Castile (Penhaligon's)

Everyone knows the House of Creed is a polarizing one, capable of generating fist fights between basenoters (no mean feat, considering basenotes is an online community), tears, and even the gnashing of teeth. Some feel it's a great company; others despise it for its perceived dishonesty. Those who are bluntest about their distaste simply feel Creed fragrances don't smell very good and aren't worth the sticker shock. Those guys annoy me, but I can relate, because I feel the exact same way about Penhaligon's.

This brand mystifies me. It's an old company - like Creed, claiming to go back hundreds of years - and they've produced a royal warrant or two to publicly uphold their pedigree. They're expensive: a 3 oz bottle will run you about $140. Stylistically, they're very stodgy. You can almost smell the bookshelf dust before the perfume. It's as though each fragrance were crafted with hand tools in a candlelit shop to the sound of Mendelssohn. By all rights, such a legacy should inspire fragrant beauty of unmatched proportions, works that would bring the staunchest Francophile to his knees. Penhaligon's fragrances ought to smell amazing. Why then do they smell like crap?

Allegedly derived from the Spanish soap of the Castile region, this fragrance was a true challenge for its maker, because it's to closely match a very specialized product. Quality of ingredients is essential when replicating a certain heritage toiletry; a skilled nose would gather necessary components, selecting only the highest-grade materials, and intentionally avoiding redundancy with a new accord, made of three or four original elements. A touch of Mediterranean citrus perhaps, and maybe some Spanish lavender. Only the finest naturals would do.

Mediocre, designer-grade materials were used to make Penhaligon's Castile. It smells chemical and waxy, like truck stop restroom soap. I'm unfamiliar with the smell of real Castile soap, but if it's anything like this, I'm sticking with Irish Spring.

Bluebell (Penhaligon's) & Other Thoughts

The week in repose: what a great time. I learned a lot about Japanese culture, and met a truly nice woman, which is rare in Connecticut these days. During my time I had a few thoughts about perfume, my blog, and a sampling of Bluebell by Penhaligon's. Let me get these thoughts out scatter-shot and then settle into the review.

First, I have a few things to say/add to my Social Politics post on Creed. There were a couple of sarcastic remarks in the comments about my doing "great research" and "investigative journalism is in your future," etc. I assume some of this has to do with my contention that most reviewers of Creed are sampling crap and have no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, that seems like a sloppy assertion, but when you read what people write about Creed as much as I do - and buy new bottles of Creed from their boutique - you realize that the opinions being generated are ridiculous. When you read something about Royal Scottish Lavender, like: "A deceptively beautiful opening...rich, lush, expensive and expansive smelling lavender. Then it went away. Bye beautiful lavender...hello weird, burnt toast & dog food note," you're literally reading about a spoiled bottle, and I'm sorry, there's simply no arguing with that. Nothing fresh out of Creed smells like dog food, or burnt toast.

My mall-vendor purchase of Green Valley yielded the same beautiful opening, and weird burnt-toast and dog food note in the drydown. When Creeds go bad, they smell nice for a few minutes, and then morph into mud. It's no big surprise to read that people are having these experiences with Creed. Basenoters and Fragranticans will opine, and then reveal that they buy all their bottles from Fragrancenet, Amazon, or Ebay. The number of guys and girls who have actually come forward in conversations with me and confirmed their purchases from Creed or Neiman Marcus are few and very far between. Follow that up with disingenuous comparisons that mimic Luca Turin in The Guide, and you reach a saturation point for perfume bloggers' attempts to stay "chic."

When it comes to the rest of the blog post, in no section did I definitely state anything about Creed. I'm simply giving them the benefit of the doubt, and when it comes to my position on the vintage packaging of Olivier Creed fragrances from yesteryear, I'm positing my take based on my education, and what I see. Could these bottles be from 1990? Possibly. But when it comes to Creed, there's a lot I don't know, and that's more than most of the skeptics are willing to admit. I guess Luca Turin saying Pierre Bourdon created Green Irish Tweed is enough for many people, but Mr. Turin failed to back it up with facts on basenotes several years ago, and after that conversation I decided his word wasn't the last one after all. One more thing: many people are suspicious of Creed because Laurice Rahme was the brand's sole stakeholder in its American distribution. She's also the woman behind Bond No.9. Why does this warrant suspicion of Creed? Because she's a good marketer? Because she's a successful businesswoman in a male-dominated industry? I guess I'll never know.

The second thing I'd like to talk about is "strong fragrances," perfumes that are perceived to be too much for gentle noses. My Japanese friend had a very light sensibility with perfume, and loved Eau Sauvage on me. She wears Escada Moon Sparkle and considers Mugler Cologne to be too much. Well, the first five minutes of Mugler Cologne. After that, she thought it smelled good.

There are plenty of Americans who prefer to go light and easy with perfume as well. I can understand that, but in all cases I'm not sure what the reasoning is. Aside from getting a headache, what's the harm in smelling something with overt sillage? We have no problem subjecting our eyes to bright colors, or our ears to the hundreds of decibels of New York City traffic. But inhaling a little too much perfume is a scary prospect . . . with Japan, I concede it is cultural. Japanese people favor restraint in all things. They also like classy brand names. Bvlgari fragrances are popular there, scents with breezy personalities. But here in the States, it doesn't compute. Then again, there are plenty of people walking around in hazy clouds of scent. Maybe they're the ones ruining it for the rest of us. I just don't know.

This leads me to Penhaligon's famous floral fragrance (say that three times fast), Bluebell. On Tuesday we went to Yale's British Gallery, viewed their permanent collection, and stopped off in the gift shop afterwards. They had a smaller-than-usual selection of Penhaligon's testers on a shelf. Usually there's twenty-five or thirty testers, but this time only eight or nine. It was a bit odd, but I can only conclude that they either sold out on the rest, or weren't selling them at all.

I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I gave Bluebell a few spritzes. The opening was harsh, astringent, full of sharp chemicals and alcohol, but it rapidly arranged itself into a semblance of galbanum and hyacinth, with a sort of fetid, powdery sweetness that resembles the floral note in Pinaud's Lilac Vegetal aftershave. I dislike Lilac Vegetal, but the mixture of unfriendly greens in the top of Bluebell was different. I liked it.

Then came something else I liked - an earthy cinnamon/clove accord, which smelled very brown, like a pungent forest floor. It wafted across Bluebell's silvery-green notes like a cloud of dust. This effect stuck around for the better part of an hour, and at this stage I was starting to wonder what the hell all the negativity was about. I smelled a conceptual fragrance, understood the concept, and couldn't for the life of me get why people hated it so much . . .

. . . Until the far drydown, which arrived fairly quickly. Somehow the concept folded on itself, and the floral notes, which were light and semi-sweet for a while, suddenly became scratchy, stinky, and unremittingly chemical. This change seemed to sucker-punch the cinnamon/clove thing. The cinnamon became achingly bitter, and the clove smelled like a Glade air freshener. Before long, all I could smell was a sourmash floral note and artificial clove. What the hell happened?

I'll give Luca Turin this much - as far as I can tell, he has Penhaligon's pegged. I've only tried four of their fragrances. To use baseball lingo, they're the Golden Sombrero-wearers of the perfume world. But I'll keep on keeping on.

Violetta (Penhaligon's)

I have an odd relationship with violets, perhaps because I'm a man who likes how they smell, and doesn't mind wearing them. To me, violets are about green shadows, wet earth, night-blooming romance. They're the stuff of mystery, and the men who build mysteries. When rendered honestly, they smell incredible.

When rendered dishonestly, all the inherent good and evil of violets is tragically undone. It's a fine line because there's very little difference between a good violet scent, and a bad one. The best and the worst smell sweet and green alike, with only subtle variations to distinguish them. A good violet scent - perhaps the greatest available to men - is Grey Flannel. I feel like my soul is on my skin when I wear Grey Flannel. Swirling remnants of anything that is fair and foul about me manifests in its well-oiled machine of imploded lemon, violet, violet leaf, oakmoss. Any remote fleck of selflessness and personal sacrifice is nicely suited to its sweetness; duplicity and murderous impulses are the shadow matter of crushed greens under its mossy thicket, providing shadow to the light. There aren't many fragrances that operate this way. While most frags simply accompany me, Grey Flannel becomes part of me.

Not so with Violetta by Penhaligon's. Is it any irony that Violetta was released the same year as Grey Flannel? Perhaps, and the meaning isn't lost on this violet fan. Where Grey Flannel conveys a natural scent profile, Violetta settles on blatantly synthetic aromachemicals to convey an empty expression of "chic." Violets have a natural sexiness built into their fragile scent, and if a perfumer frames their earthbound allure with other natural notes, as Andre Fromentin did, the result is beguiling. If the nose decides "natural" isn't enough, and filters violets through gobs of naked Ambrox and Galaxolide, the result is headache inducing. Needless to say, Violetta is a migraine in a bottle.

Despite its crudeness, I can sense what the perfumer behind Violetta was going for: a crisp, green, dusty violet, with hints of wood and musk as supporting players. Looks good on paper, but in practice it's a disaster. The opening violet note is piercingly bright, sickeningly sweet, and possesses the demeanor of an expensive air freshener - not a fine fragrance. It rapidly becomes obvious that the synthetic violet bombast is playing bicinium to coarse musk. The musk note is almost odorless, yet louder than the violet. It was meant to lend the sweet greenness some loess for relief, but instead just expounds on the already-bad. There are precious few wearable violets for men on the current market, and this one bites the dust. Literally.

I find it amusing that Grey Flannel, at only $12 for 4 ounces, eclipses a $125 perfume by such a wide margin. But as a guy with an eye on quality instead of price, I don't find it surprising in the least. Experienced male fumeheads know how easy it is to smell amazing for under $15 - you just have to know that what feeds the soul usually spares the wallet. With their fragrances consistently underwhelming me, I see no reason to jettison this credo for Penhaligon's, and certainly wouldn't waste time on something as offensive as Violetta.

Hammam Bouquet (Penhaligon's)

England is a beautiful country, and London is currently the capitol of the universe. When I was there in the early nineties, I strolled through the city's impeccably flowered and pruned parks, endlessly in awe of Britain's green thumb pride. And how about those Royals?

Sniffing Hammam Bouquet today, I can appreciate its nostalgia factor. It has a Victorian feel to it, a musty sensuality stifled beneath the artless frills of an opaque bodice dress. The first few seconds of lavender and rose are chilly, but alluring. Britain's imperialism and considerable reach into Asia are evident in the fragrance's opening. Eventually a sweet orris note appears and guides me into an amber drydown. Hammam Bouquet smells tortuously restrained, as if sin could overcome virtue by way of sexual apoplexy.

The poetic reviews on Fragrantica and Basenotes are enjoyable essays borne of unbridled enthusiasm, and while admirable, cannot be duplicated here on my blog. I will acquiesce to the fragrance's rich history, however, and note that while Hammam's current formula is lacking a bit, its form is not. This type of British barbershop dandy scent is truly classical in scope, and I await the day that it is added to my rapidly growing collection.