After 25 years, guys across the world are still wearing Boss Bottled

Boss Bottled has been a favourite of men everywhere ever since it was first launched 25 years ago. And in a market as crowded as the business of smelling really, really good, that’s no easy feat. What makes it even more difficult is the subjectivity of it all: one man’s heaven scent isn’t so holy for another. But still, despite all that, Boss Bottled has been one of the single unifying fragrances among countless men over the years, with one bottle sold every four seconds. That’s almost 8 million bottles a year. They must be doing something right.

And this landmark fragrance for men was actually made by a woman called Annick Ménardo – a woman who took risks to try to answer an almost impossible question: what do guys like?

After years of developing some of the best menswear on the continent, it made sense to distil that tailored expertise into a signature smell. Other brands were doing it, and doing it well. It made more sense, though, for Boss to do it differently. Ménardo looked not to the coastal vision of Sicilians lemons, fast cars and faster nights, but to something a little closer to home. Or at least home-baked: Ménardo’s biggest inspiration was the apfelstrudel: cooked apple, cinnamon and vanilla were the leading notes on the very first Boss Bottled.

Fast forward a quarter century, and Boss Bottled is still riding high – and the signature sweetness is the finishing touch for thousands of men. To mark its big anniversary, Boss Bottled Elixir has dropped. It is a remix of that landmark fragrance, but freshened up for 2023.

The birthday made it even more special for Ménardo, who is still reeling from the success that comes with creating one of the bestselling men’s fragrances in history. She has a knack (or, at least, a nose) for this sorta stuff. “Back with the original Boss Bottled, I had to rely on my own instincts and creativity,” she says. “There wasn’t a specific brief at the time. I worked on a clear idea, made 13 trials, and selected one to be sent to a customer test.”

There’s still a faint aroma of apfelstrudel, but Ménardo approaches the “gourmand” family in a different way. “Boss Bottled Elixir is an intense ambery and woody fragrance,” she says, “and I wanted to do things in a more contemporary way, with an overdose of vanilla notes enhanced by a strong patchouli signature and a rich ambery background.”

And, like the original, Boss Bottled Elixir had a woman in charge – Suzy Le Helley – and she wanted to commemorate the legacy of the brand’s fragrance house. “Boss Bottled was the first fruit scent for men,” she says, still simmering with the enthusiasm that came with the very first sample. “There was no men’s perfume with this fruit overdose at the time. It was a revolution. It was really daring. And we created a new family with a fruit side from apple, and a note of amber wood and ambrox.”

Le Helley, by her own admission, never saw her professional success in the world of fragrance. “Initially, I wanted to become a ballet dancer. I started at the age of five, studying 15 hours a week until I was 18 or 20, but I was doing a scientific baccalaureate at the same time,” she says. And when her contemporaries went onto the Grandes Écoles – a group of top academic institutions that are a little like the French equivalent of the US Ivy League – she decided to become a perfumer. Le Helley had grown up making sense of nice scents. “My mother is Grassoise, and part of my family worked with flowers, so flowers are a kind of family affair. It was in my family garden that I first learned about botany. So my first job was at [fragrance company] Haarmann & Reimer, and then I joined Créations Aromatiques, Firmenich, and finally, Symrise.”

The evolution into Boss Bottled Elixir reflects the brand’s current values: “be your own boss” read the slick marketing campaigns, supercharged with some of the most famous people on the planet. “I always like following my convictions in my creations, and this idea of being your own boss resonates quite well with my way of working, and it reminds me of the leap of faith I took in following my intuition to create the original Boss Bottled,” says Ménardo.

In practice, Boss Bottled Elixir is a modern fragrance that packs a punch without overpowering a passer-by. It receives compliments. And more importantly, it works, whether guys need a new fragrance for the everyday, or something to scent the late nights. As Boss continues to mould itself for men who want striking clothes that don’t try too hard, Boss Bottled Elixir is the perfect freshener for this new confident air. Ménardo says: “The Boss man is an audacious, inspired and empowered person that’s able to be their own Boss, and able to integrate this idea into every aspect of their life.” Or into their bathroom cabinet, at the very least.

Boss’ evolution has been smart, and patient. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, and all that. So rather than leave its ideals behind entirely, the brand focuses on what it does well – classic menswear and incisive fragrances – and builds upon it. Boss Bottled Elixir isn’t a brand new fragrance that’s foreign to fans of the brand, but a new son of that original scent released all those years ago. “It became a classic and I am so proud of it,” says Ménardo. “I’m just happy to smell this fragrance on people in the street 25 years later.” There’s a reason it still lingers.