The final task in my quest to have all the 80's powerhouses in regular rotation- I already had Poison, Opium, Obsession, and Kouros- was to conquer Giorgio. Giorgio appealed to me only because of its reputation as the loudest perfume ever; the ads didn't have a trace of the elegance, sophistication, irony, or immersive fantasy of Opium or Poison, and instead painted a lifestyle of forced, loud, brash good times at the beach or in the convertible, usually involving a woman suspended in mid-laugh, as though she had been cryogenically frozen in Virginia Slims land and carted over to Giorgio without prior knowledge, her magenta-painted mouth hanging open to expose her Hollywood-white fangs in a feral distortion of a smile. It was either this woman or simply a picture of the "Extraordinary Perfume Spray" bottle looming like the 2001 monolith over a black background. Could I be this girl? I'm a six foot four, 270 lb bearded man, so it would be a challenge.
Soon enough I saw the yellow and white prison bars, so familiar to me from repeat viewings of "Troop Beverly Hills", staring back at me in TJ Maxx. I paid the $20 admission price and entered the world of Giorgio. I went back to my car and sprayed on lavishly. "Not so bad!" I thought. Pineapple, tuberose, and pool chemicals; it had that-er-"well blended" quality that I often find in cheap perfumes like Tabu, wherein the perfume seems to contain no discernable individual notes, just one big distinctive stench, the source of which can only be a giant oil drum labeled "TABU": or "GIORGIO" in a grimy factory somewhere, not, you know, "night-blooming jasmine from the fields of Grasse," or whatever. After thirty seconds I couldn't smell much but could feel a dull throb that seemed to be circling my brain-a sinus headache, I assumed. My vision also seemed slightly impaired, everything was blurring. Passersby stared at me as though I were covered in blood. It was DELIGHTFUL.
For three weeks I denied that the headaches that Giorgio caused were caused by Giorgio. I funneled allergy pills and pain relievers into my gullet on an hourly basis. I also sprayed on more Giorgio. I purchased Giorgio Red. None of these things helped. I was in a perpetually crabby mood whenever I had the Giorgio on, too. I didn't ask anyone's opinion of it because I didn't want to know what they thought. At this point in my life, it was perfectly appropriate that I was wearing a perfume that kept people away in droves, made everyone everywhere I went aware of my horrible mood, made me physically ill, cost too much for what it was, and didn't feel right with any of my clothing except for the Madonna Blond Ambition Tour tee.
I haven't been able to track down any old Giorgio for comparison but I would imagine that it would have the same effect in any vintage. As a child of the nineties, it's titillating and horrifying to me to think that the whole world smelled like this in the eighties. Everyone was experiencing that dull throb in their head all the time, everywhere they went, for an entire decade and then some. ON PURPOSE! And FOR A GREATER PRICE! Though it is now practically only found in drug stores and discounters, Giorgio was once THE snob perfume, the one that no one else had but you, or the one you wanted but couldn't afford. It was originally only available in the Giorgio boutique and by mail order, so you had to be on the inside to get it. The point of it was to advertise your nouveau-riche status by beating the whole world over the head with a toxic, lingering cloud of Californian grotesquerie. By the late eighties it was available everywhere, the top-selling perfume for years, and was worn (used, I should say, Giorgio isn't worn but used, with intent) by cliquey high school girls to terrorize their social inferiors. Its veneer of cheerfulness- pineapple! flowers! beaches!- hides a vapid, hollow, black soul and no moral center, capable of doing anything. Giorgio was cruel, exciting, and nauseating, and its success seems unthinkable today. Then it felt glamorous, now it feels like the olfactory equivalent of that scene in David Lynch's "Inland Empire" where Laura Dern is stabbed unexpectedly with a screwdriver and runs around screaming and bleeding on the Hollywood walk of fame until she collapses next to some homeless people and dies. A true classic.
