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Maurice Roucel

Honey Maurice Roucel Milk Musk Review Spice Tea

Hongkong Oolong by Maurice Roucel for Nez, the Olfactory Magazine

14th September 2020

What a beautiful and refreshingly to-the-point fragrance. In the tinderbox of nowtimes where the fuse is short and the flashpoint just a meter downwind of someone having a bad day on Twitter, Hongkong Oolong by Maurice Roucel for the autumn/winter 2019 issue of Nez, the Olfactory Magazine is a welcome respite – a meditation room off the main thoroughfare, filled with soothing white noise.  

Hongkong Oolong is a very clean, almost simple scent, which of course means that it’s a bit abstract and therefore not so straightforward to describe. It is almost easier to say what it is not than what it is.

So, let’s start there. Though it is a musk in the hands of Maurice Roucel, it doesn’t smell like anything in the delightfully slutty doughnut musk triptych of Musc RavageurLabdanum 18Helmut Lang EDP. Though it is gently spiced with powdered ginger and cardamom, and in the latter stages, there is a savory note that reads as cumin, it doesn’t smell particularly like chai.

Stripping it back even further, though a minimally fermented-smoky nuance develops midway through, and the composition focuses on a variety of tea (oolang) reputed to be milkier and more floral in tone than other teas, Hongkong Oolang doesn’t even really smell like tea. I mean, it does if you’re highly suggestible to the official description. But otherwise? Not so much.

Think instead of Roucel’s lighter, more playful work centred around his signature magnolia and magnolia leaf – honey, cream, and lemon, sliced through with a flash of metal and tart greenery – like the entire midsection of L’Instant Pour Femme (Guerlain) or the teeny tiny part of Tocade (Rochas) that is not rose lokhoum or really loud butter cookies.

Hongkong Oolong is therefore really just a dense but silky cloud of honeyed, milky musk molecules pierced by the succulent greenery of a Hosta or Monstera and the green apple peel nuance of magnolia. There is something lightly leathery, tannic almost in the lower registers, which, again, I’d describe as a nuance of tea rather than a courtroom sketch. A Bvlgari tea fragrance this ain’t.

Indeed, as a floral musk with the oblique suggestion of tea, rice milk, and greenish white floral notes, I suggest that Hongkong Oolang forms the third point of a triangle stretching between Champaca (Ormonde Jayne), with which it shares a nutty-toasty note that splits the difference between basmati and wheat, and Remember Me (Jovoy), for that cardamom-steeped milk note that comes on hot n’ heavy in the basenotes. They also all three have a light floral presence that is noticeable but not dominant (jasmine and magnolia in Hongkong Oolang, frangipani in Remember Me, and champaca in Champaca), though Hongkong Oolang is far milkier than Champaca and much fresher than Remember Me.   

But still, it’s the milkiness and their milkiness that’s the point here. I love the milkiness in these fragrances because it feels almost wholesomely natural, as if hand-cranked out of brown rice or sandalwood or those huge, waxy-leaved tropical plants that cry plant sap tears when you snap them in half. Though admittedly quite plain, this kind of milkiness is infinitely preferable to the claggy popcorn butter/moist socks stink of off-the-shelf milk aromachemicals used tiresomely often in the indie perfume oil sector.

And so, I love Hongkong Oolong. Though far cleaner than I usually like my musks, I find peace in the scent’s unshakeable center of balance between freshness and that milky sandal-rice-plant-milk undertone. At a time when nothing seems stable or constant, its restful simplicity is a cure.

Source of Sample: Hongkong Oolong was sent to me free of charge with the Addictive Substances edition of Nez Magazine (autumn/winter 2019) by the charming Jeanne Doré of Nez, the Olfactory Magazine, the first entry in the 1+1 series. Though this was kindly provided at no cost to me for review, I loved the perfume so much that I have re-ordered this edition of the magazine to get a second little bottle of Hongkong Oolong.  

   

Cover Image: Photo by Edwin Hooper on Unsplash

Masculine Maurice Roucel Musk Review

Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur

29th June 2015

Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur is a big ole sex musk with a leer on its face. Luca Turin says it’s more flashy than good, and I’d agree, but then again, I don’t think Musc Ravageur takes itself all that seriously to begin with. It’s a musk with bedroom eyes and an Adam’s apple.

The more I wear it, the more I think of it as the male equivalent of Shalimar. It’s a big-boned oriental at heart, a crude, deconstructed version of the older versions of Shalimar extrait – all rude body musks, thick vanilla, and butter-like tonka. Objectionably rich, and quite pungent in parts.

Even the top notes of Musc Ravageur share a certain barbershoppy feel with Shalimar: in Musc Ravageur, it’s lavender and cloves, and in Shalimar, it’s something like herbes de Provence (thyme?). Perhaps that’s why so many men find the opening challenging – the pungent spices, dirty musk, and sweet vanilla churning their stomachs in a way they can’t handle.

But I’m a Shalimar girl all the way, baby, so this is familiar territory for me. People either hate the opening and love the dry down, or wish that the rough opening would last all the way through – me, I love every part of Musc Ravageur from front to end.

It smells like someone rubbed a vanilla-glazed Cinnabon across the sweaty perineum of a man who hadn’t washed for a few days. Hot, sweet, a bit dirty (in a good way). The combination of the rich, sweet vanilla, tonka, and sandalwood in the base is to die for, no matter where you stand on the exact dirtiness of the musk at the start.

I used to think that it was too loud and too dirty for a lady to be wearing outside the house. But then I realized that the Shalimar extrait I wear is pretty dirty and I wear that out of the house all the time. I think I bought into the hype about this being a disgusting, filthy, old-man kind of smell. Now, I just think it’s a fabulous gourmand musk/oriental that’s both sexy and comfortable.

Vulgar? Yeah. Hell yeah! And so what! A bit of vulgarity never hurt nobody.

Maurice Roucel Musk Review

Helmut Lang Eau de Parfum

29th June 2015

Aha! I’m starting to sense a pattern here. Maurice Roucel takes Musc Ravageur out of the bedroom and into the nursery, refashioning it as Helmut Lang Eau de Parfum.

It’s an amazing accomplishment when you think about it – it shares the same basic DNA as Musc Ravageur, and even smells somewhat similar – and yet the feel of one is a hundred million miles away from the other.

If Musc Ravageur is lying spread-eagled in the boudoir, spilling out of its red lace teddy and trying to disguise its Adam’s apple, Helmut Lang EDP is the tender gripe-water exhalation from a baby sleeping in its cradle. (The only teddy here being the one clutched in fat little baby fingers).

The opening of Helmut Lang EDP always reminds me pleasantly of nightly bath time rituals with my children: the Chicco calendula and lavender baby wash I use, the smell of plush cotton baby towels fresh from the drier, and the innocent smell of the skin at the nape of their necks, which I cannot resist nuzzling.

Few people talk about the sheer sensuality of children these days for risk of being misunderstood – but parents of small children will understand when I say that there is no greater sensual pleasure than the smell and touch of small children. It’s why parents can’t resist nuzzling and sniffing their kids. We are drawn helplessly to their velvety skin and their specific, milky smell.

Helmut Lang EDP smells milky and warm and fresh and innocent to me. It opens with the baby breath of heliotrope, neroli, and pretty orange blossoms. Later, it strikes me that the musk and vanilla is on the knife’s edge of being not-so-innocent after all. Maybe it’s even a little dirty. But not dirty in the Musc Ravageur fun, sex way. Just not as squeaky clean as you might expect from its opening. I don’t find it sexy, though (due to the nursery associations). Just touchingly human in scale, which is nice too.

Helmut Lang EDP is quite modern, airy, and stream-lined, a further departure from the butch oriental category wherein I mentally place Musc Ravageur. But I really should stop comparing them – leaving aside the obvious Maurice Roucel DNA they share – Helmut Lang EDP simply occupies a different place and function in my wardrobe, and I like them both on their own terms.

Amber Maurice Roucel Musk Review The Discard Pile

Le Labo Labdanum 18

29th June 2015

Maurice Roucel, you old roué! I think I’ve figured out your game. You made a beautiful musk-vanilla-amber template in the lab one day, and you thought to yourself, “Maurice, old boy, this ain’t half bad! I can get at least three good fragrances out of this.” You dialed up the rude bits on the template to arrive at Musc Ravageur, and you sanitized it with cotton and heliotrope and doll’s head plastic to come up with Helmut Lang EDP.

Le Labo comes a knocking, and you decide, you know what – let’s see if we can’t wring a last drop of juice from this old sponge. We’ll name it after an ingredient that isn’t noticeably in it, let’s say labdanum, so as to give those contrary hipster mofos at Le Labo their jollies. Add a pinch of cinnamon, a touch of powder, and my standard musky-ambery-vanilla, and BAM! Everybody’s happy.

Well, not me, Maurice, not me. The last imprint of the well-used template is too faint to leave much of an impression. It’s a midget in a hall of giants. Civet, leather – castoreum? Pfff, please. Shalimar has more underpantsy funk than this. The trouble is, of course, that Le Labo Labdanum 18 can only cower in the shadow of its more outgoing big brother, Musc Ravageur, and its more distinctive, characterful little sister, Helmut Lang EDP. And if I want a powdery musk-amber-patchouli scent that smells like skin, I always have the soured-fur delights of L’Ombre Fauve to fall back on. Desolee.