L'Interdit (R.I.P. Audrey Hepburn)

Can someone please tell me what the 2002 reformulation of L'Interdit ever did to anyone?

I know, I know, the first one was Audrey Hepburn, all powdery florals and white gloves with a touch of wispy, ephemeral whatnot. I'm sure it was lovely, and in comparison, here comes Raquel Welch, top heavy, shaking it, showing it, lips like a come on, hips like a been there, done that. It's like replacing a Rolls with a Ferarri, I know, but a Ferarri is quite something too, so can we all stop acting as if it's chopped liver and onions?

I'd read so much about the reformulation (and we're not talking about the more recent reformulation, which seeks to restore, some say successfully, the original Hepburn effect) that when I tried it, I was a little shocked how much I liked it. I don't know why these things keep shocking me. When I smelled Parfum d'Habit, more recently, I was surprised too. I'd read customer reviews on basenotes and makeupalley describing it as the most animalic thing this side of a rat's ass; foul, leathery, urinous, and just generally, unforgivably offensive. I couldn't figure out what people were talking about. Medicinal, yes; urinous, no. I smelled no leather, no animal, no wet dog, and really, truth to tell, not a whole lot of anything I'd heard described. Parfum d'Habit is pretty, to be sure, and even somewhat jarring at certain points, particularly the opening, which has the medicinal astringency of witch hazel, but it's hardly the caveman I expected, and the 2002 L'Interdit is certainly no run of the mill fruity floral.

I should have known, with Jean Guichard at the wheel. Everytime I smell a Guichard fragrance I'm again reminded how much his son Aurelien has inherited from him, and you can see links between L'Interdit and the light/dark achievements of Visa and Azzaro Couture. Like father, like son. Papa Guichard's genius, to me, is persistent radiance with an inner edge which somehow turns things inside out or upside down. Rather than getting brighter, and lighter, Guichard Sr.'s best work dries down to a burnished, heat seaking core, revealing unexpected, unsettling dissonance. So Pretty by Cartier has a straightfirward succulent fruit note up top and a darker, contrasting pit of angst deeper down. Eden seems so bright, so cheery and floral at first, and yet the picture Cacharel uses to package this fragrance gets right to the bottom of its attraction, showing a tangled jungle of competing white flowers and the somewhat unsettling suggestion of something like a poisoned apple beyond all the distracting foliage. Fendi Asja achieves this contrapuntal effect by turning berry into heady red wine. Go down the list, and you'll find these magic tricks throughout Guichard's oeuvre, right down to the weird, doughy jasmine of LouLou.

Guichard's L'Interdit sprays on like an easy going if steeply pitched fruity floral, but there's something in there which doesn't quite fit the image, and you start to see it very soon after the initial notes start wearing down. I'm no chemist, but judging by the pyramid provided by Osmoz, I would guess this has something to do with the combined effect of iris, frankincense, and tonka bean in the dry down. What I kept thinking, before I'd seen the notes, was that someone had mixed some incense into my bottle. How could a stereotypical fruity floral dry down into something so resinous and compelling? The answer: this is no stereotypical fruity floral. Givenchy seems to have known this, and after you discover the fragrance's weird complexity, the red label and box make perfect sense. Yes, red for rose--and passion.

That iris and frankincense combination gives L'Interdit a rooty incense accord I find pretty intriguing, making L'Interdit anything but a 1950's nice girl perfume. That isn't to say you would notice iris in the mix, before or after you know it's there. The tonka bean gives it a sturdier platform to stand on, suggesting cinammon, hay, clove, caramel and, especially, almond. This trifecta of contrasting basenotes gives L'Interdit a curious quality, making you wonder what it might do next. The Audrey Hepburn prototype died with its source, and what Guichard seems to have been saying or suggesting with his reformulation is that it might be high time we redefine what we mean by "nice girl" in the first place. In the fifties, being a nice girl meant that you knew your place and didn't rock the boat. You were to look pretty and to defer, always demurely. You refrained from showing more skin than absolutely necessary. Guichard's L'Interdit is a celebration of the nice girl's emancipation into sensual and emotional complexity, allowing her the freedom to be outspoken and even contradictory without reducing her to total transparency. Whereas the original evoked soft, powdered skin, Guichard's version celebrates the dewy prespiration of a woman too busy experiencing life to let the tought of a little sweat trouble her.

The accomplishment of this 2002 remake is its ability to balance light and dark, sweet and salty, hot and cold, and a world in between.

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?

Tomato, Tomawto: The Many Faces of a Perfume (or, Just Who Do You Think You're Talking To?)

You never know what you're going to get when you order perfume off the internet these days.  Everyone knows you take your chances with Ebay (will it be the right formulation, or even the real thing?) but many of the other fragrance vendors can be just as inconsistent.  Back when I ordered Bandit, for instance (from I don't remember where), I received what I imagined must be the latest iteration.  In Seattle, months later, I smelled from a bottle in an off-the-path perfume store and it seemed to be the same.  I'd never smelled Bandit before purchasing it so had nothing to go by, but I'd read Lucca Turin's review of the fragrance in Perfume: The Guide, which reports that the modern reformulation is pretty faithful to the original(s).  The bottle at the perfume shop in Seattle looked like it had been on the shelf for a good many years.  The box had that beat up quality.  The one I'd purchased online seemed a little newer.  After all this, I found two quarter ounce bottles of Bandit pure parfum.  They smelled heavenly, much better than the others I'd come across, but the bone structure was there, and the difference was no more than the one between most EDP and parfum extrait concentrations.

I was excited to get back to Perfume House this year because they carry the Robert Piguet line.  Looking back, I couldn't understand why I would have ignored Bandit my first time there.  Wouldn't I have snatched it up immediately, such an arresting perfume?  I can't even remember smelling it.  Maybe, I thought, I just wasn't yet evolved enough and didn't recognize its greatness.  Maybe my tastes needed to mature a little.  I'd been much more attracted to Visa during that first visit to Perfume House.  Because I have Bandit now, I wasn't interested in getting any more this time.  But I was very interested in picking up a bottle of Baghari, which I'd seen at the Los Angeles Barney's months ago and liked.  I'd been given a sample of it during my visit and ultimately decided against buying any; since then, having spent more time with the Baghari, I realized I wanted some, and planned on buying it at the Perfume House.

This is where it gets confusing.  In December, a friend from Portland visited.  She agreed to pick up a bottle of Visa for me at the Perfume House.  I figured I should resume my exploration of Piguet there, since Visa was the one I'd initially found most compelling, but when my friend/courier arrived with said merchandise, I didn't really recognize the smell.  I did and I didn't.  It seemed less interesting at first and I had to adjust my expectations.  In my head, "Visa" had become something else, richer, more visceral.  By comparison, this here was plain old fruity gourmand.  Fast foward to my recent return to the Perfume House.  Another customer came in, looking for something special.  She'd just been initiated into niche perfumery and the world of fragrance teeming just under the surface of the face mainstream  fragrance shows to the world.  I couldn't resist making suggestions, and went directly to Bandit, excited by the prospect of blowing someone's mind--but when we sprayed it on a cotton ball, it smelled nothing like the Bandit I know.  It bore no similarity, even, that I could tell.  Gone was the grassy splendor; gone the strange, perversely au contraire base.  This was powdery and prissy, a stuffy society lady to old Bandit's Sartre-reading, gender-bending, chiffon and leather streetwalker.  Perfume House is reliable and I trust these are the latest versions of Piguet, as they say, so what's up?  Are THEY being lied to?

Complicating things, Baghari smelled nothing like the tester I'd been given at Barney's.  I could see about as much relation between the one and the other as I could between Bandits Now and Then.  Did I mix u all my testers?  Did Barney's have a different version of Baghari?  The tester was a wonder of jasmine and rose under a fizzy layer of citrus aldehyde.  I could see, smelling it, the perfume Turin seemed to be talking about in The Guide.  The one at Perfume House was equally lovely but in an entirely different direction, distorting my ability to immediately appreciate it on its own merits.  And while I'm thinking about it, why did Barney's even have Baghari?  Why Baghari but not Bandit, when both are about as obscure to the average consumer?  Why Baghari but not Fracas, for that matter, which is recognizable enough to have put Baghari in some kind of useful context for the uninitiated?  Was the tester I was given at Barney's LA even Baghari in the first place, or did I simply remember it that way?

The virgin buyer of Bandit might be getting any one of several versions, whether he walks into a store or shops online.  Add to this the fact that some retailers are no better than the sales force at Sephora when it comes to knowing what they have in stock and what it should smell like.  My first bottle of Bandit was opened and partially used.  I sent it back and got another, equally beaten but at least unopened.  I was lucky and got an older version.  How many others aren't so lucky, and think we're smelling the same thing when they sound in on makeupalley.com?  It isn't just Piguet and a classic like Bandit, known by many without, more often than not, actually having been smelled (after all, I heard about Bandit and many other perfumes long before I actually got my hands on them).  It's any old perfume, no pun intended.

It's Magie Noire, for instance.  The first time I smelled it was in a discount shop.  Do I need to tell you that the second time I smelled it I barely recognized the thing?  It's Anais Anais, which is said to be very much the same as always and I believed this, until I smelled a bottle from the eighties and had a very different impression.  Is Lou Lou the same old Lou Lou?  Is Coco the same old Coco my sister wore in high school?  How much of the perceived changes between one and the other has to do with the passage of time and the distortions of memory?  How much is someone else's tinkering around?  We all know that natural musks have gone the way of the Studebaker, changing the face of nearly every perfume in some minimal to profound way, and that various other ingredients have been outlawed as if they were crack cocaine or hashish and the public must be protected from them lest they serve as gateways to more insidious contraband.  Everybody knows that one perfume is repackaged as an entirely new thing using the same name, while another is presented as if an entirely new entity under a totally different name, and some of us catch these things, but how do you discuss perfume when you never know what you're dealing with from one to the next, or whether you're even talking about the same thing?  It's like discussing the color red with someone viewing things through rose-tinted glasses nobody told you or him he was wearing.  You both might as well be color blind.