Luxe Patchouli EDT: Comme des Garcons

Several years ago, traveling back from a film festival in Greece, a good third of a full bottle of Luxe Patchouli leaked out into my carry-on, much to the displeasure of the man whose seat adjoined mine. He liked me even less when some of it - or a lot of it, if we go by him - got on my hands. I'd loved Luxe Patchouli from moment one, and finally splurged on a bottle. It was my first international festival and my first film and these seemed like suitable justifications, in case my guilt had plans to put me on trial. I knew Luxe was strong, that it might not be to everyone's taste, but it wasn't until that seemingly endless plane trip that I realized just exactly how...singular the fragrance is.

I have a soft spot for the curry-steeped-in-maple-syrup qualities of fenugreek, which makes Luxe Patchouli a real bonanza for me. Patchouli haters will assure you it is aptly named, but I consider it more of a fenugreek scent than a patchouli proper. Add some pepper, woods, and a little vanilla, and you have something somewhere between edible and earthy. This is a polarizing scent, and consider this: Some of them still should be. I find it extraordinarily nice, but others might recoil. While I'm not arguing for more recoil in modern perfumery, I don't think strong, passionate feelings for or against should be as much a thing of the past as they seem to be threatening to become.

Unfamiliar with fenugreek? Here's author Steffen Arctander's take on it, quoted from Glass Petal Smoke:

"The characteristic odor of fenugreek extract is a celery-like spiciness, a coumarinic-balsamic sweetness, and an intense, almost sickeningly strong, lovage-like or opopanax-note of extreme tenacity. The diffusive power of the odor of this material is usually underestimated by far."

That gives you an idea why the guy next to me was crying.

This description would scare off many, even though wearing Luxe Patchouli doesn't require spilling it all over yourself and can be used just as wonderfully in small doses as large. The price didn't help the scent's reputation, either, and it has gone practically unremarked. The eau de parfum version is (still) pricey at over 200 dollars for 45 ounces, so I've worn mine sparingly, which is to say rarely. In perfume years, the fragrance came out close to a century ago, way back in 2007.

Now, six years later, Comme des Garcons, who have been on an upswing creatively of late, have released both Luxe Patchouli and its companion fragrance, Luxe Champaca, in eau de toilette versions. At over 100 bucks for 100 ml, the fragrances are still arguably cost prohibitive, but compared to the originals they seem practically free.

I was worried that the EDT version of Luxe Patchouli would be - I don't know - 'effervescent'? Tastes since 2007 have nudged then shoved patchouli away from its dread grunge origins, making it ever cleaner, smoother, creamier, and otherwise unrecognizable and unremarkable. I think I've actually yawned once or twice smelling some of these contemporary interpretations. Comme des Garcon hasn't always followed trends, and isn't afraid of a fragrance that frightens the horses, but in the recent past they've veered toward tepid if not exactly tame. It's all been a little airy for me. Was there a "modernization" effort involved in the edt? A re-orchestration?

I'm more relieved than someone probably should be over something like this to say that the edt version of Luxe Patchouli is a.) practically identical in smell to the edp, b.) in other words not at all light, and c.) money well spent. It lasts as long, as far as I can tell, if not quite as long, and would have gotten me as much grumpiness on a flight from Greece as I've grown accustomed to. If I notice one difference - if I'm splitting hairs - it's that the fenugreek and patchouli give way in the far dry down to a marked hint of vetiver I don't remember from the EDP. But that's if I squint, and the trade-off is that the opening is lightened just enough that everything I've always loved about the scent rings out more clearly. Let's hope this and Black are signs of things to come from Comme des Garcons, rather than momentary aberrations.

All that said, a note about packaging. Really, Comme des Garcons? Two boxes of the same size, joined at the hip, one empty, one full?

Dressing the Part: What a Dandy Wears

When I first heard about my friend's twin brothers and their obsession with dressing themselves like something out of a Bond film, I asked her whether they wear cologne. I couldn't imagine spending that much thought and time crafting a public persona without scent being a crucial component of your wardrobe.

She said she wasn't sure, so before I headed over to film them, I packed up some of the cologne on hand I thought I might be able to convince them to wear - Hermes Terre d'Hermes, Gucci Pour Homme (2003, natch), Gucci Envy, and Divine L'etre Aime Homme.

There was so much I wanted to bring but doubted I'd get them to try. What could be better for a self-professed, pink-panted dandy than Penhaligon's Sartorial, Caron's Third Man, Yves Saint Laurent's Rive Gauche Pour Homme, or any number of classic man of discerning taste fragrances that come to mind? I'm not about to throw a bottle of Amouage Gold at just anybody.

My subjects, clearly, aren't just anybody. A lot of eighteen year-old guys are obsessed with the way they look. A lot of them spend much of their time and money on clothes. I don't think I've ever met a guy their age whose sartorial interests reference Marshall and Parker's primary influences, let alone one who shares their disregard for the kind of gender inhibitions that keep most men far away from the color pink. It's just as rare in my experience to meet someone their age who isn't afraid to take something seriously and wear it on his sleeve. Fingers crossed they get the scent bug, too. Nothing makes me happier than the thought of someone their age dressed as well as they do, wafting around on the scent of good cologne.

Hedonist by Viktoria Minya: What's in a Word

It's been interesting, as early reviews of Hedonist have come in, to see what people make of the word. I had no idea it had quite the reputation it does - you'd think, from some of these reactions, it were a synonym for harlot, trollop, or worse - and I wonder what Viktoria Minya, the perfumer behind the scent, thinks about all this, because to my nose the fragrance is more in keeping with the actual definition of hedonist than with these apparently somewhat popular connotations, and I imagine she must have been thinking of the bigger picture too.

Strictly speaking, hedonism has to do with the pursuit of pleasure - as in, first and foremost - which would make a hedonist, I guess, on the one hand a pleasure seeker and on the other averse to anything which veers in the opposite direction. Nothing in that definition privileges carnal pleasure, though the physical would obviously be included in any bullet list of what floats the boat. That bullet list might also include fine cuisine, silk clothing, spring days, comfortable furniture, and feathers, depending on your taste. It probably wouldn't include okra. Regardless, Hedonist doesn't make any effort to claim one pleasure at the expense of others - and when I smell the perfume it's far more expansive in tone than the "merely" sexual, if those two words can be used together.

Minya, who is based in Paris, has mentioned in the literature for Hedonist that it harkens back to classic perfumery, and it does feel classical, even grand. There's a retrospective quality to the fragrance that nods back to early twentieth century perfumery, certainly - but again, I think the scent sees a bigger picture in its references as well. Some reviewers have compared its wonderful peachy facets to Mitsouko (a reference point I can get behind, as long as I'm not stuck there). For me, one of the fragrance's biggest bonuses, not to mention pleasant surprises - and there are many - is how strongly it relates to some of my favorite eighties fragrances.

That's where some of you will stop reading, I suspect, whereas some will now have perked right up. Hedonist certainly has the iconic sensual boldness that characterizes some of my favorites from that era - Poison, say, or Diva - but without their take no prisoners bombast. I see an 80's connection, I guess, mainly because that decade was the last great period for this kind of sumptuousness, a time when a fragrance was meant to be smelled rather than merely perceived, to register not as a whisper but as a declaration - of elegance, of personality, of intent. Poison, Diva, Paris, and, say, Giorgio, are the no-brainer 80's benchmarks, but Hedonist reminds me more of lesser known favorites from that era; particularly, a fantastic earlier Krizia fragrance, Moods.

Like Moods, and some of the other 80's fragrances I'm thinking of - the once wonderful Creations by Ted Lapidus, for instance, Houbigant's Demi-Jour, or the reformulated Shocking de Schiaparelli - Hedonist is maximally honeyed. It has a green-tinged vanillic sweetness to it I remember from Moods as well. It's a fully saturated fragrance but plays off the skin in a very contemporary, radiantly diffusive way. I imagine people will notice its sillage, without feeling victim to it, and in that way, among others, it updates some of its influences.

Honey-faceted fragrances often have a slightly animalic quality to them, to put it diplomatically. While its aura is lush and dramatic, Hedonist has a sweeter, cleaner disposition. I get a tea note, a very nice tobacco storyline going on, orange blossom, and that honey, primarily. It's a fascinating combination, which lasts well and conjures any number of nostalgically pleasurable mental and emotional sensations. One Fragrantica reviewer characterized the overall effect as "really golden...[reminding her of] honey and ambrosia with a glass of Alsatian Gewurztraminer." I've never had gewurztraminer, but I like the sound of all that. Hedonist feels strangely familiar at various points during its lifespan, maybe because in some way it catalyzes little memories of comfort like this. It's familiar the way remembered pleasures can be. The dry down does interesting, even subtly unusual, things with its osmanthus/peach/tobacco combo, opening it up rather than narrowing it down. The fragrance is heady but bright, surrounding rather than suffocating the way fragrances this opulent can tend to do.

I miss some of those eighties honeyed fragrances, so Hedonist has been a welcome surprise. They don't make them much like this anymore. In most ways the perfume landscape, commercially and otherwise, is starting to seem pretty spare and minimalistic, kind of anemic in the pleasures it affords. Hedonist would be a welcome change at half the fragrance it is. Fortunately, its pleasures pay off in dividends. In the few weeks I've been wearing it I've grown to like it more and more, and I keep noticing different things - like, I think, some cedar in the mix, and a presiding creamy warmth I hadn't singled out for a while because I kept focusing on the peach and the tobacco specifically.

Fragrantica calls it a woody chypre. For me, it has more affinities with the floriental. I hope Minya does more but Hedonist already feels like an old favorite, and I'll take a new line with a single fantastic scent over one with ten mediocre fragrances any day. Luckyscent sells the fragrance, which comes in an appropriately luxurious bottle (pictured above) and box. Already, with this perfume, Hedonist has a new connotation for me.

Buying Perfume on Ebay: Things to Keep in Mind

Over the last several years, I've purchased something like 50 bottles of perfume on Ebay.

For the most part, my transactions with sellers have been good experiences: the product I receive is essentially the product I believed was on its way. I'm not an extravagant buyer on Ebay, whatever the number 50 might lead you to believe. I have a policy with myself. I generally have a limit, which happens to be under thirty dollars and often falls below twenty. I also have a bit of an advantage, because while some people go online looking for precious vintage bottles of My Sin or Coty Chypre, I'm more apt to consider a discontinued Avon fragrance like Patterns or Perle Noire a costly treasure. I rarely set my aim too terribly high and even more rarely bid on an item I expect to be surrounded by stiff competition. These things alone minimize my sense of risk.

That said, I know many perfume lovers who avoid Ebay altogether, either because of their own bad experiences or because they've heard horror stories from others. I won't tell you there aren't dishonest people on Ebay, or that you'll never get burned, but there are ways to mitigate those mishaps, and ways to hold duplicitous sellers accountable.

The following are only suggestions, based on my own shopping history. They aren't an endorsement for or against buying on Ebay; however, if you're curious and haven't taken the leap, some of these things are things I wish I'd known when I made my first purchase, and you might find them helpful too.

1. Ask questions...

Don't be afraid to clarify anything you're uncertain about when it comes to a listed item. Has the seller tried the atomizer? Is the item for sale the item pictured in the listing? First read the description thoroughly. Then read it again. If you still have questions, contact the seller directly or post your question under the listing.  The speed with which the sellers answer will tell you something about what to expect from a transaction with them. Their willingness to take the time to answer you thoughtfully and comprehensively will too. Pay attention to your gut about all that. While a prompt and thorough answer doesn't necessarily indicate that shipment will be speedy, it does reflect something about how efficient and serious the seller is. A seller's patience is a good indication that not just this sale but your repeated business is of value.

2. Never assume...

You know the saying. Unfortunately, when assuming on Ebay, only you end up the ass, stuck with something you might have avoided had you read more carefully or asked the right questions. I've made many assumptions, and many of them have cost me, causing either inconvenience or disappointment. First and foremost, don't assume that the seller has listed everything you need to know about the item - let alone that the seller KNOWS things a seller SHOULD when it comes to this or any other item up for sale. Do not assume that the bottle must be a spray, using the logic that if it were a splash this information would be indicated explicitly. Do not assume that vintage means old (see number 3). Do not assume that the seller knows much if anything about perfume (refer to number 1). Do not assume that the photo depicts the actual item up for sale.

3. Vintage doesn't always mean vintage...

Some perfumes can be counted on as vintage simply by virtue of the fact they haven't been manufactured in years. My Sin is going to be vintage (whether it's authentic is another issue entirely, and one of utmost concern when shelling out big bucks). Tabu might or might not be. Do some research - not just with the seller but through sources online. Take Tabu as an example. Vintage is quite a different thing than the stuff they sell now. Sometimes you can distinguish old from new by scrutinizing the packaging. This is where asking questions comes in handy - maybe the bottle pictured is old packaging but the seller isn't using an image of the actual bottle on sale; can the seller tell you what the ingredients list looks like, helping you determine the age? Most sellers won't photograph the back of the box, where not only the ingredients but the manufacturers are listed, but they can tell you what the back says. Some sellers sell regularly, but rarely perfume. These can often be very good deals, but that seller might not know to list certain things that other more perfume-centric sellers would know to be necessary information. As far as they're concerned, they haven't seen a bottle of Tabu in a good two decades, until this bottle they found at an estate sale; therefore, to them, it's vintage, hard to find, rare, and just short of the golden fleece.

4. Check the seller's ratings...

Read the fine print. Great, the seller has overall good ratings. However, most highly rated sellers have disappointed customers now and then, and usually those customers will voice their complaints through negative reviews. A seller with a lot of negative reviews is iffy no matter how you slice it. Most often the complaints have to do with false advertising. Pay attention. Have a policy with yourself. Mine is that only on very rare occasions will I buy from anyone whose rating is below 99.7%. If customers complain that items are received three weeks later, and you're fine with waiting periods, go for it. If they complain often that the perfumes seem to be weak or don't smell as they should, you might want to save your money. Even when a seller has good ratings the complaints are instructive and indicate what to expect. When a high ticket item I really want seems too good a deal to pass up, I will only move forward with the transaction if I believe the seller is reputable. By the same token, if a seller is listing a rare bottle of perfume at far below the average asking price, I will not automatically assume something is fishy (see numbers 2 and 3). I look at the seller's ratings. Most of the real steals for me have come from sellers who are more likely to list fishing tackle than perfume. Every once in a while, they find a vintage bottle of Estee Lauder Youth Dew bath oil. They don't charge a lot for it often, not just because they got it for very little to begin with but because they know they aren't qualified to distinguish its true value, whatever the "going rate", and can't have such a conversation with any kind of confidence or authority. Another thing the ratings will tell you is what kind of character the seller has. I've avoided certain sellers who had pretty decent ratings simply because the way they responded publicly to their customers seemed like a pretty safe indication of their abilities to handle and resolve conflicts. See number 5.

5. Try to resolve conflicts privately...

Most sellers will want to maintain high ratings. They count on the fact that other buyers will read the reviews in order to determine whether doing business with them seems smart or stupid. Sellers who care about their reputation do whatever they can to resolve conflicts harmoniously. When trying to resolve a conflict, first look at whether you in some way contributed to the problem. Did you fail to read all the descriptive information? Did you make assumptions? Fail to ask pertinent questions? I don't blame a seller when I'm at fault for not buying responsibly - which doesn't mean I don't try to resolve the misunderstanding. It simply means I try to be honest with myself about what contributed to the situation. A good, reliable seller will appreciate the opportunity to satisfy the buyer. Handling the conflict through a private exchange allows them to preserve or improve their rating through one on one customer service. Your posting a negative comment publicly before giving them a chance to make things right doesn't tend to breed mutual respect and consideration. Save the Oh No You Didn't attitude for your Maury Povich appearance, even when you suspect you're dealing with a fellow traveller. Keep in mind that some sellers will choose not to SELL to buyers with poor ratings, which means that for every negative rating you leave you might earn one of your own. I have only ever resorted to a public/negative review when I feel I've given the seller the opportunity to respond and the seller continues to deceive, make empty promises, or refuses to resolve things in a way which is fair. I do this not to be mean spirited but because these are things a buyer deserves to know before dealing with a seller - things I'd want to know myself in hopes of avoiding problems. When I do this, I count on the seller responding defensively, so I think carefully about what I will post and how I will respond to what I can expect that seller to say in return. Expect that seller to accuse you of child neglect, so stay focused and avoid personal attacks. Stick to the basics of the transaction and the source or your dissatisfaction.

6. Bid strategically, not systematically...

A big part of successful bidding is the element of surprise. First and foremost, decide how high you're willing to ultimately bid, and commit to that. Avoid impulse bidding by being clear with yourself what the value of the item is to you. When you make that decision, don't immediately enter that number as your high bid mark. Consider this: say I'm bidding against you, and I've decided I'm willing to pay four hundred dollars for the item. Say you're willing to pay 100. Obviously, you'd prefer to pay far less if you can - as close to the opening bid as possible. Entering your high bid of 100 right off the bat or even at anytime during the main portion of the bidding window will result in a few possible scenarios, none of them advantageous to you. Say that I decide I'm going to try to outbid you, and I take my bid up to 95 eventually, then get bored and forget the whole thing. You will be stuck with paying a lot more than you might have, had you bid more strategically. Say, on the other hand, that I feel the competition for this item is stiff: I'm going to watch that auction like a hawk, and you're unlikely to get anything by me.  If you wait until very late to increase your bid, you don't give me much time to outbid you, which means you could not just win but walk away paying less as opposed to more.

Here's what I tend to do. I first determine how long the bidding is open, putting the item on my watch list. If I really want it and intend to win, I wait until the last day to bid at all. People tend to operate by suggestion. If nobody seems to want it, they feel less pressured and sometimes less attracted. Their impulse triggers aren't activated. When I make my initial bid and I am then outbid, I do not immediately raise my maximum bid. I wait until the last forty seconds of the auction, at which point I enter the maximum bid I've decided on, leaving the other unsuspecting bidders very little time to outbid me. When the competition doesn't seem to be anywhere near fierce, people aren't likely to bid extravagantly. Like you they want to get away with paying as little as possible. If only one other person has bid during the auction before them, and no one bids after, they feel confident and aren't as likely to raise their maximum bid to what they're really willing to pay "if it comes to that". There seems no reason to. If you alert them of the competition too early, they are more likely to enter their maximum bid much higher, and at the last minute, when you try to outbid them, you will keep hitting the wall of their maximum bid, losing to them ultimately.

You can still be outbid this way - I've lost two out of ten items regardless of this strategy. However, I believe it would have been more otherwise. More than anything, relax. You win and you lose. It's fun to approach an Ebay auction with a poker face and a strategy, as long as you can take losing in the spirit of fair play. If you're the kind who gets your panties in a wad with the least provocation, trying to outsmart an auction opponent - which is just as likely to fail as succeed when all is said and done - probably is too big of game for the weapons in your holster. You probably want to save your competitive streak for boardgames with people who are used to your temper and will react predictably and reassuringly to your little pistol.

Youth Dew Gets A(nother) Face Lift

Recently, I've been exchanging emails with Elena over at Perfume Shrine about a series of mysteries revolving around Youth Dew and its somewhat unknown related iterations, all of which were released during a little blip on the Lauder screen in the mid seventies. It's been fun playing detectives - the fragrances have come and gone, so it's all harmless mystery. Things get a little more serious, I learned, when a more established fragrance is forced into what is considered by its die hard fans a weird sort of early retirement. I'm speaking of the latest Youth Dew reformulation, but I'll get to that.

In 1977, Estee Lauder released Soft Youth Dew, a flanker to her flagship fragrance. At least, I think she did. Pick a day, any day, and run a search on Ebay for Soft Youth Dew. All you're ever likely to find are half ounce gift with purchase bottles. It's almost as if the fragrance was put on a giveaway trial run and quickly considered ill-advised, without ever actually being put on sale. Stranger still, when I did find something other than a half ounce bottle of Soft Youth Dew, it was a vintage tester bottle. The juice in that tester bottle smells very little like the Soft Youth Dew contained in the half ounce bottles, several of which I've smelled. It's much closer to Youth Dew proper, with a hand extending firmly toward Cinnabar.

Cinnabar was released a year after Soft Youth Dew, and the bottle it comes in hasn't changed much over the years. What has changed is the cap, and the name. Soon after the appearance of Soft Youth Dew, Cinnabar was introduced under the title "Cinnabar, Soft Youth Dew Fragrance". The cap for the earliest spray bottles of Cinnabar is identical, except in color, to the cap on my Soft Youth Dew tester bottle. Viewing these together was the first time I'd thought about a direct, explicit connection between Youth Dew and Cinnabar. When you remove Cinnabar's cap, you see that the bottle looks very much like the original bath oil and cologne flacons for Youth Dew. Many people have commented on a connection between the fragrances, but that has always been a perceived connection, based on ingredients and standards of classification. Those earliest bottles for Soft Youth Dew and Cinnabar, as well as the commingling of their names, makes their intrinsic connection crystal clear.

Also clear: Lauder had no apparent problem with a connection being made. Either way, she would succeed: Cinnabar might, on the one hand, trade on the success and lineage of Youth Dew; on the other, it might break new ground as something quite different, for those who didn't really fancy Youth Dew much. Soft Youth Dew disappeared. Youth Dew and Cinnabar prevailed, the latter presenting some formidable competition for Opium, a similar oriental released the year before.

Elena pointed out to me the possibility or probability that Lauder and Yves Saint Laurent might have been in competition over the choice of Opium's inro style tasseled bottle. Had Lauder won, the strategy for Cinnabar's marketing might have been different. Opium, of course, won, but Lauder clearly next bested Yves, choosing a name for her oriental which embodied inro without having to shape itself as one. There was a bit of been there done that to Lauder's decision in packaging Cinnabar anyway. For years she'd been presenting solids of her fragrances in decorative compartments one could attach to a dangling chain. Essentially, as Elena pointed out, the inro-themed idea was first hers. Besides which: While Opium was a provocative name, Cinnabar was a richly evocative one, whose associations reverberated in the consumer's imagination, as opposed perhaps to simply scandalizing or titillating it.

Soft Youth Dew and Cinnabar/Soft Youth Dew Fragrance weren't the first times an Estee Lauder fragrance appeared and disappeared in short order. Soft Youth Dew competed with Lauder's own trio of fragrances: Pavilion, Celadon, and White Linen, one of which will sound very familiar to you, two of which you've possibly never heard. It wasn't the last time the Youth Dew franchise was openly toyed around with, either: years later, Youth Dew Amber Nude was there, then not.

In between all these up front conceptual tinkerings have been behind closed doors tweaks and adjustments - and not just of Youth Dew but of all the Lauder scents. Almost everyone realizes that Youth Dew has changed at least a little over the years. The animalics it originally contained had long since been removed a year ago or less (or more), when the fragrance changed more than ever before. Until this latest change, Youth Dew die hards remained content(-ish). The juice remained that nice dark balsamic brown. Its oils pooled luxuriantly on the skin. Its smell contained a thousand childhoods, and motherhoods, a menagerie of memories and remembered moods.

Want to see a shit-storm? Visit the Lauder page and peruse the customer reviews for Youth Dew. Notice that around this time last year, the objections began. They haven't stopped since. "This is not my Youth Dew," wrote YouthDewGirl, age 55-64, El Cajon, California. "I do not know what Estee Lauder has done to this fragrance but it is terrible now... Bring the old Youth Dew back again!"

"The new generation will never know what they have missed," according to Mother01, age 55-64, Elkton. "They will try the new version and move on, because it is nothing special now. The original scent was used by four generations of women in my family."

You get the picture. So do they. This litany of objections, as several note in the "reviews", demonstrates how savvy the loyal consumer is. The Lauder lady at the counter will tell them nothing has changed, just as I was told yesterday at the mall, but the longtime Lauder buyer smells rat. In a sense, Elena and I have been, in the last few weeks, enacting our own version of this online commiseration, comparing our impressions and theories about Soft Youth Dew and Cinnabar and their relationship to Youth Dew original, testing personal perceptions against those of a peer.

For us, it's innocent sleuthing. To the Youth Dew Loyalist, changes to the formula are a far less entertaining affair. For the Lauder brand, this breach of contract with the consumer is serious business indeed, and if the reviewers honor their word, the company will realize they only thought they knew what a slump in sales truly meant. Reading these reviews I thought, don't mess with loyalty. Then too, I thought that anyone who's ever gotten into an argument with a woman of a certain age should know better than to try to pull the rug out from under one. Tell her you're selling insurance out of Cambodia and need to dip into her pension, maybe, but messing with her fragrance is folly.

Still, I thought, how bad could it be? So I went and smelled it.

I don't think it is bad. In fact, I like it. It's a fine fragrance, better than most, on its own terms. The problem is that Youth Dew can't be separated from its own terms: that's a lesson Lauder might have learned herself with early Cinnabar and Soft Youth Dew, and it's a lesson Tom Ford must have surely learned the hard way with Amber Nude. As the Lauder sales associate told me yesterday, the biggest obstacle for Amber Nude was the fact that no one seemed to be able to figure out it wasn't meant to REPLACE Youth Dew. Thus the constant refrain: What happened to my Youth Dew? Hard to sell a flanker when it sits between the original and its loyalist.

The feelings for and against Youth Dew are strong enough that no side really wants to see something slightly different. Take it or leave it, yes. Six or half a dozen, not so much. "Everything that made Estee Lauder's original fragrance so unforgettable is still here," read the ads for Soft Youth Dew. "It's all just a little s-o-f-t-e-r." Apparently, not soft enough, or too soft altogether when it comes to lovers and haters of the original.

The newest Youth Dew is more leathery to me. It still comes in the Body Satinee, the cream, the dusting powder, the bath oil, the deodorant (head scratcher, that one). All are arguably just as penetrating as Youth Dew's ever been, in any concentration. The oil won't be pooling, but the fragrance sticks around. No more cola colored contents. No more deep, dark, recesses of the earth balsamic structure. It can hardly be said that this Youth Dew is younger, or hipper, less stately than Youth Dews past, so it's hard to believe the changes have been an effort to win new consumers. It's a woody oriental, with less floral decadence than it once, even recently, had. Stealth woody orientals aren't selling like hotcakes, last time I checked.

This version, in fact, reminds me more of an exercise like Amber Nude and Soft Youth Dew than it does a reformulation. In effect, in all but name, a flanker. In some ways it reminds me of the reformulated Magie Noire's relationship to its original. It remains, however dark and oriental, surface bound somehow, lacking that weird vintage resonance. Still, for me, if not for the Lauder website reviewer, it's unmistakably Youth Dew - and latest Youth Dew's version of surface is still far deeper than the majority of contemporary fragrances.

It's interesting to consider what Lauder, still living, might have made of all this - let alone to ponder whether she would have allowed it in the first place. I like to think she learned some kind of lesson with Soft Youth Dew and Cinnabar, though I don't know just what that would be. In truth, her handling of those two related fragrances, however superficially confusing, was done intelligently enough that no existing fragrance was compromised, no established name muddled. It's hard to imagine Estee, who spent so many years building her empire, woman by woman, relationship by relationship, countenancing this kind of maneuver, which amounts to betrayal in the eyes of many of those women. Better to have let Youth Dew die, she might have thought.

Which is exactly what the ladies on Lauder's website are saying.

(Pictured: the changing face of Youth Dew - from Youth Dew to Cinnabar and everywhere in between. Top photo: Cinnabar, Soft Youth Dew Fragrance. Second down: Tester bottle for Soft Youth Dew. Third down: Early bottle for Cinnabar. Fourth down: Early Youth Dew cologne bottle. Fifth down: Magazine ad for Soft Youth Dew. Sixth down: A hybrid Cinnabar/Youth Dew/Soft Youth Dew bottle, with Youth Dew's silhouette, Soft Youth Dew's name, and Cinnabar's branding.)

Rarities: Coty Amaranthe

In 1969, Dina Merrill, until then regarded as a socialite turned model/actress, created a line of cosmetics in association with Coty under the name Amaranthe. Merrill's father was E.F. Hutton (When he talked, people listened). Her mother was cereal heir Marjorie Merriwether Post. During Merrill's childhood, her mother convinced her father to buy out Birds Eye frozen foods. He resisted, thinking frozen foods were a fad with a short shelf life. She insisted, pointing out that shelf life was immaterial when it came to frozen foods, and their fortunes significantly metastasized. Their company eventually became General Foods. You've probably eaten more than a few General Foods products, so you can imagine how wealthy Merrill's family was. Along with that fortune, Merrill inherited her mother's headstrong business sense, making her a logical choice for Coty.

She wasn't simply the name behind Amaranthe, the way Jennfier Lopez and any number of celebrities put their names on beauty products now. Running a company was in her blood. Coty had been bought out by Pfizer in 1963, and was going through the kind of seismic changes representative of the cosmetics industry at large. Those changes required different directions, territory most recently, at the time, epitomized by Revlon. In 1956, Charles Revson had the wisdom to bring Princess Borghese's cosmetics line into his company's portfolio. Borghese was real life Italian royalty and her cosmetics were known in her country as "family secret recipes". My family's secret recipes involve cookies, but the rich roll differently, and the buying public has always been fascinated, to the point of mimicry, with the rich, which might be why cookies cost a fraction of the price on a tube of a royal's lipstick.

Revlon's move wasn't an unmotivated stroke of genius. All of the cosmetics companies were losing ground to Estee Lauder, whose higher price points and limited distribution strategies had changed the playing field. Revlon competed through its Borghese acquisition. Faberge launched the Juliette Marglen division. Max Factor purchased the already established Alexandra de Markoff line. Perfumes and cosmetics had long been endorsed by celebrities, but Lauder was something different, a sort of homespun in-the-know, hands-on magnate - what the British might call a Battle Axe, with flawless make-up on - and the success of her persona forced her competitors to rethink their market profiles - drafting not just endorsements but self styled "creator pioneers".

Dina Merrill wasn't Italian royalty but she was a pretty close stateside approximation, and more than Borghese she touched upon the all-American appeal of Estee Lauder. She supervised the Amaranthe line until the mid -70's, when it folded. In a People magazine article from 1980 she mentioned her frustration with the way department stores allotted floor space to cosmetics companies, calling their practices corrupt. You have to imagine she was referring in a veiled way to Lauder, who, to this day, has the kind of focused presence in department stores that Coty and Revlon can only dream of. While Coty has plenty of celebrity scents represented at the mall, you're just as likely to see its product at Walgreen's, whereas Lauder has, after all these years, maintained its uniquely exclusive, independent counter presence at Macy's and its ilk (not just through Lauder proper but through Clinique, another kind of main street apothecary-in-the-mall brainchild). Lauder had taken the model of the door to door Avon saleswoman - a neighborhood friend bearing tips and trends - and transplanted that living room experience into high end, high volume brick and mortar sales figures.

Merrill's official story differed from Lauder's in the sense she had no real "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" appeal; yet the women shared a unique persona, that of perfectly coiffed business sense steeliness. Ultimately, Merrill might have been the wrong kind of move for Coty in this chess game with Lauder. Like Grace Kelly, Merrill was perceived as a bit of an ice princess shiksa by the American public, with none of Lauder's underdog brunette chutzpah - admirable, but not exactly relatable.

Business sense doesn't necessarily imply audacity, but it did for Lauder, who was perceived in many ways as the woman next door with bright ideas and no nonsense advice. She wasn't above getting her hands dirty, which is a little different than a socialite sitting on the board of directors, high up on a corporate penthouse floor. In all the stories about Lauder you can imagine the feisty click of her fast moving heels. Merrill's are muffled by plush carpet. These aren't nearly the truths of the matter, but Lauder, famously elastic with the truth, knew better than anyone that the buying public didn't go by truth but by appearances, and Merrill's public persona was a lot more patricianly effete.

Amaranthe released one fragrance of the same name, and however lovely, it too was a bit ill-judged. Hate them or love them (I love them), Lauder's fragrances match her persona - strong willed, full of presence and drama, a little bossy, a little intrusive. Even Soft Youth Dew - until then, about the softest Lauder fragrances got - was more shrieking than shrinking violet. It wasn't really until the -90's that Lauder produced anything even remotely resembling something other than bombastic, and it's arguable that even Pleasures and White Linen Breeze had the kind of stealth you could never really misconstrue as anything other than robust.

At the time of its release, Amaranthe had Estee, Youth Dew, and Azuree to compete with in the Lauder line-up. Those fragrances, even then, were slightly old fashioned - high drama balsamic, aldehyde and leather constructions. Amaranthe was old fashioned in a different way - probably closer to Coty's 1913 Muguet de Bois than anything more up-to-date in the brand's fragrance profile. Yet it was hardly outdated, unlike Lauder's output at the time maybe, and in fact more forward thinking, adding to its muguet theme a bright peachy succulence. It thought ahead to the kind of fragrance which is practically ubiquitous today, upbeat and unassuming, but executed it with far more class. Put the name Ralph Lauren on the bottle and it would sell respectably in today's marketplace, I imagine. Amaranthe isn't exactly squeaky clean, though I smell nothing anywhere near animalic in it - but far more than anything Lauder or Borghese produced, it was bright and more arguably classically all-American. It was more mid -50's than late -60's probably, but hardly -30's and -40's like, say, Lauder's bestsellers.

There's nothing even faintly sensual about Amaranthe; nothing close to dramatic. Which isn't to say it isn't wonderful. However familiar in its parts, the whole is something I can't remember smelling before the mid-nineties. Knowing anything about Merrill's persona, it's hard to imagine her approving anything else. Amaranthe is perfectly engineered to express her known cinematic qualities - more blonde than brunette, more reserved than showy, reassuring rather than provocative. In addition to the muguet and its counterpart peach theme, Amaranthe has something subtly lactonic going on. I would call it golden milky, a quality its bottle and packaging somehow reinforce.

The shape of the larger bottle resembled a peach, forcing you to hold it as you would that fruit. Its glass extends this impression further, covered in a rubbery tactile material, showing the "juice" inside - half brandy, half sunshine in color. There's the subtlest trace of high end liqueur in it, as well as whiffs of rose and jasmine, but it steers clear of deep woods and white floral indoles. It isn't in the least declarative. It's what you imagined you might smell if you got close to the face of -50's mainstays like Doris Day and, obviously, Dina Merrill herself, the peachy, good natured cleanliness America wants to believe emanates from the rosy cheeks of its young women. The bosom was left to Lauder, and the success of her fragrances, and the relative failure of Amaranthe, suggests that, however in love with the ideal of a clean-scrubbed face America was, it inevitably stooped to cleavage.

Amaranthe is almost impossible to find now. I found a bottle like the one pictured above on Ebay, reasonably priced.

Miss Habanita: Dark in Broad Daylight

If you've only smelled the reformulation of Molinard's Miss Habanita and been led to believe it has little or no connection to its reason for being, good old smoky Habanita, it's perfectly understandable - and I feel sorry for you. Here's a good, if kind of tragic, example of a careless reformulation, where everything interesting and even remotely complicated has been altogether removed from the fragrance as initially conceived. And for what? It's hard to imagine the current version of Miss Habanita selling any better in the present marketplace than what it replaced might have.

Released in 1994, over 70 years after the release of Habanita, original Miss Habanita is one of my favorites, and the two relate to each other in fascinating ways. Miss Habanita, these days, is a densely sugared white musk affair, chokingly sweet, depressingly banal for something so relentlessly perky. Its fruits are neon jammy, and the neon is right up in your grille. Fruits have been done better, frankly, and original Miss Habanita is still around here and there on Ebay to prove it.

Classified as a fruity chypre, its take on fruit recalls Nina Ricci's Deci Dela, by Jean Guichard, which was released the same year. Deci Dela and Miss Habanita are very similar in their use of steeped fruits over a drier than dry base of oakmoss. This isn't cheery, life affirming succulence. It's darker than that; more earthy. While we're all waxing poetic over our romantic ideas about oakmoss, let's remind ourselves how the Egyptians viewed it. As Edwin T. Morris mentions in Fragrance: The Story of Perfume from Cleopatra to Chanel, it was once an essential part of the embalming process. Egyptians stuffed the cavities of eviscerated corpses with it, preparing for burial and the afterlife. Then as now, it was a good fixative; its antimicrobial properties "serving admirably in the mummifying process". When some people smell oakmoss and say it reminds them of something damp and musty, they're not too far off the mark.

Pretty elemental stuff - as opposed to, say, something slightly smooth and sweet which used to be in a lot of fragrances in much larger quantities. Vis a vis Miss Habanita, let's put it another way: someone took the peach off Mattisse's table, where it fit in with the contrived color scheme, and threw it out in the yard, where time's gotten to it and reminded you that a painting, like mummification, freezes things into a lie. The fragrance sits comfortably somewhere between compote and compost. Original Miss Habanita was a late stage reminder that at one point perfumery had as much to do with the unknown and the unsettling as smelling fancy or clean. Miss Habanita has a little weirdness and mystique in it, mixing the beautiful with the ever so slightly macabre. Listen, don't get me wrong. Miss Habanita isn't that dark. But we've gotten so used to FRUITY FLORAL meaning something much brighter and perkier and airheaded that a recalibration might be necessary before approaching what that used to mean.

Miss Habanita distinguishes itself from Deci Dela further by faithfulness to its source, a composition which itself plumbed the depths of the darker side. I wouldn't say that Miss Habanita is perfect for those who find Habanita a little much, obviously. For one thing, a Miss can get in just as much trouble as a Mrs., if not more. Ideally, appreciating one means appreciating the other. Miss Habanita isn't a refinement or a series of improvements but a way of contrasting certain aspects of the original in refreshing ways.

The moss - and some vanilla - speak to the creamy tobacco of vintage Habanita. Everything anyone might find questionable, if not entirely objectionable, is still there - the leather, the tobacco, the dirtied amber, the palest hint of decayed floralcy - and maybe even amplified in some way by bringing a certain amount of translucence into the equation. I can just as easily imagine Miss Habanita being used to scent cigarettes, as Habanita once was, and Habanita is such a dense proposition that it's easy to forget it also contained peach and orange blossom and plenty else besides, much of which reappears in its progeny to more emphatic effect.

Miss Habanita reminds me of Habanita with the lights suddenly turned up. Everybody's still doing what they were doing in the dark. They haven't had a chance to pretend otherwise yet. It lasts amazingly well, always surprising me by its persistence. It's a wonderful fragrance, full of quiet melancholy. Other than Habanita, there's really nothing quite like it.

I suggest looking for it on Ebay. I've seen it through e-tailers but the bottle you receive is not always the bottle pictured, and a simple exchange of emails with an Ebay seller will reassure you of getting what you pay for. The original formula came in two bottles, one frosted mustard, the other translucent amber. One of these is simpler in design; my favorite of the two, the amber glass, looks exactly like the famous Lalique Habanita bottle graced with water nymphs and has a glittery metallic bronze cap.

The Synaesthesia of Scent

In The Diary of a Nose, perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena writes, "Green is the only color that makes sense as a smell," adding that, in his collection of raw materials, he has different kinds of green including gentle, harsh, smooth, sharp, dense, etc. Among these he has greens "that smell of beans, fig leaves, syringa, ivy, seaweed, elder, boxwood, hyacinth, lawns, and peas."

He might be right, in one sense, given that of all the colors green is used maybe most frequently as a descriptive. Green chypre, for instance - or green floral. When I think of any number of fragrances I picture the color green. I can't talk about, or wear, Jean-Louis Scherrer or Givenchy III without seeing the fields of parched summer grass I remember from my childhood vacations in rural Arkansas. Alliage brings to mind bitter snapped stems. Clinique Wrappings is a shock of fir peeking out from under banks of aldehyde snow; Tauer's Cologne du Maghreb, a dish of fresh herbs. Ellena says every perfumer runs the hazard of conjuring mental images of toothpaste when using mint in a composition, but I smell it in many fragrances and think of herb gardens.

It might be more accurate to say that green is the color that gets the most mileage in the scent vocabulary. Red, for instance, is a little trickier, but some rose-centered fragrances do read to me as red. Une Rose has always brought to mind a deep red velvet when I smell it; Agent Provocateur, a drier shade on the spectrum, like something long sitting out in a potpourri dish. Miss Dior Cherie - don't let's get started on exactly which version - reminds me of fresh strawberries; not just their smell but their damp, staining skins. Lipstick Rose evokes the obvious - but even Arden's Red Door recalls the crimson lipstick my grandmother applied with a brush from its tube.

I often think pink, especially with the contemporary spate of fruity florals. Baby Doll is strictly bright fuchsia tutus and tart berry innards. Yellow crops up every so often too - buttery yellow for certain floral compositions, palest yellow for scents whose vibe feels incredibly buttery to me, whether from orris root or otherwise. Daffodils pop up in my head. More often than anything I imagine golden yellow to orange hues, probably because orientals are one of my favorite types of fragrance. Alahine is golden light at dusk, casting everything in a late afternoon glow. Mitsouko is a brassier shade, something like peaches steeped in liquid sun. I even think of white, when I smell White Linen - something scorched of all color, singeing the senses.

Sometimes I wonder if some of us have a rare offshoot of synaesthesia when it comes to scent. The synaesthete cross-pollinates the senses in ways most people don't. She might see a number and hear it as a sound, for instance. She might see a color and experience it as a smell. What about the other way round, I wonder. What about seeing a scent as a color, as a sort of tinted wash that spreads over our senses? Has anyone seen MARNIE, the Hitchcock film, where Tippie Hedren's kleptomaniac goes into fugues, seeing red when an object or a situation triggers certain emotions? During these episodes the whole screen goes blood red. I wonder if scent is like that for some of us.

It's not quite as cinematic with me, but most of the smells I love do filter the images they conjure through some emotionally corresponding colored lens. When I smell Vent Vert, I do see green - my mind goes right to an analogous image - a field, a spring lawn, fresh shoots proliferating on deciduous branches. It's like that in some way with every scent I smell. So I'm not sure I agree with Ellena, whose own Kelly Caleche tints my imagination a specific sort of pale but vibrant metallic pastel.

Form and Fashion: Balenciaga's Scent Trajectory (With a Drawing)

I've never really seen how the early scents produced under the Balenciaga name had much to do with the designs, let alone mystique, of the man himself. In The Master Of Us All: Balenciaga, His Work Rooms, His World, Mary Blume refers to the couturier's presiding aesthetic as "austere extravagance", demonstrating, again, through the course of the book, for anyone who wouldn't know just by looking at his often structurally oblique clothes, that the man, if not the myth, was virtually intractable.

His garments were often, like something out of nature, unclassifiable works of wonder - and he himself, private to the extreme, offered nothing by way of context or explication. He avoided the public, and he avoided trends. In a world that increasingly, post Dior, valued novelty and an ever changing theme, Balenciaga moved more organically, refining his line at a snail's pace. You look at Dior, Saint Laurent, or Givenchy, several of his contemporaries, and see with each year a new iteration, a different direction. Balenciaga was more of a nautilus, curling outward more and more elaborately over time from some undisclosed axis. Many design strategies of his time - most notably, Dior's New Look - reshaped or remapped the female physique. Balenciaga seemed to dematerialize it, rendering each woman who wore him a floating nimbus of shifting lines and moods. Somewhere inside that cloud, an indivisable idea.

The early Balenciaga fragrances are wonderful, but they seem more like something Dior or Givenchy might have inspired. However wonderful they are, they fall far more easily into categorization than the man or the inimitable clothes he created. His first two fragrances, La Fuite des Heures and Le Dix, were released between 1947 and 1949, more than a decade after the designer had moved from Spain to his Paris atelier. I've never smelled La Fuite des Heures. Released years later for the American market as Fleeting Moment, it has been attributed to Germaine Cellier (of Bandit, Fracas, and Jolie Madam) and described varyingly as a chypre and an aldehydic floral. Le Dix, named after the address at 10 Avenue George V where sat Balenciaga's fashion house, is most definitely an aldehydic floral, emphasis on soft woods and cool violet.

While arguably austere, Le Dix is hardly extravagant. Granted, thanks to No. 5, the fashion at the time was for aldehydic florals, yet something along the lines of the inscrutable woody warmth of Arpege would have made more sense to me. Even compared to Chanel No. 5, Le Dix is delicate and pristine. It's one of my favorite violet fragrances, and has special sentimental value to me, having sat inside my grandmother's medicine cabinet during my childhood in an unmarked miniature bottle, but I would never associate it with anything I've since seen by Balenciaga.

Smelling Le Dix in that unmarked bottle, with no idea where it came from or what it was called, I thought of the fragile vintage tulle dresses housed in an old cardboard box up in my grandmother's attic. You touched them and they started to fall apart, their beads scattering on the floor. Le Dix was something from another time, candied, powdered, and quaint, but indicates none of the sculptural durability of Balenciaga's work. Perhaps this goes toward explaining the earliest ads for the scent, which posed the bottle near the designer's face, lest the link be lost on the consumer, with the simple text: "His creation." It was, in fact, the creation of Roure's Francis Fabron (of L'Air du Temps and L'Interdit).

Le Dix also reminds me of an anecdote from Blume's book regarding Chanel and Balenciaga, once friends, then, abruptly, not. At first an advocate of Balenciaga's artistry, Chanel derided him after a falling out involving a magazine article (was there ever a lifelong friend among Chanel's working relationships?). "To a tough cookie like Chanel," writes Blume, "Balenciaga's vulnerability seemed a weakness. His staff knew it was his strength." Le Dix hints at the vulnerability without underscoring the strength.

After her betrayal, Balenciaga returned to Chanel everything he owned associated with her name, including a portrait of her she'd loaned him, as if to say, "You look at yourself for a change." Anyone can make such a renunciatory gesture. It takes a lot of backbone to enforce it over time, and Balenciaga seems to have, by all reports I can find, never dealing with Chanel again in anything approaching the spirit of their earlier friendship.

He was stronger yet than even that. To the dismay of his friend Givenchy, he attended Chanel's funeral, explaining, "In life there are things one must forget, the ills that people have done to you." It's hard to imagine grudge-holding Chanel appearing at Balenciaga's funeral, had the tables of mortality been turned, and just as hard to imagine that bedrock strength of character smelling Le Dix.

Until the seventies, Le Dix, Fleeting Moment, and a later addition, Quadrille (1955), defined the Balenciaga style through fragrance. Quadrille was rethought (ie reformulated) in the eighties, adapting its mossy chypre structure to the style of those times with an infusion of dark plummy fruits. In either formulation, Quadrille alone comes closest for me to matching or expressing Balenciaga's mystique. You can get a little lost in its moss-laden depths in a way diaphanous Le Dix makes unlikely. Le Dix seems thematically transparent, Quadrille more opaque, its movements more subterranean. Like chiffon, Le Dix seems to hide nothing. Quadrille is sturdier, more voluptuous stuff, recalling the fabrics Balenciaga worked very hard to find - like Gazar, a nubbed silk that took several years to engineer and ably supported the structural folds and contours which became Balenciaga trademarks.

It took a while for the fashions of fragrance to catch up to the fashion of Balenciaga. By then, Balenciaga had closed his salon. By the seventies and eighties, the trend in fragrance was increasingly robust and byzantine, and scents like Ho Hang (1971: a masculine fougere eventually claimed by as many women as men), Michelle (1979: a velvety floriental by Francoise Caron), Portos (1980: a front loaded woody, leathery animalic with a wonderfully pungent cumin accent), and Prelude (1982: an unusual amber pulled in different directions by florals and spices) got closer and closer to the formidable inscrutability that was Balenciaga. These scents required time to understand. Like Balanciaga's constructions - the melon sleeves, the envelope dress, the wedding gown with "coal scuttle" headdress (pictured) - they're at once broadly stroked and infinitely nuanced. The reformulation of Quadrille brought it up to that speed, and taken together these scents, for me, compose a nearly complete and accurate picture of Balenciaga's oeuvre.

Rumba (1989: a rich, patchouli laden floral) tipped the scales to the other side, falling so in step with the trends of its time that, wonderful as it is, it contradicted Balenciaga's singularity. The more recent Balenciaga Paris went full circle, recalling the bright fragility of Le Dix, adding waifish inconsequentiality to Le Dix's ephemeral charms.  Florabotanica put a period on things, and relates to nothing but its own pleasantly content mediocrity. In between, there were Cristobal (1998: floral vanilla), Ho Hang Club (1987: woody leather), and Talisman (1994: early stage fruitchouli), some more decent than others.

(Leave a comment telling me your favorite Balenciaga - or the one you're most curious about - and why, and I'll draw two winners for a sample of one of the following: Le Dix, Quadrille, Cristobal femme/homme, Rumba, Balenciaga Paris, or Prelude)

Ramon Monegal Mon Patchouly: Jasmine in Big Boy Pants

I resisted the Ramon Monegal line for a long time, for several old reliable reasons. The fragrances embody two emerging trends I'm not that eager to embrace - the ever-escalating price point of niche perfumery, and the  overabundance of choice presented by a start-up brand, which can give the impression, right or wrong, of trying to be all things to all people. I suppose all of this might have been mediated by instant love for the scents themselves. But it took me a while to come around to some of the Monegals I now regard as favorites. I went back repeatedly to smell them, and it's probably less accurate to say they grew on me than it is to say I grew into them.

Mon Patchouly is my favorite, by far - though Kiss My Name, a Carolina Herrera-esque fruity tuberose updated with hints of incense, isn't getting kicked out of bed any time soon. When I first smelled it, I was told Mon Patchouly was the brand's biggest seller, and I could see why. At the time, it somehow reminded me of the best mass market masculines - simultaneously familiar and unusual. Each time I came back to smell the fragrance, it surprised me, because while it's very well done and has something referential in it I can't define, it's even more unusual and singular than I initially gave it credit for.

Essentially a well blended study in patchouli, jasmine, and geranium, Mon Patchouly is classified as a Woody Oriental. I don't know why, when I first smelled it, I also thought it was pretty soundly masculine. True, there's some kind of barbershop after shave strain in the fragrance, but these days, I have trouble imagining many men I know wearing it. Like Insense, by Givenchy, it's a little more floral than most men unaccustomed to niche perfumery would feel comfortable wearing. It's constantly threatened with emasculation by that floral influence. That jasmine, however perverted by patchouli and geranium, is ultimately pretty gender bending by mainstream standards.

The patchouli cants things in the direction of classic masculines, but the jasmine is still front and center, singing "I feel pretty" - half in baritone, half in falsetto, like the breaking voice of a teenager who's just started growing facial hair. Mon Patchouly is more skirt and tie than even most niche "masculines" I'm familiar with, no matter how much the geranium underscores the masculine coding. This is all beside the point, unless, like many men out there, you feel a little vulnerable when gender distinctions start dissolving into hazy, free-floating halfway points. For this reason, a scent like Mon Patchouly is even more attractive to me than a wonderful smelling fragrance would otherwise usually be. I like a little anarchy in a scent, especially when it's smuggled in under a frilly skirt.

One thing I look for in a fragrance that costs more than I think it should is tenacity. After that, projection. Mon Patchouly is impressive in both respects. Too impressive (read: oppressive) for some. The customer reviews on Fragrantica alternate between unmitigated love and outright repulsion. I always forget how much some people despise patchouli, even when it's scrubbed clean and smoothed of all rough spots in the lab the way it tends to be these days. Yet it isn't just the patchouli, I suspect. The combination of jasmine and patchouli here is just below well worked out (another reason I like it, but also possibly why some can't tolerate it). Had it been what I felt was thoroughly worked out, I doubt the combination would have retained its slightly off-kilter appeal for me. Worse, for some, that strangeness never wears down into something less strange, which might be why more than one person has compared it to Mugler's Alien and Angel. Admirably, Mon Patchouly bucks another current trend, front loading the formula, which eventually, inevitably, tends to end up in the same banal territory the last fragrance has settled for. If you want to scrub Mon Patchouly within the first ten minutes, you might as well go ahead and do it. It won't be rewarding your patience any time soon.

The presiding combination of jasmine and patchouli - even an apparently squeaky clean patchouli and an indole-free jasmine - has a slight, if delicate, whiff of grunge to it.  This could come from some other player in the mix. I don't discern the alleged oakmoss, but with oakmoss restricted to within an inch of perceptibility, that's at least no surprise. Still, I can't pinpoint amber, vanilla, or olibanum either. Never mind. However exactly it does it, for something which seems to be playing such a familiar tune, Mon Patchouly veers off in some usually uncharted territory. I'll leave the question of whether or not that journey is worth the price of its ticket up to you. Currently, the Monegal line runs $185.00 for a 1.7 ounce bottle. This bottle, by the way, is quite the chunk of glass, reminding me more of a concealed weapon than anything a fragrance might come in. I smelled Mon Patchouly at Luckyscent.