Keiko Mecheri Johana

Unless cacao and vanilla combined are to be taken as the new oakmoss, Keiko Mecheri's Johana seems anything but a chypre to me, yet the fragrance continues the trend toward eroding distinctions about what is and isn't one. As with other "modern chypres", Johana seems to think being something means simply saying so. I'm going to let it go for now, even though I don't seem to age in reverse, am not devastatingly handsome, and cannot (yet) fly by flapping my arms, much as I keep saying I do, am, and can.

Johana is a nice scent with an interesting tension between deep/dark and airy/bright. It's hard to make sense of that, which might explain why I alternately admire this fragrance and wonder how I possibly could. In many ways it follows the standard MO of a Keiko Mecheri release: it stays just this side of fascinating, settling for "interesting". But it's pretty interesting, and while I dismissed it at first, I kept coming back to it, and finally (if predictably), I caved.

I haven't had the best luck with Keiko fragrances. I like many of them. There are things I admire in Mogador, Oliban, Loukhoum eau Poudree, Peau de Peche, and several others. Of these, I own Mogador. I wear it once in a while but not often, mainly because, like every other Mecheri perfume I've courted - short of overstay-its-welcome Loukhoum - it doesn't last on me as well as I feel it should. Mogador has a radiant disposition in keeping with the work of Calice Becker, its perfumer, situating it somewhere in the general vicinity of Tommy Girl, J'Adore, and Beyond Love. It doesn't want to get too bogged down in anything heavy, which is nice until you realize that means it ain't sticking around long.

Johana's been a surprise to me, mainly because it does last, but also because there's something pleasurable in it that very few other fragrances reach for me in just this way. The fragrance contains, allegedly, chrysanthemum, galbanum, rose, wisteria, iris, cacao pod, patchouli, incense, sandalwood, and vanilla. Looking at this "pyramid", I'm wondering when or if we'll ever dispense with the nonsense of "notes" in contemporary perfumery. It's like the British Monarchy. Do they really stand for anything, or do we just like the idea? Certainly the word chypre seems to mean nothing by now. Why should the fancy of a pyramid?

I'll play the game, since we're all undecided on that, and tell you I smell, at least, cacao, patchouli, vanilla, and a melange of florals I'm willing to agree falls somewhere between rose and mum. When I spent some time with Johana, I started to suspect it was created by Calice Becker, because it has that weird sunny thing she does so well, only anchored to something moodier by a gourmand gone woodsy foundation. Oddly, while I won't give it "chypre", I can tell you it has another nice tension in it, and in an unexpected, indescribable way: it feels simultaneously contemporary and old fashioned. It loses some of this the longer it sits on you, but that first spray is a little uncanny - grafting a new, bright floral onto something more traditionally (if subtly) balsamic. That's an illusion, because there appears to be nothing remotely balsamic in Johana, but everything's basically an illusion in perfumery (starting at the idea that it should cost as much as it does).

This effect lasts on me for a good thirty minutes or so. After this, Johana remains interesting for different reasons. It becomes another kind of anomaly: a dusted coco fragrance which lifts and amplifies into radiance and just-this-side-of-succulence rather than sinking down into a deep dark gourmand nether region. I like deep dark gourmand nether regions, but this is something different, and I'm all for that. It seems to me that niche lines do dusted chocolate a little heavy or moody to avoid accusations of mall-stream juvenilia. Johana manages to go in the opposite direction in a way that feels sophisticated and fresh.

One thing I do like very much about Keiko Mecheri fragrances across the board - okay, two things: the bottles, and the price point. (Disregard Mecheri's Bespoke line in this equation, btw). Name more than five niche lines charging 115 bucks at 2.5 ounces for a bottle this fantastically formidable and attractive. Something about these bottles looks like what you hope a perfume will smell like. They make their owners look like they know what they're doing. And at this point, 115 bucks is like ten cents in the world of niche perfumery.

All They Need is Love: The Gourmands

So often I read comments from perfume-addicts (I haven’t settled on a term yet ~ perfumistas, perfumeos, perfume-geeks, perfume-nerds, etc) about how they dislike gourmands fragrances. The gourmand category is just over a decade old (isn’t Angel considered the first official gourmand? If not, please fill me in), and already perfume-aficionados have been lamenting its existence for years.

I believe the accepted definition of gourmand is anything that contains/captures edible notes. A gourmand could therefore be anything such as chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, bread, pepper, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, coffee, almond, wheat, maple, liquorices and hazelnut. In a way, I’m confused about certain notes *not* being considered gourmand ~ what about edible fruits ~ such as fig, lychee, strawberry or pomegranate? I understand that citrus fruits are separate; they’re categorized as hesperidic, and existed long before the gourmands. But what about fig? This is a little tangential and I ought to get back giving the gourmands a little love.

I often think that when a type of perfume becomes too popular, trendy and mainstream that’s when perfume-aficionados diss it. I get it, this happens with any hobby where someone delves deeply into the thing of interest; wine lovers don’t usually drink Sutter Home and bird watchers don’t faint when they see a Blue Jay. The 'common' is no longer interesting to the aficionado. But come on…Angel by Thierry Mugler is some groundbreaking and amazing stuff! Even if you don’t like the smell of it, it was a bold and interesting perfume back in 1997 and deserves a little respect. After Angel, there have been thousands of spin-offs. I’ve noticed that many perfume-aficionados admit to liking Hermes Ambre Narguile, Serge Lutens Chergui or Caron Farnesiana. Lately I’ve been thinking that not all gourmand fragrances smell like cupcakes with four inches of frosting. I think a lot of folks equate gourmand with sticky sweet vanilla. There are a whole bunch of gourmands that aren’t extremely sweet or mostly vanilla. What about Lolita Lempicka, Bond No 9 New Haarlem, Bond No 9 Nuits de Noho, L’Artisan Bois Farine, Jo Malone Nutmeg Ginger, Serge Lutens Rousse, Keiko Mecheri Gourmandises, L’Artisan Poivre Piquant, Yosh Ginger, Montale Mukhallat, and Parfumerie Generale Aomassai? If you hate all of these, then you dislike gourmands, and that is, of course, fine! Perfume is, above all, subjective. But I just wanted to give the gourmands a little love, because they aren’t all sickly sweet vanilla and many are complex, interesting and smell good...