Vetivresse: Nosing Around in Scent, Wine & Style

Sleeper Standout 4: Bombay

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:43:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I received a selection of fragrances by Montreal perfumer Claude André Hébert. Hébert has created 12 fragrances for men and women, inspired by the continents. Among them, I managed to find two very pleasing masculines, Dundee and Bombay. Of these two, I precipitated to the latter. It was dry and spicy and sexy. Manly but not dirty, elegant but not dressed up. What appealed immediately was Hébert’s apparent restraint in not over-improvising as so many industry noses do. He knew where and when to stop in this gorgeous quartet of vetiver, Indian sandalwood, cardamom and cinnamon. Each element played its part but, taken together, there was a clarity and expansiveness I found myself quietly admiring. Again, as with the others in my Sleeper Standout series, there was something here worth noticing; in this case, a micro-perfumer who is turning out scents which, by rights, deserve a much wider audience. Wearing Bombay on a cool autumn afternoon renewed my confidence in a generation of noses who, despite the trend to unisex fragrances, extract minimalist odes from classic masculines, as if scrubbing the dust from the gold-leaved escutcheons of Guerlain and Givenchy to rehabilitate some past splendor.

Square Root: Le Labo Iris 39

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:48:00 +0000

Frank Voelkl’s Iris 39 for Le Labo came out a couple of years ago. Before someone told me that the number referred to the number of ingredients used, I was thinking it referred to a female character out of dystopian science fiction. You know, Iris 39, the brunette in the Mylar dirndl, the one who replaced Iris 38.

But first the back-story. Since 2006, the mass-market has been flooded with iris scents, many of them soliflores of the chilly, dove-grey, powdered variety. Chanel’s 28 La Pausa comes to mind, along with Hermès Hiris, Dior Homme, The Different Company Bois d’Iris and Prada Infusion d’Iris––each of which shows a distant, if common, progenitor: Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist. The most respectable iterations show off the woody character of the iris note––in perfume-speak, orris––that originates in the rhizome, not the blossom, of the iris.

In Iris 39, Voelkl (Firmenich) goes a different route, blending orris root with patchouli, ginger, green spices and a woody, forest-violet accord. The fragrance opens screechingly loud, as if the floral base (the uterine nerve center of any perfume) were being showcased with little elaboration. I get rain-splashed flowers after a few balmy overcast days. Mind you, kitchen-garden flowers, not rarities in the Jardins de Bagatelles.

If the photographer who comes most readily to mind when I think of iris soliflores in Edgar de Evia, Iris 39 is a Wolfgang Tillmans’ still life, by contrast. It succeeds at the semblance of a studied paring-down, a premeditated slice of life. It revels in its of-the-moment digitality.

A certain botanical soapiness lingers in the drydown where I’d rather have smelled the green-muskiness of ambrette seed. For all its fresh-from-the-garden-with-mud-on-her-hands character, I find this lass a bit too cleaned-up.

Japanese Peacock

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:55:00 +0000

Cinematically speaking, Oyédo by the Parisian fragrance house, Diptyque, is a Technicolor citrus, all chartreuse greens and warm chrome yellows. Ostensibly Japanese in flavor, it succeeds more in a vein of sheer Oriental weirdness – as if Rei Kawakubo had commissioned it, not Desmond Knox-Leet and Yves Coueslant.

To my nose, it doesn’t scream fruit as much as something artificial, like a new plastic shower curtain liner, a grape-flavored Jolly Rancher sans the high-fructose corn syrup, or - and, for most people, this is the monkey wrench in the gears - something that approximates analgesic rub. (But if James Heeley can do it in Esprit du Tigre, then I guess the folks at Diptyque can too.)

Which is not to say that Oyédo won’t appeal to people – Quite the contrary, I think it fills a very real need for wintertime citruses that don’t evaporate in twenty seconds time and that parry notes other than bergamot and lemon zest. It embodies the paradox of something cool-smelling succeeding in a world of ice and snow, as if its notes mimicked the chilled air.

Heard a peacock lately?

JAR

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 02:02:00 +0000

Not much has been written about Joel Arthur Rosenthal’s bejeweled perfume creations. In 2005 Luca Turin remarked on his Duftnote blog: “When jewellers make perfume (Boucheron, Van Cleef et Arpels, Bulgari), it is usually because they have a big name and want to generate some cash flow. But that can't be JAR’s reason since his entire customer base can (and probably does) fit in the Ritz, and the perfumes are if anything even more confidential than the jewels.” Indeed they are, only available at an address in the 1er and at Bergdorf Goodman.

Having circumvented the JAR boutique in the past, I was surprised three weeks ago when Karen Dubin (founder of Sniffapalooza) and I expressed simultaneous urges to penetrate the inner sanctum and put the perfumes to the test. Nary a bottle in sight, the boutique is painted in a dark purple hue with a trompe-l’oeil ceiling bisected by an ominous bolt of lightning. It reminds one of a back-room at Harry Winston, where Audrey Hepburn or Empress Farah would sit waiting for the tiara to be presented. Six lidded glass jars holding pieces of perfume-imbued purple suede sit atop a small table complemented by two purple velvet-upholstered side chairs. I can’t say that we were treated with any of the fanfare or “Spanish court rigmarole” that others have noted. The attendant produced the perfumes one by one – some enchanting, some off-putting, all singular.

My first impressions, coming from Shadow and Diamond Water, were marked by the recognition of high-quality natural materials (mint, oakmoss absolute, sandalwood, carnation absolute, to name a few), but unlike the plethora of mass-market scents that owe their power to the genius of chemistry, they were able to amplify on the skin without the (at least recognizable) presence of fancy man-made molecules. There were chemicals for sure, to bind and bolster ... but not chemicals for the sake of chemicals. Somehow all the while, with each opened jar, the perfumes themselves were proving that the truest novelty, the strangest strangeness if you will, was right there in nature itself. Whether this (and the prices, which run upwards of $380 an ounce) will appeal to the better part of niche perfume shoppers, I haven’t the foggiest. Certainly, if you take the materials into account, the price is not inflated terribly much. After all, that hundred-buck eau de toilette you bought last week is worth less than the price of the bottle it came in. And what’s more, if JAR’s creations don’t feel quite like you, they at least feel like they were made only for you – despite the fact that they didn’t quite get it the way you wanted it. But, there again, the better part of luxury is growing into an understanding of the difficult thing. I’ve always felt that luxury without some difficulty is just blasé. To be continued...

Image credit: Bangle Bracelet, c. 1987 JAR, diamonds, colored stones, titanium, private collection, New York. Reproduced with permission.

My Fall Scents

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:10:00 +0000

A day of cool weather and I’m already thinking of raking leaves, baking pies, dressing for the woods – I don’t get to them that often – chopping firewood, going to the opera (you weren’t expecting that gear shift), sipping coffees on the bench outside of Doma in the West Village, and wearing lots of the scents that I don’t dare in the dog days of summer. So here they are:

The (Chic) Old Guard

Caron Tabac Blond. Smoky, floral, sultry and not nearly as strong as I’d like
Caron Poivre. Spicy, clove-studded (and studly) in femme sort of way
Acqua di Parma Profumo (1930 formula). The quintessential chypre. A big blonde
Chanel Cuir de Russie. Birch tar to bring them home
Coty Oeillet de France. Dirty carnations

The Lost Generation

Creed Tabarôme (original). The Armagnac of men’s cologne. Luca can kiss my...
Guerlain Derby. You can tie up your horse here any day
Chanel Bois des Îles. Give me wood, lots of wood ... don’t fence me in.
Patou pour Homme. I like a little hot pepper on my pizza

The Young Turks

Heeley Cuir Pleine Fleur (Fine Leather). One of the best things out there
Miller Harris Feuilles de Tabac. A sillage monster. But it smokes quality s***
Prada Cuir Ambre. Amber plus leather. Little bottle. Lots of personality
Vero Profumo Onda. Dark and fiery. Ouch!
JAR Diamond Water. Peppery, sweetly spiced carnation kaleidoscope

Strange that I left off the vetivers. Or maybe not. Of late, I find them so pan-seasonal. Tropical grasses seem appropriate at nearly any time. Anxious here to hear your autumn picks.

Sleeper Standout 3: Sutra Ylang

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:16:00 +0000

The name alone conjures up golden temples at dawn, concubines and opium pipes. But this self-professed oriental by perfumer Enzo Galardi would be better described as a hesperidic chypre dressed up like the Empress Dowager of China. It’s a gutsy perfume, fueled by a top-note powerhouse (read: paradise) of half-parts bitter citrus and bay leaf, and it doesn’t go in for histrionics of any sort. Instead of wimping out, like so many orientals, with a screaming synthetic sandalwood base, it progresses slowly and methodically down an endless corridor of rose and violet tones. While the SA’s will market this to women, I think it would serve perfectly for formal wear on a man. Where the current formula of Caron’s (now discontinued) Alpona strayed into expensive furniture polish, this keeps to the path. Materials are deftly handled throughout. And I’m left thinking: It rules!

Wieke Somers “Amber”

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:15:00 +0000

Doing some research today on Dutch designer Wieke Somers, I ran across this beautiful image of a bottle she did for IFF Hilversum. In the past, Somers has collaborated with Droog. About six years ago, I bought a pair of barnacle glasses she created at a studio in The Hague. Apparently, the “Amber” perfume applicator is a feather. If anyone knows more about this scent – most likely, a one-off – please let me know.

Autumn Paraphrase: Brûme d’Automne

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:48:00 +0000

Jean Paul Guerlain’s Brûme d’Automne (2008) brings to mind those lines of Wallace Stevens’: “The wind of Iceland and / The wind of Ceylon, / Meeting, gripped my mind.” (I had the good fortune to obtain a small decant from Guerlain, extremely rare in part because, at present, it is only available in the limited edition coffret, Les Quatres Saisons, which is mega-expensive.)

If a scent could represent the meeting of two currents, or two jet streams, from vastly different worlds it would be this. From one direction we have cooling green notes of rosemary, coriander and slightly savory pink peppercorn; from the other warm, sensual notes of ylang-ylang, rose, patchouli and vetiver. The composition literally does what its name means, as le brûme denotes “mist,” the phenomenon precipitated by cool air moving above warmer land or water. Of course, ever since types like Wordsworth, Shelley (Mary, too) and Caspar David Friedrich began playing with impressionable minds, mist has become a mood-building device and a metaphor for the numinous, the barely grasped.

It supposedly was inspired by the memory of a long-lost love and a journey to Piascassier, a hilltop village near Grasse. Such histoires sentimentales are nothing new for the house of Guerlain. But who can balk when the product of sentimental reverie is so unbelievably pleasant...and different from everything else on the market? If it ever gets released in the Les Parisiennes line, it will be taking its place alongside such other magisterially moody scents as Jicky and Derby.

Sleeper Standout 2: Sushi Imperiale

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:42:00 +0000

When Florentine perfumer Enzo Galardi entered the American market last year with his line of unisex fragrances, Bois 1920, I was going through a “niche-suspicious” phase. For the space of a few months, niche after niche seemed to be filling up, like the Brooklyn skyline, with new construction: mediocre, on-the-face-of-it modern, and expensive. So much of the market seemed not to take into account the glorious (modern) forebears that, in some cases, were being ripped off, if not completely ignored, as tried-and-true formulas were unveiled as new. But what was important here wasn’t the product, it was the creation of a customer – a person of early middle age with a modest income, with a taste for finer things and an allergy to the luxurious trappings of the previous generation. Among the new lines, two stood out immediately: Bois 1920 and By Kilian. Of the former, I was immediately impressed with Real Patchouly. For whatever reason, I didn’t give the others much attention. Jump ahead one year. Sushi Imperiale and Sutra Ylang stand out, too. They’re from two different ends of the universe: one a spiced gourmand, the other a sultry oriental.

Sushi Imperiale, whose name put me off initially, seems cut from a similar cloth as Alexis Dadier’s Miroir des Vanités for Thierry Mugler. It has a sparkling, unusually pleasurable accord that brings to mind Italian bitters, the quinine edge of tonic-water cocktails, and the sweet spices of traditional eau de cologne formulas amped up to maximum decibelage. For the duration of its evolution on the skin, it straddles the bitter-sweet divide like a Russian gymnast on the pommel horse. The middle notes are drawn out impressively, while the base notes (mainly sandalwood and tonka bean) only become apparent after a few hours. Sushi Imperiale, as with Sutra Ylang, proves that the heart is where the home is: rose, star-anise (appealing to the wine lover in me), nutmeg, pepper and just a hint of jasmine absolute. Itadakimasu!

Sleeper Standout 1: Chanel Allure Edition Blanche

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:17:00 +0000

I had a hankering for lemon today. I’d consumed quite a few of them, Meyer and otherwise, at the cabin last week. Each day, after hiking somewhere in Alpine County or the Desolation Wilderness, I would squeeze a couple into a tall drinking glass, fill it up with ice and water and top off with a few tablespoons of simple syrup.

And so today, not having the time or the inclination to make my homemade limonata, I reached for my bottle of Allure Edition Blanche whose lemony heart and peppery top notes I knew would bring a smile to my lips. There isn’t, in recent memory at least, a mainstream men’s cologne that delights me as much as this one. It’s not a bergamot bomb. It doesn’t spray its machismo like the towel-clad “dudes” at my midtown gym. Nor does it try to do the niche thing. It just does what cologne is supposed to do: make you smell clean and potentially, haply, approachable.

And it gives a really great drydown – Bourbon vetiver, tonka bean, white musk and cedarwood – for less than a hundred bucks a bottle. Sadly, it’s a limited edition and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Would that my friends at Chanel took Olivier Polge’s improvements here to heart and allied sophistication to the clean-fest of the other Allure pour Homme colognes.

Quartiers d'Été

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:21:00 +0000

Vacation time. Hikes, morning- and late afternoon swims, birds, chipmunks, books and hopefully some good wine. See you all back on August 26 for more musings on the stuff in the bottle. Bon août!

Splash Down: Chanel Cologne

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:08:00 +0000

Having recently become a New Yorker-with-a-bike, I’ve taken to zipping around parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan I’d never had the chance to terrorize before. (An old friend once told me that Raymond Roussel took to doing similarly in a white Rolls-Royce he’d had outfitted with a harpsichord.) I love the feeling of liberation such meandering rides produce in me ... but, alas, not the smells. Hot, muggy summer-in-the-city means almost guaranteed inundation with stagnant water, sunbaked trash and something that I can only liken to the putrifaction of our piscine friends.

These are not the days for perfumes of profundity. A good bar of soap, clean water, absorbent towels and a large bottle of eau-de-Cologne will do ... all of which brings me to my supreme joy that someone with common sense was in the room when Chanel decided to include a cologne among its Les Exclusifs offerings. No matter how low the Dow Jones goes, no matter how high the price of milk or gasoline rises, each household should stock a 400ml bottle of the stuff.

A masterfully rounded Cologne, it manages to weave its very traditional components into something modern, “Coco” would have warmed to, or, at least, indulged in between her trysts with all those Grand Dukes and whatnot. Of course, the bergamot and néroli are there, but also some rose and vetiver, and a fresh-linen-smelling musk that makes me want to pour half the bottle over me. Very few drydowns transform my mood (Eau d’Hiver, Eau de Guerlain, Cologne Blanche) and this one does. It reminds me of childhood, post-bath, pre-pajama moments – moments which, sadly, are not revisited in the countless spa situations we endure in the city.

If I were you, I’d keep a large bottle on hand – which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have another bottle stored away for safe keeping.

After the Storm

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:08:00 +0000

Well, I guess we can all do a long exhale, as the inevitable has occurred. Chandler Burr, esteemed critic of the olfactory has passed into bafflement. Like Frank Bruni stomping out of Vong, steam billowing from his ears or a claque of Michelin Guide Rouge critics casting a Tour d’Argent duck-press into the Seine, Typhoon Burr ripped through Kerala yesterday with as much violence as Kathleen Byron in the climax scene of Black Narcissus. Jean-Claude Ellena managed to escape the 145kmh winds, while saris whipped about palm trees and servants fled to high land. Hermès Un Jardin Après La Mousson was panned.

It is, he writes, “a failure on every level, and its failure is so strangely complete, so weirdly disorienting, that after I had repeatedly smelled the bottle delivered to my office — put it on colleagues, offered my arm to strangers — I came to distrust that what I was smelling was the intended perfume.” Ellena, who Burr shadowed throughout the lead-up to the writing of The Perfect Scent, has his fair share of admirers, and in retrospect it would appear that Burr was one of them. The tone of the review remains one of grudging respect, despite disappointment. Burr would be the first to admit that even the greatest noses are capable of colossal failures. No less than Jacques Cavallier, Michel Almairac and a host of others have been dealt one-star reviews in the past. But my beef is not with the rating––it is with the review itself.

Burr’s assessment begins with a rather convoluted discussion of Hedione (the chemical responsible for the success of Edmond Roudnitska’s Eau Sauvage and Diorella) and a denigration (no fault there) of the much-overused aquatic Calone. He initially allies the rain-soaked facets of Un Jardin Après La Mousson with the latter, but later reveals that, with the help of a gas chromatograph, he realized it contained none. He then gallantly throws his mistaken assumption into striking relief by revealing that it is chock full of Hedione. Traditionally Hedione, also known as methyl dihydrojasmonate, has the effect of reanimating floral notes, making them positively shimmer. Ellena first used it in an über-opulent success of his youth, First by Van Cleef & Arpels.

Calone? Hedione? Chromatographs? By this point, any reader is straining for a description … for any form of subjectivity that transcends the mere sticking of said star to waterlogged page. Perhaps Burr assumes that the reader knows the score (in every sense) and has read his books. (From the consistent weirdness of most of the comments on the T-magazine blog, I have to assume not.) Ellena is the master of minimalism. Each of his Hermès compositions, the hard-to-find Hermessences included, is a take-it-or-leave-it study in doing without. For better or worse, these are crystalline compositions exhibiting in each iteration a trademark clarity. They are eminently wearable, if just a bit steep in price. But this is Hermès, after all. Realistic pricing would dull some of the appeal.

Whether you like it or not, Un Jardin Après La Mousson fits the mold. Perhaps (perhaps) its weak point is a dull consistency. I, for one, think the natural vetiver is handled very well. I’d reach for this. It doesn’t bother me, but neither does it bewitch. That said, Chandler Burr’s review bewilders me –– Or does it baffle? –– Oh, I forget.

Alexis (Dadier) in Wonderland

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:07:00 +0000

Things simply aren’t as they would appear –– not this side of the looking glass, at least!

But Alexis Dadier, the young talent behind Thierry Mugler’s À Travers le Miroir (from the Miroir, Miroir Collection), was thinking more of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 film Le Sang d’un Poète than Alice in Wonderland. One of the picture’s seminal sequences involves a man passing through a mirror, and while I will leave the psychosexual critiques to those better qualified for that sort of thing, I will say that androgyny clearly was on the perfumer’s mind when he set out to create his own version of Through the Looking Glass. The TM Perfumes website sums it up as: “a fragrance that accentuates feminine strengths and masculine fragility.” In layman’s terms, À Travers le Miroir has set out to accomplish something that niche houses the world over would like to do –– mainly, create something that men and women will want to wear, regardless of the previously “gendered” materials found inside.

Let’s face it: the world has seen dozens of tuberose accords. To name the principals: Robert Piguet Fracas, Givenchy Amarige, Guerlain Mayotte/Mahora and Jardins de Bagatelle, L’Artisan Parfumeur La Chasse aux Papillons, and, most recently, Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle and Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower. Fracas is the undisputed queen of tuberoses, big, sweet, buttery and unmistakable in a closed room. With its coconut shavings, Carnal Flower is the gourmand of the pack. Tubéreuse Criminelle is the bad girl, her flower steeped in gasoline, like a Molotov cocktail.

À Travers le Miroir is the boy-girl, with its heady white florals emerging initially but quickly overtaken by herbaceous, bitter, absinthe-like notes (nod to Lolita Lempicka for Men and Giacobetti’s Fou d’Absinthe). Here, liquor meets ice but forgoes the gourmand temptations of black licorice. Instead, Dadier overlays the whole production with a camphorous, mentholated note (wintergreen, I think), acknowledging a late-great tuberose from Le Galion, c. 1936.

I love the coolness of it all, as if we were relaxing on the other side of mirror with a tuberose Italian ice. Great work.

A Few Faves du Jour

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:08:00 +0000

This is one of those superlatively subjective posts that I’m doing just because it feels good. For a great many perfumophiles, fragrance is a form of therapy. Like a person who finds in a glass of wine a problem to be worked out (“what am I smelling in here?”) or the amateur pianist who plays an étude to experience the composer’s tonal dilemma (“what was he grappling with, sonically?”), the person with olfactory sensitivities turns to the ... bottle – No, I mean the flacon.

This evening, after the gym, I spread out on my desk about fifteen perfumes. There were some Parfumerie Générales, some Profumums, some Tauers, some Frédéric Malles and some Serge Lutens. For the most part, I knew them. So I begin sifting through. First cut, second cut and, finally, the remaining three bottles: Une Fleur de Cassie (Frédéric Malle), Incense Rosé (Tauer Perfumes) and Bois de Violette (Serge Lutens).

There were a great many very good scents there before me, but these were the masterpieces. Or to be more precise, the masterpieces of Blending. (I guess, then, you’re thinking that this is my response to the Top 25 Fragrances postings on many of my sister blogs. Honestly, it is. I just can’t bring myself, however, to sum up great things in four words or less.)

Une Fleur de Cassie is as beautiful a perfume as they come. It’s like the feeling that comes when you’ve finished a chapter of Colette; a feeling, that is, wagered on the piling up of pastel adjectives – the prose equivalent of a Renoir oil sketch. Mimosas and almond milk and pearls held up in the light. It’s a floral that doesn’t project the aura of flowers. It’s a meal and a kiss and a brush stroke all in one.

Incense Rosé took me months to comprehend. It’s one of the very few incense perfumes that does the “incense thing” with boldness. If Chaim Soutine and Philip Guston got together to create a perfume, this would be it. To me, it’s not rosé – it’s as “rouge” as it comes. All I get here – and if that were all, I’d be ecstatic – is a canvas caked with red paint; caked, and then overlaid and glazed with wonderful things, like vetiver and myrrh. And then, comes the rose. Big and red and bit blown.

Bois de Violette is the type of perfume that, as a boy, I’d have associated with a very rich and elegant woman on a cold night. That said, it’s gorgeous even on summer evening in New York City. (Caveat: I’m indoors with the a/c running.) Wood, violets and something like purple silk cravat. God, I love alpha-methyl ionone ... especially, with the dark touch of Messrs. Lutens et Sheldrake. Warm, sweet and delicious.

Prada No. 5 Narciso

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:03:00 +0000

Narcissus is one of those brand of soliflores that people either love or hate. I have yet to encounter a happy middle ground.

On the face of it, it would seem that any floral accord which strays into the province of the indolic runs the risk of alienating certain people who “think” they like white florals when what they truly like are scrubbed-up florals done in cosmetics labs. Real flowers aren’t hygienic-smelling at all. They grow in the dirt: they co-exist with decaying plants, animals, and minerals. They have “complexity” in their blood, or roots, or phylum or whatever you call it.

Prada’s No. 5 Narciso, one of the quietly released perfumes available exclusively in select Prada boutiques and Liberty of London, is, like its bedfellows Oeillet, Fleur d’Oranger and Cuir Ambre, a vintage-styled gem. This is narcissus in the late morning, when you take a few steps in the kitchen yard and run your hand through the green stalks. The perfumer manages here to imbue the green-sweet-polleny solvent-extracted narcissus poeticus note with a certain sunniness, owing to the inclusion of orange blossom absolute, beeswax absolute and narcissus tazzeta.

If that isn’t special enough, after about fifteen minutes on my skin the vetiver peeks through the flowers, dry and spicy, mimicking human perspiration. All in all, this is a very human scent, neither vaunting prettiness or brute strength. (Personally, I’d have gone with some oakmoss in the base for a chypre effect.) It speaks clearly and, on a warm summer morning, you find yourself listening.

Prattling Violet

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 02:36:00 +0000

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, to prattle is “to talk or chatter idly or meaninglessly; babble or prate.” (And you, dear reader, already are thinking that this is going to be a bad review. Patience, s’il te plaît.) Annick Goutal’s singularly impressive Duel, conceived by Isabel Doyen in collaboration with Annick’s daughter Camille, constellates its elements –– birch tar, green maté leaf absolute, Paraguay seed, orris, and musk –– around a dusky violet heart. It is a strange effect, to say the least; strange but not unwelcome. Indeed, Duel is a misnomer of sorts; for the fragrance transports me not to a scene of drawn pistols at dawn, but, rather, to the slapping of gloves that preceded it. Duel reeks of the libertine and his illicit “freedoms,” the panoply of liberties he’s taken with his rivals’ sweethearts. His britches make the ladies (and a few of the footmen) swoon, while gentlemen of his rank and station affect quizzical expressions at the violet spray in his lapel. Rumor has it, he’s no shrinking violet.

Parfum d’Empire Cuir Ottoman

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:32:00 +0000

Leather in summer. Sounds like the title of a German mountain film or an avant-garde poem from the Weimar Republic. Inevitably, these are the words that come to mind when I think of Parfums d’Empire Cuir Ottoman.

For some reason, here I am reminded of Etat Libre d’Orange Jasmin et Cigarette. It inhabits an olfactory space where delicacy vies with debauchery. While one is a leather scent and the other a tobacco scent, they allow us a casement-view into their twinned identities. And, often, I have found them appealing to the same noses. The genius of Jasmin et Cigarette is the amped-up, fruity jasmine. Bananas and Beaujolais. The genius of Cuir Ottoman is the double-caress of Indian and Egyptian jasmine absolute and cool, powdery orris in its disjointed-yet-instantly-appealing heart. Like Jasmin et Cigarette, Cuir Ottoman eschews the indolic, sweaty-body aspect of jasmine for something pretty but not prettified.

After a while, Cuir Ottoman sticks close to its leather base. It never strays into the bejeweled Orientalist realm but, rather, remains Parisian through and through. For those who would find themselves seduced merely by the name, a caveat: this is not Serge Lutens territory. The Ottoman Empire minus the hair and the ointments and the camel dust. Think of Proust’s “petite bande” on the boardwalk at Balbec transformed into a band of enchanted lederhosen-clad Bavarian youth—Hedi Slimane-thin––beholding the Golden Horn and the minarets of Sultanahmet for the very first time.

Vétiver Véritable

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:17:00 +0000

Vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides) is a material of aristocratic mien but humble means. Used to stanch water erosion in the tropics, vetiver traditionally has been utilized in everything from window shades to grass mats. The dried roots resemble a tangle of vermicelli and possess a intoxicating sweet-smoky-woody-earthy aroma touched with a nose-tingling bitterness and a bit of licorice. Vetiver has been the subject of many a post on Vetivresse, and understandably so. The market seems to have reached vetiver saturation, with more than a handful of very pleasant renditions available. The venerable house of Chanel has recently entered the fray with Sycomore, a Sheldrake-Polge collaboration, which, if I were to give vetiver advice to a fragrance neophyte, would fall high on my short list of benchmark vetivers. While it bears little resemblance to its forebear, Chanel’s 1930 version, it is dark and smoky and sophisticated: a welcome anodyne to the present surfeit of bland men’s colognes. Sycomore is a dashing sports car of scents, tuxedo black with touches of glinting eighteen-karat gold and a little splash of mud on the fender. It possesses better-than-average sillage and tenacity, and, in its behemoth atomizer, is vetiver enough to sustain you for a couple of years.

Image: courtesy of Chanel

Parfums 06130: Lierre Rose

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:28:00 +0000

For a second there, I thought I would subtitle this review “When Natural Just Isn’t Enough.” (Well, I guess I just did.) Lierre Rose (the name means “Ivy-Rose”) was created in 2007 by Jacques Chabert, uncle of Nicolas Chabert the founder of Grasse-based Parfums 06130. Chabert worked with Jacques Polge on the EDP update of Chanel Cristalle and with Jean-Paul Guerlain on Samsara (1989). His Lierre Rose for 06130 is a pretty enough rose, which in no exaggeration reminds me of the smell of a newish bathroom in a Cote d’Azur luxury high-rise. It succeeds in making high-quality natural materials smell mundane, even cheap. This is disconcerting for a brand that seemingly prides itself on remaining outside the beck and call of the vast mass-market middle ground; for that same middle ground is what enabled Chabert to make a name for himself in the first place.

Lierre Rose starts out with something interesting: a slightly camphorous cardamom note playing counterpoint to an intoxicating tuberose-rose-violet triad. But all too quickly it gets muddled, where one or more of the elements should stand out. I wish it would have been the greener, earthier aspect of the Grasse violet absolute, but instead it’s just a sort of creamy floral fuzzfest dusted with jasmine. Where there could have been boldness, sultriness even, there’s scented-candle insufferableness. Lierre Rose had my hopes up, but ultimately she just turned out to be a pretty girl who wouldn’t leave the bathroom.

$145 for a peck on the cheek? She should have been chypre.

Uriental

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:36:00 +0000

Yves Saint Laurent lived his life as in a dream. And for forty years he succeeded in giving the world a privileged glimpse of what he saw each day in that lush and, often, dangerous place.

He represented la belle France’s uneasy relationship with her colonial past, even as he lusted for the charms of an even earlier colonial era (that of his decadent forebears, Flaubert and Pierre Loti). Likewise, he craved the very things that a provincial upbringing kept at arm’s length: exceptionalism and cultural subversion.

He embodied both Schéhérazade and her Sultan – the sentence of death commuted, then reinstated by his whim: the sentence becoming, like the sentence of YSL’s beloved Proust, a golden thread sewn onto our living hearts.

So what shall it be to acknowledge the master’s leave-taking? Champagne or a little Opium?
(I shall let you choose, but I’m pushing the latter.)

Here’s to you, M. Laurent.

Dame of the Rose

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:13:00 +0000

Jean-Paul Guerlain’s Nahéma parfum (1979) was unarguably one of the biggest, sexiest, most luxurious rose fragrances ever created. And one of the most terribly timed releases in perfume history. Its muse, the actress Catherine Deneuve, strangely was endorsing a competitor at the time of its release. Over the years, though, it has garnered its admirers.

Years before Sophia Grojsman’s Paris and Trésor, Nahéma redeemed roses from a boudoir dripping in frillies. Much of this has to do with the amplification that JPG was able to effect in the execution of his idea. Other commentators – Luca Turin among them – have honed in on the painterly quality of this scent, and they aren’t unjustified in this. Damascones, the molecules isolated from rose oil by Firmenich in the late 70s, lent a golden, autumnal complexity to something that could quite easily have been frou frou. Alpha-damascones lent a ripe, bursting peachiness while beta-damascones bolstered the sandalwood in the base with a warm, dusky quality.

All this, blended with Bulgarian rose otto and ylang ylang, succeeded in conjuring up the Arabian Nights sort of woman that Guerlain envisioned. Sadly, women at this time had their sights on the Far East and were more enamored of Opium-dreams than roseate visions.

Nahéma deserves more serious reappraisal than it’s getting. The materials and craft of this fragrance are sans égal, and it doesn’t suffer from the additions and detractions of pervasive reformulation. It would be marvelous on a younger woman and is a shoe-in for the Insolence crowd.

Making Hay

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:17:00 +0000

A few things come to mind:
Cutting it.
Summer of ’02.
Dornach, Switzerland.
The onerous task of running in front of the bailer.
Raking the stray blades into clean rows.
Blazing sun beating down on me in farm clothing.
Running behind the bailer straightening the bails.
Taking refuge under shady cherry trees.
Thinking of lunch.
Sneezing.

A few years later, I ventured into Santa Maria Novella’s Soho boutique and sampled their eau de cologne, Fieno (Hay), hoping to rekindle fond memories of simpler times. I can’t say it embodied what I thought it would. Rather, its clean, powdery and slightly green character captured an aspect of hay as, say, I’d imagine a hay-scented soap to smell. There was even a sweetness to it. Why does hay automatically get associated with a dry-ish summer barnyard? Come to think of it, there were many days – this being Switzerland and all – when the sun wouldn’t come out and there I’d be with these marvelous respiring dairy cows (Holsteins for the most part), watching them eat as I threw the beautiful green blades into their manger. Something in Fieno (as I wear it today in the triple extract concentrate) brings back that moment, the cooling breeze coming in through an open barn door and wafting over the freshly cut hay. Its sweet herbaceous character, accented by myrtle, is the essence of such days and the respite they gave from the sun’s rays. A summer must-have, for sure. I wish it came in soap and shower gel, too.

“1000”

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:48:00 +0000

Now, here’s a fragrance that Luca Turin really did a disservice to. He didn’t pan it. Rather, as with too many perfumes in his (and Tania’s) guide, he awarded it four stars, threw off some gnomic wit, and basically told us nothing. Yes, to his point, perhaps it is a little “dated,” but to call it tired would be like calling Garbo tired instead of retired. And, happily for us, 1000 is far from either. Created in 1972 by the great Jean Kerléo (incidentally, founder of the Osmothéque in Versailles), 1000 was one of those scents for which the brief must simply have read, “Mind not the cost.”

For me, it is a most-welcome stop on the road to the perfect floral chypre. Elegant, subtle and understated (compared, say, with the exuberance of Joy), it invites us into a bright, burnished environment of apricot-ey osmanthus, jasmine absolute de Grasse (as opulent here as in vintage No 5 extrait de parfum), rosa centifolia, rosa damascena, violet leaf absolute, patchouli, oak moss and sandalwood. On my skin, the heart notes seem to go on for decades.

Certainly not a bargain to procure, be assured that the quality of the naturals here is unimpeachable. If you like Mitsouko, a bottle of this shouldn’t far off in your future. And it’s still available in the extrait de parfum. Who can guess for how long?

A Glass of Milk

noreply@blogger.com (Vetivresse) — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:37:00 +0000

And a piece of toast. (Be not afraid, I shan’t channel Gertrude Stein.) I’m just trying to wrap my mind around two genre-bending gourmands which use milk-and-toast accords in novel ways: Serge Lutens Douce Amère (2000) and Thierry Mugler Miroir des Envies (2007). Neither is on my usual bill of fare, being neither vintage nor terribly atmospheric. My tastes run to moody perfumes, perfumes that evoke paintings, landscapes, a longed-for past, even music. Douce Amère and Miroir des Envies are un-nostalgic scents which speak to me, rather, as a mother to her child in what, for lack of a more apt term, I will call “kitchen tones.” They invite us to a table. But not just any table.

Christopher Sheldrake’s Douce Amère owes much of its intrigue to wormwood, which, by sheer dint of the name, could not be farther from such a comforting place as the kitchen table. But dried fruits and spices conspire there to make artemisia absinthium a companionable bedfellow. Far indeed are we from the artemisic opening of, say, Yatagan. Rather, we are presented with something resembling a blanc-mange in which almonds have been replaced with licorice and the top has been lightly dusted with jasmine and some type of sharp, dark chocolate. After a few minutes on the skin Douce Amère settles down to light cedar and slightly sweet spiced milk. It is creamy and lovable and addictive – a pleasant alternative to scents with powdery drydowns, like Lorenzo Villoresi’s Teint de Neige.

As for the toast (what wine geeks call pain-grillé), perfumers Louise Turner and Christine Nagel of Givaudan succeed in serving it up in their brilliant, otherworldly tour de force for Thierry Mugler: Miroir des Envies (Mirror of Desires). Given a Givaudan lab with all the great naturals and premium synthetics I don’t know what would possess me to do bread, but these gals obviously knew what they were doing. Toast is one of those things that I like to taste in a good glass of Meursault or Champagne, but on the skin I’d never have imagined how well it works with a jasmine-dominated floral accord. And what’s more, it’s surprisingly unisex. Put this on the list with L’Artisan Parfumeur’s bready iris Bois Farine and reacquaint yourself with the aroma. Clearly, those envies wanted something crunchy (knackig as the Germans say) to sink their teeth into.