The Exquisite Attendance of Sadness: ‘Cio Cio San’ by MDCI

This is my first real opportunity to dedicate a full post to the work of Cécile Zarokian, a perfumer whose work I admire tremendously. She is part of a group of passionate young noses whose olfactory art in recent years has seduced and dazzled me. Working within the shifting and evolving restrictions of IFRA’s annual bell-tolling pronouncements on materials, they choose to see everything as a challenge and creatively, evocatively produce work that circumnavigates the brouhaha and still meets Houses briefs or radiates individuality and sensual signature charm.

I wrote about her work when I blogged on Masque Fragranze back in December 2014. She created Tango for Riccardo and Alessandro and I love it, along with Russian Tea, it is my favourite Masque elixir; it took a few wearings to get there, like meeting someone you weren’t sure about and then you spend all your spare time dreaming about them. In my piece on Russian Tea, this is what I had to say about Tango:

‘The thing that really dazzles me with Tango is how close the formula smells to being decayed and turned. In my scented travels I sometimes come across near empty flacons with the syrupy residue of perfumes lying stickily in the base. These evaporated, reduced, concentrées have strong vintage odours of creosote, face powder and sweet stale gateau. Oddly this is what I detect in the powerful drama of Tango…. It’s a tricky balance, the suggestion of corrosion, whilst surrounding it in swathes of smouldering ambered ardour. But Zarokian knows her stuff and has produced a scent of fire and passionate generosity’.

Cécile Zarokian

Cécile’s versatility is becoming very apparent. She set a very high standard for herself when she created Private Label for Jovoy, still I think one of the finest scents in the House’s complex and sensual repertoire and the personal favourite of Jovoy Creative Director François Henin, who Cécile credits with sincerely helping and supporting her in the early days of her career as an independent perfumer. Patchouliful for Robert Drago’s wonderful Laboratorio Olfattivo is one of the most luxurious and sexy patchoulis in years, intimate and dangerously addictive. You want to keep on spraying until you drown in its warm, leathery embrace. The cinnamon blast at the top is genius, mingling beautifully with the frangipani Cécile walks carefully alongside the gorgeously rounded patchouli. 

Now we have Cio Cio San, the second scent she has created for Claude Marchal’s rather oblique and mysterious niche house MDCI. Cécile also made Nuit Andalouse, launched in 2013, a beautifully constructed gardenia couture gown of a scent with a floating train of shimmering white holiday drenched salicylates. Underpinning this is a bodice of violet and orange flourishes that hold the construction together with grace and delicate pressure. It is a remarkable and perceptive piece of perfumery, ticking floral and holiday fantasy boxes whilst at the same time demonstrating an eccentric decorum that is both graceful and alluring.

Nordic Fatale: The Art of Malbrum

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

From The Tyger by William Blake

Malbrum Parfum’s debut collection of peculiarly frayed and sensual scents has urgency and mischief in its juices. They proved popular at Esxence in March this year as did Creative Director Kristian Hilberg himself with his striking Nordic good looks and intricate knowledge of both the natural and synthetic components of his chic new house. 

Creative Director Kristian Hilberg enjoying a quieter side of Cannes 2015 

(Malbrum Instagram)

Reading the notes for the extrait strength parfums on the website Kristian has chosen interestingly to list the traditional head, heart and base notes separately from the synthetics such as Exaltolide, Toscanol and Ambrofix.

Aspects of Structured Verdancy: ‘Panorama’ by Olfactive Studio

The glorious Sheats-Goldstein residence juts out of tropical LA fauna into the sun with unashamed glittering brilliance and angular arrogance. It is a modern cave, a spiky fuck-off-statement of exquisite harmony and brooding privacy. An alien abode containing no 90º angles or painted objects, it built from concrete, glass, stone and leather. I have loved it for decades and always wanted to visit it. Depending on how it is viewed, it seemed to hover and float next to the trees and flora, from other perspectives it seems to be reaching out like one of Ray Bradbury’s haunted Martian architectural maws into the glittering air.

It is photographer Miguel Sandinha’s emerald-suffused image of the Sheats-Goldstein residence that has inspired Panorama, the latest release from Céline Verleure’s artistic and über-chic niche house Olfactive Studio. I have only just treated myself to the solemn, shadowed stickiness of Ombre Indigo created by Mylène Arlan a young Roberet parfumeuse who studied under Jacques Flori and Michel Almairac. The image for Ombre Indigo by Gustavo Pellizzon is a haunting one, a shadow creature walking water or perhaps waiting at the edge for passage across a darkening lake.

Vagabond Polaroids: ‘Scent Stories Vol I’ by MiN New York

MiN New York Apothecary & Atelier is a scent repository and haven for bruised and bothered senses at 117 Crosby Street in New York owned and orchestrated by Founder and CEO Chad Murawczyk and Vice President and Curator Mindy Yang in 1999.

The place itself is a meld of Euro sensibility; American boho beat style and gentleman’s smoking den, stocked with a curated collection of scent, skincare and shaving lines from around the world. The emphasis at MiN has always been on personal experience, presenting items from fine fabrics, leather, glass, the inhale of rare niche scents and the smoky fumes of exquisite chandlery to fit the client, making it feel right for them.

Chad & Mindy - Airport Study in Black

(taken from MiN New York Intstagram)

tweaked & titled by TSF

Chad and Mindy are darkly beautiful, predominantly garbed in shades of noir and strategic in their use of social media. Mindy in particular is a perceptive and elegant tweeter, highlighting trends, causes and magpie philosophies. It’s a damn chic brand, just on the cusp of being painfully so, but pulled back by a genuine passion and obsession with scent and quality and providing a consistently unique environs where their clients can inhale and experience extraordinary olfaction, chandlery, skincare and grooming.

ExquisiteWaterGarden#5 – ‘Le Jardin De Monsieur Li’ by Hermès

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

Li Bai (705-762)

Mediterranean swoon, Nile reverie, monsoon rain, rooftop sanctuary and contemplative pools. These five riffs on aquatic jardinière obsession are arguably the masterworks of Jean-Claude Ellena, elicited during his genre-defining tenure at Hermès. His relentless pursuit of olfactive meaning in water, reflection, light, calm, verdancy and stillness has created a quintet of odiferous canvases that continue to seduce and dazzle.

According to the scented grapevine, Jean-Claude’s time as Hermès seems to be softly drawing to an enigmatic close with Christine Nagel waiting patiently in the minimal wings. Yet he shows no signs of taking his fingers off the mouillettes just yet. He has not made any concrete statement about retirement; much of the chatter about his departure is a fiction of the press and perfume blogs. I sense a certain wistfulness and longing in his work, but this is not enough to prove pending departure.