06.21.09
Posted in 2000s, Thierry Mugler, good
at 8:44 pm
by Thierry Mugler, 2001
Thierry Mugler is an artist at the high-low fashion tightrope walk, because his Cologne is a real work of postmodern art. It starts by smelling like a better-made, more expensive version of 4711, all fresh and citrusy, and you’re thinking, “Hey, ok, highend 4711, dude!”. Then all of a sudden you’re wearing highway reststop bathroom soap, “Whoa! WTF?” (yes, my inner voice sounds like Keanu), which evolves into the barest hint of Nag Champa incense and aftershave lotion, then something fresh-herby starts morphing into Un Jardin en Méditerranée, suddenly zigs away from that luxe smell, zagging back into the reststop bathroom. All this in under 5 min. Then it starts all over again; or, really never went away, just revealed more of itself over time.
Sound complicated? It’s not, it’s very straightforward and simple smelling. Mugler’s scents tend to be rather direct and no-nonsense, hitting you upside the head with their obvious-yet-weird mashups of quotidian accords: Angel=chocolate-musk-vetiver-licorice, Alien=jasmine-wood-musk, and this? Citrus-pink public bathroom soap-incense-herbs. If fashion is the line between taste and trash, this is a work of genius.
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06.19.09
Posted in 1990s, Issey Miyake, bad
at 4:04 pm
by Issey Miyake, 1998
It’s a fire alright, right outta Hell! This has been characterized as an odd floral-spicy scent, roses & hot milk, according to some. I put it on and immediately thought, “OFF! OFF! GET IT OFF ME NOW!!!” Roses & milk & spices MY ASS! This is roses & boxwood & baby barf. The roses I’m sure of, the boxwood is my best guess at an indelible strong spicy-woody-vileness accord, one that reminds me to those nasty bottles of predator urine (bobcat, wolf, fox, etc.) you can buy at fancy garden centres to sprinkle around your vegetable plot and scare away the little bunnies from eating your lettuces. The baby barf is the closest to the purported “milky” note, but if it’s milk, it’s waaaay beyond rotten, and not even cheese yet, just a bile-laced bad-breath sour-rotten nightmare that clings needily to skin. I don’t get it at all, why is there a following for this discontinued dumpster juice (Heaven help us! there’s a “Light” version still available)?!
I diligently tried to scrub it off after enduring close to an hour of wear, just to be fair and check for development into something tolerable. Was it worth it? Let’s just say this was possibly the biggest sacrifice I’ve ever made in the name of Fairness.
After scrubbing three times with different detergents and soaps, IT’S STILL THERE! I may have to amputate…
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01.27.09
Posted in B&BW, Comme des Garçons, Prada, Thierry Mugler, quickies
at 10:14 pm
Sorry once again for my long absence. Aren’t the holidays swell? As usual, no time for a single in-depth review:
Odeur 53 by Comme des Garçons
Supposedly made of 53 chemicals not found in nature. Has ridiculous ad copy that mentions NONE of the following: Faint whiffs of rose, old leather, stale tobacco, lipstick, dried up mint gum, and a lost violet pastille. It’s Eau de Grandma’s Purse… oddly, it’s not your grandmother’s purse.
Prada eau de parfum
Berries, musk, leather accord base. Luxurious, classy. Seemed to be aiming at Kelly Caleche but hit Lolita Lempicka by accident.
Black Amethyst by Bath & Body Works
Lowend deadringer for the above. Less leather, no development. Won’t wash off.
888 by Comme des Garçons
Supposedly made to smell like gold bullion, but smells like a mostly generic highend luxury scent. Replace the berries from the Prada with saffron, add a yellow (instead of white) flower accord and it’s the same scent. Still… nice, classy, pleasant, gives a warm glow.
Angel Men Pure Coffee by Thierry Mugler
This is Angel (candy-chocolate-musk). For Men (extra musk). Coffee scented (Yum!), which wears off quickly, just musk left (yuck), which sticks to your clothes fiercely (drycleaning!$$!).
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11.27.08
Posted in 1920s, Guerlain, good
at 1:31 pm
by Guerlain, 1925
I finally tried it. I’ve never actually worn it before, only sniffed and dismissed it as yet another old aldehydic menace like No. 5.
I applied a few drops to my wrists and neck, and nearly scrubbed it right off. Those nasty aldehydes almost drove me to my knees, but just as I was passing out with the image of a WWI gasmask-readiness poster as my last coherent thought, the chemical topnotes dissipated sufficiently for me to regain full conciousness…
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time…
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
After that, I had to leave for work.
While driving, the middle & base notes creeped forward, the warm vanilla note for which Shalimar is famous hummed up from a dim filament to radiant full glow. A different chemical-musk-greenish middle note also appeared with the vanilla; cheap shampoo filled the air, and until it dissipated I couldn’t shake the feeling I hadn’t rinsed my hair out completely. This is the note co-opted into copycat spinoffs and background scents for toiletries, much like No. 5 has been. Evidently, this is the cheapest component of the scent. One of those cheaper scents, such as B&BW Warm Vanilla Sugar, fly by these notes, zooming directly to the vanilla. But Shalimar is on a train, and is concerned with the journey itself, not the mere vulgarity of “getting there”.
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10.23.08
Posted in 1990s, Bulgari, good
at 9:39 pm
by Bulgari, 1998
I’ve read this is a blend of burning rubber, vanilla, and car exhaust contained in a rubber hockey puck bottle. Intrigued with the description, I hunted for it, and hunt I did. Department store perfume counters, perfume discounters, and even Nordstrom seemed barren of it. I found every other color of Bulgari scent (Jasmin Noir made me pause for awhile, tho), except for Black.
Just when I thought I’d have to flush it out online …lo and behold! I wandered over to the men’s side of the new Sephora at the mall… Eureka! Hidden behind a box of some vile Armani scent; there it was, Mr. Black Hockey Puck himself!
Spritzed on paper, it’s surprisingly sweet, musky, and vanilla. On skin the industrial odors materialize…. It isn’t burning rubber, it’s melting polystyrene! it’s the sweet scent of touching a soldering iron to a foam drinks cooler, a melting plastic scent that has nothing to do with the vinyl-plasticky aldehydes in most perfumery. There’s a resinous smell mixed in with the vanilla, a slight spicy-syrupiness –Styrax or Benzoin? Rosin or Retsina? Maybe…
So who wants to smell of melting (not burning) plastic and vanilla-retsina syrup?
I DO.
It’s magnificent, evocative, unique, inspired, and just plain weird. It’s a shared-custody weekend at my dad’s place, playing with his soldering iron by testing what it’ll burn thru and wasting his rosin-core solder, followed by grandiosly buffoonish pseudo-academic baking experiments we were fond of, (e.g. Confectionary, My Dear Watson: The Effects of Vanilla Extract Infusion upon Apple Pie… an Experiment in Six Parts).
This scent is fascinating, odd, jarring, and sentimental (ok, maybe just to me). It’s a post-industrial-waste barren racetrack rush-hour experiment gone wrong all the right ways. A polyharmonic Penderecki concerto kind of fragrance, a harmony of perfect dissonance.
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09.10.08
Posted in 2000s, Guerlain, so-so
at 9:23 pm
by Guerlain, 2000
Mahora was renamed Mayotte after its introductory ad campaign failed. This discontinued perfume is widely vilified as a horror, is it because something so unsophisticated came out of the haute House of Guerlain? I don’t know what the hot fuss is about, Mahora is only tuberose.
Saying Mahora is “only tuberose” is like saying Michael Phelps is “only a swimmer”; both are understatements of the year, and both are a simple truth. There is tuberose, the complete tuberose, and nothing but a tsunami of the tuberose in all its waxy, tropical glory. It’s heavy, and absolutely nothing is added to lighten it. To wear Mahora is to suffocate to death in a very specialized, very niche candle store (Tuberose Yankee Candle Co.?) Luckily, it isn’t a strong perfume, its sillage is minimal and wears off exponentially within 4 hours.
I cannot stress this enough, to enjoy this you have to like tuberose! It may have an incense-y edge, but this is essentially a soliflore of natural (or damn good artificial), full-spectrum, god-given, this-one-goes-to-11 . Despite the loud monotone, it isn’t a bad scent, it wouldn’t be so hated if it wasn’t from Guerlain; if it were a drugstore offering from Dana its sales would suffice and it might have become a beloved scent, a reminiscence of impoverished youth. Instead you embark on a failed safari in search of a nonexistant trace of Guerlinade.
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08.12.08
Posted in 2000s, Annick Goutal, Uncategorized, so-so
at 10:21 pm
by Annick Goutal, 2005
Mandragore is French for mandrake, a historical, Biblical, mythical plant, reputed to cure barrenness & poisoning, give visions, & preserve vigor & youth. Its root sometimes forks, giving it a homunculus-like appearance, which supposedly screams when pulled from the earth, the scream itself deadly if heard. So much a source of folklore & legend, this infamous plant’s nearest relative is… the tomato! Unlike the early tales about its cousin, the mandrake is actually poisonous if eaten.
The perfume starts out lemony-vinyly, quickly followed by plasticky ginseng. The lemonyfreshness soon starts fading and the ginsengy layer slowly loses its vinyl elements, receding into the naturally-occurring plastickyness of ginseng instead of the initial artificial plastic-vinyl elements. Wearing further, a savory black pepperlike note appears with some other background spices, adding itself to the ginseng center note. The lemon topnote very faintly persists, and the pepper & spices wander to the forefront then recede again with the ginseng a constant dying-ballast hum in the foreground. And that’s it. Ginseng obviously is supposed to stand in for the mandrake, but it was so aggressively GINSENG! just like the vials of extract from Chinese groceries, that I couldn’t recognize it for anything else. Since mandrake fruit looks like a tamarillo, which is another distant tomato relative, I expected anything of mandrake to taste/smell of tamarillo, at least a little.
That’s all folks. It’s essentially a 3-note composition, and a very light-airy one, too. It was barely there, and didn’t last more than half the day. I suspect the Annick Goutal empire is more concerned how it’ll play as a candle or air freshener than as perfume, despite calling itself a “High Perfumery House”. With a name like Mandragore you expect something more witchy, dark, mysterious, exotic, eeevviiillll! Not a sweet, ethereal, will-o-the-wisp. You expect Morgana le Fay, not Tinkerbell.
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07.15.08
Posted in 1970s, Crabtree & Evelyn, good
at 2:26 pm
by Crabtree & Evelyn, 1970
This is a discontinued fragrance that I was lucky enough to buy before it disappeared forever (Note: Basenotes lists it as still in production. Where?!), most likely discontinued due to supply problems. Sandalwood from India is now so rare & expensive it probably became cost-prohibitive to have a line of mere toiletries based upon it. Sandalwood from Mysore, India in particular is now extremely rare, overharvested, poached, and is now threatened. There’s sandalwood from Australia, but it smells differently, a little more astringent and lacking the fruity undercurrent that Mysore sandalwood has. There are unrelated trees called “sandalwood” whose oil is marketed as “sandalwood oil” but the scent only bears a passing resemblance to sandalwood. Also, one if the ingredients listed on the bottle is diethyl phthalate, used to denature the alcohol (no making cocktails out of your cologne!). Due to the current hysteria concerns about phthalates lately, I suppose they couldn’t bring that back, either.
Yes, Crabtree & Evelyn have a Sandalwood toilet water in production, but it’s not the same thing, believe me. The current C&E sandalwood scent is a wan, pale pretender to the throne of this magnificent original, it might even have a bit of real sandalwood (from Australia?) in it, but it’s so damn weak it’s unidentifiable. Hell, any scent in it is pretty much undetectable! I’ve sampled it twice and neither time did anything blossom from this Void of Nothingness, like it did from Kenzoair. They’re probably using some artificial sandalwood scent in the mix to save $$$$, which isn’t working. The artificial “sandalwood” scents always lack the depth of the real thing. Each chemical may capture one facet of the scent perfectly, but it’s only one facet, and very lackluster. Combine several and you may get a better approximation, but still the soul, the quintessence is missing.
But the original’s sandalwood scent is deep, mellow, and rich, and surprisingly sweet. That heavy hippie-deodorant spicy astringency sandalwood can fall into is expertly rounded with ylang-ylang and a touch of cedar and vetiver. When first applied, the top notes are a very sweet ylang-ylang, a bit of cedar, and the sandalwood slowly follows behind, blooming in about 20 minutes as the ylang wears off, then it’s smooth, polished sandalwood all the rest of the day. When my bottle was new, the sandalwood would leap out at you, pleasant and civilized, but insistently there. Now that it’s older, it’s mellowed like wine does, and makes a graceful appearance instead of announcing itself loudly. As much as I love this scent, I shouldn’t wear it on my skin, for some reason it goes sour and a little rotten on me in a few hours (perhaps the ylang aging like a gardenia?), if I apply it to my clothes it’s glorious all day.
I wore this as a teenager and into college. At the time, Giorgio, Polo, Drakkar Noir, and Aspen was all the rage, and though I have a special place in my heart for Giorgio & Drakkar (the snotty girls wore Aspen & Polo), this C&E scent is what really evokes my teenage years.
It’s now had it’s day in the limelight, (or been eulogized). Time to be tucked back into its bubblewrap and put back to bed…
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07.05.08
Posted in 1990s, Caron, so-so
at 9:42 am
by Caron, 1990
… is actually a blurry spice trapped in the chewy center of a flower-flavored pastille. A plasticky eugenol note glows from it, evoking my grandmother’s lipstick or some other old cosmetic.
The trapped spice in question is mysterious: A peppercorn? Dried pepper leaf? Smoked tea? Tobacco? Sumac powder? Who knows. The flower-flavored pastille it’s trapped inside definitely has rose, but the clove-ish cosmetic element defies the definition of any other flower it might contain. As it wears, the powdery element of the clove pretty much takes over, leaving only the candyrose and a vague spiciness behind.
Though it evokes a very specific reminiscence of my grandmother, it’s still not emotionally engaging. It’s an unusual mixture of notes that work together well; the candysweetness says “young contemporary”, the rose & clove says “old-fashioned classic”, the spice even suggests “masculine”, yet… I’m still disappointed it wasn’t formulated better. It smells like a draft on the way to a much better perfume, one with a stronger spice element, more definable flowers, and only a touch of clove to hold it together. Instead we get this promising but unfinished sketch that’s somehow gained entry into the holdings of a world-class museum. I wonder, who’s its uncle?
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06.10.08
Posted in B&BW, Burberry, Gucci, Michael Kors, quickies
at 11:25 pm
Life is busy. No time to focus on one scent in depth. Here’s some observances from recent mall-crawls…
Michael Kors eau de parfum
A tuberose-tropical, good for summer. Tries hard to evoke a tropical vacation, and pretty much succeeds. The tuberose is light enough to let other notes have a chance, but is overall a weaker strength scent than Fracas or Mahora (some would say that’s very fortunate). Unintended scent by-product: it has a top note smelling almost exactly like Chinese Silk Tree blossoms; we had a huge one in our front yard when I was a small child. Will probably buy it just for this.
Gucci
Sort of similar to Michael Kors but less tropical, more fake-sandalwoody
. Little bit of leatheryness too. Goes on smelling sophisticated & expensive, wears out quickly, going cheap & stale in an hour or two. The generic woody-vanilla-amber base note that everything has nowadays lingering forever, which is bad, it’s so boring it’s annoying it won’t go away. You want it to succeed, you really do when it’s fresh, then it grows up to be a big disappointment.
The Beat by Burberry
Goes on smelling like an intriguing unidentifiable pleasant white floral-ish something, just when you think you’ve identified it you can’t think of the word… Soon moves into an odd “urban accord” of exhaust fumes, asphalt, and burning rubber –and quickly exits it. Ends in another generic woody-somethingorother that won’t wash off! I’m 90% sure Comme Des Garçons has covered this ground already, but 100% less timidly.
Mango Mandarin by Bath & Body Works
If I deride B&BW stuff so much, why do I bother trying it? Because I have hope they’ll accidentally make something with depth someday. In the meantime, It was 104 degrees F last week and I just wanted to smell yummy & uncomplicated. The gallons of sweat didn’t warp this chemical juggernaut one bit. Very foody scent. Made me hungry. Wanted a fruit slushy all day.
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