Royal Copenhagen (1970)
by Royal Copenhagen

One of the worst scents I have had the "pleasure" to own. I was given this as a gift from a vendor. Bottom line is I wish they would not have bothered. WAY too much powder and cheap smelling lavender. I still have the bottle, but will never wear the stuff. Yuck!

23rd July, 2011.

I agree with those who say that you need to at least be able to tolerate powdery colognes, if not love them, in order to appreciate Royal Copenhagen. This is certainly a powdery scent. However, that powderiness is tempered with an overall brisk, clean smell from lavender. The combination of crisp and powdery works quite well, and is what draws me to this fragrance.

Though classified as an oriental, I consider this to be more of a floral scent. There are oriental elements in this, such as amber in the base, but they are subtle and merely provide warmth to the strong floral jasmine in this. The jasmine and musk create a slightly dirty smell underlying Royal Copenhagen, adding to its appeal and complexity.

I think the nautical theme used in marketing Royal Copenhagen, as well as the blue color of the juice, suits this scent very well. It's not an aquatic scent as we now know it, but it has an overall cold freshness to it that makes me think of the open sea. Royal Copenhagen smells particularly good when I wear it near the ocean.

This is a real winner, and is a wardrobe staple for anyone who loves classic, mature fragrances.

MY RATING: 7.5/10

18th May, 2011. (Last Edited: 19th May, 2011.)

Royal Copenhagen is a very generously priced and bottled vintage barbershop creation with mediocre longevity and projection in its present reformulated incarnation. The vintage version is blended with more care and more natural notes. The current reformulation´s initial shot hints at reasonable comparisons to Canoe, but it is far more tolerable because it lacks the heavy accent on the patchouli that strains Canoe at times. Royal Copenhagen is a musky, powder keg fragrance with a short fuse and a very linear and boring evolution that lacks any subtlety and stays rather linear the whole way through. More a fresh, powdery aftershave in the vein of many of the early 20th century fragrances, Royal Copenhagen was old-fashioned even in 1970, designed when the 1920´s were becoming in fashion again and the ragtime era was becoming a brief fad. Serves its purpose as a fresh splash on and certainly is more appealing than Brut, but not a fragrance that has an identity outside of its time. Formulated in an era in which aftershaves took precedence over spray cologne, this is ultimately an aftershave cologne for those who want to invoke memories of 1950´s barbershops. Nice for nostalgia, but nothing to seek out. Royal Copenhagen is a drugstore fragrance that misses the mark given better products available at even lower prices like Clubman, Old Spice, Aqua Velva, etc.
Still, a rather boring but inoffensive fragrance that induces a calming nostalgia for a barbershop era gone by. It has its loyal audience, but ultimately there are simply too many better blended, more subtle and sexier scents than this.

5th April, 2011.

This is indeed very similar to Canoe by Dana. Only where Canoe has a very clean feel, Royal Copenhagen is a bit more dirty and a lot more musky.

My first initial impression.. Musk musk musk.. Lots and lots of musk. Oodles and oodles and noodles of musk! Then as it dries it becomes rather powdery with just the slightest drop of citrus, that quickly vanishes. I'm left with powder, lavender, spice, and aldehydes. And those aldehydes are what reminds me so much of Chanel No 5.. only where Chanel No 5 perfects those aldehydes; RC just screws them up. The resemblance with the notes are there, but the quality most definitely is not. Picture a watered down Chanel No 5.. making out with 7 bottles of Canoe. Royal Copenhagen is your result.

So in a nutshell, this fragrance is powdery, musky, and a bit dirty. It was released in 1970, and it does carry that 70's feel with it, although I do believe that the right man who enjoys powdery and musky fragrances can pull this one off very well even now in 2011. That man isn't me though.

13rd March, 2011.

SPOILER ALERT: If you don't like powder, stop reading now.

Royal Copenhagen is all about the powder, with a hint of vanilla, similar to Canoe. The list of barbershop-style fragrances is numerous: Clubman, Old Spice, Rive Gauche, Brut, Fred Hayman Touch among others. If you have any of those you won't need Royal Copenhagen as well. Having said that, RC is slightly (just slightly) smoother than say Canoe or Jade East. It has been compared to Amouage Gold. That's not way off the mark, although AG is more floral and refined. Of course, AG is twenty times the cost of RC.

I like these old school scents so I give it a thumbs up but you MUST like talcum powder in your frags to dig this one.

Ready availability and rock-bottom prices add up to a worthwhile find in the nostalgic sweepstakes.

20th January, 2011.

I can see the appeal to the this, I really like the drydown. It's the front that, to me, smells dead on like a urinal cake. maybe it's just me.

30th November, 2010.