As Jake Levy and Matt Belanger, founders of NYC fragrance shop Stéle, told us, “Today folks want variety: one to go out, one to go to work, one for date night, and even one to start a conversation.” As one of GQ’s regular fragrance writers, I’ve spent years testing colognes and reporting on the category, while the wider shopping team has spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what deserves space on a shelf. We test scents on skin over full days of wear, tracking how they opened, dried down, projected, and lasted over time.