Metz, The Social Concept

Why I Wear $14.75 Deodorant

Posted at 05:54AM in cpg • Permalink • No Comments

February 10, 2010

I was sitting in a doctor’s office about a month ago when I saw a writeup in The Advocate about the “best deodorant in the world.” I’ve been using Gilette’s deoderant/anti-perspirant probably since high school (1994?), and I’d never really thought of changing, except that I’d been reading a lot more about aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex, and thinking it wasn’t such a good idea to put it into my body.

Dr. Harris & Co.’s Arlington Stick Deodorant retails for about $18, and it smells like a cross between fresh lemons and a cedar tree. It’s sold at a small shop a few blocks from St. James Church, near Picadilly Circus Metro Station. To say that this is a North-of-the-Thames deodorant would be correct. It’s the classiest thing you can do for your pits. You seriously smell like you just played a great game of rugby or something after you’re all sweated up.

It’s actually unavailable in retail in Northern California, so I had to mail-order it from Highland Menscare, a Devon, Pennsylvania-based firm. (I later found Arlington $5 cheaper, for $18, on Amazon, from another vendor). If you order 3 from Highland, they’re actually only $12.

I guess I was willing to take a chance on such an expensive personal-care product because I figured that if someone was willing to take 30 minutes to write an article in such a well-known publication about it, that one of two things was going on: (1) there was a really good PR person involved or (2) Arlington was seriously one of the best deodorants in the world.

Since I’ve started using it, we’ve signed two new clients, and I’ve stopped putting aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex into my body. Sure, I feel my own sweat and everything, and occasionally, I might stink a little due to the lack of anti-perspirant (although you’d have to ask my girlfriend to confirm this), but my pits feel and smell better (and classier) than ever.