 1990s, which means that to procure a bottle these days you have to travel to France (not cheap, obviously) or be prepared to engage in some furious bidding on eBay, where even part-used bottles of the stuff can now command about £60. I was reminded of this while I was shifting some bottles of aftershave from a cupboard into a new bathroom cabinet recently and landed upon a flacon of Jules that is, worryingly, just a few spritzes short of being completely empty.
