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In no particular order, here are my top ten winter picks. More winter favorites can be found at the following sites -
Now Smell This :: Perfume Posse :: Perfume Smellin’ Things
1.) Lancome - Poeme
I’ve recently rediscovered this 1995 release by perfumer Jacques Cavallier (via Now Smell This) and it’s just as sumptuous as I’d remembered it. It’s not the most well loved of Lancome fragrances, and small wonder at that. For all the thick, cozy warmth, it’s nevertheless so strong that it hits some folks like a bitchslap in a mitten. Poeme’s composition is so chock full o’ notes that it reminds me of how Givenchy’s Amarige can be received: No two people will notice the exact same notes at any one time. On me, Poeme seems front-loaded with peach and tuberose, with a distinctly smokey undertone of woody amber and what I keep imagining is “violet leaf.” My nose lies to me, because I think my “violet leaf” is supposed to “vetiver.” I like my husband’s impression of Poeme best; When asked his opinion of it on my wrist, he shook his head ruefully and said, “That is what you wear to crush the competition in a room.” Ha! And maybe that’s why I like it. Screw the girl power of the 90s, give me some woman power.
2.) The Body Shop - Ananya
See, the Poeme I might be forgiven for under certain circumstances, but digging out Ananya means I am in serious nostalgic swing for the 90s. It wears as vaguely smokey on my skin, and on me, and only me, it smells a lot like a less trenchant Dior Poison. Weird, I know. Ananya smells like a nuclear fruit device, even moreso than Poeme, with notes of peach and melon. Yet I keep reaching for it. I am so embarrassed. It’s like an addiction to a drug that I never really liked in the first place. It’s not chasing the dragon - it’s too foofy and girly for that. It’s like… chasing the unicorn? Dunno. It’s sickly sweet, powerful, and I cannot help myself. Would anyone else like to start an Ananya support group?
3.) Fendi - Theorema
See? This so-called “winter” list is trying to become a “full-on hard-on for the 90s” list instead.
“Fendi’s Theorema… distills warm sun upon the skin with a simple spritz. It parlays the quiet pleasure of a satisfied cat napping in a window sunbeam into a fragrance. […] This fragrance contains all the complexity we expect from heavier “orientals,” but it is lighter. Effortless, even.”
“Theorema is no longer being sold in the US anymore. It is worth hunting down.”
4.) John Varvatos - John Varvatos
The first offering from this designer escaped my notice until last year, and I kept meaning and then forgetting to mention it. It’s not a great leather scent, but it’s very wearable and I’d imagine quite striking on the right person. I am not the right person. However, I did force my regular guinea pig, my sister, to try it on, and a lovely (if a little dark) sueded floral tone bloomed on her during the drydown. I am of course jealous, but also eager to replicate the magic it had on her skin. So I keep persisting, and am holding out hope that others may wear it with such luck. We both got a subtle dried figgy note and soft woods through the middle, as well as vanilla toward the end of wear that stuck like super glue. (I personally like a dab of vanilla with leather, but as they say, “your mileage may vary.”)
5.) Tauer Perfumes - Le Maroc pour elle
“The roses here are deep, rich, and I found myself nodding in agreement when I read Luca Turin’s mention of Bal a Versailles in his recent post about Le Maroc. While they do not smell alike, both share a quality of circularity. A note suggests it will fade off into the distance only to reappear as it makes another lap around the track. In Le Maroc’s case, this is how I perceive rose occuring.”
“Le Maroc is classified ‘pour elle,’ and while it is indeed feminine, it’s certainly not weak. Sensual, vibrant, and composed of strength, it is not the smell of a little girl, or some flirty teenager. It is womanly. And I like that.”
6.) Agent Provacateur - Agent Provocateur
“Agent Provocateur fascinates me. I don’t know any other way to put it. It engages me in a very peculiar way, because while it is ostensibly intended as a sexy fragrance, I find myself trying to think it over and puzzle it out while I wear it. So I guess for me, strangely enough, Agent Provocateur develops as an intellectually stimulating fragrance. It makes me feel like reading long complicated books, like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and just thinking.”
“Agent Provocateur has a truly magnificent, and practically maniacal, throw. So the sillage may give many people pause before choosing this scent. I love any number of scents, and like many more, but this one instantly knocked my socks off. It’s certainly not for everyone. It has tremendous character, one that not everyone will take to. In fact, this could wear as vulgar on some folks.”
7.) Can we cheat a little? I am naming two sadly discontined Helmut Lang fragrances as my number seven.
The first is the eponymous Helmut Lang parfum. It is pure class and raunch at once. Transparant citrus surfaces stretch over a profoundly musky stank, suggesting wild beasts trapped safely behind the smooth civility of zoo glass. It wears just as well in summer as it does in winter, but my craving lately for it places it prominently on this list.
The second discontinued fragrance is Cuiron. I picked it for fall. It’s dandy in winter, too. “Helmut Lang’s Cuiron paints a portrait in monochrome. It is comprised of successive layers of leather. But not any old leather. Or rather, it IS old leather - the smell of an antique book pulled off the shelf, an old black jacket hanging off the back of a chair, a soft suede purse that’s only pulled out on special occasions, a well-worn chair that’s seen better days but is still the comfiest one in the house.”
Proctor & Gamble own the rights to the Helmut Lang fragrances, and they are breaking my heart. If these two were released again as some niche perfumery’s creations, I have no doubt they’d wind up with cult-like followings. In the wake of discontinuation, folks are now left to scavenge discount retailers and eBay to stock up on these before they completely evaporate into the ether of corporate sales margins.
8.) A love affair with Mrs. Meyer’s products continues unabated at Chez Scentzilla. At Christmastime, the company sells Gingerbread household products, and I couldn’t resist. There’s no use looking for them now, but if you spot the hand soap, cleaner, or room spray during next year’s holiday season, scoop them up and remember to thank me later. One word of advice - do not use any of them in the bathroom. I do my dirty business in there, yet emerge with a case of the munchies, filling me with much confusion and shame. Kitchen-use only, please.
9.) Serge Lutens - Santal Blanc
I SOOOOO love this fragrance. Simple and chic, its medicinal/mentholic top notes cut a very smart edge along a dry woody base. Despite my love, Santal Blanc betrays me. I have been told it makes me smell like a dog peed on me. Wear it with that warning in mind, and a thousand puppy kisses if you can carry it off successfully (i.e. without dog pee.)
10.) Comme des Garçons - 2 Man
“The opening blast always weirds me out just a little. Whatever notes are ascribed to it don’t matter to me. It smells like typewriter ribbons […] 2 Man recalls the way Gres Cabaret seems filtered through a cloud of smoke without smelling smokey. Its woody notes are real but unidentifiable, like staring out a train window and watching the blurry trees fly past. Mutant spices that I know without recognition drift by until we land at nutmeg. The nutmeg of 2 Man’s dry down is warm and dry, mixed into the smeared streaky watercolors of an abstract forest.”
*Honorable Mention*
Elizabeth W - Vetiver candle
Elizabeth W’s Vetiver fragrance smells timid compared to many soliflors dedicated to that note. Their take on vetiver explodes with white florals more that it expresses the full pungence of the grass… which perversely makes the candle perfect for winter. It fills the house with bright cheer from fresh spring bouquets and a rather tender and sentimental vetiver base note, and never overpowers the space with the usual muddy dankness that both vetiver and rainy Pacific Northwest winters have in common. It’s nice to have flowers in the house when there are none left in the yard. This particular candle also is good at covering up burnt microwave popcorn smell, which is neither here nor there, but I may as well throw that in there. I can’t possibly be the only person who has a popcorn-specific inability to use the microwave properly, can I?
(Reader disclosure: I received this candle and a deck of carded samples from Elizabeth W last year.)
L’Occitane - Rhubarb Compote candle
There’s not much throw from this candle, which should be mentioned right off the bat. It is best suited for the kitchen or small rooms only. However, this candle does make honorable mention because L’Occitane really nailed a rhubarb note with surprising accuracy. The tartness and the sweetness inherent to this fruit smell perfectly balanced when lit. What a fun winter candle option for comfort fragrance addicts and foodies with a hankering for rhubarb. It’s a very nice treat without the sugary calories or trouble of baking.
Mrs. Meyer’s Geranium All Purpose Cleaner
Geranium has long been used in perfumery as an easy and cheap method to either boost or add a rose layer to a fragrance. I love that someone has returned to the concept and thought to use it in a household cleaner instead of the endless parade of lavenders, citruses, and pines. To the company’s credit, they didn’t even mess around with pretending it’s “rose”: They labeled its fragrance all proper. The minty rose of geranium emanating from the kitchen lends a homey, cozy feel to offset the visual sterility of scrubbed surfaces. If you’ve ever wondered why on earth you smell something “rosy” and “toothpastey” in a fragrance yet some reviewer insists on calling the combination “geranium,” then this single product may possibly reveal to you what they are specifying. I honestly think this may well be my favorite fragrance product of the year, since a minty rose kitchen is so much more pleasing to work in than a Formica-covered pine forest.
Okay, okay, so this is the second year I’ve mentioned these, but this is also the second year my pair still needs no sharpening. And I take terrible care of them. They’re thrown loose into a tray with scissors and nail stuff and etc… without the rubber tip protectors because those were lost in the first five minutes of ownership. If I make it to year three with no need of sharpening or replacement, I’m going to call these the best beauty implement ever. These tweezers are precise, culling out those weird stray fine hairs in my eyebrows (that grow due to only sheer maliciousness as far as I can tell) as well as yanking out my three billy goat hairs gruff that sprout in a tight coarse cluster on my chin (I hate them. So. Much. I feel a weird surge of satisfaction when I extract them. This is all possibly TMI, isn’t it? Getting older sucks.)
I asked my husband what his fave fragrance find of the year might be, just for giggles. He would prefer not to be a fragrance snob though alas! Turns out he’s not immune to osmosis from marriage to a perfume nut, after all. He unequivocally voiced his preference for L’Occitane’s Eau des Baux, and wished the company would make their men’s skin care line available in that scent beyond their regular Cade line (which he also likes.) It’s a woody-musky scent with a fruity, but not cloyingly sweet, and incense heart. Eau des Baux smells very nice on men, and I’d imagine it has more than a few female fans as well.
Givenchy’s small reintroduction to ten older and newer classic fragrances has been one of those little things that makes one feel like not all hope has been drowned in an ever widening sea of mediocre debuts (which total industry wide into the hundreds, sigh.) Small wonder that the current economic situation is not going so well in the perfumery business. However, it is nice to see this particular LVMH-run house embrace their quite chic heritage despite a constant fashion trope that the only way to stay relevant is to always be new. And it sure beats leaving some very lovely Givenchy perfumes to gather dust as if the house’s history was comprised of nothing but a series of old marketing agendas. (They were of course, that, too, but not just that.) Those fragrances are still great; they deserve to see the light of day no matter what the current fads are.
In what has turned out to be what I feel is a pretty lackluster year, Infusion d’Iris seems a conspicuous contender for the “perfume I’d most like to espy on others” in a crowded, and otherwise middling field of 2007 releases. I suspect if it’d been launched even a couple years ago it might have flown under the radar a bit, though who knows? I don’t personally have the chemistry needed carry this somewhat delicate fragrance off. However, of all the new launches this year, I think this is the one I’d be most delighted to discover became the surprise sleeper hit of the year. Because just how much sickeningly sweet vanillas and fruity-florals in the air can a person take from other folks’ sillage? Especially when standing in queue at the bank or when stuck on an elevator ride. God bless you wonderful iconoclasts who buck the “pink”ening trend in fragrance. You wear your greens and your flowers and your chypres without remorse, and for that I thank you. I suspect this year you were more likely to find happiness in a bottle of Infusion d’Iris than whatever the latest Eau de TMZ was.
I don’t know if this is new this year or just new to me, but either way, what a fun little discovery. Its composition carries green elements, such as found in Creation Mathias’ discontinued L’eau de Figue, a sprinkling of esters to lend a flowery feel just as they do in L’Artisan’s Premier Figuier Extreme, and a creamy hint of the warm woods found in Diptyque’s Philosykos… Which added together makes for a charming and fun fragrance in its own right, even if it’s not quite the equal to any of the aforementioned “figs.” However, Mediterranean Fig comes as part of a range of bath and body products and not just as an EDT, so you can still enjoy the scent without necessarily abandoning use of your other favorite fig fragrances.
Old Navy “Blue Alert” commercial
The best perfume ad of the year was not a perfume ad. The first few times I saw Old Navy’s “Blue Alert” commercial, I was sure it just ought to be a fragrance ad, but no. It’s a lovely cover of a Leonard Cohen song accompanying a blue jeans pitch. Dear advertising people behind this: If this is your soft sell behind cheap denim, I’m longing to see you tackle perfume. No snark here, I decided I really liked it. It didn’t make me want to buy jeans, as I’ve been less than impressed by the quality of Old Navy clothes, but your ad did make me pay attention. Repeatedly. Not many ads can suck you in to watch them more than once, let alone multiple times. The ad can be viewed via this link to Adweek (LINK.)
Bored Games
For his Life in Hell comic, Matt Groening (The Simpsons) creates an annual list of “forbidden words” that were annoying or overused or both during the course of the year. (Comic not available online, but a list of some previous years’ entries is cataloged here and there on other sites.) I figured it might be fun to do the same with perfume ad copy and PR releases.
As I looked over my badly scribbled list of words I realized this might have the makings of either a drinking game or a bingo card… Hey! Why not do both?
Every time you spot one of these words as you leaf through magazines or are online shopping, mark your card, then DRINK!
And the first person to achieve bingo within a single ad wins… Oh crap. You win a hangover. But buck up. Because the rest of us scanning multiple ads for a bingo victory will only wind up winning alcohol poisoning.
A New Year’s Wish
So, smell ya later 2007, and happy 2008 to everyone. May this coming year see fewer fragrance releases, the abasement of celeb fragrances from celebs we’ve never heard of as well as those we have, and a return to a time when one could count on fruit to stay in the produce bins and clean to stay in the shower.
Please visit my oh so lovely online colleagues for much more substansive and interesting lists at Aromascope :: Bois de Jasmin :: Now Smell This :: Perfume Posse :: Perfume Smellin’ Things ::
Today I join with a few of my fellow fragrance bloggers to rhapsodize about our favorite picks to wear during the fall season. Mine are numbered, but in no particular order, really. And I realize with a little surprise that my faves have changed very little from year to year. Maybe it’s because there’s so much in the way of new releases nowadays that keeping track of anything but mostly the old favorites just seems silly. Or maybe it’s a dismal reflection upon the less than memorable quality of far too many of them. Or maybe I’m a sad little creature of habit: Given the obsessive-compulsive aspect of perfume collecting, that last excuse is the most likely of the three.
Please visit my blogging buddies over at Aromascope, Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, Perfume Posse, and Perfume Smellin’ Things for some great lists, too!
1.) Jean Desprez - Bal a Versailles
“My favorite aspect of Bal a Versailles is its circular quality. As the fragrance develops, notes seem to fade off, only to rise again. To experience it is to open a travel brochure of smells. Roses, orange, orange blossom, and jasmine fill my nostrils with the first spray. Then warm woods with soft balsalmic spices push forward into vanilla and patchouli . Broad notations of amber and incense, musk and more musk, unfold. And then we start all over again, surreally spiraling amongst the flowers and trees, riding waves of indoles and ketones. It is sexy, but not vulgar; Rich, but not gaudy.”
2.) Jacques Fath - Fath de Fath 1993
The Fath de Fath reformulated by Haarmann and Reimer and relaunched by a revitalized Fath house in 1993 only shares but the slightest connection to its earlier 1953 incarnation. Perhaps it’s not its equal, but it’s still very, very good. Fath de Fath ‘93 smells of grand entrances down gilded opera house staircases. Berry-stained citrus top notes color a thick array of pale though never timid floral heart notes, including jasmine, orange blossom, and tuberose. The fruity-floral notes curve gracefully around a heady mix of powdery musk, woody amber, patchouli and vanillic base notes, lending the impression that grace is not achieved by lightness of step but with a deft understanding of gravity.
3.) Lanvin - Arpege
Happily, the more popular a scent was in the past the more readily bottles of it can be unearthed. Even more happily, the popularity of fragrances from the past is not necessarily a negative indication of its quality; Popular does not always have to mean middlebrow. Arpege deserved and still deserves its success. I don’t even think you have to be “rose lover” to dig into its layers of meaning. A flash of aldehydes at the quick could certainly be off-putting to those who cringe at anything that tugs at notions of “old lady perfume,” but they subside into harmonies of rose into jasmine into tuberose, which draws you down further into the satisfyingly low thump of its leathery base.
4.) Lancome - Magie Noire
“The secret to this fragrance for me is how it mutates its not unusual notes. Lichen wears as spice. Rose and galbanum become gold. Wood presents as though it were curing itself on the skin. Patchouli leaves flutter loose from the folds, hinting at trunks of woven treasures from imaginary adventures. Magie Noire is sometimes referred to as an amber oriental. This is not a cold butter amber, nor an incense amber. It’s amber that echoes some distant animal shriek. The echo bounces across the floral, green, and wood notes - never landing, never stopping, just fading off as it repeats itself.”
5.) Givenchy - Organza Indecence
This is the fragrance that makes me careen flat over in a lovestruck Tex Avery-style thud. Luckily, its benzoin pillows make for a soft landing, blanketed with cinnamon, cedar and palisander notes that pull over my head as I drift deeper into a swoon. Love may be patient, and love may be kind, but above all these, love smells a lot like Organza Indecence.
6.) Helmut Lang - Cuiron
“Helmut Lang’s Cuiron paints a portrait in monochrome. It is comprised of successive layers of leather. But not any old leather. Or rather, it IS old leather - the smell of an antique book pulled off the shelf, an old black jacket hanging off the back of a chair, a soft suede purse that’s only pulled out on special occasions, a well-worn chair that’s seen better days but is still the comfiest one in the house.”
7.) Les Nez - Let Me Play the Lion
I’ve struggled with this one for months and months, and still do. It resonates so well with me that I can’t decide if its because it just happens to hit all the right notes with me personally, or if it really is a sneaky little charmer. A list of adjectives seems a subpar way to describe it, but “dry smokey woody deliciousness” sums this fragrance up so concisely that there’s no excuse for purpling up the reason to enjoy it.
8.) Esteban - Teck and Tonka candle
“Is it ridiculously spendy for a candle? Yes, yes it is. It is worth it? Yes, hell yes. […] This is the sort of fragrance that a sophisiticate would describe as aphrodisiacal. I’m not sophisticated: It’s humpy. And it definitely sets a mood.”
9.) Guerlain - Mitsouko
“Mitsouko parfum is one the best things I have ever smelled. There’s just something about it that melds intrinsically to my skin, and it is hard to tell where I begin and Mitsouko’s sensual chypre ends […] Mitsouko is in such good taste that it is a whenever the hell you feel like it choice. You can smell opera gloves and elegance. But you can also smell a picnic barbeque in it - the sunshine, the grill in action, and paper plates with hot dogs and potato chips. Mitsouko fits in everywhere.”
10.) Lola Cosmetics - Lola perfume oil
“There’s really no polite way to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it: Lola fragrance oil is sex. Some scents are flirty, some are sensual, some are sexy. This is S-E-X. In a bottle […] This is the smell I would have if I happened to be a nymph who’d gone for a romp in the woods with Pan. Animal-like, earthy and sweetly piquant, it doesn’t smell directly of Pan himself, but rather more that I’d been unmistakably in his prescence, raunching it up gaily.”
Tom Ford’s advertising campaigns have moved in a slow slimy crawl from titillation to approximations of hate fucks. First he gave us a nude in his Yves Saint Laurent M7 ads, which conveyed little about the fragrance, but at least some remnant of sensuality clung like the last sip of evening wine to those images. Later, he carved out a Gucci-font G into a female model’s pubic hair. The faux shock of that image tried so very hard to communicate sexuality. I think it achieved that goal, but by focusing on a rhetorical exhibition of sex, the models failed to radiate any sort of enjoyment about Gucci products. At least it reinforced the brand logo.
The old marketing chestnut reminds us, like a hangover or an outdated political bumper sticker, that “sex sells.” Yet what he’s selling now isn’t sex, and I’m not sure it’s fragrance either. He’s hoping you’ll buy into the insecure hostility surrounding male sexuality that has seemingly become fashionable, rather than remain just a meatheaded side effect of adolescence. This photo has all the creative juice and subtlety of a Limp Bizkit song. The Tom Ford for Men ads effectively communicate… that it smells good? That it makes you feel good? No. It only coveys Tom Ford did it all for the nookie. And then he branded and bottled it.
With his slow escalation using sex to demonstrate dominance rather than pleasure, I fully expect and dread the next campaign: perfume bukkake.
I presume the ad campaign was devised to attract attention by looking provocative. But perfume is not about being provocative. Perfume, like effective advertising, is about seduction. Jean Baudrillard once said, “Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the caricature of seduction. It says: ‘I know that you want to be seduced, and I will seduce you.’ Nothing could be worse than betraying this secret rule. Nothing could be less seductive than a provocative smile or inciteful behavior, since both presuppose that one cannot be seduced naturally and that one needs to be blackmailed into it, or through a declaration of intent: ‘Let me seduce you.’”
Has much thought been given to what the audience has been provoked to do beyond getting turned on? I’ve never heard a guy announce “I have a hard-on, let’s go fragrance shopping!” Perhaps Tom Ford has deep insight into a side of the male psyche which I can’t possibly hope to understand. With that in mind, I decided to seek an opinion on the ad from a man. He asked to remain anonymous, so we’ll call him Deep Scrote:
What is there to say about this? Is it supposed to capture the essence of cleavage? [Ed. Note: And we should be concerned about it smelling like cleavage. If it’s anything like my great-grandma’s, who used to hug me into her bosom when I was little, then it’s gonna smell like boiled meat and mentholated cough drops.] Where will she place the bottle next? How does this stuff taste? She seems to want some . . . Did Tom Ford titty-fuck a blow up doll and put his jizz in a bottle? Will that smell good? Who exactly is the target audience here?
Ooh, look… a bottle getting squeezed between two breastseses. That looks exciting. Look at her mouth… expectant! Gosh, I wish that was me between those oily blobs of silicone. What is it about gay old Tom Ford that gets the ladies so hot? Maybe it’s his scent. If I smelled that greasy perhaps I could get a good titty-fuck, too. Maybe I should buy whatever is in that bottle and slather myself in it. Then none of the blow-up dolls could resist me.
This is an advertisement, isn’t it? ‘Cause an advertisement is supposed to sell something and I’m not sure that whatever niche audience this is targeted at is worth the trouble. If Tom Ford wants to sell this stuff he needs to rethink his strategy. Selling stuff to guys is easy: You take a guy or small group of guys and surround them with a bunch of hot women to fawn all over them. Axe Body Spray figured it out! Hell! The tobacco and alcohol industry have been doing it for years. Whether consciously or subconsciously men get the message and buy the product. People want to be sexy, not creepy . . . unless that IS the target audience. Tom Ford’s Perfume for Pervs. Buy it TODAY! Tom Ford is weird . . . I’m gonna go watch Zoolander now.
“You know, Bijou, I would love you more if you did not bathe so often. I love the smell of your body, but it is faint. It vanishes with so much washing. […] I like the strong female smell. Please wash a little less.”
~ the Basque to his lover Bijou in the story The Basque and Bijou (from Anais Nin’s collection of stories, Delta of Venus.)
It’s a peculiar habit of modern life that we wash away all our natural smells only to slap on new ones. Weirder still is the popularity of “clean” scents aimed to further obfuscate the aroma of actual cleansed skin. The social bias against the unwashed masses has resulted in a cultural predilection to remove the stink of humanity from the human body.
We pluck and remove hair that nature put there. We obsessively freshen breath when our mouths exist in a golden age of dentistry that prescribes frequent brushing anyhow. We wash inside orifices which by design already evacuate themselves. We paint new faces on old ones - intending to merely enhance what we already like, but sometimes it looks more like trying to subvert what we were born with.
We were born to decay; decay has a stink; we are made to stink.1
However, one can’t discredit the benefits of hygiene for humanity. Nor can one exist in a creative vacuum where, out of all the senses, smell alone remains artistically unexplored. Perhaps the best perfumes, like the best applications of makeup or fashion, serve to highlight what we like best about the natural through cunning use of utter artifice.
Caron’s Yatagan revels in the feral innocence of the Nature Child. Yatagan is not an attempt to imitate the smell of traipsing through the forest without access to indoor plumbing and hot showers, it is an impression of it. Just as in comedy, it is impression rather than imitation that startles and delights us. Impressions investigate minutiae, amplifying details that don’t ordinarily stand out. Imitations, on the other hand, leave us unsatisfied, appearing like wan ghosts of diluted reality with nothing novel to say.
Yatagan shows off dirty pine needles littering the forest floor in a sticky relief map of hidden smells. The spicy little voices of herbs (lavender, fennel, basil) and grass strain under the shade of bellicose trees, singing with a more delicate tenor than the woody baritone shadows they grow in. Its armpit funk from patchouli accompanies a dark whiff off Pan’s sun-leathered skin, and brings us back to the realization that we are all Nature’s Children wandering through the world, whether our forests are wooded or urban.
We cannot deny nature. We cannot invent it. We can, however, share impressions of it. The delight found in Yatagan’s impression lies in a rejection of the hypervigilant scrubbing away of nature, while paradoxically being a product of the basic hygiene ritual.
If you’re wearing perfume, you’re not feral. But you can remind yourself and the rest the world you could be.
As one version of a highly apocryphal story goes, Dr. Samuel Johnson had been traveling for weeks without access to a bath. As he waited on a rail platform for his train to arrive, a fellow passenger complained about his disheveled state with an admonishment that he smelled. The annoyed Dr. Johnson responded, “No, madam. You smell, I stink.”
1Maybe this is why fragrances geared towards a youth demographic always smell so insipidly fresh and fruity, while heavier animalic ones are frequently derided as “old lady perfumes.” Perhaps fragrance characteristics represent an evolving comfort level (or lack thereof) with aging and our own organic rot, rather than being strictly a matter of taste. Or perhaps perfume as an artistic manifestation of the fear of dying is such an imaginative stretch that it’s just too silly an idea to entertain. Either way, it’s a tangent that’s too long for a little ol’ footnote to contain, so I’ll leave it there.
1.) Alan Cumming - Cumming
Sometimes I fear like I’m banging the drum for this fragrance as annoyingly as a Gunter Grass character. But I’m merely banging away for the fragrance version of a pleasurably rotten rainy day, which I hope is much less pedantic and insane. It’s muddy, it’s wet, it’s wonderful.
2.) Novaya Zarya - Barber of Siberia No. 3
This fragrance is an ode to a Russian film of the same name. It smells very much of a gin and tonic with lime, and though one can find similarly inspired gin and tonic fragrances, thus far this is the best one I’ve found. I think I even smell the quinine, though I’ll admit the possibility that this note may be imaginative conjuring.
3.) Czech & Speake - Dark Rose
Spiced rose on ice. ‘Nuff said.
4.) Hermes - Eau de Mervielles
I don’t regularly go for orangey fragrances, but I cannot fathom how anyone couldn’t submit to the beauty of Eau de Mervielles. It’s peppered wood heart belies its erstwhile sweetness in summer, lending it a more tawny beach-strewn driftwood feel.
5.) Versace - The Dreamer
The Dreamer should be regarded as a mess of a fragrance - and what a glorious mess it is. The tangled web of sweet shop and forest it spreads across the skin is all wrong in the best possible way. The Dreamer adopts a soapy tone in the high heat of the season, giving one a sanitary impression of what the candy cottage in the woods might look like to Hansel and Gretel if the old witch that lives there was a committed vegetarian.
6.) Penhaligon - English Fern
Listen, I’m not saying this is the most complex thing ever, but when the temperature hits triple digits Fahrenheit, the simple fougere just clicks with me.
7.) Carven - Ma Griffe
Vintage bottles of Ma Griffe can still be picked up for reasonable prices, thankfully enough. If you crave perfume complexity no matter what the weather, the spiced galbanum of Ma Griffe will satisfy without laying on the air like a wet wool blanket.
8.) Frank LA - Frank LA No. 1
Frank LA (now Frank LA No. 1, with the newish additions to the line) is another greeny fragrance, which entices me to the point of addiction. It’s got herbal salad tones that include the chopped green pepper of galbanum, it’s got incense, it’s got a smidge of nutmeg. Sound too heavy? Somehow it manages to slice a clear swath through the thick humidity and sleepy heat of even the hottest day. Rather than feeling oppressive, it invigorates, and wipes the smile that descending sweat melted off back onto your face.
9.) Guerlain - Sous Le Vent
For what seemed like ages, I had the worst time figuring out what I thought of Sous le Vent. Mostly because during the cooler weather the appearance of a note I sadly can only describe as asparagus pee-like popped up on my skin. But now with the rising mercury, that troublesome asparagus pee is no more! I’m left with a refreshing rush of green florals and herbs that overlap like waves greedily consuming one another on the incoming tide. It does play out as more animalic in summer than during winter, however, this is simply not a deal breaker for me. I find its indolic animal on sweaty summer human possesses the same negating effect as fighting fire with fire.
10.) Cote Bastide - Peche de Vigne
The peach orchards of Goldendale, Washington are not legendary, but they should be. During the peaches’ peak ripeness, they taste of honeyed blossoms as much as they do of fleshy fruit. Peche de Vigne grabs me with the same gravitational force as the wafting aroma from pallets loaded with Goldendale peaches.
To read some other great compilations of summer fragrance choices, please click on any or all of the links below:
Thanks to Marina for the graphic used at top!
Mizensir is the brainchild of legend-in-his-own-time perfumer Alberto Morillas. The Geneva based company offers an intriguing range of candles and home fragrance sprays, none of which I’ve tried outside of the Heliotrope Bleue candle. (Too little time, too little money, etc.)
Heliotrope Bleue smells not of actual heliotrope, but of an idealized, hyper-real impression of it. Where many heliotrope fragrances tend to overly fetishize the bloom’s sifted powder element, Morillas takes an endearingly different tack. Aniseed fills the heart of its aroma, but smells less licorice-like than one would think, and more… nutty? Yes, nutty. Paired with a vanillic lilt, the effect is reminiscent of almond biscotti. Hovering over the biscotti allusion like a halo, the pale glow of fresh floral notes linger in the air, having been trapped forever in a perfumer’s state of grace where there is no organic decay, no death.
In some ways, this candle embraces what I wanted the Lolita Lempicka fragrance to be, but wasn’t. Which? Is largely due to an errant and most unfortunate stale gym shorts note in Lolita Lempicka, that once noticed couldn’t be shaken off upon subsequent sniffs.
The candle is slow burning, but burns cleanly, with a delicate yet wide flung throw, and evenly melting wax. Even the wick doesn’t need to be trimmed all too often, as it seems to keep pace with the wax quite well.
I’m not sure I’ll be replacing this particular candle, which has nothing to do with its quality and everything to do with a now keen curiosity about the rest of the Mizensir line. Heliotrope Bleue smells charming, elegant, and as if a paragon of the word “cozy” itself… much like a good cafe or an intimate still life painting.
The following was written by my sister Sasha, otherwise referenced here by me as my favorite guinea pig:
Sitting in my car, searching for music that wouldn’t exacerbate my frustrations with traffic, I chose to listen to a lame P. Diddy commercial over lame pop music or most likely a lame P. Diddy single that could have been playing or “dropping” at that very moment on another station. He wanted you to buy Unforgivable for your dad on Father’s Day. Diddy said in the radio ad,”Your dad is number one so you should get him the number one smell good scent, Unforgivable.”
Now, when Puffy talks the world listens for some reason. But I am confused. Why is the number one smell good scent… unforgivable? What has it done? What is it doing now? Should I be worried?
But then I guess the number one smell good scent shouldn’t be Forgivable either: you might as well name it Tolerable, Not Too Pleasant But I Can Stand It, or I Can Take It If You Can.
For those of you not revolted by Puffy’s music and lifestyle, good news! He has two versions of Unforgivable that are apparently indistinguishable from each other. That’s right, YOU can choose the way YOU want to be Unforgivable in two totally unnoticable ways! Now, I must admit I find it strange he only has two Unforgivables, because I was totally prepared to “unforgive” him more than twice. On the other hand, I also find it odd that he wanted his personal scent to be… Unforgivable… twice.
However, I suppose I should consider the possiblity that Unforgivable was named to reflect Sean Comb’s music career. It is unforgivable that his half-assed attempt at “remixes” and production have most likely sold just as many records as his “inspiration” and victims’ originals; It is unforgivable that he can just grunt and moan in the background of another musician’s song and claim credit and originality. I theorize that since The Police or David Bowie do not have fragrances of their own for him to “remix,” he was forced to copy his own scent which is in turn apparently reminiscent of a fragrance called Creed Millésime Impérial. This leads me to wonder, if an Unforgivable III were made, would it end up smelling like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox? A reproduction that’s been through the copier so many times that the ink has faded and said document is neither legible nor helpful? I shouldn’t think too much about that.
P. Diddy offends me in so many ways I resent him. Obviously, he has his music career…..gross. He has a fragrance…grosser. Now, he has a few paragraphs I unfortunately felt compelled to write about him…grossest.
My message to you, Puff Daddy, is this: My father will not be smelling like you, Puff Daddy, or if you will, the daddy of puffs, even if it is your self-proclaimed number one smell good scent. When I think of gifting the man who bought me ice cream when I had a bad day or who drove me to and from softball practice, anything Unforgivable does not come to mind.
~ by SASHA
