Goeffrey Beene Grey Flannel: fragrance review

In the Grey Flannel scent by American designer Geoffrey Beene, crisp greenery and musk tonalities (plus that seductive coumarin in the bottom) combine to evoke a man in a tailored suit, perfectly groomed, clean-smelling without one iota of modern aquatic “freshness." The man who wears this in cooler weather is the quiet type, a smart businessman or someone who has been opting for it for half his life and wisely knows not to change. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it, as they say. The only misstep? Perhaps that flannel in question is really purplish-green instead of grey? But we can be very forgiving in his case.

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The bitterness of galbanum is what greets you, which is incongruent with modern sensibilities, I'd wager, since most men (and women, of course) are attuned to sweeter-smelling notes nowadays, but wait it out a bit, because the scent mellows into a violet leaf accord with aubepine aromachemicals and a touch of iris and almond — from the coumarin — in the background. Overall, its feel is cooling and rejuvenating without being spikey sharp, especially in warmer climates or on hot summer days. But let it bloom on a rainy day and there comes a certain melancholy coming out of the heart, which is endearing in an unsentimental way — priceless.

There is a distinct kinship with Dior's classic masculine cologne from the 1980s, the famous Fahrenheit pour homme. But there the violet takes on a different guise, leaves and all, with a more petrol-smelling, pungent opening that is a throw back to the agrestic and abstract opening of Guerlain Jicky, instead of the bitterness of galbanum in the Beene creation. Still, the indigestible nature of the beast is hard to miss. The Grey Flannel customer was prepared for the onslaught to the senses that the original Fahrenheit presented a decade later...

NB. There is another edition called Eau de Grey Flannel which takes the metallic grey of dihydromyrcenol (that aromachemical which characterized all the Cool Water clones of the 1990s) which dilutes the original Grey Flannel in a sea of ionized water. Do not go for that.

NB.2. My bottle comes from the early 2000s. There are several batches out there with a tiny bit of variation. But not too much.

At the moment: December 2019

It's been a loooooooong while I last wrote an At The Moment post. There's a reason. I have had my plate full. Rather too full for my own sake. But I think it's time to stop aside and smell the roses and organize things a bit, before the grand organizing of the upcoming "new year's resolutions". This way, by reflecting on what occupies my thoughts, I can better foresee what needs to be adjusted hopefully. You're of course welcome to share your own thoughts and plans in the comments!

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But first let me digress with a small heart-felt "so long" to one of the people on the Net with whom I felt close to, even though we had never met in the flesh. 
Gaia, the Non Blonde, is no longer with us, due to a sudden heart emergency this past November...My heart sank when I heard the news. So young, so lovely, so loved...
Gaia Fishler,  like her name probably foreshadowed, was a wonderful human being, a woman of genuine glamour and great taste, perfume and otherwise, and a beacon of truthfulness on the internet; a quality which became all the more appreciated in the tsunami of influencers that followed. There was no makeup and grooming advice I didn't take from her religiously; she was meticulous in her search and practical in her pursuits. Her demise is most unfortunate and she will be sorely missed. My glass is raised in loving and respectful memory. 


And there you go. More mundane and practical stuff follows. You've been warned.

READING

The Balkans are a very complicated geopolitical region, a crossroads in Europe. Mark Mazower is the historian to turn to, and his The Balkans: A Short History is my go-to when addressing those issues.
And in a desperate effort to declutter (my library, as well as my house and my life) I turn to Marie Kondo's infamous book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy. Let's see; will it cure my unstoppable accumulation habits? I'll faithfully report back!

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WRITING

Among the things I wrote lately are two articles on fragrance ingredients interweaving into producing something different than expected (Fragrance Maturation, How Does it Work?) and whether tester bottles really do contain different juice than actual merchandise (the short answer is no).
The section of my articles in Greek is also growing strongly, check it out on THIS LINK.
Furthermore I'm hoping to organise my thoughts better during the holiday season and start writing my secret project in earnest. You'll be duly notified. ;)

SCENTING

Revisiting some good ol' designer fragrances (which can be equal to niche sometimes) and pondering on which masculine fragrances set my heart aflutter. (great gift options, mmm, I'm looking at you baby).
Starting to wear the Vetiver Oriental bottle I bought in the early fall in anticipation of cooler days. The scent of Lutens' Vetiver itself is perfect for wet weather.  I also want to wear Cuir Intense by Guerlain, an exclusive perfume circulating at the boutique circuit.
Discovering Max Factor's Blasé eau de toilette, as well, thanks to the scented fairy. I'm also getting the Habanita out for those longer winter nights...

STYLING

Unusually warm and wet weather means that gabardine trench coats and light jackets get maximum wear. A soft wrap in cashmere wool suffices for neck warmth and cool draughts. I like this fringed one in eggplant.

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GROOMING

Thanks to a fellow perfume enthusiast I discovered the merits of Nyx Professional Doll Eye Mascara in the Lengthening formula (there's a Volumising too, but I think that defeats the purpose, doesn't it?). It does make for dolly eyes, so very pretty and fanned out it hurts. Individually separated and nicely smooth without smudging. It washes off easily too, a big plus as I don't like tugging at my delicate hairs.

EATING & DRINKING

It's the season for those delicious spicy honey-dipped cookies with the sprinkled walnuts and cinnamon on top, melomakarona; they're looming out everywhere (yup, even in your corner of the world, I'm telling you, they're everywhere!), beckoning us to bite, and I'm dreading the scales! But if you're braver than me, here's a recipe for you.


LISTENING

In my quest for soundtracks I revisited a cult movie from 1982, based on a cult comic book, that more or less "made" Arnold Swatzenegger the star that he became. Before the demystifying I suppose.  No matter, the music by Basil Poledouris is sublime.

Estee Lauder Sensuous: fragrance review

The scent of Sensuous is rather clever, even if not particularly ground-breaking, balancing all the ingredients and chords in an effect that would make you feel, like one reviewer said, "the victim of your own fragrance snobbery." We tend to bypass mainstream releases in favor of niche, and yet there are some mainstream releases which make us wonder what we have been neglecting, or viewing with unwarranted contempt, and Sensuous is one of those scents.

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Sensuous in 2008 was moving the boundaries from already well known Estee Lauder floral notes towards an opulent oriental woodsy-amber concept, to praise the beauty and sensuality of women all ages. The fragrance was created in cooperation with the nose Annie Buzantian of Firmenich, who composed it of sensual lily notes, magnolia and jasmine petals in the top. The heart brings aromas of molten wood and amber, while the base introduces sandalwood, black pepper, juicy mandarin pulp and honey.

Lightly spicy and quite creamy, the original Sensuous gives me a warm, soft, just right impression of lightly scented skin, in a way paying homage to the creations of Lutens (though less spicy-sweet), but also winking in the direction of Tom Ford's personal favorite Santal Blush, which is also a very creamy and smooth skin scent if you let it dry down. The sandalwood is what is most prominent on my skin, totally a creative attempt at giving that old mainstay of perfumery a valiant effort, but quite effective and very indulgent; it's skin-like at the same time as it's clean and polished, perhaps with a distant whiff of smokiness in the background.

The advertising campaign for the original Sensuous was actually talking about "molten woods", which is as good a term as any fantasy line, I guess, to capture that titillating balance between straight-faced earnestness and blurted out seductiveness. People still pick perfume in order to appear more alluring, there's no use in denying it. So Lauder embraced it, but in a quite classy and clever way, which should teach the market a lesson or two.

The way to do that was to employ several different spokes models (actually two well-known actresses, the pleasantly mature and established Liz Hurley and the not-so-ridiculed-on-U.S-soil Gwyneth Paltrow; and two supermodels, Carolyn Murphy and Hilary Rhoda), dressed in an identical white man's shirt in various stages of decency. The move is clever in a double whammy way: men's shirts, as worn by women, not only offer a morning-after visual code that the public has been conditioned to interpret in exactly this way thanks to endless movies utilizing the trope, but also an androgynous way to borrow the "better" qualities of the masculine gender in the public perception and stereotyping, i.e. self-confidence, assertive disposition, a devil-may-care regard for others' responses. So in one single decision, Lauder and their creative directors managed to appeal to a woman who is both strong enough to not care about men's weighing of her value, but also attractive enough to have men in her life in a sexual way.

The next installment in the Sensuous line came in September 2010, more fittingly season-wise, in the countdown to Christmas. Sensuous Noir is indeed a rather dark fragrance and my personal favorite in the triptych.


Please visit Estee Lauder fragrance reviews and news on the PerfumeShrine.com using this link.

Guerlain Mon Guerlain Eau de Parfum: fragrance review

Mon Guerlain does not dare veer into the animalic, like its forerunners  Guerlain Jicky and Guerlain Shalimar do; this is the first thing one needs to watch for. The propensities of today do not allow hints of bodily odor emerging, nor would they allow the weird opening of Jicky which sometimes comes across as vaporized petrol. Instead, Mon Guerlain veers into the caramelic, with a rum & hay ambience, a "toffee" accord, which embraces the Carla lavender flower from Provence and renders it soft and pliable. After all, the starting point for perfumer Thierry Wasser was the vanillic accord, not the other way around. Was it a genius idea prompted by him? In a way. But not entirely.

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There are several nuances lavender can take. A decade back, when I was describing the main odor constituents of Fragrantica's vast notes database one by one, I came up with the short form of "an aromatic clean note, medicinal on one end and licorice-like on the other end", and I stand by my description to this day. Hermès was the first to exploit this duality fully, thanks to Jean Claude Ellena's idea of a quintessential blend of exquisite lavender wrapped in licorice in Brin de Reglisse (in the boutique exclusives line), therefore the mischievous reconstruction of an olfactory symbol of the South of France reinvented by the gourmet touch of a ribbon of licorice. “Dressed in mat black, a magnified lavender, memory and landscape…”  

Nowadays, it is the vanillic and licorice nuanced lavenders which are featured in any product that aims to appeal to women or women buying for babies and children. To wit, most children's products for the bath and body which claim "relaxing lavender" are mostly featuring a blend of musk with vanilla and abstract notes of extraterrestrial flowers grown on the moon; lily of the valley, jasmine and delicate, unreal roses. And this explains the divide that lavender produces; some people love the medicinal properties they have come to know from real lavender, some people abhor them, confused by the artificial construct that is advertised as "lavender" but really isn't. 

If we insist in our path with Guerlain's Mon Guerlain, and in direct juxtaposition with their classic lavender-laced Jicky, one can certainly see how over a century of fragrance production has seismically shifted the notion of lavender in general. From an animal-laced beast into a vanillic comforting cocoon for women who love their desserts, but don't want to be seen stuffing their mouths with it. 

There's something sexy about making one's self feel good about themselves, giving them the confidence to be themselves, to inhabit their skin, and maybe that's the root of the concept of comfy notes producing claims to sexiness and attraction. Mon Guerlain is in that direction, although to my more daring tastes, close but no cigar...

Very pretty (classic) bottle nevertheless!

Further Reading on the PerfumeShrine:
Guerlain news & fragrance reviews
Perfumer Thierry Wasser

Hermes Elixir des Merveilles: Revisiting my Fragrance Review

Elixir de Merveilles came out ages ago and we have all -I hope- tried it out in the shop. But are we still grasping its genius? It's the rare fragrance which possesses that odd twist: the woody structure is given a steeping into sweeter materials, yet the resulting effect isn't really sweet at all. The chypre-reminiscent earthy note of patchouli gives a grounding to the orangeade of the original Eau de Merveilles, with its more summery facets; in fact the perfumer coerces Elixir into recalling more of the rind of the fruit than the juice.

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The rind of the hesperides fruit is by its very nature resinous, thus colliding with the other resinous materials in the background, providing that much needed liaison. But because orange rind is lightly bitterish and refreshing, akin to the scent of fresh sweat, Elixir de Merveilles becomes perfect for intimate wearing when one's body stills retains a little sweat, mingling with the humidity of the environment, the overripeness and the loaded pong of the vegetal matter, but retaining its lived-in chic.


Elixir des Merveilles by Hermès is a Oriental Fougere fragrance for women which was launched in 2006. The nose behind this fragrance is Jean-Claude Ellena. The fragrance features scent notes of Peru balsam, vanilla sugar, amber, sandalwood, tonka bean, patchouli, Siam resin, caramel, oak, incense, orange peel and cedarwood.

Everything Old is New Again: the Bell Jar

In recent years we have seen an endless recycling of design, ideas, DIY tricks and products that reference the past, in a spin of retromania, which started after the millennium. But even back in the 1990s it seems the adage held firm, with an otherwise iconoclastic artistic director getting inspired by the past. Not that he hadn't already been inspired in other ways, but it's striking to see the very design that he established as "his" being offered by a very mainstream brand 50 years before.

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And so my research led me to the discovery of the Shulton company bell jars, presented as a redesign of their fragrant offerings in 1944. And for none other than Old Spice, the classic reference for men, which started its illustrious history as a ...women's fragrance. Almost 50 years before the Salons de Palais Royal fragrances which were presented in bell jars by none other than Serge Lutens.
And sometimes, a few times, those bear references to an even further distant past...such as medieval manuscripts' art.

Limited edition of Serge Lutens Rousse

Further Reading on the PerfumeShrine:

Art History and Perfume Ads

Serge Lutens news & fragrance reviews

Art in Perfumery