Histoires de Parfums Olympia Music Hall is such a weird little perfume. I don’t hear much about it, so I’m guessing it’s rather a round-peg-in-a-square-hole kind of fragrance for the line – too abstract to describe in three words or less to rushed customers, but not weird enough for perfumistas to latch onto and champion as an example of the fifth art, or whatever nth art perfumery is supposed to be. I mean, it’s weird, but it’s not M/Mink weird or Humiecki & Graf weird.
They’ve changed it now, but the picture for suede on Fragrantica used to be a pile of three or four suede carpets, folded back so that you could see their rubber backing. I always found that image hilarious in its honesty. My guess is that this image was far too Proletarian for perfumers, who would far rather we imagine the suede notes in their perfumes to look like the softest grey suede cushions in an upmarket hotel on Cap d’Antibes rather than a carpet salesroom in Leeds (I imagine Roja Dove writing in anguish, “Please, mon cher monsieur Knezevic, it hurts my eyes so…..”).
Anyway, Histoires de Parfums Olympia Music Hall makes me laugh because it smells very much like the rubber backing to the suede carpets in the original Fragrantica image – and I like these little moments of intellectual honesty I glimpse in perfumes here and there. Olympia Music Hall is not afraid to call a suede carpet a suede carpet. And I’m sure that it would cause Roja Dove’s nostrils to flare.
Suede perfumes are mostly abstract affairs, for me – kind of like leather, but without the ISQ bitterness, and kind of like cashmere, but without the bonelessness. I suppose if I were to try to define the difference between leather and suede, I’d say there are rubbed out lines to suede that aren’t present in the tougher, clearer leather note. Olympia Music Hall takes the softness of suede and gives it the rubber backing of a suede carpet.
I’m sorry – I’m not adequately describing how sexy this is. I wouldn’t blame you, with all the talk of suede carpets and rubber (unless of course that does sound sexy to you). But Olympia Hall is deeply odd, and therefore strangely sexy. It’s an offbeat little mixture.
That saffron-led rubber and suede accord forms the beating heart of the fragrance, but I’ve left out the sparkling citrus notes at the top and the weird mélange of soapy, almost twee florals (peony, freesia, and lilac) which manage to massage this thing into something both abstract and likeable. Kind of like the soapy, hand wash-like peony note in Dzghonka adds to its sense of mystery rather than making it seem schoolmarmish and old-fashioned.
And there’s a hefty dose of something animalic here too – not just the skin-like suede notes, but a rather sweaty, carnal musk and a dank patchouli, all very suggestive and torrid. The base relies on an opulent frankincense that manages not to smell Church-y or smoky, but rather like the waxy, cold, and rather soapy smell of the unlit, raw resin.
If smelling like rubber, suede, snuffed-out candles, cold wax, handsoap, unlit resins, and the posy of flowers held for too long in the sweaty hands of an Austrian milkmaid sounds good to you, then give the totally odd but not objectionably weird Olympia Music Hall a fighting chance.
