Polo 
Ralph Lauren (1978)

REVIEW FOR THE CURRENT (2020) FORMULATION.

TLDR: OK (2.5/5). Reformulations have dulled the shine on a once great fragrance.

I have written in other reviews about how my appreciation of Polo following its initial release was tempered by my classmates over zealous application during my final year of middle school.

In spite of my Polo fatigue, when a high school girlfriend gave me a bottle, I felt forced to use it (even though I had returned unopened bottles received as gifts on 2 prior occasions--my aunts were not going to stop talking to me if I exchanged their gifts; the girlfriend was another story). And so I came to try Polo and discovered that it was quite wonderful if applied with respect for its undeniable power. Long after the girlfriend had moved on to one of my classmates, who I noticed soon began to reek of Polo most days, I continued to wear the stuff from time to time.

After the start of the Covid-19 lock downs, in an effort to find something to do in my down time, I started to reacquire the fragrances that had begun my scent journey. If there was a current version of the scent available, and there was for nearly all of them, that is what I bought. So in April of 2020, I received the classic green Polo box and prepared to get reacquainted with an old friend.

The initial spray was what I remembered. Pine, green notes, spices, nothing else in the green aromatic genre has managed to surpass this opening.

The heart notes weren't quite as I remembered them. There was a certain depth missing from the composition. Perhaps my memory was faulty or my much older skin reacted differently to the scent than it once had? Still, this smelled nice. Our reunion was going well.

Then we got to the base notes. Ugh. The chemicals now used to simulate the animalic leather and supplement the trace of oakmoss that remains in this fragrance don't work. At all. The smell of the base is borderline unpleasant. Only some decent patchouli present here keep the last few hours of this scent just this side of the scrubber line.

Performance is also a shadow of its former self with duration at most in the 6-7 hour range (it used to greet you as you awoke the morning after applying it). Siliage is initially average, but fades quickly. This fact is a good thing, in the end, because the diminished projection corresponds to the less pleasant phase of the scent progression.

This fragrance is still OK, but the poor base notes and the sadness occasioned by memories of what this scent once was make this one a neutral for me. If the fragrance just consisted of the opening and the middle and simply tailed off into a generic woody leather note as is found in so many masculine-targeted fragrances, the rating here would be considerably higher. Perhaps the next reformulation will fix the glaring problems with the base notes and bring Polo back to something close to the great earlier versions. I doubt it will happen but will hope for a nice surprise.

For now, I only bring it out to experience the great opening and enjoy the memories it always conjures for me.