#borneo 1834

[moratoirenoir]

[moratoirenoir]

[parfumieren]

Borneo 1834 (Serge Lutens)

Much like fire fights fire, it seems the only remedy for Serge Lutens is more Serge Lutens. One need only look to his back catalog to find a treatment for Miel de Bois. (Did you think I meant L'Eau Serge Lutens? Good lord, we want to revive you, not autoclave you.)

The conventional myth surrounding Borneo 1834: Lutens found inspiration in the historic use of patchouli (genus Pogostemon) as a moth repellent for textiles. Asian merchants scattered patchouli leaves on lengths of costly silk before rolling them up into bolts to be shipped west. The alien/alluring fragrance of such cargo turned heads upon its arrival in European ports (a date apocryphally set by Lutens as 1834). Only the wealthy could afford to adorn themselves with these sumptuous fabrics; thus the scent of patchouli became synonymous with 19th century luxe.

If you visit a modern sari boutique and stealthily sniff the air, this historical fact comes alive under your nose. A silk salwar kameez I purchased some years ago retained that heady, transporting scent for ages. I regretted its slow fade, and even today, I remember with pleasure that every garment in the shop was imbued with the same.

It's too bad that the West abhors smells like patchouli. Fixated as we are on soap-and-water cleanliness, we usually associate such odors with poor hygiene or alternative lifestyles which set the wearer beyond the pale. (My father, himself an ex-beatnik in the know, used to joke: "You're wearing that hippie crap again.... you holdin'?")

I'm not going to even try to refute the patchouli stink factor (though I will have you know, Dad, that I stopped smoking that shit years ago. Really.) But I will say that the main culprit is cheap patchouli applied neat and unadulterated. Certain scent elements cannot perform well unless used in reasonable (read: miniscule) amounts, embedded among other olfactory notes so that they do not hijack the entire fragrance. If you, like me, cringe at the difference between a "touch" of rose and the full-force wallop of rose absolute, you understand what I mean. But whereas pure patchouli behaves like the Borg, ruthlessly assimilating all weaker scents, patchouli-in-miniature tends to play nice-- though you want to keep an eye on the friends it makes.

In Borneo, Lutens arranges a playdate between patchouli and cacao, with camphor as a referee. The result: simply happy. True, the resulting accord is nearly identical to that which underpins Thierry Mugler's Angel, stripped bare of all the sleaze. Some may find it monotonous, even severe. But Borneo's herbal-chocolate accord possesses more elegance and credibility in its birthday suit than Angel has in all its Lady Gaga shock frippery. It stands alone in perfect dignity despite (or maybe because of) its nakedness.

(All this confirms my suspicion that it's not Angel's foundation which is defective, but the cassis-floral funhouse structure built atop it. Because here, one finds its bare bones isolated-- and it works.)

This is not to suggest that Borneo lacks flesh to go with those bones. After applying Borneo to my clean, freshly showered body, I notice that I no longer smell exactly clean or fresh-- but neither do I smell unpleasant. I smell alive. This is the friendly scent of a warm-blooded animal, with no flower-and-herb concoctions to camouflage it. I feel unmasked for the mammal that I am-- natural and, as Jon Lovitz famously put it, "nude as a bee" underneath my clothes.

And I love it.

In Patrick Süskind's 1986 novel Das Parfum (Perfume), the antihero Grenouille creates an exaggerated "human" perfume for himself to conceal his lack of personal odor from the people around him. From a hell's-grocery-list of loathsome ingredients, he devises a fragrance he hopes will allow him to "pass". Today he wouldn't need to go to such trouble; he would fit in perfectly with the rest of us who have been denatured, rendered scentless and sanitary and safe. And if you think that's a crime, go find yourself some Borneo 1834 and get back in touch with what a human ought to smell like. It might come as a pleasant surprise.

Scent Elements: Patchouli, camphor, cardamom, labdanum, galbanum, cacao

[byzantienne]

[perfumeblogging] Borneo 1834, Serge Lutens

This was recommended to me as an alternative to Coromandel (which, as you might recall, was the scent that went to Orange Pez on my skin. I blame benzoin. I think benzoin and I are not friends.)

In many ways this was a test to see if I actually like patchouli.

Conclusions: when mixed like this? Hell yes I do. This is not a scent I would think of as being 'hippie' or 'unwashed'. It is -- refined, almost a very bold sketchwork of a scent. I think of a Japanese ink-and-brush painting of bamboo. Tropical, but stylized.

Wet it is strongly cocoa -- the baking chocolate scent, not the sweet chocolate one, the bitter architecture of chocolate -- and a BUNCH of patchouli. As it dries the bitter chocolate goes to traces, and there is cardamom and white flowers underneath. (Fragrantica says labdanum. If this is labdanum, I really like labdanum.)

A scent for summer evenings. A woman or a man who is very comfortable in a very unusual place. And I keep coming back to the blackwork sketch of bamboo. (That, and yellowed, humidified paper, curling up at the edges. A tropical archive.)

I will wear it again.