by Vince

rose/not rose

Photo by Ryan McGinley

Baked into “smell theory” (for lack of a better phrase) is the idea of the salubrious. Salubrious smells make you get up and go. They make you feel like doing something great, but they also make you feel that all is right in the world. Crucially—in today’s vernacular—these smells give you life.

This concept isn’t just perfumery mumbo-jumbo. Smells, above all, contain information: they signal what to eat or not eat; when to run away, to be alert; or to be calm and to enjoy yourself. That perfumery would incorporate this information for the benefit of the wearer seems more than natural. To do anything less would be to miss a tremendous opportunity.

Which brings me to the rose. Depending on your orientation the Rose is either the apex of perfume or a staid and conventional smell. Perhaps best perpetuated by the rose soliflore (a perfume built around one material), many rose perfumes are indeed staid and conventional, appealing to a more demure demographic who crave a sense of order and gentle pleasure. As a result, so many younger and young-ish people associate rose with older women or even (very unfortunately) with “potpourri.” Our most associative of senses would tell us to run and/or roll our eyes.

In the early 2000s Mark Buxton upended perfume trajectory with Comme des Garçons 2, a rich and unusually transparent rose fragrance that, although undoubtedly an oriental, works in multiple genres and smells of a rose deconstructed and reconfigured. It was not only an important achievement, it still smells very, very good. It formed a blueprint for new, modern roses that reconstructed the flower into a semi-alien new whole. Since then, landmarks have included Lyric Man and Lyric Woman for Amouage, Galop d’Hermès by the great Christine Nagel, and countless variations on the red in black pairing of oud and rose, which the Arab world invented centuries ago as supreme cultural technology. 

These post-modern retellings of rose reveal a surprising new aspect of the beloved and reviled material, and prove that it’s real character is both bracing and comforting at once. These new roses smell salubrious.

My people come from the Arab mediterranean and this bright and hearty rose is the one that I know. Smelling it in the Muscat style for the first time I felt a sense of recognition. I was nostalgic for some thing I could not have known in life.

Still, I do know it…somehow. The fascinating question remains: how? Did I simply smell a great perfume and rightly so fall in love with it? Do I just like rose? Perhaps. But I prefer to believe that something mysterious is at work. Recognizing beauty when you smell it is one thing. Coming home is quite another.

hanging in the heat

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When it gets hot, I sweat. And when I sweat whatever I’m wearing comes wafting off me like swamp gas. Even something relatively “light” like Comme des Garcons 2 Man can overwhelm. I found that out the hard way. The first time I ever wore Histoire de Parfums’ 1740 (in August) it never left me alone and not it a good way. It was a long time before I could wear it without feeling nauseated. Seriously.

So when things go bad, they go bad. Good thing the team at SMELL DORADO have cooked up a teeny-tiny list of summer-safe bets to get you started, perfect to pair with that white suit (or flip flops).

Kerbside Violet. Be warned, it’s a screamer. But this reedy gem from LUSH/Gorilla is fresh, green, and cheerful. Perfect for just about any summer activity.

Elie Saab Essence No. 2 Gardenia. One of the nicest white florals around. While most consider it a crowd-pleasing modern feminine, a heavy dose of woody notes make it a great masculine, too.

Amouage Figment Man. Want to smell like a basement from your childhood with a dash of classic locker room? Have I got the perfume for you!

Comme Des Garçons Odeur 71. Billed as an odd, arty “anti-perfume” this bottle is actually quite accessible and easy to love. Just don’t call it perfume.

Chanel Eau de Toilette. An unimpeachable and enduring way to beat the heat, rendered beautifully as only Chanel can. It won’t last too long on skin, but that’s the point.

Too good for this world

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Apple’s Jony Ive once said that people are very good at sensing how much care went into making something. The trouble is, care isn’t nearly enough. Even very carefully made products so often arise from an exploitative spirit, from the shabby way contributors are treated to the disregard for the well being of the audience. (Sadly, Apple does come to mind.) Miraculously, there remain brave souls who willingly give the customer a fair shake: people who charge less than they might and deliver more than they could. In the world of perfume, these companies are vanishingly rare. As niche perfumers drive prices sky high, the big brands have followed suit, charging more for cruder, shoddier products. Never has it been possible to spend so much on so little.

Which is why smelling Nicolaï’s New York Intense can actually bring me to tears. Patricia de Nicolaï didn’t have to put such lovely materials in the formula. She didn’t have to polish the stuff until it positively brimmed over with warmth and generosity. But, she did. And that generosity, that sensation of not just care but care for someone, is why I treasure her and why she deserves all her success–and much more. I imagine Mme de Nicolaï making perfumes, not for an abstract customer or market, but for a friend, and for someone to whom she holds herself accountable.

Of course, it smells great, too. I’ve always thought of New York–in any formulation–as the most comforting fragrance I know. No showy flashes. No modern cleverness. Just a fantastic melody played on keen instruments, its sumptuousness derived from de Nicolaï’s diligent tuning and counterbalancing. Unlike other master technicians–Dominique Ropion comes to mind–every choice, every careful turn adds up to delight. As I smell it I can feel my whole body relax.

The curmudgeons among us might say that she just happens to be really, really good at her job. That exemplary creations naturally create the effect of sentience, and thereby intention. But I’m an optimist. Her work is not just great but personable, making easy terms for those who would seek it. Her work is not challenging, but it is, in every sense of the word, satisfying.

Perhaps people like Patricia de Nicolaï were always meant to come scarce, but I think not. For those who listen, she can remind us to demand more and deliver better. I for one am paying attention.

I hate your soap

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Public bathrooms are a dicey affair. So rarely are they well-appointed enough to be comfortable, by the time you get to the sink, you’re just glad if there’s enough soap left for a good scrub. Generally, the soap smells fine. Or at least it’s inoffensive and gone soon enough.

Then there are those bathrooms–stocked by some batty, misguided fool–that contain, not just soap, but Soap. Imagine the olfactory equivalent of being followed around by a close-talking Ethel Mermen. If you’re trying to enjoy a meal, forget it! You’ll be stuck smelling that fruity/floral nonsense every time your hands get near your face. Dear IFRA, when you’re done “eliminating allergens” from our favorite classics, you might turn your attention to the real problem: compulsory hand soap smell tattoos.

Here are the few praiseworthy outfits that get it right…

Dr. Bronner’s

Their standard stuff with the blue label is my favorite. It smells exactly as soap should, with a jolt of peppermint. There’s a depth to the low end notes that remains ideally crisp, even as it fades. The hunt can end here, my friends.

Hospital soap

Sure, it smells chemical and industrial. It also isn’t trying to pretend to be anything else. If you’ve just had to hunt for your keys in a sewer drain or cope with a burst trash bag only this smell will convince you that your hands are now good and clean. And really, shouldn’t the smell of hand soap only ever serve as proof that you’ve washed properly?

Southwest Airlines lavatory hand soap

This one blew my mind. I was having a stressful visit to the airplane lavatory–timed just before the turbulence got bad enough to get me forcibly pinned to my seat–that I smelled something familiar. From the tiny steel sink came wafting a sweetly aldehydic smell not unlike Lutens’s La Myrrhe. Yes, it’s a bit like hearing Wagner coming out of a flip-phone, but it’s also a good bit of fun at a fraction of the cost.

My groove is back

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I took a break. A long break. Readers, forgive me. It has been far too long since my last post.

It took a while to figure out what I wanted to say. In 2017 I bought one perfume: Geurlain’s Derby. The previous year, I bought something close to 20. In 2018, I have purchased none.  I still smell new perfume on the regular. I’d like to know what the new drops from the Christine-Nagel-helmed House of Hermes are like. (I loved her Galop d’Hermes back in 2016.) And I’ll always tune in when Amouage drops something new. But I don’t feel that gut-pull to find the next great thing out there. Clearly, something has changed.

Perhaps my collection is essentially complete. There are only a few holes to plug up, and I’m content to wait until the right bottle comes along. As the collectors among us know, it can take years. Furthermore, I’m not not convinced that there’s anything better out there than what I’ve already got. (I will probably never love another jasmine more than Sarassins.) I’m also not willing to make room in my heart for any new perfumes that aren’t essential. Loving a perfume takes work, as crazy as that sounds. I’ve even started off-loading the non-essentials.

I may end up digging deeper into those fragrances I know and love. (I have no desire to be a compendium on the best of what’s out there.) Or I may push beyond perfume into the wider world of smell pleasures. In any case, I won’t be chasing new releases or parsing online chatter. Posts will be less frequent and more personal. But hopefully, they’ll also be better.

 

Smelling the Met Gala

This year’s Met Gala honored Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garçons, a decades-strong leader of the fashion avant-garde. Depressingly, far too few people actually wore Kawakubo’s stuff, which is more often seen on the street than at a formal event. If you are lucky enough to have the money and the invite to a fete celebrating Comme, then by god should you wear Comme. And everyone who tried to limp by on some other kind of “funky/weird” (maaaaaassive eyeroll over here at SMELL DORADO HQ) were even more infuriating than the staid souls who just wore something nice (see Gisele and Tom). No Katy Perry, this is not the time to wear Margiela. Rei Kawakubo GAVE BIRTH to Margiela. Go home.

To sooth my mounting nerd rage, a very dear friend suggested I write a post imagining what perfume some Met Gala notables were wearing. So here we go, Ms. Ashley Shew. If this gets optioned for a book, you’ve got a royalty check coming your way.

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There’s something both admirable and ill-advised about what’s going on here. I have a little crush on Priyanka, so I’d like to imagine her in something decent. I’m thinking classic chypre, like Bandit or Chinatown.

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The Dream Team. On him Cuir de Russie. On her, I’m thinking Sophia Grojsman. Perhaps 100% Love.

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Sheer perfection. I’m going to go with S-Ex by S-Perfumes. Weird but sumptuous, and a little masculine.

 

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Too much, but pleasantly so. Perhaps something zingy and natural from the Masque Milano line: either L’Attesa or Romanza.

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Just L’Eau d’Issey: that’s the meanest/most accurate thing I could think to say.

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Something from Roja Dove, I think. Or Gucci Rush, since I rather like Celine.

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I still don’t know what a Lil Yachty is, but I like his style. My first thought was Amouage Gold Man, but I think this demands something more tacky/cool. I’m gonna make an oddball call and say Cartier’s L’Heure Perdue.

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Iris Silver Mist. Done.

When the wolf’s at your door

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Now, I’m not a Shalimar guy. Believe me I’ve tried. I don’t even think I’m a Mitsouko guy, which, for any self-respecting smell-nerd is at least heresy adjacent. I avoided Guerlain’s other pillar L’Heure Bleue because when reviewing the first post-IFRA version Tania Sanchez only had this to say:

A pretty stranger has come in claiming to be your best beloved.  It is hard to be angry with her.  She is clearly out of her mind; they look nothing alike.  You sit and wait patiently for your love to turn up.  The windows go dark, night after night while the stranger smiles and dawdles, waiting for you to forget.  Can you?

With no access to the vintage stuff, I wrote LHB off entirely. Who wouldn’t? After a competent opening, that version gets grim pretty quickly. I can’t imagine why they would they let it go to market. If there’s any justice, sales would’ve been miserable.

Not really meaning to, I ended up at the Guerlain counter at Saks in Beverly Hills. Their rep Alejandro is one of my all time favorite people working sales. He’s honest about reformulations. He doesn’t try to sell you anything. And he’s more than happy to wile away hours letting you dig through his magic drawer of back stock. Last visit, he let me smell the newest version of L’Heure Bleue, reformulated by Guerlain’s head nose Thierry Wasser. Y’all, please believe the hype: LHB is back.

Yes, it’s got a bit of a modern sheen, and it probably doesn’t quite have the staying power of the old stuff, but this stuff moves. You can practically hear the strings when you spray it on. It flirts with edibility but never quite resolves itself as either a gourmand or not a gourmand. It is the best kind of coquette.

But hold your horses, folks, because then something miraculous happened. A friend of mine got a bottle of the parfum–wait for it–FROM THE 1930s!!! And that stuff, to quote Bob Odenkirk, makes other perfume smell like fucking horseshit. It makes No. 5 seem like a snooze. It makes Knize Ten seem staid. It packs a blast of romance and drama unlike anything I’ve ever smelled. I’m tempted to say that it will be hard to go back to normal life after this, but the truth is that it could only make normal life better. Until I meet its like again, that one brief shimmer of beauty will keep me warm. It makes this weary world seem a little brighter.

I hate citrus

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Growing up I had a treehouse built into my grandfather’s old orange tree. It smelled of everything orange: the fruit certainly, but also orange blossoms, and a diffuse sappy greenness, which nonetheless carried the spirit of the oranges well beyond fruit-bearing season. If it sounds magical, that’s because it was. Best of all, those orange smells mingled with darker, woodier, more resinous smells: the lumber of the treehouse and the dirt from the ground below.

My father also loves the smell of citrus, particularly neroli. He loves a classic eau de cologne in a way that always makes me think I’m missing something. The eau de cologne is one of the oldest styles or genres of perfume based on a recipe of citrus, herbs, and musks. The French school leans on lemon in the opening, while the Italian school favors orange notes, including neroli. The Russian version tends to be drier and more abstract. It is a classic and generally a must-have for anyone who likes fragrance.

Still, I don’t care for it. In my ever-expanding perfume horde, there remains a noticeable gap where an eau de cologne ought to be. Even Chanel‘s exceptional Eau de Cologne makes me want to scrub it off well before the drydown. Although, admittedly, that opening is sheer, back-straightening perfection.

So what gives? Why don’t I care for citrus for citrus’s sake? Maybe it’s the built-in preciousness in most eaux de cologne, that fresh-scrubbed baby angel thing, with nothing even remotely dirty to balance it out. I like citrus best when it is shorn of its squeaky clean pretensions. Perhaps that’s why I like Etat Libre d’Orange‘s Cologne, which combines a typical citrusy opening with a leathery base. In a perfect world someone would cook up a cross between Institut Très Bien‘s Cologne á l’Italienne and YSL‘s Kouros (both, incidentally, by the great Pierre Bourdon), a snappy mix of bright freshness and dirty bathroom.

My general ambivalence toward musks also makes eau de cologne a hard sell. Citrus notes are some of the most volatile in perfumery, meaning they evaporate quickly, and thus can only be properly smelled for a bit. To make them stick around longer, nearly all colognes use heavy doses of musk, which act as a fixative to prolong the citrus smells. By the end of the day, that’s most of what you’re smelling. A notable exception is Mugler‘s Cologne, which smells musky/industrial and is all the better for it.

So, here’s an easy fix: let an eau de cologne disappear naturally. It doesn’t need to stick around for hours like a normal perfume. It’s supposed to disappear right away. Once someone kicks out a great one that doesn’t overstay its welcome, I might just reconsider my position.

Mint for men

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At my favorite breakfast place with my best friend, I was drinking mint tea. Actually, he was drinking the tea and I was pinching sips. When I brought the stuff to my nose, I noticed a bleachy quality, the same thing I notice in lavender essential oil. When I brought it up, he mentioned that all those plants are from the same family. The lamiaceae family, which, as it turns out, includes the full spectrum of aromatics so vital to “masculine” perfumery: lavender, sage, and, less often, mint.

I picked up a bottle of Guerlain’s Derby this weekend. I walked in expecting to buy something else entirely and then found myself, led by the nose (pun definitely intended) by this dry and teeming man-chypre. I generally agree with Luca Turin’s edict that “there is nothing so good as a good chypre,” and few things, I found, are as good as Derby. It is as dry and dignified as its brother in quality and comportment Chanel Pour Monsieur, but not quite so buttoned up. Even, perhaps, a bit of a rogue.

In typical Guerlain fashion, the composition is dizzyingly complex, but not so crowded that a bright mint note doesn’t stand out. In Derby’s spicy surround, it is rendered creamy and rich, far from the stridency found in toothpaste, etc. Here, mint was used as one would use lavender, a gentle nod to fougère structure that further expands the emotional reach of Derby.

Mint crops up in a few other masculines: Frederic Malle’s Geranium Pour Monsieur, Comme des Garçons’s 2 Man, Heeley’s Menthe Fraiche, and perhaps most inventively in Dirty by Gorilla Perfumes. Each one is very good, and makes the case for using mint in novel ways, not just in masculine fragrance. However, there’s something about how it crops up in the heart of Derby, radiating out from among the bed of spices and leather. The stuff positively sings. Perhaps thats because, more than any other perfume I’ve listed, Derby employs mint for emotional impact. More than a cooling element, or a stand-in for other more common aromatics, Derby’s mint flirts with near edibility. It is inviting, comforting, and substantial.

Derby is the rare “for men” fragrance that fits me just fine. In its current incarnation at least, it is neither a chest thumper nor a club shouter. It is relaxed and refined, more dashing than anything else in its league. If Cary Grant had smelled this, I wonder, would he have thrown out his Green Irish Tweed?

The Old Year


This will not be a typical end of year list*. Not only did I smell so few of the 2000 perfumes (yikers, right?) released this year, but after the corker of a year we’ve all had, getting personal seems to be the only appropriate way to go. Read on for an unabashedly sentimental accounting of those perfumes that buoyed my spirits when the year was darkest.

Amouage

Barely a day goes by that I don’t thank the Lord for Christopher Chong and Amouage. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, can touch their particular brand of towering mega-scents. I may not have rushed out to buy Myths Woman (let alone Myths Man, Bracken Man, or Lilac Love), but Nathalie Lorson‘s green fairy is nothing if not a proper meal. And what a pleasure it was to join her for the twists and turns.

Ultimately Opus X got me to shell out that Amouage-money. (Not the steepest price tag in the game anymore, but a decent yardstick for costliness.) I love weird and I love rose and when the two come together with Annick Menardo on the bill and an Amouage budget, well, can you really blame me? It’s loud, raucous and unmannered. But it’s also warm and open-hearted. The beautifully modulated rosy lament is rousing, never overwhelming. An epic with a light touch.

Galop d’Hermes

Christine Nagel‘s opening salvo for Hermes may have made all the year-end lists I read. And to think, some people were worried about how she’d handle the pressure. I confess that most of Jean-Claude Ellena‘s work for Hermes didn’t land for me. (The obvious exception being Osmanthe Yunnan: as close to perfect as one could hope for.) Galop d’Hermes made me think, “Jean-Claude, who?”

Nagel’s leather and rose accord in Galop d’Hermes is remarkable enough to make you root for the big houses again. Complex though it is, it will always remind me of the smell of grooming a horse after a ride. Nagel’s composition is built from some of the loveliest stuff around, but the shape and structure are undeniable. Y’all, this is some exquisitely sweaty horse butt.

Starck Paris

No great fan of Phillipe Starck and his steely brand of bombast, I eyed the Starck Parfums display at my local Neimans with understandable skepticism. And then, in a second, my grumpiness evaporated. All three of those absurdly named perfumes are worthy of serious attention.

Sure, Dominique Ropion flexes his muscles with the genteel musk of Peau de Soie. And Daphné Bugey puts a very clever spin on a crowd-pleasing woody amber. But it’s Annick Menardo who really shines with her gently futuristic meditation on growth and decay. Peau d’Ailleurs is classic Menardo, as succinct and insistent as Patchouli 24, but tender and dreamy. Let her take you by the hand.

Mathilde Laurent

Full disclosure, I have a crush on Mathilde Laurent: a perfectly impossibly schoolboy crush. It’s not just her perfumes, or that fantastic smile, it’s that she seems genuinely warm, silly, and unpretentious. She showed up to an interview in metallic cowboy boots.

Manning the helm at Cartier, she has her name on no fewer than eight releases this year alone. I remember smelling L’Envol for the first time, trying to reign in my optimism. “I’ll be damned,” I thought, my eyes widening, “that bastard did it.” Yes, it smells great. And Laurent managed to pull off an instantly winsome masculine without any of the grating, chest-thumping tropes. But this stuff does something barely any masculines ever have done: offer shimmering, radiant fun. Unlike even some of the best perfumes for men, L’Envol doesn’t convey gravitas or a life well-lived. It’s not merely trying to impress. 

But strap yourself in. Because that lovely little gem isn’t even the best thing she did this year. This is the year that Mathilde Laurent also gave us L’Heure Perdue, a work of supreme accomplishment, intelligence, and beauty. But as much fun as it is to dissect, L’Heure Perdue is simply exceptional perfumery, as miraculous as this stuff gets.

*On a side but important note, it heartens me greatly to find so many woman leading mainstream perfume houses. In an industry where even Frederic Malle cosigns the exclusion of women, the glass ceiling is a low as ever. Wonderful then, to see these women deservedly appointed to notable positions as they effortlessly kick out the best stuff of the year. We’ve got a long way to go, but lots to be grateful for. Cheers, ladies.