It's a drizzly evening in London. The schnauzer's curled up next to me on the sofa, the TV's on without sound, wasting electricity and the new Lucinda Williams album is growling and twanging in the background.
A rummage around my samples box doesn't show up anything that I don't feel fully familiar with so I decide to have a bit of an experiment; do a bit of mixing or layering and see if I can come up with a new smell sensation. Or at least something to stave off the boredom. I scour my cupboard of scents for some ideas...
Diptyque's Tam Dao is an excellent fragrance but ultimately it's just wood. Very woody wood, like I imagine a walk through a sawmill would smell. It's very nice wood indeed. But just wood. So I select a few scents that I think may benefit from a good, strong wood at their base, apply them to my arms and smell the results over the course of the next couple of hours...
Monsieur Balmain
It's an inexpensive reformulation of the Germaine Cellier original (that I'd love to locate and sample) but Monsieur Balmain isn't half bad - if you like lemons that is. With pancake day approaching, I slaver some over a Tam Dao base and see what happens to the super-bright, creamy confection of very lemony lemon when it meets very woody wood. And it's good. It all feels deeper and more complex with a bit more zestiness up top.
Hermes 'Hiris'
Hiris is a strangely sour, hissy kind of iris rather than a sweet, earthy, rounded one and she doesn't seem to like a big old block of wood invading her space. She turns her back and stands firm and Tam Dao just paces around her. The combination doesn't work at all and I can smell the two scents quite separately.
Matthew Williamson 'Incense'
Wood and incense is a natural combo and whilst I certainly wasn't expecting anything like the stature of Armani Privé's 'Bois d'Encens', I thought this pairing might work out. And it did. The Williamson scent is just sheer enough to allow Tam Dao to shine through and they rest atop one another very pleasantly. The biggest success of the three, definitely.
And the point of all this? Well, none really. I may bolster up my Matthew Williamson with a bit of woody Tam Dao the next time I wear it. I may not. Boredom, eh...?
[By ANDREW]
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