Monthly Archives

August 2018

Fougere Herbal Lavender Masculine Review Tonka

Tom Ford Fougère d’Argent Review

26th August 2018

 

Tom Ford Fougère d’Argent will prove popular with younger male consumers, because for many, it may be their first exposure to a proper fougere, i.e., one that hasn’t been tonkified or fatted up with sweeteners in the modern manner (see: Tom Ford Fucking Fabulous, Chanel Boy, and Serge Lutens Fourreau Noir). If they’re not familiar with stuff like Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche Pour Homme or Azzaro Pour Homme, the bitter freshness of the Tom Ford might smell like a new shape in the air.

 

Only….it’s not. Fougère d’Argent is simply a re-packaging of an old idea for a new audience. The fougere has been around since 1882, which is when Houbigant launched Fougère Royale, a ‘fern-like’ fragrance for (ironically) women. In overall concept, the fougere is analogous to the chypre, in that they are both abstract, perfumery renderings of an idea rather than a smell. Fougeres aren’t rigidly configured to smell like ferns, which don’t have a scent of their own anyway, but to capture a broad range of foresty nuances from trampled herbs to bitter earth. Traditionally, they revolve around coumarin, lavender, and oakmoss, but often feature geranium, vetiver, patchouli, and often, spicy materials like clove or carnation (eugenol).

 

To my nose – and in fact, to most noses – there is something about classic fougeres that smells incontrovertibly masculine. Fougère d’Argent is no exception. It opens with the soapy, metallic sheen of lavender and ginger stretched over a bitter, mossy backdrop. In most modern-day versions of the fougere, like Chanel Boy, Chypre Palatin, or Fourreau Noir, this stinging ‘aftershavey’ quality that women associate with fougeres is muffled by swathes of creamy materials like sandalwood, vanilla, or tonka bean. Fougère d’Argent simply shears off these accoutrements and allows the basic bones of the fougere structure to stand proud.

 

Tom Ford’s approach here shows confidence. He’s a guy with his finger on the pulse of what (many) men want, so he must have picked up on the fact that the pendulum is swinging from the modern taste for sweetness back to a more old school taste for bitterness. Maybe it was the commercial success of his laudably sugar-free Vert series that convinced him the time was right for this.

 

Fougère d’Argent doesn’t smell at all original or exciting, but it does smell good. It’s basically a re-upholstering of Serge Lutens’ Gris Clair, the same central axis of lavender and electrical-socket-haze tonka bean dressed up a bit with the shimmering, aldehydic bitterness of Rive Gauche Pour Homme. It is not as warm or as spicy as, say, the re-issue of Houbigant’s Fougère Royale, which I greatly prefer, nor is it as creamily animalic as Chypre Palatin. Compared to other classic fougeres such as Azzaro Pour Homme, it is slightly sweeter and more synthetically radiant. But it is also nowhere near as sweet as modern fougeres (‘nugères’). In general, it reminds me of the kind of crisp, freshly-applied aftershaves I would smell on the neck of my father before he left for work each day.

 

But, you know, meh. This kind of fresh, clean manliness in fragrance form used to be de rigueur. Men expected it and they got it. It’s only now, in this glut of bloated niche and masstige fragrances, that they’re forced to shell out $250+ per 50ml bottle for the pleasure. I think that men deserve better than a classic idea upcycled. Fougère d’Argent is too cynical for me. It is clearly designed to catch the guy who’s either unfamiliar with sugar-free fougeres or who has been raised on Tom Ford and (rightly) sees this scent as something completely different from its stable mates. My one hope is that men smell this scent and get interested enough to use it as a jumping off point to explore the fougere category in general. At which point, they’ll inevitably come across something more interesting.

 

Coffee Masculine Myrrh Resins Review Sandalwood

Santal Nabataea by Fredrik Dalman for Mona di Orio (2018) Review

11th August 2018

 

Lovers of the sweet, creamy, and foodie representations of sandalwood, I’m sorry but Santal Nabataea by Fredrik Dalman for Mona di Orio (2018) is not for you. If you love the fake milky sweetness of stuff like Memo’s Quartier Latin, Miller et Bertoux’s Indian Study/ Santal +++, or Perris Monte Carlo’s Santal du Pacifique, and your general expectations of how sandalwood should smell are set in that direction, then take a pass on this.

 

Santal Nabataea smells very much like real santalum album oil and very little like the usual representation in commercial perfumery. When I first smelled it, I was first astonished, and then a little teary at the thought that something like this can still exist in modern perfumery. The best way to prepare you for something like Santal Nabataea would be to tell you to beg, steal, or borrow a drop of real santalum album oil and see for yourself how different it is from the creamy, sugary loudness of sandalwood in commercial perfumery.

 

I’ve written a bit about how real santalum album smells like here and here, but to recap, the essential oil itself is quiet, with curiously sharp high notes that can remind one alternately of peanut husks, solvent, glue, and even yoghurt. Australian native sandalwood (s. spicatum) is very sour, with strident green pine notes, but santalum album, used here and also the species from which Mysore sandalwood is derived, is softer, with a dusty incense-and-buttered-toast depth that’s rightly the object of obsession for many.

 

But no matter what type of sandalwood used, it seems that it’s the perfumer who decides whether to push it in a sweet-creamy or arid-aromatic direction. Natural sandalwood features both aspects simultaneously, but sandalwood synths all seem to focus on the sweet, ambery creaminess to the exclusion of the aromatic.

 

To date, the sandalwood fragrances that I feel have come closest to capturing the complex, unami-rich flavor of natural sandalwood have been Lorenzo Villoresi’s Sandalo, Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier’s Santal Noble, and Etro’s Sandalo (vintage eau de cologne). Or more accurately, should I say, they all capture that wondrous push-and-pull between the slightly sour milkiness and the dusty, aromatic aridity of the wood itself.

 

My personal favorite is Etro Sandalo eau de cologne, for two reasons: first, the topnotes feature the same nail polish, industrial plastics, and burning tire weirdness of some natural santalum album oils (which I love and welcome as a sign of authenticity), and second, as a bit of a cop out, it gives me the creamy, incensey milkiness of fake sandalwood in the drydown, a kind of guilty pleasure I can’t seem to wean myself off of. I used to own Santal Noble but although I admired it, I felt its brusque coffee-ish opening rendered it too masculine for me to enjoy as a personal fragrance.

 

I got into detail about these fragrances because I am convinced that Santal Nabataea is as close to Santal Noble as is possible to get this side of disastrous Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier reforms. It has the same touch of resinous coffee funk and the same dusty, earthy brusqueness.  The use of sweet myrrh (opoponax) in the basenotes is also similar,  emphasizing the herbal soapiness inherent to both scents.

 

I always thought that wearing Santal Noble was akin to stumbling upon the private quarters of a very English gentleman and watch him silently getting dressed in his three-piece tweed hunting suit laid out by his valet, tucking as he did a paisley handkerchief sprinkled with aromatic eau de cologne into his upper suit pocket. I didn’t feel comfortable inhabiting the skin of this gentleman every time I wore Santal Noble, so I swapped it away. However, I found and still find the scent of Santal Noble to be richly evocative in a way that few sandalwood-forward perfumes are. Santal Nabataea is similarly evocative; exotic without being derivative.

 

But Santal Nabataea also possess something of the odd, solvent-like topnotes of the Etro Sandalo and the dark, saline weave of aromatic fougere-ish notes seen in the Villoresi. It’s arid, earthy, and deeply unami, reaching parts of you that synthetic sandalwood just can’t. The supporting notes in Santal Nabataea are just that, a chorus of backing singers for the sandalwood soloist. The dusty resinousness of coffee is noticeable in that it dims the lights a bit, and underlines the essentially masculine nature of the scent. But unless the fruity nail polish honk in the topnotes is thanks to the oleander or apricot, I can’t really make them out as distinct shapes or forms in the texture of the scent. If anything, they exist simply to emphasize the astringency of the sandalwood core.

 

That’s not a complaint, by the way. I’m so grateful to smell something that actually smells like real sandalwood for once that I’m glad not to be distracted by a plethora of competing notes and accents. I think the way Fredrik Dalman built Santal Nabataea shows real confidence in his materials and in his own vision. I think he’s also counting on people to notice that the authenticity of the sandalwood heart in Santal Nabataea and read it as the entire point of the exercise. If so, message received. Lovers of real sandalwood and of fragrances such as Villoresi’s Sandalo, Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier’s Santal Noble, and even Etro’s Sandalo will definitely want to at least sample Santal Nabataea. For me personally, it joins the pantheon of great sandalwood commercial fragrances.