Patou pour homme

So, is it the greatest men's fragrance of all times? That would almost be something of a backhanded compliment in a business where the all-time classics are almost entirely "pour elle" - the L'Origans, Mitsoukos, Shalimars, Tabac Blondes, Chanels. Let me thus boldly state that Patou pour Homme ist one of the greatest perfumes of all times, period. And this is not a question of subjective preference - the near mystification of this fragrance is for once justified, for Jean Kerléo truly created an aesthetic and conceptual masterpiece for the ages, a dazzingly beautiful and technically mindblowing astrolabe of scent in which the spheres of Fougère, Chypre and Oriental are entwined in perfect harmony, a miniature cosmos with an invisible and inexplicable mechanism.

Looking at the construction plan, i.e. the scent pyramide, in its most explicit and, I believe, accurate version from the "H&R Duftatlas," one first notices the plethora of materials: Lavender - Hay (Coumarin) - Moss form the Fougère-Axis; Petitgrain, Patchouli, Moss and Leather, that of Chypre; Cinnamon, Jasmin, Sandalwood, Olibanum, Castoreum, Ambergris, Vanilla and Tonka make up the Oriental. Added to this are clary sage, basil, carnation, geranium, vetiver and spruce.

In the beginning Fougère appears on the horizon, a tartly herbaceous lavender, almost strenuous by today's standards. But soon a spicy sweetness rises in the background and a three-dimensional scent-space opens up as the astrolabe magically unfolds. Patou pour homme becomes more accessible now and the cinnamon planet becomes increasinghly potent over the next twenty minutes, accompanied by jasmin and carnation. What an olfactory "sight": Fougère lighting up the sky and oriental waxing beside it and rather than interfering beginning a beautful cosmic pas de deux. But it doesn't stop there: the mediterranean herbs have already gently heralded the chypre (the petitgrain will have done so as well, but is probably weaker now than it was when the juice was young) which now rises on its green orbit, supported by vetiver and spruce, as a patchouli-moss complex (and yes, some components spritely jump between the genres or connect them. Amazingly, instead of growing thicker with increasing complexity, the masterpiece gains in transparency, it remains an aerial ballet. Ètonnant! Monsieur Kerléo, how did you do it?

When Patou pour homme is frequently identified as either a fougère, chypre or oriental, it is so classified by the famous blind wise men each touching one part of the elephant, by astronomers who can only see their segment of the heavens - but Kerléo's creation is the cosmic whole, an unfathomable transformation of the aesthetic brutalism of the powerhouse era with its sometimes excessive "everything but the kitchen sink" attitude into masterful harmony. I do not believe this has ever been achieved before or after with such grace and today it would be well-nigh impossible due to the unavailability of certain raw materials alone, not to speak of regulatory limitations. I doubt that most contemporary perfumers trained on post-modern fragrance aesthetics would even be able (or willing) to create such a perfume or even just copy Kerléo's formula. It borders on alchemy and one is tempted to embrace a Robert Johnson-like narrative, in which the ability to weave this masterpiece required a deal with the devil. But for that to be true Patou pour homme is too much the embodiment of a divine order of the fragrance world, which perfume adepts must and should admire and enjoy both with awe and deepest pleasure. For this is the ultimate of its achievements: that with all its amazing clock-work-like complexity and sublime artfulness, this weave of scent projects seamless, effortless perfection,which, moderately applied, will even smell agreeable to an unschooled 21st-century nose.

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/

jitterbug perfume from a garden of delights

Natural perfumer Anya McCoy is a witch, which obviously should be understood as a compliment. It doesn't require mentioning that her creations do not smell like typical synthetic-plus-natural products, but they also transcend the aromatherapy clichés of many natural fragrances. In fact, they speak of a deep wisdom about all manner of plants, as the herb women of yore passed it on from generation to generation. Thus witch (did you know the Royal Mail even features a lovely witch on a stamp? It's Nanny Ogg from Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld, a character worthy of emulation by all of us).
I like to believe that I would smell this wisdom in Anya's perfumes even without knowing about her magic garden in Florida, her ethnobotanical studies and long involvement in organic gardening. They have a certain "je ne sais quoi" that comes about when people genuinely and deeply live what they do ( I'm not being paid for writing this, though please note the samples were provided free of charge :-) ).

I'll be posting about several fragrances from "Anya's Garden" in weeks to come, but Pan deserves an article of its own. It brought a smile to my face the first time I smelled it and still does. Why? Well, for starters, it's a very nice, classic ambery Fougère made from superb materials. That's a good and rare thing and I'm giving bonus points to every perfume these days that will not clobber my nose with cheapo synthetic redundancies because the perfumer had no budget, no time or no more ideas (oh yes, I'm talking $$$$ niche here, not drugstore stuff).

But there's more, beyond the dusty green opening (cedar, hay, lavender), a strong, but really good, non-headshop patchouli that picks up on the dryness and builds a bridge to the gently sweetened beeswaxy drydown (but nothing here is sticky in the least). That "more" is the (billy) goat's hair tincture amply discussed by all reviewers of this scent, which makes the whole thing "Pan out" (cough!). It's not skanky - you have to deduct the droppings, pee and other barnyard details from the animal. This may be a rutty goat, but it is proudly-standing-on-top-of-Olympus-Mons-clean. It's not even erotically animalic (at least in an obvious way), as the homage to Tom Robbins' ribald novel Jitterbug Perfume would suggest, but really quite well-behaved  - definitely there, though, and certainly recognizable if you've spent time around hairy animals. It also seems to modulate the other notes and works nicely to harmonize them in Pan, as it perfectly connects with the coumarinic aspect of the lavender and the leafy-earthy patchouli. Pan can be applied generously, as sillage is rather moderate and it isn't too lasting either (the presence after an hour is very subtle). Great fun while it lasts though, just as those encounters with the horned God, and a beautiful perfume for men and venturous women which one should have around if only to sniff the bottle. My only suggestion would be to release a flanker (Pan-Demonium?) which would sufficiently dirty the original up in the direction of Jicky to create a flat-out erotic variant - a challenge when avoiding civet, but I really think Billy the goat is full of potential. 

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/PanandDaphnis.jpg)

Penhaligon's Shenanigans

I'd love to own a suit by Norton & Sons. That's the Savile Row bespoke tailoring establishment featured in Penhaligon's campaign for their most recent release Sartorial. The choice makes sense as Norton's current owner Patrick Grant is trying to straddle the low-key conservatism and discretion that defines Savile Row houses and the contemporary branding necessary to keep an operation in the black these days. Penhaligon's, while no longer British-owned, plays on its Victorian heritage, while its fragrances have meanwhile become quite contemporary and certainly lack the exclusivity - and sadly too often the quality - of a £ 5000 suit. If I were managing this house, I'd release a nearly-all-natural, über-quality line of historical scents at £ 1000 a pop to show Creed and Clive Christian what luxury REALLY means and build some neo-Victorian upstairs-only cachet - but that's a different story. Quite. For as Octavian Coifan has argued, convincingly, I believe, Sartorial is really Marks & Sparks in bespoke drag, i.e. a very nice, middle-brow 1970s fougère with a Duchaufour update and a touch of luxury. When I "haze" Sartorial on, I can look past the modernist metallic ozonism which is supposed to represent the shears and steam of a tailor's workshop. Applied directly last week, though, this Eau de Toilette went through an uncanny evolution on my skin. It started off smelling like some cheap toilet cleaner, the likes of which is encountered in public buildings, schools etc. Just nasty no-budget functional perfumery stuff - forget all the fancy bespoke imagery. It next progressed to a poor-man's Burt Reynolds retro-macho-cheapo-deodorant product. Slowly it approached the level of haute - well, sort of - parfumerie (cheap Rive Gauche knock off?). At last (all this was taking much too long considering the price tag) the high quality beeswax note started to take over and things fell into their proper place to make a nice, allround masculine with a touch of elegance. And curiously reminiscent of Dukes of Pall Mall's Belgravia, a forgotten EdT from 1983 which is also a beeswaxy fougère, but made from far better materials. What I learned from this is firstly, that Sartorial is the kind of fragrance for me, where mode of application is a vital factor and secondly, that I will wear Belgravia with my Savile Row suit. Which is not from Norton & Sons, but a vintage (of course) piece by James&James.