As you may know, Nick Gilbert, my scented partner in crime and I run a perfumed Twitter project called ‘@Fragrantreviews’, in which we review fragrances in 140 characters or less. Well, if you didn’t you do now and you’re in luck because it’s that time of the month where we round up all of the reviews from the last 30 days. Without further ado, I bring you all of our reviews posted in June 2016! They range from the sublime to the disappointing, and all that’s in between!
If last year’s Misia was anything to go by, perfumer Olivier Polge is definitely finding his feet at CHANEL, having taken over the position of perfumer-in-residence from his father, Jacques Polge, the man behind the likes of Antaeus, Coco, Coco Mademoiselle, Égoïste – need I go on? Big boots to fill, most certainly, but M. Polge Jnr certainly has a fair few hits under his own belt, scents such as Dior Homme, which, lets face it is already a modern classic, so perhaps those shoes aren’t quite so big after all?
For his second outing in CHANEL’s niche line, ‘Les Exclusifs’, Olivier Polge pays homage to Arthur Capel, Gabrielle Chanel’s patron and lover. ‘Boy’, as he was called, lends his name to the fragrance, which is a feminine take on the typically masculine fougère inspired by Chanel’s clothing, couture that borrowed heavily from the codes of menswear and tailoring. BOY the fragrance has been created to capture Capel’s “irresistible elegance” and “virile strength” and is a gender-bending scent that borrows from the olfactory codes of men and women. As CHANEL describe it, BOY is the “mark of a man on the skin of a woman”.
What is there to say about the career of Perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena at the house of Hèrmes as it draws to an end? His work speaks for itself and through the perfumes that constitute Ellena’s body of work at Hèrmes one can detect a distinct DNA that has been carefully crafted and woven through the olfactory outputs by the man, who is arguably one of the greatest perfumers of all time. Jean-Claude Ellena has created a signature that is now undeniably ‘Hermès’. It is a complexly pieced together as a Kelly bag but as ethereal and light as a silk scarf. To put is simply, Ellena really has taken the spirit of the house of Hèrmes and bottled it.
Ellena’s work is so often referred to as fragrant watercolours and his lightness of touch has proven that perfumes need not be loud, confrontational and weird to be beautiful, they can portray light and shade in utter simplicity. This style in itself is divisive because the fragrances can so often seem imperceptibly simple or transparent, but they are, in fact, incredibly complex. It’s a testament to Ellena’s talent that he can say so much with such reserved abstraction. His work is cerebral and intelligent in a way that modern perfumery isn’t nowadays, and he has always been a refreshing voice amongst the cacophony. The man is nothing short of a genius and one of the handful of true master perfumers who have earned the title through a life’s work.
For his final piece at Hèrmes, Jean-Claude Ellena has attempted to capture the elusive lily of the valley, a flower that smells so intense, yet yields no fragrant oil usable within perfumery. The work is a construction of the flower, of course and as Ellena puts it, he wanted to “snatch the fragrance of these flowers from the dawn sky, together with that of the foliage that envelops them”, thus crafting an homage not only to white blooms but also to its accompanying greenery. The result? Well, Hermès describe it perfectly as “a shower of delicate bell-shaped flowers evoking the opalescent white of porcelain – radiant, playful, diaphanous”. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Maybe it’s because I’m British and I simply have no choice, but I love the rain. My favourite moments are those cold nights when one is all tucked up in bed as the rain and wind lashes against the house. Not to mention warm summer days peppered by hot showers of rain that bring a welcome breeze through open doors and windows. These rainy moments are some of my absolute favourites and we haven’t even discussed the smell! The odour of rain is mineral, but it’s also an atmospheric adaptor that relies heavily on the landscape around it. Summer rain on hot tarmac smells different from muddy winter downpours, and so on. The one constant however, is the fact that rain always smells and more importantly, feels beautiful.
In this piece I’ve selected five fragrances inspired by the opening of the Heavens, which we’ve certainly seen a lot of in the UK over the last few weeks. They range from the grey nimbus clouds that precede and promise rain through to storms in the summer and the city, all the way to the odours left by the rain as it moves on. Each and everyone presents a different idea of deluge and downpour, crafting through olfaction, the spirit of nature’s temperamental emotions. So prepare yourself for precipitation and a veritable storm of scented rain!
Ooh I do love a good wedding. There’s something wonderful about all that pomp and circumstance; the dresses, the hats, THE CAKE, not to mention the flowers, the emotion and the love! Every wedding is a special day, one that is organised with every minute detail considered. One detail that can’t be forgotten is the wedding scent and this is just as important for the groom and his party as it is the bride and hers. Luckily, for Escentual’s #ScentToBe Wedding Week, I’ve put together a handy guide of masculine fragrances that are perfect for the groom, best man and father of the groom. Click here to give it a read!
If you paid a visit to the blog yesterday you would have caught our latest episode of Desert Island Sniffs with Barbara Herman, the author and scent historian who has recently launched a brand new line of fragrances called Eris Parfums. Named after the Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord the Eris perfumes tap into Herman’s love and passion for vintage fragrances, you know the kind with proper animalics and heady florals, and brings them bang up to date. The result is a thrilling clash of the vintage and the modern.
For Eris Parfums, Barbara Herman teamed up with renegade perfumer, Antoine Lie, the man behind Etat Libre d’Orange’s Sécrétions Magnifiques, Tom of Finland and Rossy de Palma, amongst others. The fragrances are inspired by the “bold eroticism of vintage animalic florals perfumes” and they certainly don’t hold back, my friends. If you’re a lover of the bold, beastly fragrances of yesteryear, then you need look no further than Belle de Jour, Ma Bête and Night Flower, because these modern twists on classic florals aren’t afraid to cause quite the scandal.
“Antoine Lie and I have reimagined the intensity and eros of perfumes of the past for a contemporary audience. We wanted to bring back the emotion of animalic perfumes.”
Have you packed your sunglasses and swim trunks? Good, because we are taking a trip to our tropical island for another episode of Desert Island Sniffs. If you’re not familiar with this series, the concept is very simple – I invite important members of the perfume industry, such as brand owners, creative directors and perfumers, to be stranded on their very own desert island, along with 5 carefully curated perfumes of their choice. It may be a tricky job narrowing a life down to such a small number of perfumes, but I can assure you that it is an entirely worthwhile exercise!
The perfumes they choose should be those that have had a significant impact on their scented lives and map specific points in their journey of olfactory discovery. In addition to their 5 Desert Island Sniffs one is kind enough to allow them to take a luxury item (only one, mind) and a ‘perfume bible’ to keep them company. By the end of this series there is going to be some rather fabulously smelling desert islands out there!
Few things get my pulse racing like a brand spanking new MUGLER launch, even more so if that launch is a spin-off of my all-time favourite fragrance, Angel. So one can imagine my excitement when Angel Muse landed on my doorstep. We’re going to #HateToLove this modern spin on the gourmand queen that is Angel, MUGLER say, and they’re not wrong, because as much as I don’t like to see my beloved celestial being messed about with, I begrudgingly admit (not really, you know I’m here for all things MUGLER) that I do enjoy Angel Muse very much indeed.
Angel Muse was created by Givaudan perfumer Quentin Bisch, who I must say is a real up and coming talent within the industry, having done great work with Etat Libre d’Orange (see Hermann à Mes Côtés Me Paraissait Une Ombre & La Fin du Monde) and with MUGLER on last year’s sticky sweet A*Men Ultra Zest. Bisch is a good fit for Mugler because he is a truly innovative perfumer who seems to work best when tasked with crafting novel accords, such as the popcorn note found within La Fin du Monde. For Angel Muse, Bisch switches out dark chocolate for hazelnut and adds an element of masculinity with vetiver, taking Angel to new and very modern heights.
I wrote a full break down of Angel Muse for my Escentual column a few weeks back (clicky here to give that a read), so I’m going for a review en bref today. I also wanted an excuse to buy a jar of Nutella to use purely for photographic reasons of course. Although, it would have been a waste not to have a spoon or twelve now, wouldn’t it? So let’s get to it and give Angel Muse a good sniff to see whether it is as delicious and divine as Nutella, or whether it falls short of its lineage…
We’re heading towards the final handful of instalments in my Escentual A-Z of Fragrance and it’s fair to say we’ve had quite a wild ride. We have admired Amouage, lusted after lavender an ogled olfactory oddities, covering the alphabet all the way up the final three, and easily the most tricky letters; X, Y and Z. For X, my filthy mind only had the option to go for ‘X-Rated’, a piece all about fragrances that are so sexy they are likely to get you all hot under the collar, and possibly in other places too…
So, for X is for X-Rated you can treat yourself to an erotic and whimsical tour of the sexiest scents out there, ranging from delicious treats to be worn after the watershed to florals that flirt and tease, and all the way up to XXX scents that are positively pornographic in their sexiness. Click here, if you dare, to head on over to the Escentual blog to read the piece and find your very own sexual napalm.
There is an ever-growing trend within perfumery for intense sweetness. I’m not talking about your everyday gourmands, because those have been around forever, I’m referring to scents that offer up pure, unrefined sugar by the ton, not say, the likes of MUGLER’s Angelwhich inspired the gourmand trend, but ultimately was an essay in tension between sugar and patchouli. In the mainstream, it all started in 2004 with Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb, a nuclear candy floss scent that contains as much ethyl maltol as is possible to shoehorn into a bottle, presenting sugar toasted at the edges without any dark contrasts to temper it. Ever since, fragrance houses have been stumbling over themselves to see who can make the sweetest, most obnoxious fragrance, well that was until Lancôme came along with La Vie est Belle – officially the world’s most tooth-achingly sweet, toasted candy floss scent. It’s also an international best seller – go figure.
Now, I mention all of this not to moan, but instead to say that despite this ever popular trend, a house is yet to make a deliciously sweet overdose of a scent that doesn’t cause olfactory diabetes with one sniff. Well, that is until GUERLAIN threw their hat into the ring with Mon Exclusif, which turns out to be a decadent little treat that knows exactly when to say ‘no more for me, thank you’. Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised that GUERLAIN have been the brand to hit the nail on the head here, they are, after all half-perfumer and half-perume-patissiere, churning out some of the world’s most delicious morsels in fragrant form. So it’s no surprise then, that Mon Exclusif is a delightful bon bon that has depth and contrast to its sugar overload.
GUERLAIN launched Mon Exclusif in 2015. Created by Thierry Wasser, GUERLAIN’s in-house perfumer, the novel aspect of the fragrance is that it technically comes with no name, allowing the wearer to select their own title by placing the sticky silver letters on the bottle, which itself is a reinterpretation of the house’s famous Coque d’Or bow flacon. “Because your relationship with your fragrance is very intimate” GUERLAIN says, “it’s up to you to name this partner by your side”. So Mon Exclusif can be whatever one wants it to be: Jack, Tyler or Pierre. The choices are infinite and for many reasons, which I’m sure you’ll be able to guess, I decided to call mine ‘CANDY’.
The Candy Perfume Boy 