Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Whistlin as I walk by the haters
Amouage artistic director Christopher Chong is currently trolling the shit out of Basenotes and it is pretty hilarious. Bonus troll points to the Basenoter who complains that Amouage, a house based primarily around incense, is too smoky (!!!).
Hermes - Un Jardin Sur Le Toit and Jour d'Hermes
I am a big fan of Jean-Claude Ellena. If I organize my fragrances by nose his fragrances represent by far a plurality, maybe even a majority. I've been less fond of his recent perfumes, though, perhaps because he has reached a stage in his career where his work consists on tight variations on a single theme, namely a particular (and very good) vegetal/mineralic theme in a stripped-down key. For better or worse, two of his recent works for Hermes are again a return to this theme.
Un Jardin Sur Le Toit is the newest in the Jardin series. It is a good fragrance, no question, but if you have any of the others this will not be new to you: swap out the mango in Jardin Sur Le Nil for bright, tart apple and et voila. If you're unfamiliar with the series then this is as good a place to start as any but I can't say this evokes strong emotions. The danger of Ellena's brand of stripped-down directness is that it can sacrifice beauty for simplicity. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but at a certain point one wants more to eat than just a well-plated appetizer.
Jour d'Hermes fares better. It's a feminine fragrance in the modern style which Ellena himself had a big part in creating: limpid and serene, the floral equivalent of a freshly scrubbed face with no adornment. The notes are seamlessly blended; individual flowers can't be discerned. On the floral fragrance axis with soliflores on one end, Jour d'Hermes defines the opposite end. Ellena's vegetal base again makes a welcome appearance here. How much one likes this will be a matter of taste: if you prefer Ellena's style to the bolder florals of classic French perfumery then you most certainly will want this. As for me, I like my florals to be grander, along the lines of Amouage's massive Honour Woman; but I certainly wouldn't turn it down if someone gave me a bottle of Jour d'Hermes.
Un Jardin Sur Le Toit is the newest in the Jardin series. It is a good fragrance, no question, but if you have any of the others this will not be new to you: swap out the mango in Jardin Sur Le Nil for bright, tart apple and et voila. If you're unfamiliar with the series then this is as good a place to start as any but I can't say this evokes strong emotions. The danger of Ellena's brand of stripped-down directness is that it can sacrifice beauty for simplicity. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but at a certain point one wants more to eat than just a well-plated appetizer.
Jour d'Hermes fares better. It's a feminine fragrance in the modern style which Ellena himself had a big part in creating: limpid and serene, the floral equivalent of a freshly scrubbed face with no adornment. The notes are seamlessly blended; individual flowers can't be discerned. On the floral fragrance axis with soliflores on one end, Jour d'Hermes defines the opposite end. Ellena's vegetal base again makes a welcome appearance here. How much one likes this will be a matter of taste: if you prefer Ellena's style to the bolder florals of classic French perfumery then you most certainly will want this. As for me, I like my florals to be grander, along the lines of Amouage's massive Honour Woman; but I certainly wouldn't turn it down if someone gave me a bottle of Jour d'Hermes.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
New Amouage in June - Fate
Um shaking and crying rn and maybe also just pooped myself a bit and there's definitely some pee because a very helpful person on Basenotes has informed us that there is a new Amouage coming soon, perhaps even in a few weeks? And I am SO EXCITED? Question mark? Just look at this bottle! Good lord! I love Amouage very much and I may have to sell my cats to raise money for these. Just kidding, I love my cats, I won't sell them. I'm totally selling them.
UPDATE: It looks as though Fate won't make it to the US market until September. Fate Man will be $400 and Fate Woman will be $435. Yeeeikes. Soon we will yearn for the days of $300 bottles of Amouage. I expect at least half of the cost of the bottle goes towards Amouage's flash animation budget.
UPDATE: It looks as though Fate won't make it to the US market until September. Fate Man will be $400 and Fate Woman will be $435. Yeeeikes. Soon we will yearn for the days of $300 bottles of Amouage. I expect at least half of the cost of the bottle goes towards Amouage's flash animation budget.
Frederic Malle - Portrait of a Lady
Because I'm an irascible contrarian, I was prepared to reject Portrait of a Lady because the guys on Basenotes are ALL OVER IT and I don't really like the idea of agreeing with people who treat batch numbers on Creed fragrances like a Kabbalistic key to the universe.* But goddammit they're right: this is really, really good, a modern classic even.
Frederic Malle is a fantastic house and all of their fragrances share a near-obsessive focus on perfect balance. If I was forced to pick a favorite fragrance of all time it might well be Malle's Une Fleur de Cassie, a jaw-dropping masterwork of clockwork precision. And once again Malle shows how it's done with Portrait of a Lady (which btw A++ trolling by giving that name to your very unisex fragrance and confusing all of the poor dudes who are obsessed with ZOMG IS THIS FRAGRANCE FOR A LADY OR NOT? AM I ALLOWED TO WEAR IT??). This is not, on the face of it, a complex fragrance. The notes are clear and perfectly discernible: there is rose and there is patchouli and I don't smell much else. But what there is, is balance. To get a rose this sturdy, a patchouli this . . . well, woody and un-hippy, and to have the whole package be so pleasing and addictive, must be the result of a whole lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes; and so yes, there must be a high level of complexity going on here, but it is hidden behind a deceptively simple facade. As a nice bonus this stuff lasts about 80 million hours on the skin, give or take an hour.
*n.b. All snark aside I like Basenotes a lot. No offense, Aventus-obsessed dudes!
Frederic Malle is a fantastic house and all of their fragrances share a near-obsessive focus on perfect balance. If I was forced to pick a favorite fragrance of all time it might well be Malle's Une Fleur de Cassie, a jaw-dropping masterwork of clockwork precision. And once again Malle shows how it's done with Portrait of a Lady (which btw A++ trolling by giving that name to your very unisex fragrance and confusing all of the poor dudes who are obsessed with ZOMG IS THIS FRAGRANCE FOR A LADY OR NOT? AM I ALLOWED TO WEAR IT??). This is not, on the face of it, a complex fragrance. The notes are clear and perfectly discernible: there is rose and there is patchouli and I don't smell much else. But what there is, is balance. To get a rose this sturdy, a patchouli this . . . well, woody and un-hippy, and to have the whole package be so pleasing and addictive, must be the result of a whole lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes; and so yes, there must be a high level of complexity going on here, but it is hidden behind a deceptively simple facade. As a nice bonus this stuff lasts about 80 million hours on the skin, give or take an hour.
*n.b. All snark aside I like Basenotes a lot. No offense, Aventus-obsessed dudes!
Amouage - Epic Man and Epic Woman
Um oh my god, Amouage Epic Woman is the best. THE BEST. This may be my favorite in the entire line, which is saying something because Amouage has a seriously impressive lineup of fragrances. At least it is tied with Jubilation XXV, which is my other nominee for best in show. Everyone is doing oud now and it's pretty fucking tired, to be honest; but if there's one house who really should do an oud it's Amouage and they killed it with this one. What makes Epic Woman work is that it's not just an oud; it's based around the genius triple combination of oud, rose and tea. None of these notes dominate; this is a highly complex fragrance in the classic Amouage style. It is a truly brilliant idea to pair oud with tea, the kind of brilliant idea that once you smell it you're amazed nobody has done it before: the sour medicinal quality of the oud note is perfectly complemented by the light airiness of the tea note. The whole thing is rounded off by a pleasing burst of spices in the top notes. Masterful. If I have one small complaint it's that the lasting power is not as long as I expect from an Amouage -- the warm vanillic/incense drydown appears a bit too fast for me -- but with a fragrance this beautiful, this unexpected, it seems churlish to complain.
On the other hand, Epic Man is dull. It's a generic men's oud which means there's not much here. Yes, it's made with good ingredients, and if you want a standard par-for-the-course oud you could definitely do worse, but why would you want that? If you do, I'm judging you right now.
On the other hand, Epic Man is dull. It's a generic men's oud which means there's not much here. Yes, it's made with good ingredients, and if you want a standard par-for-the-course oud you could definitely do worse, but why would you want that? If you do, I'm judging you right now.
Amouage - Interlude Man and Interlude Woman
Amouage is pretty great, I think we can all agree on that, and if we don't agree then I am very sorry but you are mistaken; and as proof I submit Interlude Man and Interlude Woman, two more in a long string of Amouage successes.
Let's start with the not-totally-batshit-insane one. Interlude Man is perhaps the best smoke fragrance I've ever smelled. By Amouage standards this is somewhat linear: there's a mild sweetness in the top, like sweet tobacco smoke, and then it's on to the very long-lasting and exceptionally realistic smoky drydown. If I find it a tad shy of true greatness that may be because it's not as odd or striking as the best Amouages, but this is very good and very well done.
Okay then so let's talk about Interlude Woman next, and holy fuck what is this? All of the weirdness that is missing from Interlude Man is here in spades, in double spades. Amouage claims this is the smell of chaos and boy howdy they are correct. The first time I smelled it I hated it. But then it kept creeping into my mind and I kept putting it on over and over again, trying to figure out how it works, this ungainly angular contraption made of fruit and coffee and incense and something sharp that I can't decipher. Now I own a full bottle of it and I still can't figure it out. There's an almost Lutensian sweetness in the top notes which can be very bad if done wrong (I am not a fan of Lutens in general) but here it stays just on the right side of grotesquery. Actually, the entire fragrance is a perfume game of chicken: just when you think the fruits and coffee are getting too out there, or that weird bitter note roars up out of nowhere and surprises you, Interlude Woman takes a sharp right-hand turn in the nick of time. Even by Amouage's high standards this is a complex, nigh-unparsable fragrance. Oh, and if you put it on, you'd better like it a lot because it is also one of the longest-lasting fragrances I've ever worn. Seriously, this shit is nuclear grade. Thankfully I love it.
Let's start with the not-totally-batshit-insane one. Interlude Man is perhaps the best smoke fragrance I've ever smelled. By Amouage standards this is somewhat linear: there's a mild sweetness in the top, like sweet tobacco smoke, and then it's on to the very long-lasting and exceptionally realistic smoky drydown. If I find it a tad shy of true greatness that may be because it's not as odd or striking as the best Amouages, but this is very good and very well done.
Okay then so let's talk about Interlude Woman next, and holy fuck what is this? All of the weirdness that is missing from Interlude Man is here in spades, in double spades. Amouage claims this is the smell of chaos and boy howdy they are correct. The first time I smelled it I hated it. But then it kept creeping into my mind and I kept putting it on over and over again, trying to figure out how it works, this ungainly angular contraption made of fruit and coffee and incense and something sharp that I can't decipher. Now I own a full bottle of it and I still can't figure it out. There's an almost Lutensian sweetness in the top notes which can be very bad if done wrong (I am not a fan of Lutens in general) but here it stays just on the right side of grotesquery. Actually, the entire fragrance is a perfume game of chicken: just when you think the fruits and coffee are getting too out there, or that weird bitter note roars up out of nowhere and surprises you, Interlude Woman takes a sharp right-hand turn in the nick of time. Even by Amouage's high standards this is a complex, nigh-unparsable fragrance. Oh, and if you put it on, you'd better like it a lot because it is also one of the longest-lasting fragrances I've ever worn. Seriously, this shit is nuclear grade. Thankfully I love it.
Amouage - Opus VII
Do you like Frederic Malle's Bois d'Orage but wish that it had more leather? Well, today is your lucky day because Amouage has anticipated your request. Also you are weird because that is a weird request but whatever, Amouage is here for you. You weirdo. Lest I seem glib, this is unquestionably a good fragrance made in the classic Amouage house style: durable, well-blended, with high-quality materials, based around a strong slug of galbanum backed by woods, incense, pepper, and leather. The galbanum in the top notes is handled better than in Bd'O, which I find shrieky; and the drydown of Opus VII is better too, replacing the cigarettes of Bd'O with smooth leather. So although this seems a weird case of Amouage biting someone else's style -- usually they strike out boldly on their own, which is why they're my favorite house at the moment -- this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Still, I like it more when they make up weird shit from scratch.
n.b. I don't usually complain about price when considering the quality of a fragrance, but the aspirational price level ($325/100ml) for Amouage's Opus line perplexes me. Especially in this case, $325 seems a steep price to pay for what is essentially a nice galbanum/woods/leather accord.
n.b. I don't usually complain about price when considering the quality of a fragrance, but the aspirational price level ($325/100ml) for Amouage's Opus line perplexes me. Especially in this case, $325 seems a steep price to pay for what is essentially a nice galbanum/woods/leather accord.
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