The Year In Review, Part One Of Two: Philosophical Musings On The Balance Of Type, Applied To Men

It's been an interesting year. I used to think a year in perfume appreciation was all about uncovering new and exciting fragrances, and experiencing as much as humanly possible. That's part of the journey, but the better stretch may be in settling down with what you know, to further appreciate, explore, and possibly fall in love with familiar scents. Perfume is not an art form, it's a design accessory, an olfactory extension of our individual personas, built to last, if not on the air, then in the fog of memory. To grow with perfume means challenging assumptions, re-exploring old avenues, opening and dusting off old books. There's never a dull moment when you're thinking with your nose.

When 2012 began, I was in an interesting place. I'd established two new "favorites" and was busy establishing others, but the two perfumes of which I write were somehow connected, without making their relationship obvious. The first perfume is Grey Flannel by Geoffrey Beene. The second is Kouros, by YSL. These perfumes share a very snaggly, far-reaching branch on the fragrance family tree. Can you imagine it? A galbanum-laced chypre with more violet leaf than a greenhouse, and a dusty animalic fougère with not an overtly green bone in its body, but with all the whitewashed radiance of an herbal field surrounded by golden, sun-baked clay, somewhere in the Mediterranean. Quite a pair.

Loving Grey Flannel means loving fresh, aromatic fougères, but back in January I hadn't touched those jackstraws together yet. What bothers me about Grey Flannel is that it's now a maligned fragrance, outwardly hated by almost any guy with a web cam, and seeing very little love in forums. Yet the general populace still appreciates fresh fougères, green aromatic fougères, and even musky fougères like Kouros - although YSL's offering isn't exactly a top pick these days either. Whenever I smell Grey Flannel, whenever I wear it, my mind drifts to one infamous, universally-loved unisex fresh-green fougère, none other than Green Irish Tweed. The association I get is overpowering.

In 2011, I purchased a bottle of Green Irish Tweed. By the imaginative accounts of many basenoters, that was a great "vintage" for this perfume. There were virtually no complaints about 2011 bottles. I certainly wasn't complaining. I loved it. It's amazing stuff. So deep, so rich, so purply-green, loaded with those darkly vibrant octin esters, touched with that woody apple/lemon accord that melts into a naked strain of dihydromyrcenol that smells identical to so many other, cheaper postmodern fougères. I felt I had "graduated." I felt in-the-know. I'd moved past the predictable designer clones of this kind of thing, and accepted the official One And Only. I'd become wise, and a little financially poorer, but happy, satisfied, a bit high on myself. It was fun.

But there was something about Green Irish Tweed that puzzled me. Just as, whenever wearing Grey Flannel, I always thought, "People are missing something here. I don't know what it is, but I smell it, and it's real, and it's essential to understanding all the masculine perfumes released in the last thirty years. It's the Book of Genesis of postmodern masculine perfumery." So I decided to apply my sense to comparing, contrasting, exploring the interplay of notes, the overall "aura" of these two fragrances, and then contextualize my findings. I realized that, as far as green-leafy masculines go, this is a forest of offerings. There are no solitary men. There are co-conspirators, working together to form a "type" of man. He's the guy who seems boring and piecemeal, the one your mother approves of but your friends think is dull, albeit passingly handsome. And he turns out to be the best lover in the world, a fact learned by the quiet wallflowers who give him the time of day.

Grey Flannel and Green Irish Tweed are in different scent categories, but they share the same violet/violet leaf heart, with the same type of mossy-soapy drydown, and a few ingredient variances that separate them, and keep them from being flat-out identical. I won't go into it again here, I've opined on this in detail before. But the thrust of what I'm saying is, these two fragrances are not sharing a room together. They're in a party together. Attending are Drakkar Noir, Taxi, Bowling Green, Aspen, Sung Homme, Fahrenheit, and Cool Water. Party crashers are Kenzo Pour Homme, CK One, Chrome, and Acqua di Gio. Admission is free, drinks are 99 cents, the music is live, usually played by cover bands.

By the spring time, I'd officially run out of GIT. That was a rough day, spraying the last few drops, shaking the bottle in a vain effort to milk the dregs, and hearing nothing sloshing around. I perched the bottle in the corner of the room to remind myself to buy more. And later in the season I grabbed a bottle of Cool Water to bide the time. I liked Cool Water, always enjoyed wearing it, but didn't really understand it. I knew I liked it far less than I used to, but then again more than I used to, because back many years ago, I actually disliked it, and avoided it. Then I got acquainted with it again, and grew to "like" it. Then I met GIT and came to regard it as the "lesser fougère." The substitution between bottles of el-pricey Green Irish Creed. The bat boy to the major league slugger. And I appreciated Cool Water more, knowing it was inspired by such greatness, but also felt there was a built in let-down inherent to the Davidoff fragrance, as its components were designer grade, and never destined to match the power of its progenitor.

Then something strange occurred. I began to love Cool Water. It's like meeting a woman who is twice your age, marveling at the beauty she used to be before her life's misadventures sapped her energies - and then, despite all the callous assessment, falling in love with her. You can't help but wonder how. Why. To what end? Is there any chance of figuring out the conundrum of the heart? To smell it again, my nose suddenly understood Cool Water. That sweetness on top isn't a nondescript and nameless "fresh" aroma chemical. It's green apple, with that dryly acidic woodiness of naked dihydromyrcenol, the very same aroma chemical in GIT. There's peppermint, hints of violet leaf, and a musky/ambery tobacco drydown that lends depth and masculinity. I realized that the notes are all there. Many of them are different from those found in GIT. It's a more complex pyramid - but they're all there! They are separable. Inhale, and feel. Simply feel. And remember. GIT. Remember deeper. Grey Flannel. Of course. The missing link is in the evolutionary arch of placing two fresh fougères after a fresh, soapy chypre. Grey Flannel is Soviet Russia, and all the similar scents are satellite nations.

Eventually I graduated from Green Irish Tweed. Let me explain this briefly. I realized that my first impression of GIT is correct after all: this fragrance is too close in feeling to Cool Water, and therefore not worth repurchasing. The initial burst is Cool Water on steroids, and then it gets heavy, deep, billowy, very eighties. Sometimes a little hard to take. Around some people, headache-inducing. I've almost never gotten a compliment on GIT. I've been complimented on Cool Water. The social math, the olfactory math, the financial math, the $4 tip I left the waiter while typing this, all suddenly added up to one thing - knowing the man. If he's the same guy who would wear Grey Flannel, he's the same guy who would get confused about GIT, and Cool Water. And he'd eventually go through a scent tunnel, where prior to entering everything seems destined for premium ingredient quality, but upon exiting, he finds the world relies more on precision, Swiss accuracy over Swiss timepieces. The accuracy, not the watch, is what costs a lot.

Grey Flannel is accurate. It's a complex arrangement of extraneous green notes, overlaid on a traditional chypre structure. There's a lot moving in a singular direction. There's a lot moving on its own, without regard to anything else. Yet everything works. This is a well-oiled machine.

Green Irish Tweed is not as accurate. There's the beauty of its parts. There's the grace and elegance in which they've been assembled. And it's reliable. But it does less. The structure is far simpler. There is really just a three-step going on, against Grey Flannel's waltz. Citrus, violet leaf, ambergris, with wood paneling. Gorgeous. But not in the hot seat. There, under intense questioning and scrutiny, GIT starts to sweat, and resorts to Big Accords to mask the "little simple" in its heart.

Cool Water is the most accurate. Cool Water is hardest to understand. With all its notes, ranging from the bright apple, to the thin lavender, to the subliminally integrated mint, to the crisp tobacco in its heart, and then its slender musky base in the further reaches of the drydown, Cool Water needs to be recognized before you realize that it's working with you the whole time. It's too easy to say, "grape candy", or "sweet", without knowing how the sharpness has really reached its mark. And it's too easy to say it's cheaper than GIT, without really comparing the overall effect both fragrances have - and share.

These considerations graduated me into Cool Water, from a guy who was right there with all the basenoters in the past, telling newbies that GIT was the only way to go, to avoid CW because it's so thin and degraded in comparison, and that they share almost nothing with each other. How wrong I was back then. How right I am now.

This seachange brought a realization: genius is at work here. Not mine, of course, for I am a globally recognized genius whose wisdom and technological foresight is rivaled only by Leonardo da Vinci. I'm old news. No, this was another animal. This was the perfumer. This was a man who knew not one thing, but two, and knowing two things simultaneously is the mark of controlled madness. I suddenly thought that the nose behind Cool Water, a man who collaborated heavily on GIT, must be someone who recognizes that every gentleman has his alpha-male alter ego. He must know that everything in the universe, from tree trunks, to snow flakes, to the very galaxy itself, spirals outward from an ever-tightening coil. He exhibits pure tension in his works, leveling a balance between the disparate angles of green and animalic. He therefore must see outside individual perfumes, outside the individualized tensions, into the broader stroke of "who" modern man is. He recognizes that the tension must be applied not only to his outcomes, but also to his choices. In the case of masculine fragrance (unlike feminine perfumery), there are fewer choices. So he must have already whittled (or distilled) it down to two, long before we even realized what he was doing, and applied them to type: the gentleman who wears a fresh fougère, and the gentleman who wears a musky one.

For true contrast, the musky fougère must be singular not only in composition, but also in overall effect. Its "aura" must be untouched by neighboring perfumes. All that comes after it must fail to garner the same diversity of reaction. All that came before can only be viewed as pure delineation of events, followed to their logical outcome in a fine fragrance. This perfume, unlike its cooler brethren, stands alone. No Balenciagas, no Lapidus Pour Hommes, no Orange Spices, Ungaros, or anything else will ever truly emulate the sillage, the headspace, of Kouros by YSL.

I realized that Pierre Bourdon had decided sometime in the late seventies that mankind's greatest fear was not fear itself, but rather "no fear." And he decided to rectify the situation of becoming too secure, too self-assured, too calm. He took on this brief knowing that uncompromising aggression could be bottled, from nature, from lab materials, with the intrinsic soul of barbaric man flowing between the notes. Kouros opens with that pungent blast of musky citrus, soapy and fresh, yet dark, a touch dirty, and getting darker as the minutes pass. Then, like hot sunlight through the reeds, wildflowers shimmer, honey oozes, lavender buds and incense scurry across the parched earth. This fragrance has attempts at imitation, and some interesting reinterpretations, but no true peers. It still stands alone. Even Orange Spice, which is under suspicion of being by the same hand, emulates a Kouros flanker better than the original.

My love for Kouros means more than just a profound appreciation for a perfume. It means I truly need a Jedi Master to follow, and Bourdon is it. His vision, following the briefs of other men's visions, secured a singular, constantly operating contrast in masculine options. Two separate poles, inexplicably linked by one fragrance: Grey Flannel. Because without Grey Flannel, the "fresh" pole would never have reached the acute greatness it enjoys today, and without that achievement, there would not be the need to go back, further past the fresh fougères of the late eighties and early nineties, all the way to the musky retro fougère of 1981's Kouros, the ultimate reversion to true type. We need to know that there is a little of Cary Grant's suaveness in us, side-by-side with Charles Bronson's testosterone-fueled ruggedness. We need to know that bisexuality in fragrance is achievable without personal compromise, and that there's also a haven for all red-blooded alpha males to go, without fear of recrimination from their peers. A home base. Grant's charm, combined with Bronson's muscle, delivers a true understanding of the duality to a man's persona. For better exploration of that topic, you can enroll in a psychology program and get all the finer points.

My personal growth this year came in realizing that Bourdon loved Andre Fromentin's one and only credited work, sought to emulate, and take further, that very same fresh, soapy concept in GIT, and then was finally granted, by a cigarette company no less, the opportunity to create its refined form. Tucked in his resume is the control to his experiments: Kouros. Every time he doubted, every time his orthodoxy faltered, the method of returning to basic instinct in a classical, terrestrially-musky French fern kept his newer ideas in their proper place, and aided in maintaining his success.

I now stand at the base of 2012, knowing that I'd not be attributing the success of these scents to the perfumer's understanding of man's self identifying nature, had it not been for all the down-time thinking about this in the twelve months prior. Everyone has their core philosophy about greatness in a cultural form. The above is mine. From it, everything in my known universe spirals outward.