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Sonoma Scent Studio Winter Woods

7th October 2015

Anything by Sonoma Scent Studio is as rare as a hen’s tooth over here in Europe (distribution problems) so when I got the chance to buy a decant of Sonoma Scent Studio Winter Woods untested, I just had to go for it. I rarely buy blind anymore, but I’m a committed fan of anything Laurie Erickson does, so I knew that the risk factor was low.

In the end, I think I’m going to have to ask one of my U.S. friends for a big (and perhaps illegal?) favor, because 4mls of this dark elixir is just not going to be enough. I need more. How much more? Technically, let’s say it has to be enough to stop those feelings of helpless rage and sorrow every time I see the level in that decant bottle dip any further.

Winter Woods goes on with a whomp-whomp of a hot, dirty castoreum note married to the cool, sticky, almost mentholated smell of fir balsam. Immediately, you are plunged deep into a dark woods at night, all around you silence and the sticky emanations of sap and balsam and gum from the trees. There is an animal panting softly nearby – you don’t see him, but you can smell his fur and his breath.

But it is warm and safe there in the woods. As a warm, cinnamon-flecked amber rises from the base and melds with the animalics and the woods, the scent becomes bathed in a toffee-colored light. There is sweetness and spice here. It smells like Christmas, and of the pleasure of breathing in icy cold air when you are wrapped up, all warm and cozy.

In the heart, a touch of birch tar adds a smoky, “blackened” Russian leather accent, and this has the effect of fusing the heavy, sweet amber with a waft of sweet incense smoke. It’s as if someone has opened a valve of SSS’s own Incense Pure in the middle of the woods – a dry, smoky outdoors incense for a pagan ceremony perhaps. I also sense some dry tobacco leaves here, reminiscent of Tabac Aurea, another SSS classic.

I love the way that the heavy layers of the fragrance – amber, woods, animalics, labdanum, and incense smoke – have been knitted together to form one big angora wool sweater of a scent. It is heavy, but smooth, and a total pleasure to wear. If I could get my hands on it, I would buy a big bottle of it in a heartbeat.

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Smoke Vetiver Woods

Bruno Fazzolari Lampblack

6th October 2015

Bruno Fazzolari Lampblack is exhilarating and deeply satisfying experience from beginning to end. I like the name ‘Lampblack’ – like Lumiere Noire, it tells you to expect a juxtaposition of light and dark elements. And the perfume definitely delivers on the promise of its name, smelling like you just dug your fingernails into a bitter grapefruit and sprayed its volatile oils across a matte, black chalkboard. But what I most appreciate about Lampblack is that it achieves its aims in an elegantly simple way – no unnecessary bells and whistles you sometimes see laid on for effect in ‘daring’ niche perfumery. Yes, admittedly it does contain the rather questionable note of ‘shadow’ in its listed notes, but the perfume itself is so good that I am inclined to forgive it its one small moment of bullshit.

The sour and juicy grapefruit notes that hit you straight out of the can are somehow – miraculously – sustained in their effervescent intensity throughout. Usually, citrus oils are so volatile that they disappear from the skin in under an hour. I don’t know by what trick the effect has been extended here, but it strikes me that Lamplack may just have solved the problem of traditional, citrus-based eaux de colognes. Perhaps it is because the grapefruit notes are overlaid on the inky, matte black base of vetiver and what smells to me like black rubber or tar – it is possible that the dark base simply acts as a fixative for the volatile citrus notes. The grapefruit has, as is its wont, a slightly urinous aspect to it that lends a pleasant (but light) touch of animal warmth, and any potential sharp corners here have been sanded down and made warm by a thin blanket of benzoin.

Oh and by the way, I hate vetiver, but not when it’s done like this. Void of any saltmarsh, rooty dankness, the material used here is matt black, crisp, and smoky. Actually, infused with the smokiness of cypriol, the base of Lampblack reminds me strongly of Timbuktu, minus the incense and pulp fruit notes (mango, davana). Like Timbuktu, Lampblack uses cypriol oil, or nagamortha, in a restrained and elegant way, allowing it to imbue the scent with smoke and air and radiance. Nagamortha is used way too heavily in most niche perfumery these days, especially to imitate a dense, woody ‘oud’ base or to blast the scent out at decibels that make dogs flinch. Bruno Fazzolari shows us the difference that the hand of a skilled perfumer can make.

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Incense Scent Memory Smoke Spice

Comme des Garcons Black

18th September 2015

I left Ireland for Bosnia when I was 22, without so much as a backwards glance. Over the following 16 years when people asked me if I missed home, I would always be startled and say yes – automatically – but it wasn’t quite true. I just never thought of home as being anywhere other than wherever I was right then.

I never realized that the gene for “home” was carried deep within my DNA until one dark night when I stepped out of a snow-stalled car into the deserted crossroads of a tiny village in Bosnia and was hit in the solar plexus by a waft of smoke from a coal fire.

Not just one – dozens of coal fires. All sending plumes of sweet-smelling smoke into the black, starless sky. In my mind’s eye, I could see walls covered with centuries of soot, men huddling round the heart smoking cigarettes, and the fingers of women putting more coal on the fire.

My mother’s fingers, black with soot. In that moment, every cell in my body ached to be back home, watching the familiar sight of her white fingers gingerly placing another coal on the flames, egged on by her always-cold children. Was she sitting beside her fire now, thinking of her first child, wondering if she was cold?

Comme des Garcons Black is the smell of home to me. It smells of coal dust, sweet woodsmoke, frankincense, dry cedar logs, licorice, and finally, in its dying moments, a salt-encrusted leather belt. Not of these things directly but of these things burned on a fire and sent out into the crisp, cold air of a Northern night sky as a single curl of smoke. Every time I spray it on, I experience a joy like that of launching into a sudden run.

If I were being picky, I’d say that the projection and longevity and projection of Black leave much to be desired. But I’m content with this in a quasi eau de cologne format. I’d be afraid that any attempt to make Black stronger would compress all the air out of its airy weightlessness. I like that Black takes the form of coal dust mites, shifting as you move; acting as your own personal force field.

I’ve long been looking for a smoky, woodsy birch tar fragrance that hits this exact spot – the coal-fire-in-Bosnia spot. I love Le Labo Patchouli 24 for coming close, but the vanilla syrup makes me pause, and Bois d’Ascese is far too dense and acrid. Memoir Man does smoky, charred woods and Frankincense beautifully, but it has a somber, sulky feel that might prove difficult. Black, to me, is what you might get if you were to put all these perfumes through a Photoshop filter and apply a filter to reduce the density by 70%. Black does indeed smell truly “black” but it’s more a sheer wash of color rather than a thick daub of oil.

I love it. It’s the first Comme des Garcons perfume for which I’ve been able to locate a heartbeat. I admire their modernist approach but something in their stripped-down aesthetic usually leaves me cold. Here there’s both an emotional core and a minimalism that’s entirely in keeping with the house signature. Maybe the heart bit is all me, but I do feel there’s something warm and human about Black.

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