Amorvero: Back to My Roots

For months now, I've felt there's something wrong with me.  I was kept pretty thrilled by fragrances for a good four years, consistently surprised, enthused, and engaged.  It's been a real passion for me.  Every day I packed a perfume bag the way some would pack a lunch.  I'd sit at work sniffing one bottle after another.  I'd have four to five different things on, making comparisons.  I made my co-worker sneeze.

Suddenly, I wasn't so interested.  I went from buying samples and bottles on a regular basis, sniffing religiously, to a dry state of affairs where maybe every month or so I might make a single purchase, and I started visiting my perfume cabinet so infrequently it might have been a lost wing in a massive house.  It's been weird.

I couldn't imagine that the fragrance industry turned overwhelmingly boring overnight, so I thought it must be me.  Maybe I'd gone fickle.  Maybe I'm prone to boredom.  I know now that it isn't really me, because the fragrances that always surprised, enthused, and delighted me are still doing so.  And I guess I don't care too much to parse all the vagaries of the industry to determine what's happening on that end, when really the bottom line is that most of what comes out now feels uninspired or insulting.  Otherwise I think I'd be writing more - about my dissatisfaction, if nothing else.  The fact that I can't even be bothered to write about that is the biggest surprise, and disappointment, of all to me.  I feel the industry has finally turned a corner, where restrictions and cost-cutting have crystallized into banality and bottom line as standard practice.

I thought about doing posts during all this.  I thought, okay, so if I still love the same fragrances, what are they?  What would be my 25 desert island scents.  Granted, 25 makes for a pretty cushy island, but narrowing down to ten, while it makes for good type, has always been a struggle for me.  Even 25 seemed like a waste of time.  How often had I written about these fragrances, anyway?  How much more could I have to say?

I say all this mainly to give you some context for how even a simple, well made scent can seem like a revelation these days for me.  Back in October, for instance, I was in LA, and someone who didn't think much of it handed me a bottle of Amorvero.  I'm not sure what I might have thought about it two years ago, but in October I liked it instantly.  How much my liking it had to do with this dry spell I can't say, and I resisted writing about Amorvero until now because I didn't trust the pleasure it gave me.

After all, Amorvero isn't exactly anything new.  It's a throwback to the big picture vanillic florientals of the eighties, really - recalling things like Poison and Giorgio, among others.  But while many perfumistas look back to the pre-fifties fragrances as the benchmark for quality fragrances, the eighties are really my decade of choice in many ways.  Many of my top 25 scents came out of that era, and I would gladly trade some of the things I've bought from recent years for eighties fragrances I want but don't own.

Amorvero reminds me most of 24, Faubourg, a fragrance released in 1995 which feels more like an eighties scent itself.  Like Faubourg, Amorvero buttresses tuberose and jasmine with vanilla and amber on one end and citrus notes on the other.  Like Faubourg, it lasts all day.  A simple story, Amorvero, but the pleasures are pretty complex.  Each time I return to the scent I find new things to like in it.  The thing is an immediate mood lifter, and adds a level of drama to the dreariest frame of mind.

Amorvero was created for a hotel I've never heard of in Rome, the Hassler.  I believe it was in 2000.  The perfumer is Lorenzo Dante Ferro.  I can't see where one finds the stuff, other than a website I googled online.  It would be hard to track down and try. I'm sorry.  But I was glad to find it, and in comparison to most of the dreck currently being released, it's something of a Godsend for me.

There isn't much about it on perfume blogs, though I was happy to see, in the middle of writing this, that Cafeleurebon just wrote about it several days ago.  I like that it goes against current trends in perfumery, because those trends are really bringing me down.  And while I'm not yet sure it would enter my top 25, it has a lot in common with another fragrance favorite on that list, Miss Balmain.

More Best of Summer : Brian's Picks

Recently, I discovered that I don't really care about light scents at any time of the year. I prefer heavier fragrances not just in the Winter, when they're said to make sense by serving as something approaching a comfortable blanket, but in the Spring, when they start mingling with the fresh, open air. The biggest surprise for me has been how much I like the power scents in the Summer. I think I might like them most of all at this time of year. It isn't just that citrus scents are so fleeting, though that's part of it. They hit the heat and poof, they're gone. Citrus scents and eau de colognes, however long they last, turn sour on sweating skin, as if trying to hide some basic facts of nature. Summer in the south isn't clean and composed. It's sultry and animalic, and the fragrances which make the most sense on my skin are the ones heat and sweat can only be complimented by, as opposed to struggled against.

1. Habanita (Molinard): Try it on in the Summer. The powder isn't there. It's as if someone blew off a coat of dust Habanita was submerged under, and now you can smell the basic structure underneath, more of those tobacco nuances, the weird peachy top notes, the push and pull of vetiver and vanilla. Infamously, the EDT lasts all day in the winter. It lasts just as well this time of year, and smells like sex warmed over.

2. Fougere Bengale (Parfum d'Empire): I only bought this last month, but I imagine the tangy, herbal thrust of the lavender gives it an interesting Summer dissonance it would be too well behaved to let show in the Winter. Immortelle and spices run like a strong current underneath, pulling you along.

3. Moschino de Moschino: This is indeed, as Tania Sanchez says, joss stick. However it distinguishes itself from many lesser orientals and even some of the superior classics by its weird, smoked florals.

4. Bandit (Piguet): There is no wrong time of year for Bandit. It spans the calendar, covering the bases. Grassier this season than last, to be sure, this green leather seems like a saddle left out in a field of chamomile. I never get that in the winter, when it seems like something you've snuggled into a pocket to keep warm.

5. Karma (Lush): Orange incense. People love it or hate it. In the winter, I...lurv it? In the summer, pure love for Karma. The heat activates subtleties that the cold leaves dormant, merely strident.

6. Daim Blond (Serge Lutens): I was so disappointed when I bought it last summer that I put it away and had only smelled it periodically ever since. Lately I pull it out and it makes perfect sense. The peachy cured leather smell lights up the skin. The heat makes it moodier, less the cheerful happy-go-lucky it is in the winter and fall, more unpredictable. It has issues, suddenly. I can relate.

7. Encre Noire (Lalique): Someone will have to convince me this isn't the best possible summer fragrance on a guy's skin, bar none. It smells virile without resorting to that chest thumping feeling you get from cruder peers. It's both fresh and filthy, inviting and repelling. Vetiver doesn't get much better.

8. Miss Balmain: A sister to Aramis for Men (born in a man's body), closely related to Aromatics Elixir, Cabochard, and Azuree (also great this time of year). This stuff is twenty bucks a bottle and based on the vintage bottle I own smells just as good presently as it ever did. It seems to grow warmer and thicker on the skin as it wears. Wonderful dry down, leather in deep floral hues.

9. Arpege (Lanvin): Especially the most recent reformulation. It smells of aldehydes, forals, and vetiver and sticks with you for the long haul.

10. Broadway Nite (Bond No. 9): the heady, almost waxy impressions of this fragrance are strong enough to get the point across, whatever the point is.

Small Wonders: La Perla

Every once in a while I suddenly stop ignoring a scent I've willfully disregarded for an extended period of time, and give it a smell, and it turns out to be a real sleeper. For a year I've been going to this kiosk in the mall. They have some rarities, some discontinued items, some stuff you'd otherwise have to get online. They're not the cheapest place but they're handy, and a short drive across town. There are all kinds of things in this little glass square planted in the center of the mall, many of which, even when scouring the shelves for something I haven't tried before, I consistently turn up my nose at.

I don't even think I really ever gave La Perla much more than a cursory glance. The name sounded cheap and negligible. The black and white box looked even cheaper. Sandwiched between Il Bacio and Elizabeth Arden's Blue Grass, La Perla seemed determined to defy my attention span, hell bent on boring me. I don't know what struck me yesterday but I decided to give it a chance.

Turns out it's better than a good third of the fragrances I own. A rose chypre in the style of the old Coriandre (R.I.P.) and Halston Couture (So Long, We Hardly Knew Ye), closely related to Aromatics Elixir, Miss Balmain, and even, more recently, Etat Libre D'Orange's Rossi de Palma and Agent Provocateur, it has persistence and diffusion like very little on the market today. It has a discernible amount of oakmoss in it and enough patchouli to satisfy the die-hard, as well as Coriander, cardamom, ylang ylang, honey, orris, vetiver, sandal and benzoin. It costs all of 35 to forty bucks.

You would think La Perla dates back to at least the mid seventies. It smells old school, rich and warm and happy to reach out and greet the casual passerby. It's bold but textured and complex. Like Aromatics Elixir, it's forceful without being a bully.  It smells classy and a bit déclassé, playing out these contradictions as it dries down on the skin.  It's like a fragrance your mother wore yet it feels modern, as if determined to step into the near future.

In fact, it was created in 1987. La Perla, basically a panty firm, has something like a dozen fragrances under its belt--no pun intended. Who knew? I didn't. I'm not a big fan of panties, as you can imagine. "La Perla" was the first fragrance, after which followed IO, Eclix, Creation, Charme, and others. I suppose La Perla could be considered a glorified Victoria's Secret, but "La Perla" is better than anything that fixture of the local mall ever produced, as far as I know. It was created by Pierre Wargnye, the nose behind Drakkar Noir, Tenere, and a bunch of masculines I find dreary and uninspiring (Antidote, anyone?).

Now that they've absolutely destroyed Coriandre, which remains on the market as a frail ghost of its former self, it's reassuring to know you can still find something like it, an alternative or a compliment to Aromatics Elixir.  La Perla achieves the depth of focus found in those classic rose/floral/leather chypres with a level of sensory detail that approaches photo-realism.