Scents I've Reconsidered: Shocking!, Krizia Krazy, CDG Red Series Carnation

Something happened this year. This Fall. Is it because the Summer was so extreme? I could barely smell anything the last four or five months. Spring shot past without registering, plunging us into one of the hottest Summers on record. In that heat, it wasn't just that my skin ate up perfume. My nose didn't seem to be functioning properly, either. I was like the squirrel who thinks the sky is falling in. I forgot, I guess, that seasons pass. I'd started to think it would always be that way. I'd just never be able to smell much again.

So Fall has been a real bargain for me. I always rediscover scents I'd forgotten about when October rolls back around. But I rarely reassess them so drastically. I'm looking at and smelling things in an entirely different way. Logic would dictate that only lighter fragrances reinvent themselves in cooler weather: the cold prolongs their effects, for one. But I'm finding that even heavier scents seem like different beasts to me.

Shocking! de Schiaparelli

The other day, I sprayed on some Shocking! by Schiaparelli, and I was astonished at how deeply I'd previously misapprehended it. I've always loved it, but many of its subtleties were lost on me. I could smell clove, honey, and rose, the polar points of the fragrance. I didn't think of Shocking! as anything remotely close to subtle. The name wasn't at all ironic to me, despite the exclamation point. All I got was the bombast.

This time, I could smell the imaginary places in between, the intricate tensions created by such bold juxtapositions. The tarragon up top was more discernible. I could discern between the tarragon and everything else going on in the opening. And I appreciated the slow, inexorable descent into patchouli, civet, and labdanum, as well as the influence of , I think, vanilla. I'd always thought of Shocking! as a heavy tank of a scent (a good thing, in my opinion) but smelling all these things at play I've seen more clearly how the scent fits into the Schiaparelli sensibility; like a giant lobster on an elegant evening gown, yes, it's somewhat jolting. But the gown is definitely there to give the kitsch emphasis and contrast, taking it into irony.

My bottle is probably from the seventies, possibly the eighties. The ingredients list only parfum, alcohol, and aqua. Shocking was created in 1937 by Jean Carles, the nose behind tweedy green fantasia Ma Griffe and--more tellingly, in this context--Tabu. I have no idea what Tabu once smelled like. I imagine it possessed a lot more of Shocking!'s subtleties.

Krazy de Krizia

I've owned it for well over a year. So I had it last winter, as well. You would think I'd be more than a little familiar with its range. To me, it was merely an Obsession clone. It came out in 91, five or six years after the cultural landmark which was Obsession. That fragrance has changed significantly over the past five to ten years. Obsession is still Obsession, but more piquant up top, more shrill overall, and much thinned out toward the bottom.

I assumed, smelling Krazy, that Krazy gave a more accurate indication of what Obsession once was. What I see this winter is that Krazy, though it speaks the same language, has a slightly different inflection and is much softer at the punctuation points. Krazy is hard to find now, but I've been fortunate enough to find two bottles: one in edp, the other edt.

Several things strike me as being significant differences between Obsession and Krazy. Krazy's pyramid includes Lily-of-the-valley and aldehydes. I believe the Lily-of-the-valley must give it that dulcet quality which sets it notably apart from Obsession when you really get down to it, providing a note of weird, unexpected dissonance, a muted counterpoint. The aldehydes give Krazy a quality of amplification as well. It was interesting to rediscover Krazy lately, because the perfumer behind it, Dominique Ropion, is much discussed these days for what I suspect is a far less interesting or compelling fragrance, Portrait of a Lady.

Carnation by Commes des Garçons Red Series

This one disappointed me when I smelled it a few years ago. I bought it, then returned it, having smelled it all day on my hand. Too subtle, I decided, or something to that effect. It's hard to remember what I was thinking at this point because I like it very much now, and smell it wafting up from my skin for quite some time after application. On the reviews sites, Carnation is criticized for the candied red hots quality people say it has. Too much clove. Not enough persistence. Where's the rose?

I do smell the rose now, where I didn't before. Yes, it is submerged under a rather formidable clove and cinnamon one-two punch. You still feel their impact, but rose softens the blow. Jasmine is listed in the pyramid but I'm still not getting that, however enlightened of late I am. What I'm getting now and missed before is an update of a classic carnation soliflore: rather than the dainty budoir carnation of old, this one radiates with a modern kind of warmth and assertiveness. It feels both friendly and fearsome; there's the slightest bit of edge there.

Letter To A Young Man in Flip-flops

Dear you,

In your American Eagle T and your madras shorts. You in your meticulously frayed baseball cap, which bears the insignia of a camp you’ve never lost your virginity at, let alone been to, or heard of. You with the boxers peeking out at your waistline, a look you stole from the black boys at school, along with their music, though, alas, not their rhythm. I’ve seen you at the mall, bushy-haired and slouchy, that smirk on your face. I guess you know you barely lift your feet as you saunter along the pavement. Is that the style now, that shuffling, almost narcoleptic gait? Is walking already passé—or have I been asleep at the wheel?

Oh my flip-flopped not so fleet-footed friend, just this morning on my way into Sephora I saw you and your peeps, sleepwalking ahead of me like a little row of baby ducks whose mama had already scurried off around the corner, frightening them with the sudden prospect of independence. The wind was moving in the wrong direction, but I’m going to guess what you had on under the madras and the T and the boxers and the cap. Your cologne. I’m going to say Izod. Or is it Lacoste? I’m going to say Nautica, or even, just possibly, Varvatos. I know you were wearing cologne because I know what cologne means to you. I know how it conveys an image you want to project, or you imagine it does. I know: the guy on the boat or in the field in that ad is your imaginary mirror image—your twin, the secret you—and yet, in your mind, you’d like to cut your own path. That’s why I’m writing.

I won’t tell anyone I sent this to you, but I do want to discuss your purchasing patterns. As I walked behind you, I smelled my wrist, imagining I was you imagining you were that other guy. Would my friends really scramble at the scent of Creation, by Ted Lapidus? Now that every girl in high school isn’t spritzing it in her pink calico canopy bed, dreaming about a boy like you in a mist of fruity chypre, who would recognize it and mark it as sissy? It once smelled the way guys imagined Christie Brinkley must—as if its wearer had been slathered in some dangerously soapy elixir which added to rather than subtracted from her natural musk. It made a girl smell like she’d spilled something on her parents’ leather sofa, downstairs, in the rec room, only she didn’t want her mother to find out, so she’d scrubbed the seat to within an inch of its life, and still she seemed so...fidgety. Her face was still flushed from the exertion. She might have wanted sex but you couldn’t be sure, because you didn’t know what she’d spilled either, and though you had a few wild guesses, it could have simply been your active imagination. It could have just been, like, Jean Nate. Wind Song or whatever.

Creation smelled like a very specific complex of associations back in the day, but that day has passed. Now it smells weirdly virile. It always did, but with all the cosmetic subterfuge, no one ever noticed before. I tell you this because I know a very easy way to distinguish yourself, and all it would require is imagination on your part. You know how to imagine, don’t you? All we have to do is put our heads together, and think outside the box. Step out of your flip flops, and feel the ground under your feet. Lift your feet, and feel the pull of gravity. I’m not asking you to walk. I’m just asking you to think.

I’m willing to let you borrow my Creation. But there are many fragrances you might try. Now that no one sees Christie Brinkley in them, they’re practically dirt cheap. I know you’re on a budget, disposable income or no. I’d be happy to make some suggestions. I might even loan you something, if you promise to turn down that music when you stop by to pick it up. What I'm saying is that, often, scents once intended for the opposite sex make the most electric statement on a guy's skin, totally transforming him and the way people experience his presence. I'm saying that if you have the balls to smell like people used to think a girl should, there's no telling how deeply you might penetrate into other people's perceptions and desires. Krazy by Krizia, for instance, which smells of vanilla rubbed on wood, is a good start. That's putting your toe in without straying too far off the path. Black Cashmere, Balmain de Balmain, Caleche. The limits are mental. The possibilities, endless. And yes, it’s true, such a bold stroke might make your friends scramble--but I bet you’d find, if you turned around, that they were just rearranging themselves, and would eventually all end up in a line behind you, following your lead.

I'm just looking out for you, kid.

Your friend,

Telly Savalas

P.S. Please bring lollipops.

P.P.S. I like grape.