Paco Rabanne Pour Homme: fragrance review

Paco Rabanne has been the green giant looming on the bath sill of many a bathroom in my country of origin in the 1970s and 1980s. This classic fougère has marked a generation, alongside best-sellers Drakkar Noir and Aramis, not to forget Azzaro pour Home; with a scent that has come to characterize maleness. In the case of Paco Rabanne pour Homme the underlying brutishness is there, but the sophisticated veneer and the hint of sweetness makes it friendlier than any of the others.

Like any classic fougère the abstractness of Paco Rabanne pour Homme tries to replicate a feeling, an impression, rather than an actual smell. The fern from which the fragrance family takes the name (in homage to the 19th century Fougère Royale fragrance by Houbigant discussed above) is more like the green tentacles of soapy leatheriness of the barbershop than anything anyone would actually meet in a forest. Ferns don't smell much after all. The fougère is a man-made smell rather than an approximation of the natural.

The soapy overlay of Paco Rabanne pour Homme makes it exceptionally attuned to that prerequisite of any masculine fragrance that aims for wide appeal: a sense of cleanliness, though not entirely ersatz thanks to the familiar recollection of lavender essence; but at the same time a man-made product for sure. It's an entirely inedible smell, alternatively cool and warm, gaining warmth in the drydown thanks to an ambery note, always forceful despite the hint of honeyed softness, the hallmark of any good representative in the fougère genre. Some things are not to be trifled with.

The newer version alas does not live up to the old one, but it's still something that needs to be visited in order to appreciate how steadfast a classic fougère can be. It's how fathers should smell like, a scent of dependency and safety.

Hermes Equipage: fragrance review

If Calèche encapsulates perfumer Guy Robert's idea of a great taste feminine perfume, then Équipage is his idea of the perfect masculine; sober, handsome, restrained, graceful. These two Hermès fragrances embody both the house's easy, effortless elegance aesthetic (you can imagine them as "old money" contrasted with nouveau rich) and Guy Robert's idea that only a "lived-in" ambience about a scent makes it truly romantic; if you need more proof you can just test out Madame Rochas and his other marvels (Amouage Gold, Dioressence etc).

Scent Description 
Aromatic, spicy and woody, the brief for Équipage was based on the success of Monsieur Rochas, composed by the same perfumer (Guy Robert) just one year prior, demanding the scent of a "cold pipe".  Word has it that Jean Louis Sieuzac also worked on this one. The smokiness is there all right (I'm hypothesizing birch tar to give a smoked leather note, reminiscent of the Cuir de Russie type of scents), but there's pungent dryness instead of the usual rum casket fantasies of honeyed milky tobacco; such as the ones evoking languorous Turkish escapades that Lutens brings to his Fumerie Turque, to cite but one example.  Liatris is an interesting note: it possesses both a herbaceous facet on one end and a hay & tobacco facet with only a subtly vanillic undercurrent on the other end, so it balances off nicely the bitter, pungent top notes of Équipage, reinforcing the concept of a smoking pipe.

Équipage is resolutely old-school and conservative smelling ~therefore probably anathema to anyone under 40, unless they have a perfume obsession~ and like an experienced acrobat balances between strength and finery, between the rustic herbs, the bitterness of the clary sage opening and the bite of cloves, on a base of smooth wood notes and a little sweet floral touch, a combination as dependable as a gentleman of the old guard. The florals cited in official notes description give only half the truth: the lily of the valley gives but crispness, the rosewood a profusion of linalool (that ingredient familiar from classic lavender), the carnation adds a clovey tint, as carnation composing was done by utilizing clove essence.
The true character of the fragrance evolves from the evolution of the aromatic, rustic and bitter herbal essences into rich woody, earthy notes in the drydown with a tinge of leather notes. In this it is in the same league as the equally magnificent Derby by Guerlain, which epitomizes the smooky woody fragrance genre; perhaps the Guerlain is a bit more balsamic and greener than the Hermès.

Who is it for?
I can vividly picture Équipage on a tweed-clad man out in the woods, lithe, supply riding his horse with his gun between horse bridles and saddle, leather lapels & patches on the jacket, having a good time only to return home when the sun is beginning to set. Perhaps it's so old-school that such a picture doesn't really seem ridiculous or overblown. Hermès at any rate likes to emphasize its "team player" name, showing the bottle over the photo of a rowing team. Cool, I get it. That's got to be some posh British college we're talking about, where the idea of a team spells dedication and loyalty and doesn't mess with anyone's individuality. Équipage smells perfectly individual nowadays, sticking like a diamond ring among graphite pencils, so perhaps my modern take is skewed. I suppose more men smelled in some variation of this liquid nectar back then....and oh boy, weren't those the times.

Équipage seems perfectly at ease on a smoker too, a heavy one at that, fusing with the remnants of the ashtray scent on the clothes into producing something delightful rather than repelling. No wonder in this age of cigarette demonisation Équipage looks like an outcast. Most interestingly this masculine eau de toilette works well in both the hot and cold season and lasts equally impressively, as it seems to morph to suit the weather. Winter brings out its crispness of sweet earth and woods. Summer heat highlights its cooling herbal, almost mentholated effect and its spicy kick.

I am a bit at a loss on how it would be possible to recommend it be worn by women, evocative as it is of virile-looking men like Sean Connery, however I have to share that I indulge myself in my vintage bottle more often than I'd care to admit. Perhaps there's something to be said about women embracing the idea of wearing a virile scent from time to time...

Vintage vs Modern Équipage 
The vintage versions of Équipage bear a light brown cap with a screw top design; the modern is sparse, black, architectural. The modernised version, available at  Hermès boutiques and department stores with a big selection of Hermès fragrances where you will have to ask for it by name, has attenuated some of the pungency and projection of this fragrance, without messing too much with its bouquet garni of herbs. If anything it's more citrusy and terpenic now than leathery, but not by much.

Notes for Hermès Équipage: 
Top: bergamot, rosewood, lily of the valley, clary sage, tarragon, marjoram
Middle: jasmine, carnation, pine, hyssop, liatris (a herbaceous perennial)
Base: Vetiver, patchouli, tonka bea, amber

Optical Scentsibilities: bottle design, part 2

Bottles get fairly often copied, er...*cough, cough*..."inspired" by other bottles it seems. After all we highlighted some on a previous post. Maybe the bottle designers/sculptors are just a handful (which they are, actually)and the rights for use are rather...liquid.

Witness these latest examples:



The scarce Japanese Y perfume has an elegant bottle that seems like a drop. Or a figurative swan's neck made of crystal, if you contort to a mental pretzel position for a bit.

Roughly evoking the similar bottle of bestseller Cashmere Mist by Donna Karan.
Jennifer Lopez is full of energy, producing not only twins and singing albums, but also fragrances to fill malls across America. Her latest is Deseo (desire in Spanish), which takes a novel approach of an irregular shape, bluish colour (not the usual choice for a passionate fragrance) and an offbeat cap.
Somehow I think we have seen this idea executed more competently in L by Lolita Lempicka. Another passion-potion in a blue-ish, irregularly shaped, vaguely heart-like bottle.

Balmain has Ambre Gris displayed everywhere in France. It just now made it to some online stores worldwide. Striking and hefty bottle, isn't it, with its big, sherical cap!


And guess who had made a similar bottle looooong ago? Coty for his seminar L'Origan.

Parfumerie Générale goes the way of niche: austere sturdy bottles, uniform design throughout the line, empasis on what's inside rather than frills, serious approach, emblematic labels.

Imagine one's surpise to find somethig similar enrobing the comparatively lowly Denim by Elidda Gibbs!

Then of course there is jewellers's brand Van Cleef & Arpels, who have issued many fragrances in jewel-like bottles. Féerie is their latest in an elaborate crystal flacon with silvery stems, shaped like a ripe fig.

If only Pierre Dinand hadn't already designed the lovely fig limited edition bottle for L'artisan Parfumeur's Premier Figuier...

Jessica Simpson tries hard with all the desperation of a has-been. So hard that she actually sanctions a quite pretty and expensive-looking bottle for her new perfume, Fancy (fancy that!)
Then again her target audience is 15-35 years old (nothing wrong with the upper end of the margin, plenty of wrong with the bottom end of it though: how could a modern 15-year-old get away in her entourage with anything elegant without atracting ridicule? To be answered in the hazy distant future).


Eerily reminiscent of the limited editions for the bell jars of the Serge Lutens fragrances for Le Palais Royal, like this one for Mandarine Mandarin.
Now cut it out, Jessica, please! This isn't funny!!

Pics via aedes, artcover, ausliebezumduft, ambregris, autour de serge, scentaddicts, luckyscent, parfumflacons.

Optical Scentsibilities: bottle design

Art apparently not only imitates life, but art itself as well! Here today is photographic evidence of design borrowing concerning perfume bottles.

The most classic example is of course the couturier's dummy by Schiaparelli for her legendary Shocking.

The torso has a seamstress's tape on the neck and a head of flowers. Very 30s.
While Gaultier decided to give it a corset in his take on Jean Paul Gaultier Classique. Very 90s...

Weird shapes and precarious balances also inspire. Hermes did this tipsy bottle that sits on an angle first for Eau de Merveilles and then for Elixir de Merveilles (depicted).

Missoni liked the idea and borrowed the almost on the side, ready to fall but not quite balance on their eponymous scent and later on their Aqua by Missoni.
Youth Dew is a classic by Lauder: their first fragrance. Its shape above (coming from a later design on the original bottle) is echoed though in another perfume bottle.

Madeleine Vionnet, as a couturier, made sure she had a thimble-shaped cap on her fragrance. The rest is quite similar. The sketchy filigree design by Jane Birkin's hand proved successful for the ultra pared-down, functional bottle of Miller Harris L'air de Rien.

Lostmarch opted for a slightly more nostaligic design on theirs, lifting the sparse bottle a bit. Laan-Ael it is. L'artisan Parfumeur designed new caps for all their bottles recently (Why? Completely redundant, they were perfect anyway ~OK, perhaps they needed to inject a shot of masculinity to the image of their unisex fragrances, I am hypothesizing).
Yves Saint Laurent followed with their cap for L'Homme.

Perles de Lalique has one of the most arresting bottles in their extrait de parfum, as you can see.

Until one sees the vintage parfum bottle for Arpege by Lanvin that is.... Sisley came out with a moon-cap for their Soir de Lune. After all lune does mean moon in French.
But apparently Songes, which means dreams, is also tied to moon imagery, according to Annick Goutal. Good night, sleep tight...

Pics from osmoz, amazon, artcover, doctissimo.fr, scentedsalamander blog (for soir de lune), parfumflacons, flickr, official Miller Harris and Schiaparelli sites.

Colour of the jus

Have you ever wondered if the colour of your perfume is not a haphazard choice? Have you asked yourselves if you would love it equally if it were a different hue? Or more importantly if the people involved in creating it have actually exerted any brainstorming about this?
A funny incident happened a while ago and made me consider the issue from another angle than the mere personal.

On a fine lunch hour shopping spree I passed from that shop that was inspired by Moses' wife and rhymes with catastrophe in Greek (which is what my significant other always mutters when he sees a bag with the white-on-black logo of it). I am referring of course to Sephora.
As I was browsing, nodding to myself "already tested", "already tested", "already tested", I come close to a couple at the Lauder shelves. Casually dressed but well groomed (the european groomed casual chic), around 30 both.
The girl, a dark haired one, rather pretty, grabs the tester for Knowing and ooohs and aaahs saying "Oh, this is my favourite perfume in the world, wore it so much". (I am thinking she wanted the guy to take the hint and buy it for her- and she was not the mercenary type at all). The guy seems uninterested and browses beside her, going "uh huh". She then picks up Cinnabar, as they have the older Lauders all grouped together. "This is nice too" she comments smelling the bottle.(I agree) She gives it to the guy, who says they are both rather heavy, vetoing the decision. She is even motioning to pick up the Youth Dew, when he intervenes and says : "Imagine how heavy that one must be; it's almost black!!" She never finished the motion to pick it up and sniff the bottle, as she didn't do it with Aliage either (which is also quite dark). And immediately he goes on and picks the nearby Alien (Sephora places them alphabetically and Mugler is after Lauder). "Now this is lighter, better" he quips. (the "light" thing merits its own discussion in another post) She made a face. I just about wanted to smack him at that point! Both because he denied her what she obviously liked and because he showed his prejudices about perfume picking. I didn't follow them to see what they bought in the end. I didn't have the luxury of time. Maybe they didn't buy anything. If they did however it was not what she wanted, she seemed crestfallen....
I don't see these two making it to the aisle and that doesn't refer to the shopping kind.
The little story has a moral though. People judge with their eyes as much as with their noses.

There is another great story that has been recounted to me by J, known as Teacake, a sweet Australian-based lady. She mentioned that someone young (a teenager actually) who was a friend of her daughter had proclaimed upon viewing her collection that "yellow/golden juices don't smell nice, only pink and blues do". That comment has been a mini-epiphany for me. Seriously: it made me realise that indeed the colour of the jus really denotes the target market as well as the olfactory family in most cases: fruity florals and "fresh" scents which were all the rage with the young some nanoseconds ago are indeed pink or blue!

I don't think this is an accident. I believe it has to do with the mentality that yellow jus is older, classic perfumes that are associated with natural ingredients (no naturals are coloured pink or blue, except chamomille of course and they don't use it in most commercial perfumery because of that unstable blueish tint that might ruin the general effect).
If one stops and thinks about it most of the classics are pale golden or light ambery: Shalimar, Femme, Mitsouko, Joy, Chanel #5, Bois des iles, L'heure bleu. They all vibrate at some variation of wee colour. There are a few notable exceptions like Chanel #19 or the afore mentioned Youth Dew, but still no pink or blue or even purple coloured perfume existed till quite recently. Certain natural ingredients do have a deep colour: Peru Balsam is molasses dark; natural jasmine turns almost orange with the passing of time, sometimes alarming us into thinking that a perfume containing it has turned.

Pink and blue juice on the other hand usually has a highly synthetic construction that guarantees the stability of colour and the unnatural hue of the finished product.
Personally, I have a deep seated aversion to the colour blue in fragrances, although I do appreciate it in other permutations (the sea, glassware and jewels come to mind). I think it shows an insurmountable lack of imagination on behalf of the person who opts for it; especially if it's a man, I'm afraid. It's such an easy, safe choice! What's your favourite colour? 9 out of 10 men reply blue, if asked out of the blue about it (am I being punny?). I don't hear fuschia (too gay), chesnut(too difficult; do they even know it's a shade?), vermillon (it sounds like a french recipe for something involving snails or frog's legs) or even black (the odd rocker/goth/outcast/mysterious Lothario picks that one up out of the 10.....thank God fot that)
In perfume terms it usually denotes an overload of the dreaded fakeness that is the "marine" note. Yeah.....marine for people born and raised and living all their lives in the Chezh Republic(a landlocked country); having no passport on top of that. I am categorically adamant that the sea does not smell like any of the marine fragrances out there I have ever smelled. I do keep hoping some day they will catch the elusive trail. I live in hope.

Anyway, younger folks tend to associate the hip and new with those pastel hues, dismissing the rest as "old ladies' perfume". In their desire to mark their territory and draw the line, maping their own identity, revolting from what their parents wear, they go for the pink and blue, with the odd inclusion of purple for those who like a smidgeon of mystery (or so they imagine).
So companies churn out perfumes in those colours. It's all marketing, I'm afraid.


Pic was sent to me via mail uncredited, probably courtesy of an advertising campaign (MAC maybe?)
Not sure, but great photo nonetheless.

What is Chic ?

The human brain needs small incentive to go on a day dreaming track when provoked. A casual question on a perfume forum made me think about what constitutes chic in perfume. The unanimous response reigning supreme was Chanel #19, a scent I personally love and consider very chic indeed. Other chypres also featured prominently. However the issue deserves pondering on and not just writing it off with a few predictable recommendations.
Antisthenes the famous Greek philosopher, has a saying attributed to him, by which I have abided all my life: roughly translated, the beginning of wisdom lies in exploring meanings. So what is chic? I have thought about that, first of all.

via tubearc.blogspot.com

People have different definitions: some consider chic equals “confidence, timelessness...fragrances that are effortlessly stylish”, others say that it “means fashionable, to be sure, but also stylish in a kind of lean 'n' mean, insolent, provocative way” and cites models of a certain designer house as examples.
Ayala, a perfumer herself had this to offer: “timelessly stylish (as opposed to the passing fashion-du-jour). There must be something about it just a little bit cool or aloof in a way - as if there is no real attachment to the scent (or the fashion item), and they are just used as a tool...”

Luca Turin addressed the issue in a humorous way in The Emperor of Scent:

“Chic is first when you don’t have to prove you have money, either because
you have lots, so it doesn’t matter or because you don’t have and it doesn’t
matter. Chic is not aspirational. Chic is the most impossible thing to define.
Luxury is a humorless thing, largely and when humor happens in luxury it happens
involuntarily. Chic is all about humor. Which means chic is about intelligence.
And there has to be oddness –most luxury is conformist and chic cannot be. Chic
must be polite and not incommode others, but within that it can be as weird as
it wants.”

By that same token, Madame Clouzot, sister to film director Henri-Georges Clouzot in talking about French perfumery she deemed only two houses as really great French perfumers. She then ascribed Guerlain to cocottes (=kept women), while Caron was for duchesses (proper, proper chic). What the French consider chic nowadays is “a sort of kept-woman vulgarity”, luxury that shows. So I do find myself simpatico with that opinion expressed above. 

Many times women’s glossy magazines, fashion editors and coffee table books devoted to style do spreads with images alluding to the following ladies: Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly - and Katherine Hepburn if the editor is having a good day...More subversive personalities, like Diane Vreeland or D.Furstenberg, are considered exceptions that consolidate the rule. In that light, chic at some point deteriorated to certain "style-icons" of Western perception and scope.
A pearl necklace, a camel coat and black leather pumps look. You know what I mean. Timeless, classic, a little preppy. (I am having a difficult time imagining in those terms what would be chic in India, for instance, if one takes into consideration clothes’ tradition and climatic differences) But what was it that equated chic with that look? Is this chic? Not if a hundred women out there go out and copy it; because isn't chic supposed to be sophisticated? And what is so sophisticated and individual in following in the footsteps of someone else, someone as well known as the style icons just mentioned? I mean, everyone would expect it. Hmmmm...

In the interests of objectivity I searched the term online too.

The Free Dictionary had this to offer:

adj. chic•er, chic•est
1. Conforming to the current fashion; stylish:
chic clothes; a chic boutique.
2. Adopting or setting current fashions and
styles; sophisticated: chic, well-dressed young executives. See Synonyms at
fashionable.
noun
1. The quality or state of being stylish;
fashionableness.
2. Sophistication in dress and manner; elegance.

By that definition, chic has a stylish air, a contemporary element (not something obsolete) and yet possesses elegance aplenty.
Also there is this definition by Wikipedia: “means stylish or smart, as reflected in styles of fashion such as heroin chic or boho-chic”. This leaves much more leeway, though, for almost anything.

via goldgorgeous.blogspot.com

So what are the perfumes that personify all the elements of chic? What is elegant, contemporary, sophisticated, non aspirational, confident, insouciant, and humourous?
Maybe it can be better defined by what is not in that league.

Too much luxury has an effect of “blinding” the sensory receptors, registering as bordering on show-off. Cascades of costly ingredients, rich velvet feel, gold tinged nuances: all that points to the direction that the wearer wants to be perceived as wearing a rich perfume (why that would be desirable, enough to make it to a beauty magazine such as Allure with the corresponding views of Frédéric Malle -the head of “ Éditions de parfums”- in the article "How to smell discreetly rich", is perhaps the theme of another article). What could be included in this super-luxe category? Obviously the Clive Christian and Amouage perfumes, which are so costly they surely stand as the olfactory equivalent of a Hèrmes Birkin bag -in crocodile skin, no less; costs as much as a small car and has a waiting list of at least two years. I’d rather give my money to charity, thank you.

Unfortunately, although not as pretentious, there are other perfumes, lovely, gorgeous perfumes that bring to mind lush plush and starched banknotes: Joy, Shalimar, Boucheron femme and homme, 24 Faubourg. They don’t smell un-chic. But they do smell conformist, like someone who wants others to know he/she has good taste. Alas many oriental fragrances suffer from this affliction.

Too much sexuality is also anathema to chic, not because very sexual beings are not chic per se (they can be, as proven by some), but because advertising one’s sexuality with perfume might border on the desperate. So hairy-chested, virile, traditional male aftershaves that purport their attractant properties like Kouros pheromonic experiments and perfumes that have the dubious fame of resembling odorata sexualis (such as Musc Ravageur, Boudoir, Shocking, Obsession or Ambre Sultan to name but a few) bring to mind catcalls to carnality and cannot be seen as insouciant. Sorry…They do serve their other purposes admirably, though.
Too much experimentation on the other hand, that avant garde that is so prevalent among niche brands with unusual synthetic ingredients that mimic everyday objects of sometimes even an unpleasant nature, are also removed from the elegant part of the equation. Comme des garηons is a prime candidate, although I love their Incense series.
Obsolete creations that have withstood a myriad incarnations or bring on the reminiscence of another era can also be excluded. They do attach themselves to ageist jokes of a cruel nature and this is sadly to their detriment as well as to the joker’s. I am afraid Quelques Fleurs suffers from this fate, along with certain old lavenders, such as Yardley English Lavender. It’s not a fault of the perfume; it’s just that they seem far-away and not intended for a major revival.
And there is no need for me to elaborate on why fragrances that smell too much like food do not have associations with chic, now is there?

So what does that leave? I find iris scents and non invasive chypres chic. Some aldehydics can be too, if they don't conform too much. Even some select orientals could, if one wears Opium the way I do: very casually. Yes, Chanel #19 is very chic, exactly because it never shows off and is never more or less than a lady. Miss Dior is also playfully audacious and naughty under the effluvium of floral notes. Rive Gauche vintage is so coldly steely it can cut a swath in a room and make everyone wonder without ever becoming bothersome. Bois des iles is wonderfully composed to sit equally well on men and women, in formal or informal attire. Tauer’s L’air du desert worn by a discerning male could be very chic. Defiant. Mitsouko in all its veiled mystery can be chic, simply because it never elicits the instant recognition compliments and is sexual in a most intriguing, never obvious way. Guerlain Vetiver is always chic; dicreet but individual. Alpona or Jicky on a man could be all those things as well. I would like to put Madame Rochas in its older incarnation in this league, along with modern ones like Voleur de roses, Timbuktu, Fumerie Turque, Tubereuse Criminelle and Iris Poudre. Possibly there are others too.

Does perfume play such a major part in grafting chic-ness onto an individual? Is that even possible? I don’t know for certain. All I know is that chic needs humour. So maybe even the least expected perfume can be viewed as chic on a person who has the wit to make it his/her own.

Art in perfumery part deux: post-modernism?

In my previous post I elaborated on what constitutes art in perfumery and what criteria must apply for it to be defined as such. Some perfume lines were scrutinised in order to decide whether they deserve the term or not. Considering that some perfumes are in some degree artistically conceived and not merely as a means of generating income for the conglomerates that so often produce the majority of perfume today, the next question would be what style and period of art do they belong to and if post-modernism features in there.

Takashi Murakami Super Dob

According to certain theorists all art can roughly be divided into two extremes: classicism and baroque, styles antithetical to one another and with the consistent habit of succeeding one another through the passing of time.
Nota bene that it is of paramount importance for our purposes further on, though, to differentiate those terms clearly. I do not refer only to their standard definitions regularly used. I use them in a broader artistic sense. Thus by classicism we can not only define the ancient greek and roman art, nor the 18th century genre that mimicked some of those attributes, nor still the things that are generally viewed as “classics” by the layman.
Even within ancient greek art (which one would label classic, without thinking twice about it) the two extremes are inherent; the golden century of Pericles that provided such masterpieces as Diadoumenos was swiftly followed just another century after that by the equally exquisite Hellenistic baroque with Laokoon and the Snakes. Surely these two examples cannot be lumped into the same stylistic technique or aim of the artist. One is calm and sure of itself, relying on perfect harmony and rules. The other is full of expressive agony, imbalance and agitation.


In J.K.Huysman’s English translation of his famous book A rebours/Against the grain (Albert & Charles Boni), Havelock Ellis notes in the introduction that classicism is the subjection of detail to the form, the parts subordinated to the whole; while baroque/decadence is the antithesis of that; the glory of the detail above the whole, the homogenous in Spencerian phraseology becoming heterogeneous. Therefore classicism precedes baroque and can also be considered more “correct” as it has its roots into functionality. (the aim is served by the technique and not the other way around). He goes on to give examples from architecture and literature ( early Gothic is classic, late Gothic is decadent, Hume and Gibbon are classic, Emerson and Carlyle decadent)

I couldn’t agree more, even though I am personally drawn to baroque.
Baroque exalts segmentation over the whole, striving for the virtues of individuality. It tries to make beauty out of imbalance and feeling out of clash. Romanticism is baroque. German expressionism is baroque.

In that respect perfumery can also be seen through this lens; series of classical perfumes in contrast to baroque ones.
Classical perfumes are those that have a smooth balance of notes to serve an idea behind them that unifies the whole into one precise image, one specific aim. In my mind such perfumes are Allure by Chanel or Femme by Rochas. They give out a very balanced precise message. Every chord is serving that message: “like me” for Allure; “ravage me” for Femme. The nuances are there to serve the general purpose, no matter what that latter is.

In contrast there are other perfumes that follow a baroque sensibility, focusing on detail: Bal a Versailles, Angelique Encens, Tubereuse Criminelle are orchestrated in segmented glory in order to make us appreciate every evolving stage and hint at various different messages along the way. Although two of those are considered “classics”, this does not by any means refer to the term already discussed, but rather to their endurance to the passing of trends.

To make this issue contemporary and relevant and not an art history lesson, I have pondered on the art movements of the 20th century from post-impressionism to fauves to cubism to Dada, from modern and post-modern to pop art to Damien Hirst. Again the succession of classical style to baroque continues. Perfumery did not have so many phases as the visual arts, but it did have its fluctuations in style which does not mean they are clearly divided always into “pockets” of style. From the revolutionary modern phase of the late 19th century that produced Jicky and on to the roaring 20’s with their Guerlain Shalimar and Caron Tabac Blond to the 50’s with their lighter aldehydics and feminine chypres, to the 70’s with their emancipated scents or hippy-ish oils, to the opulence of the 80’s and on to the sparseness of the 90’s and full circle to the baroque gourmands of recent years.

However it was a comment by a poster on MUA, named Rhian, who got me into thinking that if the great perfume classics are those created before the 1930’s (the period of modernism in art and also the basis of most revolutionary setting of rules for modern perfumery) what exactly personifies the olfactory post-modernism?
Rhian reminded me of Louis Sass, who in his book Madness and Modernism elaborated on the shared disjunctive narratives, surreal images, and incoherence of both post-modern art and schizophrenia, which is intriguing to say the least.
I personally disagree with John Cage's maxim:

"Emotions do not interest me. Emotions have long been known to be dangerous.
You must free yourself of your likes and dislikes."

In my opinion perfumery is deeply rooted to the physical, being a transportation of the senses, so any cerebral interpretation has to go through this aspect still; we react very viscerally to smell, even though we may *think* about the specific stimulus in a certain way. So yes, in that regard perfumery as a whole could be viewed as an antidote to the mind frame of post-modernism.

"Postmodernist fiction is defined by its temporal disorder, its disregard of
linear narrative, its mingling of fictional forms and its experiments with
language."

according to Barry Lewis referring to Kazuo Ishiguro.

The notion that in order to create a post modern perfume one would have to break down the traditional techniques and shatter every well-received knowledge of the masters of the field in order to create something truly baroque to its core is so difficult to come by, though; since modernism is a classical stylistic means, like we agreed, it would follow that post-modernism should embrace the extreme baroque. Thus I cannot for the life of me get beyond two -or three, at gun point- lines that truly produce such a post-modern product. One of them is Serge Lutens for Les Salons du Palais Royal, who is deeply baroque in the most contemporary way in my mind. The mentholated opening that segues into creamy floral is a very post-modern idea. Ditto the warm ashes in conjunction with cool lavender.
The other line is pushing the envelope even more. It’s Comme des Garcons. If there is truly a post-modernist perfume they (and I refer to Rei Kawakubo by “they”) have certainly been the ones producing it.
From the cloning of dust on a lit lamp to burnt rubber to wash drying in the wind and from the Synthetic series to the Incense series to the Guerilla scents they have succeeded to churn out so many innovative and anti-perfume scents that they have earned the laurels of the rather unwearable but oh-so-revered post-modern perfume. Brava! The case for schizophrenia is not far behind.