Scent and Subversion

by Barbara Herman

  It could be argued that some perfumers introduced strangely plastic notes to 1980s and ’90s fragrances when they could have just as easily created “natural” smells. Synthetic and unnatural were introduced as a virtue—not synthetics in place of more-expensive ingredients, but rather perfumers making the aesthetic choice to create accords that smell synthetic. Think of Poison’s sickly-sweet tuberose/grape bubblegum accord, or Angel’s bizarre cotton candy / patchouli accord.

  The Eden Jean Guichard has proposed for us—in keeping with Angel and Poison—is a garden of plastic delights.

  Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, mandarin, green note, peach, tarragon, orange blossom

  Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley, rose, ylang-ylang, orris

  Base notes: Cedar, patchouli, sandalwoood, musk, moss, vanilla, tonka, amber

  Premier Figuier by L’Artisan (1994)

  Perfumer: Olivia Giacobetti

  Premier Figuier, Olivia Giacobetti’s Garden of Eden fragrance, in contrast to Guichard’s interesting artificial Eden, has one tree—a fig tree. The school of naturalism to which it belongs is in sharp contrast to Eden’s postmodern expressionism.

  A beautiful compromise between the sweet, gourmand 1980s and the clean, fresh 1990s, Premier Figuier (“First Fig”) is as much a special, landmark perfume as Sophia Grojsman’s Calyx, both for making complexity look (or smell) simple, and for making elegant notes that, in others’ hands, could become cloying and cliché. (It’s not Giacobetti’s fault that we are now saturated with fig scents; remember, hers was “le premier.”)

  Premier Figuier evokes every part of the fig tree—its sweet fruit, its green leaves, the tree’s bark, and, via almond milk and coconut, fig’s sensuous mouth feel and what she’s described as “the white milk at the tip of its stem.” The fig tree, she says, “is absolutely my totemic tree, the one from my childhood … This evokes my first memories of the Mediterranean, my first taste of happiness.” You can feel and smell that sense of Edenic childhood in the pure and almost elemental notes of this iconic perfume.

  Notes: Fig, fig leaf, milk of almond, sandalwood, coconut

  24, Faubourg by Hermès (1995)

  Perfumer: Maurice Roucel

  Named after the address of Hermès’s flagship store in Paris, 24, Faubourg starts with sunny orange blossom and decadent jasmine, warmed by amber and a touch of spice from patchouli. Like a jaunty print on one of Hermès’s scarves, 24, Faubourg’s sunniness is tempered by its formality and rich materials. This could be considered matronly and a little forbidding by some.

  Notes: Orange blossom, jasmine sambac, iris, ambergris, vanilla

  Poème by Lancôme (1995)

  Perfumer: Jacques Cavallier

  It’s hard to believe that it’s been eighteen years since Poème came out, but one whiff, and the fruity-floral gourmand automatically dates itself. The first note sounded is a lovely, sourish-green black currant, followed by a juicy lineup of fruit and intensely indolic and sweet white flowers. A gourmand drydown gives the notes a place to rest their heads. In the intervening years, this style of perfume has crept into functional scent territory, so it’s a little hard to smell this without associating it with synthetics and shampoo.

  Top notes: Black currant, mandarin, bergamot, and peach

  Heart notes: Orange blossom, clove, freesia, jasmine, and tuberose

  Base notes: Vanilla, tonka bean, amber, musk

  Jungle L’Éléphant by Kenzo (1996), Dominique Ropion

  Gourmand without being overbearing, Jungle L’Éléphant’s spiced mango heart is rounded off with the almondy goodness of heliotrope and the richness of vanilla. Cardamom, clove, and licorice pull the fragrance in a direction that seems at once elegant, playful, and exotic, as if Willy Wonka decided to take the children to a foreign land instead of the Chocolate Factory. The spicy drydown smells like chai or spiced cookies.

  Top notes: Mandarin, cardamom, cumin, clove

  Heart notes: Ylang-ylang, licorice, mango, heliotrope

  Base notes: Patchouli, vanilla, amber, cashmere

  Envy by Gucci (1997)

  Perfumer: Maurice Roucel

  A tart green rose that soars with galbanum and coriander and then plummets to earth with a dissonant powdery-anise accord, with facets of celery and violet leaf, Envy mimics the bipolarity of its namesake emotion. It feels like two different perfumes, so violently does its first half differ from its second. Because I love the galbanum and rose opening, this powdery-licorice base tempers my affection for this scent, but I admire its dramatic two-act play.

  Notes: Green notes, coriander, cumin, hyacinth, lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, magnolia, iris, woods, musk

  Jungle Le Tigre by Kenzo (1997)

  Perfumer: Dominique Ropion

  Like Jungle L’Éléphant, Jungle Le Tigre thinks outside of its perfume-category box by evading the heaviness that comes with being designated an “Oriental” perfume. Le Tigre starts off with a jubilant mix of kumquat, tangerine, and orange made elegant with the warmth of apricot-like osmanthus and sharp ylang-ylang. Amber and cinnamon unifies Le Tigre with its heavier L’Éléphant brother. With this duo, Ropion pulls off quite a feat: He creates a happy Jungle Book bestiary that’s playful, chic, modern, and something even more elusive for perfume—charming.

  Top notes: Kumquat, tangerine, and orange

  Heart notes: Osmanthus, ylang-ylang

  Base notes: Amber, cinnamon

  Bulgari Black by Bulgari (1998)

  Perfumer: Annick Menardo

  Powder, tea, rubber, leather, savory-smoke, tar, lemony-bergamot, vanilla … Wow.

  A masterpiece of twentieth-century perfumery, Bulgari Black is one of those “Where were you when you first smelled it?” kind of fragrances for me. In fact, I was at Nordstrom’s in San Francisco with a friend in the men’s department when the fantastic Thierry de Baschmakoff bottle caught our eye. Squat and round, with a silver cap, rubber-encased glass with a bit of clear glass peeking out of the top, this fetish-like object beckoned us to it. It was confused love at first spray. Powdered rubber and a smoky, meaty-smelling lapsang souchang tea note snake around the perfume’s more-conventional base notes of bright bergamot and vanilla/amber. Bulgari Black is an updated Shalimar for romantic types who frequent leather and latex fetish bars. It’s also the smell of a bat’s powdered, webbed wings as it flies around Manhattan in an urban goth fantasy …

  Top notes: Lapsang souchang accord, bergamot

  Heart notes: Jasmine

  Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, leather, vanilla, musk, amber

  Le Feu d’Issey by Issey Miyake (1998)

  Perfumer: Jacques Cavallier

  Reminiscent of the scent of xí muôi, the Vietnamese preserved-plum snack I used to eat as a child that assaulted the palate with a difficult mix of salt, licorice, and dessicated plum, Le Feu d’Issey (“Issey’s Fire”) confronts the nose with some intensely conflicting information. (It’s this perfume that prompted Luca Turin to rhapsodize that perfume was “the most portable form of intelligence.”)

  At the heart of Le Feu d’Issey’s pyre is a smoky, milky rose surrounded by an extraordinarily complex mélange of gourmand sweetness, saltiness, and savoriness. Gauiac wood provides the savory smoke; anise adds a dissonant herbal aspect; and vanilla, caramel, and coconut create the lush gourmand accords that are this perfume’s centerpiece. As if Le Feu d’Issey were not complex enough, there’s also a smell of wet and burnt woods. A love-it-or-hate-it perfume that is likened by some haters to baby vomit. Proceed with caution. (Le Feu d’Issey is almost impossible to find, unless you want to spend $300-plus for a bottle. Blood Concept’s RED+MA, a woody, spicy lactonic, and similarly challenging perfume, would make a good substitute.)

  Top notes: Bergamot, coconut, rosewood, anise

  Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, milk, caramel

  Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, guaiac wood, vanilla, musk

  Muscs Koublaï Khän by Serge Lutens (1998)

 
Perfumer: Christopher Sheldrake

  With its atavistic embrace of animal notes (albeit in synthetic form) that hearkened back to vintage perfume styles and even to the nineteenth-century dandy’s love of musk, civet, and ambergris, Muscs Koublaï Khän not only subverted the clean, office-scent genre, but also sounded a dissonant note in the same decade in which bland pop celebutante Paris Hilton came to fame. It smells like wet fur, unwashed hair, and cedar chips, combined with the faintest, softest hint of something sweet and powdery, like wild honey and pollen. Its combination of conventional floral notes with animalic notes also evokes the smell of a man who has just taken a shower and decided to exercise without deodorant, the metallic twang of his body odor, ripe with olfactory facets of cumin and hamster cage, radiating through the fresh, powdery soap he’d just used.

  Thirteenth-century ruler of the Mongol Empire in China and nephew of Ghengis, Koublaï Khän isn’t exactly the aspirational figure most people fantasize about being when spritzing on perfume, and it’s hard to imagine a focus group okaying the idea of creating a perfume that evokes a musky, thirteenth-century warmonger. And yet Muscs Koublaï Khän led the way for a future wave of “skank” perfumes, as they’re affectionately called, including the mania for the difficult, earthy oud wood note that rages on today.

  Notes: Civet, castoreum, cistus labdanum, ambergris, Moroccan rose, cumin, ambrette seed (musk mallow), costus root, patchouli

  Theorema by Fendi (1998)

  Perfumer: Christine Nagel

  What a strangely dry and intellectual name for such a sexy, spicy scent. This gourmandish woody-spicy Oriental has a peppery, smoky character that cloaks the florals in a garment of dark mystery. The blast of pepper and spices coincides with the earthy, smoky character of guaiac wood and patchouli in the base, giving the perfume a dirty edge that distinguishes it from other, more eager-to-please Oriental perfumes. It’s less difficult than Issey Miyake’s gorgeous Le Feu d’Issey, although it shares its rose, pepper, amber, and guaiac wood notes.

  Several times in Theorema’s drydown, I smelled what seemed like smoky leather or earth combined with the comforting gourmand notes of amber and benzoin. (The balance of disquiet and comfort is part of what makes Theorema so exciting and actually untheoretical/cerebral.) Benzoin can impart a creamy vanilla or chocolate note to perfumes, and in Theorema’s case, it combines with a candied orange note that smells like Terry’s Orange Chocolate candies.

  As many have said elsewhere, Theorema is a wonderfully comforting winter scent. Hours later on my skin, it smells like milky, spiced rose.

  Top notes: Citrus, orange blossom, nutmeg, pepper, cardamom, rosewood, rose hips

  Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, osmanthus, ylang-ylang, cinnamon, spices

  Base notes: Benzoin, guaiac wood, sandalwood, amber, patchouli

  Gucci Rush by Gucci (1999)

  Perfumer: Michel Almairac

  In ads for Gucci Rush, a bright red tint washes over the entire image of a woman’s face thrown back in ecstasy, eyes closed, with parted lips. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess what’s going on: She is either in the throes of an orgasmic rush or a drug rush.

  Rush, the perfume, lives up to the metaphor of its name, in that its beautiful notes seem to come at you all at once, rushing forth as if from a higher altitude, their elevation probably due to aldehydes. Milky, peachy, and with a dose of syrupy florals, Rush is cut with a bit of warmth and spice from coriander and patchouli. It never fails to give me a perfume high. The spell may not last long for me, but even after it settles on my skin, that hit of happiness continues for anyone who nuzzles up against my neck.

  Top notes: Gardenia and freesia

  Heart notes: Jasmine, Turkish rose, coriander

  Base notes: Vanilla, patchouli, vetiver

  Eau du Fier by Annick Goutal (2000)

  Perfumer: Isabelle Doyen

  Like Bulgari Black’s more-intense sibling, Eau du Fier (“Proud Water”) dispenses with the softness of vanilla and powder and primarily stays in the keys of bitter and smoky. It opens with an aromatic, bitter orange flanked by the smoky, savory, meaty scent of Chinese lapsang souchang tea as the tar, burnt wood, axle grease, and smoke scent of birch signs the scent with a signature flourish. (As with Santa Maria Novella’s Peau d’Espagne, you can almost taste Eau du Fier’s bitter smoke in the back of your throat.)

  It may be off-putting at first, but like many genius things, you soon adapt to its reality. In Eau du Fier’s case, it’s like entering a smoldering, Mad Max–like postapocalyptic olfactory world. Aromatic orange, delicate osmanthus, and sweet-spicy clove are still inhabitants, but they’ve been overtaken by the Dark Overlords of birch and black tea. If ever a scent deserved to be called fierce—Eau du Fier(ce)?—this is it. And of course, it’s discontinued and getting harder and harder to find. Maybe that letter I wrote to Annick Goutal’s online customer service begging them to bring it back will work? A perfume lover can dream.

  Top notes: Bitter orange and mint

  Heart notes: Osmanthus, clove, black tea, a salt flower

  Base notes: Birch bark

  Laundromat by Demeter (2000)

  Perfumer: Christopher Brosius

  Laundromat doesn’t just smell like detergent—it smells like clothes coming out of a dryer while they’re still hot, along with static electricity and dryer sheets. In the era of clean fragrances, this witty scent took that trend to its logical conclusion.

  Notes: Lily of the valley, mint, starch, slight warm/balsamic note

  PART III

  The Future of Scent and Subversion

  With over a thousand perfume launches a year, including more slapdash celebrity fragrances than there are T.J.Maxxes on which to unload them, it’s hard not to feel that perfume has exhausted its possibilities, and that all we have to expect from scents are rehashes of what’s already been created. And for perfumers who still believe perfume is an art, bad news has come in the form of the EU’s recent announcement that it will propose even more severe restrictions on natural perfume ingredients, including oakmoss, rose, jasmine, and lavender. By limiting and even forbidding the use of certain ingredients, these restrictions destroy perfumers’ palettes. Imagine telling a painter she could no longer use cobalt blue or yellow. As Frédéric Malle of Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle said in a recent article, “If this law goes ahead, I am finished, as my perfumes are all filled with these ingredients.” He is no doubt speaking for Guerlain, Chanel, Christian Dior, and any future perfumer who wants a real perfume palette to work with.

  Leaving aside the fact that perfumers will be limited in what they can “say” with their perfumes, what lies in store for its future? Will it still be exciting? What are its possibilities? What do we have to look forward to?

  In addition to the beautiful perfumes that manage to eke their way through the dreck, there are also perfume provocateurs who are moving perfume and even the idea of perfume forward. Whether by “queering” perfume, creating scents that smell like things in the world, emphasizing perfume’s decadent associations or imagining perfume’s function beyond the aesthetic—into the politically progressive—the following figures in the perfume world are nudging perfume in exciting directions.

  Scent Visionaries

  Antoine Lie and État Libre d’Orange’s Sécrétions Magnifiques: Fragrance Meant to Disturb

  In 2006, Étienne de Swardt launched a new perfume house whose dadaist name and punk ethos, État Libre d’Orange (The Free State of Orange), hinted that their perfume would be iconoclastic. In press materials, interviews, and on the brand’s website, État Libre d’Orange (ELD) declared itself liberated from the restrictions of modern, mass-market perfumery. The brand would promote “licentiousness and seduction,” “craftsmanship and creativity,” and “olfactory insubordination.” This declaration of independence would be a return, they claimed, “to the ideals of perfume—its carnal energy, sensual power, and the essential, erotic expression of the body and its desire.”r />
  It was a good time for État Libre d’Orange to stage its olfactory and cultural insurgency. Perfumery was just beginning to emerge from a decade that had privileged perfumes with transparent, clean, aquatic accords—when it wasn’t producing fruity, gourmand scents. And in place of the aspirational ethos reflected in the names of such mass-market hits of the late 1980s and 1990s, scents called Beautiful, Knowing, and Happy, État Libre d’Orange offered the louche and the antiaspirational: perfumes with names like Putain des Palaces (“Hotel Slut”), Delicious Closet Queen, Fat Electrician, and État Libre d’Orange’s anti-clean cri de coeur and first commercial perfume, the magnificently outré Sécrétions Magnifiques (2006).

  If the body had been absent from most 1990s perfumes, État Libre d’Orange’s creative director de Swardt and the perfumer he chose to help realize his vision, Antoine Lie, brought it back with a vengeance and a twist with Sécrétions Magnifiques. Wanting to create a perfume that would shock people out of their office-scented complacency, de Swardt approached Lie with an offer he couldn’t refuse. For État Libre d’Orange’s first commercial scent, he wanted Lie to help him create a revolutionary, shocking perfume. They would work together, but as with all this brand’s perfumes, the perfumer would have the final say in what ended up in the bottle, and, ultimately, the marketplace. The perfume brief? Sécrétions Magnifiques was to be a perfume that smells like the body right before orgasm—literally and metaphorically. It wouldn’t simply be suggestive of bodily smells, it would smell, according to the original perfume description, “Like blood, sweat, sperm, saliva … as real as an olfactory coitus.” And thus Sécrétions Magnifiques, État Libre d’Orange’s first scent, was unleashed upon the world.