My feeling is that if it's good enough to spray in the air I breathe, and if I'm going to be smelling it anyway, then it's good enough to wear. There's also that whole body is a temple thing, and a temple is a room, so I go with that.
I was curious about Laurier because it was said to contain eucalyptus, rosemary, laurel, thyme, cumin, clove, amber, patchouli, and sandalwood, among other things. They had me at cumin and clove. I've had good experiences with Le Labo's home sprays: I wear Calone and like it a lot, and the fig and pine are nice. Laurier is a somewhat cacophonous smell, not safe for the office probably, which makes it ideal office wear.
Once I was in Barney's surveying the Diptyque selection. This was back when the line had more than the three or four room sprays they carry now. I'd wanted the John Galliano room spray for some time but I don't really spray rooms, I spray my skin, so I just enjoyed it whenever I saw it in the store. It never occurred to me to wear it, until the sales associate that day told me she sprayed the Dptyque home sprays on her clothes. That shouldn't have probably been a revelation but it was. I left the store with a bottle of the Galliano, and gasped for air all winter as it wafted up from my scarf.
Have you smelled Galliano? It's a big bonfire of a scent, smoked with clove and burning wood. It reminds me of a memory from childhood. We lived in an apartment complex in Houston and one of the units caught on fire. The following day some of us walked past the building surveying the damage. You could see through the walls. Everything inside was charred. I remember seeing a pink stuffed animal which looked like it had been dipped in tar. Fire was something like the ocean to me at that age: too powerful and swift and mercurial in its currents to grasp. The whole area smelled like Galliano, which isn't to say that Galliano reminds me of people who've lost their homes, but it does remind me somehow of this fearful power and the respect it commands. Or something like that.
A friend smelled Laurier on my hand and remarked that it reminded him of burning eraser. Later he said it smelled like the outdoors. It does smell somewhat like you're standing in the woods and someone nearby has sprayed Galliano.
While not so surprised that I like it, I am surprised how little Aziyade reminds me of the things I'm told it should. What's not to like? Are there many who don't like Serge Lutens' Arabie? I don't know many of them. It's likable, too. It smells to me of dates marinated in various resins, and Aziyade has some of those fruity woody aspects too. As do Kenzo Elephant and Feminite du Bois. But Aziyade has so many peculiar qualities those don't that I'm not sure I would have made the connection on my own. For me, likability is about the biggest thing they have in common.
I made a comment the other day, talking about Noix De Tuberose, that tuberose fragrances often seem very similar, with only very fine distinctions. I see the school of thought which places Aziyade among the sugared fruits and woods of the perfume world, but it has such a nice, tart angle, with some leather and terpenoids going on in there too. I get some pine, though it isn't listed. I think this might be ginger, which is. None of the notes come as a shock to me. Yes, okay, there are those crystallized dates and prunes, but they're more of a backdrop. Orange is a big player here, adding to that terpenoid zing. Pomegranate, a cameo. The ginger, almond, cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, carob and ciste season the mix in a way which feels uniquely spicy. Aziyade isn't a cold smell, it has some warmth, but it lacks the fuzzy splendor of Elephant and Arabie. Those have always reminded me of Cinnabar in a certain way: they heat up on the skin the way the smell of food on the stove spreads through the house.
Aziyade is brisk. I would call it radiant. It doesn't smell anything like them but its radiance brings Caleche and Clinique Wrappings to mind. Those have a similar, slightly camphorous edge for me which should probably be chalked up to aldehydes. Aziyade's tangy vibe isn't something I've smelled anywhere, except perhaps in another Parfum D'Empire fragrance, Ambre Russe. What to call this? Both make me think of a rich, high end liqueur like the one I sometimes see and covet: a pear floats inside, like a model ship in a bottle. Aziyade dries down into a dreamy booze of a fragrance. It doesn't have the forceful longevity of Elephant and Arabie but it lasts quite well. Actually, now that I bring it up, it smells a bit of pear.
Le Nomade starts off with a tart, sparkling lime note, making the fragrance seem almost dewy at first. I wish it lingered there longer because it's a unique note, but it's a pretty fantastic openings. After this, it moves along into woodier, spicier terrain, but it never really loses that tart disposition altogether. Some have compared it to Cartier Declaration, and while it's true they feel related, there are enough differences between them to warrant individual attention. Declaration is nuttier somehow. Le Nomade feels a little more floral, recalling the jasmine beatitude of Third Man, if perverted by the spice rack.
I liked Le Nomade instantly. It smells better than the majority of masculines I come across, and, like Third Man, has something about it which makes it feel a little more unisex, partly the jasmine, but also something else. It doesn't take much to veer away from "masculine", when you consider how homogeneous your average masculine fragrance is. Many of the D'Orsay fragrances date to the early 1900s. Le Nomade is practically a baby, at a little less than ten years old. It smells much older, and not just because it bears very little relation to contemporary trends in mainstream perfumery.
The D'Orsay website features the fragrance as part of its "Intense" series and lists the notes as follows: ivy green, cedar leaves, bergamot, lime, jasmine, geranium, cardamom, coriander, cumin, black pepper, vetiver, atlas cedar, sandalwood, balsam fir, sage, and liatrix. The easy way out would be to describe Le Nomade as a woody vetiver, citing the cedar, the sandalwood, fir, sage, etc. But the spices, the jasmine, and the geranium take the composition to an entirely different place. I've heard people describe this as a confused fragrance. D'Orsay doesn't help dissuade from that impression. "Where cultures collide," the website boasts, continuing:"the perfect blend of essences from Asian and African civilizations." Then again, that makes sense to me, as the overall result smells like a fusion of a spicy dish and a steaming porcelain cup of jasmine tea, side of lemongrass. Le Nomade is that rare thing, an eau de parfum masculine.
When he took over the house of Givenchy several years back, and the world at large first started hearing his name, designer Alexander McQueen publicly dismissed the religiously esteemed founder of the company as “irrelevant”, instantly and perhaps permanently establishing his reputation as a prig with attitude and a propensity for shock so showy that few, even now, recognize what an enormous talent he might be.
Son of a taxi driver, McQueen left school at 16 to apprentice with Savile Row tailors Anderson and Sheppard.At 20, he traveled to Milan, where he worked for Romeo Gigli.He received his Masters in Fashion Design from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London; his thesis collection was bought in its entirety by the late Isabella Blow, his equal in extravagant uncanny with a specialization in baffling estrangement. He was one of the youngest designers to be awarded British Designer of the Year, receiving the honor three times between 1996 and 2003.
His clothes, however shocking or unusual, are impeccably conceived and constructed, wonders of geometrical form.McQueen has the talent to back up his attitude, yet the flip side of his arrogance is an apparently sincere desire to be liked.Following all his bluster, humility reads more like an admission of vacuous hype.After the backlash over Givenchy, he tucked his tail between his legs, expressing remorse, publicly teary, wondering why everyone hated him.Then he went about figuring out how to work within the system of a major fashion house with a reputation and an intricately archaic protocol more complex than his instinctive hubris enabled him to understand. This dance of attack and retreat, alternating between hauteur and abject humility, is one McQueen seems destined to perform ad nauseum.
Kingdom, the first fragrance released under the designer's name, marries cumin to rose, tart citrus to sweaty skin. Its reputation arguably suffered sight unseen, thanks to McQueen's own, which preceded it. At the time of its release, much was made of its composition, as if it were as formally innovative as Angel or definitively bold, like Poison.It is neither, but it matches McQueen’s sensibility well, conceptually and structurally, right down to the atomizer. Depending on how one holds it, the sculptural bottle, ruby red glass sheathed in chrome, resembles the prototype for some futuristic heart transplant or a slice of fruit which zests rather than sprays.
Kingdom is ineffable or elusive enough to resist categorization, though several detractors regard it as unfocused rather than complex. It was composed by Jacques Cavallier, the man responsible for many equally unusual, even challenging, scents. As Chandler Burr said, Cavallier is a "prolific perfumer so successful these days that he often seems to generate a quarter of each year's worldwide fragrance product." Often, the compositions Cavallier has created or to which he has contributed have as many detractors as fans. Among these fragrances are Yves Saint Laurent's Nu, Boucheron's Trouble, Rive Gauche Homme, Acqua di Gio Homme, Armani Mania, Jean Paul Gaultier Classique, M7, and Shiseido Vocalize.
Many of Cavallier’s scents, like Kingdom, might arguably be classified as fascinating mass-market scents harboring deeply niche personalities. He himself comes from what might be considered The Perfume Establishment. Cavallier's family has been in Grasse since the 15th century. His father and grandfather were perfumers. He says that this background and natural raw materials are essential to his craft, yet his fragrances often seem otherworldly, anything but traditional. Rose, Agar Wood, Jasmine, and Orange Flower are the most prevalent raw materials in his "olfactive palette". Cavallier remembers running through jasmine fields as a five year-old boy, and dates his beginning as a perfumer to the time his father first introduced him to the smell of the May Rose. His fondest memory from childhood, he has said, was the image of his mother's eyes when he woke up.
Discussing the creation of Elle, another YSL juice on which he collaborated, Cavallier said that the two most important meetings or moments during the creation of a perfume are the first and the last. During the first, an idea is proposed or generated. By the time the last has been reached, that idea must have been translated into a tangible, marketable product. A hallmark of Cavallier's artistry is his insistence on going bolder after that initial discussion, rather than toning things down toward a lowest common denominator. He has made mistakes of judgment this way, exceeding the fluctuating boundaries of wearability, yet almost all of the risks he has taken, like McQueen's clothing, leave indelible impressions, which might be why scents like M7 become cult favorites after their discontinuation, persisting in the collective imagination the way the childhood image of his mother's eyes have for Cavallier.
Though probably closer to an abstract floral, Kingdom passes in and out of rose so distinctly at times that it might as well be considered a soliflor. This is deepest, darkest, twilit rose, shadowed and thorn-ridden. The addition of cumin and mint takes things from interesting to odd. The scent is unlikely to win any converts to cumin, nor is it quite as fantastically strange (or as repulsive) as people sometimes assert. At times it seems downright old-fashioned in its dogged intensity. The rose and jasmine strike recognizable cords, but are sent off kilter by ginger and myrrh. Vanilla gives a faint suggestion of the gourmand, referencing Guerlain's Samsara. The cumin, as in Olivier Cresp's Rochas Femme reformulation, creates the impression of classic French animalics, creating a persistent edge to the construction, sometimes sharp, sometimes blunt. Maybe serrated is a better word. What you notice right out the gate with Kingdom is the citrus: bergamot, orange, mandarin, neroli. These persist throughout the heart to some degree, and along with vanilla in the base and the salty cumin overall make for quite a succulent experience. Succulent to some, anyway; salty to others. A percentage of the buying public is convinced the smell of Kingdom takes its inspiration from the armpit or, worse (apparently), the sexual organs. For some, that's altogether a bad thing.
True to form, when Kingdom sold poorly, McQueen released My Queen, a much more polite and conventionally feminine perfume, whose title might just as fittingly have been Please Like Me.
