A Haunting of Absence – ‘Saffron Rose’ & The Black Label Collection by Grossmith London

“Now that you're there, where everything is known,tell me: What else lived in that house besides us?

Anna Akhmatova

I have been wearing Grossmith fragrances since 2005 when this most venerable and historic of English perfume houses was resurrected carefully and reverentially through a fluke of genealogical research by Simon Brooke, a former chartered surveyor. With the aid of family, the guidance of perfume consultant and all round shiny scented guru Roja Dove (and his connections at Robertet) Simon and his wife Amanda invested savings, abandoned a regular income and devoted painstaking amounts of time to what must have seemed like an utterly bonkers venture. But… family Brooke have succeeded magnificently, nay, regally in re-orchestrating a truly delightful vintage line for the modern age, carefully walking an expensive and luxurious line between accessibility and profit. A genuine phantom of the original house haunts the contemporary line and yet the scents themselves combine past tastes and modern yearning for all things heritage with resolute and stylish aplomb.

Old fragrances die all the time. Trends and tastes change. These things we know. It doesn’t make it right or any easier to accept, but sometimes we have to move on and simply just remember. Some vanish forever but occasionally it seems, some are worth saving. Simon discovered he was the great great-grandson of John Grossmith and set about researching not only his own family connections but as much as he could about the Grossmith perfume heritage. The Brookes featured in the entertaining BBC series entitled Perfume from 2011. They were in episode 3 entitled The Smell of the Future. YouTube it. Well worth watching. Worth it for the sight of Roja Dove wandering his glittering emporium, polishing crystal and glass with what looks like part of his voluminous silken MC Hammer ensemble. But their quite passionate and heartfelt dedication to the family story is eloquent and terribly British.

Silvered Choice: A Reflection & Harvest of 2014 – Part III

This is the third and final part of my 2014 olfactory harvest, I have included some of most favourite scents of last year and finally my most beloved of all: Foxglove by HYLNDS, my best of year. I'm not entirely sure why I am quite so profoundly obsessed with it, but I am. It is perfume perfection. To me it smells of melancholy, sex and soul woven with dexterity, élan and erudition by David Moltz, one the most talented noses working in scented storytelling today. 

It was odd, assembling these recollections into three parts. But it has provided me with a unique insight into how I work and more importantly how I portray the odours I crave and obsess over to all of you my lovely Foxy followers.

Leather & Hazy Smoke

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”

From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ by Tom Stoppard

French Leather – Memo Fragrance

I wasn’t entirely convinced by Memo’s French Leather at first. The third volet in their richly decorative Cuirs Nomades collection was on initial acquaintance very different from the brutal, horse-beat of Irish Leather and the vanillic enormity of Italian Leather, a scent I find myself shockingly addicted to. I have been wearing Memo fragrances for years, entranced by Memo co-founder Clara Molloy and perfumer Aliénor Massenet’s translations of wistful wanderings. Towns, landscapes, mountain ranges, seas, quartiers and memories… frissons, souvenirs: these are the essences of Memo(ory), subtle renderings of times and places with gathered emotive materials. The journey is the destination. This is the Memo way. I am happy to follow. Siwa and Lalibela are my fetish choices from the house. I return to them again and again. The Cuirs Nomades series broke new ground for Memo, yes the perfumes looked to locations (albeit abstracted locales..) yet preoccupation with a single tenet and the density and supple carnality of the formulations was fabulously at odds with the other scents.

Irish Leather was a savage love letter to Clara’s Irish husband John, an equine homage to saddlery and the wild Irish countryside. The second was the laidback playboy sex of Italian Leather which floods an ecstatic hide note with a deluge of tonka-laced vanilla and an eerie tomato-leaf facet. So when French Leather was announced I wonder how that would roll; the mention of lime threw me slightly. In the accompanying PR text for the launch was a cryptic phrase, describing the scent as: a heroine’s modesty..a second skin..a private journal.’ But as I sampled and wore it, this description began to make sense, the notes writing themselves very discreetly, yet purposefully on skin. There are distinctive echoes of Jean-Claude Ellena’s Kelly Calèche, I can’t get away from that, but his Barenia calf extract and tuberose combo could often be suffocating and sinister. French Leather is an aloof portrait of the conflicted Parisienne, alone in her world of applied and honed perfection, a veil of carefully controlled desire between her and the urban world she navigates with brittle, spike-heeled elegance. I have come to adore this truly lovely scent, each time I wear it, I feel a little transported. The lime essence and pink pepper in the opening of the scent echo the glitter of wet pavements on Parisian spring mornings. My worries over the lime were unfounded, it’s an adroit addition by Massenet, counterpointing the suede and glowing rose, bitter kiss on floral leather, just delicious. Touches of cedar and juniper freshen the mix and the drydown is as elegant as a sun-dappled stroll along the Seine. French Leather is nowhere near as dramatic and full on as the first two, but that was never really going to be the case. This is a study of quiet ardour and sophistication, a perfume that leaves enigmatic traces behind, a sense of special wonder. The beautiful work continues at Memo. Will we get Russian Leather, something imperial and cold, or perhaps Patagonian? Gaucho soft, cactus green and wind-scoured? We will see.

Yesterday Haze/A City on Fire

Imaginary Authors

Josh Meyer. Where do I start? He’s my perfume crush.. a geeky, Portland scented savant dreaming up olfactory tomes of imaginary adventures for me to wear and obsess over. I own so many now, he’s a divisive perfumer, you love his work or you don’t. I love it, his style of atmospheric playfulness based his pungent scents on novels or writing he has conjured up from Imaginary Authors just makes me warm and thrilled to be scented. There is a great erudition at work in the assemblage of ideas, images, timelines, graphics etc. Now the juice itself could easily have played second fiddle to Josh’s blatantly fertile imagination, but the marriage of olfaction to concept is canny and stylish. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of his fragrance to date. I obsess over Cape Heartache with its melancholy portrayal of mulchy trees dripping in webby moss, the ground alive with wild strawberries glittering in morning dew. I love the lonely flattened out asphalt accord in The Cobra & the Canary, mixed with bitter, dry lemon, hay and sun-hot tobacco, the story of two boys on the road to destruction.

In 2014 Josh released two very different scents, a moody smouldering wonder with the fabulous title of A City on Fire and Yesterday Haze, a love story of dust and orchards, fig and lies. Both scents have outstanding presence on the skin, telling the story of their notes with wit, clarity and just enough mystery to further enslave the wearer. Yesterday Haze is a dreamy wander of a perfume, the addition of walnut bitters, iris and tree bark reinforce the sensation of the novel’s heroine restlessly wandering orchards at night, wondering if she should choose crop-duster lover or loyal farmer husband. I normally dislike fig so I was delighted to find the note a little subverted, crushed underfoot in the orchard grass, dusty and abandoned. The more I wear this strange fragrance, the more I love it. Then at the tail end of the year came A City on Fire, a collaboration with Machus Menswear, a boutique in Portland. Ostensibly inspired by an imagined graphic novel about Rupert, who makes matches and Frances, who pens a dating column for a local paper (matchmaking..). Together they witness a murder and find themselves involved in the darker, more tenebrous elements of the city. The scent is both of them, dangerous, explosive, troublesome… quick to spark. The keynote is cade oil or juniper tar as it is sometimes referred to; a hugely powerful whoosh of heady reeking burn. But Josh being Josh, always does things differently. This could have been just smoke, burnt out buildings, torched cars, blackened drums. But he has added a red berry facet through the burn, like handfuls of lipsticky haws exploding in the heat. The sweet smoke is amazing and demonstrates Josh’s simmering intelligence, wit and olfactory skill.  

Myrrh Casati – Maison Mona di Orio

My final vaporous entry is Myrrh Casati, a triumphant and haunted release from Maison Mona di Orio, the first new scent to be created for the house by a new perfumer since Mona’s death in December 2011 at the age of 42. Mona’s partner and Creative Director of the house Jeroen Oude Sogtoen has taken his time, carefully and beautifully controlling the release of work since 2011. Rose Etoile de Hollande, Eau Absolue, and Violette Fumée, (created for him by Mona) have all appeared to critical acclaim. But it was inevitable that a time would come when Jeroen would have to recruit new talent to carry on the name of the house. This was never going to be easy, the weight of expectation was enormous, from passionate fans and the industry alike. Mona was the house muse, it revolved around her; she was its luminescence. Then last year, Jeroen announced not only a new scent, Myrrh Casati, but also the return of two of the older discontinued signature scents, Lux and Nuit Noire. The re-boot would also include new flacons by Ateliers Dinand, sensual, androgynous photography and division of the oeuvre into three distinctive collections: Signature, Les Nombres d’Or and Monogram.

It was always going to be hard to follow Mona; the Monogram collection will celebrate her style, influences and traditions without attempting to recreate her golden, shifting chiaroscuro style. Myrrh is one of those powerful and elusive notes that wreathes the senses, a resin burned on altars, mingling with prayers twisting towards gods and heavens. The perfumer Melanie Leroux has used layers of smoke, illusion and veil to formulate an enigmatic yet defiantly sensual scent. I smell mournful things, solitary rooms and abandoned possessions; I’m not sure why, it a perplexing scent, with bold honeyed moments mixed with other more unsettling shifts of rooty fumes and smudged urgency. There is always a sense of mask and veil, of something underneath the notes.

Luisa, Marchesa di Casati was a Italian noble woman who spent her entire life masked from reality within a series of elaborately contrived personas, dramas, art pieces and multiple lives. Yet she was extraordinary, blazing like a surreal, persuasive flame, drawing people obsessively to her and repelling others in disgust. She was both enigma and performer, benefactress and charlatan. She sat for a remarkable array of painters and sculptors many of whom were seemingly ensnared by her bizarre sexuality. She was truly gothic, obsessed with the macabre, the dead and magic, her performances were swathed in smoke, incense and a sense of genuine oddity and dread often using elaborate settings, lighting, costumes, mirrors, music and scent, even weather and live animals to achieve the effects she desired to perpetuate the Casati myth.  

Myrrh Casati is strong stuff, a rendering of the Marchesa’s complex and divisive personality though smoke, transparency and manifold mix of materials. I love the saffron and cardamom mingle in the middle section, the touch of warm dark licquorice and swell of benzoin as the heady medicinal notes of guaiac wood, incense and cypriol begin to flare in the base. The myrrh is huge though, a shuddering banner held aloft in darkening sky. It smells so beautiful; it takes your breath away. It takes quite some time to fade, drifting into a sueded sweetness that lingers like dreamtime. It is a different kind of Mona scent, but one I am glad we have, it proves the house is vibrantly alive and somewhere Mona is smiling softly. 

Masqued

“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”  André Berthiaume

Russian Tea/Tango – Masque Milano

Masque Milano were my niche house of the year over at Cafleurebon, each of their beautifully appointed fragrances preoccupied and delighted me in different ways. Delphine Thierry’s Montecristo was the fragrance that drew me dizzyingly into the Masque world of operatic illusion and sensual excess. However it was the 2014 double whammy of Tango by Cécile Zarokian and Russian Tea by Julian Rasquinet that really blew me away. I had already been aware of Masque because I had gone looking for more work by Delphine Thierry after acquiring Cloon Keen’s epicurean Castãna and Akaad and Galaad she made for Lubin. Her virtually flower-free Montecristo is a roaring beast of smoky animalic excess. Radiating with faecal, pissy hyraceum, Thierry’s turbulent essay in fumy sexuality binds animalism with styrax, rum, ambrette and a filthy blaze of tobacco.

Masque Milano is skincare and scent, founded and illuminated by Italian creative duo Alessandro Brun and Riccardo Tedeschi. The guys have tremendous artistic skill and imagination, building Masque around an operatic concept of life, love and emotional environment set against a olfactory backdrop of imagined scenes and acts composed by a handful of remarkable noses including Thierry, Zarokian, Rasquinet and also Meo Fuiscini. Tango by Cécile Zarokian is indeed a dance of dark, paranoid desire. The notes are subversive and feel so wrong, dissonant and misplaced; the olfactory rhythm seems off-kilter. And yet of course it is glorious, rose and jasmine, lifted and held by the heat and glowing power of spices, balsams, tonka and a thrumming leather accord. I loved the scent of decay it has. This sound totally nuts, but sniffing it straight off skin, it’s as if you have found some forgotten bottle of evaporated vintage scent, residue lying syrupy in the base of the flacon. Fabulous!!

Russian Tea was a blind buy, a risky one as it had mint in it, not a favourite Foxy note, but something made me have to have it. I was captivated by the simplicity of the inspiration. A tea ritual in a tearoom overlooking the frozen Nevsky Prospekt in Leningrad, hot water poured over smoky black leaves and shattered mint, the powerful diffusive brew sweetened raspberry preserve. Alessandro and Riccardo handed this evocative idea to Julian Rasquinet who in turn created a perfume of infinite complexity and slow turning beauty. Like sweet smoke on ice-lashed days, Russian Tea seems to inhabit the senses like a warm, redolent presence. There is a honeyed ghostly heart of magnolia that flickers momentarily and is then consumed by the baroque eagerness of the perfume’s glorious smoky swagger. I was devoutly thrilled by the triptych of raspberry, mint and tea; it came together so beautifully in the vaporous arms of Samovar dreams. 

        

Aberration & Desire

“By living a life “against nature,” the deviant or pervert becomes a hero or heroine in decadent fiction.”  Asti Hustvedt

Maai – Bogue Profumo

I sample so much I am rarely truly jolted by scents, but every now and again something enters my environment that momentarily causes my senses to short and my skin to ripple, shudder with unexpected pleasure. Vero Kern’s perfumes had that unique effect, as did David Moltz’s gorgeous HYLNDS formulations. Then I found Bogue, an esoteric and guarded Italian trove of aromas by architect and designer Antonio Gardoni. There were three ready to wear scents, Eau d’E, Cologne Reloaded and the claustrophobic sexually charged atmospherics of Maai, a perfume which kinda blew my mind. The scent of brothels and abandoned caves, mouldering monasteries and vampiric bedchambers. Part of me was horrified by my body’s overwhelming attraction to such a dank and animalic reek, but then most of me just smiled, applied liberally and waited for the world to end.

Antonio is someone who needs to probes at edges and darkness. He is the founder of Studio AG, an architecture and design studio based in Brescia, Italy, co-founder of Jump Studios in London (with Ron Arad) and also a professor of industrial and interior design in Brecia. Most of all he is fascinated it seems by personal environment and how we inhabit it, either through physicality, objectivity and olfaction. He is a deliberate and obsessive man, seeking finite detail in everything he does. Bogue Profumo grew from the rooty discovery of a vintage assembly of perfumer’s materials in a forgotten pharmacy basement. By blending these redolent raw materials with contemporary techniques and adding ingredients such as styrax, castoreum, lavender and citrus, Antonio created vaporous and substantive variations of the original essences.

There is a feral, defiant signature written boldly across the work that declares. I am unafraid of fear, olfaction is subjective, skin is art. This is how I read Antonio’s extraordinary formulae. Maai is an trangressive work of art, arguably hardly perfume at all, instead something dangerous and challenging to be carefully stored away in the crepuscular cupboard that houses Andrea Maack’s undead Coven, Josh Lobb’s sticky vampiric Norne for Slumberhouse and Vero Kern’s bordello thigh porn chic, all aromas that flame my often jaded senses.

Maai smells both teeming and desolate, like a once busy town now abandoned to mildew dust and memory. The rose and slovenly jasmine smell so incredibly rich and full against a pissy green backdrop of obsessive tuberose. The bestiality and power of Antonio’s ballsy assault on the chypré genre is magnificent. I smell his buried oakmoss like a coded invitation to share in some private ritualistic dare. Maai is one of those rare concoctions that appears so very rarely, a brew of studied concentration and desire. In its exquisite flacon and hand-cast fetish rubber top, it is a scent for the brave and trangressive. I feel sublimely corrosive and sexy as its notes flow over me. Ben fatto Signor Gardoni!

Foxy #1 – Foxglove by HYLNDS

I knew as soon as I inhaled this singular juice off my skin, it would be my scent of 2014. I loved so many things, but David Moltz’s Foxglove electrified my senses and seized my heart with silvered and unequivocal skill.

Brooklyn-based David and Kavi Moltz and started their lauded niche line D.S.& Durga in 2007, working with small hand-finished batches of tonics and perfumed brews for friends and family. David’s musicianship and Kavi’s architectural training fed in and out of the burgeoning Brooklyn self-sufficiency, artisan movement of the time, sweeping through food, furniture, coffee, beer, ceramics, chocolate and of course scent. It may seem now seem arch and a tad hipster in retrospect, but the importance of people creating, making; realising personal visions of art and emphasising that pure craft could communicate and also sell should never be underestimated. David is the juice maker and Kavi looks after the design element of the lines. This is probably a little simplistic though. They are a beautiful couple and obviously deliciously in love with one another, so the creative process must be more instinctive and symbiotic than a mere 50/50 division of labour. 

I love the potency and historical/artistic referencing of the Durga line, a number of their fragrances sit in my study and I have a serious craving for Debaser, their latest launch, inspired fabulously and darkly by the Pixies track. The PR stuff is adorned with the macabre eye-slicing scene from Dali and Buñuel’s ‘Un Chien Andalou’. Way to get a Fox’s attention.

But my heart belongs I think to HYLNDS, David Moltz’s masterly collection of Celtic mythic storytelling liqueurs that seem somehow to be painted and spellcast into their bottles, ready to spray charm, magic, oddity and enigma onto stunned skin. They smell somehow different; better is unfair, as the classic Durga line is beautiful, the HYLNDS anthology does have a different texture and tone in its telling. Using Manx, Angle, Norse, Irish and Scots myths and histories as a starting point has allowed David to indulge his obsession for rare and precise raw materials to reflect his intended olfactive visions. He has also visited the places he has envisaged in his perfumes, walked the lands, inhaled the shifting airs, handled soil, grasses and felt rain and mist on his adaptive skin. This immersive approach demonstrates not only a commitment to his craft but also to a pursuit of knowledge, understanding how the scented pieces assemble around and inside us.

I have Spirit of the Glen in my collection, David’s HYLNDS collaboration with the Glenlivet distillery in Speyside. Living in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city, you can’t avoid the importance of whisky to the culture and economy of the country. It has proven over the years to be a tricky note to elucidate in perfume; boozy is easy, the nuances of distillation of rye, malt, location, peat etc, not quite as much. I do love Aqua Alba, Angela Flanders' wonderful smoky, vanillic oud-tinted whisky scent, created with Jim Beveridge, Master Blender at Johnny Walker, inspired by the Johnny Walker Black Label. More recently, Harris Tweed announced an amazing new product, something they have working on for ages, called The Fabric of Flavour, a very unique technology, whereby the scent of Aqua Alba is microencapsulated through the fabric in the finishing process. The scent is defiantly imbued in the tweed. 

Spirit of the Glen is very different in character, soft, yet pungently subversive, rich and creamy with the most beautiful smoked barrel notes played over a pear-tined eau de vie and pineapple grass melange. The other HYLNDS aromas such as Bitter Rose, Broken Spear and Isle Ryder share a common weather of stony, lichen toned geography with touches of wild flora and limpid pools, metalwork and sky.

Foxglove was a revelation. On paper I saw iris and peach and thought perhaps David had reimagined Mitsouko on the skin of Brontëan drama queen Cathy Earnshaw as she scours the moors for her feral addictive Heathcliff. Foxglove turned to be more ephemeral and captivating than I imagined. The perfume was glittering flesh wrapped in the exquisitely mastered skin assembled most carefully from musks, iris, immortelle and soft soft soft suede.  

I realised early that David Moltz has written a perfumed essay on the melancholy state of vigil. The desolation of lonely attendance over a love lost to time. Foxglove is inspired by the story of Oisin, the Irish warrior poet, his lover Niamh and the mystical land of Tir Na Nog, the tempting Land Of Youth. Foxglove is Niamh, watching devotedly over the final resting place of her lyrical lover. David visited Oisin’s resting place and found a solitary foxglove about twenty feet from the grave. This lonely bloom, keeping watch, was the catalyst for David’s erudite olfactory mind to wander and begin its fabulous detailed assemblage.

The carroty green chew in the apex of Foxglove, mixed with a delicious spray of citrus peel is beautifully deceptive, totally wrong-footing the senses as the full power of the peach and orris combo radiates out with terrific cold vintage force. David’s handling of this iconic peach note is both reverential and brazen; echoes of bygone Guerlain flood the senses as the lactonic fruit tones mingle with lemon and musks..but and it’s a big but, the plush shimmer and ooze of Foxglove is unique, aided in part by the use of Champaca and a stunning amber effect that seems to throw a series of CGI lenses over the composition, lending depth, sheen, gloss and luminescence depending on mood and time of day. A skeletal slivered Mitsouko lies beneath a furred and dappled formula of magisterial grace and power.

Foxglove is a scent I will wear for as long as it is made. I feel unbearably sacred when I wear it; it smells so defined and rare that I almost lose myself in its oddity and significance. It is alchemy like the making of Foxglove and its subsequent osmosis with my skin that reminds me why I do this, this writing thing, the words, the sampling, the endless sniffing and foraging for fragrant juice. David and Kavi Moltz have created two lines I adore, but HYLNDS has me hooked and Foxglove is David’s best work yet, an epic of tremulous emotion on a quiet lonely stage.    

So, I finally end my harvest of 2014, for me a strong and intriguing year for perfumery. I already have some great things lined up to review for this year that I look forward to sharing with you all.

©TheSilverFox

31 January 2015

Silvered Choice: A Reflection & Harvest of 2014 – Part II

Roses

‘It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important’.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince

I was obsessed with roses in 2014. I always have a place in my foxy heart for rose fragrances to be fair; they thrill me, the best of them causing senses and heart to swell. There is something primal and intensely emotional about the differing odours of rose, be they peppered, jammy, verdant, mulchy, chocolately, boozy, berried, tea-like, ghostly, rubbered and darkly petrolic. 

Rozy Voile d’Extrait – Vero.Profumo

Vero Kern, the sorceress of Vero Profumo has been one of my most treasured perfumers for a while now, ever since I fell under the spell of her profoundly erotic Onda, a scent like none other. She makes scent that reminds us why we have skin. We are her canvases. In 2014 she unleashed a duo of fragrances with the same name Rozy, one an eau de parfum, the other her own singular voile d’extrait formulation, both inspired by the iconic Italian actress and force of nature Anna Magnani. Rozy EDP was gorgeous, a fruity voluptuous crash of rose intensity. Vero’s dirty trademark passion fruit musk effect and a drip of honeyed peachiness make Rozy EDP a fleshy close wear. For me it was all about the Rozy Voile d’Extrait. I was quite shocked at how different it was, yes the delicious Rozy head-turning expansive rose was still beautifully present, but this time the tone was exquisitely weird. The rose note smelled like hot plastic blooms, red like blood. Wearing it is an oddly claustrophobic experience, the notes and expanding petals press in on the senses. The addition of blackcurrant adds a clever rather erotic underpinning to the rose, layering an acidic earthiness reverse to the rose’s lavish honeyed drama. The key to a successful rose perfume to reveal secrets, unfurl a little majesty and yet still gold something back. Vero always retains something. There is a hidden oddity and buried enigma in all of her fragrances, It haunts them and is what makes her so valuable.

Rose Cut – Parfums Ann Gérard

Another very different rose scent came from the chic Parisian pairing of jeweller Ann Gerard and master perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour. Rose Cut is the first scent from Ann since the masterly triptych of fragrances Bertrand created for her in 2012 – Perle de Mouse, Ciel D’Opale and perhaps one of the best iris scents ever, Cuir de Nacre. It was an intriguing wait to see what or even if Ann would do another scent. The trio were near perfect. Each one was exquisite, reflecting Ann’s trademark use of reflective surfaces and materials such as nacre and opals and her deeply personal interpretation of the nature of skin and the wearing of metal and stone on flesh. A move into olfactive lustre was inevitable. Rose Cut, as it sounds is a glittering aromatic jewel for the skin. I can’t help but imagine it as a bloody pirate ruby, nestled in shadowed décolleté, facets winking provocatively. It is the work again of master perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour and he has returned to his lovely use of boozy rum to add a swaying sense of danger to his rose and peony combo. The peony is gorgeous halo to the rose, light glittering off the rose’s carefully held thorns and velveteen petals. Blackcurrant bud, benzoin and a rather mucky vanilla note make this rose more Grimm than Barbie, a bloom that might draw shocking blood and a smile from a crimson mouth.   

Nevermore – Frapin et Cie

Creative Director David Frossard at Frapin launched a weird gothic stained rose in September called Nevermore, inspired by The Raven, Poe’s melancholy poem of tightly wrought grief, paranoia and dread. Quite different in style from the cognac house’s usual output of boozy, woozy woody fragrances, Nevermore was an arresting essay in oddness and the unexpected. There is a ritual of red roses and cognac placed reverentially on Poe’s grave on the anniversary of his death and this sparked an idea for Frapin and perfumer Anne Sophie Behaghel. I like the regular meaty style of Frapin and the daring weight to their dense formulations. 1697 and Speakeasy are incredible fragrances. Nevermore is the sensuous clutch of two roses (Centifolia and Damask) and their unsettling float over a musty cellar-damp base of woods and wet musks. The real star of the scent is the exceedingly blatant dose of Florazone in the top of the scent that suggests the insidious chlorophyll creep of night garden into the room of a grief-torn man. Nevermore had mixed reviews, but I loved it, it smelled amazing on skin, a mix of old books, decaying petal and bright grassy air. Lovely stuff from Frapin and very different.

 Sådanne - Slumberhouse

Taking of different… good lord.. Sådanne by Slumberhouse. Oh Josh Lobb, I love your work, you never fail to stun me, I read about your latest. I crave it, have to have it, buy it, soak it up, adore it. You’re a crazy scented motherfucker with ideas burning like watchfires in the inspirational spaces of your headworld. Norne just obsessed me, I wear it like a talisman, a spell to ward off the whole world, it smells of woven threatening nature. Nothing else will ever smell like it and I am so glad I have it muttering and lambent in the darkness of my Foxy study. After the (limited..)splashed crimson cranberry madness of Zahd, I wondered what would come next from Josh’s hermetic world. Sådanne is magnificent, a howl of liqueur-drenched strawberries, simmering rose and an aftertaste of animalism that still keeps shocking me. According to Scent & Chemistry who analysed it, they say it contains the highest levels of beta-damascones in a scent in years. ∫Damascones exude creamy honeyed plummy tones in a rose composition. In Sådanne the overload gives the incredible sensation of a sticky, tobacco-tinted hibiscus syrup. This is dizzying scent to wear, persistent and neon-sexy, a ramped up pole-dancing Britney-esque trash aesthetic blended magnificently with a dark Borgia poisonous twist that thrills the paws off me. I love that Josh is controlled enough to veer over the edge but also sensual enough to acknowledge as we careen into the abyss we need to smell fucking gorgeous.

Tobacco Rose – Papillon Perfumery

Liz Moores has been gilded with well-earned praise in many end of year round ups for her debut trio of scents Anubis, Angelique and Tobacco Rose. Every piece of hyperbole, joy, love and wonder penned on her work is justified. They are remarkable works from an incredibly kind and very modest woman who is genuinely gobsmacked by the enormous wave of critical acclaim what has engulfed her in 2014. A devoted and tough talking circle of friends and family keeps her grounded at her base in the New Forest in England. Kids, hubby, horses, cats, snakes, nature and a voracious love of the good (and occasionally wicked…) things in life have made a deeply personal, beautiful and sensual woman into a quite exceptional perfumer. It almost seems unfair that someone’s debut collection is this damn good. But when that someone is as delicious and kind as Liz, you want the world to buy her sexy juice. I got to know her through twitter actually, she’s great (and generous) on social media. I got some samples and BAM. Another stunning rose. It is one of my all time favourites actually, I wear it a LOT. I get so many comments on the subversive porniness of it; it’s not a pretty rose. It’s a bloom for sex and seduction, for leaning into and sharing, flirting, pulling, tempting. It’s a dirty bitch of a rose. I know Liz struggled endlessly with the mods of these and had to walk away time and time again, cursing the volatility and complexity of the materials. But my darling, it was worth it, I know it, you know it and the people all over the world who have indulged in it, sensing their skin flicker with smoky jammy desire know it too.    

Exquise Gourmandise

‘All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.’

Charles M Schultz 

Four wonderfully varied niche gourmands found their way into my collection in 2014, all unique, all a little strange, but all skin-lickingly lovely. Gourmands have evolved into a schizophrenic entourage of aromas, with some sensually created interpretations of florals and orientals with milk, chocolate, caramel, coffee, coconut, dulce de leche, honey and chai. On the flip side there are shrieking nasty concoctions that are always kandy with a ‘K’. Everything has its place, but certain niche houses have realised the inherent comfort and potential experimentation to be had with the variety of foodie notes. Not for everyone, but to be dismissed to quickly either, I am a huge vanilla fan, L’Artisan Parfumer’s now sadly discontinued Vanille Absolument has been my signature scent for years (I have cellar stock….) and I always look out for new intriguing permutations of the note (HELLO Architects Club!!!).

Salt Caramel – Shay & Blue

Shay & Blue… how much do I love thee? Enough to have all of their fragrances bar the Sicilian Limes. I just can’t handle limes, just too bathroomy for me. The dapper and charming Dom de Vetta is the Creative Director of Shay & Blue and together with young perfumer Julie Massé (and style director/muse Juila Sarr-Jamois) launched a truly delightful and accessible house with utterly delicious fragrances that have been a genuine joy to discover. Dom’s background at Chanel and Jo Malone have been put to beautiful and precise use, allowing us to access a range of immaculately conceived scents in a range of styles with just enough difference to pique curiosity and jaded olfactory senses. The Vermeeresque style of the London store, the rich blue signature livery and a lively use of social media have made Shay & Blue a brand to really follow and wear. Each new launch has buzz, something exciting about it. This is pretty hard to pull off; their fan base is passionate and genuine. I love their weird and milky Almond & Cucumber, Amber Rose has a lush dulce de leche heart, the Blood Orange is scorched with fire and leather dipped. Their truffly coffee tinted Oud Alif was one of the sexiest ouds in years, so wearable and FUN. But for me, it was Salt Caramel that really did it. I loved this enormous musky OTT gourmand, inspired by the Charbonnel et Walker Sea Salt Caramel Truffles, a shockingly addictive bonbon one should never leave anywhere near me or I will clear out the box, leaving dusted little crinkle cases behind. Julie Massé used vanilla, sandalwood and tonka to play succulently against the salted caramel marriage. In patisserie and food preparation, salt counteracts the any potential bitterness of caramel allowing a smooth aurous continuity. There is a tremendous lightness to the composition, a sense of pinkified aeration that makes Salt Caramel a joy to wear in ridiculously liberal amounts or over other fragrances, especially roses. Skin smells lacquered and lickable. This is fun scent with a serious molten allure. Thank you Dom & Julie. I look forward to your 2015 olfactory adventures.

El Born – Carner Barcelona

Carner Barcelona is a gorgeous and I think rather under-rated niche house run by Creative Director Sara Carner. The brand has steadily grown in reputation since its foundation in 2009, but I feel that Sara’s discreet and handsomely mounted scents have not really been acknowledged or interpreted sufficiently enough to allow the grace and difference of the scents to shine. I first came across them in Bloom Perfumery in London; the team were just unpacking them, they were freshly arrived stock. I loved the unpretentious, sombre packaging, clean line and heavy wooden tops. Great names too - Rima XI, Tardes, Cuirs, D600 – enigmatic and atmospheric. Sara’s family history is one of leather-makers, hence the lovely Cuirs and her obsessive mapping of Barcelona, while to some might seem restrictive, is in fact a deeply personal and lovely reflection of tastes, mores, moods and ambiance. I have liked all of the scents so have been trying to find time to write something. Then last year Sara launched El Born and I was seriously smitten. It is by far my favourite Carner scent and I’m quite besotted with its swooning pitch-perfect gourmand solicitude. I love the singularity of Rima XI, an intensely made aromatic with a saffron stained-jasmine surrounded by a veritable larder of resins, balms, spices, woods and vanillic musks. Inspired by the 11^th Rima or Rhyme by 19^th century Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.

"I am a delusion, an impossible,

a vain phantom of mist and light;

I am unbodied, I am impalpable;

I cannot love you."

"Oh come, come you...!"

Sara returned from a fashion career in New York to pursue her olfactive dream in her home city of Barcelona, using the sights, sounds, history, energy and style of the city as a mirror to spark her fertile processes. El Born is the best to date I think, although Cuirs has a enormously powerful honeyed leather note oozing through it which I find hard to resist. And allied as it is to the memory of Sara’s leather making forefathers makes it even more resonant to wear as second skin. El Born is the part of the lower section of La Ribera (The Shore), an area of Barcelona where many of city’s renowned medieval architecture is located. Nowadays it is the destination for chic slow shopping, casual café culture and bijou unique art experiences. The place has buzz and laid back charm amid the winding streets and balcony shadows, the air sweet with the drifting aromas from overlapping pastelerias. The scent itself is so beautiful, opening on a huge, caramelised rooty licquorice effect that must be the meld of jasmine, anisic angelic and honey in the top. The fig (normally a nemesis note for me…) and heliotrope embellish the established gourmand character with nuances of almond and smoky black cherry. There is no cocoa listed in the notes, but a ghost of it is dusted through the composition like summer shade in the later stages of the scent. The balsamic vanilla and milky woods give El Born an impression of sugar-laced churros dunked in hot thick chocolate calienete.. The later stages of El Born are haunted by echoes of pipe tobacco, sweet and damp, rolled between hot fingers. Tobacco impregnated with kirsch and bitter almond. I catch sudden pieces of it like smoke on the wind. A delightful addition to the Carner Barcelona line and proves that Sara is a gifted and inspirational creative director.

Ragù – Gabriella Chieffo

Now, Ragù by Gabriella Chieffo was a different kind of gourmand experience altogether, a savoury exploration of memory, family and home. Inspired by the long simmering of Italian ragu sauces over languid Sundays of happy voices, gossip and family legend. Ragù is part of Collection 14, a quartet that truly surprised me in 2014. It is rare to be genuinely startled by scent when you try as much juice as I do. But Gabriella’s personal and carefully formed olfaction hooked me in from the start. The scents are embodied by Gabriella herself in a series of Cindy Sherman-esque poses, indicating the moods and motifs of her perfumes. The effect is unsettling but effective, demonstrating Gabriella’s emotional commitment to the formulae. This approach could have gone horribly awry, coming across as arch and egotistical, however, the overall eccentricity and bravura quality of Lye, Hystera, Camaheu and Ragù is so good it outweighs any doubts on might have had. Exploring personal and therefore universal issues such as childbirth, adolescence, death, remembrance, identity, Gabriella ghosts them into a set of odd olfaction, using a particularly ashen, snowy palette of aromas. Ragù is my favourite though, the capture of slow, bubbling tomatoes, sugars breaking down with mentholic oregano, basil and black pepper to a sensual mix of musks, woods and herbaceous haze. The blend of elemi, cloves, saffron and cardamom over a base of cashmeran is the reality of Ragù, but the skill of the recipe is the olfactory holography of that hypnotic Sunday ambience, the diffusive slow-cooked fumes that radiate in mind and home.

 Architect’s Club - Arquiste

I am including Architect’s Club by Arquiste in my Exquise Gourmandise section simply because it’s sensational and Yann Vasnier’s delicious rendering of vanilla was one of my favourites of the year. I am still working my through a major piece on Arquiste for my Foxy blog as Architect’s Club prompted a re-visit to the line and a complex re-evaluation of fragrances I had previously struggled with a little bit. This time round, no struggle, just a letting go and luxuriating in the stylish arms of a very handsomely appointed and subversively sensual collection of perfumes. The inspiration for Architect’s Club is a Deco one, a meeting of line and form giddily interrupted by the irresistible insouciance of Mayfair’s Brideshead cocktail culture. Vasnier knows his way around a party or two and his sling-referenced juniper note is brittle and cool, tempered by a brilliant use of cadmium-lemon intensity and a persuasive anisic angelica note which threads top down to the woods, a shimmer of amber and that gorgeous, swirling, sexy vanilla. Oooooooohhh the vanilla is so damn fine, fresh and modern, a touch of crème anglaise with a whiff of unwrapped electrical goods.

Creative Director Carlos Huber trained in the historical preservation of architecture, literally stabilising the past, conserving history and memory whilst using the best available modern techniques to hand. This adaptation and melding is necessary to safeguard structural heritage. Working with Yann and Rodrigo Flores-Roux, Carlos has created a portfolio of masterly detailed perfumes, each one inspired by precise moments in time and history. They are in some ways like olfactive blueprints, or maps allowing us to see and inhale pieces of imagined time. Architect’s Club has been a revelation for me, one I am grateful for. I have always admired this beautiful house from day one of its inception. Everything about it works for me, the skill, presentation, style, inspirations and joie de vivre of Mr Huber. But for ages I struggled with the juice on skin. Anima Dulcis, the guys’ amazingly cloistered chilli-kissed cocoa gourmand was the one that grabbed and kept me attached to the brand, the others just fluttered around me like blurred moths in poor light. Architect’s Club was the light was burned the dust from the room and oddly seemed to throw all the others into focus. I’m not sure why, but when I went back and spent an evening sampling the line again, notes and theme just fell into place. Vasnier’s deco vanillic rush is sheer joy to wear, everything about it is capricious and warm. This is a scent I will treasure.

So Part II is done. Part III is coming. Foxy last musings on 2014.

©The Silver Fox

11 January 2014