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Mairuwa
Top Review
9
Gallivant's travels or: The sad uniformity of inner cities in times of globalization
gallivant calls his creations "Wanderlust-inspired". Or also "perfumed escapism". A series whose title uses the names of international cities is intended to convey cosmopolitanism and also follows a trend of world travel fragrances that houses such as Memo or Une Nuit Nomade have been successfully pursuing for years. And that is a perfectly fine idea. After all, faraway places have always invited us to dream and the concept of a fragrance journey is as obvious as it is convincing. Not least because certain fragrances and scents can be located geographically or are associated with certain parts of the world. The declared aim of the fragrance is to transport its wearer to the respective distant place that is to be evoked. Perfumer Karine Chevalier has also worked on Une Nuit Nomade, so she is familiar with the concept of translating travel impressions into fragrances. All of this sounds promising to me at first.
In Gallivant's travels, however, the focus is decidedly on the urban. The series is dedicated to cities from Amsterdam to Abu Dhabi, from Berlin to Bukhara, from Istanbul to London and from Tel Aviv to Tokyo. And now Buenos Aires. However, capturing the character of an entire city in an olfactory image is more difficult than capturing the character of a landscape, for example - the jumble of smells in city centers is too loud and too colorful, and too inharmonious. Traffic with its exhaust fumes overlaying all sensory impressions is too dominant in almost every major city today, and the temptation to compensate for these disturbing factors with gourmet notes or, at best, with the floral scents of the local fauna, which are the most likely to be specifically associated with certain cities in a positive way, is too great.
In fact, this is also the case with Gallivant's new fragrance "Buenos Aires": the composition relies, unsurprisingly, on local (or regional) notes from the botanical and culinary world: dulce de leche, Paraguayan petitgrain, the blossom of the coral tree (Erythrina crista-galli, a kind of national symbol) and, of course, yerba mate. Grapes are also allowed to play a part here, after all Argentina is one of the major wine-growing nations today, and even the anything but distinctive leather note is advertised as "gaucho leather". And yet: all in all, this olfactory local color only conveys the feeling of already knowing it all in one way or another - and from somewhere else.
According to the company boss Nick Steward, who certainly seems likeable, the fragrance is intended to reflect the impressions he remembers from his trips to Argentina in the 1990s. Admittedly, I know Buenos Aires neither in the 90s nor in the present day. But this "Buenos Aires" smells very familiar, smells of the present, and you would expect to find it on one of the world's boulevards at any time: In Los Angeles or Amsterdam, Brooklyn or Gdansk. This synthetic, fresh and woody scent with a light fruitiness, very subtle leather and a gourmand touch seems to me to be very contemporary and anything but a retro fragrance. So what?, you might ask: after all, the fragrance should also function as a perfume and not just be the sum of the olfactory impressions of a stroll through the city. However, the concept ultimately reveals itself to be pure marketing.
In our globalized world, it seems as if not only the inner cities of the major metropolises are becoming more and more similar, but also the scents they leave behind as the mix of cosmopolitan strollers becomes more and more similar. For those who feel comfortable with this, "Buenos Aires" is probably just right and the fragrance is sure to find its fans. And rightly so, because it is certainly not badly made.
For me, however, against this background, it would be the expression of a rather sobering realization - and an argument in favour of using the world of fragrances for imaginary journeys into imaginary worlds rather than into distant, yet always familiar and interchangeable metropolises.
It would be interesting to test a few other fragrances from the series for comparison and preferably one that has a city as its theme where the globalized boulevards do not yet exist in the same way - Accra perhaps? Or Bukhara?
Thanks to parfumo for the sample.
Top Notes 
Grape
Paraguayan petigrain
Heart Notes 
Coral tree blossom
Maté
Base Notes 
Dulce de leche
Leather
Tonka bean
