Varon Dandy Part 2: The Fougère Cousin of Knize Ten

Source of original images: https://perfumecharm.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/knize-ten-by-knize-perfume-review/ and parfumo.de

 

The Knize Ten	Shared notes	Varon Dandy
Lemon, Orange, Rosemary	Bergamot, Petitgrain	Lavender, Anise, Clary Sage
Rose, Iris, Cinnamon	Geranium, Cedar, Carnation, Sandalwood	Fern
Castoreum, Vanilla	Oakmoss, Amber, Musk	Tonka

At last we return to Varón Dandy, whose history I discussed back in August. As I suggested then, I find it to be a relative of Knize Ten - they may be from different streets, Chypre Boulevard and Fougère Avenue, but the neighbourhood is the same: 1920s men's fragrance and they share a surprising number of notes that give them both a similar old-time feel of powdery-spicy florality. 

As you can see from the table above, Varón is an old-school barbershop fougère: a citrus-lavender top with green clary sage, very powdery from the get go, a heavily coumarinic heart ornamented with some florals and woods, that has a primarily powdery soapy-carnation feel to it and a sweet-mossy-musky base. It doesn't last too long and generally comes across like an old-fashioned hotel soap (the reason of course being, that these were frequently fragranced with a standard fougère formula). It makes me want to wear a top hat and truly feels like from a different era, one that still lingers on in some increasingly obscure old-boy grooming products (like the Spanish Floid Aftershave) but has all but disappeared from the fashionable perfume world (although it is still echoed in a scent such as Burberry Brit for Men). Clearly it's hanging on in the Spanish and Spanish-speaking nicks of the wood though, just as Tabac Original is north of the Alps.

The leathery chypre Knize Ten is darker and heavier from the outset with its motor oil-floral combo, but the cousins share the dense clovey-woody powderiness of the heart, with a more textured florality in the Viennese scent and the serious sweetness of cinnamon, where Varòn's fern-floral is almost giddy and somewhat flat by direct comparison. The castoreum and leather notes create ever more depth where the Spaniard treads more lightly with sweet musk and amber, with just a smattering of moss, though the combination  does in fact create a suede-like effect. Varón Dandy has been described as a woody, leathery, animalic and oriental fragrance , so perhaps, in previous iterations, it was even closer to Knize than it is in its current state - oh to have a vintage bottle of Parera-made juice, which I suspect might have pulled more punch and contained more facets. As it is, the Spaniard is a paler, slightly anemic cousin to the Austrian Dandy, one whose tails have perhaps been a bit tattered from an awfully long history in the mass market, a fate of so many old timers that Knize Ten has yet miraculously avoided.Still - I like its old world aura and it would probably be considered less obnoxious by many a mainstream nose than Knize Ten. I imagine the infamous L'Air de Panache in Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel as being pretty close to Varón Dandy, even if Mark Buxton decided to render it as a Chypre.              

 

Source: http://www.vogue.com/866538/lair-de-panache-what-wes-andersons-fragrance-smells-like/

Trump Wins, Cohen Dies

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul


Leonard Cohen, The Future

Angela Flanders, Earl Grey, and the English Perfumery Tradition

About two years ago, on a weekday, I stood before the closed doors of Angela Flanders' dainty Victorian perfume store on Columbia Road, after visiting the all-felt cornershop installed by artist Lucy Sparrow in the vicinity. Despite my love of English perfumes I had never heard of this house, but the window looked enticing and I promised myself I would return when the occasion arose.
It did last week, when we spent another family holiday in our favorite city within the European Union and decided to visit the famed Sunday flower market on Columbia Road, when all the little indie stores along the lane pop open. In the meantime I'd read up on Angela Flanders, only to learn with dismay that she had died in April of this year, at the gracious age of 88: an interesting woman who built a career in costume design, went free-lance into interior design and antiques in the 1970s and discovered perfume in her late Sixties, teaching herself the art and launching a perfumery business at an age when most people retire from professional life. I assume she must have been the oldest recipient ever of a FiFi award - at 84, for her 2011 Precious One as best new independent fragrance. Chapeau!

The shop is now tended by her daughter and it was crowded that Sunday with perfume aficionados. I was set on purchasing a fragrance as a souvenir of this London trip and had already laid eyes on Earl Grey, which sounded very British and just like like my cup of tea, if you'll permit the pun. I nosed myself through a dozen or more offerings, some trad, some modern, but in the end, Earl Grey EdP was it (winning out over the attractively dilly Ambre Noir) - and I do believe this early creation of hers (1994) in some ways epitomizes Englishness and English perfumery. The integration of otherness, as Peter Ackroyd noted in his study of English character, Albion, is key to understanding the mentality and history of the scepter'd isle. As in the case of Gin Tonic, Paisley ties, and Earl Grey tea this scent makes something distinctively English of imported goods - bergamot and other citrus notes, oriental spices, rosewood and patchouli.  The zesty bergamot is folded into what I perceive as the sweet green of lime and orangey notes - it is less refined than the gentle clear bergamot of vintage Farina Gegenüber, but not as pungent as sticking your nose into some perfumed tea of the same name. There are no tea notes at all in the fragrance, notably. What pops up besides the citrus immediatly is a spicy melange of mace (the blossom of nutmeg, not the spray), coriander, cardamom and clove (which seem to have been favorites of Ms. Flanders, perhaps harking back to the spicy potpourri tradition) draped upon a bed of quiet bois de rose. Then there's what I perceive as a gentle patchouli, nothing near the earthy pungency of Villoresi's version, Montale's beastly Patchouli Leaves, or even the reference vintage Etro EdT. This is Anglicized patch free of dark foresty dampness, underbrush, humus, it's more Sissinghurst than Sherwood Forest, really. And there we are, this happy blend lingers about for a solid eight hours, with gentle sillage. It is well behaved, not at all sweet, smells natural, (more so, than, say, Cacharel pour homme) but in the slyly mannered fashion of an English garden that celebrates nature as improved by civilization. It lacks both the bodily eroticism and the abstract artfulness as it has defined classic French perfumery since Jicky, but you wouldn't want to wear Jicky to an afternoon tea at the Dowager Countess of Grantham's, now would you? Or even when eating clotted cream off your lover, for that matter. Earl Grey smells good and makes you smell good in a pleasant and unobtrusive manner, striking just the right Victorian balance of good taste, all-the-while coming off as utterly unslick; this is not the work of a Duchaufour or Morillas for Penhaligon's, that self-parodying simulacrum of Englishness wrapping itself around industrial perfumery, but the work of a dilettante as that word was understood in the 18th century: a devoted amateur who delights in a field with no primary pecuniary interest. Earl Grey is a fine fragrance indeed (and I do wonder whether it didn't partly inspire Jo Wood's Usiku, a spicier, ethno-new agier take on the same theme). The only place you can try it and buy it is in the two London stores on Columbia Road and in Spitalfields - a form of exclusivity far preferable to the usual niche approach of charging astronomically high prices in no way justified by commensurate quality. Luckily, orders can be placed through the website, but, needless to say, the full experience is going to the places Angela Flanders so carefully laid out as a little English Gesamtkunstwerk, the memory of which will infuse the fragrances you purchased with an added dimension.               

Perfume humor...

What's the difference between a fragrance and a fragrance account executive?

A fragrance is a soul with no body.

(This is the result of spending too much time in a drugstore smelling, with difficulty,  dior homme perfume, dior Sauvage, Hèrmes Jardin de M. Li, Baldessarini Strictly, Zadig & Voltaire This is Him and various other fragrant nonentities. 

Source of image: sb.kraljeva-sutjeska.com

This Gentleman is a Hep Cat - Annette Neuffer's "Hepster"

Cab Calloway | Source: pbs.org

"Your sound is beautiful - dark and warm," Wynton Marsalis said of Annette Neuffer's trumpet playing. Neuffer is not only an accomplished jazz musician and singer, but also a perfumer. As is typical of the indie scene that has emerged through the possibilities of web-based marketing, she is self-taught, having developed her art from a deep interest in commercial fragrances that lead her onto the path of experimentation and ultimately natural perfumery - less from any dogmatic stance, than from increasingly losing interest in working with synthetics. She has cultivated an impressive portfolio of fragrances at this point and "dark and warm" seem characteristic of her travels in scent as much as in sound - there is a certain emphasis on orientals featuring the deep balsamic, resinous materials of that genre blended with luciously warm florals, spices, as well as gourmandy notes: Arabica, Maroquin, Mellis, the duo of scents under the heading per fumum and the quartet dedicated to Avicenna, the great Persian scholar, as well as several others speak of her fascination with the Middle Eastern roots of perfumery. But her 2016 release Hepster walks a different, greener path.When I asked her about the background of this composition Annette explained that when she started making perfumes, she was doing so mainly for herself and was also lacking male guinea pigs as her significant other doesn't dig fragrance (WHAT???). Now that her line is in the world she realized she didn't have an explicit masculine (with the exception of "For Him" specifically created for a friend) and when she came across a high quality supergreen mastix absolute the idea for Hepster was born.

If you liked the black metal of Josh Lobb's Norne, you must try this sophisticated jazz bottled by Annette Neuffer | Source: parfumo.de

Hepster was a term coined by Cab Calloway in naming his ca. 1938 Hepster's Dictionary of the slang used among the black jazz musicians of Harlem, who were hep cats and hip to the jive (this vocabulary was adopted in various parts by the post-war Beats, Hippies - dig? - Funksters and ultimately Hip Hoppers - "yo, break it up"). So, the name suggests this is a fragrance for cool cats who "creep out like the shadow," i.e. come on in a suave, sophisticated manner and as you can see in the above photo, a hep cat like Mr. Calloway wasn't always running around in a flamboyant zoot suit but also came across as quite the dapper gentleman, when he pleased. I am not someone deeply immersed in the world of jazz (that would have been my Dad), but its imagined smell, to me, is one of the thick air of night clubs, suffused by cigarettes, perfume and alcohol. Hepster, on the other hand, very much stands in the dignified tradition of English and Italian gentlemen's scents of the aromatic chypresque kind featuring citrus notes, herbs, a touch of florals, green notes and a "dark and warm" woody-spicy-resinous base. When I was grasping for analogies while trying to figure out this beautiful creation I thought of Blenheim Bouquet or Crown Perfumery's Town & Country with their straightforward citrus-herb-pine axis. But Neuffer's composition is far more complex and dense and the use of mint, pepper, juniper, nutmeg and balsamic materials inevitably reminded me of Lorenzo Villoresi's mid-90s italo-orientals such as Piper Nigrum and Spezie. "Blenheim Bouquet reformulated by Villoresi" became my shorthand attempt at contextualizing Hepster - but not to be misunderstood, this is a fully, indeed highly original work (because, for one, Lorenzo never did try his hand at a Blenheim). And there is quite some jazz in it, after all.

Hepster comes on with a burst of sax, trumpet and drums. The citrus accord is green and complex - it is not, thankfully, the clear and smooth smell of organic bathroom cleaner or washing up liquid - the dreaded lemon pledge effect! Rather, it has a textured surface resulting from the complexity of bergamot and lime and the impact of herbaceous notes - the gravelly juniper and nutmeg, the judiciously employed mint, that adds edge, but never becomes blatant here, and the ethereal treble of black pepper. And then there's a lifted, transparent vibrancy and gently animalic quality running through this which reminded me of the brilliant effect of genuine civet in classic fragrances - is it the magic of the hyraceum? Alas, this is the kind of masterful citrus complexity that characterized miracles such as the beautiful Signoricci II (vintage), delivering the olfactory equivalent of Arabic calligraphy behind the purported simplicity of a citric-fresh cologne. Such intricacy is what makes a fragrance gentlemanly: a refined, unobtrusive elegance that never vulgarly displays and yet ineluctably suggests a deep structure of erudition, integrity, sincerity. It is the complexity of technical mastery hidden behind the deeply moving rendition of a plaintive melody performed with seeming ease.  And it doesn't end there. Very soon you are met by the heart notes and the balsamic base that provides, literally, a well-contoured body to the opening accords, adding further depth, and which corresponds beautifully to the warmth of one's own body (this is a great scent to apply while one is still steaming from the shower, the naturals just really come alive). 

Mastic Trees on Chios, Greece | Source: http://www.mysteriousgreece.com/monthly-article/chios/ecotourism-in-chios/

The green character of Hepster announced by citrus and herbs is confirmed by mastic and pine, which provide a decidely Mediterranean flair and add a refreshing boldness to the refinement ofthe topnotes. I only know mastic tears from Greek cuisine and have never smelled the absolute, but imagine it to be a very deep, balsamic green on its own that here blends wonderfully with the woody-green pine note (which features a new material from Robertet, Bois de Landes). The floral notes - iris, néroli and rose geranium - are masterfully tucked into the heart to envelop the powerful greens in soft creaminess, a wonderful example of harmonic contrast that the old English gent's scents used to pull off so well. At this point I wish Hepster would just continue forever, but then, it is what it is because it is a natural perfume. Only synthetic modulators and fixatives could extend this pleasure and I wouldn't want to pay the price of altering what is an aesthetically complete experience. My skin doesn't hold fragrance too well, but I do get a good ninety minutes of this phase, before it begins calming into a gentle ballad performed at the late-night bar by a laid-back jazz quartet. What you have for the next five to six hours is a calm, green woody-balsamic skin scent that makes you want to sniff yourself constantly. It's ultra-classic: incense, cedar, sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli, labdanum, oakmoss and hyraceum (with the green notes lingering on), but I cannot emphasize strongly enough the difference between a blend of these actual ingredients and a scent pyramid that lists them to describe ambroxan, santalol, iso-e-super and other synthetics. While these have their place in perfumery within limits, an all natural base accord is something very beautiful and special, all the more when it's so well crafted, and everyone should get to smell it as some point in their olfactory voyage. Nothing sticks out here in a coarse manner, it is a smooth pleasure cruise into the Aegean sunset. Speaking of which: if I wanted to match this perfume with a person, it would have to be Patrick Leigh Fermor, the brilliant Anglo-Irish gentleman-adventurer who travelled this part of the world so extensively and wrote so beautifully about it. He embodied and old world education and refinement that yet was cosmopolitan and eager to search out and engage with new places and people and this spirit of tradition and open-minded curiosity, the encounter of northern and south-eastern Europe no less characterizes the beautiful Hepster.

Osmodrama Report II: Smellscapes, Soundscapes

Three smell-packed days at the Osmodrama Festival in Berlin have left me full of thoughts, inspirations, questions and deep impressions. It was fascinating to see the Smeller 2.0 scent organ perform solo and as a complement to film, literature and sound art. To start with the most affective experience: The live co-performance of a sound collage by Carl Stone and a smellscape by Wolfgang Georgsdorf that really managed to transport me to another world. Smell and sound, truly on par here, interlocked to create an imaginary space that came alive through the multisensory input, that was truly multi-dimensional, sensorily palpable and emotionally present in a way that sound or smell alone would not be - it helped to have your eyes closed. The soundscape began and frequently returned to a (tropical) forest with the sounds of exotic birds, rain but also drones, to an airport in Asia with chatter, clatter and planes, but all a step removed from reality by complementary sounds, distortions and mixes, culminating in an eerie warped string ensemble - and all the while the smeller was furnishing olfactory impressions of green, plantlife, fruit, decay, of food, people, life,  carving out mental images of an alternate world. The fine detail is lost on me now, but the memory of the journey and its places is incredibly vivid. It was a truly awe-some experience that invited me to stop thinking and just immerse myself in the sensory moment. Of all the performances I saw [so much for ocularocentrism creeping into the language of a smell blog] witnessed this one worked best as an immediate sensory piece of art.

The 2016 pure scent composition Autocomplete was quite a different experience. This was part of the daytime program, there were fewer visitors than at the evening events and I sat in the first row experiencing an uninhibited airflow (which is physically noticeable when the room is not packed) and strong olfactory impressions. The sequences of smells come without any frame, explanation or sensory complement and it's interesting to watch yourself trying to make sense of them, to find a narrative or memory that gives structure to these de-contextualized smells, devoid of objects, places, persons. An "unreal" experience that made me think and reflect, rather than permit an immersion. There were three phases within the nearly hour-long piece that each formed a scene/narrative for me: a forest with underbrush, rotting humus, mushrooms, pine trees and then a human presence in the shape of a smoky camp fire; a rural farm scenery with hay, leather, horse, florals and then a shift to the farmhouse kitchen composed of clove, spices, fruit, peaches; and a short domestic "parental grooming" sequence featuring classic aftershave, cosmetics, calone (i.e. fabric softener) and pipe tobacco. Finally, a simple triad of vanillin, coffee and mothballs triggered a memory of my beloved grandparents: grandma serving her signature marble cake (my favorite, for this reason), made with vanilla flavoring, as one did in those days, and grandpa having his afternoon coffee. Their place did NOT smell of naphtaline mothballs, but that is a fictional olfactory "grandparent" trope that somehow fit in.    


This experience reveals some of the possibilities and limits of olfactory story-telling: The olfactory narrator, like the musical composer, can use chords harmonizing or contrasting, sequences that are causal or rupturing, employ repetition and variation to aim for certain effects, though as in any art the message will never be unequivocal and intention may bear no resemblance to reception. Indeed, smell reception will always be associative - your memories and emotions connected to smells will make their perception meaningful or make a sequence come together to form a scene. There will be a quiz-quality of wanting to understand, i.e. label the scent. Through my training of analyzing perfumes and a general interest in smell I found this easy, but the question is whether this cerebral act distracts from the sensory experience. Interestingly someone was programming an app during the festival that would send the actual Smeller sequences to your smartphone, providing the score, in other words. Will that improve or further distract from the sensory experience? The other inevitable reaction is judgment: this smells good, this smells bad. The smell researcher and artists Sissel Tolaas has always insisted that we learn to appreciate smells free of our assocations with them, but while an open mind/nose is certainly a good thing, our evaluation patterns of smells do have biological roots (spoiled food, approaching fire) and are an essential part of our socio-culturally formed selves - not that those are not malleable and capable of expanding and transforming, of course. But if the smell of a certain rose-scented soap "is" your mother, that is, of course, a valid and relevant reality for you that will determine your relationship to that smell - and thus that smell may be an avenue for exploring important memories and emotions for you. Awareness of smell is more important than neutrality. Why you like or dislike certain smells may reveal things to you about yourself that may remain hidden in other sensory or intellectual realms.

I, for one, am convinced that the olfactory art of Smeller 2.0 has the potential of all great art forms: of creating and questioning beauty, of expressing the creative mind, of showing us new, enriching perspectives that help us know the world - and ourselves. And it's bringing us one step closer to sensory equality!

Osmodrama Report: Scent-Tracking Literature

Madzirov, Mattes, Kissina, Georgsdorf in front of Smeller 2.0

This evening I witnessed the world premiere of a reading of poetry and prose accompanied by a scent track produced by Smeller 2.0 It was an absolutely fascinating and intriguing experience which raised many questions and pointed to many new horizons.

In the first segment Mazedonian poet Nikola Madzirov read seven poems, each preceded by a scent prologue, followed by a reading of the poem in German by Eva Mattes and then a scent epilogue. These programmed scentscapes by Wolfgang Georgsdorf  worked as a form of olfactory translation/commentary/interpretation. Madzirov loved the idea, pointing out that his poetry (each word like an uncried tear, which I found both moving and terrifying) works towards silence, which is wonderfully fulfilled by an olfactory translation that maintains the presence of meaning without language.

Ukranian/Russian author Julia Kissina read a bit from her novel Elephantina's Moscow Years, a quasi-autobiographical, surreal account of the underground art scene in the last years of the crumbling Soviet Union, followed by Eva Mattes reading a full chapter in German. In this case Georgsdorf played a scent-track live along with the reading via a Midi-Keyboard that triggered the smell releases - a daunting task, as he had to play 24 seconds ahead for the molecules to reach the audience in synchronization with the words (and since scent molecules are slower than soundwaves, there is a latency issue for the audience in the front and back - the sweet spot was gauged for the middle of the tent-auditorium). I sat in the third row and the timing worked pretty well. Kisseva, who was able to smell the scent-track (Madzirov was reading in a dead olfactory angle) and understands German seemed thrilled and joked that the scents were now "in the book" forever for her.


My impression was, that, on the one hand, we are still olfactory illiterates struggling with this new art form because we tend to underestimate scent in Western culture and lack an established vocabulary to describe it (if we are not perfumers, wine critics or coffee testers), as well as an emotional grammar to grasp precisely what it does to us. But we also lack the reference points we have when it comes, e.g., to the language of film (even if it isn't explicit, we learn the conventions of what a close-up or a panoramic shot mean). The scent experience is there, but how to link it up to the spoken word, onto which, in these cases, it is grafted as an added layer? I, for one, despite being deeply involved with smells, lacked the ability to integrate the scents with the language in the way that a film score is automatically connected to visual input by years of exposure to genre conventions. On the other hand, this experience of an added olfactory dimension has the potential to break through the conventions of literary language and the setting of "the literary performance." Thereby, apart from its sensory contribution, it may actually help liberate language from these constraints which even the finest and most experimental writers cannot evade. There is certainly way more to this than releasing a rose scent when love is spoken of:  multiple new layers of metaphorization, representation, relationality and meaning come into play.

One problem I encountered - like in my perfumista life - was the use of synthetics. A monomolecular scent doesn't trigger emotions or memories in me except within the boundaries of its self-referentiality. Melonal is Melonal (yuck), undecagammalactone doesn't work as peach/tropical/fruit/imagined south sea paradise for me but only as an obnoxious air freshener. The scent effects worked on me when they appeared "real" - animalic, moldy humus, church incense, plastic and that would bring a smile to my face or cause reverberation connecting scents and imagery from a poem in interesting ways (reenforcing and contrasting).

Wolfgang Georgsdorf is highly aware of all of theses isues and pointed out that this artform is in its infancy, as moving images once were. A whole number of firsts have occured at the Osmodrama-Festival and the feedback will be used to think about and further develop the technology of the Smeller apparatus and the conceptual backbone of "olfactory painting" and multimedia-interactivity.

Tonight, for sure, was a great, enlightening, no: ensmelling evening and it felt like watching the Wright Brothers lift off and fly into a new era.    

Until September 18: The Osmodrama Festival in Berlin

If you happen to be in or close to Berlin within the next week, you must absolutely visit the Osmodrama Festival. Multimedia artist Wolfgang Georgsdorf has invented and built the first fully functional scent organ, which through a complicated system of airflows can place and remove scents and scent accords into a confined space (in this case a 120-seat tent-auditorium). This enables the performance of sequenced scent compositions, as well as scent-tracking films, concerts, theater productions or readings of literature. And all of this has been happening at the Osmodrama Festival since July. People who have experienced it find it a literally sensational experience, and a trove of well-known artists and performers has assembled for the events, as you can see from the progranm. The perfumer "feeding" the scent organ called "Smeller 2.0" is none other than Geza Schön and IFF is providing the raw materials. I will be in Berlin for the last three days of the festival to witness a reading, film screening and the closing party. Besides evening events, a constant rotation of scent compositions is being performed through the day weekdays.   

The Entangled History of Varon Dandy - Part 1

Advertising the "Varon Dandi" product line in the 1950s. Source: Spanish National Library,  http://www.bne.es/es/Micrositios/Exposiciones/Arte_Belleza/Exposicion/Seccion4/Obra20.html?origen=galeria

European Perfume history tends to be somewhat gallocentric, with brief nods to "KölnischWasser" and the English tradition (the founder of the Guerlain dynasty did learn soapmaking there, after all). But the epicenter of scent (and much other) culture, was, naturellement, France. Well, yes, but - despite this special status, perfume history is really quite a multi- and transnational affair. Just as our understanding of cold war politics has benefitted massively from expanding a scholarly gaze long fixed on the US and the USSR to the complex interaction of local, regional, national and international politics (says the historian) it is worth looking - and smelling - into perfume cultures beyond the fragrance superpower to explore idiosyncracies, patterns and connections in space and time. So here, then, is the national masculine fragrance of Spain: Varón Dandy (occasionally also spelled Dandi), released by the house of Parera in 1920 or 1924. It was one of two masculines from the 1920s listed in the 1989 version of the H&R Genealogy of Perfume- the other is Knize Ten - but later editions dropped it and it is not listed in Michael Edwards' perfume database despite its uninterrupted production to this day. Parera was acquired by the German corporate empire Benckiser / Coty in 1990, famous for its low budget products, many of which were once luxury items (and that chapter of perfume history as part of the postwar development of capitalism is another, scarier, story for another time).

Source: fragrantica.com

According to a newspaper feature from 1995, Joan Parera Casanovas had a vision of providing Spaniards with the possibility of smelling as distinguished as any French citizen, but at a price more affordable than that of imported French perfume. He began his career in perfume in 1912 in Badalona, Catalonia, one of the more metropolitan regions of Spain, but things only really took off in the Roaring Twenties. For some decades now, fragrance in Europe had shifted from being a genuine luxury item reserved to nobility and the upper middle class to becoming part of a middle class consumer and leisure culture, a product of the techno-industrial revolution with its superior extraction techniques and chemical synthesis embodying the social revolutions of modernization. Ever since, perfume has been a somewhat schizophrenic affair in projecting its desirable former upper-crust exclusivity while representing a prime example of mass production/consumption. Varón Dandy's iconic top hat and gloves emblem, which feature on the packaging to this day, were to signify high style to aspirational male consumers, while the broad product range placed Varon Dandy in the context of a male grooming culture. This positioning also aimed to forestall suspicions of male perfume usage signifying effeminacy or homosexuality which lurked in the minds of a society still largely shaped by a sternly conservative and patriarchal understanding of gender roles. Varón Dandy, by its very name bridged the gap between Spanish masculinity (varón means anything from boy, to man to great man) and the cosmopolitan sophistication of the Anglo-French "Dandy." The time was evidently ripe even in the less urbanized and industrialized south of Europe for this early expression of consumerist metrosexuality and Parera's product struck a chord in Spanish society: Varón Dandy quickly became the emblematic scent of Spanish machismo, Old Spice avant la lettre, to be woven inextricably into the tapestry of Spanish everday life and the collective olfactory consciousness of the Hispanic world. Spanish culture is full of references to and traces of it. Thus, as the Parera brand sponsored radio shows similar to its US counterparts, the well-known singer Carmelita Aubert sang the praises of Varon Dandy in 1934 as well as of communism. It wouldn't be long until the civil war broke out and after the Fascist victory Parera arranged itself with the new order and for coming generations of Spaniards, Varón Dandy inevitably became part of the smellscape of the Franco era. After democratization and with the opening-up of Spanish society in the 1980s - encapsulated for non-Spaniards like myself in the culture of La Movida and the films of Pedro Almodóvar - the scent lost much of its appeal due to its association with a discomforting past, while Parera was now simultaneously exposed to the heavy competition of the European beauty market. This may explain the Parera takeover by Benkiser in 1990. The brand actually recuperated in the following years - I imagine for similar reasons that old East German brands experienced a renaissance after "Ossis" had binged on West-products: it was, after all, the scent of "home" (with all the good, bad and ugly), of Spanish identity, memory, of a world quickly disappearing or at least massively changing in the wake of globalization (and how ironic that globalizers such as Coty should capitalize on that as they acquired that memory and increased their shareholder value by it).

Source: fragrantica.com

Varón Dandy was by no means a purely national phenomenon, however. Like many Spanish products it diffused into the hispanic markets of the former empire with their close cultural and economic ties and acquired its own meanings there. And from South America or Puerto Rico it migrated to the US. I found this interesting passage in Marta Moreno Vega's memoir of youth culture in 1950s Spanish Harlem, When the Spirits Dance Mambo: Growing up Nuyorican in El Barrio. She writes of her brother:              
      
"On weekdays, he splashed on Old Spice aftershave, purchased at the local drugstore, but on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and sometimes Sundays, he used Varon Dandy." That was the fragrance to go dancing with, not the gringo perfume, but the emblem of Spanish masculinity (together with Yardley pomade, as Vega points out - a fascinating salad bowl of grooming culture, globalization from below).

Varón Dandy is a wonderful example of how a fragrance can be a window into one - or more - cultures, in that its use and estimation mirrors the complex movement of those cultures through time and space and speaks to how people identify and make sense of themselves in the world. If anybody reading this has Varón Dandy memories, pleasse feel welcome to share them in the commentary section!

In the next part of this article I'll discuss the actual smell of Varón Dandy - a lovely, clearly old-fashioned scent to my nose - and why I believe it is a cousin of the more illustrious and celebrated Knize Ten.    

Thyme of Mani

Thyme of the Mani at Tiganis

The Mani peninsula, second finger from the left of the Peloponnese hand, is an arid place; its inhabitants scraped by for centuries on subsistence agriculture and piracy. The government encouraged olive cultivation in the 19th century and one sees little else there in terms of husbandry. There was in fact a great exodus - to Athens, America and elsewhere and today many villages are deserted. Urbanized Maniots may return from the city for the weekend or holidays and I suppose it is the kind of place that you may leave, but that never leaves you. Kith and Kin reach deep here.

 The Greeks of the Mani, particularly the inner region, were fierce clannish warriors steeped in bloody feuds for centuries until they united to challenge (the somewhat nominal) Ottoman sovereignty, beginning the Greek independence movement. Blood feuds, family towers and the pre-Christian tradition of the myroloja - deeply moving, spontaneous, yet intricate grieving chants performed by the women otherwise relegated to the sidelines of this patriarchal society upon somebody's death - are what the Mani was known for. Patrick Leigh Fermor, the wonderful Anglo-Irish travel writer was so impressed with the region he not only wrote a book about it but settled and concluded his life there, not the least, I believe, because the emotional release of the myroloja spoke to his own deeply buried demons which he had unsuccessfully tried to run from by his profuse travelling and drinking. He writes, most insightfully:
     

Patrick Leigh Fermor, "Lamentation" in: Mani. Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (London: John Murray, 1958)

Such a harsh society produced such deep wisdom, as the harsh environment of the Mani brings forth incredible beauty and life intensity. Rarely have I been more strongly in the moment, fully aware, mentally, emotionally, sensorily of myself and my surroundings and their interaction than in these landscapes so barren, yet so full of sight, sound and, of course, smell. All places of the Mediterranean have their specific herbal smellscapes and the Mani is no exception. You can taste it in the stern, almost bitter honey the Maniot bees make and its emblem to me became the thyme that flowered with abandon across the stony terrain besides dusty roads and pathways: bright violet blossoms challenging the dusty ochre and washed out green surrounding them and a smell and flavor so wonderfully strong and pungent it outdoes the wild sage and garlic even. Those plants live hard, they have little to go on and their strength is wonderfully evident, inspring and enlivening in the bite of their oil. The thyme of the Mani is like a myroloja of nature, singing of the hardship and loss that is part of existence, yet therein affirming life to the fullest, exuberantly and with a firm, clear voice: here am I, beautiful, unique, safely nested at the bosom of mother earth and brimming with the force of father sun. Mourn the dead to feel you are living. 

Tigani, the "frying pan" which harbors the remains of the old great castle of the Mani, salt pans all across the handle, and bushes of windswept thyme