The Way Through the Woods is Strangely Shadowed: ‘Florabotanica’ by Balenciaga Paris

Wandering through Harvey Nichols on a work break, tired and vaguely peeved as I am usually am in department stores by the miasma of scent and the slapdash approach to perfume promotion, I was not really expecting to see or at least smell anything interesting. I had already been utterly deflated by the latest Tom Ford floral releases, hyped as usual and massively underwhelming. As a man obsessed with all things lilium related I had been looking forward to trying his Lys Fumé, the lily soliflore from the Jardin Noir quartet. I realised after spraying it on, there is a facet to all of the TF fragrances that I actively dislike; that in fact rather irritates me. Despite all the talk of high-level naturals and absolutes etc, they all have an off-putting malaise, a breath of deoderised car, lighter fuel and smoked bug spray that sits under the notes like a latent curse. The Lys Fumé was no exception; in fact I recoiled from my own skin. Now if you follow my writing you will now how much I adore lily soliflores, I have at least six or seven tremulous variations in my collection at home, but this smelt like burnt bathroom freshener, not a good effect in a fragrance.

Revisiting my wrist in a vain hope the drydown might unlock a twist in the formula and I would perhaps marvel at the sudden majesty of lily-form lines and curves, I noticed the new Balenciaga fragrance was being merchandised. Obviously just in, the striking carnivorous botanical packaging caught my eye and lured me over. The Lys Fumé at this point had withered to a flat and unimaginative campheraceous echo of the original indolic floral flourish. The smoked note was drawn in the air like cheap cigarette smoke in a bus shelter. I am really beginning to wonder whether the immaculately hirsute Mr Ford has anything to do with his scents any more, they are becoming increasingly dull and formulaic. Pricy and glossy Dynasty concoctions for scousewives and Beverly Hills princesses.  

Florabotanica is the third fragrance from Balenciaga under the mighty creative sweep of Nicholas Ghesquière, one of the few true visionaries working in fashion today. The first two fragrances used the enigmatic note of violet to create similar yet reflectively different interpretations.  I will admit to being rather underwhelmed by the first Balenciaga Paris, which I found bloodless and wan. It expired far too quickly on my skin and made me shudder as if shaking the hand of someone I knew was going to die. It was too safe, despite a coldly beautiful campaign fronted by the mercurial and inscrutable Charlotte Gainsbourg. However the second version, Balenciaga Paris L’Essence, was divine, poetic and fairytale-like in its dreamy interpretation of the way through the woods. The violets glowing amethyst in hazy pockets of sunshine dappled with glinting metallic musk tones like coins in the sunlight counterpointing the floral elements with elegance and grace; lending an air of toughness I found lacking in the original.

Immortal Love: ‘L’Être Aimé’ by Parfums Divine

Pour D & B, Merci.

I received the most wonderful gift in the post from two new friends in Lyon recently. Fellow fragrance lovers, on holiday in Edinburgh earlier this year, we met and bonded over olfactory passions, practiced our languages and now talk in the electronic ether about all things fragrance related. They both have exquisite emotional taste in perfume and are adventurous in their desires to search out the new and unusual while remaining faithful to fragrances that anchor them to memories of their travels, home and each other.

I sent them some samples of fragrance, Penhaligon’s Peoneve and a spare bottle of my touchtone leather, Tom of Finland by Etat Libre D’Orange for B to try. My gift arrived wrapped in lovely vintage Laura Ashley wallpaper, and slightly knocked from its journey and there was a faint scent of caramelised sugar rising from the paper. Inside the box was a bottle of L’Être Aimé by Parfums Divine, a bijou niche house based in Dinard on the north coast of Brittany and founded by Yvon Mouchel in 1986.

Mouchel’s elegant and classically constructed fragrances have become quietly successful with perfume cognoscenti and lovers of scented difference. As an independant, Mouchel has control over his own business, releasing a limited number of bottles a year. Instead of following trends he is free to explore his love and passion for the drama and classicism of fine fragrance. His first creation, the eponymous Divine, released in 1986 is a sophisticated and truly elegant portrayal of woman as art. TO me she is swathed in pearls and a subtle cigarette haze with the music of Mahler playing softly around her as she stands at a window looking out in the night. It was Divine that created the scented buzz that started Mouchel’s cult following.

Originally from a cosmetics background, Mouchel was pretty much fragrance self taught, obsessed with the artistic aspects of olfactory experiences. He works with renowned noses, fellow Breton Yann Vasnier (Givaudan)and Richard Ibanez (Robertet)to create a line of fragrances that have clarity, intent and tremendous beauty. They seem to echo luminous creations of the past, while somehow remaining totally unique to themselves. This is very difficult to achieve in today’s crowded and cloned fragrance world.

‘Creating a perfume is an artform…. A great perfume is a work of art’. 

This is how Mouchel views his world. Perhaps other perfumers should listen (and take notes….!) and we might be spared the avalanche of tedious smelling releases that crowd around us with the monotony of elevator jazz.

The attention to detail and commitment to quality in Divine frgrances is superb. Each of the fragrances has soul, personality and oozes distinctive style. I have sampled the original Divine and L’Homme de Coeur before. Then someone passed on a decant of L’Inspiratrice, dismissing it as too sweet for their skin. I on the other hand loved its sweetness, it translated into chocolate fire on my skin, laced with ylang, peony, white musks and tonka, all things I like in my fragrances. Also the rose note floating through was rather mournful, like a cloud passing overhead on an otherwise sunny day. Most beguiling.

Tell the Bees My Heart Overflows With Sorrowful Wax: ‘Séville à L’Aube’ by L’Artisan Parfumeur

I have become much preoccupied with orange blossom in recent years, not the burnt sugar aromas of neroli which can make me dizzy and nauseous in large doses, but the delicious floating beauty of orange blossom water, redolent of sweet succulent jasmine as late evenings drop from summer skies.

2012 seems to be a big year for orange blossom with a number of lip-smacking releases already out and more to come. Roberto Cavalli’s eponymous scent for women reeks of slickly oiled eurotrash and heady casino nights and is tremendous fun to wear. Bobbi Brown’s Beach is salty and full of the coastal rush of summer love, innocent and lickable.

There have been some lovely interpretations of orange blossom over the last couple of perfumed years. Some of my favourites include Killian’s Love, Jo Malone’s Orange Blossom (although I wear this glazed with Prada Candy….) Serge Lutens’ Fleur D’Oranger, A Lab on Fire’s Sweet Dreams 2003 and Azemour Les Orangers by Parfums D’Empire. It is a very tricky note in my opinion to get right, to balance on the skin. I have a real love/hate relationship with the bitter marmalade facets of neroli, it often triggers severe migraines. But the more jasmine-like tones of orange blossom lull me with dreamy longing.

I’m all a tremble just now with the release of one of the most intricate and sensual fragrances I have ever smelt: Séville à L’Aube, a new limited edition eau de parfum by L’Artisan Parfumeur. Brought to life by Bertrand Duchaufour and inspired by an intense erotic olfactory memory experienced by perfume blogger, writer and critic Denyse Beaulieu. This memory of a man and a moment, of skin, touching, lips, tobacco, of Holy Week in Séville, candles, incense, wax and the rush of sexual desire has been mined by Bertrand and Denyse in painstaking and detailed sessions of sturm und drang, emotion and calm. drama and analytical fragrance chemistry in Denyse’s book The Perfume Lover. This aromatic slutty memoir details the collaboration from concept to perfume. Denyse has recently said how the fragrance has shaped and led her and Betrand, manipulating them through the twists and turns of various mods, toying with themes, effects, abstractions and emotions.

I don’t want to go into any great detail about the birth and development of the scent. You should read the book for yourselves. I want to talk about my reaction to this amazing fragrance and the effect it had on me.

It is a fragrance of many facets, animalic, floral, smoke and sun, desire, sex and memory. I love the contrasts, the internal shifts from the pouting innocence of orange blossom to the comforting hive smearings of the beeswax wrapped in smoke and woods. I was lucky enough to wear it before it launched and became obsessed with it. On my skin the osmosis was exquisite.

Every now and again, fragrances come along that seem made for you. Séville à L’Aube is one such fragrance, as soon as it settled on my skin and I sniffed the beautiful hot lavender notes rising lazily through the indolic orange blossom and waxen animalics, I realised I had found something extraordinary. It lives and breathes with you. Denyse’s erotic memory lives on, gilded and transmuted through the painterly olfactory skills of Bertrand Duchaufour. His ability to visualize light and texture, to feel a moment has served this fragrance well.

His 2010 Orange Blossom for London brand Penhaligon’s was very stylish and a touch déshabillé. It is a top to toe re-working of the House’s uninspired 1976 original and much the better for it. He lifted and refreshed the formula with incandescent orange blossom and neroli notes blended with cedar, vanilla, peach flower and a delicate Ambre Solaire flourish (benzyl salicylate) to suggest holidays and beaches. The final result is a glorious rounded floral with touches of deep shocking indolic beauty and was by far and away the highlight of the company’s somewhat hit and miss Anthology Collection.  

There are echoes of Bertrand’s work on Orange Blossom (and also his creamy magnum opus Vanille Absolument for L’Artisan Parfumeur) wafting through Séville à L’Aube, but it has a very distinct identity of its own. Shadows and sexual darkness, an erotic past, whisper in the street. I find it very emotional, beeswax does that to me. I burn beeswax candles I buy in a cathedral shop, the scent is like nothing else, sweet and strange, filling my rooms with an ethereal sugared heat that triggers memories of school chapel, a French lover who wore Antaeus and a minor erotic obsession I had with a catholic pretender to a small European principality in my late teens.

The distinctive smell of polished wooden floors, peat smoke, the mahogany warmth of much loved furniture. Corridors and summer sunlit rain, Mallaig and the windswept west coast of Scotland. These are random shards of memory that rise and fall when I smell Séville à L’Aube, it seems to stir quite the olfactory stew. But it’s dirty too, sexual and growling. The costus element; skin and scalp, the leaning in, the nuzzling that runs under the initial indolic rush moulded through the wax is both comforting and repellant. The desire to push away and pull in is quite remarkable. The heat of a moment defined in a scent. So hard to capture, the stay, go… let go, give in. These complex emotions have been translated into a subtle cascading pyramid of notes and that draws you into the heart of a horny and shimmering fragrance.

Cravings I - July 2012

I want to do something a little different for this piece. I’ve been thinking about new releases and fragrances I really want to be living in and breathing off my skin.  Obviously the market is continually washed through with new releases from both high street and niche and also a relatively new and somewhat blurred area of designer boutique fragrances, concept scents, vanity projects and the increasing number of high cost ‘art’ perfume experiments. Recent examples include the Steidl/Lagerfeld/Schoen/Wallpaper* collaboration: Paper Passion, the Blood Concept fragrances by Giovanni Castelli and Antonio Zuddas and the rather haunting Olfactive Studio fragrances inspired by the alchemy between nose and the eye, perfumery and photography. So the perfume world is much more intense and complex now than it ever has been, the simplicity of merely scenting oneself is now only a part of the experience, perfumery is reaching inside to touch our souls, stimulate our hearts, our minds and perhaps, to scent the length and breadth of our lives.

But shadowing this is a creeping zombification of scent, where everything has become tainted with cloning, the mould of repetitive flankering or a desperate desire to shock and subvert. But essentially dead inside. Sometimes it seems what the central tenet of perfumery…. simply to smell extraordinary…is disappearing amid our increasing need to buy into trends and peer acceptance.

The scented maverick, the olfactory maven is becoming a thing of the past. We are becoming defined by mediocrity. But I have faith… I know there are mavericks and rule breakers out there, scentheads, freaks and obsessives. I know some, I am one, work with them, love them, and desire them.  

So I want to initiate a sporadic Silver Foxy look at fragrances out in the scent-o-sphere that intrigue me and that I’d actually like to have on my precious tattooed skin.

Normally I prefer to blog about fragrances I have bought. I believe it honours the perfumer. I’m not a big fan of decants and find samples irritating and rarely reflect the actual juice. The perfume blogosphere runs on decants and sampling, something I just can’t be bothered with. Buy the juice, take your time. Desire things….want things…. Crave.

These are my wants and desires just now. (And yes…. I have succumbed as you will see to a few samples… my cravings are that bad!)

Number One - Séville à l’Aube by L’Artisan Parfumeur

Top of my list, and I know I’ve been going on about it for a while now, but… Séville à l’Aube by Bertrand Duchaufour is a feral, flickering force of perfumed beauty. A rare elixir, a successful gourmand oriental; it has the most exquisite beeswax and Luisieri lavender absolutes lashed to the brightest and most luscious orange blossom note I have smelt in years. This delicious and deeply porny explosion of ecstatic skin notes is folded into the arms of incense, petitgrain and my beloved benzoin. I’ve been lucky enough to be wearing this for a while now and I fell in love with it the moment it rose off my skin like an incantatory dream.

The story of this scent of course has been minutely documented in the book The Perfume Lover by Denyse Beaulieu, the talented and influential blogger behind Grain de Musc, one of the most eloquent fragrance blogs on the web. Her use of language is second to none and Denyse understands the unique power of fragrance to move us, change us and imprint moments in time. Indeed, Séville à l’Aube is a memory scent, an erotic moment from Denyse’s colourful past; Holy Week in Séville in the arms of a handsome Spaniard. This charged and amplified memory is veiled in smoke and ritual, candles, beeswax, orange blossom, light, skin, sweat, hair and desire.

Working (and bumping olfactory heads…!) with Bertrand Duchaufour to bring this memory to scented life is the fascinating core of her book. Originally to have been called Duende (a reference to the dark and sensual artistic force that defines much of Spanish art, literature, music and dance) this magical and textured fragrance has been picked up by Parisian niche house L’Artisan Parfumeur and will be sold throughout their boutiques. It is one of most eagerly awaited launches of the year. Bertrand has produced one of the finest fragrances of his career in my opinion, something a little new, a strange tactile animalic gourmand oriental that makes you want to be touched, hard and with passion. It’s a merciless Sadean scent, demanding your senses are torn apart and rebuilt with desire and a just a touch of exquisite pain.

Séville à L’Aube by L’Artisan Parfumeur – Limited Edition, available at selected boutiques, from 25th July 2012. 

http://www.artisanparfumeur.com/shop/home.html

Number 2 - Blackberry & Bay by Jo Malone

Blackberry & Bay by Jo Malone is due for release in early September. Accompanied again by a Hardyesque and whimsical campaign by Tim Walker, this is a really handsome and thoughtful fragrance, coming hot on the heels of their successful limited edition Velvet Rose & Oud Cologne Intense. I bought this and adore it, so sweet and jammy with that subtle underpinning of dirt that I love about cleverly balanced ouds. I was obsessed with last year’s Rosewater & Vanilla, wearing it over and over with so many different fragrances as a base and as a varnish. This year’s velvet incarnation pushes the plushness of the rose, the hedonistic drama of this most eroticized of blooms. The new Blackberry & Bay, created by Fabrice Pellegrin is a tightly constructed fragrance, marrying the sweet hedgerow magic of the ripened berry and the dry, country kitchen verdancy of the bay.

There is of course that familiar Jo Malone grapefruity sparkle running through the notes, a cologne fizz that lifts the potential sickliness of the blackberry note. I liked the vetiver and cedar earthiness of the drydown; it worked intimately and aromatically on my skin. Of course all blackberry fragrances must be measured against the magisterial Mûre et Musc by L’Artisan Parfumeur, the benchmark in all things sparkling, berry and green. The key to the L’Artisan Parfumeur scent has always been the very clever balance between the effervescent high-pitched Galaxolide musks and the bubbling just-picked hedgerow berry notes. There is also a beautiful rubbed leaf and stained fingers feel about Mûre et Musc which is missing from Blackberry and Bay. Jo Malone’s Blackberry & Bay is like an Elisabeth David recipe, less overblown than its French gilded counterpart, a little more reserved. Still very much in the French style but translated for the English palate and quietly beautiful for it.

Blackberry & Bay by Jo Malone, from September, general release.

http://www.jomalone.co.uk/ 

Number 3 – Eau Sauvage Parfum by Dior

Edmond Roudnitska’s citrus and Hedione drenched behemoth Eau Sauvage has been around for so long, we nod wisely and accept it’s magnificence and more importantly its continuing crystalline beauty which seems to grow ever brighter as the years pass. Dior has wisely only played with flankers once or twice with varying degrees of success. I really liked the Eau Sauvage Cuir, with just a whisper of leather, the faintest of muffled whipcracks in the sunlight to give the classic formula a twist of Alain Delon enigma as it dried down. It was rather unexpected and somewhat poignant, like an adult weeping silently at a child’s party, surrounded by ruined cake and smeared balloons. I was not that enamoured of the Extrème version, it overdosed on the hedione and the citrus notes were too acidic, it was like biting down on tin foil. Now we are about to have a dramatic new interpretation of the classic scent. Called simply Eau Sauvage Parfum, re-worked and designed by Dior in-house maestro François Demachy, the new incarnation is part of Demachy’s campaign to reintroduce a younger more dynamic fragrance audience to the smells of Maison Dior. A lot of controversy has swirled around his attempts, accusations of destroying original formulations and releasing fragrances with the same names as classic Dior fragrances but bear very little resemblance to them. I personally think this is by the by, I like his work and admire what he is doing. Times change and if we can sniff even an echo of times gone by, we are lucky.

Eau Sauvage Parfum is completely different from its original namesake, with strange unsettling osmanthus-like notes running under an addictive oriental accord. You can smell Demachy’s work on Dior Homme Intense and his recent beautiful restructuring of Diorling. The floral tones are oddly disconcerting, settling like sweet dried fruits with a (very…) subtle breath of leather rolling out under the sugar. For me the most beautiful note; and this radiates off the skin, is the myrrh. One of the most beautiful notes in perfumery, used with dexterity in scent it can be a magical, transformative note. It combines with vetiver in Eau Sauvage Parfum to create a dense perfumed wall of sound. One of my all time favourite fragrances is the heartbreaking Eau Noire by Dior. This new savage water reminded me of how good fragrances can be and brought back memories of how visceral the shock of first finding Eau Noire was. This is going to be huge.

Eau Sauvage Parfum, Summer 2012. (Review from very large sample sent by superkind superchic Parisian friend…..Merci XX) 

http://www.dior.com/beauty/gbr/en/women_fragrance_and_men_fragrance_by_christian_dio/men-fragrance/eau_sauvage/y0897240/py0897240-ceausauvagefpl.html  

Number 4 – Gucci Première by Gucci

Now, I flit back and forth to the high street, hoping for miracles and those of you who follow my blog will know how much I adored the Bottega Veneta Eau de Parfum and the Cartier Baiser Volé last year, both exceptional examples of niche quality high street perfumes. This year, the Roberto Cavalli’s slick eurotrash tan-tastic take on orange blossom has seduced me despite strenuous attempts at resisting. It just smells bloody marvelous; sexy, fun, loud and gaudy, like moneyed skin swaying past you in Nice or Cannes. A little vulgar perhaps, overdoing the gold with the swimsuit, but hey, its hot, it’s the south of France, who cares?

So to Gucci. I loved Gucci by Gucci, the fabulous seventies style campaign by David Lynch with Racquel Zimmerman swaying hypnotically like some equine alien to Blondie’s Heart of Glass. Created by Ilias Ermenidis, Gucci by Gucci was a really delightful fruity attempt to re-invent the floral chypré with guava, honey and a delicious Tiare flower note that oozed out of the composition. The new Gucci Première is inspired by the luxurious dazzle of Hollywood and couture gowns. Fronted by Blake Lively, the Mert & Mercus campaign is modern and striking and sadly just a little bland. Frida Giannini has said :

‘For such a successful woman, something equally remarkable was required. Gucci Première is womanly, intriguing and as a seductive as the perfect couture gown.’

Again there is orange blossom, a key fragrance note this year in fragrance, mixed with bergamot, these two big notes symbolising the Italian heritage of Gucci. It is an intensely feminine fragrance, with a very traditional white floral heart, but somehow, the addition of Tonkin musks and a very delicate leather note create a much more sophisticated effect than I expected. It feels like Gucci have looked at the success of the Bottega Veneta eau de parfum by Michel Almairac and also the Elie Saab scent by Francis Kurkdjian and noticed that modern women are now looking for something a little more discerning and transformative to wear on their skin. Nothing too trangressional, that would be too shocking for the cashmere and silk set, but a juice with a hint of mystery and imagination. Gucci Première is not going to be winning any awards for originality but it has a certain quality of return, a moreishness that cannot be denied. I like the subtlety and restraint the fragrance demonstrates in the drydown, the etiquette if you like. It has a delicate presence on the skin, like an expensive fabric that has no need of gaudy colours or labels to signal its origins. I have worn it a number of times now and I am falling for its soft persuasive charms. 

Gucci Première Eau de Parfum by Gucci, Selfridges exclusive from 5^th July, Nationwide from 25^th July.

              

Number 5- The Scent of Departure: Vienna

I love everything about this fun new brand, the packaging, the art direction, the joie de vivre, the price point and the determination to do something a little differently. It could have been twee and self-conscious, but in the talented hands of perfumer Gérard Ghislain and designer Magali Sénéquier it is witty triumph. 

It is notoriously difficult to launch a niche fragrance brand in today’s competitive fragrance world. But Ghislain already has form; his Histoires des Parfums is an outrageously confident range of fragrances, an olfactory library of gorgeous works to be read and inhaled off the skin.

The Histoire des Parfums scents are definitely the work of a latter-day dandy, a man who loves the finer things in life. Inspired by famous (and infamous…!) people like the Marquis De Sade, George Sand, Eugenie de Montijo, Mata Hari, Jules Verne and some landmark years like 1969. (sexual revolution and the student uprisings in Paris). 1969 is my obsessive HdP fragrance, a experience that melts onto the skin and intensifies until your senses are hypnotized by its beauty. It is built round chocolate, peach, coffee, patchouli and lashings of musk. It verges on whorish, but the sweetness is always perfectly counterbalanced by the rubbed dirtiness of the patchouli. I could have a love affair with myself wearing this incredible perfume.  

So this year Ghislain has done something very different, light and airy almost, fun and incredibly well designed. A Scent of Departure is top to toe design conscious. Every part of the concept had travel elements; from the display stands and the destination board design for the website to the stylish luggage tag bottle packaging with the airport code names - CDG,LAX,LHR etc.

“HELLO, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. THE CAPTAIN AND FLIGHT DECK CREW WOULD LIKE TO WELCOME ABOARD THE SCENT OF DEPARTURE, AN AFFILIATE OF FRAGRANCE AIRLINES PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS, SIT BACK AND GET READY FOR TAKE OFF. WE THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING OUR AIRLINES AND WISH YOU A PLEASANT FLIGHT….“

This is the brand introduction from the website. The idea behind the brand is to remind us as travellers how important olfactory imprinting is as we move around the world. I do this every time I travel actually, take a new scent with me and imprint it on the city I am visiting. Amsterdam was Bulgari Black. Moscow was Fleur de Cassie by Frederick Malle. And Paris is forever my beloved dank and sensual Eau Noire by Dior.  

The Scent of Departure fragrance I really want in my collection is Vienna….. Described as a city walk along the banks of the Danube, in the Palace Gardens of Belveder and of course surrounded by the city’s aromas of pastries – vanilla, chocolate, cream and coffee. Strauss rhythms and warm comforting gourmandise delights. The notes include cut grass, mint, tarragon, anise, clove and rhubarb. These top and heart notes sit on a gourmand base of vanilla, chocolate, coffee, licquorice and some lovely guaiac wood and patchouli. This mix is strange and beguiling. Cold yet warm. Standoffish and come hither. Like Vienna itself, sometimes the chocolate-box appearance of the city can be overwhelming, but the heart of the city beats with genuine beauty, foodie warmth and humour. It just takes a little patience to find it. 

The Scent of Departure: Vienna, 50ml €40 £31

www.thescentofdeparture.com

Thai me Up, Thai me Down: ‘Fils de Dieu du Riz et des Agrumes’ by Etat Libre D’Orange

If you love Asian food and all things Pacific Rim and fusion this fragrance is perfection. I love making jasmine rice with jasmine flowers from Neal’s Yard, lime zest and coconut milk. The aromas that fill my kitchen are divine. But the moment of epiphany is having left the rice to slowly and magically transform, is lifting off the lid and inhaling (eyes closed of course… )the citrus-sweet steam billowing out with the bittersoft beauty of jasmine blooms. This physical moment of vaporous gustatory olfaction is a startling concept for a perfume and one which only Etat Libre D’Orange have the perfumed couilles to carry off. 

Last year Etat Libre D’Orange announced a new fragrance to be signed off by the talented, artistic German perfumer Ralf Schwieger, a man who builds scents from seemingly opposite elements and is very steeped in the aesthetics of fragrance. It was to be called Philippine Houseboy and would be built around steam, rice, citrus and animalic accords. After a name change, we have Fils de Dieu (du riz et des agrumes), a very original composition released alongside Bijou Romantique by French perfumer Mathilde Bijouai. Schwieger has two acknowledged masterpieces under his belt, Eau des Merveilles for Hèrmes and the glorious, smudged and erotic Lipstick Rose created for the original line-up of Editions Frédérick Malle.

Eau de Merveilles (2004) is the fragrance that really put Schwieger on the olfactory map. Working with the influential Véronique Gaultier at Hèrmes, he and co-creator Nathalie Feisthauser* played with the oceanic salty skin sexiness of the sea and modern amber notes. What I like about Eau de Merveilles is the transformative nature it has on the skin; body heat flips the accords into a second layer of signals, all of them sweetly animalic and come hither sparkling. A tribute to the weirdness of real ambergris, Eau de Merveilles has a wonderful strangeness to it, a sense of being washed in the ocean and then dusted lightly in golden sugars. It has a central floral motif of lily of the valley and this is treated with reverence and beauty; laced with elemi, bergamot, pink pepper, benzoin, warm woods and of course a synthesised ambergris accord. A quite delicious and rewardingly complex skin experience and one of the best perfumes in the Hèrmes canon.(*Nathalie Feisthauser created the magnificently Sadean Putain des Palaces, also for Etat Libre D’Orange, an aldehydic floral with incredible boudoir violet notes softened by candlelight, rice powder and swathes of animalics.  It is one of the most accomplished and truly finished fragrances in the range).

One of the most fascinating things about Eau de Merveilles is of course its beauty on skin but also its wearability on fabric, fur and wool. I’ve read in a couple of interviews that this was intentional. If so, bravo! I love fragrances worn on clothes; woven through the actual fibres around me, on scarves, jacket linings, pocket squares, cashmere and silk. There are differences in the molecular spread of the aroma and I like the linger, the memory of the scent embedded in cloth each time I take something from my wardrobe to wear.

Schwieger was a late starter in perfumery terms, beginning his training at the Roure School of Perfume in Grasse after training in chemistry in Berlin. His breakthrough was Lipstick Rose in 2000, one of the original fragrances for Editions Frédérick Malle, a unique and at the time, groundbreaking selection of fragrances published by Malle, whose maternal grandfather founded Les Parfums Christian Dior.

Malle had studied Art History and then joined the Roure School, studying with the legendary Jean Amic (Opium and Y). In 2000, he launched nine fragrances by nine perfumers, including Dominique Ropion, Olivia Giacobetti, Edmond Roudnitska and Jean Claude Ellena. Malle wanted perfumers to be more visible, more credible. This was rather radical from a marketing point of view. Perfumers worked behind the scenes and handed on their work; other people, the Houses themselves took the credit. True, there were some superstar noses, but generally speaking, like directors behind the cameras, they were content to let the actors or juice shine for the cameras and press. Editions Frédérick Malle changed that. Perfume lovers have since become fascinated with the world of the nose, the men and women who create the world’s vast array of mainstream, niche and avant-garde smells.

This was a seismic shift in the attitude toward the marketing and retail of fragrances. Of course small numbers of aficionados have always been interested in the names behind the notes as it were, as their personalities flicker through the perfumes like musical motifs. Talented names were often smothered in mainstream Houses, working with strict budget and marketing/brand briefs.  Yet working for niche and artisan houses like Frédérick Malle, L’Artisan Parfumeur and MDCI to name a few allowed some perfumers the chance to really soar and spread extraordinary scented wings. Bigger houses such as Dior, Hermes, Bulgari and Cartier then started to recognize the value in having these olfactory artists creating more singular work alongside the standard big budget crowd pleasers. So big names like Mathilde Laurent went to Cartier, Ellena to Hermes, and Demachy to Dior. The shift and blurring of artisan and mainstream has become intriguing and to be honest a little confusing in the last decade or so. To be truly artisan now requires quite an effort.        

Released in 2000 Schwieger’s Lipstick Rose captures that delightful creamy soft boudoir scent of classic lipstick, a mixture of fatty rose, smudged violet, vanillic skin and talcum. A woman in a haze of retro beauty, applying make-up in blooming mirrors in a childs’s rose-tinted memory. But there is a ruthless and animalic streak of modernity ruining through Lipstick Rose, a lick of pole dancer. A naughty raspberry note sparkles at the top as the scent opens and this develops down like a trickle of forbidden liquor through the scent as it warms through on skin. The rose/violet theme is a classical fragrance accord that echoes down through decades of perfumery. I love L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Drôle de Rose for its cranberry-coloured interpretation of nostalgic dressing up and scented nights out. But Lipstick Rose undercuts any melancholy and sentimentality with the sexuality and danger of aldehydes and a deep, plush kiss of throaty vanilla.

Etat Libre D’Orange was started by the iconoclastic South African Etienne de Swardt. After creating a totally bonkers scent Oh my Dog! with Laurent Jugeau, he set up Etat Libre D’Orange in Paris, with the tag line….Le parfum est mort. Vive le parfum! (Perfume is dead. Long live perfume!). The portfolio of fragrances is witty and vivacious. The blurb and over-sexualised marketing can be a little tiresome. Although the recently revamped website is a huge improvement on the old one. But at the end of the day a brand lives and dies by its fragrances. I have blogged previously about my beloved Rossy de Palma Eau de Protection, a gorgeous sensual, dark bloody rose. Tom of Finland is a remarkable porny leather. Charogne and Rien are the two other Etat fragrances I like to have in my collection.

So I was very excited last year when news surfaced that Schwieger was creating a fragrance for ELdO. At the time the name bandied about was Philippine Houseboy and some rather dodgy looking ethnic publicity images appeared, masks and totems etc, with references to South Pacific eroticism. Thankfully the name changed to Fils de Dieu (du riz et des agrumes) and was launched alongside Bijou Romantique, a sensual rich oriental style scent, inspired by jewels, decadence and lavish loves. Bijou is not the most original fragrance. I love a ravishing velvety oriental, but there is something lacking in Bijou. Bite I think, teeth behind the lipstick. A strange void of real animalics, which is odd considering ELdO usually drench their fragrances in every animalic under the sun.

Fils de Dieu is unquestionably a totally original scent experience. I have never smelt anything quite like it. The harmomising of the notes and accords is masterly. Essentially a simmering steamed twist on a classic oriental theme; Fils de Dieu plays with (and subverts) animalic, citric and vanillic accords to create an updated slant on Guerlain’s Jicky, with elements of Mitsouko and Shalimar prowling around the edges of the scented fire. I caught warped twists of Guerlain’s fabled guerlinade in the dance of rose, jasmine, amber, tonka and the heightened hesperdiric aspect of the ginger.

As a gourmand lover though, it is the beautiful handling of the milky rice notes and the little dashes of coconut that make this fragrance so beautiful to inhale and wear. It opens with that glorious, lifting-the-lid-off-jasmine-rice scent I mentioned at the beginning of this piece and then unfurls layers of greenness, with shiso leaf and rubbed green coriander, then delicate soft floral notes as if the petals were themselves steamed on the rice or floating on a broth of sweetened coconut milk. Then wonderful and I mean truly wonderful clean musks. The castoreum is superb, inviting, and just a little bit fuckable. All of this is woven through with cinnamon and that mouthwatering ginger accent. I have never really liked ginger in my fragrances, it is always far too bath-timey, or dry-spicy and dull. But Schwieger has really highlighted the beauteous wetness of the lemongrass quality of this fabulous rhizome. It just sings out of the composition.