What's Worse: Discontinuation or Reformulation?

 Reminiscing today on a few of my favorite scents that have been changed or retired, I started to wonder, which is worse? Is it more heartbreaking to find out a beloved scent has been altered or that the company has decided, for reasons they usually never disclose, that they are sending their work of art to the great beyond? Naturally whichever direction they go in, I have always found it disingenuous for companies to not make their client base aware. I understand that companies reserve the right to change their formulations at any time, given the ever changing nature of inflation, ingredient availability, global political shifts, and constant emerging research on ingredient and formulation safety, but given what an incredibly personal and emotional item fragrance is to many people, it just seems a little cruel to not let the die hard lovers know when their baby might be taken away. In the spirit of solemn reflection that autumn always brings me, let's look back on some of my favorite scents that have been retired or changed.

Boy Smells - Suede Pony

This is one of the first fragrances that Boy Smells came out with, which I collectively refer to as their "first era" when they were actually making scents that pushed the "genderful" envelope. Fragrantica lists Suede Pony as being launched in 2021, which is when Boy Smells say they expanded beyond candles into fine fragrance, as per their website. Boy Smells' products are "conceived beyond the gender binary" with co-founder Matthew Herman saying, "We wanted to have products that were embracing masculine and feminine simultaneously in a simple and straight-forward way that wasn’t overtly targeted to one gender." Hence the bottle design that combines the phallic shaft bottle cap with the feminine round glass vessel, and labeled with a unisex dusty pink.

Suede Pony itself is a very complex fragrance with a lot of notes competing with and complimenting each other in a wonderfully dry, earthy cloud. I feel like I am being Mandela Effect-ed but I could've sworn when this first launched there was a hay note in the middle, which lent it a greater Cowboy in the Barn vibe. Taking a look at the notes listed on the box, you can see how very dry and slightly spicy the body of the perfume is, between the saffron, cardamom, suede, and woods. If you've ever been in a barn full of hay in the middle of a dry summer, when the environment almost feels like it's pulling the moisture out of your nose when you breathe, that's how the perfume feels. The earthy quality of suede and gentle warm spice of cardamom and patchouli add body and depth. Despite having these incredibly dry notes, there is an uplifting juiciness curling around the suede and wood notes, which I attribute to the pineapple. Neither the cardamom nor the patchouli are aggressively spicy. This is more like someone next to you is wearing these notes and you can breathe in their core essence. This is a beautiful fragrance that swirls around you and sticks to the roof of your mouth when you breathe in. It makes me want to sneeze and it makes me wish for a summer with cicadas. 

The beauty of Boy Smells early fragrances is that they do play with the idea of gender. While this evokes the idea of a cowboy wearing his gear while walking through a barn, this is not a cologne. It's a warm, enveloping, spicy cloud of clean earth. It gives me a little swagger in my step and feels very unlike any other fragrance I have. Not as heavy as Tom Ford's Ombre Leather family, nor as spicy and heavy as YSL Opium, it's lingers on the skin and wafts around you gently but is it a fragrance or just what you smell like naturally after leaving the ranch? Anyone can wear patchouli and suede and anyone could wear Suede Pony. 

I happened to check Boy Smells website during their holiday sale 2023 and saw both Suede Pony and Tantrum full sizes on sale for breathtaking prices, about $39 each or so. Really made me think about buying backups, even though I've already learned the hard way back ups are a little pointless for me. I knew then what Suede Pony's fate was. No company would do a holiday sale quite so generous. Luckily for me, both full sizes were already sold out and I was saved from spending my money so recklessly. And perhaps, as my heart breaks a little every time I spray it knowing I am getting just a little closer to the end, I am slowly and painfully being taught a lesson about appreciating and living in the moment and letting go of things I have no control over. 

Boy Smells - Tantrum 

Tantrum was also launched in 2021 as part of the first core fragrances for Boy Smells. It's fruity and green and fresh. This is another that I maintain changed their formula between when I first smelled it and when I bought it, because I feel certain that there was a pineapple note early on and it was touted in fragrance spaces as an alternative to Creed Aventus for those looking for the exciting and relatively unused note. Before you point out that Suede Pony above has a pineapple note, I know, and maybe I am muddling them in my head, but Tantrum has always read significantly more fruity that Suede Pony ever did. But never mind my spotty memory now. 

It leads with green bell pepper and mint, creating a juicy, bright, refreshing opener, with the midnotes of mate (an herb that creates a tea that's between black and green teas and has the same mouth drying effect as strongly brewed green tea) and sandalwood keeping it from getting too airy. The mint does not veer into toothpaste, it's the same as the gently invigorating smell of standing over a mint bush. It has vetiver and ambroxan as bases, which are two notes than can get quite overwhelming if you let them, but this fragrance always keeps everything very light and fresh, and never succumbs to the heavy depths that vetiver and ambroxan can take you to. In fact on the dry down I get almost entirely cedar, like you've just hung out in an unfinished wood cabinet and gotten the smell stuck on you. It's one of my favorites to use in the summer, as it maintains that fruity fresh levity all day. In an incredibly niche instance, it is the only fragrance I reach for after a cool shower in the morning when I'm trying to keep the I'm Cool and Not Sweaty Yet feeling going all day. 

As with the Suede Pony, seeing the bottles on sale on the Boy Smells website for over 50% off rung the death knell for them. I knew then that I was to never see them again. Boy Smells have returned to their vegetal gourmands since then, with the launch of their From Farm to Fragrance limited edition mini collection that had candles and matching travel spray fragrances. I am sad that I didn't pick those up while they were available but I had hoped they might make them permanent in an attempt to return to their "genderful" roots. Sadly I feel since 2023 Boy Smells has been steering in a very bland and easily marketable direction, with most of their recent launches being extremely similar to what's already available. A spicy woods fragrance, a creamy woods fragrance, and a vanilla. None of the chaotic, competitive, and unexpected notes lists from their early outings. 

Glossier - You

Glossier You was the first major perfume purchase I ever made. I want to say it was about 2019 and I had bought a couple of Cloud Paints and they sent a blister sample of You. I wore it and loved it. I had never bought a perfume myself before and certainly not a full bottle but that's all they had. It was $60 and a lot of money for me at the time. I ordered it, and since I was living abroad, had to wait to get my hands on it until a rare trip home. Sprayed it on myself ... and hated it. I don't remember exactly how it smelled to me at the time but I remember being nauseated. It gave me a headache and I couldn't wash it off. I was so mad and disappointed. This is what I got for splurging on something as frivolous and pointless as perfume. I was beyond upset but I took the bottle with me back to Japan in the hopes that something miraculous would happen. I lost it in my room for about a year. 

Sometime after a move to a new apartment, I rediscovered the perfume, tucked away in some box, forgotten about. I pulled it out and held it in my hand, that milky pink bottle fitting perfectly in my palm, thumb in the indent as intended. I was overcome with curiosity, did it smell as bad as I recalled? I sprayed it on and maybe angels sang in the background. It smelled amazing. I am about to say a description that sounds nasty but it wasn't, it smelled exactly like a clean, cool, tile lined pool bathroom. That cold smell that subway tile has with a light layer of chlorine water over it, plus the gentle sweetness of the candied violets. The first year I wore it I never got powdery or syrupy sweet notes, it was just clean and bright. It would last all day and into the next morning, where I could smell the lingering lily and ambroxan like a kiss on my wrists before I sprayed it again. My sweatshirt could last all week on one spray. You was glorious. 

As it aged, it turned gently powdery on me, still clean but now softer, more like a plush white robe. More of the floral came out when I would wear it. I lost the cool clean tile aspect of it, but I retained that gentle sweet warmth. It became more mature as I did, but lost none of the fun that hooked me all those years ago. I was not a religious perfume wearer back then, and You had a projection and lasting power that was incredible so I didn't need to use too much or I would overwhelm myself. A spritz on the wrists, one in the hair, maybe in the elbow ditches if I was wearing short sleeves, nothing more. My first ever bottle lasted me until 2023. 

Somewhat of a side note, but I worked at Sephora for about a year, and fragrance was the world I loved working in most. The number of times that I would mention Glossier You as a perfect Your Skin But Better scent was astronomical. This was before it was even announced Glossier would be coming to the store. If it was a cage match between Juliette Has a Gun Not a Perfume, Clean Reserve Skin, and You, I would bet on client's picking You every time. It was just something that nothing else could replicate. I sang You's praises so well that I had client's say they'd rather wait and smell You when they could than take a chance on what we had in store. Sorry to my store director.

As I sprayed the last drops of my first bottle, I was giddy to buy another one. Glossier had launched a larger size, 100mL, and I was excited to take that journey of maturation with another bottle, hoping to replicate the life cycle of my first bottle with a new one. When the package arrived I ripped it open and spritzed myself liberally. And waited. It smelled like nothing. I sprayed more and started to detect something but it wasn't You. It was spicy but also somewhat bland, merely a whisper of You, like when you get to the bottom of a shaved ice and you can remember what the sugar syrup tasted like but all you're actually eating is ice. 

Maybe it was me. I put the bottle on my shelf, dejected, but willing to wait. I would wait forever for true love. I came back to You once or twice over the next month but every time the same, just an odd mimicry of You. No strength, no lasting power, no sweetness. I couldn't fathom it. Was this the only perfume that COVID had cursed me with never smelling? Did I actually have to wait a full year like my first bottle to like it again? Did they water it down for the 100mL size?

During an idle scroll of Reddit, I clicked on a "which reformulation made you the most sad?" thread. Big names were understandably in there, like OG Poison and Opium. Halfway down someone said "Glossier You." car crash, glass shatter, record scratch, zoom in on my face HUH? You had been reformulated? I scrambled to a new tab, fat fingering a search for "glosser you reformlation" in my shaking haste. Page after page of people on Reddit, blogs, Tiktok, and IG talking about the Great Reformulation of 2022. Lilial was apparently the target, due to new EU regulations, but there were rumblings of cost cutting for the launch in Sephora (rumors that I would support due to seeing several small companies struggle in Sephora and having it ultimately work against them. Plus on a personal, Glossier's shipments and customer service took a nose dive before the Sephora launch). I wasn't crazy. You wasn't You anymore. Well it was, but it wasn't. You was someone new. 

You is now more pepper forward, quite tingly in the nose. The lily and violets are gone and it's iris for the floral note, which is much more gentle. The base is warm and sweet, with the ambroxan and musk still doing their job, but they feel quite muted and shallow. The spray nozzle is also different. The first bottle sprayed large drops, almost like spittle, and was fairly focused and straight. The new bottle creates a fine mist. To each their own about spray nozzles, but I find mists seem to warp the oils and make it easy for the scent to dissipate on the skin. This is very much a personal preference of course, mists can perform perfectly fine, I just don't enjoy them as much as a more droplet creating sprayer. 

In new You's defense, it's basically a different person. I have tried gallantly to give it the space and time to win me over, all the while sounding like the worst Boomer possible, saying "back in my day You lasted for hours." I am slowly coming to like You Two Point Oh, although it's still just a shadow of what it used to be. For anyone who is worried about You now being a worse copy of itself (it is), don't let it scare you from trying You as a new creation however. That's as silly as saying you shouldn't watch Lord of the Rings because you never got to experience it in theaters with superior surround sound or you can't go to the Oasis Reunion Tour because you weren't alive during the Britpop heyday. Experience You now as something new and wholly on your own terms. Plus, you can never miss what you didn't know. 

Conclusion

During the course of writing this, I think I clarified my own feelings on the matter, but personally I find reformulation to be worse than discontinuation. While I understand the reasons behind both from a business standpoint, we're talking personal feelings here. Reformulation sometimes feels like trying to snatch smoke out of the air, a company grabbing at former glory. I get it, for many companies a pillar fragrance is an icon. Everyone knows Dior Poison and Miss Dior. They could reformulate it a million times and the name would still carry, because that's the impact the name has. Glossier only has You, so I understand why they would be unable to retire it and create something new. Meanwhile Boy Smells probably needed to make room on the production line and in the warehouse for the new scents they launched, and it makes sense to cut the scents that aren't pulling in as much money. Vanilla and musk are easy to wear, suede and cardamom not as much. 

But sometimes a reformulation is the scene in The Monkey's Paw when the mother wishes for her son back. He comes back, but he's Not Right. At least a discontinuation feels like they died like they lived, fully intact with all the same notes. Gone but never forgotten. There's an added element of betrayal and disappointment when you smell the new scent expecting the old, like when your foot misses a step in the dark and momentarily you're sailing through the air completely untethered and unsafe until you hit the floor again and there's a flash of anger at your house for not being where you expect it to. How could it betray you like that? 

The bright side of a reformulation is learning to love, or at least like, a new fragrance where it is and see new people discover it. They don't miss what they never knew. It gives companies a chance to try something new while staying true to the DNA of the original and is a bit like a song remix. Sometimes the original is better, but sometimes the remix has something new and impactful to say. To say a company should discontinue rather than reformulate is to rob the world a new expression of an idea, and maybe one that new people will resonate with more. 

Let me know below which you prefer and if any of your favorite scents have been victims.