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...

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..."

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...

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...

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...

Strictly speaking, this isn't really a review, but in the interest of perfume geekery I'll share my experience with the latest two fragrances (Escentric 02 and Molecule 02) from Escentric Molecules, the niche line of perfumer perfumer Geza Schoen.

When I "reviewed" Escentric 01 back in 2006, I found that the fragrance was so perfectly described by the brand's own description that it was silly to say much more, so I just quoted the description and added a few words. The same is true of the new Escentric 02, so here is what Escentric Molecules had to say:

Escentric 02 uses an unparalleled concentration of ambroxan, in combination with vetiver and muscone, a particularly gorgeous nature-identical musk. Orris, elderflower extract and hedione lead into the instant effervescence of the topnote...

Boudicca, the London-based design house of Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby, will launch Wode, their first fragrance, this fall (it was introduced in conjunction with their Paris couture collection this week):

An experiment five years in the making, involving a small army of specialists who've all signed non-disclosure agreements, it's more of an anti-perfume that Kirkby claims "does something never done before and is applied in a new way." But here's the kicker: it won't be available for sale when it's unveiled in a "spectacular" September launch. "If I say too much I'll be in breach," explains Kirkby, "but it will not follow the conventional route of a fragrance."

The fragrance is named for woad...

Escentric 02 [shown] uses an unparalleled concentration of ambroxan combined with vetiver and muscone, a particularly gorgeous nature-identical musk. Orris, elderflower extract and hedione add an instant effervescence to the topnote, giving it a fresh 'mineral' effect...

In his book of essays entitled, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the physician Lewis Thomas wrote, “The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking itself.” And it is with this appreciation of smell as comparable to thought and interpretation that the exhibition If There Ever Was considers scent as integral to the perception of abstraction and representation...

...an homage to a single scent ingredient. It consists of 'Iso E Super' in an unprecedented concentration (65%), together with other ingredients (including pink pepper, green lime and balsamic notes like benzoin, mastic and incense) in a new balance — rather than the traditional formula of top, heart and base notes, Escentric 01 moves quickly from top to bottom...