From Old Spice to Rainbow Bar: Kevin Costner’s surprisingly honest fragrance pivot

I did not have Kevin Costner on my 2026 bingo card for most intriguing celebrity fragrance move, yet here we are. He admits his scent life was bare bones, more inheritance than intention. He wore what his father wore. Old Spice. The kind of aftershave that smells like locker rooms, barbershop foam, and family lore. To this day it reminds him of his father. That is not a marketing angle. That is muscle memory.

Then he meets Johan Bergelin, the creative force behind 19-69, and falls for the brand’s Rainbow Bar body wash. If you know, you know. Rainbow Bar is not a safe hotel soap. It is a mood in neon, a late night on Sunset translated into something you can wear in daylight. The pivot from Old Spice to 19-69 is telling. Instead of the predictable megabrand cash-in, he is partnering with an indie house that has cult credibility and a point of view.

Celebrity fragrance projects often smell like spreadsheets. This one smells like curiosity. Costner is not pretending to be a perfumer, he is owning the fact that his baseline was his dad’s bottle and that something in Rainbow Bar flipped a switch. That feels disarmingly human. Also strategic. There is a generation of men who have stayed loyal to drugstore classics because everything else sounds like velvet-rope nonsense. A bridge from Old Spice to niche is exactly what might get them to cross the aisle.

For me, the nostalgia is real. My own father’s aftershave hovered in our hallway, the clean-spice haze that meant he was headed out the door. So I understand the gravitational pull of that red-ship icon. But scent is a biography that keeps getting edited, and the edit here makes sense. 19-69 brings cultural reference and edge without the soulless gloss. If Costner’s project keeps that energy, we could see a rare thing in celebrity fragrance: a launch that invites men into the niche world without talking down to them.

Watch this space. And if you have not already, put your nose to Rainbow Bar. If it can convert a lifelong Old Spice loyalist, it might surprise you too.