Cosmic Harmonies

When Solange Azagury Patridge came out with her first perfume, Stoned, I was curious to sample it. It-jeweller to the London stars Elton John, David Furnish and Bella Freud and creative director for Boucheron, Solange had all the makings of a hip-celeb in her respective field and the news of her launching a fragrance seemed like a nice idea for someone who had obviously good taste and an eye for imaginative design in jewellery. Then I learned the name of the scent: Stoned. It recalled images of Amy Winehouse, not of glamour. Let's just say it wasn't very appealing, even though I belatedly found out it was simply named thus for a girl who likes stones. Heftily priced/prized ones, that is...
Later on I found out it actually had finely milled diamond-dust in it. And on the heels of that, the price. OK, by then I was ready to hate it! But surprisingly it was not a bad perfume, this smooth oriental, even if lots of the money asked went to the bottle and the diamond dust. Stoned took a year to break even, business speaking, which in light of the above hardly comes as a surprise, does it.

Now Cosmic came to the scene and it was rumoured to be a modern chypre. This got me in a mode of at leasting wanting to try. Both Solange scents were developed by Lynn Harris of Miller Harris, which to me ensured at least a standard of quality ingredients and concept.
The name Cosmic is taken from the Cosmic zodiac jewellery collection by Solange in which each piece is unique.
Of course again the bottle and the name suggest something that is otherwordly to what is actually hiding in the bottle: a likeable green velvety skin-scent. What I mean by a skin scent: not that the fragrance reminds of the smell of your-skin-but-better, that alloy of synthetic musks that is so favoured in very recent perfumery. No, I mean that it stays close to the skin and doesn't project like some extraterrestrial entity that has landed on you proclaiming its scheme to conquer the earth. It's too well-mannered for that.


According to Solange:

A shooting star falls to earth revealing its meteoric and potent charms. Following on from her parfum Stoned, Solange has thrown her imagination out to the furthest corners of the universe and created the exquisite Cosmic-- an intergalactic liquid jewel enclosed in a star-faceted silver orb. The bottle's shimmering surface glints and winks from every angle, literally a Cosmic addition to every girl’s dressing table.

Cosmic is a modern Chypre that weaves together a milky-way of magical essences, combining Solange’s own sweet candy accord with an airy top note of bergamot, sparkling aldehydes and galbanum. The heart of the fragrance beats with classic blossoming rose, jasmine absolute and rare iris. Base notes of earthy vetiver, opoponax from Peru, myrrh from Somalia, and sweetly addictive vanilla add layers of sensual aroma. To further embellish these earth-based substances, Meteorites have been specially ground down to create a fine Stardust for the fragrance. The heady combination of essence, cosmos and ether simply takes you out of this world...

Cosmic by Solange goes into its own little twists and turns keeping a smooth harmony in which it's hard to discern particular ingredients, they're weaved in tightly. Initially there is the herbal hit of galbanum with a minty overlay of aldehydic sparkle, seguing on to a smooth lightly sweeted heart of soft heaps of flowers. One would be hard-pressed to pinpoint their little heads. The sweetness reminds me of ionones (gamma-methylionone, alpha-ionone)and mint leaves on a cool champagne sorbet, melting into a serene moment to yourself. You might be contemplating the stars or wondering how your lucky stars might help you actually buy this indulgence.
In a way Cosmic has traces of both Satyr by Armando Martinez and Alice in Wonderland by Konstantin Mihov, two indie perfumers which have been featured in these pages; and perhaps also a shade of Maboussin, another fragrance issued by jewellers.
In Cosmic the smoothness and sweetness are rounding out the initial jolt of galbanum and are beautifully accompagnied by the persistence of a little resin and earthy notes such as vetiver and patchouli like a basso continuo you find yourself noticing more and more.
I call this success, don't you?


Cosmic notes
Bergamot, Galbanum, Rose, Jasmine Absolute, Iris Absolute, Patchouli, Vetiver, Labdanum, Opoponax, Myrrh, Vanilla

Cosmic comes in a silvery metallic star-embossed bottle of Eau de Parfum 50ml/1.7oz and retails at 200 euros or 285$.
Cosmic is available at First in Fragrance and Luckyscent.




Following posts will feature lots of surprises and articles inspired by my trips. Stay tuned!

Pic of moons sent to me by mail unaacredited. Pic of bottles: Stoned on the left, Cosmic on the right, from official Solange site.

Jacques Polge for Chanel

A clip with Jacques Polge, in-house perfumer of Chanel, in which he explains the necessity of perfume.
You can also see the procedure of securing the neck of the extrait de parfum bottles with thread and a wax seal, properly called baudruchage (the coiling of the silk thread),barbichage and brossage (the following steps into securing the neck and seperating the ends of the thread). The whole process might take up to an hour.



Please check back later for the first blog review of Solange Cosmic.

Clip through Captain Lucas Inc.

Montana Parfum de Peau: fragrance review

On an ordinary morning on an ordinary weekday in Paris this past June, a rumour started to ripple through the mirrored design studios, the gilded, glossy magazine offices and the cramped workrooms of the French fashion industry. "Have you heard?" whispered voices ominous with impending ill news."The police found a body on Rue de Bellechasse this morning." "Have you heard?" they whispered, "about the death of Wallis Montana?"

~ Marion Hurne, Node Magazine Australia August/September 1996

Parfum de Peau, also known as Montana de Montana, as was its original name, is usually described as sexy, assertive, dirty, and sultry. It is all those things! But it is also tinged with tragedy as it was inspired by style guru Wallis Francken and the strange androgyny of her public persona. Together with Claude, they formed a weird couple and this is a weird perfume that can be easily imagined to be worn by people who love making a statement.
Almost unsufferably potent and single-minded in its assault, Parfum de Peau was given to me as a gift when I was a teenager. I wonder if the gifter was trying to tell me something. Because this zest has stuck. Did I always project a certain drama? Was that drama merely a plea for attention like every dutiful teenager does? All I remember is behind its bursting, blinding fruitiness peppered with spice it taught me what a furry little animal smells like when it’s hot and it lies dead on the street and one has the strange craving to go pick it up and lull it to sleep. There is the bitter and sweet odour of Thanatos which weaves such a strange net to lure us into a false sense of security.

Claude Montana, “king of the shoulder pads” and butch leather-man wearer is half-Spanish, half-German and began his career as a jewelry maker that got him recognition through Vogue coverage; that in turn helped him settle for a job at cutting and grading leathers at McDouglas, a Parisian firm in 1970. It would take some shows at Angelina’s Tea Room until he would start his own company in 1979 designing Amazonian, emasculating clothes for women. Those caused some ruckus with their inferred image of being reminiscent of Nazi uniforms. The Constructivism risus sardonicus that runs through his collections animates gyrating proportions with the addition of a peplum over narrow, wasp-waisted skirts. He greatly admired Mme Gres and Balenciaga which comes as no surprise. That kind of trapeze designs with the emphasis on shoulders and the power with which a silhouette moves in them was both reflected and bouncing back in his personal life.

His 1989 admission "I'm like a battlefield inside, a mass of contradictions" merely confirms the rumours of erratic behaviour and troubled inner life. He had married his muse, the German-American angular model Wallis Franken, 18 years after meeting her, when they were both 43. She, already a mother and a grandmother, always striking, always rail thin, knew all about the strange affairs of Claude. That warm July day, three years before the tragedy, she “gave up and yielded and went to Susa on foot to the monarch Artaxerxes”: she went on to be a wife ~"Oh, you know, cooking in the kitchen, fixing the dinner, lighting the candles..."
She was decked in an organza pant suit and white cowboy boots on that day. She was a vision.

What happened still remains a mystery: Wallis fell out of the balcony. Pushed or not? Out of her own accord or due to drug intoxication? The grim underbelly of fashion life in ne plus ultra Paris was just a hair away from being revealed. But it never did. It remained an agreement of silence: hushed, whispered in corridors but never out in the open.
What remains is one of her last public performances as an extra in the Madonna clip Justify my Love shot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino at Hôtel Ritz in Paris. I can smell the atmosphere in those rooms ~they reek of Parfum de Peau; they reek of contradiction and need; they reek of the desire to transcend death.

{Warning: uncensored version; unsuitable for office enviroment!}

(uploaded by nicubuleasa)

Parfum de Peau was originally composed in 1986 by Jean Guichard (Fifi, Deci Dela, Obsession, Loulou, Eau d’Eden) and was later reformulated with synthetic castoreum by the great Edouard Flechier (Poison, Tendre Poison, Une Rose, Lys Méditerranée, C’est la Vie). Not to be confused with the second feminine perfume of the house, Parfum d’Elle (1989) in a similar, shorter bottle.
The original Montana de Montana came in a breathtaking, award-winning helix-shaped bottle designed by Serge Mansau, inspired by the swirling fall of a winged sycamore seed as seen by a strobe light. It was encased in a cobalt blue box in both Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfum versions.
The older versions had a packaging with the name Montana writ big, while the newer versions have a silhouette torse recalling the bottle on the outside of the box in orange, with the name Montana in smaller script underneath it.

Notes: green note, pepper, cassis, plum, peach, cardamom, ginger, rose, carnation, sandalwood, jasmine, tuberose, yalng-ylang, narcissus, patchouli, castoreum, civet, vetiver, olibanum, musk, amber.


Collage of Wallis Francken originally uploaded by Superchic1966 at Msn groups. Pic of ad from parfum de pub.

A poem ouverture...

As I was thinking about perfumed matters in general and Parfum de Peau in particular (whose review will run shortly, check back later on!), with its very relevant maladjusted story behind its creators, a poem by a well-loved voice whispered to my ear...

The Satrapy

What a misfortune, although you are made
for fine and great works
this unjust fate of yours always
denies you encouragement and success;
that base customs should block you;
and pettiness and indifference.
And how terrible the day when you yield
(the day when you give up and yield),
and you leave on foot for Susa,
and you go to the monarch Artaxerxes
who favorably places you in his court,
and offers you satrapies and the like.
And you accept them with despair
these things that you do not want.
Your soul seeks other things, weeps for other things;
the praise of the public and the Sophists,
the hard-won and inestimable Well Done;
the Agora, the Theater, and the Laurels.
How can Artaxerxes give you these,
where will you find these in a satrapy;
and what life can you live without these.

~Constantine P. Cavafy (1910)

Originally uploaded on this page.

Leather Series 11: the Big Bruisers

Perfume directions often go the way of fashion trends and lifestyle choices, which sometimes translates as going the way of the dodo, and this is nowhere more obvious than in the leather scents that emerged in the late 70s and during the 80s. After the brief optimism of the mid-60s, the world entered a grim period of oil crisis, economic downfall and the threat of the planet suffering nuclear annihilation. So what emerged from this situation? Consumerism, the cult of the ego, striving for quick wealth and excessive partying all rolled into one big cigar! Bret Easton Ellis wasn’t far off in his American Psycho: there was some degree of paranoia running through the course of that era and the leathery scents that graced it partook of it in some degree.

Many of those big, nasty bruisers that emerged owe a lot to the intense patchouli high of such scents as Aramis (1965). Composed by Bernand Chant who would follow with equally patchouli-laden Aromatics Elixir, Aramis, arguably the male version of same nose’s oeuvre Cabochard, made it OK to leave a bombastic luxurious sillage announcing itself in Wagnerian ouvertures that demanded their own Brunhilde following.

But it was Estée Lauder’s Azurée which was continuing the noble lineage of leathers in 1969. With its rather masculine edge despite its feminine gardenia aspirations, submerged into deceptive aldehydes or cyclamen and jasmine aromas, it opens on dark, musty oakmoss that grabs you and makes you pay attention. In a way though its leatheriness does not possess the striking green slap-across-the-cheek of Bandit or the smooth caress of a gloved hand that is Diorling; resulting in diminished revenue in today’s currency.

Caron’s Yatagan by nez Vincent Marcello came out in 1976 to a striking ad campaign brandishing a man with a giant curved Ottoman sword, the yatagan in question. On a par with Djedi in its uniqueness and otherworldiness it conjures up visions of fierce Tatars roaming through the steppes, stomping over jade artemisia and dark pine needles and keeping the meat for their meal under the saddle, imbuing it with the horse’s dense sweat. Its odour of livestock is peculiar, in an accord with liquor that has gone rancid. The culinary image of steak tartare with its weird vibe of sour, bitter and metallic is embossed in the fluxes of memory and never fails to raise its head when I am thinking about this arresting, avant-garde and trully brave scent which inspired and is still inspiring many niche perfumers, even today.

One of the first masculine scents I purposely tried to locate and wear was Jules by Christian Dior. It came out in 1980 and for years it kept a low profile saleswise, until suddenly it stopped being carried by my local store. It was at that minute that the quest for it became an impossibility and therefore (predictably) a semi-obsession: how could they do this to me? Discontinue it when I hadn’t even paid enough attention to it in its darkly aged-tobacco-ish flacon? It was de trop! I was determined to locate it! Of course decisions and determination often culminate in materialisation years later and such was the case with Jules. My encounter with it was sudden, brisk and like seeing a familiar face which I hadn’t thought of for a long time: Cuir de Russie amped up via a peppery accord like bell peppers getting cut in front of me.

Cartier made their own pilgrimage in 1981 through the cult of the watch: the leather wristbands of their Santos watches, inspired by aviator Santos Dumont, and on a second level the bomber jackets of the first days of aviation gave cue to Santos the fragrance. One of my personal favourites it is perhaps too butch, yet its mesmerising nutmeg and cumin spice pas de deux hidden in the effluvium of dark and dank patchouli and rich castoreum never fail to captivate me. Strange as it might sound, Santos has all too often served as a personal ambience scent for centering: How many happy hours have I stooped over historical documents and textbooks trying to think of this or that relation between cause and effect while the gentle remnants of Santos on little silk cushions were wafting their magic…
Santos was followed with many flankers, one of the most memorable ones being the Concentrée version which mollifies the spice duo and renders the greener aspect more intense.

But Santos was not alone: that same year Chanel gave Jacques Polge the brief to come up with a new masculine that would make waves and he succeeded with the intense sweaty macho maleness of Antaeus with its unusual honeycomb accord in the deep drydown and the strength of its mythological inspiration.

On the vein of the intense Van Cleef & Arpels homme, Trussardi Uomo (which came out in 1983) was for one brief moon the scent of choice of my father, its crocodile-print flask bottle garnering pride of place on the bathroom sill. Spice along with tobacco is prominent in this one as well, highlighting my predilection for such materials, with a passing touch of serene incense. But on re-smelling the fragrance for the purposes of this article I came upon a distinctly sour note that has a pin-and-needles effect up the nostrils which I didn’t recall in my father’s morning ritual. A little research quickly yielded its unsavoury results: there has been a reformulation which happened around 1995 when the bottles were redesigned. Too bad!

Guerlain is no stranger to leather and Derby, a masculine leather fougère, is one of the most elegant and debonair fragrances in the genre one could hope for. First issued in 1985 by nose Jean Paul Guerlain, it got re-issued for the removation of La Boutique Guerlain in 2005 to great and deserved critical acclaim. The leather notes rest atop the moss and minty herbs, with a very thick, spicy clove introduction. After some time a floral phase of carnation and jasmine peek under the clove and give a smooth richness that then goes into the forest floor of a traditional men’s fougère and the leather note of a battered jacket that has withstood the elements in a battle at some far away place.

The less controversial Bel Ami by Hermès was brought out in 1986 and it placed leather firmly in the map with all the determination of the purveyors of fine saddles since 1837. Leather was cool by then. It wasn’t the mark of the daring individual a la Yatagan, but a distinguished mark of sophistication all over again.

But the two most legendary ones are intended for women: Paco Rabanne’s long defunct La Nuit (1985) and Claude Montana’s Parfum de Peau (1986). The quintessential bruisers, both scents sport an unapologetic dash of panache which prowls across the room, across the corridor and probably over down the street as well.
As to La Nuit and its amazing drydown despite the unasuming opening, I am leaving you to enraptured Luca Turin on his take ~which probably caused a stampede to try and locate some of the elusive juice:

“This is the warmest, sultriest perfume imaginable. To think I hated it when it came out ! My extenuating circumstance was that at the time (1985) I lived in Nice, where women can be toe-curlingly vulgar, and it was a big hit. La Nuit is probably the most animalic perfume ever made by a major firm, and I don’t just mean musky à la Koublai Khan, or castoreum as in Tabac Blond, but something beyond that, almost urinous/sweaty, “wrong” and truly wonderful. Spray Tabu on a horse, and you’ll get the idea. I wrote a disparaging review of it in 1992, apologized for it in 1994 and only recently treated myself to a bottle. Now that the Niçoises have moved on, I see it for what it was all along: the sexiest fragrance since Cabochard”.

Parfum de Peau was my major introduction to castoreum, of which it features copious amounts, and thus merits its own full review shortly.

Pic of Glen Ford originally uploaded by spuzzlightyear on livejournal. Pic of La Nuit and Jules ads courtesy of parfum de pub.