Matchabelli (1982)
by Prince Matchabelli

To this day it is the fragrance that brought me the most compliments. It still does! (I recently bought a bottle that was still full, in its original packaging. It smells as I remember it did. That was a second try, after an earlier half-full bottle smelled completely wrong. I suspect that bottle had been added to with something else.)

In the '80s, I in my 20s then, it evoked compliments from not only virtually every woman I knew, including my mother and one of my college teachers, but also from women whom I'd never met. Strangers would open conversations with a compliment on it. Men, too, even.

These days I wear it lighter than I did in those Saturday-Night-Fever days, yet it has elicited a compliment from a woman I did not know in a shopping mall.

I tried many suggestions of similar fragrances in an effort to reproduce the compliments to no avail.

Can anyone shed any light on why I cannot find a fragrance that emulates it these days? (Possibly out-lawed ingredients?)

I'm just getting into aftershaves and found a bottle in the bathroom of Matchabelli that my godfather (US) used to wear and the last time he was in Hungary was in 1994.

In the 16-20 years half of the aftershave disappeared from the bottle. I just checked it and it's definitely stronger than it used to be. I don't think I'll ever use it, but it brought back some memories... :)

I found a vintage bottle of this at a school fair and paid the princely sum of 20 cents for it. The bottle is 3/4 full. Even though it is only after shave strength it is still reasonably potent. The subtle woodiness and slight citric start make this a very comfortable fragrance.

A toned down 80's chypre with a very, very good lemon and sandalwood note and a hint of leather at the bottom.

I LOVED THIS and wore it in college. It's the only thing that I ever wore that both men and women constantly commented on and wanted to know what it was! My French teacher in college even told me one day "I love that smell, what is it?" which was pretty hilarious given the fact that I was about 20 at the time and she must have been 35 or so. She seemed embarrassed to ask. I started out buying it at Meier & Frank or The Bon Marche and it sort of made its way into drugstores and then eventually the only place you could find it was K-Mart! I knew that was the beginning of the end. And soon, it was. So sad. I've never found anything like it.