10/11/2013
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My Worst Nightmare Wrapped in My Greatest Fantasy
This is the funniest joke I've smelled all week! Imagine a book filled with freshly printed pages of crisp archival paper and upon these pages is printed, in newly dried ink, a mesmerizing sonnet, a series of witty vignettes, scattered contemplative Haiku on things both existential and post-modern, dropping philosophy bombs about the very nature of writing, the words, the format and the book itself, like "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte (there is no such thing as outside-of-the-text)." All of this fantasy book is printed in the most eclectic and modern and artsy fonts. Imagine opening this book and randomly flipping to a page that is both visually intriguing and filled with life changing subject matter and then as you peruse the page, notice the fine workmanship on the binding and the way the seam allows the clean white pages and dark ink to lay in perfect symmetry Inhale deeply and smell that moment. This is what I understood I was purchasing when I rashly blind bought Paper Passion by Steidl. What could possibly go wrong when Geza Schön agrees to collaborate with Karl Lagerfeld to create a wearable masterpiece- a fragrance that smells exactly like the freshly printed pages of a new book? My beautifully wrapped package arrive factory sealed, in an unbleached hard cardboard box, filled with a luscious hand dyed, deeply textured red paper encased mystery. I shivered with excitement at this point...near to fulfilling the wildest dreams of a lifetime obsession with fresh paper products, that magical sudden inspiration for writing that comes when the invigorating smell of ink hits just that right place in one's olfactory bulb and of course, the allure of the fragrance format. I'll admit my expectations were a bit high when I snuck into the garage to open this package in secret like a naughty child who has finally secure a coveted and forbidden object. I was prepared for a woody somewhat masculine base provided by other reviews that expressed similarities to JHAG "Not A Perfume", Escentric Molecules "Molecule 01" solichemical Iso E Super base (7-acetyl, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-octahydro-1,1,6,7-tetramethyl naphthalene, for short), but expanded upon with a cosmic alignment of Fatty notes, Ozone and Osmanthus to add a complexity and bring all my dreams to life.
Imagine my horror and shock when I opened the book and it did indeed smell strongly of book and Iso E Super, I quickly found the center cut out and discovered that the bottle cap had not been correctly closed or had come loose delivering the entire contents of the bottle back onto the pages! I bought a fragrance that was supposed to smell like a book and ended up with a book that smells really like a book dowsed in Iso E super with a vague but beautiful Osmanthus note left on the pages. So I now have a book that smells like a book. Oh, the irony! The book itself with the empty bottle is a gorgeous keep sake, but to be honest, I decided not to request a new one as the closet where I placed the empty book now wreaks of musky woody velvety aromachemical magic- but I was hoping for so much more from this volume. If you’re trying to decide between getting this or getting another Iso E-scentric version, go for this for the bottle and packaging aesthetics- the scent was a text book lesson in modern generic perfumery available to the everyday person by combing Molecule 01- or 4 EUR worth of Iso E-super with any watery Osmanthus cologne- i.e., this was not a page turning thriller for me, rather a tragic comedy- but the humor is not lost on me and so the story goes.
Imagine my horror and shock when I opened the book and it did indeed smell strongly of book and Iso E Super, I quickly found the center cut out and discovered that the bottle cap had not been correctly closed or had come loose delivering the entire contents of the bottle back onto the pages! I bought a fragrance that was supposed to smell like a book and ended up with a book that smells really like a book dowsed in Iso E super with a vague but beautiful Osmanthus note left on the pages. So I now have a book that smells like a book. Oh, the irony! The book itself with the empty bottle is a gorgeous keep sake, but to be honest, I decided not to request a new one as the closet where I placed the empty book now wreaks of musky woody velvety aromachemical magic- but I was hoping for so much more from this volume. If you’re trying to decide between getting this or getting another Iso E-scentric version, go for this for the bottle and packaging aesthetics- the scent was a text book lesson in modern generic perfumery available to the everyday person by combing Molecule 01- or 4 EUR worth of Iso E-super with any watery Osmanthus cologne- i.e., this was not a page turning thriller for me, rather a tragic comedy- but the humor is not lost on me and so the story goes.
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