Excessive Indulgence in Sensual Pleasures: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Debauchery

After wearing it for more than a month now, I'm convinced that anyone smelling Debauchery on me wouldn't just be surprised to find out it's an oil, but shocked. I won't get into detailing what makes an oil smell like an oil. I'm not sure I could tell you. And I'm not going to argue that a perfume is preferable to a fragrance oil. I don't believe it is. I happen to like good fragrance oils, and some of my favorite Black Pheonix Alchemy Lab scents could never be mistaken as classic perfumery, a distinction which often appeals to me. They're always something different. What's so unusual about Debauchery is that it smells more like classic perfumery than most of the classic perfumes I've gotten my hands on.

The mix includes civet (synthetic), red Egyptian musk, and opium, but I find it hard to believe there isn't more in there. Black Phoenix oils tend to be pretty complex--or appear to be. They do typically go through various stages, so much so that many reviewers break their assessments down into three categories: in the bottle, wet on the skin, dry on the skin. That's another way of saying top, heart, and base, though the stages play out at different rates. I point all this out because, while it's been my experience that the BPAL oils change a lot as they wear, they aren't exactly shape-shifters. For the most part, they don't start out dog and end up cat.

Not so Debauchery. In the bottle, Debauchery is strictly your "Who farted?" one-liner. I've never smelled such a dose of civet, and I've smelled--and love--Mona di Orio's Nuit Noir, the animalic thrust of which divides people like a brick wall. Debauchery is powerful stuff at first, as if all its component parts were clenched tightly into...a fist. The moment you put it on, everything starts to relax, eventually softening into an unusually sublime wear. Debauchery smells vaguely floral, slightly animalic, musky, even a bit powdery, though by a bit I mean so faintly you'd have trouble putting your finger on why.

It smells to me like what I expect the old-timers will when I finally get my hands on them. I'm often disappointed with those. I won't name names. And it's not always due to reformulation. Debauchery delivers on their promise. I think the fragrance it comes closest to in its dry down is Paco Rabanne's discontinued La Nuit. To give you an idea of La Nuit's character, I offer the following anecdote. I once put some on a friend before we left for the evening. It was summer and we could smell the stuff radiating from her body all night. We stumbled back very late, worn out from walking and sweating and various other nocturnal activities. Not everyone thought La Nuit smelled divine. My friend was attacked by a usually placid chihuahua on our way home. She bent down to pet it after permission and encouragement from the owner. The dog lunged at her as if it had been surprised out of its slumber by a ferocious wild animal baring its fangs, and probably would have torn into her had he or she not been restrained by a leash. Nice little doggy became, in a flash, wolf in sheep's clothing. The owner was shocked silly. He'd never seen anything like it. Neither had we.

By classic, I mean French, and by French I don't just mean French perfumery but French films, French men and women, a stroll along the Seine, a sudden confrontation with the Arc de Triomph after an unexpected turn onto the Champs-Elysees, strong coffee, the rhythmic pull of the language blanketing the air around a American visitor's ear. French iconography, let's say. More than anything I picture that famous image by Robert Doisneau, Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville. Nevermind that the image has become something of a cliche representing romantic ideas of Paris. Take any Doisneau photograph, really, like the one above. Debauchery captures that mood for me. The name gives fair warning of the opening. What it doesn't indicate is how fantastic the rest of the experience is.

Highwayman (Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab)

Few fragrances are discussed on the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab forum with as much bewilderment as Highwayman. Though not without fans, it seems to leave detractors feeling as if they've been assaulted by some unseen hand. Two days into spending time with it, I started comparing it to Angel, not because it smells similar, but because Angel elicits equally strong, equally contradictory reactions, and because, like Angel, Highwayman is a proposition of opposites which can be as off-putting as it is mind-bending.

Many of the Black Phoenix fragrances require creative association on the part of the wearer; the oils are interpretations of a theme or a subject, and sometimes they're left of center to your expectations. Dracul's pine and mint notes--brisk, almost cheery--are anything but vampiric for some. Jasmine and patchouli might not readily come to mind when you think of the cryptic caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Names like Sin and Perversion are bound to divide opinion. These things are discussed at length on the forum by fan and foe alike.

The first image I got, hearing the name Highwayman, was a pavement-bound drifter, dressed in scuffed leather, mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes, vapors rising off the asphalt around him, desert on either side of the road; an unshaven stranger, fairly unwashed, his face and hands scuffed with the grease, grass, and dirt of innumerable days out in the open. That image sprang to life like a dry sponge hitting water the moment I smelled the fragrance.

Highwayman is the best leather fragrance I've ever smelled, and I've smelled quite a few. There's just no comparison. My biggest disappointment, even with my favorite leathers, is their eagerness to tame the foul harmony of the real thing. Chanel Cuir de Russie and Lancome Cuir make friendly with florals. Even more openly jarring leathers, like Heeley's Cuir Pleine Fleur, are ultimately a lot more softened than I'd like. Knize Ten, too, is incomparable--I wouldn't be without it--yet as it ventures deeper into tanned territory it sprinkles sweetener about generously. Creed's Royal English Leather and Parfum D'Empire's Cuir Ottoman are smooth and buttery, and ultimately more about amber than anything else. I want something that smells of the undomesticated animal it came from.

Highwayman has gardenia, rose, and jasmine in it but you'd never guess. Then again, gardenia and indolic jasmine are the last thing you'd expect to be paired with leather, about as far removed from the polite iris of Cuir de Russie as a baseball is from a basketball court. There's a floral aspect to Highwayman but you'd be hard pressed to say exactly what. It enhances the overall effect perfectly, the way the unlikely addition of chocolate to patchouli radicalized antagonistic opposites in Angel. The rubbery, camphorous vibe of gardenia works ideally here, and your mind continues to struggle its way around such an improbable counterpart.

Highwayman's biggest emphasis is on the smoked tarry ambience of creosote. The asphalt drives of my childhood were fertile with this smell during the summer, when the sun baked their dark surfaces, giving them a tactile rubbery spring and an aroma which seemed both aggressively unnatural and perfectly appropriate to the surrounding environment, smelling as much of wood as smoke. This quality, without taking Highwayman away from leather, places it alongside Santa Maria Novella's wonderful Nostalgia, which is a much more civilized version of Highwayman, a volatile marriage of creosote and kerosene. The scorched pavement Nostalgia burns rubber on is far too small a patch of land. It doesn't last. Highwayman is a wide open road, and it goes on forever.

Another useful comparison is Garage, from the Comme des Garçons Synthetics series. Again, Garage is a much more transparent and affable fragrance than Highwayman, but it plays around in the same space, among fuel spills and oil leaks and the rubber of well-worn tires. Garage pulls up to the dangling tennis ball, but, unlike Highwayman, it leaves the electric door open, allowing the air to circulate. Highwayman is more of a shut-in. It even lights a cigarette. Like Garage, Highwayman's effects have a lot to do with vetiver. Garage, again, cleans that up, making it a much prettier, more presentable contributor. Highwayman uses vetiver the way several good BPAL fragrances do, exploiting its rich, almost chocolatey depth, full of happy contradictions. The dry down of Highwayman is predominately vetiver, and not dissimilar to Lalique's Encre Noire.

I smell so many things that the idea of a holy grail seems a little bizarre in theory, like finding a needle in a haystack. I've smelled a lot of Black Phoenix scents too, and love more than I like. Some, like Djinn and Now Winter Lights Enlarge, are uncommonly good. The past year introduced me to Tabac Aurea by Sonoma Scent Studio and Teo Cabanel's Alahine. I knew when I smelled them what people mean when they designate a holy grail fragrance. It isn't that I wear these all the time, or even often. But they bond with my sensibility in a powerful, emotional way, as if they sprung out of my imagination, or take root there in a wonderfully parasitic way. Highwayman is at the top of that list.

Black Annis

I've fallen so hard for so many of the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab fragrance oils that it will take me at east a month to really dig into the nature of their appeal. It's a curious line, and I'm sure more than a few fragrance lovers have dismissed them out of hand. How do you classify what they're doing? The volume of their product inevitably seems suspect. The oils themselves often smell crude in the bottle, giving very little if any indication what stories they'll tell on the skin. The image is decidedly Goth, and those who don't view that sub-culture as a harmless, even quaint relic of pre-internet suburban disconnection suspect that its exclusivity isn't imposed but self-ordained, implying an active hostility toward outsiders. For various reasons, Black Phoenix is approached with a preconceived set of dismissals, a phenomenon which can be felt on makeupalley, the pink hues and girly splendor of which would seem diametrically opposed to BPAL's sensibility, like the jock's girlfriend bewildered by a goth peer's heavy eyeliner.

Go to the Black Phoenix forum and you get a totally different impression. Every BPAL release is discussed there, sometimes passionately, often heatedly. Far from sycophantic, the reviews display a wealth of opinion which quickly dispels the stereotype of the Goth as conforming nonconformist. The people who (sometimes lazily) get grouped under Goth aren't a select few--but as author Poppy Brite might tell you, they're a fantastic audience, often as discerning, committed, and articulate as the majority is fickle and indifferent. Part of what bonds them together is the ability to look beneath surface impressions. One way of looking at heavy black eyeliner is to view it as a shorthand. Dismissing the person underneath without going much deeper saves the wearer a lot of time.

But this is all sort of philosophical, suggesting that the Goth sensibility is purely cosmetic and, ironically, superficial, a theoretical exercise. Another way of looking at black eyeliner is: it's gorgeous. Bands like This Mortal Coil aren't thesis papers. They make fantastic music, rich in sensory detail, a sonic gift to the listener. To say they're not for everyone is kind of beside the point, really. As much as I love so many BPAL scents, there are those I can't get behind (March Hare comes to mind). What exactly is for everyone? Certainly not Black Annis, and I won't waste time trying to convince fans of the department store fruity floral to give it a whirl (instead, I recommend Jezebel or Sacred Whore of Babylon) but I do want to bring it to the attention of those who might just truly love it, as I do.

Black Annis is as interesting as just about anything I've smelled from a niche line. Maybe more so. Its challenges are more viscerally palpable than those supposedly presented by more widely known fragrances like Oud 27, Pathcouli 24, Boadicea Complex, Parfum d'Habit, and Rien, to name just a handful off the top of my head, while, for all that, going nowhere near the assault which is Secretions Magnifiques. Black Annis takes something of an adjustment. Like the majority of BPAL fragrances, the smell given off of the bottle is no real indication of where this scent will go; likewise, the list of notes. Try to wrap your mind around damp cave lichen, vetiver, civet, and annis. The combination is something you can only really experience.

On skin, the initial impression isn't much easier to describe. What starts to emerge for me immediately is a fantastic interplay of opposites, what I call barnyard gourmand. I get chocolate and hay, particularly, with a leathery anise chaser. In the spirit of concision, the nearest analogues to this effect are Heeley's Cuir Pleine Fleur and Molinard's Habanita. Black Annis is at first much darker than the former, but they dovetail at certain stages of development, chiefly around this sweetened hay aroma. Habanita is powdery par none, but it too adjusts more gourmand influences with something smokier, resulting in a peculiar density unique to these two scents. After a heady intro, Black Annis softens down to something above a skin scent. Not all of BPAL's fragrances do. Many retain that early vigor.

Though there are comparisons to be made, I've never smelled anything quite like Black Annis. The first several times I smelled it I alternated between disliking it and loving it. Mostly I disliked it. I think that's because it doesn't operate the way most fragrances do, the way I'm conditioned to believe they should. I wasn't looking past the black eyeliner, maybe. I highly recommend getting to know this stuff. All of the BPAL oils come in 5ml apothecary bottles and can be ordered from the website. They're also available as testers.

Dandy of the Day: Crispin Hellion Glover

Some find it easy to dismiss him. He certainly gives them a headstart. To many his name has become synonymous with a litany of those adjectives reserved for the terminally idiosyncratic. Years ago, he took aim at David Letterman's head with his platform shoes and kicked his way out of the mainstream and into the margins. America knew him as the mesmeric goof-for-brains in Back to the Future, and the idea that he might not have been acting, might in fact be a genuine loose canon, made his mainstream audience more than a little uncomfortable.

Crispin Glover is one of the more fascinating actors to come out of the past few decades, mainly because he seems so out of step with the times. After various character roles throughout the eighties and nineties, he came to his own in parts which seemed to have been tailor made for his gifts. Willard, Bartleby, small but atmospheric bits for David Lynch, the Thin Man in Charlie's Angels. Ultimately, he came full circle, reuniting with Robert Zemeckis, the director of Back to the Future, in Beowulf.

He played Grendel, a role which in many ways presented a fascinating inversion of his painfully dweebish turn as Michael J. Fox's young father. Both were outcasts; each made a monster by his inability to fit in or gain control of his impulses or navigate the trecherous signposts of his destiny. Whatever you think of the movie as a whole, you can't say Glover isn't absolutely electrifying in it. During the course of his career he has written books, directed films (first What is It? More recently, It is Fine. Everything is Fine!) and traveled for speaking engagements which play more like vaudeville than book signings and question and answer sessions. Glover has smuggledthe avant garde into mainstream cinema and through mainstream cinema into the American living room.

Like his image, his cologne should be vintage, something from the fragrant yellowed pages of an out-of-print book. At night he might wear Etro's Messe De Minuit, a slightly oily incense recalling the damp stone walls of forgotten cellars and the ghostly suggestion of flowers once worn by the missing. He wouldn't pass up an opportunity to wear Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Zombi. Cinnabar, with its dusty cinammon (a crimson velvet pillow for the nose), would be a more arresting choice. Something about its spicy rich hypnotic quality, its fragrant whiff of port wine, slightly turned, seems in perfect keeping with his image.

Zombi, by Black Phoeniz Alchemy Lab

Ungaro III and Czech and Speake No. 88 get all the love when it comes to arguably goth rose fragrances, yet Zombi openly references associations those two only politely hint at--the sleepless, the undead, New Orleans plantation homes with floor to ceiling windows and moonlight coming through. That isn’t to say Zombi isn’t a perfectly presentable soliflor. But it can easily be admired on parallel, even mutually exclusive, planes: as a nice, quiet rose in a porcelain dish, and something the undead would bring you, clenched between what’s left of his teeth.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is owned by Elizabeth Moriarty Barrial and Brian Constantine. The company is based in Los Angeles. The perfume sold by BPAL is blended by hand, using natural ingredients such as essential oils and absolutes. Some of the oils contain honey and/or beeswax. Otherwise, the products are vegan friendly. Though you’ll probably see it classified as a dirty rose, Zombi is much more than that. Fresh Cannabis Rose is “dirty” in the sense this term usually means—-dirty as a sort of condition, the opposite of fresh or dewy, maybe. Zombi is more conceptual, aspiring to a very specific if inarticulate realm of associations.

The name is a giveaway. The scent immediately recalls moist, upturned soil, the faint whiff of wet grass and trodden Johnny jump-ups. It's one of the more fascinating, evocative BPAL fragrances I've tried. “Our scents run the aesthetic gamut of magickal, pagan and mythological blends, Renaissance, Medieval and Victorian formulas, and horror/Gothic-themed scents,” say the owners, who, talking like this, might as well call themselves Dr. Frankenstein. BPAL has many oils. Possibly, too many. The site lists upwards of 100. Dragon’s Blood, Dragon’s Tears, Danube, The Hanging Garden. Zombi can be found under the section titled Ars Moriendim, wich translates into “The Art of Dying” and refers to a pair of so-named texts from about 1415 and 1450, products of the Black Death, which describe how to end well.

Other series of oils are Sin and Salvation, Mad Tea Party, Wanderlust, and Rappaccini’s Garden. The Stardust Collection is based on the characters, locations, ideas, and dreams found within the pages of Neil Gaiman's novel of the same name. You see where this is going. It’s hard to take Black Phoenix too seriously, which makes their obvious sense of humor about themselves a fortuitous thing.

Zombi is a fragrance oil and comes in a standard apothecary screw top bottle. All BPAL oils are sold in 5 ml decants. Zombi is $15.00. The notes are listed as dried roses, rose leaf, Spanish moss, oakmoss and deep brown earth.

The above photo is from quasara.blogspot.com