I received a really nice French cologne as a birthday gift back in the 80's--women loved it. It was low grade enough that only people very next to you would notice, and it would last days ... even after showers. This made for some interesting interactions with women at the office ... "Oh, looks like someone had a good weekend ..."

At some point, they had to change out the binder/fixer/whatever (presumably it's either horribly toxic or horribly cruel to skunks), and colognes haven't been the same since.

Now, in order to get a cologne to last even a couple of hours, they create things that are horrifically strong at start, and you still almost can't smell them several hours later.

(I actually had the misfortune to test this. My mother used Chanel No 5 Eau de Cologne that I would buy for her as a gift when she ran out or it went bad. The last one I bought smelled wrong as soon as I opened it--they reformulated it and discontinued it soon after. I wound up kicked through Chanel customer service to get some of the last "real" stock they had--they knew that the updated one was wrong and had kept a small amount for customer complaints (and presumably very rich patrons).)