Tom Ford Sahara Noir: Just Desert

Leave it to Tom Ford to bring frankincense back to basics.

It isn't just the name of his latest fragrance, which retraces ancient trade routes, pointing farther east than the Catholic church, where westerners seem to have consigned frankincense.

It isn't just the "Noir" part, which turns the lights down on all that far east mystique, reminding us that when we think of other cultures we should probably think dark, which is to say illicit.

It's certainly more than a little to do with the price. At 150 bucks a bottle, 50 ml a pop, Sahara Noir isn't exactly sacrilege. It's more affordable - if only just - than many niche fragrances its size. But it's not so comparable to most of what it will sit alongside at the mall. As always, Mr. Ford is determined to up the aspirational ante in the mainstream marketplace.

More than anything, it's that gold bottle, which reminds you that, yeah, okay, so all that church stuff - all that holy temple hoo-ha - but let's not forget: this is the substance "more valuable than the gift of gold." Before there was a baby Jesus to give it to, Sahara Noir says, there was frankincense. Frankincense is strictly, in Tom Ford world, B.C.

I'm making it sound like I don't think much of Sahara Noir, and if anything, I think it's getting some awfully careful praise, the whole backhanded thing we've fallen into. We're in kind of a backhanded period, I guess. The needle on our bullshit detector flutters wildly at the stinky stuff, detecting it everywhere we point our noses.

Thus, Sahara Noir is "just" a frankincense fragrance - too one dimensional, not enough something else at some point. It's too heavy. It's not heavy enough. It's nice but suffocating. It's led to water but can't be made to drink. It doesn't open the door for you. Granted, Tom Ford probably asks for this and has it all coming.

The incense fragrances we remember introduce a subtle twist. It's tricky, because we want incense, but better than incense, otherwise one incense would be every other incense. I find it hard to imagine our ancient ancestors splitting these hairs. Surely, there were grades high and low, but just as surely it was enough that the stuff was burning, and smelled like the money spent on it.

Not so with the contemporary sniffer. Our favorite incense perfumes see just how far they can go before you consider them something else entirely, so for instance you get Wazamba, by Parfums d'Empire, which throws a faint but uncanny whiff of apple into the mix. Even Tauer's superficially straightforward Incense Extreme has a little inexplicable something to it, a thing you can't quite put your finger on, ever so slightly...tart?

For me, a good incense fragrance merely need be very good to win my praise, if not my utter devotion, so while I roll my eyes closer to God at the silliness that is the Ford persona,  I'm relieved I don't have to picture, let alone see, Tom Ford's ass playing nice with the asses of others in a communal shower, and I really like Sahara Noir.

My favorite frankincense is the discontinued Norma Kamali Incense. Nary a twist to that one. Norma Kamali is full frontal brute force. You understand, smelling it, why frankincense was used to mask the smell of decay after death, and how it could do this while pleasing rather than offending the powers that be in the afterlife.

Sahara Noir isn't nearly as heavy as I was led to believe - though I admit nothing ever is - but it has a quality I don't remember smelling in anything else, not even in the standard bearing Incense Series from Comme des Garcons, and it's an interesting counterpart to Norma Kamali's Incense, a basic frankincense fragrance which is good enough at being good to get away with not being the best thing ever in the history of all things historically documented. It takes the Norma Kamali approach, straight on, with addition of bottom line wearability.

Somehow, it's got a very open aired feel to it - not the open air of the cavernous temple but of the great outdoors. I'll even go with "desert", which might make it seem smarter than it is. I guess I'm trying to say that while this will be nothing new to the demographic whose mystique it mines, it's something a society lady like Barbara Hutton would consider correspondent to her waspy misunderstandings about the great Other out there, the Other she would view from behind the safety of her car window and consider herself sufficiently immersed. There's a slight sense of safe remove to Sahara Noir - but isn't that true of all mainstream fragrances? And we are nothing if not aspirational in our tastes, so we're more likely, as a whole, to follow Hutton's lead than the source.

Sahara Noir isn't a refreshing fragrance if you expect it to be something unlike anything ever done before. But it's certainly not being done much in the mainstream sectors of society. I appreciate that, and I appreciate the fact that it smells wonderful, lasts well, and takes pains not to insult my intelligence the way so many high priced "luxury items" do. For the record, I like it as well if not better than anything in the CDG Incense Series. It won't surpass Wazamba for me, but I don't need it to.

The notes list honey, jasmine, rose, and papyrus, none of which I smell even the slightest suggestion of. I do smell the cinnamon, which is twist enough for me. Like Ford's other mainstream bids, Black Orchid, White Patchouli, and Violet Blonde, Sahara Noir wears with presence.

(Pictured: Poor Little Rich Girl Barbara Hutton, doing as the Romans do, in Tangiers)

Gucci Eau de Parfum

The juice is dark brown, that alone made me want it. It took me a few wearings to truly love it, but, oh, how I do.

Gucci eau de parfum was created in 2002 by Daniela Roche and was apparently based upon an idea by Tom Ford. Do not confuse Gucci edp with Gucci by Gucci or Gucci II which are inferior by a mile. Gucci by Gucci is housed in a square brown bottle. The good stuff, the stuff I'm writing about, is Gucci edp, pictured above, it's the brown juice in a clear glass bottle. A hefty glass bottle.

Gucci eau de parfum is easily Gucci's best fragrance next to Envy. Gucci edp is dirty. It's a filthy little trollop for the first hour. One you might wish you hadn't worn to the office. I don't even know how to categorize Gucci edp. It's a whole number of things all at once - it's a dirty musk - a woody oriental - a luscious skin scent - a sweet vanillic leather - a herbaceous yet synthetic elixir. The word potion comes to mind when I sniff Gucci edp. It seems to be a potion rather than a perfume. It's drop dead sexy in an understated manner. It's Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy. It's not a curvaceous blond bombshell but a tousled natural beauty in jeans and her lover's t-shirt. She probably has a tattoo and a scar.

Gucci edp starts off a bit rocky for me. It has a weird medicinal start, perhaps the mixing of notes such as thyme, cumin and orange blossom. I've come to love this odd start in the way I sometimes long for the beginning of Tubereuse Criminelle. Though, for the record, Gucci edp's start is nowhere near as difficult as Tubereuse Criminelle. After about an hour, Gucci edp becomes so easy to wear. It melts into my skin and becomes one of those "me but better" fragrances. Gucci edp doesn't shout "look at me" but instead slinks into the room and slowly but surely takes the center of attention. It's a potion. I'm telling you. There's magic here.

Notes:
Top notes - orris, heliotrope, orange blossom, and vanilla absolute.
Middle notes - cistus, cumin, and thyme
Base notes - patchouli, vanilla, and deep musk.

What I'm Loving Lately: Nathan Branch's Photos

I'm not totally uninterested in fashion and the luxury industry. Just a few months ago, I bought a dictionary of fashion designers and terms (to help, I told myself, when writing, say, a Dior or a Norell perfume review). I returned the book a few weeks later, because (surprise) I needed the money for perfume--but the general curiosity is there. Reading Nathan's website I understand how people who think they love perfume but have never (or not yet) heard of Lutens or L'Artisan or, less likely still, Parfumerie Generale or Andy Tauer, must feel when reading my detailed posts about perfumers. It's all a bit over my head--but a fascinating glimpse into a parallel universe. If I'm going to learn about how hard the current economy is on watch/timepiece retailers, it's going to be from Branch. Somehow, he endows the subject with poetic significance.
What I really love are his photos of perfume bottles, which are like nothing I've ever seen. Does he take these himself? It's hard to imagine--not because I doubt his technical skills but because the bottles seem to have been photographed with the kind of clarity and illumination that only fantasy or CGI effects can achieve. Why doesn't the fragrance industry photograph perfume this way? It never occurred to me until I saw these photos. They're photographed as if just received in the mail, surrounded by their packaging and even, sometimes, the paper they came wrapped in, capturing that exciting moment any pefume lover knows, when, after days of waiting and false alarms, "the package" arrives.

Nathan understands how wonderful that feeling is, how weirldly momentous. The day drops away, all the stress, the distractions, the anxiety, and what you're left with is a zeroing-in feeling; the world goes dim. All the light gets sucked up by the bottle, which burns with a golden intensity, part sunshine, part emotion. It isn't just the bottle itself but opening it, feeling it, weighing it in your hand.

The photos pinpoint the architectural splendor of these bottles, too. Tom Ford's Private Blend Italian Cypress looks like something out of Bauhaus; i.e. a work of art. Caron Infini is a marvel of cubism; light and shadow animate its angles, shifting them into ever new kinetic configurations. Branch looks at these bottles and sees what's interesting from every angle; then he shows you, in just the right way, so that you understand what you're seeing and taking for granted.He emphasizes the way the box containing Luxe Patchouli opens up like a cyborgian blossom, making the bottle the flower's equally angular pistil. He shows all the care and personality that go into bottling a Liz Zorn perfume, and how special receiving one can be, using the colored wrapping paper packaging a bottle of Tobacco and Tulle to depict the fragrance as something which magically appears in a cloud of burgundy smoke, like a rabbit out of a magician's hat.

Branch foregrounds the detailing on a bottle of Etro Messe de Minuit, that relief at the base and on the cap, finding in the liquid that quality of light coming through high cathedral windows when the sun sets, the feeling of solitude you're struck with inside these spaces. The ribbon which wraps Shalini's large box snakes around the bottle once the box has been opened, expressing how, even once you've separated the bottle from its packaging, the packaging influences your experience of the fragrance, setting a stage or the tone for your engagement with it.

Nathan's photos make fragrance seem like a gift from God, and I check them out regularly to remind myself just how mystical fragrance really is. See what I mean?

Tom Ford Purple Patchouli: A Review

Purple Patchouli might be the least liked of the dozen perfumes good ole Tommy Ford launched in 2007. I have been very curious about it for some time now but given the exclusive price tag my curiosity simply lingered. Last month I bought some big ticket items from Bergdorf and the fabulous sales associate there tossed in a bunch of 5 ml Tom Ford samples with my purchase.

I dabbed on Purple Patchouli a few weeks ago but didn’t think very much of it. Once I transferred the coveted juice into a spray/atomizer (because I simply can’t get the true impression of a fragrance by dabbing it on), I realized, wow, Purple Patchouli is a character.

When I think about Purple Patchouli in the overall scheme of Tom Ford’s collection I realize it’s really sort of a “Purple Black Orchid.” In fact, it would make much more sense if Black Orchid had been named Black Patchouli instead. Then we’d have: Black Patchouli, White Patchouli and Purple Patchouli. There, all better. Now you can sniff Purple Patchouli and “get” it.

Purple Patchouli, starts off very “purple” for me. I get a blast of sweet violets and very nearly a blueberry note (similar to Guerlain Insolence edp). Purple Patchouli is much sweeter than I’d imagined and this sweetness stays throughout. There are definitely floral notes, jasmine I would guess, and leather and amber notes. I think the “purple” smell I’m noticing must be the orchid accord, which is rather sweet, somewhat jammy and tropical. Fold this jammy purple orchid around earthy leathery patchouli and, viola, you have Purple Patchouli. The patchouli note is definitely apparent for me, I don’t think innocent bystanders would think I was wearing straight up patchouli but the trademark patchouli is on the guest list at this party. Others mention citrus and vetiver but I don’t detect these as being prominent on their own.

Purple Patchouli would smell uber-sexy on guys. I like it on myself and think it’s surely unisex as Tom Ford engineered these fragrances to be. I quite like PP but find it a bit much for office wear (I don’t wear Black Orchid to the office either). I see myself wearing PP on the weekend and out amongst friends. I think the patchouli note is what makes me uncomfortable wearing it to the office or for traditional “stuffy” settings. Purple Patchouli has a playful, sexy, night-out-on-the-town vibe to it for me. Once I finish this 5 ml sample, I think this might be a full bottle for me.

Three additional reviews of Purple Patchouli ~

Marina at Perfume Smellin Things
Kevin at Now Smell This
Patty at Perfume Posse

This Week At The Perfume Counter: Givenchy III, Van Cleef Gem, Voile de Fleur, Dolce and Gabbana By

The Russians at the perfume kiosk in the mall have some kind of racket going on. I can't decide just what. Of course, I have my own racket. Last week, after sitting on my "I'm going to sell this all on e-bay and make millions of dollars" stash, I realized that my drive for new perfume is stronger than my patience when it comes to navigating the internet marketplace. Now I understand why the Korean perfume shop owner I bought it all from had it priced so low; he couldn't be bothered, either.

The stash includes 6 bottles of Gucci Nobile, 3 bottles of Feu D'Issey, 3 bottles of Paco Rabbane La Nuit EDP, a truck load of Etienne Aigner No 1, 1 bottle of Kenzo Peace Pour Homme, 1 bottle of Yohji Men, 2 huge bottles of Cristalle EDP, old formulation Givenchy III, and others which presently escape me (plus I'm bored with this sentence).

This week, I mentioned to the Russian woman who seems to run the kiosk that I had this stash, and she was very interested. She said she would pay me, but I knew I would never get what they were worth in dollars from her, and why charge her what they cost me when I could trade them for more expensive perfumes from her inventory? So I traded my Gucci Nobiles, and even writing this I feel a pang of remorse. Perhaps I should have held on to them. It's as if I cashed in my nest egg and have nothing to fall back on.

The problem is I have most of what I want from their stock, except for a few, like DK Fuel for Men and DK Unleaded, which smell nice but fade quickly from what I can tell. I bought Van Cleef Gem and Dolce and Gabbana By for Her before we made this arrangement and wished I'd waited so I could have gotten them for free. But I couldn't, which is why I'm cashing in my nest egg in the first place.

For the curious, Gem is brilliant. I would venture to say it's a fruity floral, with a definite contrapuntal thrust of spices. Others have compared it to Rochas Femme, and I see the similarity, though Gem is decidely (and aptly) brighter. Smelling it, I thought, Well that's too ladylike even for me. I might as well wear a dress and a flower in my hair and bat my eyes. But it stuck with me as I shopped, especially into the dry down, which is more compelling than the Olivier Cresp reformulation of Rochas Femme, possibly because it contains animalic notes which pre-date restrictions. Besides, batting my eyes comes naturally to me. Gem was composed in 1987 by Roger Pellegrino, of Anais Anais and Armani Eau Pour Homme.

Dolce Gabbana By has piquant citrus notes up top, very quickly moves into caffienated territory, then sticks much too close to the skin for my taste. It's nice, but nothing I would miss were it to suddenly vanish from my stash. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and I suspect By will outlast many of my fragrances, most of which are much louder and persistent and will be reached for more compulsively.

The next several days I returned to the Russian kiosk with bottles of Gucci Nobile, though the drive isn't a short one. I suppose I made several trips so as to lessen the blunt force trauma of instant divestiture. I'm guessing I instinctively feared some horrible withdrawal. I traded for the new, much soapier formulation of Givenchy III (me likey) and Tom Ford Extreme, which the Russians mistook for garden variety Tom Ford for Men. I explained the difference without mentioning the difference in price, as I figured Extreme was a fairer trade for Nobile in any case. As has happened before, they didn't believe me, until they unboxed the Tom Ford for Men and performed a comparison test.

Extreme is fantastic--tarry, smoky, leathery goodness--and it lasts all of twenty minutes. The nearest analog I can think of is Burberry London for Men, which shares Extreme's preoccupation with some fantasy version of an exclusive Men's Club library, complete with port wine, cigar smoke, and suit and tie sweat. Like Extreme, London is gone before you know it. I wanted Extreme regardless. It smells that good, and besides, memories fade too.

The last thing I traded for was Black Orchid Voile de Fleur, EDT. It smells like the EDP done right, and unlike Extreme has staying power. The focus is on white florals, but with the same saving grace of the EDP, a grungy patchouli base. The patchouli gnashes its teeth at the pretty white florals and the tension plays out on your skin. I wish Tom Ford didn't annoy me so much. I'd feel so much better about buying his fragrances. Every time I see his face I'm frustrated by the compulsion to wipe that pseudo-sexy look off it. It's like some bridge and tunnel guy coming on to you at the bar. He's sweet talking you and everything he says has a winking eye to it, and all you can think about is that blindingly God-awful gold chain around his neck, wondering how many chest hairs it pulls off when he removes it, if he ever does.

At the thrift store I found semi-vintage ml samples of Rochas Femme, Equipage, and Miss Dior. The latter interested me most. Much has been made of Miss Dior's degeneration, and there's certainly a marked difference between the version I own and the version I smelled the other day. The latest formulation is soapier, more pungent, an uncomplicated, cheerful good-time gal. The version I smelled at the thrift store was much darker, more oriental, without the newer iteration's focus on green. Surprisingly, I prefer the version I own. I know: to some, this is like saying I have a preference for boxed wine. Fine. Leave me in the grass boozing it up on my discount vino. More for me, I guess.

But back to the racket. What are the Russians up to? Or after years of cold war conditioning and despite my ostensibly liberal leanings do I simply distrust Russians? I leave it to you to decide. When they gave me my Voile de Fleur, they asked if I minded not getting the box. It really doesn't matter to me, unless I think I might eventually re-gift the perfume at hand. I knew I'd want to keep Voile, or more specifically, that no one else I might give it to would want such a corruption of the white floral, so I opted for box-less, and was given the bottle of Voile in a cheap, imitation gauze bag (gauze is cheap to begin with, so you get the idea), and I left without asking questions.

Are the Russians smuggling fake bottles in authentic boxes--or does the average mall shopper simply have a natural aversion to tester bottles, which can seem like used goods or knock-offs to those who buy one bottle at a time? Where do the Russians get their stash? I've asked jokingly, pretending not to be looking for an answer, but they've never taken the bait. Some of the boxes--like a recent addition, Caron Pour Un Homme, from the eighties--look like they went through a rock tumbler. The lids hold on by a thread.They didn't have Gucci Rush for Men, they couldn't find it anywhere, then one day, suddenly, presto, there it was.

Are they siphoning fake juice into old bottles? Like every shop owner they aren't above giving you a line. They've informed me with straight faces that DK Gold is discontinued and impossible to find, even though Perfumania carries it, right upstairs. They've said the same about others. When Giorgio Red for Men was recently re-released, they priced it at 65 dollars, assuring me how rare it was. I bought it, then saw it later elsewhere for half the price, and by elsewhere I mean everywhere. They're up to something, I just haven't figured out what. Clearly, pawning off my cheaply bought bottles of discontinued fragrances at top dollar prices, I'm up to something to, so perhaps the cold war is alive and well? It's all very cloak and dagger at the local mall, people. Make sure you bring your trench.

YSL and the Nu Wave: A Review

Much has been made of Nu’s unisex appeal. There’s no mistaking the floral accord, but the alleged white orchid here is no more prevalent than the iris in Dior Homme, and tempered similarly by contrasting influences (in Dior’s case, leather; in Nu’s, pepper and incense). Both have a heavy waft of powder about them. Is powder feminine? Someone tell Habit Rouge. This is a tiresome line of argument, as which scent should and should not be worn by one sex or the other is a now nearly cro-magnum hang-up. Fragrance augments persona, and personality transforms perfume, creating context and reference point: thus, a man in Nu is a unique assertion of masculinity, and a woman wearing it has the forceful charisma of a truck driver (and yes, some men like that kind of thing. Give them the chance to discover it). A sexier masculine than its wan aquatic contemporaries, smokier than most feminine fragrances dare, Nu is quintessentially bisexual. Ford thrives on such complex cross-references and gender conflations. To wear Nu, Black Orchid, or M7 is to dispense with broad generalization, engaging the intellect of wearer and witness in an unspoken dialog about the myths of he and she. Nu harkens back to Habanita and Bandit in its heightened ambiguity, looking forward to a time when the male and female sections at Sephora will collapse into one and the same thing.

For the rest of this review and others, visit perfumecritic.com.

vintage perfume ad of the day: YSL Cologne

Before Tom Ford--before Mark Jacobs--there was Yves Saint Laurent. Ford might have raised eyebrows posing nude in Out magazine, and Jacobs, post recovery, seems to have taken every available opportunity to show off his newly sculpted figure (Look, Ma, no love handles!), but Yves trumps them both. One imagines him looking for the quintessential embodiment of the Saint Laurent man. The head shots are spread before him on the drafting table. Whom to pick, whom to pick, decisions, decisions. Eenie, Meenie, Meyenee...Moi! Who better than Yves himself to represent the company in this early, perhaps crucial bid at masculine fragrance? One imagines Yves taking care of business. Perhaps he'd chosen someone else, after all, and the model balked at appearing in the buff. Mr. Laurent was in the house, to show him how the big boys roll. Mr. Laurent WAS the house, and he would have kindly shown that timid model the door.