Leather Fruit: CK One Shock for Him

The most shocking thing about CK One Shock is how good it is, compared to how mediocre it should have been.  What of note has Calvin Klein done in the last several years?  Secret Obsession, Beauty, and any number of interchangeable flankers have been disappointments - even the pleasures of Euphoria were pale in comparison to the brand's great fragrances of the eighties and nineties.  Obsession, Escape, Eternity, and CK One, however repugnant to some, were distinctive enough to warrant strong opinion, and each seemed to encapsulate its era through a radical marriage of scent and sensibility.

There have been many seasonal Ck One successors, none of which I paid much attention to.  By now, these iterations are so far removed from the original that they have nothing to do with it, and Shock, particularly, has more to do with other lines and other trends in perfumery than it has to do with the original CK One.  In that sense, it can be viewed as redundant, but Shock coalesces these trends in such subtly surprising ways that, for me, it transcends its influences, and feels altogether new.

It borrows much from Bulgari Black, Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight in Paris, Paco Rabanne One Million, and Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male, to name only several, but it doesn't read like a compendium; nor does it feel derivative.  It has some of Black's strange rubbery facets, making much more of them than the lackluster Givenchy Play Intense did.  It has shades of the fruity spice undertones overdone in One Million, subtle black tea hints from Black and Midnight in Paris, the tension between sweet and tart played out at maximum volume in Le Male.  It is strong but subdued, feeling much more like a niche release than a mainstream mall fixture.  At times during its development it reminds me of Santa Maria Novella's wonderful Nostalgia, part asphalt steam and the friction of tire against road, part floral, part fruit and spice and leather gloves.

The notes are laughably inventive.  It's described as an oriental with mandarin, cucumber, Red Bull accord, pepper, cardamom, tobacco, ambrene, musk, and patchouli.  I've also heard: black basil.  Of these, I can identify nothing definitively but the tobacco, which is where the fragrance ultimately comes to rest, in a wonderfully soft, powdery sweet melange of cigar stub and sugared rubber.  This dry down is wonderful, but the real moment of distinction in Shock, where it earns its name, is upon application.

The combination on skin isn't something I've smelled before - not quite.  It's as if Shock reassembled familiar motifs, changing the chemistry of their individual properties through skillful, well calibrated combination.  I get spices and leather, a wonderful balance between opposites.  This isn't the effervescence of a citrus but the succulence of something like a peach or a ripe mango.  Mind you, I don't smell either of those fruits in the mix.  Just their quality of succulence, and it's perfectly tempered and muted by a phantom sense of florals which apparently don't exist here.  I smell the ghost of jasmine, personally; probably an illusion created by the mellow alliance of leather, spice, tobacco, and musk.

I would never mistake this for a feminine, and in fact it seems less commercially unisex to me than Bulgari Black.  It announces itself pretty emphatically as a masculine, and yet in overall effect it isn't quite like any masculine I know, however many fragrances of the category it recalls or references.  Ultimately this is what makes it most literally and refreshingly unisex to me.  As on a man, on a woman it would seem familiar but distinctive, the smell of her leather gloves mingling with her perfume and the events she's just experienced out on the road.  It feels unisex, in other words, in a way which isn't marketable, which is probably why there is a feminine counterpart on the other side of the store.

Once it arrives at its tobacco base, Shock goes on indefinitely.  It has minimal but decent projection.  It is just odd enough, and I would love to see more mainstream releases achieve this kind of delicate alchemy.  The ad campaign and the design of the bottle demonstrate how entirely accidental this accomplishment of novelty is, referencing not the moment but some moment past, drunk on the look of a Stephen Sprouse ensemble from the mid eighties.

Dior Ambre Nuit

The fourth in a series of colognes initiated and originally curated by Hedi Slimane, one time bad boy at Dior, Ambre Nuit had some steep competition. Cologne Blanche, Bois D'Argent, and my favorite by far, Eau Noire, were basic but rich, presented in almost industrial looking, over-sized bottles. They were made to be worn generously, using a grade of ingredient which made a little go a long way. The colognes were hard to find and filtered out into the market the way niche lines do, primarily by word of mouth. The perfumers involved delivered some of their best work, indicating the kind of artistic freedom a niche line typically provides. Bois D'Argent was Annick Menardo at her best, revisiting themes and motifs she'd explored more commercially in Hypnotic Poison (also Dior), Bulgari Black, and Body Kouros (Yves Saint Laurent). Francis Kurkdjian hadn't done much at the time, unless you consider how many units two of his earliest creations, Gaultier Le Male and Narciso Rodriguez Her, moved off the shelves. His Eau Noire remains, for me, the most skillfully imaginative use of the immortelle note in fragrance, and was ample indication, way back in 2004, that Kurkdjian had the strength of vision and a recognizable enough fingerprint to create his own line.

Slimane had strength of vision too, and helped to make Dior Homme stand out in a marketplace where name alone increasingly mattered less. Perhaps he was a bit too visible. He left Dior in 2007, and the indication until now was that the line, at least vis a vis fragrance, lost not just the sense of vision he'd provided but any vision whatsoever. Their next moves seemed more like stumbles. Dior Homme Sport, while perfectly nice, was a fairly insipid flanker to Polge's brilliant Dior Homme. Packaging it in the same bottle seemed majestically ill-judged. It was hard to imagine pale, pencil thin Slimane on a treadmill, cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth; intentionally or not, this was the picture Sport drew. Fahrenheit 32, also perfectly nice, was either a step back or a standing in place.

Until now, the cologne series languished. It lay so still I thought it was dead. Word of Ambre Nuit filled me with cautious dread. Surely the world could do without another synthetic amber. They'd already taken the edge out of Dior Homme, grafting a little red racing strip onto what felt like a spaceship by way of a Bentley. Surely someone with the freedom to use his head realized that bastardizing sleepers this way did the line as a whole no favors, whatever the immediate gain by association. Maybe the series was better off dead, but no one seemed willing to protect its grave from vandalism.

There was every reason to expect the worst, and things beyond Dior have gotten equally grim, especially in terms of masculine fragrance, so the quality and pleasure of Ambre Nuit isn't just a surprise but a real blessing. To call it cologne is an understatement. Like the others, Ambre Nuit lasts better than most toilet waters. It feels and smells rich and textured. The clear liquid is packaged in honey-colored glass. It sits comfortably between masculine and feminine. François Demachy has created in Ambre a spiced rose which makes as much sense on a woman as a man. And what a rose. In an interview with the Fragrance Foundation, he listed rose as an exact scent he would one day like to capture. "Just when you think you know everything about [it], there are always new things to discover," he said. Ambre Nuit isn't by any stretch a photorealist rose. It doesn't aim to be, but it feels like some kind of discovery along that path Demachy is traveling.

In the same interview, he admitted he has yet to master the use of cumin in fragrance. While admitting it can work wonders, he hasn't discovered the right proportions. I don't get the sense there's cumin in Ambre Nuit, but it offers ample evidence that the perfumer uses spice notes carefully and intelligently, practicing restraint where others exercise indulgence. Ambre Nuit feels just right in any number of ways, resulting in an infinitely satisfying wear. The dry down doesn't offer much development. Ambre Nuit is in the end what it was from the beginning, a song you play on repeat all day because you love it so much. There are resins in there, those spices, rose, a nice, mellow amber. The fragrance has the soft feel of leather to it, adjusted by woods and patchouli. It isn't a show-stopper. It isn't incredibly cutting edge, though it is without a doubt more interesting than 99 percent of its mass market peers. It strikes an interesting, precarious balance. Demachy addresses the need for vision as perfumer at Dior, but seems well aware of the need for the walk along that tightrope.

Dior is a context, ultimately, and any story Demachy wishes to tell must somehow serve to advance that larger narrative. He's interested in refining parts of the story, essentially. "I'm not saying I have a particular vision of perfumery," he says, "but at Dior certain types of perfumes are expected and, most of the time, created." What the brand has sometimes lacked is more of a hand-crafted feel, in his opinion. Despite their current vogue, perfumers aren't an elite but an imaginative group of skilled artisans, assigned the responsibility to create not just effect but substance, a synergy between the two poles. More personal, hand-crafted products might not sell very well, but they provide a backbone of quality and in their own ways provide subtext to the brand, adding detail and nuance to the sweeping plot points of the master narrative which is Dior. Ambre Nuit shows a lot of respect to the line but has the good sense to demonstrate some amount of idiosyncrasy as well. What it adds to the story is character.

Contradictory/Contrarian Thoughts

1. I've discovered that I really like fragrances I'm discouraged from even sniffing by reputable sources. Michael by Michael Kors smells like roasted gardenia and tuberose to me, spiced a little, and that's a good thing. It dries down in a wonderful way, lasting just about all day and then some. Boucheron Trouble doesn't smell too sweet or pedestrian to me. It smells rich and slightly woody. Kelly Caleche isn't a bore or even a letdown. It makes a pretty definite statement to me, with its vegetal iris and peppered disposition. Jean Paul Gaultier is supposed to be headache in a bottle, whereas for me, it has restorative properties.

2. What is a dandy fragrance? I used to think it was a rose a guy could get away with wearing. Now I realize that the fragrances which get called dandy-worthy are typically anything the guy in question likes but which is popularly regarded as feminine and therefore requires some justification or mental adjustment to wear. In this respect, every perfume I own which is meant for women (and I have a lot) is a dandy fragrance. I don't think wearing a so-called feminine requires justification. It's an act of social sabotage, which is justification enough. You make it your own, and if you stop worrying over it, and wear it with confidence, people stop judging it separately from you as being either appropriate or inappropriate. You own it. What could be more appropriate? The other day a homeboy came in to smell the Bond No. 9 fragrances while I was standing there. He had on Louis Vuitton sneakers, chunky gold jewelry, and was more put together than most of the women I know, and he was worried that the No. 9's he favored were considered feminine. He looked to the women behind the counter, who all liked different No. 9's, to tell him whether or not he should be caught dead in his favorites. Enough said?

3. I'm not sure what I think about the alleged masterpiece Beyond Paradise. There, I said it. Sometimes I think I love it. Is that a figgy sort of green in there, or just a gardenia and jasmine sucker punch? Wearing it today, I'm drunk on it. Smelling it a month ago I thought the naff lollipop bottle suited it perfectly.

4. I love Givenchy Insense. It seems harder and harder to find the older bottles. Online they're always "out of stock". I found some at a local discount store and purchased, even though I had a small bottle at home already. Before I ever smelled it I was told that Insense is a male floral. I disregarded the fact that it smelled anything but floral to me. Maybe if I focus I can smell the magnolia and the muguet, but I would never call this girly or even anything less than robustly masculine. More bewildering still, Michael Edwards classifies this as woody - floral musk. What am I missing? Top to bottom, I get that mentholated green note, part galbanum, part eucalyptus. It's almost as butch as Estee Lauder Alliage. I'm told this is the lentisk (aka mastic tree), a small evergreen shrub of the mediterranean region. And yes, the part waxy, part oily qualities of muguet and magnolia suit it well. But, really--musk?

5. What's going on at Sephora? Granted, their stock was always pathetic, but at one time, just under a year ago, they carried Cartier, Hermes, and any number of items I haven't seen on their shelves for months now. We're getting new stuff in, they told me, when I asked why they were rearranging their shelves and things started to go missing. They were just making room, they said. Now the masculines and feminines, once on opposite sides of the room, are on the same wall, and both have been laughably condensed. No more Jardins de This or That. No more Baiser du Dragon or So Pretty. But if you're in the market for Fresh Sake or Burberry Bland, this is the place to go. I used to dislike Sephora. Now I know I hate them.

6. When I first smelled Santa Maria Novella Nostalgia I thought, yes, it does smell a little like Bulgari Black. Then I got home with the bottle and actually conducted a side by side comparison. Nostalgia is nothing like Black. And it blows it out of the water, as far as I'm concerned. I've also since come to realize that Nostalgia lasts with impressive tenacity. In less than two weeks I went from liking and admiring this fragrance to loving it all out of reason. On sale: One slightly used bottle of Bulgari Black. Make an offer.

Bvlgari Black

Bvlgari Black, created by Annick Menardo launched in 1998.

Maybe I’m too far along in my perfume addiction, but I’ve never thought of Black as weird or edgy – I’d call it interesting. I’ve also never thought of it as among the top 10 best perfumes of all time. Sure there are hints of smoky rubber but they seem low key and soft. Black is mostly a fragrance about vanilla. It starts off smelling like celery salt. Then it morphs into smoky celery salt and rubber. Then when it finally settles down it becomes prominently a soft woody, celeriac vanilla. I really love Bvlgari Black particularly the celery salt bits. Overall it’s a cozy comfort scent for me. I put Bvlgari Black in the same category as People of the Labyrinth’s Luctor et Emergo. They’re both hard to define and seem in a category all their own, they both have cult-like followings and they’re both comfort scents. I’ve never figured out what’s so ‘black’ about Bvlgari Black. I know there’s black tea among the notes but I don’t detect it at all. If I where to give a color label to Black I’d say it’s Pale Green.

I’ve been wearing Black a lot since I read Perfumes: The Guide by Turin & Sanchez. I was somewhat shocked by the high marks it received and very shocked that it placed in the top 10 perfumes of all time. Of course, being a scholar in the field of olfactory science, means Turin knows much more than me when it comes to perfume. Turin is knowledgeable of all the elaborate details of perfume making. He knows how difficult certain notes are to create and he knows more about the history and structure of perfume than I ever will. But Bvlgari Black just isn’t that amazing for me. I do love it, just like I love POTL Luctor et Emergo, but I wouldn’t place POTL in the top 10 either.

I need to subtract points from Black because it lacks longevity and has virtually zero sillage. When I wear Black I need to douse myself in it, (I mean douse, like 10 sprays) in order to smell it for about 3 hours. The first hour is the most interesting. I like Black the best before it dries down to a comfy vanilla. I fail to understand what Turin is raving about in his review of Black. To me, Black seems like an interesting starting point. I suppose it is groundbreaking in its structure and its ability to morph through an unusual assortment of notes and yet still smell pleasing and beautiful. Perhaps Menardo or another perfumer could build upon this idea but make it more daring and also add some longevity and sillage this time.

Black is an interesting fragrance and it smells really good. I do think that more people ought to try it because it’s a worthy fragrance for those that want something unusual yet not too odd. Black is easy to wear and unlike POTL it can be had for cheap.

Longevity: Poor
Sillage: Soft

An Open Letter to Annick Menardo

Dear Ms. Menardo,

If you only knew how much time I spend walking around in your head-space—and I don’t even know how to pronounce your last name! What’s the etymology? I haven’t been able to find much out about you online. In the only photos I’ve seen, your face is covered by a handkerchief. I’m guessing the handkerchief is soaked in perfume, and you couldn’t stop working long enough to take a picture. You’re a busy woman. It isn’t just that you’ve worked on many perfumes—though I know you have—but the level of quality you strive to maintain. Body Kouros, Hypnotic Poison, Xeryus Rouge, Roma Uomo, Bulgari Black, Lolita Lempicka (man and woman), Boss Hugo Boss, Hypnose. Stop me anytime here. Aside from Roma, I can’t think of a Menardo scent which lacks in persistence and diffusion. I picture you in your lab with hands so busily mixing and shaking and sniffing and decanting that you appear, like Kali, to have many arms, all moving simultaneously, with superhuman agility and precision.

You were born in Cannes and wanted to be a psychiatrist. I don’t know what Cannes says about you but your interest in psychology makes perfect sense to me. Emotional propositions, your fragrances elicit potent feelings. Impossible to stand in front of a Van Gogh without being moved back or forth in time along some visceral emotional spectrum—and so it is with a Menardo. When I first smelled Bulgari Black, I didn’t know what to think. I’d smelled everything I thought I could possibly be interested in. I was such an authority, couldn’t be bothered with the idea of surprise. I knew what I liked, I had my list, I’d tried everything. I was on my way out of the store, but I’m greedy: one more fragrance, one last whiff before I go. Imagine my surprise. Black stopped me dead in my tracks—because, quite frankly, rubber? I mean, really; you must be joking. “Black is New York, Berlin, Hong Kong or Tokyo and its smoking sidewalks, its concrete buildings and its steel bridges.” Well, okay. If they say so. To me it came out of nowhere—not black tea, not leather but a great big miasmal accord of the uncanny, something out of Ambrose Bierce, the word for which might have been in The Devil’s Dictionary had it not taken up too many pages to get across. What is Black, if not a head trip?

After this I tracked down the others. Lempicka au Masculine is comfort food, recalling the sweet, doughy dishes a mother who loved you might have served. Xeryus Rouge: a spicy something or other from the proverbial Orient, hot to the touch. In the osmoz of my mind, Body Kouros is classified as Camphoraceous-Gourmand. The day I bought Hypnotic Poison, I wore it to a friend’s house. Here is my report: not two steps through the door I was asked what that wonderful smell was. Another convert; another comrade. Were your ears buzzing? If so, they must frequently. And yet very few of your juices, with the exception of Lolita Women, seems to have struck a popular chord. No small surprise, perhaps, given the kind of copy written to sell them. “The mauve color is symbolic of faeries,” someone wrote of the Lolita Lempicka au Masculine bottle. Is it any wonder men didn’t flock to the shelves in great prancing droves, their toes all a-twinkle? Only Black seems to have been packaged and marketed with the right tone of top-down design—and that, I suspect, by happy accident.

For this and other reasons you’re a cult figure, the David Lynch of perfumery. Black is your Blue Velvet, Hypnotic Poison your Mullholland Drive. Like Lynch you are an enigma. Now that I think of it, perhaps your face is covered with the handkerchief by decree. Ludicrously, we’re meant to believe Lolita herself waved her magic wand and—poof! Those little glass apple bottles sprouted from trees. The public, somewhat unconsciously, imagines Yves Saint Laurent in your place, mixing Body Kouros up by trial and error in his velvet-upholstered lab. Dior had a bright idea one day; in a trance, he saw red, then Hypnotic Poison. And so on. Perfumers are kept in the shadows, remaining spectral figures to most, so that very few would ever make the connection between Xeryus Rouge and Roma Uomo, unless it turned out that Laura Biagotti and Givenchy had engaged in a torrid, uber-secret affair. It’s as if The Met had scattered its Van Goghs all throughout the gallery, removing anything indicating who’d painted them. Would someone who'd never been exposed to his art before realize that the sunflower in the vase had been cut from those in the field? Cult figures are great—for those who love them—but it’s nice to be recognized at large. It’s nice to know where the sunflower came from, so you can keep going back for more.

I’m writing to tell you about my plans to start the Annick Menardo fan club, membership of which will include monthly newsletters and bi-weekly sniff-a-thons. Every January, we’ll coalesce en masse at a Holiday Inn somewhere in Iowa or Georgia or Maine, attending panel discussions with names like “Whence came that dreamy, signature vanillic dry down?” “Is Black to Goth as Robert Smith of the Cure is to liquid eyeliner?” “What to do with yourself, should Body Kouros go the way of Havana.” I’ll be the moderator, switchboard operator, and benevolent head of the membership drive. I’ll be your tireless advocate. Barack Obama will thank you for your contribution to world peace in his inaugural address. I'm on it. Like you I’ll keep my arms moving. I’m thoroughly committed to the idea, Ms. Menardo—but we’ll need a clearer picture.

As ever,

Your devoted fan.