Classic Values ~Kouros by YSL: fragrance review

Kouros : how misrepresented you are. I almost feel pity... Or perhaps not. Because it has been over applied and misused by many, it earned a reputation of no less than "piss" (enter the comment of a character in the indie film “The locals” who says so, when the other guy slips a bottle of Kouros out of the glove compartment saying girls at work like it). Yet I still love it in small doses!

Someone I know who actually did work for Yves Saint Laurent back in his heyday had a little anecdote on its creation to share: when Yves visited Greece in the 1970s he made a stop at Sounion/Sunium, that cape at the edge of Attica with the famous Poseidon temple {click to see an atmospheric photo and here for a more classical one}. This temple is situated at an advantageous point for surveillance of the Aegean in case of a potential enemy fleet and formed part of the Holy Triangle, marked by three major temples (Aegina island – Athens – Sounion cape). The day was bright, the sea ahead was azure blue, the columns of the temple stood imposingly solid. The only etchings on the marble then were those of Lord Byron who obviously felt the need to leave his name on a piece of antiquity: see, vandalism was not unknown even back then, even if Byron assisted the country’s National Revolution. It must have made an impression: he quoted Sounion in Don Juan ~

"Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where the waves and I can only
hear
Our mutual murmurs sweep
There, swanlike, let me sing and die."

But I digress... Yves contemplated the view and was inspired to recreate the feeling in a perfume. The progressive sketches he made were of stylized columns that little by little became the austere white image of the bottle we know today. "Living Gods have their perfume: Kouros", ran the advertising campaign.

Kouros the name was in keeping with the Greek theme: Kouros (plural kouroi) is an iconographic type of the archaic Greek sculpture of 6th century BC that featured the famous archaic smile. A statue of a young man, in the nude, with one leg slightly protruding before the other, it gives the impression of motion that is about to happen any minute now.
Kouros, the fragrance, composed by the great Pierre Bourdon (Iris Poudre, Ferre by Ferre, Dolce Vita, Cool Water) launched in 1981 and became iconic of that period winning a FiFi award the next year and holding a place in bestsellers for years to come. With its intense, pungent almost orangey blast of the coriander opening it segues on to warm clove, sensual oakmoss and a touch of ambergris (that infamous whale byproduct that is so hard to come by) and infamously civet, managing to smell both sweet and bitter at the same time, urinous with sage, quite powdery which is unusual for men’s scents; insolent, animalic, audacious, almost Gordon Gekko! The drydown is like freshly washed hair on a sweaty body.

It is usually recommended to all ages, but frankly I can not picture it on the very, very young, nor the old. It's best in between: a little experience is necessary, but not that much! To be rediscovered by a new generation pretty soon. I just wish they came up with a feminine version of this one : if it’s so common to do so with women’s perfumes, then why not with men’s?

The Flanker Fragrances of Kouros

The original Kouros is one of the fragrances with the most "flankers" over the years (flankers are new, often wildly different fragrances coat-tailing on the success of a best-seller using the name and bottle design in new twists, as devised by the company). These tried to lighten up the load of the odoriferous original. The experiment started with Kouros Eau de Sport in 1986 (now discontinued) and Kouros Fraîcher in 1993 which added bergamot, orange blossom and pineapple, while still remaining the closest to the original.
From 2000 onwards, interest picked up, a comparable case as with Opium, and parfums YSL launched Body Kouros composed by Annick Menardo (of Bulgari Black fame) in a black bottle goving a twist through vibrant eucalyptus on the top notes and adding Camphor-wood and Benzoin to the drydown, the latter's sweet caramel vibe clashing with the mentholated notes of the former.
Kouros Eau d'Ete in 2002 plays on blue-mint, rosemary and cedarwood and comes in a clear ice-blue bottle. Kouros Cologne Sport came out in 2003 and relied on cedrat, bergamot and tangerine for the top with the florancy of jasmine and cyclamen in the heart. Neither of those really resembles the original ~which is either good or bad according to your reaction on the latter.

Kouros Cologne Sport Eau d'Éte sounds a little like they ran out of words (cologne, sport and summery!): it launched in 2004 as a limited edition in a gradient blue bottle (predictably). Yet another limited edition Kouros Eau d'Ete launched in 2005, with just a marginal play on the box.
The latest was the Kouros Tattoo Collector (2007), another limited edition: lighter and with a peppery accent it comes in an Eau Tonique concentration which fits somewhere between Eau de Toilette and Apres-Rasage/aftershave. And what about the tattoo? Well, it came along with two temporary tattoos in the box. Booh, if you're going to be serious about anything, get a real one, please!
This year sees a gradient bottle of blue (again!) with the tag Kouros Energising. Ooouff! Enough!

So, what do you think of Kouros? Love it or hate it?

Image of Archaic kouros from Getty museum, pics of ads by Parfumdepub

Travel Memoirs: Arabian Rituals

Encountering other cultures is often revealing of prejudices of one own’s culture. And nowhere is this more apparent than upon glimpsing the fragrant rituals of the Middle East and in particular the Arab world. Immersed in the tradition of aromas, which were brought to Europe through the Crusades, soon opens a vista of a sensuous world. Fragrance is used to augment not only a person’s attraction but also to enhance food, living quarters and personal objects, to give a sense of moral purity and to unite members of a social group. Furthermore, in Islam scent is coupled to beliefs of evil spirits being associated to foul smells, while “the scented person is surrounded by angels”. Fragrance therefore takes on a deeply spiritual meaning, a matter of sanctity or sin, allying one with the forces of good and dispelling evil influences.

Arab people use aromatics in abundance and they revel in expensive materials when they can afford it, but they try to use what they can lay their hands on when they cannot. Women adhere to the motto: “We must use lots of smells”. But contrary to the beastly trail one imagines being left behind, that does not happen in public. An intimate approach is favored: within family and friends or among other women’s company.

In the United Arab Emirates specifically, highly prized are aloe wood (with a price to reflect it of upwards 250$ a pound), saffron, musk, rose, ambergris, jasmine, Arabian jasmine, narcissus, sandalwood, civet, and henna. Oil form is prefered due to its sensual nature and because oil holds fragrance better. Seeds and leaves are grinded into powder to enrich those oils. Arabian women are increasingly appreciating the convenience of Western-style spray fragrances, emulating the Western ideal, yet there is also the belief those smell a little less beautiful due to the intense alcoholic blast out of the sprayer.

Different aromatics are employed for different parts of the body. After a thorough bath, based on the principle that the application of fragrance on unwashed skin invites disease, the ritual begins. The purpose of perfuming is to revel in the scent. Rose, musk and saffron are favored for use all over, while hair benefits from sesame seed or walnut oil, fragranced with essences of ambergris or jasmine. Mkhammariyah is a red-hued mixture of aloe wood, saffron, rose, musk and civet that is put on ears for scenting as well as coloring. The armpits are scented with ambergris or sandalwood, the nostrils with aloe wood, the neck with ambergris, aloe wood, saffron, musk, narcissus and rose.

The rituals become even more elaborate for a wedding: the bride is washed, massaged, oiled and censed with various unguents and lotions. The bridal dress is soaked in water aromatized with rose-water, pepper, saffron and civet and then fumigated with ambergris and musk. A husband says after describing his wife’s scents on her person and her garments: “We men like all scents used but have a preference for musk, ambergris, aloe wood and saffron”*. Arabian men are also catered for: often with the same scents ~ rose, ambergris and particularly aloe wood. They are rubbed on ears, under nostrils, on the palms and smeared on the beard.

Clothes are censed with “fumigation”: washed, dried and then placed on a rack over a big incense burner purposely used for this process. The scent captured by the fabric remains perceptible even after washing, that dense the cloud of smoke is. Darker clothes (usually worn by women) are being censed with aloe wood, musk, ambergris, rose, Arabic gum and sugar, while white clothes (usually worn by men) are only censed with aloe wood for fear of staining.

You can watch the ritual here:



Olfactory pleasures come in gustatory form as well. Food is cooked slowly, with lid on, so as to preserve the aromas of fragrant materials used, resulting in mouth-watering Epicureanism. Spices are highly prized, especially anise, pepper, cinnamon, clove, garlic and ginger. Rose-water, orange-blossom water, cardamom and saffron are recipe ingredients in desserts. Cardamom is used in Arabic coffee and saffron in tea, while both saffron and cardamom oil are often added to milk. Frankincense smoke is sometimes used for drinking water, also useful for disinfecting it, which is arguably the origin of the now archaic tradition. A pot is filled with thick frankincense vapors, then water is poured over it and the lid put back on.

An invitation to an Arab house is occasion for reveling in olfactory pleasures as a means of tightening social ties. Good manners dictate to arrive pleasantly perfumed and to compliment the scents of the house and the food. The end of a meal is a chance to partake in fragrance sharing rituals, which intensifies the group’s sense of unity. A 19th century narration of the process goes thus: “A small square box […] is filled with charcoal or live embers of Ithel and on these are laid three or four small bits of sweet-scented wood. […] Everyone now takes in turn the burning vase, passes it under his beard…next lifts up one after another the corners of his head-gear or kerchief, to catch therein an abiding perfume.”* Currently Arab hostesses bring out fragrances for the guests to savor and put on themselves. The higher quality the scents are, the higher the praise for the hostess when passersby and friends smell the guests leaving from the place of invitation.

The pious aspect of fragrances in the Arab world is reflected in places of holiness and funeral rites.
Mosques are weekly incensed with frankincense for purification and it is an old tradition that musk had been used in the mortar to render a pleasant smell for years to come. I haven’t personally smelled it as such but the literature insists that it was so.
Funerals are held to be scented affairs. The body is washed with water scented with fragrant leaves and then smeared with camphor, sandalwood and saffron oil. On each side a censer, with Arabic gum and frankincense respectively, is placed, while the burial ground is also aromatized with aloe wood sticks sending their fragrant trails to the heavens. However it is interesting to note that although perfuming is lavished on the dead, for this occasion it is reserved for them only: the living do not use perfume as a mark of separation from the realm of the dead and as an external manifestation of mourning.

Recapitulating, it is fascinating to contemplate that fragrance takes on so many aesthetic and moral uses in a rich culture such as the Arabic one. Perhaps the West has still things to get taught.

References:
*1) A.Kanafani “Aesthetics and Ritual in the United Arab Emirates: the Anthropology of Food and Personal Adornment among Arabian Women”, American University of Beirut, 1983 pp.42-90
*2) W.G.Palgrave, “Narrative of a year’s journey through Central and Eastern Arabia”, Macmillan 1866, vol.2, p.26

Artwork "Two Lovers" from the 19th century, via the Hermitage museum. Clip originally uploaded by BBCWomeninBlack (from the homonymous documentary) and kindly sent to me by Kels.

The Wonders of Amber: Perfumery Material of Soft, Oriental Character

Amber is a fit subject to tackle in the colder weather, if only because it's such an enveloping aura it creates. There are many misunderstandings about amber and hopefully we will dispel some of them here. Amber is a difficult term to describe in perfumery, simply because it has so many meanings as a word. Amber has additionally become a rather generic, all encompassing term, resulting in us being able to find all types of oils touted as "amber oil" in the market and sold online.

Essentially, there is no such thing as an amber essential oil. Essential oils are oils from plants in their purest form, distilled or otherwise extracted from a single plant species. Fragrant amber is a combination of several different botanical sources (or in ambergris’s case -which is a completely different material- a product of animal origin, more on which later). There is no one plant from which amber comes from, although some claim it comes from a special tree growing in the Himalayas. This is probably imaginative copy. Fir tree resin, in its regular, non-fossilised form is actually used in perfumery sometimes and offers a rather sweet, warm and deep smell that serves as a base to anchor the other ingredients that are placed on top of this less volatile ingredient. But it's not the usual reference.

The concept of "amber" on the whole is in fact an olfactory convention of the late 19th century and became a perfume "genre" at that time with the invention of vanillin (synthetic vanilla, as known from patisserie to most of us) added to the time-honored use of labdanum. This is for all practical purposes what we refer to as the "amber note": labdanum and vanillin.

"Ambery" is the general term -according to the French system - to describe the perfumes that fall in the oriental group and that have a warm, slightly powdery, erotic, animalic tonality in them ("parfums ambrés"). We could classify Shalimar, Obsession, Must de Cartier or Moschino for women (original) in that category. This doesn't have to do with the actual ingredients, it’s rather a figure of perfumery speech, although of course the perfumes of this category do include "ambery notes".
Please note however that NOT all "orientals" however are "ambery": the opoponax-based or balsamic/resinous fragrances in the Oriental spectrum (Opium or Youth Dew for instance) can eschew significant use of pure "amber bases" (see below for actual ingredients for this) in lieu of other accords within the variety of materials in hand. Simply put, the "oriental group" of fragrances is more encompassing than the "amber orientals".

The following materials do NOT have a relation with "amber" as the term in perfumery is used:

*A sort of "amber oil" comes from the Baltic amber; the fossilized resin from a prehistoric tree called Pinus Succinifera, a pine species. Amber dust is a by-product of the fossil amber industry (which caters for jewels) and the material renders an amber oil through a process called destructive distillation of fossilized amber. The oil yielded contains succinic acid which is useful in health products, however due to its uninviting aroma it’s useless in perfumery. Therefore there is no such thing as "amber fossil" used in perfumery.

*Ambrette seed is another ingredient often mixed up with amber that gives however a musk note in perfumes. Coming from the plant Hibiscus Abelmoschus , the seeds are distilled to give a waxy substance that is then treated with an alkaline medium to give finally the "absolute”. The smell is slightly musky and soft, warm, peachy and snugly; used in many luxury perfumes.

*Ambergris is the legendary ingredient often used in relation to "amber" (as ambra/amber appear shortened sometimes, since ambergris in French means “grey amber”).
Ambergris comes from a cured secretion from sperm whales; the whale secretes a substance to heal its stomach from the scratches of the cuttlefish it swallows when feeding. This gets out through the gastrointestinal system and is left floating on the ocean for years. The floating part is what gives it its characteristic slightly salty and warm , sensuous smell. It is animalic in a subtle way and retains its scent for centuries, just like musk.

So what actually goes into the production of amber and ambery perfumes, you might ask at this point.

The answer is two-fold.

Natural ingredients are used by natural perfumers to create an amber base without actual ambergris (and without synthetic vanillin, as per above), meaning a perfume base that smells warm, erotic and sensual or simply an oil mix.
Usually these include:

1.Labdanum: Cistus labdanum or rockrose is a gum resinoid from the common in the Mediterranean rockrose bush. In the past a long double rake (ladanisterion) was used to comb off the gum from the beards of goats grazing on the bushes, especially in Crete, Greece. It has been used in incense since antiquity. Today the twigs and leaves are boiled to yield the gum. The aroma is the closest thing to real ambergris in the plant kingdom.

2.Benzoin: A secretion of the tree Styrax tonkinense, a tropical asian tree, in the form of tears, which is secreted when the tree is injured. Two varieties exist; Siamese and Sumatran, the former drier and more powdery, the latter sweeter, more caramel like.
Its aroma is sweet and warm and evolves into powdery balsamic.

3.Styrax levant (Liquidamber orientalis): Another resinoid from a tree, it smells a bit like glue with a cinnamon edge. It is important in the creation of amber chords and has a rounding effect.

4.Natural vanilla extract from the Madagascar vanilla orchid can be used. (Perfumers dabbling in synthetics opt for vanillin instead)

Mandy Aftel in her book "Essence and Alchemy" suggests a simple "amber base" made from just three materials for the amateur perfumer: 30 drops of labdanum, 120 drops of benzoin, 6 drops of vanilla.
Usually other accent notes are used in amber chords to differentiate the result and make it unique, ergo the abundance of different "amber oils" in the market. Some of the usual ingredients to do so are vanilla, tonka bean, Peru balsam (sweet ambers), clove, cinnamon, Tolu balsam, sage, juniper (drier ambers), sandalwood, patchouli, olibanum (mysterious ambers), rose, jasmine or other flower essences in very small amount (more floral ambers).

The big perfume manufacturing companies (not the designers or the cosmetics companies who label their name on them, but those who get the “brief” and go in the lab to create them, such as Firmenich, IFF, Givaudan, Roure etc) have patented their own "synthetic ambers" for use in their perfume creations. It goes without saying that in order to find out what your favourite perfume contains you have to find out which company is responsible for its creation. Those "amber bases" (and please note that some lean onto "ambergris") fall into three categories:

1.True ambers: Those include Ambrarome Absolu by Synarome, Ambrogène by Roure, Ambergrissol by IFF, Ambré B.V. by De Laire and Fixateur 404 added to Grisambrol by Firmenich.
2.Ambers from labdanum: Those include Ambreinol and Ambregris Synthetique by Givaudan, Grisambrène by Firmenich, Ambre Synthetique by Naarden.
3.Pseudo amber (which is closer to opopponax resin really): Those include Ambre 53 by de Laire, Ambreine Samuelsom by Firmenich and Ambrène by R.Sondes.

New molecules are developed as we speak. For a modern and extremely popular synthetic that draws upon amber qualities refer to our article on Ambrox/Ambroxan, a woody amber note with great tenacity and diffusion.

The issue of amber is a fascinating one and hopefully some of the more obscure aspects of it have thus been illuminated. It is important to know what is at the core of a fragrance, however it is our nose and limbic system that finally makes the decision for us. So, wishes for a happy amber hunting!


This article used some data from the archives/catalogues of the perfume companies mentioned, Mandy Aftel’s "Essence and Alchemy", Eden Botanicals and Ayala’s "Smelly blog". Thanks to all.