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"FacebookPinterest\n\n During an interview for GQ's April Style Bible issue, I made Mark Ronson think more about scent and cologne than he had in his entire life. In fact, at the end of our conversation, the DJ/producer/GQ style hero literally said, \"You've made me think more about scent and cologne than I thought I'd have to in my entire life.\" Perhaps caught off guard by the curious topic, Ronson\u2014who is usually polite but guarded in interviews\u2014revealed his deepest, sincerest thoughts about a man and his musk. The Fendi fragrance frontman told us everything about his criteria for how a guy should smell, weaving in analogies to the music production process, boyish collegiate anecdotes, and stories of an ex-girlfriend who smelled like his deceased grandmother. Oh, and something about how, in Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman was a scientist who made perfume (?). Anyway, it's all awesome. Below, Mark Ronson's unabridged Scent Manifesto.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nGQ: What's your criteria for how a guy should smell?\n\n Mark Ronson: I think it's important for a guy to be \"protective,\" shall we say, but you don't want to come off like you just rolled around in an Old Spice factory. Everyone has their own natural scent. I know guys who can fucking go and play basketball for four hours and smell like they just came back from a Hawaiian spa. I also know people who go in the subway for five minutes and they're horrible to be around afterwards.\n\nBut like anything, you figure out what fragrance works for you as you get older. It develops. There's this DJ named Jules who I used to perform with in New York, and he had his own concoction...it was like Issey Miyake mid with something else. I don't know how, in these blunt smoke-filled hip-hop clubs, that man always smelled so good. I tried to make that same concoction and it came out nothing like it on me.\n\nSo finding your cologne is like finding your personal style: Sometimes you see something in the store and you're like, \"Oh man, that looks so fucking amazing,\" and you put it on and it looks ridiculous. Or maybe you hear some vinyl at the record store and it sounds great because they've got these great old '70s speakers, but then you bring it home and it sounds nothing like it. The cologne you pick should make you feel good when you go out with it. I think confidence comes across more than any other of our attributes.\n\n **\n\n GQ: When is wearing a cologne absolutely mandatory and when should it be avoided at all costs? **\n\n Mark Ronson: I don't know if there's ever a time when you should avoid it. I mean, there's nothing worse than showing up to the gym or playing basketball and somebody is just reeking of cologne, like they're going to prom. But if you have a good scent and you're not overdoing it, you're probably OK. And the times you should wear it? Whenever you're going out and want to feel classy.\n\nIt's funny; when you're a kid living in some shitty college dorm, the last thing on your mind when you bring your little bathroom kit to the shower is putting on cologne afterwards. And now, I almost feel strange to leave the house without wearing cologne. I'm not saying you're naked without it, but when you have one and you feel good about it, it can be that little icing on the cake.\n\n GQ: How does a guy know when he's chosen the right scent? Sometimes you might really dig it, but friends could think you reek.\n\n Mark Ronson: At that point, it becomes trial and error. Like if I feel like I've found some awesome new sound, but all of my boys are like, \"Dude, this is pretty lame,\" then it's not going to take very long before I see something in what they were saying. But at the same time, you have to feel some sense of individualism. The kind people at Fendi have made me the face of their new mens fragrance. It only goes to figure that I'm now wearing only that and I've thrown away all my old ones and burned the remaining bottles. It took my wife a minute to get used to the new one, and now she loves it. It'd be pretty awkward if I didn't like the scent of this Fendi thing, because I signed up for it, but I actually do love it.\n\nI met the guy who made the Fendi Homme fragrance, and he's just like...what movie was that? Something where Dustin Hoffman is like a perfume master and he's in a lab making all these different things...\n\n GQ: Hmm, that sounds familiar...\n\n Mark Ronson: I think it's called Rain Man. Anyway, there's a scene that's called \"perfume,\" I think. There's guy in it who's working on a scent for two years with a lab coat, and it reminded me of those old pictures of Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles and George Martin and all the engineers are wearing lab coats. I have a lot of respect for anything that's like that craft magic, for a lack of a better word, where that's a person's entire life, always tweaking tiny little things. It's like sitting in the studio and tweaking the sound of a kick drum. Maybe the average listener won't know the difference, but it's what's gonna make your shit sound better than the next song in the club or on the radio.\n\n GQ: What's the trick to putting on cologne? \n\n Mark Ronson: You do one spray on each wrist and then rub 'em together\u2014it keeps you from overdoing it and it gives you a good spread. I think I got that from either my dad or a Richard Gere film from the '80s.\n\nGQ: Should a guy stick to only one fragrance? \n\n Mark Ronson: From my experiences, once you find the one, you stick to it. But I don't think there's any rule, that's just how I prefer it. I'm sure the people at Fendi would love to say you just buy one, but I don't think there's any absolutism there.\n\n GQ: There's probably a benefit in picking a signature scent\u2014another thing for people to remember you by. Smell is really tied to memory.\n\n Mark Ronson: My grandmother always used to wear this English perfume called Tuberose and then she died and then I dated this girl who wore the same thing. Every time I hung out with her, I could only think of my recently deceased grandmother. So sometimes a signature scent can be good and sometimes it can be bad.\n\nGQ: Is there such a thing as a \"manly\" smell and a \"girly\" smell?\n\n Mark Ronson: I don't know. I vaguely remember in the '90s when Calvin Klein started making unisex cK1. Don't worry about whether it's made for men or women. Listen, we all like to put mum's clothes on sometimes. What's important is that it feels right for you."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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