I have never been fond of all-natural perfumery, for two reasons: 1- Constraints in art are fruitful only if they channel creativity to give results pleasing to the senses, e.g. rhyme, modal harmony etc. The all-natural constraint is not productive: no all-natural perfume has ever been as good as the best natural-aromachemical ones*. 2- My definition of Nature includes Organic Chemistry and all who sail in her. This said, I find Anna Zworykina‘ fragrances very impressive […]
If HoM is anything to go by, niche perfumery is growing up fast, both in presentation and in content. Beautiful blue bottles with coppery labels; a distinctive look, half steampunk and half Islamic-abstract; consistently good, properly worked-out perfumes with apt but not hyperbolic names; and an overall cast of high quality and good humor. There is much to like in the 9-perfume collection they sent: Trillium, a herbaceous green-floral that feels mostly natural without being […]
I am always wary of programme art: Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring was composed in complete ignorance of its title, with Martha Graham merely asking for a piece “on an American theme”. Yet Copland got a lot of mail afterwards telling him how the piece nailed spring in the Appalachians. One thing is to give a piece or a perfume a brilliantly apt name after it is done, as in Lento or Angel, quite another is to produce […]
Today I cracked and ordered online something I thought I’d never live to see: Rondini sandals. Rondini is a small shop situated Rue Georges Clémenceau in Saint-Tropez, where my parents used to go on holidays when I was a kid. There are two sandal makers in St Tropez, Rondini (est. 1927) and Keklikian (est. 1933). The differences between them are millimetric, but to the trained eye Keklikian sandals are beautiful, […]
Nothing whets your appetite for a little sense of humor like smelling the work of two or three niche firms of the US West Coast hippie persuasion, forever declaring their perfumes to be an homage to some desert flower, extinct civilisation or spiritual practice. That stuff is the perfumery equivalent of yoga music, and demands a couple of Sousa marches as a chaser. I felt lucky therefore to receive a package from Anastasia […]
I got a mysterious little box this morning from an outfit called Ponk. It said Module 4 on it and contained five carefully wrapped, numbered little phials, well-sealed with what felt like Teflon tape, and a square envelope that said “The Reveal Inside.” I naturally opened it, whereupon it turned out the phials contained five raw materials. Aphermate (1-(3,3-dimethyl cyclohexyl) ethyl formate, see pic), an unusual ester of formic acid that smells typically […]
Perhaps one of the most mysterious associations in all of perfumery is denoted by the term “powdery”. Why should one state of matter smell like another? What primeval talcum powder have we all inhaled that smelled like heliotropin? Was it some face powder in a circular box with a little dusting pad? Is it, perhaps conversely, the fluffy aspect of mimosa flowers that causes the association? Does everyone think powdery in response […]
Yesterday I finally got the first notice of payment for the ads that had been turned on some time back. It turns out the payment per view is $ 0.0015. I find the whole thing lacking in transparency and in any event consider the income not worth the ugliness. I’ll turn them back on if one day I officially become, to paraphrase William Safire, the Prime Prattling Panjandrum of Perfume Positivism, with an audience […]
It’s been alarmingly hot these last few days in Athens, last Fri on the way back from work my scooter was showing an ambient 43C near the airport, soon after this pic was taken. Impossible in this heat to drink red wine or smell perfumes: everything smells like it’s falling apart and wilting. More soon, global warming permitting. Update: Btw, the sand on my scooter comes all the way from […]
Big, beautiful fragrances like Vero Kern’s require a reset to older smelling habits and demand to be judged after at least an hour on a strip. Of course until about 1980 all fragrances did, then the industry assumed that people have the attention span of a sedated gnat, and put all their money on the first fifteen seconds of pleasure (often followed by hours of repentance). I hadn’t smelled her creations for […]
perfumesilove 