Égoïste (Chanel)

Sometimes fragrance companies produce a scent that is so beautiful, so distinguished, so utterly peerless in both radiance and allure, that everyone misses the point, few people wear it, and whole nations refuse to sell it. Such a perfume is neither aspirational, nor avant-garde, but simply the stuff every obsessed fragrance fanatic's dreams are made off.

Égoïste isn't it.

Jacques Polge's 1990 release surely serves as fragrant manna for some believers, those who enjoy its rich, herbal-fruity orientalism for being unique in an ocean of banality, and for the elegant woody-fresh ambiance it imparts. If a man stands up to say that Égoïste is the greatest masculine ever made, he isn't wrong. Because fragrance is largely functional, this person is simply bearing allegiance to that which functions best for him. To expect him to get into the ins and outs about the scent, and what it does for him, is to expect too much; I have met people who claim to love the smell of skunk, and though it nauseates me, their right to sit at home and spend hours inhaling skunk fumes (easily replicated using a common weed found in New England, nick-named 'Skunk Cabbage'), is ironclad, and I hope iron-curtained as well.

As perfumery is about functional design, it's apt to compare Égoïste to staplers, namely Swingline staplers. There are many staplers in the world, manufactured by hundreds of companies. Somehow the Swingline has become the North American holy grail of staplers. How did that happen? It's unclear, but I'd wager Hollywood had something to do with it - a little corporate comedy named Office Space not only made Swingline a household name, but prompted the company to produce the first-ever red Swingline, to correspond with Milton Waddams' inexplicably-shaded desk ornament. Red Swinglines didn't exist until Office Space threw the scare into their inventory and forced them to do a little coloring. I believe they may have gotten carried away, but there you have it.

Égoïste is Chanel's red Swingline stapler. Prior to its release, the brain trust in the back lot released something fantastic called Bois Noir, which by several accounts smelled wonderful, full of rich spices and floral notes that were big, proud, technically impossible, a true large-scale monument in modern oriental-style perfumery. But it walked a fantastic line, entertained the few who had real money to spare, and was quickly discontinued, which simply meant clearing off a shelf at the boutique in Paris. The little show at Cannes was over, and what do you know? Some people really liked it, Chanel customers in particular. Remember that off-beat woody-fruity oriental you used to make, Chanel? The one with that delectable stewed fruit thing going on in its heart? Oh, of course it wasn't unique, or significantly different (Mouchoir de Monsieur, Habit Rouge, and Samsara all got there first), or even exciting to smell, but theirs are beige, yours was red, and we want it back. We want a red stapler to call our own.

Chanel obliged, and we were given Égoïste, a tidied-up version of Bois Noir, with less oomph! Which is problematic to start, since Bois Noir's reputation rests on its having lots of extra oomph! The main attraction was the spicy-fruity mix in the middle, but somehow Égoïste's nose decided sandalwood had more heart, and attached the citrus-herbal-woody Mouchoir-like structure to a judiciously integrated Polysantol base, which may or may not have been in the original. The real attraction here is sandalwood. If you'd like a florid little semi-sweet woody oriental with a big, smooth, expensive sandalwood base, look no further. After the crisp citruses and tangerine/raisin/plum notes start twinkling out, I'm left with a soft, vanillic sandalwood that is as boring as it is neat. Did I mention the lavender? Égoïste's terse lavender note runs like a silver spine through the amorphous composition, breathing some breezy, aromatic masculinity into an androgynous perfume. Nice enough, but is it enough?

Technically yes, perhaps Égoïste's composition is the stuff of greatness, and some fan can rattle off a dozen reasons why it's better and more interesting than everything else Chanel has released in the last twenty years. Me? I'm satisfied with the black and grey staplers, thank you very much. They perform their simple task just as well, and without all the chagrin that accompanies something fun you know is headed for the scrap bin, just as soon as everyone's forgotten why they liked it in the first place.

Tabac (Mäurer & Wirtz)

Somone once called Tabac "Chanel N°5 for men," and rather poetically added that it smelled "divine." Of course, having been a Bolshevik in my former life, my mind immediately jetted off to Eastern Europe, and roamed the black-forested hills of Russia, the mountain towns of Lithuania, the former Czechoslovakia's golden fields of mustard and rape. Wings of Desire, or Der Himmel über Berlin,the famous Franco-German motion picture directed by none other than Düsseldorf's Wim Wenders, also comes to mind. I can attest to the bleakness of life for Soviet-satellite nations only second-hand, having strolled on ankle-thin cement sidewalks between hulking cement behemoths holding upwards of six-hundred families in their colorless bowels. Naturally these are post-communist memories, and I've never been to Germany, but I have witnessed the fatalistic stoicism of a people so accustomed to repression as to expect it despite their hard-won freedoms.

The beauty of the Polish, the Czechs, the Slovaks, is their casual understanding of the universe; the great unknown, as they seem to see it, is where we're all headed, and you might as well toke on a Djarum Black and walk your dog and ignore the impulse to substitute classical music for the din of rush hour traffic. God is another excuse for letting your emotions get away from you, and why bother talking to him through the tears when you can create something, save something, and move someone all by yourself? Eastern Europeans work hard. I mean hard. Harder than any American, possibly harder than the Chinese and Japanese, and to date I've yet to see another people who consider a twelve-hour day "short," or commute four hours a day without a second thought. There's no shortcut in a catch-up culture. Everyone has to pay their dues, and keep paying until they're dead or broke.

Háje, Praha

Tabac, probably the European equivalent of Old Spice, is what repressed people wore when their leaders were cordoning off their communities with cement walls and barb-wire fences. You might think, having never tried it, that it must smell weak, simple, without resource as a product of those with very limited resources. In fact, it's just the opposite. Tabac smells rich, smooth, complex, and very, very good. Prior to acquiring my little bottle I had no idea what to expect, and hadn't really done much reading on it. I spritzed some on my wrist, and what a surprise! It's a citrus chypre! And it's unisex! The top notes are loaded with aldehydes, bergamot, lemon, lavender, and a big spicy carnation that feels pink and clean and peppery-fresh. A powdery amber sets in later, lending this heady construct some warmth, with hints of sandalwood and rose. An approximation of tobacco is loosely achieved via the thoughtful combination of amber and moss, with just a touch of pine contrasting the sweeter floral notes. The result: divine indeed.

Despite its many virtues, Tabac is not what I consider easy to love. Its citrus is big, its floral notes are very heady, and its woody-mossy underbelly is crudely unapologetic. One could speculate that the construct was calibrated to mask bodily odors, which isn't far-fetched when you consider the days of public bath houses in diesel-fumigated city squares (had I been there, Tuesday and Thursday would have been my preferred "bathing days"). Perhaps a point of comparison would help - Boucheron Pour Homme is more refined, but the same basic storyline of rich citrus and floral notes is there to be had. It certainly sits on the same branch of the olfactory family tree. This review is of Tabac's Eau de Cologne concentration.

Paco Rabanne Pour Homme (Paco Rabanne)

To truly enjoy a family of fragrances, it's useful to revisit the first in a genre, that which spawned dozens of variations, the "originator." For most of the early twentieth century, European and American men wore traditional fougères, things like Fougère Royale, English Lavender, Dunhill, Pour un Homme, Moustache, and Arden's Sandalwood. In the early sixties the old guard began to transmogrify into the newer and more novel, due in large part to the invention of better fragrance molecules. Things like Brut and Agua Brava, with fifties-era nitro-musks and transcendent 10 carbon alcohols, were tailored to be rich, brash, and smelled the way the Rolling Stones played.

Then came refinement, and its name was Paco. Anything's possible, but I like to imagine the pre-game for selling the concept to the perfumer. "We like traditional Spanish ferns, and also the scent of Barbasol. Make it a little of both." Or, per Tom Ford, "Make it so."

Paco Rabanne Pour Homme is the premiere mass-market mega-hit aromatic fougère, and as such received accolades and suffered the outrageous fortune of having many pursuant releases improve what it first proposed: a fresh, sweet, woody-green fougère, capable of commanding respect without raising its voice. Paco gathered the familiar shaving-soap smells of every man's morning ablutions and distilled them down to a magnificent heart accord, which by all rights should be bolstered by two or three more aromatics and turned into a old-school perfumer's base (which then should promptly be sold to whoever makes Pinaud's aftershaves). 

The beauty of the heart is in its bold blend of oakmoss, coumarin, and a notably polite sage, which segregate over time into their sheer myrcene, myrcenol, rhodinal, aniba rosaeodora, and pelargonium constituencies. (This translates to bay leaf, lavender, citron, rosewood, and geranium.) Smell it up close, and the citrus note smells tart and bright, wedded nicely to sweet English lavender, with the herbs lighting the floral bay and spiced rosewood's subtle shadows. Kind of like an evening stroll through the autumn woods. From afar, I get a much less saturnine smell: shaving cream. Very nice.

My gripe with Paco is that it needs a spirit level. Its stages are all beautiful and deceptively complex, but I've ridden Japanese jeeps with smoother transmissions. Paco's bright, crisp, ebulliently-green top accord is the sort of thing one encounters only four or five times in a lifetime of smelling hundreds, if not thousands of perfumes. That it only lasts ten seconds is a travesty. Fortunately its lavender lives on to freshen the proceedings and hold their components together, as lavender typically does in masculine compositions, but from this forest-glen emerges a bubble of sweetness, the slightly-bitter nuttiness of coumarin flanked by honey. Together they form an accord that should send every dentist within a thirty miles radius on high alert. 

This shit is sweet. I'd say it's definitely too sweet, but then again, it's a variant of traditional fern, which was reputedly quite sweet at heart, with stray tonka and hay accords amplifying rich coumarin effects. So maybe Paco's coumarin, heady and sugary as it is, really isn't out of place, but just way out there, the man at the wedding in the robin's-egg blue seersucker and paper pants. The rapidity of transition in this fragrance is a mixed blessing - here it allows the sugar rush to pass within ten minutes, and from there it's cool, woody-dusty goodness, with vibrant green accents.

Has Paco been eclipsed by its successors? Have Azzaro, Drakkar, and Rive Gauche taken the same floor plan and used better furniture? Yes and no. I find Azzaro tedious on a good day, although its earlier incarnations smelled captivating. But wearing it made me wonder if I wasn't taking myself too seriously. Drakkar is beautiful, perhaps the freshest mossy lavender on a bed of evergreens since Polo. I enjoy it, but wonder if it isn't taking itself too seriously. Things like Rive Gauche are merely variants, extensions of the barbershop wet-shaver aura peddled by Pinaud's Clubman, all the way up through history to Brut and Paco. YSL's version keeps the original furniture and re-upholsters it in black velour. Nice, but nothing new.

Maybe the most refreshing thing about Paco Rabanne is that it holds its best facets out where they belong: in a cool, musky sillage at five paces. Everything since has re-hashed and repeated the same structure, with negligible results. The aromatic fougère is dead; Long live Paco Rabanne Pour Homme!

Mesmerize for Men (Avon)

Masculine fragrances of the last thirty years have generally trended in two directions: woody-fresh and fruity-fresh, with the first category hosting things like Grey Flannel, Drakkar Noir, Zino, and Ungaro, and the second seeing Cool Water, Acqua di Gio, and Mugler Cologne. They're terrific realms to explore, with specimens of the first genre enjoying a second (or even third) wind. I was complimented today by a young female co-worker when some warm rain re-activated my Drakkar, a mere seven hours after application. Her reaction in a long line of similar reactions suggests, contrary to popular belief, that women in their twenties and thirties gravitate toward herbal-piney scents, and not just your ordinary saccharine musky-florals.

The fact that most female perfume bloggers ignore the aromatic power-fougères of yesteryear amazes me; things like Paco Rabanne, Azzaro, and Drakkar are still as effective now as they were on their release date. Today's blogroll is loaded with comments on fruity-chypres and borderline-unwearable florientals. I love you ladies, but enough with the obscure niche stuff already. Pepper your posts here and there with something about these mainstream masculine masterpieces, and address the poor, pedestrian fougère. I'm fully aware that Parfumerie Générale and L'Artisan are amazing, but I'm dying to meet the girl who dons Skin Bracer in the morning, and would much rather read what she has to say. I understand the French turn their noses up at Mr. Drakkar because he was over-used by lesbians in the eighties. If that's true, I'd like to see a fashion revival, not strictly limited to that demographic.

Which brings me to Mesmerize by Avon, a humble firm with only one notable chypre on the niche-snob radar, a certain retro celebuscent called Deneuve. With no hi-power beauty queen fronting it, I can understand how the feminine Mesmerize floundered, but the masculine version flogs all expectations. I purchased Mesmerize from a co-worker who recently decided to become an Avon rep. She let me flip through her little catalog, and I was very close to changing my mind and declining a purchase, or maybe giving Ironman a try. I don't know what happened, but I suddenly realized I liked the royal blue bottle for Mesmerize, which is the only Avon bottle that isn't Hellishly ugly, and ordered accordingly. I'm glad I did, because Mesmerize is very nice. 

Its sweet green-apple and bergamot top note is reminiscent of Cool Water and every fresh fougère since, and this aromatic fruity edge persists into the drydown. But wait - there's more to it than this - Mesmerize rapidly transforms into a warm, woody oriental in the Zino/Ungaro axis, with similar ambery overtures of precious woods (rosewood, sandalwood), vanilla, and musk. Though admittedly middle-shelf, for twenty dollars you could do much worse, and in many ways this scent is much better than competition at twice its price. The fruit notes aren't blatantly synthetic or obnoxiously "fresh" and I get a pleasant balance between the softer aromatics in the heart and base. Longevity and sillage are decent but average, clocking in at six hours and two or three feet respectively.

Given that this is sort of a Franken-scent, an unexpected combination of two hugely popular scent profiles, one might ask, 'if not Zino or Cool Water, why Mesmerize?' For the sizable phalanx of adult men under forty, this respectable little oriental (or fougèriental, if you prefer) eliminates the need for an either/or commitment to the two camps represented by those scents, and binds them both into one. Many fragrances since 1992 have tried doing this, and most have bombed. This one stays aloft, and just plain smells good. Ladies, Mesmerize is eminently wearable as an off-beat feminine, and I think female skin would bring out its mandarin and vanilla notes better than mine does. Consider this one of those share-wear frags, and go guilt free after sneaking a spritz or two in the bathroom. And yes, by all means, ignore the feminine version - Avon is capable of impressive things, but they dabble in the mundane far more often.

Le Troisième Homme (Caron)

Perhaps the nicest thing about having 100 years of modern perfumery behind you is the ability to trace the thematic evolution of popular scent profiles. It's as easy to connect the dots between Skin Bracer, Caron Pour Homme, and Agua Lavanda Puig, as to follow the gilded path from Grey Flannel to anything "fresh" and "green" from the last twenty-five years. The fact that one could miss genuinely unique and distinguished entries is the only possible downside, as those rarest of rare diamonds-in-the-rough sometimes have an elusive way about them. Which brings me to Le Troisième Homme, Caron's "Third Man" in its esteemed masculine range. 

Released in 1985, this brilliant fougère stands aloof, safely away from a myriad of woody-fresh fougères of that era, although I contend it's loosely book-ended by Pierre Cardin Pour Monsieur cologne and Creed's Bois du Portugal, with Guerlain's Héritage further afield. All parallels aside, comparing Le Troisième Homme to anything misses the point: this fragrance is one of a kind, and its nose is undoubtedly the sort of slightly-eccentric woman who voluntarily reads Ada and Beautiful Losers and plays Fruchtchen! for fun.

Le Troisième Homme, created in a Givaudan laboratory by a Japanese perfumer named Akiko Kamei, takes a yuzu-tinged citrus and lavender note and enlivens it with a fresh, cool, almost-lactonic woody-floral accord of surprising strength and tenacity, thanks to synthetics that extend the lavender well past its sell-by date. Its herbal coolness is flanked by a judicious touch of oakmoss, and forms a subtle tension against a warm and musky base. Coriander lends a feral edge to clean jasmine and an anisic, ephemerally-camphorous base of cedar, vanilla, and sandalwood. 

Although its drydown is lovely (and dare I say it, sexy too), I'm more enamored with the fragrance's champagne-fizz top. It's comprised of nothing special, yet somehow smells new, unprecedented, successfully inventive. A standard arrangement of orange, lemon, lavender, and oakmoss is passable on paper, but in practice here it astonishes me, as it smells of nothing else, and smells very, very good. You could blame it on the angelic touch of aldehydes in the first five seconds, or perhaps the liqueur-like dulcitude of syrupy orange and lemon as they mingle with a tempered version of Pour un Homme's unmatched lavender. Whatever it is, it works, and the somewhat-questionable sheer musk that plagues other Caron masculines, Yatagan in particular, is right at home here as well. Nice work.

It took me four years to get around to trying this scent, due in no small part to the scattered reviews about it in online forums. I'd come close to a blind-buy, and then read more about it and get spooked. People have the most divergent opinions about Third Man, with comments ranging from "Tom Selleck with his shirt open," to "a great scent to wear on Easter, with its association of flowers and candies." Some say it's too feminine, too "pretty," while others claim it's almost unisex, but in some ways too masculine for the ladies to pull off. Still others suggest that it's completely unisex. Having finally worn it myself, I can say that I fall firmly into the last camp, finding LTH neither overtly masculine, nor overwhelmingly feminine, but somewhere in the middle, a terrain inhabited by everyone, from the girliest of girly-girls, to the butchest lesbians, the strongest archetypical silent types, to the classiest bisexual Hollywood players.

Ironically enough, virtually no one wears it. Their loss - I'm definitely keeping it in my rotation for the rest of my life.

Baie de Genièvre (Creed) "Juniper Cinnamon"

The full name is Baie de Genièvre Feuilles de Cannelier, or Juniper Bay Leaves Cinnamon. Sort of a rum-less bay rum with extra aromatics, thanks to a generous slug of juniper berry. It's one of the recently-vaulted grey caps that is no longer available, except maybe for five random days of the year (they recently let Royal Scottish Lavender back out of the bag). However, this EDT is still find-able, and Luis is surely willing to track bottles down for American customers if you put it to him nicely, so all you wetshavers out there should dry your tears until the supply truly dwindles to near-extinction.

My personal feelings about BdG were never all that enthusiastic. Its top is a nice burst of spiciness, with big hits of juniper that shimmer into a masculine aftershave drydown. A wise basenoter once compared the base - which is complex for a grey cap - to warm, clean hospital bandages, and I see his point. It's well made of course, and the notes are very distinct, lively, and likable. But the hints of cinnamon, the dusty dryness of the spice mingling with the juniper, and the overall Old World wet-shave ambiance doesn't warrant spending $175, at least not from my wallet. Back when grey caps were $150, I'd say it's your call, sleep on it, don't feel guilty about spending the cashola, whatever. 

Now that Creed has jacked prices on vaulted fragrances, I'm almost prepared to reprimand anyone who concedes hard-earned coinage for BdG. There are other bay rums that smell as-good or close to it, and actually include the rum. So if you happen across this at a discount - like an $80 for the bottle discount - buy it without a second thought. But if full-price, or anything over $100 is all you can find, skip BdG and check out Badger & Blade for tips on great aftershaves and colognes that excel in this category.

See you in October!

Original Santal (Creed) "Modern Oriental"

Many Creeds are subject to the comparison game, something I've played before on this blog, but I won't play it here. I'll only mention that Original Santal has been endlessly compared to two modern orientals, Joop! Homme and Montblanc Individuel, with many claiming the three are interchangeable. To suggest that a Creed smells like a designer scent is like saying The London Symphony Orchestra's rendition of Holst's The Planets matches a Casio keyboard when you hit the "strings" button. 

The catch with Creed is, has always been, and probably always will be a matter of ingredient quality, i.e., Creed's synthetic and natural ingredients are top shelf and a few rungs above the competition. Approaching Original Santal with a skeptical mind (it's a fuzzy cinnamon oriental, and I'm rarely enthused about those), I placed a drop on my wrist and inhaled, thinking the top would be, well, warm and fuzzy. It was half that, and half piercing lavender, with an almost-resinous hint of evergreen lurking under piping hot cinnamon. The spice is extremely realistic, with a richness I've never encountered in an oriental anywhere . . . except fleetingly in the first three seconds of Old Spice. If you like the smell of cinnamon, you'll love it in Original Santal.

Five minutes later, the cinnamon recedes, the lavender becomes increasingly aromatic, and the wisp of evergreen resolves itself into juniper berry, with the whole thing sweetened by an amiable sandalwood reconstruction of tonka and musk. I'm not a sandalwood expert, but I'd hazard to say it's fair - not great. It does smell like sandalwood, with that semi-sweet brusqueness that's so refreshing in old-school masculines, but it's reserved, tucked behind an almost-frightening lavender, juniper, and vanilla. Three hours in, the vanilla, edged by lavender and fixed by the sandalwood composition, becomes the reassuring warmth, the pleasant light at the end of the tunnel.

Refreshing too is the absence of the usual Creed ambergris base. Sometimes it's just not possible to conjoin two good ideas into one. Smelling Original Santal and thinking of all the chatter it generates, I can't help but guess that Creed must be hated within the fragrance community, particularly among perfumers who frown on how a brand with so few avant-garde ideas can be so successful, simply by using high-grade materials. When Chanel does fresh amber, they get fruit salad; when Creed does it, they get Green Irish Tweed. Likewise, in Original Santal, the theme has been the same since 1990, but all the players are in perfect lockstep, and bring fluidity and elegance to a vulnerable form. It's a pleasure to wear, and emblematic of all that is right with the folks at 38 Avenue Pierre.

Sublime Vanille (Creed) "Inedible Vanilla"

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I hated vanilla in perfume. I'm not sure why, but it bored me. I associated vanilla with ice cream, girl's perfume, boring ambers and orientals worn by unadventurous academics who tortured English Lit majors with turgid third-period ramblings. Always nice, but never interesting, vanilla simply didn't factor into my chauvinistic and fougère-centric world.

Then I met Caron Pour un Homme, and everything changed. I hated vanilla? Where had it been all my life? Boxed cake mix? Cotton candy? Vanilla is stunning! Vanilla is masculine. Vanilla is elegant. Vanilla is in.

Shalimar, Guerlain's flagship oriental, is probably the most wearable treatment of vanilla on the current market. It's terrific, not because it smells expensive (that doesn't hurt), but because it smells at once luscious and inedible, like the whiff of a beautiful woman's bare skin on an October breeze. There's the dry, boozy sweetness, and a musty, almost-beige veneer of concentrated vanillin, brutally rich and modern, yet very familiar. Guerlain treats it well by framing it with citrus, opoponax, sandalwood, and musk.

Creed's attempt to do its own Shalimar-like oriental is Sublime Vanille, but with the "Frenchness" dialed back by a simplified form and amped-up atmosphere of starchy Britannia. If you compare the two, you'll find they don't smell anything alike, but share some basic structural elements and high-quality raw materials. Creed's citrus treatment is transparent, a little sharp, and very dry. It lacks Shalimar's ambery glow, and I think the Guerlain feels much warmer and more inviting. After that initial fruity burst, the "big vanilla" heart appears, and Sublime Vanille becomes a three-note tune: intense, grandiloquent vanilla, predictably mingling with tonka and musk. It's simple, it's loud, and it's very nice. But it's no Shalimar.

One day, Creed will find a reason for me to part with $640. Sublime Vanille ain't it.

Tabaróme Millésime (Creed - Brief Review)

Tabaróme Millésime is a soggy, citrus-ginger-tea EDC. This Vintage Tabaróme reboot does its prestigious name no favors, and simpers on the sidelines while a slew of better tobacco frags find their mark. As it stands, this Millésime is superfluous in a lineup crowded with fresh citruses and gentleman's club orientals. Creed should replace it with a traditional Fougère Royale-styled fougère, and a fresh pine fougère in the Pino Silvestre tradition.

The Leffingwell Fragrance Genealogie Charts

This post is just an aside to my readers. Many of you may wonder where I get my fragrance classifications from, when I refer to things as chypres, orientals, etc. I use the Leffingwell Fragrance Genealogie Charts, of which there is a "Masculin" and "Feminin" version, both extensively charting the timeline and fragrance grouping of all bestselling designer and mass-market fragrances. There are no modern niche fragrances in the charts. However, classical French houses like Caron and Guerlain are represented, and I suppose they could be considered niche.

Leffingwell charts have been published in The H&R Genealogy, a limited edition set of books that were the industry standard for fragrance classification. They are no longer in print. It is worth noting that in the original editions, fragrance types such as "Aquatic" and "Ozonic" were acknowledged not by these names, but as "Fantasy" fragrances, and were categorized as such.

Love in Black (Creed) "Fake Iris"

With Love in Black, Creed, somewhat rhetorically, proposes a new style of perfumery, asking adult women to try returning to stodgy Rococo florals rendered in a postmodern, semi-gourmand oriental style. No easy task, especially since Rococo-era perfumes are all but extinct, with almost no surviving formulas. "But Bryan," you groan, "That's not a new style of perfumery. It's been done to death!" To this I can only say, yes and no. If we delve into the canons of French form, we find dozens of examples, from Opium to Paris, Angel to Insolence, 28 La Pausa to Joop! Femme. 

True, all are bellowing foghorns of super-sweet orientalism, aldehydic caricatures of real floral accords, and/or unapologetic synthetic pastiches of every aroma chemical fabricated since 1964. One would be hard pressed to find anything original at this stage of the game, save for the occasional freak of nature among unnatural things, which is an oxymoron wrapped in cliche. Yet Love in Black pushes through the ramparts with a style of fragrance I have yet to encounter, not due to its scent profile, which is quite broad and widely imitated, but for its ability to change, evolve, and mutate, with every turn equally wide, and every note equally loud. 

My description may elicit shrugs, but consider this: when was the last time you sniffed an intricate fragrance that morphed into something new exactly four times in two hours, without ever decreasing in complexity or character? And when was the last time this fragrance resembled in equal parts a floral structure and a postmodern form?

Moving against their own grain, the noses at Creed decided to take a risk with Love in Black and devise a formula with classical French forms bloated like beached whales, all done entirely with synthetics. Forget the natural tinctures of old, the antiquated nobility of true floral bodies derived from extracts and oils. Swap it all for expensive lab experiments, gallons of Ambroxan, ionones, aldehydes, and everything else Givaudan keeps under the counter. Perhaps Chanel's 28 La Pausa would be a reference point for how traditional modern iris is presented in feminine perfumery, but if you exacerbate the neon hi-gloss zeitgeist of 2012's feminine fashion zone and cull only the most obnoxious, shallow, artless styles, 28 fades out, and something like LiB's top note fades in. 

This is synthetic iris, plain and simple, with all its artifice amped up, deliberately exposing the crudeness of Ambroxan. It smells like someone weaponized Play-Doh and turned it into an aerosol spray. The note is dense, colorless, fuzzy, semi-sweet, semi-bitter, almost like turnips left out in the sun for days on end, and then suddenly rained on. The elegance of iris would be expected to jump ship, but instead somehow reverts to a classical poise, where the gauzy, haunted serenity of this note becomes self-effacing, tongue-in-cheek, and over-extended to the point of hilarious parody. 

But the joke isn't on us; LiB's swagger is bombastic but always beautiful, with a directness usually found in the stodgier eighteenth and nineteenth century compositions by this firm. Just as I'm starting to think this perfume is top-heavy, the cloud implodes on itself, becoming more of a low-lying haze, enshrouding the shimmering elements of Stage Two.

Enter rose, violet, blackcurrant, sandalwood, and cedar. Imagine these notes are not used to create an abstract Chanel-like accord, but are instead rendered individually, each with its own fidelity, distinct, separate, yet bundled together, and all shouting at the top of their lungs. The truth in this approach is beheld in older modes of French high perfumery, in things like Lubin's Black Jade, or Creed's own Fantasia de Fleurs. Before synthetics, the naturals could only be blended so much before their differences in viscosity and intensity became apparent, and notes stood out resolutely as their own players in an olfactory card game, betting stakes that they alone were what made the proceedings worth watching. If it contained rose, jasmine, bergamot, you smelled rose, jasmine, bergamot. 

This is also apparent in the current formula of Shalimar, which for all intents and purposes smells incredibly natural and boasts ridiculous note separation. To date, Shalimar is the only Guerlain I've sniffed that does this with naturals and synthetics. Creed decided to do it with the highest-quality synthetics it could find, and the result is like a Fragonard done in DecoArt acrylics.

Again, LiB strains credulity, not because things get boring, but rather for its absurdly bright insistence, with the rose and violet notes remaining unflinchingly sweet, the fruit lending them a crystalline edge that siphons feedback but not volume, the woods creating a solid base to this temporary stage, rounding things out warmly and with sophistication. 

Stage Three begins around the ninety-minute mark, and this is the part of LiB that scares me the most. Rapidly, the flowers fuse together, the fruit becomes yet brighter, the woods sweeten, and a frighteningly sweet musk composition appears. That's right, a musk composition - two or three separate musks, all sweet, all vying for supremacy, suddenly overtaking what has been, up until now, a purely postmodern interpretation of the classical floral chypre. But no! This isn't a chypre! This is a floral oriental, replete with woods and musks that defy explanation. 

This part could easily be misconstrued as a sugar-bomb (I myself reviewed it as such upon initially trying it), but further examination brings a different conclusion. The sweetness is purely synthetic musk, and it bludgeons the delicate overtures of Phase Two with saccharine smiles, dirty winks and nods. It smells good, but it's almost crass, and if it wasn't for the continued presence of Ambrox, I'd say it was the point at which this scent loses its mojo. Fortunately the balance between lovely and obscene is maintained.

This later phase is the shortest, and mercifully slips away as rapidly as it came, relieving me of its brutal hiss kiss. The far drydown is the most staid part of LiB, and perversely also the least enjoyable. The woods return, with sandal and cedar now flanked with birch and something akin to the saw-dusty wood of English Leather. 

Hints of jasmine, violet, rose, and iris linger in the periphery, with jasmine making a cameo before succumbing to the more overt syrupy tones of the other flowers. It's beautiful, it's unbelievably loud, it's ridiculously well made, but it's altogether the most demure part, a Belle du Jour who resists Madame Anais and really does keep her top on. But perhaps "Belle" is the wrong way of looking at things - Love in Black could very well be the best masculine Creed to come out in the last five years.