Castile to Hampstead, via Milano

The trend towards reviving Eau de Cologne shows no sign of abating, which is a good thing for a classic cologne fogey such as myself. I was graciously gifted with a bottle of Washington Tremlett's Hampstead Water recently (officially a fougere, but to me it's a high-longevity EdC), which I had been most eager to try, as that brand's Black Tie is one of my perennial favorites. Both scents happen to be creations of Shirley Brody's, a key figure in contemporary British perfumery. She was involved in the rebirth of Penhaligon's in the late 70s as well as the conception of Czech & Speake's aromatics line, which, before the recent relaunch of inferior reformulations, constituted the pinnacle of English-style fragrance craft (ironically, Made in Italy). One of her more recent endeavors is the little known XPEC line which manages to combine an excellent perfume with the most horridly misguided branding (both the name and the packaging are incompatible with the classic contents that would seem to appeal to traditionalist, straight-razor-shaving, Savile-Row-clad fragrance aficionados). But she has also been a major force behind the Tremlett brand, thus continuing the cooperation that once existed between Czech and Speake and the fragrance firm of Forester in Milan, who were responsible for such masterpieces as C&S No. 88, Domenico Caraceni and the aforementioned Black Tie, as well as the hard-to-find Gianni Campagna series with gems such as Vento Canale. Perhaps, then it was the through the Brody connection that Hampstead Water immediately reminded me of Penhaligon's Castile. Not that the former is a clone or anything and I doubt Brody was involved with Penhaligon's anymore when Castile was released in 1998. The similarities likely result from the simple fact that both are Eau de Cologne style fragrances, HW featuring bergamot, orange, lavender, water mint, leather and musk, while Castile is built around neroli, petitgrain, bergmot, orange blossom, rose, woods and musk. As the notes suggest, the tops are quite similar, but Hampstead is a good deal fresher via the mint, while Castile is defined by the warm orange and rose interplay. Still, it somehow makes sense to me to see Brody's spirit hovering above all these waters like a fairy godmother of English perfumery. I guess I have a crush on her...Anyway, in the geography of Eau de Cologne, Castile is closer to Hampstead Heath than you may think - just travel via Milan.


Image: "The Writer" at Hampstead Heath with a bottle of Castile

Of good smells and bad taste

In the 1890s nouveau-riche Americans shocked Old Europe with their unique combination of immense wealth and what appeared to the English, French, German, Italian etc. better classes to be an utter lack of cultivation. Starting in the 1990s it was Russian oligarchs and their entourages who did their best to confirm the platitude that superwealth married to a lack of cultural sensibility will produce the most astounding aesthetic carbunkles. The gaudiness and excess of Moscow's superrich has been amply documented. Needless to say Old Europe's fashion & beauty businesses then and now, large and small, have always used their cultural capital to sell good taste - or bad - to the new money. A small but conspicuous Italian venture called Xerjoff, founded by Italians Sergio Momo and Dominique Salvo in 2004, has specifically targeted, as the name already suggests, the new rich Russians with an extensive and expensive line of perfumes. In fact, they do their best to make Creed and company look like drugstore scents.

Now, at first sight the whole affair could easily be dismissed as a typical hot air balloon. For starters, the English language copy on the website and product is appallingly faulty and vacuous, clearly the result of overly literal translation from the Italian by an amateur. As a former translator I have never understood this slovenly approach to language among international companies for whom image is essential. Is it so difficult to get feedback from competent native speakers? After all, how would you feel about a $300,000 Maserati whose computer system notifies you to "please to be putting on seat belting for driver safeties"?
Secondly, Xerjoff suffers from the industry epidemic that has now fully infected niche firms - throwing way too many products on the market in too little time. Xerjoff already features three distinct lines, the flagship XJ 17/17 (weak name) with four scents, Shooting Stars (twelve scents) and Casamorati (four scents). Such speed inevitably comes at the cost of originality, as even the best noses will be reworking established formulas.
Lastly, the styling of several of the products - particularly the high end Murano flacons of the 17/17 line and the faux retro Casamorati series - is an aesthetic nightmare. Whatever money can buy is thrown together to create costly kitsch that would make designers from Aalto to Wagenfeld rotate in their graves - though Jeff Koons may perhaps squeal with delight, as perhaps will the designated target group in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

BUT - VERY BIG BUT - setting aside the aesthetic repulsion and instant-niche skepticism, one delightedly discovers that the gaudy canisters do not contain some nameless industry swill of the "who cares what it smells like as long as it costs thousands" variety, but very high quality essences, some of them stunninghly beautiful and worthy to be smelled and worn by fragrance aficionados(few of whom will ever be able to afford them) rather than superficial millionaires. As I was told by someone who knows the numbers, Xerjoff, contrary to many supposedly high-end niche firms, actually invests unually high amounts of money into the best essences and is, in this respect, on par with quality-obsessed one-man houses like Tauer.

You can read numerous perfumista impressions on an extensive basenotes Xerjoff testing thread based on a sample extravaganza aimed at introducing/hyping the brand to/in the US, but I'll limit myself to three cases in point here:
XXY from the 17/17 line is an overly sweet, rather uninspired unisex (?) scent, so generic in its combination of fruit, floral and amber that you may just as well buy some $40 mainstream product, if you're in it for the perfume rather than the exclusivity experience. A 3/10 on the perfumery scale, but a 10 for nouveau-riche-silliness here.
Much more impressive is the 17/17 lines Xerjoff homme, a bow to the grand Knize Ten - equal, perhaps even superior in quality and a bit more rounded and creamy to suit contemporary tastes. Imagine K10 pushed in the direction of Creed's Royal English Leather and Lutens Cuir Mauresque. So, here we have a truly top-notch, if not highly original scent of deep, rich leather, suitably dark, but without excessive harshness. An 8 on the perfume scale for an excellent variation of tradition that may well become the personal preference of many a perfumista and will introduce nouveau-newbies to good rather than merely expensive perfume.
The big winner in this trio, though, is Kobe from the Shooting Stars collection (€ 384 for 50ml) - the best and most interesting men's neroli scent I have ever tried. Superb essence, supplied with unusual longevity, free of the unpleasant off-notes marring, e.g. Czech & Speake's (reformulated) or Norma Kamali's Neroli, and creatively blending citrus (bergamot and orange notes supporting the neroli) with resinous notes of labdanum, rosewood, styrax, benzoe and restrained oud. This is innovative, intelligent, beautiful and I want to know who did it. As to the price: considering that Creed was asking $ 405 for 50ml of a pretty synthetic-smellingAND short-lived green floral (i.e. Windsor) I'd say you're almost getting Kobe at a bargain. Ah, but let's not get snotty. If we leave all the hoollaballo aside, what we have here is a small house producing many good and several great perfumes for too small an audience. I hope those rich Russians appreciate just how fine these smells are, before the next luxury hype vies for their attention.

BONDage & Dominance

Bond No. 9 is one of those perfume firms which have succesfully commodified the concept of "niche perfumery," which, from an aesthetic angle, was initially meant to embody a vision of perfumery as a craft based on the integrity and artistic control of an inspired creator and which now represents a streamlined pseudo-exclusivity based on imaging and PR rather than the actual quality or originality of the product (read more about niche degeneration here). Its founder Laurice Rahme, who was called "an industry bête noire, combative and obstinate" in the NY Times, somewhat modelled the Bond approach upon Creed perfumes which she had distributed in the US before breaking with them, transforming that brand's largely invented Old World pomp & circumstance narrative into a Big Apple story feeding on the well-established global attraction of New York as the capital of glitz, urbanity, cosmopolitanism and diversity. Perhaps not surprisingly, some early Bonds are rather uninspired copycats of Creed's succesful Green Irish Tweed (Chez Bond) and Silver Mountain Water (Hamptons). As a matter of fact, the staggering number of 43 releases in the 8-year period of the company's existence pretty much precludes any true dedication to originality and creativity. Naturally, the scents are created by external noses working for the big aroma & scent giants. Out of the 36 Bonds reviewed by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, 22 are judged "awful" and "disappointing."
Perhaps it is amateur psychology to assume that Bond No. 9's guilt over its little plagiarisms and general creative redundancy (hardly uncommmon in the business) has pathologized into a damaging case of paranoia about evil forces threatening the company's identity. It does seem like the firm is projecting its own attitude towards perfume onto strangers which are then accused of haunting poor little Bond No. 9 (there's a David Lynch movie somewhere in here). It was only a rumour that Rahme was pivotal in effecting the ban of decant sales on ebay (a concerted effort by numerous perfume houses). What created major repercussions in the blogosphere was Bond's threat of suing a one-woman perfume operation for trademark infringement over using the word "peace" in the name of her perfume "Peace on Earth" - a term Bond seemed to believe was its own in the world of beauty products after having released the 9/11-inspired "Scent of Peace" (a generic fruity floral more deserving of the name "Scent of Wuss"). While it may be understandable that companies are particularly eager to protect their brands in this fluid virtual age (though it's quite obvious Bond did not have a case by a mile in this particular instance) the arrogant attitude that shone through Bond's undiplomatic handling of the matter left a bad impression among a major part of the perfumista community - but not bad enough apparently for history not to repeat itself. It has been reported that Bond No. 9 has warned the decanting service The Perfumed Court, via twitter of all things, to desist from decanting Bond No. 9 fragrances as this supposedly represents a trademark infringement. This is nonsense of course, as anybody has the right to dispose of their legally acquired property as they see fit, but the question is: doesn't Bond realize that TPC, known as a reliable and trustworthy source of decants to the perfumista community, is providing free marketing for their brand and bringing in new customers for them from all over the world? That should be considered an asset rather than a threat, especially in these times of recession and after an obvious miscalculation on the potential of the German market, which was seriously oversaturated with Bond No. 9 (half-price was a common site, it was going on the grey market for 60 Euros). If I had ever been interested in this line, which I was not, this heavy-handed approach would have cured me once and for all. It's time someone told this outit to stop pestering the perfume world with its mean-spirited corporate antics and mediocre wares and to desist from infringing upon his trademark rights. I mean Mr. Bond. James Bond.

Mecca or Monaco?

La Via del Profumo is the natural perfume studio of Dominique Dubrana, who crafts fragrance under the name of Abdes Salam Attar and is inspired by the mystic Islamic branch of Sufism. His fragrances have been hailed widely as transcending the traditional shortcomings of natural perfumes such as lack of structure, complexity and longevity. Even Luca Turin, who used to be quite skeptical about natural perfume, has given very high marks to Dubrana's compositions.

His latest "scent of the soul" was inspired by his trip to Mecca and is accordingly called Mecca Balsam. As part of the sampling/discussion group on basenotes for MB, I received a generous sample of the essence which I have studied over the last months. And I admit, understanding Mecca Balsam was itself something of a pilgrimage. I've revisited it again and again, as my sample permitted and from an initial discomfort and skepticism I have come to deeply appreciate it. I am, I suppose, a convert . To me Mecca Balsam is not soothing in the sense of providing complacent tranquility. It carries within it the whole spectrum of a pilgrim's path. Dusty, forlorn roads, rocky, forbidding terrain (the austerity and dustiness of dry resinous labdanum), the pleasure of being hosted by a gracious stranger (dry, but rich tobacco, sweet enticing tonka) the deep, sweet satisfaction of reaching the sacred destination and finding there: yourself (the divine licqourous wine of those amazing florals, soft, meditative frankincense interacting with the dry resins & the tobacco). The sum, thus, is greater even than its magnificent parts: rich, complex, distinct and yet with the typical subtlety of a natural perfume, or as Octavian Coiffan so aptly put it in his review, an archetypal oriental freed of excessive ornamentation.

The effect, surprisingly, is somewhat two-faced. Mecca Balsam does exude a spiritual quality worthy of its name and its creator's intentions. But make no mistake, it could just as well be employed to seduce those around the wearer in very worldly ways - like a subtler, more genteel Domenico Caraceni for, indeed, men of the world. The abscence within it - of the stereotpyical loud synthetic amber, of screechy metallic florals, of frankincense on ISO-e-Super-steroids - imparts it with a serenity and exclusivity that would make it grace a plain white pilgrim's tunic no less than the bespoke-tailored, gold-buttoned navy blazer and crisp white shirt of a yaughting millionaire. One can thus choose what sort of wealth one wishes Mecca Balsam to display - that of the pure spirit or that of the art of fine living. The latter may not have been part of Dubrana's vision, but it makes Mecca Balsam even more impressive and enticing as a work of fragrant art.

bittersweet musings under the boxtree

Here I am wearing an artefact, drops from one of those few forlorn bottles of the shipwrecked fragrance enterprise (un)known by the name Gobin Daudé. It's the first new - to me - fragrance in quite some time that has triggered reflections rather than just a mental shrug of the shoulders. I tried a few By Kilians this afternoon - it might have just as well been any other line - and found them just another permutation spit out randomly by the great niche perfume generator with its basic algorithms of absinth this and incense that plus iso-e and a tad of exotic gourmand. Uh yeah, me self-critically thinks, you're just a jaded fop with too many bottles of Dukes of Shmukes in your cupboard, but then I smell Sous le Buis, a real act, a quantum leap, of creativity, something refusing to conform to standard parameters, a natural perfume that no one could ever push into the aromatherapy corner, because it does those old names proud, those Guerlains, Carons, Chanels and sweeps the floor with all this ennervatingly conformist Vegas variety show playing 365 days a year, the Buxton-Duchaufour-Ellena Can Can. Yeah, you're geniuses, but I'm telling you the act, from where I'm sitting, is wearing pretty thin and who cares whether the manager made you do it. Call me a betamax bumpkin for praising a venture that failed, what's the point of making great perfumes that not enough people want to buy? Hell, ask the starving Schuberts, the impoverished Van Goghs. Victoire Gobin Daudé, wherever you are, you are a goddess, you have the power to breathe life into an assortment of oils, to grow a true French Rococo garden from molecules. You really do what a perfumer is supposed to do, to - apologies for borrowing Star Trek imagery rather than quoting Apollinaire - create a holodeck in a bottle. Here's a perfect rendition of a sculpted boxtree on a wistful, lusty spring day and as if that weren't enough you manage to remind me of the days when Nino Cerruti was a grand green masterpiece and show Jean-Claude what Eau de Campagne really should have smelled like. All this genius, all this beauty lost to a business plan that would not compute. Why? I don't know, don't even care, all I know is, I'm so tired, I'm so sick and tired (ah, my beloved Morrissey) of the mundane being sold as the sublime, at a premium. I've rarely played this game (no full retail for me, there are mouths to feed), but even just watching it is getting too much. But I'm no spoilsport, not that anyone would give a hoot for what I think, so this is for the eyes of hardened veterans, not to crush the enthusiasm of the young-nosed newbie. A salute to the few, who do no bow to the market, and as to the perfume industry per se, well, to quote the Mozzer once more, the world is full of crashing bores.

Craft and Modernity

Shockingly, my most satisfying acqusition in 2009 has not been a perfume - though it is perhaps not entirely unrelated to fragrance. Bear with me and find out whether you agree.
It was on ebay.uk that I stumbled upon the tea service pictured above. I had to have it and to my surprise managed to snatch it for a ridiculously low price (as in: "$500 for a bottle of the original 1882 Fougère Royale is a ridiculously low price"). You may not find the design overly impressive - functionalist ArtDeco, a typical 1940s bauhaus-inspired design - until I tell you that this set is actually older than Fougère Royale - pre 1872 to be exact. It is attributed (by Harry Lyons, Christopher Dresser: The People's Designer, p.205) to Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) perhaps the most radical and pioneering British designer of all times. A botanist by profession, Dresser promoted the adaptation of stuctural principles found in nature in design, as evident in his textile designs, while his boldly geometrical metalwork was also inspired by travels to Japan. Dresser wished to combine aesthetics, functionality and serial production, as well as being one of the first designers to sign his work, making himself a brand. He anticipated many bauhaus ideas by half a century. It's not surprising that Alessi still offers Dresser designs - you can purchase his radical teapot for a mere 4,000 Euros, the toastrack is a bit cheaper.
Now you understand why I had to have this (Art Nouveau, Art Deco and 'bauhaus' are my favorite design styles), but where in Jacques Guerlain's name is the perfume connection? Well, bingo. The blend of traditional craft and industrial modernity Dresser embodies immediately reminded me of the birth of modern perfumery pretty much coterminous with my wonderful tea set and embodied in the names of Coty and Guerlain. Coty reinvented perfume by embracing the products of new distillation technologies - super-pure power-absolutes previously unthinkable as well as synthetics such as coumarin and ionones. Coty and Guerlain also represented a new era of, by previous standards, mass production and professional marketing aimed at the new affluent middle class equipped with leisure and money and prone to consume the new wonder world of products, many of which had previously been reserved for the upper crust. Jicky is known to us as perhaps the living monument of the new modernism in perfume, both technically, aesthetically and sociologically and many of the principles and innovations it embodies are precisely those that define the work of Christopher Dresser. Thus, nothing could be more consonant than to pour myself a cup of Hajua Assam from my avant-garde teapot while wearing a fine old Guerlain (I personally prefer Mouchoir de Monsieur - 1904 - over Jicky) on my handkerchief. And dream of the glory days of (perfume) design.

making history III: the usable pasts of creed and farina

After a long hiatus we now conclude our look at history and perfume with two extremely juxtaposed approaches of perfume houses to their past: call it source-based history versus history as myth. According to Family Business Magazine the Perfume Houses Johann Maria Farina gegenüber dem Jülichsplatz and Creed are among the oldest family-owned businesses, tracing their beginnings to 1709 and 1760, respectively. Not surprisingly, their age and history plays a key part in both company’s image and marketing. Roughly 30,000 visitors annually tour the old Farina premises in the heart of Cologne known as the birthplace of Eau de Cologne, which house a store, museum and the current managing director Johann Maria Farina’s offices. The company stresses its 300-year dedication to quality, a glorious past as the leading perfume manufacturer for a 200-year period, and a wealth of illustrious clients. Similarly, Creed’s reputation is built around its role as purveyor to the rich and the beautiful, from the royal courts of yesterday to today’s Hollywood elite, as well as references to old artisanal traditions passed down from generation to generation. Both these firms do indeed have a genuine history, as opposed to the many brands who borrow past names but are really newly formed ventures. And yet, the way they deal with their histories could not be more distinct. Succinctly put, one could say that Farina Gegenüber has almost obsessively displayed its history to the public from the necessity of defending its position and reputation against innumerable plagiarizers and forgeries, boasting a series of 2000 court cases which has not yet ceased. Creed, on the other hand, has always felt a need to both obscure and rewrite its history from the desire of wishing to appear as a 250-year old fragrance house, rather than as a respected tailor’s who happened to dabble in fragrance and only became a perfume house proper in the late 1960s or beyond (there is little evidence even for this late period). The purpose here is not to judge these approaches, but to illustrate how two comparatively small perfume houses with no major PR budget use and have used history under differing circumstances to position themselves in a competitive market up into the present, where their businesses create status illusions and confirmations and emotional fantasies for high end consumers in the niche market. Such fantasies, as one should never forget, are the basic product perfume houses sell, for which their fragrances are simply carrier substances, like alcohol for essential oils.

Creed: A Royal Fantasy

The Creed entry in Family Business Magazine reads:

“In 1760 King George III appointed James Creed to make fragrances. In 1854 the company moved its operations from London to Paris. Both Prince Charles and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, commissioned the company to make scents for them. Today, owner Oliver Creed produces 238 fragrances.“

The problem is that such testimonials tend to be unsubstantiated and, more importantly, that there is no available evidence for the historical relevance, or even the existence, of Creed perfumes prior to the late 20^th century. The oldest flacon I have ever seen an image of seems to hark from the late 1960s or early 1970s and bears the name of Olivier Creed. Major visibility seems to have arrived in the 1980s with Green Irish Tweed.

No documents, novels, advertisements, letters of the 19^th or 20^th century mention Creed perfumes, while the family frequently appears in the context of tailoring. Fashion dictionaries and museums feature works by Creeds, but every perfume history I have read is silent. One of the rare statements from within the family is a ghost-written autobiography by one of its “black sheep” Charles Creed (1909-1966), the uncle of Olivier Creed. Primarily an account of his own exploits at tailoring and womanizing it does make references to the family history and its meteoric rise to fame after 1850, when Henry Creed opened a Paris office and collected Royal Warrants from the French Court and Queen Victoria for clothes and riding habits. While it may be that Creed furnished fragrances as well, as did Guerlain, Farina and other renowned names of the day in perfumery, there is simply no available evidence. The internet spews out frequently conflicting dates and wearers of older Creed perfumes, which in their present form cannot possibly have existed prior to the advent of modern natural-cum-synthetic based perfumery in the 1880s. The beautiful Vintage Tabarôme was thus supposedly made in 1876 for George IV (b. *1762, c.1820, d.1830), Green Irish Tweed for Cary Grant (1904-1986) – it is now undisputed that Pierre Bourdon collaborated on GIT, perhaps in the mid-1980s, and would rework some of its key ideas in Davidoff’s Cool Water. GIT just may have been Archie’s deathbed wish, but the facts do not actually compute.

Olivier Creed, then, has chosen to rewrite the complicated history of a fashion house’s 19^th century rise and post-WWII fall into a brand story for his own fragrance enterprise and it has been an unconditionally successful strategy that enables his company to charge a premium for its products in retail contexts. The pomp and circumstance surrounding Creed, from the imitation Prince of Wales ostrich plumes suggesting a Royal Warrant that does not exist, to the monotonous incantation of stock phrases and name dropping by Creed representatives and in PR pieces is also cause for derision, e.g. by Luca Turin, but admittedly, it is a spiel that most everyone in the business plays in one way or another.

Farina Gegenüber: History as a Weapon

Like Creed, Farina Gegenüber is a firm with a rich heritage, a fact that nearly broke its neck when it failed to adapt to changing consumer patterns after WWII. After a long, slow decline, the family bought back all stock in the company from outside investors and began reconstituting the brand as an exclusive niche firm, recreating its historical flacon designs, stressing its unique selling point as the original Eau de Cologne, and restricting sales to selected outlets who may not sell the brand’s discount nemesis, 4711. As with Creed, this has proven a successful strategy that invests the product with a high prestige value. But contrary to Creed, the history of the Farina fragrance is unusually well documented, as it had become the subject of conflicting claims by competing Eau de Cologne firms inventing their own foundational narratives and frequently stealing the Farina brand name ever since the late 18^th century. The Farina archive is one of the most complete company archives in the world, it has been used for a number of academic studies in economic history and it documents the history of Farina cologne extensively – Royal warrants, orders by the celebrities of the day (we are talking Goethe, not some American Idol runner-up), historical advertising. While this does not preclude different interpretations of Eau de Cologne history, a basic factual record from which to proceed is extant and available and has formed the basis for evidence in many of the court cases fought by Farina (and they did win them all). Does this mean that Farina Eau de Cologne is a more authentic or better perfume than, say, Creed’s Bois de Cedrat (a light citrus cologne supposedly formulated in 1875)? No. The Farina you buy today is also a reformulated product containing synthetics. It is meant to preserve and convey the spirit of the original while catering to the wishes of contemporary consumers, e.g. in terms of longevity. However, while Creed long emphasized its reliance on ancient infusion methods and avoided the mention of synthetics (there have been modest concessions in more recent PR blurbs, as would seem necessary considering the obvious high content of synthetics in most Creed releases since the mid-80s) Johann Maria Farina, who is a trained pharmacist and perfumer, openly embraces the ethos of modern (i.e. post 1880s) perfumery and its use of naturals with semi- and fully synthetic materials.

Creed and Farina have chosen very different paths to create “usable pasts” for their brand, which are themselves in many ways determined by the nature of those histories. They offer fascinating insights for the historian of smells into the depths and shoals of the past of perfumes as well as lessons on the fictions involved in fragrance branding for the student of perfume culture today. But for the simple lover of perfume truth lies only within the flacon and history - is bunk.

read making history II: the carthusian candidate
read making history, faking history