Friday 14 December 2007

L'Eau d'Hiver (Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums, 2003, Jean-Claude Ellena)


As the ice winds of winter sweep across the northern hemisphere, what better way to warm up than with a spritz of warm, lustrous scent? Well, actually, there are a few, including a roaring log fire, the Slanket, and a one-way ticket to the Maldives. Still, there is something comforting about smelling warm in frosty weather, and certainly the smells of winter – cloves, mulled wine, pine needles, spiced fruit, animal fur – are among the greatest pleasures of the season.

It comes as a surprise that the perfumer who considers that he has the right to bag the name L'Eau d'Hiver – and, furthermore, to declare that it is "the first Eau Chaude" – is Jean-Claude Ellena. Ellena has churned out a few warm-spectrum smells (including L'Artisan's Ambre Extreme, and Acqua di Parma's Colonia Assoluta), but he is the master of fragile, icy freshness. His Bois Farine, for L'Artisan, is ethereal, bitter and woodsy. His Rose Poivrée, for his own Different Company, is stunningly unsweetened and piquant, almost an anti-floral. His Angéliques Sous La Pluie, also for Frédéric Malle, is one of the most peculiar and evasive scents out there, a bit like the olfactory equivalent of that odd shade of pale grey that looks vaguely powder-blue or lilac-tinged or even slightly pink or green or yellow in different lights. Admittedly, with Bigarade Concentrée, he has shown he can work up a sweat; but, just because he can, doesn't mean he wants to. Ellena makes perfumes like Dale Chihuly makes glass sculptures: delicate, intricate, precise; informed by nature, but otherworldly.

Fortunately, with L'Eau d'Hiver, he has played to his strengths. There's a hint of spice at the topnote, but it turns out to be a cool blast of angelica, backed up with iris and heliotrope. A few moments in, the flowers gradually begin to sour down, with a hint of elegant decay coming in; like three-day old water that has been used in a porcelain vase filled with irises and heliotropes, in fact. At this point, there is something distinctly rubbery going on. God knows what. If you're expecting the alleged honey note to impart any sweetness during this process, don't hold your breath. Ellena is far too subtle to pull a Miel de Bois-style overload.

And then it's gone, leaving behind it nothing but the faint sense of having recently been in a snowy garden. Possibly one with a pile of tyres in the corner. I still don't get why those are there, actually. Maybe it's the angelica.

Like all Ellena's best, L'Eau d'Hiver is complex, compelling, and intangible. What it is not, though, is an Eau Chaude. There is nothing chaude about it: this is a mysterious, dreamlike, wintry scent, but it's colder than Nicole Kidman's hands after a long, ungloved yak ride by a fjord on Christmas morning. Brrr. Pass the mulled wine.

Tuesday 11 December 2007

Celebrity fragrances

What a lot of celebrities we apparently want to smell like. Liz Taylor started it all with the hugely successful White Diamonds. Now, even the likes of Courtney and Ashley Peldon, Jade Goody and Kerry Katona get in on the act. And some of these things are gigantic sellers, despite being foetid.

I had a browse in a supermarket recently and entertained myself for minutes. There's Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs's Unforgivable, a topnote of watermelon on a drydown of watermelon with a base of some more watermelon. Naomi Campbell's Sunset reminds me of Ambre Solaire. J.Lo Glow, its biscuitty clean topnote mingled with citrus and pine, smells exactly like something you’d use to clean the hobs with. (Her Miami Glow is the same, but with bubblegum.) And, as we all know, Britney Spears smells Curious. Though I'm going to embed the commercial for another of her fragrances, Fantasy, here, because it fills me with nostalgia for the bright hope that was her life in 2005:



Awww. And, er, whoops.

Creating a perfume is an art and a science, requiring enormous sophistication and taste, years of training, subtlety, maturity, talent. Which is why the only celebrity perfume you should ever buy is Celine Dion's.

Yes, this entire post is an excuse to post an Onion article from four years ago. What of it?

Sunday 9 December 2007

Querelle (Parfumerie Generale, Pierre Guillaume)

There is much talk online about Querelle being weird and desolate and miserable and surprising and challenging. Maybe it's my skin, but I don't smell any of these things. I get myrrh (a huge hit), vetiver (an almost equally huge hit) and amber (a subtler hit). I also get something which smells a bit like celery seed to me, and a quick look at the ingredients tells me it's probably the contribution of Iranian black caraway.

Desolate? Challenging? Not at all. All warm and earthy and sensual. Personally, though, I love myrrh and vetiver so much that I was bound to love it. Annoyingly, though, Querelle is part of the Parfumerie Generale 'Private Collection' which is produced in strictly limited editions, with, apparently, 'only a few dozen bottles available each year'. How many, one wonders, is a few? If I fall in love with this scent, am I going to be unable to buy more in the future? I find these enforced limitations elitist and frustrating - the only downside to this marvellous fragrance.