Overrated: I Smell Hypocrisy

I've been called splenetic before.  I won't lie.

I had to look it up, and when I understood what the word meant, I didn't entirely disagree.  This might lead you to believe that I'm a mean, nasty guy who keeps to myself.  And of course I might be--mean and nasty.  But the truth is, I love reading and talking to other bloggers.  I love reading the various fragrance boards.  I belong to a few of the more popular communities--and even a secret society or two.  I've made many friends there, believe it or not.  Every day I visit these sites and forums and do my share of reading.  Often it feels like I'm at these places all day.  The windows seem always to be open somewhere on my mental screen, and the discourse wafts in and out of my consciousness.  It's a matter of record that we all routinely disagree there.  Mostly, we agree to.  I love knowing that the fragrance I love might be disliked by someone else.  I like reading what gets other people talking, even when I don't have much to say about it myself.

So what gets my goat, exactly--and where's it getting from?  I can't say.  Overrated praise for the subjects below is simply "in the air", wafting in and out of the screens--not just on blogs but in forums, boards, fragrance site customer reviews.  I don't pay tons of attention to the source.  I just smell the general stench of something fishy after a while.  The last time I wrote satire or, um, rather...angular...commentary, it was as though I'd slain a bunny in a field of dandelions.  Surely there's room for creative dissent?  Judging from our site's stats for that post, there is, and people secretly love to hate a strongly phrased, technically unpopular, opinion, believing themselves superior to someone's verbalization of things they'd secretly like to say themselves.  I suppose in this case Duchaufour will be the bunny and again I have a sharp weapon in hand.  So be it.  I like a conversation, and I enjoy saying what it seems I'm not supposed to say.  Like any community, online or off, we have our heroes and villains.  I often want to illuminate the underdog and scrutinize the hero.  Collective heroes tend to baffle me.  What makes these people or things so great?  Who died and made them king?  And to what extent is our appreciation of them socially contagious?

Lately, several heroes and trends have continued to rub me the wrong way.  Don't take it too personally.

If I Wanted to See Your Tan Line I'd Be Buying Your Drinks, Not Your Perfume

My response to a post called Who Will Save us from the Vulgarity over at The Perfume Chronicles, one of my favorite blogs.  Who Will Save Us talks about perfume advertising and marketing which uses sex as its, um, central thrust.  The most recent example of this, taking it, supposedly, to the level of high art, is the project Petit Mort, a collaboration between a perfumer (Bertrand Duchafour) and several others, under the auspices of Kilian Hennessey.  Petit Mort is meant to evoke or provoke--whichever comes first (puns are inevitable discussing such things)--that apparently salty and pseudo-revolting moment of sexual orgasm:

"Yeah, the Petite Mort ["project"] is…well, I mean, what next, petite merde? Thankfully it hasn’t permeated the perfume enthusiast’s consciousness much yet. I posted what was intended as a satire of the Petite project last week, thinking everyone would immediately apprehend the references, and it dawned on me that not everyone has heard of the project, as eminently laughable as it is. The Petite Mort website is truly like a Saturday Night Live commercial parody, back when they were worth watching. I lifted most of my ad copy for Petite Fart directly from their site, verbatim. What I’ll give Marc Jacobs, though I generally class him with Tom Ford, is a sense of humor (self serious Ford lacks one).

Eye of the Needle: Sartorial

I'm not starved for blessings, but I don't tend to hit the jackpot very often, so I was really excited to win the latest Penhaligon's fragrance in a draw conducted by Indieperfumes.

I haven't been the most ardent fan of Bertrand Duchaufour, Sartorial's creator. Like Jean-Caude Ellena, he works within an artistic vein I can appreciate but find hard to enjoy. The transparency of his best work for L'Artisan, Comme des Garcons, and Eau D'Italie left me irritated more than intrigued, and the conversation around the alleged pleasures of these fragrances still baffles me. Their merits I can acknowledge; the experience of wearing them is something else altogether. Nothing baffled me more than Nuit de Tubereuse, which was the source of much talk online and seemed less rather than more interesting than the other things Duchaufour has done. I feel like I should get that out of the way.

That said, there are a few Duchaufour fragrances I really love. Amaranthine continues to grow on me, and I know that when my small, second decant runs out, I'll be considering a bottle. S.T. Dupont, going back to 1998, is a truly great fruity chypre. Lalique's Flora Bella is pretty lovely, too. But Jubilation XXV is the real treasure for me. I save the big bottle like fine china, I love it so much. Words fail, which I why, loving it as I do, I've written so little about it. I save it for special occasions which never arrive; no occasion seems special enough for this fragrance, which smells like a million bucks and a new lease on life. I love Jubilation so much that I pay close attention to whatever Duchaufour does, because I know that he's capable of great things.

Sartorial is no Jubilation, but it's pretty damn good, and reason enough for its own kind of excitement. Intended as a tribute to and an evocation of the bespoke tailors along London's Savile Row, Sartorial is steam, fougere aftershave, and metal sheen in a bottle. Many fragrances set out to pay tribute in this way but few seem ultimately to bear any relation to their alleged sources of inspiration, or do but only in the most literal-minded way. The wonderful thing about Sartorial is--

Well, there are many wonderful things. What I love most I think is how well designed and executed it is, not just the packaging, which can often seem like an afterthought on its own, but the fragrance itself. It feels like such a gift to the weak, effete world of masculines; bold and imaginatively rich, it engages its wearer and his or her social intimates in a conversation about what masculine is and might be, veering just far enough outside preconceived ideas to keep the dialogue fresh.

The beeswax (prepare for pun) seals the deal. How Duchaufour keeps this element from taking over without sacrificing its sweet, resinous characteristics is a mystery I'll leave to someone more qualified. You feel it could have gone over the fence, dominating the fragrance. Instead, it peeks out from the margins, inflecting every other impression you get as the notes waft in and out of your consciousness. The fougere profile is unmistakable, and at varying points seems as if it too might take over. You get those ferny elements; the woods and herbal touches--but the dull, milky sweetness of beeswax, along with vanilla, cardamom, linden, ginger, and ozonic elements waft steadily in and out, complicating and expanding your initial impressions.

To wear Sartorial is to be made aware of how careful a balancing act great perfumery must be. Still, it feels inarguably modern, speaking to traditional perfumery from a contemporary vantage point. Conducting that conversation successfully, so that each voice rings distinctly at different times, in unison at others, requires delicate calibration. When discussing a good perfume, people often say that no one note is distinguishable from the others. Sartorial tweaks things so that, while no note can be distinguished from the others necessarily, each continues to contrast itself against another, showing you something new.

I think I'll probably wear the hell out of this.

Fashionable Attitudes: From Tuberose to Ylang Ylang

It's fascinating to read the comments about Abigail's Nuit de Tubereuse--mainly because I can't make any connection between what I smelled and what you all are talking about. A month ago, when I smelled it at Barney's, I found Tubereuse infinitely uninteresting. Like Abigail, I'm not much of a Bertrand D fan, though I do really love Amaranthine: I don't find it sugary or banal. But Tubereuse, which has been hyped for months and waxed poetically about, really seemed much ado about nothing to me, on top of which, the now-chronic persistence problem which characterizes all of L'Artisan on my skin. It's sad. Back when I first smelled a L'Artisan fragrance I thought the heavens had opened up. Now I'm horribly blase about the line. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe Bertrand just had his work cut out for him.

Meanwhile, I've smelled the new A Scent Florale and think it's a great addition to the original. Fainter, yes, and not as green, but the original has plenty of green to go around, and Florale retains a lot of it. I'm probably relieved that Florale doesn't feel like a corrective of some sort, an attempt to "fix" the most oft-cited problems with A Scent. Too sharp? Too masculine? Who cares? Florale is the kind of flanker I enjoy: it doesn't simply use its source material as a marketing springboard. It plays around with many of the same characteristic elements, tweaking and recombining them, almost as if the perfumers had been asking themselves, "How much can we push this, in baby steps, until it isn't quite what it was?" Only be staying very close to the original can the differences truly be enjoyed, the contrasts fully absorbed. The biggest difference are the highest top notes, a dewy burst of peony mixed with galbanum and, possibly, ylang ylang. Galbanum and Ylang Ylang have some interesting interplay, their rubbery, almost mentholated facets mingling nicely. The fragrance is closer to the skin than A Scent original but by no means a skin scent on me.

Speaking of Ylang Ylang, I'm only now getting around to Estee Lauder's Private Collection Amber Ylang Ylang. I'm glad to be smelling it now, while the conversation about Nuit de Tubereuse rages on. I remember how disappointed people were in Amber Ylang Ylang. I thought, wow, it must be pretty bad. I'm surprised to find that I like it very much, though I suppose like many who did I should qualify that by saying it isn't the most groundbreaking thing I've ever laid nostril on. I wonder what makes Tubereuse, which seems so uninteresting to me, the topic of so much excitement and praise, while Amber YY was regarded so resolutely as a failure. I can see things being worked out in it, like the challenge of bringing vintage balsamic florals into the future. Oriental Lounge seemed to be asking itself the same questions, and answered them differently and possibly more emphatically. My impression is that Amber YY aimed for a more languorous tribute to those older sisters Bal a Versailles and Youth Dew. Ultimately it presents a far more mellow meditation on those themes. Much was made of the price, but 80 bucks for an ounce of Amber YY doesn't really seem exorbitant to me. Again, I don't smell the vanilla overload everyone seems to have suffered under, but talk to me in the winter.

Know what I continue to love? Histoire D'Amour by Aubusson. Another Ylang Ylang driven fragrance which didn't have the good fortune to have been created by Bertrand D or manufactured by L'Artisan. Personally, I like it as much as anything I've smelled from either. Another good one for me lately, and I have yet to review it, is Yosh's EDP version of Omniscent. I've read very little about it, and it strikes me as one of the best releases of the past six months. I smelled the EDP version alongside the original when I picked up a bottle at Barney's. They smelled not very similar to me. I suspect people haven't been reviewing it because they assume otherwise. Like Amber Ylang Ylang and Oriental Lounge, Omniscent approaches the subject of an older style of fragrance with both respect and irreverence, resulting in a uniquely contemporary wear.

L'Artisan Parfumeur Nuit de Tubereuse

I’ll start by admitting that L’Artisan and me, well, we just don’t see eye to eye on what makes a good perfume. To me, a perfume is an art, a craft, a science and a consumer product all rolled into one. The piece I think L’Artisan misses is the consumer product aspect. They just don’t make many fragrances that last (some, yes, most don't). And if I can’t smell my own perfume, let alone anyone else ever getting a decent whiff of it, then it’s a big fail in my book. Reminds me of the moral of The Emperor Wears No Clothes; or like drinking wine and never feeling a buzz or taking a sleeping pill yet never falling asleep.

First off, Nuit de Tubereuse (NdT) is not much ado about tuberose. So if you’re a huge tuberose fan like me, you shouldn’t expect to find the creamy, sexy white flower we adore. But Nuit de Tubereuse isn’t meant to be a soliflore, you say? Well, correct, you are right, but I really can’t even find a hidden tuberose aspect or a tuberose agenda anywhere in here. It could easily be any white flower, it’s a nondescript floral aspect which could be jasmine, mimosa, gardenia, ylang ylang or a blend of all these. This floral is tropical, it is sweet and sultry and not sharp or heady or cloying at all. I wish L’Artisan had instead named NdT something like Nuit de Fleur Blanc or Encens de Fleur Blanc because this is what it smells like to me. Actually Encens de Fleur Blanc would be perfect. Pardon my French, I have no gift with it, I’m just playing here, so stop snickering in the corner over there.

Nuit de Tubereuse opens with a tropical, sweet, almost candy-like beginning. In essence, it’s a fruity floral. (Just say it with me people, “it’s a fruity floral!”) It’s a fruity floral with heaps of incense and earthy resinous dirt. So imagine a nice fruity floral, with a natural vibe, with about three-quarters resinous incense taking up the composition. You’ll easily recognize this incensey-resinous heart and base, I think Robin at NST has named it “Duchaufourade.” At times there’s a bit of morphing, I smell some vanilla here and there, however I get zero of the green, bitter or vegetal quality others have discussed and I've been looking. On me, this is how I would describe it to give you a reference point: Take YSL Nu edp and mix with a sweet tropical fruity floral and viola you have Nuit de Tubereuse.

Am I a Bertrand Decahufor fangirl? Not really. I think he makes interesting aromas, things that are fun to smell, to sniff for a short while to see how they morph, but I don’t think he makes real perfumes. I just scanned the long list of perfumes Duchaufour has created (thanks to Robin at NST for her amazing ability to keep us all organized and in the know). Of Duchafour’s long list of works, I only have feelings for a few, such as L’Artisan Havana Vanille and Fleur de Liane (a nice green floral), Eau d’Italie Paestrum Rose and I actually like one of his lesser known works probably the best, Lalique Flora Bella. So much of Duchaufour’s work strikes me as interesting aromas but not proper perfumes. For instance, I don’t think of the following as proper perfumes: Piment Brulant, Timbuktu, Dzongkha, the CdG insence series, etc.

You might recall that I felt like the lone dissenter who hated Amaranthine (another Duchaufour creation). Well, I certainly do not hate NdT, in fact, I think it smells quite pretty, but I don’t find it wears like a perfume on me. It lasts about 1 hour maximum and the sillage is nonexistent. I’ve been wearing NdT for 3 days. For three days I’ve applied 4 sprays to each forearm and 2 big sprays to each wrist and then I spray in the air and walk through it. I’ve accosted several household members and asked if they smelled me. Three different family members said they didn’t smell much, one gave me the best she could with “you smell nice, a little sweet maybe?” For me to smell NdT I have to bring my nose to within a 1/2 inch of my arm. You might have noticed that I become extremely frustrated by lack of sillage. As far as I'm concerned, NdT is a consumer product and a perfume needs to last and project a bit. Shouldn’t that be a rule? A LITTLE projection, not Angel projection but just enough?

You might ask “what if NdT had plenty of sillage and longevity?” Well, then, I might like it a great deal more. At least I wouldn’t have anything to complain about and could focus solely on the scent. As I’ve already stated, NdT is a pretty smell, not particularly odd or unusual to me, just a nice fruity floral over an incensey base.

At this moment I feel a bit too practical. I feel like the dissenter, once again. I read others impressions, most are falling all over themselves with adoration of Duchaufour and I just think, “so what? If I can’t wear it like a perfume, then it’s just some sort of aromatherapy.”

Additional reading:
Review at NowSmellThis
Exclusive Duchaufour interview at Grain de Musc
PereDePierre's review
Review at Muse in Wooden Shoes
Review at Ca Fleure Bon
Octavian over at 1000 Fragrances
and the server for Perfume Posse is down otherwise I would link to their reviews (yes, more than one!)

Penhaligon's Amaranthine: Lone Dissenter

Penhaligon’s Amaranthine received (pretty much) across the board excellent reviews. I received my bottle of Amaranthine many months ago and right away there was something about it that didn’t sit well with me. Yes, it’s Bertrand Duchafour and yes, it’s a departure for Penahligon’s but that’s not going to make me like it nor will that make me smell facets and pleasures that aren’t there.

Amaranthine is very sweet. I cannot underscore this enough - it's sweetness level is sky high. To me, it’s a milky vanillic floral. Not even particularly tropical – just a milky sweet scent with unidentifiable florals. It reminds me of Lalique Le Parfum and Kenzo both of which I like much better. Sometimes I think our readers only want good reviews but I do want to offer a contradictory point of view on Amaranthine. I enjoy the beginning of Amaranthine and this is the period of time I feel I’m being too critical, too harsh on this fragrance. But after those 15 minutes fade and it dries down to a swampy, sweet, humid mess, I can't help wonder what everyone else is smelling (only the first 15 minutes, perhaps?). Honestly, if I smelled this blindfolded, after it had been on skin for over an hour, I’d probably think it was something from Avon or Bath & Body Works. I don’t detect spices at all, nothing green, nothing woody. I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned this, but Amaranthine seems a failed Songes. Annick Goutal Songes does the tropical floral vibe with vanilla and soft spices brilliantly. To prove I don't dislike tropical florals entirely, I do love LesNez Manoumalia (this is tropical floral supreme) and L’Artisan Fleur de Liane (delightful green tropical floral).

I'm not sure what the inside of a woman's thigh smells like but I doubt it's anything like Amaranthine. Nor do I think Amaranthine smells corrupted. If anything, it's a gourmand floral concoction, basically comfy, milky, feel-good jus. I envision a tray with rice pudding, warm milk and a pile of sweaty petals and flowers turning brown in the heat of the tropics. Gag.

Turns out the opposite happened for me: I expected to love Amaranthine and I have a like (15 mins)/hate (the rest) relationship with it. I expected to hate Havana Vanille and I love it.

I’m not going to list the notes because you probably know them by now and as far as I’m concerned they’re all lies (!) Green tea? Coriander, cardamom and clove? Orange blossom? Amaranthine smells like this: ylang, indolic jasmine and condensed milk.

Lalique Flora Bella

Lalique Flora Bella is a beautifully big puffy tropical floral created by Bertrand Duchaufour and launched in 2005.

Recently I’ve become intolerant of florals injected with pink pepper and while Flora Bella lists pink pepper among the notes it’s not overdone. Flora Bella is rather difficult to describe from it’s notes – I smell freesia and frangipani the most prominently at first with a softly spicy carnation way in the background. It’s a sweet tropical fragrance but much less narrow minded than other tropical scents such as Monyette Paris, Kai, Ormonde Jayne Frangipani, Chantecaille Frangipane and the like. Flora Bella, while tropical, is still very much a sophisticated proper perfume without the casual beachy vibe. I’ve worn Flora Bella a few times over the past 2 weeks and I’ve come to regard it as a perfume very nearly in a class by itself. I can’t think of any other fragrances which I’d classify as sweet, tropical yet complex and interesting.

After Floral Bella dries down it morphs into a milky-vanillic-floral which is nearly edible. I think of rice pudding with a string of orchids decorating the dish. At this stage, the floral note moves closer to a sweet violet rather than frangipani or freesia – so from a distance it smells like a milky violet scent. It’s really rather sexy and delectable.

Flora Bella also has the one-two punch which is so necessary in a good perfume: it projects and lasts for a very long time. You can easily wear 2 sprays of Floral Bella and have it last all day. And while it projects, it does so in a polite manner, it’s not overpowering, yet it’s there.

I bought Lalique Flora Bella for a song from Rei Rien. I’m so happy I did – it was a steal and I’ve come to think of it as a hidden gem.

Notes: mandarin, bergamot, rose, violet, pink pepper, frangipani, freesia, cassia flower, mimosa, tuberose, carnation, orchid, tiara flower, white musk, vanilla, spices and amber.

This Week at the Perfume Counter: The Perfume House, Portland, Oregon

I have a soft spot for this little off-the-beaten path place, so I was excited, a few months ago, when I found out I'd be able to make a trip back to Portland this month. Around this time last year, I visited and, on the hunt for perfume, was directed to Hawthorne Street, where the Perfume House sits just back enough off the road that you might miss it if you drove by too fast. I drove slowly. The store is aptly named; situated in an old house, the first floor is almost entirely taken up by fragrance. Last year I had a crash course on Lutens and L'Artisan. I obsessed over all the Comme des Garçons. I wasn't so interested in Patou's Ma Collection; I only learned later that they'd all been discontinued and many are hard to find. I would have paid a lot more attention, had I known back then. The Perfume House has an extensive selection of Caron, and I got a primer on those. I smelled the Montales, Etro, Amouage, D'Orsay, Carthusia.

I was overwhelmed and excited during my initial visits to the Perfume House, so this trip was a welcome opportunity to get a little more specific, spending more time on things I'd either missed in the shuffle or overlooked out of general beginner's ignorance. I've learned a lot in the space of a year, too, and was able to focus on rarer items, like a single bottle of Molto Missoni (tarry, smoky, floral: me likey) and Elsha, a cheapo but lovely leather toilette with a modest but committed following of admirers. I found a few things I'd been looking for all year, like Balenciaga's Quadrille; this one is very nice, subtle but rich, my favorite of all the old Balenciagas I've smelled (Le Dix, Prelude, Portos, Ho Hang). I revisited the Ma Collection, snatching up bottles of Divine Folie (wondrous carnation!), Adieu Sagesse, and L'Heure Attendue. I passed on Amour Amour and Chaldee, which were pretty but didn't arouse must have psychosis. L'Heure Attendue is spicy wood on the dry down: sandalwood and patchouli, according to Jan Moran. There's also geranium, lilac, rose, ylang ylang. Adieu Sagesse is the final entry in Patou's love trilogy and makes wonderful use of carnation, a floral note present in many of the Ma Collection fragrances. The focus seems to be on gardenia but I'll have to spend more time with it. Adieu wears like a skin scent, floral musk and a bit green.

There are no more bottles of Vacances in stock, but they had a tester in the back and brought it out so I could at least get a whiff. Turns out Vacances is one of my all time top five favorite fragrances. It must be as popular with others. Of all the Ma Collection testers, it was the only practically empty bottle. In fact, there was barely enough left to spritz out onto a cotton ball. Over at Bois de Jasmin, Vacances is characterized as "intense verdancy", "a perfect juxtaposition of delicate peppery and green sap notes folding into honeyed sweetness." Intense about gets it. Vacances is leafy green and lilac, and totally out of this world lovely. It also gets my vote for best use of galbanum. In addition to Vacances I smelled Cocktail and, finally, Pascal Morabito's Or Black. There was none of the latter in stock (you can only get Or Black in France now) and I could see why Turin raves about it and others want to get their hands on some.

Perfume House, like other older perfume shops (Parfumerie Nasreen, in Seattle, for instance), does have rarities like Molto Missoni in stock. There are early Parfums de Nicolaï, Safraniere and other discontinued Comptoir Sud Pacifique selections, Zut by Schiaparelli, even various Crown fragrances. I picked up Sandringham, Crown Fougere, and Crown Park Royal, all very nice. Sandringham is my favorite of these period pieces, all three distinctly bygone-era masculines. All three last amazingly well, too, and have a base which seems characteristic of the line, rich in moss and sweetened woods. Sandringham is distinguished by a well-blended muguet note. Crown Park Royal uses galbanum in a way which places it close to contempoary fragrances like Romeo Gigli's Sud Est and patchouli in a way which places it squarely on top of Michael by Michael Kors. Park Royal exceeds both in terms of subtelty, managing to use some very heady materials without being taken hostage by them.

After several days at Perfume House I finally did the math. I'd been spending so much on fragrances I liked, when for the same amount I could get one I truly love. Amouage Jubilation XXV is to my mind a Bertrand Duchaufour masterpiece. Timbuktu is swell but poof and it's gone. Likewise Dzongkha, Mechant Loop, Sienne D'Hiver and his entries in Comme des Garcons' Red Series. I like them all but on me they're little more than skin scents. Not so Jubilation XXV. Months ago I'd been given a sample, most of which I wore out on the town in LA one night. Jubilation really commands the space around you in a way I love, its fruits and spices burnished with just the right amount of frankincense. It projects and attracts. Wearing it, I felt electric, and thought if I ever had that kind of money for a bottle of perfume, this would be it. Of course, once you've purchased three or four bottles of perfume, you've spent that kind of money. Realizing this, I took my unopened "like" buys back to Perfume House to trade in for a "love".

The best part of the place is the staff: the best I've encountered in any fragrance retail environment. As I remembered, they were friendly and helpful without being obtrusive or overly chatty. Tracy, in particular, is always great to shop with.