Bond No.9: The Good, The Bad, and the Fugly (or, Just What Is It That Makes Today's Bond No.9 So Hit and Miss?)

Is there a more derided niche house than Bond No. 9? I'm tempted to say no. The brand's infamously aggressive tactics - with consumers, with retailers, with critics - have earned it a special place in the hearts and minds of people who write about, talk about, and sniff perfume: first there was criticism, then, more recently, silence. The increasingly outrageous pricing hasn't helped, nor have the endless series of flankers in all but name, a long line of perfumes which share the basic DNA of drugstore shampoo.

It's hard to see, at this point, what's any good, as opposed to what is merely mediocre, in the line. Some tell you it's all mediocre. I'd say a lot of it is. But there are some good, even great, perfumes to be found there. And none of this probably hurts the company anyway, judging by a recent trip to Nordstrom, where even the least interesting Bond fragrances seemed infinitely more compelling than the majority of the department store's increasingly narrowed down inventory.

Here's a list of my highly biased picks for good, bad, and otherwise:

The good...

H.O.T. Always 2003

A just right combination of patchouli, cinnamon, and civet, with the balls out feel of pre reformulation Givenchy Gentleman and Giorgio for Men. Some have commented that you might as well pay a fraction of the price for still-in-production Gentleman or Giorgio, but in my experience they aren't half as rich or satisfying, however superficially similar. H.O.T. Always was composed by Maurice Roucel, as were a number of other earlier Bonds, such as the also good Riverside Drive and New Haarlem, and the fantastic...

Broadway Nite 2003

Probably my pick for favorite, Broadway is, like H.O.T., quintessentially American in its cheeky, verging on overkill attitude. Amber, rose, vanilla and violet create the general outlines of the fragrance. It's a good time gal of a scent, not overly preoccupied with sophistication, if by sophistication you mean something like understatement. Broadway is radiant and strangely succulent, as if all its ingredients were set on impersonating berries they'd only ever actually seen in movies.

Manhattan 2012

Unlike the more recent I Love New York for Holidays, Manhattan feels like something created with this time of year in mind. Too much for some, it seems just right to me. Gingerbread and honeyed chocolate could go very wrong, but something in the mix (jasmine, patchouli, plum?) puts them in check. In my favorite Bond's, there is often a "just so" quality - the sense that with one more minor tweak, everything might have gone horribly awry. There's an audacity to that high wire act that I really like, and Manhattan is one of the only recent Bond's that revives that spirit of risk.

New York Oud 2011

It's on the expensive side, even for Bond, but New York Oud is hands down my favorite oud fragrance, and given that most of them are ridiculously overpriced, even compared to this, Bond's entry is a steal by comparison. When I tell you it's my favorite I imagine you will say to yourself, yeah, but has he smelled...(fill in the blank)? It might be hard for you to imagine this is the favorite of anyone who's smelled all the wonderful offerings that are OUD. So I should tell you I'm pretty sure I've smelled most of these now, and while some impress me, and some have even persuaded me to the point of purchase, none come close to New York Oud in my affections. Having worn it for over a year, I can also tell you I think it's worth every penny in terms of projection, tenacity, and likability. To say it's nothing more than rose, oud (or what, more likely, passes for it in most of these scents), and patchouli is like saying A sunset is basically the sun and the sky. Bond No.9 Signature is very similar in certain respects but not nearly as fantastic.

Runners up: Chinatown, Nuits de Noho, Saks Fifth Avenue for Her, Bleecker Street, Great Jones, Fire Island, and the now discontinued Andy Warhol.

The bad...

Cooper Square 2010

There are worse things, even at this price, but Cooper Square gives them a run for their money in terms of disappointment. A pronounced juniper note never really goes away - not a bad thing in itself, but everything just feels at odds in this fragrance for me, and bombastic juniper, devoid of mediating skills, struggles to keep the peace by drowning all else out. It feels like every masculine known to man, just in case whoever comes to pick it up from the airport might mistake it for anything else and leave it stranded with its considerable baggage.

Madison Soiree 2003

A dead ringer for the milky chypre Madame Rochas, for a time, Soiree is the life of the party for all of five minutes, before it buttons down and sulks into its overcoat on a low chair in the very far corner of the room, a very sour look on its face.

Fashion Avenue 2003

Great, if you could wash your hair with it, and you lived on a planet where 3 ounces of shampoo at this price made anything close to sense. Fashion Avenue is one of too many shampoo Bond's to count. Count them yourself if you like. I get them all confused.

New York Patchouli 2013

Maybe Le Labo can get away with a patchouli scent which is anything but patchouli, but Bond has its reputation working against it, and Le Labo is often at least giving you a new way to think about the note in question. NY Patchouli is part of Bond's more recent line of even higher priced fragrances. A few of these (New York Amber and New York Oud, specifically) are good enough to let pass. New York Patchouli is a sticking point. It's so generic it doesn't even smell like much of a fragrance to speak of.

The fugly...

New York Amber

If not for the price, I would put this under Good. I actually really like this take on Amber, and it has good projection and longevity. At first glance, it was foul. It grew on me until I found myself carrying it around throughout the day. Not that it takes much re-applying. I file Amber under Fugly because for me it represents a downward trend with Bond. To single Bond out for it's over-production and outrageous pricing is a bit disingenuous, as these are industry wide practices. But Bond seems particularly egregious to me. They release far more than they should, too many to keep track of, and escalate their pricing so frequently and seemingly arbitrarily that it strikes me as transparently hostile toward their consumer. Amber is a useful case in point because I believe that, were Bond not conducting itself this way, and actually took the time to focus on a fragrance like Amber properly and realistically, more people would know about it and recognize it as a good, maybe very good, fragrance. Instead, it's lost in the shuffle Bond itself initiated and continues to cultivate.

Montauk 2010 (repackaged in 2013)

Where to begin? I'll not and say we did.

The Scent of Peace for Him (2013)

The Scent of Peace, like Nuits de Noho, is by all accounts a good seller for Bond. When I meet someone who doesn't know much about Bond, they do tend to know about this one, and they want it. Peace for Him, aside from being totally unnecessary (what, for instance, makes the original particularly feminine?), manages to call its predecessor into question, prompting reevaluation. Will the guys buy it? Probably not, but I think their girlfriends will. Something in this fragrance sticks out like a sore thumb, screaming half finished and rushed for rushing's sake.

Washington Square

The ingredients: lavender, powder, and a neon sign that reads My Parents Went to Bond No.9 and All I Got Was This Poor Excuse For a Fragrance.

Runners up: Almost everything else.

A few perfumes I've loved this spring

Parfums DelRae Debut
Having first met Amoureuse, I didn’t think I was a fan of DelRae’s florals. Then I met Debut and realized Amoureuse and I weren’t meant to be friends but Debut and I are BFF’s.

Debut is an early spring scent. Debut begins all sharp and citrus (lime, bergamot) but then unfolds into an obvious note of lily of the valley (and hyacinth which isn’t listed in the notes) with a wet white floral/clean musk dry down. I find Debut to be delicate and a little green. Debut can be a heady scent with similarities to Diorissimo, Penhaligon’s Bluebell and il Profumo Blanche Jacinthe. I can’t wear Diorissimo or Bluebell but I love Blanche Jacinthe mostly for its fresh, delicate wetness. The fragrance Debut most reminds me of is Fracas. Debut doesn’t smell like Fracas, there’s no tuberose in sight and Debut is far less indolic, however, both fragrances are classic heady white florals, which somehow share a classy instead of brassy style.

Etro Dianthus
I meant to write a full review on Dianthus alone but never got the words together. I’m still a little shaky on what exactly this fragrance does for me. In summary, I have been wearing Dianthus a lot the past 6 weeks, so it’s fair to say I love it. The problem is that it smells so different at various times throughout the day that I’ve become stumped on how to describe it. If I tell you it’s both cool and warm, wouldn’t that just confuse you? If I tell you it’s powdery and spicy but not powdery in the traditional sense wouldn’t that also just serve to confuse? If I tell you it’s both subtle yet tenacious wouldn’t it begin to seem like this fragrance is a vortex of opposites? Well, maybe that’s just the point. Etro Dianthus is a bunch of seemingly opposite attributes all rolled up into one scent. This is precisely how the season of spring feels to me. Spring can be warm and cool, wet and dry, light and dark, dull, dreary and suddenly bright and blooming. Dianthus contains all these opposite attributes and keeps me interested all throughout the day. When I first smelled Dianthus, I didn’t realize it was based on carnation (dianthus being the Latin name for carnation). It took me a few wearings and a bit of poking around online to quite suddenly smell the carnation note. Once I did it loomed so obvious, but I initially didn’t find it to be a heavily carnation laden scent.

Etro Dianthus reminds me of the character played by Polly Walker in the film Enchanted April.

Annick Goutal Un Matin d’Orage
Un Matin d’Orage has become one of my favorite fragrances. It conjures a feeling, an emotion, and a dark spring thunderstorm. It smells like the lifting of a bad mood, to reveal peaceful contentment which had been stuck beneath a dreary bad day. I’m buying this for myself in the butterfly bottle. I must have it. And I don’t even like gardenia, not usually, but UMdO makes me love this floral note.

Guerlain Chamade
I’m always sportin’ Chamade at some point in the spring. I finally rewarded myself with the pure parfum and it is To-Die-For. The deep green galbanum note is more potent in parfum, I’d go so far as to say the parfum version of Chamade is more fierce than expected. Usually parfum concentrations wear closer to the skin and are smoother, but Chamade in parfum seems aggressive to me. I adore it.

Bond No. 9 Broadway Nite
I’ve been obsessed with this ever since wearing Sonoma Scent Studio To Dream a few weeks ago. To Dream reminded me of Broadway Nite and FM Lipstick Rose in its basic rose-violet personality.

I scanned the reviews of Broadway Nite and came away feeling insulted. Many reviewers say it’s far too overpowering; it’s loud, aldehydic and just plain awful. On me, it’s one of the most complimented fragrances I have ever worn. As far as the potency issue goes; I mean, really, you can’t just apply two spritzes of a powerful perfume and find it just right? I suppose you must love the scent first and then you would adjust the application to make it work for you. If you immediately hate the scent, the fact that it’s potent is only going to make you hate it more when it lingers on you for 6+ hours appearing to become stronger and stronger. I have, of course, experienced that "please-get-this-stuff-off-me" episodes a few times; once I tried Guerlain Insolence (in edt not edp) and initially thought I liked it until a few hours later when I would have paid $250 to be able to shower it off. This has also happened with Vivienne Westwood Boudoir; I was nauseous wearing that one. But me and Broadway Nite are tight... if my plane crash-landed onto an undiscovered island (and I lived to tell of it), I’d be happy to have a bottle of Broadway Nite with me until the rescue crews arrived. I have no issues with its potency; two sprays are perfect, delightfully perfect.

Maurice Roucel created Broadway Nite which seems fitting because I enjoy many of his other creations; such as Bond No. 9 New Haarlem, Gucci Envy, Le Labo Jasmin 17, Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur, Hermes 24 Faubourg and Guerlain Insolence (edp only). Aside from Gucci Envy, most of these fragrances ain’t no shrinking violets; suffice it to say I enjoy Roucel’s style in general and amongst all his creations, Broadway Nite is my favorite.

Sonoma Scent Studio To Dream

This is the first time I’m breaking my rule of always spraying from the bottle and wearing a perfume 2-3 days before writing a review. Full disclosure: I’ve only sampled SSS To Dream from a dauber vial but I have worn it for 2 days and I’m blown away by it. I’m in lust for To Dream and cannot wait for my bottle to arrive, which, of course, is already on order and in transit!

Ms. Erikson, perfumer behind Sonoma Scent Studio, sent me a sample of To Dream on a whim, thinking I might not like it, because it’s similar in structure with her existing fragrance called Lieu de Reves. I am enamored with virtually all fragrances from SSS but Lieu de Reves and a few of her musks just never resonated with me. I sampled To Dream, in a way, just to be polite.

Wow!! The word ‘Wow’ is all I could think initially. To Dream (TD) is built like a classic rose/violet/aldehyde fragrance. One of my absolute favorites in this genre is Bond No. 9 Broadway Nite as well as Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose. Yves Saint Laurent Paris is also a famous rose/violet scent but Paris, as much as I love the high school memories it conjures, is like nails on a chalkboard for me. Bond’s Broadway Nite and FM Lipstick rose are two of my ultimate rose/violet glamor puss scents. In fact, I don’t often receive compliments on the fragrance I’m wearing, but I always, I mean it’s uncanny, but I always receive a compliment from someone when I wear Broadway Nite. Erickson’s To Dream gives homage to these sorts of glamor puss rose/violet scents but with the SSS trademark woody incense dry down.

Similar to the advice American Idol judges give contestants each year; if you’re going to take on a famous song or artist, someone incredibly original and iconic, like Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston, you must change it up a bit and make it your own. I was thinking about this analogy with Erickson’s To Dream, about how rose/violet fragrances are classics and many of the best one’s are quite well known. To create another rose/violet fragrance and make it sing, make it worthy enough to add to an existing collection which may contain several rose/violet scents already, Erickson would have to make it different, unique and phenomenal in its own right. To Dream is just that; it’s a glamorous rose/violet fragrance infused with the Erickson/SSS magic.

To Dream starts off as an obvious rose/violet aldehyde. After five minutes the aldehydic quality diminishes and a delectable rose/violet/mossy/woody scent emerges. To Dream is potent but it’s not loud. While not a gourmand there is still a delicious sensation here, I feel the urge to lick my wrists. The thing I love about rose/violet scents is that you really don’t have to like the notes of either rose or violet because the combination is something different entirely. I don’t know exactly why, but it’s these sorts of scents, these rose/violet aldehydes, like Bond’s Broadway Nite or FM’s Lipstick Rose that make me think of glamorous old movie stars and red lipstick. To Dream takes the standard rose/violet scent and anchors it with a gorgeous woody base and a dab of incense. Instead of keeping To Dream light and mostly floral, Erickson gave it a deeper base, like an iconic glamor puss with a sultry husky voice.

Erickson strikes again, she has created yet another masterpiece with To Dream.

Notes: Violet, rose, heliotrope, cedar, amber, frankincense, oakwood absolute, vetiver, tonka, orris, vanilla, musk, sandalwood, oakmoss, subtle suede, cocoa, and aldehydes

More Best of Summer : Brian's Picks

Recently, I discovered that I don't really care about light scents at any time of the year. I prefer heavier fragrances not just in the Winter, when they're said to make sense by serving as something approaching a comfortable blanket, but in the Spring, when they start mingling with the fresh, open air. The biggest surprise for me has been how much I like the power scents in the Summer. I think I might like them most of all at this time of year. It isn't just that citrus scents are so fleeting, though that's part of it. They hit the heat and poof, they're gone. Citrus scents and eau de colognes, however long they last, turn sour on sweating skin, as if trying to hide some basic facts of nature. Summer in the south isn't clean and composed. It's sultry and animalic, and the fragrances which make the most sense on my skin are the ones heat and sweat can only be complimented by, as opposed to struggled against.

1. Habanita (Molinard): Try it on in the Summer. The powder isn't there. It's as if someone blew off a coat of dust Habanita was submerged under, and now you can smell the basic structure underneath, more of those tobacco nuances, the weird peachy top notes, the push and pull of vetiver and vanilla. Infamously, the EDT lasts all day in the winter. It lasts just as well this time of year, and smells like sex warmed over.

2. Fougere Bengale (Parfum d'Empire): I only bought this last month, but I imagine the tangy, herbal thrust of the lavender gives it an interesting Summer dissonance it would be too well behaved to let show in the Winter. Immortelle and spices run like a strong current underneath, pulling you along.

3. Moschino de Moschino: This is indeed, as Tania Sanchez says, joss stick. However it distinguishes itself from many lesser orientals and even some of the superior classics by its weird, smoked florals.

4. Bandit (Piguet): There is no wrong time of year for Bandit. It spans the calendar, covering the bases. Grassier this season than last, to be sure, this green leather seems like a saddle left out in a field of chamomile. I never get that in the winter, when it seems like something you've snuggled into a pocket to keep warm.

5. Karma (Lush): Orange incense. People love it or hate it. In the winter, I...lurv it? In the summer, pure love for Karma. The heat activates subtleties that the cold leaves dormant, merely strident.

6. Daim Blond (Serge Lutens): I was so disappointed when I bought it last summer that I put it away and had only smelled it periodically ever since. Lately I pull it out and it makes perfect sense. The peachy cured leather smell lights up the skin. The heat makes it moodier, less the cheerful happy-go-lucky it is in the winter and fall, more unpredictable. It has issues, suddenly. I can relate.

7. Encre Noire (Lalique): Someone will have to convince me this isn't the best possible summer fragrance on a guy's skin, bar none. It smells virile without resorting to that chest thumping feeling you get from cruder peers. It's both fresh and filthy, inviting and repelling. Vetiver doesn't get much better.

8. Miss Balmain: A sister to Aramis for Men (born in a man's body), closely related to Aromatics Elixir, Cabochard, and Azuree (also great this time of year). This stuff is twenty bucks a bottle and based on the vintage bottle I own smells just as good presently as it ever did. It seems to grow warmer and thicker on the skin as it wears. Wonderful dry down, leather in deep floral hues.

9. Arpege (Lanvin): Especially the most recent reformulation. It smells of aldehydes, forals, and vetiver and sticks with you for the long haul.

10. Broadway Nite (Bond No. 9): the heady, almost waxy impressions of this fragrance are strong enough to get the point across, whatever the point is.

Cheap Thrills: Dunhill Desire for a Woman

It's a testament to Maurice Roucel's talent that his cheapest fragrances often smell as good as his high end niche reputation makers. K de Krizia is an amazing aldehyde floral, dirt cheap online. Nautica Voyage, a miraculous little sleeper of a scent, retails for as low as thirty-five dollars. Rochas Tocade (25 bucks) smells as fantastic, if not more so, than Guerlain L'Instant (60-70). Lalique Pour Homme (roughly $35) might just smell better than Bond No. 9 Riverside Drive (three times the price). Nothing compares to Iris Silver Mist, of course; then again, it's more an out-of-body experience than a perfume, and holding it up to mere mortals for comparison is like looking for a Paul Lynde "type" to play David Bowie in a high school musical. Wondrous oddities aside, Roucel's work remains remarkably consistent.

One key to that consistency is his trademark magnolia accord, which relates many of his scents to each other and smells so rich, creamy, and tangible you swear you could eat it or touch it or slather it all over yourself. Tocade is vanillic rose laid out on this signature base. L'Instant uses it not just as a foundation but as reason for being. You smell it everywhere in Roucel's ouevre, from Broadway Nite to 24, Faubourg. Tenacious sans bombast, it transitions from high to low, adapting itself to everything in between. What could be cheesier than something named Dunhill: Desire for a Woman? And yet, like almost everything else he's done, missteps and heavy hitters alike, Dunhill Desire too arranges itself around that familiar rubbery magnolia accord.

Lush, long lasting, and impressive, Desire has more going on in its top notes than the entire formulas of many a mainstream fragrance. I bought my 2.2 ounce bottle for 30 dollars--so it has more going on for less money, too. I'm not going to pretend I've wasted much time on Dunhill fragrances as a whole. There seem to be so many--for men, at least--the majority of which strike me as something my straight male friends would wear, lured by some aspirational fantasy associated with the name.

"Dunhill caters to the needs of the discerning man," says the company's ad copy, "from formal and casual menswear, to handcrafted leather goods through to fine men's jewelry" and so on, ad nauseum. Not pens and pencils but "writing instruments"; not watches but "timepieces". Jude Law is the spokesmodel and litters the website looking studiously urbane; suave, styled within an inch of his life, and bored out of his mind. "I'm sensitive, well dressed, and sometimes known to lean against the shelves in my library reading from a randomly selected, leather bound book," his sensitive expression says. Greys, tans, black, white. The menswear line is designed for "the modern gentleman and the maverick traveler."

I suppose a maverick travels in his own private plane, as opposed to lowly first class, and lives in a world drained of color. With their facile attempts at signaling a certain kind of cut-rate Ralph Lauren affluence, the few Dunhill masculines I've smelled depressed the hell out of me--as if to be a man means ipso facto to be magnificently tedious--and why be depressed, with so many wonderful things to smell out there? I've ignored Dunhill, and will probably continue to do so. Desire for a Woman seems to be an anomaly for the line: it smells like nothing else on the shelf, performs impressively, and like my favorite Roucels, manages somehow to suggest both impeccable taste and fun-loving, imperturbable trash.

I don't know exactly what's in it. I only know that I like it. It starts out intensely floral but very subtly evolves on the skin, arriving at a perfectly calibrated olfactory architecture of spiced amber, buttery warmth, and woods. From various sources online I've heard rose, freesia, caramel, sandalwood, and vanilla. There could be watermelon in it, for all I really know. Like everything else Roucel does, Desire smells edible without feeling particularly gourmand or foody. His fragrances share this precarious quality with the work of Sophia Grojsman.

Think of Desire as L'Instant Intense. I was always disappointed by L'Instant, and smelling Desire I now know why. L'Instant was far too timid; a miscalculation for which Roucel overcompensated, three years later, with Insolence, Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill to L'Instant's Masterpiece Theater. Desire situates itself somewhere in the middle of these extremes, a luxury it earned, most likely, by virtue of its market. Imagine the pressure applied at Guerlain, which has a real heritage to uphold, compared to the fairly straightforward, faux historical mass market imperatives of an outfit like Dunhill, whose incessant releases survive or perish according to a sink or swim mentality. Desire seems like Roucel having some fun, with a more relaxed attitude and a healthier sense of humor. The bottle is shimmery fuschia, just so you don't miss it, a delicious squeal of laughter compared to L'instant's pale whispery, watered down purplish pink.

Dunhill marketed Desire as the fragrance equivalent of the young woman in a pajama top designed to look like her boyfriend's, only in bright girly colors. Smells a little like his cologne, they said, but not to worry: strong enough for a man, but made for a woman, etc. Lo and behold, the reverse holds true. The perhaps unintentional effect of Desire's conglomerate of notes is a dreamy-sweet, curried pipe tobacco aroma, a mixture of powdered bubblegum and smoking room which makes the fragrance, in fact, a far superior masculine than any of the Dunhill males I've had the misfortune of smelling.

Bond No 9 Broadway Nite - Maurice Roucel - Aldehydes & Musings

Broadway Nite was created by Maurice Roucel in 2003 for Bond No 9. Broadway Nite is a sweet, warm floral, with aldehydes aplenty and the potency & sillage of an 80’s perfume.

All of the above happens to appeal to me immensely. I’m finding myself with less and less tolerance for perfumes that don’t have presence or longevity. I’m also finding myself attracted to aldeydes, which is shocking, because about five years ago I avoided aldehydes like the plague. I also previously avoided perfumes that were inherently synthetic smelling, or “perfumey,” like Chanel No. 5, but now I’m finding that there are many scents in this genre that I love.

Maurice Roucel is brilliant. Roucel creates complex, abstract, perfumey gems but he also has the decency to ensure the scent has sufficient sillage and longevity. If I spend $185 for Broadway Nite, I want the bloody juice to last me all day! Roucel has created many of my favorite perfumes: Bond No 9 New Haarlem, FM Musc Ravageur, Gucci Envy, Hermes 24 Faubourg, all of which are wonderfully tenacious little critters.

Broadway Nite reminds me a bit of Chanel No 5. Not that it’s a copy of Chanel No. 5 in the least, because it’s very much its own fragrance, but because it’s a classy, aldehydic floral. Broadway Nite is sweeter, warmer and more overtly floral than Chanel No. 5, too. The most prominent note in Broadway Nite to my nose is rose ~ sort of a rose-violet blend ~ so I find there are similarities with Yves Saint Laurent Paris and Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose. I like Broadway Nite much better than YSL Paris, because Paris is a very sharp and piercing fragrance, where Broadway Nite is friendlier, softer and easier to wear.

When I set out to write about Broadway Nite, I did some research first, I scanned through the reviews on basenotes, MUA and looked to see if there were existing reviews on NST and other blogs. What struck me is that Broadway Nite is not well loved. Many of the reviews call it synthetic, perfumey and aldehydic in a negative way. This makes me think about Coco Chanel, way back in the early 1900’s, and her aspirations for Chanel perfumes.

The following is a quote from Coco Chanel:

"I want to give women an artificial perfume," said Chanel. "Yes, I really do mean artificial, like a dress, something that has been made. I don't want any rose or lily of the valley; I want a perfume that is a composition." No. 5 is famous for being the first perfume to heavily rely on synthetic floral aldehydes as a top note. Before synthetics, perfume either had to be applied heavily or frequently so that the fragrance would last.

Chanel applied the French aesthetic theory that "ugly" placed next to "beautiful,” by contrast, makes the beautiful object appear more so. In this era almost all perfumes were floral and "pretty" - designed to enhance a woman's beauty with more beauty. Instead of the scent of flowers, Coco wanted a perfume that "reflects my personality, something abstract and unique". She believed that a perfume should serve to spotlight a woman's natural beauty using contrast - i.e. the artificial perfume would make the woman's natural beauty more evident.”

Prior to Chanel, among others, perfumes were not artificial/synthetic, had very little, if any fixative and had to be reapplied constantly. Surely there are days when I’m not in the mood for a synthetic smelling fragrance and I reach for a more natural/organic, realistic and soft aroma. But there are just as many days when I want a true perfume of the Broadway Nite variety.

Broadway Nite notes
Top: Aldehyde, green violet
Middle: Rose, honeysuckle, iris, heliotrope
Base: Sweet amber, vanilla bean, cedarwood, musk

You can purchase Broadway Nite directly from Bond No. 9 in New York City

Dandy of the Day: Patrick Petitjean

Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you the Ted Kaczynski of contemporary fashion: Patrick Petitjean, aged 25, of France. Patrick is versatile. He is Grizzly Adams, the man on the street who just asked you for a dime (you refused), Godspell revival, and Abe Lincoln. He is man, woman, and wolf, all rolled into one. He crosses and confuses gender boundaries and preconceptions. He's the perfect fashion model, we believe, because you can't look at him without imagining he must smell. He brings fashion down to earth, literally, rubbing it in the dirt. Here are the scents we suggest for Patrick Petitjean:


Kenzo Air: all peppery vetiver and arid grit

Comme des Garcon 2 Man: citrus smoke and a singeing incense vaporousness

Baron, The Gentleman: pungent, ever so slightly dysfunctional lavender

Kolnisch Juchten: charred leather and delicious, pickled wine barrel cork

Body Kouros: a slightly sexualized wrestling match with eucalyptus, and the plant is winning

M7: Look what happened to that glass of Coke you left on the table--for twenty years.

Hermes Equipage: Let's take a ride on my horse's saddle. Please sit on your face.

Knize Ten: Welcome to my studio. Sorry about the smell. I've been cleaning my paintbrushes.

Bond No. 9, Broadway Nite: What did you expect me to smell like--armpit?