Glacier Bay
Bath and Body Works

Glacier Bay by Bath & Body Works (2005) was an early proper fragrance effort that didn't make it to the 2010 refresh when everything moved from the L'Occitane-like blue bottles to the soap bar bottles (since replaced again), and methinks part of this may have to do with the fact that this was a blatant ripoff of a 90's blue aquatic. That said, I rather enjoyed Glacier Bay, as it sat somewhere between Polo Sport by Ralph Lauren (1993) and Navy for Men by Cover Girl (1996), the latter of which I lost my taste for at some point before I got this bottle. Problem was with this, and such was the case for many early Bath & Body Works masculines like Canyon Cologne (2005), that the performance was utterly abysmal even if the smell was just a peg or so below designer quality. Sure, fans of the brand probably didn't mind and would just keep buying more, but I wasn't keen on wasting a tenth of the bottle with every application or carrying it with me to get some performance throughout my work day. This stuff really was cologne strength, and not "men's cologne" like the usual nomenclature.

The opening was pretty cool and a bit smooth, with dihydromyrcenol aquatic notes, lavender, mint, some freesia, and aldehydes that made this scream "90's" right from the start. The best parts of Polo Sport minus the seaweed, coupled with the most pleasant parts of Navy for Men minus the odd sourness that one has, merged together on a heart of hedione, lily of the valley raw materials (likely still lilial or lyral then), geranium, neroli, and some ionone materials that gave a soapy feel. The base was pretty much Iso E Super and oakmoss with white musks and tons of linalool like a Calvin Klein fragrance, while it lasted, as you'd get about 3 hours or so of pleasant aquatic freshness then blamo! Nada! Zero! Goodbye! This was eventually the deal breaker for me, but if you didn't mind keeping this in a gym bag or used it with the accompanying body spray, shower gel, deodorant, lotion, bar soap, and God knows what else, you'd have some sustain. Vintage Avon men's fragrances were infamously built to be layered up with accessory products to get longevity, but not to this extreme. Best use is probably summer, after shower, you know the drill.

Of course, the problem with this is that it was a widespread commercial product when available, and had a lot of fans when discontinued, so even though this is -just- Bath & Body Works, full bottles of Glacier Bay sell for insulting amounts of money on eBay. Anywhere from $100 to up over $325 for a bottle of cheapo mall boutique aquatic juice that smells like a study of fragrances already out of fashion and lasts about as long as a traditional eau de cologne on skin sounds like lunacy to me, but such is the way for stuff like this. I've seen some vintage Jovans sell for more than old bottles of Chanel or Dior so I guess value is in the nostalgia factor when dealing with lower-end retired fragrances, as more people have memories attached to something like a Bath & Body Works fragrance they bought on the cheep as a young adult than something they probably couldn't afford when it was being made, and only knew through advertising. Still, I absolutely cannot endorse this for the price, and didn't even finish my bottle when I had it due to the performance, but it did smell nice while I had it. Thumbs up.