REVIEW: 'Mat; Male' by Masakï Matsushïma

After a couple of hours, the base of green, sappy wood - bamboo, I suppose - with some dusty, fruity florals hanging on in there, is really, really good.

But the shrill opening, like an animated, brightly coloured confectionery counter, commandeered by some frightening ninja lychees and a samurai watermelon, attacking your nose with a shower of sharp little citrus swords and badly-aimed berry nunchucks, is enjoyably strange but not enormously pleasant.

          [By ANDREW]

The Scents of the Bathroom

My only experience of fragrance for men as a child came in the shape of talc. Sandalwood talc. Even now, I remember the absolute joy of opening a new one, normally from St Michael (I had no idea that there was a link to M&S) and the delicious anticipation of squeezing the slightly-giving metal sides until a mini dust cloud came out.  It's weird to remember the simplicity of a seventies lower-middle class bathroom. They were empty.  Anything gorgeous was reserved for the Dressing Table, an area out-of-bounds for the son of the family.  Again, is that why I love those little bottles of perfume, because they were away from my clumsy hands?

So, what was in the bathroom? Soap, of course. Solid, or the remains of solid soap. I don't remember us having Carbolic Soap, but maybe it was there for garden-induced stains.  I do recall the life-affirming joy of Zest soap, whose lemony-lemonness can never be replicated for me. I remember a Christmas stocking with a bar of Zest in it, probably from 1977, and I was filled with the most heady joy that I owned a soap. A simple pleasure perhaps, but also key to me resenting the underfed citrus hit of CK One nearly two decades later.

Shaving cream. Oh God, if anything else represents the uncomplicated male it is that. Clean, crisp, medicinal and wholly masculine, it is something that I want to smell right now, as a 42 year old urbane man. There was something about it that told you everything would be OK if your Dad was there, shaving bare-chested in the bathroom.

Toothpaste. I love to cook now, but have a terrible habit of adding too many ingredients. I have a feeling this was based on the rapid-fire introduction of colours and flavours into mid-70s toothpastes. How astonishing it seemed at the time, to see three or four colours coming out like a liquid stick of rock onto your toothbrush.  Again, a simple pleasure - but how many pleasures are complicated?

The third, and final item were the bath soaks such as Radox or Matey would appear on Christmas Day and stay, empty and defiant, until they were cleared away in The Spring Clean. But Talc was the mainstay, the only acceptable way of a man fragrancing himself in the seventies, and therefore the only way that I had.

I loved it, but loathed the way it settled into the quickly-perishing rubber foot wells of our ancient bathroom scales. I spent many evenings looking at them with real, burning resentment. My sweet, soft talc, which added so much to my life, became my enemy. It sullied an experience. I knew there was a better way - something clear and pristine that evaporated before it spoiled - but it was only a concept. The reality came years later with my first bottle of fragrance, which is something to discuss in a future entry...

         [by PETER]

REVIEW: 'Midnight in Paris' by Van Cleef & Arpels

The relatively quiet launch of Van Cleef & Arpels' six-strong Extraordinaire selection in 2009, alongside 2008's Feerie and now this masculine offering in the so-called Haute Parfumerie line, is clearly designed as a revitalisation of the jewellery and watch creator's position in perfumery, in a tasteful 'stealth wealth' fashion but firmly in line with just about every other high end brand's approach to fragrance recently.  From Hermes' Hermessences to Chanel's Exclusifs and Dior's Couturier line, it appears that expense and exclusivity are now essential if a brand wants to position its scents as far as possible from the tat churned out in the name of Paris Hilton or the like.

Midnight in Paris isn't particularly expensive or hard to come by but it certainly feels quite special - compared to most mainstream men's releases, that is.  The flacon is beautifully-designed, especially 'cute' in the handy 40ml size, and the juice speaks of excellent quality.

But...  I'd read reviews online comparing Midnight in Paris to Bvlgari Black, one of my all time favourites, and I'm afraid there's little more I can add to that.  From the very first spray, this is simply a slightly more approachable version, minus the thrill of the 'rubber' notes that put some people off Bvlgari's 1998 masterpiece.

I've also read comparisons to Dior Homme but I don't get that at all.  Apart from a sweetness and smelling nicely expensive, Midnight in Paris doesn't have that dusty, cocoa powder note.  And anyway, Dior Homme is all about the iris and there's none here.

Midnight in Paris also bears a resemblance to Kenzo Peace Vintage Edition, the limited edition scent that was released to celebrate Kenzo's 20 years in perfumery.  You can still find it online and I'd urge you to seek it out.  But guess what -  Kenzo Peace Vintage Edition was created by the perfumer Annick Menardo, as was...  Bvlgari Black.  In truth, it's just another 'lite' version of my favourite so there's no surprise that I like it.

All of this means that Midnight in Paris feels lacking in something.  It has that black tea and vanilla accord which works perfectly well on its own, and which obviously works for me, but it could support something else - another note to set it apart and make it feel more special and a bit less 'safe'. 

          [by ANDREW]

"Mum had a smell. Wish I could capture it."

I received one of the most simple and moving texts of my life this week. I sent my first blog entry to my oldest friend Graham, and got this in reply:  "Mum had a smell.  Wish I could capture it."

I think those words have an incredible power. Graham has never been prone to excess, unless you are talking wine and wigs (more of that later).  In many ways the yin to my yang, our friendship has endured a hell of a lot.  Normally, he has endured me.  I love having a friend who has been with you forever, a fairly rare occurence these days. What's truly astonishing is that our friendship, bound by memories and ties, continues to evolve. Involving wigs.  As I have said, more of that later...

In my last blog, I failed to mention that my parents are forty years older than me, which was fairly rare in the early seventies, the time of my early fragrance memories. Graham, who lived round the corner from me, was in exactly the same position, with Dad Jim, and Mum Stella. We shared a middle name - Howard - and the fact our sisters were both four years older. Stella had three main claims-to-the-exotic. She was from Liverpool, not Birkenhead. That lent her a slightly dangerous edge - had she met The Beatles?  She had a Jewish friend called Gilda, and therefore had Matzo Meal in her kitchen. I was never more jealous, and hated my parents for their bland ingredients. I wonder, is that another reason for my love of the strange, the outsider, the unusual?  Thirdly, Stella was evacuated with Frankie Vaughan. If you don't know who that is, get yourself to Wikipedia.

The fourth, hastily-added reason for Stella's exoticism is that she worked. Mums didn't work then. At least not in my tiny world. However, Stella (As I write this, I can't stop thinking what an amazing name that is...) worked in Liverpool's greatest store. A labyrthine monster of a store called George Henry Lee, but known to the population as George Henry's. It was an intimidatingly huge place to a young child, full of things that could be broken and PAID FOR if your inquisitive arms even happened to brush within five feet of them. This also gave Stella an advantage that even my Duty Free Dad could not give, the wonder of the sample. I had no idea what a sample was, but Stella had them.

This leads me to the problem I have with Stella. I want to remember that loving woman and what she smelled of. I cannot. She probably smelled of Blue Grass, and Youth Dew, and Charlie, and Jicky, and Shalimar, and Evening in Paris, and any fragrance she could charm from the Perfumery Girls. How wonderful that her love of fragrance was based on what she could find. Times were not easy then, and the chance to own three mls of something great would have been an amazing coup in the grey, dull days of the early seventies. Her daughter Rachel is a fan of the heavier fragrances, and has a great collection of dark, musky scents that rivals my own. Surely, as a fourteen year old, she sneaked into Stella's bedroom and took a quick spritz of Opium in 1979.

There are no answers, sadly. I don't think she had a signature scent - why would she with a library of fragrances at her disposal?  Graham, I cannot tell you what she smelled like. But I have a sneaking suspicion that her fragrance would be full-bodied, larger than life, and utterly lovely.  Just like your Mum.

          [by PETER]

REVIEW: 'Vierges et Toreros' by Etat Libre d'Orange

Although the results are terribly inconsistent, I can't fault the imaginative and sometimes elaborate stories and inspirations behind the 'alternative' French fragrance house Etat Libre d'Orange's scents.  Fat Electrician is based on the imagined tale of a beautiful mid-Western boy seeking his fortune in New York, only to find himself old, overweight and unfulfilled.  The resulting vetiver may be unexciting but the bittersweet inspiration is quite beautiful.  Jasmin et Cigarettes fares better, truly encapsulating the smoky glamour of Hollywod's Golden Age and screen sirens and the notorious Secretions Magnifique truly, shockingly smells of human bodily fluids.

My favourite in the range, and my current scent obsession, is the heady, heavy Vierges et Toreros - virgins and matadors, if you will.  I discovered it at one of Odette Toilette's marvellous Scratch+Sniff events (where I came second in the evening's competition with the haiku that I wrote about it - a tasteless imagining of Princess Grace's last moments, prompted by the fragrance's car interior notes).

The inspiration for the fragrance (which is printed on a lovely little booklet accompanying the bottle) is the tale of a matador deflowering a virgin and then taking the bloodied bed sheets into the heat of the bullring the following day.  A bullring somewhere in Spain, rather than Birmingham's shopping centre.  The tale is no less tasteless than my Princess Grace story perhaps, but imbued with more of a brutal romanticism, I think.

And the scent itself is both brutal and romantic at the same time.  It's supposed to encapsulate the nature of both characters with rich, virginal florals alongside dark, masculine leather and spice.  The fleshy tuberose and ylang-ylang gradually seep up through the blast of nutmeg, pepper and cardamom and the whole effect is deliciously, deeply animalic - like a sweaty, leathery old beast with a garland of blooms around its neck, I suppose.

But what may sound strange or forbidding really isn't at all.  Vierges et Toreros is exciting but very wearable - neither masculine nor feminine but warm, enveloping and curiously comforting as well.  It's probably a bit too powerful for the office and a little certainly goes a long way.  Yes, it's a raging bull that needs to be approached with some care but befriend it instead of stabbing at it with spiky sticks and you'll soon be skipping through fields of flowers together.

          [by ANDREW]

Elizabeth's Passion

How much of my love for Elizabeth Taylor's sweet, smokey Passion for Men is tied in with my love of the woman herself?  Dated, ridiculous and extravagant are just some of the adjectives applied to both the actress and the product. When this fragrance was created, her days as a movie star were over. However, this is no puny attempt to wrestle money from the public. Her Box Office allure was indeed finished but her fame remained undiminished.

When Passion for Men was launched in 1989, Taylor's attention was firmly on the fight against AIDS,  a disease that was decimating Hollywood. I use the word decimate loosely. It means killing one in ten. I have a horrible feeling that more than ten percent of Hollywood's gay community was wiped out by that epidemic, but the facts were hidden behind the carefully-crafted eulogies... The fact is that nobody wanted to get angry about this "gay" disease until our Liz got angry.  Angry was not the word.  Used to being cossetted and adored, thank God her inner Velvet Brown turned petulant. That anger, that petulance, that MGM-induced arrogance has never been used to such effect. I work on television so have to steer clear of exaggeration for fear of repercussions; therefore I have never said that I believe that Elizabeth Taylor's overwhelming fight against AIDS has saved thousands, perhaps millions of lives.  But, I believe it.

I don't care that she has, media-wise, been given the credit. She deserves it. As the most famous, the most beautiful, the most talked-about woman in the world, how easy to settle into a life of talk shows, comedy roasts and lifetime achievement awards?  When Barbra Streisand was asked why she had not done more for AIDS, she replied: "I have many causes. Liz has only one".  Well, thank God for single-minded Liz.  Let's not forget that eight years before she had settled into the ultimate Middle American Dream of being a Republican Senator's wife.

So, Passion for Men. The world's most appalling bottle? Perhaps! I hope she knocked the design off in minutes. But averting an epidemic seems far more important than a flacon. The fragrance itself is dated, ridiculous and extravagant, which is precisely why I want you to buy a bottle today.

          [by PETER]

REVIEW: 'Eau Sauvage' by Christian Dior

As a fey teenage boy in the early 80s, spritzing Drakkar Noir or Kouros with gay abandon, the notion of having to market a men’s fragrance as "wild" or “savage" water seemed somehow archaic and faintly ludicrous to me. Eau Sauvage was worn by elder brothers, uncles, friends’ fathers; those with less of an interest in Soft Cell 12 inches and the cheap cosmetics counter at Woolworth’s. It was something from another age when men had to be overly assured of their masculinity before they dared do something as dubious as wear a fragrance. As a New Romantic I eschewed it.

I first came across a bottle that I could properly try for myself when I moved into a friend’s London flat in the early 90s. This was the Summer pied-a-terre of a West Indian family, a place now used less frequently as old Mr Barnard had passed away. The bottle remained at the back of a bathroom cabinet and when I dared to retrieve it and take a spray, it really felt like reaching into the past. I suppose it was imbued with what I knew of its 60s heritage, the grandeur of the wonderful residence in which I was living and the stories of old Mr Barnard, sitting it the St Lucian sunshine, sipping single malt whisky rather than cheap rum, attended by maids and nurses whilst commanding his empire of hotels, distilleries and banana plantations.

At the time, I was unable to identify anything beyond the initial blast of rich lemon that faded into something poised, confident and, well, expensive smelling.

Now, thanks to a prize draw from the completely lovely Katie Puckrick’s fragrance blog, I have my own bottle. Now, I can appreciate how the ghost of the lemon top note remains and hovers at the edges of a wonderfully balanced herbal, mossy, lightly floral combination. I can see how well it would have worked for Mr Barnard, out in the tropical sunshine, first cooling and refreshing and then underlining his position at the head of a dynasty.

I still find the idea of “savage water” quite amusing, but now I understand how this thing works. It’s classically clever, handsomely confident and it really does provide the assurance of a fine life conducted with good taste. It’s a fragrance to aspire to.

          [by ANDREW]

Peter in Action...

"Madam Gres.  She made Coco Chanel look like she'd woken up in a skip."

Peter: Scents of Childhood

Given that my professional life is dedicated to fragrance, I wish my childhood was dominated by the overwhelming need to smell the impossibly beautiful. Or, do I?  My childhood was shockingly normal, and will never end up on the shelves of WHSmith as an example of how-not-to-parent, or be-parented. My memories barely light the corners of my mind, but have a sepia tone that has been much used in examples of the Great Lost British Childhood.  Nobody died, nobody divorced, and arguments were kept to a frantic, hushed whisper (in case the neighbours were to hear, the ultimate early seventies indignity).

So, what smells remind me of that retrospectivally idyllic childhood?

The first would be the overwhelmingly normal odour of vegetables boiling (this was years before a steamer was found in Birkenhead) as I came in muddied and sweating from a day of tree-climbing.  I loathed that smell.  Suddenly Luke Skywalker was no longer an inter-galactic hero, but a normal Northern boy about to be served mince and greens.  The resentment I felt was astonishing.  Clarity of mind and the ability to swing a fabulous LightSabre was replaced by a hatred of the normality of my life.

My second is easy:  the smell and taste of vegetables grown in what was known as "the patch" - the area of garden in between the manicured section, and the wilds of my "bit".  Well, not just my bit, but my best friend Graham's as well.  There we played, fought, imagined.  And stole. Big, luscious peas that seemed to throb with an intensity now hard to imagine.  Tomatoes, so plump and warm.  Nettles, the ultimate enemy to our play that stung our bare arms and legs.  But the dock leaves were there to assuage any grazes. Genius, pure genius.

The third scent is one that I don't want to remember with any false nostalgia. This is the part that makes me the man who loves fragrance.  I can't say that this is based on one experience - it's not.  But, if I want to recall happiness, and comfort, it's this...

My parents were slightly different from the other parents I knew. My father had travelled all over the world and brought things back like Tiger Balm, and Tiger's Eye Gemstones. Funny that my two recollections involved tigers, as I have absolutely no recollection of him bringing back a killer cat.  My Mum would have been furious.  What would Aunty Freda and Stella have said, as they were being savaged?
"Lilian, dear, put a lead on your tiger?"  The mind boggles.  And boggles back to reality...

What my Dad did have access to was Duty Free.  There was a huge glamour to those words in 1972, and it meant that I always received a Toblerone from my Dad's tan briefcase when her returned from his travels.  Being allowed to open that briefcase on my father's return allowed a rush of chocolate and leather to my nose, which makes me realise why I love Mugler's Angel.

It also meant that in our house we had Fine Fragrance, a category probably not that well-known in Rock Ferry.  I don't know what my Mum owned, but the smells were so rich, so expensive, so complicatedly divine that I can recall them so clearly now.  The humdrum stopped.  The house no longer smelled of boiling cabbage and chops, but a magical, mystical place where all dreams were possible.  Of course, that would fade quickly, and my love affair with the temporary and supefricial began in earnest...

          [by PETER]