Scent and Subversion (30 page)

Parfum Rare belongs to an uncommon and wonderful perfume category: the animalic fruity-floral chypre. Ripe, spicy, and mossy, it starts at a low register, with hooded eyes and slurred speech, and goes from its fruity-fresh green note to a rottenish base of leather (probably castoreum in all its overdosed glory), amber, musk, and moss. Grab it (or its kind) while you can, before The Man takes away every ingredient that’s special about this perfume from the olfactory palettes of perfumers.

Top notes:
Cassis, tagetes, aldehydes, bergamot, green note

Heart notes:
Jasmine, tuberose, rose, lily of the valley, orris, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Patchouli, leather, benzoin, styrax, olibanum, amber, musk, moss

Pineapple is not a note you encounter often in perfume. In Patou’s Colony, it joined with an unusual chypre leather base and somehow worked. Scherrer 2 almost approaches a chypre elegance and counterpoint to sweet pineapple with its woody base, but it falls short of justifying the use of pineapple.

Top notes:
Aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin, pineapple, anise, green note

Heart notes:
Lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, lily, orris, tuberose, honey

Base notes:
Vanilla, sandalwood, benzoin, amber, musk, heliotrope

Perfumer:
Jacques Courtin-Clarins

One of the most beautiful lemon-forward perfumes available, Eau Dynamisante was marketed as the first perfume with firming, toning, and energizing benefits. It could be dismissed as a mere aromatherapy product, but that would be a pity. With a soaring aromatic-green citrus opening supported by the spice of carnation and patchouli, by
the time it blends and dries down on your skin, what’s left is an herbal-citrus skein of happiness. A refreshing aperitif in a decade of rich sauce-heavy entrees.

Top notes:
Orange, coriander, caraway, lemon, petit grain

Heart notes:
Rosemary, carnation, cardamom, thyme

Base notes:
Patchouli

Perfumer:
Jean Guichard

I’ve never been into perfumes that are “seductive” in a conventionally feminine way. While some women wear Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb or Victoria’s Secret Very Sexy, I’m happy smelling like overripe flowers (Diorella) or someone’s overripe armpit (Aramis).

This doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate perfume in that girly genre, if done well, and Loulou by Cacharel does it well. With a gently sweet opening of black currants, fresh top notes and florals, and a decadently rich vanilla heart, Loulou dries down to incense and woods, adding mystery to the perfume’s more-conventional come-on. Loulou lives up to the supposed perfume brief Jean Guichard was given by Cacharel: to create a perfume that projects both “tenderness and seduction.”

Loulou was the sequel to Anaïs Anaïs (1978), a straight-up “innocent” floral, and it was also heir to Ombre Rose (1981), whose praline and vanilla notes proved popular. (Until Ombre Rose, vanilla had been out of vogue for decades.) We’re told that Loulou also attempted to soften the harshness of Dior’s Poison (1985) through its intense vanilla note. Among everything else 1980s perfumes overdosed on, apparently vanilla was one of them.

I could never wear Loulou, but its vanilla/incense–sandalwood combination is pretty intoxicating. The vanilla is so rich and gourmand, it runs through Loulou like a vanilla version of the chocolate river that ran through Willy Wonka’s candy factory. By the end, the scratchy-spicy base notes add a maturity and sophistication to the fragrance’s sweetness.

Top notes:
Bergamot, violet, plum, mace, cassis (black currant buds), tagetes (marigold), anise

Heart notes:
Jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, rose, orris, lily of the valley

Base notes:
Cedar, vetiver, sandalwood, tonka, heliotrope, vanilla, benzoin, musk

In 1957, Audrey Hepburn was the face in ads for Givenchy’s L’Interdit, a perfume created exclusively for her a few years before. In the 1970s and 1980s, untold numbers of Chanel No. 5 ads featured Catherine Deneuve staring impassively at the viewer, her iconicity and elegance synonymous with the Chanel brand. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that the celebrity scent as we know it—the perfume branded with and marketed by the celebrity himself or herself—came into being. Sophia Loren had one (Sophia, in 1980), Cher had one (1988), and Elizabeth Taylor, starting with Passion, ended up with roughly a dozen fragrances.

Passion was La Liz’s first fragrance, and it is surprisingly “difficult” for a celebrity scent, with a lot of leather, musk, patchouli, sandalwood, artemisia, and coriander to offset the easier tuberose-y florals and honey that make it so unmistakably an 1980s scent.

Top notes:
Aldehydes, bergamot, gardenia, coriander, artemisia

Heart notes:
Jasmine, rose, tuberose, orris, honey, heliotrope, patchouli, sandalwood, cedar

Base notes:
Oakmoss, castoreum, civet, cistus, leather, musk, vanilla

Perfumers:
Francis Deleamont and Jean-Pierre Bethouart

Boucheron starts off, well, very sweet: Orange blossom is flanked with fruit and a tiny bit of herbal basil. It’s got that Amarige screech of sweetness that so many ’80s fragrances do, and which today in perfumes stands out like
Dynasty
-style shoulder pads. The “fruit complex,” which must be laboratory-made, smells very synthetic and contributes to the difficulty I have with this perfume. Its floral heart joins treacly jasmine and tuberose with a dose of some angles (geranium? narcissus?) and lightness, perhaps from lily of the valley. Boucheron’s drydown makes the sweetness a little more tolerable, and it evolves into a warm and woody/spicy base that veers toward the Oriental. I’m not a huge fan, but I may be in the minority.

Top notes:
Bergamot, lemon, cassis, fruit complex, basil, orange blossom

Heart notes:
Jasmine, orris, lily of the valley, tuberose, geranium, cedarwood, sandalwood

Base notes:
Ambrein, tonka, benzoin, oakmoss, olibanum (frankincense), civet, musk

A science brief as perfume ad, Jovan Andron claims that it contains the human pheromone Alpha Androstenol. (Ad from 1983)

Perfumer:
Sophia Grojsman

You can detect Sophia Grojsman’s signature of joy in the absurdly named Ex’cla.ma’tion; however, it’s like a Forever 21 dress with great ideas but poor materials. Although lovers of Ex’cla.ma’tion say that it was an affordable perfume at a time when department-store perfumes were too expensive for young women and teens, I just can’t get past how cheap this perfume smells.

Fruity, vanillic, and musky, Ex’cla.ma’tion’s green note is dissonant, putting it in the Eden and Must de Cartier school of perfumes that invite the question, “Where is that strange note coming from?” Haarmann & Reimer list it as a floral, but to me this is a fruity Oriental perfume. The green note and bergamot keep it from being too weighed down (after all, it’s an exclamation point, not a semicolon or ellipses). It’s like a teenager in a woman’s gown. Try as she might, she’s in an ill-fitting dress.

Top notes:
Peach, apricot, green note, bergamot

Heart notes:
Orris, rose, jasmine, heliotrope, lily of the valley

Base notes:
Cedar, amber, sandalwood, vanilla, musk, cinnamon

Perfumers:
Jean-Louis Sieuzac and Maurice Roger

Fahrenheit’s temperature rises from its chilly, fresh opening to its warming base of ambery leather. As its thermostat adjusts itself, the less-volatile climes of violet and cedar create an equanimity that seems like its true personality. Because this is the kind of scent men wore when I was growing up, it smells classically masculine to me, but in comparison to men’s fragrances now, this “masculinity” wrapped itself around a surprisingly floral and sweet center.

Top notes:
Bergamot, lemon, lavender, violet, mace, chamomile

Heart notes:
Jasmine, lily of the valley, cedarwood, sandalwood

Base notes:
Amber, patchouli, leather, tonka, musk

Perfumer:
Jean Kerleo

Knowing is a bold, green, 1980s-style green floral chypre with fruit and woods, and with a hint of Paloma Picasso’s intense animalic base. In the way that you might pause when eating a delicious Vietnamese meal and wonder, suspiciously, if you just ingested loads of MSG, you might pause when sniffing Knowing and ask yourself which note is synthetic and projecting like it’s on steroids? Sometimes beauty and pleasure can bypass such questions, and for me, Knowing is one of those cases: Ignorance is bliss.

Top notes:
Green note, coriander, orange, aldehyde

Heart notes:
Rose, jasmine, lily, cardamom, cedarwood, vetiver

Base notes:
Patchouli, oakmoss, honey, musk, amber, civet

Take Shalimar, with its bergamot, vanilla, and civet base; add a big dose of amber, a smidgen of black currant, and the scent from Doublemint gum’s powdery foil—and you have the sparkling, warm, sweet-spicy floriental perfume, Roma, by Italian fashion designer Laura Biagiotti.

Like some perfumes in the Oriental category, Roma gets a lift from hesperidic top notes. They seem to linger throughout Roma’s development, lightening the perfume’s mood so that we don’t take it too seriously. The uplift from bergamot and pink grapefruit plus that quirky touch of powdery mint keeps Roma’s character from falling into the brooding or overly decadent. It seems fresh and carefree for a perfume in this category. (The fluted, frosted bottle looks like a Roman column.)

Mint is said to be a difficult note to use in fragrance without evoking Scope mouthwash or toothpaste, so it’s surprising it works so well in a floriental with such prominent vanilla and amber. You’d think it would clash or seem unappetizing, but its freshness works well with richer notes.With a fresh, sparkling opening with extra zip from mint; a floral heart that gives it a soft femininity; and a vanillic/ambery/civet base with creamy/spicy sandalwood for depth and warmth, Roma is an approachable, unpretentious beauty.

Top notes:
Bergamot, pink grapefruit, black currant, mint

Heart notes:
Jasmine, rose, lily of the valley

Base notes:
Sandalwood, vanilla, amber, musk, patchouli, oakmoss, civet

Perfumers:
Jean-Claude Ellena with Ron Winnegrad

To discover that Jean-Claude Ellena was a co-nose of Rumba is like stumbling upon a photo of a chic movie star before she had a stylist, wearing some ’80s getup with big shoulders, a profusion of ruffles, and huge hair. Like a pre-stylist starlet, Rumba is a beautiful, hot mess.

Some may know that before Ellena had his Minimalist Phase (Bulgari’s Eau Parfumée Au Thé Vert, Hermès’s Un Jardin Sur Le Nil, etc.), he was in what could only be described as a Maximalist Phase. Among his Maximalist creations: First by Van Cleef & Arpels (1976), with its huge floral bouquet, and the honeyed floral animalic Rumba, which starts out loud and fruity and dries down to a husky-throated woody-leather-musk affair.

A rumba, derived from the Cuban-Spanish word
rumbo,
meaning “party” or “spree,” is a ballroom dance based on a folk dance in duple time of Cuban-Spanish-African origins. It’s heavy on the hip-swaying and passion, and Ellena does his best to translate this larger-than-life drama into perfume.

If you can get past the huge fruity-floral opening (usually my least favorite style, but maybe you love that sort of thing), you might find yourself liking parts of Rumba in spite of yourself. It has that Amarige/Poison-like syrupy fruit-tuberose-honey opening that could put you into a diabetic coma, but then in a flash, Rumba gets incensey and a little rough. Rumba’s drydown is, in fact,
dry,
and such a welcome counterpoint to its fruity treacle: Cedar, sandalwood, and styrax create an incense effect that’s both mysterious and sexy.

Styrax is an interesting note often used to create leather scents. A gum-resin from the bark of a styrax tree, it imparts a leathery, smoky, balsamic (powdery-ambery) effect that perfumer Olivier Polge has said can give a chypre-like quality to perfumes. (Maybe this is why my Haarmann & Reimer guide has categorized Rumba as a floral-chypre animalic, even though there is no bergamot or oakmoss—the usual chypre ingredients—listed in the notes?)

I read a description somewhere of Rumba that stuck with me—that its drydown is like the inside of an old cathedral during mass, the smell of dripping beeswax candles combined with burning frankincense. If this aspect of the perfume were foregrounded and just slightly sweetened with the other notes, what a completely different dance Rumba would be. But then, it wouldn’t be the ’80s fragrance that it is …

Maybe Rumba is the perfume that sent Jean-Claude Ellena fleeing into the arms of Perfume Minimalism, like a drunk to rehab after a weekend bender.

Top notes:
Peach, raspberry, green note, orange blossom

Heart notes:
Tuberose, jasmine, rose, carnation, heliotrope, lily of the valley, honey

Base notes:
Cedar, sandalwood, amber, tonka, vanilla, musk, styrax