The Brut Truth
Why British Men Still Call Perfume ‘Aftershave’
ZACHARY COSTELLO
Luton gets a bad rap. It always has. I always find it rather unfortunate that it seems to be under incessant construction. Last week, I found myself boarding a Wizz Air flight; the only carrier that will ship you off to Lubin. I was, I admit, rather disappointed not to see Stacey Dooley at the duty free, offering me a spritz of Montblanc or Calvin Klein. One lives in hope. I am finally getting the hang of life. With all this heat, I’ve taken to refreshing myself in Boots with a discreet ‘sample’. Scenting ourselves is certainly not a contemporary affair; Victorian barbers would douse their clientele in bay rum, a scented antiseptic splash. The advice of 1811 still rings true, reminding us, in its wonderfully blunt phrasing, that “a gentleman ought neither to smell too sweet nor the contrary; for he ought neither to be offensive like a he‑goat nor perfumed like a civet‑cat.” Sensible words. I am no perfumer, but anything sweeter than gruff, I simply reject.
So there as I stood in Luton’s Duty Free, with some time to kill, I took it upon myself to find a new scent. And there I was between the discounted Paco Rabanne and the forlorn bottle of Davidoff Cool Water when my good friend Google informed me: there is, in fact, a chemical difference between perfume and aftershave. Not merely a misnomer, as one thought, but a real divergence in formulation.
Old Spice entered the UK market in the post‑war years; it was marketed as aftershave first and fragrance second. But at some turning point, British men collectively decided, like some trade union, that all scent was to be named “aftershave”. Brut arrived in 1964; its advertisements featured Henry Cooper and Kevin Keegan. Ironically, Brut was technically an Eau de Toilette (toilet water). The 1976 advert said it plainly: “Splash it on, lads.” Let’s hope the toilet had been flushed first. Perfume was of course rather feminine. Aftershave had an English gentleman’s disposition. As men’s grooming expanded, designer fragrances entered the UK: Aramis, Drakkar Noir, Paco Rabanne. These were proper perfumes, EDTs, whatever that means, yet British men continued to call them aftershave. Department stores reinforced the habit, labelling men’s counters as “Aftershave & Grooming”. Splashing toilet water upon one’s wrists is indeed abuse. A man could be wearing a £120 Eau de Parfum and still say, without any irony at all, “I’ve got a new aftershave.”
Most British men today wear EDP, proper perfume, but call it aftershave because seventy years of grooming culture told them to. And so, in Luton’s Duty Free, I found myself not merely choosing a scent but confronting a national linguistic quirk. Thank goodness I was in Boarding Group 12.