Aspen for Men
Coty (1989)

A small, spicy, musky aromatic gem that evokes a woodsy aura, a piney, slightly mineral freshness and a green, high-mountain dimension that releases a surprisingly natural and realistic fragrance on the skin. It initially evokes the feeling of being in a high-mountain landscape in North America (the Canadian Rocky Mountains, "Canadian Rockies"), but also more than vaguely in the English Countryside, given the more than obvious similarity to fragrances like Creed Green Irish Tweed (and partially to Boss Elements 1994). Mint, bergamot, leafy geranium, pine needles, fir balsam and lavender determine a truly penetrating aromatic aura which, supported by sweet spices, intense cyclamen, orange and jasmine, produces a varied (multifaceted) and lush vibe, spicy floral but always aromatic and musky, as in an ideal combination of iconic fragrances such as Guy Laroche Drakkar Noir (1982), Van Cleef & Arpels Tsar (1989), Lomani Pour Homme (1987) and Creed Green Irish Tweed (1985). Aspen For Men was introduced in 1989 and is not easy to find. It is certainly a woody-aromatic and floral masculine fragrance with light ozonic hints. The latter determine a light aromatic salinity that is certainly reminiscent of the Davidoff Cool Water fragrance (1988) although in a more balsamic, piney and less ozonic form. The dry down of Coty Aspen For Men evokes a stroll through a coniferous forest: fresh, slightly musky and balsamic-resinous with a subtle mineral-saline touch. Gradually, the green, spicy and citrus-floral notes of the opening give way to oakmoss and lavender, fir balsam, and amber, creating an overall woody, aromatic and earthy sensation (though still spicy and floral). At this stage, however, the conifers, mint and pine needles prevail over the more "colorful, floral and citrusy" notes, resulting in a clean, rough, assertive and discreetly masculine dry down. The performance is in line with that of other fougère fragrances in the same vein.

I'm not quite 11 years old. It's my very first "cologne."

The ever advancing awkwardness that comes with pre-pubescence has me fascinated with prospect of being an adult one day, though I am still very much a child with none of the furrows of maturity and not a clue what wisdom really means. "Old" to me is someone in their 20s. Yet, grown-up things fascinate me, and its time for me to have something to wear like my older brother's Polo. There it is, affordable with my allowance—that spade shaped poplar leaf on the bottle beckoning me. Trees! That is what a man smells like, trees, forests! Like Paul Bunyan.

That opening watery (aquatic), leafy green blast embedded into my memory, that "mountain air" sensation I felt, slopes of pine trees and rolling meadows, this is the archetypal smell of manhood. Really, it is the nostalgia of Aspen that, when smelling an old bottle again, has me returning to the days of keeping up with the latest fashion of my classmates—Rude Dog, jams and stone-washed jeans. That summer, Bobby Brown and Jody Watley are ruling the airwaves and I am saving up for Vuarnet shades (or knock off versions). I am doused in my Aspen.

Within a year or two, I would graduate to Cool Water.

Aspen is a green foresty scent that works just about any day at any time. This can be compared to Green Irish Tweed by Creed but at a $300 cost reduction. Me, personally, I have the vintage launch not by Coty but by Quintessence which IMO is the better version. The scent lasts about 4 or 5 hrs so I always take some along with me if I know I'm gonna be away from home. The green bottle with the golden leaf in the middle is what I call simple elegance.

Bottles are kind of important to me when I buy a fragrance so if the fragrance is fantastic with great performance and scent but the bottle is simply hideous I'm passing on it. It's strange but it's a pet peeve of mine. In conclusion, Aspen for Men is a nice simple green scent that's also quite masculine as well and at $20 a bottle you just can't beat it.

9/10

Just an excellent and unassuming scent that is still one of the best values in men’s fragrance—and likely one of the best bargain amber fragrances ever. And like many of the classic drugstore-variety colognes (Brut, Old Spice, Tabac, Black Suede, or Stetson), the gestalt and drydown of Aspen isn’t anything fancy, and yet it’s immensely satisfying and humbly masculine. I don’t find it as dark as Cool Water in the drydown, though I wear and love both. An easy reach that impresses me each and every time. So glad Coty still makes this.

Aspen for Men by Coty (1989) began life as it's own brand marketed by Quintessence, a perfume division of Beecham that was the corporate remnants of a leveraged buyout involving the house of Jovan. Beecham acquired Coty in 1992, launching the masculine Coty Gravity (1992) the same year but eventually merged Quintessence into Coty by 1994, which is when Aspen became a de-facto Coty fragrance. At the time Aspen launched it was fairly novel, and likely a downmarket attempt to capitalize on the emergent fresh style of fragrance created by Pierre Bourdon and Olivier Creed in 1985 with Creed Green Irish Tweed (1985), a style that had already tumbled downmarket once when Bourdon cannibalized much of his own work to create Davidoff Cool Water (1988), a fragrance recognized as the first archetypical aquatic. Aspen also featured a heavy slug of dihydromyrcenol to give it the same fresh airy aqueous lift that both Green Irish Tweed and Cool Water had, but took the template into more of a proper aromatic fougère direction with an actual lavender/geranium/tonka/oakmoss core. Straddling the lines between the fresh fougère, aromatic fougère, and aquatic, Aspen went quietly unnoticed by high-brow connoisseurs for decades, guys who typically stuck to designers at minimum but more and more dedicated themselves to niche and luxury brands, because Coty had the same relative reputation as any drugstore or catalog brand (e.g. Revlon or Avon), but that seems to be changing thanks to people looking for lower-cost alternatives to the ever-increasing prices of the aforementioned Green Irish Tweed.

The opening of Aspen is that telltale slug of aquatic aromachemicals, which were likely the most expensive part of the composition when new. Lemon, galbanum, juniper, calone-1951 and cyclamen add airy woodland floral pop and sizzle to this opening, while the heart of lavender, geranium, hedione, neroli, and a light dusting of violet ionones establish the green floral fougère core. The base is balsam fir, oakmoss, limonenes and linalool compressing a rounded ambrein-proxy of something other than ambroxan (which was really expensive then), giving a midway feel between Cool Water, Green Irish Tweed, and something like Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche (1982) minus the smokiness. Performance is to be expected as modest and for the price, can you really complain? You'll get six hours out of this with moderate sprays and projection that dies in an hour but sits detectable on skin or clothing, and the overall aesthetic is appropriately "mountain forest air". You'll smell like how the mascot on Brawny paper towels looks, and that isn't a bad thing if you're the cheap cologne and expensive survival knife kind of guy, with a beat up 1970's Ford F-100 covered in primer and NRA stickers. This is a work-in-the-sun or gym bag kind of fragrance to be used up, thrown away, and repurchased every six month to a year, so don't overthink it. Best use is pretty much year round because for how cheap and versatile it is, you can just super-size your applications in colder weather, but Aspen for Men is not date night material or meeting-with-the-board fragrance either. If you want that, spend a little more on a bottle of Armaf Tres Nuit (2015).

So what's the skinny on Aspen? How does it compare? Well, if you try holding them up, you get in one hand a $10-$20 drugstore scent made to sell blindly based on the blurb printed on the back of the box to truckers passing through a Bucc-ee's, and in the other hand a once-$150 but now-$450 luxury niche brand that touts par excellence only for billionaire movers and shakers of our Capitalist hellscape to conspicuously buy. In short, you're setting yourself up for a really bad time with comparisons. Aspen borrows the skeleton of Green Irish Tweed for sure, but is built for cost and themed in a way that at the time would be thought appealing to the everyman demographic snapping up Coty (née Quintessence) fragrances anyway, folks oblivious to Creed and probably Davidoff too. The oldest pre-Coty bottles just had the leaf on the bottle and a shinier brass cap without the word "Aspen" printed anywhere, and no other info on the front besides whether you had a natural spray or an aftershave on your hands. Later Coty bottles added the name and weight to the front, with a duller thin bronzed cap. Quality differences are marginal because again, this is a cheap fragrance that's sef-aware of its cheapness. For the price however, this is a great dumb reach casual fling for fans of the style that want something they can go nuts with and not have to worry about price point or being overbearing to others. If that changes and Aspen becomes a pricey unicorn like Coty Stetson Sierra (1993), I'm going to once again point you to Tres Nuit, because Aspen will always be a fragrance that smells like you paid $10 for it no matter what you actually paid. Thumbs up.

Simply put Aspen is ultra cheap Green Irish Tweed, as in what $20 GIT would smell like. Aspen gives an impression of 'green' whereas the more well known Cool Water is more 'blue'/aquatic. I really like Aspen so I make room for both. They are not redundant. However, Aspen may qualify as the cheapest fragrance that is collection worthy. We're talking solidly under $20 for 4.2 oz which makes it a no brainer for those that have room for this. Thumbs Up.

100 wear follow up: Judge me all you want, I don't care. I do love Aspen for Men and it is a frequent wear even in a sizeable collection.