If Wes Anderson's new film is anything to go by, men and scent are having a moment. Lynn Enright explores the new olfactory playground of straight men and why they're really wearing it.

In the new Wes Anderson film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, the protagonist, a hotel concierge called Gustave H, is remembered fondly by another character as ‘the most liberally perfumed man I have ever met’, and throughout the film, we see Gustave H (played by a hilarious Ralph Fiennes) spritz himself with his signature scent, the fictional but exclusive-seeming L’Air de Panache. Gustave H is camp, certainly, but resolutely heterosexual, an assiduous womaniser with a particular penchant for elderly blondes.

He is ceaselessly popular with the various older female guests of the hotel he works at because of his wit, his charm, his hospitality industry-style willingness to go the extra mile and, you presume, because of his scent. After all, smelling good – clean and just slightly masculine with top notes of expensive sexiness – is a crucial component in any womaniser’s arsenal. Academic research has concluded that women are more influenced by olfactory stimulants in sexual encounters than men are (men, perhaps predictably, care more about visual cues) and anecdotal research suggests that men who look like they smell good, well-groomed guys like Ryan Gosling and Benedict Cumberbatch and Idris Elba, have thoroughly usurped men who look like they whiff a bit as the sexiest on those arbitrary sexiest lists. The thought of nestling into Pete Doherty’s unpleasant underarm seems utterly unpalatable, so 2005, as passé as trilbies.

"Men who look like they smell good, well-groomed guys like Benedict Cumberbatch, have usurped men who look like they whiff a bit as the sexiest on those arbitrary sexiest lists."

As early as 2007, The New York Times reported on a spike in young men in their 20s shopping at the Manhattan Le Labo fragrance store. ‘Just 18 months after opening, half of Le Labo’s custom comes from men, and Rose 31 [a scent originally intended for men] is its best-selling fragrance,’ the newspaper said at the time. ‘What is even more surprising to [Le Labo founder] Mr. Penot, as well as to others in the slow-to-change men’s fragrance market, is how one group of guys in particular, young men in their 20s, is shaking up the hidebound (and hide-scented) formulas that have held sway for decades.’

Jezebel was quick to respond to that particular Times article, asking ‘Are these 20-something urban men with a penchant for synthetic scents actually straight? Cause honestly, the straight men we know emanate a scent derived not from roses but from armpit sweat and beer.’ Even now, seven years later, I wonder if the women at Jezebel have a point. After all, when I think of the men with whom I wander around the ground floor of Liberty, the men under whose noses I shove my recently scented wrist, the men whose soft necks smell of Creed’s Aventus or Frederic Malle’s French Lover, the men who say ‘Too tuberose-y though, eh?’… Well those guys are gay.  And the Cumberbatches and the Goslings … those guys are famous. And Gustave H? Well he’s entirely made-up.            

So, are regular straight guys buying more (and more expensive) scent? Definitive figures are hard to come by as department stores can tell you if the sales of male scents are increasing (they are) but obviously they’re not about to go enquiring into the sexual preferences of every man or woman who buys a bottle of fragrance. It’s also getting increasingly tricky to monitor who exactly is buying which scents because unisex scents, like Rose 31 (although Le Labo originally marketed it as a men’s scent, it has since lapsed into ‘unisex’ territory) or Liberty’s best-selling fragrance, Escentric Molecules Molecule 01, are becoming more and more fashionable, as the line blurs between what is sexy for a man and a woman when it comes to scent. Liberty beauty buyer Sarah Coonan says there are really only five scents for sale in the department store that could be deemed exclusively male.  

The actor Richard E Grant, who is launching his first perfume, the unisex Jack, next month, says he thinks that men and women, straight, gay, bi, whatever, are all equally interested in scent but straight men are traditionally more reticent about talking about it. ‘I think the difference is that women talk about it more openly than men of my generation do,’ the 56-year-old says, ‘but the desire to smell attractive is centuries old.’

He too has noticed a shift towards unisex perfumes, particularly among younger men and women. ‘I am struck by how the youngest perfume-buying generation are so brand-savvy and seem to have no gender issue about whether something is feminine or masculine, which chimes with the seismic shift in attitudes to understanding and accepting every permutation of sexual preference,’ he says. ‘Defining something as masculine or feminine seems Jurassic.’

"Defining a scent as masculine or feminine seems Jurassic." - Richard E Grant

And while I do tend to agree with him on the issues of gender, sexual preference and scent, I am still curious about whether or not the average straight man invests in scent. I canvass the straight men I know on their thoughts about scent, fully expecting them to be unforthcoming on the subject but it turns out Richard E Grant is completely right. They are all interested in the subject of scent and smelling good and while a couple of them say they wouldn’t talk about it openly with their male friends, they are overall quite up for discussing it with me. Of the eight men I speak to, all unmarried and in their early 30s, only one, a 33-year-old artist, says he doesn’t wear scent at all.  

‘I don't even wear deodorant,’ he admits ‘There is nothing wrong with having a scent but I think a lot of people get it wrong. I like it all natural, what’s the point of masking pheromones – as long as you keep yourself clean I think that’s a win. I do realise I’m in the minority though.’ Well, yes: the other seven all wear a scent. And, they are unanimous in their thinking that scent does work when it comes to attracting women. ‘Yes, it works without question,’ a 30-year-old actor friend says when I ask him if he thinks spending money on scent is a good investment when it comes to getting laid.

Another friend, a psychologist, is more considered. ‘An olfactory response has the chance of activating a more instinctive response reaction which may override cognitive appraisal of an individual. Basically if you have the right scent on for the right lady, she'll probably still be attracted to you even if you're a d*ck,’ he says. ‘However, the scent, if associated with something or someone aversive, could cause the opposite reaction – no matter how nice you are she's going to have an instinctual aversion. So, a bit of a gamble. I’m not an expert on this but as a guess, it’s best to either go for an obscure, mild scent or something that reminds her of her dad.’

He has a point: madeleine moments abound when it comes to scent. I feel a sinking guilt in my stomach whenever I get a heavy, sickly waft of Dior Fahrenheit on the Tube as I associate it closely with an old boyfriend, and the scent which once activated teenage lust now just recalls emails I forgot to answer and a sort of flashback of fuzzy hazy decade-old regret.

For this reason, another friend, says that he avoids conspicuous scents. ‘Having spent years wearing fairly safe scents like Cool Water and l'Eau D'Issey I made an effort to look for a new fragrance last Christmas. I wanted to have a scent that isn't absolutely ubiquitous, one that wouldn’t remind every girl of her first boyfriend.’ More than a couple of my men friends say it was their exes who introduced them to what they now think of as their ‘signature scent’, including, actually, my own ex-boyfriend (a different one to the Dior Fahrenheit one). 

Perhaps influenced by The New York Times article, certainly influenced by the chic boutiques in Los Angeles and Paris and London, I bought him a bottle of Le Labo Rose 31 for his birthday back in 2011. We broke up less than a fortnight later and I remember cursing myself for having unleashed him onto the single scene for the first time in years smelling so fragrantly. ‘I did rebuy that Rose 31 for myself,’ he says now three years later. ‘F*ck me that stuff isn't cheap… But it does get you laid.’ 

It’s not all about sex though. A 31-year-old male friend who always wears 212 NYC by Caroline Herrera admits, 'I really enjoy the scent but I don't think it helps me in my disastrous encounters with the opposite sex, it's more of a personal pleasure.' He lets me smell his wrist and it’s like a more mature, more sophisticated CK One. Really, when it comes down to it, it does seem to be just like Richard E Grant says: my straight guy friends like scent for the very same reason me and my gay and my girl friends do. ‘It makes you feel elevated,’ one says. ‘It's like wearing a really well fitting suit or Burberry trench coat. It’s a protective layer that is unique to you.’ They like that it makes them feel attractive, they like the luxury of it, the feeling of personal indulgence. 

Gustave H’s womanising in The Grand Budapest Hotel isn’t the horrible sleazy sort; no, it’s the generous type of seduction, the loving kind that ends in laughs not tears. And it turns out that he’s a more relevant, more appropriate advert for modern male sensitive scent wearing than any of those aggressive Photoshopped abs you see on the billboards.

JACK is released on April 2 exclusively at Liberty and online at www.jackperfume.co.uk