Perfume Review: Tom Ford White Patchouli

If you don't believe in skin chemistry, I invite you for an olfactory experiment. Come and smell Ford's new White Patchouli on my colleague (white flowers, mostly jasmine, coriander and a discrete hint of dry patchouli) and then on me (a whopping dose of sweet, ripe rose blended with chocolate-smelling patch...a Voleur de Roses smell-alike)... It smells best of all on a blotter, the flowers are quieter and the patchouli leads the composition from the start, where it is spiced by coriander, to the finish, where incense adds an extra layer of resinous richness to the blend. White Patchouli is pretty, elegant and lush, and indeed "melds Bohemian influences [that would be the patchouli] with today's structured sophistication [that would be flowers]". Like most Ford's scents, it has a luxurious feel to it, in that it is fairly heady, long lasting and with a conspicuous sillage. I find it less striking and more obviously attaractive than the love-hate Black Orchid...for most people obvious attractiveness would be a plus, but hey, I am nothing if not jaded. But mainly I will not need White Patchouli, because, as I mentioned, it is Voleur's twin on my skin. I am not happy about that, since, as indifferent as I usually am to packaging, I adore the White Patchouli bottle. White Patchouli is available at Bergdorf Goodman, $92.00-$138.00.

Perfume Review: Santa Maria Novella Patchouli

Patchouli madness continues along with re-discovery of previously under-appreciated lines of fragrances. I have never had much luck with Santa Maria Novella's creations, and it is ironic that I should find a new interest in the line because of its rendition of the formerly disliked note. Patchouli starts very earthy, with the kind of raw-moist-soil feel that both attracts and scares me in patchouli scents. The sharp, dark, brooding beginning is also strikingly masculine. Within a couple of minutes, however, the fragrance begins to soften, acquiring a creamy, dare I say, floral feel, as if sweet blossoms like tuberose and/or ylang-ylang were included in the blend. There is also soft spiciness (nutmeg? truly I am just making wild guesses here, um, as usual) that goes really well with "flowers". I find this reverse sort of development (from strong to soft, from dark to light) incredibly compelling. Experiencing the development of SMN Patchouli is like watching a figure dressed in a severely masculine costume strip off clothes revealing a very feminine, very voluptuous form underneath. Patchouli is available at Lafco, $96.00 for 100ml.

Perfume Review: Bois 1920 Real Patchouly

Does it happen to you that by falling in love with a perfume you fall in love with a whole genre or family of scents that it represents? A couple of months ago I became obsessed with L'Ombre Fauve, which for me is a patchouly fragrance first and foremost. I sang praise to L'Ombre Fauve before but I will repeat that I think it is an incredibly sexy scent. When I smell it, my knees go week. And now patchouli in general has the same effect on me. My tiny bottle of L'Ombre Fauve is almost empty and on a desperate search for the next best thing I came upon Real Patchouly by Bois 1920. The line that I previously found underwhelming, but hey, lately it has been all about re-discovery and re-evaluation. Real Patchouly, despite the name, is not just about patchouli. It is heavy on woods and on vanilla, the supporting notes which make the star note simultaneously even darker, more forceful, and softer. Give me a well-done contrast in a perfume, and I am smitten. And the contrasts of dark and light, dry and sweet, harsh and soft, yang and yin that Real Patchouly showcases are my most favorite kinds. I don't get much development from the fragrance... not that a complicated and long-winded development is always necessary to enjoy a perfume. The sweet earthiness of patchouli, the woods, the vanilla are apparent at once and stay that way for all 8-9 hours of Real Patchouly's life on my skin. It is a "shared" fragrance in the best possible sense of the term. A fragrance that could have been his but is now part of your skin, melded with it, melted into it, making it impossible to tell anymore where one of you ends and the other begins. Real Patchouly is available at Barneys and Luckyscent, $160.00 for 100ml. Image source, chanel.com.

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.

Theatre of Shadows: Borneo 1834 by Serge Lutens

You throw yourself, oh blind one, upon something non-existent Even as upon a mirage evoked before your eyes, Upon a golden tree appearing in a dream A shadow play amidst a human crowd Buddhist Therigata, first century B.C. Borneo 1834, the latest scent in Serge Lutens non-export line is his homage to patchouli. “1834” in the name supposedly refers to the year when patchouli, brought to Europe wrapped with the bales of silk to scare off moths, became popular with the chic Parisiennes. Described as “the dry and silky scent of patchouli leaves” and “a memory of waltzing Paris”, Borneo 1834 has the notes of “florals”, galbanum, Indonesian patchouli, cacao, camphor, cardamom, cistus, and labdanum. The design on the Limited Edition bottle was inspired by the wayang, Indonesian theatre of shadows, where the stories about gods, kings, and ordinary mortals are acted behind a cloth screen and presented to the audience through the shadows cast by puppets. The fragrance itself is shadowy too, it is a dark scent in which no note is particularly distinct. It starts as a blast of something vaguely medicinal and chocolatey, a slightly minty, somewhat nose burning accord follows and is in turn replaced by an opaque, warm note of patchouli in the drydown. Despite the fact that Borneo 1834 is meant to be a patchouli-heavy scent, the main note, to my nose, is actually that of another moth repellant, camphor. I believe its strong, penetrating, pungent, aromatic odor adds that medicinal and cold-minty accord to the perfume. Incidentally, one of the varieties of camphor comes from Borneo and is called Borneol. Combined with the cacao accord, this note makes Borneo 1834 one of the strangest scents I have ever experienced. Not being overly fond of patchouli, I was surprised at how much I liked that dreaded note, when it finally flourished on my skin during the drydown. Patchouli in Borneo is both warm and dry and is made especially attractive by the almost unpalatable and most probably, for me, unwearable top and middle notes. This is the same effect that was used by the master puppeteers Lutens and Sheldrake in Tuberose Criminelle, in which the tuberose note was made heartbreakingly delicate and beautiful by the sheer strangeness of the cold and minty notes that preceded it. Kipling’s colonial romaticism of Borneo appeals to me immensely, I admire the patchouli note in this scent and do not particularly mind the cold pungency of camphor in the beginning. What renders the scent unwearable for me is the cacao accord. Were it more distinct, perhaps the effect could have been more striking. As it is, the cacao note here is rather blurry, self-conscious and shy; its insipid sweetness only muddies what otherwhise could have been a remarkably dry and dark scent. Still, Borneo is undoubtedly a unique scent and the one that will be always fondly remembered by me as a fragrance that made patchouli attractive to my patchouli-phobic nose. Being a part of the non-export collection, Borneo 1834 is available only in Les Salons du Palais Royal in Paris, where it retails for 100 Euros for 75ml. * The picture of Borneo 1834 is from quickmarket.ru. A Theatre of Shadow scene is from this wonderful site