Should Men Buy Perfume For Their Sweethearts?

Should men buy perfume for their sweethearts? I always though it was a nice gift for your Valentine, but not so fast according to some folks. It never occurred to me that buying a nice new and different perfume would be perceived as anything but an endearing gift.  There are two different camps when it comes to the subject. One camp says, "yes it's a nice thoughtful gift", the other camps says "no. let them wear what they want". If your significant other likes a certain perfume, then stick to that one.

As a man, I prefer to mix things up when it comes to cologne. I am not married to one brand, if my wife likes it, I like it. She knows how she wants me to smell and I trust her to buy the right type for me. For woman it seems that they prefer to pick out their own smell rather than have it bought for them, even as a gift.

When I told my co-host LBF that I used to buy new and different perfumes for my wife as gifts, she accused me of essentially having an affair because quoting her, "why do you want your wife to smell like a different woman? You animal!"

I swear that is not my goal in buying her a different brand, it's just that I thought it smelled good when the lady at the mall whipped out a sample of it as I was casually perusing the various perfume kiosks. After buying my wife new scents over the years and noticing that she hardly touched them and they were just for display, did it finally dawn on me that women want what they want and are happy sticking to it.

The answer for me now is a resounding yes! Of course I mean buy only what you know they like otherwise it will end up gathering dust on bathroom counter or given away. Perhaps we should stick to the tried and true roses and chocolates, they never throw those away.

In honor of Valentine's Day and Bob's very '80s gifts to his wife, I went on a deep dive on iconic 80s perfumes that should make a comeback.

OK, Bob's gift was an Estee Lauder gift pack. And to be really honest, it was makeup and skincare, not White Linen eau de parfum.

Because all I could think of was spraying "Beautiful" all over my Champion sweatshirt before I went to go drink in the woods with whichever boy I had a crush that week.

One, smelling like Love's Baby Soft is a core memory I think we should all revisit.

Also, perfume was almost reaching its celebrity endorsement phase. Liz Taylor and Passion and Debbie Gibson and Electric Youth paved the way for J-Lo and Justin Beiber  and Sarah Jessica Parker.

I mean, all I can say is if you had a best friend who wore Poison on the regs, you were DEFINITELY having a good time on the weekends.

My first perfume was the 1st runner up of teen fragrances - Heaven Sent. And WHY they didn't call it Heaven SCENT is beyond me.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY MADISON AVE.

And if you were wearing Opium, you were a confident, one-percenter who scared me a little.

Sure, half this crap probably caused cancer in test-monkeys, but boy did we love them.

Love's Baby Soft was the first perfume you usually got as a gift. A stocking stuffer or a present from grandma. It smelled like powder and, apparently, perverts. Because WHAT IN THE NAME OF CHRIS HANSEN is GOING ON in this commercial?

While all my friends were wearing Love's Baby Soft, the elixer of, apparently, Level 3 sex offenders, I was stuck with Heaven Sent. It was the lesser-know entry-level perfume. I think my mother wore it, so of course, she bought it for me. Here's the very 1968 jingle. I couldn't wait to get older, get a tube top and get me some better perfume.

This fragrance hit CVS and the frenzy over getting it (at least as an 8th grader) may not have rivaled the craziness of, oh, Taylor Swift tickets, but it was a HOT item. No commercial, but enjoy Debbie's rendition of "Electric Youth" for your listening pleasure!

I'll make a statement: this stuff was the probably the most lifted perfume in all of drugstore history. You know those plastic cases at Walgreen's keeping all the baby formula, razors and Sudafed away from the masses? Blame teenagers and their unrelenting need for Exclamation!

Liz Claiborne smelled like your cool, well-dressed, slightly preppy friend who looked like she was on her way to be deposed by her ex-husband. But damn, the bottle was cool as hell. And this commercial hit ALL the right notes!

Hey honey, this smells like a stalker! Obsession was one of those perfumes you were sort of afraid of. It smelled like sin, possible pregnancy and definitely the whiff of restraining order.

People who wore this were from Wellesley. That is all.

At $3 bucks each, what could go wrong? I'll tell you what could go wrong. Everything. Desperate Imposters is a better name. Also, pretty pervy commercial. The 80s were so weird.

No teenager had this perfume. Not one. But we all wanted to visit the landmark store in Beverly Hills a la Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman."

I wore it. Of course I did. And if your name was Lauren, you got it every Christmas, every birthday, every holiday until you turned 30. If was almost enough to change your name to Ralph Lifshitz.

Anais Anais by Cacharel was huge among the Laura Ashley set. If you liked lace and buttoned-up collars, prairie skirts and soft, filtered lighting, the costuming in "Out of Africa and the movie "Pretty Baby" (ew), then this was for you. Also, this commercial wins for "Most Vague".

"Kind of young kind of now, kind of free kind of now, CHARLIE!" More like kind of fruity and apricot-y, kind of smells like pot-pourri-y, CHARLIE! Thanks to CHARLIE, I can't stand the smell of dried fruit. Thanks a lot CHARLIE!

I've said it once and I'll say it again: any teenager who wore this was a one-percenter with a BMW and a Bloomingdales card who probably scared me a little. Also, is it a good idea to name a scent after a highly addictive substance responsible for the deaths of millions? I'm no marketer but that seems like it might need a rethink.

Ok, this perfume overpromised and underperformed. Sure, teens didn't wear it because we had NO intention of getting all of that done in a day. But our moms may have worn it - and we saw they were burned out. And speaking of burned, this commercial is burned in my memory.