Shi (Alfred Sung)

Some fragrances break all the known rules of good perfumery, yet still come out smelling great. Alfred Sung's fragrances in general seem to do this to varying degrees, although the latest version of the original feminine isn't very good. Sung Homme is overtly synthetic, a little harsh, overly-complex in its pyramid and structure, yet it winds up smelling very clear and fresh, a soapy masterpiece. I approached Shi with one thing in mind: it looks like what Tania Sanchez has dubbed "sneaker juice," a mall-rat perfume with a target demographic of children and teenagers. Sneaker juice is usually fruity-floral, saccharine sweet, and something sophisticated adults frown on. Once you pass the age of sixteen, you should really start exploring adult fragrances, because in a few short years you're technically an adult, right? I beg to differ. Shi is a good example of a casual, fresh, sweet fruity-floral that gets it right, and smells good on all ages (I had the pleasure of knowing a girl in college who wore it).

It breaks all the rules of course - it's very simple (it lacks complexity), it's linear (it lacks development), it's synthetic (it possesses no discernible naturals), and has zero depth (there's little to no texture). Sound like a disaster? Shi has remained on the market for thirteen years, no doubt due to one saving grace - it smells good. Fragrantica yields some clues to its commercial longevity, as it appears that Shi smells very similar to a discontinued scent by Yves Rocher called Ming Shu, which has its fans. Since Ming Shu is no longer available, it makes sense that Shi is considered a viable alternative, and that probably helps to keep it moving off store shelves. Yet the fragrance itself is delightful, a bright accord of orange blossom, lily, mandarin orange, pear, and the usual green apple. Holding the fruits together is a sweet violet note, and everything is layered atop one of those cheap-smelling aquatic musks. Shi is shampoo-grade, but it works.

The hotter the weather, the less likely I am to enjoy fragrance, so anything with a cheerful and fresh disposition is more than welcome in my wardrobe. With women, particularly American women, the impulse is to wear "body mists," those one-dimensional sugar waters sold at places like The Body Shop and Bath & Body Works. I was recently at the mall with three female friends, and we had an hour to kill before a movie, so we wandered over to B&BW to do some shopping. Two of them are forty; the other is sixty. I was surprised (somewhat) to see the sixty year-old was just as enthusiastic about the body mists as the other women. And in a way, I was a little surprised that two forty year-olds were interested in these obviously cheap products. But then again, this is America, and people are "anti-fragrance" by default, in that they don't want to broadcast their presence via scent. Body mists do not broadcoast much of anything. They are simple, sweet, direct, but also very quiet, so I guess they make sense.

I still think they could take one step up the hierarchy and buy a decent fragrance from a real perfume brand like Alfred Sung. Shi only lasts about two hours on skin (less in extremely high temps), isn't complicated, isn't loud, and has all the same sweet and fruity overtures as the typical body mist. Its difference is in its structure - I noticed that the B&BW mists were all two-note compositions, usually pairing a sweet fruit with a sweet flower or a musk - while Shi offers at least five or six notes in addition to the musk. To me that's a lot better than these barely-there $20 mists (they're grossly over-charging), and maybe it's the soft bigotry of low expectations, but if my adult lady friends switched from mists to base-level sneaker juice, I'd be a happier man.

My Spring Picks

May is the loveliest month. It's not too hot, sometimes even cool outside, with occasional showers coloring everything forty shades of green. And man oh man, do I like me some green - the greener the better.

This month I've used a steady rotation of all the greenest stuff in my arsenal. Mind you, I consider anything with heady florals and herbs to be green, as well as pure greens featuring citrus and grasses. The season for green is surprisingly short - by August I've switched to muskier fare. But it's beautiful while it lasts. The past two weeks have seen repeated applications of the following:

Tsar (Van Cleef & Arpels) - Simply an amazing fougère. Such gorgeous bergamot, lavender, artemisia, oakmoss, and many other dark, spicy green notes. It's more refreshing than a walk through a forest in the rain.

Sport Field (Adidas) - This is Creed Green Valley Lite. A pop of lemon and ginger, then hours of air conditioned coumarin playing the grassiest one-note I've ever smelled. Divine, and criminally affordable.

Silences (Jacomo) - Perfect for rainy days. Starts off with a punch of galbanum, and slips through the reeds into flowers and bouquets of cut stems. When I smell this on my shirt the day after, I totally understand the meaning of "true green" in perfumery. This is nature in a bottle.

Sung Homme (Alfred Sung) - A good spicy, soapy, and unerringly green chypre with the soul of a fresh fougère. Nice on Thursdays and Fridays when Irish Spring 2.0 is the desired effect.

Horizon (Guy Laroche) - Bright grapefruit, mint, lavender, crushed herbs, dihydromyrcenol, ambergris, and cedar, all bundled in a seaweedy aquamarine-colored bottle. I don't reach for it as often as the others, but I never regret it when I do. Another good one for the rain.

Brut (Helen of Troy) - White floral powder. Not good for high heat, but when there's still a cool breeze to cut the sun, Brut works wonders, especially with light application.

Pour un Homme de Caron (Caron) - I'm never really sure when to wear this scent. Its frigid lavender top is too cold for winter; the warm and powdery vanilla-musk base is too heavy for summer. Spring is a good season I suppose. Autumn too, but we have Yatagan for autumn. Anyway, you can't go wrong with hyper-realistic bouquets of French lavender. The fragrance for gentlemen, this stuff is.

Just as an aside: Am I the only one who finds Kristen Stewart attractive? My guy friends think she's mediocre, even unattractive. As a movie buff I'm familiar with all the current beautiful female stars, and there's certainly a slew of more traditionally-beautiful women coming out of Hollywood, but I dunno . . . Ms. Stewart has always captured my imagination in ways the other gals couldn't. Although I hate most of her films (except The Runaways), I often find myself watching them just to see how she moves through the frames. The girl's got something going on. Anyhoo . . . thanks for reading.

Sung (Alfred Sung)

My history with the house of Sung is an odd one. The famous wedding dress designer has had some success in the fragrance world, particularly with Sung, his first release. His second offering, Sung Homme, was also met with open arms by the buying public, and both fragrances continue to sell today. I tried Sung Homme first, several years ago, and hated it. Then I tried the feminine Sung, and somewhat liked it. Eventually I re-tried Sung Homme, and loved it. Then I re-tried Sung, and hated it. I could get into this, but I fear it would reveal just how insane I am, and so will instead get on with the review.

Let me be brutally honest here: Sung has been reformulated, and the reformulation is a disaster. I do not, unfortunately, know how the original Sung smelled, as it was never a blockbuster fragrance, and I have never met anyone who was openly a fan. But I can say with total certainty that what passes as Sung today should not pass as anyone's signature fragrance, for the simple fact that is smells like a prostitute's cleavage. You know how people will sometimes refer to inexpensive floral perfumes as being "screechy?" Well, this sums up Sung in a word: it is the ultimate screechy floral.

It opens with the false promise of a nice hyacinth and jasmine accord, which rapidly devolves into a mush of chemical sweetness, with shrill flecks of synthetic green occasionally flitting out from a cloud of yellow. There is absolutely no note separation, no evolution beyond the opening phase, and no character to the sent whatsoever. It just smells thick. And sweet. And bad. I'm sorry, any bride who wears this on her wedding day is just begging for divorce. Enough said.

Sung Homme (Alfred Sung)

Soapiness is a fragrance quality not often desired these days. Darkly-woody oud orientals, and blaringly sweet 'n feminine gourmands are the latest trends. Those essential oil bars of the '70s and '80s are largely relegated to the consignment bins of history's fashion graveyard. Still, some have survived. If you were to ask me what my favorite surviving soapy fragrance is, I'd say that I have two: Grey Flannel, and Sung Homme.

Grey Flannel was a given the moment I first smelled it; Sung Homme had to earn my love. A few years ago, I picked up a small bottle of Z-14, and another small bottle of Sung Homme, and did something obviously foolish - tried them both at the same time. The result was that I could tell what Z-14 smelled like, and couldn't tell what Sung Homme smelled like, except it smelled really, really bad. Because my sniffer was having no problem with the Z, I figured the same for the Sung, but it wasn't so. The intense leathery-cinnamon Mack truck of Z-14 ran right over the more subtle and nuanced Sung, allowing me to discern bare facets of what should have been a complex olfactory impression. I mistakenly thought that I hated both scents, and got rid of them as quickly as possible.

Fast forward a few summers, and I suddenly found myself curious about Sung Homme again. It occurred to me that I probably didn't have the whole picture, especially since I'd given Z-14 much more of a chance (it was the first scent I tried that day). Also, I'd been reading about it. People were fairly consistent in their evaluation of Sung - it was widely compared to Irish Spring bar soap, especially the original 1970s formula. It was also described as being very synthetic, a "powerhouse", and of a world that, since the years immediately following its heyday, has long been abandoned.

When it arrived in the mail, I unwrapped the bottle and gave it a spritz. This time there was nothing interfering with my nose. Lo and behold, there was the scent of Irish Spring bar soap, emanating peacefully from my wrist. Better still, it was the original Irish Spring, not the current formula, which is a little too dry and stark for me. The original soap had a creamier, spicier, and more complex scent. It was also a tiny bit sweet, which contrasted nicely with its green effect. Colgate has re-released the original soap in body wash form, but I'm not convinced it does it justice. The original bar was just . . . better. I don't know if Alfred Sung intended for his first masculine fragrance to smell like Irish Spring, or if it was just a coincidence. In the extremely unlikely event that our paths ever cross, I'll mention it to him. My guess is, he'd roll his eyes and give me an I've heard that a million times already look.

Anyhow, I digress - from that soapy, synthetically-green opening unfurled a dense array of spices and aromatics. Sage, thyme, fir, black pepper, and juniper berry are combined into a smooth, but forceful scent sheen, one that reads as a synthetic construct of representational notes, blended into an abstract soap effect. It was like I'd just showered, there in the middle of a hot August day. The brisk afterglow of my soap still lingered in the air around me, cool and thick, like a cloud. I smelled like a lye-based product, but not really clean. Something here made me happy.

As the fragrance dried further, the bittersweet density of the heartnotes began to give way for a pleasant blur of fake pepper, pine, patchouli, and oakmoss. Actually, the pine doesn't smell all that synthetic at this stage. It was linear for another couple of hours before it faded away. The verdict: Sung Homme is very good. Unusual, yes. Synthetic, yes, yes. But crap? No way. Yeah, it's about as soapy as a scent can get, and it reminds me of a Christmas candle with those massive fir and juniper components. But this is cool juice, a bright-purple '80s masculine chypre in one of Pierre Dinand's gorgeous Art Deco-inspired skyscraper bottles. Its bright demeanor isn't hard to like, especially if you're a fan of Irish Spring.

I really wish they still made bold chypres like Sung Homme. But then again, if we were awash in a fashion-scape where chypres are the trend, Sung might be considered too synthetic to be a real contender. It isn't something I reach for all that often, but when I do, Sung makes me consider the possibilities of masculine perfumery, and that's more than I can say for most things.