 |
| Vintage N⬝R⬝G |
In 1975, Jōvan released its masculine and feminine Ginseng fragrances, which seemed to endure for the remainder of the decade before their eventual discontinuation. Jōvan is one of those weird drugstore brands that I often think could have been the stuff of greatness, if only it had held on to its best products. I mean that seriously. Grass Oil. Frankincense & Myrrh. Ginseng. Fresh Patchouli. Does any of this sound like crap to you? I guess it could have been, but a brand grows by offering quality to buyers. And Jōvan has grown, which is significantly better than just "surviving." Every few years it has something new to offer, and Coty has cradled Barry Shipp and Murray Moscona's now-fifty year-old baby with love (no awful reformulations, cheesy seventies image intact).
Jōvan released Ginseng N⬝R⬝G in 1998, and I've often wondered if it was a reissue of the original masculine Ginseng fragrance, repackaged for the GNC health-nut nineties. This fragrance snuck onto KMart and Walmart shelves, and I was endlessly curious about it, always stopping to sample it. I thought it was hilarious, and a little clever, that Jōvan packaged it in miniscule 1.6 oz bottles that seemed crafted to resemble the similarly-diminutive herbal/caffeinated energy shots that were becoming all the rage. I also thought it was an interesting perfumery concept; no other company was dabbling with ginseng, and Jōvan used "ginseng extract" in the formula, so buyers knew they were serious, or as serious as a tongue-in-cheek brand like Jōvan could possibly get. This was a ginseng fragrance, souped-up for Millennials who were too young to remember the original.
At some point in the 2000s, Coty discontinued it, only to reissue it a few years later with slightly different packaging. Gone was the holographic box and the 1.6 oz bottle size (only the 1 oz size remained). Gone was the framed label on the bottle, now made smaller and plainer, with only the name of the fragrance in holograph. The new look was obviously a budget cut, but the fragrance smelled exactly as it used to, so it didn't worry me. What does Ginseng N⬝R⬝G smell like? I reviewed it a few years ago, and mentioned that it reminds me of chlorinated swimming pools, that stinging feeling when you get water up your nose at the local YMCA. A more generous interpretation would be that it's a pleasant nineties "freshie" with notably nineties accords of green tea, violet leaf, fig leaf, tonka, woody amber, and musk. Oh, and ginseng, definitely ginseng.
Ginseng N⬝R⬝G manages to do something interesting, however. The central accord of bitter-woody ginseng against a soft backdrop of pallid florals and musks plays like a harp from olfactory heaven when you catch it just right. The fragrance is surprisingly strong, which may account for why it's in such small bottles, yet the green notes, usually the sharp-vegetal piece of any bucolic fragrance theme, are invariably sweet and smooth, while the typically genteel ensemble of "buzzy" woods are the aggressors. The tea note is nuclear strength, yet also floral and sappy in its bombast, and the somewhat dank woodiness of ginseng seems a background player. At first sniff you would think it's just "cheap," but give it time and things start to seem a bit off-kilter. Why is the fig blended so tightly? Normally fig leaps out at me and becomes the only thing I can smell, but here it vanishes into the abstract paperings of nectarous greens.
Likewise, drugstore musks are usually "fuzzy" things that overtake whatever finesse a cheap frag might offer and change it into a monotone blah. Ginseng N⬝R⬝G's musk is fuzzy all the way through, yet its pyramid of complex materials never really loses ground. The tea, citrus, leafy florals, and ginseng are quite coherent throughout the ten hour lifespan of the drydown, poking through the musky fog to remind me of who's calling the shots. I don't subscribe to the religion of reformulations, or attend the church of batch variations, so my view on how consistent the ginseng extract is in Ginseng N⬝R⬝G on a year-to-year basis is as neutral as it gets. But forfeiting an ecumenical stance doesn't eradicate the need to know more, and I'm dying to know who put this fragrance together, what their motivation was, and how something so weirdly dated and passé could survive the decades with nary a missing note. Who is the untapped genius behind this budget marvel?
One could view the "Panax ginseng extract" as a gimmick, but it's really not. Let's face it, a perfume that advertises itself as containing a material should contain the actual material, and this one does. Not only that, but the fragrance doesn't resemble anything else on the market, then and now. I don't sniff Ginseng N⬝R⬝G and say, "Okay, another Cool Water," or "Yep, there's Acqua di Gio." No other fresh Millennial sneaker juice comes to mind when I smell this stuff. It's like I'm experiencing a fragrance in a cultural vacuum; there are no obvious comparatives, and thus the impossible was inexplicably achieved.