Ecstatic Synthetic: Nomenclature & Cyber Scent

If you were a cyborg how would you crave to smell…? I have pondered this during multiple viewings of Ridley Scott’s masterly Bladerunner and my consuming obsession with Rachel, the doomed smoke-wreathed, fur-clad femme fatale played so achingly by Sean Young. Has uncertain mechanical obsolescence ever looked so shatteringly beautiful? In my mind Rachel has always radiated Tabac Blond, something disturbingly sensual, an implanted memory that tied her to lost generations, women in photos women who of course are nothing really to do with her, figments, chosen ghosts that haunt her tragically wired mind.   

Sean Young as Rachel
in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner

Chris Cunningham’s cold rolling sexbots for Bjork’s All is Full of Love, my beloved Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell, Prometheus’ beautiful Peter O’Toole obsessed android David, Bladerunner’s damaged Pris, Jude Law’s painted Gigolo Joe in AI and the pristine, calculating Ava in Ex_Machina. 

These challenging and enigmatic cyber creatures contravene nature in their search for soul and love, their bodies mirroring our own, yet lacking the warmth and humanity to truly connect and convince us of a definitive reality. They can be seen as projections, desires, fantasies, objects to be inscribed upon, like phantom palimpsests, over and over..

Bjork - All is Full of Love
Directed by Chris Cunningham

This analogy of oddity, mirrors of reality, an echoing of nature applies equally to aromachemicals, a glittering exquisite world of bonded synthetics and riffs on nature’s beauteous magnificence. People fret so about synthetics in fragrances, but they fact is they have been around since coumarin was isolated and subsequently synthesised in 1868 by William Henry Perkin. Without these extraordinary materials, perfumery would be a monochrome and unimaginative world, a drab landscape with little variation in vegetation, topography and climate.

Foxy Loves of 2015 - Part III (Dazzled & Delighted)

Dragon Tattoo

Dragon Tattoo – Ys Uzac

I wanted this as soon as I read about; it seemed quite a deviation from the established quietly sublime musically inspired work that Swiss house Ys Uzac had launched to date. Run by perfumer Vincent Micotti and his wife Vera Yeoh makes beguiling perfumes that are very unique. The quality of the work is superlative, each scent a carefully formed aromatic experience inspired by musical motifs, pieces of music, Beethoven’s mysterious Immortal Beloved, jazz, Nina Simone, musical terminology etc. I have the crystalline Lale, an apricot-infused tea-tinted white floral that is so deliciously light it’s barely there, but still the skin smells of sweet glittering snow. I have Pohadka too, although I have to be in the right frame of mind for it, the blond tobacco note is shockingly realistic and sometimes I just can’t handle the full-blown smoked vanilla and hay ambience. Dragon Tattoo is a whole other ball game though. The name obviously references Lisbeth Sander, the extraordinary protagonist of three huge bestselling novels by the late Stieg Larsson. The first novel in the so-called Millennium Series was actually called Men who Hate Women in the original Swedish, but changed to the more palatable The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when it was translated. Dragon Tattoo is a scent of fierce collision and shock. I have never really experienced anything else like it. It is almost repulsive at times. I love the fact that most of my friends loathe it. The image Ys Uzac used to promote the fragrance, a punk-lite model, tongue out, flipping the bird in a too-pretty studded leather jacket was almost insulting. Dragon Tattoo is way more fucked up and dirty than any faked up faux-punk fashion editorial aesthetic. You have to remember how deeply damaged Lisbeth was, how scarred, raped and punished she had been and continued to be at the hands of men and a state system that set out to bury her. She is shockingly vulnerable and distasteful, hard to like, but she compels you to care through survival and a refusal to ask for pity. This scorned and vengeful woman is a part of this utterly bizarre and visceral olfactory experience. This abstracted homage to Lisbeth and her kind is so powerful to wear, it hangs off the skin like a battered hand-me-down biker jacket, thrashed in club sweat, split booze, make up, teen perfume, hairspray and blood. The mix of ink, ripened peach, apricot, leather and shuddering levels of primal, private musks make Dragon Tattoo quite a perverse aromatic experience. It smells deeply feminine, almost disturbingly so on boys, as if one’s gender was being challenged. The fruit has a whiff of fermentation, the musks just sliding into the uncomfortable side of sweaty. Yet, it is an exhilarating perfume, raw, pornographic and base. It has a certain prettiness, an initial allure, but then it savages the senses with fierce beauty. The best yet from a vastly underrated house.

Foxy Loves of 2015 - Part II (Dazzled & Delighted)

Alaïa Paris

Alaïa Paris – Alaïa

It did seem amazing that superstar Tunisian born designer Azzedine Alaïa had never launched a scent; but he was an unusual talent who oscillated between enormous publicity and intense reined in privacy. His clients who included some of the most famous women of the day such as Grace Jones, Tina Turner and Naomi Campbell are generally reluctant to discuss him personally except to reiterate how extraordinary his talent was and how special his clothes made them feel. Alaïa Paris was created by the sophisticated hand of Marie Salamagne in collaboration with Beauté Prestige International. Monsieur Alaïa had a specific if oblique brief; ‘a smell of cold water splashed on burningly hot whitewashed walls’. A memory perhaps of Tunisian heat and evaporation. For such a short proposal it is arresting enough and the resulting parfum is one of the most beguiling and enigmatic mainstream launches in years. It was initially exclusive to Harrods but now widely available. The Paolo Roversi campaign and gorgeous Martin Szekely bottle with its black opaque glass design (with incised motifs echoing the laser cut leather of Alaïa’s cult collections) and a cap resembling a spool of golden thread only added to the luxe impression of Alaïa’s debut scent. The vague list of generic pink pepper, freesia, peony, animal notes and musks was interesting but not as much as Alaïa’s dictate that no one note should be detectable over another. On paper this sounds relatively easy. Yet from an olfactory and technical point of view it is incredibly demanding. During development, BPI and Salamagne honed and smoothed the complexities until this exquisite cold, mineralised consistency was achieved. I am on my third bottle of this strange, indefinable scent already; much is its moreish power. There is both luminosity and fade to the mix; I love the way the musks cling close, while the overall impression is one of disconcerting allure. As the lines and edges continue to blur and shift between niche and certain perfumers working in mainstream scent, Alaïa Paris is a sublime (and price accessible) reminder of luxurious high street beauty. 

Foxy Loves of 2015 - Part I (The Triptych)

This year I have found and worn some beautiful work. I had a very unsettling period in the summer when my sense of smell just collapsed; I found myself unable to properly distinguish between notes, accords and materials I normally navigated with ease. This was the result of a serious viral infection a few years ago that resulted in hospitalisation and now a ghostly set of symptoms rises and falls like a malevolent tide, periodically attacking my olfactory system. Even when I recover, I am plagued by doubts; am I truly smelling cashmeran or cistus or just my memory of them? It has made me painfully conscious of how I interact with aroma, much more so then before and I have been researching the science of scent psychology and the effect on mood, migraine, learning, autism, dementia and sexual awareness. I now go for days with no scent on at all, whereas before I would never have dreamed of doing that. My skin and senses need days of neutrality and blankness in order for me to process aroma.  

I have written less than I would have liked I think, but what I have written is bold and heartfelt. Some of you have commented on the increased poeticism and eroticism in the writing. This is fine; I am always trying to do different things. I wrote five scent-related prose essays for Issue 4 of ODOU Magazine, the olfactory related publication designed and edited by the wonderful Liam Moore. I loved writing these, short obsessive pieces linking sex, death, desire and love to five particular fragrances including Bulgari Black, Vero Kern’s Onda, Iris Nazarena by Aedes de Venustas, Daphne by Comme des Garçons and Tabac Blond by Caron. I have more prose in Issue 5.. not saying too much except it will be haunted and obsessed with roses.  

I have always taken my time with my reviews and thoughts, those of you that follow my work are aware of that. I need to, the pieces are long, detailed and take a lot of time to research, plan and assemble. I also take a lot of the images myself. If don’t take them, I edit them ruthlessly through a complex series of apps, filters, lenses, effects and frames to achieve the precise look I desire. Editing is exhausting. I always overwrite and prune back; it’s the way I’ve always written. It’s indulgent and time consuming I know, but it allows me to play around with large amounts of info and then begin to carefully whittle it down through numerous drafts. I have a few trusted readers, only one technical reader, perfumer and friend Mr E; he has read my work from the beginning and I rely on his expert aroma knowledge to help me when I stumble or need reassurance that my instincts are not crazy. I still don’t do negative reviews and yet I’m still criticised by other bloggers for this. I don’t care. Everyone is different, all our tastes unique. I like things, you all like things. That’s all it really amounts to. I am not a perfumer or any kind of expert; I write on what I like, why waste time on anything else?

Disorderly Wine: ‘Fundamental’ by Rubini Profumi

It has taken me a little while to get around to writing down my thoughts on Fundamental Eau de Parfum by Rubini Profumi. I was very kindly sent a sample by Andrea Bissoni Rubini when the scent initially launched at Pitti 2015 and it fascinated and charmed me then. It is very much an Italian affair, created by Andrea, in collaboration with Ermano Picco, blogger at La Gardenia nell'occhiello, perfumer Cristiano Canali and renowned designer Francesca Gotti who created the singular presentation for Nu_be, another innovative Italmian niche brand. The mix of personnel is quietly and distinctively a family of perfumed immensity and quite the platform for a debut scent.

Andrea Bissoli Rubini

I have become quite addicted to Fundamental’s unexpected and compelling grape note; it smells yeasty, fatty, smeared and indulgent. Shifting from sparkling party bubbles, the bread and melon hit of prosecco to a more disturbing lolling, after-hours addiction of vampiric carmine stain; there is unwashed skin, a whiff of fuck and silence, falling make-up, lipstick, cologne, tradition and innovation. All of these disparate elements swirl around that central personality of Soave grape. It is quite an experience.

Fundamental by Rubini

So much time is spent writing about lost scents and houses attempting to shore up their crumbling foundations. There are also many faux-vintage olfactory formulae out there, offering cracked windows into bygone eras with mixed results. Fundamental is a very different creature. Andrea comes from a line of established Veronese perfume sellers, so his blood is scented, but he was restless, aromatically fatigued if you like, looking for something amid the usual flacons that would inspire him. He set out to create his own scent, an odour that satisfy his vintage cravings but also represent something modern, constructed and singularly apart from anything he had experienced to date. Could he build a fragrance that might echo with history and geography and yet still resonate with a contemporary set of complex and fickle senses? 

Ermano Picco (l) & Cristiano Canali (r)

The name Fundamental is key to this scented endeavour. Andrea’s grandfather started up a small perfumery business in Verona in Northern Italy in 1937 after returning from the Italo-Ethiopian war. The word translates variously as crucial, intrinsic, supporting, base or foundation. His grandfather’s name was Pietro, the Italian word for stone. His post war perfumery business was literally the cornerstone of the Rubini family. Fundamental is Andrea’s homage to his grandfather’s memory but also a way of saying.. ‘This is my foundation, I place this olfactory object in place and mark a new Rubini beginning..’

Verona

In order to achieve his dream, Andrea set about assembling a talented and relatively green squad of collaborators to help him realise his Fundamental project. La Gardenia nell’Occhiello is an Italian perfume blog hosted by Ermano Picco, a man who knows a lot about the history and traditions of perfumery. Andrea consulted with Ermano in order to create a detailed brief they might start with. Using this, they contacted Cristiano Canali, a young graduate from the ISIPCA in Paris who Andrea had previously met at Pitti when he was showcasing a selection of the Osmothèque’s classic canon of perfumery.