Notes on Jacques Cavallier

After smelling all manner of wonderful, exotic things in Italy, I returned home to find my bottle of Calvin Klein Man. It was sitting there on my desk, where I'd left it. The smell transported me back, twenty days ago, to the frantic state of mind I was in as I struggled to tie up last minute loose ends in preparation for such a lengthy time away. I bought CK Man several days before my departure. It's only now, coming back to it, that I realize how far it went toward calming me, however crazed I felt at the time. What is it about the work of Jacques Cavallier, the nose behind CK Man and so many other fragrances I love, that appeals to me?

Chandler Burr on Cavallier: "...a prolific perfumer so successful these days that he often seems to generate a quarter of each year’s worldwide fragrance product." Interestingly, in a recent review of Cavallier's latest Stella flanker, Sheer Stella, Burr accused its creative team of crass commercialism and lowest common denominator aromachemicals. Cavallier responded in print, correcting Burr's facts if not his opinion. The ingredients of Sheer are the same as those in the original; simply modified into different proportions. This bit of careless inaccuracy must have irked Cavallier to no end, given how often his perfumes have been judged more emotionally (i.e. irrationally) than factually.

Cavallier, self admittedly strong-willed, has built a reputation, in part, on a small body of cult favorites, fragrances difficult to classify, sometimes impossible to market. Some have been discontinued. All are interesting, whether success or failure by commercial standards. That isn't to say Cavallier doesn't create marketable fragrances. Some of his creations, like Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey, have been genre-defining hits. But for every hit there are one or two "misses". The interesting thing about those so-called misses is how influential they are in their own way. Far from missing their targeted audiences, these ricochet off into different precincts of the industry, creating new trends, planting the seeds for new audiences through alternate combinations, forging innovative paths which other perfumers then follow. It's a different kind of success.

M7, for Yves Saint Laurent, is no longer available in the U.S., but it presages the craze for all things aoud in masculines and feminines alike. M7 probably helped make the Montale line possible. It certainly influenced the recent reinterpretation of Habit Rouge, the edp concentration of which replaced powdery carnation and amber with agarwood. The inclusion of rosemary in the M7 mix typically goes unremarked, yet it adds a trademark touch of the herbal dissonance to the composition in a way which relates M7 to everything from Ultraviolet for Paco Rabanne to the above mentioned CK Man in Cavallier's oeuvre.

The herbal bent of Cavallier's compositions often has, as with CK Man, a lactonic quality, giving it a richness and an opacity unique to perfumery. Le Feu D'Issey (discontinued and difficult to find) and L'eau Bleu D'Issey both explore this territory, resembling the milky viscosity you get when you break open certain twigs and plants. Feu is less openly herbal, applying the effect to citrus notes. Bleu is unabashedly green and aromatic, and in addition to the herbal tones it features another Cavallier trademark, an odd little bread note. That bread note reappears in different combinations throughout his output, creating alternate takes on what is already a unique accord.

The apotheosis of this bread note appears in YSL Elle, which Cavallier recently co-created with frequent collaborator Olivier Cresp. The two have also worked together on Midnight Poison, Cacharel Amor Pour Homme Tentation, Diesel Fuel for Life Unlimited, Lancome Magnifique, Nina Ricci "Nina", and Paco Rabanne Pour Elle. Aside from Cresp, Cavallier's most frequent collaborator has been Alberto Morillas. His creations with Cresp have been less overtly odd. His work with Morillas, his "brother in creation", seems to have trickled off around 2003. A more recent collaboration with Annick Menardo proved one of the more interesting fusions of technique in contemporary perfumery. Who knew that the sensibilities of the two would compliment each other so well? For Diesel Fuel for Life Women, he matched her creamy vanillic-floral contribution with herbs and that signature bread note, creating a unique take on the trend for fruity florals. Fuel for Life Men presented a modern fougere, part fruity, part fern.

His most iconic fragrances, aside from L'eau d'Issey, have been Acqu di Gio for men, Jean Paul Gaultier Classique, Bulgari Eau Parfumee au The Blanc, Essenza di Zegna, Armani Mania, Stella McCartney, and Lancome Poeme. My own personal favorites have typically been YSL fragrances created under partnership with Tom Ford: Cinema, M7, the fantastic Nu (again, slightly ahead of the craze for incense fragrances), and Rive Gauche Pour Homme. His work with Ford continued after Ford's tenure at YSL ended. Since then he has done two Private Blends under the Tom Ford brand name: Tuscan Leather and the sublime Noir de Noir, both with Harry Fremont, who was also his collaborator on CK Man. I appreciate Calvin Klein Truth and Boucheron Initial (a wonderful use of immortelle) without feeling too passionately about either.

Weirdly, my favorites aren't necessarily those I wear most often. I can't remember the last time I sprayed on Nu, let alone M7. So it's no surprise that the first Cavallier fragrance I bought and loved is the one I wear the least frequently. Kingdom is unusual even for Cavallier, in that I find it difficult to relate to the rest of his work, apart from its general audacity. No other Cavallier fragrance divides as neatly down the line between love and hate. Some smell body odor. I smell jasmine, rose, and cumin. The first proposal for Alexander McQueen's first fragrance was what eventually became Secretions Magnifiques for Etat Libre D'Orange. Comparing Secretions to Kingdom shows how tame Kingdom really is. Whereas Secretions is assaultive and difficult to impossible (I like it, mind you), Kingdom integrates its oddness in a way which makes that dividing line not only possible but emphatic. Secretions is alarming and off-putting, no matter how much you appreciate it. Kingdom carries the big stick but walks softly with it.

Cavallier was born in 1962. His birthplace, big surprise, was Grasse. His family has been there since the 15th Century. Both his father and grandfather were perfumers. As a child, he studied raw materials with his father from 5 to 7 a.m. He joined several companies before Firmenich, with whom he's now employed.

Lorenzo Villoresi: Teint de Neige

Abigail and I agree on a lot of things, and are often right on the same page on any given number of subjects, but every once in a while we part ways when it comes to a particular fragrance. A while back, after buying a bottle of Teint de Neige, she observed that it smelled of baby powder; nothing more, nothing less. Hearing that, I might have passed on Teint de Neige altogether. Who wants to smell like baby powder? And in fact, when I ran across some of Villoresi's fragrances in Milan, I smelled everything but Teint de Neige the first few times I visited the shop in question.

I'd never read the Chandler Burr review, which awarded the fragrance five out of five stars, but I'd heard a lot about Villoresi on the perfume blogs. I liked what I smelled, but not enough to buy anything. A few days before leaving Italy, I finally asked to test Teint de Neige, figuring I should at least be familiar with it, and I was surprised how much I liked it. I liked it so much that, after spending a day with the sample I'd been given, I returned to buy my own full bottle. Teint de Neige (color of snow) does smell like baby powder, which is why I initially dismissed it. Gradually, I realized it smelled like a lot of other things to me too: almonds, rose, jasmine, musk, orange blossom, vanilla.

In some ways, Teint reminds me of Hypnotic Poison. The two share a strange, lactonic-floral undertone. It also reminds me of make-up, the aroma of cosmetics, a smell I really like for various reasons, most of them having to do with nostalgia, evoking memories of my childhood fascination at how much time my grandmothers and mother spent putting on their faces. Teint smells vintage somehow, and formal, and something about it brings to mind the powdered wigs, cakes, sets, and fashions from the film Marie Antoinette. Like that film, Teint de Neige is very specific, maybe even exhaustive, in style. It's a very focused fragrance, and this might preclude many people from enjoying its more subtle attractions.

As Burr says, Teint de Neige has great longevity and diffusion. Many of Villoresi's fragrances seem to, and the discussions and reviews about them often point out their strength of character. They are frequently slammed by Luca Turin, who seems to have decided, if not decreed, that their maker has no talent. Aside from Mona di Orio, there are few perfumers to whom Turin and Sanchez are more thoroughly unkind. Villoresi is dimissed as a talentless hack, while Orio is regarded as a sort of impostor, pretending to have studied with the great Michel Roudnitska. Both Burr and Turin are dismissive of various perfumes. It isn't often they dismiss an entire line. Even rarer that they dismiss a perfumer him or herself. Even the worst seem to produce something of interest now and then. I forget how much influence these kinds of reviews can have, and how insidiously they affect the attitude toward a brand or a specific fragrance. I was surprised, too, when I smelled di Orio and realized how much I like her work.

Fortunately, people seem to swear by Villoresi, and, according to Burr, Teint is Villoresi's biggest seller. The shop where I bought my bottle stocked it more than any other, in two sizes, whereas every other Villoresi but Patchouli came in only 3.4 ounce bottles. I bought 1.7 ounces because Teint is strong and requires very little. To me, it works better faintly, as if a hazy but persistent memory.

Star Power: Perfume and the X Factor

I've been thinking a lot about star quality lately. I'm reading a book called The Star Machine, in which the author, Jeanine Basinger, "anatomizes" the old Hollywood Factory, a system which manufactured desire, then sought to fulfill it by the creation or cultivation of stars.

What made one person (Greta Garbo, for instance) a mega star, where another equally beautiful woman, also a good actress, might not have been? It wasn't just the publicity behind her; the studio system working overtime. It was some indefinable but inarguable quality she had. Hollywood saw this potential in many people, and was able to exploit it in some by tweaking the basics: straightening teeth, perming hair or raising a hairline, crash diets, plastic surgery, dance lessons, voice lessons, poise instruction. Where the raw material didn't already exist the studio bosses sometimes tried to create it from scratch, but this almost always ended disastrously. Whatever that seed quality was, however much they improved upon it or tried to devise a formula to replicate it, it existed beyond definition and all practical logic. As one observer of old Hollywood said, you knew star quality when you saw it, not before then. How many studio executives, seeing Bette Davis for the first time, would have imagined 21st Century America would remember her name?

Inevitably, I started relating these questions to perfume. What is it about some fragrances, what quality, that makes them so powerful? We're talking about something like Angel or L'Heure Bleue, perfumes which have legs and walk right into the next century, never losing their appeal, becoming iconic over time or even instantly. It's the difference between Joan Crawford, who survived the transition from the silents to the talkies, and Pauline Frederick, who didn't. MGM wanted you to believe they'd created Joan Crawford out of whole cloth from one Lucille Le Sueur, as if there were some secret recipe they followed for mass appeal. Moviemakers are always trying to replicate the success of what appears to be a proven format, with an actor or a movie that resembles some other runaway hit. Similarly, the perfume industry released gourmand patchouli after gourmand patchouli trying to capitalize on the success of Angel (Chopard Wish, anyone?) and who knows how many fruity florals have flooded the market in the last decade, thanks in small part to the sales of a few fragrances like Carolina Herrera.

Pyramids and ad copy for these perfumes are full of pure untruths, half-truths, and fantasy images which try, like the old Hollywood fan magazines and studio star bios, to build appeal. From The Star Machine: "The 'bio' was a blatant advertising tool, designed, like all advertising, to shape the buyer's attitude and convince him that he needed the product... " But few of these knock-offs or sequels succeed on any kind of level that would validate the idea that a hit can be carbon copied. The secret of this kind of success eludes everyone, not least the perfumers themselves, who devise the formulas to begin with.

Some perfumes have built mythical worlds of imaginative association around themselves beyond any attempts by their manufacturers to make them best sellers. It's something mesmeric about them and no one can put their finger on it, though a few, like Luca Turin, find words to convey their power. Like, say, Ingrid Bergman, they've transcended a list of attributes and statistics and become something more, something huge, sustained by fantasy and desire. Plenty of actresses were foreign, had blond hair, a nice smile, a certain sadness, but no one else was Ingrid Bergman, just as Bergman was no Greta Garbo, whose success she'd been an answer to. Some of the most beloved perfumes have been helped by their parent companies. Guerlain has done particularly well building an image for its progeny, creating an air of glamor and intrigue very close in spirit to films like Casablanca. Chamade becomes an actor, a star, in a series of movies in the mind of its wearer, overwhelming the senses in a way no one truly understands. Turin can relate the plots of those movies in a way that brings them to life on the page. But who could film them?

Which of the classic perfumes would be which stars? Which match what persona in terms of broad appeal? Bette Davis would be Habanita, Tabac Blond, or Magie: something a little difficult, a challenge to fully aprehend behind all that cigarette smoke and bravado. Garbo would be Mitsouko, I've decided. Joan Crawford might be Cuir de Russie--or Coromandel. Something with thick eyebrows and fearsome bone structure. Grace Kelly would be Chanel No. 19, compellingly aloof, hot and cold simultaneously. Jimmy Stewart might be Monsieur Balmain; affable but sturdy.Modern stars are typically better suited to modern perfumes. Informal, gregarious Julia Roberts is hardly a rich oriental. She has that curious appeal of a fruity floral you wouldn't expect to find yourself falling for. Something fun-loving, with a sense of humor. Juicy Couture? It smiles big, has an easy laugh, is effervescent and uncomplicated, and you're hooked. Gwyneth Paltrow is easy enough: Kelly Caleche. What better perfume for a Grace Kelly carbon than one basically named after her? That said, there are contemporary stars you can picture inhabiting older perfumes, Debra Winger being a prime example.

Winger has always seemed out of place within the system and cut her own path outside it, much like Bette Davis, who fought with the studios and won, or Frances Farmer, who fought and lost. Winger seems too big, too willfully complex for the minimalist ambitions of modern perfume, typified by Jean Claude Ellena. She makes more sense with something like Bandit, too busy cutting her own path to bother daring you to understand what she's about. Even most of the niche fragrances seem too simplified and straightforward for her. Unless you're talking about something discontinued--something too complex and unusual, too headstrong in a certain direction to make it in the mass marketplace. Shaal Nur, maybe. Or Dzing!
One person might feel nothing for Crawford, or Garbo, and yet the draw is hard to deny, that star quality. Others, like Winger, difficult in some way or with less popular appeal, are acquired tastes. They're really character actors with the looks or magnetism of a leading player, too shaded and nuanced for superstardom. I think of Alexander McQueen, having just written about Kingdom. The reviews were pretty stratified. Kingdom would fall into a love it or hate it category. The kind of star that divides opinion, with little room for half way, and is consequently shoved aside into the margins, where it plays a supporting or unnoticed role. Black Cashmere and Givenchy Insense come immediately to mind. Then there are the stars and perfumes which make no pretense about aspiring to this very category, making another kind of stardom out of marginality. Comme des Garcon has specialized better than any other brand in this way. Etat Libre D'Orange has followed in their footsteps. Etro walks the line but probably having wandered into it inadvertently.

Just as the studios tried to manufacture star power out of simple boys and girls from Idaho, the perfume industry tries to hype a whole lot of nothing much into superstar status. It only rarely works. And in a climate of empty buzz and super-saturation, critics like Chandler Burr and Luca Turin, as with Pauline Kael in film, encourage us to re-evaluate our unconscious, unexamined attractions to various stars, putting chinks in their supremacy and, maybe, taking some of the wind out of the sail of a commercial entity which is full of hot air. The downside of this is that sometimes the critics themselves become authorities with the power to blow something out of proportion or to knock it down without much more than a sigh, like columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons once did movies and movie stars.

"Parsons and Hopper...could inspire genuine rage among members of the motion picture community helpless to fight them," writes Victoria Price in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. "When Joseph Cotten once kicked the chair on which Hopper was sitting to bits, after having an extra-marital affair announced in her column, his house was filled with flowers and telegrams from others who had been similarly maligned. But...when Hopper and Parsons liked someone, nothing was too much to do to help—and their power could become a boon for someone struggling to make it in movies."

Thankfully, like Parsons and Hopper, Burr and Turin often disagree, revealing how opinionated and inexact a science the whole equation is. From The Star Machine: "The problem for the business was that the audience didn't all agree on what they saw. Some said that Greer Garson was a talented actress of ladylike grace and charm, but Pauline Kael called her 'one of the most richly syllabled queenly horrors of Hollywood.' For their legions of fans (who still endure), Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald were the believable epitome of musical romance, but for Noel Coward they were 'an affair between a mad rockinghorse and a rawhide suitcase.'"

Turin gave Kingdom one star. Kelly Caleche is...bleh, to him. And yet Chandler Burr often disagrees with him by more than a single star or even two. LikeParsons and Hopper, those two influential Hollywood gossip columnists, who could make or break a star with a well-worded sentence, Turin and Burr even seem to have something of a competition going, friendly or otherwise. Background in chemistry or not, there is no real science to how perfume appeals to or influences us. Stardom is elusive and powerful, and stars are enigmas. Who can explain my attraction to Galliano eau de parfum? In one way it's perfectly silly and stereotypical. It imitates other more fantastic, more talented stars the way Christian Slater poorly recalls Jack Nicholson. I can imagine how it will be reviewed, once it hits the states. It would never carry a picture, and yet I find myself liking it, more and more, casting it in my own personal movies.

Dior Addict: A Review

It was only a matter of time before I got to Dior Addict. I’d guess that anyone who loves Loulou, Amarige and other big, loud floral-orientals would be inclined to like Addict. Addict is an attention getting fragrance. It’s a sultry, sexy, spicy, complex vanillic fragrance. I love Addict.

Don’t get the wrong impression of me. I’m not the woman in the office that everyone gags when they’re around because of the headache-inducing cloud of perfume surrounding her. I wear all types of fragrances and they aren’t all loud. I certainly don’t over-apply the uber-strong ones – but, without a doubt, there’s a place in my heart for certain fragrances that so many love to hate. Like Angel for instance – love it.

Addict is a rather difficult perfume to describe. It’s complex and smells differently from person to person and from day to day. Overall Addict is a citrusy-vanilla-floral-oriental. The structure of Addict reminds me of Angel. By this I mean it’s an addictive (I had to use addictive just once!) combination of traditionally feminine and masculine notes. Addict has a good dose of heady florals and vanillic sweetness, the typical feminine stuff, but it also contains a balancing amount of dry ambery woods, and it’s this combination that makes it so good. If Addict were solely a sweet sticky floral-vanilla I’d surely find it gaggity. The addition of the dry woods and spices give it depth and diffuses the sweetness - so instead of being repulsive it makes you want to smell it again and again.

I won’t lie to you and tell you it’s not a trashy fragrance. Addict smells utterly trashy. But it’s a good trashy. Addict is definitely that rebellious sister, friend or aunt that seems to live a rather (ahem) interesting life that you’d love to experience for maybe a month. I have an aunt named Paula. Paula was brilliant. She was a straight “A” student, got into an Ivy League college, quit college, became an exotic dancer, moved to California, did lots of drugs, wrote a book, married 4 times, re-married husband #1 recently, had a string of interesting and oddball jobs, owned a bookstore once, was a therapist for a few years (yup, a sex therapist), traveled the world, created her own line of vitamins, and is now a yoga instructor. Addict makes me think of my aunt Paula. It’s trashy yet it’s interesting, intelligent, thoughtful and creative.

To describe Addict more specifically, it starts as a citrus and very sweet vanilla scent. It’s not among the listed notes but Chandler Burr mentions that Addict contains coumarin. Coumarin is a sweet synthetic smelling vanillic-almond-salt water taffy aroma. Addict smells mostly of citrusy coumarin for the first 30 minutes or so. This isn’t my favorite part. Addict becomes a great fragrance once it dries down and the sweetness fades a little and the spicy, ambery woody notes appear. Upon dry down Addict shows it’s most interesting facets – it swirls about in a circle of sweet coumarin, florals and cinnamon, amber & spice.

Addict is not for the faint of heart. But if you like the occasional loud fragrance with sillage and longevity to spare check it out.

Longevity: Forever
Sillage: Huge – be careful

Notes: mandarin leaf, silk tree flower, Queen of the Night flower, rose, jasmine, orange blossom, absolute of bourbon vanilla, sandalwood from Mysore and tonka bean.

UPDATED a few moments after posting: Actually I just had an epiphany. Addict reminds me a lot of a supercharged Trouble by Boucheron on steroids.

Binge Dieting: Secret Obsession, Magnifique, Sensuous and Other Anorexic Simulations

What is it with the latest batch of commercial releases? What aroma-chemical or marketing approach lends them all the baffling sense of sameness? Pick up Lancome Magnifique, Estee Lauder Sensuous, and Calvin Klein Secret Obsession to name several. The dry downs of the latter two seem virtually identical: politely discreet, vaguely woody, a half-assed, half-finished accord akin to someone with stale breath turning his face away so as not to offend you, inadvertently insuring you won't be able to hear what he's saying any more than you can tell what his sentence smells like. Magnifique shares with these a thinned-out sweetness in the top notes, as if someone diluted the overall composition with water and vodka and anything else she had at hand, just to see how far she could extend it before its aroma reached that barely-there threshold.

What do these fragrances and this apparent trend have to say about the buying public's desires or our cultural sensibility as a whole? Many fragrances targeted specifically to the Asian market take into account the Asian buyer's partiality to perfume so pristine it ceases to smell like perfume, creating fragrances which bow their heads and avert their eyes in deference to all who approach. Americans, on the other hand, seem to be obsessed with fruity florals, or someone thinks they are and relentlessly produces them. Add to fruity florals the obscenely, obsessive-compulsively clean. Aqua di Gio continues to be a bestseller in the masculine market, even as masculines inch ever more toward the floral. Meanwhile, Dolce and Gabbana's Light Blue is a top-seller with women and smells like something a man would spray to hide the B.O. his girlfriend finds offensive or the lingering odor of a particularly torrid indiscretion.

The Reds and Giogios and Poisons and Paris' of the eighties seemed in keeping with a culture-wide disregard for the feelings or circumstances of others, a fashion for big-shouldered, high-haired silhouettes, and an imposition of one's self onto one's environment, as if the latter weren't complete or noteworthy until the arrival on the scene of the former. Trends change but always reflect cultural values to some extent. So what's with all the anemic fragrances flooding the department store counters? Are we wishy-washy, non-committal, or simply afraid of our own shadows?

It's interesting to compare the reviews of Chandler Burr and the intellectual team of Lucca Turin and Tania Sanchez. While all three revere the great creations of perfumers past, Burr advances the idea that the practical application of these creations in the contemporary social environment is non-existent at this point, while Turin and Sanchez hold to the idea that perfumes are timeless and relevant; they no more go out of fashion than a Dior cut from 1940 or the Declaration of Independence. It's all about attitude and character, and homage without context is worthless. Change is great, but at what cost?

Burr often gives high marks to compositions which recall those vintage perfumes the way postmodern writing begs, borrows, and steals from the classics of literature, tossing all its constituent attributes into a hybrid which recalls without specifying exactly what or when. His unqualified appreciation of Sisley's Eau du Soir is a good example:

"It is an expert pastiche of the traditional French “animalic”—i.e., the smell of animal (a classic trope of French perfumery)—but in a version for the 21st century. This take on animalic is not redolent of an armpit but rather of a mink coat, which is to say it is the smell of real leather plus real hot fur. This is a visceral luxury, and Mongin builds the perfume’s top by welding it to a greenish, sleekly modern floral."

Turin's dismissal of the fragrance as insipid, empty-headed knock-off is equally indicative of his own values. The perfume doesn't even rate a review in Perfume: The Guide; rather, he knocks it in passing, in the course of another fragrance's review, as if throwing a passenger out of the car without stopping to let her out. To Turin, Eau de Soir is a perfume which recalls the classic green chypres, to be sure--the way a town in Disney's Small World attraction recalls its real time source. You can't expect to understand Japan from the little pivoting automatons in kimonos.

Don't get the idea Turin and Sanchez are living in the past. Witness Turin on Chanel No 5 Eau Premiere: "This is abstract, classical perfumery at its best," he writes, "revisited by people who do not see modernization as an excuse for screwing up." Turin will be the first to slam Guerlain for altering its classics, unless or until he feels the job is being well done. Progress is great: hurray for the future. Turin just happens to be the strongest critical voice in his field speaking out for the recognition of perfumery as art, the relevance of art to cultural history, and the importance of history to culture at large. That isn't to say Burr dismisses the past or perfume's artistry. Of Germaine Cellier, the nose behind Fracas, Bandit, and Vent Vert, he said: "an artist working in the olfactory medium." It's simply to say that Burr and Team Turin-Sanchez are necessary polar points in the modern dialog about perfume, presenting its complicated, panoramic picture to date. That Burr presents the picture using photo-realism and Sanchez-Turin represent it with the kinetic brush strokes of cubism illustrates how much room there is for interpretation.

What would these three say about the relative sameness of modern commercial perfumery offered at the local mall; specifically, about Secret Obsession, Magnifique, and Senuous? This is the face of perfumery the average consumer digests and perhaps demands in some way. How can someone like Calice Becker go from the pungent glory of Tommy Girl and J'Adore to the milquetoast timidity of Secret Obsession within such a relatively short amount of time? Turin, at least, has sounded off regarding Sensuous, remarking, "...up close the fragrance disintegrates over the first hour into a bare array of disconnected things failing to cohere: white floral, synthetic wood, praline-like amber. All told, thin and lacking mystery."

Perhaps the modern fragrance reflects the contemporary obsession with diet and self-abnegation and a concomitant nation-wide phenomenon of obesity. Are these fragrances our way of punishing ourselves for our indulgent excesses? If we're going to gorge ourselves on the fruity gourmands and decadent pleasures of heady floral bouquets, we must, we might feel, at some point fast. At least we have the wit and erudition of writers like Sanchez, Turin, and Burr, who elevate the conversation to an ideological plane which feels as rich as chocolate and feeds the mind without indulging its apparent need to eventually deny itself pleasure.

Caron Tabac Blond Parfum vs. EdT and in general

This evening I’m only wearing two perfumes. On one arm is Caron’s Tabac Blond in the EdT concentration and on the other arm is Caron’s Tabac Blond in parfum extrait concentration. I love making these sorts of comparisons. Next week I plan to get Caron’s Narcisse Noire parfum to compare with the EdT I already have. Sometimes I find there is very little difference or that I actually prefer the EdT concentration which is usually easier to find and less expensive. Tonight, however, I think the parfum version is taking the lead. Yes, in my mind it’s a bit like a horse race. I keep sniffing every 15 minutes or so to see how things are changing in the various phases. I’m in the dry down phase now and it’s definitely the parfum Tabac Blond that’s the clear winner.

In the beginning, after the initial spritz, the EdT smelled mostly like alcohol and the parfum smelt immediately like buttery suede with spices (clove and carnation). The parfum stayed surprisingly true to form from the first spritz all the way through the dry down and it’s about 3 hours later now. The EdT on the other hand (on the other arm I should say) was the one that morphed the most. The EdT started off much like an unsettled blast of alcohol, almost gasoline like, but after 5 minutes began to exhibit the lovely suede-leathery spicy carnation smell that I adore so much about Tabac Blond. The EdT stays a bit tamer in the dry down, exhibiting more sweet vanilla spicyness compared to the truly rebellious parfum, which stays in a smoldering tobacco, leather, spicy mood throughout.

I’ve read Chandler Burr’s interview with Luca Turin where Turin describes Tabac Blond as (paraphrasing here) “dykey (for dykes), dark, angular and unpresentable.” By the end of Turin’s statement, I believe him to be saying that Tabac Blond is quite edgy, unusual, interesting and truly chic. I don’t think I’d call Tabac Blond “dark,” either in EdT or parfum, but it is definitely edgy and not something Laura Bush or the country club set would wear. Tabac Blond is for the woman who is completely confident, comfortable in her own skin, opinionated and has a sharp witty sense of humor.

While I think the parfum extrait version is the clear winner in a side-by-side comparison, I still think the EdT concentration is a beautiful perfume. If you can’t easily find the parfum, don’t fret, the EdT is less expensive, easier to find and still a knockout. Tabac Blond in either concentration blows most leathery, spicy, tobacco perfumes out of this stratosphere.