4711 - Echt Kolnisch Wasser - It's not 5150

As a dorky overweight teenager I affected so many notions of sophistication that I actually passed off as something other than Pigtown Shanty Irish, at least once in a while.  Somewhere along the line I started wearing an Ascot tie, what you don't know ?  Your assignment, look it up.  I favored natural shoulder jackets, those long white crisp raincoats, we called them Barracudas, worn over your sport jacket or with a liner.  I remember the time my half pint bottle of vititus, I'll give you this one, a homemade Lithuanian cocktail made with honey, fruit, spices and whiskey, that I got from Jimmy Remeikis, his Dad made it every year, that I had in the pocket of my Barracuda, clunked against the pew during Christmas Eve midnight mass, causing heads to turn, and noses to sniff.

I wore London Fog jackets, raglan sleeve sport shirts, cotton Oxford button downs, bleeding madras shirts and Bermuda shorts, those really smooth khakis, white duck, Jack Purcells and Florsheims, all that stuff we called the 'Joe College' look, an Ivy League knockoff.  I had a motor scooter I putted around on, and the next year I was the first, and only for all I know, kid in my high school to ride a motorcycle, a Czech made Jawa, to campus, causing an outrage.  I was Joe Cool.   

Then there were the toiletries.  Everybody used their Dad's Old Spice, or they bought Jade East or Englsh Leather.  I used Canoe by Dana, we're talking mucho dinero here for a 16 year old, and for girls there was Ambush, which had a similar fragrance, and when I was at MCRD Parris Island, a Pigtown girl used to send me letters soaked in Ambush, it got me through boot camp, despite the humiliation, harassment, and beatings by the DIs.

Somehow I heard about 4711, the original eau de Cologne.  It was from Koln or Cologne, Germany, providing the name for that whole class of refreshing astringents, and I've favored it ever since.  Created in 1792, made with bergamot and other natural ingredients it imparts a healthy spring like sense to the user.  Jackie has always bought it for me and when we went to Italy the folks managing the Tuscan property we stayed in were German, "Greens" from Cologne, constantly ribbing me about my Federal Reserve employer, and when we left they gave me a small bottle of 4711.

The formula - a well-kept secret

I haven't used this fragrance for years but lately I am required to share a small enclosed, confining, airless space with someone who has no idea of their own skank.  Does a skunk know how it smells ?  Anyway, 4711 is now part of my daily routine, along with some of those deep hydrating, regenerating, anti wrinkle, age defying, sunblocking emollients that keep me picture perfect.

Maybe it was the James Bond movies I watched, or those hidden Playboys that I actually read.  A great short story I read in Playboy, a few years later, is 'The Flashlight', by Eldridge Cleaver, they DO have good articles, really !  Maybe it was all that Botanny 500 tailored by Daroff, the Chanel, Lagerfeld, Dior, Laurent, Givenchy, somehow I became a dedicated follower of fashion.  When I went to the Balenciaga exhibit at The DeYoung last year, the descriptions of those clothes were incredible.  It was the most imaginative, suggestive, yet lightest, airiest, and some of the most effective interpretion I've ever read.  I didn't know I had a 'passion for fashion', ha ha.  Yeah right.  We're all fashion victims, accidentally or otherwise, even the interior of the most macho truck had to have a designer.  Anyway, see you at The World of Gaultier !