To be (dis) continued: the story of the lost men's scents What do you do when your favourite fragrance is discontinued? Weep... It is difficult, not to say ruinously expensive, having any kind of meaningful, lasting relationship with Jules. The love and commitment are there on my part, but... well, not on Jules's, alas. Jules, for those who don't know, is a classic but almost impossible-to-find fragrance from the 1980s by Christian Dior, as well as being my all-time favourite man scent. How to describe it, apart from saying lamely that it's just, like, really nice? In my very well-thumbed copy of Perfumes: The Guide (Profile, £12.99), the authors and scent fiends Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez describe it as "one of the most adventurous, reckless fougères ever put together." "Its top note of sage on a background of cedar," they go on, "will either delight or shock depending on whether sage smells aromatic or urinous to you." Broad-minded and open to adventure as I am, I think I'll go with aromatic, thank you all the same, though colleagues sitting near me might beg to differ. Aromatic and maddeningly elusive too, since Dior saw fit to stop selling Jules in Britain some time back in the 1990s, which means that to procure a bottle these days you have to travel to France (not cheap, obviously) or be prepared to engage in some furious bidding on eBay, where even part-used bottles of the stuff can now command about £60. I was reminded of this while I was shifting some bottles of aftershave from a cupboard into a new bathroom cabinet recently and landed upon a flacon of Jules that is, worryingly, just a few spritzes short of being completely empty. Now, the blogoshere is awash with people bemoaning all the great women's scents that have been been and gone, but it set me thinking about the men's fragrances that have been discontinued over the years - and continue to be, at the rate of about a dozen or so per year, according to unofficial figures that one perfumer gave me. One woman who knows all too well how sorely they're missed is Lynne Bramwell-Griffiths, who has run the brilliant specialist scent shop Fascination Perfumery in Lytham, Lancashire, for the past 28 years. Every day she is besieged by customers from all over the world chasing long-lost or recently departed fragrances. "Escada Pour Homme," she says, "that's what they've all wanted this week. Oh, and Jacomo, that's another. We get hundreds of enquiries. Hundreds. She proceeds to reel off other names faster than I can do shorthand: Cacharel Pour Homme, Lagerfeld Photo, Van Cleef & Arpels' Tsar, Cerutti ("the original, mind"), Ted Lapidus, Salvador Dali, Gianfranco Ferre, Trussardi... So what man scents do others mourn? Which one would they resurrect if they had the power to? "Addiction Wild Ginger by Fabergé," says one acquaintance, a solicitor who coincidentally happens to be a redhead, without hesitation or embarrassment. I discovered it as a teenager after an extensive trawl of the Boots fragrance counters. It became my signature scent. It was withdrawn suddenly and with no explanation just after we left university. This caused me to experiment with a number of scents and I have finally settled on Hermès Terre, which perfectly matches my own earthy aroma. There's nothing for it but a call to that famed "nose" and perfume obsessive Roja Dove , an urbane sort of chap who can always be relied upon to give good quote. As predicted, he doesn't disappoint: in the course of our conversation he describes one particular smelly, in a not entirely disapproving way, as "faecal." Which is the one that he misses most? "That," he says, "is a very, very difficult question," before launching into a few pensive mmms and aahs. After a while he fires back his answer - Knize Ten, a cologne created in 1924, which is cheating rather, because like Dior's Jules it's not been universally discontinued but does remain fiendishly hard to find. "I like it because it is a really, really imaginative scent, with such an original structure," says Dove. It comes from the same accord as Tabac Blond [by Caron] and it has this big leather-tobacco note. So many men's scents today are so similar, and there's a lot of mediocrity bordering on puerility about. Every so often a mainstream scent will come along to buck that trend, he says, citing the limited-edition Aramis Classic Reserve, which was launched in 2008 only to disappear soon afterwards. It was almost identical to [Grès's much-lauded women's scent] Cabochard but had a resin-y pine note added to it. It was a magnificent scent and one of the great sadnesses was that it was limited edition. There are a number of reasons why companies discontinue scents, or toy with their formulations. By far the most annoying, for the fragrance fan, is when they simply decide that it no longer fits the brand's image or, as they would have it, DNA. Otherwise, production can no longer be justified commercially because of poor sales. Finally, and perhaps most compelling of all, the original recipe might have called for ingredients - natural musk or civet, for example - that are now illegal to use, or, in the case of ambergris, ethically dubious and certainly prohibitively expensive (we're talking £100,000 per kilo). Just occasionally mainstream brands will bow to pressure and resurrect scents, the most recent obvious example being Yves Saint Laurent's relaunched M7 for men. "Historically this will be seen as an unbelievably important scent," says Dove. It was the first to put oud on the map as an ingredient. It was quite avant-garde and just a bit ahead of its time. Dove himself has been instrumental in reviving certain lost classics, by leaning on companies when he feels sufficiently exercised. One he had a big hand in relaunching is Fougère Royale, Houbigant's men's scent of 1882, which is now a best-seller with a whole new generation of followers, among them Nick Gilbert at the specialist scent shop Les Senteurs in London. The one Gilbert would revive, though, is Gucci Pour Homme, from 1976. "It was my first fragrance love," he says. Obviously I didn't realise it at the time but it was the massive cedarwood notes that did it. It was retro in a way but also futuristic. As for me, I continue to search for Jules, and have even resorted to seeking out back-street chemists in the hope they might just have some old stock. So far I've had no luck, but I have befriended a few pharmacists along the way and I have enjoyed some limited success with the other scent I mourn, Samarkand, another 1980s classic, this one by the Body Shop. To all those fellow Samarkand fans out there, I'd love to be able to tell you that it's just been relaunched. It hasn't, sadly. But quite by chance I have discovered that the women's leathery Azurée by Estée Lauder bears an uncanny resemblance to my memory of it, though alarmingly this itself is only available in Selfridges or online. Note to Estee Lauder Inc: please, please don't even think about discontinuing it. PS: A big thank you to the brilliant (and lovely) Ruth Lewis, who did the illustration. You can see more of her work here