"Dream Team" By Luca Turin
Twelve years have passed since Shiseido opened its Paris Salons in the Jardins du Palais Royal. Right from Day One it was clear that Shiseido’s design supremo Serge Lutens was fully in control, and therefore that no shortcuts would be allowed. Bottles, packaging, decoration, dress of the sales assistants, light level, every exquisite detail added to the dark, intoxicating spell of the place. Few in 1992 believed that Lutens could keep up the promised pace of at least two new perfumes a year for long. Twenty-eight perfumes later, we are blessed with the most coherent modernist oeuvre since Ernest Daltroff’s glorious years at Caron (1904-41). Daltroff was a perfumer, Lutens is not, someone had to translate his vision into fragrances. The Aaron to Lutens’ Moses is Chris Sheldrake of Quest International, probably the most skilled natural-products perfumer around.
What have they created ? Simply put, a new style of perfumery. Considered as music, perfumes sing melody (Diorissimo’s coloratura soprano), harmony (Beyond Paradise’s angelic choir) or some counterpoint in between (most others). By contrast, each of the Lutens-Sheldrake perfumes explores a different timbre. Opening the bottles is like blowing into a weird instrument made of an uncommon material: out comes a loud, steady, startling note. Devotees of the Saint-Saëns school of perfumery have called them unfinished and disparaged them as "bases", i.e. building blocks. That is missing the point. Bases are meant to be mixed, whereas what Lutens wanted, and got, was each idea (or raw material) fleshed out precisely to the point where it ceases to need company but retains its soul entire.
It doesn’t always work, and for example I find the florals, Un Lys, Sa Majesté la Rose and Fleurs d’Oranger a little trite in a white-lace sort of way. But was there ever a more brazenly animalic confection than Muscs Koublaï Khan, a sunnier homage to the nostalgic plushness of hay than Chergui, or a more accurate rendition of the rubbery heart of tuberose than Tubéreuse Criminelle ? The latest two (2004) are outlier points, unusually abstract and apparently prompted by a desire on Lutens’ part to step back from the (delightful) orientalism of most of his creations. Chêne is an astringent, almost bitter tincture of oaks and the mosses that festoon them in primeval European forests. Daim Blond (blonde suede) is a rethink of that most refined of all perfume styles, the leather chypre, stripped of... everything that Chêne contains. It is almost as if these two magicians had taken an axe to Bandit and found that the halves scuttled away, each with a life of its own. The fairy tale continues.
April 1, 2005
March 1, 2005
"Grassroots" By Luca Turin
"Grassroots" By Luca Turin
Vetiver has a status apart in perfumery. It is one of the few materials for which there is no good synthetic substitute. It comes from a weed beloved of civil engineers that grows like hell, has a huge root system (where the smell resides) and so holds earthworks together. It has such a strong personality that vetiver fragrances are basically arrangements rather than compositions, which is why almost all are named Vetiver with different spellings. The big question is, as with cocoa, just how much arrangement is enough. Some say none: vetiver has its “black chocolate” fanatics, forever searching for something in a bottle which smells like the dried roots. Nothing does. When I was a kid, my mother used to send me down the street to buy bundles of vetiver roots from a proto-hippy store to put in linen drawers. No extraction method known to man gives that light, fresh, liquorice-and-earth, warm but austere, in a word intelligent smell. The perfumer has two options: retreat and declare victory, i.e. add a touch of lavender and call the result Vetiver (black chocolate); Or earn his keep and compose full-score for bass clarinet and orchestra (Milka with nuts and raisins).
Experts agree that the best classical vetiver of all time was Givenchy’s, which never sold well but was kept in production because Hubert de Givenchy wore it. When he passed away, so did the fragrance. Next best was a tie between the strikingly fresh and carefree Carven and the excellent, darker and richer Guerlain. Then came the Lanvin, a bit more cologne-like, and all sorts of no-holds-barred vetivers from niche firms, among which Annick Goutal (spicy and salty), Maitre Gantier (patchouli-like), and others. More recently some serious work has been done at both ends of the spectrum. Dominique Ropion has composed a Vetiver Extraordinaire for Frédéric Malle which sets a new standard for accuracy. In a very different vein, Serge Lutens’ Vetiver Oriental focuses on one of the hidden facets of vetiver, a ginger-like, buttery sweetness. At the other extreme, I received in the mail a few weeks ago an excellent durchkomponiert vetiver called One by Hannes B. which Google tells me is a Zurich men’s outfitter. Lastly, Guerlain has just released what they call Vetiver pour Elle which is basically the pour lui with a touch of added jasmine. It smells wonderful. In its infinite wisdom, Guerlain wants to sell it only in duty-free shops and for a limited time, so take a cheap flight to somewhere interesting and get it.
Vetiver has a status apart in perfumery. It is one of the few materials for which there is no good synthetic substitute. It comes from a weed beloved of civil engineers that grows like hell, has a huge root system (where the smell resides) and so holds earthworks together. It has such a strong personality that vetiver fragrances are basically arrangements rather than compositions, which is why almost all are named Vetiver with different spellings. The big question is, as with cocoa, just how much arrangement is enough. Some say none: vetiver has its “black chocolate” fanatics, forever searching for something in a bottle which smells like the dried roots. Nothing does. When I was a kid, my mother used to send me down the street to buy bundles of vetiver roots from a proto-hippy store to put in linen drawers. No extraction method known to man gives that light, fresh, liquorice-and-earth, warm but austere, in a word intelligent smell. The perfumer has two options: retreat and declare victory, i.e. add a touch of lavender and call the result Vetiver (black chocolate); Or earn his keep and compose full-score for bass clarinet and orchestra (Milka with nuts and raisins).
Experts agree that the best classical vetiver of all time was Givenchy’s, which never sold well but was kept in production because Hubert de Givenchy wore it. When he passed away, so did the fragrance. Next best was a tie between the strikingly fresh and carefree Carven and the excellent, darker and richer Guerlain. Then came the Lanvin, a bit more cologne-like, and all sorts of no-holds-barred vetivers from niche firms, among which Annick Goutal (spicy and salty), Maitre Gantier (patchouli-like), and others. More recently some serious work has been done at both ends of the spectrum. Dominique Ropion has composed a Vetiver Extraordinaire for Frédéric Malle which sets a new standard for accuracy. In a very different vein, Serge Lutens’ Vetiver Oriental focuses on one of the hidden facets of vetiver, a ginger-like, buttery sweetness. At the other extreme, I received in the mail a few weeks ago an excellent durchkomponiert vetiver called One by Hannes B. which Google tells me is a Zurich men’s outfitter. Lastly, Guerlain has just released what they call Vetiver pour Elle which is basically the pour lui with a touch of added jasmine. It smells wonderful. In its infinite wisdom, Guerlain wants to sell it only in duty-free shops and for a limited time, so take a cheap flight to somewhere interesting and get it.
February 1, 2005
"Two Guys" By Luca Turin
"Two Guys" By Luca Turin
Estée Lauder and Guerlain have something in common: they are not fashion houses, and ultimately live or die by the fortunes of their fragrances alone. Both have recently come out with new perfumes “for men”, respectively called Beyond Paradise Men and L’Instant Pour Homme. There is something comical about this recycling of names from feminine to masculine: the Lauder hints that one of the pleasures of the afterlife may turn out to be a segregation of the sexes, while the Guerlain name has the stern ring of a “Be Brief” sign facing the visitor on the CEO’s desk. Both are wonderful perfumes.
Let me start with the Guerlain, since I have been critical of their recent work. It is hard to find fault with this one. For a start, the black packaging is exquisite. For the first time in years a Guerlain has a look (slightly Chanel-inspired, to be sure, but who cares ?) at once distinctive, classy and coherent. Now for the smell: on skin, it is like watching a perfect Olympic dive from the 10-meter board. It goes from fresh-citrusy in the manner of Shalimar Lite to a suave-sandalwood reminiscent of Samsara Lite via two half-twists, one of anise and one of vetiver. Elbows tucked in all the way, perfect entry, no splash. One immediately wants a replay in slow motion: spray it on fabric and marvel at how it’s done. Two other things are noteworthy about l’Instant Homme. First, and that is a sign of a really good fragrance, it smells good even in the thumbnail-sized versions of deodorant, shower gel etc. It’s like Barber’s Adagio in Quartet form: they’ve got the tune right. Second, whereas the medley of Guerlain quotations in L’instant Femme hinted at someone with a past but no future, here in a masculine context they suggest a guy who has learnt some of his art de vivre from women and isn’t ashamed to admit it.
The Lauder, very differently, also follows Ernst Haeckel’s law according to which development recapitulates evolution. Part of the trick is to be discerning about which life forms you include on the way. This one morphs from Cool Water to Hugo Boss Adam via Grey Flannel with the seamless grace that is Calice Becker’s hallmark. Unlike the Guerlain, which has a familiar cool-to-warm arc, Beyond Paradise Men never leaves the primeval ocean to bask on the beach: it manages to remain grey-green, indistinct and misty from topnote to drydown. Both fragrances show the reverence for history that informs classicism. Both, I wager, will be classics.
Estée Lauder and Guerlain have something in common: they are not fashion houses, and ultimately live or die by the fortunes of their fragrances alone. Both have recently come out with new perfumes “for men”, respectively called Beyond Paradise Men and L’Instant Pour Homme. There is something comical about this recycling of names from feminine to masculine: the Lauder hints that one of the pleasures of the afterlife may turn out to be a segregation of the sexes, while the Guerlain name has the stern ring of a “Be Brief” sign facing the visitor on the CEO’s desk. Both are wonderful perfumes.
Let me start with the Guerlain, since I have been critical of their recent work. It is hard to find fault with this one. For a start, the black packaging is exquisite. For the first time in years a Guerlain has a look (slightly Chanel-inspired, to be sure, but who cares ?) at once distinctive, classy and coherent. Now for the smell: on skin, it is like watching a perfect Olympic dive from the 10-meter board. It goes from fresh-citrusy in the manner of Shalimar Lite to a suave-sandalwood reminiscent of Samsara Lite via two half-twists, one of anise and one of vetiver. Elbows tucked in all the way, perfect entry, no splash. One immediately wants a replay in slow motion: spray it on fabric and marvel at how it’s done. Two other things are noteworthy about l’Instant Homme. First, and that is a sign of a really good fragrance, it smells good even in the thumbnail-sized versions of deodorant, shower gel etc. It’s like Barber’s Adagio in Quartet form: they’ve got the tune right. Second, whereas the medley of Guerlain quotations in L’instant Femme hinted at someone with a past but no future, here in a masculine context they suggest a guy who has learnt some of his art de vivre from women and isn’t ashamed to admit it.
The Lauder, very differently, also follows Ernst Haeckel’s law according to which development recapitulates evolution. Part of the trick is to be discerning about which life forms you include on the way. This one morphs from Cool Water to Hugo Boss Adam via Grey Flannel with the seamless grace that is Calice Becker’s hallmark. Unlike the Guerlain, which has a familiar cool-to-warm arc, Beyond Paradise Men never leaves the primeval ocean to bask on the beach: it manages to remain grey-green, indistinct and misty from topnote to drydown. Both fragrances show the reverence for history that informs classicism. Both, I wager, will be classics.
January 1, 2005
"The secrets of candle fragrances" By Luca Turin
"The secrets of candle fragrances" By Luca Turin
My hero Michael Faraday [1791-1867] led a strangely blameless life. That may explain why, despite his eminence as a scientist, there are no best-sellers or movies about him. Poor and unschooled, he became the greatest experimenter ever, and once noted in his diary something everyone needs to know: “Nothing is too wonderful to be true”. One of the oddities of this gentle genius was his love for candles. About them he wrote his only book, compiled from yearly lectures he gave to children. He told the kids candles were “the most open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy”. I often wonder what he would have made of scented ones, for through them what he helped create (we call it chemistry and physics) is now softly revealed to us by smell as well as light.
What makes a scented candle work is that the fragrance enjoys only the briefest moment of freedom between its solid prison of wax and its gaseous annihilation in the flame. Only the small pool of molten wax is fluid enough for fragrance molecules to swim to the surface, where heat helps them take flight. Aside from a gradual crescendo when the candle is lit, which cleverly keeps us unaware of what is taking place, the release of perfume is, like the flame, gracile but steady. The fragrant pool is constantly renewed, so the fragrance is unchanging, without topnotes or drydown. Candle fragrances are not melodies, but sostenuto organ chords.
Candles are, of course, terribly passé: “Air care” (the very term stinks) is now a huge and trashy market. Tasteful (i.e. hideous) plastic devices, some electrically powered, daily release tons of garish smells into the troposphere. Most smell “good” only in comparison with whatever pestilence they are meant to hide. There is also the innumerable progeny of the late and unlamented hippy joss-sticks, and they smell like gift shops in US malls: nauseating. A few perfumers, however, take candles as seriously as Michael Faraday did. One is Ormonde Jayne, situated 100 metres from the magnificent Royal Institution where he lived and worked, close enough for his ghost which (his successor assures me) still walks the corridors to pay a visit. Try her unforgettably sultry Ormonde (get the perfume too while you’re at it) and the laughing Sampaquita. The other is Patricia de Nicolai: her Maharadjah festoons the house with invisible glitter, while her Vetiver de Java was once accurately described to me by a friend as “good enough to start a minor religion”. Both firms have Web sites.
My hero Michael Faraday [1791-1867] led a strangely blameless life. That may explain why, despite his eminence as a scientist, there are no best-sellers or movies about him. Poor and unschooled, he became the greatest experimenter ever, and once noted in his diary something everyone needs to know: “Nothing is too wonderful to be true”. One of the oddities of this gentle genius was his love for candles. About them he wrote his only book, compiled from yearly lectures he gave to children. He told the kids candles were “the most open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy”. I often wonder what he would have made of scented ones, for through them what he helped create (we call it chemistry and physics) is now softly revealed to us by smell as well as light.
What makes a scented candle work is that the fragrance enjoys only the briefest moment of freedom between its solid prison of wax and its gaseous annihilation in the flame. Only the small pool of molten wax is fluid enough for fragrance molecules to swim to the surface, where heat helps them take flight. Aside from a gradual crescendo when the candle is lit, which cleverly keeps us unaware of what is taking place, the release of perfume is, like the flame, gracile but steady. The fragrant pool is constantly renewed, so the fragrance is unchanging, without topnotes or drydown. Candle fragrances are not melodies, but sostenuto organ chords.
Candles are, of course, terribly passé: “Air care” (the very term stinks) is now a huge and trashy market. Tasteful (i.e. hideous) plastic devices, some electrically powered, daily release tons of garish smells into the troposphere. Most smell “good” only in comparison with whatever pestilence they are meant to hide. There is also the innumerable progeny of the late and unlamented hippy joss-sticks, and they smell like gift shops in US malls: nauseating. A few perfumers, however, take candles as seriously as Michael Faraday did. One is Ormonde Jayne, situated 100 metres from the magnificent Royal Institution where he lived and worked, close enough for his ghost which (his successor assures me) still walks the corridors to pay a visit. Try her unforgettably sultry Ormonde (get the perfume too while you’re at it) and the laughing Sampaquita. The other is Patricia de Nicolai: her Maharadjah festoons the house with invisible glitter, while her Vetiver de Java was once accurately described to me by a friend as “good enough to start a minor religion”. Both firms have Web sites.
December 1, 2004
"Amor vacui" By Luca Turin
"Amor vacui" By Luca Turin
Fashion, Coco Chanel once said, is what goes out of fashion. This raises a question: could it be that the puzzle of fashion’s abrupt scenery changes has more to do with repulsion than with attraction, and that new loves rise in our minds like the mercury in a barometer tube, by way of sudden inner vacuum and steady outer pressure? Evacuation itself is a mysterious thing: who could have predicted what recently happened to smoking and planned economies, both long known to be health hazards? Those poor (but well-paid) people whose job it is to spot trends rather than create them must wish for face time with the angels who, no doubt, make the real decisions. Let me join the seers just this once with a prediction: spicy fragrances will soon come back and take over the world. Their eclipse dates back to the Opium wars. Opium (Saint Laurent, 1977) has become a case study in coherent design: name, smell, look, color (a shade of red borrowed from cinnabar, a mineral found in China). It came out at the same time as a w0nderful Estée Lauder fragrance called… Cinnabar (angels again), which was a textbook flop. Smelling them today, it is easy to understand why. Cinnabar was beautiful but it was not strange. Spice is to perfumery what a tan is to beauty: it improves faces, but it also blurs them. Mixed together, spices are the Baywatch of fragrance, suggesting wholesome profusion at the irreparable expense of individuality. If everything is beautiful, nothing is. The trick then is to do one of the hardest things in Art: deliberate damage. What made, and later undid, Opium was a minty bubblegum note as unexpected as a plastic duck in a bag of brown sugar. Later spicy fragrances also relied on dissonant harmonies to make their tune interesting: Coco (1984) with balsamic notes borrowed from Cabochard, Teatro alla Scala (Krizia 1986) by morphing smoothly from cloves to carnations in the manner of Caron’s Poivre. Dolce Vita (1995) with its floral bouquet borrowed from Féminité du Bois. But all these still suffered to some extent from the tiresome affability of spices. The reason for my new-found optimism lies in the work of Christine Nagel. Her Teorema (Fendi 1998) was already a remarkable thing: a sober hippy fragrance. But her somber masterpiece, Mauboussin’s Histoire d’Eau Topaze (2002), does for spices what Kind of Blue did for jazz: no more smiles, no more warmth, just a menacing, dusky miracle: the tropics in winter.
Fashion, Coco Chanel once said, is what goes out of fashion. This raises a question: could it be that the puzzle of fashion’s abrupt scenery changes has more to do with repulsion than with attraction, and that new loves rise in our minds like the mercury in a barometer tube, by way of sudden inner vacuum and steady outer pressure? Evacuation itself is a mysterious thing: who could have predicted what recently happened to smoking and planned economies, both long known to be health hazards? Those poor (but well-paid) people whose job it is to spot trends rather than create them must wish for face time with the angels who, no doubt, make the real decisions. Let me join the seers just this once with a prediction: spicy fragrances will soon come back and take over the world. Their eclipse dates back to the Opium wars. Opium (Saint Laurent, 1977) has become a case study in coherent design: name, smell, look, color (a shade of red borrowed from cinnabar, a mineral found in China). It came out at the same time as a w0nderful Estée Lauder fragrance called… Cinnabar (angels again), which was a textbook flop. Smelling them today, it is easy to understand why. Cinnabar was beautiful but it was not strange. Spice is to perfumery what a tan is to beauty: it improves faces, but it also blurs them. Mixed together, spices are the Baywatch of fragrance, suggesting wholesome profusion at the irreparable expense of individuality. If everything is beautiful, nothing is. The trick then is to do one of the hardest things in Art: deliberate damage. What made, and later undid, Opium was a minty bubblegum note as unexpected as a plastic duck in a bag of brown sugar. Later spicy fragrances also relied on dissonant harmonies to make their tune interesting: Coco (1984) with balsamic notes borrowed from Cabochard, Teatro alla Scala (Krizia 1986) by morphing smoothly from cloves to carnations in the manner of Caron’s Poivre. Dolce Vita (1995) with its floral bouquet borrowed from Féminité du Bois. But all these still suffered to some extent from the tiresome affability of spices. The reason for my new-found optimism lies in the work of Christine Nagel. Her Teorema (Fendi 1998) was already a remarkable thing: a sober hippy fragrance. But her somber masterpiece, Mauboussin’s Histoire d’Eau Topaze (2002), does for spices what Kind of Blue did for jazz: no more smiles, no more warmth, just a menacing, dusky miracle: the tropics in winter.
November 1, 2004
"The end of civilisation as we know it" By Luca Turin
"The end of civilisation as we know it" By Luca Turin
A terrible rumour had been circulating among perfumers for the last six months or so. Apparently, Guerlain had decided to modify all its classic fragrances (14 of them) from to bring them into conformity with IFRA guidelines. IFRA is an industry body that keeps track of any health problems arising from fragrance use, i.e. allergies, etc. Its decisions are not law, merely recommendations. When IFRA says some raw material has been found to cause allergies in a small number of people, you can either remove it or put a small label that says what it does. The accepted practice in the industry is that only new fragrances need to be totally IFRA compliant. The old ones can stay as they are, much in the way that you can still drive your 1949 Armstrong Siddeley on public roads though it has no airbags. Given that a) Guerlain’s greats have been around a long time, and b) you seldom hear, at a funeral, a friend of the deceased saying "what do you expect, she wore L’Heure Bleue", no one is asking Guerlain to do this. Well ahead of any actual regulation that would force them to do so, they are now pressing ahead with this act of vandalism rather than simply putting the little label on the bottle
Three raw materials in particular are going to be removed altogether: coumarin, oak moss and birch tar. That alone means the end of Mitsouko and Shalimar, which will henceforth smell of Eau du Soir and Vanilla Fields respectively. Finding replacements for these materials is non-trivial. There is no good coumarin substitute. Putting together a decent synthetic oakmoss has been the perfumery equivalent of proving the Riemann Conjecture in mathematics. The greatest minds have tried. One master perfumer, Arcadi Boix Camps, claims to have succeeded. You would think that Guerlain would enlist talent of that caliber to tackle this awesome task. Not a bit: they have just published an ad on the web looking for a "technical perfumer" between 25 and 28 years of age to do the job. Touchingly, they want the candidate to be good at computers and fluent in English, as if that was going to help. This is like asking the guy who tiled your bathroom to restore the Ravenna mosaics. Guerlain cannot even claim to be consistent: while plotting to destroy the fragrances everyone can buy, they are bringing back a dozen great classics (original formulae, allergies and all) to be sold only on the first floor of their store at no. 68, Champs Elysées. If you feel about this the way I do, e-mail Guerlain’s customer relations officer, isabelle Rousseau, irousseau@guerlain.fr
A terrible rumour had been circulating among perfumers for the last six months or so. Apparently, Guerlain had decided to modify all its classic fragrances (14 of them) from to bring them into conformity with IFRA guidelines. IFRA is an industry body that keeps track of any health problems arising from fragrance use, i.e. allergies, etc. Its decisions are not law, merely recommendations. When IFRA says some raw material has been found to cause allergies in a small number of people, you can either remove it or put a small label that says what it does. The accepted practice in the industry is that only new fragrances need to be totally IFRA compliant. The old ones can stay as they are, much in the way that you can still drive your 1949 Armstrong Siddeley on public roads though it has no airbags. Given that a) Guerlain’s greats have been around a long time, and b) you seldom hear, at a funeral, a friend of the deceased saying "what do you expect, she wore L’Heure Bleue", no one is asking Guerlain to do this. Well ahead of any actual regulation that would force them to do so, they are now pressing ahead with this act of vandalism rather than simply putting the little label on the bottle
Three raw materials in particular are going to be removed altogether: coumarin, oak moss and birch tar. That alone means the end of Mitsouko and Shalimar, which will henceforth smell of Eau du Soir and Vanilla Fields respectively. Finding replacements for these materials is non-trivial. There is no good coumarin substitute. Putting together a decent synthetic oakmoss has been the perfumery equivalent of proving the Riemann Conjecture in mathematics. The greatest minds have tried. One master perfumer, Arcadi Boix Camps, claims to have succeeded. You would think that Guerlain would enlist talent of that caliber to tackle this awesome task. Not a bit: they have just published an ad on the web looking for a "technical perfumer" between 25 and 28 years of age to do the job. Touchingly, they want the candidate to be good at computers and fluent in English, as if that was going to help. This is like asking the guy who tiled your bathroom to restore the Ravenna mosaics. Guerlain cannot even claim to be consistent: while plotting to destroy the fragrances everyone can buy, they are bringing back a dozen great classics (original formulae, allergies and all) to be sold only on the first floor of their store at no. 68, Champs Elysées. If you feel about this the way I do, e-mail Guerlain’s customer relations officer, isabelle Rousseau, irousseau@guerlain.fr
October 1, 2004
"Guardian Angels" By Luca Turin
"Guardian Angels" By Luca Turin
The week, like the city, the wheel and writing, is apparently a Sumerian invention. Seven days, each named after a planet-god, is just the right length: long enough to get used to work, but short enough to make it across in one piece. The fit between planets and days is uneven (Mondays aren’t very moon-like, for example, though Friday definitely belongs to Venus). Sunday, however, really is dies solis, especially when enjoyed in vacant city streets basking in morning light. For those who like waiting for nothing in particular, Sundays are an inspiration. Hopper painted their emptiness, Aaron Copland wrote down their silent music in his masterpiece, "Quiet City". But if Sunday were a perfume, which one would it be ? Which one breathes the calm that slowly fills you to your fingertips during walks with only a guardian angel for company ?
My long-time favorite was Guerlain’s Jicky, that flag-like confection (I have the Ukrainian one in mind, big earth under big sky) of lavender and vanilla. Jicky is the oldest proper perfume in existence (1889, Eau de Cologne doesn’t count) and has undergone some restoration in recent years. For once, no damage was done. It is now as good as it gets, cool on top, warm below and mercifully quiet. Gone is the layer of French sexiness that used to cloud its simple beauty. Until recently, I could see no serious contenders. Now, unexpectedly in this world geared to Monday mornings and Saturday nights, comes another great Sunday fragrance: Osmanthus, by the Different Company. Its composer is one of the founders of the outfit: Jean-Claude Ellena, who has recently become the Hermès in-house perfumer. This is Hermès’ gain and, so far, our loss, because the first fragrance in his new job (Un Jardin en Méditerrannée) has turned out nicely crafted but not particularly interesting.
Osmanthus is a different matter. The plant itself, O. fragrans has, like hyacinth and tuberose, one of those smells that God must have composed while studying organic chemistry. Soapy, powdery, definitely inedible, it is Wedgwood blue for the nose. Ellena has set it in a structure reminiscent of the soft glow of ancient perfumes like Worth’s Je Reviens. The sum total shimmers like an opal: Osmanthus feels different every time you wear it, but always intimate and reassuring. The Different Company has had the brilliant idea of offering its fragrances in small, sealed 10 ml sprays they call "48 hour refills". Their discovery pack of three promises a sensational week, though anyone who gets through that much perfume so quickly probably needs expert help.
The week, like the city, the wheel and writing, is apparently a Sumerian invention. Seven days, each named after a planet-god, is just the right length: long enough to get used to work, but short enough to make it across in one piece. The fit between planets and days is uneven (Mondays aren’t very moon-like, for example, though Friday definitely belongs to Venus). Sunday, however, really is dies solis, especially when enjoyed in vacant city streets basking in morning light. For those who like waiting for nothing in particular, Sundays are an inspiration. Hopper painted their emptiness, Aaron Copland wrote down their silent music in his masterpiece, "Quiet City". But if Sunday were a perfume, which one would it be ? Which one breathes the calm that slowly fills you to your fingertips during walks with only a guardian angel for company ?
My long-time favorite was Guerlain’s Jicky, that flag-like confection (I have the Ukrainian one in mind, big earth under big sky) of lavender and vanilla. Jicky is the oldest proper perfume in existence (1889, Eau de Cologne doesn’t count) and has undergone some restoration in recent years. For once, no damage was done. It is now as good as it gets, cool on top, warm below and mercifully quiet. Gone is the layer of French sexiness that used to cloud its simple beauty. Until recently, I could see no serious contenders. Now, unexpectedly in this world geared to Monday mornings and Saturday nights, comes another great Sunday fragrance: Osmanthus, by the Different Company. Its composer is one of the founders of the outfit: Jean-Claude Ellena, who has recently become the Hermès in-house perfumer. This is Hermès’ gain and, so far, our loss, because the first fragrance in his new job (Un Jardin en Méditerrannée) has turned out nicely crafted but not particularly interesting.
Osmanthus is a different matter. The plant itself, O. fragrans has, like hyacinth and tuberose, one of those smells that God must have composed while studying organic chemistry. Soapy, powdery, definitely inedible, it is Wedgwood blue for the nose. Ellena has set it in a structure reminiscent of the soft glow of ancient perfumes like Worth’s Je Reviens. The sum total shimmers like an opal: Osmanthus feels different every time you wear it, but always intimate and reassuring. The Different Company has had the brilliant idea of offering its fragrances in small, sealed 10 ml sprays they call "48 hour refills". Their discovery pack of three promises a sensational week, though anyone who gets through that much perfume so quickly probably needs expert help.
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