The Best Cheap Colognes, Walton Goggins Brings Recessy Back (?), and Expat Editor Import Insights

Olá Blue Princes, from home sweet home. I sure did miss my dear Lisbon. It’s been either brilliantly sunny or biblically raining ever since we arrived, which means I’m either strolling these steep hills catching up on podcasts at 2x speed, or cozied up inside doing all of our post-travel laundry… and smitten with each second.

Oh, and receiving dozens of packages as they start to sprinkle in. More on that below, if you’ve been curious about the import process for us expat editors. (Bit of a venting exercise for me, that writeup.)

Let’s get to business, shall we?

The Best Inexpensive Colognes for Men

This week we uploaded a YouTube video about the best cheap colognes (shot in December). And of course “cheap” here means “low-cost”; I know these brands may not be ecstatic to say “yay we got called one of the best ‘cheap colognes’!”

That’s a fun side effect of the Google/YT algorithm and “finding people where they’re searching”. Alas. But these 11 scents really are fantastic without breaking the bank—they’re all under $100 with (I think) just one exception at ~$105.

Links for each product are in the description of that video, too.

Also, hoorah for 20K+ followers on YouTube!

Expat Editor Problems: The Q1 Product Catchup Begins

Insights into cosmetic package intake (Portugal’s Version).

Now that I’m home after so long, it’s time to catch up on products I’ve missed. Which means the mighty box pileup of Q2 has begun, with our doorbell ringing half a dozen times each day.

If you’re wondering about moving overseas—hmm, why on earth would more of you be pondering that these days?—I want to point out one of the really fabulous things you’ll get to navigate: MAIL! (In addition to bureaucracies that are so far behind on their paperwork and applications, and so underpaying their staff—leading to bottlenecking and strikes…)

In my particular case, cosmetic product samples. In NYC, you can have every product on your desk same day as you get the press release. It’s messengered right over, et voila.

When I lived in Germany for 6 years, the system was fairly simple: A box usually arrived without worry (90% of the time), regardless of the shipping company, and I would get a bill in the mail weeks later for any shipping and handling fees + lingering import fees. Germans are very diligent about paying bills, so the system of trust and payment obligation worked really well there—not to mention, I had official DHL, UPS, and FedEX posts all within a few minutes walk from my front door. If you’re gone, they leave you a notice, and drop the box with a neighbor, if not at the corner store below your home.

If you choose to move to a more wealthy country like Germany (in the EU, that’d likely be one in northern + western “Potato Europe”) then you can expect some similar version of this shipping efficiency.

Now let’s talk about Tomato Europe, specifically Spain and Portugal. Things aren’t so orderly…

We almost moved to Spain instead of Portugal. And for my career, thank god we didn’t: A freelancer like I cannot import cosmetics into Spain. Great! So I’d be asking a bunch of you to wrap it up in a bow with a Happy Birthday card on the side, just in an effort to get me a box.

As for Portugal, here’s how things play out: I am able to import, except I am not allowed to declare cosmetics as samples or $0/$1. So official retail prices typically need to be declared—and the customs officials do often audit the boxes to make sure of it. (Half of my time is spent correcting these declarations from $0/$1/sample.)

In my very central part of Lisbon, there are no official stores for UPS, FedEx, DHL. They will not leave a box at the address if I am not home, nor with a neighbor, nor will they leave a paper notice of any attempts—not even if they leave it at some random pickup center. Tracking a parcel has never been more imperative. And receiving boxes (especially a backlog of them from 95 days of travel) becomes a full-time job all its own. At least I never have to worry about a stolen box, though.

Someone from each company’s import center will call me for every single box that arrives, and each time, the same person explains to me for 10 minutes that they will email me a form that needs to be filled out in order to clear the box through customs. I try to remind them each time: We talked about this yesterday, and every single day, I know the protocol, please just email me the paperwork. I even answer the phone with “Hey (their name); can you just email me and let’s skip this step?” But it never helps—they always start from the beginning and recite the Portugal protocol. It’s the protocol after all.

This all puts pressure on us being physically home when a box arrives; so on weekdays, we rarely leave the house at the same time, ensuring that one of us is here to get any number of boxes en route. Add to that, the fact that we live on a one-way, single-lane street, and sometimes drivers just don’t want to bother parking and seeing if we’re home to receive. So I often check the status of a package online and it will say “attempted to deliver, 1030am; recipient not home” and yet… both of us were home at that time. Oh, my darling Portugal.

Then I get to chase it down via calls or emails. I don’t discount the fact that brands and PRs are spending major coin to send these boxes. This is also why I always ask brands, when possible, to send from a non-UK port within the EU if possible (no UK bc Brexit). This can get around things like import phone calls and no-fly products and overseas shipping. I want it easier on the senders, especially if it’s a small brand.

All of this to say: It feels so good to be home and in my daily rhythm—even if it includes fun little box-shaped headaches. I am eager to catch up on the products I’ve missed and the ones coming down the pike. I love the testing part of my job, even if receiving them is, well… testing.

To those of you who have ever sent samples to me overseas, or helped coordinate an EU product send, or dealt with a returned product because of some inefficiency… I appreciate you! And a big thank you for always paying me back for these costs too; that means the world.

I’ll update soon on my favorite launches of late—the ones I’ve actually got with me at home. We’re making the pivot to short-form fast-paced social this week, and that’s where I hope to have this “best new products conversation” on a regular basis.

An early favorite though? Musc de Soie EDP from Van Cleef & Arpels—it’s like if you just put on some clean bedsheets and then the freshness inspired you and your +1 to sully them up again. I wrote that before realizing that “soie” is “silk”… so, silky musk. Mmmm.

It also opens with neroli, which typically bodes well for my nostrils—plus cashmeran, sandalwood, iris, resin, and aldehydes. I want to fall asleep on this aromatic forest floor.

Is Walton Goggins Bringing “Recessy” Back?

I am loving all the memes and articles about Walton Goggins’ recessed hairline; he and his White Lotus love interest Aimee Lou Wood are both the subject of cosmetic chatter (him for his hair, her for her teeth).

But let’s be clear, receding hairlines were never unsexy. Nor have bald heads ever been unsexy. What is sexy (lol am I the expert here?) is swagger. Mr. Goggins has it in droves. This guy is the human equivalent of a Prada leather bomber jacket. He could have clown hair and we’d all be switched on for it.

This hairline is where Harry Styles was, pre-transplant, and we were all just as doe-eyed for him then, too. Styles has a different kind of swagger—a Bowie-esque zeal vs Goggins’ mysterious intrigue, I suppose?

I would still sway most guys against choosing this length of hair with that hairline, just as a best practice. Look, I’ve been there… it’s tough most days; even if you can nail the hair part and have a good hair day overall, the payoff is rare and you can expect to wear a hat half the time.

All of the below are from 2015, which I refuse to admit was a decade ago. Oh to be 29. I give 2 of these 5 looks a pass. Big reason I personally ended up in Istanbul in 2020, these photos… I wasn’t a necessary candidate for transplant, but certainly one who could benefit greatly.

For every 99 who can’t pull it off, you get a Walton Goggins who can—even at a ripe 53 years of age. (And with some chiclet veneers no less; why is all the teeth focus on Ms. Wood? But that’s another conversation). Just scroll through Goggins’ IG and see what he can pull off that the rest of us plebes cannot—here are two recent editorial shoots:

Signing off, and hoping you all have a great week—let’s hope it starts with a satisfying finale of The White Lotus, to take our minds off that other kind of recession which seems impossible to ignore.