Lavender Water (Geo. F. Trumper) and What Elevates a "Lavender Scent" to a Loftier Fougère Status (For Me)

I recently visited an old college chum in Manhattan to catch up after thirteen years apart and out of touch. We were roommates at Rutgers for spring semester of 2001, lodging in the smallest dorm in Demarest Hall, and we developed a friendship based on our differences. He's an Israeli-American who was raised in New Jersey and separated from his family when they returned to Haifa; he stayed behind to pursue several law degrees, most of which he stacked up and never really used. I would frequently return home after a long day of classes to living quarters hotter than an Al Manzul spa. We had nonverbal arguments over me opening our one window and him promptly shutting it. We watched Seinfeld and laughed like hyenas, and goofed around on his electric keyboard into the early hours, irritating our lesbian neighbors. After a decade of zero communication, our reunion felt as if we had never missed a beat, a sign of true friendship.

One of the monikers he gave me was "Male Martha Stewart," presumably based on my limitless interest in men's fashion and fragrances, my unrivaled success with several necktie knots (I do a fantastic Windsor), and my frequent criticism of his leather Land of Jesus-style clogs, which frankly were the fugliest things I've ever seen on human feet. Well, I affirmed my Martha status by telling him that we should share part of our day in the city by going to C.O. Bigelow Chemists (called "Bigelow Pharmacy" from the street) so I could check out their supply of Geo. F. Trumper products. I had never been, and wanted to see what was in-store versus online. It turns out that Bigelow Pharmacy is packed with niche products, an impressive array of brands ranging from Musgo Real to Parfums de Marly, and yes, Geo. F. Trumper. Their selection of Trumper frags was actually a little disappointing, limited to Eucris, Sandalwood, and Lavender Water, but I was there specifically for the Lavender Water, and they had the big splash bottle. 

I bought this stuff blind because good luck finding wearable Trumper samples, and the only vendor I use is eBay (and rarely Amazon). After I purchased it, my buddy joked, "If people ask what you're wearing, you'll have to lie and tell them it's Geo. F. Bidener." I wanted the bottle for two reasons: I had modest expectations of it, as my bottles of Wild Fern and Bay Rum are very good but not exactly "great," but I still held out hope that I'd find a Trumper scent that I could truly love, and I wanted to have a bottle that was purchased from the brick-and-mortar Bigelow Pharmacy in NY City. I paid $100 for it, which might seem like overpaying, but it occurred to me that 1.7 ounces of Trumper usually goes for no less than $50, so paying twice the price for double the amount feels okay. It feels even more okay when I consider that I now pay $45 to get five things at Stop & Shop, so with inflation in mind, a Benjamin ain't what it used to be. 

I'm pleasantly surprised by this fragrance. It gets fair-to-good reviews online, with some saying it's a pretty natural lavender with a nice spot of oakmoss in the base, and others lamenting its lack of vibrancy compared to Oxford & Cambridge by Czech & Speake. Apparently O&C is the standard for lavender that all other lavender scents should aspire to be. I've never been okay with this because everyone says it's a "minty" lavender, which is only one side of the lavender coin. Lavender can tilt "minty" or "sweet," as in the case of Caron Pour un Homme, where the coumarinic angle of high-grade lavender is accented by semisweet vanilla and soft musk. I tend to prefer a little of both. (I am also on the market for a bottle of the newer EDP of O&C, which I understand is like the original but longer-lasting.) My expectations of Trumper's product were muted, as I fully expected this to be a semi-synthetic lavender that lasts all of five minutes, but I was wrong. This is an excellent natural/herbal lavender, and it lasts twelve hours or more.

First, a comment on the bottle: the paper tag looped around the spout says everything is "hand made." Beautiful little frosted glass lip peaks at a brass spout so tiny that you have to shake it vigorously to free a few drops. No chance of blowing through this stuff. It screws shut with a matching brass cap in the shape of a crown, an effete touch that loiters in the realm of gaucheness. Trumper has royal warrants, which should be enough for it; I can't understand the British fondness for emphasizing their monarchy. It's why I wonder at people who claim Creed is lying about their warrants. Who would do that? Anyway, it's clever and kitschy, just understated enough here to pass muster. Beyond that, the Trumper aesthetic is relatively cheap and unassuming, with thin paper boxes and little else. I do think the 100 ml. bottle is prettier than the 1.7 oz spray, which is the size of my Wild Fern and Bay Rum, and I like that it's so hard to splash. 

The fragrance itself is a basic but surprisingly natural lavender scent with a hint of spearmint and noticeable oakmoss in the drydown. Oakmoss is listed on the materials list on the box, and it's higher up there than expected, so they didn't skimp. It acts in tandem with some potent woody notes to fix the scent for far longer than needed, but I'm not complaining because it smells great. I agree with those who say this isn't a "radiant" or "vibrant" lavender, in that it is bright and fresh for all of five minutes before it adopts a sort of "dusty" quality, like a very dry and woody tone, evocative of nineteenth century photos and what I imagine the inside of a stagecoach smelled like. It isn't going for a summery feel, as apparently Czech & Speake are. This is aiming for understated old-school charm. 

One of the things about lavender scents is that they are often the subject of what I think of as the "Fougère Controversy." What is this controversy, you ask? It's stupid. But it comes up all the time. And it's an exhausting conversation to have. Whenever I discuss a lavender fragrance on the internet, there are inevitably four or five people who chime in to tell me that whatever lavender fragrance I'm on about is NOT a fougère, and it's very, very important that I understand that such frags are NOT fougères. 

To date, this has happened with quite a few fragrances. One example is Caron Pour un Homme. This is one of those silly examples of something that is obviously a fougère, and recognized by the industry as a fougère, listed as one by Haarmann & Reimer, yet armchair experts say otherwise. Their reasoning? "Where's the coumarin?" Or, "Where's the oakmoss?" Or, "Where's the geranium?" Or even, "Where's the fougère accord?" Apparently if a fragrance lacks a fougère accord, it can't be a fougère. Which is technically true, except that there is no universal fougère accord. The trick with a good fougère is to make its conventional accord secondary to the innovative identity of the fragrance it upholds. In Caron PuH, the fougère accord of lavender, coumarin, and oakmoss is what perfumers refer to as "extended." The lavender top note is intense, metallic, cold. This eventually mellows a bit and becomes a bit more expansive and aromatic, and if it were a simple "lavender scent," that's where it would end.

But it doesn't; the truth about lavender is that it has a coumarinic drydown on its own, that soft, hay-like glow of sunset made smell. In Caron's composition, this naturally abbreviated hay-like ending is fortified and extended using a clever mishmash of synthetic aromatics and slightly animalic musks, which are made less obvious by the inclusion of a plush vanilla note. Thus the coumarin that naturally attends lavender oil is artistically manipulated into a new form, one that interprets this secondary phase of the traditional fougère accord as refined sweetness and warmth. Eventually the powdery nature of the musk becomes more apparent, and because oakmoss is naturally powdery, the wearer doesn't fully realize that this final nail has been hammered into the fougère coffin. Pour un Homme is a fougère, but you don't have to be a big fan of the fougère accord to enjoy it, because Ernest Daltroff went a few steps beyond it. 

Another example is Moustache Eau de Toilette Concentree by Rochas. This one is often mistaken for being a citrus chypre. Indeed, it contains a mighty wallop of intense citrus and citrus rind notes in the opening and early stages, and those fruity aldehydes and esters co-mingle with animalics, lending it a urinous edge that some find off-putting. Moustache EDTC has always been one of the "oldest" in my "old-school" collection, in that it smells totally outdated. Chypres from the late forties are usually also clearly in an antiquated style that has long fallen out of fashion. But Moustache EDTC isn't a chypre, it's an aromatic fougère. Unlike Pour un Homme, the lavender in Moustache isn't in-your-face and dead obvious. Instead it's a different approach to the fougère, with Edmond Roudnitska interpreting it from a different perspective. Instead of a flat screen of lavender, he louvered the aromatic into a rich citrus accord, diffusing its biting herbal qualities in a haze of lime rind and bergamot fizz. You aren't meant to dwell on lavender, you're only to smell it. 

Likewise, the heart of Moustache is a symphonic coumarin, similar in style to that of Lauder for Men, smelling dry and sun-parched and grassy, yet also impeccably rounded and dimensional. Instead of resembling hay, this coumarin resembles cut bitter greens. Yet get it on the retrohale, and there it is: unalloyed coumarin. Again, the fougère accord is disguised and elevated beyond the conventional by the nose of a genius. "But Bryan, it's obvious there's labdanum and oakmoss, and not obvious there's coumarin, so what are you talking about?" It isn't obvious there's labdanum in Moustache EDTC, not even a little bit. There's geranium, and there's the same urinous musk note, probably synthetic, that I smell in Pour un Homme. Here it's more intense, as if Roudnitska admired Daltroff's use of it and wanted to up it by doubling the dose in his composition. Eventually Moustache settles on a traditional oakmoss and sandalwood base, which frankly smells pretty great. The fougère accord is manipulated into something better than the sum of its parts. 

Yet another example of olfactory misdirection is found in Roger Pellegrino's Versace L'Homme. This one is kind of funny, because Versace actually embosses the ferns right on its bottles, yet guys constantly squawk at me, "It's a chypre! It's a chypre!" No, no, it's not. It's a fougère. Yes, there's quite a bit of citrus on top, but there's also geranium and a very subtle lavender in a more refined version of the Moustache accord. Eventually the mid sweetens (slightly) into a dry/grassy coumarin, with a clear oakmoss finish, but the whole affair trends to bitterness and heavy-handed maturity, and while I appreciate the technical work, I find Versace L'Homme a bit too stuffy to really love it. Instead of just focusing on the fougère accord and building off it, Pellegrino opted to take the Roudnitska approach and give us a citrus-heavy "fresh" woody fougère. Haarmann & Reimer consider it a chypre, but when you get really good at detecting lavender, you find that it's more of a chameleon than the broader public seems to think, and that occasionally includes the industry gatekeepers themselves (they got Moustache right though). 

But Trumper's Lavender Water doesn't do any of that. It simply opens with natural lavender, smelling like lavender essential oil. This endures for fully four or five hours, at a fairly low register, without changing, other than going from somewhat bright in the first few minutes, to adopting that "dusty" quality I mentioned earlier. Then, at around the six hour mark, the oakmoss comes in, smelling dry and green and solid, holding what is left of the aromatic lavender and spearmint accord of the opening phase until dinner time. I get a hint of natural coumarin at the tail end of the lavender, but it smells like the natural byproduct of lavender, and not an intentionally-inserted note. It sometimes adopts a smoky earthiness, reminiscent of Ungaro pour L'Homme II, depending on the weather. From beginning to end, Lavender Water smells like lavender, and pretty much just lavender. This makes it a lavender scent, not a fougère. I would never say that Trumper Lavender water is a fougère. I'd never say that anything near-identical to it is a fougère. There is no real fougère accord in Lavender Water. It smells of simple lavender. 

Now, someone could argue that Lavender Water is a fougère, and I'd entertain that argument. I could see how someone might interpret the attenuated coumarin note and the surplus of naked oakmoss as a fougère accord, and could also see how the inclusion of spearmint might be considered enough embellishment to label it "aromatic." I wouldn't agree with that assessment, but I think it would be fair. However, to me this is simply an excellent lavender fragrance, a "lavender soliflore," if you will. If you're interested in a robust and natural lavender scent that doesn't really stray beyond lavender, here you have it. I haven't smelled it yet, but apparently Czech & Speake's fragrance is also an excellent lavender scent. If you want a fougère but you don't want all the bells and whistles of the Caron or Rochas scents, I would recommend getting Trumper Wild Fern, which is a straightforward lavender/coumarin/oakmoss accord with the inclusion of some fennel, geranium, and musk, or I would point you to Brut Splash-On, which is similar, but with sweeter and more ambery/white floral qualities. 

Bay Rum (Geo. F. Trumper)

People get hung up on the massive and very natural clove note in this one. Take, for example, Fragrantica member Planet_X's hilarious review: 

"See and hear me crying with laughter. Bay Rum smells like. . . I thought for ages it smells like Bicardi or Havana Club or Captain Morgan, funny, I know . . . But . . . quoting Justice Glaster its 'clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove clove . . . that's all you get!' Take it or leave it, just do not call it Rum and Bay, please!"

Humor aside, what Planet_X has forgotten is there's more to bay rum than just rum. The bay and spice are gigantic components that offset the liquor-like sweetness found in literally 99% of designer masculines these days. And Trumper's carefully composed Bay Rum cologne contains a green monster bay note (pimenta racemosa) that overtakes the composition only a few seconds after application. While the bright clove top note is impossible to miss, the bay steals the show. Thirty minutes later the drydown arc arrives at a soft rum that smells sweet (but not overly so) and unnecessarily expensive. 

Trumper's scent accurately clones Pinaud's cheaper Virgin Island Bay Rum cologne, a favorite among wet shavers. So why all the hate for it in the fragcomm? This will always puzzle me. I suppose the bay note smells similar enough to the clove note that people think Djarum kreteks instead of the beach. It's the simple but sturdy smell of a fragrance that has survived countless world wars, pandemics, and disasters, and it now sits on my bedroom dresser in the early twenty-first century. Geo. F. Trumper's scent is a survivor, so critics should cut it some slack. I don't smell it and think, "Gee, the balance is wrong." I think of wooden ships bouncing across rough seas. I think of cowboys. Women in tight corsets. Queen Victoria. Dracula. The Industrial Revolution. 

My one gripe with this bay rum, as with all bay rums, is it isn't loud enough for how good it smells. It's a skin scent after an hour, which at Trumper prices is not ideal. Regular reapplication isn't cheap at $25 an ounce, for 1.5 ounces. So a little more perfume oil in the blend is called for, although its longevity is acceptable at roughly three hours. It's yet another winner by a brand that knows its oft-overlooked customers better than they know themselves. The wisdom of age, I suppose.

Wild Fern (Geo. F. Trumper)

When people refer to a fragrance as "barbershop," it's usually a figure of speech, a casual reference that is not meant to be taken literally. But in the case of Wild Fern, it is quite literal. This is obviously because the house of George F. Trumper is, quite literally, a barbershop. A visit to 9 Curzon Street is "by appointment," for tucked in the rear of the shop are rows of barber's chairs, and an impressive battalion of straight razors gliding across upturned cheeks. Trumper's colognes are all, by royal warrant, "barbershop."

Wild Fern is perhaps the most barbershoppy of the barber's tonics. Created in 1877, this fragrance is no historical imposter (see Truefitt & Hill for those antics). The brand has indeed spanned two centuries, with a small array of colognes that have survived the years relatively intact. For most of its run, Wild Fern's chief competitor was Penhaligon's inimitable and gloriously faded English Fern (1911), a rivalry recently ended with Pen's unfortunate discontinuation of their flagship fougère. Today, Wild Fern stands as the sole surviving original English fougère, and is none the worse for it.

I'll keep it real: I smell a really lovely shave cream here. Exquisitely made shave cream. Citrus, lavender, geranium, mint, anise, coumarin, rosemary, musk, and oak moss, all melding into a medicinal and slightly powdery cleanness, evoking hot towels and badger brushes. Trumper doesn't use the cheaper synthetics that Penhaligon's succumbed to under Puig. Their formula smells lucid and natural. A dollop of funky patchouli draws the dry florals and greens back down to earth, and the cool, mossy base fades politely away by lunch. It's simple, it's functional, and it's perfect. 

This stuff is excellent after a shave, and I'm happy to see that the prices for Trumper frags have dropped in recent years. When I started this blog back in 2011, I couldn't find a bottle for under $65. I was able to snag my Wild Fern for a mere $34. At these prices, I'll be exploring more of the range in the days to come.