Posted by Robin
on
12 April 2011
I used to think there were some notes that simply couldn’t be done to death. The fragrance industry has proven me wrong on that score. Raise your hand if you’d just as soon not see another new oud fragrance for a few years?
Vetiver hasn’t yet reached that stage.1 We’ve seen a slow but steady stream of new vetivers over the last couple years, but nothing like the fever-pitch rate of new ouds. On the other hand, you know, there are lots of vetivers out there already, and vetiver, like oud, has a tendency to dominate whatever composition it’s in. So the bar is set high for a new vetiver fragrance.
Today, I’m looking at new(-ish) vetivers from Escentric Molecules and Chantecaille. Many perfumistas already know about Escentric Molecules, the niche line of perfumer Geza Shoen. They’ve released three fragrance duos, each consisting of a single note diluted in alcohol, and a fragrance built around that single note. The third duo, which debuted last year, features vetiver. Molecule 03 (the fragrance I’m counting as a half in the title since it isn’t really what you’d call a finished fragrance) consists of vetiveryle acetate diluted in alcohol, nothing else. As with Molecule 01 (iso e super) and Molecule 02 (ambroxan), it’s probably not the most cost-effective way to get yourself a straight-up aroma chemical, and I’ve always wondered why they don’t release the Molecule fragrances in very small sizes…
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Posted by Robin
on
19 October 2010
Perfumer Geza Shoen’s Escentric Molecules line has launched their third fragrance duo, this one focused on vetiver:
Molecule 03 ~ “The [sole] aroma-chemical in Molecules 03 is vetiveryle acetate, a refined vetiver note which is celebrated at its purest in this fragrance…”
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Posted by Robin
on
30 December 2009
The Beautiful Mind series, a project from perfumer Geza Schoen, will debut in January with the launch of Intelligence & Fantasy, a new fragrance created in collaboration with Christiane Stenger, who at 12 was the youngest person to be awarded the title of Grandmaster of Memory…
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Posted by Robin
on
18 November 2008
Ok, raise your hand if you'd like to see a moratorium on new niche brands? At the very least, I'd like to see an independent judging panel evaluate each line, sniff a sampling of their wares, and determine if they have anything to offer that the world really needs. Given how much product is already out there, we don't need much, do we? More product makes it harder to find the perfect scent, not easier.
I used to define a perfumista as someone who wants to smell everything, but I can't say I fall into that category anymore. I don't want to smell everything if that means smelling 1500+ new fragrances a year, and that's my (obviously unofficial) estimate of what we're going to see before 2008 is over*. More and more often, new niche lines launch, and after reading the fragrance descriptions, I decide I'm just going to save myself some time and trouble and not smell them at all.
Byredo was one of those lines. They launched five fragrances earlier this year, and as I said at the time, none of the fragrance descriptions made me drool on my keyboard. So I didn't chase after them. Luckily, a kind friend sent me a sample of Byredo Pulp so I could see what I was missing…
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What does communism smell like? How about the Sun, or Cleopatra’s perfume, or the atomic blast that destroyed the city of Hiroshima? This booklet, published on the occasion of the exhibition If There Ever Was, attempts to bring distant, elusive, and sometimes impossible olfactory experiences to life. Curator Robert Blackson commissioned thirteen fragrances from eleven perfumers and smell artists, including Bertrand Duchaufour, Christophe Laudamiel, Christoph Hornetz, Mark Buxton, Sissel Tolaas, and Geza Schön. If, like me, you missed the show at the Reg Vardy Gallery, this booklet gives you a chance to smell them all in the comfort of your own home.
Each scent of the exhibition is encapsulated in a scratch-n-sniff card, and comes with a short explanatory text. What these fragrances have in common is that they all refer to objects that are absent from our experience: they represent things that are temporally and/or spatially remote. There are no traces, for instance, of the original recipe to Cleopatra’s perfume; we can only guess what it really smelled like…
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