Selections from Bourbon French Parfums, New Orleans, Lousiana

Originally called Doussan French Perfumery, the perfume house now known as Bourbon French Parfums dates back to 1843, the year perfumer and founder August Doussan arrived in New Orleans from France.

The establishment has since passed through several hands and noses, all of which and whom you can read about on the company's website or hear about, I imagine, if you visit the store in the French Quarter.

The perfumes are, depending on who smells them, either wonderfully old school or old lady, that much-loved term for all things not fairly strictly contemporary. I like or love nearly everything I've smelled, and stand among Bourbon French's many admirers.

It's true the scents recall a different time and probably require some amount of appreciation for perfumes past. It's also true that the history of perfumery is increasingly hard to discern in the changing landscape of modern fragrance, where reformulations have altered the old reliables and prevailing fashion has drastically remapped the rest.

It helps that the pricing is reasonable. It doesn't hurt that you can buy many different sizes and concentrations. The perfumes arrive in velvet drawstring pouches. The labels look like they were printed on a vintage press hidden in the basement of the building. Not much information is provided about the fragrances, which adds to the pleasure of discovering them and enhances their sense of mystery. Several have become personal favorites:

Voodoo Love

One of the house's better known fragrances, Voodoo Love is earthy, floral, and spicy, beginning with an unusually strong dose of vetiver that bursts forth on the skin and is gradually embraced by velvety rose and jasmine. There is probably quite a lot of patchouli in this fragrance, helping to turn the lights down on those florals, and it could be that the patchouli, and the vetiver, neither remotely clean, contribute to the scent's subtle but pervasive animalic quality. It could also be that there's civet in the mix. If so, it's humming faint accompaniment. I sense clove but could be imagining that, a phenomenon that happens for me with many of Bourbon French's perfumes. I would probably classify Voodoo Love as a floriental, and it reminds me of once-popular, now-forgotten Lanvin fragrance which only exists in my mind. It has great persistence and projection, and the extended dry down is worth waiting for. The scent veers back and forth between accepted ideas of masculine and feminine on the way there.

Mon Idée

Imagine carnations steeped in peach nectar. Pour that peach nectar infusion over slightly spiced rose. Mon Idée is the most cheerful Bourbon French scent I've smelled. It doesn't get "carnation" right in the strict sense of the word, and carnation is so ever-present that you might be led to believe that it strives to. What it does get is the feeling of receiving a bouquet of carnations from, say, an admirer, or a loved one - that flush to your cheeks and your senses, the heightened feeling of possibility being noticed or admired can bring, the nearly electric thrum of the colors in the bouquet after this mood filters them to your senses. Mon Idée, for me, is an astonishing fragrance. It's very floral, like another favorite, Perfume of Paradise, but it doesn't have the latter's hothouse vibe, nor its indolic carnality. Mon Idée wafts around in a little pocket of happiness, well being, and radiance which is so foreign to the experience of every day life that smelling the perfume can produce an elated confusion of uplift and heartbreak.

Romanov

A peach of a very different frequency presides over Romanov. This fruit is slightly turned, an effect enhanced, if not entirely created, by the distinct presence of honey. The peach skin has darkened; its fuzz gone rough. I would say this is primarily peach, rose, and honey, although there is clearly something sturdier going on underneath that core medley; some clove, possibly or even probably some patchouli. Like Voodoo Love, Romanov conjures fragrances that never were but seem to have been. You keep trying to place it. I should add that a common remark about the Bourbon French fragrances is that they are uniformly powdery. With a few exceptions, I don't get the connection. Romanov, Mon Idée, and Voodoo Love could hardly to my nose be called powdery, nor can most of the others, which leads me to believe that I've been right in concluding previously that for many the word powdery is often a stand-in for vintage. That said, while all three of the scents I've mentioned have vintage aspects and at times an overall vintage vibe, they also strike me as better versions of niche scents than the overwhelming majority of niche scents I've smelled in the last few years.

Sans Nom

If you find a better name for a fragrance, do let me know. Sans Nom has to be called something, so why not call a spade a spade? The scent reminds me of everything from Opium to Cinnabar by way of Teatro alla Scala, but Sans Nom feels peerless at the same time. The usual suspects are there: rose, jasmine, patchouli, clove. But somehow Sans Nom feels softer than its comparisons. Again, I could be imagining it, but I smell what seems like a lot of Ylang to me. Of the so called feminine fragrances in the Bourbon French inventory, Sans Nom sits second to Voodoo Love as the most masculine in feel. Or does it? I can't decide. It's the only BF fragrance I've smelled that I might call a straight up oriental. Despite it's powerhouse company and notes, it isn't the most persistent fragrance in the line, nor the loudest. It isn't quiet - not at all - but there's something meditative and whispery about it that I don't usually get in orientals.

Other favorites are Perfume of Paradise, the custom blend formerly known as Dark Gift, Patchouli, Vetiver, Kus Kus, and Oriental Rose. Thanks out to Maria Browning of Bitter Grace Notes for introducing me to this line with a very thoughtful and generous care package of samplers.

Wind Song: Home Is Where Its Heart Is

I have only the vaguest recollection of the Wind Song now being sold in drugstores. I remember buying it on impulse and, a few days later, returning it with my wits about me. The word that comes to mind is dowdy. Mumsy runs a close second.

So I'm surprised how much I like the vintage version I found in a local antique store for twenty bucks (about all I was prepared to shell out for it, based on my forgettable first encounter). First things first: let's get the bottle out of the way. What even casual vessel fetishist among us could resist the glass crowns which housed these early Prince Matchabelli scents? Who among us wouldn't like this thing sitting out somewhere on the dresser? Seeing pictures of them online, I'd always imagined these bottles were interchangeable with an arguably much more useful half pint of Crown Royale. Holding one in my hand I see how wrong I was.

Wind Song (1953) is unmistakably a floral in the fifties sense of the word. The goody two shoes carnation you expect from a good girl fragrance of that era is front and scenter, and for those who don't like carnation it can be a bit of a deal breaker. That's too bad, because Wind Song has a lot besides dowdy going on, and it does things I don't think I've smelled in any of its contemporaries. After you adjust to the carnation you ascertain some of the bit players who've been drafted in to support and enhance it: coriander, mandarin, tarragon, among them. If the era's aldehydes could be considered knowing and somewhat confidently if not forbiddingly aloof, its orientals thought of as contradictions of the idea that the poodles on its skirts weren't animals but "puppies", Wind Song might be looked at as a sort of Doris Day re-alignment, reaffirming the pleasures of simplicity and subtlety in the midst of these extremes.

Not that Wind Song doesn't have its depths. The joke about Doris Day, the reason she's become shorthand for the naivete of the fifties, is that she was a little, shall we say...white bread? Yet to listen to her voice and to watch the stylized precision of her performances is to remind yourself of her artistry, above and beyond the cliches about her persona. Similarly, the dry down of Wind Song is really something, and that something deepens the first impressions and potential dismissals.

It never fails. Not thirty minutes after applying Wind Song I want to know what "that smell" is and where the hell it's coming from. The note list I've seen for the fragrance lists sandalwood, vetiver, amber, cedar, and vetiver in the base, and at different times I've felt I smelled all of those things. The floral component of Wind Song - which, in addition to carnation, includes some of the usual suspects, rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, orris root - never quite leaves the building. Orris root, particularly, sticks around to sit in the chair provided by the scent's base notes, making its rich, buttery presence felt for the duration. But that combo of amber, woods, and grasses is really the backbone of this fragrance, and in fascinating ways that no oriental or aldehyde could, the combined effect underscores the bedrock strength of the matronly persona. This fragrance, more than most I've smelled from its era, helps me understand why that ideal of the 1950s - the safe, secure, comfort of the home and family - was so seductive and compelling. If home could feel like golden, woodsy Wind Song smelled, why would you ever stray too far from it?

As one of the iconic ads for the fragrance asked: "What makes you the girl he can't get out of his mind?" To which another answered: "Wind Song whispers your message." Wind Song can still be found for...a song...online.  The dry down alone makes it worth far more than the going rate. Like an also cheapo bottle of vintage Avon Persian Wood I found on Ebay recently, Wind Song is the clearest distillation yet for me of sandalwood's inimitably pleasurable attractions.

Perry Ellis for Men

When I was in my teens, Perry Ellis - the brand as well as the designer, the two of which were inseparable in my mind - represented something unique culturally.  While not openly gay, Ellis and his sensibility felt that way to me.  Something about him set my radar off; maybe the way he concluded each of his shows by skipping down the runway.  You didn't see Oscar de la Renta skipping.  Even ruffled Ralph Lauren kept his catwalk appearances to a stroll.  Ellis was boyish and good looking and had an aura of charming, all-American insouciance about him.  He wore his hair long and looked like something between hippy and private school graduate.  He was preppier than Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, whose images seemed forced compared to his, and he conveyed a sense of warmth, good humor, and accessibility their personas and clothing lines didn't quite express.

In fact, Ellis was a shrewd businessman, with a masters in retailing.  There was no one like him in fashion or in the media, and his clothes, first for women, then for men, were meticulously thought out iterations of relaxed, unstudied comfort.  He knew the industry inside out, having started as a buyer and a retailer.  And in contrast to his carefree, candid social demeanor, he led a scrupulously invisible private life, well outside the consumer's eye.  His death from AIDS in 1986, at the height of his fame (and success), came as a shock which contrasted deeply against his public image.  He was one of the first quasi-celebrities to die of the disease, at a time when much fear and hysteria surrounded the epidemic, and that fear and hysteria cast a pall over his memory.  Compared to the omnipresence of his brand and his image at the time of his death, he's all but forgotten as a personality now.

But I remember him, and the feeling that seeing him in print gave me, and I remember his first fragrance for men, which remains something of a classic for me.  That fragrance, called simply Perry Ellis, might have done much better commercially, had it not been released in 1985, the year before he died.  Like the death of Rock Hudson, the death of Perry Ellis was not perceived just as a shock among the buying public but as a betrayal, signifying deceit.  It destroyed the myth implicit in the Perry Ellis image, suggesting a host of things that contrasted sharply and darkly with the all-American persona which had generated around the man.

It probably didn't help that Perry Ellis for men also contrasted with Perry's public image and complicated the casual, unstudied-seeming elegance of his clothing line.  It was darker and moodier and a bit more secretive than might have been expected.  Had it been more in line with Perry Ellis for women, a bright, somewhat crisp floral aldehyde released the same year, it might have persisted a bit longer in the marketplace, but I doubt it.  The damage to the Perry Ellis public image was too extensive and complete, the fragrance too palpably at odds with the line's sensibility, too well aligned with the sense of shrouded contradictions and finality surrounding Perry's death.

At the same time, Perry Ellis for men is emblematic of the masculines which were its peers.  It fits within the trajectory of potent, aromatic fragrances such as Grey Flannel (1975), Polo (1978), Lagerfeld (1978), and Oscar Pour Lui (1980), to name only several iconic scents roughly from that era.  Classified as a leather, it has dark chypre qualities as well.  The oakmoss in Perry Ellis is deeply submerged within a carnation note, which is startlingly robust upon application.  Galbanum lends the proceedings a burnished herbal effect.  No spices are listed but they're felt, and it's doubtful this is just the clove influence of carnation.  The fragrance feels peppery for much of its duration.  Vanilla, rose, and a leather accord round everything out.  Perry Ellis is unquestionably a leather composition, and one of the more interesting leathers of that time, I think, in that it walks various fine lines between floral and spice, leather and moss.

An anniversary edition of the fragrance was released within the last several years.  While it's perfectly nice, and generally in keeping with the original, it's a slightly different fragrance, essentially more synthetic, its rough edges less contoured to balance out the composition properly.  It feels like the work of a less seasoned perfumer faced with economic and artistic constraints his experience doesn't endow his imagination to handle effectively and resourcefully.  I found an older tester bottle in a discount shop in town, and prefer it.  The newer Perry Ellis shouts a bit more and gets what it has to say off its chest pretty quickly, after which it shrinks.  The older version goes on much more richly and, though it dries down fairly quietly as well, maintains its deep, enigmatic tone throughout.

Perry Ellis for men feels emblematic of the designer's secret life to me as well, so there's something melancholy and irreconcilable in it, a quality I appreciate on a fall day, when happy thoughts go hand in hand with more troubling ideas.  The brand has released many fragrances since, but all have been much more careful to correspond to the public image of the label, and they lack the drama and the undisclosed mysteries of this earlier scent.

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

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

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

Shocking! de Schiaparelli

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

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

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

Krazy de Krizia

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

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

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

Carnation by Commes des Garçons Red Series

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

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