In Britain, "aftershave" almost never means aftershave.
Walk into a shop and ask for one and nobody hands you an astringent splash for a freshly shaved face. They point you at the men's fragrance counter. The word drifted decades ago and never drifted back, so the UK is now the one market where "what aftershave do you wear?" is a question about eau de parfum.
That matters for a buying guide, because the two products are genuinely different. True aftershave is mostly a post-shave treatment, usually alcohol-heavy, scented lightly and designed to fade within the hour. What people actually want when they ask for aftershave recommendations is a fragrance that lasts the day. This list is the second thing.
Everything below is drawn from the verdicts on our own perfume pages, which are compiled from wearer reports rather than a single reviewer's nose. Where a fragrance divides people, we say so instead of smoothing it over.
How to read this list
Fragrance concentration is the single most useful thing on the box, and it is the thing most buyers ignore. As a rough guide, eau de toilette carries less perfume oil than eau de parfum, and parfum or extrait carries more again. Higher concentration usually means the scent sits closer to the skin for longer, but it is not a quality ranking. Some of the best-loved masculine fragrances ever made are EDTs.
Where a fragrance exists in several concentrations, we have said which one the pick refers to. They are not interchangeable, and a shop swapping an EDT for an EDP is not giving you the same thing in a stronger form.
The everyday workhorses
These are the ones that cause the fewest problems. Office-safe, season-flexible, and unlikely to offend anyone sharing a lift with you.
Chanel Bleu de Chanel - Eau de Parfum
Composed by Jacques Polge, Bleu opens on grapefruit, lemon and mint with a peppery lift, moves through ginger and nutmeg, and settles into cedar, sandalwood and amber. The structure is the point: it is fresh at the top and warm at the bottom, so it works in July and in January.
Our verdict calls it the modern masculine standard, and that is close to the community consensus too. If you want one bottle that covers work, dinner and a wedding, this is the safest answer on the list. The EDP is the version most people mean; the EDT is lighter and the Parfum heavier.
Montblanc Explorer - Eau de Parfum
Bergamot and pink pepper over vetiver and leather, landing on ambroxan and patchouli. Olivier Pescheux and Antoine Maisondieu share the credit.
Explorer is the value pick of the designer tier and the one we would push hardest at someone buying their first proper bottle. It sits in obvious company - the fresh-woody-ambroxan family is crowded - but it does the job cleanly and sells for noticeably less than the houses it resembles.
Issey Miyake L'Eau d'Issey Pour Homme - Eau de Toilette
Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud built this in 1994 on yuzu, lemon and bergamot over lotus and nutmeg, with vetiver, cedar and tobacco underneath. Thirty years on it still reads as clean rather than dated, which very few aquatics of its generation manage.
This is the one to buy if "fresh" is the whole brief. It is quiet by modern standards, and that is deliberate.
Hermès Terre d'Hermès - Eau de Toilette
Jean-Claude Ellena wrote Terre around orange and grapefruit over pepper, geranium and flint, with vetiver and cedar below. The flinty, mineral quality is unusual and is what people either love it or fail to notice.
Our verdict describes quiet strength without shouting, and that is the right framing. It is the most grown-up-smelling fragrance in this section and the least likely to be mistaken for anyone else's.
The statement bottles
Louder, sweeter, more memorable. These get compliments. They also get noticed in a meeting room, which is not always what you want.
Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male - Eau de Toilette
Francis Kurkdjian was in his twenties when he composed this in 1995. Mint, lavender and cardamom over cinnamon and orange blossom, resolving into vanilla, tonka and sandalwood. It is the creamy lavender-vanilla accord that launched a thousand imitations.
Three decades of shelf presence is its own argument. Note that Le Male exists in a long line of flankers and the original EDT is the one people mean.
Azzaro The Most Wanted - Parfum
Cardamom into toffee into amberwood. Our verdict calls it a date-night gourmand, and that is exactly the use case: sticky, spicy, warm, and built for cold weather after dark. It is not an office fragrance and nobody involved pretends otherwise.
Giorgio Armani Stronger With You Intensely - Eau de Parfum
Anne Flipo layers pink pepper and juniper over toffee, cinnamon, lavender and sage, with vanilla, amber, tonka and suede underneath. Sweet, spicy, unapologetic. Same brief as the Azzaro, slightly more wearable in daylight.
Dior Sauvage - Eau de Toilette
François Demachy built Sauvage on pepper and bergamot over Sichuan pepper, lavender and vetiver, with ambroxan, cedar and labdanum below.
Sauvage is the most widely worn masculine fragrance in Britain, and that is both the recommendation and the caveat. It smells good. It also smells like a great many other men, so if you want something that reads as yours, buy something else on this list. The EDT, EDP and Elixir are three genuinely different fragrances sharing a name.
The budget tier that actually competes
The Middle Eastern houses changed this category. These are not compromises.
Armaf Club de Nuit Intense Man - Eau de Parfum
Lemon, pineapple and blackcurrant over birch and jasmine, into ambergris, musk and patchouli. Our verdict calls it a bracing citrus-smoky powerhouse with fierce projection, and the community agrees loudly.
It is widely discussed as a smell-alike for a much more expensive fragrance. We would rather recommend it on its own terms: it is a good fragrance at a low price with a trail that does not go unnoticed.
Lattafa Asad - Eau de Parfum
Pepper, pineapple, tobacco and cardamom over lavender, cinnamon, liquorice and coffee, landing on amber, vanilla, labdanum and benzoin. Spicy, smoky, sweet underneath.
Our verdict is blunt about the limits: it is not for the timid or for summer sun. Wear it in October, not July.
Afnan 9pm - Eau de Parfum
Apple, cinnamon, lavender and bergamot over orange blossom, into vanilla, tonka, amber and patchouli. A straightforwardly sweet gourmand aimed at nights out, priced so that a bad guess costs very little.
The benchmark
Creed Aventus - Eau de Parfum
Bergamot, blackcurrant, apple and pink pepper over pineapple, patchouli and jasmine, with birch, musk, oakmoss and ambroxan below. Credited to Erwin Creed and Jean-Christophe Hérault.
Aventus is the fragrance the last fifteen years of masculine perfumery has been arguing with. Whether it justifies its price is a question only you can answer, and plenty of people conclude it does not. What is not in dispute is that the smoky pineapple accord genuinely was new, and that most of the budget tier above exists in its shadow.
Questions people actually ask
Is aftershave the same as cologne? In British usage they are both used loosely to mean men's fragrance. Strictly, cologne means eau de cologne, historically the lightest concentration of all. In the US "cologne" is the default word for any masculine fragrance, which is why American reviews and British shop shelves can seem to disagree.
Does a more expensive bottle last longer on skin? Not reliably. Concentration and the specific materials matter far more than price, and skin chemistry varies enough that two people can get very different results from the same bottle. The budget picks above are not short-lived, and some expensive fragrances are deliberately soft.
Should I buy the EDT or the EDP? Read them as separate fragrances rather than strengths of one. Sauvage EDT and Sauvage Elixir share a name and little else. Where we have named a concentration above, that is the one the description applies to.
What about buying a smaller bottle first? Sensible for anything in the statement or budget tiers, where the risk of disliking it is highest. Many of these are sold in 30ml and 50ml, and several are available as samples or decants if you want to test before committing.
Where to start
If you want one bottle and no further thought, buy Bleu de Chanel. If the budget is tighter, Montblanc Explorer does a similar job. If you want compliments rather than approval, Le Male or The Most Wanted. If you want to spend as little as possible and still smell expensive, Club de Nuit Intense Man.
Prices and stock on this page update from retailer feeds, so what you see is current rather than what we typed on the day.
