Bulgari - Black

Urban cool

This is another one of my favourite perfumes, and I bought it for a bargain price. Luca Turin gives it five stars and calls it one of the "great emancipated fragrances of all time." Annick Medardo created something truly new in perfumery with Black, there is nothing else on the market that smells like this and Bulgari no longer offers it, which is crazy, so if you want to try it you'll have to search for a bottle.

Black has a hint of bergamot in the top notes, then becomes linear with a smoky black tea, a wood note, and a non-sweet, very smooth vanilla. If you've never tried smoke and vanilla together, you must, it is an incredible combination. But the smoke note in Black is a shape-shifter, it changes from minute to minute. Smoke becomes black rubber, like tires on the pavement. Sometimes it smells of black leather, like a motorcycle jacket. Through the smoke and rubber and leather twists a ribbon of sheer vanilla, like your biker is eating an ice-cream cone.

Black is unisex, a masterpiece and increasingly rare. If you love perfume, I highly recommend picking it up while you still can.

House: Bulgari
Nose: Annick Menardo
Notes:
Top: tea, bergamot
Middle: sandalwood, cedar, jasmine
Base: leather, amber, musk, vanilla

Graphic: LayoutSparks.com

Ayala Moriel - Espionage and Rainforest

A spy walks in the forest

I'm not that familiar with natural perfumes. Ayala Moriel creates ready to wear and bespoke natural perfumes from pure botanical essences. Her perfumes start very strong, but mellow quickly and I was surprised at the complexity of the fragrances.

Espionage starts with a strong note of peat fire. A swirl of smoke and peat reminds me of whiskey, and maybe the person with the dram also has a lit cigar. After a few minutes the fire and smoke give way to a sweet vanilla and tobacco that lasts a long time. Very nice.

Rainforest starts with a strong mossy green with undertones of leaves and mulch. It is amazingly like walking in a forest, with the leaves and dirt under your feet and the trees dripping with water around you. After a few minutes an uplifting bergamot shines through like a beam of sunlight.

I smell green galbanum throughout the day, my favourite, and some rose in the heart. In the far drydown you can really smell the beautiful hay absolute. Gorgeous.

House: Ayala Moriel
Nose: Ayala Moriel

Notes:
Espionage: Ambrette (Musk) Seed , Bergamot , Guiacwood Jasmine Grandiflorum , Leather Notes, Orris Root Rose Otto (Turkey), Tabac Blond, Vanilla Absolute Virginia Cedarwood

Rainforest: Bergamot , Virginia Cedarwood, Orris Root, Pine , Rose Otto (Bulgaria), Rosewood, Spikenard, Spruce Black, Violet Leaf, Galbanum, Ginger, Hay Absolute, Juniper Berry, Oakmoss


Photos: ozjimbob and vladeb

Video - Perfumer Honorine Blanc

Perfumer Honorine Blanc, who collaborated on Yves Saint Laurent's Belle d'Opium, talks about her inspirations and creating perfumes that will endure.

Yves Saint Laurent - Belle d'Opium

A snuffed candle

Yves Saint Laurent launched its best-selling fragrance Opium, in 1977. It was one of the big iconic perfumes of the 80s, a fragrance that signified exoticism, mystery, danger and sensuality. Its popularity and its decadent scent trail inexorably led to a backlash against heady perfumes that I think we're still recovering from. 

So, in 2010, YSL released Belle d'Opium, the latest flanker to the famous oriental. The YSL web site says that it contains an "overdose of rare and precious ingredients to take extreme femininity to the limits of indecency." Ah, no. Belle d'Opium doesn't even get near my limits of indecency, but I do like it.


Belle d'Opium opens with white pepper, a hint of peach and some sandalwood from the base showing through. The heart of the perfume revolves around what they refer to as the "Nargileh accord" and incense. Nargileh is a tobacco water pipe (hookah is basically the same thing), like I described in Fumerie Turque. But I don't smell tobacco in Belle d'Opium. Instead the idea of a lazy curling column of smoke has been created with a smoky note that smells like a just-snuffed candle, with a touch of incense weaving through it. The bottle hints at this candle aspect with a red wick running through the middle.

Although "Casablanca Lily" is the flower that the marketing focuses on, I don't really smell lily either, which is a good thing by me.  Lily is one of the new "it" notes this season but not one of my favourite flowers. Belle d'Opium has a quiet, well-blended white floral bouquet, quite demure and nondescript actually, supporting the curling smoke heart. It's almost as if the fat, waxy petals of those flowers translate into the waxiness of white candles. The base is a musky wood with patchouli - pretty much the ubiquitous "new chypre" base.


Belle d'Opium is fairly quiet, staying close to the skin (unlike the original) and fading after a few hours. I'm disappointed that Belle d'Opium, with such a delicious list of notes, and marketing that promises an "overdose" of ingredients, is so tame to me, but that seems to be the way that the big main-stream perfumes are done these days. Truly "indecent" perfumes, or perfumes that dare to have sillage, still can only be found in the smaller niche lines.

But Belle d'Opium is pretty. I like wearing it. If I could get a big bottle inexpensively, I could see spraying this on liberally in the cooler months. I like to relax in those long dark evenings with candles burning and a cashmere wrap for cuddling. Belle d'Opium would be a good comfort scent for those casual evenings, shut away from the rest of the world, lolling about on the couch. Not unlike an opium den, actually.

House: Yves Saint Laurent
Nose: Honorine Blanc and Alberto Morillas
Notes: Sample card lists: Casablanca Lily, incense and Nargileh accord. OzMoz lists: top note: Mandarin Orange, Lily, Gardenia, White Flowers middle note: Frankincense, Peach, Pepper, Tabacco, Hookah Accord, Fruity Notes base note: Patchouli, Sandalwood, Smoky Notes, Amber


Photo: One of a series of photographs by Hungarian photojournalist Brassaï taken in Paris in the early 1930s. Via stevechasmar.

Tauer Perfumes - Lonestar Memories

Fall in love with a cowboy

Lean back against your saddle and warm your hands by the camp fire. The other day I posted a link to a news article about the new Bond No. 9 perfume Saks Fifth Avenue Texas, which doesn't seem to smell like Texas at all. But there is a perfect Texas perfume on the market already, Lonestar Memories by Tauer Perfumes. LM is an olfactory travel log, a smell-o-vision memory, of a night on the open range.

The Tauer web site calls LM "An ode on birchtar" and Andy Tauer, the Swiss perfumer who deeply loves Texas, calls it "cowboy in a bottle." And what a cowboy. This isn't a smooth urban player with a new pair of boots and a shiny buckle. This is the real deal – a man with a slow drawl, rough hands, and a fast horse. His jeans are dusty, he's been working outside all day, but he can build a fire, spread out a blanket for you under the stars and sing you to sleep.

Oh, my... where was I?  LM starts with the realistic smell of a camp fire – charred wood and smoke. After you get used to that, you start to notice grasses and sage brush – a dry, bitter and almost soapy smell. Then, everything gets a little warmer and sweeter and it develops the distinct smell of well-worn leather. I imagine a smooth brown saddle.

Lonestar Memories is a bit rough around the edges but I find the story it tells so masculine sexy, I want to date myself. My husband, who generally only likes to wear soap, may be getting stealth-perfumed with this one.

House: Tauer Perfumes
Nose: Andy Tauer
Notes: Head Notes: Green geranium, and spicy carrot seed blended with clary sage. Heart Notes: A rich smoky leather chord, with cistus and a hint of jasmine. Body Notes: The finest woods and balms from myrrh, tonka, vetiver and sandalwood.

Photo: Padams

The Smell of Summer

There is a town in north Ontario,
With dreams, comfort, memory to spare
And in my mind
I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.¹

Today was perfect. The kind of warm, sunny day that seems like a gift in Toronto - clear blue sky, no humidity. A perfect day to sit by the pool with a book, walk the dog down in the green grass between Old Fort York and the railway tracks or get some beer and something to BBQ tonight.

I got to thinking about summer and what I would put into a bottle of my perfect scent-of-summer perfume.

It would have to be focused around the smells of northern Ontario of my childhood. The head, heart and base would all revolve around a note of cool, deep green water with sunlight sparkling on top.

The head would include green foliage and the smell of the little orange jewelweed flowers that grow down by a creek. There would be the tang and creaminess of orangecicles and the wood of their dry, licked sticks.

The heart would be the smell of hot grass and clover, and tall queen anne's lace. Add in a touch of dust from the shoulder of a back-country road and some of the orange day lilies growing in the ditch beside it. There would also be a note of wild raspberry and the leaves of the twisted canes that grow beside the road. I can't forget to add the smell of a cedar dock, warmed by the sun but with damp patches shaped like your back. Notes of warm golden skin weave throughout.

As the drydown begins you would smell notes of sticky pine sap on bark, and dry pine needles. There would be a sense of airy space dappled by sunlight slanting low through tall quiet columns of light and shade like a hushed outdoor catherdral. At the base darkness falls and out comes moss and darker woods with a touch of wood smoke. The perfume ends with more of that minerally lake water from a late-night skinny dip.

Is it out there? Can someone make it for me?

¹ Neil Young, Helpless