From the Mountaintop: Norma Kamali Incense

As soon as I smelled this magic stuff, I knew I had to sign on and talk about it, because I waited forever to try it, and my hesitation had to do mostly with how infrequently I heard it mentioned. Incense couldn't be all that--it couldn't be too terribly fantastic--with so little being said on its behalf. I revisited the reviews on makeupalley again and again--one of the few places I saw it discussed--trying to find a common denominator in the general opinion there. Incense was said to be strong like you can't believe, one of those assault weapon fragrances which make massacre of your nearest neighbors. It was said to be linear ( like a bullet leaving the chamber, it moved straight to its victim), offensive, too bold to be tolerated. How could anyone actually wear his stuff, people asked. In theory, this sounded like my kind of fragrance, but the stuff goes for a whopping two hundred and twenty bucks, which is quite a sum for a feckless gamble.

I should mention: I'm not an incense fanatic. I rarely seem to back flip for whatever the latest craze seems to be, and I often resent the din of conversation centering around something which seems more about marketing than merit. Wonderful things have been done with Oud--I own a few of these things--but I grow weary seeing someone's mouth start to make the shape of the word, worried I'll have to hear more about it. Fig and iris were like Brittany and Kate Plus Eight to me. Where did these things come from? How long would they be cultural wallpaper? Would everything be brought to their level? The various permutations of these trendy notes fascinated me about as much as a photograph of Brittany emerging unawares from a limo, sans underthings. They were distractions, more than anything. Incense, for me, was just another one of these pointless celebutants. I loved some of the fragrances, the Comme des Garçons series, particularly, but for a while it seemed like learning to love the enemy, someone with whom you'd be forced to share a small cell indefinitely.

What drew me to Norma Kamali's version, I can't exactly say. Probably the idea of its force. I make no secret of my love for the stinky. This makes it into a joke, but really, for me, it's about embracing scents others make silly excuses not to like. My friend Bard says that when people say a fragrance is overpoweringly strong, what they essentially mean is, they don't like it. Which isn't to say some fragrances aren't loud. Poison is an intense scent. Amarige can be. Habanita is. But I'm always shocked, when I discover such pariahs for myself, how tame they actually are compared to these reports, and I've gradually learned to pay attention to the fragrances people dislike intensely.

I finally dropped coin for Incense, and I knew the moment I sniffed from the stoppered bottle that it would enter my top ten. I got the feeling it had always been there, on the list, waiting for me to join it. Incense is just about everything I might ask for in a fragrance, and so much more than a simple, straightforward variation on a them that I'm disinclined to call it by its name. Incense is robust but smooth, balsamic, charismatic, a little smoky, vaguely spiced, woody, diffusive, and persistent. It does smell like incense. It smells like a lot of other things, too. At the same time, I'm again thoroughly baffled, Bard's words aside, by the response to it. I don't consider Incense to be a particularly "fierce" or "potent" smell. I don't find anything in the opening which singes the nose hairs; nothing which resembles paint thinner or lighter fluid fumes. It doesn't tip heavily toward the masculine to me. The reports of its relentless linearity confuse me as well. While I do feel that Incense remains consistent from beginning to end, and while I agree it goes through no radical shifts, I suppose I wonder what fragrance truly does. Incense operates like a natural fragrance, shifting mercurially, full of nuance and depth. You smell it on someone and it speaks of a story. You feel there's something going on there, under the surface. Incense seems to collapse the idea of a surface, forcing you to sense depth. It has the kind of presence most perfumes are developed by creative teams to avoid at all costs. By this, I don't mean it's loud, or even that a little goes a long way; I mean that it has character and is unique.

Those who adore it and assign it top ratings like to point out that a bottle will last you forever, because you only need one drop. More strange praise, which I know now contributed to my resistance; why spend 220 bucks on something you can never have too little of? The truth is, I see myself moving quickly through Incense. I sprayed myself about five times in the summer heat yesterday and by no means or stretch did I scare anyone out of the room. I was working side by side all afternoon with a colleague and had no problem. Trust me, I asked. Incense requires no more or less application than any other scent that comes to mind, but, then again, like many of the fragrances I love, it's often most misleadingly described by its devoted admirers. It's the kind of scent you can't find the proper words for, maybe, even as it compels you to search.

Finding a great fragrance can be a religious experience, and you want to share the pleasure it brings you. It alters your consciousness a bit and leads you to see things in a different way. You want to shout it from the mountaintop. That can come off like proselytizing. It can also come across as superiority--something I often pick up from other perfume bloggers. I think I understand that. I empathize. Ultimately it's a process of trying to put into words, with some kind of definitive elan, why one fragrance has touched you more than another. In order to emphasize its greatness, something else must be less great.

Ultimately, however, the way a fragrances reaches one person will be very different from the way it does or doesn't connect with another, something we all know very well, however much we engage in dissecting the unclassifiable. We collectively pretend that we can reach consensus on fragrance: this, over here, is the good stuff; that, over there, that's the crap. The pile of crap is usually a gold mine, and gives away the lie of all these glorified opinions. Few have called Incense crap, mind you. But many sing its praises in a way which doesn't do it any favors, particularly when you consider that, had I heard it described differently, I might have purchased it months ago.

(The accompanying image is a photograph of a Norma Kamali dress taken by Mark Seliger)

Annick Goutal Eau de Fier

You’ve heard the expression, Sexy Ugly, right? I use it plenty to describe a person who is not conventionally beautiful or handsome but there’s just something...some sort of charisma, twinkle in the eye, strut or sex appeal that you can’t deny? I categorize Benicio del Toro, Denis Leary, David Duchovny, Milla Jovovich and Uma Thurman as Sexy Ugly. When you pull apart the features of these individuals, they might not be attractive, but as a whole, a sum of their parts, it all works, and you find them quite attractive.

Annick Goutal Eau de Fier is Sexy Ugly. Eau de Fier (EdF) is a blend of some of the ugliest stuff in perfumery; the tarriest birch tar, rubber, smoky, smoky, smoky tea and some citrus and a touch of fruit (if you’re looking for it). Eau de Fier is not conventionally pretty, nor is it perhaps acceptable for the office, if you work in a corporate suited-up environment, but I’m so attracted to it that I just can’t keep my hands off the bottle.

Eau de Fier goes on sheer, but it lasts for days. I find it an odd juxtaposition of sheer and potent; you might not realize it’s still there, but it most certainly is. I sprayed it on a male friend of mine, on his arm, and a bit got onto his sweater when he rolled his sleeve back down. I smelled it on him until he washed the sweater. Eau de Fier just doesn’t quit. It is a tenacious sexy beast.

If Bulgari Black is not your thing because it smells slightly rubber-y then you should stay away from Eau de Fier. EdF is hardcore. It is shocking that EdF comes from the house of Annick Goutal, who, for the most part, create charming, natural and conventionally pretty fragrances. I don’t know how EdF got out the door, because this, THIS is the most avant-garde fragrance I’ve ever smelled (yeah, yeah, Tubereuse Criminelle starts off shocking but it settles down, becomes tame and pretty after 30 minutes). EdF is something you’d expect from Comme des Garcons, I'm thinking of their Tar.

As far as I know EdF is discontinued making it impossible to find, and this makes me want to cry. Surely EdF wasn’t selling like hotcakes, but I wish AG would continue making a small supply for perfume aficionados, oh, maybe, 250 bottles per year or something. It should never cease to exist. EdF needs to exist, it needs to represent it’s end of the perfume spectrum, the end where horrific beauty that can be imagined. Eau de Fier smells like fresh lapsang souchong tea leaves. Very smoky tea leaves, over scorched leather and rubber. It begins with a burst of citrus, which never entirely vanishes, but gets pushed aside by the more aggressive smoky tea, tar and leather. About a half hour in an apricot-like fruity note emerges (guessing osmanthus) and this stays until the far dry down. I think it’s magnificent.

The Non Blonde recently reviewed Eau de Fier and Bois de Jasmin also reviewed EdF a few years back. Proof that I’m not alone in my lunacy :-)

Notes: bitter orange, osmanthus, salt flower, clove, tea, and birch tar

PS: I could not find a photo of the bottle anywhere, so the above pic is a collection of their masculine bottles, which is the same as their Eau de Fier bottle.

Parfum d'Empire 3 Fleurs & Wazamba

Marc-Antoine Corticchiato, the nose for Parfum d’Empire, oftentimes lives in the shadow of Serge Lutens. The two share a passion for Morocco and the scents associated with this land. Corticchiato has created several fragrances in the footsteps of Lutens. Detractors suggest PdE’s fragrances are similar yet less inspired renditions of a few Luten’s creations, namely PdE’s Ambre Russe to SL’s Ambre Sultan, PdE’s Cuir Ottoman to SL’s Cuir Mauresque and this year’s newly launched PdE’s Wazamba to SL’s Fille en Aiguilles.

Personally I’ve found Corticchiato’s fragrances equally masterful as Lutens. Ambre Russe is my favorite amber focused fragrance of all time. Cuir Ottoman is one of the most wearable leathers I’ve ever owned. And Wazamba is perhaps my favorite new release so far this year (note: I have not tried the Fille en Aiguilles yet).

Parfum d’Empire 3 Fleurs
Of the two new fragrances from PdE, 3 Fleurs was the one I was most excited about. Oddly, upon receiving them both, I like 3 Fleurs but I love Wazamba. As the marketing material suggests 3 Fleurs is a scent built upon the 3 most emblematic florals in perfumery: rose, jasmine and tuberose. Early reports suggested tuberose to be the most prominent note and I was happy to hear that being a big fan of tuberose. After wearing 3 Fleurs, I find it to be an equal blending of all three flowers rather than one being magnified more than the others.

The fragrance is a voluptuous, heady floral, not so much a white floral but more or less a “pink” flower with rose being added to the equation. The tuberose adds the sensuous, exotic element, jasmine lends a light green floral note and rose invigorates the blend with an herbal freshness. As suggested by Grain de Musc, 3 Fleurs pays tribute to Jean Patou’s Joy (another jasmine rose pairing) but includes an additional floral layer with tuberose in it’s base. A clunky description of 3 Fleurs might be Joy plus tuberose minus civet.

3 Fleurs is delightful. It is a straight up floral lover’s dream. It’s a full lipped, heavy bosomed, ripe and erotic beauty.

Notes: Bulgarian rose, Egyptian jasmine, Indian tuberose, galbanum, mint, white musk

Wazamba (love this name)
Wazamba is named for a musical instrument from Western Africa used mainly during initiation ceremonies. Wazamba, the fragrance, is meant to symbolizes one’s inner journey, a sort of purification ritual, like burning incense to purify oneself and one’s surroundings.

The word that stikes me the most from PdE’s marketing for Wazamba is sacred. Wazamba smells like sacred incense. It smells fresh, clean and pure. Wazamba is most similar to the scents from Comme des Garcons; Avignon, Jaisalmer, Kyoto Ouarzazate and Zagorsk. For me, these sorts of incense fragrances are not wearable for the office but this does not mean I don’t enjoy the scents. I absolutely love Wazamba and find it incredibly wearable in a private setting. Since Wazamba is meant to evoke sacred space, ceremonies and inner journeys, wearing it in these settings makes perfect sense to me. I would love to wear Wazamba while doing yoga, meditating, reading a book and relaxing at home.

I find Wazamba more wearable than the CdG incense series scents. Wazamba is fresh, resinous yet soft and enveloping. It does not take center stage but instead provides a back drop for peaceful activities. Sillage and longevity are both excellent as they are for all PdE fragrances.

Notes: Somalian incense, Kenyan myrrh, Ethiopian opoponax, Indian sandalwood, Moroccan cypress, labdanum, apple, fir balsam

Keiko Mecheri Oliban

Keiko Mecheri Oliban is named for its most prominent scent note, olibanum. Olibanum is the proper name for frankincense which is a fragrant gum resin from Boswellia trees mostly commonly identified as the scent of incense.

Very often I review fragrances that are considered the Greats, such as Guerlain, Chanel, Serge Lutens, Comme des Garcons etc. But just as often I find myself writing about perfumes that are equally as great, but not as often discussed or perhaps disparaged on the perfume forums – the underdogs if you will. Perfumes like Ivoire, Safari, Un Jardin Apres La Mousson, Alien, Lalique Le Parfum (which Turin calls ‘rock bottom’ for Ropion), Angel, Angel Innocent, Youth Dew, Trouble, LouLou and Amarige are all perfumes I love and have written about. The reason I write about these underdogs is threefold, (1) to balance a fragrances’ reputation, particularly if I read mostly negative reviews about a scent that I happen to think is wonderful (*clears throat* Amarige and Angel are definitely on my mind for this point); (2) to point out that there are so many fragrances available at drugstores and department stores that are fabulous – one does not need to shop at Luckyscent to find good perfume or spend over $200 per bottle; and (3) to shed light on an excellent perfume that seems hardly discussed/undiscovered.

I believe Oliban falls into category #3. It’s a fabulously well crafted incense fragrance with gorgeous whiffs of blond tobacco, woods, rose and honey. The initial burst of incense and cedar are refreshingly spiritual (don’t most incense frags seem rather churchy to you?). Oliban, especially at the start, seems soothing, calming, centering and cleansing. When I feel harried, rattled or just tired, Oliban serves as a meditative pick me up. Most frankincense type frags seem decidedly unisex to me (well, all frags, in essence, are unisex but you understand I’m referencing cultural norms here) but Oliban introduces a soft rose note that causes it to lean towards the feminine, just slightly. The middle phase of Oliban is a delicate incense, tobacco and rose aroma – very subtle, a little mysterious, and with just a teaspoon of sweet honey. Oliban is not strictly an incense fragrance like anything from the Comme des Garcons Incense Series – I love Avignon and Zagorsk – but, for me, these are not for wearing to the office – these are ultra dry, seriously hardcore, virtually unadorned by anything but incense and woods fragrances. Oliban, on the other hand, is a perfume that I can wear to the office. Once dried down, some vanilla appears in the base, so for the longest duration Oliban smells like a softly spiced rose draped over a bed of woods and frankincense. Others have mentioned leather – I just don’t smell the leather myself.

I think Oliban would be a nice surprise for those who like incense, but not austere Catholic mass incense. Oliban is similar in style to YSL Nu edp (not edt), sans the pepper.

Longevity: Soft but excellent 5+ hours
Sillage: Soft but present
Rating: 4.5

Listed notes: atlas cedar wood, olibanum, blonde tobacco, damascene rose and honey

The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Comme des Garçons

People love to decry the death of something they once loved which has, by their estimation, subsequently jumped the shark. Thus, the "end of the novel", the "decline of the movie", and the selling out of this or that beloved band. Bob Pollard of Guided by Voices fame has, according to fans and non-fans alike, sold out at least five times to date. No one reads anymore because books aren't well written. No one watches movies because they suck. Artists can sell out. Filmmakers, politicians--even hoteliers. It's only ever one bad move away.

There's always some defining moment, some compass point by which to pinpoint the exact transition from great to god-awful. On The Brady Bunch, it was a trip to Hawaii. Fonzie literally jumped the shark, via waterskis, on Happy Days. The sellout-resistant band ultimately welcomes sponsorship from Starbucks. Toward the end, Will and Grace started peppering episodes with lazy turns by famous guest stars. The people who determine the exact point at which something jumps shark usually have high standards, a bottom line which becomes the final straw. Their expectations are disappointed and they can't make adjustments any longer. Hard core fans, they have definite ideas about the way things should go with their favorite group, TV show, celebrity, or cereal. Increasingly, perfume aficionados have joined these ranks, a migration which makes sense, given how educated, articulate, and cultured many of perfume's biggest followers are.

L'Artisan, to some, is walking thin ice. It's the whole persistence thing. The prices went up last year, and yet the longevity continues to go down. Some will excuse L'Artisan for as long as humanly possible, hoping that the company will consider its fans and do something to turn this around. Lutens has done its own dance with the shark, producing, for every Iris Silver Mist, a Miel de Bois and a Serge Noire. The commercial houses disappoint so regularly, are so generally inconsistent that their inconsistency becomes the one thing to rely on. Others (niche lines, typically) set the bar so high that even when they fall short and are way above average in effort and accomplishment they can seem more like dismal failures.

Comme des Garçons has practically defined the concept of conceptual perfumery over the last fifteen years or so, but their project began with fashion. The clothing line was started as a women's label in 1969 by designer Rei Kawakubo. It was established as a company in 1973. By 1978, a men's line was added. Over its first several decades, Comme des Garçons (translation: "like the boys") pushed the fashion envelope in almost every conceivable way, distressing, tearing, fraying, and puncturing fabric, dissolving or disassembling structure, fading the palette to a monochromatic black, turning ideas like "pretty" and "glamor" and "silhouette" inside out. Their mission seemed to be a total re-evaluation of the psychological underpinnings of fashion, with an emphasis on, as Kawakubo herself put it, "breaking down the barriers between art and fashion." The 1997 collection, which came to be known as the "lumps and bumps" line, advanced a destabilization of traditional forms of beauty and form. More recently, in 2006, the label presented a collection on the theme of "Persona", mixing feminine and masculine elements to explore how we define ourselves through gendered dress codes and rigorously enforced social attitudes about self-presentation.

The first Comme des Garçons fragrance was released in 1994. It was a woods and spice eau de parfum in a now iconic flattened oblong brown bottle designed by Kawakubo and Marc Atlan. The juice was composed by Marc Buxton, who had just done Dalissime for Salvador Dali and Pasha for Cartier. The original CDG perfume has spawned so many imitators that one easily forgets how truly avante garde it was at the time and, to some extent, still is. The following year, a flanker, called White, was released, adding to the initial formula a strong floral quotient and the fruity influence of pomegranate.

In 1998, CDG released Odeur 53, the first in a series of "anti-perfumes". It was the company's boldest fragrance assertion yet, the first to match the irreverently off-kilter spirit of the clothes. Composed of 53 non-traditional notes (flash of metal, sand dunes, nail polish, and so forth) the "scent" questioned what constitutes a perfume in much the same way the clothes challenged what it is to be a shirt or a dress. Clothes, Kawakubo has always seemed to say, serve not just a cosmetic but a social function. What happens if they are liberated from this responsibility? Who says a skirt has to look like a skirt? How far can you take a skirt before it isn't one at all? Odeur 53 asked similar questions, much to many people's consternation. An abstract floral seeks to replicate known natural entities with unknown or unfamiliar ingredients, often synthetic. Odeur 53 went further, arguably in the opposite direction, creating an abstract banal. Rather than conceal the synthetic aspects of its composition, 53 embraced them, proposing scent as a Brechtian exercise.

After Odeur 53 CDG presented ever more ambitious propositions. Comme des Garçons 2 (1999) evoked flowers without employing many. The logo was rendered in the squiggly line of a ballpoint pen, while the scent itself recalled the inky aroma of the childhood classroom and the theoretical outdoors. Like the bottle, a variation on the original flat oblong, the juice shimmered with metallic sheen, reflecting and distorting various associative impressions like a sleek funhouse mirror. 2 took its cues from an object or evocation the same way other perfumes did, but where their departure points were flowers, spices, woods, and fruits, 2 looked to everyday objects and sense perceptions. Odeur 71 followed in these footsteps a year later, extending the experiment of 53.

The years since have been very productive for the company. What started as individual releases became multiple part exercises in conceptual perfumery, starting with the Leaves series: Calamus, Lily, Mint, Shiso, and Tea. All but Tea, Lily, and Calamus have since been discontinued. Series 2: Red (2001) included Carnation, Harrisa, Palisander, Sequoia, and Rose. Perhaps the most popular series, involving incense, followed. Avignon, Jaisalmer, Kyoto, Quarzazate, and Zagorsk are largely gorgeous iterations of the company's unusual sensibility, and predate the rage for incense compositions by several years. The series themselves, taken collectively, have asserted perfume as an endless resource for investigation into everything from color (red, green) to different religious chambers and states of mind from around the globe, tying the latter all together into an aromatic declaration of religious tolerance and spiritual unity, taking transcendence out of the cathedral and into the head space.

The company's increasingly ambitious exercises have produced a wider variety of hits and near misses, and everything in between, prompting some to level accusations of decline. The general consensus seems to be that the shark fin approached shortly after the incense series, though Series 5: Sherbert has as many admirers as critics. Series 6: Synthetics goes some way toward closing that gap. Series 7: Sweet seems almost universally derided. It's too early to tell with Series 8: Energy C, whose Lime, Lemon and Grapefruit seem to have been received lukewarmly at best. It's difficult just yet to situate singular scents like 2007's Play and this year's Monocle Scent 1: Hinoki and 8 88 within the CDG oeuvre. Though they follow in the footsteps of earlier CDG fragrances, they depart from the "Series" Series, sticking out sore-thumb-like. A few of the company's smaller series (mini-series, if you will) have been charged with the blame of bringing the line's heyday of playful and provocative experimentation to a close, if not an imaginatively bankrupt standstill.

Guerillas 1 and 2 are named after CDG stores which sprouted up briefly in unlikely places, challenging the concept of permanence and brand stability in a world inhospitable to such things. Guerilla 1, with its meat notes and vague air of urban refuse, is often regarded as unwearable on the one hand and a tad too conventional on the other, somehow both too arty and too boring to bother with at the same time. The top opens with pear, saffron, and clove, an unforgivable offense, if not outright assault, to some. From there, insult adds to injury: the heart notes include Champaca flower and black pepper. Guerilla 1 is certainly an unusual scent. Inhaling it, the mind tries to connect it to something, filing through a mental rolodex of potential source materials. The effect is a wavering indeterminacy, a sort of way station fragrance, like the pop-up stores the scents are named after. Guerilla 1 was the brainchild of Marie-Aude Couture, whose other best known fragrance might be the previous year's Eau d'Amazonie.

Guerilla 2, by Nathalie Feisthauer, is considered the more conventional of the duo, though it's hard to see exactly why when in this case the word conventional becomes highly relative. The notes are listed as bergamot, pink pepper, ginger, red pepper, curcama, raspberry, tuberose, vetiver, cedarwood, and musk. The key word is "red". The result is tangy, tart, and somewhat savory too. The vetiver seems just the pinch of salt the affair calls for. Feisthauer has done work for Etat Libre d'Orange, another equally adventurous perfume line which arguably wouldn't exist were it not for the path CDG has forged. Both Guerillas are wearable and, though said to be more feminine than not by some, each mixes feminine and masculine attributes and impressions in ways which fit perfectly into the company's credo. Guerilla 1 has more development and seems slightly more indecipherable. But Guerilla 2 demonstrates more than a little stealth itself; hard to tell what exactly is going on in this fragrance, though it seems to know where it's going.

Of the Synthetics, I prefer Garage, which as a friend pointed out, smells like your grandparents' detached garage, with the Schwinn bike tires and the still-wet innertubes stacked in a corner, the tennis ball hanging from the ceiling to designate the stop point for parking the car, some oil on the concrete floor, some sawdust, old magazines, humidity, and vinyl. It's a wonderful evocation, with persistence like nobody's business, creating sensory memories out of thin air. Even the maligned Sweets Series has its standouts. Nomad Tea is actually one of the more unusual and enigmatic fragrances of the entire line, mixing what smells like birch tar with minty artemesia. Wood Coffee and Sticky Cake are far more compelling than they're given credit for.

Luxe Champaca and Patchouli are standouts, not just in quality but cost. They're expensive, to be sure, but Patchouli, at least, lingers so well that it might make up for it, if you give it the time. These two seem like something of an anomaly for a line which is otherwise fairly affordable and populist. Nevertheless, they open questions about what luxury means and who has access to it and in some ways they seem to indicate an exercise in irony, though it's unclear who the joke is on. One thing seems abundantly clear. Comme des Garçons is alive and well, despite claims otherwise, playing around with form and content and what it means to smell and be smelled. Recently, the company designed a line for the H & M Department Store Chain, complete with signature fragrance. This will inevitably be seen as a compromise of some kind, a watered down version of previous genius. But let's all get real: Comme des Garçons has never pretended to be anything but fake. If a shark fin is in fact circling the company's image, it's attached to a stick which Kawakubo manipulates from under the water.