Roses
‘It is the time you have wasted for your rose
that makes your rose so important’.
Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry – The Little Prince
I was obsessed with
roses in 2014. I always have a place in my foxy heart for rose fragrances to be
fair; they thrill me, the best of them causing senses and heart to swell. There
is something primal and intensely emotional about the differing odours of rose,
be they peppered, jammy, verdant, mulchy, chocolately, boozy, berried,
tea-like, ghostly, rubbered and darkly petrolic.
Rozy
Voile d’Extrait – Vero.Profumo
Vero Kern, the
sorceress of Vero Profumo has been one of my most treasured perfumers for a
while now, ever since I fell under the spell of her profoundly erotic Onda, a scent like none other. She makes
scent that reminds us why we have skin. We are her canvases. In 2014 she
unleashed a duo of fragrances with the same name Rozy, one an eau de parfum, the other her own singular voile
d’extrait formulation, both inspired by the iconic Italian actress and force of
nature Anna Magnani. Rozy EDP was
gorgeous, a fruity voluptuous crash of rose intensity. Vero’s dirty trademark
passion fruit musk effect and a drip of honeyed peachiness make Rozy EDP a
fleshy close wear. For me it was all about the Rozy Voile d’Extrait. I was quite shocked at how different it was,
yes the delicious Rozy head-turning expansive rose was still beautifully
present, but this time the tone was exquisitely weird. The rose note smelled
like hot plastic blooms, red like blood. Wearing it is an oddly claustrophobic
experience, the notes and expanding petals press in on the senses. The addition
of blackcurrant adds a clever rather erotic underpinning to the rose, layering an
acidic earthiness reverse to the rose’s lavish honeyed drama. The key to a
successful rose perfume to reveal secrets, unfurl a little majesty and yet
still gold something back. Vero always retains something. There is a hidden
oddity and buried enigma in all of her fragrances, It haunts them and is what
makes her so valuable.
Rose Cut – Parfums Ann Gérard
Another very
different rose scent came from the chic Parisian pairing of jeweller Ann Gerard
and master perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour. Rose
Cut is the first scent from Ann since the masterly triptych of fragrances
Bertrand created for her in 2012 – Perle
de Mouse, Ciel D’Opale and perhaps one of the best iris scents ever, Cuir de Nacre. It was an intriguing wait
to see what or even if Ann would do another scent. The trio were near perfect.
Each one was exquisite, reflecting Ann’s trademark use of reflective surfaces
and materials such as nacre and opals and her deeply personal interpretation of
the nature of skin and the wearing of metal and stone on flesh. A move into
olfactive lustre was inevitable. Rose Cut,
as it sounds is a glittering aromatic jewel for the skin. I can’t help but
imagine it as a bloody pirate ruby, nestled in shadowed décolleté, facets winking
provocatively. It is the work again of master perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour and
he has returned to his lovely use of boozy rum to add a swaying sense of danger
to his rose and peony combo. The peony is gorgeous halo to the rose, light
glittering off the rose’s carefully held thorns and velveteen petals.
Blackcurrant bud, benzoin and a rather mucky vanilla note make this rose more
Grimm than Barbie, a bloom that might draw shocking blood and a smile from a
crimson mouth.
Nevermore – Frapin et Cie
Creative Director David
Frossard at Frapin launched a weird gothic stained rose in September called Nevermore, inspired by The Raven, Poe’s melancholy poem of
tightly wrought grief, paranoia and dread. Quite different in style from the
cognac house’s usual output of boozy, woozy woody fragrances, Nevermore was an arresting essay in
oddness and the unexpected. There is a ritual of red roses and cognac placed
reverentially on Poe’s grave on the anniversary of his death and this sparked
an idea for Frapin and perfumer Anne Sophie Behaghel. I like the regular meaty
style of Frapin and the daring weight to their dense formulations. 1697 and Speakeasy are incredible fragrances. Nevermore is the sensuous clutch of two roses (Centifolia and Damask)
and their unsettling float over a musty cellar-damp base of woods and wet
musks. The real star of the scent is the exceedingly blatant dose of Florazone
in the top of the scent that suggests the insidious chlorophyll creep of night
garden into the room of a grief-torn man. Nevermore
had mixed reviews, but I loved it, it smelled amazing on skin, a mix of old
books, decaying petal and bright grassy air. Lovely stuff from Frapin and very
different.
Taking of different…
good lord.. Sådanne by Slumberhouse.
Oh Josh Lobb, I love your work, you never fail to stun me, I read about your
latest. I crave it, have to have it, buy it, soak it up, adore it. You’re a
crazy scented motherfucker with ideas burning like watchfires in the inspirational
spaces of your headworld. Norne just
obsessed me, I wear it like a talisman, a spell to ward off the whole world, it
smells of woven threatening nature. Nothing else will ever smell like it and I
am so glad I have it muttering and lambent in the darkness of my Foxy study.
After the (limited..)splashed crimson cranberry madness of Zahd, I wondered what would come next from Josh’s hermetic world. Sådanne is magnificent, a howl of
liqueur-drenched strawberries, simmering rose and an aftertaste of animalism
that still keeps shocking me. According to Scent & Chemistry who analysed
it, they say it contains the highest levels of beta-damascones in a scent in
years. ∫Damascones exude creamy honeyed plummy tones in a rose composition. In Sådanne the overload gives the
incredible sensation of a sticky, tobacco-tinted hibiscus syrup. This is
dizzying scent to wear, persistent and neon-sexy, a ramped up pole-dancing
Britney-esque trash aesthetic blended magnificently with a dark Borgia
poisonous twist that thrills the paws off me. I love that Josh is controlled
enough to veer over the edge but also sensual enough to acknowledge as we
careen into the abyss we need to smell fucking gorgeous.
Tobacco Rose – Papillon Perfumery
Liz Moores has been gilded
with well-earned praise in many end of year round ups for her debut trio of
scents Anubis, Angelique and Tobacco Rose. Every piece of hyperbole,
joy, love and wonder penned on her work is justified. They are remarkable works
from an incredibly kind and very modest woman who is genuinely gobsmacked by
the enormous wave of critical acclaim what has engulfed her in 2014. A devoted
and tough talking circle of friends and family keeps her grounded at her base
in the New Forest in England. Kids, hubby, horses, cats, snakes, nature and a
voracious love of the good (and occasionally wicked…) things in life have made
a deeply personal, beautiful and sensual woman into a quite exceptional
perfumer. It almost seems unfair that someone’s debut collection is this damn
good. But when that someone is as delicious and kind as Liz, you want the world
to buy her sexy juice. I got to know her through twitter actually, she’s great
(and generous) on social media. I got some samples and BAM. Another stunning
rose. It is one of my all time favourites actually, I wear it a LOT. I get so
many comments on the subversive porniness of it; it’s not a pretty rose. It’s a
bloom for sex and seduction, for leaning into and sharing, flirting, pulling,
tempting. It’s a dirty bitch of a rose. I know Liz struggled endlessly with the
mods of these and had to walk away time and time again, cursing the volatility
and complexity of the materials. But my darling, it was worth it, I know it,
you know it and the people all over the world who have indulged in it, sensing
their skin flicker with smoky jammy desire know it too.
Exquise Gourmandise
‘All you need is love. But a little chocolate
now and then doesn’t hurt.’
Charles M
Schultz
Four wonderfully
varied niche gourmands found their way into my collection in 2014, all unique,
all a little strange, but all skin-lickingly lovely. Gourmands have evolved
into a schizophrenic entourage of aromas, with some sensually created
interpretations of florals and orientals with milk, chocolate, caramel, coffee,
coconut, dulce de leche, honey and chai. On the flip side there are shrieking
nasty concoctions that are always kandy
with a ‘K’. Everything has its place, but certain niche houses have realised
the inherent comfort and potential experimentation to be had with the variety
of foodie notes. Not for everyone, but to be dismissed to quickly either, I am
a huge vanilla fan, L’Artisan Parfumer’s now sadly discontinued Vanille Absolument has been my signature
scent for years (I have cellar stock….) and I always look out for new
intriguing permutations of the note (HELLO Architects Club!!!).
Salt Caramel – Shay & Blue
Shay & Blue… how
much do I love thee? Enough to have all of their fragrances bar the Sicilian Limes. I just can’t handle
limes, just too bathroomy for me. The dapper and charming Dom de Vetta is the
Creative Director of Shay & Blue and together with young perfumer Julie
Massé (and style director/muse Juila Sarr-Jamois) launched a truly delightful and
accessible house with utterly delicious fragrances that have been a genuine joy
to discover. Dom’s background at Chanel and Jo Malone have been put to
beautiful and precise use, allowing us to access a range of immaculately
conceived scents in a range of styles with just enough difference to pique
curiosity and jaded olfactory senses. The Vermeeresque style of the London
store, the rich blue signature livery and a lively use of social media have
made Shay & Blue a brand to really follow and wear. Each new launch has
buzz, something exciting about it. This is pretty hard to pull off; their fan
base is passionate and genuine. I love their weird and milky Almond & Cucumber, Amber Rose has a lush dulce de leche
heart, the Blood Orange is scorched
with fire and leather dipped. Their truffly coffee tinted Oud Alif was one of the sexiest ouds in years, so wearable and FUN.
But for me, it was Salt Caramel that
really did it. I loved this enormous musky OTT gourmand, inspired by the
Charbonnel et Walker Sea Salt Caramel Truffles, a shockingly addictive bonbon
one should never leave anywhere near me or I will clear out the box, leaving
dusted little crinkle cases behind. Julie Massé used vanilla, sandalwood and
tonka to play succulently against the salted caramel marriage. In patisserie
and food preparation, salt counteracts the any potential bitterness of caramel allowing
a smooth aurous continuity. There is a tremendous lightness to the composition,
a sense of pinkified aeration that makes Salt
Caramel a joy to wear in ridiculously liberal amounts or over other
fragrances, especially roses. Skin smells lacquered and lickable. This is fun
scent with a serious molten allure. Thank you Dom & Julie. I look forward
to your 2015 olfactory adventures.
El Born – Carner Barcelona
Carner Barcelona is
a gorgeous and I think rather under-rated niche house run by Creative Director
Sara Carner. The brand has steadily grown in reputation since its foundation in
2009, but I feel that Sara’s discreet and handsomely mounted scents have not really
been acknowledged or interpreted sufficiently enough to allow the grace and difference of the scents to shine. I
first came across them in Bloom Perfumery in London; the team were just
unpacking them, they were freshly arrived stock. I loved the unpretentious,
sombre packaging, clean line and heavy wooden tops. Great names too - Rima XI, Tardes, Cuirs, D600 – enigmatic and atmospheric. Sara’s family
history is one of leather-makers, hence the lovely Cuirs and her obsessive mapping of Barcelona, while to some might
seem restrictive, is in fact a deeply personal and lovely reflection of tastes,
mores, moods and ambiance. I have liked all of the scents so have been trying
to find time to write something. Then last year Sara launched El Born and I was seriously smitten. It
is by far my favourite Carner scent and I’m quite besotted with its swooning pitch-perfect
gourmand solicitude. I love the singularity of Rima XI, an intensely made aromatic with a saffron stained-jasmine
surrounded by a veritable larder of resins, balms, spices, woods and vanillic
musks. Inspired by the 11th Rima
or Rhyme by 19th century Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.
"I am a delusion, an impossible,
a vain phantom of mist and light;
I am unbodied, I am impalpable;
I cannot love you."
"Oh come, come you...!"
Sara returned from a
fashion career in New York to pursue her olfactive dream in her home city of
Barcelona, using the sights, sounds, history, energy and style of the city as a
mirror to spark her fertile processes. El
Born is the best to date I think, although Cuirs has a enormously powerful honeyed leather note oozing through
it which I find hard to resist. And allied as it is to the memory of Sara’s
leather making forefathers makes it even more resonant to wear as second skin.
El Born is the part of the lower section of La Ribera (The Shore), an area of
Barcelona where many of city’s renowned medieval architecture is located.
Nowadays it is the destination for chic slow
shopping, casual café culture and bijou unique art experiences. The place
has buzz and laid back charm amid the winding streets and balcony shadows, the
air sweet with the drifting aromas from overlapping pastelerias. The scent itself is so beautiful, opening on a huge,
caramelised rooty licquorice effect that must be the meld of jasmine, anisic
angelic and honey in the top. The fig (normally a nemesis note for me…) and
heliotrope embellish the established gourmand character with nuances of almond
and smoky black cherry. There is no cocoa listed in the notes, but a ghost of
it is dusted through the composition like summer shade in the later stages of
the scent. The balsamic vanilla and milky woods give El Born an impression of sugar-laced churros dunked in hot thick chocolate
calienete.. The later stages of El
Born are haunted by echoes of pipe tobacco, sweet and damp, rolled between
hot fingers. Tobacco impregnated with kirsch and bitter almond. I catch sudden
pieces of it like smoke on the wind. A delightful addition to the Carner
Barcelona line and proves that Sara is a gifted and inspirational creative
director.
Ragù
– Gabriella Chieffo
Now, Ragù by Gabriella Chieffo was a
different kind of gourmand experience altogether, a savoury exploration of
memory, family and home. Inspired by the long simmering of Italian ragu sauces
over languid Sundays of happy voices, gossip and family legend. Ragù is part of Collection 14, a quartet
that truly surprised me in 2014. It is rare to be genuinely startled by scent
when you try as much juice as I do. But Gabriella’s personal and carefully
formed olfaction hooked me in from the start. The scents are embodied by
Gabriella herself in a series of Cindy Sherman-esque poses, indicating the moods
and motifs of her perfumes. The effect is unsettling but effective,
demonstrating Gabriella’s emotional commitment to the formulae. This approach
could have gone horribly awry, coming across as arch and egotistical, however,
the overall eccentricity and bravura quality of Lye, Hystera, Camaheu and Ragù is so good it outweighs any doubts
on might have had. Exploring personal and therefore universal issues such as
childbirth, adolescence, death, remembrance, identity, Gabriella ghosts them
into a set of odd olfaction, using a particularly ashen, snowy palette of
aromas. Ragù is my favourite though,
the capture of slow, bubbling tomatoes, sugars breaking down with mentholic
oregano, basil and black pepper to a sensual mix of musks, woods and herbaceous
haze. The blend of elemi, cloves, saffron and cardamom over a base of cashmeran
is the reality of Ragù, but the skill
of the recipe is the olfactory holography of that hypnotic Sunday ambience, the
diffusive slow-cooked fumes that radiate in mind and home.
I am including Architect’s Club by Arquiste in my
Exquise Gourmandise section simply because it’s sensational and Yann Vasnier’s
delicious rendering of vanilla was one of my favourites of the year. I am still
working my through a major piece on Arquiste for my Foxy blog as Architect’s Club prompted a re-visit to
the line and a complex re-evaluation of fragrances I had previously struggled
with a little bit. This time round, no struggle, just a letting go and
luxuriating in the stylish arms of a very handsomely appointed and subversively
sensual collection of perfumes. The inspiration for Architect’s Club is a Deco one, a meeting of line and form giddily interrupted
by the irresistible insouciance of Mayfair’s Brideshead cocktail culture.
Vasnier knows his way around a party or two and his sling-referenced juniper
note is brittle and cool, tempered by a brilliant use of cadmium-lemon
intensity and a persuasive anisic angelica note which threads top down to the
woods, a shimmer of amber and that gorgeous, swirling, sexy vanilla. Oooooooohhh
the vanilla is so damn fine, fresh and modern, a touch of crème anglaise with a whiff
of unwrapped electrical goods.
Creative Director
Carlos Huber trained in the historical preservation of architecture, literally
stabilising the past, conserving history and memory whilst using the best
available modern techniques to hand. This adaptation and melding is necessary
to safeguard structural heritage. Working with Yann and Rodrigo Flores-Roux,
Carlos has created a portfolio of masterly detailed perfumes, each one inspired
by precise moments in time and history. They are in some ways like olfactive
blueprints, or maps allowing us to see and inhale pieces of imagined time. Architect’s Club has been a revelation
for me, one I am grateful for. I have always admired this beautiful house from
day one of its inception. Everything about it works for me, the skill,
presentation, style, inspirations and joie de vivre of Mr Huber. But for ages I
struggled with the juice on skin. Anima
Dulcis, the guys’ amazingly cloistered chilli-kissed cocoa gourmand was the
one that grabbed and kept me attached to the brand, the others just fluttered
around me like blurred moths in poor light. Architect’s
Club was the light was burned the dust from the room and oddly seemed to
throw all the others into focus. I’m not sure why, but when I went back and
spent an evening sampling the line again, notes and theme just fell into place.
Vasnier’s deco vanillic rush is sheer joy to wear, everything about it is capricious
and warm. This is a scent I will treasure.
So Part II is done.
Part III is coming. Foxy last musings on 2014.
©The Silver Fox
11 January 2014
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