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Parfums Dusita Erawan, Fleur de Lalita, La Douceur de Siam, Le Sillage Blanc

12th November 2017

Recently, I was lucky enough to have been sent travel sprays of the new perfumes in Parfum Dusita‘s line-up – thanks to the generosity of Pissara Umavijani. I understand that all Dusita perfumes will soon be available in the more perfumista- and budget-friendly option of these 7.5ml travel sprays, a move I can’t applaud enough. Here are my thoughts on the new perfumes.

 

Erawan

Erawan blends the rich, vanillic hay-like properties of liatris odoratissima (deertongue) with a nutty crown of vetiver, moss, and clary sage for a result that has the same sweet, pappy aroma of freshly-poured putty and earthy, uncooked grains.

 

This effect is startling: nutritious without being foodie. Several non-perfumey ideas jump to mind, including freshly mown grass, warm hay, the horse feed we would give horses after a race (oats with Guinness and a boozy, fermented edge), and the smell of the brown soda bread mix prepared every morning in farmhouses up and down this country, which contains bran flakes, wholewheat flour, baking soda, salt, and milk.

 

Suddenly, though, after a period of lingering in the cereals aisle, Erawan rips open one side to let a crisp, pond water muguet out of hiding, a move that surprises me since I am used to the cut glass green floral notes like narcissus and muguet appearing at the top of a perfume. The coumarin facets of the liatris emerge more strongly in the drydown, giving the scent the more recognizable character of lightly toasted tobacco leaves, dry hay, honey, beer hops, and dusty vanilla.

 

With the green floral notes and the coumarin, I am reminded slightly of a less pissy Tabac Tabou, whereas the beginning posses more of the nutty, quinoa flour feel of Bois Farine (L’Artisan Parfumeur). These are just distant points of reference, though, because to my nose, Erawan is thoroughly original to the point of being kind of weird. And that’s a compliment.

 

I’d recommend Erawan to fans of rustic “countryside” fragrances that smell like the great outdoors than a classic French perfume (although that is exactly what Erawan is) – scents such as Fieno and Tobacco Toscano (Santa Maria Novella), Cuir Pleine Fleur (Heeley), Sova (Slumberhouse), and Tabac Tabou (Parfum d’Empire).

 

 

Le Sillage Blanc

 

Le Sillage Blanc features the same grey-green, matte, slightly oily galbanum leather that stars in both Cabochard (Cabochard) and Bandit (Robert Piguet), but to my taste, Le Sillage Blanc is an improvement on both because while it is quite dry and bitter, it is absent the stomach-churning raw meat aspect that makes Bandit unbearable (to me) and the somehow lifeless, non-moving torpor of the Cabochard. Le Sillage Blanc is slightly sweeter and smokier than its antecedents, as if the leather is trying to crack a smile while dangling a cigarette at the corner of its mouth.

 

Still, there is a certain brown-grey grimness to this genre in general – a certain lack of juiciness and sap that marks them out as unforgiving of human frailty. I think one needs to be Parisian, whippet-thin, and an elegant chain smoker to find this one perfectly comfortable. But in those circumstances, yes, I can see how it might read as sexy.

 

Fleur de Lalita

 

Fleur de Lalita is simply phenomenal. My favorite out of the new Dusita perfumes had initially been La Douceur de Siam, but then I tried Fleur de Lalita and have been mainlining it like a junkie ever since. There is something about this perfume that excites me, and I think that it’s because it manages the same perfect balance of crisp, crunchy green “leafy” notes and warm, milky-sweet tropical florals as in Amaranthine (Penhaligon’s) and Sira des Indes (Patou), but mixes in the deeply animalic galbanum-musk pairing that makes L’Heure Exquise (Annick Goutal) so enduringly beautiful.

 

I am not a big fan of galbanum, but here in Fleur de Lalita, the galbanum sidesteps the lime leaf and cut green pepper freshness of the resin and goes instead for that cigarette smoke-inflected, murky, animalic dankness that we can glimpse lurking in the depths of L’Heure Exquise and maybe even No. 19 EDP (Chanel). The animalic aspects of galbanum are cleverly emphasized with natural ambergris, which gives the body of the scent a salty, musky funk that hangs around for a good while (the last time I saw galbanum and ambergris work together so well was in Ella by Arquiste).

 

None of which might be apparent when you first spray this on, of course, because Fleur de Lalita is a ladylike endeavor and will only reveal her undergarments when you insist on looking. The first part of the scent, therefore, really focuses on the milky, banana-leaf sweetness of tropical ylang, jasmine, and lily; if you loved the sultry, cumin-spiked crème brulée of Amaranthine, like I do, then the opening hour or so will have your eyes rolling back in your head.

 

But the sharp, wet greenness of muguet reins in the supine creaminess of the florals to the perfect degree, ensuring that the scent never tips too far one way or another into sharpness or dessert. It’s like a rice pudding stirred with a snapped-off piece of agave, cold from the fridge and beginning to drip droplets of clear nectar.

 

Fleur de Lalita is the perfect balance of the green and crunchy with the sweet and milky, all underscored with the most beautifully musky, animalic galbanum-sandalwood seen this side of L’Heure Exquise – back when the Annick Goutal still had real Mysore sandalwood in it. I’d hesitate to try and define this, because it is a very complex fragrance and straddles (I think) several different categories, but perhaps this might worj: a tropical milky floral a là Songes, Sira des Indes, or Amaranthine crossed with a woody, animalic galbanum fragrance a là L’Heure Exquise or even Bandit. That might not seem like it would smell all that great, but it truly does.

 

La Douceur de Siam

 

Kafkaesque has, as per usual, described this fragrance to perfection – his/her degree of accuracy and eloquence is unmatched in perfume criticism. As I am not the best at describing notes or the progression of a fragrance, perhaps it is best to first read Kafka’s review to find out what La Douceur de Siam actually smells like, before returning to my flightier, impressionistic impressions.

 

You back? Great. Notes aside, La Douceur de Siam is, for me, the perfect rendering of that moment in Snow White when the little birds are helping Snow White to clean up the cottage of the seven dwarves by dropping fresh flowers into a vase and hanging shirts up on the line. It also reminds me of that orgasmic moment in the Herbal Essences ad when the girl throws back her head in ecstasy as soon as a dollop of that clear pink gel hits her hair.

 

Wearing La Douceur de Siam gives me the same feeling of childlike joy as those scenes suggest – when I first tried it, the first thought that jumped to my mind was how grateful I was that florals like this are still being made, by which I mean juicy, clear, uncluttered, and happiness-inducing without being too self-conscious about it.

 

The first stage of La Douceur de Siam strongly features the minty bubblegum aspects of ylang, against a backdrop of a tropical, fruity custard of frangipani, magnolia, and champaca. It might prove almost too pretty were it not for the overdose of benzoin or some other resin up front that gives the texture a strangely raw, doughy feel, like a bowl of potato flour moistened with a few drops of water. This central accord is lifted at the corners by small flourishes of green tea, banana, wet violet leaf, and cinnamon, like those little Disney birds lifting the corners of a tablecloth.

 

The scent goes on in this fruity, floral track for a while, getting sweeter as time goes on, while all the time avoiding that metallic, tinned-fruit aspect that dogs most tropical florals. Interestingly, the champaca begins to take over at some point, imbuing La Douceur de Siam with the rich, steamy rice and green tea character of champaca flower. Champaca is often strangely musky to my nose, like a curl of green apple peel dipped into a resinous cream, but here the clean, fruity facets of the flower dominate.

 

Thanks mostly to the strong presence of the champaca, the scent takes on a pleasant soapiness. This is not the thick, opaque soapiness of, say, Ivoire (Balmain) or even Noa (Cacherel), but the clear, fruity soapiness of shampoos like Herbal Essences or Garnier Fructis. Fun fact: champaca blossom gave rise to the word “shampoo” by way of the Sanskrit word for champaca, “champo”, which means “to massage”.  Champaca oil was traditionally used throughout Asia to fragrance all kinds of hygiene products such as soap and shampoo.

 

Later on, I notice a creamy vanilla and sandalwood duo coming in and settling all the floral notes. This is a truly delicious part of the fragrance, making me think of both dry book paper and a creamy chai sprinkled with dark cocoa and flakes of coconut.

 

A silky, jammy rose emerges strongly at the end, and combined with the lingering traces of the fruity, tropical shampoo notes conspires to make me think of Liasons Dangereuses (By Kilian), another fragrance that conjures up the vision of a clear shampoo with droplets of pear and peach nectar suspended in the gel, popping and bursting juicily against one’s head when massaged in.

 

They are not smellalikes, but in both these perfumes, there are mouthwatering gourmand notes like rose jam, dark chocolate shavings, cinnamon, and coconut flakes that work perfectly against the canvas of sharp, green-fruity shampoo. These are the kind of perfumes that make me think of showering with Lush Rose Jam or Garnier Fructis (the original), aromas so appetizing that you instinctively want to open your mouth and swallow some, just to see if the taste matches up.

 

The only drawback I see to such out-and-out gorgeousness is the lightness of the perfume – it settles rather too quickly into that papery cinnamon rose-ambergris-sandalwood base, losing the crispy green juiciness of the tropical flowers. But while it lasts, there is little to match the beauty of that floral bouquet, which I find intensely moving in its purity and gentleness.

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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Green Floral Hay Herbal Honey Scent Memory Tobacco Tonka Vanilla

Slumberhouse Sova

7th October 2015

For those of you who don’t know what Slumberhouse Sova smells like, it smells like this: boozy hops, pipe tobacco, sweet green resins, piles of damp hay laid out to dry in the sun, broom, honey smeared over everything, licorice,  vanilla, amber, dirt, cocoa butter, beeswax, and the pure, warm animal growl of castoreum. It smells like a rural fantasy of a childhood spent rolling around in a hayfield, lazy bees humming in the background, backlit against a haze of smoke and sugar.

What I like about Sova is that Josh Lobb seems to have set out to capture the entirety of a farm during baling season, complete with the not-so-picturesque parts. As anyone who has grown up doing farm work will know, there are a host of smells involved, and not all of them pleasant. I have baled hay – back-breaking work, by the way, with or without a machine. I have mucked out horse stables. I have even stuck my hands deep within the nether regions of sheep to pull a lamb out. Nowhere are you more intensely aware of the circle of life than on a farm.

The opening, which I have come to understand as typical for a Slumberhouse, is deeply tarry, black, and sticky. But upfront, I get a load of hay absolute mixed in with the tar, so there is an immediate sense of sunshine piercing through the upper notes. It smells simultaneously of freshly-poured asphalt, hay, trampled grass, rubber tires, something green and resiny, waxy and honeyed.

Someone I know mentioned he saw a similarity with Dior’s Eau Noire, and I have to say that I agree, to a certain extent.  Both have an almost shockingly tarry, dense, aromatic note, like the burning smell you get when you spill coffee or sugar on a boiling hot stove. It is almost too roasted, too intense, too “black” a smell. But Sova is more immediately sweet, a deep, honeyed stickiness coming from, I think, tonka beans or the vanilla.

The hot asphalt smell reminds me of nothing so much as those pools of poured tar on holes in the road that would always soften and almost liquefy somewhat in the heat of summer. In Ireland, growing up, there was maybe one day in the year that was ever hot enough to make the road tar all gooey like that, but that would be the smell that defined the whole summer for me, somehow – kind of like a child only ever remembers summers being sunny when he or she was a child. It also recalls the smell of heated tires and running tractors, farm implements lying around on a hot day – quasi-industrial smells mingling with the sweet smell of hay that has been cut and is now drying out in the fields. Also, I get a raft of sweet, grassy notes that are fresher than the hay note, which I presume are the clover and broom notes.

Reversing what I’ve experienced with Slumberhouse perfumes, Sova does not grow drier and more sparse, but indeed, darker, more syrupy, and somehow more “stewed” in texture. It is a very wet hay type of smell, which to my nose, is incredibly pleasing and sensual. The smell is almost like the gingerbread, dry, fruity, wet-dry smell of tobacco leaves laid out to dry in the sunshine. It also picks up a dried fruits feel, not a million miles away from the intense fruitcake feel of a Serge Lutens, specifically something like Arabie.

As the scent progresses, the tar notes, the heated asphalt and running farm vehicles smell –all shift to the back and let the stewed hay and dried fruits accord take center stage. Towards the last stages of Sova, I sense the tar notes get drier, until they manifest more as a smoke note, adding to the fierce pleasure I get from smelling this. On repeated wearings, I pick up even more smoke in the background, almost ash-like, and a sweet type of burning incense smell. The castoreum and vanilla in the base gives it this wonderfully warm and dirty feel, somewhat reminiscent of the deep warmth of Chypre Palatin – except in Sova, it is the warm dirtiness of a haybarn, not the inside of a musty castle.

Something about hay and grass notes bring me straight back to summer days, to my youth, to the simple pleasures of hard physical work, and the rewards of sensory delights of rolling around in cut hay. It seems that Josh Lobb intended for this fragrance to be experienced as a sort of nostalgic, rural childhood fantasy scent, because the re-launch of Sova on the Slumberhouse website is accompanied by this delightful little quote from Montague, which accurately sums up its nostalgic effect: “All the glorious trials of youth dear boy. When I was a lad I’d rocket off on my tandem with Wrigglesworth and ride and ride. Find some old barn and fall asleep with the sweet perfume of hay on our lips.”

Sova is a pure parfum and made from hellishly expensive ingredients, some of which apparently cost over $1,000 per ounce, such as fossilized amber, pure broom, sweet clover, and Tahitian Vanilla. I’m told that the reason Sova was discontinued originally was due to the expense and difficulty of getting hold of all of the expensive materials needed to make it. The further I get in this hobby of mine, the more I want to pare back to just a few bottles that are worth owning, no matter how expensive, rather than a whole cupboard full of lesser scents. Sova is one of those scents worth ten of what I already have.

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Gourmand Herbal Immortelle Masculine Review Spice Vanilla

Dior Privee Eau Noire

7th October 2015

Dior Privee Eau Noire is a fascinating fragrance, and one of great balance and refinement. It opens up on an almost shockingly bitter, aromatic note, like the burning smell you get when you spill coffee or sugar on a boiling hot stove. Actually, the more I wear this, the more I’ve realized that this ‘burned coffee’ note is actually lavender, which makes sense both coffee and lavender smell piercingly resinous, woody, and ‘roasted’ as if exposed to high heat for too long. It’s pretty genius of Francis Kurkdijan to pair two highly aromatic notes like this – they play off each other so that your nose smells sun-roasted lavender one moment and burned coffee grounds the next.

It is almost too “black” a smell at first. There is a coffee roasting business near my building, and in the early hours of the morning, the owner turns on the roasting machine and starts processing the coffee beans. The smell fills the entire neighborhood. But like with all good, aromatic smells, like herbs or coffee, when you take it too far, like way past burning point, the effect is almost exactly half way between nauseating and attractive. Eau Noire has that effect going on for the first half hour. I am torn between repulsion and attraction, but either way, I can’t stop smelling my wrist.

The dry down is sublime, though, no two ways about it. I can only describe it as an arid, burning cedar smell, giving the impression of dry and hot all at once, like when someone throws water on the stones in a Swedish sauna. It is so parched in effect that it feels like the air is being sucked out of the room. The dry, papery vanilla is a delight too – the more I wear it, the more it smells like fresh newspaper pages to me.

So here we have all the elements needed for total relaxation – a good cup of steaming black coffee, a touch of immortelle to provide that interesting salt-sweet twang of Scandinavian licorice, the smell of a sauna heating up, and a good fresh newspaper waiting for you to read. What more could a person want?

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Animalic Barbershop Herbal Honey Masculine Musk Spice Spicy Floral Tobacco Tonka Woods

O’Driu Peety

6th October 2015

O’Driu Peety, hmmm.

This fragrance famously comes 49ml to the bottle, with the final 1ml to be topped up using a drop or two of one’s own urine. I only had a small sample vial, though. I gave it my best shot, logistics not being my strong point and all, but there I was, crouched furtively over the small vial when the horrid thought occurred to me: WHAT IF THE PERSON WHO GAVE ME THE SAMPLE ALREADY PEED IN IT?

I thought quickly – who had given me the sample? Ah, that’s right – Colin Maillard from Basenotes. So off I waddled to my computer, my panties around my knees, and past the living room, where my husband looked up from his newspaper and called out mildly, “Everything alright, dear?”

Colin had not, it turns out, adulterated the sample. I was free to pee. But in the end, I chose not to. I’d like to say it was logistics, but really, I am a wuss.

So what does Peety smell like?

Surprising (to me). I don’t know why but I had expected something comforting and stodgy, like a piece of marmalade pudding with custard on a cold day. It’s something about the listed notes that made me think that – tobacco, tonka, honey, oranges. I had been imagining Tobacco Vanille mixed with a little bit of Absolue Pour Le Soir and rounded off with a touch of Feve Delicieuse (or Pure Havane).

No such thing – this is the opposite of comfort. This is startling. Uncomfortable even. In a good, on-the-edge-of-your-seat way.

The first whiff corresponded with the notions of tobacco comfort I’d nurtured: a deep waft of whiskey and tobacco and even hay, and there I was with a grin on my face and getting ready to sit back and enjoy the ride.

But then in rode this wave of licorice-like herbs and citrus fruits, all drenched in this dark, bitter honey with a deep piss-like nuance to it. Bitter oranges and lemons might indeed explain some of the sharpness, but here the citrus is not fresh. It smells like a cross between a bunch of dried herbs and a lemon, like lemongrass or singed lime peel. The herb-citrus mélange covers the fragrance with a deep medicinal gloom that seems almost black to me, like viewing a pile of luridly-hued fruits under a thick brown preserving glaze in a museum bell jar.

The sharp atmosphere that this almost toxic stew of pissy-honey, civet, medicinal clove, herbs, and preserved lemons creates forms the central character of Peety – and it never quite leaves. But that is what is fascinating to me. It reminds me of something caustic you’d use to lance a boil or dress a war wound.

Actually, this sort of barbershoppy, herb-strewn, musky character is something I associate with a certain style in Italian perfumery. I have experienced the same herbs-and-citrus-on-steroids openings in many of the other O’Driu’s, including Eva Kant, and in Bogue’s Maai and Ker. There is a sort of hyper-masculine, but self-conscious retro barbershop style at play here, as if these perfumers are trying to re-imagine the traditional Italian barbershops and apothecaries they might remember from their childhood.

The style is specifically Italian to me, and although I didn’t grow up in Italy, I did live there, and I recognize the atmosphere of those old, dusty places where traditional healing remedies, tisanes, and unguents sit right next to little white boxes full of Swiss-precise modern medicines. The whole of Italy is kind of like that; this weird and charming mix of traditional superstition and ultra-modern moral mores. So when I say that parts of Peety remind me of those Ricola honey-anise throat pastilles you see at every cash register in Italy, I don’t mean that it literally smells like that but that there is a memory association there for me.

Later on, a musky tobacco accord emerges, rich and glowing. The end result, on my skin anyway, is a sort of “old leather” aroma redolent with male musk and warm, stubbly cheeks (the type on a man’s face, one hastens to add). The aura of rich male skin and musk is bolstered by a warm, almost sick-smelling castoreum, and while there is never sweetness, there is a feeling of sharp edges being rounded off and sanded down – a sleepy warmth.

Funnily enough, it is only in the very later stages, when the bitter herbs and spices have banked down a bit, that I can smell the flowers – a rose and jasmine combination that smells both sultry and medicinal. Joined with the cozy ambroxan or amber-cashmere material in the background, there is an effect there that is quite similar to Andy Tauer’s Le Maroc Pour Elle (although this is not as sweet). The dry, papery (and hyper-masculine-smelling) tobacco accord in the dry-down is a real delight. It is not fruity or sweet like other tobaccos – this is dry and leathery. Persistence is extraordinary – I could smell this on my face cloth for four days afterwards.

A fascinating experience, this perfume, and just one of those things you feel richer for having experienced. Very few moments of wide-eyed delight come about for me these days, so hats off to Angelo Pregoni for Peety.

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