Hopeless Case

Here it is, not even twenty-four hours after I landed in New York, and what do I have sitting on the bed in my hotel room? A BOTTLE OF SERGE LUTENS IN A BERGDORF GOODMAN BAG. And it isn't even the one I thought I was going to buy, Un Bois Vanille. It's Chypre Rouge.

I mean, goddamn. Didn't I say I loved Un Bois Vanille madly and didn't really adore the middle of Chypre Rouge? I did say those things. But I smelled them both in the store (along with a lot of other things that didn't really enter into the equation), and I had the Vanille in one hand and the Rouge in the other, and I didn't know what to do. I suppose I could have bought both of them, but, well, that's insane, isn't it? I mean, I HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN HERE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS YET and the chances of my buying something else are all too good, because, as should be pretty obvious by now, I don't have a lick of self-control. And the Vanille was expensive enough ($120), but the Rouge was worse ($140), and that's more than I have ever spent on a single scent in my entire life.

My reasoning, if we can call it that, and we can't, because I was pretty much beyond reason at that point, was that I would get more wear out of the Vanille, but I would appreciate the Rouge more because it is so strange and fascinating and rare. There are lots and lots of vanilla scents out there--I should know, because I think I own most of them--but there is only one Chypre Rouge.

So I bought it. I'm happy with my choice. It could have been worse: I was awfully close to buying a bottle of Coromandel (at $200).

Trick Question: Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille

What's the simplest, most accessible thing Serge Lutens could make and still be true to his vision and his reputation as an offbeat, just-this-side-of-avant-garde niche perfumer?

My first impression of Un Bois Vanille was that Serge Lutens was playing some kind of joke on his devoted fans, because all I could smell was, in essence, Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Coco. I thought that there couldn't possibly be coconut in the damned thing, because it doesn't seem like the sort of thing Lutens would do, so, given the choice between trusting my nose and trusting my assumptions about a brand, I chose to disbelieve my own senses.

There is coconut in there, as it turns out. A big blast of vanilla-infused coconut? How can this be? What saves the opening from being a retread of the CSP is a little static-electricity buzz of dry licorice. There isn't a lot of it, but it adds the necessary Lutens touch of slight oddness.

A few minutes in, there's a moment of LouLou, a Cacharel oriental from the late eighties composed of tropical flowers and lots of vanilla: the LouLou doesn't last long, but it suggests that tucked into Un Bois Vanille is a floral note, probably tiare, that (somehow) makes a brief appearance and then darts away again.

After that, Un Bois Vanille is straight-up vanilla. For something you'd think would be a wood scent--the name means "Vanilla Wood"--it isn't very woody. Guess what? It doesn't matter. Un Bois Vanille consists mostly of the second-most beautiful vanilla I've ever worn. (The winner is still the base of Tom Ford Black Orchid, and you are going to have to sit through a lot of other stuff, beautiful though it is, to get to that vanilla.) It lasts just about forever, too; ten hours later, it's still clearly evident, and not just in a nose-to-the-skin way; it still wafts and eddies around you. If you are in the market for a simple yet spectacularly beautiful vanilla scent, sweet and effusive and glorious, then trust me on this: you are going to want to get your hands on Un Bois Vanille.

And now I'm off to New York for a week, where I am going to manfully fight my urge to buy a bottle of this stuff and who knows what else. I'm trying very, very hard to declare a moratorium on scent-buying, but I have a feeling that if I should end up in Bergdorf Goodman and should somehow get a bottle of Un Bois Vanille in my hands, my moratorium, and my resolve, will collapse. Wish me luck.

If Only: Chanel 31 Rue Cambon

The highest praise that I can give 31 Rue Cambon is that it is gorgeously made and absolutely seamless from start to finish: no one element stands out as it makes its slow transition from a bright, shimmering aldehydic scent through a lush but restrained not-quite floral (with yet more of that Chanel iris which, like that of 28 La Pausa and Cuir de Russie, is unobjectionable) to a base which is clearly supposed to be the modern oakmossless interpretation of chypre but which is actually a very pleasant warm woody haze. The whole thing smells of elegance, quiet good taste, expensive refinement.

I only wish I liked it more.

I don't know what my problem is. It's so well made and so obviously good, and yet it leaves me cold. It reminds me of something I smelled in the eighties, something, uncharacteristically, that I cannot put a name to; there shouldn't be anything wrong with this, but despite its theoretically being a "new chypre", it doesn't seem particularly new to me.

Never mind what I think. Many others adore 31 Rue Cambon, with some calling it the jewel of the Les Exclusifs collection, and it probably is. You ought to try it just to see what's being done nowadays in high-end perfumery. You will probably fall in love with it. Me, I'll stick to the delicious Coromandel, absolutely the high point of the entire collection.

For Your Consideration: Chanel 28 La Pausa

There is a dilemma in writing critically about any art form, and it is this: the writer cannot simply like every incarnation and permutation of the art form (food, opera, perfumery, film, wine, clothing, whatever) that he is writing about, because that demonstrates a certain lack of discrimination, but that same discrimination means that he cannot write fairly about certain artists or forms. If you do not like Martin Margiela's clothing design, then when you write about his latest show you are probably going to be critical of it: but conversely if you love everything he's ever done, then you are not an objective observer. If you go to a certain beloved chef's restaurant and know he's working that night, you are likely to be more generous in your assessment than if it's a second-stringer working, or a chef you don't care for. Perhaps--probably, in fact--there are people, professional critics, who can be absolutely fair in their assessments, who can ignore the fact that they don't much like Don DeLillo when reviewing his latest novel, and simply judge it on its merits--but I am not one of those people.

I don't like irises. In any real quantity, they make me recoil. Therefore, I don't like perfumes based on the iris; I can't be objective about them. Whenever I end up talking about an iris-based scent, I feel as if I have to make note of this fact, in the interests of fairness.

So imagine my surprise when I tried 28 La Pausa, and then tried it again and again (because I can't properly judge something as complex as a scent by experiencing it once), and discovered that it started out with a pale silvery iris, and yet was remarkably pleasant for all that. Just now I'm wearing it, as I always am when I'm writing about a scent, and I keep drawing my hand up to my nose, not just because I have to think about the scent but because I find I want to experience it: because I'm enjoying it.

One way out of the dilemma, then, is to just keep trying things that you know you don't like, because sooner or later, it's entirely possible that one of two things will happen: either your taste will change, allowing you to appreciate what you previously despised, or someone will find a way to employ the devices of artistry to make that despised thing palatable or even beautiful. You hate twelve-tone music? Yes, but have you heard Berg's Lulu Suite?

I don't love 28 La Pausa and I certainly wouldn't wear it; it hasn't made me reconsider everything I thought I knew. But it is extremely well-made; a glowing, pearlescent iris, very light, with a little splash of citrus, a tuft of greenery, a tiny haze of warmth at the base. There's is nothing strong, overblown, or dramatic about it, no great sillage, no complex structure. It is minimalist in the best way; high-quality materials assembled to be shown off to their advantage.

As a consequence of this, the lasting power is ludicrous: two hours after you apply it, it's simply gone. Since there isn't anything heavy about it, there's nothing to tack down the airy molecules. It's almost an iris cologne, and if you decide to spring for it (currently $190), you'll be glad it comes in a 200-mL bottle, because you will be reapplying it frequently.

Drowning in Opulence: Chanel Sycomore

I try to post more often than I've been doing recently, but Jim had a couple of weeks off work so he was around the house a lot, and I can't really wear any scents around him except tiny amounts of harmless, inoffensive things like some Demeters or the occasional shot of a CSP vanilla. Certainly nothing like Sycomore.

I wanted to like Chanel's Sycomore. It sounded on paper like the kind of thing I would like: vetiver. There are other ingredients, but most of the reviewers were in agreement that it was all about vetiver.

Well, not to my apparently freakish nose it isn't. There's vetiver in there, all right, but it's blanketed--swamped, in fact--by a massive cloud of creamy wood. The whole scent seems to be composed of some amorphous cedar-sandalwood-rosewood object poached in a bath of heavy cream, with a thin core of vetiver, and it's suffocating: thick, lush, rich in a way that, to my surprise, I find almost revolting. Eventually the heaviness subsides and the vetiver becomes more evident, but by then it's much, much too late. I want out long before that's happened.

In fact, the second time I wore Sycomore, a thought came out of nowhere, one I'd never had before: "I wish I were wearing Mitsouko." I didn't consciously stop and think, gee, I hate what I'm wearing, it should be something good; my brain just kind of said to me, hey, dude, something's not right here, get rid of it and put on something you like.

Weirdly, the creamy-wood aspect of the scent made me think of Le Feu D'Issey, which marries a milky-woody accord to large quantities of rose, so of course I wore them both simultaneously to compare them. They aren't really that similar, as it turns out, and Le Feu, despite the fact that I think my bottle is starting to turn, is by far the better scent; milkiness instead of creaminess makes a huge difference, and the rose adds a freshness that even a Chanel vetiver can't match.

Sycomore may actually be a good, well-made fragrance, and I know some people love it, but on me it could hardly be worse. Almost anything you could think of doing to it--add a citrus top, give it a floral core, dose it with pomegranate and litchee, for god's sake--would make it less oppressive than it is.

Standards and Practices

You must have heard about the new Federal Trade Commission ruling that bloggers have to disclose any free merchandise they receive and subsequently review. All the perfume bloggers are talking about it: over on Now Smell This, of course, and on Perfume Shrine. Slate.com has a thoughtful piece about it. If you think about it for even a few seconds, you will naturally begin to wonder why bloggers are being held to a different standard than other media, and will ask questions like these: Will fashion magazines (which famously receive samples of every new product under the sun, including fragrance, and never ever write a bad review of said products) be held to the same standards? If not, why not?

Since I'm Canadian, I am fairly sure that the long arm of the FTC doesn't reach into my home, but in the interests of full disclosure, here goes. I'm on the mailing list for Bond No. 9, so they send me samples of everything they do, and I review pretty much all of them (still working on their back catalogue): as it happens, their aesthetic kind of meshes with mine so I generally like what they produce, although if something of theirs is not good, I'll say so. I've received a small number of samples from other companies (Ormonde Jayne, Andy Tauer) or blogs, but always as the result of a contest. I've gotten some more samples from swaps with other bloggers. Everything else I have ever written about is something I bought with my own money (since I have hundreds of bottles of various sizes, hundreds more samples, and no self control whatever). Nobody's paying me to say nice things about their products. Why would they? It's not as if I have a readership of millions. I do this entirely for my own pleasure and, I hope, that of people who happen to stumble in here.

That's not to say that if the marketers of the world want to besiege me with samples, I won't take them. In an ideal world I'd try everything that comes down the pike*; I don't know how long it would take to get royally sick of the parade of new scents, but I'd like to give it a shot.

*Yesterday while out running some errands I sniffed, but did not even bother to ask for samples of because I knew what the answer would be, Armani's new Idole, Guerlain's new Idylle, Marc Jacobs' new Lola, and YSL's new Parisienne, and the reaction was the same in every case; Nah. Lola has a terrific bottle but otherwise no. Parisienne in particular is fairly awful, with a gigantic cranberry note stuck way out in front. Maybe it fades later on, but why is it even there in the first place?

Just No: Chanel No. 18

Just when I was really afraid that I was going to be giving Chanel a tongue bath for their entire wonderful gorgeous Les Exclusifs line, this comes along.

No. 18 is supposedly based on ambrette, the musky-floral seed of a species of hibiscus, and maybe it is, but what I smell from No. 18 first and foremost is a piercing metallic shriek accompanied by a big slosh of iris, more of that Chanel iris that was in the classic No. 19 (which I also don't like) and in a smaller amount in Cuir de Russie, and obviously I am not the most level-headed person to be reviewing this scent because I don't like iris much to begin with, but this is truly dreadful. There's a wad of greenery that vaguely suggests olives, and some musk, and probably some other stuff in there, too, but I don't even want to think about it because for about the third time--I always wear things repeatedly, even bad things, several times before I feel as if I can write anything about them--I need to go and wash this off.

I honestly don't know what else to say about the thing. If you like iris, perhaps you will like this. (Some people do, of course.) Otherwise, seriously, steer clear.

And now I must go and scrub myself.

Time is Money: Bond No. 9 Andy Warhol Success is a Job in New York

I am going to finish up the Chanel Exclusifs, but first, something else with a Chanel connection.

The newest Bond No. 9 in the Andy Warhol series has the wordy name Success is a Job in New York, the title of an illustration by Warhol for an article by that name and also a book about him. The bottle, as usual, has a Warhol motif: this time, a big, cheerful dollar sign in shades of blue and orange on a shiny black background.

At its heart it's a dark, rich floral oriental, and it seemed familiar to me, though I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first. I thought it was similar to the previous Bond Warhol scent, Lexington Avenue, but I wore them side by side and there isn't much similarity at all. After racking my brains, I finally realized that Success is a Job reminded me of Coco, a Chanel scent launched in 1984 and a huge success. (I bought a bottle of it not long after its launch, one of the first women's scents I had ever dared to buy for myself.) I haven't smelled it recently because I know it's been reformulated at least once, and I'm afraid that the new reality of it won't match my memory of it. Some things are best left the way the are. Success is a Job shares with Coco a rich, lush rose-jasmine middle and a dark, ambery base.

The comparison between Success and eighties-era Coco is apt in more ways than one. Coco was a big, impressive floral oriental which showed up as the Western economy was beginning its huge late-century boom, and it smelled like power and confidence and, of course, success.

Success is a Job isn't exactly like old-school Coco. It's also something like Spellbound, another power floral oriental that wasn't nearly as successful as Coco because it was introduced in 1991, when the tide had already begun to turn against massive oriental scents and towards paler, gauzier things. Success is reminiscent of Spellbound because in addition to their floral oriental structure they share notes of coriander and pimento in the top, tuberose in the middle, and of course amber and vanilla in the base. (Spellbound, I'm happy to say, doesn't seem to have been reformulated at all: Estee Lauder is very good about leaving their scents untouched, or, if reduction in the availability of ingredients necessitates it, making the changes subtle and unobtrusive, bless them.)

But Success is a Job in New York isn't just a throwback; it has its own very modern qualities, particularly in the middle, which is streamlined and slightly clean, considerably less heavy than its forebears. It smells very much as if the perfumer, Laurice Rahme, had made serious notes on an armload of eighties power fragrances and then brought the whole thing into the twenty-first century by introducing the newest aromachemicals to a classic scent category. The economy may not be what it used to be, but if you want to smell eighties-wealthy yet still modern, this is the way to do it.

Simplicity: Chanel Eau de Cologne

I seem to have liked all the Chanel Exclusifs so far--not necessarily head-over-heels about them, but all the ones I've tried have been really good--so I was all set to dislike Chanel Eau de Cologne, so that I wouldn't seem as if I were simply drooling all over them because they were Chanel. But damned if EdC isn't really good as well.

Here's the thing, though; it's sort of hard to make a genuinely bad eau de cologne, which follows a set structure: choose some citrus fruits for the top, put something with a bit of body in the middle, maybe lay it all on top of something warm, and you're done. There are lots of colognes on the market, and they're generally pleasant to wear and smell: I don't recall having tried a truly bad one.

There are all sorts of variations, of course: the middle can have flowers or green notes, the base can be most any wood or resin, and you have a wide array of citrus to choose from in the top (not to mention sparkling aldehydes and light florals if you like), including begamot, orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, tangerine, neroli, and yuzu. But the fact is that as a rule, most eaux de cologne are going to smell more or less the same, and this, unfortunately, is also true of the Chanel EdC. It's lovely; plenty of lemon, a droplet of rose, a little vetiver, a musky base. It smells bright and fresh and happy. The lasting power, as you'd expect from such a formulation, is almost nil: an hour, perhaps two. It's meant to be lavished on, enjoyed for its short-lived freshness, and reapplied as needed--the heart and soul of any EdC.

Someone out there will disagree, because some people must be buying it, but I can't see that it's worth almost $200 for a 200-mL bottle (you can also get a giant 400-mL vat), not when you can get many classic colognes for a lot less. The ancient 4711, the very template for an EdC, is an eighth the price of the Chanel; the only thing it's missing is the ritzy bottle and the name.

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Commenting on my review of Coromandel, Clare said

This one makes me feel like a fragrance philistine. I feel that, due to inferiority (whether inherent or due to lack of knowledge/experience), I am not "getting" the greatness or appeal of it.

Well, listen: don't ever let anyone make you feel inferior for not liking something that everyone else seems to think is great. Every artist, however gifted, and every work of art, however important, has detractors. George Bernard Shaw disdained Shakespeare, saying, "With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his."

There are artworks that most anybody can appreciate, and then there are those that appeal to people who've done the research, who have studied the form. Most people can enjoy a Rossini tune, but it takes some study to understand and derive pleasure from a Berg opera. And then there is the fact that different people have different tastes; even if the masses declared Coromandel the greatest thing since Shalimar, if you don't like it, then you don't like it, and that's all there is to it. And that's all right.

If it makes you feel any better, I don't get Jicky by Guerlain. It's supposed to be one of the greatest scents in history, but it simply doesn't interest me very much. I know all about its history, and I can smell it and understand that it is a ground-breaking work of art, see the craftsmanship in it. But that's all: I don't love it, it doesn't speak to me, I don't desire it. It is not immediate for me, as many other scents, even lesser ones, are. Does that make me a philistine too? Then so be it. I'm a philistine. I have lots of other scents to turn my attention to.

Hiding: Chanel Cuir de Russie

Alert readers may have noticed that I am apparently doing the Chanel Exclusifs in alphabetical order, but that I've missed Bois de Isles. That's because I don't have any. There are twelve Exclusifs, and I have only the newest releases, not the four re-issues from the twenties. Except for this one. Thank goodness.

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A while back I decided--as I will often decide out of nowhere to do something that seems interesting or edifying--to listen to all the symphonies of Haydn. He wrote a lot of them: a hundred and seven, give or take. I suppose I got through about twenty or so when I realized that they all were sounding pretty much alike to me. I couldn't tell if I had listened to a particular one already, so I just gave it up. There's lots of other music to listen to, after all.

I'm not saying that I'm some philistine who thinks that all Haydn's music is the same, and that he might as well have written just the one symphony and be done with it. Without a doubt there are people who love the symphonies individually, and have listened to them all repeatedly over the years with great pleasure, and can even tell from a snippet which symphony they're listening to, in the same way that I can tell which of the six Bach Brandenburg concerti I'm hearing (a much lesser challenge, of course). But you have to have an emotional connection with the composer and his music, and you have to spend the time--and more importantly, want to spend the time--becoming familiar with it.

I know that people who don't get the obsession with fragrance will think it's insane that I would have so, so many different scents, when I can't possibly use them all up. And yet they are all different; one amber scent will not do when there are many dozens on the market and each, if it is made with any degree of care and art, will have something interesting to say about the theme of amber. It's the same with leather: many, perhaps most, men's fragrances contain some of this thoroughly masculine note, and quite a few scents have been based entirely on the idea of leather. And yet perfumers have still not finished ringing the changes on this note: you can buy leather sweet (Stetson) or bone-dry (Knize Ten), classic (Antaeus) or modern (Je Suis Un Homme), aggressive (Yatagan) or restrained (Lonestar Memories). And what's more, there are women's leather scents, too.

"Cuir de Russie" is French for "Russian Leather". There's a Demeter Russian Leather, but where it's a single-minded leather scent with a dark floralcy and no development, Chanel's Cuir de Russie is gloriously elaborate, constructed, and once again, at the risk of repeating myself into meaninglessness, very, very Chanel.

Cuir de Russie opens aldehydic and shimmery, with a jangle of citrus and a typically Chanel iris note on top, the leather already in evidence. Where I said that the Demeter was like a live flower that was somehow made of leather, Cuir de Russie is more like a single flower placed on a well-worn leather armchair. The leather deepens and enfolds you: you're sinking into the armchair, and the stem of iris, root and all, is joined by a clutch of flowers, slightly dirty jasmine and perhaps a rose or two. Despite the animal quality of leather, Cuir de Russie is thoroughly refined, a most genteel sort of leather, and it only becomes more so as it heads towards its long-lasting finale, a warm haze of vanilla and amber with enough of the leather remaining to keep it from ever becoming too sweet or pretty. It is a masterful piece of work: a masculine scent turned into a feminine scent that any man could still wear, and perfectly situated on the line between the coarseness of animal hide and the elegance of couture.