// B L O T T E R //

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Scent Verse: Petrichor

I slept in my skin And it smelled just like whiskey. Whiskey and sleep When I'm sleeping in her. I awoke in a grout Between tiles, just like mildew. And it's dampened in here Like the sun never burned. I get hooked on the scent Of her sweat, a slight cumin; And the sweet wave expanse In the strands of her hair. Yet she's content in contempt Unaware that our fusion Has developed its senses And become self aware. So she slithers and shivers Flushing cold from the vision Seeping out of the pavement In the rain addled air. And there’s warmth to the concrete That gets splattered in patches Soaking up the plump raindrops As if there was none left to share.

-- First published on Basenotes.

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I just smelled some of the fragrances from The Different Company. And whilst I fully know that the brand is a culmination of several fantastic lineages and collective lifetimes of knowledge and work (the brand is brought to the world by such enigmatic perfumers like Jean Claude Ellena, Celine Ellena, Bertrand Duchaufour etc) what is so inspiring about them is how flawlessly sweet and ‘finished’ they all are on paper. They’re masterstrokes. So well balanced, each so soft but diffusive and oh so perfectly rounded. There’s no jutting peaks of raw materials or indulgent material overdoses. Everything is just so smooth and rested and enriched. 

Of course on skin they do switch pace and tone but they do so without losing a beat of their first paper impression. They keep that profile but it’s the skin that adds more. More depth and a different kind of definition.  Q: Are they too rounded? Given the amount of time I imagine they were worked on, are they fraught and over thought? Or is it me that is overthinking the perfumer’s craft? After all isn’t the whole idea to create something perfect and rounded and COMPLETE?

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A bit of a bolt of the obvious here: realising that vanillin is WAY more important to a blend than I’d ever previously comprehended.

Must illicit tests ASAP to find the biting point between that and coumarin. Find the perfect blend of the vanilla longevity and the dry, hay-like, almost ashen powder point of the essence of the tonka bean. And more than that, perhaps there’s ample legs in a three-way experiment involving vanillin, coumarin and the 20% tonka bean tincture I made some time ago? Perhaps the vanillin would soften that burning note of alcohol I get in the opening from the tincture that’s made it so off-putting up until now?

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Ideo’s Prison Blues is a gorgeously playful perfume that manages to be light and yet deeply distinguished at the same time. At once sparkling with citrus, cardamom and the nascent fizz of heavily diluted aldehydes it also plumbs the depths of conventional spiced refinery by using it’s bastardised bay rose, cloves and the slight cola cube sweetness of geranium on top of that impossibly woody backbone (that is most probably derived from one of those unbelievably dry smelling wonder wood chemicals like norlimbanol). It’s a rose perfume that comes in disguise; a composition that does a lot to prove that a rose doesn’t have to be all rouge and powder or Grandmother chic.

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Building a range of fully realised perfumes from exactly the same blend of musks and overly weighty molecules is the sort of brand ideology that appeals as much to a casual sense of geeky curiosity as it does one’s nose. And sure, Jeroboam's range of five extraits do all smell wonderfully unique in isolation, but it's by smelling the range one after the other that you really start to comprehend the brand's rather masterful and technical hook.

Origino is the original Jeroboam blend - a perfume that was made to convey the kind of beauty that is possible to achieve when mixing together a selection of synthetic musks. Origino acts as the nucleus of the range, an expansive but almost muted, sweetly fruity base thats comes chocked full of musk and pomp. The other four fragrances in the range steer that same blend of musk(s) into different genres of perfume, modifying the musk base and pairing it with new materials: Oriento is an oriental floral thats enriched with a classic spiced rose facet whilst Insulo is a sweet and vanillic oriental and Hauto is an out and out woody floral. But it's Miksado with it's gloopy, psuedo-rubbery and sueded aspects that is perhaps the most arresting.

On first sniff from the bottle Miksado can be a little bit caustic, coming across like an angry potion of scorched man-made plastic materials with a little hint of labdanum. But give it a few minutes on skin and the musky exo-skeleton imparts a real sense of class and sophistication into what is essentially a bit of a bizarre interpretation of saffron and guaiac wood. It becomes widescreen, a perfume that’s astute and deceptive, as flighty and luxuriously fruity as it is spicy or leathery.

It’s proof of how vital musk molecules can be in perfumery and, as with the rest of the Jeroboam range, it’s patently obvious that every ounce of Miksado’s power lies in that enigmatic fusion of musks. 📬: Roullier White

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PG27 is a supposed to be a rock. Or at least it’s inspired by the scent of people draped on a pebbled beach in the bake of a Mediterranean sun. It’s defined by the interplay between the fractioned patchouli, the spice of the cumin and labdanum and the overriding salty aspects of the benzyl salicylate used to create the impression of salt water. To me, Limanakia is intended to be an element beaten stone face sitting and crisping in the midday sun whilst the temperamental ocean laps and sinks into the pores of it’s knees. But  it most definitely succeeds in tying a decidedly human element to the dampened mineral impression when the chalkier twinges of the stone notes combine with the sweat ripened, sun tan lotion like sweetness in the perfume’s floral heart (of jasmine, lily and gardenia). Like a lot of Pierre Guillaume’s work, Limanakia positively cries out for the warmth and reaction of human skin to express itself properly. On paper Limanakia’s subtlety and transparency sells its depth short, but on skin it becomes a widescreen vision that is both heavily sour and vannilic in it’s sweetness. 📬: Bloom Perfumery

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On the one hand, Rouge Bunny Rouge’s Tundra is a decidedly delicate and transparent pepper focused fragrance. On the other its the smell of windswept arctic vistas and bright white landscapes pocked with patches of earth and greenery. And that’s whats both so wonderful and yet so infuriating about a lot of modern, transparent perfumes: some days they’re so alive that they really can feel like the frozen woods and iced land masses in stasis that they were inspired by and on others they can just feel a little light, unadventurous and perhaps - dare I say it - overly simple.

The combination of slow thawing wood, elemi, pink pepper and vetiver in Tundra is a pretty poignant thing though, if you do happen to be in the mood to drink it all in. Pay close attention to it and sometimes there’s a toothpaste like facet deep in the heart of it and on other occasions the violet note takes full control shading all the moss dappled woods in an early-evening time lilac kind of hue.

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Less the smell of a fresh leather bag and more the scent of a biker’s fingerless leather gloved hand after a quick tinker with his steed’s spluttering engine, Mona Di Orio’s Cuir has a very black and pronounced depth to it right from the get go. It’s kind of a brutal perfume - one that might not feel immediately wearable to a lot of noses. Mysterious and anthracite dark it’s simultaneously sueded and smokey with rich tar like facets and a slightly sweetened note of cardamom.

And although it packs all this smokey coal like punch there’s definitely a balance to it. The bitter element of cigarette smoke and the heavyweight molecules of synthetic castoreum and cade rub against the spices and wormwood to make something perfectly unique.

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When the glory of a fragrance can be distilled down to the inclusion of a single material, it makes total and complete sense for the perfumer to simplify the approach and just use any additional materials to complement and highlight certain facets of it. And that’s precisely what the perfumer Antoine Maisondieu does with Fat Electrician for the French house Etat Libre d’Orange. The Haitian vetiver heart that’s at the core of the fragrance is so packed full of darkened caramel and pineapple nuances that the idea of bolstering more of the ingredient’s sweet and resinous tones with the vanilla, myrrh and opoponax seems like kind of an obvious thing to do. But the milky twist Maisondieu’s achieved with the inclusion of chestnut cream and olive leaf really does add a creamy, peanut aspect that the Haitian vetiver heart lacks when smelled in isolation. With a rather unconventional structure (it’s all middle and base notes with very little top), the focus of Fat Electrician is squarely on that unique vetiver that’s both ambery, sweet, dark and fruity. That decision proves to be a very apt, warming and comforting a thing. 

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The latest release in The Merchant of Venice’s Nobil Homo collection is a charismatic marine fragrance that borrows heavily from perfumery’s traditional fougére structure. Building on the genre’s mossy, earthen base and amber facets, Venetian Blue adds a well worn, distinctly aquatic and salty note that’s then feathered with the spice of black pepper and the citrus shine of bergamot and lemon. Yes, it is another perfume that takes inspiration from the sea breeze (this year’s micro trend) and yes it’s a very classic and linear Italian masculine fragrance that isn’t outrageously bold or original but what’s really quite wonderful about it is the way the juice performs. The scent has a very enduring lightness of touch.

Venetian Blue might focus on some of the more flighty notes like pepper and citrus but it lasts and lasts thanks to the big slug of ambroxan used to fix and exalt those opening notes.

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The latest drop from Arquiste came in two parts: ÉL and ELLA. Masculine and feminine facing respectively, they both take the same idea of adding classical animalic base notes to different genres within modern perfumery. Simply put, they look backwards to heavier times to push things forward. And whilst ELLA takes the floral route, adding musty, sweaty textures to a chypre accord, it’s ÉL that really sticks, out adding musk, castoreum and civet notes to an already bristling fougère accord. And whilst some may have been criticising ÉL because its nothing particularly new - it’s more than reminiscent of some of those big burly ‘80s powerhouse scents with a similar kind of dynamic weight and soapiness - whats really quite note worthy is just how well it’s been translated. Plus the juice wears incredibly well. The bite of the base notes lasts and lasts and the [slightly muted] green aspects bond with the heft and punch of the dry down wonderfully. It smells like a father should do: strong, bushy, manly and comforting. 

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Raw but subtle, these first six drops from Canadian perfume house Libertine Fragrance seem to want to revel in the power of their constituent ingredients. I know that sounds like the most obvious thing to note but it’s more the fact that on a blotter the compositions first smell quite dilute and light, but on skin it’s as if their creator wanted the power of each to lie squarely in its simplicity and the linearity of the way the formulas peel back and develop. Soft Woods seems to need time for the juniper and rose in the heart to open up into something more plump and coniferous and the wine soaked Troubled Spirits benefits properly from the flattening of the cinnamon bark’s spice. Witch Doctor is the highlight, a sultry and resinous amber that uses cedar, birch tar and labdanum to illustrate the idea of sun-caked sweat lodges and purpled, spicy medicinal facets. Cloaked in an array of burnt herbal notes there’s a wonderful dry aged patchouli sitting at the base of it.