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Onda Voile d’Extrait by Vero Profumo: A Review

11th January 2024

 

I always thought of Onda by Vero Profumo as a difficult perfume, but now, at a distance of a decade, I understand that I was just not grown enough for it.  Though I first smelled – and liked – the parfum in Campo Marzio 70 in Rome, my mistake was ordering a sample of the eau de parfum, not knowing that the formulations were very different.  The putrid-smelling passion fruit note, the pissiness, and the fungal brown wetness of it all repulsed me.  I couldn’t imagine anyone wearing let alone loving it. 

 

When I referenced its urinous aspects, laterally, in a review of Maai (Bogue Profumo) for a now-defunct blog, Vero herself took offense and, as the kids say, put me on blast publicly for having a scat fetish.  (Yes, I had to look that up too.  No, I don’t recommend doing a Google image search.)

 

Wearing the Voile de Parfum, an extenuation of the original parfum, now, I still think that the dark, mealy honey-vetiver dankness of Onda gives a little freshly cleaned bathroom stall, but in an unctuous way that also makes me think of brown velvet and the dull, chocolate-y glow of Tiffany lamps.  There is no repulsion.  It turns out that it was me all along that was the problem, not Onda.  And when I was ready to grow the F up, Onda was there, waiting for me. 

 

Still, Onda is by no means for the uninitiated.  Salty, wet, and a bit furry, it is a perfume that smells of feral cats in a den hidden in the undergrowth, albeit a world removed from the agrestic ‘smells’ turned out by indie perfumers to simulate an environment or an animal that lives there.  Onda is a wild-reared, 100% grass-fed, organic experience that just happens to be chypre-shaped.  There is no sense of it having been born, just of it arriving in the world fully formed – a creature with native intelligence.    

 

There are no perfumes that smell like Onda, but the medicinal (and medieval) dustiness of the mace note remind me of other ‘brown-grey’, shadowy, and sepulchral things like Djedi (Guerlain) and Marescialla (Santa Maria Novella).  The ‘artisanal’ apothecary vibe reminds me a lot of both Maai and MEM (Bogue Profumo), as well as the turgid funk of several O’Driu perfumes, including Ladamo.  Still, even in this company, Onda stands out as being impenetrable and a little disturbing.  

 

But then, the greatest perfumes in the world all have something impenetrable or disturbing about them, don’t they?  Mitsouko is a prickly creature, sometimes smelling of peaches and wood, sometimes of formaldehyde.  The clove and honey notes in Comme des Garcons Parfum are sharp and unlovely at first, reminiscent of a sweaty crotch.  L’Air de Rien carries with it the distinct whiff of unwashed scalp.  Yet these are perfumes worth spending time with and trying to unlock, because behind that door lies greatness.  Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to only smell amazing.  For most people, perfume is an extension of their grooming ritual.  You can enjoy beauty without worrying about whether or not it has a dark side.  But if you believe that perfume is art, then it stands to reason that your perfume should transmit a message that goes above and beyond a good ‘smell’.   And love it or hate it, Onda is a great example of perfume as art. 

 

Source of sample:  I have owned the parfum and the Voile de Parfum of Onda since 2015.   

 

Cover image:  Photo by Bram Azink on Unsplash 

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Ambrette Iris Leather Musk Spice Spicy Floral Suede Vetiver

Heaven Can Wait by Frederic Malle: A Review

10th January 2024

 

I can’t decide if Heaven Can Wait by Jean-Claude Ellena for Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle is really that good or if I am just happy to get some relief from the heady amber, booze, and tobacco molecules that thicken the air on the high street at Christmas.  

 

The juxtaposition between cold, rooty iris and warm clove is charming.  Its texture?  Also a delight.  Despite a notes list that promises a battering ram, Heaven Can Wait has all the heft of a lace handkerchief.  Initially, it reminds me of the delicate, gripe-water musks of L’Eau d’Hiver and the thin, hawthorn-ish suede of Cuir d’Ange, with a faint brush of Superstitious‘ green-copper acid over top.  The plum is more plum skin (umami, bitter) than fruit and the magnolia doesn’t add any of its usual honeyed lemon cream.   More Parisian greige than Dior’s Gris Dior itself, this is weightless elegance at its best. 

  

But elegance alone is not enough to sell me.  I have plenty of elegant perfumes, including Cuir d’Ange, Chanel No. 18, Iris Silver Mist, and a dab of Poivre extrait, all of which are references I would call upon to describe this scent.   What makes Heaven Can Wait special is its weirdness, which you only catch glimpses of as it rounds the corner on the drydown. 

 

It is down there that something extremely dry and gippy ‘catches’ at the corners of the scent, threatening to unspool the thin silk.  The freshly-poured cement aspect of cashmeran, perhaps, or the raw, parnsippy character of the orris lingering long after the topnotes have burned off.  The earthiness of the carrot seed is a contributing factor, for sure.  But I suspect that there is also a fair amount of (unlisted) benzoin here, as this is a material that smells – to me at least – like the doughy-but-dusty aroma of potato flour just as you begin to add water to it.   

 

To be less arcane, Heaven Can Wait kind of ends up smelling like the art room at your old secondary school, the air thick with the smell of pigments ready to be mixed into white paint, paste glue, plaster of Paris, and so on.  An alluringly odd mix of the organic and inorganic, chemical and vegetable.   I’ve seen the stupid ‘sexy’ advertizing images that were released with the perfume but I think the brand missed a trick by not leaning into its whole ‘Parisian high society lady slumming it in art school’ vibe.  

  

Even the clove note is a quirky.  Unsniffed, you might expect it to smell ‘red hot’ and sweaty-metallic like Eau Lente or the original Comme des Garcons EDP, or alternatively, like the frothy, frilly carnation accord from Caron’s Bellodgia.   However, the clove in Heaven Can Wait is unmistakably that of an old-fashioned clove rock.  Now, I think this is funny – borderline adorable –  though others might not, given the almost $300+ price tag.  But if you think about it, it is this clove rock note, mixed with the scent of art room pigments, that serves to keep the perfume feeling clean and modern, rather than ‘retro’.  And this is a a good thing.  After all, if we want perfumes like this to find a younger audience who might otherwise be looking at something like Angel’s Share, a clove that is candied rather than sweaty or Miss Havisham-ish is probably the right move.   

 

Source of sample:  A SA at House of Fraser, Belfast, was kind enough to give me a carded sample after she saw me empty half a bottle onto myself. 

 

Cover image:  Photo by Khara Woods on Unsplash 

 

 

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Aromatic Attars & CPOs Fougere Green Herbal Lavender Mukhallats Oudy Concentrated Perfume Oils Oudy mukhallats Patchouli Review Saffron Spice The Attar Guide Vetiver

The Attar Guide Earth, Herbs, Spice & Aromatics: Reviews A-C

10th October 2022

 

 

 

For a brief introduction to everything earthy, herbal, spicy or aromatic in attar, mukhallat and concentrated oil perfumery, see a handy primer here.  Now on to the reviews!

 

 

 

 

017 (Hyde & Alchemy)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

No. 017 is an unusual scent.  It opens with a strikingly dirty mint-citrus accord, which manages to feel both fresh and dilapidated at the same time.  It then unravels into a semi-poisonous cherry and clove drop heart.  It smells see-through, like a boiled candy, flavor RED in all caps.

 

Many BPAL perfumes treat cinnamon notes in this syrupy, bitter manner, with a lurid intensity that signals a lack of sophistication.  This is no different.  Unlike BPAL perfumes, to be fair, there is a minty effervescence in the background that smells different and attractive.  But the composition would clearly have been better served if either the listed birch or patchouli had turned up and done their part.   

 

 

 

026 (Hyde & Alchemy)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

No. 026 is a fresh, foresty affair that initially feels like placing your nose against a frost-covered window.  Bergamot, lavender, and pine show off the coldest, most bracing parts of their collective character, creating a dry ice effect that has been cleverly pinned against a dusty, warm cedarwood accord for contrast.  Cedarwood is not listed, but its presence is felt far more strongly here than the advertized sandalwood, which doesn’t even bother sticking its head around the door.

 

There is a strange, but not unwelcome, hint of staleness to the dusty woods here, like the scent of a log cabin being kicked back into life at the start of the summer season.  Radiator dust, stale-smelling sheets, clean wood, unwashed hair, and the burnt-sugar crackle of homemade caramel popcorn on the stove.  I like that this scent encompasses both the smells of the forest and the comforts of the inside.

 

Cozy and reassuring, No. 026 would work well for hikers, naturalists, and crusty dads who just want to go up to the summer cabin with the kids and not have to shower for a week straight.

 

 

 

019 (Hyde & Alchemy)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

There is no patchouli listed here.  And yet, weirdly, the opening is all patchouli, momentarily spinning me back in time to when I slathered the oil neat onto my skin as a teenager, staining my t-shirt cuffs a dirty nicotine-yellow.  The musty patch note subsides quickly enough to make me question my own sanity, leaving in its place a minty lavender and iris combo that smells mineralic, like water flowing over stones.

 

In an unusual effect, No. 019 smells both crystalline and foggy, as if the stream of water is catching here and there on nuggets of golden amber resin strewn over the riverbed.  The scent’s herbal overlay gains warmth and body from the amber, but is not weighed down, remaining bright all the way through.

 

I like No. 019 because, unlike many of the Hyde & Alchemy oils, it is not afraid to make a statement.  The patch-heavy opening admittedly smells a little headshoppy.  But the lavender and iris materials can be perceived quite distinctly, and it is these more sophisticated elements that shift the scent out of the headshop and into ‘earth-mother-and-CEO’ mode. 

 

 

 

1001 Nights, or Alf Lail o Lail (Ajmal)

Type: concentrated perfume oil, based on the traditional distilled attar known as ‘shamama’

 

Photo by Joshuva Daniel on Unsplash

 

1001 Nights is a smoky, woody-animalic take on the idea of shamama, the traditional Indian attar that combines over sixty different notes and materials, and for which the recipe varies from family to family, attar company to attar company.  It is difficult to pinpoint the main features of shamama attar, such is its complexity, but traditionally, a shamama will contain an array of (vegetal) amber notes, aromatics, flowers, spices, bitter herbs, musk, and saffron.  Some shamama attars smell earthy, sweet, and grassy, whereas others are damp, medicinal, and woody.  All are very rich, sharp, and potent.

 

This is the only shamama attar I have ever smelled, however, that transmutes the vegetal into the animal.  1001 Nights takes the foundation of shamama and twists it into the semblance of civet-soaked piece of wood, whose basic aroma mimics that of raw Hindi oud oil.  The opening reeks of sour barnyard, smoke, damp hay, urine, and freshly tanned leather, keening like a banshee with a high-pitched bile note as effective as amyl nitrate in snapping the wearer to attention.

 

Given time, the sharp Hindi opening slowly drifts into a complex series of interlocking notes such as hay strewn with bitter green herbs, dry aged woods, smoky vetiver, grass, and spicy red pepper.  Henna and saffron feature too, their mustiness adding a dulled, ochre-yellow spice tonality.  1001 Nights smells erotic, troubling, and naughty.

 

Spiritual?  Yes, that too, particularly if you already use Hindi oud for meditative or spiritual purposes.  1001 Nights smells as ancient as the red earth on the banks of the Ganges and as piercingly animalic as the hordes of people gathering there, in Varanasi, for Diwali.  There is an awkward type of beauty here for those patient enough to listen to, and catch, all the nuances of the perfume.  By corollary, 1001 Nights is not for the faint of heart or for those looking for a dumbed-down, non-confrontational snapshot of the genre.

 

 

 

Aanandha (Alkemia)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Gul-hina Flowers and Rare Mitti Earth – A special blend for perfume connoisseurs combining concentrated extraits of Mitti and Hina blossoms in meadowfoam oil. 

 

 

Aanandha is the second in Alkemia’s series of tributes to traditional Indian attar perfumery, this time focusing on the pairing of gul hina, an attar distilled from henna flower, and mitti, an attar distilled from dry Indian earth.  The opening is pure hina in all its plasticky, vegetal sweetness and for about ten minutes, it reminds me of the start to some Nemat oils, most of which have a vague petrochemical feel to them, as if the botanical aromas are fighting to get through a miasma of melting plastic, vegetable oil, and banana skin.  In case you were wondering, all this means is that Aanandha captures the weirdness of henna flowers quite accurately.  It might not be something Westerners are used to, or even like, but the tone is spot on.

 

Given time to settle, the oil evens out into bodacious rosy-resinous amber identifiable only as a typical ‘attar’ type of smell, meaning a half-syrupy, half-powdery mixture of rose, sandalwood, and amber, with a chaser of something unidentifiable to maintain the allure of the exotic.  The mitti, or whatever was there of it to begin with, is completely lost in the mix.  Mitti has a very delicate scent profile that doesn’t stand up well to powerful notes such as henna or rose.  Still, this is a beautiful tribute to a style of attar making that is sadly endangered these days, and more than adequately justifies its price tag of $30 for five milliliters.

 

 

 

Absolute Oakwood (Clive Christian)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

On the skin, Oakwood opens with the lanolin-like oiliness that characterizes the opening of many of the Clive Christian oils, before drying down to a dusty wood threaded with tiny seams of dark chocolate, plum, and metallic clove.  On paper, it reveals itself to be even more complex, with notes of creamy mint, cinnamon, tonka, and dark rum emerging slowly in the background.

 

Absolute Oakwood is more evolved than most of the other Absolute oils (with the notable exception of Absolute Sandalwood, which is on par with this).  It presents quite an abstract, blurred picture of the star player.  Oakwood, as a raw material, can smell as pungent as cheese, raw milk, or even fecal matter.  Needless to say, Clive Christian does not allow any of these less desirable features to leak into Absolute Oakwood.

 

Instead, an idealized version of dry, toasty wood appears, made autumnal with plummy fruits and a boozy thickness.  It operates in the same general arena as Chêne by Serge Lutens, though nowhere near as dry or as minimalistic.  There is also a sheen of woody radiance – Iso E Super perhaps – that renders Absolute Oakwood’s voice audible at thirty paces.

 

 

 

Absolute Vetiver (Clive Christian)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

 

Absolute Vetiver accentuates the fresher aspects of vetiver root with topnotes of bergamot, lemon, and what smells to me like bitter orange or lime.  The effervescent sparkle of the citruses is a perfection introduction for the earthy vetiver note that arrives to take up the central stake in the fragrance.  Together, these notes form an accord that is more freshly-cut grass than dank, marshy root.  Further on, a note of medicinal clay appears, giving an impression of soft leather rubbed with medicinal salve.

 

Many modern vetiver fragrances soften the impact of a rooty vetiver with creamy florals, burned sugar, and hazelnut notes, perhaps aiming for an entire generation of men raised on tonkified masculines.  But Absolute Vetiver stays clean and fresh, tucking its heels in and staying close to the more classical vetivers such as Vetiver Extraordinaire by Frederic Malle or Guerlain’s Vetiver.

 

Like the Malle in particular, there is a metallic radiance to the central accord that signposts the presence of modern aromachemicals and woody ambers.  This synthetic breeze runs through most, if not all, of the Clive Christian Absolute oils, but varies in how strongly it presents to the nose based on the individual scent.  Absolute Amber, Absolute Osmanthus, and Absolute Oakwood are woody amber behemoths, while Absolute Orris and Absolute Rose make far more judicious use of them. 

 

Absolute Vetiver sits comfortably at the midway point.  The woody ambers are present enough to make you notice the radiance of the scent, but not so aggressive as to take over the scent or obscure its more delicate notes.  I mention this only as a useful reference for people who might be buying blind, and who are looking for oils specifically featuring this type of woody radiance (or indeed, like me, trying to avoid it).

 

 

 

Al Andalus (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Famously one half of the most exalted Amouage attar – Homage – Al Andalus is a bright aromatic fougère that can be worn by women and men alike.  Stuffed to the brim with green herbs such as clary sage and rosemary, the opening feels like being awoken from a peaceful sleep by someone slapping you across the face with a bunch of dripping wet herbs.  Underscoring the herbs is a bright citrus accent and a velvety, mossy base that smells like the inside of a cool, damp forest.  The bitterness of the herbs, citrus, and moss is softened by a pinch of sandalwood, but this is not your average thick, sweet Middle-Eastern attar.

 

Al Andalus is not overly complex or rich, but its refreshing herbal qualities make it an excellent choice in hot summer months.  It is basically the attar equivalent of a bar of Irish Spring.

 

 

 

Alhambra (Arcana)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description:  Recline in the shadow of the Alhambra with this Moorish blend of pomegranate juice, fresh Spanish rosemary, aged patchouli and golden beeswax.  Made with skin-soothing coconut milk, safflower petals and tussah silk. The Court of the Lions beckons.

 

 

The opening to Alhambra is a mash-up of my least favorite notes in perfumery and is therefore difficult for me to write about with much objectivity.  An onion-sweat clove joins with a rosemary note so camphoraceously bitter that it smells like straight eucalyptus oil.  The result is simply unholy – a stinking miasma of sharp, urinous notes of headache-inducing proportions and volume.  There is a metallic blood-like nuance flitting in and out that adds to the misery, creating an overall impression of unclean air clinging to the clothes of someone suffering from a chronic illness.

 

I cannot imagine anyone wanting to have this on their skin, but, of course, taste is subjective.  Alhambra dries down to a grungy red musk and patchouli combo that, while still sour and marginally unpleasant, does tug us back into more familiar territory.

 

Needless to say, nothing in this bears any relation to pomegranate, either real or imagined.  Pomegranate in perfumery is always interpreted through synthetics, which invariably smell like cherries filtered through industrial soap.  But Alhambra does not even have the grace to smell like cherries or soap.  This perfume is a personal Armageddon, so it is possible that others might have a more positive experience.  In which case, forgive me and ignore this review.  

 

 

 

Al Mas (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

 

Photo by Jyoti Singh on Unsplash

 

Al Mas has a uniquely calm, sweet demeanor.  It successfully balances two very distinct accords – one, a saffron-rose-sandalwood accord that smells like an exotic floral custard, the other, a bitter but refreshing mélange of fern-like herbs, oud, rosemary, and citrus.  In a way, therefore, Al Mas is a playful mash-up between rose jam and a fougère.  I remember the late, great Conor McTeague calling Mon Guerlain a ‘taffy fougère’ for its fun combination of a masculine lavender with sweet, candied notes borrowed from feminine perfumery: the same definition might apply to Al Mas.  Taking the best from both genres, Al Mas knits everything together into a scent that smells exotic in the most approachable way possible.

 

Al Mas bears some similarity to Asrar in that they both revolve around saffron, but in replacing the gummy orange blossom with roses and sandalwood, it improves on the model.  The attar opens on a toasted, dusty-sweet saffron accord dotted with rose petals, spice, and nuggets of golden, salted caramel, i.e., the ambergris.  It suggests that this might be a gourmand spin on the traditional rosy attar smell.

 

Almost immediately, however, the taffy-like saffron-rose combination is counterpointed by a remarkably dank oud note and a clutch of damp herbs, greenery, and forest leaves.  The oud smells very natural here, and if it is not genuine oud oil, then it is a stunning reconstruction of its inky, leathery aroma, with zero trace of the tanning chemical sharpness that dogs other oud compositions.  The sandalwood is dry but creamy and textured with spiky rosemary.  Together, these notes form a dark, fragrant base suggestive of dark green velvet spread under yellow gold.

 

Medicinal, sweet, sour, creamy, and dusty – every nuance in Al Mas has been carefully positioned to counter-balance the other.  In sense of range, radiance, and balance, I am tempted to say that Al Mas could be Jubilation XXV in attar form.

 

 

 

Al Souqh (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Al Souqh opens on a rich, medicinal haze of oud, a sort of terpenic woodiness that instantly lifts the mood.  But almost immediately a very odd accord moves in – and it is quite unpleasantly animalic, like the dirty, rotting smell of a j-cloth left to rot in a damp sink, or metallic dust gathered at the back of a disused radiator.  The smell is that of staleness, or inert air.  It is also intensely spicy, suggesting the cloying antiseptic dirtiness of clove or carnation when overdosed in a blend.

 

This accord dissipates mercifully quickly, clearing the way for an astringent black tea note that is astonishingly true to life – rich, smoky, and salubrious.  Its dark, dry tenor is shot through with sparks of fiery hot spices and smoke, licking around the oud like flames around a stone in an open grate.  Out of the smoke, a shape slowly emerges, revealing itself to be a rose.  Not a fresh, sweet rose, but an austere flower with dried-out petals and a potpourri-ish surround sound system of cinnamon bark, black pepper, tea, and cloves.  Fans of red-hot spice orientals such as the original Comme des Garcons EDP, Comme des Garcons White, Diptyque’s Eau Lente, and, to a certain extent, Costes, will appreciate this stage of the attar.

 

A sweet rose-honey accord blooms around the dry spices, and the smoke recedes into the background just enough to allow the dried berry nuances of the Cambodi-style oud to emerge.  An amber rich in plummy, dried fruit and incense notes brings up the rear, with very pleasant echoes of amber stalwarts such as the legendary Amber Absolute by Tom Ford.  A rocky start, therefore, but one that rewards patience.  

 

 

 

The Antikythera Mechanism (BPAL)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Bronze gears spin inside a polished wooden case, and an entire universe dances within. Teakwood, oak, black vanilla, and tobacco.

 

 

The Antikythera Mechanism is one of those instances where my nose refuses to acknowledge the official notes list and insists that, based on experience, it is smelling something else entirely.  To my rebellious nose, this is earthy patchouli with the same cocoa-brown dustiness of Serge Lutens’ Borneo 1834 or Parfumerie Generale’s Coze.  But nobody else seems to perceive it as such.

 

There is a pinch of tobacco leaf underneath the dusty, dark-chocolate patchouli accord, but it registers as a fleeting soapiness rather than as something more distinct.  That dark, earthy chocolate patchouli – if that is indeed what it is – is gorgeous.  Rich in a myriad of facets that reveal themselves slowly, it turns on a dime from bitter coffee grounds to nuts, booze, wood, and camphor.

 

It is not edible or gourmand in any way.  Neither is it particularly ambery or balsamic.  But it does run in the same track as Borneo 1834 and Coze, so fans of those scents may want to sample this.  To me, and possibly no-one else, the Antikythera Mechanism is a dusty patch with intent.

 

 

 

Arcana (BPAL)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: The essence of magickal [sic] enigmas and long-forgotten esoteric mysteries. Frankincense, rosemary, lavender, neroli, and verbena.

 

 

Pungent, oily lavender in all its aromatic glory.  If you don’t enjoy lavender, quietly skip this one.  The green-blue sharpness of the opening calls to mind the blue skies of Provence, an image further underscored by a strong rosemary note.

 

Despite the headlining frankincense, this is a fresh herbal scent, rather than an ambery or resinous one.  Only the lemony, fresh pine aspects of frankincense have been emphasized so that it forms a logical bridge with the bright herbs and aromatics.  Arcana is a good stab at that elusive ‘fern’ flavor, but its medicinal undertone limits its appeal to hardcore fans of aromatic fougères.  For everyone else, the relentless brightness could prove a bit of a chore.

 

 

 

Arcanum (Alkemia)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: An enigmatic yet compelling blend of seductive eastern spices, aged patchouli, and sandalwood. Frankincense, nag champa, and dragons blood deepen the mystery.

 

 

Arcanum is a balsamic amber that runs close in feel to Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, with a spicy, soapy sandalwood note recalling incense, prayer beads, and dried cloves.  Some will interpret these accords as potpourri-ish, but those enamored of the earthy spice of Opium will rejoice.  The dried fruit element is nicely lightened with a cool, minty patch, making me think of Boney M and men in brown corduroy jeans.  It dries down to nag champa with a chaser of that sweet, soapy sandalwood that Alkemia likes to use.

 

Arcanum evokes vague, Western notions of the East, sure, but infuses it with a self-consciously retro, seventies vibe that is totally groovy.  Flower children of the world, unite and buy stock in this wonderful little thing.

 

 

 

Ar Ruqya (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

 

Photo by Conscious Design on Unsplash

 

Less of a mukhallat, really, than an unguent to ward off jinn (evil spirit), Ar Ruqya is an all-natural blend of raw materials celebrated for their cleansing or spiritual properties in India.  It opens with the spicy floral-medicinal ointment feel common to most traditional Indian attars, which is likely a function of the combination of spikenard, saffron, rose, costus, and musk.

 

The attar evolves along a cleanly musky trajectory, with a lime green sharpness in its upper registers that seems like it might scour a wound if directly applied to skin.  Overall, this is a blend that belies its long list of ingredients by coming off as pleasantly simple and straightforward.  It is quite traditionally Indian in character in that it smells medicinal and ayurvedic rather than perfumey in the traditional sense.

 

 

 

Autumn Fire (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

The opening to Autumn Fire is arresting – a clump of wet roots mashed up with stinging camphor and poisonously bitter green leaves, all mulched gently over freshly-cut pine logs.  It is a richly evocative smell, recalling an impenetrable thicket of thorns and saplings.

 

The Malaysian oud used here must be one of those steamy jungle ouds, because although it brings the high-pitched woody tenor of oud to the mix, all barnyard funk is left firmly at the front door.  It is slightly somber in tone, with none of the berry-studded caramel notes of other styles of ouds.  There is even a cool, watery mint note threading in and out of the fug, further pointing to a steamy rainforest island provenance.

 

Nag champa notes bring a hint of gummy, unlit incense sweetness to the camphoraceous body, but in general, the smoke notes are minimal.  This is principally a Zen, easy-going foresty mukhallat with sweet, earthy and green undertones.  A velvety musk envelops the composition, preparing a pleasantly soft landing for the foresty notes.  A trace of sweet, smoky labdanum – although none is listed – appears to weave in and out of the musk.  This is really the only stage when the smoke notes are assertive to the point of being noticeable.

 

In brief, despite the heavy-hitting materials listed for this attar, Autumn Fire is ultimately a light, subtle, and outdoorsy little thing.  I recommend it to people who love the smell of the great outdoors, especially that of the forest and the ambered, sweet smoke of a far-off campfire.

 

 

 

Bazaar (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Remember the Soda Streams sold in the eighties?  I recall the excitement in our household when we finally got one, and specifically, the smell of the soft drink concentrate that came with it, a sort of proto-Fanta and proto-Coca Cola.  The idea was to ‘revive’ the concentrate in the Soda Stream with the addition of carbonated water.  Well, Bazaar revolves around a note that smells exactly like the Coca Cola concentrate that came with these machines.  Dark, syrupy, spicy with cinnamon, and a little plasticky, it brings me right back (in a good way).

 

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your level of fondness for Coca Cola), Bazaar then begins to pick up on the sweatier aspects of the spices, particularly the clove.  There is also some cumin or fenugreek in here somewhere.  It becomes heavy and sticky, almost to the point of being ‘too too’.  If Bazaar starts off smelling like Coca Cola concentrate, then it ends up firmly in the souk originally promised by the name.

 

Truth be told, there is something a little hackneyed and even cheap-smelling about the spice-and-dried-fruit ‘orientalism’ on display here.  You wear this and think, yes, that smells like a souk, so ten out of ten for authenticity, but also, hmmm, haven’t I smelled that exact thing in one of those cheap little perfume oil shops in Cairo or Mumbai?  (Answer: yes, you have.)

 

Although Bazaar’s more syrupy spice elements are deftly placed on top of smoky resins and labdanum for contrasting ballast, the result still smells like a clumsy soup of souk + chocolatey Darbar attar + headshop amber cubes + sweat.  Or maybe it is just me, bitter that the Soda Stream cola note was whipped away from me far too soon.

 

 

 

Bloodlust (BPAL)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: A fiery Martial blend that embodies primal rage, lust for conquest, and all-encompassing desire. Dragon’s blood essence, heavy red musk, Indonesian patchouli and swarthy vetiver with a drop of cinnamon.

 

 

Almost exactly as described in the company description, Bloodlust is a heavy blend of camphoraceous patchouli, vetiver, and ‘red’ musk.  At first, it smells like the damp, brown earth of a humid tropical island.  Unsweet and with a claggy, clay-like dankness, it actually makes sense as a hot weather scent in the same way as mitti does.  In fact, any earthy soil-like scent has the same cooling properties.  There is also a thread of metal or iodine, which, combined with the clay, smells like iron-rich blood.

 

In the drydown, the rooty wetness of vetiver swells to fill the air pockets of the scent, bringing with it the whiff of stagnant vase water and salt marsh.  It smells quite like ruh khus, the cooling vetiver distillation used by Indians in summer.  Bloodlust is a distinctive and useful little blend that matches its rather (unusually for BPAL) straightforward description. 

 

 

 

Bohemian Spice (April Aromatics)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

Photo by Hanna Balan on Unsplash

 

Although identifiably the same scent, the perfume oil and eau de parfum versions of Bohemian Spice differ significantly enough to be noteworthy.  Part of this has to do with the nature of the oil carrier itself.  As with Le Labo oils, the carrier oil tends to flatten the edges of citric or aromatic notes, delaying their unfurling until further along the compositional timeline.  The experience ends up being roughly similar, in other words, but the various stages ‘hit’ the nose at different times.

 

However, it is also fair to say that part of the difference between the oil and eau de parfum versions is due to tweaks to the formula made by the perfumer herself, in order to create a slightly different outcome.  The April Aromatics perfume oils were designed to be worn in situations where a more subtle scent is appropriate, such as in the office or at yoga.  In general, the oil versions of the AA scents are ditties based on the bigger, deeper songs of the eau de parfum versions; they are simpler, shorter in trajectory, and more compact.  They are also much quieter than their eau de parfum brethren.

 

Now onto Bohemian Spice.  The oil version of Bohemian Spice is a Café del Mar version of the classics in the background while you work, whereas the eau de parfum version is sitting through seven hours of Wagner.  The original eau de parfum is a juicy pomander orange studded with shards of black pepper, rolled in the earthy, almost chocolatey darkness of patchouli and vetiver.  Its genius lies in its balance of light and dark.

 

Wearing the original side by side with the perfume oil, I notice a lot of dry, smoky labdanum in the eau de parfum that is neither listed nor noted in most reviews. (It doesn’t show up at all in the perfume oil).  Its effect in the eau de parfum is marvelous, merging with the frankincense to form a hulking amber-incense backdrop that reminds me of Amber Absolute and Sahara Noir, both by Tom Ford.  Most find Calling All Angels to closely resemble Sahara Noir, but with its sour orange and resinous frankincense-amber duet, Bohemian Spice is arguably the closer match.

 

Bohemian Spice is a touchstone of natural perfumery for me, because even though it doesn’t contain any synthetic musks or woody ambers, it manages to be rich, complex, and long-lasting.  If you’re a Doubting Thomas on the whole natural, crunchy-granola perfumery scene, then roll the dice on a sample of Bohemian Spice.  Smelling Bohemian Spice as an introduction to the all-natural scene is like reluctantly trudging along to a vegan dinner at a friend’s house and finding yourself completely satisfied (not to mention quasi-converted) by the end of the meal.

 

The perfume oil version is chewy and satisfying, albeit in a slightly different way to the eau de parfum.  First – and this is unusual for a citrus note in oil format – the bitter orange pomander notes ring out even more clearly than in the eau de parfum, where they are quickly crowded by the earthy patchouli and vetiver.   The patchouli in the oil is subtler and its chocolate note a creamy white rather than an earthy dark. The limpid milkiness of the patchouli note in the oil seems to allow the orange and spices to flare more brightly and insistently than in the eau de parfum.

 

The second key difference is in the nature of the incensey-ambery support that threads through both formats.  In the eau de parfum, as discussed, a dusty labdanum and benzoin blend works with the sooty frankincense note to produce that austere, church-resin feel common to both Amber Absolute and Sahara Noir (Tom Ford).  In the perfume oil, on the other hand, the amber-incense accord smells light and almost sparkly, like tiny nuggets of resins fizzing on the surface of pink champagne.

 

Whereas the original smells dark and thickly embroidered, with a deep, rich baritone voice that seems to come from large, rocky chunks of resin, the oil format compresses everything into a surface layer of glittering resin that’s been pulverized into mica.  Both versions are incredibly satisfying but choose the striking eau de parfum if you want to make an impression, and the oil if you want a private audience with the scent.       

 

 

 

Bonfires at Dusk (Arcana)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Woodsmoke, sweet beeswax, Oregon lavender, sandalwood, charred juniper, and the scent of swiftly appearing stars.

 

 

Pungent, slightly smoky lavender and juniper form the herbal backbone to the perfume, while beeswax and sandalwood makes things pleasantly soapy, sweet, and musky in the drydown.  I heartily recommend Bonfires at Dusk for forest hikes, where it seems to meld with one’s own body temperature and skin musk to form a glowing ‘salt of the earth’ aura that radiates for days (or until you wash it off).

 

 

 

The Bow & Crown of Conquest (BPAL)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Nobility and haughtiness befitting the Antichrist: sage, carnation and cedar with lavender, vanilla, white musk and leather.

 

 

Now this is a beautiful perfume.  It features none of the loud, booming honey, musks, or resins that typically herald a BPAL perfume.  Instead, this is a soft, buff-colored cream of pencil cedar, vanilla, and touches of mint, sage, lavender, and anise, whipped up into a pillowy cloud of white musks.  Less Antichrist, more angel, if you ask me.

 

A base of brushed grey suede gives the creamy, aromatic woods and herbs something to rest against.  In the far drydown, a dusty carnation blows a puff of hot spice through the suede, lending the scent some retro-femme appeal.

 

Parallels to Snowshoe Pass and White Fox by Solstice Scents could be drawn, with perhaps hints of Guardian (for the sage), but I find The Bow & Crown Conquest to be even better.  It is a uniquely restful blend from BPAL, and one that I would recommend to anyone looking for Zen in the hustle and bustle of daily life.

 

 

 

Boy (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Initially, things do not look good for this Chanel dupe.  It opens with a metallic grapefruit note that seems to go on forever, a feature absent from the original.  However, once the pungent citrus notes die back a little, the dupe settles into a decent facsimile of Chanel Boy, especially in the mid-section, where the familiar aromatic eddy of lavender, heliotrope, and sandalwood begins to move.

 

For a while, the dupe smells relatively similar to that of the original, although the fougère accord in the dupe possesses a Germolene note not present in the original, bringing it closer – strictly speaking – to the Narciso Rodriguez white cube perfume territory than to Boy.

 

However, by hour two, the lack of substance and quality in the base of the dupe becomes evident.  The original has an almondy sandalwood and tonka bean drydown that feels like falling into a bed piled high with thick cashmere blankets.  The dupe peters out into an altogether thinner, more synthetic sandalwood basenote.

 

Chanel invests in its materials.  In dupes of any Chanel fragrance, therefore, there will inevitably be a shortfall in quality, texture, and, well, the Chanel magic stardust that seems to be sprinkled over everything they produce.  These are the things that are hard to replicate.  This shortfall is particularly obvious in the fresher perfumes in the Chanel line-up, such as Boy.  Therefore, the dupe, while a fairly good impression, will never be an adequate replacement for the real thing.

 

 

 

Bushido (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: mukhallat

 

Photo by Jaspreet Kalsi on Unsplash

 

Bushido is an attar made exclusively for The World in Scents, a Princeton-based purveyor of fine attars and pure oud oils. Its name translates to ‘the way of the Samurai. The idea for this attar came from the ancient Japanese practice among royalty, Samurai warriors, and the nobility of scenting their kimonos, robes, and sword sheaths with a blend of tsubaki, an oil made from camellia flower petals, and choji, clove oil.

 

Sometimes powdered jinko, the Japanese word for aloeswood (agarwood), was also added to enrich the oil, but this would have been the preserve of only the wealthiest members of society, meaning the royal family of Japan. The use of agarwood is historically important in Japan, and dates to the 6th century AD, when fragments of fragrant agarwood were combined with aromatic herbs and woods to perform Kōboku, the act of perfuming one’s robes for religious and stately purposes. Important warriors also used it before battle, and it was an important commodity on the Silk Road.

 

Today, one can still see traces of the ancient ‘way of the Samurai in the making of Japanese incense. Oud oil is not particularly prized or used in Japan, but the densely-resinated wood from whence oud oil is extracted –agarwood – remains a crucial component of the Japanese incense tradition. The old traditions of tsubaki and choji have also left their mark – delicate floral notes and spicy clove-cinnamon flavorings are still very much part of the character of Japanese incense. Famous incense sticks such as Shoyeido’s Southern Wind (Nan-kun), for example, feature a combination of powdered jinko, usually from Cambodia, mixed with clove, star anise, sandalwood, camphor, and spikenard, the Himalayan herb also known as jatamansi (fresh, spicy, with a fatty animal undertone and lavender-like facets).

 

What Rising Phoenix Perfumery does with Bushido Attar is to trace the roots of tsubaki and choji oils back to its source, and using materials available currently, re-build the attar from scratch. When we smell Bushido Attar, therefore, we are smelling something that is as close as can be to the original oil these Samurai warriors would have massaged into their sword sheaths and the royals would have dabbed onto their ceremonial robes.

 

Bushido is constructed largely through the compounding of several distillates and extractions, most notably a trio of wild jinko (agarwood) oils (a Hindi, a Cambodi, and a Malaysian), a 1980s Mysore sandalwood oil, and a rare vintage star anise oil which dates to 1906. The star anise extract has both the clove and licorice tones common to Japanese incense. 

 

The attar opens on the skin with a blaze of oud and spice so thickly knotted that it is difficult to parse out the pieces. Like flies trapped in amber, Bushido’s three oud oils float weightlessly in a bubble of molasses or chestnut honey. The oud assault at the start is animalic and leathery, hot with smoke and fruit, but not in the least raw, thanks to the smoothing out properties of that molten molasses accord. The texture is smooth, unctuous even, with the stifling density of hot tar.

 

The opening salvo of leathery oud and thick black honey is followed by a subtle arrangement of notes that begins to separate and float free of the oud – licorice, anise, clove, camphor, and allspice. The vintage allspice extract comes out distinctively as clove at first, with a rounded, almost cocoa-ish spiciness that completely avoids the more unpleasantly metallic aspects of modern clove notes. The spicy exoticism of the note is subtle, defining the overall feel of the attar as firmly Japanese in orientation rather than Indian or Middle Eastern.

 

As time goes on, the structure of the attar opens a little, the leathery thrust of the ouds dimming to allow more of the spices to come out, and revealing a rich, salty buttery Mysore sandalwood in the base. The slide from fiery-hot to buttery-sweet reminds me slightly of one of my favorite perfumes, the magnificent Eau Lente by Diptyque. Tania Sanchez says in her review of Eau Lente in The Guide that it is the equivalent of “those hypnotic colored lights that slide from pink to cyan without anyone noticing”, which is a perfect way of describing the transitions in Bushido Attar too. The ambergris in this attar slices through the heft of the sandalwood with a salty, mineral sparkle, giving it air. The ambergris lingers long past the finale, leaving a trace of something musty, sweet, and saliva-ish on the skin.

 

Bushido is a must-try for anyone who loves the Japanese traditions of Kōdō. If you’re unfamiliar with the characteristic Japanese combination of agarwood, clove, spikenard, star anise, and sometimes immortelle, then perhaps approach this attar with caution. It is not immediately familiar to the Western palate, which means it might not be immediately likeable. But if you like carnation, clove, or even if you rather like fragrances like Diptyque’s Kimonanthe or Eau Lente, then give Bushido a try.

 

 

 

Chimera (BPAL)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: The fiery, volatile scent of cinnamon, thickened by myrrh, honeysuckle, and copal.

 

 

Chimera smells like a Red Hot in the best way imaginable.  For the best part of the first hour, it is truly a cinnamon-aflore, with little else but the fiery cinnamon on show.  Later on, it begins to smell like buttery toast or pain perdu with a heavy sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.  It is a delicious, almost edible scent.

 

Tl;dr: must love cinnamon.  But even if you’re naturally wary of cinnamon, it is worth knowing that the note has been handled so that none of its usual pungency or bitter woodiness seeps into the blend.  Rather, it has been coddled and massaged with a creamy amber accord and a hint of something sweetly floral until all the nose perceives is a perfectly smooth, round spiciness with just the right amount of heat.  .

 

 

 

Coromandel (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Ah, but Chanels are difficult to dupe.  No matter how many times you run a fragrance like Coromandel through a gas spectrometer, you cannot make pearls out of a swine’s ear.  Access to superior grades of sandalwood, iris, jasmine, and patchouli means that any attempt to dupe a Chanel will inevitably lack that indefinable touch of class that only Chanel can bestow.

 

The shortfalls of the dupe are immediately clear. Whereas the original bursts onto the skin in a skein of glittering aldehydes, oranges, soft white chocolate, Irish whisky, and jasmine, all the dupe can rise to is a ruby grapefruit note over watered-down patchouli.

 

Crucially, the dupe does not smell like melted white chocolate, cashmere, or any of the rich, comforting things that makes the original such a hygge fragrance experience.  In the original, it is the chemistry between the powdery benzoin, golden amber, and earthy (but smooth) patch that creates the famous white chocolate accord.  The dupe tries to rally but its reedy raw materials are inadequate to the task, and the whole affair just limps along.

 

This dupe fails on just about every level, but with Coromandel, it is the textural component that matters the most, and here the dupe cannot compete.  Save your soul and buy a bottle of the original (the eau de toilette, if you can find it, for preference) because this dupe is about as satisfying as licking a stamp when you are starving. 

 

 

 

Cotton Mather (Sixteen92)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Blackened patchouli, woodland mosses, sweet herbs, dried helichrysum, woodsmoke, lamplight, ink, ash and flame

 

 

Cotton Mather shares something of the acrid leather-patchouli DNA of several other Sixteen92 blends, especially Baba Yaga and Salem, but winds up in a far quieter place than either.  It smells like a cross between the sourness of linen folded away while still damp and the hairspray-ish chemical high of paper drying processes in a printing press, all underscored by a shadowy, mossy patchouli.  It is at once less atmospheric and more subtle than either Baba Yaga or Salem, and thus, perhaps, more wearable. 

 

The scent dries down to a fine-grained, mossy powder, like handfuls of burnt hay and grasses blitzed to a brown dust.  Immortelle usually brings a Mach 5 level of maple sugar intensity to a composition, but Cotton Mather is dry rather than syrupy or overblown.  Indeed, I see this as a lighter indie oil equivalent to something like Comme des Garcons’ Patchouli Luxe, a similarly ashy immortelle-patchouli combination.  Nice work.

 

 

 

About Me:  A two-time Jasmine Award winner for excellence in perfume journalism, I write a blog (this one!) and have authored many guides, articles, and interviews for Basenotes.  (My day-to-day work is in the scientific research for development world).  Thanks to the generosity of friends and acquaintances in the perfume business, I have been privileged enough to smell the raw materials that go into perfumes and learn about the role they play in both Western and Eastern perfumery.   Artisans have sent vials of the most precious materials on earth such as ambergris, deer musk, and oud.  But I have also spent thousands of euros of my own money, buying oud oils directly from artisans and tons of dodgy (and possibly illegal) stuff on eBay.  In the reviews sections, I will always tell you where my sample came from and whether I paid for it or not.

 

 

Source of samples:  I purchased all the samples reviewed in this chapter, apart from the samples from April Aromatics, Rising Phoenix Perfumery, and Sultan Pasha Attars, which were gifted to me by those brands for Attar Guide review purposes.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Marion Botella on Unsplash 

 

Note on monetization: My blog is not monetized.  But if you’d like to support my work or show appreciation for any of the content I put out, you can always buy me a coffee using the little buymeacoffee button.  Thank you! 

 

 

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The Attar Guide: Earth, Herbs, Spice & Aromatics

7th October 2022

 

 

Traditional Indian attars (especially the complex attars) and Middle-Eastern mukhallat perfumery draw on a vast array of aromatics, herbs, earthy notes, and spices that give the finished perfumes that special ‘flavor’ that renders the final result exotic to the Western nose.  Although not distilled as single-source attars, these aromatics provide a boost of complexity, depth, and piquancy to the attar that complements the primary distilled material or materials.

 

For traditional Indian attar perfumery, attar wallahs tend to prefer the broad range of aromatics, herbs, and spices available to them in Mother India.  Prime among these aromatics is spikenard, otherwise known as Himalayan nard or jatamansi.  Native to the mountainous regions of Northern India, as well as other regions, spikenard is a truly ancient herb, said to have been the aromatic herb used by Mary to anoint Jesus before the Last Supper.  It was also widely used in Ancient Egypt as a healing unguent, and later, by the Mughal Empress Nur Jehan as an anti-aging treatment for her face.  Scent-wise, spikenard is both pungent and sweet, like lavender with a trace of animal fat clinging around the edges.  It lends a rooty, medicinal-herbal facet to attars.

 

Charila lichen: Photo by Pranjal Kapoor, who kindly granted his permission to use it here

 

Charila is grey-green lichen that grows in Nepal and the mountainous regions of Northern India. Possessed of a bitter, inky aroma profile, it is somewhat analogous to European and Balkan oakmoss.  It is used to give attars a dark, green-mossy character.  Mitti and ruh khus (described here) are the scents of baked earth and vetiver roots respectively; they take their rightful place beside the other earthy aromatics in this chapter.

 

Patchouli is a member of the mint family, and native to India (as well as other semi- or fully tropical hot countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Madagascar).  Deriving from the Tamil word for green, patchai, patchouli has been distilled and used in ayurvedic medicine and attar perfumery for over five thousand years.  Its earthy, camphoraceous greenness is prized for its moth-repelling properties as well as for its anxiety-reducing qualities.  For distillation purposes, only the small, green leaves of the plant are selected for loading into the deg.  Patchouli has a calming, almost sedative effect on the senses, and is used in attar perfumery to give an earthy, grounded character to the attar.

 

 

Saffron distillation: Photo by Pranjal Kapoor, who kindly granted his permission to use it here

 

Although saffron is not native to India, there is significant production of the spice in Kashmir, the northernmost state of India.  Indeed, Kashmir forms part of the saffron belt that stretches between Spain and Iran.  Kashmiri saffron is pungent and sweet, with facets of hay, iodine, ink, leather, and honey central to its character.  In attar perfumery, it is often used to give the traditional ambery attars a characteristic spicy, vegetal warmth and leathery undertone.  However, saffron is equally prized in Middle-Eastern mukhallat perfumery, where it is often used to give the blend a rich leather, suede, or even oudy character. 

 

Henna, or hina, is steam-distilled from the flowers of the henna plant, the so-called Lawsonia inermis.  Although more commonly used throughout Asia for body art and pre-marriage rituals, henna is also used in traditional Indian attar perfumery.  The essential oil is earthy and sweet, with a dry, tannic edge that recalls black tea leaves.  Henna lends a spicy, earthy tinge to complex co-distilled attars and ambery attars, but it is also enjoyed in its pure form, as gul hina (attar of henna flower).

 

Ambrette seed comes from the musk mallow plant (Abelmoschus moschatus) native to India.  When steam-distilled, the odor of the ambrette oil is sweet, anisic, with hints of green apple or pear, cumin or bread, and hard alcohol, like grappa or cognac.  But its principal aroma constituent is its muskiness.  Ambrette gives the attar a velvety roundness that might otherwise only be achieved with animal musk. For this reason, it is a very valuable material in attar perfumery.  Musk attars in India are traditionally made with ambrette seed oil rather than deer musk, as ambrette is easier and less expensive to obtain. 

 

Cypriol essential oil after distillation: Photo by Pranjal Kapoor, who kindly granted his permission to use it here

 

Cypriol, or nagamortha, is a type of papyrus that grows wild in the Madhya Pradesh region of India.  Its rhizomes are used to make a deeply fragrant oil that acts both as a fixative in complex attars and as a key aromatizing ingredient in and of itself.  Its scent is woody, smoky, dark, and slightly dirty, with elements common to vetiver, patchouli, and cedarwood.  Cypriol’s main contribution to attar (and indeed Western) perfumery is that it can stand in quite creditably for oud, whose smoky woodiness it resembles.  Cypriol oil is also used extensively in Middle-Eastern mukhallat perfumery.

 

Choyas, on the other hand, are uniquely Indian.  They are used in traditional Indian attar perfumery, especially in the more complex attar types.  A choya, named for the special earthenware pot in which it is cooked, is a type of distillation method separate to hydro or steam distillation, known as destructive distillation[i].  It is used for a couple of very hard materials, like seashells (choya nakh), frankincense (choya loban), or tree bark (choya ral).  The hard materials are placed inside the choya, which is then cooked over a direct fire until droplets of pure essence collect on the interior walls of the choya.  These droplets are carefully scraped off the walls of the choya and later added into distilled attars.

 

Choyas are extremely concentrated aromatics and must be dosed carefully so as not to overwhelm more delicate aromas present in the attar.  Choya nakh can add a saline, mineral tang to an attar and can sometimes come across as leathery, a feature illustrated extremely well in the all-natural perfume Tango by Mandy Aftel.  Choya loban adds a pine-like, fresh or citrusy freshness to an attar, capturing as it does the higher register of notes present in olibanum rather than the waxier, more resinous aspects.

 

Distilled from the small white flowers of the evergreen Bakula tree native to Western India, bakul or bakula oil is not much known in Western perfumery, but much loved in India for its sweet, persistent floral smell.  The Latin name for the tree is Mimusops elengi, which suggests that people might have originally thought it was related to mimosa or acacia.  In India, people like to collect the small blossoms when they fall from the tree, because they retain their scent even when dried.  The flowers are popular for their fresh aromatic smell and often used in wedding garlands (the tree is also sometimes called the Garland Tree).

 

Stephen Arctander, author of Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, as cited by Chris McMahon of White Lotus Aromatics in his article on Bakula, describes bakula essential oil as a ‘pale yellow, mobile liquid of very delicate, sweet and extremely tenacious floral odor, somewhat reminiscent of orange flower and tuberose, or the more well-known stephanotisits florabunda (gardenia undertone).  A honey like, heavy-sweet undertone, is quite persistent, and this essential oil could, if it were made regularly available, certainly find uses as a modifier of countless floral fragrances.’[ii]  Although not commonly used outside of India, several artisan perfumers do use bakula in their perfumes, most notably Dawn Spencer Hurwitz of DSH Parfums, and Russian Adam of Areej Le Doré. 

 

Up next:  Reviews of everything aromatic, spicy, earthy, herbal, and soapy-fresh in attar, mukhallat or concentrated perfume oil form!

 

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Mohammad Amiri on Unsplash 

 

[i]https://theperfumemistress.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/attars-and-choyas/

[ii] https://www.whitelotusaromatics.com/newsletters/bakul (unfortunately not available online anymore)

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Gatsby 22 by Ormonde Jayne

9th August 2022

 

Because I feel that I should love Gatsby 22, but definitely don’t, I have worn it heavily over the course of the summer to figure out how to describe it to someone who very well might.  All perfume reviewers have their blind spots, and here’s mine: I am terrible at describing huge floral-woody musks that are little more than a vague shape in the air.

 

Amber smells delicious, kind of like food.  Flowers smell distinctly of themselves, once you know what they smell like individually.  Incense smells like church.  Pine smells like the forest.   But to me, Gatsby smells less like the individual flowers or woods or vetiver referenced in the notes list, and more like an abstract (and ever-shifting) set of ‘moods’ caused by these notes bouncing off each other as they jostle around that expanse of sour, rubbery musk.  

 

Parts of it certainly smell good.  I appreciate the clean, bright citrus shifting into the spearmint tones of geranium, the tangy waft of violets, that Ormonde Jayne osmanthus with its high-end, peach fuzz suede, all washed down until shiny with benzyl salicylate water for that mild, sweet balsamic touch.  This familiar familial arrangement of Ormonde Jayne notes cannot fail to please.

 

But then again, these accords all come drenched in, and partially obscured by a woody musk material that screams eau de department store for once, rather than the usually palatable (to me) Iso E Super accord that Ormonde Jayne uses.  The effect of this particular woody musk is to make the more natural-smelling fruit and floral notes read as arch, highly stylized versions of themselves – glossy magazine inserts rather than the real thing.

 

Here’s the kicker.  I am not the young professional or cool girl/gal at whom it is aimed.  So, can I do this scent justice for the reader who does form part of this demographic?  Ormonde Jayne call Gatsby 22 edgy, but it took me a whole month of wearing it to figure out that they didn’t really mean that it smells edgy (it doesn’t) but rather that it has that clean, androgenous, Ambroxinated vibe that people who wear Glossier You or Tanagra by Maison de Violet or even Baccarat Rouge 540 find so sexy.  These are perfumes that smell like nothing at all but also like crushed gemstones, fresh air, sexual confidence, and the aspiration of personal wealth.

 

In other words, it is the abstraction of Gatsby 22 that matters.   Worn side by side with, for example, Bal d’Afrique (Byredo), a scent that goes for a similar sparkly champagne-lemon-vetiver vibe, it soon becomes clear that Gatsby 22 is much drier, more urbane, and far less literal than the Byredo (which suddenly seems quite ostentatiously gourmand-ish in comparison).  Gatsby’s tart woody musks act like a pour of the driest Vermouth on earth, swishing all the notes together into a blur of things that your field of perception sometimes catches (was that grappa?) but more often not (why am I not picking up on the vetiver?).

 

Gatsby 22 isn’t something I can see myself ever leaning into, but I appreciate that it made me work harder than usual to figure out why I don’t like it and, conversely, think more seriously about the person for whom it might be the best thing ever.  Because, as it turns out, those are two types of people whose tastes will never intersect on a Venn diagram.  And that’s ok too.

 

 

Source of sample:  Ormonde Jayne very kindly sent me a 50ml bottle of this free of charge for review.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Atikh Bana on Unsplash

 

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Attars & CPOs Floral Mukhallats Review Rose Spicy Floral The Attar Guide Tuberose Vetiver Violet White Floral Ylang ylang

The Attar Guide: Floral Reviews (T-Y)

17th December 2021

 

 

 

 

Tahani (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Tahani is an exotic floral blend with a touch of fruity Cambodian oud anchoring it at the base.  It opens with a very sweet, rich Taifi rose and the pleasantly bitter sting of artemisia.  Nuances of apricot, rum, and leather nudge things along towards what will hopefully turn out to be an orgasmic riot of white flowers.  (This is the kind of opening that portends good things to come).

 

Unfortunately, it loses the plot slightly in the heart, when the rich rose is joined by a soapy and far-from-brilliant white floral accord, which dulls the bloom on the other notes.  The ambergris in the base does its best to fan some life back into the florals, its salty radiance for once more bitter and foresty than warm, which gives the scent a chypre-like mossiness that works against the bright, fruity rosiness of the opening.  On balance, Tahani is fine but not worth the price of admission.

 

 

 

Tasnim (Tasneem) (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Tasnim (otherwise known as Tasneem) in eau de parfum format is one of my favorite ylang compositions of all time.  Its buttery, creamy banana custard is touched here and there by rubber, and given a gentle, steadying backbone of dusty woods and resins.  It smells – for lack of a better word – dreamy.  Like custard clouds whipped up by Botticelli angels.  In the late drydown, there is a wonderful texturization akin to almonds or hazelnuts pounded down to a fine paste with cinnamon and clove.  Although it ultimately winds up in the same vanilla-banana-lotion area as Micallef’s Ylang in Gold, it remains resinous and nutty rather than fruity.  Think of it as a higher IQ version of the Micallef.

 

The attar (or more accurately, mukhallat) version of Tasnim is similar to the original eau de parfum, but because it stresses different facets of the ylang and for longer, it smells quite different for the first two to three hours.  Specifically, the slightly pungent rubber and fuel-like tones of the ylang are brought out more clearly, complete with the melted plastics undertone inherent to pure ylang oil.  The opening is not unpleasant, but it might be a little odd for people unused to the super potent (and not terribly floral) nuances of raw ylang.  In terms of complexity, I prefer the opening of the eau de parfum because it is both softer and more traditionally ‘perfumey’, whereas the opening of the attar smells more like ylang essential oil.

 

The attar stays in this fruity banana-petrol custard track for much longer than the eau de parfum, affecting both the texture and the ‘feel’ of the scent.  Namely, the eau de parfum possesses an innocent, fluffy softness that I visualize in pastel yellow, while the attar is a bright, oily concentrate – a Pop Art yellow smear of gouache.

 

The drydown is where the attar truly shows its mettle.  In fact, the ever-evolving complexity of the drydown is a good example of where the attar format often trumps the alcohol-based format.  In oil format, the naturals continue to unfold and retract in somewhat unpredictable ways, while the development of the alcohol-based format evolves to a point and then stops.  So, while the eau de parfum displays a beautiful, nutty ‘feuilletine’ finish folded into gentle puffs of woodsmoke, the attar just gets spicier, lusher, and more bodaciously sensual.

 

Tasnim attar is also less sweet than the eau de parfum, a pattern I notice in all direct comparisons of the attar versus the eaux de parfum for this house.  (This feature might make the attars more attractive to men).   The attar eventually dries down into a rich, leathery ylang-resin affair, with the same dusty-creamy texture as the eau de parfum (think crème brulée with a handful of grit stirred through).  It is more animalic than the eau de parfum, with a sort of stale, animal-ish costus note appearing in the latter hours.

 

Both the eau de parfum and the attar of Tasnim are beautiful.  I have a slight preference overall for the eau de parfum, especially in its measured collapse from feathery custard clouds into richly nutty feuilletine.  But in terms of longevity and richness, I must give it to the attar, which only gets deeper and lusher the longer it is on the skin, shedding its rather simplistic ylang oil topnotes to become a floral with an animal growl.  The attar is as powerful, rubied, and pungent as a high grade ylang essential oil, while the eau de parfum is softer, milkier, and sweeter.  

 

 

 

Tawaf (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Tawaf greets you with a hallucinogenic swirl of gasoline, grape brandy, plastics, nail polish remover, and magic marker – not immensely floral, in other words, and a little shocking to those used to commercial (synthetic) jasmine.  I admire its thrusting, near sexual pushiness, but it is not for those of a nervous disposition.  Tawaf is not just jasmine, but a clever mixture of jasmine with its tropical partners in crime – ylang and tuberose.  The flat inkiness of indole defines the opening, and although I find it more squeaky-chemical (magic marker-ish) than animalic per se, it might pin your ears back if you are a jasmine virgin.

 

Soon, a bitter vegetal note emerges to tamp down the purple roar a little.  This is the greasy yellow-green of narcissus, with its feral undercurrent of soiled hay.  In the attar format, the initial floral surge is underpinned by a pungent herbaceous note, like lavender or jatamansi, which to my nose smells disturbingly like spoiled milk.  It is as intense a smell as lavender buds crushed between your fingers.

 

In the attar format (but not the eau de parfum), the scent takes on a silky texture, like heated beeswax slipping through your fingers.  The spikiness of the lavender accent persists, but now it is the soapiness of opoponax resin being pushed to the fore, which gives the scent a pleasantly ‘barbershop’ tonality missing in the eau de parfum format.  The eau de parfum settles into a powdery rose and jasmine tandem kept slightly dirty by way of the barnyardy wet-hay narcissus.  In the far drydown, Tawaf eau de parfum smells rather like the classical jasmine-civet-rose combination in Joy (Patou) – a little sour, leathery, in short, a true jasmine sambac smell.

 

The eau de parfum and attar of Tawaf are quite different from one another, so choose with caution.  The eau de parfum is sweeter, lusher, and more ‘golden’ in temperament, while the attar is oilier, more herbaceous and bitter, and with its emphasis on the lavender-opoponax accord, a virile green-blue hue on the color wheel.

 

The attar does not accentuate the jasmine as much as the eau de parfum at first, although it does allow the jasmine to finally break through the herb-resin miasma past hour two.  In the attar, the primary focus is on the lavender-ish, shaving foam aspects of opoponax, rather than the jasmine.  In the eau de parfum, the herbal shaving cream aspect barely registers, emphasizing instead that skanky jasmine blast in the opening and a classical rose-jasmine-narcissus structure thereafter.

 

The drydown of the attar is spicier, stronger, and more pungent than the eau de parfum, a fierce crescendo of jasmine, shaving cream, and boot polish.  If you are a jasmine fiend, go for the eau de parfum, and if you like the sexy, herbal sourness of skin sweating under a wristwatch, go for the attar.

 

 

 

Tayyiba (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Tayyiba opens with a bouquet of sweet, oily, and slightly pungent flowers – mostly lilac, jasmine, and ylang – creating an effect that is soapy and thick rather than fresh, as if the flowers have been muffled under a thin layer of beeswax.  Later, a savory orange blossom note not a million miles away from the corn-meal masa feel of Seville à L’Aube (L’Artisan Parfumeur) sweeps in.  Overall, Tayyiba is an odd but memorable treatment of traditionally sweet, clear-as-a-bell florals. It is one to sample if you like florals with a muted, salty edge.

 

 

 

Tudor Rose (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Tudor Rose is one of the most accomplished mukhallats in the Mellifluence stable, and one that personifies Abdullah’s neat fusion of Eastern and Western perfumery cultures.  The freshly-cut-grass earthiness of vetiver and deer musk form a thickly furred accord that wraps around the embers of a smoking rose.  Its slightly sulky, ‘red-rubied rose in green velvet’ countenance recalls the animalic rose chypres of the 1970s, such as La Nuit (Paco Rabanne), L’Arte di Gucci (Gucci), or even Knowing (Estée Lauder).

 

However, this is an Eastern take on the rose chypre, so along with that mossy forest floor we get heavy deer musk and two types of real oud oil.  By the time we hit the base, it is clear that we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.  The dark musk used here is particularly good – velvety and bitter, like 70% cocoa chocolate made liquid.  The slightly stale, earthy ‘old school’ Thai oud used in the blend brings some genuinely barnyardy funk to the party, propelling it out of chypre territory and planting it firmly in the humid jungles of the East.

 

Tudor Rose eventually settles into the quietness of rose-tinted woods, where the sharper notes such as vetiver and rosewood continue to duke it out for some time.  If you like animalic rose chypres but also enjoy the exoticism of oud and rose pairings, then Tudor Rose will reward a sampling.  One of my favorites from Mellifluence. 

 

 

 

Tyrian Purple (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

What an over-the-top, edible delight!  Tyrian Purple (love the Game of Thrones-ish name) is a dollop of cooked rose jam sitting on top of a smoky, medicinal oud that has been gussied up with enough candied apricots and sugar to tip it into the gourmand category.  The gourmand aspect specifically references Middle-Eastern, Indian, and Persian sweet treats such as Rooh Afza, sherbet, and kulfi-like custards flavored with rosewater, saffron, and cardamom.  Osmanthus is the headliner here, creating an olfactory vision of silky rose and apricot jam, and platters of freshly-cut fruit so juicy you almost visualize beads of water popping on their skin.

 

Basically, if you do not smile when you put Tyrian Purple on, then there is something wrong with you.  If you love fragrances such as Andy Tauer’s Rose Jam, By Kilian Liaisons Dangereuses, or Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Mood Satin Oud, then there is no reason why you would not love this too.

 

 

 

Ubar (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Amouage’s Ubar is a big-boned floral built around a triumvirate of indolic white florals, ambergris, and sandalwood.  Sadly,  given that it has been reformulated several times since its launch, with earlier versions more heavily focused on sandalwood than flowers, it is difficult to know what version people are talking about when they refer to Ubar as being a supersonic floral.  Furthermore, the quality of the ambergris and jasmine materials has been downgraded with each subsequent reform.  Whatever in Ubar was once natural is now more likely to be synthetic.

 

However, two features mark Ubar out as being uniquely ‘Ubar’ no matter what the version.  First is its lemongrass-like freshness up top (due to the bright herb called litsea cubeba) and second, its head-spinning complexity.  Ubar is also a perfume an interesting dual personality – a sort of Eastern exoticism meets Western abstract floral perfumery culture clash.

 

So, how does the dupe fare?  In fairness, one can hardly expect a dupe oil to mirror the compositional complexity of an Amouage.  And indeed, while the dupe makes a creditable effort, it falls short.  In particular, the interestingly bright, sour herbaceous topnote of the original is missing, replaced by a screechy citrus material that immediately sets the flavor dial to ‘harsh’.

 

The general texture is also off-kilter – soapy and woody rather than bright and salty.  The floral bouquet is dimmed and blurred by this soapiness, like a lantern rubbed with wax before being lit.  By hour three, the dupe has achieved a sort of uneasy synchronicity with the original Ubar, settling into a soft floral blur that is not unpleasant.  But where the original retains a briny herbal brightness all the way through, the dupe collapses into woody vagueness.

 

However, if the dupe is worn alone, the resemblance to the original is possibly strong enough to pass.  Adequate, in other words – but just barely.

 

 

 

Un Bello (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Un Bello is a juicy, peachy floral accord floating freestyle in a nineties-style aquatic musk.  It smells blue, in a Calone-driven manner.  Given that it accidentally recreates, in faithful detail, the original Acqua di Giò for Women, it would be unconscionable of me to recommend that anyone actually go out and buy this. 

 

 

 

Une Vie En Rose (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Unlike most of the other rose-based compositions in the Henry Jacques stable (that I have smelled), Une Vie En Rose is rendered in the syrupy rose mukhallat style of Arabian perfumery rather than in the crisp, citronal-heavy style of the English garden.  It does not smell as natural or as ripped-from-nature as Henry Jacques’ other rose-forward perfumes, therefore, but in compensation, the thickeners of labdanum, resins, and myrrh make for a more interesting ride.  A smooth but animalic oud oil tucked into the seams gives Une Vie En Rose the feel of a more natural Oud Ispahan.

 

The innocence of the name puzzles until you remember the husky, grief-stained voice of the woman who sang La Vie En Rose.  Edith Piaf would have loved this fragrance.  If you adore the musky bite of oud wood smoking on a burner, or the rough sensuality of balsamic roses, then Une Vie En Rose is for you.  Fans of Oud Ispahan (Dior Privée), Oud Palao (Diptyque), or even the gorgeously syrupy Rose Nacrée du Desert (Guerlain) – this is the one in the Henry Jacques collection to seek out. 

 

 

 

Venezia Giardini Segreti (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

One of my favorites from La Via del Profumo, Venezia Giardini Segreti frames a voluptuous jasmine against the rough-textured tobacco of ambergris, which creates a backdrop of black tea leaves and ash in the manner of Jasmin et Cigarette (État Libre d’Orange).   It is this balance between the damp, fetid lushness of the white flowers and the dryness of the leather, tea, or tobacco that makes Venezia Giardini Segreti so special.    

 

Interestingly, there is also the burnt coffee grounds aroma of real oakmoss.   This accord smells a bit like the oakmoss you get in older, vintage chypres like Givenchy III, meaning rather than fresh and bitter, it feels pre-degraded by time and exposure to the air, like green plant stems rotting slowly in murky vase water.  This dusty ‘brown’ moss note ages the base of Venezia Giardini Segreti, turning the sultry flowers into the cracked-at-the-elbows leather jacket of Cabochard (Grès), Miss Balmain (Balmain), or and Le Smoking (DSH Perfumes).

 

Tempered in this way by the grey-green ink of oakmoss, the jasmine feels like one of those dried and salted mystery items you pick up at the Asian store to snack on.  It is fantastically sexy, and I far prefer it to La Via del Profumo’s most famous jasmine creation, Tawaf.  It is the perfect jasmine perfume for a Bohemian spirit.

 

 

 

Vetiver Blanc (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Vetiver Blanc is sexy as hell.  Straight out of the bottle, it is a creamy emulsion of grass and tropical flowers, with a texture close to coconut cream.  The gardenia and tuberose absolutes give up their creamy, earthy facets but none of their strident, candied, or rubbery undertones, ensuring that the florals in the blend remain low-key.  It smells fertile and damp, like the hummus-rich earth under ylang bushes after a tropical storm.  In this, it shares a bond with Manoumalia by Les Nez, considered by many – including myself – to be the ne-plus-ultra of the tropical floral genre.

 

But the galbanum and the vetiver in Vetiver Blanc run a smoky, rooty thread through the mukhallat, tethering it to the greenery of the jungles and preventing the scent from floating away aimlessly into a pool of pikake island bliss.  There is sensuality, but it is reigned in.  Which, of course, is what makes this even sexier.

 

Another welcome surprise – ambergris.  The composition of Vetiver Blanc contains 35% real ambergris, procured on the West Coast of Ireland and tinctured by Sultan Pasha himself.  It is white ambergris, the highest grade of all, which does not produce much of a scent of its own beyond a sweet seawater minerality.  But the role that the white ambergris plays in this composition is vital.  It causes all the other notes and materials to glow hotly, as if lit by some internal heat source.

 

The effect is a gauzy halo of buttery white florals, resins, and creamed grass, all pulsing outwards in concentric circles of scent waves that fill the room and one’s own mouth.  I find this incredibly beautiful, sexy, and warm – the perfect white floral for white floral avoiders and the perfect vetiver for the vetiver-averse.  It rivals both Songes (Goutal) and Manoumalia (Les Nez) for their damp, fecund sensuality, which, if you know those perfumes at all, is really saying something.

 

 

 

Violet Forever (Agarscents Bazaar)   

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Only the hardest of hearts would not melt at the opening of this perfume.  Violet Forever is a frilly bloomers explosion of sweet, powdery violets, a glitter spackle of violet pastilles pinned lightly to its fabric.  It smells like all the colors associated with Easter – lilac, blush, primrose, duck egg blue.  

 

The childlike exuberance of the opening dies back very quickly, however, transitioning into a more honeyed texture which, while still crystalline, renders the violet note syrupy and medicinal.  Rose and vanilla maintain the creaminess quotient, but alas, the initial freshness of the violets is lost.

 

Despite this, the development of Violet Forever still holds some delights, chief among them a delicious rose jam note that marries the jellied texture of lokhoum to the nuttiness of halva.  The violet becomes ever more insistently sweet as time passes, as well as unapologetically girly.

 

If you love violet pastilles, children’s antibiotic syrups, the scent of My Little Pony, or anything dainty and pastel-colored, then Violet Forever just might be your nirvana.  For everyone else, just keep in mind that they were not kidding about the Forever part, so unless syrupy violet pastilles are your particular fetish, steer clear.  Overall, the sense is of an opportunity missed.  The scent briefly teeters on the brink of something great, but rapidly loses its train of thought, lazily circling back to the girlish cliché you expected it to be in the first place.

 

 

 

Violets Blond (Perfume Parlour)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Dupe for: Tom Ford Violet Blonde

 

The dupe is almost identical to the original Tom Ford perfume, save for a slightly marshy edge to the iris in the dupe.  It nails the violet and iris notes to within an inch of the original, especially the cold suede-like overtones of the orris and the powderiness of the violets.  The dupe is as clean and as musky as the original.  Longevity and projection are also roughly on par.

 

The only real difference is that the absence of the sharp, metallic violet leaf at the beginning, and a lighter, less benzoin-heavy drydown.  The toned-down presence of the benzoin means that the powder is dialed down about forty percent from the original, a feature that some might enjoy or even prefer.  On the flipside, this also translates into a slightly slimmer body – a thin foam pillow instead of a plump goose down one.  Overall, though, this is a more than adequate replacement for the by-now-discontinued Tom Ford.

 

 

 

Violette Noyée (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Expectations are such weighty things, aren’t they?  The minute Sultan Pasha mentioned that the inspiration for Violette Noyée (‘Drowned Violet’) was Guerlain’s classic Après L’Ondée (‘After the Downpour’), it was inevitable that that we would begin to stake out some pretty lofty goal posts in our heads.

 

Expectations like these are nigh on impossible to satisfy.  If the perfumer produces an exact copy of Après L’Ondée in attar form, then it is just a dupe.  If it diverges too far from the original template, then people will scoff that it smells nothing like the original.  When a behemoth like Après L’Ondée is involved, therefore, best not to mention it at all.  That way, if people find it similar, they will point it out and the whole thing becomes a ‘happy accident’ by a talented perfumer whose work happens to come close to the standard set by a Guerlain classic.  

 

Therefore, to judge Violette Noyée fairly, you really must put all thoughts of Après L’Ondée out of your head.  They smell very little alike.  But they are both beautiful in their own way.  Après L’Ondée is sweet and aerated, with a heart of tender violets and heliotrope gently spiced with anise and clove.  The iris in the Guerlain emphasizes the delicately mineral scent of earth after a rain shower.  The entire affair is delicate and gauzy. 

 

Violette Noyee, on the other hand, has a bright, hesperidic opening that bristles with lemon and the brushed-metal greenness of violet leaf, which gives way to an earthy ‘forest’ floral.  Peppy green florals such as hyacinth and lily of the valley play the main role here, rather than the melancholy purple sweetness of violet flowers.  The impression is first and foremost of freshly cut grass and sunshine.

 

Heliotrope is strongly present in the latter stages, but compared to the Guerlain, it is neither fluffy nor gauzy, but heavily fudgy and pastry-like.  The scent develops along the same spicy marzipan track as Après L’Ondée’s big sister, L’Heure Bleue, more than Après L’Ondée itself.  This makes sense as the mukhallat is modeled after the rare Après L’Ondée pure parfum, which is a much heavier and denser affair than the eau de toilette (and indeed, much more like L’Heure Bleue).

 

Being an oil-based perfume, Violette Noyée does not and cannot truly capture the silvery weightlessness of the original, nor does it even attempt to recreate its mineral petrichor effect.  But Violette Noyée should be enjoyed as its own creature rather than as a point of comparison.  Its bright citrus and violet leaf notes are especially beautiful, providing as they do a fantastic contrast with the damp verdancy of the florals.

 

The base throws all sense of restraint to the wind and mixes the cool ‘blue’ fudge-like texture of heliotrope, tonka, and amber with spicy, hot carnation, resins, vintage-style musks, and a filthy, saliva-ish ambergris.  What a mind warp to travel from cool green florals and juicy lemons to L’Heure Bleue’s dessert trolley, to finally plant its feet firmly in the stinky mammalian effluviant of ambergris.  Ethereal it ain’t.  But judge Violette Noyée for what it is, please, rather than for what it purports to be.

 

 

 

Walimah Attar (Areej Le Doré)         

Type: mukhallat

 

 

The opening of Walimah Attar is strangely familiar to me, and it haunts me until I realize that it simply shares what I would characterize as the sepia-toned density common to all blends of natural floral absolutes in attar perfumery.  When you mix a bunch of floral absolutes together, they conspire to make a thick, oily-muddy fug of smells only vaguely floral in dilution.  Unlike the synthetic representations of flowers in mixed media perfumes or commercial perfumery, where you can clearly differentiate one floral note from another, the flowers in all-natural attars don’t give up their individual identities without a fight.  They are melted down into the soup.  But still, there are markers that can tip you off as to what is there.

 

So, for example, in Walimah, I can smell the musky, apple-peel outlines of champaca but not its softer, creamier yellow parts.  The gassy miasma of benzene and grape that lingers like fog in still air tells me that ylang plays a role here, even though it doesn’t really smell distinctly of ylang.  A note like lemon peel dropped into creamed white honey, with a cutting green leaf undercarriage – this is the magnolia.  Finally, there seems to be a big tuberose at loose here, but it is the brown-green, angularly bitter type of tuberose one sees in natural perfumery, rather than the buttery, candied Fracas kind.

 

This floral miasma all boils down into a sticky, fruity, brown varnish of notes that smells more like balsamic oud than a field of flowers.  There is nothing fresh or dewy here.  The floral varnish smells aged and, also kind of vaporous, as if evaporating off a piece of old wooden furniture left to fester in a backroom, sending little spores of varnish off into the ether.  That tells me there is lots of saffron here, with its dusty, potpourri-ish trail.

 

Further on, there is a fabulously grassy vetiver threading in and out through the floral fug – not fresh or citrusy like a straight-up vetiver oil, but more like ruh khus, with its soft, mossy smell of winter greens cooked slowly in olive oil.  There is also, at times (but not on every testing), a trace of mushroomy earthiness, creating an impression of either myrrh or gardenia.

 

Texture-wise, Walimah Attar evolves slowly from a dense, syrupy brown varnish to a dusty, soapy base, with a detour here and there to the grassiness of vetiver.  The funkiness of the musk gives the scent a sweet, powdery, and vaguely civety finish that, coupled with the oily, abstract florals up top, make me think of Gold Man by Amouage, particularly the vintage version.  That is my way of saying that Walimah smells a little dirty in parts, a bit soupy and lounge lizardy, like poor body hygiene covered up with a floral white musk deodorizing powder.

 

Walimah unfolds to me as a series of block movements rather than distinct notes – first, a sharp, fruity fug of yellow and white florals compressed tightly into an oily brick, followed by the relieving, aerating soap powder of musk and old woods,  and finally, darting through everything, that nutty, almost creamy vetiver note.

 

Although I really like Walimah Attar, it gives me a slight headache every time I wear it.  Furthermore, despite its potency for the first four hours, it loses steam quite quickly thereafter.  I recommend it highly for men and women who love the following fragrances: Vetiver Blanc (Sultan Pasha),  De Vaara (Mellifluence),  Champaca Regale (Sultan Pasha),  Jardin de Borneo Tuberose (Sultan Pasha), and Gold Man (Amouage).

 

 

 

White Lotus (Anglesey Organics)

Type: essential oil (doubtful)

 

 

Anglesey Organics’ version of a white lotus ruh is extremely cheap, which means, of course, that it is likely not the real deal.  Still, it is highly enjoyable to wear, even neat on the skin.  The opening is of a honeyed white floral, with little pockets of fresh, cool nectar popping in the honeycomb structure.  It is lightly creamy, but not heavy or thick.  There are some woody and vegetal undertones at play in the background, with a faint tea-with-lemon facet developing much later.

 

Overall, this is a delicious, sparkling oil that makes you want to knock it back like a glass of iced floral cordial on a hot day.  As it develops, there is a parallel to the honeyed creaminess of magnolia, but the white lotus is shot through with a crisp, watery hue that gives it the edge in hot weather.  In the far drydown, alongside the tannic tea and citrus notes, there also appears a dry, resinous thickness that is especially toothsome.

 

 

 

Yasminale #1 (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Sweet pea, honeysuckle, Mirabelle plum, freesia – the notes list reads like a perfume made for a twelve-year-old woodland fairy.  True to form, the perfume starts off as a tender-hearted floral, with a soft fruitiness that broadcasts ‘youth’ without straying into flashiness.  

 

Things take an unexpected turn, however, when a rather adult creaminess rolls in to support the florals in the rump, an exquisite combination of jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood that smells like one of those old-fashioned, boozy egg creams you get at a retro diner.  Not a perfume for a nymph after all, but for women with deep bosoms, zero thigh gap, and serious sexual intent.

 

 

 

 

About Me:  A two-time Jasmine Award winner for excellence in perfume journalism, I write a blog (this one!) and have authored many guides, articles, and interviews for Basenotes.  (My day-to-day work is in the scientific research for development world).  Thanks to the generosity of friends and acquaintances in the perfume business, I have been privileged enough to smell the raw materials that go into perfumes and learn about the role they play in both Western and Eastern perfumery.   Artisans have sent vials of the most precious materials on earth such as ambergris, deer musk, and oud.  But I have also spent thousands of my own money, buying oud oils directly from artisans and tons of dodgy (and possibly illegal) stuff on eBay.  In the reviews sections, I will always tell you where my sample came from and whether I paid for it or not.

 

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Amouage, Anglesey Organics, Perfume Parlour, Agarscents Bazaar, Abdes Salaam Attar, Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics, and Mellifluence. The samples from Sultan Pasha and Areej Le Doré were sent to me free of charge by the brand.  Samples from Henry Jacques were sent to me by Basenotes friends in sample passes. 

 

 

Note on monetization: My blog is not monetized.  But if you’d like to support my work or show appreciation for any of the content I put out, you can always buy me a coffee using the little buymeacoffee button.  Thank you! 

 

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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All Natural Ambrette Balsamic Independent Perfumery Review Vetiver

Vetiver by Hiram Green

21st July 2021

For all that vetiver famously possesses an olfactory range stretching between hazelnut, roses, and earth, it is always unmistakably ‘vetiver’ in the same way that patchouli is always patchouli. You’ll notice, therefore, that descriptions in reviews tend to drift towards one pole or another – dark or fresh, wet or dry, wood or root. But in the end, they’re all variations up and down the scale of the essential vetiver-y-ness of vetiver.

Then there’s the personal tolerance angle to assessing vetiver fragrances. Before I learned to love the (vetiver) bomb, I would rank vetiver scents on a sliding scale from what a friend of mine calls ‘bullshit vetivers’, i.e., scents like Timbuktu (L’Artisan Parfumeur) or Shaal Nur (Etro) where it plays a key but minor role, and the hard no of the swampier, danker, more evilly-vetiver vetivers like Racine (Maître Parfumeur et Gantier) and Vetiver (Guerlain). So, when I see a perfumer venturing out into vetiver soli-root territory, I always wonder (a) what the perfumer will do – or not do – to break vetiver out of the olfactory straitjacket it was born into, and (b) where it falls on my old but probably still ingrained sliding scale of tolerance.  

On the first, Vetiver by Hiram Green definitely innovates on the theme by using the vetiver as the portal through which we get to – at a distance at least – a spicy, musky base dressed with a lemongrass brightness. But Vetiver is still clearly vetiver. The burnt lemon peel aspects of the root are cleverly accentuated by ginger, another root that crackles with spikes of primary yellow before tailing off into sepia. This is vetiver in the guise of a sparkling eau de cologne, although while fresh, the opening is immediately spicier and more aromatic than citrus alone. Soon, the fragrance settles into its second and what seems to be final iteration – the nostalgic scent of ancient wooden furniture and dusty covering sheets that have lain undisturbed for half a century until relatives come to clear the place out.

Not enough is said about the appeal of mustiness. But it’s precisely this smell of ancient neglect that marks fragrances like Djedi (Guerlain), Mukhallat Malaki (Swiss Arabian), Muschio di Quercia (Abdes Salaam al Attar) and Messe de Minuit (Etro) out as special. Further, it’s the dryness of materials – stone, wood, earth – that is important to me at a personal tolerance level, as anything wetter signals a rot of a less noble kind, i.e., damp rot in walls, rotting fruit, or the breaking down of animal tissue. The dustiness of the vetiver in Vetiver is the pleasant exhalation of once-loved rooms, books, and ‘good’ furniture, their human users long gone and their memory faded with time. If, like me, you abhor the rootier, marshier variants of vetiver that smell like stagnant pondwater, then you’ll love Vetiver for first its cleansing-spicy and then dry-woody character.

But let me also tell you that if you’re a complete vetiver wuss, you might like Vetiver anyway because there is the get out clause of a very good ambrette material tucked away in the basenotes. Normally quite vegetal and cool-toned, here the ambrette takes on an almost ambery, resinous sweetness (akin to the ‘rice pudding skin’ vibe the same material creates in Musc Nomade by Annick Goutal). And there are moments where the lingering citric brightness of the ginger smashes into the musk mallow, recreating that distinctive Refresher-Bar-meets-amber vibe of Opus 1144 (UMUM).

How much of this you perceive will depend on application method and the distance at which you smell it. When lightly applied, the sweet, sparkling resinous-musky facet rides up quite insistently, but applied heavily, it is the pleasantly dry, musty woodiness of the vetiver (and the warmth of the ginger) that predominates. Similarly, when smelled up close, Vetiver is all about that vetiver, but when smelled from a distance, the sillage in the air is more that of a bright, spicy Italianate balsamic mixed with something vaguely woody and earthy.

Now, that might be a mixed bag of findings for some (especially those don’t like musks or balsams masking – if even partially – the purity of vetiver), but if you’re looking for a vetiver-centric scent that faithfully conveys the essential vetiveriness of vetiver without making you feel like you’re ingesting a plateful of collard greens boiled in fetid swamp-water, the Vetiver by Hiram Green is a brilliant option. I enjoyed this sample to the last drop because it gave me the ‘dusty old books in a decaying mansion’ vibe I really dig, while also giving me the white-hot lemongrass sting of ginger at the top to wake me up and the sweet, almost resinous sparkle of ambrette in the base to see me out comfortably. It’s basically what I’d make for myself if I were a perfumer and I wanted a vetiver fragrance.

Source of sample: Kindly gifted by the perfumer, Hiram Green.

Cover Image:  Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

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Ambergris Ambrette House Exploration Independent Perfumery Iris Leather Oud Review Smoke Vetiver

Neandertal: Them, Us, Light, Dark

8th March 2021

The indie perfume brand Neandertal boasts some of the most achingly cool bottles I’ve ever seen, one of the hottest talents on the indie perfumery scene (Euan McCall), and several glowing Luca Turin reviews – and yet, surprisingly little hype. I’m going to hazard a guess that, for some, ‘achingly cool’ + bottles that look like ice sculptures = intimidating.

That includes me, by the way. I am the least cool person in the room at any given time, so it’s likely I’d have continued to ignore Neandertal to infinity and beyond were it not for the fact that I recently purchased some samples of Euan McCall’s work (for his eponymous brand) and wanted to compare/contrast against his work for another brand to get a fuller picture of his style. When a perfume contact who does some PR for Neandertal (Brooke) offered to send me samples of the line, I figured it was kismet. 

I’m really glad I got to smell these. All of them were interesting – unique even – and none of them were the paint-by-numbers type of jobbie we’ve come to expect from the more upmarket niche brands. One was marred by a heavy hand with nose-burning aromachems, but even that was redeemed by a beautiful and unusual central section. Matching the bottles, the perfumes draw on the jolie laide nature of raw, elemental things – metal, earth, leather, salt. The effect is often jarring, and sometimes (one senses accidentally rather than deliberately) even pleasant. But we all need a little intellectual roughage in our diets, don’t we? 

 

Them

 

Oh, the grappa and Fairy washing up liquid sting of pure orris root tincture! I love how, when used in more generous quantities than the standard dribble tapped out with a fingernail into niche perfumes to justify an obscene price tag (Floretiiiiinnnnne irisssssss), this buttery but bleachy rhizome always manages to bring in the desaturated cool grey-pink colour canvas of Scandinavia – even if what the perfumer had been going for was Italian sunshine or Russian leather. Orris will out. Luckily, we have a Northern European perfumer (Euan McCall, a Scot) going for a cool, foggy interpretation of orris root, so the Scandi colour palette works just fine.

 

Orris root is an interesting material because, to me, it is a mixture of high and low, which means that it smells in equal parts like a fine leather glove and like the rooty sting of moonshine brewed by a Polish potato farmer. An elevated root cellar smell. Part of the reason that Them works because the perfumer understands this element of the material and surrounds it with other high-low accents. So, we have a green, scratchy salt note rubbing up against an ambrette material that feels luxuriously cloudy (a drop of Pernod in water), and a vaporous leather note slowly losing its initially screechy, toxic edge as it is folded into a much finer, softer ‘cuir’ along the same lines as Cuir d’Ange (Hermès) or Cuir X (La Parfumerie Moderne).  

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It is also an outdoors-to-indoors kind of perfume. It starts in the cool, foggy outdoors (Iris Silver Mist territory even) before slowly switching the scene to a posh art gallery full of spot-lit ‘found art’ sourced from nature, like long, silvery hunks of hollowed-out driftwood, polished stone, dried seaweed, salt, leather – the type of beach-cast objets that a collector might pay thousands for. There’s an awkward moment in the transition that smells a little bit sweaty or BO-ish, but it’s brief enough for me to pass it off as my imagination (or perhaps a momentary concentration of something evil in the iris material used).   The small flashes of furry warmth and leather underbelly briefly bring to mind Slumberhouse Sibet, but no, Them is green, salty, and almost aqueous in a way Sibet is not.  

 

  

Us

 

Us is one of those atmospheric indie scents that are more like exhibitions than perfume – experiments not really designed to survive beyond the walls of the lab but to be held up, admired, and put back down again. It smells like boot polish, tanning agents, and the soot-streaked insides of a kipper smoking house. And also like wet eucalyptus branches thrown onto an open fire in a sauna. While I admire the phantasmagoric summoning of the La Brea tar pits, I’m not sure that something this extreme is for wearing.

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In the drydown, it calms down enough for me to spot the relationship to the hoary old seagrass vetiver (burnt, whiskey-ish) of Vetiver by Annick Goutal Vetiver or Arso by Profumum, but I would rather wear the Goutal than a version that’s been amped up by a factor of ten. I just don’t have the stomach for this kind of stuff anymore. If you’re just getting into niche or indie, however, and you are chasing down all the ‘burning tire’ scent experiences you can find, then Us is gripping stuff indeed.

 

 

Light

 

Light is a jarring but ultimately thought-provoking fragrance. There is an opening blast of some aromachemical so vile and toxic I can feel it at the back of my throat, and for a moment or two, before this thing rights itself, I have to fight the urge to scrub it off my skin. I suspect a noxious brew of Ambroxan and the milky-metallic shriek of violet leaf, with a pronounced ‘curdled milk’ effect.

 

However – and you know that the ‘however’ has to be a good one in order for me to get past the teenage body spray thing at the start – Light surprises me by settling into a weird but interesting accord that I can only describe as a tart but creamy ‘rhubarb and custard’ floral that gets me in its headlights and refuses to let go. Yes, I understand that nothing in the notes list would explain this. Yes, it is possible that I’m going crazy. I have worn Light several times now, and each time I grimace my way through the opening (hairspray! licked metal spoons! teenager deo!) and each time I wind up in the rhubarb and custard place.

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And if it only stayed there, I would be enthusiastic. However, after an hour or two, the scent begins a slow fade into a chemical marshmallow drydown with an unpleasantly dusty ‘wheaten’ undertone – a sort of stale, chocolate-less smores accord – which reminds me a bit of that Godawful Rouge Smoking by Parfums BDK (which is cherry cough medicine + pleather + bubblegum + stale, wheat-dusted marshmallow) and of Sangre Dulce by Strangers Parfumerie, which is actually pretty good. I’m not keen on this indie ‘protein bar’ accord, to be honest, so this is a mark against it. But that weird salty-floral-creamy rhubarby midsection – oh man. What I’d do for a flanker that excerpted that part.

 

 

Dark

 

 

Aptly named, Dark is one of those oily, industrial-smelling concoctions that get you thinking both of (a) the fuel spills, rubber, tarpaulin, and black oil of a car repair shop, and (b) the oily black infestation at the cire of a freshly-felled agarwood tree, i.e., the natural and unnatural intertwined so densely that one is undistinguishable from the other. It smells dank and oddly savory (umami), perhaps due to the seaweed note, which is more reminiscent of miso paste than of salt. Unlike Light, Dark is, well, the smell of closed-up spaces, of rot, of time v. infection.

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Though unusual, its grungy industrial bent is not entirely unique – there are elements of what I am smelling here in both Nooud by Baruti and Black No. 1 by House of Matriarch. But in the drydown, Dark takes a very different turn, and this is where the paths diverge. The scent sees itself out on a long tail of pure, blinding metal. You know the metallic scent of orange juice that’s been spilled and left to dry? This is precisely that, minus any scent of orange. I don’t know if this is saffron, coriander, rose oxide, violet leaf, or some other metallic material, but the flash of metal provides a link to Light that I find interesting. Dark mixed with Light, by the way, provides for a compelling experience – the tart, metallic rhubarb and (salted) custard sparks against the oily, savory dankness of Dark’s oudy leather to yield a scent that feels as bright as an over-exposed photo and as grungy as mold.  

 

 

Source of samples: Samples of the Neanderthal line were kindly sent to me by Brooke, who does some PR on social media for the brand. I disclose where my samples came from so that you (the reader) can decide for yourself whether my review is unbiased or not.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Frank Eiffert on Unsplash

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Balsamic Coffee Fruity Scents Gourmand House Exploration Independent Perfumery Leather Oud Review Smoke Spice Vetiver Woods

Parfums Prissana and Strangers Parfumerie: A Sampling

12th February 2020

I’m fascinated by the individuality of the models at play in the indie perfume sector. Some houses, like Diane St. Clair and Papillon work slowly, releasing an average of one perfume a year (if that), willing to wait until every single detail is ‘right’ before releasing what is a highly-finished work to the public. Others, like Prin Lomros, work gonzo style – restlessly creating, releasing, and then wiping out whole perfumes, like an artist furiously rubbing out a sketch he is suddenly unhappy with.

What this boils down to is the notion of risk. Just how much risk is Prin Lomros willing to take? In my opinion, a lot. This is a guy who has had quite a few brands and sub-brands in a very short period of time (I count three, including one disappeared, one prestige, and one diffusion, although in the last few days, I think a fourth might have been sprung upon us), populated with perfumes that appear and then disappear, never to be seen again. Other perfumes get the chop, only to return a year later under a different name.

Sure, this all sounds like Prin Lomros is having a lot of fun – but what about us? Though there’s nothing permanent in perfumery these days – Penhaligon’s glorious Ostara came and went in the space of two years, despite its critical success, and half of the 13 Gucci Flora flankers will probably have been removed from the shelves by the time I finish this sentence – expecting even the most committed of indie perfumery supporters to lay down $160 on a 30ml bottle of liquid that might be axed on a whim four months later is an exceptionally big ask.

Generally, a perfumer can only bet on their customers accepting this level of risk if one of two conditions have been met. Either a) the raw materials are of such rarity or unusual quality, like vintage Cambodi oud oil from the 1970s or a hunk of white ambergris from the Western shores of Ireland that customers buy out of the fear of missing out on a once-in-a-lifetime experience, or b) the compositions themselves are so artistic or clever that customers are inspired to invest wholesale in the creative real estate locked inside the perfumer’s head.

For the former, you only have to look at the success of Areej Le Doré, Sultan Pasha, and Ensar Oud to know that the feverish fanboyism around the cult of raw materials is more than adequate to keep the ship afloat. Brands, if they are clever, might seek to co-opt a bit of this market for themselves by introducing special one-off editions focused on rare, limited run materials; Eris Parfums did this recently with Mxxx. (review here) to great effect, using a fantastic piece of white ambergris to turn their regular Mx. from a silky white cotton t-shirt into a $1,500 cashmere wrap.

Prin Lomros’ perfumes lean a bit on the precious raw materials thing, but really rely more on the perfumer’s artistic vision as the hook with which to reel customers in. He takes quite a few creative risks – which makes sampling his work huge fun (but blind buys ill-advised). What this means for me is that although roughly 60% of what he turns out doesn’t work for me, the ones I do like I really, really admire and find myself thinking about long after I’ve put the sample away. Heck, even the ones I wouldn’t wear to save my life linger in my head.

I worked my way through 18 – count them, 18 – samples from both Parfums Prissana and Strangers Parfumerie during a time of great stress this January, when multiple deadlines and the arrival of a new management team at work meant that I survived on crisps and wine for nutrition and rarely got more than five hours of sleep a night. Normally, conditions like these would taint my perception of whatever I’m testing or wearing; but, a grosso modo, the Prin Lomros stuff still emerged with a big fat thumbs up from me.    

Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t a few problem areas. For one, the perfumes are all a little front-loaded, with drydowns that, while long-lasting (lots of ‘beastmode’ performers here), are a little wan compared to the richness upfront. Two or three of the perfumes I tried were marred with an overdose of noxious ‘power tool’ aromachemicals – Ambroxan, maybe, Norlimbanol, and a few of those ‘new wood’ captives; these ones were an immediate line in the sand for me. But even in those, I was able to find little pockets of something interesting or playful that kept me plugged into the experience. To say that his perfumes surprised me and challenged my preconceptions is really quite something, only because I am jaded as fuck.

I think Mandarava (Prissana) is utterly horrific but many people whose opinion I respect think it’s a masterpiece. While clearly well made, its dense cloud of indeterminable flowers, incense, and musk is unbearable to me, because note for note, it smells like someone emptied an entire aerosol of nag champa-scented room deodorizer into a small room and closed all the windows. It has the same overwhelming stuffiness and cheap, greasy-powdery musk overload as Koh-I-Noor by Areej Le Doré but lacks that scent’s more fine-tuned sense of balance that somehow keeps everything in check; Mandarava is unhinged in a way that sets my teeth on edge. But, you know, people other than me love it.

Photo by Chloe Evans on Unsplash

I don’t normally review so negatively, so you have to know there’s a redeeming angle here. And here it is – the drydown is weirdly good. I’ve worn this three times in the name of science, and each time the drydown takes me by surprise in a good way. Unfortunately, I never quite managed to make it to my notepad in time to write down what it is that I think almost redeems Mandarava, so you’ll have to believe me that the texture of the scent changes about six hours in, emerging from the cardboardy fug of nag champa to become sharper, woodier – more interesting somehow. If I ever subject myself to Mandarava again – which, to be honest, is unlikely – I’ll come back and update this review.

If you’re skimming this post for an entry point, then Ma Nishtana is probably the easiest and most immediately likeable perfume in either the Prissana or Strangers Parfumerie line. A judiciously-spiced church incense scent, Ma Nishtana splits the difference between the soapy, aldehyded, Coca-Cola-ish airiness of Cardinal/Avignon and the warmer, breadier, more caramelic-ambery thickness of Contre Bombarde 32 by SAUF or Samharam by Arte Profumi. The drydown drones on a bit, thanks to an application of the dreaded Norlimbanol, but even as a No-Limbs-Left-At-All-hater I have to admit that it’s applied with an unusually subtle touch here.

I don’t know that Ma Nishtana distinguishes itself so much from the stalwarts of this rather cramped incense genre to be worth the price, but of course, this is a deeply personal thing. The most innovative or unusual thing about Ma Nishtana is really that faint whiff of armpitty cumin or turmeric that’s half under-proved doughnut and half curry-sweat, but if you own either Grimoire by Anatole LeBreton or Al Oudh by L’Artisan Parfumeur, I think you’re covered. Ma Nishtana is very nice, very good – but not entirely necessary, at least in my opinion.

Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash

Tom Yum is a thing of beauty! A fantastically fresh and sour take on the classic French eau de cologne, it is something like Eau Sauvage or Ô de Lancôme flushed with the mouth-stripping aroma of lemongrass – half lemon, half rooty grass – and freshly-squeezed limes. These tart, aromatic topnotes are all under-pinned with a gorgeously sweet and dusty galangal note that stands in for musk and serves an a pillowy extension cord for the citruses well into the drydown. Although Tom Yum doesn’t smell as authentically hot, sour, or herbaceous as a bowl of Tom Yum itself, and is therefore not nearly as exotic as the notes list wants you to believe, it is still the rare ‘update’ to the eau de cologne model that actually works (and lasts).

Tom Yum is just sour enough in the topnotes to refresh, herbaceous and soapy enough in the midsection to offer that essential coolness, and sweetly spicy enough in the tailbone to avoid that throat-catching sourness of laundry musk that tires my palate in most modern takes. For me, Tom Yum competes head-to-head with the basil leaf-inflected blast of air conditioning that is the bottle of Paris-Deauville (Chanel) I keep in the door of my fridge as a substitute for, you know, actual air conditioning. If you have the money to spend on an eau de cologne-style perfume and want it to last a fair amount of time without having to choke on nasty woody ambers or oceans of white musk, then I highly recommend Tom Yum. 

Somewhat along the same lines, if you love neroli and want a complex, natural-smelling version, then Natsumeku is very good. In keeping with its Japanese inspiration, it smells quite like a Di Ser perfume in that its tingly, orangey citrus notes (neroli in this case) tinged with the wintergreen finger snap of camphor and silvery, refined hinoki wood. In other words, neroli filtered through a Japanese sensibility rather than through the regular ole channel of an Amalfi citrus grove. It is fresh and sharp, and quite medicinal, like the cool, steamy air in a Japanese onsen on Hokkaido island, where you are getting rubbed down by a masseur with unpronounceable Japanese herbs, damp sea mosses, and yuzu-style citruses that probably only exist within 2 miles of the onsen and nowhere else. It smells like, for want of a better word, the “Other”.

I am less enthused about the solid-but-plain-Jane drydown of Natsumeku, because I am not a huge fan of neroli, and this does get very ‘neroli’-ish in the end. It might be just me who has this issue, but I always tire of the incessantly cheerful soapiness of neroli. In this instance, if I am choosing to smell soapy and clean, then I’d much rather be wearing Tom Yum, above. 

Photo by Sonny Ravesteijn on Unsplash

Thichila is an interesting one indeed. Sorry to be bossy, but I’m really going to have to insist you disregard any reviews you see for Thichila that make it out to be tremendously complex, floral, incensey, old school, or even chypre-ish – it’s really none of those things. Because Thichila is one of those perfumes that happens to be composed in an Eastern style and uses complex-smelling, exotic naturals, many people – mostly Westerners – may mistake its complexity for a matter of construction. As a matter of fact, Thichila is simply one big bridge built between two massively complex materials – a natural Thai oud oil and a big, rustic myrrh. These two monoliths happen, in this case, to share a peculiarly rubbery-rooty-oily-anisic character that makes it difficult to tell where one ends and the other takes over. I find Thichila fascinating precisely because of this.

The Thai oud smells charmingly like the inside of a party balloon or a bouncy castle – plasticky, rubbery, with the far-off twang of trampled fairground straw and sticky, jammy-fruity children’s handprints. It reminds me very much of one of FeelOud’s more unusual-smelling oud oils, whose name I can’t recall right now, but which smelled like the air that escapes from plastic lunchboxes that you’re opening for the first time in three months when the new term is starting.

At some point, the sweet, plasticky rubber tube of oud rolls into the scent of myrrh – gloomy and rubbery, but also sweet and crunchy, like giant golden sugar crystals dipped in anise and spread in a hard, glittery paste across your skin. I think Thichila is, on balance, a great perfume, but fair warning – you have to love this particular style of oud oil and this particular sort of myrrh for it to be a success for you. A very specific perfume, therefore, for a very specific taste.

Maruyama smells to me like a richly vegetal cis-jasmone or immortelle scent, i.e., floral notes with clear overtones of burnt hay, maple sugar, or strange exotic herbs like lovage that smell half like a white flower, half like celery. It reminded me at first of Comme des Garcons’ Sequoia and then of Cardamom Rose Sugar by Solstice Scents. There’s always a point at which this sort of thing smells pleasantly like a glazed maple-cider doughnut to me, and then slightly but ever so insistently of curry and caramelized brown sugar mashed together, at which point I don’t really want to smell it at all. If you don’t hit that plateau quite so quickly as I do, then I highly recommend Maruyama as an exotic Eastern take on the classically French ‘Sables’ (Annick Goutal) territory.

Photo by Allie Smith on Unsplash

Mohragot is the nouveau fougère of the line, kind of analogous to the place that Mousse Illuminée holds for Rogue Perfumery, or Eiderantler for January Scent Project, but with a thrillingly damp earth accord that whips us away from that lavender shaving foam ‘daddy’ picture and plunges us instead deep into the bowels of a violent thunderstorm in a forest, the rain and wind ripping up the soil and hurling broken branches, leaves, and air molecules into each other.

It took me forever to work out why I love the wet, dark, green ‘mustiness’ and soil-y ‘moldiness’ of this opening, until I realize that it replicates the same ozone-in-turmoil atmosphere of Supercell by Sixteen92, and to a lesser extent, the ‘old’ and ‘clay-like’ green earthiness of Oakmoss (Muschio di Quercia) by Abdes Salaam Al Attar.

Someday, I’ll figure out what it is about this sort of scent that moves my black soul, but right now, all I can think of is that this kind of mossy vetiver smell is alive and dead in equal measure. The mold and the dustiness, the ‘aged’ browny tint of the earth smell, its overall murk and gloom – this reminds me of the ‘newly-opened tomb’ dead air that billows out of Onda parfum (Vero Profumo) and Djedi (Guerlain).

But here and there, there is the juicy rudeness of new plant life poking its way through, the air crackling with ozone. So yes, though the hummus-rich, brown-green earthiness is all-encompassing at first, soon you notice that it is pierced here and there with the minty vase water of oakmoss.

On balance, however, this is not a particularly fresh or herbal example of a fougère. Pandan leaf, or screwpine, is mentioned in the notes list, so perhaps the gentle sweetness of those screwpine ittar they use to flavor syrups, tobacco, and cosmetics in India is what is relieving Mohragot of that tiresomely ‘Brut’-like, aftershavey bitterness that usually makes fougères such a bore to wear (as a woman). The pandan leaf note gives Mohragot an interestingly milky, nutty tonality, yet it is not as piercingly sweet or as fruity as an actual screwpine ittar. I find Mohragot one of the more interesting perfumes in the Prissana line, because it takes a while to pick apart, and even after three or four wears, parts of it remain impenetrable to me. I do appreciate that the ubiquitous 21st century finish of dopey tonka bean has been swapped out for a softly musky tobacco accord that smells like an idealized vision of an autumn walk. Unfortunately, Mohragot disappears from my skin within three hours. Now, I’m no longevity bore, but for $160 for 30mls, that’s just taking the piss. 

If I’d been dipping my toes into Strangers Parfumerie to test the waters and encountered Aroon Sawat first, I’d have turned 180º on my heels toute suite. Its clumsy mish-mash of woody ambers and big, syrupy fruit is bathed in a chemical radiance so powerful and all-reaching that my eyeballs hurt even to remember it now. It is a perfume whose finer points are wasted on me completely, obscured as they are by this big, thick gloppy blanket of amber-wood-syrup-resin-fruit aromachemicals. It’s just atrocious. A crime against perfume.

Thank God I operate a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy, because all the other Strangers Parfumerie perfume turned out to be either memorably quirky, or charming, or at least interesting enough to redeem the utter horror that was Aroon Sawat. In fact, in general, I liked the Strangers Parfumerie as much as, if not more than, the perfumes in the more upmarket (and more highly priced) Prissana line. The fact that they represent much better value for money is almost beside the point.

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

SM Café is possibly one of the most successful coffee-based perfumes out there, and I say that as someone who rarely thinks that coffee-scented anything works (apart from the real thing itself of course). The SM in SM Café stands for sado-masochism, but there’s nothing really risqué about this nicely-balanced dance between the intense, burnt flavor of freshly-roasted coffee beans and the clean sweetness of wood, musks, and amber resin. The coffee does smell undeniably dirty and grungy, but it’s more the funk of damp coffee grounds you’re cleaning out of the pot than anything S&M or leather related, and anyway it all gets balanced out by the milky ambers and beeswax in the base.

Although not terribly fruity, the sour morello cherry accent and the coumarin add a certain pipe tobacco angle to the concoction that I find broadly handsome – it also makes SM Café the indie synonym for Close Up by Olfactive Studio. But truth be told, SM Café is far more austere and masculine-leaning; in overall orientation, far closer to the dusty, burnt, 1970s character of Coze by Parfumerie Generale than to the sweetened coffee-tobacco of Close Up. 

I’m confused by just how much I enjoy the gourmand perfumes in the Strangers Parfumerie line-up.  Gourmand perfumes are not generally my thing. The designer ones are gloppy glucose bombs with zero distinguishing features, the niche ones use higher quality or more interesting sugar-choco-frooty aromachemicals but unfortunately tend to arrive at much the same place as the designer ones (and cost about $200 more), and the indies, well, in their effort to be all weird and ironic and indie about it, push the gourmand notes into ever-increasingly grotesque forms just for the sake of it (with few of them very wearable in the long run).

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

So Fetch, for example, has a protein bar accord and is based on a phrase from Mean Girls, so you’ll forgive me if I say I was ready to automatically class this with the third category. But I WAS WRONG. This stuff is just delightful. It has sass. It opens up on a huge whoosh of cherry-flavored fizz, as if someone dropped a whole packet of Love Hearts into a 2 liter plastic bottle of 7-Up and shook it all up until it exploded like a trailer park Prosecco.

So Fetch makes me feel young. It makes me imagine what Bendelirious by État Libre d’Orange might smell like if cross-pollinated with the rubbery tennis balls of The Soft Lawn (Imaginary Authors). There are, at points, beguiling little whiffs of rubber tires, fuel exhaust, and lemon-scented sherbet powder. In the drydown, notes of pink lemonade, strawberry erasers, and marshmallow fluff float into the picture – basically the same soft, billowy lokhoum fun of Douleur! by Bogue, minus the enamel-stripping rose oxide. Really, really good stuff.

Sangre Dulce is darker in tone than So Fetch, but no less weird or interesting, or ultimately, wearable. Immediately on application, there is something here that reminds me of something Lush or BPAL would make: burned sugar crossed with the headshop murkiness of amber cubes and dragon’s blood incense, or some mysterious dried herb concoction in a burlap sack. It smells very indie – not in the super-fancy artisanal sense of the word, but more in the sense of the Etsy crowd dropping a Solstice or Hexennacht release of perfumes honoring the Moon or witches or something. Not saying that to knock it, by the way – many of my favorite perfumes are indie oils from the latter category (I am just not into the witchy side of things).

I smell in Sangre Dulce a whole host of confusing but really pleasing notes that seem to hang together very well – burned sugar, rubber galoshes, sugar mashed into dirt, bathtub booze, and in the far drydown, something that smells like over-baked wheatgrass and granola bars (maybe this is where that protein bar ended up). If Luca Turin were to smell this, I’d imagine he’d find a way to praise Prin Lomros for his off-the-wall thinking, in the same way he (almost wistfully) loves the Constantine father and son duo at Lush for having the guts to just throw everything into a pot as a mad experiment and see what works (“Someone seems to be having a lot of fun over there” as he might say, in that impish way of his).

A basic way to describe Sangre Dulce is to say that it smells like sugar cubes and burned wheat that took a wrong turn somewhere and fell down a dark cellar into a pot of hooch, dragging with it some Converse sneakers and a vial of herbal folk medicine. In fact, I’m pretty sure that was the creative brief for Lush’s All Good Things.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Cigar Rum seems to be one of the most popular scents in the Strangers Parfumerie stable, probably because the handsome, complex aroma of tobacco absolute never fails to please. This is a good but hardly unique take on tobacco leaf – most of the heavy lifting is done by the tobacco absolute, but there’s a flash of warm, boozy rum up top to dress it up, and it skips over the heavy vanilla or dried fruit stickiness of Tobacco Vanille.

That said, it does nothing special or new above and beyond the real baseline for indie tobacco perfumes, which remains Tabac Aurea by Sonoma Scent Studio. Cigar Rum is also one of the Prin Lomros scents that falls flat in the base – there’s very little there to hold it together once you get past the richness of the tobacco opening. If you’re thinking of investing in an indie tobacco, I’d still go for the best-in-class of Tabac Aurea.

Cigar Rum Intense is the same, but is obviously a concession to the bros, who always want something more chemically radiant and beastmode. Anything nice-smelling or natural about Cigar Rum has been wiped out by the heavy woody ambers in the Intense version. Honestly, I’d steer clear and leave this one to the bros, because God knows those poor guys are under-catered to/s.  

Burning Ben is so, so good. You definitely need to love phenolic scents to like it, but as long as your fetish is smelling like beef jerky on a campfire, then Burning Ben will really do it for you. It runs along the same lines as Le Labo Patchouli 24 or Slumberhouse Jeke – basically big, billowing bombs of birch tar, cade, and lapsang souchong smeared over a sweet or boozy baseline. But it features an innovation so good-smelling and so damn right that I can’t believe nobody’s thought of before now: coffee! The burnt, aromatic ‘fresh roast’ coffee bean note lifted out of SM Café and grafted right on top of the burning cade-birch heart of Burning Ben makes for a smoky, tarry coffee darkness that smells fantastic.

At first, as you might imagine, it’s a bit too intense, like a billycan of coffee that’s boiled over on a campfire and is now sizzling meanly on the embers beneath. The addition of the coffee gives the birch tar leather a more masculine bent, and for part of this ride, I feel like I’m wearing my boyfriend’s leather jacket, infused with his scent of aftershave, manly musk, and general ‘maleness’ – this I find sexy in a cross-dressing way, and for people who find Patchouli 24 not masculine or butch enough, well, voila Burning Ben.

But before all of these intensely burnt, roasted flavors can run over into harsh or bitter, an oriental-ish and sweetly nutty base arrives to soften the edges. The basenotes are vague and amorphous in a way that makes you think, ‘Mmm, that smells good’, but also leaves you at a loss to define any one particular note or accord that’s making it so.

The best I can do is to say that it’s more like a texture than a taste, like those firm salted toffees whose pleasure lies mainly in the chew. Salty-sweet amber, toffee, beeswax, crushed hazelnuts – a sensuous mélange of silky, warm ‘brown’ flavors that are the perfect accompaniment to the sharper, smokier ‘brown’ notes of birch tar and coffee up top. Burning Ben is one of the Strangers Parfumerie scents that smells ever better the more it goes on – perhaps the forceful nature of phenolic scents in general is what ensures the richness doesn’t attenuate as quickly. Anyway, I love this category of scents, so it follows that I love Burning Ben. Beyond my general bias, I think that Burning Ben manages to pull off a bit of innovation in a genre that I suspect is rather a self-limiting space.             

Photo by Gustavo Espíndola on Unsplash

As good as Burning Ben is, I’ve left the best for last. Salted Green Mango is, for me, the standout of the Strangers Parfumerie line. The mango note is not really the point – it’s just a momentary swelling of something syrupy and green-tropical behind the avalanche of musk and vetiver, subsiding into the ether far too quickly to be a feature.

The thing to pay attention to here is the salt. Salted Green Mango is basically a huge, spacey cloud of sparkly vetiver-musk molecules that mimics the invigorating scent of salt air. It smells clean, but despite the probably industrial amounts of white musks or Iso E Super used here, also quite organic, like what I imagine the air around the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah smells like on a breezy day. And yet, there is something clearly lab-made about the scent; it feels engineered, ergonomic, and therefore a bit more chic or more modern than just a simple clustering of naturals.

I’m in love with how this (really quite simple) scent of white, clean, salty woods and musk gives me that ‘my-skin-but-better’ aura; it’s effortless and sensual. I’m willing to bet serious money that people who love those modern, shape-shifting floral-woody musks made to smell like 50% cyborg, 50% warm human skin – stuff like Glossier You, Diptyque’s Fleur de Peau, and Le Labo Ambrette 9 – will love Salted Green Mango. For me, it knocks all those modern skin musks, as well as Jo Malone’s (really excellent) Wood Sage & Sea Salt, right off their perches. This one goes straight on the full bottle list.   

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Eve and Pandora: Two Perfumes by Diane St. Clair

4th February 2020

I don’t know how to say this without sounding condescending, but one sniff of Eve and Pandora, the new duo of perfumes from Diane St. Clair, is enough to tell that there has been an evolutionary leap somewhere between her first group of releases and this one (I haven’t smelled Casablanca, so perhaps this is the missing link).

Don’t get me wrong – I really liked the first Diane St. Clair releases. First Cut, Gardener’s Glove, and  Frost were quiet études of a lifecycle as viewed through the eye of a woman intensely connected to it; each perfume a little door cracked open onto an internal dreamscape. I liked that you could tell that these were perfumes made from a woman’s perspective: there was a female sort of tentativeness or ambiguity that I don’t feel in the work of, say, a Josh Lobb or a Hans Hendley. Her first perfumes are little crawlspaces between absolutes, allowing you to breathe and just be.

But Eve and Pandora are perfumes in which you can instantly smell all of the rich, bosomy vintage perfumes that Diane St. Clair has smelled her way through in the meantime. Eve and Pandora are confident florals that have something to say and aren’t apologizing for taking up space. They both smell like flowers, clearly, but this time painted confidently in oil rather than politely in pastel.

Others better and more interested in backstory than I have explored who Pandora and Eve were, and the vein of rebellious curiosity that unites them; all I will say is that both perfumes do justice to the conflicted, imperfect condition that is womanhood. They are abstract and perfumey – a bit resistant to analysis – mixing the bitter with the sweet, and appealing to purely adult tastes. Like women (and bank vaults), Pandora and Eve take a single set of variables, shake them up, and arrive at very different results.

Out of the endless permutations that Eve could have settled on, we arrive at innocence. Well, at first anyway. Powdery woodland flowers – violets, freesia, and a fresh, crunchy green apple note that has the good manners to smell natural for once, rather than the lurid Jolly Rancher version we usually get, or worse the fake apple-cum-Ambroxan freshness of some Creed masculines. This is the prim crispness of apple soap or apple shampoo, with a lemony lick of vetiver for that freshly-mown grass thing that goes so well with apple.

Lilacs hide and then emerge – all sullen, thick-lipped sexuality, turgid and dormant, trapped inside a prim high-necked blouse, not fooling anyone. Does that description of lilacs surprise you? Are you violently disagreeing with me as you read? Talk to me when you’ve lived for years in a neighborhood so thick with lilac bushes that you feel ganged up on. Lilacs smell soapy and prim and Victorian in the singular, in isolation, but when roaming in packs of five or six, you notice that their scent has a tipping point, where it spills over from soap into this hugely ripe, fertile, polleny smell that occupies the air like a shape. Lilacs are the smell of something that pretends it is being restrained but in reality is already touching you inappropriately.   And yet, and yet…that lemony vetiver keeps the outer garments smelling as a fresh as a daisy.

Eve is for lovers of Opardu, or better yet, Warszawa, both by Puredistance, by which I mean that it will appeal to people who appreciate a certain old-fashioned, Veronica Lake-style glamour in their floral perfumes – the scented equivalent of a high-necked white satin blouse hiding a ridiculously lush shelf of a bosom.

Pandora spins the dial on the same set of notes, but the safe opens with a satisfying click on a completely different cavity. Pandora is the Hussy – Joan Holloway to Eve’s Peggy Olsen. It opens with a perfumey blast of heavy, bittersweet gasoline and hairspray mixed with fruit – the gaseous and thick aroma of an apple perhaps, rotting slowly in an organic wrapper of green leaves and flowers. In the background, there is a civety floral musk flushing the air pockets of the scent.

This is – and bear with me here – a fruity, waxy chypre backwashed in a gauze of cigarette smoke. It smells a bit like Lucien Lelong’s Indiscret, a 1940’s femme fatale type floral that derived much of its character from a grey-green, grainy galbanum that cast a hazy fag ash aura over the whole shebang. Thanks to the passion of a close friend for Indiscret, I invested in a vintage bottle from eBay, and was left a little underwhelmed by the perfume apart from this one unique aspect – that weirdly attractive ‘turned perfume’ smell you get from old perfumes whose formerly green or fresh-smelling galbanum, or oakmoss, or God knows, coriander have slowly disintegrated over time until they’ve coagulated into this brown gunk that smells alternatively of coffee grounds, brandy, and hairspray, with a hint of stale Rive Gauche haunting the far corners.    

I love this smell to the point of fetishism. I chase vintage perfumes now not really for a glimpse of how they once were, in their fully pristine, original beauty, but for the signs of this incipient decay, like a dog hunting for truffles. The combination in Pandora of this thick, gassy fruit and that ashy galbanum-vetiver is what I’m jonesing for, to be honest, and it might not even be the hook the perfumer intended to reel me in with. Whatever the intention, the top half of Pandora smells to me like the topnotes of a long-sealed-up vintage perfume, sludgy and indistinct with now banned damascones and nitro-musks, like a 1940’s Coco. I get a whiff of this with some of the DSH perfumes too, most notably Jitterbug. It effectively conjures up that fictional (fictional to me anyway) atmosphere of ladies, possibly your mother included, sweeping into the nursery with their long fur coats and Chanel lipstick and long cigarettes held preciously in long cigarette holders, wafting the mysterious musk of perfumery perfume (the ‘good stuff’ worn only on special occasions). The fact that Pandora has flashes of stale lipstick wax or cosmetic powder helps that illusion along even further.   

But if I came for the perfumey decrepitude of Pandora’s first half, I stay for the wild vetiver finale. The vetiver here almost has a texture to it, like a cup of black coffee thick with spice and wood. Addictive, rich, and very moreish, this is the saturnine heft of European style gingerbread stuffed with enough black pepper to flavor a goulash but still perfumey enough that you’d know better than to put it anywhere near your mouth.  Pandora remains determinedly abstract and fuzzy-bordered throughout, and you have to love that commitment.

Photo by Les Anderson on Unsplash

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