How to choose a fragrance for your dad (or another special man in your life)

It’s a timeless conundrum: you want to celebrate the father in your life by buying him a fragrance.

But which scent do you buy?

The selection is dizzying. And there are so many metrics by which to judge a scent. Do you go for the fastest-selling fragrance in Australia of all time? (That would be Thirst, by Victoria Bitter – yes, that VB – which is housed in a bottle shaped like a stubby, apparently smells both like “bitter citrus” and “icy”, and sold 25,000 bottles in 72 hours when it was released last year. $19.95 for 75ml, Chemist Warehouse.) Or do you go for what your dad’s idol once wore? Like iconic 1960s gospel singer Bobby Womack who wore Estee Lauder Cologne because, as he once said: “[Twistin’ The Night Away singer] Sam Cooke always wore it”?

“I would think about what kind of compliment would he want from his scent,” says Samantha Copland, a scent designer and CEO of Perfume Playground, which runs courses to teach people how to make their own custom fragrances. “[Men frequently] either want a compliment for being rich and earthy, or for being fresh and clean. [So] think about what you want your dad to feel like, and then go for what kinds of scents actually match up with those.”

Popular earthy scents include OUD by Maison Francis Kurkdjian ($351 for 70ml, Mecca), and, Tom Ford Ombre Leather ($200 for 50ml, Mecca). Best-selling fresh and clean scents – which often evoke the scent of clean laundry, the air, or the ocean and often include notes of bergamot, mandarin and lime – include: Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue Pour Homme, ($104 for 75ml, David Jones), and Jo Malone Sage & Sea Salt, ($212 for 100ml, David Jones).

Another fail-safe approach, says Laura Curtis, fragrance education manager at Mecca, is to think about what type of scents the man you’re buying for has long gravitated to. “Most people are drawn to the same fragrance families throughout their lifetime,” says Curtis, listing off the most common ones: florals, woods, fresh fragrances or amber fragrances. “You can just guess that it’s probably to do with their scent memories that they formed at a young age. Maybe their grandmother used to bake them beautiful cinnamon doughnuts,” she says, referring to those who love gourmand scents, which are known for being sweet or smelling good enough to eat. Gourmand scents often include notes of vanilla, caramel, cotton candy, honey and chocolate. Examples include Tom Ford’s Lost Cherry ($485 for 50ml, Mecca, which has been described as drying down to smell like a “maple tart”) and Lynx Leather and Cookies body spray ($4.90 for 165ml, Woolworths).

But even if your father’s mum was no baker, there’s a chance he might be newly interested in a gourmand scent. Because, historically, says Copland, people are drawn to them during times of crisis.“With the terrorist attacks” – on September 11, 2001, in New York City – “there was a real strong movement to those kind of vanilla notes”, she says, adding that this is because such scents evoke feelings of comfort and familiarity. And a desire for both, she adds, “is probably coming in a little more strong at the moment, given the global pandemic and where we’re at.” This accounts, she says, for the recent release of numerous cosmetics and fragrances with manuka honey and rose, “which make people feel safe”. (Maison Francis Kurkdjian released L’Homme A la Rose, a scent designed for men, last year, $308 for 70ml, Mecca. Byredo will launch a unisex rose scent, Young Rose, in September.)