Imagine this scene...What would you wear?

Jockey Club C&M, is possible a big joint of marihuana too?

Guerlain's monsieur de monsieur.

Does it have to be a scent from that time period? If so, then Caron PuH or Vintage Tabarome.

Either Caron Pour Un Homme (1934) or Le Dandy (1923)....

Dan

Acqua di Parma Colonia

For that era, I'd go with a Sandalwood cologne blend from a local apothocary (assuming we're talking about a big city).

What country are we in?

I'm gonna go with Knize Ten.

Caron PUH.

This thread asks such a good question.

I know I risk the wrath of all of you, my Basenotes brethren, but I think so many of the suggestions so far are too highbrow. Go ahead and kill me, you'll be right.

As much as I imagine PUH and AdP Colonia might belong, they're simply too refined and too elegant. Something like them would be right, but it would have to be something much rawer, much simpler, without dimension and without drydown. Drydown that is disappearance only, I mean, no development.

A factory worker, as I see the scene, is going to get the Jovan Musk of his day. It's going to be a splash bottle and it's going to be in the Napoleon-wore-this style. It's going to be 4711 or something heavy to crude lavender, depending on what's available in his industrial neighborhood, not far from the brewery. He uses his scent as a symbol to say I'm-here-for-the-dance rather than a symbol of self-identity (for lack of a better term). He wouldn't mind that other guys at the dance smell the same--they're announcing they're there for the dance too, and he respects that.

I'd sort of like to put him in Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet or MPG's Secret Melange, Eau pour le Jeune Homme, or even Centaur, if the question allowed me to consider any and all scents I know, even ones created after our factory worker is dead, but right as they might be in concept somehow, they're too refined and too individual, too much for marking the wearer from the crowd when my factory worker wants only to mark his day of clean good living from all the dirty bread winning days.

My thoughts.
--Chris

Inexpensive bay rum aftershave from the corner drug store?

Nothing. All my 1930's working-class friends laughed at me the last time I put on cologne.

Yup...i heard 'em yelling "cologne is for sissy-boys!"

Royal English Leather

2nd the vote for AdP Colonia as well

TNMA

I thought you'd get hanged in the 30's if you were a guy that wore cologne....Serious though...I thinking one of the Vintage Creed's...maybe Vetiver or Tabarome.

I don't think factory workers can afford Creeds and AdP, probably not even the Caron.

Yes, maybe true, and some of them might not have been created or produced in the 30's ...but I mean...we're just trying to have some fun and games here.

No cologne, but i'd be smelling like either vodka or red wine. I know i would.

I'm sure plenty of working-class factory workers in the 30s had their special niceties. For that reason, my guess is that such a man had access to either Geo. F. Trumper's Portugal or Fragonard's Zizanie.

said that it's a game with no money boundaries, I'd go with something leathery definitely; probably Knize Ten, or SMN Marescialla

I think we probably take for granted the fact that now we can just do a couple mouse clicks and purchase "rare" or " top-of-the-line" fragrances. Back then, if an average working stiff was even able to find such fragrances, one bottle would probably set him back almost a week's wages.

Too true. Furthermore, the dizzying array of men's frags we're so used to today would have been unthinkable in the Thirties. Most frags that existed were women's frags or unisex ones, and only a handful of men EVER wore them. Most men made do with (again) hair tonic and/or after-shave (which, btw, was most often bay rum, or perhaps Florida Water).

Many women, too, couldn't even afford Jungle Gardenia and Tabu during the Depression, and they did what my grandmother and her sisters used to do -- they'd daub on a little vanilla extract behind their ears, or orange blossom water if they could get it. Daddy used to talk about how the "black gals" up in Guthrie were fond of a particularly stinky Woolworth's potion called Roman Bath (it was a nickel a bottle in the Forties), and Granddad would reminisce about how his barber Sto over in Minco always "used too much bay rum after he shaved a fella." A friend of mine who's German-American told me that his grandparents and parents up in Wisconsin all used to use 4711, but only on "special occasions."
(Yikes! I'd hate to imagine THAT Lutheran Jell-0 supper! Wouldn't you?)

First time (it was back in the Eighties, I think) I ever wore a lot of scent around my 91 year-old grandfather, he declared, "Lordy, Lordy, Lordy -- somebody went a little wild with the hair tonic!"

I think I would like to meet your family

Yardley's Brillantine, of course.

K -- you're an Anglo-Indian schoolteacher (male) in India in the Twenties (during the Raj). You are intimately aware of both cultures (English and Indian). You are at least bilingual, and fairly well educated. You have enough discretionary income to have a decent array of European frags to choose from, not to mention a dizzying assortment of exotic, native Indian scents. What do you wear?