DasguteLeben

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,"

In these last years of our dying civilization, it is particularly important to read poetry again: Rilke, Brecht, Yeats, Jeffers... The Second Coming is certainly not the worst description of the current state of the world - and with a sardonic glance, perhaps also of the perfume industry.

The "haute parfumerie" that blossomed in the Belle Époque in late 19th century France, a product of technological progress and the awakening middle-class consumer and leisure society, so aptly captured by the Impressionists on canvas, is now definitively history.

But what do we have now? Why does a product like "Thailand Oud in Cairo" exist alongside 65,000 comparable ones? Who wants to buy it and why? Why does it look the way it looks, why does it smell the way it smells? What is it, anyway? These are not unimportant questions, as the deepest truths of a society often reveal themselves in its most banal products, the trashiest movies and series, the cheapest junk, where no effort is made to disguise the underlying ideologies, where they are openly inscribed for the discerning eye. We gain our deepest insights about ourselves not on a Zen retreat in the Aegean but in the TEDI next door.

"somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs"

So let’s see if I can bridge the gap between the end of the known world according to W.B.Y. and the end of the perfume world as I once knew it. I just asked in a perfume forum how older and younger perfume enthusiasts categorize the phenomenon of the neo-Arab mass market with its countless dupes, tweaks, and synthetic ouds. The interesting answer was that it fills the gap left by the old standard brand perfumery, which is now priced beyond good and evil for many consumer groups, while qualitatively it clearly resides in the 4th circle of hell. € 175 RRP for empty wood synthetics from Prada, etc.

Additionally, one must consider the structural collapse of the concept of "luxury" - on one hand, that the "original" Gucci bag comes from the same factory as the dupe and has the same inferior quality. That, in other words, behind the signifier (sign) of luxury (Gucci logo) no actual signified exists anymore. On the other hand, every 15-year-old today believes they can finance three Ferraris and a villa in St. Tropez with a streaming channel. "Luxury" can be for anyone is the message of social media, just be aspirational. Thus, luxury is hollowed out, and it ultimately doesn’t matter whether I wear a real or fake Rolex, nor whether I wear a genuine Parfum de Marly or a dupe. In the latter case, it actually doesn’t matter, because while the real Rolex still has its own qualitative residual substance (far from the purchase price, of course), the Arab clone can be just as good and occasionally better than the original from Tom Ford (QED Amber Oud Tobacco Edition). Both are ultimately just algorithmically formulated industrial products of the cheapest kind.

So we live in an iridescent consumer world where real luxury (Birkin Bag / genuine old oud), aspirational consumption (Hermès perfume / "oud"), masstige (Louis Vuitton / "oud"), and luxury or masstige clones (Lattafa Oud) blend into one another - and nobody really cares, as long as the real inequalities of global plutocracy remain stable, to which this system, with its veils of Bourdieu's subtle distinctions, actively contributes. So much for meaning and function. Now, however, concretely:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

The packaging and bottle of the present perfume (approx. € 18) are partially more elegantly crafted than, for example, Penhaligon's Legacy of Petra (RRP € 240, currently around €60) where the foil is already peeling off. Both are expectedly synthetic, blueprint fragrances with little budget, and they hit it head-on. Good bases cost money and time. TOIC manages at least an appealing Siam Oud simulation in the opening, woody-fruity-ester-composty, accompanied by a bit of sweet synthetic, which unfortunately quickly settles into a somewhat cheap rubber-leather note, surrounded by wood synthetics and a spectrum of spicy notes (tobacco, myrrh, cinnamon). The typical "Niche Synth Aura," which also wafts at you from every Penhaligon's store in London, is well captured and, for me, due to the low fragrance oil concentration, more pleasant and easier to bear than, for example, many of the unbearable "Portraits" stink bombs.

In the end, I see only minimal but not significant aesthetic or qualitative differences between cheap and expensive and gratefully reject both. I would rather pluck one last time flower like the protagonist from Ballard's The Garden of Time to throw back the approaching throng. It smells of Oud Caravan by Abdesalaam Attar and Habit Rouge.

A typical clone that behaves more like an Eau de Cologne than an Extrait, which is what it nominally is. It doesn't smell the least bit like Oud, not even the Western synthetic variant, rather like a dry cedar note and slightly milky cardamom, paired with a transparent and light boozy sweetness, a faint echo of Bentley for Men, so to speak. This kind of cheap full synthetic actually works best in a light dosage. In summary, it's an inexpensive nice green woody-soapy thing without much of a finish. You can get it for under €20; there are far worse of this kind.

Floris Elite is a well-tempered and cleverly constructed, very English barbershop scent. More of a civil servant than an aristocrat or even a dandy. For me, it has a bit of the timbre of a 1950s London version of Vetiver Hombre (Adolfo Dominguez). Light citrus notes, mild-powdery green from lavender and herbs, dry vetiver, hints of Eau de Quinine and birch water, all arranged with a light touch. It is quite understandable that one or another component may seem dull, conventional, or bland to some noses, but I like, overall, the reined nostalgia of this perfume. I can certainly envision my father smelling of Elite, yet it is all much more accessible and contemporary than, say, Eucris.

Eau de Cologne is not dead - no matter where the perfumery trend caravan may go. What began with the first European distillation attempts in the Middle Ages and Eau d'Hongrie (rosemary water), led to the first aesthetic bloom in the Rococo by the namesake Johann Maria Farina in Cologne, and was perfected by Guerlain and many others in countless iterations, is still present and continues to be. Since the significant loss of status at the end of the 19th century, when the Belle Époque marked the golden age of modern haute perfumerie, it has survived as Auntie's travel water, as Turkish Kolonya at the barber, and for sweating bus drivers, as an important ingredient in the cleansing rituals of the Dominican Santeria cult and among Amazonian shamans (Murray & Lanman's Florida Water), always as a refuge for more sensitive noses and in recent years also as a prestige product (Chanel's Eau de Cologne was released in the Exclusifs line in 2007). The need for natural olfactory freshness and the call of the South has never completely faded, even during the heyday of florientals, lusty animalics, or the present synthetic fruit bombs and ethyl maltol floods. Hence, there is Samphire (now already 12 years) - somewhere on the outer edges of the perfume cosmos.

Every now and then, I venture into the lion's den, the house of illusions, the Douglas flagship store in Frankfurt, in search of a bargain or something of aesthetic weight - preferably both, as I seem to belong to the social stratum that Pierre Bourdieu described as having too little money for its taste (en cultivant notre jardin, nous avons oublié de devenir riche rapidement). There, on sale, stood a few sad flacons from Laboratory Perfumes, a brand I had never heard of and which I recently read makes de facto dupes, although it does not appear to be a clone factory at all. Regardless - I had no context and found neither Gorse nor Atlas interesting. However, Samphire immediately made my Eau de Cologne receptors ring. Citrus - herb - wood/moss/musk, very old school, appearing very natural, recalling references: Eau du Sud, Aeroplane, Guerlain. An English house, but a French school. Very zesty, fresh citrus notes, lemon, bergamot, verbena, lemongrass, and: the slightly sulfurous-dirty grapefruit as a bridge to the herbal complex with basil, rosemary, juniper. A mild base, but with fixatives that keep the scent light, yet make it significantly longer-lasting than classic 100% natural Eau de Cologne. For this reason, the designation as Eau de Toilette makes absolute sense, even if we are stylistically dealing with the EdC tradition. White musk, labdanum, tonka, jasmine, oakmoss, and iris are said to be found in the base, but they only waft back, subdued and supportive under the citrus-herb complex - and that's a good thing.

There is hardly an EdC made with good ingredients that I do not like, and I love the diversity of this genre. Here, I had once again hit a real jackpot after a long time, which almost rivals my summer favorite Eau du Sud by Goutal, as I enjoy the slightly dirty herb notes (and here also the grapefruit), which complement and counteract the citrus freshness, thus adding a counter and synthesis to Farina's Cologne thesis. Priced at €60, it was also more reasonably priced for my wallet than the RRP of €100 (see above), but even that would probably be worth it to me if Eau du Sud has since been reformulated (I haven't sniffed any current flacon in a long time). Well done, then, this newer English gem in Gallic garb, may it remain in production for a long time!

Niche not about price but outlets - this fragrance seems to be almost exclusively available online, as I have never seen it in a perfume store.

Bentley is a luxury car brand, but in the case of perfume, that can often be a bad omen. However, this one is far too good for a car scent. An ambitious composition with unfortunately too small a budget - but hats off to what Mme. Lorson has pulled off here - compared to the ten times more expensive, but significantly simpler constructed (and likely lower in production costs than Bentley) Sir George by (at least nominally) Alberto Morillas.

As a conservative perfume lover, I find it all a bit much here; it does lean a bit towards gold chains and chest hair under an open shirt: boozy, spicy, bay-leaf pepper, sweet-resinoid-leathery. There are distant similarities to Idole de Lubin, which appears more transparent and clearer and more noble in its construction. Unfortunately, the synthetic veil lies over everything - I would love to smell the formula with double the budget. Nevertheless, Bentley for Men is not worse than many masstige products from Tom Ford, Amouage, Creed, etc., and still a third cheaper than countless mass-market fragrances that are not better and often significantly worse smelling. Just for the proof that one can still sell a fragrance of this kind for €25 with a profit margin, Bentley deserves an award, and anyone who likes the style will definitely be happy. I like to wear it very, very sparingly, but I generally prefer the Gucci counterpart Bentley Absolute.