Poll: Worst Perfume Ever!

I haven't really had a ready post for today (well, not the way I like them to be) as I had my hands so full of things to do, but I wanted to draw your attention to a very very interesting discussion I came across on another board where people discuss the "worst perfume ever!". Apparently sacred monsters of our fragrant universe (such as the famous Tubereuse Criminelle by Lutens) and more expected controversial/polarising specimens (Womanity or Angel anyone?) are being mentioned. There are a few factual errors too, but it's nevertheless fascinating to see the responses of what appears to be average folks to our little hobby.

via mycnewsonline.blogspot.com

So an idea of a poll came to me: What do YOU consider the worst perfume? Which criteria do you apply to this judgment? And should we even assess something fragrant on an axiomatic scale like that? (after all, fragrance is conceived to smell rather nice, so "worst" becomes a subjective term)

Let's hear it in the comments section!

Ormonde Jayne Montabaco: Perfume Bottle Giveaway

Ormonde Jayne likes to surprise us with new releases in a sporadic fashion, instead of globering us down the head with continuous output that would have nothing new to say. Her latest exclusive to Harrods and her own London boutiques line, the Four Corners of the World, comprises four scents (Tsarina, Montabaco, Qi and Nawab of Oudh) inspired by her travels around the world. With the help of trusted perfumer Geza Schon the vision becomes beautiful reality. I'm so very excited to share the new scents with you, which we presented to the press in an ultra-glamorous journey aboard the Orient Express (making everyone feel like an Agatha Christie character!) and I promise that reviews are coming up shortly.

In the meantime I am in the happy position to be able to giveaway a traveler atomiser bottle of the exclusive Montabaco for our readers. You can enter the draw wherever you are in the globe (fittingly to the theme!) by entering a comment answering the following question: what would be the place you'd most like captured in a fragrance? Draw is open till Friday midnight and the winner will be announced in the weekend. 

Discontinued Yohji Yamamoto Perfumes Re-issued: Cult Fragrances Back from the Dead

The Yohji Yamamoto line of fragrances came out in the late 1990s and created their own myth, perpendicular to the Japanese designer's fashions. There was Yohji (for women, a fruity with chypre elements by Jean Kerleo in 1996), Yohji Essential (a newer version of the original by Jean Michel Duriez in 1998), Yohji Homme (a spicy woody for men by Jean Michel Duriez in 1999) and then Yohji Yamamoto Femme (a floral fruity by Nathalie Feisthauer in 2004) and Yohji Yamamoto Homme (a woody oriental by J.P Bethouart from 2004).

One among them, Yohji Homme, in particular went down in the guide by Turin & Sanchez as extremely influential, if one goes by the amount of fragrances said to be referencing it (and how fun that according to said verbiage the perfumer Jean Michel Duriez of parfums Patou was inspired by Annick Menardo's licorice segment in her masculine gourmand Lolita au Masculin -supposedly the homage was returned in Menardo's later Body Kouros for YSL).

And then the perfumes were all dropped about 6 years ago when Yamamoto struggled with his creditors to avoid bankruptcy.

The good news is that the dormant line is being re-issued this spring (2013), set to be available in major department stores, in markets such as the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Ukraine and Russia, as well as Yamamoto boutiques internationally. The first launches will include Yohji Yamamoto Man, Yohji Essential and Yohji Senses (this is a new fragrance). According to Paul Christie, who is the chief executive of Yamamoto Parfums, there are two new Yamamoto fragrances, developed by Givaudan perfumer Olivier Pescheux, in the pipeline and should be out by the end of 2013, with the proviso that they follow the original formulation as closely as possible.
Yohji Homme, that elusive hard-to-find discontinued masculine, is rumoured to relaunch in autumn 2013 in counters stateside. The licence of Yamamoto Parfums is held by the IFD Group.

Whether the compositions will remain the same or there will be a significant revamp was my main gripe (and we have the past history of the re-issue of Laura Biagotti's Venezia to make us a bit hesitant), but surely with such a cult status it would be a misstep to offer something completely different and the PR staff assure me that the new compositions will follow the originals as closely as possible.
[Besides the ingredients do not necessarily lend themselves so casually to the allergens chopping block].

So rejoice and glad that Perfume Shrine is the messenger of such great news!

The Scent of 1400 Perfumes...Combined!

If you -like me- have ever played at your mother's or grandmother's vanity mixing the liquid of all the little perfume bottles together and ruining the precious juice in the process you know just what a musty, muddled stench such a combination can give and have moved on.  Apparently not every visitor at the French concept store Colette has though, which is why they're displaying that momentous thing in the first place: a giant vial filled with 1400 perfumes samples. Talk about giga-pong!

Actually that's the combined total of ALL the 2012 perfume releases (Remember the times when the most launches a single year saw was only one tenth of that number?)
Dutch duo Lernert and Sander decided to experiment regardless, amassing all the perfumes of 2012, mixing them together and displaying the mix at Colette under the "art project" name Everything; a monster perfume. After Surplus and La Petite Morte and now this, it seems like scent is the playground of artists who want to carve out a novel way to have people intrigued about their ways. Who knows what's coming up next!

pic via jezebel.com

Lived-in Elegance & Sexiness: The Surprising Case of Cumin Fragrances

Would you believe me if I said that one incredibly sexy, shockingly intimate nuance in fragrance comes from a humble kitchen spice? Cumin is frequently featured in men's perfumes to offset lighter notes and it imparts a wonderful carnality in feminine fragrances, especially now that animalic ingredients coming from animal sources are non existent and the alternatives are mostly sub-par synthetics that do not create the same intimacy. This dense, pungent ingredient can couple well with floral essences and with woods and is often among the spice "bouquet" in spicy oriental fragrances, making it a very pliable and versatile partner in perfume composition.

Source: tumblr.com via PerfumeShrine on Pinterest

The inclusion of cumin can provide that underlay of lived-in quality that is can be so elegant and old-money in fragrance compositions that would be effete without it: Eau d'Hermès by Edmond Roudnitska for Hermès is a great example, a citrus-leathery cologne for men (that women can share) which feels like a worn pair of chinos for a walk outdoors. Roudnitska's talented pupil and modern maestro of niche, Jean Claude Ellena, took this segment off the old into creating his masterful Cartier Declaration: the cumin in tandem with cardamom creates a contrast of cool and warm, on a mossy, foresty base that feels fresh, yet providing the feeling of someone who is breathing, feating and living underneath (and probably has apocrine glands that function properly and freely!), not a sterilized version of a human just out of the sauna. In Diorella, another Roudnitska classic, the ripe melon, almost garbage-like note marries well to the dirty, spicy cumin to make the refreshing top notes less acidic and more enigmatic.

To extend this notion, cumin can also provide a sexy glimpse, as in afterglow bodies which although were clean to begin with now bear the fruits of some romping around. The inclusion of cumin in the modernized Rochas Femme was an especially enlightened idea in view of that aspect; although purists argue it's quite different than the original Roudnitska creation, one can't fail to notice that at least in spirit, if not in letter, it stays close to the dicta of the grand master. Absolue pour le Soir by Maison Francis Kurkdjian marries cumin and powerful musky notes to render a very naughty olfactory experience indeed! Even though it is profoundly sexy, however, the fragrance never veers into the territory of vulgar, not meaning to please everyone via "easy" popular tricks. In Parfum d'Empire Aziyadé the cumin inclusion provides the exotic touch, but also the languor of the harem, the name deriving from the story of a concubine in Ottoman Turkey. In Jubilation 25 (Amouage) cumin plays a significant role into providing the decadent fruity chypre ambience of classics of yore. Fleurs d'Oranger by Lutens, although certainly not a lonely case of cumin use in the vast portfolio of spicy wonders in the line, is probably the most erotic floral of the brand; lush, dense, seriously romantic, fanning the spice over the carnality of orange blossom absolute and dense, clotted tuberose essence. A play of seduction in the cloistered gardens of Cordoba.

 Other times the author of a perfume is interested neither in the lived-in elegance, nor the sexiness, but in providing an unexpected touch that will distinguish the composition into an unusual spicy arpeggio above the clichés of cinnamon and pepper: Kenzo Jungle L'Eléphant was such a case, as was L'Autre by Diptyque, their distinctiveness probably the very reason of their market demise...

 WEARER'S CAVEAT EMPTOR

Cumin being the great divider it is, however -several people find a prominent note of cumin either too foody (like Indian food, where cumin is featured in the preparation of curry mixes) or too "dirty" (as in body odor)- sampling is definitely recommended for any fragrance that features cumin prominently. This is a matter of cerebral familiarity with it rather than skin compatibility which goes both ways: If you know the spice, you can pick it up and be indifferent to it due to over-familiarization through spicy food, or alternatively you can pick it up better than someone non familiar with it and thus be more attentive to it, especially if you don't fancy Indian or Middle Eastern food, feeling it sticks out like a sore thumb!)

 Cumin has been inumerable times linked to the scent of sweat on online fora and communities, to the point that it is enough to even mention the list of notes featuring it to have at least one person wondering whether the perfume will end up smelling like stale sweat on them... It's an anecdote, but a good one; when Kingdom by Alexander McQueen, a cumin-laced skanfest by all accounts, launched, an experienced online member by the alias Serpent, described his impression of the new fragrance in the shocking but funny imagery of a "hooker eating a burrito". Such was the effect of the cumin overload!

With cumin, you have to be very deliberate, it seems.

Related reading on PerfumeShrine: Cumin as a raw material, pheromones, sweat and list of cumin-laced fragrances