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 Love in Black is the latest perfume creation for women from the house of Creed founded in 1760 in England, relocated to Paris in 1854. If the scent is already out in the French capital city, it will be introduced in the US only later in September 2008. The name is like an echo and a reverse image of Love in White launched in 2005, a fragrance with a bridal theme. Like its predecessor and many other Creed perfumes it wishes to be a reference to a patrician world of wealth and privilege. Also like several other Creed fragrances, it is inspired by the memories and image of an iconic woman. This time Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis is the muse to perfumers Olivier and Erwin Creed like Grace Kelly was for Fleurissimo and Audrey Hepburn for Spring Flower. The composition itself is described as a " violet oriental" and evolves as a fresh and woody violet then iris scent developing within the elegant range of the colors black to pastel mauve. Jackie O
There are women who stand as collective references even to those who do not necessarily follow them. Some of them epitomize a near-saintly virtue often referred to in an understated fashion as "grace under pressure". In an alliance of feminine charm, inward and outward elegance and steely strength they seem to be composed of a special essence. To explain her own personal forbearance in the face of adversity, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis once said that she could not but act the way she did thinking about her forebear General Lee. The quality that was striking in her from my general perception of her image was her stoicism and something else about her that made her appear to be immutable, unruffled. When Jackie Onassis died in 1994, I had precisely started to feel her disappearance from the public scene asking myself randomly one day what had become of her not having heard of her or seen her pictures in the press for a while. There are such synchronicities of consciousness, I find, and celebrities thus populate more or less unconsciously the social imagination. Then the news came in quickly to answer this question and we all learned that she had died at a relatively young age, in her sixties, from cancer. It was like a public confession of vulnerability. She who had to overcome daunting challenges such as the loss of children, the assassination of her husband, and more, was not meant to live on a tranquil life, but had somehow finally ceded under the pressure from existence, prematurely...  Love in Black © Creed
Continue reading "Creed Love In Black (2008): Mauve Is The Color of Demi-Deuil {Perfume Review}" »
Nomad Tea is part of the Series 7 Sweet, which also features Burnt Sugar, Wood Coffee, Sticky Cake, and Spicy Cocoa. Like practically all of the Comme des Garçons scents since their debut in 1994, it aims to provide aesthetic olfactory pleasure through the sensation of anticipated and realized discovery thanks to an expressly sought-out unusual twist and with oftentimes, but not in this case, a little dose of provocation. The perfume brand owned by designer Rei Kawabuko loves to capture smells of the real world and transcribe them into liquid manifestos that are more or less incisive. Odeur 53 and Odeur 71 are compendia of street, office, home smells, Guerilla 1 only indirectly alludes to a butcher's shop without going to the extent of copying the literal aromas of, say, raw red meat and mutton fat, Red Harissa turns a terracotta red spicy condiment for Couscous into a plausible perfume ingredient, and much more. Nomad Tea is a serene perfume travelogue, like a tea scent can be, making the international roads of tea bifurcate in one imagined place, the scent bottle whimsically shaped like a turban/pumpkin/garlic bulb/fennel, which is meant to represent a sweet. Letting the scent evaporate on your skin is accepting an invitation to drink Moroccan mint tea made with astringent bitter green tea from China sitting at a café terrace in Paris and next, jump to Myanmar on the map to inhale and chew on some fermented Laphet. It is a scent that manages to be both slightly meditative and refreshing, with a calming influence also thanks to the woods, a welcome general psychological state to encourage in ourselves to counteract the summer heat.... Old woman drying tea leaves, Namhsan, Myanmar by Coole Images
Continue reading "•• Comme des Garçons Series 7 Sweet Nomad Tea (2005) •• {Perfume Review} " »
Photo © Etat Libre d'Orange Tom of Finland is the latest fragrance to emerge from the "space of olfactory libertinage" created by Etat Libre d'Orange, a taboo-averse slightly iconoclastic niche perfumery located in Paris. Named after master draughtsman of homosexual eroticism Tom of Finland, whose real name was Touko Laaksonen (1920-1991), the perfume aims to instill the sense that to be "Gay or straight, it doesn't matter. The frontiers have expanded and barriers have faded to make way for a beautiful and original vision of masculinity." It is a joint project undertaken with the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles which asked as main guideline that it "does not disturb the odor of men," (see previous post)
The problem from the start for founder and artistic director Etienne de Swardt was, if at all possible, to avoid clichéd representations of homosexuality, "With Tom of Finland, the challenge was to avoid a purely sexual banality, a conventional story of propositions clad in leather and conducted in bathrooms. At the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, I discovered a world that was highly erotic, but it was an eroticism presented as art, as a veritable religion. Tom's drawings have a fine, elegant beauty; they are never vulgar. They convey a happy sensuality, a light-hearted debauchery. The viewer is amused, entertained. To create the perfume 'Tom', I thought it would be interesting to go to the antithesis of the cliche, and assign the scent to a 'straight' perfumer, Antoine Lie, who has played up the contrast of subject and viewpoint, in his successful interpretation."
Antoine Lie, the perfumer, added, "Although heterosexual, I must admit that many of the most beautiful souls I've met in my life have been masculine and gay. I'm fascinated by their culture, their talent. This perfume is my way of paying homage to them, to show the straight world that there is much to learn from gay society, to blend absolute purity with outright sensuality all the way to a sexuality without borders."
In a way, it can be seen as playing it safe to express these ideas through perfume. How far could it go in provoking sexual walls to fall? Tom of Finland the perfume, like the drawings of the artist, betrays a playful touch, that humor perceptible in the Kake comics characters, never going as far as the more seriously olfactorily provocative Sécrétions Magnifiques. It offers a simplified image of homosexuality, one that anyone can relate to and adopt as scent. It is understandable that the brand would not want to run the risk of putting out a composition that would be felt to be repulsive, like Sécrétions is often thought to be, as this might deliver a negative message about homosexuality and potentially trigger homophobic discourse. Etat Libre d'Orange want to bring you into their fold and so they have devised an appealing perfume that speaks to the cause of gay men, in particular, the ones that recognize themselves in the Tom of Finland archetypes......
 Image © Tom of Finland Foundation
Continue reading "•• Etat Libre d'Orange Tom of Finland (2008) •• {Perfume Review} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
Sensuous is the latest major feminine launch by Estée Lauder following Tuberose Gardenia Private Collection introduced last year in the summer. If there is an American beauty brand that has consistently aimed to make as many women as possible feel more beautiful through access to fragrance allure and luxury, that would be Estée Lauder. Although it is sometimes stated that Lauder wanted to capture the attention of the upper-classes with her luxuriously feeling scents, their price points indicate otherwise targeting rather the woman who believes she has it in her to live a better life. Private Collection (1973) may have been initially a private gift to Princess Grace of Monaco, but taxi cab drivers loved it just as much and it finally made it to the department store counters. Mrs. Estée Lauder was obviously particularly sensitive to beauty. The models that have graced the advertising pictures of the brand have become the stuff of legend thanks to their gorgeous classical looks.There were Karen Graham, Shaun Casey, Willow Bay, Carolyn Murphy (see Estée Lauder advertisements for more familiar faces). Paulina Porizkova was noted for being a discreet turning point - a sign of the times - a beauty that was slightly less Greek. Liz Hurley further made the Estée Lauder woman archetype feel more accessible. These standards became an iconic reference and even made it into the popular culture. Thus best-selling author Dan Brown tickles the desires of his masculine readership by talking about the main feminine character in his thriller Digital Fortress as looking like an Estée Lauder model, in order to stress her exquisiteness knowing his readers will catch on to that mainstream gold standard of beauty: "Her delicate European features and soft brown eyes reminded him of an ad for Estée Lauder" (p. 16)...... The bottle: the back of the Sensuous bottle is ribbed, adding a sensual tactile element to the experience of the perfume. It is unusual and very pleasant to the touch, almost acting like a worry-perfume-bottle. The jus is a pink-champagne color. Photo © The Scented Salamander.
Continue reading "Estée Lauder Sensuous (2008): A Buttery Fusion of Woods & Amber {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance}" »
Kenzo Power by Kenzo, which rhymes with Kenzo Flower no doubt for harmonizing branding purposes, is destined to be the masculine counterpart to their best-seller feminine scent created by Alberto Morillas in 2000. Like its predecessor, the upcoming Power to be launched in August 2008, takes as source of inspiration the imagined scent of a flower. In the case of Kenzo Flower what served as support for poetic license was a scentless red poppy dear to the heart of designer Kenzo; in the case of Kenzo Power the fictionalized floral reference dissolves further into the vagueness of a non-entity just described as an "imaginary flower".
Olivier Polge is the perfumer behind Kenzo Power. He is also the creator of Dior Homme, Guerlain Cuir Beluga, Dior Pure Poison, Victor & Rolf Flowerbomb, among others. Masculines Are Hot
The new Kenzo Power, beyond the in-house reference, appears to be part of new trendy generation of floral compositions for men that were recently reintroduced with some fanfare by Jean Paul Gaultier with Fleur du Mâle (Flower of the Male), a masculine scent centering on orange blossom created by Francis Kurkdjian. If floral notes never really took the exit door of men's fragrances following the prim flowery 19th century filled with gentlemen sporting flowers in their buttonholes and scented with rose at their barber shops, they could be showcased more or less, and as recently experienced, readily flaunted for their modern metrosexual connotations rather than hid as sub-virile. Thus contemporary dandies have pointedly been invited to reconsider their options......
Continue reading "Kenzo Kenzo Power (2008): Trendy Masculinity By Way of Muji {Perfume Review} {Men's Cologne}" »
A Precious Rendition of Musk With its name vascillating like a flame in the direction of Serge Lutens Muscs Koublaï Khan, you might have expected Annick Goutal Musc Nomade to smell like what your imagination of a nomad of yore conjures up, one who faithfully and with great discipline would disregard the distinction between the clean and the unclean as Koublaï Khan once ordered it. If Muscs Koublaï Khan may suggest some of the martial hardiness of the mores in the steppe region of the center of Asia, Annick Goutal Musc Nomade only keeps that other facet found in the first fragrance: an idea of preciousness linked with the utilization of musk experienced as a much sought-after aromatic material purloined from the musk-deer for centuries by nomads who would trade "musk-bags". Musk and its adjective "musky" may point to a certain roughness of style, a naturalness that is borderline offensive especially in North American culture today, but at the same time, it is also the musk of luxury brought back from distant lands with its ascribed aphrodisiac, soothing, beautifying and gustatory properties. The other side of musky as in the French word "musqué" is that it came to mean at one point the reverse of what the ring of the word "nomad" seems to contain, that is an excess of affectation and also coquetry betraying foppishness in 19th century France......
Continue reading "Annick Goutal Musc Nomade (2008): The Inner Orientalist Motif {Perfume Review}" »
Lancôme Peut Etre (2008), meaning "maybe" in French (usually written "peut-être") is a feminine rose-iris fragrance accented with fresh and green vernal notes while offering at the same time a warm ambery-musky counterpoint consisting in a sumptuous, seemingly endless incense-y and resinous drydown as if offering two distinct atmospheres. It should delight amateurs of old-manner perfumes with lasting yet elegant sillage. According to the Financial Times, “La Collection brings together original masterpieces whose compositions reveal surprising complexities,” says Liz Mearing of Lancôme. “These fragrances also capture a recent trend for beautiful, vintage scents that are created to the highest standards. It’s very exciting to be able to offer something so special to a discerning, niche audience.”
The images it evokes, as it turns out, are very close to the intent of the vintage form of the perfume.
Lancôme initially launched Peut-Etre in 1937 and it is ascribed to Armand Petitjean, the founder of the brand in 1935, a former managing-director and arguably apprentice of François Coty, the father of modern commercial perfumery. This spring Lancôme reintroduced an offspring of the original scent in La Collection series of "haute parfumerie classics". The original scent was reportedly updated and recreated by perfumer Nathalie Lorson and is classified on paper as a musky floral, which is a simplification for a scent that presents other meaningful facets. In our case what took place was an eerie moment of revelation. We experienced an authentic shock of discovery after having described the perfume and written about some of the images it suggested as then we happened on a 1940 advert for Peut-Etre by E.M. Pérot where the iconography seemed to mirror our description of the new scent (see after the jump). This seems to indicate that Nathalie Lorson worked closely with the original formula as the imagery found in the 1940 advert is not hinted at in any way by the new press release (no incense is mentioned for example). It suddenly felt like a slightly disturbing pythian incursion into the realm of archetypes. If you look at the first ad below (also seen after testing the scent), you can see a reiteration of the fundamental theme we describe in the review and which comes through much more powerfully and precisely in the second 1940 advert. These publicity images therefore do speak about the perfume and about its main thrust as well as important secondary facets. Due to this "revelation" the review is layered, one more unaware and the other more informed, post-epiphany.....
Continue reading "Lancôme Peut-Être (1937-2008) {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance}" »
Un Jardin Après La Mousson is the latest and third fragrance installment in the Jardin series proposed by Hermès and created by in-house perfumer Jean Claude Ellena. Following Un Jardin en Méditerrannée and Un Jardin sur le Nil, Un Jardin Après La Mousson (A Garden After The Monsoon) aims to capture the spirit of a place and lift a stone of the vegetable world that was left unturned. Hence the concerted effort, like that of some painters' - Gauguin comes to mind but perhaps even closer to Ellena's world, Cézanne - to travel or go to the mountain (Mont Victoire), and observe the world in a different light.
Like its scent predecessors, Un Jardin Après La Mousson is based both on original empirical impressions garnered in situ by displacing the nose to a more or less distant locale and, if we are to believe Ellena, in the end, discarded in order to make room for the perfumer's own free movement of interpretation. He recently said that he does not care about reality.
Despite this pronouncement, to be clarified, usually what Ellena retains from his peregrinations is a novel, out of the ordinary smell that will anchor his composition. For Bois Farine by L'Artisan Parfumeur it was a a tree in the Reunion, a species whose red flowers diffuse a flour-like aroma. The fragrances in the Garden Series all showcase a fleshy fruit (fig/prune, mango, cantaloupe/watermelon) that gives way to a transparent, watery impression. With the latest Un Jardin Après La Mousson, the least easy and most complex of the garden scents, one encounters a delightful realignment of well-known ideas and sensations that gives in the end an unexpected and very original fragrance. The variegated nature of the scent, yet its harmonious tonality makes you think of a kaleidoscope reshuffling white, transparent, green, and blue crystals -- the colors of Impression, Soleil Levant. The felt plurality of the sources of its inspiration conjures up the vision of a page from the Moleskine notebook Ellena uses and in which different ideas are noted down and worked upon. The result is very idiosyncratic and full of perfumery quotes. The scent is in a Hermès bottle but could easily be poured into a Comme des Garçons one instead and touted as avant-gardiste. Ellena has made apparently contradictory statements about his more or less essential need for nourishment coming from the real world. There is for him a need for an olfactory trigger of inspiration on the one hand - the aromas of teas at Mariage Frères (Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert), the natural licoricey facet of turmeric (he could have used it for Brin de Réglisse had he encountered it sooner), the smell of a grove of green mangoes in Egypt or fig leaves on a tray at a cocktail party in a Mediterranean garden - and his professed absolute disregard for slavish olfactory copies of the empirical world on the other hand. Impression Soleil Levant, the painting that gave its name to Impressionism
One way to understand the seeming fundamental tension that Jean Claude Ellena seems to point to in his relationship to the natural world - both seeking it out and rejecting it - is to liken his approach to that of Marxists..... just kidding......the Impressionist school of painting. Like these painters who were mobile painters, the perfumer feels an urge to come in direct contact with the objects he will paint, look for them in open places, dig them out perhaps more so since olfactory objects can be unseen and are less well known and cataloged - try knocking on the door of the local tourism agency and asking them what is there to smell in the region? - and in the end filter them through his own impressions. The watercolor-like texture of his Jardin perfumes invites this comparison further, making you think of the lilies on a pond series of Claude Monet and suddenly making you realize also that the vegetal motif on the packaging of Un Jardin sur le Nil is not unlike them. Monet was after all dubbed a poet of gardens and water. Next a composition centered around the garden of Giverny would seem appropriate and natural. However according to Le Nouvel Observateur, Un Jardin Après La Mousson "brings the water trilogy to a close.".......
Continue reading "Hermès Un Jardin Après La Mousson (2008): A Strange, Original Tapestry of Familiar Accords {Perfume Review}" »
The latest Dior Escale à Portofino (Port of Call in Portofino) created by François Demachy is quite the unconventional Eau de Cologne. It clearly borrows its main structural idea from the genre which first came to be known to the public consciousness in the 18th century under the name Aqua Mirabilis, but lets through an absolutely brilliant rethinking of the concept. Even the in-house reference to the tradition of freshness in perfumed compositions inaugurated by Edmond Roudnitska at Dior does not fully prepare you to experience this composition as one that would be entirely predictable. The scent is part of a new line of summer fragrances illustrating a travel theme, a mirror collection of perfumes to the annual Dior Cruise Collection designed by John Galliano. Freshness, but also Transparency and Softness
Roudnitska the Elder, if we may so call him, (his son Michel Roudnitska is also a well-known contemporary perfumer) is famous for having brought to life fragrances playing upon sensations of lightness and clarity such as Eau d'Hermès (1951), Eau Fraîche (1953), Diorissimo (1956), Eau Sauvage (1966), and Diorella (1972) when full-bodied perfumes for women were a dominant norm. Like Poiret encouraging women to drop the corset and traditional focus on waist and hips, Roudnistka seems to have followed a comparable intuition with his non Femme-like fresh perfumes asking women to lighten the structural ornateness of their scents and make it more modern, different, perhaps more fluid...... Panorama of Portofino by Giorgiopix 
Continue reading "Dior Escale à Portofino (2008) {Perfume Review}" »
Mariah Carey launched her debut signature perfume, M, last year and since then there has been only positive buzz about it as far as we can tell. Celebrity perfumes are always suspected of being crass vehicles for loud branding and sheer money-making, except by their fans, and magic in a celeb's bottle is not expected by most people. M seems to be a case where the famous personality was able to have her say and impact the making of the perfume significantly while the perfumers seem to have intuited her well. Maybe we will learn one day Carey wanted it to smell like a billy-goat and the marketers set their foot down, but the perfume seems to go well with her perceived image on yet another level of synergy, that of the celebrity's image and her or his fragrance. What can catch one's attention at first is the fact that M sounds authentic because it presents blatant idiosyncratic traits: a marshmallow note with a sea breeze accord and then some Moroccan incense? Quid? It sounded like the notes were there for a reason because they sounded rather whimsical thrown into the same mix. We also later thought that it might be a little in the line of Dune by Dior (marine incense) and so were doubly curious as this one is a rather unusual scent below its surface of mainstream respectability........
Continue reading "Mariah Carey M (2007): From Smells to Floriental {Perfume Review}" »
Ambergris Ambergris is an organic animalic material excreted by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). This substance in its natural state or near-natural state, i.e., as an infusion, has a wonderful, deep, and almost unbearable intensity before it finally mellows down. The tiniest amount of what is already an infusion, something like 5 % in alcohol, takes on a life of its own once it hits the skin becoming worthy of the most ostentatious of monarchs holding court with a seductive yet iron fist. Before it alights on the skin, the scent of ambergris emanating from a phial evokes intriguingly enough the smell of pungent dusty old leather-bound books, ones that would have been left to gather the aromas of spices in the most stocked-up of the Comptoir de la Compagnie des Indes spice warehouse and the most religiously frequented too as a suggestion of smoky incense passes before the nose. Once transfigured by the warmth of the skin, the ambergris starts to glow and become, enfin, that sensation to which it gives its name, amber-y, releasing a luminous effect that is very close to the visual sensation felt next to a fire burning in a fireplace or sunlight shining through a thick brown glass bottle. A thousand nuances seem to congregate into a few recognizable facets smelling of dry herbs but also of peach, apricot, leather, dusty parchment, baby powder before the fact, white rice flour, a tinge of almond, sweet fruits, earth, skin, sandalwood, wine-y resin, manure, sand, iodine, hay, moss, cinnamon...It is a world opening up in and of itself, a minuscule universe that has formed thanks to the sea, salt, sun, and marine animals...... "Raisins" amber glass bracelet by René Lalique, 1919, from Ragoarts
Continue reading "Balmain Ambre Gris (2008) {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance}" »
Sycomore is the latest composition by perfumers Jacques Polge and Christopher Sheldrake appearing in the collection Les Exclusifs by Chanel, which purports to offer more elaborate works of perfumery utilizing finer ingredients and proposing more delicate art pieces for the connoisseur. It is a new take on an old idea for the house of Chanel since an initial Sycomore perfume was launched in 1930 that aimed to be seemingly this impossible thing: an uncluttered wood perfume for women ending up being a baroque composition as well. In Michael Edwards, Perfume Legends, Jacques Polge is reported to have characterized both Bois des Iles (1924) and Sycomore (1930) as baroque pieces. Sycomore then very interestingly already provided inspiration to him for the creation of Coco as one of the two perfect fragrance embodiments of what he saw to be the lost style of Coco Chanel, seen predominantly through the prism of her clothes. That lost side of Chanel was her equal predilection for the complicated chinoiseries and opulence of gold-leaf work as revealed by her Rue Cambon apartment to the in-house perfumer. It is therefore also the second attempt at least on the part of Polge to recapture some of the soul of the original Sycomore, but it seems going in a new interpretive direction, more towards the idea of showcasing pure woods although a baroque hint is present.
More recently, Jacques Polge is reported to have wanted to concentrate solely on vetiver and its natural facets (Vetiveria Zizanoïde) this time. Despite the reported express intention not to see the vetiver be overtaken by other facets (see previous post), it seems that the incense-y facet in Sycomore is almost as equally important as the vetiver one, a smoky varietal here.
Sycomore is a beautiful, even stunning wood and incense composition that manages both to awaken the combined evocative powers of vetiver and incense, their decidedly exotic associations in this case, while offering itself at the same time as an oh!-so-French study in ideals of understated refinement and elegance. A little baroque flourish is discreetly inserted in the signature of the perfume as an homage paid to the spirit of the Grande Mademoiselle, she who instinctively knew how to embrace the contrasted purity of monastic lines and the golds of aristocratic ostentation and excesses to feel complete. You are tempted also to recognize the influence of perfumer Christopher Sheldrake in its discreet exotic touch.
The perfume conveys its, if you will, French style or Chanel world-view through its intuition for pure lines - like a French window, a French garden - in its sense of refined, controlled, balanced and clear, Cartesian elegance. At the same time there is to be found a sense of Baudelairean voyage to the perfume, but without that hint of opiate-laden, heavy voluptuousness found in the weight of velvet curtains or sensual women's manes as often populate that universe. Something airy and pure traverses Sycomore, suggesting the original spiritual, meditative qualities of incense and smoke (smoky woods) while alluding to a quiet and polite sense of mysticism......
Continue reading "Chanel Sycomore (2008) {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance}" »
Thierry Mugler AngelMen Pure Coffee is a new interpretation of Angel Men launched in 1996, four years after the original women's Angel which revolutionized our perception of the seductive oriental fragrance by pulling all the stops on extreme edible sensations such as chocolate, honey, and caramel but darkened and turned into a dusky-voiced femme fatale thanks to indomitable notes of patchouli. Shalimar had met its match in gourmand and alluring shock-value nearly seventy years later. One can well imagine that smelling the overdose of vanilla in Shalimar in the 1920s when Vanillin was but an unfamiliar sensation in the world of fragrances must have been the equivalent of inhaling Angel in the 1992 and finding it curiously voluptuous, intense, and almost edible.....
Continue reading "Thierry Mugler AngelMen Pure Coffee (2008) {Perfume Review} {Men's Cologne} {New Fragrance}" »
The new trio of perfumes by Annick Goutal titled Les Orientalistes is inspired by the tradition of the Orientalist imagination, which was at its peak in 19th century Europe. At the same time it pays homage to three main materials: amber, myrrh, and incense also called Olibanum or Frankincense. Isabelle Doyen and Camille Goutal have decided to literally interpret the familiar notion of an oriental fragrance by bringing out the figurative motif hidden in the warm, mysterious folds of compositions that today mix the intense, nonchalant, and sensual notes of amber, coumarin, vanilla, benzoin, patchouli...
In the 19th century, an Oriental perfume would have meant any perfume that included exotic substances evocative of the East, prime among them, patchouli, as can be seen in the reconstitution of writer George Sand’s Perfume by Nicolas de Barry. It is only towards the end of the 19th century with the introduction of Vanillin that orientals would come to canonically include this aroma originating from South America, most famously in Shalimar (1925)......
C'est là que j'ai vécu, dans les voluptés calmes,
Au milieu de l'azur, des vagues, des splendeurs
Et des esclaves nus, tout imprégnés d'odeurs,
Qui me rafraîchissaient le front avec des palmes,
Et dont l'unique soin était d'approfondir
Le secret douloureux qui me faisait languir.
(Extrait de "La vie antérieure " de Baudelaire)
Continue reading "Annick Goutal Les Orientalistes: Ambre Fétiche, Myrrhe Ardente, Encens Flamboyant (2007) {Perfume Reviews}" »
Summersent is the unique creation of a new niche Chicago-based fragrance brand established in 2007 called Marjorie Midgarden Fragrances. It incorporates for the first time the suave and secret scent of a bloom (name undisclosed) captured thanks to Living Flower technology. The founder, Marjorie Kitzrow, a marketing executive veteran with 30 years of experience in the business, was not loath to tell GCI Magazine however that, “I thought it would be so interesting that it was so familiar,” she said. “It gets in your head and you just say ‘Wow!’ I had heard about it and I wanted to seek it out. It is a very old plant.”
It was by chance that Kitzrow heard again with more insistence this time in 2003 about “a mysterious fragrant bloom” thanks to a friend who had it in her garden. She decided to head for the Chicago Botanic Garden to smell a particularly fine specimen of it whose scent is just described as being “robust”. Subjugated, it gave her the idea of creating a perfume based on this aroma......
Continue reading "Marjorie Midgarden Fragrances Summersent (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
Bois de Turquie is the latest composition by Jean-Paul Millet Lage, the perfumer and owner of Maître Parfumeur et Gantier. It is the first fragrance by the house since 1989 explicitly marketed as a unisex perfume and is classified as a woody aromatic composition. Despite its name which means "Wood(s) of Turkey", its incense-y facet is more important than its woodsy one it seems as here sandalwood is made part of an incense-rich mix. "Woodsy" is a term that can be used in a more figurative sense to designate aromas like vetiver and patchouli and here it applies to patchouli. A hitherto hidden woody violet note emerges in the end which tilts the balance more in the direction of a woody perfume. Complexity is the name of the game.
The scent aims to bridge the gap between the West and the Orient seeming to do so by resorting to references to an antique historic substratum located in Anatolia while inscribing itself in the Mediterranean geographical continuity.
Inspired by the Millet Lage's travels within Turkey, the scent is a shockingly beautiful fragrance offering both austere and sensual facets with an undercurrent of discreet gourmand notes marked by a religious quality. The beauty of this perfume is such that it is able to provoke a genuine physical aesthetic emotion of poignancy and even suffering in the wearer. One feels strangled at the throat, tears are ready to pour and one attempts not to give in to the strength of one's emotions. Bois de Turquie perfectly illustrates the difference between what is pretty and pleasing and what is beautiful and more difficult to bear. In the experience of Beauty there is longing and the fear of loss while at the same time there is also the revelation of one's mortality and transiency. I will never be able to stand here for all eternity and drink from the source of this river for my thirst never will quench and the beauty that is contained in this place, person, or scent cannot last because all things and all sensations are meant to disappear. The perfume shuns exoticism and a classically rendered Orient and prefers to turn to a mythical antique pagan Mediterranean landscape filled with protective deities. The explicit "unisex" treatment of the perfume can be felt at one level in the contrast between austere, dry and voluptuous notes as mentioned above, but also more deeply, between the opposition and marriage of paternal and maternal principles..... 
Continue reading "Maître Parfumeur et Gantier Bois de Turquie (2008) {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
Pure White Linen Light Breeze inscribes itself in the direct genealogy of White Linen (1978), which had a Breeze version as early as 1996 and was adapted to contemporary tastes with Pure White Linen in 2006. Like each year, Estee Lauder put out their summer collection of fragrances, which are usually made to smell of-the-season with the addition of fresh notes and dressed in pretty shades and patterns to accent the mood of relaxation. So this year there is also a Pure White Linen Summer Fun. This review is for Light Breeze only which was issued in the beginning of 2008 to herald the early days of spring. By now our representations of what crisp linen smell like - and an immaculately white linen at that - has been heavily codified by a whole school of perfumes that aims to capture the quintessence of clean. Given this constraint and given the simple purposes of such fragrances, it is tricky to assess them beyond the fact that they appropriately seem to deliver the promise of an eternal youth for your white t-shirt. With this type of perfume on, your t-shirt will never age, wrinkle, nor smell bad. No, the Ozonic smell takes over and imparts a permanent jus-showered effect that even clean little babies can only dream of......
Continue reading "Estee Lauder Pure White Linen Light Breeze (2008): Reflections on Clean {Perfume Review} {Scented Thoughts} {Notebook: Fresh & Clean}" »
Dirty English has been identified by Nash-Taylor of Juicy Couture as a cross between the influences of her own Anglomania (she is married to John Taylor of Duran Duran), Skaist-Levys’ “CZ Guest Style”, a dash of punk (Sex Pistols) while its style (the bottle's?) borrows from their flagship store located on Rodeo Drive. She also promised that, "Any self-respecting bad boy will want to wear it." (Women’s Wear Daily) The name of the perfume is immediately catchy and if we were to start drawing a list of The Best of 2008, it would have to be nominated under the category "Best Fragrance Name". It actually makes you want to create the category. The first whiff from the bottle promises the scent to be less than pale. It is sweeter and more heavily resinous than average.
The perfume turns out to be a noteworthy twist on a traditional woody-leathery-tobacco scent for men with fresh fougere accents. It demonstrates how you can play with the idea of excess without being excessive in reality. Its most traditional facet suggests the suave after-shave of a gentleman frequenting the requisite club with all the necessary trappings of leather furniture, books and polished woods with beeswax that one would expect. This is deemed an ideal by many and it is a comfortable one. Its more adventurous facet is a humorous and sensual play on the notion of human foulness and extreme bodily exhalations as it plays with the notion of dirtiness but ultimately and paradoxically in a clean and allusive way. This Englishman is indeed a bit dirty and it is not just a play on words but really a play on olfactory sensations......
Continue reading "Juicy Couture Dirty English (2008) {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance} {Men's Cologne}" »
Avon and Cynthia Rowley Flower and Petal were both composed by tandem of perfumers Richard Herpin and Frank Völkl who have used the word “ wearable” to describe their creations destined to the mass-market. The notion of “wearability” is subjective and a bit mysterious if you start thinking about it but usually it means a perfume whose type and popularity have been tested in previous launches within a specific culture and whose smell would be best described by the aesthetic category of “pleasing”. If in a given African culture it is the smell of fried buttery onion applied onto the body that is considered pleasing and sexy, it will not be the case in North America and on the global level. A wearable scent does not aim to surprise but builds upon conservative tastes within the group aimed and is non-invasive. The specializations in this case are that Flower and Petal are for women, some older some very young, and that generally speaking Avon is known to be particularly well-established within the lower middle class culture. The nuance here is that Flower and Petal are part of a slightly more upscale designer range developed by Avon. Of the two, Petal is to us the least conventional. It is in fact an adorable perfume. Cosmetic World reports that several notes in Petal were chosen by Cynthia Rowley’s eight-year old daughter and this may explain a certain freshness of concept as well as the playful even tender addition of certain nuances by the perfumers. Flower, which feels retro and more déjà vu might (nothing is positively said about that) have been influenced by the scent worn by Cynthia Rowley’s mother as she explained that “ The scent of my mom’s fragrance…is one of my favorite memories from childhood,” adding “ I wanted to make something that I could share with my daughters”......
Continue reading "Avon & Cynthia Rowley Flower & Petal (2008) - Part 2 {Perfume Reviews} {New Fragrances}" »
Photo © Communication Serge Lutens Serge Lutens possesses this uncanny ability of turning a priori the most superficial, surface objects and sensations into an oniric walk taken down the maze of a garden as if in a daydream. With Five O’ Clock Au Gingembre composed in collaboration with perfumer Christopher Sheldrake, a tea party in an English manor opens the way to the muffled, velvety footsteps of a discovery walk down the dozens of labyrinthine corridors of a mansion built with hundreds of forgotten rooms. At the same time the contained intensity of the perfume, which unfurls as if following the line of a fall suggests a drop in a well filled with dark light. The perfume is thus complex in the sense of creating both a horizontal line of imagery, by minutely shifting the sensations, and a vertical one by creating an impression of dynamic deepening. Five O'Clock is one of the most difficult perfumes I have had to write about due to the level of detail found in it and its structuring which is poorly rendered by a chronological account. I am tempted to say that it is more constructed like a faceted gem, but it is not quite that either. It is more like a combination of both structures, the linear one and the prismatic one. Or another way to put it would be to say that it is the most elusive of the Lutens despite its deceptive homey title...
Photo © Communication Serge Lutens
Continue reading "Serge Lutens Five O'Clock Au Gingembre (2008): The Black Luminous Intensity of Ginger {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance}" »
Cruel Gardenia is the latest installment in the Art et Matière collection by Guerlain, a line devoted to more creative perfume creations offering culturally speaking a niche, i.e. arty flavor and centering in principle on a reflection on raw materials. The fragrance was created by perfumer Randa Hammami in collaboration with artistic director Sylvaine Delacourte and is a limited edition. The press release is helpful in explicitly stating from the outset the existence of a stylistic variation that can be felt upon discovering the scent and is a bit surprising. Cruel Gardenia offers a relatively spare signature in terms of classic Guerlain standards. If you expected a rich exuberant perfume, you would be let down for a moment before being |
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