Dear Year: Reflecting on 2012

There weren't many surprises for me this year, but plenty of memorable moments. In May, for instance, after a grueling film shoot, I traveled to Portland to visit The Perfume House, my favorite perfume haunt. It was a good time to go back, as it had been a few years, and I was in a place I needed to reconnect with that original excitement perfume held for me. I discovered perfume at The Perfume House, really. I learned about Lutens there, L'Artisan, Nicolai, and scores of other fragrance options I'd never known about or even suspected.

I spent several days in Portland, which meant several days inside The Perfume House. There's a single window in the place but it's highly placed and small, and for the most part you feel you've stepped back in time, or to some pocket of time, past or present, that exists independently from the outside world. The staff feel like old friends by now, and even after all this time, having scoured the place from top to bottom, there are new discoveries, things on a bottom shelf I hadn't noticed before, or hadn't known to look for, like an old bottle of La Nuit edt, some early Rosines, and Basile, my favorite, and cheapest, discovery of the year. Basile is instant happiness for me: somewhere between Opium and L'Arte de Gucci, a subtly spiced green rose no one talks about and no one's put an exorbitantly priced sales tag on.

The weather during my trip to Portland was unusually sunny and combined with the experiences inside The Perfume House it buoyed my mood. One day, standing in the shop, I met a man who cultivates hybrid peonies nearby. He waits several years for results, and had just stopped in to show the latest fruits of his labor, two dodge ball sized peonies, one butter yellow, one blush pink. He carried them around as he spoke to the staff, talking about his process. It struck me that it takes him as long to grow a peony as it takes a perfumer to create a perfume.

The staff of the store keeps all the testers of its discontinued fragrances, so I was able to smell a few old Weil scents, Secret de Venus and Bambou. Both were beyond words, and reminded me that the past of perfumery is just as essential as the present, however hard to track down - and that the store which values this past becomes a real asset to the perfume lover.

There were only a few scents that pleased me as much as Basile. At Lucksyscent for the launch of Tableau de Parfums' Loretta with Andy Tauer, I picked up a bottle of Santa Maria Novella's Patchouli, expecting not much. I was just standing there, and it was too. So I smelled it. Turns out it's my favorite patchouli, richly herbal with chocolatey undertones, and the surprise demonstrated for me that there are still discoveries to be made, right under my nose, where I least expect them, if only I keep my mind open. It's harder and harder to do that but maybe more necessary now than several years ago, when the discoveries were so numerable I didn't have to think much about how to wait patiently for them.

The buzz this year circled furiously around fragrances that ultimately disappointed me in a big way. I shouldn't be shocked any more by the disparity between what I've heard and what I smell. I should know better at this point. Still, I was taken aback by just how boring so many of these scents were. The Ramon Monegal line was nice in places - Mon Patchouli, Kiss My Name - but emblematic as well of the high price one's asked to pay for small pleasures in the current perfume marketplace. Kurkdjian's Amyris duo was instructive, not just the scents themselves but the way they were talked about. Bloggers praised them as mainstream done well, which to me, once I smelled them, seemed like a not so coded way of saying even mediocre is exceptional when you lower your expectations sufficiently, spoken the way you do when you're in bed with the subject of your appraisal.

That told me a lot about perfume reviewing now as well. I read all the perfume blogs daily when I first started smelling, and up to the last year I continued to read even those whose prose seemed the most steeply canted toward ass-kiss. I've stopped reading all but a few now, having realized finally that for too many bloggers it's more important to know the creator of Volutes well enough to chat her up at a party than to report on the fragrance with any kind of useful honesty.

The other side of this is the tendency toward "hostility first, sober assessment later" for all things fragrant, a trend I saw more and more of on the fragrance boards and consumer review sites this year. I believe the two go hand in hand. Perfume lovers know in their guts that, however well written some of these blog narratives are, they're chronically disingenuous and often self-serving, a pretty girl insisting everyone affirm her prettiness, however ugly her behavior. More and more, bloggers seem to have crawled into bed with the makers of perfume, not just perfumers but the corporations behind them. It's only natural that the consumer, sensing this, would react defensively, distrusting everything sight unseen.

I think something will have to change, and fortunately, everything eventually does. I view this type of blogging, however current, as already paleolithic, and I look forward somewhat hopefully, though hope is against my nature, to something different, where these voices will be seen for what they are and others who haven't yet been corrupted by the betrayal of their own weak egos will start talking a little more loudly.

This shift in perspective characterized the year for me. I lost a friend in October, and the process of grief involved re-evaluation and re-prioritizing. What matters started to matter more to me after that, but I'd been moving that way for months. We're living in a highly accelerated moment, where a lot of information and many options are thrown at us on a daily, even hourly basis. We're encouraged to feel I think that we must work very hard to vie for attention, which means being heard. At the same time, we're led to believe that in this state of affairs things can still feel and be special. Who cares if by shouting I can be heard, if what the listener takes away is a lot of shouting.

By October, I knew several things: I knew that those two modes of consciousness work together destructively and are in fact actually contradictory, and I knew that I needed to step away a little so that I could somehow get back in touch with what does matter in life. At this point I need to believe, with confidence, that some things do matter. If every new perfume release does, then really nothing can. I want a little more intention in my life - in the things I value and connect with. And I want to believe a connection can transcend the next several minutes or days the way we like to say perfume can. Like my friend, a profound perfume is unique in its ability to reach you and bond with you. The most impressive thing about it shouldn't be how much money it has or how many friends in high places. I need to learn I think that the exceptional peony comes after a patient wait, and that the waiting is as important and valuable as the eventual appearance of the flower.

I hope everyone's had a good year, and is out there making personally meaningful discoveries, and perseveres in the belief that ultimately the best barometer is your own mind and heart.

Andy Tauer's Advent Calendar, Etc.

As some of you might know, this month is Andy Tauer's annual Advent Calendar of giveaways. I Smell isn't participating, but Evelyn Avenue is. Visit the site for a drawing which will conclude tomorrow night.

I'm presently in Vermont, where it's been nice to get my mind off things. Just enough is plenty for me. It's cold here and pretty rural - not much perfume shopping as far as I know (if you know differently, do tell), but there's a yarn store a few blocks away, one of the best in the region, and I've managed to start yet another sweater I hope to have finished by Christmas.

The friend I'm visiting had planned to drive me to Montreal this weekend, so I didn't bring much perfume. I figured I'd find some there. I packed Alien Cuir, Knize Ten, and Havana in my luggage, and for a change I'm spending several days focused on a limited array of scents. Havana is spicy and robust. Alien Cuir is another Alien form of Alien. Knize Ten is probably my all time favorite leather - better than Chanel Cuir de Russie and any number of leathers said to be superior. My friend Jack once declared it smells of mop water. Until I spend more time around mop water, I can neither contest or concur.

I can't say I'll miss the trip to Montreal anyway - not in terms of the perfume I might find there. Lately I look at the new releases and feel they're not really all that new. It isn't just that I feel it's all been done before. I feel it's been done much better, sometimes several times over. I read some of the blogs and am baffled by the enthusiasm. Anima Dulcis, which Dane just reviewed at Peredepierre, is a good example of a recent scent you would think reinvents the wheel, judging by the gushing love it gets on blogs. To me, it smells like a celebrity scent somehow - rich on the cheap stuff, more bark than bite. Dane might be right in saying it would make a better home candle. Volutes, the new Hermes by Ellena, etc. Are these necessary? Something might need to shake up perfumery pretty soon to hold my waning interest.

I suspect the flurry of new scents from Gorilla will help. I'm excited about these. All but one or two of the nine sound like just the thing. Right now I believe they might only be available in the UK. I haven't checked the Lush USA site recently. More on that later.

Molinard Nirmala as Ghost

Since the death of my friend several weeks ago, I've had a hard time moving forward. I suspect that's temporary. Everything but death seems to be. But for the time being, scent has become something slightly stagnant for me - talking about it, writing about it, smelling it. Scent is in a different place, far from the things I'm feeling.

My friend was an atheist and for the most part averse to scent, so memorials of one kind or another have been problematic for me. I did speak at her funeral, trying to put her character, or what I knew of it, into words, trying to take the occasion somewhere specific. When you take the spiritual element out of a service, as a pastor afraid of insulting a deceased atheist is apt to do, you're left with all the ritual but none of the crucial opportunities for catharsis. Putting words to her helped.

In the same way, I kept wishing that she'd loved scent, so I'd have something to go to for help getting through the feelings I've been left with. All I remembered was a conversation we once had. She said she couldn't wear anything but Champs Elysees, a fragrance famous for its inoffensiveness. Everything else gave her migraines, she told me. I'd never thought much of Champs Elysees but immediately, days after her service, went out and bought the biggest bottle I could find. I was knitting a lot, and sprayed it all over my neck. It was barely there, and made her absence feel that much more visceral. It was so simple and sweet that it reminded me of the childhood photo she'd left up on her facebook profile - someone only distantly related to the person I remember.

I wanted something that could conjure her more fully, the way scent can with people whose memory it recalls. It's the first time I've thought about what it means that so many of the people I'm close to aren't that into scent, and why I'm so often desperate to track down something they'll like. I must want to make sure I have some portal back into their presence once they're gone. Without that, they'll seem, like my friend, stuck in some kind of purgatory, I imagine.

So I was practically euphoric last week when someone we both knew called to let me know the things from my friend's office had been cleared out and put in boxes, and in one of these boxes was a bottle of Molinard Nirmala. I'd forgotten all about another conversation we'd had, and it all came rushing back, bringing her with it.

We were sitting there knitting and she told me she really loved Angel, but that she had a hard time wearing it. I'd just found an old bottle of Nirmala, which smells remarkably similar to Angel, and told her about it, offering to give it to her. Nirmala has none of Angel's patchouli. It's a more piquant exercise in that general direction, with a wonderfully strange pineapple note standing in. I gave her the bottle the next time I saw her and never heard about it again. I thought about it once or twice, wondering if she'd been able to wear it. I suspected she hadn't.

I inherited the Nirmala bottle a few days after I heard about it again in this phone call. I was anxious to see it for several reasons. She'd kept it at work. Didn't that mean she'd worn it? Didn't that mean she had an "office friendly scent"? Would any of it be missing? I dreaded the alternative. What if she hadn't worn it or connected with it at all, making it just this empty signifier left behind, signifying nothing?

The bottle was about a third empty, and another friend told me she'd often smelled it on her sweaters. I've worn it obsessively since I got it back, and it feels a little - enough - like she's with me.

Losing a Friend

A week ago Sunday, I returned from Los Angeles, where Andy Tauer and I launched Loretta, the second fragrance in the Tableau de Parfums line. The turnout was nice, what seemed like twice the size of last year's release event for Miriam. I smelled a lot of new things I'd heard about but hadn't had a chance to get my hands on. Some were interesting. Many were disappointing.

The first several days of last week were full of catching up. The trip to LA was brief but even a brief interruption these days leaves me with a lot of loose ends. It was in this scattered frame of mind that I received news of a friend's death, early Thursday morning. When I was told by text at 6:30 a.m., it hardly seemed real. It was real, but even a week later, I keep reminding myself it's actually happened.

My friend was a pretty wonderful person. I met her about eight or nine years ago, when I wandered into a yarn shop she owned at the time to pretend I knew how to knit. I don't think I'd tried anything at that point - not even a scarf. I was attracted by the possibilities and wanted to believe knitting was something I could do if I practiced enough. The yarn was like perfume - there was so much of it, in so many different varieties. The place was like a candy store.

On any day of the week, I'd drop in and people were there knitting. If the place was open there was someone there. Often a group. Papatya had opened the store a year or so before. She held down a day job at an architect firm as a draftsman. On her lunch hours and after she clocked out at the firm, she was often at the shop, chatting with everyone, knitting herself. Weekends the place was full, and every Tuesday night people met at a large table in a side room to knit and catch up.

I met a lot of people there but no one more interesting than Papatya. Her life seemed to be very much in order. She was assertive, funny, friendly, ambitious. It seemed like she could knit or solve anything, and I doubt I would have progressed as quickly as I did without her constant tutoring. Any time I got myself stuck without knowing why, I could run over to the store, knowing she'd help. I'd get all my yarn tangled up and she'd patiently untangle it for me. She liked to do it, she said. I still find that hard to believe.

I'm an adventurous, maybe lazy, knitter. I want to use whatever yarn I like for the pattern at hand, regardless of the gauge called for. I want to use odd color combinations. I progressed to blankets and sweaters sooner than a lot of knitters do, and I wasn't afraid to take chances - but largely because I knew Papatya would support me when I hit a dead end, and she typically encouraged my choices, despite the often mixed results.

When the store closed a year later, the Tuesday night knitting group moved to a local cafe. I got busier and busier with film work, often too stressed to attend. The faces changed, but as usual Papatya was the central force holding the social network together. I saw Papatya less during that time, but she was always supportive of whatever I happened to be doing. I know from hearing others talk over the last week that she was like this with most of her friends. She made you feel you were one of her favorite people. She had that quality. It breaks my heart we weren't able to help her the way she'd helped us. She was obviously in a fix somehow, in a difficult place emotionally and mentally.  She was so good at solving other people's problems that it was hard for us to see she might need help with her own. We'll never know why she took her life last Tuesday, or why she chose to do it that day, which held a lot of significance for her, and for a lot of us.

I'm going to miss her. I miss her already. Everything I've knit reminds me of her. Knitting itself does. I've spent most of the last week editing, which helps me hyper-focus and keep my mind from spinning through the details, the why and how. I've surrounded myself with perfume - old favorites, which hold a particular appeal right now. That transports me to a better place. I hope she's in one too.

(The photo above shows Papatya as I remember her - in the middle of things, admiring someone's progress)

Zoinks! Loretta Draw Update

Dontcha just love the internet? I'm not sure I do at the moment. Some of you will have noticed there's been a problem on the Evelyn Avenue site, where Andy Tauer and I announced a draw to celebrate the launch of Loretta, the second Tableau de Parfums fragrance.

Our indomitable webmaster is looking into the issue and our fingers are crossed (and nerves frayed). MEANWHILE...the draw deadline has been extended. Winners will now be drawn and announced on Monday, October 29.

The draw itself has been moved to Andy's blog.

Please note: If you've managed to get on the Evelyn Avenue page and comment on the post there, you do NOT need to comment on Andy's post. Everyone who commented on the Evelyn Avenue post is already automatically entered into the draw and those names will be compiled with the comments on Andy's blog when the winners are selected. Check his post at the link above for details.

A Tauer Drawing to Celebrate the Launch of Loretta

 
On Friday, October 19, perfumer Andy Tauer and I will be at Scent Bar in LA to launch Loretta, the second fragrance in the Tableau de Parfums line. Loretta is inspired by the short of the same name in the Woman's Picture film series. Miriam, released last year, was a nod to the classic floral aldehydes of the past. Loretta goes in a different direction, contrasting earthy elements with white flowers and dark fruits. Miriam explored themes of nostalgia and memory. Loretta, to me, explores the gatekeeper to fantasy fragrance can become, and how fantasies can combine light and dark elements in unique ways.

To celebrate the launch, we're conducting a drawing on Evelyn Avenue, the home site for Tableau de Parfums and Woman's Picture. Three winners will be announced on Monday, October 21. To qualify for the drawing, we ask that you leave a comment on our most recent Evelyn Avenue blog post about three perfume spots we created for Loretta.

The post talks a little about cynicism in perfumery. With so many things being thrown at perfume lovers, how do we maintain a certain level of optimism? I look at the phenomenon of cynicism from a different point of view now than I might have several years ago, before starting this collaboration between perfume and film with Andy. Over the past year we've asked ourselves what it means to address that fatigue among people who love perfume, and whether we can make some kind of difference in that trend. Is it enough that we're excited about what we do? What makes our excitement any different than anyone else's? How do we make sure that we present our collaboration with some kind of integrity where the norm is too often over-priced and over-hyped? It's an interesting vantage point for me - somewhere between consumer and producer - and the questions have percolated over the last year in our minds as we toured with and talked about Miriam and our intentions.

Winners of the drawing will receive a full bottle of choice from the extended Tauer range (including Tableau de Parfums), a DVD of the first three shorts in the Woman's Picture series, and a vintage-inspired poster designed for Loretta's packaging (pictured above).

More Alien Still: Alien Essence Absolue

Apparently, the folks at Mugler decided that two Alien flankers a year just wasn't enough, and this year, in addition to the flanker associated with Les Parfums de Cuir and the summer version, Aqua Chic, the brand released Alien Essence Absolue, a purportedly richer, more intense version of the original.

I'm not complaining, because Essence Absolue is the best of the Alien enterprise to date, right down to the bottle, which resembles a cybernetic pear considered by citizens of the planet Jupiter to be the last word in exotic delicacies. True to the literature, Absolue is richer, but exactly why and how, even with a side by side comparison, is hard to explain.

There's said to be myrrh, white amber, incense, and animalistic black vanilla pod. The balance is such that I'd be hard pressed to identify any of that specifically, though at times I feel I can detect what I think might be myrrh or what could be animalistic black vanilla pod. I'm a big fan of Alien Liqueur, and Liqueur was, itself, richer than the original Alien. I was skeptical, when I heard about Absolue; it seemed unlikely that the composition could be made any richer than that. I should have known better, because it's rare a Mugler fragrance seriously disappoints.

What Absolue seems to subtract from the original equation is the very thing I thought made that composition so complex and satisfying. Gone is the roasted jasmine quality, that super saturated, burred nutty thrust. When you smell the two side by side, they seem very similar, for just a short time, as though the same hologram has been projected before you. As that initial impression shifts, their differences, subtle but profound, become gradually more apparent.

The incense aspects of Absolue are minimal; still, they replicate then variate the fuzzy quality of the original's jasmine, generating a strange edged effect to the floral components of the fragrance. Overall, the heart of the thing feels the way the juice looks, golden, shot through with light. While Absolue definitely smells vanillic, it's only when you compare its dry down to the original that you see just how much more vanilla it has, and how the amber elements dominate. I can't detect anything remotely animalic in the mix, and yet this is a different kind of vanilla fragrance, slightly more savory than sweet. The spectral silhouette of original Alien remains, hovering there, but the body of the fragrance has arranged itself differently around that outline. Absolue has more than a little in common with the L'Or version of Dior J'Adore, but where that flanker sat obediently on the skin - even meekly - Absolue has kick.

I find both versions, original and Absolue, to be comparable in projection and longevity, though I've read many customer reviews saying that Absolue is equally tenacious but less of a headache, basically. I never got or get a headache from original Alien, nor am I exactly ever clear on what people who dislike it so strongly are chiefly complaining about, so I can't tell you why Absolue is considered by many of them to be a marked improvement. For me, it's simply a variation, if something so profoundly good can be called simple.

Note: This fragrance could have been far less interesting and still worth the price for the bottle alone.

Thierry Mugler's Angel: Les Parfums de Cuir

There are those who despise Thierry Mugler's wildly successful Angel so much that they appraise its many flankers solely by their ability to mitigate that contempt. Others - I'm one of them - look forward to each successive October, when the best of these special flankers are typically released, not as another opportunity to hate the fragrance more or less, but as another form of Christmas, where Angel will be slightly reinvented, seen through yet another conceptual prism.

This year, the flankers to Angel, Alien, A*Men, and Womanity, collectively called Les Parfums de Cuir, are truly gifts that keep giving. There are many things to admire about the Mugler line, not least of which is its packaging, a big part of its gifts to give. With the exception of Womanity, arguably a misstep in the direction of excessive ornamentation, the bottles have been endlessly entertaining, if not exactly practical - interesting not just as vessels but as objets d'art. Unlike most flankers, and despite the expectations imposed on these new fragrances by detractors of the original fragrances, those produced by Mugler don't seem too preoccupied with "improvement". Again, with the exception of Womanity, which has not quite been the hot cake that Angel and Alien have been, there's nothing, from a sales point of view, to improve. These aren't apologias.

With Mugler, a flanker often brings the best of both worlds - a wonderful new fragrance not too terribly removed from the one you love, reenacting the crush all over again. The Liqueur versions from 2009 were my favorites so far. For me, Angel Liqueur is even better than the original, while Alien is a deeper, richer more of same, forcing me to look at the Alien I fell in love with in a different way. A*Men Pure Coffee was fantastic, and Pure Malt was beyond that, and the only real bummer for me has been Pure Havane, which smelled on me a little too much like death by vinyl, side of maraschino cherry.

There are Mugler fragrances I practically ignore, like most of the summertime flankers, all of them single-mindedly bent on balancing toothpaste with caramel, and while I admired last year's Taste of Fragrance editions, I never felt, no matter how hard I tried, that I neeeeeded them. The whole Innocent range seems superfluous to me, unless you simply must have a Mugler and can't stomach anything more interesting the line has to offer. But those Liqueur versions. Those were really something - so good that each September I start thinking obsessively about what the brand will come up with next.

I'm not as crazy about the leather Angel as I am about her liqueur kin, but I don't like it too much less. Certainly enough to buy it. If it's good enough to bring the guys at Peredepierre out of semi-retirement, you know it must be pretty decent. Peredepierre described an apricot quality to leather Angel that puts it somewhere near Daim Blond. I do get peach, but not with anything like the brightness of that Lutens suede. This is definitely leather for me, not suede, dark brown in color, and the sweetness of most Angel versions, including the original, is tempered here. Liqueur Angel smells recognizably of Angel throughout. Leather Angel doesn't always or often remind me of any Angel I've smelled. If I had to find a correlate I would look to Cuir de Lancome or Heeley Cuir Pleine Fleur. Leather Angel, unlike Cuir Pleine Fleur, isn't quite barnyard-adjacent, but not so far away the wind doesn't catch up with it. As for Cuir de Lancome, what I think it shares with leather Angel is a rich, creamy leather feel, with none of the arch sharpness involved in, say, Knize Ten or Chanel Cuir de Russie.

It's most recognizable as "Angel" up top. Once it dries down to the leather, which is not skanky but plush (more leather bag or seat than saddle), it becomes something almost entirely new for me. The marketing says these flankers were marinated in leather. I can't answer to that, though I find it hard to believe. Still, smelling leather Angel, this is an apt image, and as far as PR talk goes, I'll take this kind of snake oil over the stuff Dior's writing, bottling, and peddling any day. Leather Angel, like the other two "feminines", is housed in a great bottle, which is housed in a great little leather bag, which is all kind of the icing on the cake for what turns out to be a refreshingly gratifying fragrance. By dry down, you have, for once, or a change, a contemporary mainstream fragrance which not only promises but delivers the leather, with a punch. This is truly a successful conceptual exercise, wrapping Angel in layers of rich leather, and the measure of that success is how good it smells.

Multiple Rouge by Humiecki and Graef

There's really nothing else like Multiple Rouge, which has made it difficult to write about. My favorite of the offbeat Humiecki and Graef line, it's somehow simultaneously weirder than it sounds, and tamer. There's no denying it's a big bowl of fruity berries, a sort of study in various succulent hues of red. There's no getting around the immortelle, which, like patchouli, is going to be a deal breaker for some. But somehow, these two, encouraged by a dash of coriander, play nice. Multiple Rouge is similar to the fruitchouli, but something else altogether, thanks to the immortelle and a salted caramel effect.

The berries have a darker quality than, say, the explosive brightness of a fragrance like Byredo Pulp, but Pulp is a useful comparison. Like Multiple Rouge, Pulp is an oversized fantasy take on fruit. Still, for all its outlandish strangeness, Multiple Rouge is a far mellower wear. Moodier, too. Pineapple and peach complicate things, arranging the scent into interesting tensions. This is tart but seasoned pineapple, and a stewed peach. Together they seem to conjure something like apple, if not in the shape of anything you'd want to eat.

There's a savory feel to Multiple Rouge unlike anything I've smelled in a berried fragrance. While it isn't gourmand in any conventional way, it nevertheless feels foody. There's something aquatic going on as well. So: berry, salt, apple, peach, pineapple, ozonic, immortelle. See what I mean?

People talk about Multiple Rouge's sense of playfulness. Beyond words, it's a study in absurdity, fragrance as delighted squeal. Just as many seem to feel the joke's on them, and fail to see the humor. Did I mention the booziness? Those apples and berries are on their way to some kind of special, simmering brew, the kind you find in a Crock-pot around the holidays, spiked to get you through Uncle Ed's second wind; dash of grenadine, dash of cognac.

I appreciate Multiple Rouge's unusualness, but wear it seriously. It's one of my favorite immortelle scents, along with Fougere Bengale, Sables, Eau Noire, and 1740.

Top photo: Bert Stern
Middle: Norman Parkinson
Bottom: Irving Penn

Miss Dior le Parfum: One of Those Things That's Not Like the Other

Dior has never been one for leaving a good thing unbroken. Fahrenheit, while nowhere near what it used to be, remains within the company's inventory, but has spawned something like seven flankers - and counting. J'Adore, a bit of a ghost of its former self as well, has been parlayed into its own cottage industry, with about fourteen related "versions", including limited editions, seasonal variations, anniversary distillations, and one extrait and absolute after another. Since launching in 1999, J'Adore has been subjected to these updates or additions annually.  Addict and Dior Homme have been handled similarly.

At the same time, Dior has shown some superficial sensitivity to the preservation of its antiques, housing them, however renovated, within the collection called "Les Creations de Monsieur Dior", a funny name maybe, considering the monsieur in question would presumably be Christian himself, whose name has been removed from the brand for some years, which is simply now referred to as "Dior." It's questionable at this point just who Monsieur is meant to mean: Christian, or François Demachy, the man responsible for overseeing these various "collections" and for re-orchestrating (i.e. reformulating) their constituent fragrances.

Diorling, Diorella, Diorama, and Dioressence bear little resemblance to the scents they once were. Demachy has argued that the auteur theories about perfumers are overstatements, if not misleading simplifications. A fragrance like Ungaro Diva, commonly regarded as an early composition by Jacques Polge, was in fact, Demachy has asserted, more collaborative, representing the work of several well known perfumers, among them Demachy himself. I don't doubt it; nor do I believe that our romance about perfumers and the sanctity of their work properly accounts for the bigger picture reality of business as usual at a large aroma-chemical corporate entity like Givaudin or Symrise.

Demachy has something more at stake in this line of argument promoting the devaluation of single authorship in mass market perfumery.  Dior's parent company, LVMH (of which Demachy is "super creative director"), has moved to take over Dior's fragrances, previously owned as we knew them by chemical corporations (such as Givaudin and Symrise, et al) which copyrighted the original in-house formulas. By creating these variations, Dior and LVMH seek to restore their ownership and control; slightly different names, slightly different formulas, made with materials other than those owned by the companies who patented them. The fact the resulting fragrances bear little resemblance to their namesakes is I guess apparently neither here nor there, unless you are a consumer who fell in love with the originals. Still, you have to ask yourself what Dior doesn't seem to be asking itself - is it worth holding onto these names if they gradually move so far astray of recognizability that what's in a name means next to nothing? Demachy says yes indeedy, by contesting, however justifiably, issues of authorship.

Miss Dior Cherie and Miss Dior are the first real indication of what all this means for those of us with our fingers on the atomizer. Created by perfumer Christine Nagel for Givaudin, the original Miss Dior Cherie was maybe one of the best iterations of what we now know as the category fruity patchouli. It had an interesting tension to it, part strawberry, part caramel, part buttered popcorn. It bore some relation to Angel, but was brighter somehow, its contrasts, though bold, not quite as confrontational. Some loved it, some hated it. In the last several years, Dior and LVMH seem to have used Miss Dior Cherie as a litmus for how far they can take Dior's fragrances away from their vocabulary, and as a barometer for the usefulness of that vocabulary in the first place.

Miss Dior Cherie is now, for all intents and purposes, Miss Dior, and Miss Dior is something no one talks about. We all know it existed. We all know this Miss Dior is not that one. That Miss Dior, I imagine Demachy would be the first to point out, was already very little who she'd once been. She'd been, as we say, gutted. Though still recognizable, facelifts had rendered her indefinably altered. We lamented the changes, however hard they were to pinpoint. Demachy seems to be saying that nothing remains the same, so laboring over a name is a pointless endeavor. But trying to pinpoint the changes, I'd argue, with an existing reference point - i.e a name - was useful in some way. What happens when the reference point is evacuated entirely? The reference points are arguably essential, if only to attempt to qualify how over time things inevitably change, and what change means as an ongoing reality.

The conversation generated by those kinds of ongoing comparisons (between original and reformulation, for instance) is killed as far as Miss Dior is concerned. Before long, it will be as if the conversation never happened. The conversation will live on in our minds, vague over time, the way the original Miss Dior, or its facsimiles, will. Imagine the dialogue at your local department store now, where the Dior sales associate will look at you foggy eyed when you assert that there was once a Miss Dior of a different stripe, that Miss Dior is not in fact simply Miss Dior Cherie renamed and rebottled. Try to imagine a conversation of this kind, dealing in nuance and subtle distinction, with associates who still actively contend there is no difference between an eau de parfum and an eau de toilette. These are, typically, people who, as it stands, treat anything they don't stock as fictitious. I have to question Dior's game plan, after my experience buying Miss Dior le Parfum. The Dior associate who helped me spent twenty minutes trying to track down just what I was looking for, with all the boxes (Miss Dior eau de Parfum, Miss Dior Cherie EDT, Miss Dior Cherie EDP, Miss Dior Eau Fraiche, etc.) lined up right under her nose. Try cultivating brand loyalty when determining what exactly the brand is involves an afternoon-long excavation.

Miss Dior le Parfum smells lovely. There are remnants or echoes of original Miss Dior Cherie in it, though nothing I can discern remotely connected to the original Miss Dior. Like much of what Demachy has done, there is an abiding amber creaminess to Miss Dior le Parfum. It's rich, if not particularly expansive. There's something like strawberry in it, marinated in an abundance of vanilla, amber, and refined patchouli. One wonders, smelling it on cloth or paper, whether anyone involved in its creation ever actually smelled it on skin, because on skin that richness becomes a bit self-absorbed - rarefied and stingy like the girl at the party who knows everyone will eventually come to her. Like J'Adore L'Or and Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle, both also by Demachy, Miss Dior le Parfum approaches embarrassment of riches, in the sense that it is almost too refined to bother with pleasing anyone but itself, let alone you. It makes the most sense on a paper strip, where it plays out slowly.

It's one of the more exciting things at the department store counter right now, and that makes it seem very exciting indeed. How exciting is that, when the barometer is lower than the final stages of a drunken game of limbo, where the bar is down where only the truly inebriated would dare to crouch? I love it, with some kind of qualification I can't put my finger on, but who can spot much with a moving target? What exactly am I comparing it to, and why bother? It's a great fragrance: something old, something new, a department store fragrance done well. It invites a series of fantasies. It lasts reasonably well. And it has no relationship to anything I can attach emotional significance to.

It has nothing at all to do with its namesake, and hardly needs to, so I suppose the problem for me lies with Demachy, Dior, and LMVH. While I sympathize with their position, I find their tactics dishonest and offensive. It's a small thing, ultimately. They're telling me that the name means nothing. And yet they're fighting hard to keep it, which indicates otherwise. We all know, as consumers, that these names do in fact mean many things, many infinitely personal things. These creations live with us and become parts of our narratives. I trust Demachy, at least, knows this. It's one thing to be told that things change and that, for instance, the fragrance your mother or your grandmother wore as an integral part of her identity and your understanding of her will go the way of all relics. It's quite another to assert that you might as well play fast and loose with these cultural signifiers, insisting on the one hand that they mean very little, even as you work hard to capitalize on their mystique.