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Claire

Oud Rose Saffron

By Kilian Rose Oud

10th January 2016

Rose, oud, saffron, gaiac wood, cardamom……yes, it’s the typical line-up for your average rose-oud fragrance. I’ll excuse you if you’re not getting too excited – I know I wasn’t. But I find myself haunted by my sample of By Kilian Rose Oud, long after it’s gone, and I’ll tell you why. It’s one of the easiest rose-oud fragrances to wear, as well as the most serenely beautiful. It has none of the exciting harshness of the oud accord used in most other Western oud fragrances, and is all the better for it. Think of the most beautiful supermodel you’ve ever laid eyes on – but one who nonetheless fails to either move you or turn you on – and that’s Rose Oud by Kilian.

The secret to the success of Rose Oud is this: all the major elements (the rose, the oud, the gaiac wood, and the saffron) do not possess a strong character of their own but instead melt together to form a small black velvet pocket into which you find your hand fits perfectly.

So the green, slightly sour wet rose at the start gains a dulcet depth from the subtle oud, growing sweeter, jammier, and fuller as time goes on. The oud provides the dark backdrop without muscling its way into the composition in that bullying way oud tends to have. The saffron casts only a fine patina of sweet gold dust rather than its usual iodine-y leather scream. It’s a very subtle, smooth fragrance  – almost ephemeral. When I think the show has ended, eight hours on, I am surprised to find that golden, almost pudding-like saffron emerge on my skin, and a pleasantly sour tinge of oud.

Calice Becker knows her roses. Boy, she knows her roses, and Rose Oud is a rose done right. The eventual jamminess and “wetness” of the rose here mimics the pulpy lushness of the flower at the start of Liaisons Dangereuses (also by Calice Becker), but without that peach shampoo thing that Liaisons Dangereuses slithers into towards the end.

The oud, by the way, is synthetic but has the virtue of not smelling like it, so carefully woven into the fabric of the fragrance has it been. Yet more proof that it is more the skill of the perfumer (and to be fair, the art direction, for which we can thank Kilian Hennessey himself) than the raw materials that matters in terms of the final result.

Rose Oud is a beautiful, delicate piece of work whose subtleties could easily go unnoticed if you weren’t paying attention. It is by far one of my favorite rose-oud fragrances, and despite the cost, I have a feeling that I will own a (refill) bottle of this someday, even if I have to sell off some of my (many) other oud fragrances to afford it. I have finally reached the stage where I am content to do away with five or six inferior bottles of perfume to get my hands on just one bottle of something that satisfies and pleases from every angle.

Rose Oud may not be the most exciting or unusual rose oud on the market – many think it is pretty but mundane – but I think it’s one of the best-smelling rose-ouds around, perhaps only bettered by Tom Ford’s wonderful Noir de Noir or Guerlain’s Rose Nacree du Desert.

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Green Floral Hay Herbal Immortelle Independent Perfumery Iris Suede Summer

The Perfumes of Anatole Lebreton

31st December 2015

Recently I had the great experience of testing all four perfumes in the sample kit offered by Anatole Lebreton. You can order the sample set here for €6.50 delivered within Europe (which is a great deal!). Here are my thoughts:

Bois Lumiere

Bois Lumiere begins with a green, slightly wet honey – a bit dirty, as if it’s just passed from the arse-end of a bee onto your skin. But that slightly awkward phase passes quickly, transitioning smoothly into a soft, dry haze of a scent – a sort of paean to lazy summer days spent lying amongst the tall meadow grasses, making daisy chains with your children. Tender and melancholic, Bois Lumiere pairs a sour-ish honey with sun-bleached woods and a dry immortelle note that smells more like dried hay than the usual maple syrup. What is interesting is that these slightly green-gold hay notes get submerged into a thick pool of beeswax, the whole scent turning on a dime from dry grass one moment to molten wax the next.

The notes make it sound like it’s heavy – but it’s not. It’s a luminous, almost transparent wear, with a scent close to the feel and smell of the steam coming off a cup of chamomile tea. In fact, when I sniffed this blind, I thought the immortelle was actually chamomile – there is a dried hay aroma to both. There is a charming rustic feel to Bois Lumiere, a sort of idealized picture of a day out in the country. I find this to be a characteristic of the four Anatole Lebreton perfumes I’ve tested – they all paint a very specific landscape or scene, using childlike brush strokes in the faux-naïve style to bring out primitive emotions and memories in the wearer. They’re real heart-tuggers, these perfumes.

Since it is a honey scent, is it animalistic? Well, yes, but only in the sense that the honey we eat at breakfast still has the heavy scent of the bee about it. Bois Lumiere is suggestive in the same way as the rose-honey-wax notes in Cologne Pour Le Soir are: not smelling of either urine or sex, but of the sweet and sour aroma of silk stockings slowly peeled from heated flesh, complete with the enticing scent of clean female fur at the end of a long day. That Bois Lumiere ends up in the same flurry of the warm vanillic resin of benzoin is another line drawn to the wonderful Cologne Pour Le Soir. Is there room for another slightly sour, slightly animalic honey-beeswax-benzoin perfume in my life? Maybe, just maybe…..

L’Eau de Merzhin

L’Eau de Merzhin is the standout of the Lebreton line, in my opinion. The opening has all the dewy, wet, greenness of real-life plants and grasses, as well as the unpretentious cheerfulness of meadow flowers like daffodils, mimosa, and wood violets. It is an opening thick with pollen and crawling with life.

It also strikes me that this could be the inverse of Bois Lumiere, in that L’Eau de Merzhin starts off in the damp undergrowth of a meadow at dawn and Bois Lumiere is the same meadow at high noon, complete with the honeyed smell of sun-baked hay. The opening is almost hallucinogenic in its dripping-wet, juicy ripeness, and I’m reminded of the breath-taking beauty of other famous floral openings, such as De Profundis and Ostara. Despite myself, I am moved, oh, I am moved! I am such a sap for openings like this.

L’Eau de Merzhin loses most of this stemmy verdancy when it transitions into the heart, which seems (to me) to share a common accord with Bois Lumiere, specifically that steamy chamomile tea or sun-baked hay aspect. But where the hay in Bois Lumiere is wrapped up in a sweet, molten beeswax and syrupy, grassy immortelle, giving it a sort of golden, lazy afternoon sort of atmosphere, the hay or chamomile tea aspect here is greener and more herbal. I sense the juicy, snapped-stalk touch of angelica here. Heading off into the drydown, the galbanum adds its pine-like coolness, as well as a touch of lime peel.

It’s great. Something about the midsection gives me pause for thought, though, as it reminds me strongly of the mossy, slightly soapy neroli-inflected musk in the dry down of Acqua di Parma’s Colonia Assoluta, even though there don’t seem to be any notes connecting the two. Perhaps there is some unlisted white musk in this, or even some neroli, who knows? Anyway, the mind association, however tenuously or incorrectly made, happens to be a pleasant one, as I’ve owned and loved Colonia Assoluta in the past. I would actually consider getting a bottle of L’Eau de Merzhin in the summer as a replacement for my Assoluta – I think it would work brilliantly, me horsing around with the kids on the beach, and smelling like salty hay, wet green grasses, and moss.

Despite what I’ve said about the greenness of this fragrance, though, the prevailing feel in the dry down is that of a sweet, grassy creaminess – there’s no sharp green sting in the tail here, just an utterly comfortable wear that happens to evoke a dew-wet meadow and the shadows of a forest edging it.

Incarnata

Incarnata is supposed to evoke the scent of a vintage lipstick, and for a few moments it does, with the quasi-stale mien of cosmetic wax created by that clash of sweet violet (or rose) and stern, grey orris root we’ve seen before in every cosmetic scent from Misia to Lipstick Rose. The only difference is that Incarnata ramps this lipstick accord to the nth degree, and it’s rather fun feeling like you’re being pressed up against a wall by a giant tube seething with violet ionones and iris rhizomes. It’s a lipstick on steroids, yo.

The heart is something I’m not so keen on. If this lipstick was a person, the middle section would be that awkward teen phase, complete with angry outbursts and the occasional bout of violence. Basically, Incarnata sidesteps the pillow-soft landing normally used in lipstick scents and instead pairs a rather black, aggressive myrrh with a sharp raspberry leaf note and a green-ish amber, fusing them into a sharp, almost mint-like green resinousness that slices through the cloud of lipstick prettiness like a shark fin.

The resin adds vigour and backbone to what might otherwise be (eventually) a very bland cosmetics accord. It’s bright and fresh, which is not something you can normally say about myrrh or amber. But on the other hand, the slight mint and vetiver undertones are simply unpleasant to my nose – there is something too jutting about the combination. I am left feeling like I am wearing a smear of old lipstick, cut with the brackish, stale vase water from a bunch of mint that someone left out on the kitchen windowsill for too long. I feel a bit cheated – I came into this expecting lipstick and a bed stuffed with rose petals and white musk with which to break my fall, but instead I’ve cut my foot on a broken bottle.

The drydown is a return to the lipsticky waxiness of the start, but now dialed down to a hush and supported by a very fine, iris-tinted suede (or suedois) base. It is creamy and slightly sweet, with only trace amounts of the green amber, resinous myrrh, and sharp raspberry notes still apparent here and there.

Still, though – that awkward midsection…hmmmm. Given my fondness for lipstick fragrances, it’s possible that I could train myself away from my aversion to the heart notes. But it gives me pause for thought. I think Incarnata is a scary, massive lipstick up front, which is what I like about it, but it loses the plot after the topnotes fade away. Half the point about lipstick fragrances is that they’re supposed to be taken at face value – they are fun, beautiful in a simple, girlish way, and we are not supposed to try and make a more worthy scent out of them. Incarnata tries to inject a dose of salt and resin and beardy intellectualism into my beloved lipstick wax and it just ain’t happening. It’s a good fragrance alright, maybe too ambitious for the genre it’s shooting for. Ultimately, it’s just not to my personal taste.

L’Eau Scandaleuse

Wow – what a massive opening! L’Eau Scandaleuse barrels out of the bottle like an enraged bull, all gasoline-soaked tarpaulins and leather chaps a la Knize Ten, its power coming from a turbo-charged tuberose that smells like smoked, charred rubber. Fuel, rubber, leather, smoke – it’s all there, upfront, ready to knock you off your feet. It’s an impressive opening, making me think briefly of the opening to Lonestar Memories with its orangey creosote note and rubber-tire-on-a-fire accord.

But like with Lonestar Memories, L’Eau Scandaleuse loses all its interesting, smoky, ugly rubber bits – the bits that make it interesting – very quickly, collapsing into a pleasant orange blossom-driven leather with a musky tuberose support. I want more drama! More smoke! And for longer! Maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy Knize Ten or Lonestar Memories.

Later on, L’Eau Scandaleuse reminds me strongly of Tubereuse 3 by Histoires de Parfums, which I own and like, but have to be in the mood for. The rubbery leather chypre under-dressing continues to be interesting to me, because the rubber cuts the creaminess of the tuberose and the soapiness of the orange flower. To me, this small kernel of leather smells very much like the stiff brown coat leather (with mossy, coriander-leaf undertones) in my vintage Jolie Madame and Miss Balmain – that leaf-mulchy, murky brown-grey-green type of leather accord that feels stout and old-fashioned. It’s very 1970’s actually, and I like it. But – ack! Do you spot a common refrain here? L’Eau Scandaleuse reminds me too much of perfume that I already know and love. It’s beautiful but lacks the stinging slap of the new.

All in all, four very solid, even beautiful perfumes by Anatole Lebreton, with a classicizing bent and a respect for quality materials that is very evident. Everyone should test these, especially if you are someone who has seen what other non-classically trained perfumers have had to say in the past few years, such as Liz Moores of Papillon, and Hiram Green, and are excited to see what another talented, passionate perfume maker can add to that conversation.

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Gourmand Immortelle Sandalwood Woods

Serge Lutens Jeux de Peau

18th December 2015

Serge Lutens Jeux de Peau smells – at first – like the air in a food product preparation lab, where the air swirls with all kinds of flavor molecules added to enhance our perception of what we’re actually eating.

I don’t think Jeux de Peau is foody per se (because it is not something that tempts me to eat it), but I do think it relies heavily on food aromachemical notes to produce it overall effect. I smell cylotene, a molecule that tastes of slightly burned maple syrup, bread, and coffee beans and is often added to real maple syrup to enhance the flavor/smell, and pyrazines, synthesized molecules responsible for the very intense smell of coffee, chocolate, woods, and bread brought to burning point under intense heat.

Like other pyrazine-rich perfumes, such as Aomassai, Un Bois Vanille, and Eau Noire, the effect in Jeux de Peau is intensely aromatic to the point where it can smell somewhat overcooked, or burned to a crisp, and like those other perfumes, a licorice or anise note has been added to underscore the deep “black” nuances.

The butyric undertone to the sandalwood is taken to the limits here, so it smells both richly oily and more than a little rancid, like a butter dish left out to fester under a hot lamp. When the toasted bread notes meet the buttery oilslick, the effect is unhealthy in that doughy, yeasty way that always reminds me of when a businessman slips off his loafers on a plane – that steamy odor of slightly-cooked feet pervading a closed-in space, always the same regardless of how spotless his socks, shoes, or feet actually are. The opening of Jeux de Peau forces that same unwanted intimacy on me, and I fight through it, gnashing my teeth until the intensity dissipates somewhat.

In the heart, the overly rich, stale butter notes are cut with a dash of salt, which I think is coming from a very herbal licorice or anise note, and the grassy, spicy tones of immortelle. The savory notes are perfectly balanced here by a delicious and delicate apricot jam accord (osmanthus flower), as well as the gentler milk tones coming out from the sandalwood. The sandalwood in this is just incredible – sweet and salty, richly, brownly aromatic, like an ancient elephant figurine carved from Mysore sandalwood held up to a fire to bring out the aroma hidden deep within its fibers.

Burned toast and butter, you say?

No, Jeux de Peau smells more complex than toast and butter. It also smells a lot less natural. The combined effect is a blur of intense flavor impressions that attract and repel at the same rate. I think it is high art. I am just not convinced that I want to wear it.

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Gourmand Iris Leather Rose Suede

L’Artisan Parfumeur Traversee du Bosphore

4th December 2015

The first time I tried Traversee du Bosphore, I almost laughed out loud at how bad it was. There is a lurid, cherry-flavored Jolly Rancher note up top pitched halfway between children’s cough syrup and the clear pink goo you find at the bottom of a supermarket pie. I felt cheated. I had been promised a mystical Duchaufour-ian trawl through the back streets of Istanbul and what I got was cheap sweeties that even sugar-crazed five year olds might reject if they came spewing out of a piñata.

The notes say apple and pomegranate, two ingredients heavily used in Turkish and Balkan cuisine. But I am used to my mother-in-law’s wild pomegranate syrup, which is tart and sweet and tannic all at once, and I couldn’t see the connection to the more single-cell syrup I was smelling.

The dry down, on the other hand, was more interesting to me – a fat, pink suede cushion thickly dusted with icing sugar and trembling under the weight of rose petals. But every time I tried it, I had to clench my teeth through the artificial syrup opening. The main problem was that the opening notes felt cheap to me, and jarred against the uber expensive pink suede cube waiting for me in the dry down.

Then it struck me – what am I talking about? Lokum is cheap. It’s cheap to make, cheap to consume, and it tastes a bit cheap too. That’s practically the whole point of lokum. I used to live in the Balkans, and at meetings in Bosnia, Serbia, or Montenegro, someone would invariably pull out a tin of hilariously cheap lokum and you’d find yourself mindlessly chomping through two or three cubes of vaguely rose-flavored gelatin with the coffee – always more of a texture than a taste – careless of the post-lokum sugar headache that loomed over your medulla lungata like a nuclear cloud. Good stuff! Good times.

Knowing that lokum costs pennies is part of its hokey charm, I guess. It’s like coffee, good bread, and chocolate – small things that cost very little and yet provide so much pleasure to our daily lives. And this (essential) cheapness is key to appreciating Traversee du Bosphore. Enough with the mythologizing of Eastern sweetmeats, this perfume seems to be saying – lokum is made from boiled up horses’ hooves, and let’s not all pretend that it’s something fancier than it is.

I no longer live in the Balkans, so when I feel a bit nostalgic for the cheap rosewater taste of the local lokum, Traversee du Bosphore will have to stand in. Now that I have this scent pegged – a cheap and cheerful lokum suede – I can enjoy it without worrying about the cheap notes, which are, after all, exactly as they should be.

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Attars & CPOs Oud

Abdul Samad Al Qurashi Kannam 100-Year Aged Oud

3rd December 2015

I realize, as I am sitting down to write this review, that there is no accurate way for me to describe what a hundred-year old oud smells like. The best I can do is to say that it is unami, that Japanese word for the fifth taste, one that is packed ten deep with savory, sweet, salty, and sour notes, all piled in on top of each other so that the taste buds receive a complex sensation that is part taste, part smell, part feeling. Foods that are rich in unami, for example, are aged Parmesan cheese, aged balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, breast milk, and fine wines. In fact, if you have ever tasted any of these things and tried to describe them to someone has hasn’t, then you will know what I mean when I say it is a struggle to come up with accurate vocabulary.

Kannam 100-year old aged oud is, by a very wide margin, the most complex and unami-rich thing I have ever smelled. I feel very privileged to have been able to experience it at all, given that the price per tola on this one is, as the Americans say, “beyond my pay grade”. If I were rich, though, and I wasn’t depleting my kids’ trust funds too badly, I would happily cough up the $2,700 or so it costs (for 11.66666 grams). Hell yeah I would! But unless I find myself a sugar daddy, and soon, before the small portion of good looks I have run out, then I will have to content myself with the memory of my sample.

The oud oil in the sample vial was so thick, black, and viscous that I had to warm it for two hours between my boobs in order to even prise the applicator wand out of the vial (I do apologize to whomever receives this sample after I’m done with it). You have to dab it on, but the texture is like tar, so spreading it around gently is not an option – it sits there on your skin like you just painted it with wood varnish.

The smell – oh my God. It is utterly unfair that I should smell something this good and not be wealthy enough to procure it. Immediately, I have to say that the smell is not animalic or barnyard in the slightest – I was surprised by this. It is smooth and deep, but intense. My husband said it immediately brought him back to his childhood, to a massive state-owned Yugoslav leather goods store in town he used to frequent with his father for shoes, jackets, etc. There was a tannery nearby, and the air in the store thus smelled of newly-tanned leather and of the chemicals used to tan the leather. He said the oud had such an intense smell that it caused his teeth and jaw to ache, just like the leather goods store did. I have read that this is a common reaction with unami-rich smells too.

To me, at first, it smells of the following things: ancient furniture varnish, balsamic vinegar reduction, leather, rubber, resins, pine sap, wintergreen, chopped trees in a wet forest. The smell is, I have to say, intoxicating, smooth, almost sweet, balsamic, but 20,000 miles deep in unami flavors. The fumes are almost radioactive, so I can feel a buzz in my ears, almost like I am getting high on glue or something. Not that the smell is similar, not at all – just that the material gives off this powerful cloud of aromachemicals almost physically intoxicating to the senses.

Strangely, as time goes on, it becomes less sweet and more earthy, by which I mean that it takes on the damp, pleasantly moldy/sour inflections of a good patchouli. It smells of earth freshly upturned, of a wooden box buried in the damp earth for decades and then dug up and opened, releasing a stream of shut-up, stale air that smells ancient and good. I see what other writers on oud mean when they write that they smell like something prehistoric, dug up from a deep, dark cave in the woods somewhere. But like with all primitive smells (oud, patchouli, stone, forest), this has the ability to be “not strange” to your nose, as if somewhere in your prehistoric brain, you do remember this ancient smell from thousands of years ago.

Highly recommended as a once in a lifetime thrill, if only to set your own personal barometer for complexity. Samples of 0.15mls cost almost $50, so you have to be sure you want to travel this road, but it really is something I wish everyone could experience, at least once.

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Attars & CPOs

Sultan Pasha Aurum D’Angkhor

30th November 2015

For those of you who don’t know him, Sultan Pasha is a passionate attar collector, curator, and now in recent years, also a perfumer of his own teaching. Based in the UK, Sultan Pasha used to sell a fantastic range of samples of very rare or discontinued attars, including almost all of the Amouage ones, along with his own creations (see his eBay page here). I don’t know if he’s still selling the sample set of other brands, but he very kindly gave me samples from his own range of concentrated perfume oils, attars, and essential oils (including a sample of wild Mysore sandalwood, which I can’t wait to get to!). In the coming weeks and months, I will be reviewing each attar sample in the order they came to me.

If you’re interested in acquiring the sample set yourself (it contains about two drops each of 45 CPOs), you can order it here. Sultan Pasha advises that you dip the end of a paper clip into each sample well to draw out a tiny amount of the oil and apply it to the skin – these oils are extremely strong, so each two-drop sample is more than enough for five wears.

Now to Aurum D’Angkhor. It’s the first CPO in the pack that I tested, and right now I’m worried that nothing will be able to top this for me. Aurum is just mind-blowing. I trudge through an awful lot of the lower-priced Arabian oils and attars (as well as some very high-priced ones), and it’s rare that any of them stand out to me as being worth the skin time. What I mean is that there’s an awful lot of dodgy stuff out there in the CPO world, and with price not always correlating to quality or complexity, you have to have a lot of time and money to hone in on the good ones.

Or maybe it’s just me. Plenty of fellows over at Basenotes go straight to the super high end stuff, such as the pure oud oils and oud mixes (mukhallats) being sold by Ensar Oud and Agar Aura. But the price of entry for that serious oud scares me, so I mainly just lurk in the waters of whatever samples of Ajmal, Al Haramain, and Amouage CPOs that I get my hands on, lazily hoping to somehow stumble upon the attar that seems made just for me.

The Amouage attars, with the exception of Badr al Badour, failed to impress me much. I liked Tribute too, but the expense of tracking it down now seems prohibitive. The recently released premium collection by Al Haramain (reviewed here) was very mixed and in general, not worth the Amouage-level prices they are asking for them. But I did go through about 25 of ASAQ CPOs and oud mukhallats over a year ago, and I got to understand more about oud, the general profiles of the different types, and the difference between young and aged oud. Now I have my favorite CPOs, oud and non-oud mukhallats, ranging from the very costly (Badr al Badour, Ajmal Mukhallat Dehn al Oud Moattaq), mid-range (Arabian Oud Najdi Maliki and Al Siraj) to the very cheap (Majmua attar).

Aurum D’Angkhor, though, is special. It blew my socks off with its depth, complexity, and beauty. It contains a small amount of the famous Ensar Oud Encens D’Angkor in the basenotes, which is a smooth, fruity Cambodi oud oil with soft, cozy wood aspects. But the “Aurum” in Sultan Pasha’s remix means “Golden” and indeed that’s the color that comes across in this blend – golden, dusty saffron, a light smooth oud with the timbre of polished oak floors, smoke, honey, henna, and a haze of sweet jasmine and rose.

The topnote of Aurum D’Angkhor showcases the oud, and for a few minutes it has a ripe, barnyard aroma to it – not unpleasantly animalic, for example nowhere near the sour bile facets of a Hindi oud oil – but it definitely recalls the soft, ripe smell of fresh cow silage, a sort of liquid, sweet aroma that oozes across the room. I find this smell to be warm and nostalgic, because I grew up around farms.

The cow pat note disappears quickly, allowing a soft, spicy brown leather to take shape, with faintly indolic jasmine floating in and out. To my nose, saffron plays a pivotal role here, called on to bring out all its strange facets at once – the leather, the exotic dust, the sweetness, the faintly floral “mouth-feel”, fiery red spice, and a certain medicinal, iodine-like twang. The oud and the saffron create this deep, deep multi-levered scent profile suggestive of old oak floors, spicy brown leather, and dusty fruit skins (plums and figs). It is such a smooth, woody, refined aroma – it has the depth of real oud, but none of the challenging aspects.

Now, as to the smoke – this varied greatly on me from one test to another. At first, I found the opening and heart notes so smoky I felt sure there had to be either a touch of birch tar or cade oil in the topnotes, or at least a hefty dose of labdanum in the basenotes. At times, I felt that the smokiness was almost exactly like the rough, smoky Balsamo della Mecca, which is primarily a labdanum-focused scent, with dusty cinnamon (Siam benzoin) and frankincense. During my second test, I couldn’t detect as much smokiness, but instead I picked up on the honey (a sort of toffee-like, ambery sweetness) and a hint of the hay-like dustiness of henna.

In the base, I pick up a woody resin, kind of nutty, but also kind of granular, like coffee grounds. It may also be the musk, because some suede scents, like Tom Ford Tuscan Leather, Oud Saphir, Black Suede, and Al Haramain Tajibni, use a combination of a vegetal musk like ambrette, saffron, and cedar/woods to create a sort of musky, resinous suede effect. Whatever it is, it’s great. GBP 400 for 3ml, though…..it’s too much for me personally, but I have no doubt that it’s worth it.

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Gourmand Leather Masculine Rose Vanilla

Guerlain Habit Rouge Dress Code

22nd November 2015

What a beautiful opening – delicate and sweet, a cloud of bergamot, rose, and vanilla dust just hanging in the air like a rose-gold halo. And in it, I instantly recognized the ghost of Shalimar.

Well, actually, that’s not exactly true. If Habit Rouge is the male equivalent of Shalimar, then its flanker, Habit Rouge Dress Code is the male equivalent of (a mash-up of) two of the Shalimar flankers – specifically the Parfum Initial L’Eau and the Parfum Initial EDP. The Shalimar flankers strip Shalimar of its leather, smoke, incense, and dirty bergamot, and use her bone structure to turn out streamlined, sweet versions flushed with sweet lemonade, red berries, and that smooth pink patchouli that modern girls love so much. Likewise, Habit Rouge Dress Code takes the rose-leather combination of the original Habit Rouge EDT, strips it of its fresh lemon-and-herb-strewn opening, and fluffs it out with sweet notes that modern tastes love, like praline, caramel, and tonka.

But I don’t just mean that Dress Code smells like the conceptual twin of the Shalimar flankers, I really mean to say that it lifts entire sections from these fragrances. Dress Code has the same hazy but effervescent citrus-rose combo from the opening of the L’Eau, giving off the delightful effect of a huge pitcher of limeade dotted with pink rose petals. Later on, when the sweet praline and caramel come in, it starts to smell a lot like the dry down of the Parfum Initial EDP (minus the iris and berries). The overall feel is pink, balmy, and slightly resinous, so there is obviously a lot of the Guerlainade here too. In fact, at certain points, it reminds me of a sweeter, less complex version of Cologne du 68, which itself is basically an essay on the famous Guerlainade, with anise and angelica stalks added on top.

Two notes take Dress Code away from being a mere pastiche of these other fragrances, though. First, a warm nutmeg note provides a brown, spicy aura that is very striking. It acts upon the vanilla and caramel to produce a sweet, nutty effect very similar to that in Black Flower Mexican Vanilla. Second is a rather strident citronella-like note, probably from the geraniol or citronellol compounds in the rose oil used here. Both the nutmeg and the citronella notes die way back in the dry down.

Dress Code is extremely well-done, and is a striking example of a modern gourmand take on a classic. It will suit modern male tastes, I am sure, as it is extremely sweet and has that praline note that people like so much these days. But for me, it runs into “too sweet” territory, and to be honest, I can’t stand the boatloads of caramel poured into this – it has that syrupy “catch” at the back of my throat that put me off ever buying Parfum Initial EDP. The opening is beautiful, and I’ll admit that within five minutes of applying, I was scouring the net to see where I could find it. But on reflection, I only find the opening alluring because it reminds me of the one Shalimar flanker that I really rate (and own), which is the Parfum Initial L’Eau.

By the way, not that it matters, but if I were smelling this blind, I would swear that Dress Code was a feminine release. It’s a good example of how the line between feminine and masculine fragrances is really a thin one these days, and that it essentially doesn’t matter at all – if you’re a woman and this smells good to you, just wear it.

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Chypre Floral Gourmand Iris Patchouli Vanilla

Guerlain Shalimar Parfum Initial

22nd November 2015

I think Guerlain did a bang up job of modernizing Shalimar for the tastes of the younger market. Personally, I love the original Shalimar, but from what I smell on young girls around my neighborhood, their tender young noses would likely wrinkle at the smell of all that smoke, leather, balsams, and dirtiness. Some perfumes need to be grown into, and Shalimar is definitely one of those. (Don’t worry, girls, she will be still there waiting, still great, when you are finally ready). In the meantime, Shalimar Parfum Initial is a very good rendition.

Shalimar Parfum Initial is essentially an add-and-subtract job that was done with taste and thought. Wasser removed the stinky grade of bergamot used in the top notes of the original and replaced it with a sunny orange/lemon combo unlikely to offend young noses. He took away all the smoky leather, balsams, and incense, and added a huge dollop of what feels to me like Angel-like notes, mainly caramel, berries, and patchouli, thus bringing Parfum Initial to the teetering brink of the modern fruitchouli epidemic, but never pushing it all the way in. Finally, he added a massive dose of iris, giving it a plush, vevelty, powdery mouthfeel that puts it in the same family as the great Dior Homme Intense. It is also vaguely reminiscent of Coco Mademoiselle and Angel, but always retains its own character. It smells a bit like Shalimar too, of course, but the overall feel is different, more gourmand, sweet, plush, and uncomplicated. For people who hated the baby powder in the original, this version will also likely provide some relief – it is not nearly as powdery as the original.

For all of that, I don’t LOVE love it. The original Shalimar simply blows this out of the water on all levels, and it is an impossible act to follow. Moreover, repeat wearings of Parfum Initial has wearied my nose to it somewhat, and there are some things in it that I’m picking up and irritating me. I find that there is an intensely sweet, almost syrupy note in there (the caramel plus berries probably) that I can almost feel in my throat. It kind of throws the perfume off balance a bit. There is nothing to balance out the sweet syrup in this, and it makes me appreciate the original even more, because at least in that, the sweetness of the vanilla is perfectly tempered by the smoke and leather. Anyway, overall the scent is gorgeous and will appeal to the younger market, and (hopefully) bring a new generation of scent lovers around to the great Shalimar when they are good and ready for her.

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Amber Animalic Incense Leather Oriental Resins Smoke Tonka Vanilla

Guerlain Shalimar

22nd November 2015

Ah, Guerlain Shalimar, the ur-Oriental. Sitting down to write a review of Shalimar kind of feels like looking up at the top of Mount Everest and wondering how the hell even to begin the ascent. It seems to cover (in one single bottle) a lot of the themes and notes people go looking for in separate perfumes – you want vanilla, it’s the textbook example, you want smoke and incense, well you got that too, you want amber, it is the mother of all modern ambers, you want animalics and leather, ditto. If you also happen to be the type of person who is interested in freaky notes, like baby diaper, burning tires, tar, and slightly rancid butter, then, why yes, Shalimar also has you covered.

It’s not an easy perfume to love right off the bat. Don’t get me wrong, Shalimar is easy to love, but the actual falling in love bit is not immediate. It took me ten days of wearing it before I could even tolerate it, let alone love it, but I got there and in end, it clicked for me, and that was it. Pure love. The everlasting kind. Whenever I see someone saying, oh I just don’t get Shalimar, or oh Shalimar hates my skin, you know what I am thinking? You’re just not trying hard enough. Put your back into it. If you can’t commit a week or ten days out of your life to understanding Shalimar, then not only are you cheating yourself out of experiencing one of the best perfumes ever made, you are also missing the opportunity to “get” most orientals that came after Shalimar.

For, once you unlock Shalimar, you start to see that Serge Lutens’ Ambre Sultan is just a snapshot of a portion of Shalimar (principally the amber and herbes de provence) blown up 150% and turned sideways. Etro’s Shaal Nur is an abbreviated essay on the incense and opoponax in Shalimar. Mono di Orio’s excellent Vanille is a modern take on the woodsy vanilla of Shalimar. You can spot echoes of Shalimar in Chypre Palatin (vanilla and animalics), Fate Woman (bergamot and powder) and Bulgari Black (vanilla, rubber, smoke). Whether perfumers are aware of it or not, most of today’s grand orientals refer at least in part back to the ur-Mother Oriental herself.

Forgive my wittering on. For all of that, Shalimar smells absolutely wonderful, grand, lush, smoky, sexy, comforting, and warm. The opening, as I’ve mentioned, is jarring to the nth degree, especially if you’re not used to it. I don’t know whether it’s the particularly stinky grade of Bergamot that Guerlain use, or the way it clashes with the vanilla, but the top notes smell curdled and rancid, like when you pour lemonade into cream. The vanilla itself smells tarry and burned, like rubber tires piled high and set on fire. Somehow, somewhere underneath all of that, there appears a slightly horrifying note of soiled diapers, or at least baby powder that has been caked into the creases of a baby’s bottom. It smells sort of unclean, and is pungent enough to singe your nose hairs off.

Here’s the odd thing – after you get used to Shalimar, you start to actively crave the weird opening. When you begin to go “Mmmmmmm” rather than holding your breath, this is a sign that you’ve crossed the line. Welcome! It’s like a Shibboleth for hard-core fans of Shalimar – we’re all over here at the other side of the line, and everyone else is pressing their noses to the glass, shaking their heads and saying, “I think you have Stockholm Syndrome”

After the “horrific” first half hour (for which you may want to refrain from sniffing your wrists if you are smelling it for the first time), it is an easy ride from there on in. Sweet, smoky vanilla poured on top of a long, golden, powdery amber, with accents of leather, smoking resins, and animalic musks. It has this neat trick of smelling comforting/familiar and yet ultra-sexual at the same time. It lasts all day and, in my humble opinion, is just fantastic in whatever concentration and vintage you wear. Yes, the vintage parfum is the deepest and smokiest, but we can’t always be wearing that (for reasons of finances as well as time and place), so it’s good to know that Shalimar is still recognizably the same Shalimar in the weakest EDC as it is in the parfum – thinner, yes, but still, you wouldn’t mistake her for anybody else. For me, it is true love, and a top five perfume forever. It is like my second skin.

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Attars & CPOs

The Al Haramain Premium Collection

20th November 2015

Given the recent spate of reviews for Al Haramain’s Premium Collection (CPOs and attars) and Prestige Collection (EDPs), I eagerly jumped on the bandwagon of ordering samples from Al Haramain’s main European office, in the Netherlands. The price of the sample set (€20, delivery included) is incredibly good value when you consider that even a sample vial of concentrated perfume oils and attars goes very far. I received (in record time) a sample set containing all except one of the Premium Collection and a bonus two samples from the Prestige Collection.

I want to particularly commend the European office of Al Haramain for offering such a comprehensive (and affordable) sampling program, because most Arabian perfume houses do not. This is a far-sighted decision on the part of Al Haramain because, simply put, it will ensure that more people get to sample the products. And, as we all know, the world of Arabian attars and CPOs is so bewilderingly large and confusing to Western sensibilities, that we need all the help we can get in narrowing down the field.

In the end, here’s the result – I liked some, was deeply “meh” on others, hated one or two with a passion, and loved one enough to start searching for a full bottle of it. For any company worth their salt in this business, I would have to say that that’s a pretty good return on investment – right? Hats off to Al Haramain (Europe branch) for this smart strategy. Now onto the scents themselves:

Hayati

I suspect that there was a mistake in filling my sample because whereas the published notes for this CPO uniformly cite musk, amber, agarwood, sugar, rose, and saffron, I get something completely different. The top note is a bright lemon, quickly followed by a sweaty combination of pine or conifer resin and vetiver. Underneath this rather masculine, woodsy layer, I can almost convince myself that there is an unclean musk lurking, almost like the halitosis tone of ambergris or civet. None of the reviews or marketing blurb mentions anything like this, so I am putting this down to a sample mix up. Hayati itself sounds rather good, but whatever it is that I have on me right now smells pretty foul.

Mukhallat Seufi

I’ll be honest – I ordered the Al Haramain Premium Collection sample pack based purely on the glowing reviews for Mukhallat Seufi. However, to my great disappointment, Mukhallat Seufi is a distinctly middle-of-the-road attar. There is indeed a beautiful, bright, jammy rose for the first hour, tinged somewhat with that lemony floor cleaner note that all good rose oils seem to have. During that first hour, it smells beautiful, if a little traditional (read: that tried and tested rose-and-saffron attar smell).

But soon, it begins to deflate like a popped balloon into the standard fruity-amber midsection that is so familiar to me from other Al Haramain attars such as Attar al Kaaba. It is syrupy, heavily spiced with a dusty saffron, and despite what the reviews would have you believe, completely devoid of the interesting, sour-rotting smell of real oud (or even the high-strung, band-aid slap of the Firmenich synthesized stuff).

The base, which also arrives woefully quickly, is a cheap laundry musk, so within a matter of two hours (sob!) you are plunged from the heights of that initial rose drama to a screechy, rose-tinted white musk. The gorgeous rose is a cruel tease – underneath its brief cameo (“Here I am, look at MEEEEE”), the rest of the oil is getting ready to fall apart. Forget the complex notes list – this is a simple affair. I don’t hate it, but it’s nothing I’d lose my knickers over either.

Given that Mukhallat Seufi (€160 for 6mls, or €26.66 per ml) smells like two-thirds of the Al Haramain bestseller Attar al Kaaba (€40 for 25ml, or €1.6 per ml), I’d be feeling very stiffed indeed if I’d plonked down full price for this. For that kind of money, I could take Attar al Kaaba, fix the less-than-transcendental rose at the top with an expensive pure rose otto, and still have enough dosh in my pocket to buy a bottle of Narciso Rodriguez Musc for Her, which features the same sort of rosy, ambery white musk you get here (if that’s your thing).

Safwa

I never thought this would be the standout for me – cloves! camphor! kill me now! – but it totally steals the show. I was not completely sold on the opening and early heart at first. When I first put it on, I got a biting dose of camphor and a very metallic mix of clove and cardamom. Twenty minutes in, and all other notes drop out of sight for a while, leaving an oily mint note floating there – not a fresh mint note, mind you, but strands of mint roots left to rot gently in a glass of water. It is a very strange and non-traditional opening to a Middle-Eastern attar.

But the more I try it from my sample, the more I start to appreciate its almost refreshing, spicy greenness as a necessary prelude to the main act, which is a brown, spicy patchouli so beautiful it makes me want to cry. If you’ve ever tried Patchouli Boheme by LM Parfums, then you’ve a slight idea of what you’re in for, because it shares something of that musky-ambery vanilla and sandalwood base that makes the patchouli note slightly edible. But this is much, much better than the LM Parfums scent. No chocolate, and no headshop. This is refined stuff. It is also not sweet.

Further on down the line, a smoky labdanum reveals itself, and the smooth woodiness of the vanilla, patchouli, and musk is roughed up by its slightly resinous, tough texture. It’s as if the golden pool of amber and patchouli has been contaminated with the black oil of untreated leather. The smoke, tar, and leather of the labdanum resin adds a very sensual “my skin but better” feel to the scent. On the whole, Safwa has much more development on my skin than any of the others in the sample pack, and is the only one where the complex list of notes actually bears out.

On the subject of development, you’ll have ample time to study it as Safwa has a half life of decades. It’s actually freaking me out how long this lasts (and how beautifully). It wears very closely to the skin, though, and is far from bombastic. Even when I put it on first, I make the mistake of adding more and more because I think I can’t smell anything but oil for a while. It’s a quiet scent. The sample vial it came in snapped off at the top (the Al Haramain sample tubes have an odd fit to them) so I inadvertently gave myself a whore’s bath in it the second time around, and the oil still had the good manners to not shout.

I love this oil – what can I say? I am a sucker, but I am currently scouring the InterWebs for a decently-priced bottle of this. It costs €160 for 24mls, which works out at almost €7 per ml. This is almost four times cheaper than the feted Mukhallat Seufi, and yet in terms of sheer enjoyment (not to mention quality), Safwa is worth four of the Seufi.

Atifa Blanche

Blanche is an excellent word to describe this scent. It is indeed a “white” scent. There is something so softly chewy about the topnotes of Atifa Blanche that I instantly visualized the scent as a white silk pillowcase stuffed with flower petals, marshmallows, meringues, and clouds of whipped cream. It has the straight-forward beauty of a bride coming down the aisle, the sunlight behind her framing her head in an impossible halo of light. The oil opens with sparkling citrus fruits – mandarin, lemon, and lime peel – their sharpness nicely rounded out by the slightly creamy heart of lily and rose.

There is also a noticeable lipstick note in the heart, due to the violet acting upon the rose. In fact, if I were asked to sum up Atifa Blanche in a quick sentence for a catalogue pressed for space, I’d submit this: “A vintage cosmetics scent suitable for virginal brides with a Roller Derby Girl past.” Kind of in the same ballpark as Misia (which is more matronly) or Putain des Palaces (which is skankier) in that they are all big, violet-y powder puff scents at heart. But Atifa Blanche has an interesting wax or dough accord that puts it alongside Kerbside Violet (also suitable for a Roller Derby Girl).

I don’t smell any tuberose or jasmine, to be honest, but I do smell a very small bit of creamy ylang ylang. Still, there is nothing sub-tropical or Big White Floral in feel to this at all – if they are there, they are there only in a strictly denatured form, in other words, no dirty indoles, no rubber, no blowsy ladies-who-lunch elements at all. It is a clean, fresh, and stream-lined scent, with the violet and rose lipstick crème leading the flavor pack at the front.

The notes list an ozonic accord in the topnotes, but I notice nothing aquatic or watery (unless you think of lily as smelling that way, and if you do, then quite clearly you are a gardener). For me, the scent is defined by this radiant aura of clean, sweet lipstick wax, and it strikes me as both innocently retro and almost (but not quite) edible. It is beautiful and feminine, and miles better than By Killian Love. I’d almost certainly buy this if I were in the States, where it costs $90 for 24ml from Beautyspin. Unfortunately, I live in Europe, where the fuckers would charge me €160 for it. Tant pis pour moi.

Atifa Noir

As unbearable as Black Orchid, after which it is clearly modeled. It features a sickly, unholy alliance of chocolate, flowers, and fruit that only lacks the salty cucumber note of Black Orchid to make the horror complete. Atifa Noir clearly has top notch materials, when I manage to pick them out of the black sludge, such as a winey Burgundy rose and…well, no, that’s about all I can pick out. The uneasy mix of chocolate, fruit, vanilla, flowers, and the metaphorical kitchen sink has the added insult of also smelling like a cheap air freshener or a heavily-scented floor cleaning product.

The whole thing has been doused in black pepper which gives it that masculine feel that Black Orchid is so famous for (except in BO’s case, the truffle note is responsible). If Luca Turin was reviewing this oil (unlikely, I know!), I’d like to think that he’d say that Atifa Noir was slumming it in Angel territory and that the black pepper gave the florals an Adam’s Apple. Me, I’m no Luca Turin, but I’d say that Atifa Noir is only one step up from the woeful stuff that Tesori D’Oriente puts out, which is itself only one step up from functional cleaning products. But at least Tesori D’Oriente are honest enough to charge €4 or €5 a bottle. Atifa Noir costs €160 for 24mls.

Tajibni

It surprises me how many fragrances out there smell like Tuscan Leather. Recently it was Oud Sapphir, but there was something in Byredo’s Black Saffron that smelled like it too. Tajibni attar is the latest one. Nothing in the notes really suggests that it should smell like Tuscan Leather. And yet it does.

Tajibni opens with the flat oily aroma of pressed mandarin peel, not fresh or sparkling, but rather dense and compacted. The meat and bones of the “Tuscan Leather” component comes up behind the oily citrus and soon it is pretty much all I can smell. To me, what all these TL smell-alikes have in common is this: a musky suede scent profile built from powdered cedar chips, stale nut shells, and sawdust lining the ground of an indoor horse-riding arena. I like this smell a lot – it reminds me of happy moments in my childhood – but it is still more a “smell” than a complex personal fragrance. That’s the way I feel about Tuscan Leather, and in the interest of fairness, it’s also how I feel about its smell-alikes. Tajibni is a very likeable, high quality suede/leather fragrance, but at €160 for 6ml, I’d be hard pressed to recommend buying this over a bottle of the Tom Ford.

Although for some reason I wasn’t sent Ehas in my sample pack, they did send me two samples from the Prestige Collection, which features EDPs and not oils.

Arabian Treasure

Arabian Treasure is a cuddly vanillic amber along the same lines as Ambre Precieux or Ambre 114, but with an unwelcome mint/basil topnote that comes off as mould. There is also a blast of dirty clove, which lends the composition an unwholesome air, like the closed-up air in the doctor’s waiting room.  All of this is unnecessary – just show me the amber. When they arrive, the base notes are the golden river of amber, labdanum, and patchouli that I like in all the other amber-centric fragrances I like. Just buy one of those instead – any of them – because nobody had any business paying €230 for a basic amber fragrance. The sample card for this read “End of Quest!” Exactly my feelings.

Mystique Musk

This is very nice – a very fruity, sweet white musk with an opening note of pure candied purple violets (the petals as well as the leaves). It’s very childlike and fresh, and the undertone of eraser rubber that I’m also picking up is adding to the scent’s upbeat, preppy aura. It smells slight – just slightly – like the inside of a My Little Pony, when you cut through its belly (I was a weird little child, that’s all I’ll say). This is a good thing, to my nose. Osmanthus adds a hint of apricot, and there is a velvety suede accent to the base (although the notes say leather). If you like gentle, fruity, slightly musky suede scents like Bottega Veneta, Daim Blond, or Cuir Amethyste, you might want to give this a try.

The white musk in the dry down is neither cheap nor offensively “laundry” so even white musk haters should be safe. In fact, for a fragrance named for musk, I am not picking up a whole lot of it. The pricing on this is a bit weird – the official Al Haramain office in the Netherlands has this listed for €230 for 70mls, whereas Parfumaria (also in Holland) has it at €195 for 100mls…..very odd. Either way, not a bargain, and definitely not a masterpiece. I’d only pay those prices for something extremely special. Like, for example, I Miss Violet by The Different Company, which also costs a bomb, but pairs the violet and leather with a sublime ambrette seed that smells like fresh peel from a Granny Smith apple.

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