Scent and Subversion (21 page)

Perfumer:
Jacques Jentzen

Cialenga would belong to the beautiful, austere green chypres of the 1970s, but a magical drop of black currant or cassie warms it up with a subtle sweetness that rounds out its angles and makes it a little more approachable. It starts off with a citrusy fresh, green, slightly warm-fruity top, and progresses to a fresh lily of the valley/rose heart, and dries down to a mossy, smooth sandalwood finish. Perfectly balanced. Perfectly chic.

Top notes:
Citrus oils, fruity nuances, cassie, green notes

Heart notes:
Rose, lily of the valley, orris, clove buds, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Vetiver, cedarwood, oakmoss, fruity notes

I’ve been fascinated by Alyssa Ashley’s cult hit Civet for some time, dying to know how a 1970s perfume that dared to name itself after the fecal-smelling base note would smell. I also wanted to know why a bottle of Civet is now on eBay for $700. (Two answers to the latter question: [1] The bottles are almost extinct; and [2] It’s an animalic beauty.) After three years of searching, I finally found it on a decant site for (gulp) $20 per ¼ ml.

What a strange, mysterious treat this was. It starts off green and fresh. There’s an herbal, barely detectable mint aspect to Civet which reminds me just for a moment of
Serge Lutens’s Tubereuse Criminelle, with its crazy camphory minty opening notes. Soon, Civet develops into a fresh, creamy white floral—my guess is gardenia. In my first few whiffs, I was certain that this perfume was animalic in name alone. If there was civet in this polite floral, I thought, it’s working subliminally. Its heart is a soft, creamy floral.

Boy, was I wrong. After days of sniffing nothing and hence resetting my nose, I decided to pull out my tiny decant again and dip a tiny wand into a tiny vial, which gathered a few tiny drops that I smeared on my skin. Wow—how did I miss this, I wondered. Civet in all its stinky glory had been there all along, hiding amid the indolic, rottenish facets of its white flowers, like the bruised, brown petal of a gardenia that’s been sitting around too long.

Notes not available
.

Perfumer:
Jacqueline Couturier

Coriandre’s beautiful rose blooms next to the dank herbiness of coriander, which almost smells like dried fenugreek, an herb used in Persian cooking. Coriandre gets a little soft, soapy, and woody in the end, but its primary note, musky and dusky in a cooking-herb-in-an-ethnic-market way, never leaves.

Like downtown artsy types who get invited to ritzy parties to provide some edge, stink notes are usually hidden in the background of perfumes, where they lurk around and provide depth and interest to more-acceptable florals and fruits. (Examples: The civet in Shalimar and the cumin in one of the Femme reformulations.) But to give a musky, musty, and dank herb the starring role in a perfume? Pretty brazen.

Top notes:
Coriander, angelica, orange blossom, aldehydes

Heart notes:
Rose, geranium, jasmine, orris, lily, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, civet, musk

Smelling Estée Lauder’s Private Collection is like being presented with a flower genetically engineered for maximum impact, the perfume equivalent of a beautiful face Photoshopped to erase imperfections and magnify beauty.

But this isn’t just any beauty; it’s angular, a little harsh, and definitely mature. I remember turning my nose up at Private Collection as a kid, wondering why anyone
would want to smell so … bitter. This doesn’t smell like perfume should, I said in my innocence.

At once inviting and formal, Private Collection is poised somewhere between Vent Vert in its orchestral floral nature and Inoui in its piney, woody verdancy, like a white flower whose face is turned toward the sun while behind it are cool, dark woods.

The greening of Private Collection by galbanum (no doubt part of the “green accord”), pine, and citrus oils serves as the Photoshop tools that perfect, sharpen, and enhance what’s natural about this perfume, raising it to an almost-scary level of beauty. Private Collection is like a beautiful woman who catches your eye and who you cannot look away from, etiquette be damned.

And what floral notes! Private Collection features hyacinth, jasmine, and rose, and the complex, sharp, almost urinous narcissus. The cumulative scent effect is akin to ripping a white flower bloom like Datura from its tree and taking in its peppery, bright freshness for a split second before it dies away. Private Collection ups the ante on beautiful green florals.

Top notes:
Green accord, citrus oils, hyacinth

Heart notes:
Jasmine, reseda, narcissus, rose, pine needle

Base notes:
Oakmoss, cedar, musk, amber

Part of the appeal of Perfume with a capital P is the development—the movement from top notes to base, and all the permutations in between. But in some cases, and I think musk falls under this category, it’s the lyrical, aphoristic quality, its quick painting with moods using one or two words, that is its virtue. Lavender plus vanilla, or some variation thereof, is what makes these fragrances appealing to people. Plus the rich, emotionally comforting quality that works on an almost primal level, happening in the limbic system rather than consciously.

Comforting
often describes 1970s musks, and in the case of Coty Wild Musk, it’s hard not to agree. Starting off with a very herbaceous bergamot/lavender, similar to a man’s drugstore cologne or deodorant, sharp and fresh, it then veers into a creamy vanilla. Florals feel “invisible” in CWM, prompting me to believe that a commenter on a perfume forum perfectly sums up Coty Wild Musk’s appeal: “It’s more a feeling than a fragrance.”

Notes from
Yann Vasnier:
Musk, musk ketone, powdery musk, lily of the valley, vanilla, milky accord

Perfumer:
Maurice Maurin

Earthy, grassy vetiver combines with light florals, and galbanum’s clean-green scent balances Amazone’s warm berry sweetness and ambery-woody base. Amazone reminds me a little of Weil’s 1945 ode to the savanna, Weil’s Antilope. (The latter had galbanum, acacia farnesiana, and oakmoss—surprisingly, no vetiver, but a dry grass / hay smell nevertheless.) Amazone is warmth, subdued fruit, and open meadows.

Top notes:
Hyacinth, galbanum, cassis (black currant), bergamot

Heart notes:
Jasmine, lily of the valley, orris, rose

Base notes:
Oakmoss, cedarwood, vetiver, amber

Perfumer:
Henri Robert

Cristalle bursts forth with a green citrus opening, and settles down to something velvety, sueded, and mossy. It smells like the inside of an expensive leather purse in which someone has spilled a citrusy perfume.

Apparently, it’s hard to find the eau de toilette Cristalle now. In 1993, Jacques Polge created an eau de parfum Cristalle with heavier notes, including civet. I can’t speak to that formula, but many commenters elsewhere say it is very different from the superior original.

Top notes:
Bergamot, Sicilian lemon

Heart notes:
Rosewood, hyacinth

Base notes:
Oakmoss, vetiver

A perfect balance between so-called feminine and masculine notes, Geminesse, even more than Enjoli and Charlie, could be described as an exemplary 1970s-era “feminist” perfume. A rich and flirty heart of florals is balanced against a classic leather chypre base with vetiver and amber, the latter making Geminesse warm and approachable rather than austere. By using ylang-ylang, Geminesse’s composer prolongs the heady sweetness from jasmine and tuberose, tipping Geminesse over into feminine territory. Full-bodied and substantial while being sexy and fun, Geminesse says you can indeed have it all.

Notes:
Jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, muguet, tuberose, vetiver, oakmoss, amber, musk, leather

Perfumer:
Guy Robert

A smoldering, spiced rose tarted up with green notes, Gucci No. 1 will take you in so many exciting directions you won’t know where to start.

In its drydown, this masterpiece of restraint gets the Dioressence treatment from Robert with a wavy green note that wavers in scent the way the theremin instrument wavers in sound. Sweet heliotrope is followed by an aromatic, almost green mango/gasoline note that fortifies the floral heart, drying down to a balsamic and powdery base. One of the most interesting rose scents I’ve ever encountered.

Top notes:
Rosewood, bergamot, lemon, green note, hyacinth

Heart notes:
Rose, carnation, lilac, lily of the valley, orchid, jasmine, heliotrope

Base notes:
Cedar, musk, sandalwood, vetiver, amber, tonka, benzoin, vanilla

The 1970s were a big decade for lemon-based scents, cutting through the heaviness of the big Oriental perfumes of the 1950s and ’60s, the way the 1990s clean scents would take on the big-shouldered shouters of the 1980s. Like a freshly cut lemon minus the harsh angles, Skinny Dip is as short and sweet as a jump in the pool sans skivvies. You can almost smell the softness of the pith used to round out the citrus. If there’s more going on here, I can’t smell it. And there doesn’t need to be.

Notes not available.

Ambergris is the substance that starts out as the secretion in a whale’s stomach to protect it from the undigestible and sharp beaks of cuttlefish. It moves on as a floating mass of what is essentially whale vomit/excrement, and then, following months or years of oxidation in the ocean, it hardens, darkens, forms a crusty wax on its outside, and washes ashore. Perfumers prize it for its sweet, earthy, marine, animalic, and even tobacco scent. (Just to give you an idea of how prized it is in perfumery, I read a recent news story about an Englishman who found a seven-pound lump of ambergris while walking on the beach. Within days, a French perfumer had offered him—gulp—$50,000 for it.)

Alyssa Ashley’s Ambergris starts off sharp, medicinal, and with an aromatic citrus note. A sweet, warm ambergris accord emerges (it’s highly unlikely this has the real stuff), but is overwhelmed by what smells like a men’s cheap fougère cologne. Alyssa Ashley’s Ambergris is much more of a classic 1970s musk than a scent that will give you an idea of what ambergris smells like.

Notes not available.

In this 1979 ad, this let-down-your-hair fragrance turned working girl Clark Kents into smokin’ hot Superwomen.

Aviance starts off aldehydic and leafy green, and combined with lily of the valley, for a moment it feels fresh and light. Radiant rose, jasmine, and an herbal/vegetal note benefit from the delicate touch of the top notes’ freshness, but its spicy, animalic, and disturbingly rich base casts a spell of erotic mystery over its initial floral lightness. (Think of an herbal tea with a drop of milk.)

The sweet and even rich dimension of Aviance might come from its tonka bean note. (Tonka beans, the seeds of the
Dipteryx odorata,
a legume tree, have an earthy vanilla scent with facets of almond and cinnamon.) In Aviance, tonka gives its floral brightness a more-decadent dimension.

Green, spicy-woody, and dirty-rich, this floral chypre definitely smells perfumey and vintage, but I love how forward it is. And it has significant longevity: If I put this on at night, the next morning, there’s a gorgeous, lightly floral and sandalwood-spiced veil on my skin. Yann Vasnier describes Aviance as a green herbal scent with spice, coumarin (there’s that tonka), and musk.

Top notes:
Aldehyde complex, leafy green, bergamot

Heart notes:
Rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, orris

Base notes:
Sandalwood, vetiver, moss, tonka, musk

Chloe starts off fruity green, with a rich coconut note that offsets the sharpness of bergamot and green notes and envelops the peach note in a gourmand, milky nuttiness.

Its floral heart comes forth like the scent of flowers on a summer night, intoxicating, intense, and erotic, the jasmine blooming just enough to keep you interested without scaring you off. There’s a softness and youthfulness to Chloe that belies its intensely sensual base.

As Chloe dries down, the sandalwood-moss-musk combo is quite prominent; its happy floral character shines throughout, never allowing anything to weigh it down.

Top notes:
Green notes, coconut, bergamot, aldehydes, peach

Heart notes:
Tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, hyacinth, orris

Base notes:
Musk, sandalwood, moss, amber, cedar, benzoin