A'Oud Ancienne (Rogue Perfumery)

                                  Picture by Phương Huy

If I could sit down with Manuel Cross, the founder and "self-taught" perfumer of Rogue Perfumery, I'd want a conversation about what kind of perfume is "unwearable." He, and likely other perfumers of his ilk, would want to steer the topic towards the "where," and that satisfies one element, but I would fight for the "why?" Surely, in all things perfume, there must be a philosophical underpinning to every serious scent. I'm wondering why in the holy hell anyone would want to wear A'Oud Ancienne? What is the philosophy here? 

As with stuff like Pineward's Treacle and YSL's Kouros, I get it. Men enjoy animalic fragrances. I'm a man, and I like a good animalic chypre or fougère. But oud is something else entirely. It's a rotted wood, considered a "precious" wood for reasons that elude me, and bears heavy cultural implications in its common application, many of them spiritual in nature. Assam oud, like Chandan incense from the region in India, is ritually burned to cleanse the ethereal aura of a place. Its application in perfumery is widespread (and prized) throughout the Muslim world, and it's not uncommon to find various oud-based compositions in nearly every Muslim-majority Asian country. The most expensive perfume of the last ten years is Shumukh by The Spirit of Dubai, with an asking price of $1.2 million, and guess the first note? Oud. Much of this is for show, but there's another reality here. 

A kilo of oud (a kilo being roughly 2 lbs) only yields one milliliter of resinous oil extract, at a rough cost of $250, which makes just one ounce (30 ml) of pure oud resin potentially worth $7,500. This is why small bottles of Arabian oud attars are among the most expensive luxury items in the perfumery sphere. Quality attars are known for opening with brusque barnyard-like animalic essences, rife with notes of filthy hay, intense terpenes, a weirdly camphoraceous mint-like accord, and indolic florals. I've seen twelve milliliter bottles of Indian attars priced at around $15k. If you're a billionaire sheik staying at an ultra-luxury hotel in Dubai, and you happen to shop at the famous mall there, dropping this kind of coin on a vial of something that looks like bourbon-barrel maple syrup is nothing to you. 

For the rest of us, it's a mystery. What works with A'Oud Ancienne is that it smells of some quality agarwood, at least in the first two minutes of wear. Once the initial fecal pop dissipates, a synthetic "black" oud that has been popular with niche brands for years steps up and lends AA a rather chemical-inky vibe for the rest of the day. It is accented with labdanum and synthetic castoreum, and buttressed by a little bit of pine on top and quality oakmoss below, so the overall material quality of the composition is quite high, which it should be at Manuel's prices. But AA is unwearable in polite company, and I struggle to understand why anyone in the West would spend real money on a bottle of something that will make his friends run for the hills. Longevity is nuclear: expect fifteen hours. 

Santa Reads the Blog

This year, Santa was pretty generous. I received an incredibly large number of samples, some of which are sizable atomizers that can be worn for a few weeks. I previously wrote that I was giving up on the "reviewer's life" of constantly buying things to write about, and while that still holds true, the size and scope of what I have available to me increases the likelihood that reviews will continue into 2024. So for anyone who was pooh-poohing my announcement, good news. Reviews are still happening.

With that said, my nose isn't one hundred percent, and I'm not interested in maintaining my current ratio of reviews to perfume editorials. So, while I will continue to sporadically review things, in keeping with what I posted earlier this month, expect to see more editorials in the new year. Also, the number of brands that will be reviewed will be limited to about five or six in total, so the field has narrowed. But these are terrific brands, and I will be tackling the entire Zoologist line (as many as my nose allows), so keep an eye out.

I should mention that of the samples available, some may seem like they aren't coming through as they should, or are suspiciously simplistic and weak, and so they won't be reviewed at all. Covid nose (parosmia) is temporary, but it's also possible that my sense of smell is permanently weakened, which is all the more reason to scale back on rendering detailed opinions on specific fragrances. Hopefully the majority of what I've been gifted will be easy enough to read, and fair game. Happy New Year, everyone!

Vide Cor Meum (Chris Collins)

"Vide Cor Meum" is Latin for "Look into my heart." The perfume by Chris Collins smells like an exquisite Turkish rose buried in resins and woods, a penumbra of sweet green against a backdrop of smoke. I had some difficulty detecting the top notes, basically the first two minutes of the fragrance, but my girlfriend said it was a melange of clear kitchen spices and something "warm," which she could not quite name, but by that point I was picking up a hint of vanilla and amber, and figured she smelled a citric rose mixed with some spice, maybe sage or thyme. She said it was crystal clear, and I believe her.

All of this shifts rapidly into a bridge of auburn accords, the lilt of incense wafting amidst a thicket of cedars, and the sunset of benzoin casting its rays throughout. Quite enchanting, and all well done, but my heart gravitates to the rich rose note, woody and sweet, which permeates everything. There has to be real Turkish absolute in the blend, as the level of technical accuracy in this rendition is too perfect for it not to be. It's probably my Covid nose playing tricks on me again, but all the same, I'm getting a rose note so spectacular that I would consider this a rose fragrance, and one for rose lovers. The far drydown gets sweeter, with the benzoin, vanilla, and cedar picking up again. 

People develop a taste for rose fragrances over time, and some want dark and velvety roses, while others prefer their bouquets to smell bright and citric. I happen to be in the latter camp, but if I were in the former, I'd probably consider Vide Cor Meum a "must have" fragrance. Its ingredient quality is stunningly good, its blend is masterful, and it possesses just the right richness and complexity to satisfy at its price point. If you appreciate ambery florals, and want something that smells of money, look no further. This fragrance is unremittingly beautiful, from start to finish. A real treasure.  

Announcement: Making a Life Change

I'll get this part out of the way first: No, this isn't the end of the blog. If the headline had you panicked, don't be, because writing is a passion of mine, and I look forward to pontificating on perfume here, so there's certainly no end in sight to my doing that. 

That's the good news. Now, the potentially bad news: Starting in 2024, the format of this blog will change. After much deliberation, I have decided to no longer focus on reviewing fragrances here, and instead will shift the subject matter to more abstract perfume-related topics, things like reformulations, in-depth perceptions of mine, public attitudes towards perfume (tagged "Social Politics of Perfume"), how perfumes are spoken of and marketed, etc. I've always done this, but now I'll be doing it almost exclusively. 

My reason for doing this was spurred by a few things, not the least of which was my recent bout with Covid. During the month-long period in which my sense of smell was severely hobbled, I realized that life is short, and the life of a fragrance reviewer is hectic. For many years, my writing depended on having a constant stream of new fragrances, often full bottles, and more recently samples. While I enjoy doing this, there are some drawbacks, most of which affect me personally. The first is that I'm rarely able to settle on wearing any one perfume for very long, as I must shift my focus to the next one.

This isn't necessarily a net negative for me, as variety truly is the "spice of life," as they say. But it does impede my inner impulses to gravitate toward a smaller subset of favorites. For example, Grey Flannel is a favorite of mine, and there was a year many years ago when I wore it almost exclusively, before this blog had truly taken off. These days I rarely wear it, not because it has fallen out of favor, but because I'm constantly wearing other things, simply so I can post about them. Thus my two bottles of GF sit relatively neglected in storage, and I break them out maybe four or five times a year, at best. 

Another favorite of mine is the house of Creed. Naturally, Creeds are very expensive, and the prospect of even buying a full bottle seemed out of reach in the past, as they are now roughly $500. I haven't been able to purchase a bottle on discount since 2017. But this brings me to the second personal drawback: finances. Each year I spend about $400 on perfume. Even sample hauls rack up into the hundreds over time, and they allow me to review at least three or four fragrances per month. While I can technically sustain this and still be quite comfortable, I've come to find it collides with a deeper desire of mine. 

I'm forty-two years old. Again, life is short. I've worn over seven hundred perfumes, and I've learned a lot about perfumery at every price point, from every region. At this stage, I've realized that I want to wear Creed more regularly. The only way to do that without noticing is to shift my annual financial resources to a couple bottles of Creed (on discount) and simply enjoy them at my leisure, without having to think about "affording" them. I work hard, and I shouldn't have to scrape together for a Creed or two. I don't have to, if I stop exploring the wider world of random (and usually inferior) perfumes. 

To put this into context, I recently bought a bottle of Silver Mountain Water, to bring with me up to Maine whenever my girlfriend and I visit her family. I've wanted a bottle of SMW since 2018. (Full disclosure: I'm a little obsessed with this scent profile.) I could have had one in 2019, were it not for all of my resources being poured into other things. I don't resent or regret any of those choices; I made them, and they spurred the blog along, keeping me and my readers happy. But I no longer want to put my fragrance desires on the back-burner. I'm lucky to have gotten most of my sense of smell back.  

A reader recently pointed out that a lot of the claims of "in-bottle maceration" that Fragrantica members are engaging in seem to veer perilously close to being undiagnosed Covid anosmia. While this may or may not be true, I find it just as curious that suddenly every other Joe thinks his Armaf or Guerlain got "stronger" after letting it sit. This is a topic that I'd like to delve into more in the near future, but I mention it here because I think Covid is a life lesson in virus form for any fragrance aficionado. Your nose shouldn't be taken for granted! If you believe your olfactory capabilities are immutable, think again. 

And so I go forward as a fragrance writer with a new world view: wear what you like, and forget everything else. I've done enough exploring to know that, for me, the window for what I truly enjoy only opens so wide, and I've worn fragrance after fragrance that I would never wear a second time, a habit that once served a purpose, but which no longer does for me. Thus, I will continue writing here on broader topics, and will leave fragrance reviewing to guys who do it better, like Varanis Ridari, among others.

There are (I think) two more fragrances left for me to review this year, and I will commence 2024 with a new mission. Happy holidays, and Merry Christmas!

Revisiting Acqua di Selva in 2023

David Niven goes for his kidnapping reminder, hidden behind his trusty bottle
of Acqua di Selva in "The Pink Panther" (1963).

Just as I suspected, based on all the olfactory feedback I've been getting with my weekly "aroma-therapy" sessions, Acqua di Selva has proven to be the first fragrance that I've smelled clearly on myself for most of the work day. 

As mentioned in my last post, peppermint has consistently been the clearest note detected by my Covid-addled honker. It has conjured memories of my first bottle of Acqua di Selva, which I felt was a very mint-forward and piney Italian cologne in the usual midcentury Mediterranean style. I received my second bottle yesterday, and with one sniff, every note is clear and accounted for. 

The overall composition does smell a bit more muted than it otherwise would, but I could smell it in brief snatches throughout the day. Most striking is the fact that I can smell the dihydromyrcenol in the composition as a slightly incongruent bitterness, which is how it smells in every other dihydromyrcenol-fueled scent in my collection. It is used in a very small amount in Acqua di Selva's formula, as it is only a fleeting essence that rapidly vanishes behind a handful of far more lucid notes.

And that's the thing about this fragrance that my post-Covid nose has taught me: it must be made of mostly natural materials. Sure, there are synthetics in there, and yes, several of them are stand-ins for particular notes, but my recovery experience has been that natural materials smell relatively normal, while lab-contrived molecules are, to varying degrees, a bit "off." Nearly all of Acqua di Selva smells like what it intends to, i.e., a clutch of citruses, pines, field mints, lavender, geranium, woods, and moss. 

I've always considered Acqua di Selva to be Pierre Wargnye's inspiration for Drakkar Noir (1982). Although it was released in 1949, Victor's formula survived the decades unscathed, and even now, under the hand of Visconti di Modrone, the fragrance smells as fresh and crisp as it ever did. I'm sure the vintage version was smoother and even more "natural" in feel, and was likely loaded with real oak moss in its base. But the current formula lasts a solid five to six hours, and smells great. A reminder that classic masculinity can be as casual and effortless as a ten dollar cologne from the old country.

A Bad Head Cold: My Recent Covid Experience, and What I Think is Going on With Weird Fragrance Reviews on Fragrantica

Twenty days ago, I began my very first Covid-19 journey. On Sunday, November 5th, I woke up feeling super crappy. Hard to say exactly what it was, as there were no overt symptoms, other than just feeling fatigued and weird. The day before, at about noon, I had felt a slight tickle in my chest after drinking a milkshake at a diner, and had attributed the lingering sensation to the ice cream. Turns out it was the beginnings of Covid for me.

On the 6th, while at work, the symptoms manifested as a head cold. Sneezing, congestion, a sinus bonanza. I texted my girlfriend and told her I had a cold. Case closed. I plugged on at work, undeterred. I don't care about colds, even when they're bad. This wasn't going to slow me down, and if it did, it wouldn't stop me. I went to work the next day too, and felt a little worse, but still not alarmingly bad: a little shivery in the morning, which I blamed on it being really cold in my house, but otherwise normal cold symptoms, replete with stuffed head and tons of postnasal drip. 

My girlfriend reported feeling similar symptoms that same Tuesday, and by Wednesday she tested for Covid, and came up positive, which prompted her to reach out to me. I took a sick day and tested, and there it was: four years after the start of the pandemic, I was finally looking at two red lines on a rapid antigen test. Fortunately it was a short work week, and I would only miss two days, with five altogether spent resting at home. I spent that time drinking (and accidentally burning myself with) hot chicken broth, sucking on zinc lozenges, and sleeping. 

Unfortunately, I experienced the famous Covid-brand loss of taste and smell. By the 9th, both senses were completely gone, and food had absolutely no flavor. Smell was a little better off; while I couldn't really make out the true definition of anything, I could at least sense that it was there, and some things blared through clearer than others. I'll get into that in detail here, but before I do, I want to fast forward and say that as of the 20th, I tested negative, and confirmed that result with another negative result 48 hrs later. So I'm officially clear of the virus, which I'm grateful for.

My sense of smell is still recovering, and it's going to be a while. My girlfriend has a small collection of essential oils for aromatherapy, and I've been using them for scent therapy almost every day. The interesting thing about the experience is that some things are crystal clear, while others fall into a vague and muddled middle ground, and still others are nearly impossible for me to make out. Here's a short list of the stuff that I can and can't smell:

In the "Can" column:

• Peppermint oil (Comes through almost perfectly, almost like I never had Covid)
• Lemon oil (A touch faint but clear, and with enough nuance to enjoy the woody aspects)
• Eucalyptus oil (Maybe the second strongest after peppermint, with hints of rosiness)
• Lavender oil (In isolation and in a blend, lavender oil comes through muted but clear)
• Cinnamon leaf oil (Weird smell, sort of like the spice, but greener, and pretty clear)
• Patchouli oil (Can pick it out clearly in a complex blend, and it smells good)
• Clove oil (This is the weakest of the lot. I can smell it, but it's quite muted and fades out)
• Helional and metallic florals (Silver Mountain Water clones are coming in fairly well, although they're definitely muted and with attenuated longevity)
• Rosy florals (I smell the roses in my SMW clones and in Chelsea Flowers, leading me to believe that any rose-based compositions will come through fairly clearly) 
• "Spicy" accords (I can detect things along the Old Spice axis, but they're muted) 

 In the "Can't" column:

• Vanilla (Only get the barest traces of it, and only when conjoined with lavender)
• Ylang-Ylang (Not really getting that rich, tropical, sweet floral)
• Sandalwood (Not smelling it at all)
• Dihydromyrcenol (My GIT clones and Cool Water all smell super bitter and very wrong in the first thirty minutes of wear, although they get marginally better after that) 
• Abstract florals (The blackcurrant aspect of some of these is strongest, while the greener elements are undetectable, and any violet-like sweetness is all sour and wrong) 

I expect that my sense of smell will take a few months to fully recover. I also expect that by this time next month, it will have made a 65-75% recovery (it stands at about fifty percent now). My sense of taste is lagging, however. While I can taste much more than two weeks ago, I'm still only getting mellow nuances of flavor, have no lingering sense of taste, and there are some aspects of "sweet" that I can't get at all, especially dark chocolate. I have no idea when that will come back, and don't care nearly as much. 

An underlying theme to my olfactory adventures has been the lack of longevity in everything I smell. Even while I'm still sniffing, my nose conks out on occasion, and has to reset before I can detect anything. Perfumes are detectable for maybe twenty or thirty minutes, and only very faintly. Nearly every perfume I've worn, even the notably powerful Bamboo by Franck Olivier, retreats to a low hum after a few minutes of wear, and a few have disappeared entirely by lunch, when I know I should still smell them. 

This led to a realization about user reviews on Fragrantica. I've been reading a lot of them lately, living vicariously through the experiences of others, all the while assuming that they're written by people with healthy and sensitive sniffers. Having Covid for the first time made me realize that the virus really does hit the olfactory nervous center, and leaves lasting damage. So where are all the complaints about what Covid has done to people? Nowhere in the reviews under any fragrance are there people who mention having lost or partially lost their sense of smell!

What I see instead are people complaining about longevity issues. I see endless reviews, sometimes one after another, of folks saying things like, "This fragrance doesn't last," and "Longevity is seriously disappointing," and "It's gone after an hour, like I never sprayed it." Instead of linking that issue to Covid, the blame is placed squarely on the fragrances. Nearly every reviewer on Fragrantica has had Covid by this point, even the long-term holdouts like me. I would estimate that there is maybe five percent of the active population that hasn't had it, and another five percent that had it, but suffered no olfactory diminution, while the vast majority has had it at least once, and experienced some change in smell.

I'm only after my first round, so what can I expect when I have Covid a second and third time, which is bound to happen in the next decade? Will I have any sense of smell left by 2034? There is the very real possibility that later in life, I may not be able to continue enjoying the lifestyle I've grown accustomed to, and if this is true for me, it must be so for countless others as well. Let's be real about this, Covid isn't going away, and the vaccines don't seem to prevent infection. The fact that so few reviewers are open and honest about how they've been impacted doesn't bode well for the state of our community. With that said, I'm going to stay positive about long-term recovery, and I think I'll be myself again by this time next year. The body is a remarkable thing. 

One comment on vaccination: I happen to believe that the vaccine protects to a small degree against major infection, for some people, but not for others. I think it worked well enough for me, but I did notice that the two boosters I got were followed by four months of weirdly intense anxiety that would well up at random times of day and night, and which sometimes would stretch on and on. It wasn't typical anxiety. It was physically intense, overpowering at times, and not linked to anything commensurately triggering. Having had this experience twice, and being someone who is familiar with how anxiety normally works, I'm uneasy about getting any further vaccines, at least until I read that there has been some significant change in how they are manufactured and administered. 

I do sincerely believe that Covid vaccines are safe for the majority of people who get them, and I think that a sizable number of people have been protected by them. In no way are my opinions based on anything but my own personal experience, and I do not discourage anyone from getting vaccinated.

*The 11/18 Note de Yuzu review was written in October. My impressions of the scent were recorded before I began experiencing Covid symptoms, and was based on my sampling of it several weeks prior to infection.

Note de Yuzu (Heeley)

Crafted by James Heeley for Maison Kitsuné Paris, Note de Yuzu is often compared to Sel Marin. I find that strange, as I don't smell a similarity between them. Sel Marin is a sandy/salty marine scent, glistening with facets of sea spray and shellfish, which I think would be a bit challenging, and ultimately rewarding, for a fragrance newbie. 

Note de Yuzu is far more approachable and "crowd pleasing." It's also much simpler, with a cologne-like citrus accord in the first twenty minutes, followed by a woodier interplay of residual fruits and salty cedar. Yuzu is the star of the show, and it smells juicy and quite natural throughout the ten hour lifespan of the fragrance, which is impressive. Its tartness is supported by grapefruit and mandarin, the latter of which mellows all the sulfurous acidity and gently guides the nose to a woody-ambery (i.e., conventional) base. 

Fragrances like this are a conundrum, because while they smell of quality, they tend to feel a bit too simple and forgettable to warrant a purchase. I want to think I'd enjoy owning a full bottle of Note de Yuzu, especially given its wetshaver potential (woody-citrus works beautifully with a ton of aftershaves), but Sel Marin feels moodier and more interesting, and it's complex enough to absorb the sticker shock. I'd go with that one, but this is a worthy entry for lovers of quality colognes, and the yuzu is a nice touch.

Route du Vétiver (Maître Parfumeur et Gantier)

As I grow older, I find myself thinking less and less of vetiver as a note. Where once it was considered a wonderful "earthy" aroma, most useful as a central player in masculines and a secondary note in feminines, it now feels obsolete to me. I think that some things were better left in the twentieth century, and vetiver is an example of that. Guerlain's is fine but underwhelming, and always felt dated and dull. Malle's Vetiver Extraordinaire is pleasant, but no thanks to its vetiver note. Malizia's Uomo Vetiver is crisp and fresh, but forgettable. Creed's Original Vetiver, famous for having almost no vetiver at all, is probably the only supposed vetiver perfume I would buy today, and again, not because of the vetiver. 

Maître Parfumeur et Gantier's Route du Vétiver is the first vetiver fragrance that I truly hate. I find it appalling, full stop. It opens with a garrulous vetiver root accord that reeks of overripe onions atop a weirdly mineralic twang, meant to be blackcurrant. The onion effect blazes on (drawing real tears), and stinks of unwashed armpits for fully twelve hours. Unhelpfully, the perfumer added a peripheral aura of something sweet, akin to a wet kiss with expensive lipstick. It does nothing to stop me from wanting to ralph each time a little waft of air lifts this crap from my collar to my nose. Everything here smells acrid, sour, synthetic. MPG's vetiver makes me feel like I haven't bathed in months, and I suspect whoever smells it on me feels the same. There's niche, and then there's pretentious garbage, and this is the latter by a long shot. 

My patience for "man's man" vetivers is paper thin to begin with, and this one torches those last few shreds of goodwill. I shouldn't leave the house feeling embarrassed by my SOTD. I shouldn't feel self conscious and worried that I might have to explain why I smell like I've just done time. Rank body odor is by definition gross, and telling people it's really my cologne that stinks sounds like a laughable excuse for poor hygiene. Even granola-eating hippies in the seventies had the good sense to wear patchouli, of which even the most basic oils are infinitely more enjoyable than Route du Vétiver. If you want "earthy" vetiver, and aren't interested in repelling the public, wear Guerlain's L'Homme Ideal Cologne, and save money and heartache. Thumbs decidedly down. 

Angeli di Firenze (Santa Maria Novella)

Angels of Florence reminds me of my college days. The 2000s were a nineties encore decade, sadly tainted by the billowing black plumes of 9/11, and the many foibles of the George W. Bush administration. Men wore chains everywhere, even on their wallets, and women wore fruity florals that smelled like glorified laundry detergent. They weren't as sickly sweet as the dumb reaches of their ancestors, but they were just as generic and disposable, like everything else born after 2003. 

Santa Maria Novella's "barbie juice" perfume is actually not bad, a pleasant foray into the mindless pleasures of nondescript florals and melony-peachy nectars, all brushed with the requisite flourishes of vague greenery and frosty white musks. My best guess as to who this was aimed at in 2006 is the midwestern tourist who visited southern Europe on her summer vacation with her boyfriend, both wearing sunglasses the size of saucers. She's a second grade teacher with a Kate Spade bag and one designated pair of square-toe sandals for evening appearances. Despite being in an exotic land, she shops for crap at nine in the morning in nothing but a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, and yes, sunglasses the size of saucers. Gawk at her, and she'll pretend you don't exist.

She selects perfume not based on smell, but on the lack of it. Floral? Not too much. Rose? Yuck, grandma. Fruits, but not too heavy on the syrup. I know they're just dryer sheets, but I really wish someone would bottle these! What surprises me is how Angels of Florence manages to maintain its steady synthetic hum of laundry-grade chems for eight hours, unabated by time or weather. I guess the beautiful packaging and brazen name lend it an air of the divine, but only in the sense that you must have more money than god to choose it over the infinitely more reasonable Tommy Girl or Clinique Happy.  

Is Bamboo Pour Homme (Franck Olivier) the Inspiration for Dior Sauvage?

This one is a bit of a mystery. It could be what we in the fragrance community sometimes refer to as a "missing link scent," an evolutionary stepping stone from something obscure to something famous. In this case, it's possible that Bamboo Pour Homme (2012) is the original inspiration for Dior Sauvage. But, as always, it's complicated. 

First, I want to comment on the fragrance itself. When I was reading about Montblanc Starwalker, I was struck by how many people felt Starwalker was "zen-like," a quality they attributed to its "bamboo" note. I put that in quotation marks because I haven't a clue what fresh bamboo smells like, and doubt anyone else does, either. But I did detect a peculiar lemony-woody ginger note off its top accord, which smelled vaguely spicy and green, and guessed that it was meant to be the bamboo. What else could it be?

Then I picked up a 2.5 oz bottle of Bamboo, which cost me all of ten dollars, and whoah! Okay, this is the same note from Starwalker, except done in much higher fidelity. A bright and powerful citrus-woody accord that blends pine, coriander, sage, ginger, and pepper with Krizia Uomo-quality cedar, and a "buzzy" amber, brushed with Ambroxan. The result is very soothing, and yes, zen-like. However, my girlfriend took one sniff and said it smells nothing like real bamboo (she works at a zoo). So again, a question mark. 

Now to the mystery: Franck Olivier released this fragrance in 2012, only to issue a flanker in 2017 called Bamboo Men, which is packaged near identically. The 2017 scent is in blue glass and has a black box with a blue bamboo print on it. Most reviewers liken the newer fragrance to Sauvage, and do the same with the 2012 version. What gives? My theory is that Franck Olivier's first fragrance, which is essentially a fresh cedar with a modern Ambroxan twist, was admired by someone at Dior, which led to the couture house's brief for Sauvage. After Sauvage's instant success in 2015, Franck Olivier's people decided to capitalize on the noise and basically clone Dior's fragrance, a tit-for-tat. Hence all the stir around Bamboo Men. But Bamboo Pour Homme came first, so what does that make it? The original Sauvage? 

Not really. The problem is that Bamboo Pour Homme doesn't smell anything like Sauvage (the EDT, I can't speak for the other concentrations). It's a straightforward cedar scent, and Sauvage doesn't dwell on cedar. There's a smokiness to Sauvage that Bamboo lacks, and it also has peppier pepper than Bamboo, which only emits fleeting traces of pink pepper. Bamboo doesn't contain as much Ambroxan as Sauvage, but what it does have is used to elevate the citrus and fresh accents that eventually segue to a fairly well-rounded cedar base, and the Ambroxan was possibly what inspired the designer juggernaut that followed. It's quite evident that this chem works wonders to ground and freshen, while making everything feel expensive. Up until this point, Ambroxan was used mainly in high-end niche. It was around 2013 when it began to trickle down to designer levels. 

That's roughly when Bamboo hit the market, and being from Franck Olivier, it wouldn't have made much of a splash. This is an unrecognized brand, something combed over by the big-name suits on the lookout for the next "Big Thing." God forbid they actually come up with something original on their own, but I guess that's just how it goes. Comparisons aside, Bamboo is technically proficient and artistically sophisticated, punching well above its low retail price. It may not smell like bamboo, but it smells important. 

Soul by Curve for Men (Liz Claiborne)

There are rumors that Soul by Curve was discontinued for being racially insensitive, and too obviously targeting people of color in its name and package design, but I have my doubts. I find it to be far more evocative of hippies and headshop oils, and anything else is purely incidental. The free-love credo, "Love, Passion, Truth, Hope," cements the vibe for me, but maybe I'm just naive. Anyway, this 2005 release isn't as much of a departure for Curve as its image suggests, and that isn't a bad thing in the least. 

It's easy to overthink the composition of Soul, and get sucked into the "notes trap" of thinking you smell weird stuff like shea butter and saw palmetto in the blend, but I've been at this too long for that. Soul opens with a fairly standard green citrus accord, bright but not blinding, like warm juice with all the pulp strained out after it's been swirled in a blender and made ready to meet ice. The first five minutes are smooth, sweet, fruity, but not nearly as fizzy and buoyant as other iterations in this line. The muted aspect of Soul's intro suggests that this is a different tack for the brand. But what direction is it aiming for? As it dries into the heart, a translucent violet leaf and iris emerge, smelling sweet but not cloying, vaguely herbal and woody, and it becomes clear that Claiborne was trying for a Chez Bond creamy-floral thing (Laurent Le Guernec is the perfumer, hint, hint).

I sat smelling my sample, wondering at the woodiness, when the person who offered it reminded me that the top had an interesting green quality, and that's when I remembered Soul contains a bamboo note. I immediately recognized the same weirdly woody citrus quality as smelling nearly identical to the top of Montblanc Starwalker, which also has a shy bamboo note, and I laughed. I guess that's what bamboo smells like? Live and learn. That's where the surprises end, though. From the thirty minute point onward, Soul begins to smell more and more like the original, or rather like Claiborne Sport. Sweet, fruity, evocative of things in dark purple. It's slightly more floral and boasts a higher fidelity woodsy base, but overall it smells like a quieter version of its predecessor. It's worth seeking out, but perhaps only for a serious Curve enthusiast.