Fahrenheit Dior 1988 Eau de Toilette

Bottle Design:
Marie-Christine de Sayn-Wittgenstein

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Ranked 46 in Men's Perfume

7.9 / 10 2740 Ratings

A popular perfume by Dior for men, released in 1988. The scent is leathery-spicy. It is being marketed by LVMH.
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Main accords

Leathery

Spicy

Woody

Floral

Smoky

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Cedar

Chamomile

Lavender

Mandarin orange

Bergamot

Hawthorn

Lemon

Mace

Heart Notes

Violet leaf Cedar

Cedar

Nutmeg

Carnation

Honeysuckle Jasmine

Jasmine

Lily of the valley

Sandalwood

Base Notes

Leather

Musk

Patchouli

Vetiver

Amber

Tonka bean

Perfumers

Maurice Roger, Jean-Louis Sieuzac

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Ratings

Scent

7.92740 Ratings

Longevity

8.02316 Ratings

Sillage

7.72288 Ratings

Bottle

7.82311 Ratings

Value for money

7.41340 Ratings

Submitted by DonVanVliet, last update on 07/24/2025.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

Fahrenheit After-Shave Lotion

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Fortnight

The Man Cobalt

Simply Eau de Parfum

Fahrenheit Parfum

Reviews

122 in-depth fragrance descriptions

09/25/2012

8
Scent

Coutureguru
223 Reviews

Coutureguru

Very helpful Review 9

Volatile Energy

Every time I wear Fahrenheit (which is only about 3 times a year) I think "why do you wear this one so infrequently?". It's fabulous, gives me a boost of energy and makes me feel like a guy ... a gay one, but a guy nonetheless :).

This fragrance brings back memories of Fashion College in 1989. I fell in love with two fragrances that year ... this one and Lauder for Men. The reason was that my mentor and teacher wore them ... and when I say WORE them I sincerely mean it! These were the days of your sillage arriving ten minutes before you did, and fragrance was worn as a status symbol. I was a starving student in those days :) and couldn't afford to wear Fahrenheit myself, but I would hurry to catch my teacher in the elevator and bask in the waves coming off him! I bought my own bottle some years later ... and somehow infected all of the menfolk in my family with it :) ... It's remains my father's 'go to' evening frag and my brother and brother-in-law still each get a bottle for Christmas.

Despite the long list of notes, Fahrenheit plays it really cool and invigorating on my skin. The citruses up top burst like opening pods of cotton for the longest time, remarkably carrying their freshness all the way through to deep dry down. It is, however, the Cedar here which is my best friend ... and undoubtedly sparked my interest in this note. I love a good Cedar ... I'm always on the lookout for them. I don't get much in the way of florals except for a faint sweetness ... while the Patchouli in the base finally takes over but is smoothed beautifully by the Amber and Tonka.

I've read some wildly varying reviews on this one ... reminding some of everything from gasoline to greasy car workshops :). Fahrenheit displays none of these antics on me ... It's always reminded me of snappily dressed gay men from a time when we recognized each other by our smell!

11/11/2021

10
Pricing 10
Bottle 10
Sillage 10
Longevity 10
Scent

17N01
7 Reviews

17N01

Very helpful Review 8

CLASSIC

Fahrenheit edt is a classic perfume that was released in 1988. For me it is one of the most masculine scents I can imagine. Every time I wear it I get nostalgic and think about my youth growing up in the 80's and 90's.
The mix of notes does bring a gasoline vibe. Violet leaf, leather lavender and citrus. Just a great scent you either love or hate. For me it is pure love. Especially the older bottles. Go get a bottle from before 2002 if possible. They really don't make them like that anymore.

08/06/2017

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

Very helpful Review 7

Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit hit in 1988 and was an instantaneous commercial success. It was a bold scent, innovative in concept and execution and was immediately recognizable as something new. It might have been developed using the framework of the fougère, but unlike the other massive launch of the year, Cool Water, it bore little resemblance to the genre. Fahrenheit’s infamous gasoline note gave it an edginess that separated it from other masculine fragrances. 1988 was effectively pre-niche and unorthodox perfumes were rare. Dior bet that there was an unmet demand for a fragrance that didn’t play by the ‘normal’ rules of scent. The combination of gasoline and dehydrated sweetness gave Fahrenheit a deliberately synthetic appearance and distanced it from the fougères and woody chypres that were still the norm for masculine fragrances. The olfactory image of gasoline is convincing. The dryness of woods and the coolness of the violet leaf suggest volatility, like drops of gasoline evaporating from your skin.

To Dior’s credit, they didn’t simply take a traditional perfume and dress it out with ‘avant-garde’ images and a trendy ad campaign. They created a straight-up oddball that didn’t fit easily into existing categories. What’s interesting, though, is that while Fahrenheit was groundbreaking, it wasn’t without precedent. Dior seem to have learned from a few great masculine fragrances of the prior dozen years. The pressurized hiss of violet leaf is a nod to Grey Flannel and the aggressively dry woods are reminiscent of Antaeus. The last piece in the puzzle comes from perfumer Jean-louis Sieuzac himself. Two years before he co-authored Fahrenheit for Dior, Sieuzac composed Hermès Bel Ami, a sumptuous leather chypre with a noticeable whiff of gasoline. He isolated the gasoline note and amplified it to form the basis of Fahrenheit.

Fahrenheit juggled offbeat style and mainstream PR and production streams with remarkable success. Take a look at a network sit-com or an action movie from 1988. Or a fashion magazine. Listen to some 1988 pop music. Most of it doesn’t hold up very well. (see above.) Fahrenheit on the other hand might come off as era-specific, but not dated. It has survived reformulation, the vagaries of trend and an increasingly competitive market yet remains distinctive.

12/28/2012

9
Bottle 9
Sillage 7.5
Longevity 8.5
Scent

Drseid
821 Reviews

Drseid

Very helpful Review 5

Nothing Else Quite Like It...

Count me in the love camp for vintage Fahrenheit. I do get the violet driven gasoline note mentioned by others, but to me that is just fine, as I like that smell. I also get leather and woody cedar. The bottom line is this scent is a classic and entirely unique. Somewhat difficult to wear publicly, but highly enjoyable and noteworthy for it's distinctiveness and innovation. 4 to 4.5 stars out of 5.

12/06/2014

7.5
Bottle 7.5
Sillage 7.5
Longevity 5
Scent

GothicHeart
85 Reviews

GothicHeart

Helpful Review 6

A friend I've never missed...

Back in 1988 I was a poor student, and for your information, while the noun is long gone, the adjective still remains. So when I managed to save enough money and buy a gorgeous heavy woolen jacket, I was more than happy to take a long walk downtown and enjoy its comfort, warmth and quality. It was a couple of days before Christmas, and along with a blissful pixie who pretended to be my human girlfriend, we thought it would be a good idea to test some fragrances, and perhaps get a couple of free miniatures. I have to clarify to younger readers that back then most perfume samples were miniature bottles, and not the bland plain vials that they are nowadays. Truth be told, I was looking forward to return home and spray my new jacket with a generous dose of Davidoff by Davidoff, and turn it into my signature jacket soused in my then signature perfume. But what harm could a little window shopping do? So, I, armed with a brand new '80s jacket (which would be thought a curio today) and she, armed with the obligatory '80s perm, headed for the cosmetics stores.
Grave mistake...
A sales assistant who was lurking by the door and surely was a faster shooter than Billy the Kid, managed to shoot three huge sprays of something that nearly knocked me off my feet on my jacket, in less than a second. If she was holding a gun instead of a huge bottle of the most potent and fresh Fahrenheit ever imagined in her hands, I'd be dead before hitting the ground. And I have no doubts that had I tried to duck her attack, she wouldn't hesitate to spray me square in the face, if it had come her way.
I shook the impulse to strangle the harpy on the spot and search for a dry cleaner in the next 20 seconds, and proceeded with our perfume testing.
And then the horror begun...
For the next four months or so, every time I'd put my jacket on, I smelled like someone who was working in a car repair shop or a gas station, although if this was the case, I would be the swankest car repair shop or gas station employee ever.
And to add insult to injury, can you imagine what were the only miniatures that we were given in the end? Yeah, you got it right...
...
Fahrenheit is a heavy scent. A very heavy scent. And of course I'm not talking about its potence in aromatic terms only. Even though it's a prolific scorer in the fields of sillage and longevity (the vintage one at least), it's mainly a very serious player in the field that produces legend material.
I have to admit that Fahrenheit is an incomprehensible scent to me.
Peppery notes, but no pepper! Perhaps it's a dirty trick played by some strange reaction between leather and nutmeg. Since I can't point at any other notes and consider them the culprits for this elusive accord, these two have to be the ones responsible.
And then there's this strange, unique and unequalled (but not necessarily nice) accord, which I'm completely incompetent to decipher and therefore to describe it. Not in an satisfying degree at least.
But perhaps it's worth giving it a try.
Since my nose is no big deal, I rarely talk about notes in my reviews. However, Fahrenheit has kept me wondering since 1988 about this "What the hell am I smelling here Christian?" stuff.
The fragrance has three hesperidic notes (Is "hesperidic" a valid word? Internet has not decided yet, so I apologise in advance for the possible barbarism.)
Well, I don't smell them.
It also has five sweet flowery notes.
I don't smell them either.
So, according to their absence of prominence, none of this eight notes is directly responsible for Fahrenheit's distinctive and unforgettable drydown.
So what is it?
I say that it smells like gasoline soaked sandalwood, that someone was crazy enough to set it on fire, and then put the cinders in the inside pocket of an old leather jacket, which he then wears after the gym and without showering first.
And before extolling my imagination... I've done it...
But it just made the whole thing even trickier, because it added a slight cummin note, and cummin is not included in the scent's pyramid. So, what I finally got with my "analysis" was a hint of something that shouldn't be there at all. Very helping...
I could also say that it smells the way some old taxis used to smell back in the '70s, but maybe my mind is playing tricks, trying to place the leather and diesel/gasoline/kerosene/motor oil notes to a matching vessel. However, I can see some connection here, since I believe that if we ask ten people how the inside of a brand new or a very old car smells like, five of them will say that it smells of leather, the other five that it smells of fuel, and all ten of them that it smells of Fahrenheit.
But maybe it's these very same oddities about it, which render Fahrenheit one of the few instantly recognizable fragrances in my book.
I have no idea how the current formulation smells like, and to be honest I don't care. I don't love and I don't hate Fahrenheit. For me it's a perfect example of uniqueness and an unparalleled specimen of aweless perfumery, but I'm still unable to decide whether this example is a paragon or a byword, and whether Fahrenheit's universe and mine are any parallel at all. But my personal likings have nothing to do with the objective stature of the fragrance. Fahrenheit has become a cornerstone and a legend over the years, and it doesn't give a damn if I like it or not. It's just there, too busy being itself.

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