The Emperor's New (Old) Pebbles - Armani Privé

Hot on the heels of JCE's Hermesscences range, big old Giorgio presented some supposedly special scents in lavish packaging (hard wood refillable bottles and resin pebble stoppers) that could possibly apologise for the monstrous (but monstrously popular) Acqua di Giò and all that Beyoncé-fronted stuff.

Of course, that was ages ago and the range has swelled considerably since the first four offerings appeared in late '04.  But I've only just lived with enough of them for long enough to form an opinion...

Pierre de Lune could and should be so much better.  It's taught me that a good, whopping dose of iris isn't enough to guarantee quality.  Violets and a strangely medicinal dry-down make this a competent mainstream rather than a £165 per 50ml refined delight.  Shame.

I own Ambre Soie - it was a generous gift.  It certainly packs a punch.  All the requisite oriental notes are assembled beautifully - ginger, clove, cinnamon, patchouli - but it's bitter rather than sweet.  It has a strange MSG quality; an aftertaste, if you will.  It's like Lady Gaga - looks good but it's not really goodlooking.

The weird thing about Cuir Amethyste is that it actually smells purple.  That's a nice, little psychological trick.  Violets, crushed blackcurrants and unworn suede slingbacks.  It's very good.

But the crown remains with Bois d'Encens.  Deep, dark, endangered woods slaughtered for your delectation on the smoke-obscured altar of high fashion.  Delicious.  I love incense fragrances but I have absolutely no understanding of Catholic excess.  I've not so much as fingered as a cassock.  That's probably why I'm able to enjoy them

There are now loads more in the Armani Privé range to explore, I know.  And they're all supposed to be great fragrances because they're expensive.  Armani brought a tasteful understatement to Italian fashion and I suppose these scent offerings are there to do the same for his glitzy fragrance range.  But remember that this was the culture that gave us both Florence and Donatella Versace.  Beauty is so often a matter of taste.

          [By ANDREW]

On the Couch with Pierre Bourdon

I vividly recall the moment that my sense of smell became very special to me.  Some twenty years ago, I was struggling for early childhood memories; fumbling through the early 70s to better understand my relationship with my father.  A man who was mostly absent and then completely absent just a little later in my life.

From hamster cages and tom cat indiscretions in my gym kit to my grandmother's bars of Camay soap and the childhood craze for scented erasers, I'd always loved smelling things.  But nothing could prepare me for what struck at that moment.

Like a punch to the side of the head, my father's personal smell physically appeared to me.  A day's sweat in a polyester shirt.  Oil from the factory on the Slough Trading Estate in which he worked.  The tiniest remnants of Old Spice fighting against the stale smoke of a Pall Mall cigarette.  All experienced as I sat on his lap at the end of his working day, my head pressed against his hairy chest, vegetables boiling nearby.

It was there and then gone instantly.  And I suddenly understood the power of our sense of smell - what a truly great gift it is.

A little while I ago I realised that some of the scent compositions of perfumer Pierre Bourdon had a particular significance to me, most notably 1981's Kouros.  I find it terribly difficult to talk about Kouros without revealing far too much of myself.  Kouros is a psychology session in a bottle for me.  It grips my formative years in the manner of a very stubborn, very beautiful man with ripe, 10pm armpits.  I stole daily spritzes from my older brother's bedroom in the early 80s before I owned my own bottle.  He's now dead.  I recall my first visits to gay clubs in the Midlands and the North where Kouros and Ralph Lauren's Polo literally hung in the air above the dancefloors, along with amyl nitrate, perspiration and possibility.

Kouros is the smell of the ideal man.  It is the smell of sex.

I was given a bottle of Cool Water as a gift in the 90s and therefore felt I should love it.  So I did until I realised that I didn't like it at all.  And then came to despise it for what it's done to scent over the past couple of decades.  I respect its greatness but I don't want ocean freshness.  I hate calone.  That I prefer the smell of petrichor, puppy breath and mossy logs to chemical cleanliness says something significant about me, I hope.  I'm not sure what...

Monsieur Bourdon provided another scent sensation recently.  I wore 2000's Biotherm Aqua Fitness Pour Homme for quite a few years and I loved it.  It elicited a great many compliments.  It was citrus and wood cleanliness and never made me feel like I was beachcombing or picking a limpit from a groyne.  Its blue glass flacon and bright happiness were suddenly stolen from me when it was discontinued after just a few years.  I read that Bourdon's Live Jazz for YSL was a close match and a good friend who shares my love of scent bought it for my birthday last year.  One spray transported me back to an old favourite.  It's not exactly the same, of course.  But there's enough mint, grapefruit and light wood blended into a composition sufficiently similar to plug the gap of a loss.

Bourdon's final compositions were for Frederic Malle.  He's now retired.  French Lover gives me a smug smile.  I don't love it but I can see a master at work and clearly observe the individual pillars of frankincense, vetiver, cedar and iris, all connected by garlands of genius.  His Iris Poudre seems to suit my current tastes more closely.  Like a Julian Fellowes dowager in a large wig thrust into a Hoxton drinking den, it's timeless and contemporary, tasteful, classy and panderingly dumb...

Ask for your friends' advice and you'll discover that everyone's a psychologist these days.  Thank goodness for my sense of smell.

          [By ANDREW]

Goodbye, Elizabeth...

:'(

Oranges, dirty and otherwise...

Orange squash, orange Wine Gums, the orange-filled Fry's Chocolate Cremes and Quality Street sweets from the enorous tin at Christmastime...  As a child, orange was definitely my favourite flavour. My predilection stopped short of the fruit itself, leading my mother to genuine concerns about scurvy and rickets, but an orange sweet or treat whilst grubbing around in the garden is an enduringly wonderful childhood memory.

It's no wonder then that orange and all things citrus are notes that I have long-enjoyed in my fragrance choices.  Orange is such a happy scent.  Indeed, Clinique created a scent bursting with oranges, in a bright orange flacon with their 1999 Happy For Men.  But I'm afraid this is one of the few orange fragrances that doesn't work for me.  Like seemingly every other men's release from the nineties, Happy For Men is swathed in that calone-freshness that makes it far too dull and conformist.

No, it's big, unashamed oranges that I like in my scent, like Jean Claude Ellena's Cologne Bigarade for Editions Frederic Malle (and the slightly better Bigarade Concentrée).  This was a must-buy as soon as I smelled it.  It's full-on, bitter, zesty orange, propped up with a bit of light wood.  Wonderful.

Orange also seems to work for me when its bright cleanliness is put against the foil of something more dirty or sinister.  The 1951 classic Eau d'Hermès with its fetid orangey-leather and cumin-sweatiness is amazingly schizophrenic.  It was created by Edmond Roudnitska whilst Ellena was working as his apprentice and JCE's Déclaration for Cartier from 1998 is definitely his modernist take on that 'dirty orange' theme.  Déclaration isn't obviously an orange scent and its skank is quite subtle too but it's that understated, cryptic interplay alongside the cardamom and woods that makes it so uniquely interesting.  Arguably, Terre d'Hermès is another development in this vein too.

Orange remains a staple note in perfumery and Andy Tauer's Orange Star is a wonderful reworking of its capabilities, packing more of a punch than you'd imagine.  Orange is one of those smells that always seems to 'reach' you - when somebody's tackling a satsuma in the office or on a train carriage, chances are you'll smell it sooner or later.  Orange Star seems to be one of the few scents that really draws upon that power.

Last summer, Cartier released a flanker for their wonderful Eau de Cartier which replaced the fizzy Parma Violets of the original with a smooth, clean orange scent - Eau de Cartier Essence d'Orange. It's very good, if resolutely 'fake' in its oranginess.  However, this year's big mainstream newbie Boss Orange is, like every other Boss fragrance, a cynical "don't scare the straight boys" shower gel concoction that flirts with a bit of nondescript fruit.  It's just dull.

No, I like my oranges with at least a nod to reality but preferably with a bit of dirtiness as well.  I wonder why...

          [by ANDREW]

"Please Sir, can I have some more?"

When Hermès announced that it was extending the Jardins Collection with the imminent release of Un Jardin sur le Toît, I immediately hoped that Sir Jean Claude Ellena had a new cologne composition up his sleeve too.

The Jardins are OK - the fig-fest of Un Jardin en Méditerranée is of its time, Un Jardin sur le Nile made for a good book but I have an aversion to watery scents so Un Jardin après la Moussin is a bit of a scrubber for me. But with their smart orange boxes and green glass bottles, it's the Colognes collection that I love...

I discovered Eau d'Orange Verte in an airport Duty Free shop some time in the early 90s and had gone through a couple of bottles within a year. Has JCE tweaked it? Probably, but it's still wonderful. Eau de Pamplemousse Rose is utterly joyful with its fleeting stab of real grapefruit that settles into the sedate, assured smell of wealth.  But it's Eau de Gentiane Blanche that I love the most, Ellena's leftfield contribution to the "neglected" genre of eaux de cologne. It's all mulchy and vegetal, fresh and outdoorsy yet metropolitan and strangely sophisticated.

So, what could he add to the line-up? A revolutionary treatment of lemons? A lavender to end all lavenders? Lime? Yuzu? Geranium? Any or all of those would be most welcome from the schnozzle of Mr Ellena. But I wish he'd just get on with it.

          [By ANDREW]

Moiya is Not a Perfume Tart

But I am.  An unashamed perfume tart...

Moiya is an old friend of mine who's very successful in the Beauty Industry.  In fact, her Little Black Book could make a fortune on eBay.  And she has been loyal to just one fragrance since its launch nearly two decades ago - Dolce and Gabanna Pour Femme.

I find the idea of complete loyalty to a signature scent both bewildering and astonishing. Or deep down, am I just jealous of such fidelity?  With me it's Mitsouko one day, Quorum the next; a dash of Derby, a dousing of M7...  I can't imagine removing that daily choice from my life.

On a recent day out with Moiya, we combined a trip to Titanic - The Artefacts Exhibition at the O2 with an impromptu interview.  I wanted to press her on her decision to remain with just one scent for so long, especially when she works around so many fragrance options every day.

The Titanic exhibition is breathtaking.  So many direct links to that most famous of tragedies.  I could almost hear Celine Dion warbling in the background.  When I asked Moiya to delve into her perfume past, she revealed that, like many, many women, her first scent experience was with Charlie:  "I loved it.  I must have been about thirteen, and could afford to buy it with my pocket money. I loved the advert, and the jingle. I wore it for years."

She couldn't recall the name of her next, 'transitional' scent, just that it came in a grey, ribbed bottle, but her first big designer fragrance was the original Armani Pour Femme. "I wore it for about six years. It was elegant, and sophisticated. Shame they discontinued it."

At the exhibition, you get the chance to smell samples of fragrance that were being taken to New York on that fated voyage. Perfumes that have spent nearly a century under the ocean.  How amazing and moving is that?  Actually consuming something that went down with the Titanic...

I continued to coax the Beauty Industry Insider for her own perfume heritage.  "I discovered D&G Pour Femme in 1994 and it's been my fragrance ever since," she happily explained, peering at the Titanic's steering wheel.  (Are they called steering wheels on ships?  I should have read the board next to it but I was conjuring the smell of D&G Pour Femme in my mind.)

"I love the bottle - its classical simplicity appeals to me.  I hate bells and whistles and things hanging off bottles. They put me off.  I want something timeless and elegant.  But I'm afraid I hate the velveteen box. It gets really dusty."

And how does she find the strength; the lasting power of her signature scent?  "I do two squirts, no more. Even in the evening. Less is more.  I've tried all the body preps but I don't really like them. I find that it makes the overall effect too strong and I hate strong fragrances - Giorgio makes me sneeze!"

But why does she love it so much?  Why has she stayed so loyal for so long?  "It's elegant, subtle and soft... And one of the main reasons that I love it is that every time I wear it, somebody notices. Kate Beckinsale only commented last week how lovely it smelt!"  She dropped the name in a totally unassuming fashion.  Naturally, I wished it had been Kate Winslet who had complimented her.  That would have been far more fitting.

I came away with many a spine-tingling insight into the sad fate of the Titanic and a much greater understanding of why some people remain loyal to their chosen signature scents.  If you find something that is so magical and perfect for you, why not stick with it?

No, loyal Moiya is most definitely not a perfume tart.  But I'll always be one.  Now, where did I leave that Bang sample...?

          [By PETER]

The Rochas 'Globe' Mystery

Discontinued?  Officially, it seems.  But Rochas' 1990 or possibly 1991 men's scent Globe is one of those fragrances that crops up on eBay or in online discount stores every once in a while.  Either there's a lot of stock still out there somewhere or it's being produced secretly - how exciting.

Like many discontinued scents, it appears to be achieving some kind of near-mythical status as a lost, beloved, trailblazing men's fragrance - a dangerous floral leather that was way ahead of its time.  Negative reviews on Basenotes are scarce and the forums urge you to snap it up if you spot some.

Which I did.

It's currently available at one of my favourite online discounters, Cheapsmells and in a 'one weekend only' sale just a couple of weeks ago, it was going for a ridiculously low price.  Unfortunately, the bottle delivered was not the Limited Edition metal flacon that they pictured but, hey, they've since rectified that and I was just glad to own this 'lost classic'.  And I like it.  It's not a Holy Grail scent - it's not even a five star composition - but it's very good, original, well-made and it develops handsomely over time as a fine scent should.

But the mystery is further compounded by the perfumer to whom the fragrance is attributed.  Variously, sources assign it to Nicolas Mamounas and the real emperor of scent, Jean Claude Ellena himself.  In fact, JCE bashers use it as a prime example of how the revered minimalist used to be capable of more complex and successful compositions.  Chandler Burr says it's Ellena's work in 'The Perfect Scent' but Basenotes says it's Mamounas'.

So, is it really discontinued?  Is it being produced in tantalisingly small quantities by international fragrance counterfeiters who then sell it on the cheap?  And who created it in the first place, Mamounas or Ellena?

With a little more poking about I'm sure I could find some concrete answers.  But it's a niggling rather than a genuinely worrying mystery so I'll just remain relatively pleased that I now own a bottle, even if it's not the metal edition, and one day I'll probably stumble across the truth.

          [By ANDREW]