Un Bel Amour d’Été by Parfum d’Empire has been described – by the perfumer himself – as a suntan oil and flip flops kind of beach scent, while Luca Turin thinks it is a midway point between Jicky and Fracas. Going out on a limb here, neither of those are particularly accurate. To the first point, this is no suntan oil bit of fluff. It is a serious piece of floral perfumery – big, classical, sensuous. To the second, the dirtiness that Turin identifies as Jicky-esque is more the moist, body odor-ish roundness of cumin than the sharp, herbal (and dare I say masculine) civet that is the secret to the Guerlain. In truth, Un Bel Amour d’Été comes shockingly close to vintage Songes by Annick Goutal, specifically the eau de parfum version, with a side swipe of the spicy-milky tuberose bread pudding that is Alamut (Lorenzo Villoresi).
But there are key differences. The first bright, creamy explosion of tuberose and gardenia (for a few minutes, this is clearly a stunning gardenia recreation) is far more savory – saline almost – with a bready nuance that smells like the apricot-jam-slathered sandalwood of Jeux de Peau, a clear departure from the grapier nuances of Songes’ jasmine and ylang notes. Further differentiating it are a greenish ‘snapped leaf’ note, something that smells like red modelling clay, and a coarse apricot note so resinous it feels like the last, thick dregs of a carton of peach juice that burn your throat as they go down. The cumin and turmeric notes are also more audaciously spicy.
But in all honesty, it is more like vintage Songes than not. The opening is as momentously floral, powerful to the point of being pungent, and it is also similarly intensely cuminy. Both are extremely sensual – beads of glossy lady-sweat popping out and then drying on the surface of Carmen Miranda’s skin under that Bahia style dress. Though Un Bel Amour d’Été does finally swap out Songes’ creamy sandalwood for a lactonic (but also strangely dry) vanilla, there is always the overriding impression of a densely savory floral bread pudding soaked in second day lady sweat and wood.
As a Songes devotee, I am bowled over by this, but even I am sensible enough to know that there really is no justification in me owning more than a sample of something that, while not note-for-note derivative, is similar enough to an older model. Objectively-speaking, however, Un Bel Amour d’Été is more modern, richer, and honestly, probably better constructed than Songes, and it may be an option when my vintage bottle (with real sandalwood) runs out. I am impressed that there are perfumers like Marc-Antoine Corticchiato who are unafraid to play in waters so crowded by monsters like Fracas and Songes. It must be like trying to create a spicy floriental just after Coco and Opium came out.
Source of Sample: I purchased a manufacturer’s sample of Un Bel Amour d’Été from Fragrance & Art in Sweden.
Cover Image: Photo by Vicko Mozara on Unsplash
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
There’s no mistaking En Avion as anything other than a Caron. Everything comes from a well-established rulebook – flip to page ten for the stinging clove topnote of Poivre, the smoky, medicinal amber tilting its cap to leather, well, that’s Tabac Blond, and the piles of soft, mossy, licorice-and-rose-scented face power are lifted straight out of the drydown of Nuit de Noel.
But I have a sneaking fondness for En Avion above and beyond these other, possibly better regarded perfumes. It could be because that first big whoosh of scent mixes the ridiculous with the sublime – expensive jasmine mingling with the tack of sun-warmed pleather, an opulent amber against the spicy shaving soap of opoponax, or a stick of clove-scented stick of rock or bubblegum (vaguely Brighton Beach-ish) dropped into an exquisitely ornate pot of pink face powder, the kind that the sales assistants retrieve wordlessly from beneath the counter the minute they catch sight of your American Express Centurion.
Mostly, though, I love that it has this opaque texture halfway between smoke and cream, and no underlying structure to speak of. En Avion gives you all its glory upfront and then does a slow, graceful fade out that simply lowers the saturation level with each passing minute. Wearing it reminds me of being in one of those glider planes that drift so smoothly from one altitude to the next that you are unaware of your own descent until you suddenly see the ground. In the end, all that remains is a pouf of spicy powder from a big red tin of Imperial Leather talc, which makes me wonder if that’s all it ever was to begin with.
Source of sample: I bought a 15ml bottle of En Avion extrait from Parfumerie du Soleil d’Or in Lille in late 2015. I should have bought more. It is half gone and doesn’t seem to be available to buy anymore.
Cover Image: My own photo. Please kindly do not reprint or reuse without my permission.
Spyros Drosopoulos of Baruti is one of the most consistently original perfumers I have ever encountered. Baruti Indigo is a case in point. This is a perfume built on a series of weird but wearable contrasts.
First, it is balsamic but also airily floral. With its clutch of frankincense and mastic, it smells like a dense wall of greenish balsams – all crushed pine needles, sap, and terpenes – through which a slightly wilted (but still deodorant fresh) tandem of oily hyacinth and lush rose throbs like a flesh wound. Still, despite all the floral and balsamic notes, the first big hit to the synapses is of polished wood and spice.
It is never less than syrupy sweet, thanks to that rose, but it is also as vegetally piquant as long fingers of butter pickles fished straight from a jar to your mouth. This watery, almost cucumberish element seems like it would make the scent feel fresh, but instead, the overall impression is one of dark, seedy warmth.
Something about the interaction between the peppered wood, the gripe water florals, and that balsamic curtain of green makes me think of something delicious reduced to a dark, sticky concentrate. Its nectary heft makes me think of those balsamic vinegar glazes you buy to drizzle over a tagliata or green walnut salad – sweet, sour, and thick with the umami tang of Parmesan or soy.
The sandalwood and labdanum in the base are supposed to bring the bodacious comfort of an amber to finish things off, but hold up, because though there is creaminess, it is the animalic creaminess of goat yoghurt, sweat, and caramel taken too far past burning point. The lingering tartness or acidity from the hyacinth, or maybe even from Baruti’s signature ‘nood’ – a dank, metallic, but rousing synthetic base built to approximate oud without using any of the industry’s off-the-shelf oud synths – runs in the background like an application, giving the blend an addictive piquancy that keeps your nose returning for more.
Like many of Spyros’ creations, Indigo is perhaps too special or distracting for me to wear on a regular basis. But I plan to buy it one day, if only as a piece of olfactory art I bring out for those specific moments when I want to tumble down wormholes and wander the labyrinthine pathways of a true artist’s imagination. Vero is gone. But we still have Spyros.
Source of Sample: I purchased a sample from Indiescents quite a few years ago.
Cover Image: Photo by miro polca on Unsplash
Le Mat is a study in decrepitude. Picture a time-release reel of a rose blooming violently and then slowly desaturating in hue from a pulpy, blackened red to brown, dirty gold, and finally grey – a smudge of ash crushed between the pages of a book. Everything bracketing the rose is desiccated, from the dried fallen leaves of the patchouli to the hay and dried honey spackle of the curry-ish immortelle. It smells like summer grasses so bleached by the sun you can almost hear the cicadas. The dense spicing of nutmeg, clove, and black pepper force-ages the rose and buries it under a fine layer of white powder, like the mastic coating on a nubbin of Orthodox incense.
I have never smelled anything this dry that is also this beautiful. But dry doesn’t mean dead. Le Mat is more like a string of DNA captured in amber than a fossil – there is life here yet. Bury your nose in the white dust of Le Mat, breathe on it, and sometimes a small, fleshy part of the rose or the damp soil of patchouli springs to life again. It is this momentary, but repeatable, capacity for reanimation that makes Le Mat so special.
There are some parallels to 1876 (Histoires de Parfums) and Afternoon of a Faun (Etat Libre d’Orange), especially in the dry potpourri rose of the former and in the curried-maple immortelle chypre feel of the latter, but Le Mat is far less dandyish than 1876, and it is much drier and more controlled than Afternoon of a Faun. Perhaps in spirit and feel, the fragrance it comes closest to is Bruno Acampora’s magisterial hay chypre, Sballo. Both romantic and deeply moody, Le Mat is a perfume for empaths and writers and madmen who howl at the moon.
Source of sample: The sample is over six years old at this point, so I can’t remember whether I bought it or received it in a swap.
Cover Image: Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
Although Le Couvent house perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena art-directed rather than authored Smyrna, he almost certainly slipped whoever did it an early draft of his own Rose Poivrée (The Different Company). But while Rose Poivrée’s pepper, cumin, and coriander overload created a savory, metallic funk that came uncomfortably close to the scent of second-day men’s underwear, the formula for Smyrna has been stripped back to a simple premise of rose, woods, and a bit of black pepper.
Where Smyrna remains similar to Rose Poivrée (The Different Company) and even Rose 31 (Le Labo) is in that neat sleight of hand where, despite it ostensibly being a rose scent, the rose comes and goes, as unreliable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. Sometimes it smells like a peppery rose, sometimes like gently spiced woods. But never the twain shall meet.
Smyrna, for the most part, reminds me of the steamy, botanical smell of a warm greenhouse where you are dividing geranium plantlets – the vaporous aroma of sun-warmed wood frames, the peppery snap of the roots and stalks, the rosy-minty smell of the geraniums. The black pepper gives the scent a kick but no funk. It smells planty, not underpanty.
Simultaneously, though, it also smells like a body lotion or shampoo, one scented with Turkish rosewater or loukhoum. Unlike in Rose 31 or Rose Poivrée, therefore, every time the spice threatens to flare up to the point of pungency, there is enough of this balm to sooth it all down again. In fact, there is an almost Uncanny Valley lack of sharp corners here. The scent is preternaturally smooth.
I’m in two minds about Smyrna, to be honest. On the one hand, fragrances like Rose Poivrée (the original version at least) are too vegetally-sharp or culinarily stinky for me to enjoy comfortably. Smyrna resolves this by removing the more pungent spicing and adding an almost candied rosewater balminess. It is therefore much brighter and easier to wear. But ultimately, Smyrna remains a copy of something that, while not to my personal taste, was deeply original and artistic. Wearing Smyrna kind of feels like wearing the original soaked in stain remover and put through the hot cycle – it suits me better, but it also feels like a bit of a cop out.
Source of sample: Provided by the brand for copyrighting purposes.
Cover image: Photo by Bence Balla-Schottner on Unsplash
Iris Malikhân is immediately two things. It is a leather bundle charred in the grate, so smoky and bitter it short circuits to the word ‘chemical’ in my mind. But equally, it is a thick iris-vanilla cream that fills the room with a haunting sweetness.
It took me ages to figure out that second is causally linked to the first. Unwrap the scorched, blackened skin of the leather bundle, blowing on your fingers for relief, and you reveal the slightly singed, chalky orris roots that lie within, the violence of the char the catalyst to releasing those cocoa-thickened vanilla spores.
For six months, I have struggled mightily with the burnt part of Iris Malikhân. I believed that it was just like any number of other sweetened iris-suede scents out there – Dior Homme Intense (Dior), Bois d’Iris (Van Cleef & Arpels), Vanille d’Iris (Ormonde Jayne) and so on – just not as good or at least more ‘on trend’ in its use of those intrusive liquid smoke aromachemicals that brands like Maison Martin Margiela, seem to be so fond of.
Funnily enough, it was all those upvotes on Fragrantica for Iris Malikhân smelling like Dior Homme Intense that made me revisit the perfume and try to reframe it for myself. Because that comparison definitely doesn’t tell the full story. I’ve smelled Dior Homme knockoffs before (like D600 by Carner Barcelona) and there is more artistry and kink in this one’s little finger than in all of those. The weird Pastis-like note of artemisia or mastic upfront makes this clear.
The moment I was able to mentally reclassify the harshness of the opening accord as part and parcel of a leather tanning process – which in and of itself involves chemicals – was when the clouds cleared and Iris Malikhân clicked for me. Whereas before I was gritting my teeth through one part to get to the other, I now experience the fragrance as a whole, where the tanning chemical front end is key to unlocking and releasing the full fatness of that licorice crème anglaise, infusing it with a hint of anise, bitter chocolate, and woodsmoke. If I squint, I just about get leather. Heck, I can sometimes make out the shape of the purported orris root. But like Dior Homme Intense, Iris Malikhân is so much more than a sum of its parts.
Source of sample: Provided free of charge by the brand for copywriting purposes.
Cover Image: Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash
I don’t wear fully floral perfumes very often, but when I do, I swing wildly between two extremes – the dependable, if sedate, beauty of established classics like L’Heure Bleue (Guerlain) or Farnesiana (Caron) and the odd but thought-provoking experiments that are indie-made perfumes, like Cornaline (Anatole LeBreton), Quasi Una Absurdia (Chris Rusak), Flos Mortis (Rogue Perfumery), Romanza (Masque Milano), or Mardi Gras (Olympic Orchids). When I wear perfumes from the first group, I miss the element of surprise (and often discomfort) that indie perfumes bring. When I wear perfumes from the latter, I miss the polish and reassuring solidity of construction represented by the classics.
Casablanca by St. Clair Scents blows me away because it bridges the divide. The buttery, vegetal tuberose and other white floral notes never get a chance to weigh the perfume down because they are lifted in the short term by a fizzy, spicy medicinal note that smells like a vaporization of Clovis toothpaste and Epsom bath salts, and over the longer term by a bright citrus accord that smells like someone peeling an orange through a dense thicket of white flowers, spraying its petals with volatile peel oils.
The effect is extraordinarily rich, voluptuous, and delicious, yet fizzy and upbeat in a way that I rarely find white flowers to be. To me, white flowers usually smell solemn and ‘posh’, their natural environment seemingly more that of an achingly hip vase in a luxury hotel than anything that grows in actual soil. But Casablanca takes white florals out of the hotel environment and into the boudoir. It is both artificial and natural. By this, I mean that while Casablanca smells very natural, with several expensive floral absolutes clustered together for effect, there is no way one would mistake its naturalness for an absence of design.
The minty-spicy Listerine effect upfront, for example, is a klaxon sounded to jerk the white flowers out of their creamy stupor, and the sexy civet-laced minerals running through the base have been deliberately placed there to give it a retro feel. And though I suppose there are parallels to similar effects achieved in other non-mainstream perfumes – the toothpasty mothball vibe in both Tubéreuse Criminelle (Serge Lutens) and Flos Mortis (Rogue Perfumery) for one, the dusty floral civet floor of both Mardi Gras (Olympic Orchids) and Lost in Heaven (Francesca Bianchi) for another – there is not much out there that replicates the total effect of Casablanca, which is to say its rich, warm density that holds all elements (rich white flowers, civet, Listerine, blood orange soda) in balance for so long and with such grace. It has this slightly smudgy, smeary texture that I love, like flowers seen through glasses steamed up and knocked askew by an illicit embrace.
I am late to the Casablanca party, but better late than never, right? My only regret is that St. Clair’s Scents perfumes do not seem to have a distributor outside of the United States, and so, a large part of the perfume-consuming market will probably miss out on getting to know it. And that’s a shame, because I think anyone who loves full-blooded, smutty but still slightly edgy white floral bombs would love Casablanca.
Source of Sample: My sample was sent to me by Diane St. Clair free of charge. I understand my privilege as a EU-based perfume journalist, believe me, and am very grateful for the chance to smell perfumes that would normally be out of reach to consumers living where I do.
Cover Image: Photo by Joeyy Lee on Unsplash
Two fragrances do not an evolution make, I’m aware. But I can’t help feeling that Spell 125 and now Hera mark a departure for perfumer Liz Moores, away from perfumes that either reference classical styles (Dryad – a green chypre in the fashion of Vol de Nuit, Bengale Rouge – a spicier, more balsamic take on Shalimar or Emeraude) or espouse a particular trope like leathery incense (Anubis) or rose (Tobacco Rose). Rather, Her and Spell 125 seem to be a bold move towards abstraction, wherein the perfumes are much more than a good smell – they are an expression of an idea.
Take the complete lack of literalism in Hera, for example. You look at the notes and the description, and you think, ah, ok, a wedding bouquet perfume. Lush, creamy white and yellow florals spilling over a whale-boned corset of puffy marshmallow musk. Romantic, serene and beautiful in that conventionally feminine manner expected of brides. But you don’t actually get any of that from Hera.
The first surprise is an atomic cloud of spicy violet-iris powder, a diffusive ballooning of molecules powered by what feels to me like aldehydes but is actually ambrette, a natural musk derived from the musk mallow plant. The apple peel and grappa facets of the ambrette sharpen the violet sensation of the opening and feathers the whole thing into an ethereal mist. But in no way does this smell pretty or candied or like face powder. No dainty bridal pastilles here, no Siree.
There is also – immediately – the tarry benzene edge of Extra or First Ylang, announcing the first of the floral absolutes that don’t really smell like their usual floral representations in perfumery. Ylang is always painted as banana-ish or custard-like, but in truth, the natural stuff (essential oil) often has this surprisingly creosote-like smokiness that most often gets smothered by perfumers with sandalwood or vanilla, in the hope of squishing it into a more banana custard shape. Here, the ylang is uncut and unsweet. And it definitely doesn’t smell like banana custard.
The surprisingly true ylang in Hera is soon joined by a spicy Sambac jasmine – again, not the creamy, sweet white jasmine of conventional perfumery, but more the authentically leathery-sour twang of Sambac absolute. The florals do not smell lush, sweet or traditionally feminine. In fact, Hera does not even smell particularly floral.
The central surprise of Hera – its abstraction – is the way in which this tug of war between potent floral absolutes takes place inside this smoky cloud of iris-mimosa-violet powder, stacked one on top of another like a matryoshka doll. It is an incredible feat of construction that turns florals as heavy as jasmine, orange blossom, and ylang into a fizzy, violet-colored ether.
With time, another layer of the matryoshka reveals itself as a murky accord that smells like tobacco but is probably ambergris. This lends the perfume an aura of salty, powdered skin, like the glow on healthy young skin after mild exertion. Momentarily, the interaction between the purplish dry-ice florals and damp, tobacco-ish ambergris produces an impression of Caron’s Aimez-Moi (which itself smells like a pouch of moist, tobacco leaves dotted with anise and dried violets). But this impression is fleeting.
Hera feels spicy but remains utterly air-filled and diffuse, as if someone has tried and failed to plug cinnamon sticks and clove buds into an ever shifting dust cloud of wood molecules. There is also something like myrrh, with its dusty, minty-latexy bitterness. But Hera never gets bogged down in the thick, sweet thickness of resins, thus neatly sidestepping any effort to pigeonhole it as an incense. Yet, the spices and the myrrh do give Hera a hint of what I imagine medieval candy might have smelled like, a sort of salty-herbal-fizzing concoction that, when ingested, banishes all evil.
The perfume seems to deepen, but the overall sense of its construction – a complex whirligig of chewy florals and tobacco inside a bright, acidic haze of floral high C notes – remains consistent. I picture Hera almost synesthesically, a violet-greige cloud of molecules that spark off each other like electricity.
It is an abstract experience, similar to the hard-to-define Spell 125 or even Seyrig (Bruno Fazzolari), but that’s not to say that Hera doesn’t also meet the original brief, which was to honor Liz Moores’ daughter, Jasmine, on her wedding day. Indeed, Hera feels fizzy and bright and sensuous. It smells optimistic.
What Hera absolutely is not is a re-tread all the tired tropes of traditional bridal perfumery, so if you’re expecting something conventionally feminine or sweet, then park your expectations at the door. Hera feels made for a lifetime of marriage – interesting, complex, wistful, packed with all the bittersweet moments of a relationships that morphs over time – rather than for one single shiny, glittery, picture-perfect day. And in my opinion, it is all the better for it.
Source of sample: Sent free of charge to me by Liz Moores, with no expectation of a review, let alone a positive one.
Cover image: Photo by Łukasz Łada on Unsplash