Perry Ellis for Men Perry Ellis 1985 Cologne

In the midst of the 1980s, a strangely bright rose grew, seeking protection in warm leather in front of light-flooded basil as the leader of envious white bloomers, heralds of elegant coldness.
A drop of her melancholy blood only wanted to give life a little longer, whereas the relentless ferryman on the Styx took her master of the timeless cut with him.
And what began full of recklessness and creative confidence left a painful legend as a scent.

The short life of Perry Ellis granted him eight years of fashion success and fame.
No one else created this timeless look between 1978 and 1986, casual, wearable, minimalistically different.
His knitwear in particular caused a sensation.
And who else could stage his fashion better than Perry himself?
High-quality but all the more modest shirts, sleeves rolled up, perfectly fitting pants in the middle of that marshland not far from New York.
Fire Island's and GQ's darling always with that warmhearted smile.
The all American boy.
Today, that same magazine, GQ, suggests wearing its early 1980s fashion again.

in 1985, an unnamed nose created great things for Perry, his well-deserved signature scent until his passing.
I knew the fragrance from the beginning, but didn't afford the elegant pour bottle until a few years later because it was actually adorning someone else and I didn't want to compete with its aura.
All that remained of our growing friendship was this fragrance and melancholy songs from Book of Love (I Touch Roses) and 'Till Tuesday (Voices Carry).

Hiss!

Aldehydes, green galbanum and basil, citrus fruits, above all a gentle orange.
Everything so inviting, embracing and highly complexly interwoven.
Not fresh as usual, but cozy.

Then the pungency of a bell pepper from the southern sun.
The prelude of precious passion.

A whiff of greenish incense on mint whispers from the asphodelos meadows here.
Their white bloomers spread fresh floral musk sheets.
The invitation to caress with lavender honey, that ambrosia of the happy few.

But the spring-like rose shies away from that bright meadow, it will lie down on leather at the shady edge of the sandal bushes, the ground so mossy soft.
In this way, it can somewhat escape the severe coolness of its adversaries, vain jasmine gardens.

Resinous eyes see the order of the painting interspersed with contrasting plays of light.
And with the right incidence of light, the brown pupils reveal a universe of pleasant amber, like iridescent tiger's eye. Civet of the fresh midday.

The skin, still pale in winter, experiences a spring awakening and loses itself in a swirl of coumarin.
Hay-like, rosy, dry.
Soft leather wards off too harsh a cold, but allows patchouli and labdanum to float playfully with the monarch butterflies and foxtail butterflies.

And those winged shifters waft around the forgotten and taste the rose nectar.

The heart of an amiable outsider.

This idiosyncratic composition was a romantic invitation in the midst of too striking a style of the time.
It was precisely this changeable rose that was to become the core of the fragrance.
What is it now, where does it tend to go? Aromatic green in the chypre style?
Masculine leathery?
Discreetly passionate?

For me, the latter.