A'Oud Ancienne (Rogue Perfumery)

                                  Picture by Phương Huy

If I could sit down with Manuel Cross, the founder and "self-taught" perfumer of Rogue Perfumery, I'd want a conversation about what kind of perfume is "unwearable." He, and likely other perfumers of his ilk, would want to steer the topic towards the "where," and that satisfies one element, but I would fight for the "why?" Surely, in all things perfume, there must be a philosophical underpinning to every serious scent. I'm wondering why in the holy hell anyone would want to wear A'Oud Ancienne? What is the philosophy here? 

As with stuff like Pineward's Treacle and YSL's Kouros, I get it. Men enjoy animalic fragrances. I'm a man, and I like a good animalic chypre or fougère. But oud is something else entirely. It's a rotted wood, considered a "precious" wood for reasons that elude me, and bears heavy cultural implications in its common application, many of them spiritual in nature. Assam oud, like Chandan incense from the region in India, is ritually burned to cleanse the ethereal aura of a place. Its application in perfumery is widespread (and prized) throughout the Muslim world, and it's not uncommon to find various oud-based compositions in nearly every Muslim-majority Asian country. The most expensive perfume of the last ten years is Shumukh by The Spirit of Dubai, with an asking price of $1.2 million, and guess the first note? Oud. Much of this is for show, but there's another reality here. 

A kilo of oud (a kilo being roughly 2 lbs) only yields one milliliter of resinous oil extract, at a rough cost of $250, which makes just one ounce (30 ml) of pure oud resin potentially worth $7,500. This is why small bottles of Arabian oud attars are among the most expensive luxury items in the perfumery sphere. Quality attars are known for opening with brusque barnyard-like animalic essences, rife with notes of filthy hay, intense terpenes, a weirdly camphoraceous mint-like accord, and indolic florals. I've seen twelve milliliter bottles of Indian attars priced at around $15k. If you're a billionaire sheik staying at an ultra-luxury hotel in Dubai, and you happen to shop at the famous mall there, dropping this kind of coin on a vial of something that looks like bourbon-barrel maple syrup is nothing to you. 

For the rest of us, it's a mystery. What works with A'Oud Ancienne is that it smells of some quality agarwood, at least in the first two minutes of wear. Once the initial fecal pop dissipates, a synthetic "black" oud that has been popular with niche brands for years steps up and lends AA a rather chemical-inky vibe for the rest of the day. It is accented with labdanum and synthetic castoreum, and buttressed by a little bit of pine on top and quality oakmoss below, so the overall material quality of the composition is quite high, which it should be at Manuel's prices. But AA is unwearable in polite company, and I struggle to understand why anyone in the West would spend real money on a bottle of something that will make his friends run for the hills. Longevity is nuclear: expect fifteen hours. 

Santa Reads the Blog

This year, Santa was pretty generous. I received an incredibly large number of samples, some of which are sizable atomizers that can be worn for a few weeks. I previously wrote that I was giving up on the "reviewer's life" of constantly buying things to write about, and while that still holds true, the size and scope of what I have available to me increases the likelihood that reviews will continue into 2024. So for anyone who was pooh-poohing my announcement, good news. Reviews are still happening.

With that said, my nose isn't one hundred percent, and I'm not interested in maintaining my current ratio of reviews to perfume editorials. So, while I will continue to sporadically review things, in keeping with what I posted earlier this month, expect to see more editorials in the new year. Also, the number of brands that will be reviewed will be limited to about five or six in total, so the field has narrowed. But these are terrific brands, and I will be tackling the entire Zoologist line (as many as my nose allows), so keep an eye out.

I should mention that of the samples available, some may seem like they aren't coming through as they should, or are suspiciously simplistic and weak, and so they won't be reviewed at all. Covid nose (parosmia) is temporary, but it's also possible that my sense of smell is permanently weakened, which is all the more reason to scale back on rendering detailed opinions on specific fragrances. Hopefully the majority of what I've been gifted will be easy enough to read, and fair game. Happy New Year, everyone!

Vide Cor Meum (Chris Collins)

"Vide Cor Meum" is Latin for "Look into my heart." The perfume by Chris Collins smells like an exquisite Turkish rose buried in resins and woods, a penumbra of sweet green against a backdrop of smoke. I had some difficulty detecting the top notes, basically the first two minutes of the fragrance, but my girlfriend said it was a melange of clear kitchen spices and something "warm," which she could not quite name, but by that point I was picking up a hint of vanilla and amber, and figured she smelled a citric rose mixed with some spice, maybe sage or thyme. She said it was crystal clear, and I believe her.

All of this shifts rapidly into a bridge of auburn accords, the lilt of incense wafting amidst a thicket of cedars, and the sunset of benzoin casting its rays throughout. Quite enchanting, and all well done, but my heart gravitates to the rich rose note, woody and sweet, which permeates everything. There has to be real Turkish absolute in the blend, as the level of technical accuracy in this rendition is too perfect for it not to be. It's probably my Covid nose playing tricks on me again, but all the same, I'm getting a rose note so spectacular that I would consider this a rose fragrance, and one for rose lovers. The far drydown gets sweeter, with the benzoin, vanilla, and cedar picking up again. 

People develop a taste for rose fragrances over time, and some want dark and velvety roses, while others prefer their bouquets to smell bright and citric. I happen to be in the latter camp, but if I were in the former, I'd probably consider Vide Cor Meum a "must have" fragrance. Its ingredient quality is stunningly good, its blend is masterful, and it possesses just the right richness and complexity to satisfy at its price point. If you appreciate ambery florals, and want something that smells of money, look no further. This fragrance is unremittingly beautiful, from start to finish. A real treasure.  

Announcement: Making a Life Change

I'll get this part out of the way first: No, this isn't the end of the blog. If the headline had you panicked, don't be, because writing is a passion of mine, and I look forward to pontificating on perfume here, so there's certainly no end in sight to my doing that. 

That's the good news. Now, the potentially bad news: Starting in 2024, the format of this blog will change. After much deliberation, I have decided to no longer focus on reviewing fragrances here, and instead will shift the subject matter to more abstract perfume-related topics, things like reformulations, in-depth perceptions of mine, public attitudes towards perfume (tagged "Social Politics of Perfume"), how perfumes are spoken of and marketed, etc. I've always done this, but now I'll be doing it almost exclusively. 

My reason for doing this was spurred by a few things, not the least of which was my recent bout with Covid. During the month-long period in which my sense of smell was severely hobbled, I realized that life is short, and the life of a fragrance reviewer is hectic. For many years, my writing depended on having a constant stream of new fragrances, often full bottles, and more recently samples. While I enjoy doing this, there are some drawbacks, most of which affect me personally. The first is that I'm rarely able to settle on wearing any one perfume for very long, as I must shift my focus to the next one.

This isn't necessarily a net negative for me, as variety truly is the "spice of life," as they say. But it does impede my inner impulses to gravitate toward a smaller subset of favorites. For example, Grey Flannel is a favorite of mine, and there was a year many years ago when I wore it almost exclusively, before this blog had truly taken off. These days I rarely wear it, not because it has fallen out of favor, but because I'm constantly wearing other things, simply so I can post about them. Thus my two bottles of GF sit relatively neglected in storage, and I break them out maybe four or five times a year, at best. 

Another favorite of mine is the house of Creed. Naturally, Creeds are very expensive, and the prospect of even buying a full bottle seemed out of reach in the past, as they are now roughly $500. I haven't been able to purchase a bottle on discount since 2017. But this brings me to the second personal drawback: finances. Each year I spend about $400 on perfume. Even sample hauls rack up into the hundreds over time, and they allow me to review at least three or four fragrances per month. While I can technically sustain this and still be quite comfortable, I've come to find it collides with a deeper desire of mine. 

I'm forty-two years old. Again, life is short. I've worn over seven hundred perfumes, and I've learned a lot about perfumery at every price point, from every region. At this stage, I've realized that I want to wear Creed more regularly. The only way to do that without noticing is to shift my annual financial resources to a couple bottles of Creed (on discount) and simply enjoy them at my leisure, without having to think about "affording" them. I work hard, and I shouldn't have to scrape together for a Creed or two. I don't have to, if I stop exploring the wider world of random (and usually inferior) perfumes. 

To put this into context, I recently bought a bottle of Silver Mountain Water, to bring with me up to Maine whenever my girlfriend and I visit her family. I've wanted a bottle of SMW since 2018. (Full disclosure: I'm a little obsessed with this scent profile.) I could have had one in 2019, were it not for all of my resources being poured into other things. I don't resent or regret any of those choices; I made them, and they spurred the blog along, keeping me and my readers happy. But I no longer want to put my fragrance desires on the back-burner. I'm lucky to have gotten most of my sense of smell back.  

A reader recently pointed out that a lot of the claims of "in-bottle maceration" that Fragrantica members are engaging in seem to veer perilously close to being undiagnosed Covid anosmia. While this may or may not be true, I find it just as curious that suddenly every other Joe thinks his Armaf or Guerlain got "stronger" after letting it sit. This is a topic that I'd like to delve into more in the near future, but I mention it here because I think Covid is a life lesson in virus form for any fragrance aficionado. Your nose shouldn't be taken for granted! If you believe your olfactory capabilities are immutable, think again. 

And so I go forward as a fragrance writer with a new world view: wear what you like, and forget everything else. I've done enough exploring to know that, for me, the window for what I truly enjoy only opens so wide, and I've worn fragrance after fragrance that I would never wear a second time, a habit that once served a purpose, but which no longer does for me. Thus, I will continue writing here on broader topics, and will leave fragrance reviewing to guys who do it better, like Varanis Ridari, among others.

There are (I think) two more fragrances left for me to review this year, and I will commence 2024 with a new mission. Happy holidays, and Merry Christmas!

Revisiting Acqua di Selva in 2023

David Niven goes for his kidnapping reminder, hidden behind his trusty bottle
of Acqua di Selva in "The Pink Panther" (1963).

Just as I suspected, based on all the olfactory feedback I've been getting with my weekly "aroma-therapy" sessions, Acqua di Selva has proven to be the first fragrance that I've smelled clearly on myself for most of the work day. 

As mentioned in my last post, peppermint has consistently been the clearest note detected by my Covid-addled honker. It has conjured memories of my first bottle of Acqua di Selva, which I felt was a very mint-forward and piney Italian cologne in the usual midcentury Mediterranean style. I received my second bottle yesterday, and with one sniff, every note is clear and accounted for. 

The overall composition does smell a bit more muted than it otherwise would, but I could smell it in brief snatches throughout the day. Most striking is the fact that I can smell the dihydromyrcenol in the composition as a slightly incongruent bitterness, which is how it smells in every other dihydromyrcenol-fueled scent in my collection. It is used in a very small amount in Acqua di Selva's formula, as it is only a fleeting essence that rapidly vanishes behind a handful of far more lucid notes.

And that's the thing about this fragrance that my post-Covid nose has taught me: it must be made of mostly natural materials. Sure, there are synthetics in there, and yes, several of them are stand-ins for particular notes, but my recovery experience has been that natural materials smell relatively normal, while lab-contrived molecules are, to varying degrees, a bit "off." Nearly all of Acqua di Selva smells like what it intends to, i.e., a clutch of citruses, pines, field mints, lavender, geranium, woods, and moss. 

I've always considered Acqua di Selva to be Pierre Wargnye's inspiration for Drakkar Noir (1982). Although it was released in 1949, Victor's formula survived the decades unscathed, and even now, under the hand of Visconti di Modrone, the fragrance smells as fresh and crisp as it ever did. I'm sure the vintage version was smoother and even more "natural" in feel, and was likely loaded with real oak moss in its base. But the current formula lasts a solid five to six hours, and smells great. A reminder that classic masculinity can be as casual and effortless as a ten dollar cologne from the old country.