After Irish, Italian
and French interpretations of skin and wander, African Leather will be #4 in the Cuirs Nomades series from luxury
French perfume house Memo Paris, one of the fragrance world’s best kept and most
indulgent secrets. This beautiful new creation launches in the autumn but I have been lucky enough to spend time recently, indulging in its rather extraordinary aromas.
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| 'African Leather' - Memo Paris |
Each time I champion Memo fragrances, part of me is a little reluctant to do so for fear that
others might discover the olfactory wanderlust and my beloved choices might
become commonplace. Nonsense of course, but it a fear I think that potentially
stalks some increasingly successful niche brands. How successful do you have to
be before tipping into something resembling popular mainstream acceptance.
Brands like Le Labo, By Kilian and Editions Frédéric Malle and L’Artisan
Parfumeur for example occupy uncomfortable ground. It’s not a surprise that
Malle and Le Labo have been acquired by Estée Lauder and L’Artisan and their
sibling brand Penhaligon’s by Puig. Big name brands want some shiny niche
baubles to hang in their windows. But sooner or later, the niche labels
tarnishes or the quality is eroded, carefully at first. Acquisition of niche is
all about subtlety and patience.
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| Clara Molloy of Memo Paris |
Memo Paris for me is
a quintessential French niche brand, private, defiantly esoteric and emotional,
linked directly to co-founder (the other is her husband John)and Artistic
director Clara Molloy. The fragrances are precious and precisely luxurious,
inspired always by Clara’s obsession with travel and the psychology of journey,
of moving thorough landscapes to a destination. Indeed the brand’s motto is The Journey is the Destination. This
could be said to be true of their beautiful catalogue of scents. They are constructed
in such wise and picturesque ways as to storytell materials and aroma effects
in seductive and often unexpected forms.
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| Aliénor Massenet parfumeuse extraordianaire |
Les Echappés is the name of the core anthology of travel
inspired perfumes that Clara and her talented parfumeuse Aliénor Massenet have
assembled together. The relationship between these women is fearsome, their
artistic symbiosis and instinctual understanding of one another’s nuances is
key to Memo. Along with John’s business head and the distinctive photographic
style of Guillaume Lebon whose images seem to guide, capture and suggest mood
and emotion as scents are developed, the Memo Paris style is one of languid
beauty, arresting haze and the need to be admired, quietly and urgently.
My first Memo was Siwa, endless bottles in and I am still
in love with its soothing cereal-soft beige booze vibe. It has a delicious
buttery popcorn facet that I adore; overlaid with sweet narcissus, my skin
smells ghostly, a vanillic lullaby. I also have Lalibela and Monoa in my
collection, one a demanding glassy desert rose, the other a glittering comet of
oppoponax.
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| Kedu |
There is a new
collection chez Mémo, Les Graines
Vagabondes (Wandering Seeds…) that has commenced with the appearance of the
delicious Kedu, a scent so aromatic
with smeared and toasted sesame I was quite lost for a while when I first
sampled it. I just kept returning to my nutty, verdant wrist over and over. Kedu is inspired by Indonesia and the
dramatic temple of Borobudur, the 9th century Buddhist temple in
central Java. Pilgrims ascend three levels of this symbolically carved stone
mountain/temple. As they do so, they interact with complex bas-relief cosmology
and multifarious deities. The temple came to light again in the 19th
century, after lying asleep under volcanic detritus and hungry jungle for
centuries.
Aliénor Massenet and
Clara have used the symbolism of sesame seeds
to construct a unique and deeply resonant scent. According to Javanese tradition,
throwing the aromatic white seeds into fire can purify your soul. Anyone who
cooks and who has pan roasted sesame seeds will know how exquisite the oily,
creamy scent of the toasted seeds are they turn golden. Fin du Monde by Etat Libre d’Orange is the only other scent I have sampled
which has such a lovely sesame note. The precocious young talent Quentin Bisch
tasked by Etat with creating their hazy apocalyptic gourmand allied his sesame with
iris and a tremulous gunshot effect. It is a remarkable scent and one that
Quentin has yet to capitalise on.
The comforting white
nuttiness of sesame is hard to explain, but it’s a smell I have always loved,
in tahini, baked in bread, on Mediterranean pastries and the oil drizzled over
stir-fired Chinese greens. Kedu uses
three main players, the sesame, grapefruit and white musks to create an airy,
blanched ground of grace and careful texture. Over this trails whispers of mate
absolute, moss and a fragile rose-peony accord that wears like crumbled frozen
raspberries. I love Kedu’s complexity
and embracing nutty comfort. I will be adding it to my collection; I need its pallid
plane.
I am very intrigued
by this first chapter of Les Graines
Vagabondes. So much scope for olfactive exploration. You could look at the
title in two ways I guess; seed dispersal, carried by winds, seas, rivers, fur,
gut, foot and shoe to places beyond origin to germinate and start afresh. Or
the beautiful gathering or anthology of seeds by bygone explorers, collectors
and pioneer botanists, travelling by ship or overland, their precious cargo of
seeds bound for botanic gardens or private collections. We are familiar with
the sci-fi trope of floral and agricultural arks of seed of seedlings heading
off to distant galaxies to green future landscapes and crops. It will be
fascinating to see what Memo do next in this very promising series.
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| Grace Jones... an Empress of leather |
For now I am still
deeply besotted with Les Cuirs Nomades,
a collection that continues to evolve opulently and beautifully. Leather
fragrances have a particular attraction I think, appealing to our baser, more
animalic sensual instincts. The materials may have changed over the decades of
perfumery as the technology of aromachemistry has become increasingly more
advanced, nuanced and in many ways more atmospheric but the desire to capture
the ghost and imprint of pelt and hide is still a powerful one.
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| Equine dreams.. |
The first, Irish Leather was wild, green and
equine, a love letter to (Irish) John Molloy from Clara Molloy. The scent is an
abstracted capture of sweat-flecked horses racing through verdant countryside.
Juniper and mate absolute play superbly foliate against Massenet’s devout love
of tonka bean. It is beautiful, unpredictable, bitter then sweet, supple and
ghostly. There is just enough whiff of mane and fur to cause pause, but this is
quickly snatched up in the bravura assembly of crackling, swift materials.
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| Auto dreams... |
Next up was the
ravishing Italian Leather… OMG.. I
swooned on first smelling this, the vanilla bean effect was ENORMOUS; allied to
iris, galbanum, oppoponax, sage and the most glorious tomato leaf effect made
the scent supple, sensual and almost overpoweringly present. There is a
gluttonous, gourmand intensity to Italian
Leather; it is quite the malleable, moreish force. It is also damn sexy, a leather
of luxury classic cars, vintage lather driving gloves steering an heirloom car
or caressing a bare suntanned thigh. A leather of sun and open windows.
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| Couture dreams... |
French Leather was quieter, more introspective, a sueded leather
of discretion and poise. This took me a few wearings, and then I was hooked. The
triptych of rose, lime and leather is very unique and works with an alarming
beauty. This is a couture, cut leather form, a bag, a laser cut sheath dress,
something moulded softly to the body like a second skin in shades of thulian
and amaranth. French Leather does
echo Jean-Claude Ellena’s Hermès masterpiece Kelly Calèche in its expensive Birkin interior rummagy aroma. Yet French Leather sets itself apart by
dripping that rather brave lime note top downward. It serves to fittingly
counterpoint any potential rosaceous excess and season the pink pepper, woods
and resins.
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| panthera leo |
Memo’s African Leather is strong juice, a
sonorous expansive spiced floral scent on a taut dry leather ground. Aromatic
is a word bandied out with recklessness in scent, but this is just that, a
perfume deep and cohesive with aroma, its components assembled and blended with
satisfying and panoramic beauty. The saffron/cumin/cardamom triptych is
intensely bitter and green lending the huge opening of the scent an arid
sun-baked quality.
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| Giraffa camelopardalis |
There is a sense of
pressure in African Leather of open
sky weighing down on parched ground and animal hides searching for shade. The
strong leather accord that Massenet has created is not the smooth supple
interior car upholstery of Italian
Leather, but rather that of ragged ear, bitten hide, camouflage fur and
striated stillness. The vetiver is the grass and cover from heat, eyes and
tooth. So much profundity to the materials used, you can feel it in each shift
and roll of the evaporation curve. I’m not the biggest fan of geranium, it
often smells medicinal, but the high quality MD geranium absolute used in the
lush middle stage of African Leather
is fabulously verdant savannah, the ground
as it were, a canvas of safe perfumed heat over which moves the rumble of hoof,
paw and claw.
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| Equus quagga |
African Leather has vista and haze, but is essentially a
still mood piece. There is restlessness and charge but its animalic gaze is
actually rather basilisk and unrelenting. Massenet has laid down this emerald
velvet geranium at the feet of Memo’s imagined grazing mammals and the effect
is dazzling.
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| Loxodonta africana |
As with all the
Cuirs Nomades series, African Leather
too has serious projection, sillage and longevity. The oud accord and parched
chewy patchouli stretch out the drydown with a campheraceous trail. The
all-important leather is preserved and well-travelled like an explorer’s
venerated bag, salted with time, rattling around in dust-tossed Landrovers. This
is of course is also a fantasy leather, a safari melange of up-market and
managed game reserves, dusk-lit designer lodges and tables laid with white
table cloths and improbable food, flickering in the light of torches and
mannered staff. All of this seemingly at odds with the reality of religious and
tribal intolerance, poverty, HIV, corruption and the fractious, wearying
alliance between terror, tourism and economical needs in these rushing
multi-media times.
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| 'African Leather' press event chez Deyrolle, Paris |
African Leather is panoramic, a complex aromatic and luxury
scent of a perceived effect, an animalic tone suggestive of roaming savannah
wildlife, corralled by westernised floral tropes. It seems viewed almost from
above as a light aircraft passes silently over a game reserve, a flowing
intermittent shadow of wings passing over the bush below. The animals grazing
beneath don’t notice the interloper on high. It’s an affecting montage of
motifs and mood that has been collected and assembled by Clara and Aliénor
reflecting once again, Memo’s unique and stylish ability to encapsulate the
singular essence of a place or destination, however vast or seemingly obtuse.
Memo perfumes lie on the floor of the mind like scattered photographs,
evocative souvenirs for our skin to savour, rendered with brio and substance.
The final fabulous
stages of African Leather are sheer
joy. Hours into the ornate drydown the golden glow of saffron sudden ignites
again, setting fire to the grasslands of the mind.
©SilverFox 14 August 2015
For more information on Memo Paris fragrances, please click on the link below:
Disclosure - Sample of 'African Leather' very kindly provided by Memo Paris, opinions my own.
