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November 2019

Amber Animalic Balsamic Hay Herbal Independent Perfumery Myrrh Oud Review Saffron

Fallintostars by Strangelove NYC: A Review

27th November 2019

Fallintostars by Strangelove NYC is clever because it pairs the 15th century smell of Hindi oud – the dank, rotting, wet wood smell of animal hides piled high in a medieval dungeon – with the 21st century radiance of a modern amber. For the first half hour, the dissonance is dizzying. The oud is so authentically filthy that I feel like I’m being pressed up against a wall by an lout with a shiv and bad intentions. It’s as funky as a plate of fruit and cheese furred over with mold, wrapped in a length of freshly-tanned leather, and buried in a pile of steaming, matted straw.

But just when you fear you’re slipping wholesale into slurry, you notice the bright, peppery overlay of something radiant and electric, like sparks popping off a shorted wire. This accord calls to mind the aromachemically fresh, smoky black tea opening of Russian Tea (Masque Milano Fragranze) more than the pink pepper the notes tell me this is likely to be. The distance between the light and the dark is perfectly judged. It’s more of a whoosh than a lift. It smells exciting – sexy even. I’m tempted to douse myself in it and force strange men to come sniff my neck, even though, technically, this hard, peppery smell is more masculine-leaning than otherwise.

But wait, because we haven’t really talked about the amber yet. Poor Christophe Laudamiel – I bet that after the category-defining glory that is Amber Absolute (Tom Ford) he’s afraid to touch labdanum for fear of either never reaching those heights again or being accused of repeating himself. But then again, this is Christophe Laudamiel we’re talking about – a man who, as I’ve said before, when confronted with a straight line instinctively starts to zig zag wildly across the page like a wild hoss. He seems to create restlessly in one forward motion, refusing to circle back to even his most hallowed of halls.

So, no, this is not the benzoin-thickened incense amber of Amber Absolute, but (unexpectedly) the bright, hard sparkle of a champagne-and-vodka amber in the style of pre-reform Ambre Russe (Parfum d’Empire). Like a shot of those clear gold liquors served in the Alps after dinner, I’m not sure which I want to do more – drink it or apply it to a wound. It smells…well, excuse my language, but fucking amazing. How does a perfumer get amber to smell as rich as leather but as transparent as jelly?

My nose fails me when it comes to the other notes. I don’t get any of the green, hay-like barnyardiness of narcissus (unless it’s giving the dirty straw notes in the Hindi oud some welly) or indeed any of the gentler, more jasmine-like nuances of the jonquil variety, and there’s nary a hint of rose. I don’t perceive the benzoin at all, which is strange because even if I can’t smell it, I can usually feel it thickening the texture of the basenotes into a flurry of papery dust.

What I smell in Fallintostars is really an act in three parts: Hindi oud, followed by champagne-and-vodka amber, and finally a huge honking myrrh not listed anywhere. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Christophe has managed to work the inky, astringent tones of saffron and hina attar (henna) with his feverish fingers into the shape of a rubbery, mushroomy myrrh. It’s also possible that it’s just myrrh.

Anyway, what I like about this perfume is that it transcends its raw materials to make you think about the way it is composed. The modern, near slavish adoration at the foot of complex-smelling naturals such as Hindi oud or rose or labdanum often results in muddy, brown-tinged accords that speak more to their own worthiness than to joy, especially in the indie sector. In Fallintostars, Christophe Laudamiel takes heavy hitters like Hindi oud and makes it smell like bottled fireflies. And that is alchemy, pure and simple.

Disclosure: A sample of Fallintostars was sent to me by Strangelove NYC for review. My opinions are my own.

Image by Alina Zakovyrko from Pixabay

Aromatic Green Independent Perfumery Review Rose Rose Oxide Thoughts

Douleur! By Bogue

20th November 2019

Douleur! by Bogue, a collaboration between Freddie Albrighton, a tattoo artist and erstwhile perfume blogger, and Antonio Gardoni, the beloved beardie of Bogue Profumo, has already garnered quite a bit of reaction on the fragrance scene. So, on a scale of one to Sécrétions Magnifiques, just how terrifying is Douleur? Well, it’s definitely quirky, but you won’t a fainting couch or anything. Actually, I kind of love it. And that’s coming from someone whose taste lies somewhere on the scale between ‘deeply conventional’ and ‘willing to experiment on occasion, albeit briefly, and in very small doses’. Last week, I allowed myself to be talked into attending a performance by the Armenian experimental jazz pianist, Tigran Hamasyan, at the Rome Jazz Festival. For the first hour, I sat in silent rage as he jabbed at the ivories like an unsympathetic gynecologist (the fact that he seemed to be wearing diapers didn’t help), but by the end of the performance, I had realized that, under his hands, the piano was not a piano after all, but an oboe. Mind, if not blown, then opened a crack.  

While I won’t be listening to experimental jazz or wearing Douleur! every day, I’m genuinely glad to have experienced them. The smell of Douleur! – strawberry erasers on crack mixed with toothpaste and sports aftershave, essentially – is both fizzily exciting and weirdly nostalgic for me. I’d never buy or use a bottle of it but I’d love to smell it every now and then. Does that make sense? A friend of mine mentioned that he’d like to smell it on a handkerchief or blotter rather than on the skin, and I get that. As it turns out, I managed to get a bit of Douleur! on the sleeve of my trench coat, so there it will live in perpetuity, sending up a nuclear cloud of sour, rosy toxicity every time I pull it on.

Mind you, you have to like rose oxide to like Douleur! I have a real thing for it. But you might not. With its uniquely high-pitched ‘castrato’ tonality, rose oxide feels more like a whine from an electric saw than a smell. Think pear-scented nail polish remover or geranium leaf or those hard-boiled rhubarb-and-custard sweets that people in Ireland and the UK will remember for their porny balance between the creaminess of fake custard and a bright pink streak so sharp it peels your taste buds back from your tongue. This sharp, metallic smell is as chemically exciting as a pure aldehyde. Have you ever smelled Opus X by Amouage? That’s rose oxide.

But stuff like Opus X wears on you very quickly – rose oxide can drone on somewhat unless you temper it with something. In Douleur! the rose oxide has been mixed with a seaweed note, which introduces an aquatic fougère note, a bunch of toothpaste-y mint, and a strawberry cotton candy accord that smells like, well, Maltol. All this makes for an admittedly grotesque opening. You smell everything separately at first – the metal, the candy, the mint, and the melony aftershave note – and the effect is jangly and cacophonous, like an orchestra warming up.

Past the opening, though, the notes jostle into place and the whole thing settles. The cloud of semi-poisonous rose oxide remains but softens into the smell of those strawberry erasers we girls used to huff at school. There’s also a rubbery cedar or oak note in the mix here that reminds me of the milky juices that you could work out of a pencil if you chewed on it long enough. I know that Freddie Albrighton is a fan of rose oxide and strawberry, but I wonder if the innocent, almost child-like air in Douleur is coming from Antonio? If he’s anything like me, then he spends a lot of his time trying to wrest those strawberry-scented, rubber knickknacks like Shopkins, LOL figurines, and My Little Pony from their packaging, and maybe this drydown is his smoke signal to other parents of girls. Or maybe a cigar is really just a cigar.

Anyway, all you need to know is that the minty, rosy bitterness of the acid rain opener eventually melts into a big, pink marshmallow, and there’s just something about this trajectory from unsettling to fluffy that is compelling. It makes me want to smell it again and again. There’s a nutty, rosy loukhoum accord in the drydown that smells like a cross-section of Sweet Oriental Dreams by Montale and that makes me smile. In execution, Douleur! reminds me of a limited edition indie oil from Arcana called Strawberries Crave Waterfalls, which features notes of rain, woodland strawberries, fresh water, petitgrain, osmanthus, clover, and smooth amber, and despite a more amateurish finish, arrives at a similar result, i.e., artificial strawberries over an aquatic fougère base. But Douleur! has something that the Arcana oil doesn’t have, and that’s a sense of humor. I don’t know how it’s possible for a perfume to have that, but Douleur feels very playful.

So, is Douleur! weird? Yeah. Quite a bit. But plenty of things are weirder to me than the smell of Douleur. Like, it’s weird that people talk about Xerjoff perfumes like they are blown into bottles by virgins in an Amalfi lemon grove when most clearly have more in common with an ‘after’ photo of Thierry Mugler than a piece of fruit. Dior Sauvage is weird and metallic but also vile-smelling, and bafflingly, men seem to love it. And it’s super weird that, more and more, people are praising perfume for being ‘inoffensive’ and ‘mass pleasing’ as if those are not both words that mean ‘blah”.

Fuck me. I’d much rather smell a charming little weirdo like Douleur! than 99% of the insta-niche I get sent to write about – and I hope I’ve conveyed just how normal and boring my personal taste is. Douleur! is an anachronism. Smelling it makes me realize just how much we’ve sanitized every corner of our perfume to drive out any sign of eccentricity or nonconformity. Modern niche perfumery seems locked in a race to the bottom of the aromachemical sludge jar to find that single, all-pleasing, common denominator scent that sends out the unequivocal signal that we are freshly plucked, powdered, and ready to be mated with.

I’m not interested in writing about the depressing and seemingly endless parade of $300 niche perfumes whose only provocativeness or shock factor is in their marketing. (Tom Ford is releasing a new perfume called – wait for it – Rose Prick. A dildo-pink bottle of (likely) ‘meh’ juice that you know in your heart of hearts is aimed at people more interested in penis-related double entendres than in perfume). But something like Douleur? Yes, now that is worth writing about. Something that wears its weirdness as an artistic badge of honour rather than a sales ploy always is.  

Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash

Amber Gourmand Honey Independent Perfumery Review

Zoologist Bee

12th November 2019

Have you ever been walking along the street and suddenly feel so good that you burst into a run? Zoologist Bee is that for me – a burst of positivity that settles on you like a blessing you don’t remember asking for. The perfume doesn’t seem to be particularly complicated, but the trick it performs is by no means simple; effortlessness, or at least the impression of it, always requires an invisible-to-the-naked-nose system of levers and pulleys operating under the surface. Perfumes exuding this sense of almost child-like glee are rare. I can count on one hand the number of fragrances so exuberantly good-smelling that you feel you’re the world’s Secret Santa. Kalemat is one; so is Shaal Nur. Now Zoologist Bee joins their ranks.

I’m torn as to how best describe the pleasantness of the balance between bitter and sweet achieved in the opening – it’s the smoky, brown sugar-tinged bitterness of molten honeycomb (cinder toffee) just before the baking powder is added, but at the same time, there’s a jellied, clear coldness that calms the roil before it reaches burning point. This note, or rather texture, could be the royal jelly that appears in the notes. But the way I perceive the royal jelly note in Bee changes with each wearing. Sometimes, it feels as gelatinous as the cubes of grass jelly you get in bubble tea, at others, it smells more like rooibos tea that’s been boiled with a spoon of honey and allowed to cool on a window sill, i.e., a mixture of something tannic and something coldly sweet.

Whether it’s jelly or cold tea, the important thing is that this accord lends an impression of clarity, or transparency to the perfume. The rundown of notes doesn’t matter here because, as with any honey perfume, it’s as important to state what Bee is not as what it is. So, Bee is not treacly or syrupy or heavy. It’s not so sweet that it smells pungent or sharp. It is hugely radiant, but not unpleasantly scratchy or ‘fake’, by which I mean that it doesn’t smell like it’s been overloaded with those annoying woody ambers stuffed into most perfumes laying claim to the word ‘radiant’.

Bee is not – crucially, for me at least – animalic. I adore pissy honey perfumes like Absolue Pour Le Soir, but I have to be mentally ready for them. I don’t like when the saliva-ish staleness of honey reveals itself only in the far drydown, because it’s like an uninvited guest who, no matter how charming or brilliant they turn out to be, grate purely because their presence was unsolicited. I’d describe Bee a clear, radiantly ambery floral honey, tilting more towards amber than floral. There’s a doughy, fluffy sweetness in its underskirts that I take to be heliotrope, but the floral notes are largely indistinguishable, muffled as they are by the thick, white-ish beeswax note. There’s orange in the notes list, but I don’t smell any citrus at all, and if there’s anything green or fresh in the bitterness of the opening, then I’ve missed it entirely.

Bee is clearly honey from the start. No mistaking it for anything else. My children absolutely loved the scent and keep sticking their noses into my arm; my husband sniffed it and said, rather grimly, ‘yes, that’s honey alright.’ So, make no mistake – you need to like the essential honey-ness of honey to like Bee. Zoologist Bee is not the perfume for you, for example, if you like your honey notes abstract or folded into the weft where, as one note among many, it can do the least damage.

For me, honey is as problematic a note as coffee, chocolate, and caramel notes. In the context of a perfume, these solinotes almost always present more as a series of problems to be resolved (too bitter, too burnt, too urinous, too pungent, etc.) than the purer sensory pleasure they are capable of giving in the mouth.  So, it’s really something for me to say that Bee is probably the only honey or beeswax-centric fragrance that I can see myself committing to without having to make a series of unhappy compromises with my own self.

For example, I like Honey Oud by Floris but am in two minds over that vaguely synthy wood in the basenotes that only I seem to be able to smell. I enjoy the grapey, musty honey of Botrytis by Ginestet, but only when I can smell the rot – about 70% of the time I wear it, it reads as a slightly dull, fruity amber. With its smoky-sweet cinder toffee amber, my memory of Immortelle de Corse by L’Occitane comes closest of all to Bee, but of course, it’s been discontinued so my memory might be serving me up false positives. But what anybody reading this review really wants to know is this: how does Bee compare to the last honey-focused runaway success on the niche/indie scene, namely Hiram Green’s Slowdive?

Slowdive is much richer, thicker, and more complex than Bee, with the herbs, florals, and tobacco almost as important to the whole smell as the honey and beeswax. On the other hand, Slowdive is far too heavy and syrupy for me to wear casually. I can’t just throw it on – I’d have to suit up for it. Compared to Slowdive, Zoologist Bee is simpler, more user-friendly in a big-boned, good-natured, ambery way. Bee and Slowdive are connected by way of their indie or smaller niche ‘feel’ (both have more in common with those rustic, ‘honest’ indie honeys such as Golden Cattleya by Olympic Orchids than with, say, Oajan by Parfums de Marly or Honey by Kim Kardashian West). But while Slowdive has that unmistakably hand-crafted, all-natural feel to it, Bee has the more polished, high-spec finish you get with mixed media perfumes, positioning it as slightly more niche than artisanal.

With its expansive ambery radiance, Bee moves one step closer to what most people outside the tight inner circle of perfume nerds would consider ‘yummy’ and gorgeous and easy to wear. And I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing – Zoologist Bee made it to my ‘to buy’ list the minute I smelled it. Anything that smells this good just begs to be bought and worn, not endlessly agonized over.   

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Amber Floral Incense Independent Perfumery Review Spicy Floral

Hiram Green Voyage 2019: A Review

8th November 2019

Hiram Green Voyage 2019, huh. I remember little of the original Voyage other than (a) I liked it a lot – or at least enough to spend €25 on obtaining a precious 5ml decant, which I promptly misplaced, and (b) I spent a lot of time agonizing over it, trying to dissect what made the perfume tick.

And apparently, I got it all wrong. Hiram’s description of swapping out the suede of the original Voyage for lotus in the 2019 version was the first time I realized that the original Voyage was supposed to be suede. My review did pick out a slight peach skin note, similar to that of Hiram Green’s own Shangri La or Guerlain Mitsouko. But it never jumped out at me so strongly that I felt obliged to point at it and call it suedey, suedey McSuederton.

Re-reading my review of the original now, it appears I thought Voyage was structured around that familiar Guerlainesque clash between a bright, aromatic side (lavender, bergamot, cloves, cinnamon) and a dark, velvety side ( vanilla, indolic flowers). The dry down was a warm, luscious vanilla-amber, heavily laced with heliotrope and perhaps jasmine or orange blossom. I recall finding it pleasantly spicy and resinous, that prickly contrast between bright, aromatic citrus notes and warm amber never quite fading. Very loosely, it called to (my) mind the spiced pastry notes of L’Heure Bleue, the aromatic-vanilla of Jicky, and the slightly civety jasmine-tonka-amber of Ciel de Gum (Maison Francis Kurkdjian) and Musc Ravageur (Frederic Malle). No suede, though.  

But even when I get things completely arse-ways, Hiram Green is a true gentleman. He wrote to me after another review to say, in that mild-mannered way of his, that he was always surprised about how his fragrances were interpreted by writers and bloggers. From this I take that he’s bemused by, but accepts, the wildly differing takes on his work and the lack of causal relationship between our perception of what’s in the fragrance and what’s actually in the fragrance.

I’m conscious of how odd and discomfiting it must be for a perfumer to send their work to people like me in full knowledge that we are either going to smell stuff that isn’t there or miss big, important parts of the perfume that they might have labored and agonized over for months on end. This is surely is not a game for control freaks or for people who like to ‘explain’ their work constantly until people get it ‘right’ (hey, I’m sure we all know people like that, right?).  

Anyway, Hiram is probably going to read this and raise an impeccably well-groomed eyebrow, because, despite his assertion that Voyage 2019 is a lighter, fresher, slightly more tropical take on the original, with lotus taking the place of suede, I find it to be neither fresh nor tropical. And it’s about as light as a brick. Although I’ve mislaid my decant of the original and my memories of it are entirely re-built from my review, I’d still say that the overall ‘feel’ of Voyage 2019 is quite different from the original, despite both being structured around a warm amber and vanilla base.

First off, there’s an exuberantly fruity (berried) bubblegum note up top, not present in the original, that reminds me of various BPAL and Arcana ‘red’ musk accords. After that, Voyage 2019 mostly heads straight for the comfort of a deliciously fudgy amber-vanilla accord common to both but skips over the overtly floral or aromatic ‘spiky’ notes from the original completely; as such, Voyage 2019 does not have the same contrast between citrusy-aromatic and vanilla-amber of the original.  The ‘lotus’ note is interesting to me, because rather than smelling particularly floral (think: crisp, fresh, botanical, juicy, etc.), it smells golden, honeyed, soft, powdery, and somewhat resinous. Dusted over the vanilla-amber accord, the lotus doesn’t give Voyage freshness or lightness but instead creates a medicinal ‘nag champa’ character.  

Lotus flowers are revered in Buddhist and Hindi culture, because they are considered to be a direct route to spirituality, so the Indian nag champa reference seems appropriate. This smells like an Indian-style amber to me, with a doughy-powdery joss stick heart. In the far drydown, I’d swear to a bit of benzoin, its spicy ‘Communion wafer’ dustiness dovetailing with the powdery sweetness of the nag champa.  

I like Voyage 2019 more than the original, mostly because it feels simpler and more direct – a big down comforter of Indian incense and amber to keep me going in winter. Its appeal is immediate and, despite smelling briefly exotic, devoid of the twisty-turny mysteriousness of the original that taxed my analytical bandwidth.

But I am also super impressed that Hiram was able to capture the more unfloral parts of lotus, the sacred flower of India. Both the pink and white lotus varieties (from the true lotus family of Nelumbo nucifera) are ruinously expensive to produce, requiring 250,000 flowers to make just 1 kilogram of lotus concrete, which in turn yields only 250 grams of absolute after washing. I mention this to emphasize just how costly lotus absolute is, and how rarely seen on today’s market, especially outside of India itself (I have smelled a white lotus absolute but cannot attest as to its authenticity).

Because of its cost and doubts over authenticity, very few people outside attar makers and artisans working with small quantities of exquisite raw materials – like Hiram Green – will have smelled white or pink lotus absolute. You’ll probably hear talk about the lotus note in Voyage 2019 smelling aquatic, light, and crisp, because that’s what the definition on Fragrantica says. But a better source of information is Chris McMahon of White Lotus Aromatics. He describes pink lotus absolute as a “rich, sweet, floral, fruity-leathery aroma with a powdery-spicy undertone” and white lotus absolute as a “sweet, powdery, spicy,  delicate floral bouquet with an animalic, dry fruity undertone”[1]. Both those descriptions match up better with how the lotus comes across in Voyage 2019 – rich, sweet, powdery – than the Fragrantica description of aqueous or Hiram’s own description of it giving Voyage a “lighter and more tropical feel.” And honestly, I like Voyage 2019 better for how it actually smells (to me! disclaimer!) than how I’m told it’s supposed to smell.  

Photo by Maxime Bhm on Unsplash


[1] https://www.whitelotusaromatics.com/product/lotus-white-absolute