Thierry Mugler's Angel: Les Parfums de Cuir

There are those who despise Thierry Mugler's wildly successful Angel so much that they appraise its many flankers solely by their ability to mitigate that contempt. Others - I'm one of them - look forward to each successive October, when the best of these special flankers are typically released, not as another opportunity to hate the fragrance more or less, but as another form of Christmas, where Angel will be slightly reinvented, seen through yet another conceptual prism.

This year, the flankers to Angel, Alien, A*Men, and Womanity, collectively called Les Parfums de Cuir, are truly gifts that keep giving. There are many things to admire about the Mugler line, not least of which is its packaging, a big part of its gifts to give. With the exception of Womanity, arguably a misstep in the direction of excessive ornamentation, the bottles have been endlessly entertaining, if not exactly practical - interesting not just as vessels but as objets d'art. Unlike most flankers, and despite the expectations imposed on these new fragrances by detractors of the original fragrances, those produced by Mugler don't seem too preoccupied with "improvement". Again, with the exception of Womanity, which has not quite been the hot cake that Angel and Alien have been, there's nothing, from a sales point of view, to improve. These aren't apologias.

With Mugler, a flanker often brings the best of both worlds - a wonderful new fragrance not too terribly removed from the one you love, reenacting the crush all over again. The Liqueur versions from 2009 were my favorites so far. For me, Angel Liqueur is even better than the original, while Alien is a deeper, richer more of same, forcing me to look at the Alien I fell in love with in a different way. A*Men Pure Coffee was fantastic, and Pure Malt was beyond that, and the only real bummer for me has been Pure Havane, which smelled on me a little too much like death by vinyl, side of maraschino cherry.

There are Mugler fragrances I practically ignore, like most of the summertime flankers, all of them single-mindedly bent on balancing toothpaste with caramel, and while I admired last year's Taste of Fragrance editions, I never felt, no matter how hard I tried, that I neeeeeded them. The whole Innocent range seems superfluous to me, unless you simply must have a Mugler and can't stomach anything more interesting the line has to offer. But those Liqueur versions. Those were really something - so good that each September I start thinking obsessively about what the brand will come up with next.

I'm not as crazy about the leather Angel as I am about her liqueur kin, but I don't like it too much less. Certainly enough to buy it. If it's good enough to bring the guys at Peredepierre out of semi-retirement, you know it must be pretty decent. Peredepierre described an apricot quality to leather Angel that puts it somewhere near Daim Blond. I do get peach, but not with anything like the brightness of that Lutens suede. This is definitely leather for me, not suede, dark brown in color, and the sweetness of most Angel versions, including the original, is tempered here. Liqueur Angel smells recognizably of Angel throughout. Leather Angel doesn't always or often remind me of any Angel I've smelled. If I had to find a correlate I would look to Cuir de Lancome or Heeley Cuir Pleine Fleur. Leather Angel, unlike Cuir Pleine Fleur, isn't quite barnyard-adjacent, but not so far away the wind doesn't catch up with it. As for Cuir de Lancome, what I think it shares with leather Angel is a rich, creamy leather feel, with none of the arch sharpness involved in, say, Knize Ten or Chanel Cuir de Russie.

It's most recognizable as "Angel" up top. Once it dries down to the leather, which is not skanky but plush (more leather bag or seat than saddle), it becomes something almost entirely new for me. The marketing says these flankers were marinated in leather. I can't answer to that, though I find it hard to believe. Still, smelling leather Angel, this is an apt image, and as far as PR talk goes, I'll take this kind of snake oil over the stuff Dior's writing, bottling, and peddling any day. Leather Angel, like the other two "feminines", is housed in a great bottle, which is housed in a great little leather bag, which is all kind of the icing on the cake for what turns out to be a refreshingly gratifying fragrance. By dry down, you have, for once, or a change, a contemporary mainstream fragrance which not only promises but delivers the leather, with a punch. This is truly a successful conceptual exercise, wrapping Angel in layers of rich leather, and the measure of that success is how good it smells.

Angel Appreciation

Can you believe Angel is almost 20 years old?  Thierry Mugler’s Angel launched in 1992 and is far and away the most groundbreaking fragrance of the past two decades.

The first time I smelled Angel was December, 1997.  I was Christmas shopping at Macy’s in the downtown crossing section of Boston.  Angel will always smell like Christmas to me.  I have never been able to sniff it objectively, my first impression of Angel being tightly interwoven with the sights, sounds and smells of Christmas.  I was so struck by Angel on this day in the winter of 1997 that I remember what I was wearing.  I recall the heft of my chocolate brown suede coat and the over-the-knee dark brown boots I had just bought myself.  I was really into brown in the late 90’s.  I remember carrying several shopping bags which were cutting into my fingers and struggling a bit with my coat tossed over an arm as it was now too warm to wear it inside the store.   As I walked through Macy’s I was accosted by one of those enthusiastic sales associates with what seemed at the time like a machine gun of Angel at her side.  It was unusual for me to allow myself to be sprayed, but this time I did. Tis the season I suppose.  I let the sales associate give me a spritz and then kept walking.  

A few minutes passed before I sniffed the wrist where Angel had been sprayed.  I stopped in my tracks.  I was dumbstruck.  Angel was unique, unlike anything I had smelled before.  Somehow I had managed to be completely unaware of Angel from 1992 until my first encounter in 1997.  I smelled it on myself for the first time without any association of others wearing it around me.  Within five minutes I knew I must have this perfume.  I knew I would buy a bottle on my way out.

As I walked around Macy’s that day the entire city was dressed for Christmas.  Boston was strung with lights and there were Christmas trees and decorations aplenty.  These Christmas images melded with my first impression of Angel and I will forever associate the fragrance with festivity, joy, pine trees, candles and sparkling lights.  I’ve never been able to smell Angel the way others do; I have never smelled the super-sweet candy accord others seem to despise.  If I really think about it, if I dissect Angel, what I smells starts with a shrieky citrus blast which then mellows ever so slightly into a highly aldehydic, metallic, mentholated, sweet earthy patchouli.  This is technically what I smell.  But what I actually smelled that first time back in 1997 and still smell to this day are sparkling lights, candles, pine trees, cold air, damp snow, ice and a house warmly decorated for the holidays with a blazing fireplace and baked goods.  I smell promise and happiness.

Angel isn’t smooth, it is rough, a little pitchy and full of character. Her personality is like that overly dramatic friend, who embarrasses you slightly but has a heart of gold and is perpetually fun to be around.  I absolutely adore Angel.  It was love at first sniff.  Happy 20^th birthday, Angel.  

Prada Candy (aka Prada Infusion de Benjoin)

Yes, I’m alive. I’m peeking out of my hot, steamy corner here in The South because I finally wore something I’ve been looking forward to for months: Prada Candy.

Sometimes I wonder about myself. I mean, why, exactly was I looking forward to Prada Candy so much? Within the perfume realm I’m an eternal optimist. No matter how many times I’ve been burned, I seem to keep a positive attitude and remain hopeful about new releases. Prada Candy is my latest burn.

Prada’s ad copy led me in the wrong direction. Neiman Marcus tells us this about Prada Candy:

Prada Candy, the new feminine fragrance of Prada enriches the Prada brand's fragrance universe with another vision: colorful, pop and explosive.

“Prada Candy incarnates the new Prada woman: she's daring, sensual, full of life and implosive.

The perfume is named after this seductive and joyful girl who is running wild.

Top:
Seductive notes: Joyful and Carefree—Explosion of caramel

Middle:
Powdery notes: Sophistication—Cocktail of musks

Base:
Vanilla notes: Sensuality—Benjoin overdose”

I mean, they told me Candy was to be an “Overdose of Benjoin.” They said “Explosion of caramel.” I was thinking Candy would be similar to something like Thierry Mugler Angel and Dior Addict. I was thinking Candy would be a Big with a capital B oriental gourmand.

And what exactly IS Prada Candy? I find it to be very similar to their Infusion series fragrances; such as Infusion d’Iris, Infusion de Fleur d’Oranger, Infusion de Tubereuse. It’s as if Prada made another “Infusion” scent but decided to call it Candy and put it in different packaging when it should have been named “Infusion de Benjoin.”

Candy is a light, airy, one dimensional fragrance. It’s a skin scent and most definitely not a big overdose of anything. Candy is a pleasant and like-ably sheer benjoin fragrance. It starts off with a nice dollop of caramel but after about 20 minutes dries down to a simple sheer benjoin.

Candy is nice enough, bit it ain’t no overdose of anything.

Alien Sunessence 2011: Edition Or D'Ambre

I don't know why--because they've largely been disappointing--but every year I look forward to all the various Thierry Mugler seasonal, limited edition flankers with the kind of excitement I imagine a teen feels waiting for the next installment of the Twilight franchise.  The flankers for A*men have been more consistently promising, and I don't have many complaints there, but, aside from the astonishingly good Alien and Angel Liqueur duo (2009), the results over at the lady counter have often left me disappointed.

For the most part, the Angel Sunessence fragrances have half the lifespan of their original inspiration and seem very nakedly to be attempts to modify for the few who dislike or hate Angel the things which make the rest of us love it so maniacally.  "Angel toothpaste!" as Luca Turin remarked enthusiastically about one of these flankers, is good for a whirl, I guess, but it doesn't exactly leave you feeling sated, or particularly clean for that matter.  As toothpastes go, it left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.  Innocent and its rather jaded follow-ups have consistently failed to even marginally interest me.  The Alien Sunessence fragrances have, on the other hand, smelled so much like the original Alien, that I had a hard time seeing the point, let alone the difference.

I approached Or D'Ambre without much hope, and at first I thought, "same old, same old".  It was only later, when it persisted much longer than even the original Alien seems to, and seemed more interesting than any of its sister flankers by far, hours in, that I came around to what should have been its very obvious appeal.

Thierry Mugler's ad copy tends to delight or grate with its fanciful silliness, depending on your mood, and I'm not sure I smell the promised "trio of wealth" at the top of the fragrance: "the wealth of vitamins, the wealth of the exotic, and the enchanting wealth of warmth."  We all love the French and admit that they are superior in the art of fragrance.  Is all this wealth not enough to buy them an English speaking think tank?  Upon first spraying Ambre, what I get is something very refreshing; if calling that a wealth of refreshment makes more sense of things to you, I invite you to do so.  For me, it's a little more specific.  Ambre offers a weird citrus sheen or zest which is not only unusual for an Alien flanker but engineered in such an unusual way that it compliments the fragrance's weird synthetic sensibility perfectly.  This metallic hesperide lasts all of ten minutes, tops, and flows seamlessly into the heart of the fragrance, a practically teeming virtual reality of impressions.

For something as openly synthetic as Alien, Ambre has a remarkable series of moods and transitions; many more than your average, supposedly superior, more allegedly natural fragrance, which typically purports to use only the highest quality raw materials.  I've always loved the synthetic qualities of Alien, the way it feels super saturated and weirdly succulent without losing that unique cyborgian effect, like something Sean Young's character might have smelled of to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, a simulation of memories combining childhood sunsets, his mother's jasmine perfume, and the new patented Sumolinoline Vinyl upholstery of his hovercraft.  Alien absolutely feels half human, half mechanical to me, and I love that, and what made the liqueur version so compelling, aside from the fact it smelled like a million bucks, was the sense it gave of taking those synthetically engineered qualities and aging them like a fine liquor, giving them a richness that screwed around with your mind the way someone implanting memories might.

Ambre takes those pastoral-domestic fantasies, those memories of things you might or might never have experienced, and carries them in a tote bag to the beach.  Distinctly summery, it smells, somewhere in there, of sun and suntan oil on skin and the heat bearing down on your closed eyelids.  The fragrance shifts over time on your skin, sticking with you the way the experience of the beach does by the end of the afternoon, when the salt of your sweat has mingled with the oil you applied throughout the day, and your feel somewhat crunchy and sated from the effects of the wind, heat, and sand.  It's an interesting take on amber, applying the Alien sensibility to it, and conceptually it is far stronger than any of the Sunessence flankers have been.  It feels very much in keeping with the original Alien's creative agenda and yet extends it in an interesting direction, exploring slightly different territory.

Ambre is credited to Dominique Ropion, and like much of what he does it has remarkable longevity.  For an Eau de toilette Legere (all the Sunessence flankers are) it has tremendous staying power and feels exceptionally rich, long after application.  While it becomes increasingly subtle as it wears on, it never feels weak, nor watery, as many eau legeres do on me, particularly those which feature some kind of citrus aspect.  And despite the silliness of the ad copy, Ambre does indeed retain an unusual warmth throughout its development, matching the bottle's solar design in execution.  The notes listed include vanilla, orchid, amber, woods, and the wealthy trifecta of tonics up top, including kiwi, which is lost on me.  Ambre unmistakably resembles original Alien but is quite different in many respects.  Spray them side by side and you won't mistake them again.  I would argue that Ambre outlasts Alien, as well.  As for liking Ambre more than Alien, for those who didn't care much for the original, I can't say.  I love both without reservations.

The Whole World is Mothers and Daughters

My mom lives only two hours outside of town, and I haven't been to see her in over eight months. There's a perfume shop at the halfway mark. Nothing you can't find online at less than half the price, but it motivates me; if I can just get in my car and drive an hour, it's an instant fix. This trip, I pick up stuff I already have, mostly. I do find a tester bottle of Ungaro, the one Francis Kurkdjian did several years ago. Versace White Jeans. Luckyscent the place is not.

My mom lives out in the middle of nowhere. Fifteen years ago, she and my stepfather made a conscious decision to remove themselves from society, a series of life moves I've been trying to understand ever since. Like her own mother, my mother rarely makes the effort to visit her children. Perfume isn't the same kind of motivator for her it is for me, and taking care of her husband and dogs makes leaving home for any length of time very difficult, she says. A year ago, I didn't speak to her for months, after she promised to make the local premier of my first film and backed out at the last minute. She'd missed my first book signing for the same reason: who would feed everyone in her absence?

So there's some baggage involved in these visits, and typically I arrive with my feelings shut down. I go straight to my room, and try to make myself come out. It's so quiet and remote where she lives, so slow, that for the first forty eight hours I can barely keep my eyes open. It's like checking into rehab; like coming off speed. You crash hard. This makes quick, overnight stays problematic. It also works against me, because I seem not to want to help around the house or engage in any social interaction, adding to the overall impression my mom and stepfather have of me being a total jerk off.

I try to create things to talk about, so that I have some kind of outlet and can direct the conversation myself. This time, I go straight for the perfume I've given my mom over the last few years. She always loved Joy, but she hasn't worn any of the bottle I bought her. The vintage Chanel No. 19 seems untouched, too. I feel guilty for wanting to take them back. She does seem to like the Fath de Fath. She admits she wears that one the most.

I've packed her a grab bag of presents for Mother's Day, including a few small perfume decants, and I wonder whether she'll use them. She tends to save things. The perfumes are in their boxes, sitting out on her bureau. Last time, they were in the closet. I'd warned her about keeping them in the light. But a closet is a miserable place to keep something like perfume, especially when you really only look at the stuff, so she boxed the bottles and brought them out: a happy medium. While we're in the closet, she points to the highest shelf, where a large blue plastic tub sits. "That's where I keep all the letters you and your sister have written me," she says. "If anything ever happens to me. Just so you know."

I feel weird in anyone's house who doesn't have a special relationship with at least one perfume. It's like someone who never had children or a pet. There's some kind of emptiness there. My mom had me and my sister but something about the quiet out in the country reminds me of her loneliness and has the same basic effect. It makes me want to get out. Or to smell a lot of perfume in private. I brought about fifteen bottles with me. That seemed like a reasonable number at the time. Now, in this barren environment, it seems lavish, remarkably excessive.

My mom was one of three sisters. Her mother was pretty tough. I don't remember any of them wearing fragrance. I do remember a special bottle of perfume in my grandmother's medicine cabinet. It was special to me, anyway. I stole it when her health started to wane. Who would ever give it to me? I don't remember my mom wearing perfume as a child, though the bottle of Oscar she has now seems to have been around forever. I remember it sitting out on her dresser as far back as my memories will take me. It occurs to me that her perfume would probably be fine wherever she puts it. The Oscar has traveled all over the country, sitting in cars, boxes, bathrooms, and bureaus. It smells like it always did.

I don't know where my thing for perfume comes from. I wonder about it, as I smell my perfume stash behind closed doors in my mother's house over the weekend. I'm careful not to spray too much. I can write whatever I want about the genderlessness of scents on a blog, and I can wear whatever I want pretty fearlessly most everywhere in my life, but this is Arkansas, and my stepfather is a truck driver, and I can't imagine Poison going over so well at the dinner table. I feel as if I'm huffing glue. The act is so clandestine. All weekend I have sudden surges of memory; what it felt like to grow up in places I had to try to try so hard to fit into. At some point, I spray on Angel, and I think about that fragrance in an entirely new light.

Angel is beauty and force. It's a mingling of opposites, a declarative mission statement. I understand now why I feel so great wearing it. Angel means not having to hide anything. It's a rebellion, like some hostile act of beauty. You either get it or you don't. This is a stretch, but during my visit I read a book on the Columbine school shootings. I also watched Man on Wire, a documentary about the guy who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center Towers in the seventies. Inevitably, I viewed Angel and my feelings about my upbringing through the prism of those two influences.

Here were two senseless acts, both of them driven attempts to reorder a universe. It's amazing, how much time and effort, how much focus and passion, went into planning the Columbine attack and the walk between the towers. All kind of subterfuge was required. These people planned their acts of defiance for over a year. They had no real lives to speak of as they prepared, like monks, for these fateful days. Each was thoroughly unhappy with the conventions imposed by society. And look how different the results of their malcontent. The people who looked up to the top of the towers from the sidewalk saw inexplicable poetry. It changed them. The act spread hope and possibility through generations in one way or another. It hurt no one. Witnesses to Columbine have had their lives rent apart. They're still trying to make sense of what happened; the hate and unhappiness fueling the incident. The parents of the killers have asked themselves every day since what they must have done wrong.

All of these things came together for me as I sniffed Angel and others furtively at my mom's. I've always been at odds with her. I've always protected her from the complications of who I am. We talk about what she can handle. We hardly know each other. What kind of inner life must she have, I wonder? What must it feel like to be so disconnected from your son? The Columbine kids were in the basement everyday, plotting, fantasizing, assembling pipe bombs. Right under their parents' noses. Dylan Klebold, one of them, was horribly depressed. He was miserable in his life, and totally alone in it. Reading the book, I kept thinking, he and his mom must have been disconnected.

I remember when I first got Angel. I'd sprayed some on a strip of paper and had it in the car with me. My mom was in town on a rare visit, and I took her out to dinner. When we returned she asked what the smell was. I felt awkward about telling her, but it was such an obvious smell. There was no hiding it. Back then, it still seemed slightly feminine to me. Now it's androgynous, but only the way glam rock is. My mom put the strip to her nose and seemed to really like it. She wasn't put off at all. I was amazed she saw the beauty in it. I considered getting her some but knew she'd never wear it. No. 19 I can bear to see unused. Seeing an untouched bottle of Angel would feel like someone cut down in her prime.

I'm a filmmaker. My mother still hasn't seen my first film, though it's been around the world. I think she's scared to see it. It's sad, because so much of me and my childhood went into it. The movie I'm finishing up now is based on a lot of my experiences, too, though it's all been fictionalized. It has a lot to do with motherhood, with the complex relationships mothers have with their daughters, and vice versa. Growing up, I watched the women in my family as if they were in a movie. Their lives seemed so interesting. One of the characters in this film, a home shopping network saleswoman, gets in an argument with her boss, who wants to take away her callers, most of them women. She talks about her mother and their children with them. Some of the women have been calling her show for years. "The whole world is mothers and daughters," she tells her boss. "The whole world is mothers and daughters, and what's going on between them."

Like her boss, I've often felt outside the world of women in my family. But I'm fascinated by the connections they make, and I've always wanted to be a part of them. I never planned to hide in the bathroom with perfume. It was never my intention to be disconnected from or at odds with my mom, and I often wonder where things went wrong. Still, I look around and see it could have been much worse. And we're both trying, though we act as if we have all the time in the world to get it right. I know perfume is a crucial component of the connection I keep trying to make, the poetry I keep trying to create between the two of us. I keep throwing the line out, hoping for magic.

Highwayman (Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab)

Few fragrances are discussed on the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab forum with as much bewilderment as Highwayman. Though not without fans, it seems to leave detractors feeling as if they've been assaulted by some unseen hand. Two days into spending time with it, I started comparing it to Angel, not because it smells similar, but because Angel elicits equally strong, equally contradictory reactions, and because, like Angel, Highwayman is a proposition of opposites which can be as off-putting as it is mind-bending.

Many of the Black Phoenix fragrances require creative association on the part of the wearer; the oils are interpretations of a theme or a subject, and sometimes they're left of center to your expectations. Dracul's pine and mint notes--brisk, almost cheery--are anything but vampiric for some. Jasmine and patchouli might not readily come to mind when you think of the cryptic caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Names like Sin and Perversion are bound to divide opinion. These things are discussed at length on the forum by fan and foe alike.

The first image I got, hearing the name Highwayman, was a pavement-bound drifter, dressed in scuffed leather, mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes, vapors rising off the asphalt around him, desert on either side of the road; an unshaven stranger, fairly unwashed, his face and hands scuffed with the grease, grass, and dirt of innumerable days out in the open. That image sprang to life like a dry sponge hitting water the moment I smelled the fragrance.

Highwayman is the best leather fragrance I've ever smelled, and I've smelled quite a few. There's just no comparison. My biggest disappointment, even with my favorite leathers, is their eagerness to tame the foul harmony of the real thing. Chanel Cuir de Russie and Lancome Cuir make friendly with florals. Even more openly jarring leathers, like Heeley's Cuir Pleine Fleur, are ultimately a lot more softened than I'd like. Knize Ten, too, is incomparable--I wouldn't be without it--yet as it ventures deeper into tanned territory it sprinkles sweetener about generously. Creed's Royal English Leather and Parfum D'Empire's Cuir Ottoman are smooth and buttery, and ultimately more about amber than anything else. I want something that smells of the undomesticated animal it came from.

Highwayman has gardenia, rose, and jasmine in it but you'd never guess. Then again, gardenia and indolic jasmine are the last thing you'd expect to be paired with leather, about as far removed from the polite iris of Cuir de Russie as a baseball is from a basketball court. There's a floral aspect to Highwayman but you'd be hard pressed to say exactly what. It enhances the overall effect perfectly, the way the unlikely addition of chocolate to patchouli radicalized antagonistic opposites in Angel. The rubbery, camphorous vibe of gardenia works ideally here, and your mind continues to struggle its way around such an improbable counterpart.

Highwayman's biggest emphasis is on the smoked tarry ambience of creosote. The asphalt drives of my childhood were fertile with this smell during the summer, when the sun baked their dark surfaces, giving them a tactile rubbery spring and an aroma which seemed both aggressively unnatural and perfectly appropriate to the surrounding environment, smelling as much of wood as smoke. This quality, without taking Highwayman away from leather, places it alongside Santa Maria Novella's wonderful Nostalgia, which is a much more civilized version of Highwayman, a volatile marriage of creosote and kerosene. The scorched pavement Nostalgia burns rubber on is far too small a patch of land. It doesn't last. Highwayman is a wide open road, and it goes on forever.

Another useful comparison is Garage, from the Comme des Garçons Synthetics series. Again, Garage is a much more transparent and affable fragrance than Highwayman, but it plays around in the same space, among fuel spills and oil leaks and the rubber of well-worn tires. Garage pulls up to the dangling tennis ball, but, unlike Highwayman, it leaves the electric door open, allowing the air to circulate. Highwayman is more of a shut-in. It even lights a cigarette. Like Garage, Highwayman's effects have a lot to do with vetiver. Garage, again, cleans that up, making it a much prettier, more presentable contributor. Highwayman uses vetiver the way several good BPAL fragrances do, exploiting its rich, almost chocolatey depth, full of happy contradictions. The dry down of Highwayman is predominately vetiver, and not dissimilar to Lalique's Encre Noire.

I smell so many things that the idea of a holy grail seems a little bizarre in theory, like finding a needle in a haystack. I've smelled a lot of Black Phoenix scents too, and love more than I like. Some, like Djinn and Now Winter Lights Enlarge, are uncommonly good. The past year introduced me to Tabac Aurea by Sonoma Scent Studio and Teo Cabanel's Alahine. I knew when I smelled them what people mean when they designate a holy grail fragrance. It isn't that I wear these all the time, or even often. But they bond with my sensibility in a powerful, emotional way, as if they sprung out of my imagination, or take root there in a wonderfully parasitic way. Highwayman is at the top of that list.

Guardiania Angel: Bond No. 9's Nuits de Noho

At this point, there are enough Angel smell-alikes to create their own separate category, so that owning more than one isn't any more ipso facto redundant than owning several green chypres or fruity florals. Spend enough time with these unconscious, unofficial flankers and you perceive the differences, subtle and otherwise, though, judging by the fragrance blogs, you'd never know there were any at all. Maybe it's just me, but Mauboussin for Women stands on its own (and how). So does Piguet's Visa, which is yet another variation on fruity radiance by Aurelien Guichard. Miss Dior Cherie is lighter than Angel, a study in strawberry. It has a lucidity Angel lacks, which isn't to say it's superior. The complex bombast of Angel is more than fine by me. Even Molinard's Nirmala, which is likely the inspiration for Angel, smells like its own bird to me, the difference between a Warhol cartoon painting and a Lichtenstein, maybe.

For some reason, you can't have enough chypres, but when it comes to Angel and its ilk, you must make a choice. You either love Angel, own it, and need nothing else like it, or you hate it for some perceived deficiency and would gladly choose an alternative which improves upon its mistakes. Angel's biggest transgression, unforgivable to many, is its liberal dose of patchouli. Nuits de Noho solves this problem for some, while for others it's so similar to Angel regardless that it isn't worth bothering with. It's true, Nuits de Noho smells a lot like Angel, but only here and there, and its focus on white florals, with a bit of indole and creamy vanilla, set it apart.

It has good staying power and mile wide sillage, so I don't see how it's a friendlier Angel, as some argue. Maybe the distinction has to do with tonal qualities. Both fragrances have peerless density, but Angel hits more bass notes, whereas Nuits de Noho explores a mid range. A pineapple accord gives the opening added bouyancy, and a bright and shiny character unique to the Bond line. Jasmine is the primary floral, and in some ways there are more similarities with cyber jasmine Alien than with foody, broody Angel. I smell an awful lot of gardenia, myself. It might surprise the uninitiated to learn that Nuits in fact does have its share of patchouli, perhaps because white musk mediates its overall effect. Nothing earth-shattering is happening here, but it's good enough for the price tag, projects wonderfully, and fits well within the larger project of its brand. I suppose vanilla is enough to make Nuits de Noho gourmand, though I can't see what else in the mix would push it in that direction. Still, like many of the Bond line, it conveys that near-edible impression.

Nuits is the top seller, next to Scent of Peace, at the local store here which carries Bond. Many of these customers wouldn't shell out the money for a bottle of Angel. And I don't think they're buying Bond because it's trendy and expensive. Bond gets slammed a lot for being overpriced, gimmicky, and unimaginative, all of which infers a lack of art direction or an overriding aesthetic. This seems disingenuous to me and I grow tired of hearing it. It's just as fashionable to knock Bond as it is to buy it, it seems to me, so who's ultimately following the herd? The truth is that the Bond line, like it, love it, or loathe it, is remarkably consistent, and from first sniff one can usually see clearly that each fragrance relates to the bigger picture of the company, speaking to the others before and after it. People like to accuse these niche firms of lacking originality. At this point in the game, with several hundred perfumes released each year, one or two glimmers of "originality" a season are about as much as can realistically be expected, so perhaps we can stop holding perfumes and perfumers up to that ridiculously misleading yardstick and start appreciating the subtle distinctions, advancements, and discernment involved in what they do. Consistency of vision, for instance, is no small accomplishment. A lovely, eminently wearable fragrance is a shock in itself. It's easier to see the differences between the work of Lichtenstein and Warhol when you look more comprehensively. If you set two of their cartoon paintings side by side, you have very little frame of reference for comparison, let alone deeper appreciation. You can only compare dots so long, and come up with only so much of interest.

I think Nuits smells great on a guy. To my nose, it smells no less masculine than the fruity green nelly-ness of Wall Street. I find it curious that Bond wastes time marketing to any single gender at all. Why not make the entire line unisex, and let the buyer decide? Is there some concern that an innocent young girl will stray into Riverside Drive and find herself trapped in Roucel's thicket of simulated chest hair? Is some guy going to walk out of the store with Bryant Park, only to be mistaken for a woman on the subway by a man who holds the door open for him, thereby ruining the lives of both?

Another One Bites the Dust: Fendi Palazzo

I'm having trouble figuring out why it's so hard to find much on the perfume blogs about Fendi Palazzo. I suppose it will be even harder now that the fragrance has been discontinued. Where it is mentioned, more often than not, the reviewer seems resolutely unimpressed with the juice, however high the marks for the bottle. Interestingly, that bottle seems the height of overkill to me, like the coat worn by a woman I saw pumping gas today: floor length velour, a bold print of recurring tiger heads, sparkling cut glass "jewels" for eyes. The bottle for Palazzo strikes me as something someone who pronounces Versace incorrectly might adore all out of proportion. I don't reget its discontinuation. The fragrance itself I'll have a hard time doing without.

On Basenotes they're downright merciless about Palazzo; on Makeupalley.com, a little less theatrically dismissive. The chief complaint seems to be what many of its detractors perceive as a striking similarity to Angel. I smell no such similarity. To me, Palazzo shares more in common with Karma by Lush. It has the bold assertiveness of Angel, along with its odd juxtaposition of off-center elements, and of course, being an Annick Menardo fragrance, it feels foody, all of which might be why people reach for that comparison. Then too, the patchouli is right up front. But for me it's as if Menardo refined and elevated Karma's appeal. There's absolutely a bit of the head shop to Palazzo: some incense, an ambience which comes off like smoke or resin. There's also a strange, citrus brightness there, albeit buried so deeply underneath the surface that it registers almost subliminally.

Palazzo is related to Menardo's Lolita Lempicka, as well, and in fact feels like a simultaneously muted and amped up version of that juice, where the sense of sugary saturation is adjusted to more tolerable levels. Palazzo subtracts Lolita's vanilla ad-infinitum foundation, replacing it with patchouli and gaic wood. Both fragrances have similar notes up top and in the middle. Down below they go their separate ways. I admire Lolita and even owned a small bottle for a time, until I faced the fact that it wasn't something I was going to get much if any wear out of and gifted it to someone else. It was something I wanted to like and wished I could wear, but it made me feel silly somehow, like I'd baked something in my easy bake oven and decided to smear it all over myself. Palazzo wears a more serious expression. It feels a little more sophisticated and I get a lot more mileage out of it.

And why not? There's a lot to like. It last forever, projects exceptionally, and though I seem to be anosmic to most musky scents, this one keeps reasserting itself throughout its lifespan. Palazzo is a friend whose merits I try to point out to the rest of my crowd, without much luck. More for me, as they say--while supplies last, anyway. Sephora, which has pulled Palazzo from its shelves in all but gift set form (packaged with shower gel), classifies it as a woody oriental. Osmoz regards it as "floral - woody musk" and, in addition to patchouli and gaic wood, lists the following notes: mandarin orange, lemon, bergamot, pink pepper, orange blossom, rose, and jasmine. I should also say that I see similarities between Palazzo and Burberry Brit Gold, though again, Palazzo manages to be everything I wish that other fragrance would be.

Some Thoughts on the Year: All the World's a Bathroom

I'm a latecomer to perfume, and 2008 was my awakening, starting with Vetiver Extraordinaire. A friend wrote about Vetiver Extraordinaire in a French magazine, making it sound like the best thing in the world. The only thing in the world. I'd visited him in Atlanta several months before and was shocked and a little uneasy when, watching a play in a dark theater, he pulled out a bottle of Comme des Garçons 2, uncapped it with much drama, then sprayed himself, and everyone around us, profusely.

It seemed hostile and generous at the same time, part assault, part act of mercy. When I asked him about 2 he mentioned he'd been writing about perfume a lot. I was fascinated. Write about perfume? Here was a serious, well known writer, respected for his novels about the lower east side and the denizens of old Times Square. Was he doing it in secret? Later, he emailed me the copy of his article on Vetiver, showing his real name, right at the top. I asked for a bottle last Valentine's Day. It seemed appropriately extravagant for the occasion: it came from far away (I ordered from France, if you can believe it, which shows what I knew), was costly (or so it seemed, compared to the mall), and surely, I figured, it would be a special perfume for special occasions.

At the time, I had maybe four or five fragrances: an old bottle of Coriandre, a Fragonard, something by Aveda, the original Comme des Garçons. It wasn't that I hadn't bought scents in the past. I just didn't know where to look. I didn't even know anything like Vetiver Extraordinaire existed, the world of niche perfumery being subterranean territory to me. My bottle of Coriandre reminded me of high school. I used to sneak into my stepmother's bathroom to smell it.

I did a lot of sneaking into bathrooms back then. When my sister or stepmother emerged from their rooms, they smelled fantastic. Their scents had gravitational force, and everything around them collapsed into that central point of interest for me. I envied that power. More importantly, I envied them that pleasure; that drama and intrigue. There was even solace in that dynamic somehow. Scent was emotional armor and hypnotic allure. Buying Coriandre later was a bit of a defiance for me, but I treated it the way I always had: I kept it in the bathroom, smelling it every once in a while or even obsessively. I never wore it, unless getting into bed, where no one would catch me.

I still remember the day Vetiver Extraordinaire arrived in the mail. It was packaged beautifully, and the glass bottle and chunky cap had a heft to it which seemed important, even momentous. It smelled like nothing I'd ever experienced. Dry and wet simultaneously, grassy, sheer. What was this vetiver stuff? A plant--a grass, you say? I sprayed some on at work and the whole office shifted. It was so combustible. It engaged the people around me, altering their behavior, altering my mood, my attitude, my imagination. It truly was momentous, and in the weirdest possible way.

I started researching perfume. Here was my stepmother's bathroom, spread out all over the world. A little bathroom called Frederic Malle, in Paris, France; stark and sleek, black and red and dull green glass. Little bathrooms called The Different Company, Le Labo--and hey, what about that Comme des Garçons perfume the writer had employed to change the course of the play we were watching? What of number "2"?

The first part of this awakening for me was a systematic run through of all the perfumes which had ever secretly captured my imagination. First up was Angel. Years ago, when it came out, I'd smelled it as quickly as possible on the shelves. What would I do if a saleperson came over and started asking me questions? I wanted that smell for my own more than anything. This year, I bought it at the mall, where the saleswomen indeed hovered around me, sizing me up. What kind of husband or boyfriend was I, their eyes were asking? How big a dupe? They talked me into the most expensive bottle they had, deluding me somehow into believing my girlfriend (essentially myself in this scenario) deserved the very best. Hadn't she waited long enough?

A month or so later I visited Portland, wondering, "Do they have any interesting bathrooms?" They did! The Perfume House, my host said, but she didn't think it was much. It was closed the first few days of my trip and I passed the time in Nordstrom and Saks, where I got Declaration Essence and smelled Gucci pour Homme for the first time. When I was looking at Declaration Essence, I sprayed it ever so slightly on my wrist. No no, the saleswoman said, taking the bottle from me. "How will you enjoy THAT?" Before I could answer she'd sprayed more perfume than I'd ever dared, covering my wrist in a wet pool of smell. It was so strong that when I walked into the nail salon to let my host smell, it registered over the toxic stench of nail products. I walked around inside the dream of that aroma all day.

The Perfume House really did it for me. Located in an old home on the middle of a busy street, its curious effect on my outlook was incalculably transforming. For someone who associated perfume with private, clandestine areas of the house, being in a house stocked full of bottles, everywhere you looked, was revolutionary. I can't explain how life changing this was for me. It took perfume out of the bathroom: brought it right out into the open, into the living room, the bedroom, the foyer, the bedroom. And everyone came out with it, setting bottles and cotton swabs of scent all over the counters and shelves. It was a four day conversation about perfume and for once the subject didn't feel like a dirty secret. The whole history of the world was tucked inside the topic. How strange to emerge from the building. Out on the street, no one else seemed to be having the conversation.

Over the next four or five days I spent roughly ten hours there. It was an intensive crash course on just some of the variety available in fragrance. Lutens, L'Artisan, Amouage, Piguet, Carthusia, Lalique, Patou, Crown, Goutal. The owner and his staff were wonderful. They made no assumptions, no value judgments, knew something about everything they stocked. What they couldn't remember they immediately looked up, without my having to ask. I bought five or six perfumes that trip: Dzing!, Sables, Bois 1920 Classic, Comme des Garçons 2, Chypre Rouge. My last day, I had a cold and was quietly devastated that I couldn't smell the things I'd bought. Regardless, I didn't want to leave.

The interesting if perhaps predictable thing is that since that time I have purchased everything I smelled and liked in that store over the course of those four days. And then some, naturally. Am I trying to make up for lost time? Maybe. Last night, thinking about it all, I suddenly considered again how brief everything is. I'd been out to dinner with my friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Time telegraphed back and forth in my head and I got sad thinking how ephemeral life can be. Your relationships and the things which mean so much to you are blips on the screen, brief and fleeting. It tortures me. Someone's face eventually becomes a photograph, frozen in time, telling only a fraction of the story. The dog you loved and woke to for fifteen years is long gone, along with her smell and the sensation of her fur against your cheek.

Perfume, for me, I realized, extends those blips into lifelong memories, which live on indefinitely in the mind. I only went to LA several months ago, but this weekend I smelled Chanel Cuir De Russie, which I bought there, and already it smells like that whole trip to me: the insecurities I felt showing my film for the first time, coupled with the wonder of being in that weird, magical and merciless place. Perfume brought every complicated emotion back to me with visceral economy. Nothing else has the ability to do that with such facility. Maybe it has to do with the fact that perfume itself is so complicated and hard to pin down. Perfume itself is tangled emotion and wonder, sadness and beauty and beatitude all mixed together. The smell of violets isn't simply floral but ancestral for me. Violets are my grandmother, conjuring every last detail of her memory. Fragrance has the power to bring the dead back to life. It changes things, alters the course of time, penetrates the mind and the mood.

Meeting Abigail in The Perfume Critic chat room was important for me. Starting this blog extended the conversation I began at the Perfume House in Portland, bringing it into the outside world. We talk almost every day, several times a day. We meet on the blog to share our impressions and all those complicated feelings. We share perfume and the stories behind them with each other. And all those conversations are peppered with everything else going on in our individual day to day lives. When I talked to Abigail on the phone the first time, after we'd known each other a couple of months and been blogging that time, it was like walking into the Perfume House again. I didn't want to hang up. We talked so easily, more easily than most people I've known ten times as long. The things I'd worked so hard to hide or downplay in conversation with others were matter of fact between us, and I talked like someone's hand had been muffling me all this time.

I can't imagine talking about perfume without Abigail being by my side in the discussion. Together, we've left the Perfume House and taken it out onto the street, continuing the conversation in public. Funny thing, that. Once you start talking on the street you draw others who are having their own conversations. Ours eventually started getting responses from the people reading us, and we continue (avidly) reading other people. Perfume: The Guide was indispensable. IS indispensable. Turin and Sanchez are real advocates, deepening the exchange of perfume between self and the larger world, chief proponents of the right to opinion and passion when talking about it and sharing it, defending it or dismissing it. All the reference lists on various perfume blogs were key, too. I printed them all out and carried the phone book-sized lot around with me, studying as if cramming for an exam. I wanted to know perfume inside and out. I still do. All the perfumers, all the companies, all the ingredients, accords, terms, all the history. I have the feeling there's no going back for me now, and despite all the wonderful things that have happened for me this year with my work and in my personal life, my initiation into perfume and the open embrace of that long-forbidden pleasure stands alone as a singular achievement.

Below are flashbacks from the year for me, some of the moments which come most readily to mind:

-Walking into Chanel in Beverly Hills, where the first thing I saw was a row of Les Exclusifs. I came for Cuir de Russie but they were out. I was the only one in the crowded store looking at perfume, and the sales force seemed perplexed by my insistence and questions. Wasn't there someone in my life who might like a nice quilted purse?

-Traveling across the country for work allowed me to visit perfume shops and department stores I don't have access to at home, and often I was much more preoccupied with tracking down bottles of juice than the real reason for being in town. I visited Nordstrom and Parfumerie Nasreen in Seattle, Barneys and Etro and LuckyScent in LA, Barneys in Chicago, Fena Fresh in Greece. My favorite is still the Perfume House, though it doesn't have many of the lines I look for.

-I shopped online a lot. Nothing compares to the excitement of opening a package you've been waiting for. Will it disappoint? Will it exceed expectations? I've experienced both and everything in between, from the let down of Comme des Garcons 2 Man (poor longevity) to the thrill and surprise wallop of Rien and Jasmine et Cigarettes.

-Reading the Guide for the first time made the whole world stop for me. I couldn't hear or see anything else.

-Buying every last perfume I ever smelled in my stepmother's bathroom, including all the Estee Lauders and Coco.

-The constant adjustment my sensibility has gone through regarding gender lines and designations when it comes to perfume. What once seemed unspeakably feminine to me now registers as totally androgynous. What once seemed impossibly butch is now passably femme.

-I spent all year trying to find several perfumes. I ordered Chaos for a friend when it finally came out again and was a little more affordable. In the meantime, during my search, I came across DK Signature, which caught me off guard and turned out to be one of my favorite purchases. I looked everywhere for Lancome Cuir. Even the Lancome reps seemed never to have heard of it. It finally became available on Parfum1, and I love it.

-I ended the year buying five Ava Luxe fragrances and Breath of God from B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful.

Thanks to Perfume Shrine for involving us in this project. See also:

Perfume Shrine
Ars Aromatica
A Rose Beyond the Thames
Bittergrace Notes
Grain de Musc
Legerdenez
Notes from the Ledge
Olfactarama
Savvy Thinker
The Non Blonde
Tuilleries
1000 Fragrances

Dior Addict: A Review

It was only a matter of time before I got to Dior Addict. I’d guess that anyone who loves Loulou, Amarige and other big, loud floral-orientals would be inclined to like Addict. Addict is an attention getting fragrance. It’s a sultry, sexy, spicy, complex vanillic fragrance. I love Addict.

Don’t get the wrong impression of me. I’m not the woman in the office that everyone gags when they’re around because of the headache-inducing cloud of perfume surrounding her. I wear all types of fragrances and they aren’t all loud. I certainly don’t over-apply the uber-strong ones – but, without a doubt, there’s a place in my heart for certain fragrances that so many love to hate. Like Angel for instance – love it.

Addict is a rather difficult perfume to describe. It’s complex and smells differently from person to person and from day to day. Overall Addict is a citrusy-vanilla-floral-oriental. The structure of Addict reminds me of Angel. By this I mean it’s an addictive (I had to use addictive just once!) combination of traditionally feminine and masculine notes. Addict has a good dose of heady florals and vanillic sweetness, the typical feminine stuff, but it also contains a balancing amount of dry ambery woods, and it’s this combination that makes it so good. If Addict were solely a sweet sticky floral-vanilla I’d surely find it gaggity. The addition of the dry woods and spices give it depth and diffuses the sweetness - so instead of being repulsive it makes you want to smell it again and again.

I won’t lie to you and tell you it’s not a trashy fragrance. Addict smells utterly trashy. But it’s a good trashy. Addict is definitely that rebellious sister, friend or aunt that seems to live a rather (ahem) interesting life that you’d love to experience for maybe a month. I have an aunt named Paula. Paula was brilliant. She was a straight “A” student, got into an Ivy League college, quit college, became an exotic dancer, moved to California, did lots of drugs, wrote a book, married 4 times, re-married husband #1 recently, had a string of interesting and oddball jobs, owned a bookstore once, was a therapist for a few years (yup, a sex therapist), traveled the world, created her own line of vitamins, and is now a yoga instructor. Addict makes me think of my aunt Paula. It’s trashy yet it’s interesting, intelligent, thoughtful and creative.

To describe Addict more specifically, it starts as a citrus and very sweet vanilla scent. It’s not among the listed notes but Chandler Burr mentions that Addict contains coumarin. Coumarin is a sweet synthetic smelling vanillic-almond-salt water taffy aroma. Addict smells mostly of citrusy coumarin for the first 30 minutes or so. This isn’t my favorite part. Addict becomes a great fragrance once it dries down and the sweetness fades a little and the spicy, ambery woody notes appear. Upon dry down Addict shows it’s most interesting facets – it swirls about in a circle of sweet coumarin, florals and cinnamon, amber & spice.

Addict is not for the faint of heart. But if you like the occasional loud fragrance with sillage and longevity to spare check it out.

Longevity: Forever
Sillage: Huge – be careful

Notes: mandarin leaf, silk tree flower, Queen of the Night flower, rose, jasmine, orange blossom, absolute of bourbon vanilla, sandalwood from Mysore and tonka bean.

UPDATED a few moments after posting: Actually I just had an epiphany. Addict reminds me a lot of a supercharged Trouble by Boucheron on steroids.

Cavemen in Pinafores: Perfume Does Drag

The other day, applying a perfume ostensibly intended for women, I thought, "I really better butch it up today if I expect to pull this one off."

Funny thing, though, how all that works: half way through the morning, I realized the perfume itself provided more than enough swagger. Maybe you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind of fragrance which can come across like Corporal Klinger on M.A.S.H. All the markers are there: the satin, the tulle, the rouge, some lipstick. The hair is curled softly; it just so happens it's growing on the chest.

Like many male perfume bloggers I'm decidedly androgynous in my tastes, and feel strongly that a scent, though it tells a story in the bottle, only reaches conclusion on the wearer. Fragrance colludes with personality, and often works wonders when played against type. A guy in Lolita Lempicka, as Tania Sanchez suggests, can be a startling thing, akin to seeing the same tired movie with an entirely different cast. I'm not averse to wearing the allegedly chronic girly, such as Paris, Joy, or Herrera. What I'm getting at here is slightly different: the scent which mixes messages before one even applies it, and presents an even more complicated story on the skin.

The most obvious choice would be Black Orchid, a scent I, like many others, go back and forth on. Just when I decide it's silly and overrated, it changes my mind. Regardless, it bursts into the room, rattling the glassware. I think back to the first time I experienced it, at Sephora. I sprayed it on the back of my hand and instantly felt as though I'd opened a porn mag inside the Hallmark store. It felt shocking, like Angel once had, so wrong it was right. I admired it the way I admired a drag queen I walked the east village with one Saturday night in the nineties, before the area went antiseptic. You never knew what might happen to you out on the street, unless you were with someone so flagrantly confrontational, in which case you could expect to be egged. This particular drag queen gave it as much as she got it, and seemed fifty feet tall. This was a personality with the power to affect whatever environment it entered, not just interacting with it but altering it. Whatever you think of the dress and the make-up, you have to admire the balls.

Poison is so deeply associated with mile high bangs and Mildred Pierce shoulder pads, so tangled up in a cluster of mental recollections of the eighties (often heightened to the point of distortion) that one easily forgets or is prohibited from seeing at all how essentially masculine it is. Forget the tuberose; to smell Poison is to inhale a strange medley of spices most florals avoid at all costs. Coriander and carnation give Poison a peppery, woody aspect, embellishing the perfume's feminine properties with such a wallop of gusto that the category short circuits. I wear Poison occasionally. Everyone recognizes it, until they realize I'm the source. Then they're not so sure. How could it be Poison? What guy would have the guts to put it on? That slight element of surprise can allow a mental adjustment, enabling one to experience Poison outside its enforced context of era-specific excess and unfortunate-to-tragic fashion misfires.

Like many of the vintage orientals, Bal a Versailles is a bit of a winking Jesus, first uber-fem, then a resounding baritone. Some might say that winking is decidedly coquettish, settling the matter. But Bal a Versailles winks at such a rapid clip that the movement ceases to register. What's left is a kinetic, subterranean interplay between gendered codes and preconceptions. Some say the opening is inarguably feminine. I say nothing is inarguably feminine. Tie as many strings of pearls as you like around the neck of Barbara Bush. Dress her up in dowdy. Tell me she's simply a very straightforward, no nonsense woman, a la Barbara Stanwyck or, less generously, Janet Reno (which opens up another can of worms). I'm still not convinced George Sr. isn't in fact a tranny chaser. Which isn't to say Barbara isn't a woman. Just to say that a man attracted to her has wonky ideas about gender and tastes which, if dissected, might reveal unexpected, category-busting rather than -defining answers. It isn't that Bal a Versailles is beyond gender, but how many distortion filters can you put jasmine and rose through before they start going the other way? Bal a Versailles is the answer in action, working itself out right under your nose.

Spend some time with the oeuvre of Bernard Chant, and you'll start to notice certain similarities, not just between the feminines but between the feminines and their male counterparts. Many of Chant's male and female fragrances are so close in composition that it becomes increasingly difficult to regard the line supposedly separating them as anything but a mental construct. I sometimes wonder if Chant was a conceptual artist working in the field of perfume. It's as though he was engaged in a lifelong experiment. Create scents which resemble each other so closely that to discern gender differences between them would prove a bit like seeing the Emperor's new clothes. The only truly emphatic separation between the galbanum-driven Alliage and Devin are a few yards of marble flooring at Macy's and Saks. Likewise the woody-herbaceous rose of Aramis 900 and Aromatics Elixir, while Azuree and Cabochard lock eyes with Aramis. Was it Chant's project to demonstrate how little tweaking is required to edge a masculine into the feminine and vice versa? The distinctions between his masculines and feminines are so subtle as to imply mere formality. It's interesting to see the male consumer's largely negative reaction to Devin, such that it is (the fragrance remains, like Aramis 900, little known). Alliage, on the other hand, seems better understood. But it operates on a decibel one would consider more robust than a proper feminine. And if you're a guy who likes your fragrances to last, hop on over to the women's department. The only difference that counts between Alliage and Devin, it turns out, is a matter of hours.

Other fragrances which mix the gender codes: Cinnabar, Youth Dew, Gucci Envy, Habanitas, L'Heure Bleue, Chanel Cuir De Russie, Dune, La Nuit, Feminite Du Bois, Angel, Dioressence, Kingdom, Funny!, Caron Infini, Arpege.

Feeling protective

Brian sent me a huge number of decants from his collection that arrived today. I have never smelled any of these fragrances. I opened the package, unwrapped all the vials, then I proceeded to take a nap without smelling a thing. I was utterly overwhelmed.

Once I started sniffing, I began sending him emails with my reactions to each. One interesting point Brian mentioned is that he feels protective towards certain colognes/perfumes and notes. That got me thinking. I, too, feel protective towards a number of fragrances. As I ran down the list I realized that most of them are powerhouse 80’s fragrances from high school. There are only two from the 90’s, zero from the 2000’s and zero from the niche category.

Here’s the list of fragrances that I feel protective towards, and, I suppose you might understand why:

1. Dior Poison
2. Givenchy Amarige
3. Lou Lou Cacharel
4. Thierry Mugler Angel
5. Ungaro Diva

Perhaps I’m more embarrassed than protective. All five of these perfumes are seriously powerful and shriekingly loud. There are only two that I wear occasionally now, Amarige and Lou Lou, and when I wear these I’m careful to apply lightly. But back in the mid-late 80’s when I was in high school, I cared not for others. I applied Poison and Lou Lou as if they were fleeting body sprays. I sprayed Diva in my locker, in my car, all over my bedroom with wild abandon. My friend Megan wore Estee Lauder’s White Linen in much the same fashion. Nicole bathed in Lou Lou. Becky was scented with Lauren by Ralph Lauren, Melissa was also a Poison girl like me and Lesley liked to wear Laura Ashley No. 1 (which was by far the tamest scent in our group). I shudder to think of what the car smelled like when we drove off together on a Saturday night headed for a destination entirely different from what our parents were told.

Fast forward to the early-mid nineties when I wore Amarige exclusively during college. I’ve never received as many compliments on any other fragrance by a mile. Amarige is sexaaaay and that’s the way it made me feel.

I wore Angel for about 6 months when it first hit the shelves in 1997. I felt like I was the first to wear it. I loved it. It was during this time that I also loved my job. I was traveling the world (Europe, Asia, South America, you name it) and I was professionally quite happy. Once an Angel-laden-smog developed around all major cities due to the number of people wearing it I had to stop. It was just too trendy. Now it seems like everyone hates it. I don’t hate Angel at all, I rather like it, but I think fifty years of olfactory distance need to pass before anyone can truly appreciate it now.

So it seems that these fragrances make me nostalgic. I’m protective of them because they hold the memories of good times in my life. I don’t think I’ll ever objectively smell the horrific things that others smell in these fragrances because I wore them, I loved them, and they’re tightly intertwined with happy memories.

PS: Happy Birthday, Madonna! Madge is 50. I can’t believe it.

Will Estee Lauder turn the tide with Sensuous?

I bought a bottle of Sensuous last week. I had no choice. All the perfume blogs were giving Sensuous high marks and describing the fragrance as (paraphrasing here) a “warm, fluid river of wood”….it sounded right up my alley.

So, as I mentioned, I bought it, unsniffed. Sensuous is nice. It’s by no means a “warm, fluid river of wood,” though. I’d describe it as a smooth vanillic fragrance with an ever-so-subtle hint of wood that wears close to the skin. Sensuous smells good, rather more sweet than I expected but it’s a decent fragrance.

What does excite me about Sensuous and also makes me proud of Estee Lauder is that Sensuous is a departure from the now reigning fruity florals (think Del Monte mixed fruit cocktail with syrup in a can) that have dominated the perfume industry for the past decade.

I think Sensuous will be a hit, and I also think it will turn the tide and create loads of copycats churning out their versions of “fluid rivers of wood.” Sensuous could be similar to Thierry Mugler’s Angel, which created a whole new scent category and many copycats. Whether you love or hate Angel, you must admit that it was a phenomenally bold and fascinating fragrance with tremendous success. Everyone knows someone who wears Angel.

So, I applaud Estee Lauder for creating Sensuous. It’s a mainstream, inexpensive fragrance that even perfume snobs might admit to liking. Now for me, I’ll be waiting for Estee Lauder to launch “Sensuous Extreme” or “Sensuous Night,” something less sweet and drier with a lot more wood.

What are you thoughts? Agree, disagree? Do tell....

Update: 10 minutes after posting this it dawned on me what I was expecting Sensuous to smell like. Jo Malone's Dark Amber & Ginger Lily. For Jo Malone, I think Dark Amber is a rather brave departure, too. I've found that I really like it. Given that it's 3:10 AM I think I'll give Jo Malone's Dark Amber a spritz and head to bed. ;-)