Patchouli 24 (and J'ai Ose)

I stared at the description of Patchouli 24 on the Le Labo website for almost a year before purchasing a bottle. I love patchouli, though I understood from various reviews and customer comments that it was hardly the most pronounced note in the composition. I love birch tar even more, and 24 was said to be an overload of the note, so stinky strong that its inclusion forbid anything but a love or hate reaction. People talked of scaring their co-workers out of the room, then out of the building. Relationships ended. Dinner plans were canceled. Mother-in-laws got off the fence. By all accounts, it seemed like something for which I would definitely fall on the side of love.

The problem for me was complicated. The perfumer behind 24 is Annick Menardo, and, as anyone who reads this blog knows, I'm a fan. Her fragrances tend to have good lasting power, and some of them approach greatness on a level that many modern perfumers don't even seem to know exists. Here's the thing. The lady loves vanilla. Bulgari Black is worshiped in certain circles for its tea note and a pronounced rubbery splendor, but on me it smells, after an initial impression of complexity, like one of those skimpy deserts they put on your plate in aggressively expensive restaurants, daring you to complain (thereby declaring, when you do, for all the world to hear, "I am determined to be gluttonously obese and must balk at the tiny little piece of whatnot you're trying to pass off as a proper sugar fix. Hit me!).

I'd also read on many of the blogs that after its outlandish birch tar opening, 24 simmered down into a smoky vanilla, lasting the duration. I had problems reconciling all these descriptions, but I wasn't about to slap down 135 bucks for another jar of refined vanillic goodness. That I was ultimately willing to take a chance is a testament not to my resignation but to my irrational, logic defying love of birch tar.

I was hoping for something along the lines of J'ai Ose, a relatively cheapo, probably majorly reformulated bastardization of a possibly once great perfume. I can't help it. I love J'ai Ose. I'd bathe in it if I could. It's a wonderfully attractive composition that I couldn't at all figure out for the first several months I owned it. What was it--a chypre? A leather? A wood? Doubt kept me from wearing it, worried what kind of impression I would give off with something I couldn't even figure out myself.

24 was a massive disappointment, and I say this with all due respect to Menardo, because I recognize that it is essentially a wonderful fragrance. It's just not what I wanted, nor anything for which I particularly feel a need. It does in fact dry down to an abundance of vanilla--smoky, to be sure, but vanillic. The birch tar is still there, but so sublimated to the vanilla that it simply feels like a new slant on the note. "Burned vanilla!" And wonder of wonders, it at first didn't seem to last all that impressively. Maybe, I thought, le Labo actually just sucks. (Please don't write me nasty letters. I've since tried Iris 39 and put that unfair suspicion to rest).

One conclusion I drew from the experience is that, bad reformulation or no, J'ai Ose is hands down the best smoke leather I've come across. After spending a week with Patchouli 24, I went online to buy a quarter ounce of J'ai Ose pure parfum, which, in J'ai Ose world, goes for as little as 35, and feels like a million bucks. J'ai Ose ("I dared") was created in 1977 for the house of Guy Laroche, whose first perfume was Fidji. The fragrance feels much older than it is. It has a lot in common with floral leathers like Chanel's Cuir de Russie and Jolie Madame, though it smells smokier than either (and by smokier I mean blackened, i.e. charred) and less floral by far. Supposedly, the notes for J'ai Ose are jasmine, bergamot, vanilla, vetiver, musk, and sandalwood. I don't smell any of that, and find it very hard to believe there isn't birch tar in the mix playing a pronounced, even presiding, part. One never knows where these pyramids are coming from, or how figurative they are. Out of whose ass do these things get pulled?

I now realize that I had Le Labo Patchouli 24 all along. I had what I hoped it would be, anyway. Had I known that J'ai Ose was my holy grail birch tar fragrance, that much sought after burnt wood, I would have stocked up on it and saved myself much money. I should also add that, trying Patchouli 24 again last night, I was surprised by how long it stuck around on my skin. It's perfectly lovely, but not my cup of smoke.

Put Another Blog on Fire: Eau des Iles

I'm sure Eau des Iles has its roots in several other fragrances (I've heard tell of L'eau de Navigateur) but I'm not sure I've ever smelled anything remotely like it. I'm a latecomer to Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier, having just tried Camelia Chinois earlier this month. That perfume reminded me of a Barney's fragrance I once really dug and still own, with the addition of a smoky petrol note lurking underneath an otherwise chipper green amiability. I liked Chinois so much that I scanned reviews of the line's other fragrances to see what might interest me, and Iles seemed an obvious choice, with Parfum d'Habit running a close second. What sold me were comments referring to Iles' smokiness. It was also compared to wood wine barrels, cigars, and meat rubs. What's not to like?

I'm always on the hunt for a good smoke scent, though I understand others are just as eager to run from it. Kolnisch Juchten is a good example of the category for me, as are J'ai Ose and the John Galliano room spray produced by Dyptique. All have a cured leather sensibility that really appeals to me, something about which takes me into a nice headspace. J'ai Ose is one of my favorite fragrances of all time (and a real undiscovered gem), a sublimely unisex blend of florals and birch tar which is at least as well done as Lancome's Cuir and in my opinion far superior to most other cult leathers (Reve en Cuir, Cuir d'Iris, et al). Like Kolnisch Juchten (German for "Russian Leather"), J'ai Ose smells of the hearth and the outdoors, conjuring mercurial trails of bonfire smoke.

Because I had only these fragrances to go by, I unconsciously expected something along their lines, so I wasn't prepared for Eau des Iles, which is in their camp but burning a different kind of wood. It could easily become my holy grail smoke scent, but there's more to it than that. Under the smoke are coffee, spices, and green notes. This dry smell is similar to the fragrance produced at my local coffeehouse, which roasts its own beans, a slightly resinous coffee aroma, as if coffee were taking a cigarette break. Add to this labdanum, frankincense, myrrh, and ylang-ylang. Perfume Shrine's profile of labdanum is worth quoting:

"It is balsamlike, with woody, earthy, smoky, and even marshy undertones. Some even describe it as ambergris-like, or leathery and honeylike with hints of plum or oakmoss after a rain. Usually it is referred to as ambery, but it is mostly used to render leather or ambergris notes..."

This is a good starting point for a description of Eau des Iles, as well. It would seem that labdanum ties all of the fragrance's disparate influences together, blurring their individual start and end points. If there is galbanum in the base notes of Iles, as I've heard, it's used with unusual subtlety. I've also heard tarragon. I wonder if the absence of birch tar and the addition of labdanum makes it seem simultaneously kissing kin to my favorite leathers and worlds apart. One of the things I appreciate most about Iles is its resistance to easy classification. This is a softer, woodier, foodier smoke than J'ai Ose and John Galliano. It's certainly smoother, more refined than Kolnisch Juchten; both are savory, but Kolnisch seems slightly undercooked by comparison. Jean Laporte created Eau des Iles in 1988, after leaving L'Artisan; thus, perhaps, some of the comparisons to L'eau de Navigateur (1982), which also makes use of a coffee accord. The dry down brings in a little bit of the barbershop and the fougere, a powdery aftershave which makes more sense to the nose than the mind. Iles is said by some to be too challenging to wear. Me, I've yet to find a fragrance too challenging to wear, including Secretions Magnifique (though that comes closest, admittedly), so I'm probably the wrong person to judge. No question, it's an uncompromising, no nonsense fragrance. I'm not sure that means it takes no prisoners, or whether some might feel incarcerated in its presence. For me, if this is a life sentence, I'll gladly serve it.