I can just imagine the briefing process for Rive Gauche Pour Homme. There, in a corporate board room, sits Tom Ford, a few other corporate big shots, and Jacques Cavallier. The memo: "Assemble a fresh aromatic fougère in a retro-barbershop style, reminiscent of Barbasol shaving foam. Incorporate elements from every major player in this genre since 1970 - Paco Rabanne, Azzaro Pour Homme, Kouros, Drakkar Noir, Cool Water, but have the final product feel smooth and polished, a hologram of all-American post-shave ablutions seen through a new lens. And don't forget the tin." I wonder how many numbers there were on Ford's shortlist of desirable noses for this assignment, but can only think that Cavallier was on tap from the get-go (he did Opium PH, after all), with mere back-ups waiting in the wings in the unlikely event that he come up short. I feel RGPH has a message for its wearer. Something about it whispers "agenda scent," a perfume with a mission to recapture memories of past wet-shaving glories in an innovative way, which many men seem to think it accomplished. This is a widely-loved fougère, second only to Azzaro PH.
The beautiful thing about Rive Gauche PH is that it is fairly new; it turned ten this year. Wearing it is a lesson in postmodern compositional form, a design so streamlined and turtle-waxed, it takes the fun right out of note dissection while smelling it. I say this of few fragrances, but there's really no point in breaking things down here. Yes, it's an aromatic fougère, and yes, it contains all the usual suspects - bergamot, lavender, coumarin, musk, all pleasantly trimmed with heady rosemary and star anise notes, - but the only way to describe this fragrance is to ascribe color to it: Rive Gauche PH smells blue. And not just any blue - it is the ultimate olfactory expression of that deep, crisp, ambiguously violet-like blue invented by the artist Yves Klein, a shade appropriately named after him. From the outset, RGPH adopts a very dry, clean, austere tone, presenting a fresh haze of powdery morning air. It's truly sublime.
The not-so beautiful thing(s) about Rive Gauche is that it is (a) discontinued, and (b) derivative. The first issue is simply a matter of commercial folly, which could be rectified in the future if people put up enough of a fuss. The black and brown can has been replaced by a L'Oreal "La Collection" remix, which word of mouth says is not nearly as good as the original. Having noted L'Oreal's handling of Kouros, I have a few different emotions about their treatment of RGPH. In a way, I have doubts that it's all that bad, because Kouros is an easy formula to fuck up, and yet it still smells good. So how badly could they have treated Cavallier's formula? It's scarier than the Kouros situation because the fragrance has been dramatically repackaged and segregated into an exclusive line, exactly where it doesn't belong. But I'll suspend judgment until I try it. I'm happy with the old version, and happier to see it's still available online for cheap. I only paid $37 for my bottle.
The second issue is more complicated. While it smells fantastic, fresh, dry, a bit dark and dusty, there are disturbing moments in its opening and drydown where other aromatic fougères of yesteryear appear and then recede back into the fog. It's like catching glimpses of familiar faces in a dense crowd in Times Square on New Year's Eve, and having every effort to walk over to them hindered by that scenario. In the opening I catch sight of Drakkar Noir and Azzaro Pour Homme, after which there are a few moments of Rive Gauche, and then there's Azzaro and Cool Water, then a slate-grey coumarin accord (more RG again), and hey, Paco Rabanne, is that you? And was that Brut beside you? This happens on an endless loop, and it's both interesting and distracting. But the overall impression this EDT generates is one of cool, herbal freshness, lavender couched in the masculine tradition of soapy patchouli, woods, and musks. Despite all the obvious nods to its progenitors, it's original enough to stand on its own, and beautiful enough to overlook its referential nature. Familiarity, definitely does not breed contempt.