Ouder than Bombs - A Best of Aloeswood

The extensive Oud-hype in "niche" perfumery has been an object lesson in how this marketing regime works: on fashionable trends rather than creativity, as business rather than art, as a branch of the mainframe aromachemical industry rather than a countercultural and economic project by aesthetic elitists. "Oud" became completely dissociated from the actual natural product, a rebranded signifier representing exclusivity, rarity, mystical oriental traditions on the marketing side, but a stereotypical woody iso-e-super base in terms of actual scent. The usual highly profitable game of high-flying illusions above  a bland mainstream safety net.     
Of course, such corruption is not specific to western capitalism. Oud is a substance so rare and yet so highly desired in the Middle and Far East, that its sources have been plundered as wrecklessly as those of musk and sandalwood, while the market has been swamped for years with inferior products, stretched with or entirely consisting of either low grade materials or synthetics. Even extremely high prices offer no protection from forgery. Thus it will take a very experienced nose and a very trusting relationship with suppliers, or even better producers, to get at the real thing. One should always keep in mind Jean Paul Guerlain's story from his wonderful "My Journeys in the World of Perfume" about seeking a sandalwood supplier for Samsara, thus travelling through the remotest countryside of India near Nepal only to find "neatly lined-up drums bearing the labels of companies well-known in the perfume industry!" (p. 91)
Dominique Dubrana of La Via del Profumo, of whose work I have clearly outed myself as a great admirer previously, has chosen a different route. Armed with the deep respect of the natural perfumer for his or her materials, he has embarked on a journey with a number of members from basenotes to create refined Ouds which put the true high quality oil at the center, but carefully mounted as a precious jewel with a ring of accentuating materials. Fittingly named Oud Caravan No.s 1, 2, & 3, I have graciously received samples of these labors of olfactory love and shall be writing about them, as I explore these complex fragrances. The Ouds are quite distinct, and I shall begin today by noting their primary opening characteristic:
No. 1: decomposing foliage. A sharp clear impression based upon the childhood memory of playing adventurous games upon huge steaming mounds of leaves which were slowly turning to humus. Fruity-earthy-smoky-rotting this takes me right back to that moment in the past
No. 2: herbal-spicy ambery wood. The most accessible of the trio as it references well-known factes of perfumery.
No. 3: horse stables. That unique sweetness of horse's bodies and their dung mixing with the sweet hay of their feed,  a peat-fire burning nearby. This one best confirms my theory that if you love those phenolic peat-sated Islay Malts you cannot but enjoy Eaglewood as well. 


These are just impressions from the first seconds of smelling - the caravan has not yet crossed through the city gates, but a central theme of the journey has been clearly established. Too fascinating not to continue onward, and the experience happily makes you forget the dreary legions of industry banalities that besmirch the name "Oud," here returned to its true glory.

Image courtesy of www.scenicreflections.com

on the term "functional" in clothing, perfumery and food

In Germany "Funktionskleidung," i.e. functional clothing is the uniform of the middle class, especially as regards jackets.Legions walk around in hiking or trecking gear by Jack wolfskin, or, if you wish to be more exclusive, The North Face, or, if you're a trendy pseudo-elitist, perhaps Moncler. The term functional as applied to these synthetic textiles is ambivalent. On the one hand it (rightly) suggests that they are purely functional, without any pretension to style or aesthetic expression. On the other, they (wrongly) seem to suggest, that a traditional Crombie, Chesterfield, Duffle or Caban made of wool  is somehow dysfunctional or at least a lot less functional. Which may be true in the antarctic or when climbing the Nanga Parbat, but certainly not in some Western European city center.
Likewise, functional food conveys the image that its "conventional" alternative somehow fails to  function in terms of  providing specific nutrients, which the latter, as a redesigned industrial product sold at a premium supposedly does perfectly. Of course, the primary function of functional food is to generate profits for the food industry and little else. Again, nobody in the prosperous parts of the world requires complements of this sort to a regular, intelligent diet.
In fragrance, the distinction between functional and "haute" perfumery is old and seems entirely sensible. The former employs perfumery a means towards modifying (theoretically: improving) a product, be it cosmetics or car seats; the latter constitutes perfumery as an aesthetic end in itself aimed only at titillating our noses. But there's the rub. I doubt this distinction is still capable of being maintained in view of the nature of the perfume industry today. For one there is not much "haute" in most "haute perfumery" these days. The great mass of releases are formulaic, redundant, assembly-line concoctions made from the cheapest available materials and the only way you can tell them apart is by the Potemkin image campaign they are dressed up with. In fact, it is often hard to tell a perfume from a cleaning product, because both use the very same materials. Thus, to me, Jean Claude Ellena's Jardin series for Hermès smells in no way like gardens, or like luxury, but like a series of airport toilets heavily deodorized with various fruit-and-floral scented sanitary products (Frankfurt "uses" Un Jardin sur le Nil"). And this is the work of one of the grand present-day perfumers, so it is said, who has more time and funds on his hands than most.
Besides industry policies dictating the cheapening of perfume, there is also a problem on the consumer end. A lot of people's noses have been entirely denatured. We all know of the tests with children who prefered artificial strawberry flavors in yoghurt to the real fruit, because they had been socialized into viewing the former as "strawberry" and could not handle the complexity, refinement and sensory challenge of the real thing. Well, most people are so overexposed to functional perfumery that apparently they no longer realize how strong and far from natural smells fabric softener, cleaning, and cosmetic products smell. When I sleep in so-treated bedsheets, I have to wash my pyjamas - sometimes twice - because from contact alone they reek to the heavens of "April-fresh" dihydromyrcenol infusions.Consumers seemingly don't mind or even demand of their personal fragrance to reproduce the virtual smells of their chemicalized environment - a vicious circle from an outside perspective, but a wet dream for Symrise or Givaudan. Ultimately, 99.9% of  perfumery today is functional - it's primary function is generating "haute profit." Like everything (and everybody) else in a neoliberal system, that is the criterion by which it will be judged. Happy 1984, err, 2012 y'all.

Smoke and Mirrors in perfumery and politics

Just read on basenotes about the apparent crisis of the house of Montale. It seems this perfume (and watch etc.) house is the brainchild of a Palestinian entrepeneur, Ammar Atmeh, based in the United Arab Emirates, who used Pierre Montale as a French "de luxe" front, the latter perhaps not even being involved with actual perfume creation and raising the question whether the stories about Montale's service to Arab royalty are true or just so much PR. As a house Montale's made a few nice fragrances (I personally enjoy Royal and Black Oud and would like to try Cuir d'Arabie), but their release policy bordered on the absurd in terms of quanitity, redundancy and confusing naming. They also seemed less than well-organized in terms of communications and PR (involuntary guerilla-marketing?).
While an end of Montale would not be a dramatic loss to pefumery at this point, it will be interesting to see whether further facts emerge from a possible mud slinging contest (apparently Messrs. Montale and Atmeh are doing battle over the trademark, which is why Montale perfumes have been recently appearing under the name "Tanelli" - so now it's an Italian front?). Also one can safely anticipate the appearance of lots of Montale perfumes on ebay and other grey market outlets, so fans will be able to stock up.

I gather that this is a sober lesson on never believing any of the marketing BS perfume houses invest so much energy in - except if you happen to enjoy the illusion - and simply to focus on the scent in front of you. Whether it's a fake M. Montale, a reengineered Count d'Orsay, Creed's phoney perfume history, or even Guerlain's real pre-LVMH history - it says nothing about the nature or quality of the product you are paying big $ for now. A few artisans aside, behind the dreamworld of perfume lie multinational cosmetics and chemical giants and slick business plans, big business and new economy and not all that much craft or art. You can smell the result in every department store. 

It's all the more vital that bloggers, since nobody else wants the job, apparently, do what they can to focus on what Andy Tauer christened "perfumism" - the sphere of quality-driven artisan perfumery, while contributing to as much transparency as is possible of the smokes and mirrors business of perfume. Certainly  pro fumum, burnt offering to the gods, has always also served the purpose of mystifying truths uncomfortable or not desired to be seen. Smoke gets in your eyes. Ask the Greeks and Italians, whose governments have just been taken over, without democratic legitimiation by the people at large, by so-called technocrats, which is just another name for the consultants and bankers who were responsible for the banking and Euro-crisis in the first place and are now supposed to solve it (hello to Mr. Geithner back in the US). Both Mario Monti of Italy (ex-EU commissar and Goldman Sachs advisor) and Lucas Papademos (former chief of Greece's  central bank and VP of the European central bank) are part of the "Frankfurt Group" a coterie of  functionaries who installed the dysfunctional EURO system fully aware of the potential consequences and beholden to the interests of big finance rather than ordinary Europeans (English readers check here for more) That's what their policies look like, too. The whole thing stinks. Like a cheap perfume.              

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Perfume is Dead. Long Live Perfume

Classical Perfumery is dead. You hear this a lot these days, and contrary to Mark Twain, who could reply to his premature obituary that "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,"this artform most likely is indeed as deceased as the famous Monty Python parrot .
The simple course of time with its inevitable transformations of tastes, the hegemony of accountants at the corporations who control 95% of the market, the interests of the aromachemical giants, and the regulatory policies of IFRA reflecting those interests have combined to make so many nails in that coffin over the last decades (honorable mention goes to the wreckless non-sustianable exploitation of natural resources like Mysore sandalwood, rosewood etc. pp.).  Anyhow, when the epitome of perfumist integrity Andy Tauer is creating Pentachords rather than a second L'Air du Désért Marocain one could cynically assume he is not just playing with concepts, but perhaps preparing for the future status quo of scent creation.
But... I do not want to play the cry-baby here insisting on being pacified with Vintage Sous-le-Vent and this won't be a reactionary rant (although I love a good reactionary rant if it's in the name of endangered cultural heritage rather than endangered privileges). I just think that the situation raises the question of where the art, rather than the business, shall go from here, other than down the drain. And I certainly hope that what is currently widely offered as "niche" is not the conclusive answer, because that is too frequently striclty business involving very little in terms of art. While most niche start-ups just seem to be hollow business plans serving as storefronts for generic products from Symrise, Givaudan or IFF, many of the great niche names seem to have entered a phase of stagnation. Lastly, little is to be expected of the grand old houses in terms of creative boldness, even less as they become firmly controlled LVMH subsidiaries. The vanguard will be found among small operators with a vision, be it one-person natural perfume houses or other kinds of rugged creatives who rise to the highest standards from a belief in what they are doing. And perhaps the good news is that these kinds of folks can more easily find audiences these days through web-networks, and that they have new exciting materials at hand to complement and enrich what is left of the traditional palette. CO2 extraction and the fractioning of naturals have yielded some fascinating results and while technology per se may not produce aesthetic advances, we all know the beginning of classical perfumery lay in the chemical revolution and the new methods of extraction and synthesis it yielded.
This brings me to Undergreen perfumes, a project launched by two French fellows, Patrice Cardenoso und Jérôme Bonnet, who hired Fabrice Olivieri of Trends Lab to create their two perfumes, White and Black. Since I translated their PR material from English into German, you may consider me biased, as well as competent to judge its quality, which I found problematic linguistically and in style. I wish even smaller houses would realize the necessity of investing effort and money into well-made, culturally sensitive translations of their ad copy - it represents them and falls back on them when producing undesired chuckles rather than an atmosphere of luxury and desirability. Undergreen does not hold back with bathos when celebrating its unique selling point: embodying a new style of natural perfumery rejecting "aromatherapeutic" "new-age" aesthetics for a contemporary, trendy niche-style while scrupulously emphasizing natural origins and sustainable practices. It reminds me a bit of Ernest Callenbach's "Ecotopia," a very American ecological novel from the 70s which fuses faith in technology and Yankee ingenuity with Hippie eco-counterculture. Or of Steve Jobs. Yes, fans of Apple aesthetics will love these perfumes, too. Now this sounds like and could verily be just another marketing angle in an increasingly crowded market of high-end perfumery, but to my nose, the concept actually works and is genuinely reflected in the perfumes. I do not know to what extent the naturals employed here are manipulated in spinning cone columns or the like, but the fact ist: Black and White smell like throroughly trendy niches, without sporting what I find obnoxious about thoroughly trendy niches. Black is certainly not nearly as saturnine as the ad copy may suggest. As someone reared on truly dark vintage scents I would class this as easy-to-wear and downright pleasant. It's a bit like a de luxe version of mat; very male with its black licorice notes - but in high resolution 3-D quality. Plus there's a nice phenolic "Islay Malt" birch (and Oud?) note. In sum Black is a moderate-to-light and very pleasant modern gourmand fragrance, which excels by taking a trendy melange of notes (coffee, incense, oud, guajac) to a higher level by avoiding the usual synthetic suspects.  As a classicist I could use more murkiness, skankiness etc. here, but that's not the point - it's that this is a well-made, beautifully smelling scent in a contemporary style. I'm impressed. The same logic applies to White. It's a white (surprise!) floral (jasmine, ylang, tuberose, orange blossom, iris are all there) of great transparency, spiced up with minty zest and coconut. Touches all the bases of hipness but goes on to score a home-run quality-wise. I think it beats nasomatto's Narcotic Venus to a pulp (although it's much less muscular).
In sum, I believe Undergreen are making a meaningful addition to the perfume market and one of the most interesting launches this year (note: I was only paid for translating, not for writing this - but in any event, smell for yourself). Next, the queen of transparency, Mme. Giacobetti should work for these guys (not to diminish the accomplishment of Fabrice Olivieri in the least). I'd love to see her rendition of a green fougère in this line.

The Fall of Creed

One of the interesting aspects about the house of Creed is its unusually large portfolio of gentlemen's scents. Creed is, in fact, a house men are a good deal more enthusiastic (and quarrelsome) about than women and much of its image seems targeted at aspirational males. While I will happily acknowledge the quality of Jasmine Impératrice Eugénie, Fleurs de Thé Bulgarie, Ambre Cannelle, Angélique Encense (all of which can easily be worn by men, of course) Creed's reputation to me rests primarily on a series of very classicist masculine/unisex scents, most of which were conceived between 1975 and 1985, when Cool Water's pre-incarnation Green Irish Tweed announced a shift towards a modern citrus-aquatic and a more noticeably mainstream synthetic style embodied by Millésime Impériale, Royal Water, Silver Mountain Water, Himalaya, Original Vetiver and Santal and others (Bois du Portugal of 1987, as well as Neroli Sauvage and Royal Delight of 1994, were beautiful throwbacks to the older trad style). It is among the old school Creeds that I have found many of my most beloved autumnal scents, which rate 5 stars in my book and to which I always return. There's the soft smoky wood and sharp lavender of Bois du Portugal, the clovey-spicy herbacity of Royal Scottish Lavender; the warm sweet luxuriantly fruity Royal English Leather and its florally augmented cousin Royal Delight; the blend of outdoorsy naturalness and high end barbershop sophistication of Baie de Genièvre Feuilles de Canneliers (juniper and cinnamon); the pomander-potpourri glory of Orange Spice, the green and creamy Mysore beauty of Bois de Santal and the stunning complexity of the sweet, harsh, floral, spicy, warm, manly and formal Vintage Tabarôme. Perfect companions for thick cashmere sweaters, rough vintage Tweeds and elegant tuxedos I could do with no more than these thoughout the dark, but festive season and feel both perfectly well-groomed, elegant and comfortably insulated from the elements a well as being aesthetically attuned to them. These essences, brimming with fine naturals and eloquently quoting the traditions of 19th and early 20th century craft, truly light up autumn, like an olfactory painting of a richly colored New England forest. It is thus a shame that so many of them are no longer available, or at best as limited exclusives not affordable for middle class mortals. The fact is, when I got to know Creed, the house had already long turned towards a style which I personally don't care for and the vestiges of its former philosophy are disappearing for good. I understand that a firm has to go where the money is, to an extent, and it's not with vintage fogeys. But recent company policy seems to reflect the all-to-prevalent "keeping up with the Niche-Jones" mentality of jacking up prices while moving towards a blander "John Doe niche" style that bears the marks of Givaudan or Symrise molecules rather than a master perfumer. Autumn, for all its harvest riches, can be a melancholy season. But I find some consolation that when spring comes around, there will be some other Creed classics in my collection for now: Cypres Musc, Sélection Verte, Neroli Sauvage and Bois de Cedrat are waiting in the wings. And when these are gone for good, a handful of perfumers around the world will still be there, crafting new delights, faithful to the true artisan creed. You'll read about them here.

jekyll & hyde

More news from the Eau de Cologne front. Askett & English is a recently launched firm from Marlow in bucolic Buckinghamshire. Askett is the name of a nearby hamlet, not one of the owners, The double name  is supposed to suggest English (fragrance) tradition (think Turnbull & Asser in shirts, Dege & Skinner in suits and of course the high end Czech & Speake, the mid-range Truefitt & Hill, or the TK Maxx bargain bin favorite Asquith & Somerset), as do the restrained packaging (slightly reminiscent of the old Crabtree & Evelyn) and the copy on the website. The Cologne duo of "Essential" and "Absolute" is currently available in Britain at Les Senteurs, outfitters Harvie & Hudson and a number of other reputable addresses. A&E dons the mantles of "artisan perfumery," the "tradition of classic cologne,"and "rare quality and taste." A tall order for a fragrance start-up, but we saw Grossmith pull it off (admittedly, with a long, rich history to draw upon).

Is all this backed up by the fragrances? I believe not. Essential and Absolute (strange names for Eau de Colognes, is this a borrowing from Atelier's "Cologne's Absolue" concept?) are actually a bit Jekyll & Hyde for me. The former is a decent aromatic citrus, the official notes being lemon, bergamot, aromatic herbs, lavender, jasmine, tonka, cedar, vetiver. There's nothing English about it in style, the most obvious reference to me being Goutal's Eau du Sud (A & E do in fact refer to their scents "recalling summers spent in Italy and France."). Essential pales in direct comparison, both in construction, which shows synthetic tailends compared to the flawless natural impression of Eau du Sud, and oil quality. It's a crowded genre to begin and Essential lacks both the ambition to compete with the very best in the field and a new twist which would set it apart from many similar fragrances. I'd roughly class it with Taylor of Old Bond Street quality-wise, who sell at a third of the price of A&E. 

Absolute is a 90s aquatic citrus, pure international style with nothing Britsh or traditional about it. The light bergamot note is overpowered by a generic synthetic cocktail to produce the typical fabric softener effect known from Gendarme and a gazillion other fragrances and "fresh-fragranced" products. If you're a fan of Truefitt & Hill scents, i.e. like the whole Victorian packaging bit but actually prefer a modern aquatic vibe in your fragrance, then this might be for you. As everyone who knows my tastes is aware of, I cannot stand aquatics and this one is no exception. At least it comes cheaper than Serge Lutens' cruel joke, the ridiculously redundant L'Eau. 

A & E has chosen a currently very tight market for itself, with every fragrance house and their grandmother having  issued an Eau de Cologne in recent years. All I can say is good luck.

Meanwhile, my off-the-cuff recommendations for "fortified" Colognes remain:

Monsier Balmain (lemon/bergamot)

Guerlain AA Pamplelune (Grapefruit)

MPG pour le jeune homme (neroli)

MPG Fraiche Baidane (lime, mandarin)

Annick Goutal Eau du Sud or Detaille Aeroplane (aromatic citrus)

Eau Sauvage (bergamot)

Eau de Guerlain (simply brilliant) 

     

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)