Laurel and Hearty: Laurel, by Comme des Garçons and Monocle

Comme des Garçons has produced some of my favorite things. Luxe Patchouli costs an arm and a leg, sure, but oh how I love it. I finally caved and bought some. Far less pricey, the original fragrances are still, years later, astonishingly good, and up until about 2005, there was no going wrong for me. The Leaves series, the Red series, the Sweet series. Incense (2003) was a real stand out for many, including me. I liked some of the Synthetic series a lot as well. The Guerilla fragrances came out in 2004, and though they were fairly weak, as if done in watery pastels (albeit in stains the colors of raw meats and berries), they were about the last thing I truly liked, excepting Stephen Jones, Laurel and, to a lesser extent, Daphne.

Laurel is the second in the line's collaboration with Monocle. CDG now seems to have turned away from the series and toward one on one collaborations of this kind. Both Daphne and Stephen Jones were collaborations. Hinoki was the first Monocle scent, and I didn't care much for it; the world is short on great fragrances but full enough of very well done cedar type things. The latest collaborations, with designer Jun Takahashi ("Undercover"), leave way too much to the imagination. They feel uninspired. Laurel has had its critics, too, but for me it's instantly likable and compelling.

Rooms With a View: Jasmine et Cigarette and Rien

Set two Etat Libre D’Orange boxes back to back, with their red and blue, semi-circle logos, and you get a bulls-eye in the middle, an interesting sight gag for a niche line whose compositions tend toward the oblique. The names, too, sidle up to you coquettishly: Delicious Closet Queen; Encens & Bubblegum; Don’t Get Me Wrong Baby, I Don’t Swallow; Secretions Magnifiques. Quirky, however well done, is often taken to indicate overcompensation, distracting from a chronic lack of substance. But, pace Luca Turin: “Never underestimate the French gift for refinement.” Turning a phrase, you might say that Etat, who have the intelligence and imagination to back up most of their various thematic conceits, are tongue in chic.

It’s slightly misleading to say they specialize in conceptual perfumery, as all perfume is conceptual, yet Etat do spin the concept of conceptual on its head. Your average perfume begins with a brief—a proposal, let’s say. This document presupposes an aura, at the center of which is a mysterious, as yet ill-defined woman. What does this woman feel? What does she look like? The clothes she wears, the places she’s been and the experiences she’s had, the way she cocks her head when you catch her attention, the glint in her eye when she thinks back to the last time she felt the searing gaze of an admirer: all contribute to the refinement of this hypothetical what if. A perfume represents the distillation of such a woman. And when another woman, likely dissimilar in every imaginable way—chiefly, by virtue of being flesh and blood—sees an advertisement for this elixir, it appears to her, its manufacturers hope, like a specialized emotional mirror. Looking into it, she sees a fantasy image of herself.

Etat too sets out with a proposal, and the perfumes just as arguably aspire to a state of mind. The difference is that woman. It isn’t that she’s not there. Someone, man or woman, most certainly could be. It isn’t even that great pains have been taken to keep whoever this person is unspecified. It’s just that the people at Etat, like those at Comme des Garçons, are more interested in place and thing than person, per se. Where is this place? What does it feel like? What does the air smell like? What are the objects in the room, or building, or landscape? What just happened here—or might if you stick around? The mood is not that of a woman in her element, whatever that might be, but of the elements themselves.

Let’s say one of the above boxes contains Jasmine et Cigarette. The other, let’s say, contains Rien. The two are very representative Etat fragrances. The packaging is strictly minimal. What you have to go on is the fragrance and the enclosed copy. It’s worth quoting the latter. The folded note contained in Jasmine et Cigarette mentions “smoky black and white ambiance” and “hazy atmosphere”. The fragrance is the “reminder of a fantasy” in the form of a smell which has been left on one’s clothes or in the mind of another. The movie star fragrance recalls the refined ennui of Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, seen through wisps of smoke. To be sure, the prose is overblown—isn’t most ad copy?—and specific mention is made of a woman, but her features are left to your imagination, and the emphasis remains decidedly on setting. Jasmine et Cigarette puts you inside an old movie, making you both director and star.

What this means is that the experience of Jasmine et Cigarette isn’t mediated in quite the same way as, say, Dior Addict, whose model persists in your mind as you wear it the way the figure on a book jacket stands in for your image of the character as you read, and perhaps forever after. Even the pyramids of Etat fragrances are kept vague. A ‘smoky’ jasmine with tobacco, hay, turmeric, apricot, cedar, amber and musk is about all you’ll get on Jasmine et Cigarette, and shouldn’t it be? What does a pyramid really tell you? Ultimately, when rose means gerianol and various other aromachemicals, the notes proffered for most perfumes are yet another kind of fantasy, a filter through which to enforce someone else’s intended image.

As for Rien: the word translates into nothing, so don't expect much help there, either. If Jasmine et Cigarette presents you with the black and white room of a 1940s Hollywood movie, Rien shuts you in the leather suitcase near the bedside table, inviting you to find your way out. Be sure: there’s a wad of stolen cash in there, and a story to be told. While Rien is no Bandit, and its nose, Antoine Lie, is no Germaine Cellier, the perfumes share a certain sensibility, and Rien could be viewed as rebuilding a room from memory. It has some of Bandit’s lonely aloofness, that smoky, animalic veil which smells deliciously of bittersweet melancholy. Antoine Maisondieu’s Jasmine et Cigarette brings a bit of cheer with its flowers, but they’re feint enough to remind you of someone’s absence, creating a mood of longing and expectation. That is to say, if someone gave this bouquet to you, it was intended as a good-bye.

In a world where almost anything is accessible, the Etat line remains, as of now, difficult to obtain. Apparently, Henri Bendel stocks them. Harvey Nichols carries them but don’t expect a return call when you can’t figure out the US equivalent of postal code. Little information exists on the perfumes. Are they of good quality? Yes, and worth the time it takes to track them down and the money they’ll cost. They’re EDP, and true to Turin’s word, exquisitely refined. Part of what makes the two in question so evocative is their lucidity. They are exceptionally smooth. There’s a gravity to these fragrances which the sense of humor belies. Go to the company’s website and see for yourself. Etat wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Joke's on You: Moschino Funny!

There was a time when the humor and irreverence of Moschino (not just its line of perfumes but its fashion and its founder) were not entirely lost on its intended audience. There was a time when Moschino in fact had more of an audience on which to lose something. Who could forget the chocolate drizzled handbag—or the Teddy Bear dress? Plenty of people, it would seem. The Olive Oyl bottle of Moschino’s Cheap and Chic perfume was a statement at the time. Now, people tend to dismiss it as unintentionally tacky. Moschino injected the humorless, self-absorbed fashion scene of the eighties with wit and intelligence. While it’s true you wouldn’t actually often have occasion to wear a stuffed animal-infested dress out in public, couture has never been about reality or practical application. Moschino laid bare the central dichotomy of fashion industry practice; of course it was absurd that a collection never intended to be worn should conduct itself as soberly as a tax audit. It was as if Jerry Lewis, as the Nutty Professor, had started a line of couture dresses and sportswear, issued from a headquarters stationed in his lab. Unfortunately, the Italian fashion establishment felt Moschino was laughing at them, not with them, and denounced the designer as a talentless hack. This only made him more popular, his point more legitimate.

Moschino's aesthetic was exuberantly youthful and decidedly adult simultaneously. He was raised in a small town on the outskirts of Milan, perhaps shaping him from the beginning as an outsider with a close proximity to the heart of things but enough distance to view them objectively. His background was in illustration and (for Versace) publicity, so it was perhaps entirely logical that his approach would merge the surrealist audacity of Dali with the slapstick, crowd-pleasing sight-gags of Tex Avery. Moschino founded his line in 1983. Five years later, his Cheap and Chic range was introduced. In 1994, he launced what he called an Ecouture line, featuring clothes made from environmentally friendly fabrics and dyes. It might just be that the laughing stopped when Moschino died the same year, at the age of 44, the victim of that quintessential buzz-kill, a heart attack. His line has persevered, albeit with less fanfare and less imaginative marketing. His perfume line releases new product frequently. The fragrances are more interesting than they’re given credit for. Cheap and Chic itself is a brisk fruity floral, truly cheap and chic, making it, of course, exceptional and a play on words, a happy contradiction. Eponymously titled Moschino (1988) is a floral oriental which smells like Grasse by way of a headshop, another, more refined play on words. Cheap and Chic has had several flankers, as has Moschino.

The bottle for Funny! mimics the one used for Moschino Couture, extending a joke across two releases separated by three years and seemingly contradictory high/low designations. Moschino Couture is a warm, fruity floral with haughty gold cap, high-class scotch-colored juice, and velvet red ribbon sash. Funny! is literally its polar opposite, cool, fresh, and exhilarating, with silver cap, ice blue juice, and frayed satin ribbon, the cheerful country cousin to its big city counterpart. Funny! was created by Antoine Maisondieu, whose work with Etat Libre D’Orange (Jasmin et Cigarette, Encens & Bubblegum, et al), demonstrate his own refined sense of humorous elegance. He was the nose behind Burberry Brit London, Gucci eau de Parfum II, and Comme des Garcon’s Luxe Patchouli, all interesting, all arguably wonderful. Funny! combines Seville orange, red currant, and green tea, possessing an aptly curious spiciness (something of a punchline, a la pink pepper) and a resinous base which contrasts ingeniously with its effervescent attributes. It shares with Gucci II a rare quality in feminine construction, where buoyancy doesn’t mean vapidity. It is bold and declarative rather than timid and insipid. It has humor and a positive outlook on things. It’s cheerful without being air-headed, dense without being a dumb blonde. Most impressively for a citrus-focused scent, it persists, giggling in the face of summer heat. Funny it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves.