Well Being: Barney's Route du The

I was surprised to learn that this little gem has been around since 1986.  I discovered it back in 1995 or so and, I guess, thought that my awareness had ushered it into being.  It's bizarre to think the stuff was around when I was in high school, out making the rounds in the world.  What's most surprising to me is the fact that Calyx, which is much better known--and which I had heard of in high school--came out after Route du The, rather than before.  The two are so similar--and Calyx is so ubiquitous--that I always imagined Route du The was something of an imitation.

What they share is an impossible, neon idea of what it is to feel fresh and clean.  It isn't a soapy impression, exactly--a la White Linen, another study in Beatific Cleanliness--but a sense of being so well scrubbed, emotionally and physically, that the world can only touch you when, where, and how hard you'd like it to.  Both feel incredibly succulent, though Calyx is a little more openly fruity.  It should also be said that Calyx would never be mistaken for a tea scent.  Calyx is much more complicated than Route in general--and smells it--so I'm going to abandon the comparisons here, but those of you who love Calyx and haven't smelled Route du The should definitely consider seeking it out next time you're at Barney's, where Route is exclusively sold.

The notes listed for Route du The on the Barney's website are citrus, muguet, and amber.  I'm not sure it feels quite that simple, but it does feel uncomplicated and easygoing.  It does speak to me of "tea" (the name means "way of the tea") but not the way other tea fragrances which have been released in the last ten years or so do.  I do smell Lily of the valley but the scent doesn't feel incredibly floral to me or even much like a white floral.  I don't smell amber in any way shape or form, but I might be bringing to Route a more literal interpretation of what amber must smell like (certainly heavier and more resinous than this).  One of the things I love about Route is how long-lasting it is.  Fact is, I like many tea fragrances but find they just don't stick around much.  Tea time is brief.  Route lasts shockingly well for what it is, and citrus remains a part of the overall effect long into the dry down on me.  Overall I get a lemony muguet aroma which comes as close to all day sunshine as a fragrance gets.

It's very affordable.  Barney's sells it for 55 bucks, I believe.  At 100 ml, this is clearly a steal.  It's been raining here incessantly and still intermittently cold. But Spring is peaking around the edges of things, already, and Route du The has again been in heavy rotation at Casa Brian. 

Playing the Peach Card: Boucheron Jaipur

Boucheron Jaipur seems, to me, a perfect choice for the Holiday season, setting aside impressions inspired by the original ad for the fragrance, which is festive in an entirely different way. According to press materials, Jaipur "revives the mythical story of the Naurantan, a bracelet traditionally offered to young brides in Rajasthan for good fortune." I suppose one is luckiest, in some cultures, with one's hands tied behind one's back. And naked, of course. It often helps to be naked. The luck can adhere to you more easily that way. In some cultures, people get married naked. They live out their lives naked, in fact, because nothing is worse than to be fully clothed when luck comes calling. Many have been shit out of luck who were overdressed at inopportune times.

The notes for this lucky elixir are listed as follows: plum, apricot, peach, violet, rose, acacia, heliotrope, peony, iris, musk, amber, sandalwood.

Jaipur was created by Sophia Grojsman, way back in the dark ages (1994), and as Dane over at Peredepierre says, it "plays the peach card." Fragrantica classifies it as "Floral Fruity". I wouldn't disagree, but would include a caveat. Since the mid-nineties, Floral Fruity has evolved (or devolved) into a pretty different beast than it once was. See any number of celebrity fragrances, starting with something, anything, by Britney Spears. These days, Floral Fruity is synonymous with sugary sweet, but it wasn't always that way, and Grojsman's instantly identifiable "milky peachy accord" (again, Dane) exemplifies the category's roots.

Many of Grojsman's perfumes feel lit from within. They hit the skin and it seems someone has switched a light on. There's a bright, happy glow to much of the work she did in the eighties and nineties, a quality which is simultaneously exuberant and adult. The closest I've seen a mass-market contemporary fragrance come to those special effects has been Gucci Flora, which didn't impress many people--and was, admittedly, a bit been there, done that--but was, for me, a welcome revisiting of a style Grojsman made famous. For me, in a way, Flora wasn't as much redundant as a tribute. The ad for Flora captured the euphoric feeling produced by smelling something as baroquely rich as Jaipur and seemed, with its sun-dappled field-of-flowers imagery, like some forgotten broadcast from the eighties. Do stick around for the jaded valley girl voice over at the close of the commercial; that's quite an evocative throwback, too.

Grojsman is one of my favorites, the nose behind an influential arsenal of iconic fragrances including Paris, Yvresse, Vanderbilt, Eternity, Spellbound, White Linen, Tresor, Bvlgari Pour Femme, and Calyx. Many of her lesser known fragrances are fantastic: Tentations, Celine Magic, Bill Blass Nude, Kashaya. Her body of work bottlenecks around the ten year period from the mid eighties to the mid nineties. Since then, she's done only several that I know of: S-Perfume's 100% Love and Outrageous!, for Frederic Malle.

I've smelled both, and like them--a lot--but, for me, Grojsman excels at making all-American department store fare. I say that with respect, because I think more than most perfumers Grojsman helped elevate the fragrance counter at the mall, bringing a uniquely heightened level of fantasy to the middle American consumer. Think how many of her fragrances can still be found in that competitive marketplace. You can still easily find Paris, Tresor, Eternity, Spellbound, White Linen, Calyx, Bvlgari. That's quite a streak.

Her forays into niche territory have felt a bit constricted to me, which is odd, given the budgets I imagine she was provided. They don't engage with the technicolor saturation of the mainstream fragrances on which she built her reputation, and I suspect she does her best work when her imagination must stretch to work within limits. All artists are limited, but I'm guessing the limits involved in a Malle fragrance and something for YSL are two different species of constraint.

Anyone familiar with Tresor and Yvresse will feel right at home with Jaipur. There are differences, and comparing these fragrances, which at first might seem slightly interchangeable, underscores their subtle distinctions. Yvresse is spicier than you realize; Tresor more oriental. Jaipur isn't at all spicy, really, but like many of Grojsman's scents it has a boozy aspect I like, one also found in Paris and Yvress; thus its appropriateness for this time of year. Like another wintertime favorite of mine, Clinique Wrappings, it is both cool and warm, the equivalent of flushed cheeks coming in from the cold or the sensation of your face heating up after a few cocktails. Jaipur is the punch at the Christmas party, and someone, bless him, did us the favor of spiking it.

Kenzo Kashaya: The Sensual World

Kenzo Kashaya was created by Sophia Grojsman in 1994--the same year Cashmere Mist, Havana, G Gigli, Jaipur, CK One, and Iris Silver Mist came out.  It comes in a carnival glass bottle shaped in leaf-like abstractions.  Osmoz classifies the fragrance as Oriental - Floral.  Like all of Grojsman's work, Kashaya is powerful, with impressive if not potentially assaultive sillage and persistence which seems equally tenacious.

Like the bottle, which reflects red, orange, yellow, and fuschia in different combinations, depending on how the light hits it, Kashaya reflects and recalls various characteristics of Grojsman's well known oeuvre.  You can smell everything from Spellbound to Diamonds and Rubies in there, and at first you might even mistake it, as some online have, for Lagerfeld's Sun Moon Stars, which was released a year earlier.  Aside from sharing some inarticulate, decidely Grojsman-esque quality, the two have very little in common.  In fact, Kashaya seems unique for the perfumer, conveying a mood very specific to orientals, a category she hasn't exactly made a name for herself in, aside from random entries here and there, like Tentations, for Paloma Picasso.  Kashaya is less floral than many of Grojsman's fragrances (see Paris, Calyx, Yvresse, Boucheron) and not nearly as spicy (see Tentations and Spellbound).  It has a pronounced, stealthy vanilla accord and a curious mellowness to it, whereas other Grojsman creations persist in a vibrant state of excitement on the skin for hours, thrilled to be there.

For whatever reason, when I go to my perfume cabinet, the things I reach for most often seem to be Grojsman's perfumes.  People detest Spellbound (Oh the clove, the clove!) and yet I grab it even more frequently than the others.  I believe some of this, or a lot of this, has to do with the immediate gratification offered by Grojsman's work.  The very things people complain about (the strength, the projection, et al.) are the things which attract me the most.  Perfumers, like most artists, are eventually referred to with a marketable shorthand.  For the most part, they're much more complicated than the tags applied to them.  Grojsman's reputation is as a sensualist, and she's of course much more too, but there's a lot of truth there; putting Paris up to your nose is indescribably intense.  Yvress is just about the loveliest, most succulent perfume I own.  And Spellbound, as much as it's derided, is shot full of sensual pleasures (and how, which seems to be the problem for some).  It comes down to this for me: these perfumes have openly narcotic properties.

Kashaya is as intensely pleasurable as anything Grojsman's done, and lives uniquely on the skin.    Don't misunderstand: the florals are there, but they're integrated differently than in the compositions where they take or demand center stage.  Those florals are, specifically, jasmine, orchid, tuberose, and carnation (that old Grojsman reliable).  They're laid out against sandalwood, musk, vanilla, and amber in a way which takes them in uncharacteristic directions, playing up different aspects of the Grojsman artistic project.  Personally, I think Kashaya makes a good masculine, but I wear Paris, Yvresse, and Calyx without complication or inhibition, troubling myself not one second over whether or not this "seems" appropriate or can be "justified" theoretically in some way.  Unlike Tentations, Kashaya is still petty easy to find online, and affordable.  It comes in EDT, which lasts just fine.  I always thought EDP was sort of overkill when it comes to Sophia Grojsman.  It's like picturing Picasso's cubist work done in day-glo, neon paint.