More Tassels, Please: Things I'm Liking Lately

1. Please, please, please, put more tassels on perfume.  Put all kinds of dangly things - but tassels, if you can swing it.  Nothing feels better on a perfume bottle.  Nothing makes a perfume feel more like a perfume to me.  And don't skimp.  I like a nice, fat tassel.  Something you can really run your grubby little fingers through.  I have dozens of hundreds of fragrances.  Less than one percent have tassels, which really saddens me.  I realized this yesterday, when I saw the new Shalimar flanker, Parfum Initial.  I'm so tassel-deprived, it turns out, that it didn't matter what Parfum Initial smelled like (the verdict is still out on that).  I had to have it.  The Parfum Initial tassel is a little short for my taste but it has just the right heft.  It completes the bottle, and the fantasy, whatever that fantasy is (verdict still out on this too).  I look at almost every other bottle I have, however much I love the fragrance, and wish it had a tassel now.  They all seem slightly incomplete to me.  I get a little sad about it.  Another great tassel - the perfect tassel in every way - is the one on my bottle of Armani Onde Vertige.  Burnt cinnamon in color, attached to a longer cord with a pretty bead, it's just the right length, extending to the bottom of the bottle.  It's just the right thickness.  The bead makes a nice, delicate sound when it strikes the glass.  You want everything to go quiet so you can hear it better.  I suspect, seeing a well tasseled fragrance, that I would pay as much as thirty dollars more than I might normally.  Something comes over me.  I go into a fugue.

2. Chunky bottles get me every time, too.  The right kind of chunk, I guess.  Mona di Orio got chunk down better than possibly anyone has.  That big block of a bottle speaks my language.  I feel like I'm having a conversation with it.  Delicate things, those fragile, perilous case studies a la Lutens, get on my nerves.  I feel like I'm babysitting them.  I feel responsible for them in a way I resent.  What if they topple?  They're so anorexic, so kind of coy and anemic.  Oh aren't you pretty, you feel you're supposed to say.  Oh aren't you precious.  I want to slap these bottles.  I want to snap them out of their narcissism.  A blocky bottle holds its own and needs no such assistance.  It says, I deserve to be here and I'm sitting myself right down.  I like the Chanel bottles, for the most part, which are temperamental in transit but once arrived cannot be fazed.  Those taller Chanel bottles, the older things with the sturdy black caps, are even better.  Noting like Coco standing tall on your dresser, a miniature wall of scent.  The Mona di Orio bottles sit well anywhere, including your hand.  They could be used as a weapon.  While I can't imagine a scenario in which I'd need to wield a fragrance like a weapon, I enjoy knowing I could.

3. A blocky bottle needs the right cap, and again, Mona di Orio is doing this best.  Please try to tell me there is a better cap than this on the market.  I'd like to see you try.  Save yourself the trouble and admit defeat.  Worst are the gimmick caps.  Oh, I'm a butterfly.  Hey, I'm a bouquet of big vinyl flowers.  Who in Justin Bieber's camp thought this was a good idea, and how did they miss Marc Jacob's Lola, which would have deftly proven them wrong?  Many caps don't sit well on their bottles.  As much as I adore Parfumerie Generale, those black caps are a real issue.  They slide right off.  Often, the plastic ring meant to secure a cap to the neck doesn't secure a thing.  Histoires de Parfums realized the oversight of their earlier bottles, with those bizarrely ill-fitting gold plated caps, and redesigned a lot more intelligently.  Thank you.  A trendy little capricious cap mans nothing if it constantly falls off, as Tocade does for me.  Because of all these accident prone caps, maybe, I've really come to appreciate a good snap or click.  The Mona caps are solid, which is great, and unique, and there's a sound of finality to them.  Don't worry, they say, we've got this.  Go about your business.  A cap like the one on Natori constantly needs your help.  Beautiful stone cap, nice bottle, but a disastrous match.  The cap is too heavy.  It needs some kind of neck brace.  Other bad caps: Parfums Delrae, Keiko Mecheri, Cartier.  Other good caps: Byredo, Chanel, Etat Libre d'Orange, L'Artisan, Heeley, Malle, Diptyque, Cartier.

4. Guys who know a lot about perfume are my preferred sales associate.  It's just something I like.  The guys at Barneys have a little too much attitude for me, and seem rather bitter.  Recently, the one I dealt with actually rolled his eyes.  He couldn't be bothered with my questions.  He couldn't be bothered with the prospect of me.  Maybe I'm just that annoying.  The guys at Luckyscent Scent Bar are pretty dreamy and I'm glad I don't live in LA, because I think I'd probably stalk them.  I won't name them, in case some of you know them.  I don't want to embarrass them.  They're knowledgable, which is always a plus.  Okay, it's always freaky. You can't believe a sales associate actually knows what he's talking about.  For the most part, they're patient, but I don't really care much about patience.  It's their obvious love of perfume that slays me.  I'm like a puppy.  They're not just trying to sell you.  They have opinions, and favorites, and once you get them going it's like you're shopping with them.  I've found a few really good female sales associates - the local Estee Lauder SA is fantastic - but for me, finding a good guy sales associate is kind of special.  As a guy, I feel a little more understood dealing with them.  It's like being a Star Trek geek and finding a fellow Trekkie.  And if they bring out a tuberose fragrance they really love I just about go into a pleasure coma.

5. Perfumes that people hate or think are just a bit much always, when I finally smell them, seem like a dream come true.  I'd heard about Byredo M/Mink for months.  I'd read that it was stinky, strange, or conversely brilliant.  I was shocked when I got my hands on some.  Really?  All that fuss over honey and aquatics?  Somehow, rather than disappointment, I feel relief.  I feel, mind you, no less estranged from the currents of popular opinion than normally, but I'm glad to find something unusual and wearable and relieved that the hype is once again really just that, without the fragrance being a total letdown.  Absolue Pour Le Soir was another one.  Oh the cumin, people said.  Oh the horror, the stealth, the unbearable tenacity.  Whatevs.  Pour Le Soir is gorgeous.  Yes, plenty of cumin, but magnificently blended, and curiously strong without being overpowering.  The only fragrance I can think of which really does live up to its reputation is Etat's Secretions Magnifiques.  I won't wear it, though I appreciate it.  In fact, what I appreciate most is its hostility.  SM is unique among fragrances in its insistence on being difficult.  I know, I've heard many people say it smells just delightful on them, that they don't get anything foul, or challenging out of it.  And I think they're lying.  It's meant to be challenging and it is a challenge and whether or not you can withstand the challenge is an entirely different issue.  I'm liking M/Mink so much that it hurts.  Of course, everyone who hates Byredo said that they'd finally gotten it right.  Often I wish those people would shut it.  Everyone, even Guerlain, gets it wrong, all the time if not frequently.  I truly gorgeous fragrance is a freakish exception.

Mona Di Orio Vanille

In November, I reviewed Cuir, a fragrance I continue to love but rarely wear.  Cuir was different in many ways than most of what I'd smelled by Mona Di Orio, which wasn't a bad thing.  It was simply stronger and a lot more linear, and it felt more operatic in its singleminded bullheadedness than anything else she'd done, including famously skanky Nuit Noire.  What you got at first was what you got at long last.  I admire Cuir and I think it smells fantastically assertive - it's bold in a way I appreciate - and maybe it's just the heat that's turned me away from it for the time being.  Like Norma Kamali's Incense it becomes something approaching a sci-fi creature in the humidity.  It has spinning teeth and goes into attack mode.  Still, I'm defensive about it, because it seems to be one of those fragrances that people who don't like what Di Orio does use as an illustration of her failures, and the perfume's so-called drawbacks always seem like bonus points to me.

I was doubtful when, during a recent visit to Luckyscent's Scent Bar, someone raved about Vanille and suggested I smell it, I guess because something in his voice and praise led me to feel that Vanille was going to be the "break out" fragrance for the line.  I assumed, in a knee jerk way, that this was meant to imply that everything before Vanille was a near or total miss, and I figured it must be pretty boring.  I smelled other things for a while before I finally brought myself to smell Vanille--including Di Orio's Tuberose and Vetyver, neither of which I particularly liked - but I was pleasantly shocked when I got around to the third of this most recent trio, part of the perfumer's L'Ombres D'Or series.  Vanille smells like a Mona Di Orio fragrance, and yet, like Cuir, it smells like something different - not just for her but in general.

I think probably my reluctance had a lot to do as well with vanilla's vogue.  I felt the same about iris and fig at one time, a kind of eye-rolling, enough already resistance.  Don't get me started on oud. But Vanille isn't the kind of vanilla I've smelled before.  The listed notes are petitgrain, clove, orange, rum, vetiver, sandalwood, guaiac wood, amber, tonka, and vanilla.  What you get from that is something unique among vanilla fragrances, something at once drier and more succulent, slightly boozy throughout, and spiced to perfection.  The tonka and guaiac, I think, give the fragrance something that feels like vintage Guerlinade, though the overall feel of Vanille is distinctly contemporary.  Vanille is a sexy fragrance.  It makes you want to touch yourself.  I can only assume it would make you want to touch other people, too, if they happened to have some on.  I'm going to guess this one will bring its wearer a lot of compliments, the kind people get closer to give.

A word of caution about words of caution:  Everything I've heard warns against spraying too much of Vanille at once.  It might just be my skin but Vanille is nowhere near as diffusive as Cuir, and to my nose, while not subtle, it's certainly no powerhouse.  Like Cuir, it stays fairly consistent throughout, but it's playing at a lower decibel.  Several people have advised against spraying it altogether, opting instead to dab.  I've yet to find any fragrance I'd rather dab than spray, for my own sake or anyone else's, and Vanille is hardly the place I'd start.  Wear it with abandon, I say.  It might just make you some bedfellows.  This is a beautiful fragrance, and another demonstration that Di Orio is infinitely more talented than her detractors would have you believe.

Mona Di Orio: Cuir

I can't really find an antecedent in Mona di Orio's work for Cuir, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. While several di Orio fragrances have been, like Cuir, pretty bold, they were also a lot skankier, creating a series of expectations and biases around the perfumer's work. Nuit Noire dries down to what Orio retailer Luckyscent refers to on its website as "a barnyard-y animalic dirtiness" which wasn't everyone's roll in the hay. Even Carnation and Oiro have more than a whiff of the underbelly to them. Cuir is no less an affront in ways I find appealing, but in an entirely different direction.

I like Nuit Noire very much, and when I read about Cuir, part of the perfumer's Les Nombres d'Or line, I assumed it would be an elaboration of that somewhat notorious fragrance. Given Orio's treatment of the indolic and the overripe, I expected Cuir would be a sort of apogee for her sensibility, a sublimely ferocious, unwashed leather. Cuir isn't unwashed, and it isn't particularly feral. It doesn't seem in keeping with anything else Orio has done--had it come in packaging other than her trademark champagne bottle muselet, I would never have attributed it to her--but it's a fantastically remorseless fragrance, and it bums me out that her reputation for a special brand of skank and an unfairly malicious and dismissive rap from critic Luca Turin might keep people from giving it the time of day.

Cuir doesn't particularly smell much like a leather to me, either; no more than Parfum D'Empire's Cuir Ottoman does, I guess. Luckyscent calls it carnal, and I can understand why. A few months back, I reviewed Incense by Norma Kamali, another arguably carnal scent, if by carnal you mean in part unapologetically robust. Cuir initially reminded me of Incense--the stuff is unmistakably strong--though for all its assertiveness, there's a weirdly unique delicacy to Cuir. When it first goes on, you smell the cardamom and the cade, something close to smoldering spices. The cade isn't so brutal that you can't make out the cardamom, so there's a balance going on there, but a tricky one, and Cuir very nearly tips the scale into overkill. Incense doesn't have that kind of tension. It has a glorious bombast which Cuir shies away from, if only just. It's full throttle, out the gate, and straight to the grave.

Both fragrances are smoky to the extreme. Incense is much more resinous, whereas Cuir smells more like something you'd walk through than on. Supposedly there is opoponax in the mix. Who can smell it, under all that smoke? More immediately apparent is the castoreum, which gives the affair something approaching wet animal hide, rode hard, put up wet, now roasting on a spit. This is really the whole story to Cuir, but this simple constellation of elements is more than enough, telling a bigger, more complex story than fragrances with twice to three times the ingredients.

I love Cuir, and I know it will last me forever. It's sometimes--okay, frequently--too much for me. A little goes a long way, as they say. But what a road that is to go down, even just dipping my feet in it. I believe there's a much needed place for these fragrances, now more than ever, and far too few of them. They adjust one's barometer, demanding of you a certain kind of attention and commitment. They cleanse the palate by overloading the senses. With so many fragrances pandering to lowest common denominators, endlessly dumbing themselves down, seeking shamelessly to be all things to all people, something like Cuir is a handy reminder of the refreshment a willfully difficult scent can provide.

This Week at the Perfume Counter: Milano

Before I left for Milan, Tuesday before last, I googled perfume shops in the area. I needn't have bothered, as there are perfume shops all over the place--in a week, I probably passed thirty, at least--but google brought me to Profumo on Via Brera, and another shop a few blocks down on the same street, so it wasn't a total waste.

Profumo is run by a man who seems to know what he's talking about, though he speaks only passable English. The place has the usual niche suspects (Malle, Diptyque) as well as the harder to come by: I got to smell some of the Lorenzo Villoresi line, the new Heeley, Parfum d'Empire, Mona di Orio, Keiko Mecheri, and Profumi del Forte, an Italian line, my favorite of which was Roma Imperiale, an addictively light but persistent Shalimar-influenced oriental with Bergamot, mandarin, neroli, rose-wood, coriander seed, cinnamon, tomato leaves, orchid, jasmine absolute, tuberose absolute, ylang-ylang, iris butter, Turkish rose essence, seringa, civet, oak moss, grey amber, vanilla, and sandalwood in the mix.

Of the Villoresi, I liked Piper Nigrum and Spezie, which were similar: peppery and robust. The feminine fragrances I liked less. I almost walked away with a bottle of Piper Nigrum, but, projecting ahead, I couldn't see myself reaching for it all that often.

I'd never smelled Mona di Orio either (the perfumes, not the woman). I might have passed altogether on them at first sniff. Luckily, I sprayed some on--Oiro to one hand, Nuit Noire to the other--and enjoyed the depth of their development on my skin over the next several hours. If, as Luca Turin wrote, Nuit Noire is a loud fart of civet, smother me in farts, please. A spicy oriental, it smells different on me at different times, sometimes powdery, sometimes leathery, first floral, then gingered. I've heard reports that di Orio no longer has a US distributor, which would be a shame. The bottles are as gorgeous as the scents.

I returned to Profumo about four times over the course of the next week, spending time with L'Eau Trois ( a nice, dry frankincense from Diptyque; has this been discontinued?), Fougere Bengale (Holy Immortelle!), Andy Tauer (Incense Rose and Lonestar Memories) and more of the Parfumerie Generale line (Coze, anyone?). Eventually, I purchased a bottle of Nuit Noire. Let's hope I can get it back safely in my suitcase.

Down the street was a shop specializing in Penhaligons fragrance. Abigail sent me a bottle of Violetta before I left the country. It's good stuff. So is Elixir, by Olivia Giacobetti. Company copy says Elixir was inspired by Hammam Bouquet, which I own and like well enough, but I'm not sure I see the connection. Elixir lacks the weird, slightly vexing plastic note of Hammam. It's spicier and has more depth. Osmoz lists the following notes: orange, eucalyptus, mace, cardamom, jasmine, ginger, rose, woods, resin, tonka bean, vanilla, and benzoin. All of this, save the jasmine maybe, is discernable to me. I wish Elixir lasted a bit longer, or persisted with the intensity of its opening, but those first thirty minutes might be worth the price of admission.

Aside from these shops I had the best time at 10 Corso Como. The eponymously titled house blend bored me, but there was a lot besides to enjoy. I'd never really given Byredo much of a chance. Pulp is fantastic, and the staying power is equally remarkable. I got to see the Comme des Garçons/Stephen Jones bottle up close, and bought one to take home. Is there a more unusual violet fragrance? Probably not. 10 Corso Como had all the Tom Ford Private Blends, and the Histoires de Parfums, which Abigail and I have been enjoying lately. It was the only place I found any Serge Lutens in Milano (with any kind of selection to speak of, that is). It had some Caron, though not much. Some By Kilian. Some Malle. Some stuff I forget. Mostly it was great to walk around the store, which sells outrageously priced clothes and jewelry, much of it pretty unusual.

While in Milan I also picked up some old favorites. Hermes Caleche EDP, L'Heure Bleue, and, joy of all joys, Clinique Wappings, which I might have gotten in the states but only after waiting until Christmas. At a remote Profumeria I found bottles of Knize 10, Knize Sec, Knize Two, and Knize Forest. I bought Knize Sec, which is an unusual smell I'll try to describe after spending more time with it.

The abundance of perfume in Milano was thrilling. But I was disappointed by how rarely I smelled any on anyone. Several times I passed women whose perfume left a trail of dreamy goodness behind. Not once did I pass a guy reeking of cologne, and I can't tell you how much I'd been looking forward to this. Mistakenly, I was under the impression that men here bathe in the stuff. I envisioned them standing at the sink, splashing eau de whatever into their open palms, slapping their naked chests. Invariably in these fantasies they were dressed in their underwear and flip flops. Then they made me ricotta pie and pesto pasta. Then we spent some alone time, and I got high, up close, on their cologne of choice. The closest I got to this kind of religious experience was the Duomo.