Black Label (1967)
by Mayfair

The Baron de Charlus once told me: "I recall as a child that one of my first experiences with scent was when I sampled a bottle of Yardley Black Label aftershave in the chateau which my dear father shared with my uncle, the Duc des Esseintes. The exact tone of this scent immediately transported me into a clean, subtle ecstasy of citrus and lavender where, somehow, the fruits of the earth combined with a more ethereal and strange avenue of felt imagination of which, I surmised, paradise itself must be composed.
Latterly, seeking to recapture that childish rapture, I located a bottle of Black Label aftershave (now, according to the label, manufactured by Lentheric and not by Yardley). I was not totally disappointed. A pale reflection of that original realm of refined, heavenly cologne still remained, but certainly less vivid, and I had no memory at all of the elements of wood and spice, now clearly in evidence and pleasant enough, but still an offence to my pure childhood memory.
I found myself wondering. Was it simply the case, as my uncle the Duke was so fond of saying, that Imagination always exceeds Reality? Was it, as my friend Marcel asserts, that to seek to recapture lost time in the present invariably produces a mere shell of that remembered magic? Was it that my taste in scent had altered, perhaps even improved? Or was it just that Lentheric had changed the original Yardley formula?
But it's still a rather fine scent."

21st March, 2009.

My first scent ever. A confirmation gift of my father given to me with my first shaving kit (there wasn't much to shave then, yet). A very 60s scent, gentleman-like and British, yet not too heavy on the lavender. Unfortunately, not availale anymore in Germany but sometimes I can get samples of it at Ebay. 13 out of 15 points.

22nd March, 2006.