The Lightness of the Dark: Pomegranate Noir by Jo Malone

New Jo Malone scent is described as a fruity composition with notes of raspberry, plum and pink pepper, combined with patchouli, frankincense and spicy woods. Some of these notes sounded very appealing to me, some of them made me hesitant to try it (yes, I am referring to you, patchouli). Good news for people like me, the fruity- and /or patchouli-shy, no need to worry…Bad news…there are no bad news apart from the fact that I will need a full bottle of Pomegranate Noir and soon. Pomegranate noir starts as a burst of a plum note on my skin. Almost instantly the notes merge to evoke what I perceive to be a dry, almost leathery scent of pomegranate skin. This is a fruity scent at this point, but in the driest, most abstract sense of the word. After a while the pepper note becomes more obvious to my nose. For those familiar with IUNX Burning Water or Comme des Garcons Harissa, this pepper kick is somewhat reminiscent of the “feel” of those two scents to me. Both of these stages are wonderful, but the third one is my favorite, this is where the promised frankincense (very light) and woods (I think it is mostly cedar, but I may be mistaken) are most prominent. Patchouli is simply absent on my skin; I am sure it plays an important role in the composition, adding the dark depth to it, but it does so very discreetly. I love the way the fragrance keeps developing, each stage smoothly extending into the next. I also admire the fact that the top notes never disappear completely, that incredible dark, somewhat astringent, almost leathery “pomegranate skin note” is perceivable till the very end. Unlike so many other Jo Malone scents, Pomegranate Noir is long-lasting on my skin; I can still smell it six hours after application. I cannot really compare Pomegranate Noir to any other scent out there, apart from the middle stage reminding me of Harissa and Burning Water, but even then the similarity is not so much about the notes as about a certain ethos shared by the three scents. Having said that, there is something incredibly familiar in Pomegranate Noir, especially in the drydown, a note that reminded me about happy poignant days of my past, and I don’t know what that note is. In any case, there is something in Pomegranate Noir that made me react to it in the most visceral way. In his article, The Unbearable Lightness of Scent, Chandler Burr describes Pomegranate Noir as a massless scent and very deservedly titles Jo Malone as a queen of light. Burr perceives her new perfume to be “the scent of the darkness that inhabits the corners of paintings by the Dutch masters. Think of Rubens’s self-portrait. The rich, luscious dark that surrounds the illuminated head, the bright white collar floating in the warm blackness. Rubens’s dark is not the cold heaviness of the void. It is the deep warmth of all that is there, but is simply unseen.” Pomegranate Noir is definitely a dark scent, however, in my opinion, this is not a deep, warm and impenetrable darkness of Rubens and Rembrandt, the dark here is weightless, transparent. Aubrey Beardlsey’s black-and-white ink drawings immediately come to my mind when I smell Pomegranate Noir. To me, this is a smell of twilight, of that place between sleep and awake, memory and oblivion, where you can still remember your dreams before they dissolve in the morning light. Pomegranate Noir will hit the stores in October, at the moment it seems to be already available at Neiman Marcus Online, $50.00 for 30ml, $85.00 for 100ml. * The picture of Pomegranate Noir comes from Neiman Marcus Online. * The painting is The Woman in the Moon, 1893, by Aubrey Beardsley, Fogg Art Museum

New generation: Vine and Helmut Lang

Vine by Strange Invisible Perfumes It is easy to lure me with the promise of a Greek myth, wine and pomegranates. I am also unable to resist the words like “whispering decadence”, “ambrosial” and “poised”. Vine is all of those things, but what is strangely invisible in the description of the fragrance is a very noticeable animalic accord that is persistently there through the two thirds of the fragrance development and only gets less noticeable (but never disappears completely) in the drydown, where Vine is all sweet fruits and thick dark wine. To stay in the vein of Greek mythology, that animalic accord is perhaps the smell of Cerberus sent by his master to stealthily follow Persephone; it is hard to believe that she could have stayed oblivious to his musc-y, wet, sweetly repulsive odour. I cannot. This “three headed dog from Hades” note in Vine somewhat obscures all that is ambrosial about it. That is not to say that I don’t like this fragrance; I find it repulsive and irresistible at the same time, just like I cannot get enough of Muscs Koublai Khan, the fragrance that first opened my eyes to the wonders of all things musk and animalic. Helmut Lang by Helmut Lang Another relation of Koublai’s, very distant this time. A pale, androgynous cousin many times removed but still somehow reminiscent of that dirty naughty Koublai Khan of Lutens fame. The indescribable nameless animalic note is super light here, but it is still present. There is a “skin accord” among the official notes, and, whatever that may be, I bet you that is what makes this sleek, clean, modern eau de parfum smell on my skin like an unwashed Mongol warrior. Helmut Lang is very wearable, rather discreet, with just a hint of a hungry sexy predator lurking beneath the very contemporary minimalistic surface.