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26-DEC-2025 | Excerpt from J. Peterman’s “1903” Ad

Author

Dan Bogachek
December 26, 2025

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Excerpt from J. Peterman’s “1903” Ad

1903.

I was browsing in a Paris antique shop one winter afternoon when a fitted leather train case caught my eye.

It contained silver-handled brushes, boot hooks, a straight razor, several silver-stoppered glass bottles.

One bottle was different. Encased in yew-wood, with a handwritten date: 1903.

Inside the bottle, there was still the faint aroma of a gentleman’s cologne. Custom-made for a rich traveler a century ago.

Curiosity was eating at me. I bought the case and sent the bottle to a laboratory for analysis. They broke down the residue by gas chromatography. Identified its fingerprint through spectrophotometry.

The report: and “old woody fougére.” Clean citrus notes, bergamot, “green notes.” The middle notes: clary sage, cardamom. The dry-down: leather notes, smoky labdanum… elemi, tabac, frankincense.

The detective work was impressive. So is the thing itself. Women like the way it smells on a man. Like a symphony that begins loudly, then soon slides into subtle, entangling developments that grow on them.

Or so I’ve been told. 🏁

 

  • Nothing beats a story. And all the details in this one only add to the mystery of the cologne and make it one-of-a-kind.

  • Sex sells: “women like the way it smells on a man” and “then soon slides into subtle, entangling developments that grow on them.” Word play/double meaning, sexy or not, packs a big punch.

  • Note the variety. Long sentences for scene painting, short sentences to punctuate or move the plot forward. Complete ideas >> complete sentences.

Structure:
Once upon a time (“I was browsing in a Paris antique shop…”) → call to adventure (“one bottle was different”) → down the rabbit hole (“curiosity was eating at me”) → the interesting details, while selling you on the experience itself (“the report…”) → cultivate desire (“the detective work…”) → too cool for school pull-back.

“Or so I’ve been told”: yep, it’s toeing the line and borderline camp — but benefit of the doubt scores this as self-aware and coquettish rather than pretentious. It’s up to interpretation.