I’d love to tell you that I wore Bandit in my late night New York adventures of the late 80s –from a treasured bottle found in the lining of a vintage handbag– because it would be the most perfect fit for that fearless time where I danced twice as much as I slept, and Jean Paul Gaultier told me he liked my style.
But that would be icing reality with fiction.
Mostly I doused myself in Paloma Picasso or stole a friend’s Obsession for Men, smoked a million cigarettes, and didn’t do enough laundry.
And sadly, this particular vintage perfume is as disappointing as the truth. It’s good, but it just doesn’t live up to the heights of what *could* have been. The smoke has drifted apart, the leather worn soft, and the bitter galbanum greens are sun-faded.
I have another old Bandit, a micro-mini, and the slightest smudge of that juice makes my eyes roll back. It’s dark and smooth and cold-ash raspy and, no, it doesn’t have the raw bite of the eau de toilette, but it’s still got the infinite depth of a cliff edge at night.
This Bandit is just another memory you can’t entirely trust.
originally posted 9 May 2019