Roses Musk (Montale)

Launched in 2009, Roses Musk is one of Montale's earlier fragrances in the rose canon, and has become the brand's flagship rose fragrance. This is unfortunate, as I don't find it to be a very good rose fragrance, especially compared to Mancera's Amber & Roses, which boasts a far richer and rounder rose accord. It's also unfortunate when one considers how many rose fragrances Montale has discontinued, things like Highness Rose and Deep Roses, and I'm puzzled by how Roses Musk survived. 

Roses Musk opens with a blast of alcohol and aldehydes, but they're not really citrus in feel. It's more of a chemical snow, a cold blast of hairspray with the isopropyl alcohol note especially prevalent. This does resolve into something warmer and "musky" in nature, but not animalic or sweet. It's like a silvery laundry detergent musk that smells intentionally chemical. Weird. This gradually segues into a bouquet of Damascus rose with some pink peony notes to brighten things, and the pink roses effect lingers in linear fashion for a few hours before fading away. Roses Musk leaves a halo of petals around you as you go about your day, and definitely smells far better when you sense its aura than when you smell it up close, although up close gives you a better idea of what's really going on. 

I can't say that I find anything wrong with Roses Musk per say, and I actually do like it—just not as a rose fragrance. I appreciate the way the floral notes mingle with the snowy musk, creating a cold abstract lift to the flowers they wouldn't have otherwise. I also like that Roses Musk isn't a foghorn that fills a room like Amber & Roses does, which makes it much easier to wear. I just wanted more of a true rose fragrance from this Montale, and instead I got a fairly synthetic arrangement of rose-like materials. Definitely well made and interesting, but perhaps better thought of as a "rosy musk" than a "musky rose." 

Fougères Marine (Montale)

The box arrives in marine blue, the bottle in Montale’s signature silver, but that’s the last you’ll hear from me about “presentation.” What matters is the scent, and online the chorus is deafening: Fougères Marine smells “just like Tommy,” only richer, smoother, longer lasting, and therefore—according to the internet’s most excitable NPCs—worthy of immediate purchase. I understand the impulse. I smell it too. Yet I can’t quite join the chant, because I was there. I wore Lauder’s vintage Tommy when the nineties were still happening, not yet a nostalgia industry. I loved that fragrance. And this is not that fragrance.

This is the brief for that fragrance—a parallel-world scenario in which Tommy Hilfiger’s team bypassed Lauder entirely and instead tried to slip Olivier Creed a suitcase of Euros to work his unofficial “Creed magic.” In this imaginary scenario, Olivier remembers he isn’t a perfumer and dutifully outsources the job to an S-tier ghost: someone with the skill and precision to construct Tommy’s bone structure using top-flight materials, and lace its freshness with dusky herbal aromatics, Calone 1951, and a massive synthetic ambergris accord (Cetalox, Precyclemone B) for that "marine" piece. The result behaves like the finest Creeds once did: rich yet airy, diffusive yet tingling in cold air, gliding forward with the self-assurance of a fragrance that lasts twenty hours on skin and nearly forever on fabric.

Wearing it, I’m reminded that formulas age even when nostalgia doesn’t. Today’s Tommy cologne still resembles its former self, though a juniper-seaside inflection has crept in, muting the gauzy sweetness of its youth with a hint of lavandin-fueled marine bitterness, as if quietly borrowing a page from Montale’s book. If you must compare Fougères Marine to Tommy, compare it to this reformulated Tommy, not the original one worn with striped crewnecks and Caesar cuts in 1995. Montale’s version is too complex, too polished, too gleamingly synthetic-ambergris aquatic to truly resurrect the spiced-apple style of the nineties, a genre unlikely ever to return.

What it does revive, however, is a rarer pleasure: the sense that a fragrance can be both supremely wearable and quietly spectacular. Tommy was always a good idea, but Montale perfected it. To quote the NPCS: "S-Tier." Even my fiancée likes this one, and she doesn't like anything.

Sandflowers (Montale)

Here’s the thing about Sandflowers: I wanted a "true" aquatic, something that evokes the cold, briny wave of the ocean crashing on icy boulders and the gritty, coarse texture of New England sand, ground fine by centuries of waves and worn shells. Frigid, salty, with spray drifting in the air, it should carry heady notes of iodine and seaweed, but nothing of the typical funk of low tide, except perhaps the most delicate hint. And that is exactly how Sandflowers smells. No sweetness. No flowers. Salt water. Period. End of story.

What accounts for this fragrance's precision? How did Pierre Montale, known for his dense rose/oud blends and heavy, sweet musks, manage to craft something so seemingly out of character? By what act of grace did an anonymous perfumer in a Parisian lab offer up this peculiar tribute to a Connecticut beach in December? For me, it’s a hauntingly beautiful composition, the ideal aquatic for trips to Maine, where even miles inland, the air carries the cool, clean scent of the Atlantic, filtered through pine needles and campfire smoke. Sandflowers is as ethereal as that, a light, salty draft on crisp, winter air. And contrary to the consensus of many reviewers, I don’t detect anything sandy in it. For sand, one would be better off with Mario Valentino’s Ocean Rain.

Sandflowers smells salty, like skin after a day on the open ocean. But it needn’t be the frigid Atlantic of Maine. In 2004, I rented a speedboat with friends to explore the grottos of Capri, where we glided over gentle green waves in ninety-five-degree heat. The water was oddly salty, even by oceanic standards, its spray drying on my skin in a layer of salt that flaked off in the sun. By the end of that day, I smelled exactly like Sandflowers. Montale has put great care into this fragrance; aside from a fleeting, almost antiseptic alcoholic top note (mated to cinnamyl alcohol) that evokes the smell of a razor sterilizer, the composition is a resounding success, and a dream for aquatic lovers. Excellent work.

Vanille Absolu (Montale)

I don't usually go in for gourmand fragrances, but Vanille Absolu is something special. This is my first Montale, and I intentionally avoided trying the ouds and musks, mainly because everyone and their brother talks about them. I wanted an unconventional review for this brand, and Vanille Absolu seemed like a good bet. Let’s see how well Montale does vanilla! I was excited to wear it.

I found that Montale doesn't really take vanilla very seriously. The mysterious Pierre Montale is certainly no real-life Jean-Paul Guerlain. I expected a severe overdose of vanilla frosting when I applied Vanille Absolu, and for a few seconds, that's exactly what I got—intensely sweet extract, sinus-searing in its sweetness, with the bright muskiness that upholds most mall-rat vanillas. Somehow, the neon vanilla fails to endure, and within a minute, it evolves into something a bit more original: cotton candy. There has to be at least 85% ethyl maltol in Vanille Absolu. How else could it smell so strongly of cotton candy for so many hours? I don’t know, but I really like it. I don't know why I like it either. I should hate it. Vanille Absolu should be the antithesis of everything I strive to smell like or wear. Yet I can’t help wanting more of it, frequently digging out the sample. It carries itself with a cheeriness that you simply don’t get from standard-issue feminines. Paris Hilton did not think to slap her name on Vanille Absolu. (Her masculine scent is actually great, by the way, a gorgeous meditation on mango -- call me, Paris.)

As it dries down—about six hours later—the sweetness burns off, leaving a rich, bourbon-like vanilla musk. Remnants of the candy still linger, even eight, nine hours later. It's so friendly that it makes me hungry, and I’m not usually one to think with my stomach. Vanille Absolu is a little niche offering from a very controversial brand, and it’s a conceptual fragrance (concept being "vanilla") that succeeds at executing the vanilla idea, while offering something more, and possibly something more fun. It is a success and a great thing to wear on the weekends. For $120, it better be.