Scent and Subversion (28 page)

With a retro violet leading the way, Guerlain’s Jardins de Bagatelle has a lovely warm sweetness that pushes a green aspect. It doesn’t get interesting until its drydown, when its fruity-violet-lemon top, and heart that’s both green and sweet, settles into a spicy base with a hint of civet.

Top notes:
Violet, blossom-calyx notes, bergamot, aldehyde, lemon

Heart notes:
Rose, jasmine, narcissus, cassie, ylang-ylang, orris, orchid, lily of the valley

Base notes:
Vetiver, cedarwood, civet, musk, patchouli, benzoin

Feminine, masculine. Floral, leather. Sweet, bitter. Rich, dry. Light, intense. It’s hard to believe Jil Sander Woman 2 came out in the ’80s, the decade that brought us scent bombs I love like Poison and Loulou. Known for her minimalist fashions and even called “The Queen of Less,” German designer Jil Sander became famous for her separates in black, white, and cream that could be mixed and matched, made for working women with big bank accounts and an eye for avant-garde style.

But her complex perfume is a different story. Jil Sander Woman 2 is a stunning, enigmatic floral-chypre animalic perfume that comes closest to Piguet’s iconic Bandit than any modernish perfume I’ve come across so far, in character if not in notes.

It opens with a burst of juicy-sweet green fruit and bergamot reminiscent of Miss Balmain’s mouthwatering intro (and that of Sikkim, Aramis, and Azurée), which contrasts with its Mojave Desert of a base: leathery, woody, bitter, dry—and ridiculously chic.

Woman 2 may also have a touch of IBQ (isobutyl quinoline), which is the love-it-or-hate-it arochemical Cellier so famously overdosed Bandit with. It creates a rubbery-tobacco ash-and-leather accord that sent some scared Bandit sniffers running for the hills. I’m sniffing my wrists now and get IBQ plus patchouli, sandalwood, moss, and incense, combined with the faintness of the green fruit/floral top and heart. A huffer, for sure.

Top notes:
Aldehydes, fruit note, neroli, green note, bergamot

Heart notes:
Tuberose, jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, orris, orchid, carnation

Base notes:
Amber, cedarwood, castoreum, patchouli, civet, sandalwood, olibanum, benzoin, moss

Befitting a perfume that shows two entangled snakes on its cap, Niki de Saint Phalle is a heady green floral chypre that practically hisses and rattles its tail. Sour, green, fruity, and intense, the perfume smells like the collision between a lime, a peach, and rattlesnake venom. As it dries down (I visualize this poison elixir literally dripping down a wall), the florals snake their way past the hissing top notes, and the mossy, musky, woody base provides some antivenom to the bracing beginning.

Niki de Saint Phalle was a French model-turned-painter-sculptor-filmmaker-provocateur-perfumer who was influenced by Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Her most famous work is a sculpture garden in Tuscany called The Giardino dei Tarocchi
(The Tarot Garden). Opened in 1998 after twenty years of work, The Tarot Garden pays homage to tarot card symbolism, and its garish colors and found-object style of construction informs the style of this extreme perfume. (She also did “shooting paintings,” in which colors underneath a plaster canvas were not revealed until she used a shotgun to expose them. No shrinking violet, this one! Way to move on from a modeling career!)

Initially the cacophony of green notes, fruit, spearmint, and herbaceous artemisia/marigold at the beginning just scared me off.

Now I’m more receptive to its nuances: the way the amber and olibanum hum their low, warm, sweet songs at the opening as the top notes are screeching; the fact that the spearmint note adds an unusual freshness; and the way the rich florals are almost guarded by the top notes, as if we’re thrown off the treasure by the snake-guards / top notes. (Or maybe the true character of this perfume lies in the top notes? I think so.)

A lot of floral chypres mellow significantly from their bright top notes to their chypre bases. Niki de Saint Phalle’s joyous and intimidating green/sour/sweet/floral freshness sings through the chypre base. It’s there hours into the drydown, and as I’m sniffing my wrists now, I smell a mossy/woody green note kissed with a touch of fruit.

Top notes:
Green notes, tagetes (marigold), artemisia, peach, bergamot, spearmint

Heart notes:
Jasmine, rose, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang, cedar, patchouli

Base notes:
Oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, olibanum, leather, amber, musk

Perfumer:
Sophia Grojsman

How does a perfumer compose a fragrance that smells like joy, hope, and innocence? Ask Sophia Grojsman, the nose behind beauties such as Calyx, White Linen, and Eternity. The word
joy
was the first word that came to mind when I revisited her perfume, Paris, the rose-based scent that doesn’t so much scream
rose
as it does interpret, with the help of other notes, what this flower stands for in the popular imagination.

Green, fresh, and bursting with sweet—but not oppressive—florals, Paris knocks you over with its good mood. If you’ve ever been to Paris in the spring, you know the kind of blinding beauty it can offer. At times it can seem like everything about Paris was made to give you sensory pleasure—the food, the architecture, the smells—and Grojsman’s Paris translates that flash of joy into perfume notes.

Violet and hyacinth bloom most prominently around Paris’s intense rosiness, while cedar and sandalwood give it an almost cinnamony spice. The drydown is a powdery whisper of musk and orris, which soften the perfume’s floral brightness.

What’s interesting to me about Paris is how recognizable the floral notes are, and yet their composition together signifies an idea, a mood, and a place. It’s also a painterly fragrance. You can almost “see” the artist painting her canvas made of flowers—a giant rose with a dab of lily here, a splash of violet there, creating (to switch metaphors) a kind of musical tension in its notes that sustains a happy, almost bittersweet mood, like a bubble that just might burst, or happiness that surely couldn’t sustain itself.

Top notes:
Green notes, bergamot, hyacinth, blossom-calyx notes

Heart notes:
Violet, rose, orris, jasmine, linden, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Musk, cedarwood, moss, sandalwood, heliotrope

A simple but beautiful little drugstore tuberose/gardenia gem fattened by a suntanlotion-like accord, with green notes to offset the richness.

Notes:
Tuberose, gardenia, jasmine, rose, green notes, and peach

Seeming more like a perfume from decades before it, heir to Fête de Molyneux, Miss Balmain, and other chypre-leather animalics, Trussardi is beautifully balanced between green/mossy and sweet/warm. It starts off with a rosy-green galbanum/rose/coriander accord that’s offset with a surprising touch of sweetness from sensual tuberose and ylang-ylang. Its freshness continues with transparent florals and leafiness, with geranium and lily of the valley leading the pack.

Once we reach Trussardi’s drydown, this gorgeous fragrance’s basic (basest) instincts come out with a dose of patchouli, musk, and leather. Aside from the amber and vanilla, it’s like a who’s who of animalic notes. Hours into it, the fresh, green, incensey-woody-mossy-leather impression remains, touched by subtle greens and florals. If you like Sinan, Paloma Picasso’s Mon Parfum, and other intense chypres, you’ll love Trussardi. It was clearly a child of the 1960s and 1970s.

Top notes:
Coriander, green note, aldehydes, hyacinth, galbanum, bergamot

Heart notes:
Ylang-ylang, jasmine, rose, tuberose, orris, geranium, lily of the valley

Base notes:
Cedarwood, sandalwood, patchouli, styrax, olibanum, moss, vanilla, amber, musk, leather

Perfumer:
Jacques Polge

Fruity, spicy, and warm, Coco’s honeyed amber, benzoin, and vanilla represents the ’80s version of tasteful excess, with a perfect balance of shiny fabric, gold bracelets, rings, and glossy makeup. I really love the dose of patchouli in Coco, which gives it a touch of wildness and noir excitement that belies its other, friendlier notes.

Top notes:
Fruit note, mandarin, pimento, aldehyde, coriander

Heart notes:
Rose, carnation, ylang-ylang, cinnamon, orris, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, tuberose

Base notes:
Olibanum, amber, benzoin, vanilla, musk, honey, civet

Lutèce is a spicy, powdery Oriental perfume that balances bright orange and lemony geranium with a rich base of woods, spice, and vanilla. Its nutty, confectionary heliotrope and vanilla recalls Ombre Rose, but it tones down the gourmand aspect and ups the citrus, dry woods, and cinnamon spice. Surprisingly well-balanced for a powdery, ’80s Oriental perfume. (The Dana version is largely the same.)

Top notes:
Aldehydes, mandarin orange, brazilian rosewood, geranium

Heart notes:
Peony, rosemary, orris root, vetiver, lily of the valley, cedar

Base notes:
Tonka bean, cinnamon, musk, vanilla, heliotrope

Featured in
Gigi,
mentioned in Jean Renoir’s
La Grande Illusion,
and frequented by a who’s who of twentieth-century icons including Jean Cocteau, Marcel Proust, Maria Callas, and Jackie Onassis, Maxim’s was a legendary restaurant in Paris famous for its Art Nouveau decor, beautiful women, and visiting luminaries.

Maxim’s de Paris, the perfume, doesn’t stun its wearer into submission like many ’80s fragrances, balancing as it does floral and green notes, and sweetness with spice. (Its base is reminiscent of Rumba’s.) Maxim’s, in short, speaks softly, although it carries some big olfactory sticks.

Top notes:
Bergamot, tagetes, green note, fruit note, mint, melon

Heart notes:
Lily of the valley, cyclamen, rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, orris, tuberose

Base notes:
Sandalwood, musk, honey, vanilla, heliotrope, amber

Daughter of Pablo Picasso turned Tiffany jewelry designer and perfumer, Paloma Picasso added her name and input to one of the best scents of the 1980s: the castoreum-rich green chypre that bears her name.

Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum has the sillage of an ’80s perfume but the gravitas and depth of a 1940s chypre. Green, floral, woody, spicy, mossy, and animalic—Mon Parfum is overdosed with castoreum, a leather note prominent in men’s scents, making it a classic feminine scent with masculine signifiers. It’s one of my favorite chypres of all time.

Subtler yet more animalic than the versions in black plastic bottles, Mon Parfum in the white glass bottle roars with a savage blast of civet and aldehydes in its opening, combined with innocent and transparent rose and lily of the valley. Leafy coriander and geranium then encircle the florals, both narcotic (tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang) and delicate (rose, lily of the valley), transposing them into another, more haunting key.

Every time I would put on Mon Parfum, I’d notice another nuance. Sometimes lily of the valley and rose seemed to waltz in with civet in the opening, and at other times the civet hid from me, and all I could smell was aldehydes. With the later formulas, there’s an everything-all-at-once quality, like a meal that was blended together, taking away your pleasure in sampling each part at your leisure. You get all the notes, but they’re roughly corralled and herded into your nose; you miss the delicate entrances, exits, and interplay of notes.

If you can only find Paloma Picasso in the black plastic bottles (and they are everywhere to be found), you’re still going to have a gorgeous fragrance on your hands, but what will be missing is what I got to finally experience with this Mon Parfum in the white bottle: real development, movement, and depth.

Top notes:
Coriander, rosewood, bergamot, green note, aldehyde

Heart notes:
Rose, geranium, tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Patchouli, vetiver, amber, musk, civet, benzoin, oakmoss