Top Men’s Colognes Ranking

I recently discovered this list:

https://www.parfumo.com/Perfum...

I was impressed with the listings. I was really impressed with Dior, Creed, Amouage, and Dolce and Gabbana. 

Do others agree with Top-ranked? I have not smelled many of them, so I can't comment. 

Thanks

Yes, that’s a really fun way to use the site. I have 7 of those top 10 as it turns out. Mostly because I am still in my first few years of branching out to different fragrances. This year my intention is to branch out a little more but there’s still no denying the best of the best scents.

Admittedly, it took me a while (through sampling) to get where I liked those 7 of 10 and bought a bottle. The three I don’t like:

Layton Just yuck. For me. But clearly the majority of people love this.

Imagination Doesn’t smell bad like Layton but totally mid to me so I don’t wear it. It’s the best of LV fragrances though, and smells finished.

La Nuit de L'Homme Eau de Toilette More mid than Imagination to me.

The rest I either like or love. Admittedly, I need more time with the following but I still like them:

The One for Men Eau de Parfum

Spicebomb Extreme

Well, that is interesting. I counted and including the ones I have and the ones I tested and will buy, total 18.  That's almost 1/5th. 

I haven't tested any Parfums de Marly yet. Plan on getting a discovery set and testing the house this year. There are a lot of PdM's in the list.  There's talk about PdM being a niche house that puts out designer fragrances and charges a lot for them. I'll have to see for myself.

So far, I've avoided Creed, the main reason being the continuous reviews and discussions about batch numbers, inconsistency and poor performance (at Fragrantica).  They aren't cheap but apparently have let their quality control go. Maybe I'll try them one of these days but they aren't on the top of my list.

Give the number of perfumes available from Tom Ford, it's interesting that there are so few in the list.  I've been pretty disappointed with the Ford's I've tested and have pretty much written them off.  Supposedly their quality has tanked since Estee Lauder bought Ford out.

I'm also not a fan of sweet gourmands and those are pretty popular. Of the higher quality designers, I like Dior, Hermes and Cartier. For niche, it's Amouage, Nishane and Xerjoff so far. Am also impressed with the small niche house For the Scent of It. 

Sorry but as a PdM fanboy I have to bait 😆

What exactly is “niche” and “designer“? You can say PdM makes crowdpleasing perfumes but they do stand out. There’s no way you’ll find a Haltane or an Althaïr from a designer house. But strictly speaking they are a perfume only brand so yeah that’s niche.

@Ceesie, yeah can't always believe everything one reads. hahaha.  I'm going to try them mainly because you've been saying how good they are.  Thanks for putting me on to the discovery set. I can appreciate a house that helps its customers by putting together separate masculine and feminine discovery sets!

Niche is a weird and loose definition. With a few exceptions, PdM’s catalogue is geared towards safe and mass-appealing scent profiles.

At the end of the day, they’re a house with designer products for niche prices. Not saying the quality isn’t there, it usually is. But their perfumes don’t cater to any niche. Unless your niche is "inoffensive and easy to market."

Hi there!

The list is generated based on ratings members here give them. I would mostly agree with the top-list, but I'm an enthusiast which's taste is more mainstream rather than specific niche stuff. I appreciate those appealing yet unique and quality fragrances most and tend to stay away from fragrances which are very specific (like skanky-ouds). I think the top list mainly consists of fragrance I appreciate, so I agree!

If a house is just fragrances, otherwise fragrances are their niche, then the house is niche, and so are their fragrances. What the house is determines whether or not the fragrance is niche. So, for example, all fragrances from Amouage are niche.

Designer houses do other things, for example Dior. All things from Dior then are designer even their $8500 bottle of cologne.

Niche has nothing to do with price, quality, or uniqueness although you may hear “niche quality” in a positive tone.

In the end, it’s completely meaningless…you either like a scent or you don’t.

So what exactly is the third category - independent or indie? That distinction never made much sense to me.

The niche/designer distinction never made any sense to me. It makes no difference to me whether a company makes products other than perfume and I'm not sure why people consider their artistic merit affected by whether or not they do.

@Ceesie

I think the charge leveled against PdM is that they make slightly better versions of fragrances that already exist, some of which are designer:
Percival is similar to Fierce Cologne
Godolphin is similar to Tuscan Leather Eau de Parfum
Haltane is similar to Oud for Greatness Eau de Parfum
Althaïr is similar to Club Black
etc.

@Stardust23

Then why bother making the distinction?

@Smirky

I don't think indie is a third category, it's a subcategory of niche (if we're using the entirely stupid and made-up definition that niche is a brand that doesn't sell anything other than fragrance). It just means a brand that is very small, either they sell only online or in one boutique, and usually the owner is the perfumer/creative director and creates all the perfume by themselves.

I completely forgot the point of the thread; I don't want to completely derail this into a discussion about niche and designer. Here are my thoughts on the top fragrances on the site:

I touch on this in my blog post about blind buys, but I think that the fragrances that tend to be highly rated are fragrances that are 8/10 for everyone, but 10/10 for no one. Everyone "likes" Imagination. I'm sure that it's some people's favorite fragrance, but in general, I think as you progress in your fragrance journey, you tend to get more specific tastes. Imagination is very good and mass-pleasing, but it is not necessarily artistic or specific. In other words, if everyone could describe their absolute dream fragrance, almost no one would describe Imagination.

I'm picking on Imagination a lot because it occupies the No. 1 spot, but this applies to almost all of the top 10. The standouts for me are Dior Homme Intense (2011) and Reflection Man. These are more unique profiles that not everyone is going to necessarily enjoy, but are 10/10s for the right people.

My point in general is that everyone has their own absolute favorites, and you shouldn't let anyone tell you what the greatest fragrances are; you have to pick those for yourself. For example, two of my favorites, Nouveau Monde and Eau de Memo are pretty much overlooked in their respective lines, and very few would rate them as the best fragrances of their houses, much less of all time.

Also be aware that there's some kind of algorithm thrown on top. So the top-list isn't just the highest scores. It takes the number of voters and searches into account as well (or something, it's kinda vague to me).

I really dislike the algorithm. I think a fragrance rated 9/10 with 100 votes should come up higher than a frag rated 7/10 with 1,000 votes.

Yeah, making the distinction is meaningless for us as consumers but the company may care? Chanel and Dior are very clearly fashion houses, hence they are designer as they have no niche like Creed, Amouage, etc does.

However…youtube reviewers love the idea of making us think that niche products are some grail and that helps pique interest (and helps them get paid

Admittedly, niche companies have sometimes more leeway to go off mainstream?

If your main thing is niche Im not here to shit on that, I mostly have niche myself (edit: not true, Im like 40% niche) it’s just I have them based solely on smell I couldn’t care less if my entire collection was from Dior.

Indy houses like calling themselves indie but yeah, if that’s all they have, they are niche too. Again what does it matter? You like it or don’t.

The company would care in that they should know their market. For example, Dior wants to sell to people walking into Macy's who aren't fragrance enthusiasts. However, Amouage doesn't necessarily want to appeal to those people since they're most likely not going to run into Amouage randomly, and they want to keep their base of people who like artistic scents.

But, for example, a company like Creed is kind of in the middle. Yes, they're not sold in cheaper department stores, but they are in the more expensive ones, and the average person is starting to learn about their existence. So they may not want to create really basic scents like Sauvage Eau de Toilette, but they also don't want to alienate the average person by releasing something as difficult as Opus XV - King Blue for example. So it definitely isn't a black and white niche/designer thing.

Doesn't the way fragrances are made also eliminate the real difference? What I mean is, most houses, whether designer or niche, don't make their own perfumes, right?  They contract a perfumer, who probably isn't on their staff, to come up with the fragrance and then hire ACME Fragrances & Flavors Chem Co., Inc. to actually make and bottle the stuff? 

The reason I started this thread is that I wanted to see how many people own these fragrances and suggest them. I am not a fragrance enthusiast, so I am not going to know the top colognes. I recently started buying $150-250 bottles. Most of them were blind buys which can a costly mistake.

It really is black/white. Creed is 100% Niche. Dior is 100% designer even though they offer an $8500 bottle of perfume. No matter what Dior makes, it will always be designer. Even if it was the most unique strawberry, oud, leather, davana that no one ever smelled and cost $500 with the most wonderful bottle.

Amouage is 100% Niche. Louis Vuitton is 100% designer. We could go on but if the company is into fashion, accessories, cosmetics, etc, they are designer.

With all of that said…let’s say you have an LV and you thought it was niche, and you would somehow be upset to learn it was designer then by all means call it niche. It’s all good. I only wanted to define the terms but Im not here to rain on parades believe me.

I see. Well there’s only one way to be sure and that’s to sample first But to be honest the ones I know from the list are pretty darn good!

What’s maybe even more interesting (to me at least) is the Unisex list. Also a lot of familiar ones and I love a lot of them. You’ll really have to decide if it’s something for you as they can lean feminine sometimes. And sometimes not at all.

I just don’t understand why you have to adhere religiously to this distinction when you yourself said that calling something “niche” does not have any bearing on its price, quality, or uniqueness.

If JPG or Paco Rabanne made a unique amazing fragrance for $500 I’d buy it without hesitation even though I usually stay away from those brands for being too “basic.” If Amouage started making run-of-the-mill synthetic amberwood fragrances, I’d stop buying any new releases from them. What does it matter if they’re designer or niche? Plenty of designers make awesome unique and artistic fragrances: Lalique, Guerlain, Tom Ford, Cartier, among others. Plenty of so-called niche brands make boring lame creations that have been done a million times before. Using these terms is utterly stupid and pointless.

I think many folks are pressured by influencers and the fragrance community in general to buy these frags because they are somehow “must-have” fragrances. So yes, I think a huge number of people own these fragrances, but it is a feedback loop within the community. I think there are no “must-have” fragrances but there are definitely “must-try” fragrances, ones that have been influential, or ones that are constantly spoken about. But it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to like them. It’s like music. Everyone should listen to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin at least once. Doesn’t mean they’re going to end up being your favorite band.

I agree. I do like the concept of buying samples and not buying unthinkingly. I was recently introduced to Aventus Creed. My wife bought it for me as a gift. Before that gift, most frags were designers, not niche companies. 

This is a men's world 😃(only joking ofcourse) but, as a woman, I think the thoughts on the topic (top rating and it's relevance) will surely go for women as well, so I thought it would do no harm to share my thoughts And, for that matter, I can say that I really can't relate to those top ratings. Like I can't relate to the 'people who like this, often also like' section or to the 'similar' section on the page for a perfume. 

You either like/love a scent or you don't, may it be niche or designer or high or low rated. 

You are making my point that it doesn’t matter. We agree there.