Liquid wood - Odin New York's Lacha

When I started working on this blog, I initially thought about creating very simple and plain visuals. Just a few colour blocks or stripes in a Pantone colour swatch sort of way, filtering everything down to one or two colours per scent. I liked the simplicity and felt that there was conceptual strength in keeping everything clear and uncluttered. The very first blog posts still show images that had been designed with that idea in mind. But a very strong concept can have the down side of being restricting (for the creator) and ultra boring (for the reader). Limiting myself to a couple of coloured squares to describe complex olfactory creations just didn't work in the long(er) run. Yes, this blog is about colour and perfume, and I always start working with a palette, but creating the visual means thinking about shapes, composition, light and depth, structure, and, of course: texture.

I am glad that I gave up on all that probably very German desire for conceptual purity, because from time to me I discover a scent that just screams AMAZING TEXTURE, and how frustrating would it be not to use that as a base for the design. Let's have a look at Odin New York's 2015 creation Lacha:

Odin 12 Lacha

Wood notes always add some solidity to a scent, a wonderful illusion of substance, either polished or raw. In this fragrance though, the wood is anything but solid. This wood is actually liquid. When I first smelled it I had two immediate associations: wood grain and the soft ripples of silk draped languidly over it. No surprise then that I tried to merge them into my visualisation. Lacha also carries a lot of spices, namely saffron, nutmeg and pepper and on different wearings their prominence varied quite a lot, but the mix always seemed very well balanced. According to the note list it has a strong suede leather base, but for me silk and wood describe it much better. A well rounded, softly spicy perfume that nonetheless packs a bit of a punch and comforts with a twist and a wonderful example of interesting texture in a scent. 

How and where to wear:

Fallen in love with a clarinet player? Here's the scent for you.

Liquid Night

I love it when a fragrance house offers the choice of small bottles. My last purchase was a 10 ml travel spray of Musc Ravageur, bought on the spot after wearing it for only a few minutes. I dismiss the pea counters (German for nit pickers)  who keep on telling me that the price per ml is such a bad bargain. I'm not buying a sack of potatoes to feed an army here, I just want to own a piece of something beautiful, and if it's a small piece, so be it. If I love it enough to empty the travel sized one I'm very probably going to buy a bigger amount as a result, and I wish more companies would see the benefit of  'small is beautiful'. Another one that does, albeit  with a very limited distribution, is US based A Lab on Fire, which also adopted a similar editorial style concept to FM. (But who doesn't, these days?)

Liquid Night wasn't an instant love; I had come to the achingly hip Paris department store 

Colette to try A Lab on Fire's "What we do in Paris is secret", but that was sadly out of stock. I liked LN though, and 20 something Euros for a 15 ml bottle was a good enough offer to buy it. I thought. And then it sat on the shelf for months, unloved and collecting dust. I still liked it, in theory, but never got round to wear it. And then suddenly a few weeks ago, I just didn't know what to try...and gave it a go.

Liquid Night, my visualisation

Surprise, surprise: this time I love it. It immediately grabs me with an effortlessly chic aesthetic that is totally wearable but unique enough not to be boring. A creamy saffron note binds dry hinoki woods to aromatics and abstract floral accords and everything dries down to a subtle vanilla. Despite the name, it's actually a rather clear cut fragrance, not sharp, but not floating either. When I created its image I started with very fluid and organic shapes, but after hours working on it and not getting it right I realised what it needed was a very simple geometric structure to emphasise on the contemporary elegance. I took inspiration from neon lights glistening and sparkling on wet asphalt. My colours are very muted, but in principal it's a cold green/warm pink perfume. I find it incredibly suited for this in-between-two-seasons-weather we're having, where spring is on the cards and a few daffs are out, but the wind is still icy and biting enough to wear a big comfy scarf. 

Some reviews complain about the synthetic nature of Liquid Night. I personally couldn't care less. As long as they don't charge me Roja Dove prices for a bottle of ISOE super, I can live with a bit of chemical wizardry in my fragrances. 

How and where to wear:

Not so much a how or where, but with what this time.... my newest fashion find and love is German brand Oska and Liquid Night is a perfect match. A bit of a Japanese influence, urban and edgy, but incredibly comfortable.

Felanilla, languid and luxurious

Adding a new perfume bottle to your collection is always exciting, but sometimes there is a level of anxiety involved. Will I still like it? What if it smells suddenly different from the sample (has happended!) Was it really worth the money? 

My Full Bottle wish list is usually quite short and also short lived; scents appear on it for a few weeks or months and then get chucked out and replaced by something else. Apart from the odd "bargain" buy, I can wait pretty long before I make a commitment. Last week, the list had Hasu no Hana (longest ever contender, on there for a year, which is no surprise, given the price tag), Atkinson's Odd Fellow and/or Fashion Decree and Parfumerie Generale's Felanilla on it. Thanks to London's Bloom perfumery and their lovely little Halloween game, Felanilla is off the list and on my shelf now. A 28% discount is not to be sniffed at. But as I said at the beginning, receiving a new bottle can be a bit stressful. It has been a few months since I last smelled it. Will I still love it?

My visual interpretation of Felanilla

Thankfully, I do, although it does smell ever so slightly different from how I remembered it. The animalic aspect is not as pronounced as I had previously thought. Not that it ever was a civet feast, but it had an element of strokeable furryness that I can't find for now. It's still there, I'm sure, I just have to wait. What is unmissable in this creation is a wonderfully softened wood base over which a purple iris and a powdery vanilla hover in a gentle embrace. All the warmth comes from the spicy saffron and the wood (banana, according to the note list). Both the iris and the vanilla feel cool and, at least for the first few hours, "refreshing" on top of it. The iris is the first to exit the party, leaving all the fun to a gloriously dry vanilla that makes me want to bite, not lick my wrists. Because despite me not really spotting the animal, it is most definitely hiding there somewhere. Felanilla is a proper grown up vanilla, not one for the kids. Its uncomplicated and simple structure gives it a natural, barefoot luxury feel that I often associate with easy going tropical holidays. Languid, subtle but deeply erotic.

How and where to wear:

A  daybed on a veranda overlooking the jungle. A knackered old fan is doing its best to cool down the hot and humid air. 

Elegant hippy: Patchouli 24 by Le Labo

Once a hippy, always a hippy? I do have pictures of me wearing purple, hand died dungarees, a Palestine scarf and about 2 dozen badges showing all my caring for the world's problems. I used to burn a lot of incense, drank gallons of vanilla flavoured tea and liked patchouli. Still do. These days my patchouli just has to be a bit more sophisticated. And Le Labo's creation certainly delivers on the sophistication front. 

My visualisation of Patchouli 24 by Le Labo

What I mostly get from this fragrance is a smokiness that manages to be both wet and dry, stays away from the churches AND the BBQs, and is harsh and soft in pretty equal measures. My friend Nick described it once as sexy bacon, and while I agree that there is an edible element to this, for me it's not bacon. I hate the smell of fried bacon! This perfume far more evokes the image of smoked chestnuts. And because there is a strong leather element coming through it feels like holding a bag of hot chestnuts in a leather gloved hand. Not that the perfume actually smells of chestnuts. That's confusing, I know, sorry for free associations running wild. Patchouli 24 pops up on my skin with a surprisingly herbal patchouli note. A very short Bang! From then on the note stays very silently in the back. Leather, resin and burned woods take over. Wet leaves in autumn fires is another image that comes to mind, and right now, with autumn finally in full swing, is a great time to wear this perfume. It has earthiness and elegance in perfect balance, and that is what autumn very much means to me. A time for long walks in the countryside but also the best season for indulging in fashion. I have worn P24 during a 4 hour walk in a damp forest in Kent and it did work splendidly on slightly sweaty skin.  The perfume finally settles in a vanilla, which is a tiny bit too sweet for the entire composition, I find. For once, I had wished for the woods to continue. It has remarkable staying power, over 10 hours on me, which doesn't happen all that often. This will probably smell quite different, but nonetheless most delicious on a man.  

How and where to wear:

Guy Fawkes night, here we come!

P.S. I had my finger on the purchase button for a 15ml bottle of this from the Le Labo website. £37.50 isn't cheap for such a small amount, but at least they do offer bottles under a 100ml..... But, dear LeLabo people, do you think it's clever to add the VAT sneakily at the very end, when all the form filling and credit card numbering is done? It's not. 

El Born, it takes all sorts...

Spanish perfume house Carner have dedicated their 5th scent, El Born, to the ueber trendy local borough in Barcelona of the same name. My personal memory of Barcelona is a bit hazy but I certainly wouldn't mind a refresher any time soon, not least because the city has become a bit of a perfume destination. I have tried the whole Carner range before and while I certainly liked them, I found longevity to be a bit of an issue. Considering they are all created around woody notes, I thought they should last longer. But there is a certain aesthetic about their fragrances, a moody, warm and somehow languished sensuality, that appeals to me and I was happy to try their latest creation.

El Born has 2 distinctive phases for me. The first, which I call the wet one, is a strong honey and angelica mix with some added citrus notes. This honey has been made by bees who get stupidly drunk on strong cocktails on a daily basis. Well, the bee equivalent of a cocktail obviously. The sweet/sour/booze mix is interesting, but quite 'in your face' and I sit through this first half hour a bit impatiently because I want the second, dry phase to begin. The one that screams:

My visual interpretation of El Born, by Carner

LIQUORICE ALLSORTS! Because that is what is, in all its delicious glory. The list of notes is long and let's say, colourful, and congratulations to anyone who is able to sniff out half of them, but for me it's all a blend to conjure up the liquorice. If you like your allsorts and your black wheels, this scent will make you very, very happy. Otherwise you might want to stay away. It covers the whole spectrum of the legendary candy, the woody bits, the strange salty sourness you get when you munch on the all black stuff and your teeth get funny, the fruitiness from all pastel coloured ones, and the creamy sweetness from the yellow/brownish bits.  When I was a child, I hated liquorice, but these days it's a flavour I like to find in whiskeys, wines, gins and... perfumes. Alcohol makes a lot of things better.

It has excellent staying power and good projection. Once the dry phase has started it gets gently softer and softer until vanilla replaces the fruity sourness. All in all, a wonderful and sweet-wood fragrance for those who like their Haribo with a shot of spirits. Of course, there was no way I could resist using the marvellous colours of the Liquorice allsorts world for my visual. It might not be exactly what Carner had in mind, but for me it totally works. Also: sorry for headline pun but again, irresistible.

How and where to wear:

A perfect choice for a long night out. I bet it will smell lovely on a hot summers evening in Barcelona, while you desperately wait for the restaurants to open and serve you some food. 

At 10 p.m. 

Oriza L.LeGrand Part Two

The second part of my review of the delightful perfumes of French house Oriza L.LeGrand will start with one of the scents I was most looking forward to:

Horizon

Just have a look at the bottle design. Isn't it pretty? I love the pattern on the label, but by now you probably know that I love patterns. The typeface makes all the right noises towards the roaring twenties and the description from the website is mouthwatering:

The materials, colors, shapes symbolize a new freedom and portend, at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties, the hope of a new HORIZON.

At the height of its history and in its own way to celebrate the Roaring Twenties and the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in 1925, the House Oriza L. Legrand created HORIZON, Oriental fragrance for boys and tomboys, fragrance of Precious Woods and Ambergris agreements Tabac Blond and Soft Leather.

And whether your time travel destination to celebrate all this decadence is Paris, Berlin or Chicago.....it's most definitely  a big city. Urban. The 20's in deep rural countryside? That's  depression and hunger. No one wants to smell like that. So why oh why to I get this whiff of barnyard?  But one step after the other. I should get: Bitter Orange, confit tangerine and dried rose.  I do get orangey leather and and a hint of barnyard. Next should be amber cognac, oak, patchouli and tobacco leaves and almonds. And I do get patchouli, tobacco and something that could be almonds, with a hint of barnyard. I usually don't do this note comparison thing, but Horizon is leaving me not much of a choice, because it smells so different from what I expected. If I compare it to the other 20's retro scent I have recently tested, Speakeasy by Frapin, it feels about 100 years older. 
Don't get me wrong, that can be a good thing, but apart from a hint of booze and fags there isn't much that suits the Tanz auf dem Vulkan that I was looking for. I had to wear it 3 times before I understood something quite fundamental: This perfume REALLY tries to capture Paris in the 20's. Not Chicago and Berlin . This perfume isn't hinting at extremism, hunger of life and sexual liberation bordering on perversion fighting against a Prussian sense of Ordnung. It has an altogether gentler, happier and warmer approach. And if that includes a bit of barnyard, so be it. When I think of the 20's, I think of the the paintings of  Georg Grosz, but Horizon is less Expressionism, more Surrealism and Dada. Its structure is soft and warm, more Josephine Baker than Sally Bowles. And suddenly, with that in mind, I begin to like it. And the longer I wear it, the better it gets and it does have good staying power,  but there is  a lack of...Want. I like it, admire it, but I don't I want it. 2 out of three ain't bad, but not enough to justify a FB. 

How and where to wear:

Not an easy perfume to pull off to full effect, I suggest you wear it to a party and dance your heart out. I have the feeling that it will work incredibly well with a bit of fresh sweat.

And now to something entirely different:

Relique d'Amour

We all have perfumes and scents that transport us to places, remind us of people, bring up images. These olfactory connections can vary in strength and detail and are usually most significant when they involve people we loved (or hated), situations that had great impact on our lives and places we have experienced strong emotions.  But sometimes a smell hits us like with a déjà vu moment, that nagging feeling of having been there before... playing tricks with our minds and questioning our sanity. What happened to me with Relique d'Amour is a combination of both. It brought me back to a place where I've had a déjà vu many years ago.

I am not at all a religious person, but I do love visiting churches and do so whenever there is an opportunity. I've seen many many beautiful ones (Romanesque cathedrals being a favourite) and quite a few really ugly ones (usually poor old medieval structures blinged up to suit 18th century tastes and pseudo Gothic Victorian absurdities).  Sometimes feel a bit like an intruder, knowing full well that I am not believing in anything that is prayed for and preached in there but simply enjoying the architecture and art without any of the religious baggage. When I was travelling through Italy I obviously had ample opportunity for church tourism and it was in Pisa that I happened upon one of those unremarkable, late Baroque, not mentioned in any guide books churches which provide a welcome cool relief from the heat outside. Damp, cold stone, windows black from 200 years of pollution, pigeons in the roof. If you wanted to see more of the paintings that hang in various chapels you had to insert a coin (still Lira at that time) and a stream of light would barely manage to illuminate the minor work of a long forgotten pupil of some famous school. This was a place of worship with a dusty and gloomy atmosphere, only ever visited by the priests and old women wearing black and I wanted to leave again quickly, but there was a smell wafting intriguingly from one of the side chapels and I stepped inside. Here it was even darker and I could swear also colder then in the rest of the building. And all over the tiny place, the altar, the steps, the walls, the entry gates were draped lilies. In vases, wrapped into bundles, single flower stems, dried, freshly cut, rotten, decaying. Giving off a smell so intoxicating, so intense that I nearly stumbled backwards. I felt like someone had been walking over my grave. The hairs on my skin stood up and my heart skipped a beat. I had seen all this before. I was sure and it didn't feel right. I had to get out of the chapel, out of the church and into the next bar for a coffee. I can't tell you why, but that little chapel had scared me. Not to death, obviously, but really badly. It hadn't been my first encounter with the smell of lilies and  not my first gloomy church, but something in there had given me the creepiest déjà vu I have ever had. To this day. 

My visualisation of Relique d'Amour

And then comes Relique d'Amour and transports me right back there. After more than 20 years. You can guess now that it's a lily perfume. It starts with a very cold, almost icy accord and it takes some time for all the lilies to come into the open, but when they arrive they do so to an extent that is frightening. Well, to me it is. There is moss growing on cold stones, wax on well worn wood, a ton of  incense and other balmy things being thrown at me, but it will always and foremost be a lily. Magnificent and  beautiful. Melancholic and cold, pure and toxic, mysterious. In terms of colour it's a white, of course, but with lots of cold grey and black. Completely feminine but totally unsexy in my view, although M. seems to differ on the latter. By now I have worn it  3 times and the effect it had on me the first time doesn't repeat itself quite so vividly anymore. It will always remind me of that church and that moment, but it has become a fragrance that I can wear and appreciat  for its own sake. It is a very special creation and I'm glad to have been introduced to it. If I had the funds to buy a FB right now I probably would, because it's a stunning example of its genre from a collectors point of view. I know this is not a very neutral and informative review, but it is as it is...

How and where to wear:

You are dating an Italian man and are going to meet his mama? This will be perfect.


Given that these two reviews are much longer than I anticipated, I will stop here and cover the remaining fragrances in another, 3rd post.