Bored to Tears: New Releases, Old Hat

I'm pouting this week, I'm in a funk, I'm almost bored with perfume and I don't know what to do about it, a situation which would have seemed inconceivable to me only several months ago. Is perfume a passing phase--or am I just sick of being disappointed lately? So many of the things I've been looking forward to have turned out to be uninspired. Some of them feel like a slap in the face.

The Alien EDT is nice enough, but where's the promised difference, the guaranteed frisson? To me it smells exactly like Alien EDP--no heavier, no lighter, no woodsier, no more or less presided over by jasmine. I wanted special. I wanted something tweaked, not because I dislike Alien EDP (far from it) but because I wanted to see a perfumer pushing himself, responding to input about the first go round, teasing out something about the first Alien which showed its detractors how wrong they were, proving to them that Alien was wonderful all along, they just hadn't been looking the right way.

To some extent, the seasonal flankers have served this purpose, illuminating the original Alien (2005) with bursts of clarifying light. I particularly liked the first flanker, eau Luminescente, which brought a piquancy into the original's headier mix. But the mission of seasonal flankers seems to be to adapt the original fragrance's attributes into some fantasy vignette of Spring and Summer, a limiting mission, depending how you feel about Spring and Summer (I, for one, resent being asked to retire my jeans, as if I'm just not quite carefree enough otherwise, or inhibited because I won't frolic around in shorts). Key words, like "lighter" and "fresher", prevail over the exercise. For me, the Alien EDT release might have reinterpreted the original in many novel ways, but didn't, making it little better than a wasted opportunity.

I can barely talk about YSL's Parisienne without getting a little ticked off. More than anything, I'm irritated with myself, for having gotten my hopes up. Parisienne is a massive letdown on a number of levels, but the biggest disappointment of all is the fact that my little honeymoon with Sophia Grojsman might now be over. I was naive enough to believe that I would love Parisienne no matter how much of a retread it might be. I've loved every Grojsman perfume I can think of, though many resemble each other enough to keep others from owning several at once. Paris is an iconic favorite of mine. Its intensity, the lush stuff it makes of rose, violet and hawthorn, is a narcotic for me. Though I've loved it since 1983, when it first came out, the smell isn't particularly nostalgic to me. It's too timeless for that. But it makes me intensely happy, speaking to my imagination in a way which would normally require hallucinogens.

How big a part did Sophia Grojsman actually play in the creation of Parisienne? Her collaborator, Sophie Labbé, hasn't done much of anything I've admired or even been vaguely interested in, with the exception of Givenchy Organza. Granted, Organza is so good that its creator wouldn't really need to do much more in life. It has amazing persistence, impressive diffusion. It smells like nothing else, filtered through a series of recognizable motifs. It certainly doesn't smell like anything else Labbé has done. I'm not a fan of most of the Joop fragrances, some of which she's authored. Kylie Minogue Sexy Darling, Givenchy Very Irresistible, Cacharel Amour Pour Homme, Jil Sander Sport for Women and Nina Ricci Permier Jour don't exactly tip the scales in her favor.

My guess is that Sophia Grojsman is credited because Parisienne trades on Paris not only thematically but by using enough of its formula to owe her royalties. There is the faintest ghost of Paris in there, but so dulled down, so muted that to credit Grojsman is somehow discrediting her. The notes of this so-called woody floral are said to be damask rose, violet, peony, patchouli, vetiver, and most intriguingly, "a vinyl accord evoking metal gloss and varnish." Interestingly (and this is practically the only interesting thing about the fragrance for me) Parisienne smells best from the bottle. Smelled from the atomizer, you get the vinyl accord, and it's as wonderfully strange as the copy makes it sound. The problem is that once you apply it to the skin or a testing strip, it becomes the failed prototype for Kylie Minogue's next assault on the mainstream fragrance-buying public.

There are things I like about Parisienne. It isn't horrible, just insipidly pleasant. Some floral, some wood, watered-down whiffs of unusual. It hides on the skin like it's scared to come out and play or has been pushed out on stage in only its underwear. It has zero projection, and even you can't smell it after a few minutes, without making a fool of yourself practically humping your wrist with your nose. It's nice. It's pretty. It bores the hell out of me. Some have expressed dismay at the tone of the Kate Moss advertisements. My guess is that the perfume, whatever it actually does in reality, is named to evoke the stylized debauchery of "La Vie Parisienne", the naughty pre-war French magazine and the equally controversial opera of the same name composed by Offenbach, which featured, among other entertainments, "trollops masquerading as society ladies" and the "frenetic, mad pursuit of fun and pleasure", all of which Moss seems to be channeling in the ads. The actual perfume, unfortunately, is a society lady masquerading as a society lady.

And don't even get me started on masculine releases. Givenchy Play is a joke, as everyone on the boards and blogs, from basenotes to Burr, is remarking. Givenchy Play Intense is the good cop in this scenario, but it too makes you work to love, let alone like it long time. A little Rochas Man, a little Lempicka au Masculin, some Bulgari Black. It comes out doing a snake-charmer's dance with anise, coffee and labdanum, each of which in its way is more over-exposed than even Justin Timberlake, the fragrance's spokesmodel. Like him, Play Intense wishes to be all things to all people. It sings, it dances, it has a sense of humor. It acts, doing a good impression of colognes I like better, then it slinks off the skin in search of God knows what. Maybe it goes looking for Parisienne. Good luck with that.

It probably doesn't take a rocket scientist, or even someone who plays one on TV, to know that YSL La Nuit de L'Homme is going to suck, and suck it does. It smells like everything all at once. It's doing everything it can to impress and please you, boring the shit out of you. The smell of it fills you with a profound despair. So this is what it's come to. I might as well end it all right here. If women think pink pepper is getting old, cross the aisle and walk a mile in my shoes. The terrain: cardamom, as far as the eye can see. To think I actually love cardamom. Every time I go back to L'Essence de Declaration I realize anew how wrong they're getting cardamom these days. Someone please throw that cardamom a life-raft of birch tar.

The question is, what are they getting right? Yesterday I took out my bottle of Organza Indecence. I couldn't believe how rich and gorgeous it was. More specifically, I couldn't believe I'd forgotten. But with so many snoozers on the market, more every day, it's a wonder I can remember liking perfume, ever, at all.

I'd love to hear what you've been disappointed in lately. It would help me feel less alone or, God forbid, misanthropic.

Some Thoughts on the Year: All the World's a Bathroom

I'm a latecomer to perfume, and 2008 was my awakening, starting with Vetiver Extraordinaire. A friend wrote about Vetiver Extraordinaire in a French magazine, making it sound like the best thing in the world. The only thing in the world. I'd visited him in Atlanta several months before and was shocked and a little uneasy when, watching a play in a dark theater, he pulled out a bottle of Comme des Garçons 2, uncapped it with much drama, then sprayed himself, and everyone around us, profusely.

It seemed hostile and generous at the same time, part assault, part act of mercy. When I asked him about 2 he mentioned he'd been writing about perfume a lot. I was fascinated. Write about perfume? Here was a serious, well known writer, respected for his novels about the lower east side and the denizens of old Times Square. Was he doing it in secret? Later, he emailed me the copy of his article on Vetiver, showing his real name, right at the top. I asked for a bottle last Valentine's Day. It seemed appropriately extravagant for the occasion: it came from far away (I ordered from France, if you can believe it, which shows what I knew), was costly (or so it seemed, compared to the mall), and surely, I figured, it would be a special perfume for special occasions.

At the time, I had maybe four or five fragrances: an old bottle of Coriandre, a Fragonard, something by Aveda, the original Comme des Garçons. It wasn't that I hadn't bought scents in the past. I just didn't know where to look. I didn't even know anything like Vetiver Extraordinaire existed, the world of niche perfumery being subterranean territory to me. My bottle of Coriandre reminded me of high school. I used to sneak into my stepmother's bathroom to smell it.

I did a lot of sneaking into bathrooms back then. When my sister or stepmother emerged from their rooms, they smelled fantastic. Their scents had gravitational force, and everything around them collapsed into that central point of interest for me. I envied that power. More importantly, I envied them that pleasure; that drama and intrigue. There was even solace in that dynamic somehow. Scent was emotional armor and hypnotic allure. Buying Coriandre later was a bit of a defiance for me, but I treated it the way I always had: I kept it in the bathroom, smelling it every once in a while or even obsessively. I never wore it, unless getting into bed, where no one would catch me.

I still remember the day Vetiver Extraordinaire arrived in the mail. It was packaged beautifully, and the glass bottle and chunky cap had a heft to it which seemed important, even momentous. It smelled like nothing I'd ever experienced. Dry and wet simultaneously, grassy, sheer. What was this vetiver stuff? A plant--a grass, you say? I sprayed some on at work and the whole office shifted. It was so combustible. It engaged the people around me, altering their behavior, altering my mood, my attitude, my imagination. It truly was momentous, and in the weirdest possible way.

I started researching perfume. Here was my stepmother's bathroom, spread out all over the world. A little bathroom called Frederic Malle, in Paris, France; stark and sleek, black and red and dull green glass. Little bathrooms called The Different Company, Le Labo--and hey, what about that Comme des Garçons perfume the writer had employed to change the course of the play we were watching? What of number "2"?

The first part of this awakening for me was a systematic run through of all the perfumes which had ever secretly captured my imagination. First up was Angel. Years ago, when it came out, I'd smelled it as quickly as possible on the shelves. What would I do if a saleperson came over and started asking me questions? I wanted that smell for my own more than anything. This year, I bought it at the mall, where the saleswomen indeed hovered around me, sizing me up. What kind of husband or boyfriend was I, their eyes were asking? How big a dupe? They talked me into the most expensive bottle they had, deluding me somehow into believing my girlfriend (essentially myself in this scenario) deserved the very best. Hadn't she waited long enough?

A month or so later I visited Portland, wondering, "Do they have any interesting bathrooms?" They did! The Perfume House, my host said, but she didn't think it was much. It was closed the first few days of my trip and I passed the time in Nordstrom and Saks, where I got Declaration Essence and smelled Gucci pour Homme for the first time. When I was looking at Declaration Essence, I sprayed it ever so slightly on my wrist. No no, the saleswoman said, taking the bottle from me. "How will you enjoy THAT?" Before I could answer she'd sprayed more perfume than I'd ever dared, covering my wrist in a wet pool of smell. It was so strong that when I walked into the nail salon to let my host smell, it registered over the toxic stench of nail products. I walked around inside the dream of that aroma all day.

The Perfume House really did it for me. Located in an old home on the middle of a busy street, its curious effect on my outlook was incalculably transforming. For someone who associated perfume with private, clandestine areas of the house, being in a house stocked full of bottles, everywhere you looked, was revolutionary. I can't explain how life changing this was for me. It took perfume out of the bathroom: brought it right out into the open, into the living room, the bedroom, the foyer, the bedroom. And everyone came out with it, setting bottles and cotton swabs of scent all over the counters and shelves. It was a four day conversation about perfume and for once the subject didn't feel like a dirty secret. The whole history of the world was tucked inside the topic. How strange to emerge from the building. Out on the street, no one else seemed to be having the conversation.

Over the next four or five days I spent roughly ten hours there. It was an intensive crash course on just some of the variety available in fragrance. Lutens, L'Artisan, Amouage, Piguet, Carthusia, Lalique, Patou, Crown, Goutal. The owner and his staff were wonderful. They made no assumptions, no value judgments, knew something about everything they stocked. What they couldn't remember they immediately looked up, without my having to ask. I bought five or six perfumes that trip: Dzing!, Sables, Bois 1920 Classic, Comme des Garçons 2, Chypre Rouge. My last day, I had a cold and was quietly devastated that I couldn't smell the things I'd bought. Regardless, I didn't want to leave.

The interesting if perhaps predictable thing is that since that time I have purchased everything I smelled and liked in that store over the course of those four days. And then some, naturally. Am I trying to make up for lost time? Maybe. Last night, thinking about it all, I suddenly considered again how brief everything is. I'd been out to dinner with my friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Time telegraphed back and forth in my head and I got sad thinking how ephemeral life can be. Your relationships and the things which mean so much to you are blips on the screen, brief and fleeting. It tortures me. Someone's face eventually becomes a photograph, frozen in time, telling only a fraction of the story. The dog you loved and woke to for fifteen years is long gone, along with her smell and the sensation of her fur against your cheek.

Perfume, for me, I realized, extends those blips into lifelong memories, which live on indefinitely in the mind. I only went to LA several months ago, but this weekend I smelled Chanel Cuir De Russie, which I bought there, and already it smells like that whole trip to me: the insecurities I felt showing my film for the first time, coupled with the wonder of being in that weird, magical and merciless place. Perfume brought every complicated emotion back to me with visceral economy. Nothing else has the ability to do that with such facility. Maybe it has to do with the fact that perfume itself is so complicated and hard to pin down. Perfume itself is tangled emotion and wonder, sadness and beauty and beatitude all mixed together. The smell of violets isn't simply floral but ancestral for me. Violets are my grandmother, conjuring every last detail of her memory. Fragrance has the power to bring the dead back to life. It changes things, alters the course of time, penetrates the mind and the mood.

Meeting Abigail in The Perfume Critic chat room was important for me. Starting this blog extended the conversation I began at the Perfume House in Portland, bringing it into the outside world. We talk almost every day, several times a day. We meet on the blog to share our impressions and all those complicated feelings. We share perfume and the stories behind them with each other. And all those conversations are peppered with everything else going on in our individual day to day lives. When I talked to Abigail on the phone the first time, after we'd known each other a couple of months and been blogging that time, it was like walking into the Perfume House again. I didn't want to hang up. We talked so easily, more easily than most people I've known ten times as long. The things I'd worked so hard to hide or downplay in conversation with others were matter of fact between us, and I talked like someone's hand had been muffling me all this time.

I can't imagine talking about perfume without Abigail being by my side in the discussion. Together, we've left the Perfume House and taken it out onto the street, continuing the conversation in public. Funny thing, that. Once you start talking on the street you draw others who are having their own conversations. Ours eventually started getting responses from the people reading us, and we continue (avidly) reading other people. Perfume: The Guide was indispensable. IS indispensable. Turin and Sanchez are real advocates, deepening the exchange of perfume between self and the larger world, chief proponents of the right to opinion and passion when talking about it and sharing it, defending it or dismissing it. All the reference lists on various perfume blogs were key, too. I printed them all out and carried the phone book-sized lot around with me, studying as if cramming for an exam. I wanted to know perfume inside and out. I still do. All the perfumers, all the companies, all the ingredients, accords, terms, all the history. I have the feeling there's no going back for me now, and despite all the wonderful things that have happened for me this year with my work and in my personal life, my initiation into perfume and the open embrace of that long-forbidden pleasure stands alone as a singular achievement.

Below are flashbacks from the year for me, some of the moments which come most readily to mind:

-Walking into Chanel in Beverly Hills, where the first thing I saw was a row of Les Exclusifs. I came for Cuir de Russie but they were out. I was the only one in the crowded store looking at perfume, and the sales force seemed perplexed by my insistence and questions. Wasn't there someone in my life who might like a nice quilted purse?

-Traveling across the country for work allowed me to visit perfume shops and department stores I don't have access to at home, and often I was much more preoccupied with tracking down bottles of juice than the real reason for being in town. I visited Nordstrom and Parfumerie Nasreen in Seattle, Barneys and Etro and LuckyScent in LA, Barneys in Chicago, Fena Fresh in Greece. My favorite is still the Perfume House, though it doesn't have many of the lines I look for.

-I shopped online a lot. Nothing compares to the excitement of opening a package you've been waiting for. Will it disappoint? Will it exceed expectations? I've experienced both and everything in between, from the let down of Comme des Garcons 2 Man (poor longevity) to the thrill and surprise wallop of Rien and Jasmine et Cigarettes.

-Reading the Guide for the first time made the whole world stop for me. I couldn't hear or see anything else.

-Buying every last perfume I ever smelled in my stepmother's bathroom, including all the Estee Lauders and Coco.

-The constant adjustment my sensibility has gone through regarding gender lines and designations when it comes to perfume. What once seemed unspeakably feminine to me now registers as totally androgynous. What once seemed impossibly butch is now passably femme.

-I spent all year trying to find several perfumes. I ordered Chaos for a friend when it finally came out again and was a little more affordable. In the meantime, during my search, I came across DK Signature, which caught me off guard and turned out to be one of my favorite purchases. I looked everywhere for Lancome Cuir. Even the Lancome reps seemed never to have heard of it. It finally became available on Parfum1, and I love it.

-I ended the year buying five Ava Luxe fragrances and Breath of God from B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful.

Thanks to Perfume Shrine for involving us in this project. See also:

Perfume Shrine
Ars Aromatica
A Rose Beyond the Thames
Bittergrace Notes
Grain de Musc
Legerdenez
Notes from the Ledge
Olfactarama
Savvy Thinker
The Non Blonde
Tuilleries
1000 Fragrances

Cartier Declaration Essence: Essentially Elusive

My reaction to this cologne is unreasonable and indescribable, and for a long time I’ve avoided writing about it because its effect on me isn’t something a simple recital of its notes or an intellectual dissection of its dry down could convey. Since buying it, I’ve acquired many more fragrances. I won’t bore you or embarrass myself by saying just how many. Declaration Essence has been pushed to the back of the cabinet. The bottle is unwieldy and though I could easily replace it I resist using it for fear of running out. I don’t ever want to be without Declaration Essence, so I never use it. This is the logic of an obsessive, and explains why many old women have closets full of dresses and hats and coats which have never been removed from the manufacturer’s packaging, and china which is saved for a dinner which is never served.

This weekend, I traveled to rural Arkansas to visit some family. I packed efficiently (one and a half pair of underwear for each day, two t-shirts, soap, shampoo, laptop, books) until it came time to perfume. Obviously, I’ve travelled before, but almost never to a place where I can’t shop for perfume. When I don’t bring anything, it’s usually because I know I’ll need the room for purchases I’ve made while away. I rarely have to think about how much sniffing I’ll need or want to do. Would one bottle for each day be enough? Or two? I had no idea. On any given day I sit down after work with at least ten bottles and alternate holding one or the other under my nose like Frank Booth inhaling from his oxygen tank in Blue Velvet. M-M-M-M-Mommy! How could I possibly bring thirty bottles of perfume to Arkansas?

I decided this was a singular opportunity to appreciate the merits of a small handful. Smelling ten at a time, you very seldom get the true aromatic properties of any individual scent. Like cable TV, there’s so much to choose from. Declaration Essence seemed an ideal candidate for this special occasion, so along with Chanel Antaeus, Santa Maria Novella Iris, Washington Tremlett Royals Heroes 1805, and a busted-up bottle of Cuir de Russie, I packed it for the trip.

The country proved an ideal setting for appraising this cologne. I knew I loved it but had forgotten with what kind of passion. When I first smelled Declaration, at Sephora, I was impressed but underwhelmed. From the notes, it seemed like something I would be into. Anything with cardamom seemed a sure fire winner to me. But the choice was between that and Terre D’Hermes, and the latter won out. Months later, when I was in Portland, I wandered into Nordstroms while my friend had her nails done. A saleslady at the mens fragrance counter, after trying to push some feminine on me as a gift for the woman in my life (I AM the woman in my life, I want to scream at these people) she pointed out Declaration Essence to me. I didn’t realize it was a flanker at first and wasn’t interested. It was only because I decided to give the Declaration I remembered from Sephora a second smell that I allowed her to spritz my wrist with Essence. She sprayed amply, drenching my skin, and when I smelled it, I had the kind of intense reaction most of us hope for when we pick up the next bottle. The fact such a response happens so infrequently is one of the things which keeps me looking.

Arkansas was so quiet, and my access to other perfumes so circumscribed this weekend, that I focused intently on Declaration Essence, its smoky nuttiness, an artful blend of woods and spice. The projection is respectable. The longevity is decent enough for an EDT. Many people say that in order for them to tolerate anything less than exemplary persistence, the price must be reasonable and the fragrance exceptional. Essence is both. For what it’s worth, the notes are generally agreed to be bergamot, orange, cedar, birch, oakmoss, cardamom, vetiver, rosewood, and moss. Some insist on the presence of cistus and amber. Chocolate, even. It’s difficult for me to smell any of these things individually, though seeing them delineated on paper I imagine I can, if only fleetingly. Declaration Essence is so well blended, and so wonderfully fragrant, that it hardly matters. Anything that distracts me from the smell itself is banished from my thoughts. Try as I might I can’t break down DE. It isn’t a cerebral scent, even into the extended dry down, a point where your critical faculties start to again intercede with many fragrances. Looking out my mother’s windows, every one of which opens onto a view of Arkansas’ dry green summer landscapes, was a perfect visual counterpart to the smell of DE wafting up from my wrists. There’s something equally inexplicable about those views, equally difficult to describe. Being in my mother’s house always means talking a lot or hearing a lot about my grandmother. It occurred to me that she probably would have liked DE for its Maverick character, having possessed more than a little of that herself.