Friday, 12 April, 2013 · 10:30 pm

She’s coming home… III by Givenchy The Perfumed Dandy’s Classic Collection

She could have been a studio starlet, but never a star.

She knew she wasn’t hard enough for that and that her heart wasn’t even really in it anyway.

So she packed up her suitcase and set off home for a life on the stage and not the screen after all.

In New York and then the Golden State in the years before the talkies, she could just about handle the harsh lights and heavy make up.

She even endured the chemical stench of celluloid from the vast labs on the next lot.

But when the big money came with the big men and their heavy grasping hands, she just wanted to hide.

She started to long for lamp posts, thick bitter London fogs, and near at hand damp forests with the wild hyacinths the British call bluebells.

She wanted to see small grassy meadows again.

She wanted to walk off the sound stage once and for all and into an auditorium with an audience of anything but cameras.

So she got on the steam ship and headed back home, arriving in Blue Riband time.

Back to a life of cramped soft-wood panelled dressing rooms, of repertory theatres and occasional small parts in funny films shot in studios above camera shops.

She swapped Max Factor for greasepaint smelling of tea roses and factory carnations.

Picture shows for three shows a day on rickety boards with fall down sets smelling feintly of stagehands’ cigarettes.

And she couldn’t have been happier with her small part in the world.

The delicate and delicious Givenchy III is a perfume that knows its place in the grand scheme of things and is perfectly content.

She is a spry and green take on the sharp floral chypre, with plenty of wit and hard-earned sophistication to soften what can be to some noses a slightly bitter opening manner.

She undoubtedly has a notable past and belongs to a stable of Europeans that have made their way in the wider world.

But shrewdly she decided to return to the stage before she was worn out.

She has been rewarded and re-invigorated by new applause and bouquets of hyacinths and roses.

Her later career marked by altogether richer, more fluid, better crafted performances that have deservedly won great reviews.

She may not be a scene steeler, but she is enjoying a longer and more varied career than some of those who shot to super stardom early on.

In her own way and on her own terms, she has become the star she never intended to be.

And as for the question of cross casting…

Can a woman play Hamlet? She’s all for the taking on the Prince herself.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Friday, 12 April, 2013 · 1:47 am

Jungles in Paris… Eden by Cacharel The Perfumed Dandy’s Scented Letter

“Is it morally wrong to want home grown pineapples on tap all the year round?”

They were used to the eccentricities of men with too much money and too little taste, inexhaustible budgets and a fetish for as many European architectural styles in a single building as the whole state of Idaho could boast.

But she: She was something else.

“I want to create an Earthly paradise” she declared to the two Californian architects newly in her employ, “It is my desire that the whole affair should have a decidedly prelapsarian air.”

“You understand, of course?”

They smiled, blushed, nodded and patently did not understand.

As it turned out what she wanted was as incongruous as her voluminous desires would have been in the garden of innocence itself.

One was to enter the house through a conservatory constructed of cedar, the pillars of which would be sculpted, at her instruction, in the manner of “pineapple palms”…

“But pineapples grow on plants…” architect A began.

“Great pineapple palms as they have in the Caribbean.” she continued over him without hesitating over a syllable.

Once inside the glasshouse all would be replete with planting of citruses, a pair of ‘melon palms’, a large aquatic feature: she was thinking “The Hanging Water Gardens of Babylon”, with a pond lily floating somewhere to announce “classical symmetry”.

There must be flowers too, “all the time”, tuberose, mimosa blossoms (“do they hang from a tree?”), jasmine, roses and something for an “an Oriental twist”… lotus.

“But mainly tuberose and mimosa”, she impressed.

Of course, she didn’t really mind if it was all “really, real”, no “just real enough” would do.

So they set about their task, building her a botanical garden to rival Kew, all as vestibule to house that was, as of yet, little more than a shell.

Taking her at her word, they took liberties with fact.

Home grown pineapples were flown in from Hawaii to ‘grow’ on cedar palm trees where they were placed by the staff daily.

Plastic cantaloupe melons hung like coconuts from their sandalwood arboreal sisters around a Thai style pool with a fake porcelain floating flower at its centre.

Ah yes, the ‘lily’: it doubled as a fountain pouring fourth liquid scented with genuine imitation Eqyptian lotus oil from a store back East, no one, not even she, remembered why.

The tuberose at least were real, though not really growing as they were pre-cut and sat in vases of water concealed in the wood flake ‘not-soil’: they were refreshed twice weekly by a contract florist from Downtown.

The Mimosa trees (truly they were acacias, but by this point who was to worry) were “really real”, even so they needed a little help and were dusted with scented yellow confetti out of season so that they remained forever in bloom.

Only poor patchouli, lurking around the shady corners, concealing the machinery of this ‘natural’ wonder needed no assistance.

With space and moisture enough to expand, it reverted to family type and grew mint-like: extravagant and everywhere.

The whole effect was a Technicolor triumph: an unreal vision of Eden worthy of the Fox back lot.

But she loved it.

Loved it and lavished on it the thousands it cost to keep the whole unholy show on the road.

And what if the rest of the house never got finished? What if she was banished to play endless comeback shows to pay for whole charade?

Hell, it was worth it for pineapple palm trees and ever flowering mimosa.

Cacharel’s Eden is to perfumery as Carmen Miranda’s headgear was to millinery.

It is a triumph of structural engineering and sheer chutzpah over anything so petty and awful as good taste.

It is a vibrant, vulgar, un-beautifully brash affair and utterly brilliant with it.

The briefest opening of mandarin, peach and citrus is busied out of the way by a giant over ripe pineapple aroma that will see the composition through.

This is no mean achievement for this prince among fruits is joined by practically every other note that the nose can think of… acacia blossom in abundance, tuberose on top, some water lily, which, whatever it may have been intended to smell of, has the effect of adding sweetness.

There is a determined jasmine to keep the whole confection from toppling over, more blossom, a pyramid of melon balls, a little rose and a definitely discernible lily of the valley.

All of them fake.

All self-conscious olfactory effigies, designed to smell enough like but not just like the things they resemble.

All for magnificent effect.

Rumbling underneath keeping things just green and strange enough is an actually not too artificial patchouli that will assist with the segue into a wood-effect finish.

This fragrance has as much to do with that first garden as Henri Rousseau’s primitive Parisian pictures have with the actual jungle.

But like those fantastical visual musings that are in paint what this is in perfume, taken as a whole this Eden is seriously unsettling, disarmingly whimsical, magical even, and utterly unlike anything else.

Unique and strangely splendid.

Like jungles in Paris.

Of course men and women can live in Parisian jungles, but they will need to be advised that their experiences may well be with them for a long time into the future.

This is a fragrance with a half life seemingly longer than uranium…

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Wednesday, 10 April, 2013 · 11:47 pm

Our Lady of the Knives Diorella by Dior The Perfumed Dandy’s Scented Letter 

Every artist has a shining sliver of ice lodged in their heart.

Every part of her is artist.

She, though, does not work with brushes or staves, instead with blades.

Knives as sharp and flexible as her clear soul cut infallibly through each pitch perfect ingredient preparing the meticulous meals she insists on serving outdoors once sunshine comes.

Sashimis, ceviches and carpaccios so fresh they deceive as clean flesh and not fish and fruit they are.

All served with lemon herb dressings on long oblong green glass platters, amongst plain vases filled with honeysuckle stems.

Her kitchen, open to the elements and curious eyes alike, is at the centre of a moss lawn.

She, in impeccable whites, is at its centre commanding circling sous chefs to: tweak starched table clothes, excite palettes with unexpected basil, rearrange tabletop arrangements of jasmine and red carnations, pass around cleansing melon millefeuille entr’acte.

If any apparent fracture in her composure appears, the fissure is mere momentary illusion, she huffs to her herbaceous borders simply to hasten patchouli plants into perfume and achieve aromatic perfection for her paying clientele.

The meal ends with a peach desert as peerless as the operatic dame soprano whose name it bears.

Our lady of the knives acknowledges her audience.

Taking a curtain call on her kitchen stage she is all curtsies clutching a bouquet of cutting edges.

Diorella by Dior is no chef d’oeuvre to be trifled with.

An exacting, precise, cerebral perfume it is not a work but an embodiment of art.

Taking the basic chypre recipe and deploying Occam’s razor all fat is removed, all excess skimmed off: only lean muscle, fresh peeled fruit and salient floral seasoning remain.

The bill of fare may be read as unremarkable: lemon, oakmoss, basil, bergamot, a melodius melon, a few greens, a soft peach and a sprig or two of patchouli.

Oh, and that heart rending honeysuckle.

But each part is of the highest quality and it is the genius of their deployment, not the pretensions of their provenance that, gives the dishes as served their unrivalled effect.

The courses run sparkling citrus, through green floral heart to fruit and soil conclusion flawlessly.

Everything because of a single genius.

There is no man or woman in the kitchen, merely the one in charge in whites.

Diorella is Chef.

The Perfumed Dandy is lucky enough to own an older version of Diorella. The current reconstruction is a different, happy lemon sort of a scent, though not entirely to be sniffed at.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Tuesday, 9 April, 2013 · 7:00 pm

Spring is in the air… Part II: Lily of the Valley… The Perfumed Dandy’s Seasonal Selection

Dear Friends

It was always my intention to turn my musings to muguet.

Then dear Ginza at The Black Narcissus sent through an invitation to dance that I simply couldn’t refuse.

Hence here are my Lilies of the Valley, the most delicate and fleeting of flowers, ready for their foxtrot, paso or pas des deux.

Blooms for a Spring wedding or “La Fete du Muguet” perhaps, but as much about consummation and physical labour as matrimony and May Day, at least so far as The Perfumed Dandy is concerned…

1. Odalisque by Parfums de Nicolai

A strange way to start some might say, for Odalisque is an olfactory oddity: a muguet chypre.

The outsider intent of the scent continues in the blending too: it is so beautifully blurred that beyond the tart tangerine opening some people struggle to locate both lily of the valley and bitter oakmoss in this little wonder.

They are there however and in abundance; but the moss is softened to a lawn and the muguet, lifted slightly by jasmine and made more spreadable by orris root, assumes a cloud like composure floating above the composition.

Lacking the darkness of patchouli or the chilly chalk of galbanum, this could be argued not to be a true chypre at all.

Whatever the taxonomy, Odalisque is a truly engaging fragrance, with the sensation and refreshment of morning dew about it.

2. Lily of the Valley by Yardley

Quite simply citron presse meets lily of the valley.

This light, citrus, sharp yet slightly sweet muguet is a debonair, or perhaps, debutante’s delight.

It speaks of an uncomplicated antique freshness in a manner which is totally alien to tiresome modern laundry and ocean fragrances.

Sometimes it’s oddly sporting, in a lawn tennis and croquet sort of a way and on other occasions bizarrely soporific and a kind of ‘clean and ready for bed’ feeling abounds.

Frankly this is a bit of an all purpose spray for The Perfumed Dandy, though not one that takes itself or expects you to take it too seriously..

3. Silences by Jacomo

“Silences by Jacomo is a perfume that particularly deserves to be talked about, a hush that demands to be broken.”

But why you may ask would this glorious green be included in a list of lilies of the valley?

The answer lies in the vintage version…

“The opening itself is quite special, a surprising cool breeze of aldehydic muguet, shot through with sharp lemon. Be alert though, for in this changeable spring day of a scent it is gone tantalisingly too soon.”

That devilishly diverting opening would almost be worthy of a place in this set of sic on its own, but a little layering with a classic muguet takes this Jacomo gem into an entirely different realm.

Could Silences plus Yardley be the brightest, greenest lily The Perfumed Dandy‘s ever seen?

For more on Jacomo’s Silences do browse my recent review.

4. Diorissimo by Dior

“Diorissomo is one of the most discretely but decidedly sexual of all scents.”

If silences starts with a hint then this is a great mass of aldehydic muguet, the parfumeurs’ sleight of hand for the seemingly innocent Lily of the Valley.

“But like the flower carried by wealthy brides on their wedding day, this scent conceals deeper and more animal pleasures beneath its surface of propriety and cleanliness.”

I could wax lyrical all day about the naughtiness of this particular interpretation of virginal innocence, in fact I already have in my reflections on Diorissimo

Oh and what luck.. my new vintage supply arrived today!!

5. Forest Rain by Kiehl’s

Perhaps better known for their potions, lotions, conditioners and shampoos, Kiehl’s boast a small but now and again lovely perfume range.

Their “Musk” and “Fig and Sage” scents both feature in The Perfumed Dandy‘s personal collection and this forest floor floral is set to follow as soon as the pennies can be collected together.

It’s actually a pretty simple but rather unique and neat aroma.

An opening of vetiver and musk, with perhaps the merest hint of violet leaf and spice it gives way to a delicate skin scent muguet that proves a little more robust than its initially fragile demeanour would have one believe.

This could be one to convince gentlemen that who feel lily of the valley may not savage enough for them to give the flower a go!

6. Muguet du Bondeur by Caron

IMG_20140405_102106

The thrice milled soapiness of Caron’s Muguet seems to send people speeding away from a scent they consider to carry too much of the maiden aunt about it.

I’m sure the fact that Queen Elizabeth II is said to have worn it on her Coronation Day over sixty years ago and that the 88 year old Sovereign still sports it today is unlikely to gain it much capital in the cool stakes.

Nevertheless, this is the royalty of savon scents, an immaculately made bath in bottle that is splendidly calming and always leaves feel regally clean.

The Extra Special Extra Scent… Muguet (2013) by Guerlain

Why not include the Guerlain in the main list?

Well, even though it officially contains only a single note, this once a year curiosity, released in a new flacon in time for the “Fete du Muguet” on May 1st varies from spring to spring.

Whether this year’s incarnation of the perfume composed by Thierry Wasser and available in just a few days will measure up to it’s predecessors is still, therefore, a matter of conjecture.

However, The Perfumed Dandy can think off no more suitable a scent to celebrate that most ceremonially significant of flowers the muguet than the ultimate occasion fragrance.

So this year perhaps you should, as the fancier French do, buy a bottle for someone close to you this May Day?

And there we have it my lovelies.

The most delightful and yet most deceptive of scents, for remember there is no such thing as a true muguet in all perfumery.

No essence of Lily of the Valley exists, everything is a chemist’s conjuring trick!

So concludes second half dozen (plus one) from my seasonal selection.

Violets and Lilies of the Valley done, what note will follow next..?

There are still four more to come!

Here’s to a climatically more comforting week.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Sunday, 7 April, 2013 · 8:30 pm

Spring is in the air… Part I: April Violets… The Perfumed Dandy’s Seasonal Selection

Dear Friends

First it was some prompting from Portia, the doyenne of Australian Perfume Junkies.

Then the sunshine appeared and the temperatures in London rose above 10 degrees for seemingly the first time this year.

Oh, and of course our clocks just shifted seven days ago, telling us all in dear old Blighty that we are now in “British Summer Time”.

But what sealed for certain it was the The Dandy peeking his first violet of the season on his perambulations this Sunday afternoon.

So, my cherubs, here is the first part of The Perfumed Dandy’s Seasonal Seasonal Selection for Spring: six very lovely violet hued scents…

1. Aimez Moi by Caron

And why on Earth should one not love this sumptuous scent from Caron?

Well, some find it a fusty, feisty sort off thing… a little detached.

The Dandy says she needs a little time: get to know her and you will be handsomely rewarded by a truly spicy violet that has a decided something of the boudoir about her.

2. Jolie Madame by Balmain

“It all starts with a phalanx of surprisingly savoury sweet violets.”

“It is a more careworn and perhaps caring sort of scent, one which seeks not to portray a perfected idea of the world but rather to suggest memories and make associations that are more real and realistically rough edged and imperfect.”

To read The Dandy‘s more extensive thoughts on this wonderfully rich mix of violet, leather and memory, visit the review.

3. Feerie by Van Cleef & Arpels

An ever so slightly curious and delicate delight.

This starts as a subtle sugar water that holds a hint of Parma Violet sweets underscored and offset by powdery iris and a sharp cassis.

Over time it gradually grows into a splendid early summer rose with a hint of vetiver for sophistication’s sake.

A turn of seasons in a single scent.

4. April Violets by Yardley

The Dandy is quite determined that this royal and ancient perfume house should not disappear due to neglect and lack of knowledge.

Why? Because they produce fragrances as fantastic as this astonishingly unsubtle floral explosion.

If there is a hint of violet candy about the Van Cleef, then this one is like having a whole packet in your mouth at once and then inhaling deeply.

It’s fun, but only for a short while… which is just as well as there’s a change in the dry down to a deeply Victorian powder puff and corset perfume that is like drinking in sweet tea and out of date morality.

Not to everyone’s taste, but for the price it’s worth it for the ride.

5. L’Essence by Cristobal Balenciaga

“A light airy perfume resembling the half remembered memories of an evening perilously misspent.”

“Opening with an unexpected and unmentioned citrus jam note, the fragrance is soon subsumed into a vast array of flowers, all violets.

“One could be deceived for thinking this the scent of a simple and straightforward young woman. That would be a mistake.”

To see the details of what The Dandy had to say about this perfume of hidden depths you can visit the review.

6. L’Hommage a L’Homme by Lalique

Of course oud is omnipresent in male perfumery, almost to the point of tedium.

But with the worthy exception of Juliette Has A Gun, houses have been, so far, quite sparing in its use in ‘feminine’ fragrances.

Lalique‘s impeccably made perfume is a deft marriage of agarwood with violet, for once allowing the flower to take the lead.

To The Dandy’s nose, this scent with it’s twist of black pepper and sublime saffron undertone would sit quite surprisingly well on a woman’s skin.

And there we have it my lovelies.

The first half dozen from my seasonal selection.

Violet down, what note will follow next..?

There are five more to come!

Here’s to a climatically more comforting week.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Saturday, 6 April, 2013 · 10:17 pm

Heavens! It’s 20 scents more one never knew a man could wear?! The Perfumed Dandy’s Library Catalogue #7

Has The Perfumed Dandy mentioned that since starting out on his amazing adventure in the Wicked Wild West that is the World of Women’s Perfume he has amassed from dear readers an astonishing array of now over 500 suggestions of once forbidden ‘female fragrances’ that you consider fit for a gentleman to wear?

Well, The Dandy has most certainly mentioned it now!

Being ever one to share both the love and the wisdom, I have taken it upon myself to spread cognisance of these suggested scents far and wide each Saturday (this week Easter arrived and so the post has been delayed until now).

Such is the premise of our weekly peek inside the The Perfume Dandy’s Library Catalogue.

What follows is the seventh installment of ’20 scents one never knew a man could wear’ that may tickle either your fancy or your funny bone…

If you would like to further the cause of one of the fragrances, getting it a step closer to the dizzying heights of The Perfumed Dandy’s Hit Parade kindly respondez-vous to this post.

Alternatively if you believe you have the perfect perfume for The Dandy but can’t see it listed below simply visit ‘Suggest a new scent or recommend an old one’ to put the name forward.

Allons-y!!

1. DSQUARED² She Wood

The original She Wood from a brand that seems to inspire almost religious devotion among some.

Violet, heliotrope and cedar, is it as straightfowardly lovely as it sounds?

2. Dior Cruise Collection Escale a Portofino

The Dandy has heard people speak of the Cruise Collection in hallowed terms, and the perfume they always point to as the fines seems to be this one.

Reading like a complex cologne formulation bordering on an aromatic, this one reads like a light but intriguing beauty, is it?

3. Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Laurier Reglisse

A true cologne based on bay, bergamot and galbanum.

But is it a perfume fit for a laureate?

4. Guerlain Eau de Cologne Imperiale

Really? The Dandy has a real question as to whether this can be regarded as even marketed to the ‘fairer sex’.

Unisex, no?

Any thoughts?

5. Calvin Klein Secret Obsession

Is The Dandy alone in finding this flacon strangely wondrous? Like a decidedly lovely relic of the 1970s.

Please, please let the contents be better than those of the current version of this personality disorder of a perfume!

6. Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass

Did you know this is apparently one of Queen Elizabeth II’s standbys? Surreal, but The Dandy has it on good authority to be true.

Is it my patriotic duty to give this aldehydic near fougere curiosity a spray?

7. Givenchy L`Interdit

An all time classic one is always led to believe.

A favourite of one of the most beautiful women who has ever lived.

Any reason why it’s now to be avoided?

8. Bill Blass Basic Black

The Dandy knows a certain someone who is often to be found on these parts who can’t stand this… is the feeling universal?

9. Jean-Louis Scherrer Jean-Louis Scherrer

A greener than green, oakmoss heavy, aldehyde. My this sounds divine.

Why had The Dandy never heard of this before? Had you?

10. Joop! Joop! Le Bain

An 80s floriental powerhouse that goes heavy on the vanilla.

Will someone save The Dandy from this fate?

11. Tom Ford White Patchouli

White flowers and patchouli, though apparently not overpoweringly so.

The Dandy really can;t get excited about this, is there any reason why he should?

12. Cristobal Balenciaga Rumba

Honeyed leather married with oakmoss and array of fruits and flowers, mostly a prominent plum

It sounds intriguing, but equally as though it could go terribly awry.. Good? Bad? Ugly?

13. Kenzo Flower by Kenzo Oriental

The amazing success of the original flower led to a whole bouquet of flanks, with blooms of variable quality.

Is this a stunning stem or drooping head?

14. Fifi Chachnil Fifi Chachnil

Putting appearances aside, this seems to have all the makings of a scent to cross the gender divide.

Does, in fact, the central tobacco note render this one too ‘macho’ for many a modern woman?

15. Guerlain Insolence

Guerlain‘s “need” to “go after the younger market” is well documented and exemplified ably in La Petite Robe Noire.

Before that there was Insolence, is it really the act of desecration its name would suggest?

16. Gucci Gucci Rush

My goodness, this was just everywhere in the 1990s and The Dandy remember quite a few men wearing both this and the white “male” one…

Has the rush passed with the first flush of youth or has this stood the test of time?

17. Thierry Mugler The Taste of Fragrance Womanity

From the house of a 1001 flankers…

Can one even be bothered? Should one even be bothered?

18. Thierry Mugler The Taste of Fragrance Angel

This one, apparently, adds more chocolate to the original…

Why?

What next? Sands to Arabia?

19. Arquiste Flor y Canto

Technicolor tuberose in a surround screen floral experience.

Not so much a bouquet of blooms as a floriculturalist’s fantasy.

Is The Dandy man enough for this one?

20. Etat Libre d`Orange Tilda Swinton Like This

Long before Herr Lagerfeld clutched Tilda to his betweeded breast, The Dandy was an enormous fan of this great Scottish icon.

Surely nothing that Tilda likes could possibly be anything less than brilliant?

What a wonderful niche note to end our selection on.

Now, I know I’m repeating myself but… If you would like to further the cause of one of the fragrances, getting it a step closer the dizzying heights of The Perfumed Dandy’s Hit Parade kindly respondez-vous to this post.

Alternatively if you believe you have the perfect perfume for The Dandy but can’t see it listed below simply visit ‘Suggest a new scent or recommend an old one’ to put the name forward.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Friday, 5 April, 2013 · 11:39 pm

Laboratory Royalty… Balmain de Balmain The Perfumed Dandy’s Scented Letter

She is the undiscovered royalty of the fragrance laboratory.

The Marie Curie of the sweetly scented branch of industrial chemistry.

She is the most beautiful of all ball gowns though her beauty by habit remains hidden beneath a white coat and horrid blue hairnet.

She spends her sterilized days, so people imagine, enrapt in endless games of molecular quadrille.

In truth, she runs wild.

Her mind will not have its horizons trimmed by test tubes, its considerations cut short by condensing pipes, its brilliance scorched back by bunsen burners.

Where others perceive formulae she drinks in blackcurrant bush leaves broken by urgent brutish hands.

The colourless liquids frothing up into clouds in conical flasks are putative rains for dark, lichen-mapped forests as yet unleashed.

She will see measuring cylinders stuffed with irises and glass beakers fulled to the brim with green galbanum before day ends.

Her chemist’s kitchen thus transformed to wooded wonderland, she will imagine herself a savanna to surround her magic kingdom.

This sorceress is sovereign over the sense whose memories last longest.

She needs no acts of exuberant appreciation, no adulatory audience.

Her majesty is the air around her.

Balmain de Balmain is not so much a forgotten masterpiece as a triumph never known to the crowd at all.

In parfum form, this is a brave and emerald brilliant latter day chypre.

Wasting no time on ceremonial openings it immediately erects an expansive architecture of oakmoss, vetiver, cassis leaf and black pepper.

Between these great steal vaults of scent creep slow swathes of green glass galbanum: filtering the sun’s light and lending a slight bitter hue to fleshy iris, feint rose and just visible jasmine.

It is a structure built to last.

The overall effect at once luxurious and imperiously restrained.

She is a still young beauty lamenting her dead and gone beloved, but she is not yet ready to be a dowager.

The King is dead.

Long live the Queen Regnant of aromachemistry.

Had the roles been reversed and the King been made a widower, this would have made as handsome a scent for him in his sorrow.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Thursday, 4 April, 2013 · 11:07 pm

The Quiet Scientist… Silences by Jacomo The Perfumed Dandy’s Scented Letter 

She made for quite a sight hurtling down the hillside on her sledge long after the snows had gone.

She didn’t care.

Her sleigh, as she had taken to calling it, was the fastest way from home to forest whether it was the ice of winter or the wet grass of spring under her.

Its hand polished soft wood frame, lustrous with the cool green lemon resin that she lavished upon it, cut a seamstresses swathe through the fields. She took the shortest route in the least time so as to waste none of the fabric of the day.

April showers and unseasonal warmth had brought forth a scattering of lily of the valley: with an outstretched arm she snaffled a few and tossed them into her basket without stopping or even deviating from the line of descent.

Arriving at the woodland’s edge she dismounted, wiped the cold compressed grass from her trusty steed’s blades, inhaled its bitter and brand new odour then wrapped the handful of green into tissue paper before placing it beside the muguet.

Once beneath the canopy, in dappled light and shade, her search began in earnest.

It was time for the first bluebells of the year, and she had determined to find them.

Hyacinthoides non-sctipta (how she preferred the old name of Endymion), always smell best when caught early, as though the first flush having pushed themselves so forcefully to the front are breathless and exhale their scent with a more serious ardour than later blooms.

She chanced upon them almost immediately, their hue picked out in bright watery sunlight, glowing in an otherwise out of focus glade.

She held them to her nose and was not disappointed, an innocent and uncloying sweetness, that charmed instantly. Carefully she consigned them to her carry all and prepared to climb home with her precious haul.

Then something tugged at her sense: a shaper darker smell, of trees and roots, growth and decay.

Extracting the scalpel from her lab coat pocket, she scraped a little moss from the base of a great oak, careful not to take too much, careful not to disturb the fragile colony too much lest she destroy it.

No need this time take the crop close to her face, its pungent scent reached her from the basket where it now sat.

There was another aroma too, besides the unseasonal tea rose and the wild yellow iris, but it was not until the rain came, brisk and businesslike, that it revealed itself. As she trampled a path through the undergrowth, she flattened, with the purpose of disarming them, a small cluster of nettles.

They responded not with a stinging rash, but an early smell of the next season. The scent was savoury, sodden yet sun bleached, swarthy and still clean: it was the presentiment of an English summer.

She longed to take armfuls back, but contented herself with a gloved handful or two.

And so she began her return: clambering through the already tall meadows, deep in thought as wild grasses brushed against her.

All the time considering how to turn these things collected from nature into chemicals and then how to compose them into black bottled magic.

Silences by Jacomo is a perfume that particularly deserves to be talked about, a hush that demands to be broken.

It is a glorious green, replete with floral abundance, a masterful but restrained use of moss and an uncontained herbaceous feature that is more centrepiece than border.

It is an exercise in apparently effortless formality and clear-sightedly brilliant composition.

The opening itself is quite special, a surprising cool breeze of aldehydic muguet, shot through with sharp lemon. Be alert though, for in this changeable spring day of a scent it is gone tantalisingly too soon.

Before any hint of disappointment can possibly set in at the loss of this commencement a tiered heart begins to emerge.

First the green chalk sour of galbanum arrives, only to be splendidly offset by the slight sweetness of hyacinths and more distantly rose and little iris.

Shortly after a late developing but rather beautiful and restrained oakmoss makes its entrance, providing a benign bitterness that allows the other notes to float more freely above.

Then, a product perhaps of this combination, or of the appearance of vetiver, cedar and ambrette in the base, a wonderfully natural accord of summer undergrowth, of stinging nettles in particular, comes to the fore.

This is a truly evocative aroma that carries with it the alternate heat and downpours, pleasures and pains of a temperamental temperate summer.

Silences, then, is a scent that contains two seasons, in one day and a single flacon.

And there we have a statement that should give you an impression of the tremendous scale of this achievement.

Sledges, forests, amateur botany and professional chemistry are pass times as fit for boys as girls.

With special thanks to the dear correspondent who provided The Dandy with a sample of this perfume in the vintage formulation.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Wednesday, 3 April, 2013 · 3:30 pm

Sacred and profane… Nu by Yves Saint Laurent The Perfumed Dandy’s Scented Letter

Is this the New Religion?

If so, he is on the very cusp of being converted.

A work of worship, it started in an ante chamber with an Eastern rite of purification: an almost overwhelming and unexpected crescendo of cardamon.

In ecstasy the assembled are encouraged to give up residual resentments, forgo bitterness with a sweetness bought by bergamot rubbed briefly across your brow by way of blessing.

Progressing to the main hall of the temple you find the central act of adoration perpetually in motion.

True incense, that is frankincense, oil of olibanum, is caressed across the nape of your neck by a true believer.

Others of his brethren throw precious petals persistently into the air.

Arms like widmills in snow storms of the imagination, they create constant flurries out of jasmine and orchid clouds.

So commences the final act of complete consummation.

Recalling Roman ritual, that spice they valued most and which the contemporary world has made mere condiment, is wholly and wholeheartedly invoked.

Rich imperial pepper.

Of strange quality and quantities un-experienced for centuries it stimulates and eroticises the whole holy throng.

It’s intoxication invigorates incandescent adherents onwards to the climax of their idolatry.

Collective carnal embrace.

In the room beyond, you attempt to gather in your dignity and thoughts; foraging through feelings and folds of skin for meaning.

Your body is smoothed by suplicants with sandalwood oil whilst they replace your robes.

Only one question remains:

Are you fallen or have you joined the faithful?

A truly sacred and profane perfume Nu by Yves Saint Laurent is probably best summed up by the phrase ‘orgy in the temple’.

The original fragrance, prior to its recent repackaging and relaunch, mixes the conventions of Eastern and Western olfactory worship: opening with olibanum, cardamon and bergamot giving way to oriental florals.

It then proceeds to an highly sexualised heart; all pagan pepper and more frankincense this time with animalic musk.

This fragrant frenzy persists for a truly improper period, and is decidedly Tantric in its staying power especially in the much much to be preferred Eau de Parfum.

In both the drydown is sandalwood soft and gently reflective, possibly tinged with a subtle regret or is it a passion hangover?

Who cares? Strip away away the symbolism and everyone’s in this one for the ride!

Unisex?

Bi-sexual more like. And even that might be a little limiting!

I don’t think this one’s too fussy about all those fuzzy male female distinctions…

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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Tuesday, 2 April, 2013 · 9:45 pm

Golly! It’s 20 scents more one never knew a man could wear!! The Perfumed Dandy’s Library Catalogue #6

Has The Perfumed Dandy mentioned that since starting out on his amazing adventure in the Wicked Wild West that is the World of Women’s Perfume he has amassed from dear readers an astonishing array of now over 500 suggestions of once forbidden ‘female fragrances’ that you consider fit for a gentleman to wear?

Well, The Dandy has most certainly mentioned it now!

Being ever one to share both the love and the wisdom, I have taken it upon myself to spread cognisance of these suggested scents far and wide each Saturday (this week Easter arrived and so the post has been delayed until now).

Such is the premise of our weekly peek inside the The Perfume Dandy’s Library Catalogue.

What follows is the sixth installment of ’20 scents one never knew a man could wear’ that may tickle either your fancy or your funny bone…

If you would like to further the cause of one of the fragrances, getting it a step closer to the dizzying heights of The Perfumed Dandy’s Hit Parade kindly respondez-vous to this post.

Alternatively if you believe you have the perfect perfume for The Dandy but can’t see it listed below simply visit ‘Suggest a new scent or recommend an old one’ to put the name forward.

Allons-y!!

1. Diesel Loverdose

“Anise, Anise… Oh with your heart so”… err… purple.

Apologies to Blondie.

Is this liqorice all sort a sweetie?

2. Jessica Simpson Fancy

Jessica’s Fancy Nights has been kicking around on The Hit Parade for so long it’s beginning to feel like a bit of the furniture.

Will the original join the flanker?

3. Givenchy Play For Her Intense

Interesting. A female flanker to a successful ‘pour homme’.

I have to say The Dandy doesn’t take much to the packaging on this one… I’m not the console sort.

Does this game merit the playing?

4. Avon Haiku

Avon perfumes are a mystery to The Dandy…

To be frank, Avon is something of a mystery to me.

I cant help thinking that in the normal course of affairs I’m more likely to meet a secret agent than and Avon lady.

Will your support change all of that?

I do rather like short Japanese verse…

5. The Body Shop Woody Sandalwood Perfume Oil

Goodness, do they still make this?

Only recently I was bemoaning the demise of The Body Shop‘s scent bar. Perhaps, unlikely as it would seem, this is the last survivor…

6. Prada L`Eau Ambree

Prada perfumes always seem to land The Dandy in hot water.

You see I am with one or two exceptions as yet unconvinced, finding them cool to the point of clinical.

Will this resinous patchouli change my mind?

7. Christian Lacroix C`est la Fete Patchouli

Another balmy patchouli, this time supposedly slightly darker…

Could this be the first Lacroix to cross The Dandy‘s path?

8. Amouage Lyric Woman

Cardamon, incense, rose… this sounds absolutely delightful.

Could anything go wrong?

9. Victoria`s Secret Bombshell

Can this really be as vulgar as its advertising?

10. Kate Moss Velvet Hour

Inexplicably, Ms Moss doesn’t look much like herself on the advertising for the perfume that bears her name…

Does she want to disassociate herself from this fragrance, or is it a discounters’ delight?

11. Caron Aimez – Moi

The Dandy is amazed that this perfume should have gone so unloved by you all…

Caron, Violets, Cardamon… surely everything is in place for an elegant scent for a gent?

12. Mirror Mirror Collection – Miroir des Voluptes Thierry Mugler

A beautiful flacon and an orange flower, oud and tobacco composition that has set The Dandy‘s mind a racing.

Another house I’ve never really gotten into bed with, as ’twere.

Will this smokey number prove to be my first romantic engagement with a Thierry?

13. Agent Provocateur Agent Provocateur

Despite being somewhat overlooked upon its release, this saucy number has won a devoted following for its powerful musky rose.

Will The Dandy be led astray by this seditious and seductive scent?

14. Potter and Moore Spiced Tuberose and Orchid

One The Dandy had for a long while without even realising it wasn’t meant for a gent.

A simple sort of scent, but could this cologne-like duoflore be the thing for Spring?

15. Versace Blonde

A veritable festival of white florals and animalics.

Could this be a perfume to ride on the wave of The Dandy’s new found favourite flower, the tuberose?

16. Miller Harris Noix de Tubereuse

This wave of tuberose is turning into a tsunami!

Here we have a resinous variant, will it prove as pleasing to The Dandy’s nose as some of the others?

17. Mont Blanc Présence d’une femme

Belying its space age appearance, something of a house style at Mont Blanc, this reads like a classic wood and patchouli perfume with a little vanilla to complete the accord.

The question as ever with these simple scents is… how well is this one done?

18. L`Occitane en Provence Amber

Am I alone in having assumed that this handsome retro-styled bottle contained a unisex scent?

Is there anything about this amber that means that a man shouldn’t wear it?

More to the point is there any reason why anyone would want to spray this on?

19. DSQUARED² She Wood Velvet Forest Wood

The Dandy has never been very good at maths, perhaps that’s why he’s really not at all familiar with this brand.

Should I be tempted to try this coniferous green?

20. DSQUARED² She Wood Crystal Creek Wood

Eau no (sorry all) not water notes!!

Though he loves nothing betting than the actual stuff, water themed perfumes have never pleased The Dandy.

Is it possible that this violet-laden fragrance will change my mind?

Now, I know I’m repeating myself but… If you would like to further the cause of one of the fragrances, getting it a step closer the dizzying heights of The Perfumed Dandy’s Hit Parade kindly respondez-vous to this post.

Alternatively if you believe you have the perfect perfume for The Dandy but can’t see it listed below simply visit ‘Suggest a new scent or recommend an old one’ to put the name forward.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

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