One Last Word On Reformulations

Reading today's post on Pour Monsieur got me thinking a little more about my stance on reformulated, re-issued, and discontinued fragrances. It seems Houbigant's recent re-issue of Fougère Royale is rather, em, disappointing, you might say. That's unfortunate, given that the original was widely considered a masterpiece. But it's unsurprising, because the current fragrance world is the same as all current business models: cynical, manipulative, and revisionist. The better companies, like Houbigant, apparently still attempt to give semi-ignorant consumers a little bang for the buck, and fill the bottles with decent juice. The problem is that they're not confident enough to sell them as something new. An old standby is invoked instead, which abuses customer trust, as the new brew is an impostor, and clearly inferior to the original. From there, it's very difficult to go back to former glory, because fully knowledgeable consumers, like the one noted above, know the difference, and expect a company to make it up - not lamely cop out.

But then there's this problem - try finding the original Fougère Royale. Go ahead, give ebay, Amazon, and those obscure "vintage perfume" merchant sites a browsing. If you can find an empty flacon, you're lucky. Anything containing genuine Fougère Royale should be sent immediately to the Smithsonian, with a hand-written letter pleading for certification of authenticity (we can hope there's one perfume expert there who is willing to go on an archaeological research expedition for this cause, although it's a long-shot). In short, seeking Fougère Royale is like seeking all early-era (tracing Fougère Royale and Coty Chypre's many historical constellations), discontinued perfumes, in that it's a self-contained quest for that which isn't worth seeking in the first place. After the months of searching, and the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars spent, you're left with almost-empty bottles of semi-skunked juice, and only if you're lucky.

Let's not fool ourselves, here. All reformulated fragrances are actually discontinued fragrances that follow Houbigant's Fougère Royale model of marketing. Look at Skin Bracer, which is allegedly still "By Mennen." Is it really Skin Bracer? Absolutely not. Ingredients have been changed, mostly cheapened. Mennen, as a company, no longer exists. Colgate-Palmolive, in a bid for brand loyalty, decided Mennen's customers were more loyal than Colgate-Palmolive's, and wisely employed the labeling facade. I'm sure there's a few thousand old guys out there who haven't really registered this sleight of hand, and think Mennen still makes their daily splash. If the bottle said, "By Colgate," they'd stop buying and switch to Afta. But Colgate's little changeling is still a very good fragrance, well worth five dollars at the drug store, and compared to some mucho-expensivo niche labels, worth much more.

Some people, in roundabout ways, ask me why I generally don't address exactly which formula of fragrance I'm reviewing on this blog. The reason is simple. I'm reviewing whatever I have, because if I have it, chances are you have it too, and if not, you can surely get it. What I have is what's being sold now in brick and mortar shops. I don't go out of my way to seek out extinct specimens, because that doesn't do my readers any favors. It's unlikely they'll be able to find vintage fragrances that they can afford to wear regularly. Such things aren't easily "repurchased" after use.

There are many men and women who faithfully wear Paco Rabanne Pour Homme and Chanel N°5, but very few of them insist on purchasing ONLY seventies-vintage Paco Rabanne, or nitro-musked versions of Chanel N°5 from the fifties. True die-hard fans will have occasion to pick up the odd bottle of vintage, but reformulations wouldn't stop die-hard fans from using current stuff. That's why they're die-hard. Those inhabiting other levels of fragrance appreciation wouldn't be hung up on formulations in the first place, and would find this to be a moot issue. Paradoxically, such people would hold different opinions on the value of clinging to "dead" formulas, compositions that have degraded top notes, chemically-strained midnotes, and attenuated bases. The experience of wearing an older formula can be rewarding, but is always laced with disappointments.

Then there's the authenticity issue. Approaching older perfumes means dealing with splash bottles. Naturally, some might have qualms about buying an old splash flacon of, say, Bellodgia by Caron, as anyone can take some random drugstore oriental, mix it with something of a maple syrup hue, pour it into the Caron bottle, slap a ninety dollar price tag on it, and claim it's "vintage." A Caron fan could, while hating herself, spring for it anyway, telling herself there's no chance some sleazy guy left a bottle of Wind Song in the sun for a month, mixed it with a few drops of Tabu, and thus became a revisionist historian for Caron. Wishful thinking is a powerful motivator.

I tend to resent, just a little bit, the fragrance blogs that try to be different by reviewing discontinued perfumes (not formulas). My initial thought, before reading such a review, is always the same: thanks for telling me about something I wouldn't wear, even if I could find it. How about a review on something I'd actually buy? And even then, there's another paradox - many of the things I'd actually buy are new, re-issued versions of older classic formulas. Does it mean they're significantly different enough to warrant making this distinction with each review? Not really, and I've already stated my reasoning for that here. But things that are no longer made are best kept in homes of bottle collectors, not fragrance nuts. I see little value in pursuing some obscure thing from seventy years ago, especially if it was discontinued before I was born, unless I'm purely after the beauty of its container. Perfume doesn't age like fine wine. Perfume gets recycled. That's why companies like Chanel, Caron, Paco Rabanne, are still in business.

If I coveted perfume for rarity's sake, and never wore it, I wouldn't have a blog. If I spent tons of time comparing formulas from bygone days that will never return to the current, post-IFRA formulas bearing the same names as their unfortunate progenitors, I'd be wasting your time. It's not my interest to attempt - an ultimately fail - to describe the experience your father had every time he slapped the original formula for Old Spice on his cheeks. My online reviews would be counter-productive history lessons. People read reviews so they can decide on how to move forward with something. Moving backwards isn't in the cards. If it is, it should be the Joker in a fragrance lover's deck.

On to September.

Coming Attractions

August is, for better or worse, and having no alternative, on its way out. I like August because it's the only month of the year that I get time off from work, and it's also the only start-to-finish summer month that hints at autumn, with coy wisps of cool evening air, and the occasional fallen leaf. I prefer August to September, largely because the latter month sort of hangs in limbo there, being neither summer, nor autumn, but something facelessly in-between the two. Ultimately, I'll take October over any month of the year.

September, being a thirty-day suckfest, will therefore be devoted to one brand: Creed. I have some leftover Creed reviews I've been meaning to do, but don't feel like sprinkling them into the rest of the year. So, if you dislike Creed, sorry to disappoint. Maybe I can persuade you to give them a second (or third, fourth, fifth) chance. If you're a fan, it's your lucky month! See you on the flipside.

My Holy Grail, Some Runner-Ups, And The Future of From Pyrgos

After four years of relentlessly searching for my personal "Holy Grail" fragrance, i.e., the one fragrance that I feel I can wear anytime, anywhere, to any occasion, with any outfit, and in any company, and all for my pleasure and satisfaction only, I believe I have found it. This wasn't easy. Let me tell you the story, but an abbreviated version, so as not to ramble:

In 2009, having gathered a small clutch of new fragrances and done a shitload of reading about fragrance, I stopped by a mall in Waterbury and grabbed a 4 ounce bottle of Caron's Pour un Homme. I bought it blind, of course, as there's no way to sample this stuff, and I always feel guilty asking for a test spritz from the retail bottle. But I was confident that this was going to smell great. I brought it to my car, popped the cap off, and spritzed twice on my hand. I stuck my nose into the fizz. It wrinkled. My eyes watered. What the fuck had I done?

The strange smell of metallic powder was very off-putting for a few minutes, but rapidly coalesced into a vibrant herbal lavender that smelled so realistic that I took deep whiffs, paused, and murmured "holy shit" to myself repeatedly for about twenty minutes. Finally, I started the car and drove off.

Four months later, I was halfway through the bottle, and suddenly decided PuH wasn't for me. I felt it was boring. I used it up as fast as I could, just to get rid of it and make room for new adventures. Once it was gone, I didn't miss it. I gave Yatagan a try, and felt so-so about that, too. Then Zino, Acteur, and a slew of other things. For a while, PuH was forgotten.

Then, earlier this year, I realized I missed it. I couldn't explain why. One afternoon, while thumbing through fragrance reviews, I read some on Le 3eme Homme (which I have yet to try), and was surprised by my knee-jerk reaction: "this sounds nice, but not as nice as Pour un Homme." When I'd said that to myself, my faculties froze, and I back-tracked. "Wait, what did I just say? That green shit you used as air freshener?" I had a scent hallucination, and suddenly, out of nowhere, could smell the crisp, sun-singed lavender and cool, musky, semi-sweet vanilla. And I realized I needed some. Immediately. In my hands. On my skin. Now.

I ran out that weekend, grabbed another bottle at the same Waterbury store, applied it, and took a deep breath. Brilliant, bright, natural-smelling lavender, with a touch of hot and cold creating an scent reminiscent of Play-Doh, followed by a musky, frosted vanilla base, which smelled rich, unisex, yet masculine thanks to the lavender. It was decadent stuff, and I realized that I was wrong about this Caron. It's brilliant. It's simply gorgeous stuff. I feel something within myself connecting easily to the comfortable contours this scent structure has to offer. The perfume fit me like a glove.

Pour un Homme has been my exclusive scent of choice for a while now, and I haven't tired of it at all. I know it's gentle enough to work for my Japanese girlfriend, who is very sensitive to strong smells. For her I wear Eau Sauvage, a fragrance I really like, but could live without. I'll always have bottles of it for her, and I'll gladly wear it. But for me, I have Pour un Homme. I wear this for me, first and foremost. And I'm glad it's still being made, and still dirt cheap. It's possibly the only inexpensive (as in under $10 per ounce) fragrance that smells rich, expensive, and impeccably made. I will be looking toward a 16 ounce splash bottle next month, as I'm already almost out of my latest bottle.

For a while there, I thought Grey Flannel was my Holy Grail. It sure as hell came close. It was pretty much the only thing I wore during the winter of 2011. And I adore Grey Flannel, because it's another inexpensive scent that smells rich. The only problem with Beene's classic violet leaf chypre is its tendency to growl at those around me. The oakmoss can get dour, the violet note emotionally challenging, and the greenness somewhat predictable and reserved. Is it a masterpiece? Without a doubt. And I'll always have it and wear it. But it just missed the mark of being that one special scent that I can't do without. Although, in a way, I cheat - I doubt I could do without Grey Flannel, either.

Kouros was another runner up. Kouros is glorious stuff. There's nothing that smells better than a good dosage on the chest in the middle of a scalding, humid summer. The honey, wildflowers, incense, all open up into this bittersweet, citrus-tinged, muskified fougère that stinks like Heaven. But given my future companion's predilection for subdued, polite fragrance, Kouros will likely wind up being more of an occasional wear for me, something I enjoy when nothing else will do. In a way, the watered-down reformulation will serve me well, but I'll still miss that eyelash-scorching civet opening. All well. Maybe in another ten years they'll release an anniversary edition in extrait form. One can dream.

Now, about the future of From Pyrgos: Due to several life changes that are taking place this autumn, my dedication to this blog will dwindle a bit. I'm beginning the long process of learning to speak basic Japanese, something that will demand my undivided attention. I'm also preparing for a trip of a lifetime, picking up my regular work schedule after a month-long hiatus, and have a few other things on my plate as well. When my girlfriend comes Stateside, my attentions will be on her, and on making her life here as comfortable as possible, so that her epic transition won't feel so overwhelming. Also, more serious writing projects, which involve screenplays and a long-neglected novel, will be requiring renewed attention sometime later next year, if I can muster it.

What does this mean for this blog? Don't panic. I'm not pulling the plug. Do not consider From Pyrgos to be a dead blog, by any means. But do expect to see fewer and fewer posts as the season wears on. I've found that my adventure in scent has taken me to all the stops it could, and I've tried, accepted, rejected, and chewed on all the fragrances I'm likely to explore. There will be others, but my encounters with them will be fewer, and further between. Meanwhile, for constant updates on excellent masculines, please see Shamu's excellent blog. And for a beautiful philosophical approach, I highly recommend checking Sherapop's out as well.

Check in every once in a while for updates. They will be coming. I'll keep everyone in the loop.

Country Chic (Bath & Body Works)

In 1999, Creed released its ill-fated supergreen chypre, Green Valley, to some critical acclaim, bringing to its logical apex the trend of fruity-green chypres that flooded the unisex fragrance world of the late nineties. Hundreds of similar feminines came before it, but only one masculine seemed to presage Olivier's masterful creation with any true prescience, and its name was Sport Field, by the maison athlète of Adidas. Isn't my French sublime?

I'm not suggesting Sport Field was the only precursor - Insensé was far more complex, and was released one year before Adidas' understated chypre. But Insensé was a startling essay on the masculine appeal of green floral notes, a failed cultural experiment about which one could write volumes, while Sport Field was an ultra-focused ginger-grass budget scent that somehow transcended its bargain basement pedigree by maintaining a hyper-realistic green profile without any embellishment. The framework for Green Valley was perfectly represented in Sport Field: bright, bitter, grassy accord on top, touched with a shimmer of ginger, and a sweetened berry-like fruit note, all of which dried down to an analog of warm hay. Simple, fresh, and snappy, it's a wonder Sport Field wasn't more widely used and appreciated, although Adidas has recently resurrected it, and it seems to be holding its own within their range.

While Green Valley perfected Sport Field's structure with violet leaf, oakmoss, blackcurrant, ambergris, and vanilla, it was almost too much of a good thing, and the market rebelled. When done well, the ubiquitous fresh-green cologne is almost impossible to variegate with any regularity. The theme must have become redundant and played out, because most of the bitter-grass experiments of the nineties were discontinued, Insensé included. But then the tacky mall-house of Bath & Body Works got creative, and released Country Chic. Presumably, this was another ditzy fruity-floral with no lineage, other than a legion of other ditzy fruity-florals. When I first smelled it, my eyes screwed up, my nose closed, my throat tightened, and I felt like I'd encountered a Vietnam-era chemical weapon, cleverly disguised as perfume. The sting of alcohol and aldehydes was pretty Kilgorian.

Then, something wonderful happened. My nasal cells pulled everything together, and presented me with a crystalline, feminine version of that archetypal bitter ginger-grass chypre of yesteryear. Bits and pieces of the nineties emerged, but streamlined for current tastes, with a brilliant fruit accord. Hints of berry, crab apple, and pear, welded and bundled together with floral notes like reams of spare piano wire, all hit the mark perfectly, and I couldn't help but grin. Its ingredients are admittedly cheap, and Country Chic lacks the focus of Sport Field, and the refinement of Green Valley, but its overdosed aldehydic opening and tenuously well-centered green heart stakes its territory in the grimly-underpopulated category of modern chypres. There are times when I smell Country Chic and think, "this is cheap and dull." Yet my nose always coerces me to give it a second chance, and on the exhale, Chic is beautiful, and reminds me of how brilliant even the most budget-bound fresh chypre can be. This fragrance is quite an achievement, and well worth seeking out.

Farewell Coco Noir, We Barely Knew Thee

Perusing the perfume blogosphere for Chanel reviews is like listening to a broken record. You read the same notes list a dozen times, and then encounter something typical for a Chanel perfume: a disparaging article. And then another. And another. And another. And another.

I remember when Bleu de Chanel was re-released, a few months back. It was a completely new scent, of course, bearing no kinship to the original. Bloggers were groaning about it even before they sniffed it. The whole "blue cologne" thing conjured carbon-copy nightmare images of sporty-fresh sneaker juice in the minds of every amateur chemist from here to Calcutta. The usual dog-and-pony show ensued. Everyone, myself included, clamored to write the most eviscerating piece about that scent. Many of us disliked it so much, we paused to consider whether it was one offense, or every offense possible for a perfume, that pissed us off the most about it. Was it enough to say Bleu was boring? How about boring, trite, unimaginative, uninspired, derivative, mis-branded, lame. Bleu de Chanel? More like Bleu Cheese. Kind words for 'ol Bleu were few and far between. To a certain extent, Chanel deserved that reception, because I'm of the opinion that Chanel is overrated, a company put on a pedestal, for no good reason, except that it feels smart to say in a single sentence that Égoïste is beautiful, but Platinum Égoïste is atrocious. With Chanel, you can usually have it both ways, without sounding like an asshole.

"But Bryan," cries the peanut gallery, "how can you say Chanel is overrated?" Well, let's see here. Let's break it down just a bit, shall we? What was that other big fanfare Chanel release from a few months back? Ah yes, I have it: Jersey. That shining beacon of dashed hopes, stuck ironically on the upper deck of Chanel's infamous "Les Exclusifs" collection, was also poorly received, pretty much everywhere. Comments ranged from, "This smells disgusting, like bad fabric softener," to "It's okay, but not up to Les Exclusifs' standards." Sweet lavender, cushy vanilla? And this resembles the smell of Jersey fabric how? Oh yeah, that's right. It doesn't.

And how about those Allure flankers, eh? Gotta love them. I thought Edition Blanche was wearable but dull, and feeble next to the original. The sport versions all smell the same to me, and the latest "extreme" version seems to be the natural endpoint for an otherwise ceaseless enterprise - a sport scent that smells like a rich fougère. Hey, when you've literally run out of material, just return to square one, and hope no one notices.

I did love the original Allure Homme, and thought it was a great college scent. Occasionally, I'll break it out of its little brown box, give it a sniff, maybe a day of my time, and I'll enjoy the hell out of it. But then, back it goes, to be worn at another undetermined time, probably just once, months from now, to reference the origin of my fragrance obsession. I sometimes wonder if I was happier back then, with one lonely fragrance in my closet, and no concern for what other people smelled on me. I wore what I liked, and I liked it even more because I wore it, and whatever you thought of it wasn't important. Never once did I look at the bottle and balk, or say, "not today." Allure was part of my daily ritual, and I felt a little undressed without it.

But many High Priests and Priestesses of fragrance writing frown on the entire Allure franchise, finding little worth in its various interpretations of the classic fresh fougère. Which begs the next (somewhat redundant) question: if you hate Chanel's cash cow, but love Chanel, then its stylistically classical offerings must be tremendous, right? These old-school compositions must be epic masterpieces of French perfumery, correct? Golden idols of the Grasse School, right? Anyone?

Chanel N°5 is beautiful. There's no denying it. But you better check your bottle, because it was probably made in the U.S.A. The entire Allure line is made in America, as are some of the Les Exclusifs. In fact, if you skim the history books, you'll learn that Coco had to move her factory to Hoboken, New Jersey, to avoid getting bombed during World War II (not to avoid the Nazis; Gabrielle was a sympathizer). The Chanels of the 1940s hearkened from the Garden State. And apparently, they still do.

That little fact doesn't detract from the fragrances, but it knocks the bloom off the romantic "Made In Paris" rose, a flower prized by many a fumehead. I can say with all honesty that every Chanel masculine is well-made, competent, pleasing. Yet they're all very staid, and play it safe without attempting any of the daring twists and turns of contemporaries like YSL and Dior. Chanel has no Kouros. Chanel has no Eau Sauvage. Chanel has Égoïste, which I'll be reviewing soon. For now, I'll say it's a pleasant oriental with a good lavender top, an even better sandalwood base, and elevator music for the slow ride in between. Antaeus is simply Kouros with man-boobs instead of pecs. Lots of clean precious woods, with hints of beeswax and leather, an over-fed gentlemen's club affair. Someone said lesbians used to wear it. Someone else said gay men wore it. I find these claims hard to believe, although there are certainly conservative homosexuals out there. Then there's Pour Monsieur, which is your standard mid-century citrus chypre, and your standard mid-century catnap.

Have the feminine perfumes fared better? Definitely. The original Coco was a spicy eighties big-hair oriental megaphone with a few extra amps topping off its stilettos. N°19 is un parfum pour les femmes sans cœur, a flinty, grey-green bitter pill for anyone who enjoys those Legally Blonde movies. Cristalle is the four a.m. blush of sparkling white wine cascading across cold leaves in a meadow, somewhere south of Newark. And we can all agree that most of the Les Exclusifs are stately, lovely, worthy of the utmost respect. I'll be reviewing a few of those in the future as well.

Which brings us to Coco Noir. Poor, misguided, disappointing Ms. Noir. I think people are starting to expect this, actually - another lame Chanel. Which is paradoxical, as Chanel's new perfumes are often described as "unworthy of Chanel." Perspective, people. Why, exactly, is a shitty, mainstream, department store fruity-floral unworthy of a brand that has peddled exclusively in shitty, mainstream, department store fruity-florals for the last twelve years? Was Chance some kind of masterpiece no one told me about? Was Coco Mademoiselle high art? As I recall, even N°19 Poudré was deemed sub-par by the usual suspects. And now I read on virtually every blog out there that Coco Noir is disappointing. Sub-par, unworthy of Chanel. It's worse than we all thought it would be. Why is it called Coco, when it bears no resemblance to its progenitor? The bottle looks cooler in the ads than in real life. The scent is friendly, but harsh. Undying. Scary, even.

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Look, something has to change. Noir hasn't been out for five minutes, and already it wears the world's shit on its blouse. It should go one of two ways: either the blogosphere needs to stop worshipping Chanel, and accept the brand as mere mortals with business suits and bad ideas. Or it needs to start liking Chanel's new releases on their own merits, within the context of the house's recent lineage of postmodern perfume. You can baaa, and crow, and booo, and mooo at an odd note here or there, but maybe it's time to stop saying things like, "this puts the Coco namesake to shame." If you don't like Coco Noir, you're probably too old for it. Let teenagers enjoy it, because they're the ones Chanel is marketing it to. You can just wear the original Coco. As far as I know, Chanel still makes it. If you love it that much, you shouldn't need anything else, right? Stop thinking every new Chanel is made for middle-aged women, put yourself in a teenage-girl mindset while sniffing, and maybe, just maybe you'll actually appreciate what you're smelling on the paper strip. I apologize to you female perfume bloggers in your late thirties and forties, but I think it's time to accept that Chanel isn't catering to your style anymore. It's catering to younger women, because they're the future of perfume buyers. They decide what smells good, and what doesn't. You do not. You are a waning dusk, the overripe plums of a crescent moon, your long histories of perfume buying, and the cultivation of your tastes behind you. You've already chosen the great smells of your generation - now wear them, and if Chanel caters to you in future days, consider it an homage. Chanel's legacy is with high school girls, college freshmen, career-minded twenty-somethings in pencil skirts, whose sensibilities shine like the golden apples of the sun.

Jōvan Black Musk for Men (Coty)

The word "nondescript" comes to mind. I know a couple of my regular readers shudder at the sight of this cologne, but if you asked me what it smells like, I'd have to say it's nondescript, to the fullest extent of the word. It's as forgettable as a Chinese arithmetic problem, sans the thrill of a real challenge. To smell like something, anything, wear anything else. Jōvan Black Musk is not for fragrance connoisseurs.

Who is it for? Simple answer: people who like how it smells. And it is a smell, more than a fragrance, a light, linear, one-note olfactory blurb, a sniff equivalent of something Justin Bieber might say. It's truly that bad - devoid of meaning, with no redeeming accents or inflections - something the likes of which no man should ever have to see on his side of the fragrance aisle. The bottle is dull, cheap-looking, although hefty glass, and one gets points for choosing glass over plastic. The juice? Flat, greyish-purple in color, silvery cool on contact, the languid smell of fruity suede, touched by a standard white musk. It's like one of those hologram stickers - shiny on one side, dull on the other. Sometimes it smells cool, fresh, luxurious. Other times a grapey blobby thing wrecks the romance, dragging the little pretties out by their bottle-bleached locks, leaving smears of cheap chemicals and a perfume-shaped hole in the heart. Jōvan Black Musk is a vile disaster, the worst of the worst, ill-conceived in every conceivable way, and it probably doubles as nail-polish remover for goth boys. Jōvan Black Musk is a rancid crime against all of humanity, plus a few other species, too. And I absolutely love it.

L'Homme (Yves Saint Laurent)

The nineties were long gone by L'Homme's release date, yet this scent takes me on a trip down memory lane, as though its fragrance molecules can bend light and reflect past events. My surprise at learning it hails from 2006 was the first and last time L'Homme did the unexpected - it all went downhill after that. Let my criticism be attenuated by the more favorable things to say about it, because truth be told, this isn't a bad offering from YSL. In fact, it's quite nice. But is it worthy of regular wear in the adult world? Perhaps, if you're someone who dislikes fragrance, L'Homme fits your lifestyle perfectly. There's nothing about its simple citrus/ginger/violet leaf/woods structure to suggest an affinity for sophisticated perfumery. Wear this, and smell boring, safe, professional, inoffensive, forgettable, you get the message.

To my amateur, untrained nose, L'Homme smells remarkably similar to the original Allure Homme by Chanel, although some notes are starkly different. YSL's scent feels dodgier, more "metrosexual," prissy, ambiguous. L'Homme's synthetic dry-citrus opening has the requisite department store shimmer we've all come to expect from things in this price range. It smells good, but not like real fruit, and quickly loses its luster. The ginger note is spicy-sweet, and lends a cool edge to the piquant proceedings of violet leaf and cedar. After two hours everything has fuzzed into a sweet, gauzy, Chanel-like musky amber, and I half expect to switch the radio on and hear the Spice Girls, or turn to the news and see Clinton giving a speech in the Rose Garden. It's my high school days, all over again.

Is it wrong for major designer labels to release unimaginative fragrances? No, especially when you consider the profit being made. People who aren't interested in perfume should still have something decent to wear to work, and they seek out stuff like this. I'll submit to the audience that it's far better for a middle-class American male to don something without frills, like Caron for Men, than something without soul, like L'Homme. YSL's product might say, "I'm reliable ladies," but with Caron you're classically male: a man who loves women who love men. It's unfair, even morally suspect, but I'd hire that guy; with L'Homme, I'd question his resume.

Why Avoiding Top Notes Never Works Out

I recently read this blog post, and realized some of it was about me! How interesting! My post about wardrobe size was referenced, and my post about reformulations. If you haven't read this guy's blog before, I encourage you to give it a look. You'll be entertained in two ways - first, to read about perfume, and second, to read about it from a person who mentions in almost every single one of his Fragrantica and Basenote reviews that he "avoids top notes." He also has a tendency to compare everything to Montana Parfum d'Homme (something he's mysteriously ceased doing since this article was posted). Yet he glibly writes about me here:

"[He] unfortunately has not developed his “nose” to a sufficient degree to make most of his claims relevant to me."

That's perspective, coming from a guy whose nose has had years of sniffing scents thoroughly, from their top notes down to their base notes, without editing any notes out in the process. Oh, wait, my bad - that's not what he does at all. Sorry.

This is a guy who considers aldehydes "nasty," writes that Tsar pales as a fougère against Lomani Pour Homme and - you guessed it - Montana Parfum d'Homme, claims there's a dirty suntan-lotion jasmine in Green Water by Jacques Fath (perhaps confusing it with Bvlgari Aqva?), feels Pour un Homme de Caron is "synthetic smelling, simple, and crude," while comparing its lavender to the smell of "burnt plastic," feels Eau Sauvage is "overloaded with Hedione" (there is but the smallest dose) but prefers how Hedione is treated in Acqua di Gio, which is literally 25% Hedione, and generally comes across as a know-it-all, while constantly professing to a practice wherein his nose knows less. I guess that's cause for confusion on his part; this gentleman posts on his blog in comparing Green Irish Tweed and Cool Water, "I agree that GIT gets things just right . . . I see little similarity to Cool Water," yet on Fragrantica, in his review of GIT, writes, "I tried this years ago, as a newbie, and didn't like the top notes, which overwhelmed me. Now I can tolerate them, though they are not my favorite accord. Beyond that, it is quite similar to Cool Water." Kind of hard to tell exactly what this guy thinks of things, with reviews and opinions written in this manner (this contradiction has been, since my posting about it, "updated" by its author in an amusing attempt at damage control).

The remarks about me were made because I wouldn't publish some rude comments he made earlier in the summer regarding which "version" of this scent I was reviewing.

Eternity Aqua For Men (Calvin Klein)

Calvin Klein is an interesting brand. Their fragrance concepts are usually ambitious, and sometimes they hire superstar noses to formulate their juice. They've made one of the nicest modern orientals around - Obsession for Men. Their latest successes include CK One Shock for Him/Her. This company is still in the game.

What irritates me a little about CK is that I'm fully aware of their potential for greatness, yet always let down by their offerings, not because they're intrinsically weak, but because they're usually appropriate for the teenage set only. Teenage readers, take note: if you're having trouble finding a well-made everyday fragrance that doesn't condescend, take a good look at the CK range. You'll be spoiled for choice. For you ambitious business-types, the guy who works at a McDonalds, but dreams of owning a Zagat-favored steakhouse, I present to you Eternity Aqua.

Aqua has all the usual bells and whistles of a postmodern aquatic. There's a juicy citrus accord on top, made cold by a pleasant cucumber note, which smells a touch better than expected. Lavender appears as the fruit burns off, and within five minutes segues to an strange aromatic wood note (guaiac wood?), accented by piquant Sichuan spices, which I suppose are meant to lend contrast to that cool beginning. What it accomplishes is no mean trick; Aqua's banal Calone promises yield an aqueous oriental effect, which kinda-sorta works. The pepper smells clean and mature, and truth be told, is very appealing. You know what boys? I take it back - you can have regular Eternity, and I'll wear this.

Dark Rose (Czech & Speake)

Quality of natural raw materials. Quality of patented synthetics. Quality of note separation. Of composition, legibility, the divisibility of accords, the breadth of chemical evolution, its arch across time. Quality of synchronicity. The beauty of the inhale; the thrill of the exhale. The scent memory left behind.

These are all things a connoisseur factors into the experience of smelling a reputable niche perfume. It's different from smelling designer fragrances. With ubiquitous offerings, my standards are broader. I want to know if what I'm smelling is good, or bad, with Kouros, Cool Water, and Old Spice as comparisons. If it smells like it could keep company with any of those, then it has a shot with me. I don't go to tiresome lengths dissecting each accord, separating each note, ferreting out chemical synchs over seven-hour time frames. I just stay cynical about the top notes, and suspicious of the base, and if the top pleasantly surprises me, and the base doesn't kill the buzz, I have a good scent.

Niche, on the other hand, gets micromanaged. Especially the better niche perfumes, things from Malle, Creed, C&S. I expect a lot of things from those brands. C&S frags rarely disappoint me, so I'm always nervous when I first try one. Dark Rose was one of those moments - I knew their Rose was good, and I had heard good things about No.88, but really wasn't sure about Dark Rose. It seemed like it would be a love-it or hate-it scent. And it also seemed like something I wouldn't want to wear, even if I liked it. And I wanted to like it, and wear it. So I dragged my heels before trying this well-known rose/oud perfume.

I shouldn't have been worried. Dark Rose is enchanting. The top is a brassy incense accord, so rich and balsamic that I'm overcome with emotion just sniffing it. It's one of those, "Oh, Dark Rose, I want to live in your bottle" moments. I could definitely feel the quality in that intro, which was likely made of very high-grade synthetics with a generous sprinkling of naturals. It's persistent, but also shimmers, like fireworks that refuse to twinkle out. It's also long-winded, as I get around ten minutes out of that top structure. Very, very nice.

Then, enter the rose. It's a velvety, deep, brilliant red, full of rubbery nectars. Flanking it is a silvery medicinal note, which at first resembles dew on petals, but rapidly reveals its darker earthiness: the dry specter of oud. These two notes form a rich, intertwined accord, with the delicacy of wine petals swirling against hi-gloss onyx. It's feminine, but then it turns, and I'm struck by how unisex it feels. It's gorgeous, simple, and direct, but so utterly beautiful that I'm at a loss for words, especially as its amber drydown, glistening with animalic sweat, closes the show. Dark Rose does fade out completely on skin within a day - at least it did on my skin, leaving no perceptible trace after nine hours. As Marilyn Monroe once said, "A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left."

Wise girl.

This Conversation Is Important

Do you love perfume? Do you feel perfume is a part of who you are, an essential cog in your machine? Is it the second thing you think about when you wake up, after wondering where the cat that shit in your mouth went? If your answer to these three questions is "yes", then contemplating the definition of perfume should be just as important to you, because this philosophical quandary lends a face to your undefined love. It's an important consideration. If you tell me, "the debate about whether or not perfumery is art is boring, beside the point, unimportant," then you are not thinking it through. You're not as enthusiastic as you say you are. I'm wagging my finger self-righteously at you as you nod off to sleep.

There needs to be, in every good perfume blog, some mention of this topic, because otherwise things become awfully blurry. You can go from loving rock music, to suddenly doubting its importance as Nancy Wilson glibly alludes on VH1 that her line of work changed the universe. There's only so much self-adulation and romanticism one can take before a hankering for parameters sets in, and a desire for definition and solid lines overcomes blind trust.

Dear reader, please don't dismiss the "Is Perfumery Art?" debate as boring and semantic. I know it can be a drag, but the truth is that perfumery is becoming more visible in the postmodern world, and ever more popular with the masses. One could argue that we are living in high times for perfumers, a sort of Renaissance. We take it for granted, but lack sobering context by being too close to the subject matter. Just ten years ago, only a quiet circle of internet friends talked about perfume. Basenotes was a glimmer in Grant's eye. Fragrantica didn't exist. Creed had zero visibility. Chanel was still considered the Jersey Girl. Guerlain was confined to Western Europe, chiefly France. There was little debate, because there weren't many voices in the auditorium. Now, the opposite is true; people from around the world are interested, voicing their opinions, penning blogs, books, internet code for new forums and web sites.

Things have changed.

What is perfume? We should want that question answered, because we care now. We claim to, anyway. We should know what we're talking about, if we're to have any credibility in the long term, or people will lose interest in our words. These Renaissances always end, and never well. Why subject perfume's Renaissance to the same fate? With a different approach, this olfactory mode of stylistic expression can transcend all prior bastions of culture, and endure into another ten years. The fire does not have to burn out. I've already seen several thunderous voices die down to nothing because their conception of perfume as art led to constant disappointment. But if we're going to keep this love alive, we should start getting serious about giving it a name, so that it has something to go by when we call out for it. I like "design" myself. But you may prefer "art." The question then becomes, why? Reference yourself, your experience, your understanding, your possessions. Tackle the question. Enter the fray. This is one headache worth having.

Contradiction For All

Every once in a blue moon I'll post what I read as a glaring contradiction in Perfumes: The Guide, in the hopes that one of my readers will enlighten me and clarify what I'm probably misreading and misinterpreting. Until that clarification comes, I can only assume it's a hypocrisy. I'm doing this because I bore easily.

Today's glaring contradiction is pretty easy to spot. It concerns Luca Turin's concisely-written reviews for United Colors of Benetton Woman (p. 346) and Guerlain's Vetiver Extreme (p. 353).

For the Benetton scent, Turin writes,

"[A] cross between furniture spray polish and beach tanning oil. I happen to like both, and find their surprisingly successful combination in this fragrance very pleasant."

For the Guerlain:

" . . .A dismally dry sports-fragrance accord that has no business being there . . . a hopelessly cheap, sweet English Leather drydown that would be ideal in furniture polish. Awful."

In other words, for Benetton Woman, furniture polish smells good. But for Vetiver Extreme, furniture polish smells awful. Right . . . or am I crazy?

I Love These Guys

Many of you probably already know about The Fragrance Bros, but in case you missed them, they're my favorite Youtube video perfume-review duo. Who says video reviews are boring? These guys crack me up!

Unforgivable (M.A.C.)

My distaste for Puff Daddy ("P-Diddy, Sean 'Puffy' Combes, Sean John) was crafted at the dawning of his miserable career, back in the early '90s when he launched the careers of several well-known rappers, most of whom are now deceased. When he launched his own music career with 1997's No Way Out, he leeched fame off of other musicians' successes. His two biggest singles, I'll Be Missing You, and Come With Me would never have been recorded were it not for The Police and Jimmy Page. Puffy's songs generously "sampled" Every Breath You Take and Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, relying so heavily on both tracks that I severely doubted the man had an original bone in his body. When Puffy stepped into the world of fine fragrance more than a decade later, he continued to stoke those doubts by blatantly cloning Millésime Impérial.

Unforgivable smells nearly identical to Millésime Impérial, with a somewhat "greyer" citrus accord, and a thicker watermelon note clumsily welded to synthetic ozone and amber. I'm not surprised by this, because Puffy has made no secret of his love for Creed, and apparently wears Original Santal regularly. Unforgivable's strength and tenacity is admirable, as I get a good six hours out of it - twice as long as the Creed. Does it smell good? Actually yes, as its inspiration is a pleasant citrus-floral aquatic with a lovely overall demeanor. This scent is scratchier in execution, and lacks a true ambergris base, but is still a good copy. Adults with a nose for fragrance will easily smell the difference between this and MI, but if you're a college kid with little cash to spare, you're in luck: Susie in the dorm downstairs won't notice you're an aspirational klutz. It goes to show, if you're going to plagiarize, you might as well do it to the best of the best; good artists borrow, but great artists steal.

Acqua 330 (Emilio Pucci)

Acqua 330 came in a set of Pucci samplers that my ex-girlfriend had sitting among several million other forgotten things. She had a prodigious collection of junk, mostly leftover items from a life long gone. It was a little sad, for the two of us were surrounded by her material, haplessly misguided attempts to cling to her youth, in the lonely aftermath of her parents dying young and leaving her with their house. Picture an acre of land, eight-tenths of which was grass, and a temporarily unemployed man cutting it with a small push mower in 90° heat, until the abused machine literally shakes apart on him. Then picture a perpetually annoyed 31 year-old woman returning home from work, passing the newly-mown yard without noticing it, and stepping into the two-tenths of her acre that isn't overgrown scrub with a freshly-minted rant about her co-workers prepared and ready to go. This was our dynamic for six months.

Throw into that unhappy little equation an unhappy little aquatic by the Italian fashion brand of Emilio Pucci, and you really have Paradise Lost. Ostensibly a modern floral in the aquatic style, Acqua 330 should, by all rights, smell nice. After all, Tommy Girl works pretty well. Why shouldn't this have equal success with the same basic formula (floral aroma chemicals, plus Calone, and a dash of white musk)? It's hard to say, and I'll concede that it isn't the worst thing I've ever smelled, but it's hard to like. 330 opens with a confident burst of marine notes, very salty, briny, fresh. It's a synthetic accord that seems to be a clever mixture of old and new Calone variants, which produce an off-key Atlantic-aquatic vibe. This hums along nicely, and I mentally compare 330 with the smell of the salty crust that forms on my skin whenever I get splashed by sea water.

Then the fragrance gets ambitious, and things take a turn for the worse. Jasmine makes an appearance, smelling very sweet and synthetic, followed by a soapy musk that threatens my senses with its overbearing strength. They egregiously mis-calibrated that musk. Eventually the synthetics become the only perceptible element, forming an unpleasant soap-lye drydown of no particular interest. This astoundingly disappointing ending is compounded by the realization that everything else about the fragrance is interesting, from its beautiful bottle, to its uncharacteristically corporate title. If only they'd focused on jasmine's indoles, instead of its freshness, Acqua 330 might have been worth the trouble. Bvlgari Aqva is a good example to follow. In the meantime, Acqua 330 is perfect for bitchy thirty-somethings who treat the important people in their lives like numbers, and amass incomprehensible piles of crap in inherited houses they can't afford. Thanks for filling that niche, Emilio!

Aqua Velva's Reformulation Is . . .

Most shave-conscious men over thirty are aware that Combe Inc. reformulated Aqua Velva a few years ago and transferred it from glass to plastic. I remember the gnashing of teeth on Badger & Blade like it was yesterday. Die-hard fans were outraged. They cited Old Spice as an example of what happens when giant corporations cut costs and cheap out on formulas. Of course, the problem with their example is that Old Spice hasn't been hurt by the change at all. The Guide made a note of its former transience; Old Spice isn't just top notes anymore.

Aqua Velva "Classic" Ice Blue used to be a disappointing fragrance for me. Before I get into that, I'd like to say this: conceptually, Aqua Velva is brilliant. You have to remember that this aftershave hit the market in 1935, long before chemists had powerful synthetics at their disposal. But there were some useful man-made tools in their arsenal, and they were utilized well here. Ice Blue, though icy in name and color, was originally a minty-herbal-leathery chypre. But "minty-herbal" doesn't sound as refreshing as "Ice Blue", and a stroke of advertising genius positioned the fragrance as just the thing to cool razor-ravaged mancheeks. AV made menthol a starring note, and in this regard it was commercially peerless. It shared its territory with nothing else. This is remarkable, given the number of classic masculine chypres that followed. Aramis, Monsieur Lanvin, and Signoricci are the only ones that come close, but they showed up to the party thirty years later. Before 1964, Ice Blue was a loner.

I've only ever known Ice Blue from the early '90s onward. Between 1990 and 2009, not much about Ice Blue had changed. It underwent some minor tweaks as the years went by, changing corporate hands, gradually getting tweaked down and cheapened, but they kept it in a solid glass bottle. I think the suits behind Aqua Velva thought the glass bottle was a license to keep the fragrance formula somewhat complex, as though walls of crystallized sand could make the cheapest aroma chemicals smell like a successful balance of mint leaves, petit grain, lavender, moss, amber, and leather. Wrong. It smelled fine for about two minutes, very minty, green, fresh. And then the supposed "leather note" showed up, and ruined everything. It smelled dark, off-balance, wrong. It was a cheap element in a cheap formula for a cheap aftershave. It didn't work at all.

Fast-forward a few years. Some bigshot over at Combe says to himself, "We can make more money without glass. Fuck it, let's do one more tweak, pare this thing down for plastic, and call it a day." The chemists (probably donning their white lab coats in China) get busy, for all of two hours. They sit down at a table with a sample of the old formula for Ice Blue, give it a sniff, and wrinkle their noses. Americans use this shit? Whatever. They basically sit around idly for thirty minutes, trying to figure out how they can possibly take an already cheap-as-shit formula and make it passable for seasoned customers. Finally, one of them lights up. "Let's take this nasty brownish note out," he exclaims excitedly. The others furrow their brows, "like, really? that's all you wanna do?" And Mr. Bright Guy nods enthusiastically, "yeah, let's ditch the old-shoe note, and just leave in the minty-green crap. In fact, we'll turn the mint up a notch, to compensate."

Another hour goes by, they fax the new formula back Stateside, and go to lunch. Thanks to their little lazy-genius streak, I'm a happier person. Aqua Velva's reformulation is great! There's absolutely no plastic after-smell. It's minty, freezing cold on skin, and for the first time in its history, smells like a smooth block of ice. Now, if only they'd release the Sport version in a bigger bottle . . .

Molto Smalto (Francesco Smalto)

Although it was the mighty Green Irish Tweed which set the stage for the chaos that ensued in the world of masculine fragrance, Drakkar Noir launched the fashion campaign for GIT. Its bitter, lavender-fueled aromatics presaged the dihydromyrcenol-mosses of Creed and Davidoff. In its day, Drakkar was considered a leathery fougère, but I always suspected people had it pigeonholed wrong; there is a distinctly calone-like, men's-aftershavey freshness edging it, which makes sense, given its classification.

The interesting thing about this timeline is how the dense, chewy aromatics of fougères like Drakkar and Lomani Pour Homme gave way to the airier compositions of GIT and Cool Water, only to be followed by markedly denser fragrances like Eternity for Men, Horizon, and Molto Smalto. Despite the template for a New World Order being set, good chemists stubbornly held onto nose-stinging pyramids, until the last yuppie gave up and joined the '90s. Francesco Smalto's 1993 release was one of the holdouts.

Sniffing Molto Smalto is an exercise in nostalgia, one likely to conjure memories of high school for today's dad. Its opaque bottle is made of clunky black glass, and only hints at the complexity of its contents. Softer in nature than either Drakkar or Horizon, Molto follows their lead with a transparent burst of lavender, dry citrus, coriander, sage, and geranium. It's a civet-less Kouros, with re-calibrated lavender. Rapidly the citrus burns off, the lavender becomes dry and gummy in a "fresh" way, and a familiar bouquet of clipped florals, pungent herbs, and precious woods makes an appearance. Underpinning everything is a massive woody amber and musk.

These '80s-styled aromatic wetshaver fougères are never a bad choice for men, and always impart that hairy-chested manliness so many yearn to embody, but I think it's high time the ladies gave them a go. I'd advise against them wearing Drakkar Noir or Lomani, but it would be refreshing to smell GIT, the original Smalto, Cool Water, Eternity for Men, Horizon, and Molto Smalto on a thirty-something female in 2012. There's nothing wrong with a gal in dried flowers and herbs - if it wasn't intended to make men celibate, dihydromyrcenol was meant to be the great equalizer in postmodern perfumery.

Marc Jacobs Men

There are some fragrances out there that make me question my sanity. They're widely loved, enjoyed by men and women alike, boast interesting notes lists, and hearken from reputable houses. Yet when I smell them, I get nothing of interest. They're usually not bad per say, but they don't smell very good, either. Marc Jacobs Men is one such fragrance.

People say they smell green notes, vanilla, coconut, gardenia, fig, even cedar and moss. What do I smell? Nondescript sweetness, poorly-rendered citrus fruit, some vague "green" aroma chemical, and lots of gauzy powder. Everything is dense; everything is very loud. Each element is its own blob of color - yellow, lime green, beige, white. It's a comic book in scent: all melodramatic flourish, zero intellectual content. And people wear this all day? I'm lost.

I'm tempted to say MJM is a disaster, but that implies it works for no one, which isn't true. It's a well-liked scent. I don't hate it, but I'm not feeling any love. There are $9 fragrances at Walgreens that smell much better than this. Perhaps one day I'll meet a lipstick lesbian who makes this bottled charlatan smell like Chanel N°18. C'est la vie.

Why Smaller Is Better

Not for me.

Leaving the whole "there are kids starving in Somalia" argument aside, I have a few big reasons why I'm loathe to spend hundreds of dollars on fragrance. It may come as a surprise to some of you that my current collection contains 16 perfumes. I own 4 aftershaves. There is less than two ounces left to my 27 oz. bottle of 4711. My GIT is all used up. I have three bottles of Grey Flannel, one with only .5 ounces left. Kouros, Eau Sauvage, and Orange Spice are my three "excellent" picks. It's not exactly a scent bonanza at my house.

Why so few? Once upon a time I had 26 perfumes. Most of you probably consider that a meager number, and it was the most I ever owned. With 26, I found myself using less than half my collection on a regular basis - pretty much the same four fragrances - and the rest sat there collecting dust. A solid 25% of my wardrobe went untouched, as in I never even looked at the bottles, and when I did rearrange the rotation, would hesitate to include certain scents. I owned things that I liked, but didn't want to wear. Which begged the question, why own them at all? Eventually these scents were given away, some tossed out. Some were sold.

My entire perfume collection.
I'm happy with 16 (soon to be 15) fragrances because I'm much more likely to wear each one at some point during the year, and this quantity is manageable for me. But I'd prefer to own ever fewer. Having spent five years exploring fragrance, spending tons of hard-earned money to own and wear good examples of fine perfumery, the day has come where I'd like to settle on a wardrobe of three or four that will hold me for the rest of my life. I believe in staying true to a handful of scents, in order to maintain an identifiable style. To me, perfume-wearing is a function of style, nothing more, and good personal style demands consistency.

My thoughts on those with 200+ perfumes in their wardrobes? More power to you. I'm glad you're comfortable owning hundreds of bottles. What I don't understand though, and probably never will, is how you can function with that many fragrances. How can you even give each one its due? One hundred is an unimaginable number for me. To touch on them all, a guy would have to wear a different scent every day, coming back to them a mere two more times before year's end - with some scents getting a fourth day. So that's what? Maybe ten spritzes a year? It would take a lifetime to get through that collection, and a long one at that.

My other qualm about large collections is that they invite more entries. When you open your closet doors to a sea of fragrances, what's another ten, twenty, fifty bottles? Before you know it, you've lost count. Eventually someone does a headcount and informs you that you're obsessed, with 500 scents, and more coming. Someone should submit your name to the DSM. You could be a case study in perfume hoarding. Calvin Klein could use you as their new spokesmodel. Without ground rules for collecting, everything is fair game. That's a disorienting concept for me. I need some order in my life.

My ground rules are fairly simple: I must always have Grey Flannel in stock; I must always have Kouros in stock; I must always have one bottle of Creed in stock; I must have at least one good drugstore fragrance in stock; I must have, at the core of my collection, four fragrances representative of each of the four seasons, for a quarterly rotation; I must have one fresh fougère; I must have one traditional fougère; I must have one extra "green" fragrance. That's it. Within those parameters, I operate freely. Without rules, I feel shackled to the gravitational pull of chaos. Perhaps one day I'll really scale it down to just three scents, and I'll finally feel like I own the world.

Pleasures (Estée Lauder)

If you have an opportunity to visit Japan, as I do, consider your fragrance choice carefully, and only pack one. The Japanese aren't keen on scents that act like anything more than an extension of soap. Loud fragrances are taken as insults, and should be avoided at all costs. If given a choice between an eau de cologne and an EDT, go with the cologne. It'll pay off because Japanese people like fragrance, but only when tuned to very low volumes.

I'll be bringing Eau Sauvage with me to Osaka in December, which is cheating a little because technically it's an EDT, but of course it's a light variant on the cologne theme, so it'll work fine. Another possibility is Pleasures by Estée Lauder, which is an essay on soapy "clean" aldehydes and floral notes. Pleasures is also an EDT, but again it resembles a cologne. Its bright, fresh, snowy character is anything but offensive, and delicate enough to pass muster at a crowded sushi bar. I think it's a good scent, but this sort of nineties translucent-floral style never seems complete to me. It tends to smell like something very important got left out. In most cases I'm not sure what that "something" is, but in this case, I am.

Pleasures is basically Intuition without the warmth. It is decidedly "cleaner" in feel than Intuition, completely unisex, and boasts a limited but garrulous array of green florals, including honeysuckle, geranium, freesia, and tuberose. The tuberose is dialed back to the extreme, lending the construct just a touch of earthiness. The geranium, on the other hand, stands in for violet leaf and/or iris in cooling down the composition. I think they would've been better off using either of the other two ingredients instead; Pleasures smells a little too fresh and clean and lacks any real definition in its greenery. The whole thing dries down to a slightly-sour musk. It's okay, but I'd go with Intuition instead - even though it's a touch louder, it's still quiet enough, and has a certain je ne sais quoi that puts it in another league of soapy Lauder perfumes altogether.

What Cool Water Represents For All of Us

I had an opportunity to sit down and read this amazing blog post, on what is arguably the most unique perfume blog in today's blogosphere. It raises many interesting questions, and posits some compelling answers about what it means to critique perfume, and to regard perfumery as an art. I highly recommend giving it a look.

Perhaps the most important part of the article for me was the excerpt which quoted Christos of Memory of Scent. His words are valuable because they are true: Where is the theory behind perfumery to make it a real art? This question is seldom asked, because the words resound emptily through space, like radio signals to the moon. No one pipes up to answer, because there is no theory behind perfumery. No artistic theory, that is. There are thousands of personal theories about perfumery's importance, its impact on society, its artistic pedigree. Most are posited by non-artists, non-perfumers, and are trite declarations with no philosophical grounding beyond "People don't understand this topic, and therefore dismiss perfumery unfairly." With that statement alone, I believe all perfume bloggers will agree; perfumery is not discussed widely enough, and is therefore misunderstood by the masses. There is more to perfume than meets the nose.

But that can be said of our sense of smell in general. The other night my brother and his friend met me at my parent's house for dinner. We sat around talking about all sorts of things, and eventually came around to the topic of smell. I decided to challenge their assumptions about what smelled "good" and what smelled "bad." I asked them if they thought the combination of cut grass and vanilla would smell good. They balked, and unanimously declared it wouldn't. I countered that it did, in fact, smell very good. Sharp green notes intermingled with cool vanillic tones is a delicious combination.

I then asked if they thought lavender could possibly smell like Play-Doh. Again, they recoiled. "I'd like to hear this one," my brother said. Our mother shared his curiosity. I explained that there were two different grades of lavender, with one smelling minty and herbal, and the other smelling cool, a little fuzzy, and altogether caramelic. The second kind is used to great effect in Caron's Pour un Homme, which my family and friends have mentioned more than once smells remarkably like Play-Doh. This cuts to remarking on how lavender can be an alluring, comfortable, sexually-attractive fragrance, for women and men. This isn't just the stuff you put on the bottom of old musty dresser drawers.

The last challenge came when I asked if they thought the smell of feces could possibly be rendered in an attractive way. This was an unfair question - in truth, feces cannot be manipulated to smell like anything but shit. Indoles, however, can be manipulated constructively, and they are part of what makes shit smell so disgusting. I tempered my question by describing civet, explaining that in the old days, French perfumers would actually taste the anal secretion of the civet cat, in an effort to determine its usability in perfume. This thoroughly disgusted them. I mentioned that it is an active ingredient, now synthetic, in best-selling perfumes, including Chanel N°5. This cemented their already pre-formed opinion that I am crazy.

It also cemented my suspicion that those who aren't fascinated by their sense of smell make assumptions about what things smell like, without actually testing those assumptions out. Toward the end of the evening, I threw one more query out there, asking if anyone thought a rose extract - i.e., anything distilled from roses - would smell like sweet flowers. At this point they were on to me, and someone said, "let me guess: the answer is 'no.'" I said they would be correct, although again, that is subjective: if you like the smell of dirty rubber, you may find unrefined rose absolute appealing. By this time, food items were being thrown at me.

My point in mentioning all of this is that people barely understand how perfumery works, yet everyone tries, wears, buys, or avoids perfume. There must be a unifying theme to our understanding of scent, its associations, its advantages, and its drawbacks. It is 2012, and in this year, after many decades of experimentation, there must be one example of modern perfumery that we all associate with. Without a doubt, that perfume is Cool Water by Davidoff.

Green Irish Tweed should hold the title of "most recognized postmodern perfume," but unfortunately takes a backseat to commercialism, as Davidoff has much higher visibility in the market place. Cool Water, having sold billions of units, stands alone as an example of who, what, when, where, why, and how perfume is the way it is today. If Cool Water had never been created, most of what was released from 1990 to the present would not exist. One can speculate that women would still be wearing leathery chypres like Fendi Donna, and men would still be wearing piney fougères like Drakkar Noir. When today's high school girls wrinkle their noses in disgust, they're reacting to Drakkar Noir. When they snuggle their noses into their boyfriends' necks at the movies, they're doing it because he's wearing some "Eau Fraiche" thing, a direct descendant of a sapphire-blue bottle with scripted white text. In fact, these girls are wearing the same perfume as their boyfriends, provided their tastes trend toward "fresh" and not "candy-floss."

This anchors the discussion of what our frame of reference is for contemporary perfumery (it ain't Chanel N°5 anymore). Ironically, it also brings to light a striking truth: perfume-blogging "perfumistas," those denizens of the White Mountain of Insider Knowledge who make no bones about their Jasmine Awards and contacts "in the industry," have no time for Cool Water. This fragrance, they feel, has nothing left in it for discussion purposes. No un-turned stones remain. Redundancy is pointless - why talk about the same-old, same-old? Let's talk about orientals. Let's discuss those Gurlain Desert perfumes, as they are far more interesting.

Point taken - Guerlain's latest niche releases are more interesting. However, there is an artistic standard to which they must be held, if they are to be considered works of art. People are eager to clamor to perfume's artistic merits, and hold up unique niche compositions as works of art, sometimes masterpieces. But there is an old adage in art schools around America: if you can't draw a hand, you can't draw at all. This is a fancy way of saying, if you can't draw what you see before you now, you will never be allowed to draw the unseen later. Many have tried. I have met dozens of wannabe artists who specialize in quirky abstraction, with bold lines and flowing colors, but struggle to accurately replicate the intricacies of the human form using nothing more than pencil and paper. Their artistic pedigree is firmly relegated to the "student" bin, a frustrating world where hapless untalented romantics congregate, to no cultural end.

The "student" community of artists sometimes yields a breakthrough talent, like Cecily Brown, a creative mind with a wandering style who parlayed her aesthetic idiosyncrasies into a lucrative career. Although she is British, Brown is extremely popular in New York; America loves an underdog. But the art world largely favors those who take their basic skills and build on them, rather than those who rely on unusual aesthetics for controversial gain. Chris Ofili was a sensation in the early 1990s because he married elephant dung to an image of the Virgin Mary. Today, though still active and shown, Ofili is more a footnote than a heavyweight. Controversy has a shelf life, especially in the art world.

But perfumistas are disinterested in acknowledging the "draw-a-hand" rule because (a) they're not aware it exists, and (b) they're applying the label of art to perfume, which is a losing gambit. This is evidenced in the majority of perfume blogs out there today. See if you can find one that reviews Cool Water and Green Irish Tweed first, and then gets into how the two scents connect to Grey Flannel, Garrigue by Maître Parfumeur et Gantier, and Platinum Égoïste by Chanel. If we're talking art here, we're talking time lines. Yet the majority of blogs churn out articles on rare niche fragrances without offering context, because the context for these fragrances is considered too mundane to get into. After all, if we talk about Cool Water, we might come across as champions of the mundane. There's nothing sophisticated or impressive about that.

Perfumistas are also largely disinterested in writing about masculine perfumes, which is a glaring hypocrisy in the community. I can't tell you how many times I've read threads where niche lovers extol the virtues of androgyny in perfumery. They boast about how all fragrances are unisex, and only the hoi polloi segregate fragrance by gender. Yet the ratio of commercially-feminine fragrance reviews to commercially-masculine reviews is stunningly out of whack. One blogger recently said she doesn't write about masculine fragrances because they're "boring," and "don't get enough page views." Perhaps a man could see a blog loaded with feminine perfume reviews and say, with a click of the mouse, "next." That there are fewer men reading about the topic shouldn't be grounds to exclude that small readership from having their fragrances mentioned. Luca Turin is guilty of perpetuating this untruth: masculine fragrance is generic, boring, and thus is unfair to men. I take issue with that. I feel masculine perfumery is no more or less boring than feminine perfumery. If we're going to attempt to call perfumery an art, couldn't we at least get our attitudes about the gender lines straight? I'd like some female perfume bloggers (make that a LOT of female perfume bloggers) to write about some masculine perfumes, things they have worn, tested, and seriously thought about. Until the day comes where I run down my blogroll and read multiple entries like this, I will remain skeptical as to the sincerity of the collective sentiment that perfumery is an art. Art, after all, has no gender barriers. Art is, by definition, a universal mode of expression.

Some will argue that most current niche releases are unisex anyway. That may (or may not) be, but it doesn't negate the fact that there is a massive world of masculine perfumes, as defined by different eras, that have gone unmentioned. Where are the reviews of Sung Homme? Where are the articles about Francesco Smalto? What about post-war fresh fougères like Pino Silvestre and Acqua di Selva? I count one other blog that seriously delves into these topics. Ladies, what is your excuse?

This blog has a generous smattering of feminine fragrances in its review roster, with items from Prada, Fendi, Chanel, Ralph Lauren, and Penhaligon's included. I don't even consider perfumery an art, and I'm all-inclusive. I don't understand how so many others can staunchly defend their ideas without talking about some basic cornerstones of contemporary perfumery: things geared for men. It simply reveals another falsehood to the argument that this is a serious art form. Serious art critics don't leave stuff out because they find it boring.

In closing, I will say that the reason people contradict themselves so much on this subject is actually pretty surprising - everyone knows it already. If one were to say, "Perfume as an art form is currently predicated on the postmodern release of one fragrance: Cool Water," it would raise the ire of the Ivory Tower dwellers, and elicit a shrug from everyone else. If you say, "Cool Water," people know what you're talking about. You're talking about modern cologne (as most don't apply the word perfume to anything masculine). From there, you can turn bored shrugs into raised eyebrows by leading the conversation into more recent innovative perfumes.

If you say, "Guerlain Les Déserts d'Orient," however, no one knows what you're talking about, except the obsessed, and the Ivory Tower dwellers. The first population is painfully small; the second wants to keep it that way.

R.S.V.P. (Kenneth Cole)

Yesterday I went to Marshalls and found a 4 ounce bottle of Cool Water for $40, so I grabbed it. I wore it yesterday, and I'm wearing it again today. I'm always struck by how good Cool Water's composition is. Even though it's made with designer-grade synthetics, those elements are perfectly used. Cool Water is the Corvette of the fragrance world - inexpensive, flawlessly made, capable of sweating similar vehicles in higher classes without losing its center of gravity. That tantalizing combo of green apple, woody citrus, lavender, mint, cedar, jasmine, tobacco, and musk is brilliantly arranged, very legible, and timeless. Tobacco is essential to Cool Water's construct - without it, the whole thing would smell like Aspen, i.e., smooth, green, sweet, and flat. Nestled in its sweet base, the crisp green tobacco note lends Cool Water a darkness, a masculinity, that certain something every great beauty possesses but doesn't flaunt, akin to a borderline-ugly mole over a pretty woman's full lips. It's nature's nice finishing touch. Bourdon did a good job with Cool Water's.

It is important to stay true to a good formula if you want to imitate it. Frank Voelkl, who is responsible for several Le Labo scents, and the much-maligned Zirh Ikon, crafted R.S.V.P. for Kenneth Cole in the early 2000s; it saw its release in 2006. Some say this scent is based on Gucci's Envy for Men, but I don't really smell that. I'm getting something crossed between Calvin Klein's Eternity for Men, and Cool Water, with emphasis on the latter. Let's look at the similarities: R.S.V.P. opens with woody-citrus, lavender, red apple, cardamom, and pepper. Cool Water opens with woody-citrus, lavender, green apple, and mint. There isn't enough in Kenneth Cole's offering to distract me out of my Cool Water reverie.

The Eternity comparison comes into the picture later, as "Répondez S'il Vous Plaît" dries down. The lavender strengthens, the citrus notes sweeten, the cardamom fuses to the apple, creating a fuzzy wood accord, but it's too overbearingly blobby to discern separate wood notes. Hints of Cool Water still abound as the pepper ratchets up the spice factor, hinting at a darkness in the base that never fully manifests itself. This thing loses sight of its own plot-line long before it fades away, but just late enough in the game to fool me into thinking I liked it. My response: Screw you, Ken. I'm not another rookie who buys things based on top notes. But the wooden box is a nice touch.

Agua Lavanda Puig (Antonio Puig)

In the early 1940s, America was a strange country to live in. The majority of its male population was overseas, fighting on any one of several fronts in Europe and Asia. Left behind were women, children, and the elderly. Perfume releases were few and far beteween; men had no women to impress, and women had no men. Those who wore perfume were wearing it for nostalgia's sake, for love of husbands battling the enemy, or to celebrate their successful avoidance of conscription. Many Hollywood actors were given the generous option to enlist, and I imagine more than a few of them lived it up while their fellow countrymen got shot at. One of the many reasons I admire Jimmy Stewart is that he was willing to serve his country, when he could just as easily have kicked back at home and enjoyed his money. Fragrance was probably something he had no interest in at all.

Agua Lavanda Puig was released in 1940, which makes it a bit of a mystery. Who was it marketed to? Was it strictly a European release, worn by the war-torn men and women of Spain and France? Not likely, although I understand it is currently very popular in Spain. Was it imported into America for the Left-Behind generation? Perhaps, but I can't figure out exactly why. There were certainly some middle-aged men left in America, mostly successful businessmen in the upper middle class. I suppose they might have been given to wearing something like Puig's lavender water. The thing is, it doesn't smell like something any American male of the 1940s would wear. It is unremittingly Mediterranean. It is fresh, mossy, loaded with lavender, basil, and a beautiful woody lime note, which became much more popular in the 1960s. Agua Lavanda is, without exaggeration, the greenest example of early twentieth century perfumery, save for Coty's Chypre, Guerlain's Mitsouko, and Green Water by Jacques Fath. It does not get any greener, fresher, or southern European than Agua Lavanda Puig.

Puig's original formula has survived the decades and can still be had today at a whopping $20 a bottle. However, a word of caution: the fragrance comes in two different forms, one in a plastic shampoo bottle, the other in a seven ounce glass flask. Get the one in glass; the plastic version smells like a 33% concentration.

R de Capucci (Roberto Capucci)

Leather fragrances are an odd bunch because most of them don't smell anything like leather, at least not to me. English Leather comes the closest, but my over-sensitive nose has no problem dissecting EL's simple structure. There's really no such thing as a "leather note" and EL certainly doesn't have one. It uses a clever leather analog of dry lime, wood, and pine to create the olfactory illusion of treated hide. Quorum does the same, with grapefruit instead of lime. Luxury brands resort to sophisticated blends of birch-tar and floral notes to get there. Avon utilizes a blatantly synthetic suede note in its leather scents, which I suppose is somewhat accurate, but then again suede never smelled like leather to me, either. When I was a kid, I visited the gift shop of a Native American museum, and purchased a rabbit skin. It smelled amazing, and has been my standard for leather ever since.

R de Capucci is right up there with English Leather as coming closest to the leather illusion, without relying on synthetic nuances. Released in 1985, this classically composed chypre bears a resemblance to other chypres of its era, including Z-14, Fendi Donna, and Antaeus, but doesn't share their distinctiveness. RdC's characteristics extend from the bergamot-labdanum-oakmoss framework of older references like Coty Chypre and Mitsouko, with masculine flourishes of lemon, lavender, carnation, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, and the faintest touch of rose. I was fully aware of RdC's complexity prior to wearing it, but was a little disappointed by the result.

The freshness of lavender and citrus on top of R de Capucci has promise, but my chief complaint is that it doesn't hold. After five minutes, the bracing aromatics give way to sweet powder and sandalwood, with a hint of moistureless greenery on the periphery. Some say the powder is tempered by the greens; I find the plush heart too overpowering. Its dryness yields a smooth animal-skin effect, a commendable rendering of leather, but its density kills RdC's appeal. This is the definition of "perfumey" to me, albeit a pleasant scent. If I want stark lavender that slips into softness, I'll just use Pour un Homme de Caron. Its lavender is better rendered, and its vanilla-musk closing feels classy, not dated. Meanwhile, R de Capucci is very dated, but has appeal for being structurally faultless, obscure, and classically composed. I guess it's good for the office, but I think you run the risk of being labeled "cologne guy" by your coworkers.