Pour Homme Van Cleef & Arpels 1978 Eau de Toilette

Anyone who wants to know how a really good leather chypre can smell should sniff two: Germaine Cellier's legendary 'Bandit', which she composed for Robert Piguet in the early forties, and Louis Monnet's 'Van Cleef & Arpels pour Homme', launched three decades later. The former is a leather chypre with predominantly green-floral notes, while the latter features floral notes that are, however, distinctly spicier. In terms of presentation and demeanor, they are, despite their differences in detail, very, very similar: diva-like, commanding, extremely elegant, strict, a bit humorless, but very sexy.

I first encountered the scent on a colleague in the early eighties, when I was still a rather naive young man who bathed day after day in 'Antaeus'. He was pretty much the opposite of me: everything about him seemed sexually charged, he was constantly suggestive, the personification of lust - and he wore this scent.
None of my perfumes is as closely linked to a person, indeed almost possessed by one, as 'Van Cleef & Arpels pour Homme'. This scent is my former colleague S. - a sexpot par excellence.
For a long time, I struggled to wear this scent myself - I liked it, just as I liked my colleague, but when I wore it (I had bought a small bottle at the time), I felt as if I was borrowing his sexual presence, for which I was not really the type.
And as successfully as I could fend off his advances, which were quite indiscriminate by the way, I still had the impression - wearing this, his scent - that he had somehow caught me...

The original 'Van Cleef & Arpels pour Homme' was also a scent with enormous erotic radiance - a bitter-spicy elixir with intense animalistic potency; not quite as offensive as 'Yatagan', not quite as sweetly lustful as 'Antaeus', not quite as dirty as 'Jules', but still: a macho in every sense. However, a civilized macho, a well-groomed, well-dressed one, but also one brimming with self-confidence, showcasing his sexual potency.
Accordingly, the scent is loaded with plenty of castoreum and isobutyl quinoline, ingredients that give the fragrance a strong leathery-animalistic aura. In contrast to other great leather scents like 'Knize Ten', 'Tabac Blond', or 'Diorling', 'V.C. & A. pour Homme' develops almost no warmth in the base: there is no oriental embellishment to be found, no softening amber, no sweetening vanilla. The leather accord remains (as in 'Bandit') unclouded and unadulterated, with all its aggressive, sometimes even sour nuances. Today's noses may find this disturbing, but back then it made an enormous impression, as it conveyed the image of a simmering rebellion against convention: of frivolous leather underwear on sweaty skin and the accompanying promise that once the civilizing layers have fallen, things will get indulgently wild.
However, this barely concealed suggestiveness does not only come across as animalistic-leathery; it also envelops an incredibly intensively blooming rose in interplay with a robust 'bouquet garni', whose protagonists are artemisia, marjoram, thyme, sage, and juniper. This dry-spicy accord forms, together with the almost glowing red rose and the dark, even black leather, the actual foundation of the scent, which is held together by a chypre structure of bergamot, labdanum, patchouli, and oakmoss.

A few years ago, 'Van Cleef & Arpels pour Homme' was reformulated, probably not even because new IFRA regulations demanded it - no, the era of heavy, testosterone-laden scents like 'Antaeus', 'Jules', 'Kouros', and indeed 'V.C. & A. pour Homme' was simply over, and the new fragrances were all much lighter, fresher, more transparent, and completely devoid of sex.
As a complete counterpoint, one could describe a fragrance like the immensely successful 'Terre d'Hermès', which confidently advertises being completely free of animalistic additions. The aforementioned old stalwarts seemed like dinosaurs from a long-gone era, but unlike them, they did not disappear; instead, they were more or less gently adapted to modern requirements. Thus, they still stand before us today, all subjected to a diet, all deodorized, in fresh underwear and neatly combed.

A remnant of the old glow still smolders in them - still too much for some, but the time will come when one begins to tire of the transparent, fresh, clean, and will be glad that not even the last spark of urine-like, sweaty, or however unpleasantly described has been eliminated.

'Van Cleef & Arpels pour Homme' remains a great, strong, long-lasting, and masculine scent, even if it now appears almost skeletal compared to earlier times, certainly stripped of almost all its florid-erotic aura.

The beautiful Art Deco bottle has at least remained the same - that's something!