Tom Ford Champaca Absolute: Perfume Review

A fail-proof way to create a perfume I am guaranteed to like is to make it smell Like a Chanel. Or what is my idea of a Chanel (forgive me for quoting myself, in a review of Beige): "...abstract, complex, and, regardless of whether it is full of natural ingredients or totally synthetic, (...) man-made, for a lack of a better term." ...In other words, to make it smell as a Proper Perfume (again in my interpretation): "...to smell of no particular ingredient but rather to appear as an amalgamation of several, almost indistinguishable notes ... to interpret its inspiration in a non-literal, non-obvious manner ... to smell man-made, not found-in-nature." Clearly, the Tom Ford Beauty team has decided to follow my requirements (as every perfume-creating team should by the way!) and to create a Proper Perfume. They also were clearly aware than I have always been a big fan of Cold Perfumey Florals (a category made up by moi and thus very subjective) in vein of Chanel's Beige, Gardenia and Hermes's 24, Faubourg. In his new Champaca Absolute, Tom Ford created a bespoke Cold Perfumey Floral fragrance for yours truly...it's just that he doesn't know it. So much does Champaca Absolute remind me of Beige - in concept not in notes!- that I could almost take my old review, change freesia and frangipani for champaca and jasmine and be done with it. When I say, in concept, I mean that, like Beige, Champaca Absolute strikes me as being "a cold, somewhat arrogant beauty, a "better than thou" scent." For most parts, it is a stylized floral bouquet, a chic and meticulous arrangement made of flowers that have been grown and pampered in an exclusive orangery with man-controlled environmental conditions...and not of those you gather in the wild, carelessly bring home and put in a rustic vase in a haphazard manner. Having said that, there IS a very green and very natural part right after the heady, tiny bit boozy (cognac, Tokaii (yes, it is that specific) wine and the naturally drunken davana) floral top notes subside, where it might seem that -oh the horror!- the bouquet could indeed have come from some kind of unruly forest...for some time, Champaca Absolute just smells so...real and untamed. I suspect that what gives the silken blend of champaca, jasmine and orchids that ragged, dry, windswept edge is the broom note (in Beige, it was hawthorn). And then the wild note disappears, sleek bob smoothed, slinky dress straightened, face back to its expression of polite superiority. Nature? One has never been to nature, nature is too dirty and uncontrollable. And one has never heard of Oliver Mellors either. What's remarkable is how remarkably filthy the drydown smells on my skin, not animalic-filthy like musk or civet but more like mineral-rooty-filthy...whatever it is in the inoffensive-sounding base of vanilla, amber, marron glace (!) and sandalwood that makes it smell up to good I do not know. But I suppose that what it shows is that you can take champaca out of the wild but you can't take the wild out of champaca. Available at Nieman Marcus, $180.00-$450.00 for 50ml-250ml of -very, very long-lasting- Eau de Parfum.

Perfume Review: Comme des Garcons LUXE Champaca and Patchouli

Question: after every single brand has jumped on the trend-wagon and created a luxury line within a line, would that saturate the fragrance market with high-priced scents to an extent that exclusivity will loose its elegant sheen and "luxe" won't seem all that luxurious anymore? ...And do you, like me, feel that the moment of such saturation has actually already arrived? And now for Comme des Garcons not just luxe but LUXE duo of $265-for-45ml-of-not-even-parfum creations. Champaca starts wonderfully well, as what I think of as champaca per se, robustly floral, with a prominent green, herbaceous undertone. It then goes through an uninteresting stage when it smells like your basic, fresh jasmine. Fairly soon, however, the scent develops a strong tuberose note, which, thanks to the presence of angelica and pepper, is green and dewy rather then sweet and creamy. After hours and hours of unchanging easy, breezy, beautiful tuberosiness, it simply wears off my skin seemingly without featuring any typical base notes: no woods, no noticeable musk, just fresh, slightly green flowers. Champaca is not something I came to expect from Comme des Gacons. It is not strikingly orginal, it is "simply" beautiful. A good-quality, handsome floral blend. Worth $265 for 45 ml? Not for me. Patchouli. Now we are talking. Now we are talking the birth of a lemming. Now we are talking a new cold weather favorite. It might be called, Patchouli, but the scent is much more than that, it is a complex, ever-changing blend of all things wonderful. First blast is that of peppery incense, dark and warm. A dry, resinous woody note that I take to be oak materializes from the brooding depths of incense. The austere, arid wood slowly becomes a little sweeter, a little softer - this is when I smell fenugreek, which, as we all know, has the same green, meaty, curry-like sweetness as immmortelle. Opoponax covers that woody greenness with a layer of golden powder and vanilla and sandalwood ...oh, vanilla and sandalwood are delicious together, creating a strangely gourmand, warmly-piquant base on which the intricate composition finally rests. And patchouli? Patchouli is everywhere and nowhere at once. It is playing games, hiding in the fleshy verdancy of fenugreek, suddenly appearing from under the black cloak of incense, adding something almost chocolate-like to the woody-sweet notes of the drydown. In other words, the presence of the star note is always noticeable, but never too obvious, never trivial. Is LUXE Patchouli worth $265 for 45ml? I would be lying if I said that I am not longing to buy it...but, no, it probably isn't worthy that much money for that size, in that concentration. Frankly, nothing is. Comme des Garcons LUXE Champaca and Patchouli are available at Luckyscent, in Pyramid (interesting) and Cube (Piguet-inspired?) bottles.

Perfume Review: Comme des Garcons Guerilla #1 and Guerilla #2

Guerilla #1 and Guerilla #2 were inspired by Comme des Garçons “guerilla” stores, which are “pop-up” stores that appear temporarily, for one year only, in off-the-beaten-path locations in cities around the globe; for example, one outpost was in the pillar of a Warsaw bridge. (From JCreport) The packaging of the new scents is as original as one would expect from this avant-garde brand, the black rectangular bottles are boxed with a set of mock papier-mâchè canteens. The juice inside …sadly, I think this is the case, where the concept and the packaging are “bigger” and more interesting then the scents themselves. Guerrilla #1, named after Comme des Garçons' first boutique in Berlin, a former butcher shop, was created by Marie-Aude Couture Bluche (S de Scherrer, Jacomo For Her). In the perfumer’s own words, “If you think of a butcher’s shop, you think of meat, blood and then the very clean, bleached aprons... It’s carnivorous, but we have added the Indonesian flower champaca, it sensual, and then orange, so it’s fruity, with jasmine and gardenia too." (From FemaleFirst.co.uk) Hard as I try, I do not get either carnivorous or sensual from Guerilla #1. It is a rather fresh, cool, grassy-woody-floral fragrance with a vaguely medicinal top accord of saffron (mainly) and clove (just a hint), an airy, watery floral heart of champaca and what I perceive to be jasmine and perhaps some orange blossom, and a bracing, dry and earthy drydown of vetiver and cedarwood. It is the more interesting of the two Guerillas; it has that "slimy", faintly nauseating, borderline repulsive, fascinating quality of some of the stranger Comme des Garçons scents, for example Odeur 53. And yet it feels to me that the fragrance tries too hard, that it is very conscious of the fact that it is a Comme des Garçons scent and strives to live up to the wearer's expectations of weirdness and oddness. Its strangeness is uninspired, too predictable somehow. It goes to show that it is not enough for a fragrance to be almost-unpleasant to be judged avant-garde and original. There should be depth and the audacity of going too far instead of almost too far, which in the end feels as not far enough. Guerrilla 2, created by Nathalie Feisthauer (Versace Blond, Hermes Eau des Merveilles), on the other hand, seems not to aspire to be strange and striking. Said to be inspired by the color red, this is a succulent and simultaneously dry raspberry scent with appealing piquant nuances of ginger and pepper and a woody undertone, which goes a long way to stop the berries and, at the middle stage, the tuberose, from becoming too sweet. The scent makes me think not of freshly picked raspberries, but of the raspberry preserve my grandmother used to make, which basically consisted of raspberries very lightly cooked with sugar. Although it does not taste “straight from the raspberry bush”, it is much more natural than a jam. To return to Guerilla #2, I would go as far as too say that this is a berry-fruity scent for berry-fruity scent haters like me. Is it interesting, is it on a par with some of the breathtakingly weird Comme des Garçons perfumes? Not really. But it is certainly comparable to their less strange but still very appealing creations like Rhubarb or Rose. To conclude, Guerilla #1 is sort of interesting but rather unwearable, Guerilla #2 is very wearable, in fact, rather enjoyable, but not really exciting. If it ever goes on sale, I might buy Guerilla #2. For its full price, however, it is not full bottle worthy for me. Both Guerillas are available at Luckyscent, $98 for 85ml. The image is from JCReport.