You must know by now what an enormous fan I am of 4711, I’m a purist, not part of this 4711 revival crowd born out of that awful ITV drama featuring a sycophantic beard with teeth, no, 4711 runs through my veins.
A bit of history: where 4711 comes from
It is worth knowing what you are holding, because almost nothing else on a modern shelf has this long a run. Wilhelm Mülhens was given the recipe for a scented water in Cologne in 1792, and the story the house tells is that it came from a Carthusian monk as a wedding present. He sold it at first as Aqua Mirabilis, miracle water, and it was marketed as something you drank as much as something you wore.
The number is an accident of occupation. When the French took Cologne in 1794 they numbered the houses for the census, and a French soldier painted 4711 over the gate of the Mülhens house on Glockengasse. It was a bureaucrat’s scrawl, not a brand. The company only actually became “4711” in 1881, when it lost a long fight over the right to use the Farina name and fell back on its own front door instead. That is a rare thing in fragrance: a name that means nothing, chosen because everything else was taken.
Echt Kölnisch Wasser means genuine Cologne water, which is the point. This is not a cologne in the loose modern sense of “men’s fragrance”, it is the original thing that the entire category was named after. The house maintains that the seven core ingredients have not changed since 1792. The accord is the one everyone recognises without being able to name it: bright citrus, lemon and orange and bergamot, over herbs, with a little orange-blossom neroli softening the middle. Every barbershop fragrance made since is, in some sense, a note written in the margin of this one.
What the Cool Stick actually was
The cool stick is a completely new product to me however and it’s really crazy. At room temperature, when you touch it against your skin, it’s freezing cold. In fact the warmer you are and everything is around you, the colder it becomes.
That is evaporation doing the work rather than any menthol trick, which is why it got colder the hotter you were: more heat, faster flash-off, more cooling. A traditional eau de cologne is mostly volatile citrus oils in alcohol at a low concentration, so it was always going to be better at refreshing you than at lasting on you. Setting that into a stick was a genuinely clever bit of thinking, and completely of its time, from an era when cologne was sold as something restorative that you applied to your temples and the back of your neck in the heat.
It’s definitely a cool stick and not a solid fragrance. Even though there is a little fragrance left on the skin, it doesn’t particularly last, which is actually quite good because I’d want to use this a heck of a lot more than I would want to keep applying more cologne.
This is already in my travel bag and will be jetting off to Spain with me next time I visit my parents. Oh and it seems to be very compacted and even though I’ve been using it a fair bit (on the tube, in hot shops etc) you’d never know it had been touched.
Is the 4711 Cool Stick discontinued?
Yes. It is gone, none of the shops I list stock it, and what is left is old stock on eBay and the odd overseas seller. I would think hard before paying over the odds: a cologne stick that has sat in a warehouse for years will not smell the way it did, and this was never long-lasting to begin with. The rest of the 4711 line is completely fine. It is only the stick that has gone.
What to buy instead
For the same smell, just buy the cologne. The Original Eau de Cologne splash is the scent in the format it was built for, and it is inexpensive.
For the barbershop cologne done properly, Acqua di Parma Colonia is where I would actually spend. It is the grown-up version of this idea: the same bright citrus opening, more structure underneath, considerably more staying power. If it is the neroli you want specifically, Tom Ford Neroli Portofino is the obvious one, at an eye-watering price for a citrus.
For an actual solid, the honest position is that none of the shops I list sell one. The category has become the preserve of small makers, and the easiest to get hold of here is Solid Cologne UK, a British brand selling wax tins through Amazon. I have not tested them, so take that as a pointer rather than a recommendation, and know that a solid is wax and oil: it sits warm on the skin and will not do the freezing trick. That cooling was the whole point of the 4711, and it is the part nobody has replaced.
More of the range, if you want it: the Original Eau de Cologne, the atomiser body spray, 4711 Nouveau and the Acqua Colonia Pink Pepper & Grapefruit.
Where I’d buy them
Every product in this piece, with the shops I list. Some links earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.
4711 Original Eau de Cologne Splash 50ml
£12.09 at EscentualShopRead my take ↑
Acqua di Parma Colonia Eau de Cologne 50ml
£111 at LOOKFANTASTICShop
Tom Ford Neroli Portofino Eau de Parfum 30ml
£121.60 at LOOKFANTASTICShopSolid Cologne UK
View on AmazonRead my take ↑
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