As the in-house fragrance expert, Liam is constantly smelling many different scents. In order to calibrate his nose, Liam likes to smell 1740 (Histoires de Parfums), which showcases good blending and harmony, where the intense coarseness of immortelle flower, pine needles, and bitter leather are positioned against a spicy amber base rich with cistus labdanum. Its topic is the Marquis de Sade, the infamous author who penned libertine subjects concerned with the extraction of the utmost pleasure - by any means necessary. A Sadean perfume is one that refuses to see its ingredients in an obvious light. This is a perfume that prefers to linger within the indeterminacy of mysterious shadows, multiplying ecstasies to infinity. This is not a representational scene: it is a pure pleasurable feeling with a little sting and astringency. As his saying goes: in order to know virtue, we must acquaint ourselves with vice.
Similarly, the well regarded Jasmin et Cigarette from Etat Libre d’Orange fascinates with its clashing of the sacred and profane, confronting the aesthetic and moral sensibilities that prescribe how we should – and shouldn’t – smell. I appreciate the brand’s avant-gardism: an early adopter of fierce risk taking, daring to challenge the status quo. Even better, the perfumes smell marvellous. In this instance, jasmine flower is complemented by the soft ashy smoke of tobacco, tied together with the blushing and ripe warmth of apricot, festooned in a nest of sunwarmed hay. This is one big narcotic effect, a dizzyingly good length of realistic jasmine trailing along humid heat and air - its radiance is marvellous.
The pleasure of Ummagumma (FZOTIC) is its singular intensity, concentrating tonka bean, cocoa, labdanum, and tobacco into a decadent paste - worked through a body of spices, incense, and woods. An altogether distinctive sort of hedonism, Ummagumma displays clever and technical design that maintains a series of olfactory contradictions that arrest one’s attention long into wear. It is smoky yet clean, rich yet refreshing and dry, dense but fluid. This fragrance achieves the essential feat of any great gourmand - it is gourmand by accident; an incidental consequence of its notes. Incense Rose (Tauer) engages in a similar play of contradictions and contrasts, leaning on a remarkable chypric form in order to do so. It hypercharges a rose note, its fizzy opening conjoined with an enlivening blend of cardamon and clementine, so the scent begins to rise to the highest heights of the atmosphere, a vertiginous ascent that kisses sweetly scented heaven until it plunges rapidly into a cradle of dark gothic notes of incense, patchouli, and castoreum. Light and dark form an outrageous contrast, the sheer intensity of its initial blinding brightness brutally set against umbrous darkness. Tauer understands what’s capable of a rose-patchouli chypre, and then makes it extravagant!
Agarwoud (Heeley) on the other hand brings darkness to light - and keeps it there. The sublime intensity characteristic of the agarwood ‘oud’ note is free of its usual density, without losing profundity or depth. It induces meditative pause: pure agarwood smoke is marked with its usual clinical tinge of freshness, sublimated with the fleshy, diffuse, tender, and green touch of rose. This is an oud that features only the essentials – where it itself is enough. It pays attention to architectural form, guided first by its aromatic content which runs from the top to the bottom of the fragrance, so it is much more than a base note. In a single instant there is immense complexity, instantly recognisable and infinitely evocative. Its register is diurnal, absent of a stifling engulfing intensity without the ingredient itself feeling stripped. This fragrance reminds us that perfume is the art of transforming materials, and Heeley demonstrates that respect is an essential principle.
Cedar Woodpecker (Parle Moi de Parfum) realises two of my favourite pleasures concurrently. First, the beguiling charm of dry cedar, a wood ingredient that embodies brawn and delicacy all at once, happily left alone as much as it welcomes decoration. Moreover, an obsession with colognes - the ephemeral freshness of it all, the overdosing of citrus and herbal notes, the innocent immoderateness of more (and then even more), and the highly traditional shape that these fragrances assume. In this fragrance, multiple cedarwood extracts form the generous spine in which bitter orange and lemon notes burst and radiate, combined with the classical touch of iris to truly call to mind a traditional Eau de Cologne preparation. It reminds me of my beloved Habit Rouge by Guerlain, one of the first perfumes that stirred my love of fragrance.
