The Zoo Spacewood
Nose: Christophe Laudamiel
notes: mimosa, acacia, white wine
Ok, Laudamiel is supposed to be a genius, but Spacewood is pure harsh aromachemicals. “Futuristic”, I guess? or “ozonic”? but to me it just smells like failure: a cheap perfume gone off the deep end of “fresh” into artificial starkness.
To be fair, Spacewood does develop over time. It has moments of intense fruitiness (the “neon yellow and green” Laudamiel mentions) that, indeed, resembles very cold white wine; and a weird gritty muskiness close to the skin. Combined with the abstract synthetic floral there is a bit of an impression of a summer day by the pool; chlorine, fresh air, blue skies, and a Chablis.
something unusual is going on with the progression here; while most perfumes try to envelop you in a mostly-continuous cloud of scent, Spacewood is gappy. The fruity-white-wine effect is only detectable about 6 inches from my wrists and disappears closer to the skin. Is this some hard-to-achieve virtuoso perfumer’s trick that Laudamiel is putting together for his fellow chemists?
from my own, untutored perspective, however, Spacewood isn’t particularly rewarding to wear. I don’t want to smell like a swimming pool, even one with a weird evanescent neon-hologram effect.
