Konsalik

There are, of course, two great dangers to writing about fragrances in such a way that the reader's imagination becomes something like a clear impression of the fragrance, and both have their origin in the extraordinary difficulty of mastering the two great approaches to fragrances if one does not want to be overwhelmed by their siren chants in a literary way.
One access is now the one leading over the memory. It is no secret that in childhood and adolescence the world is generally perceived more holistically than in the following decades, when the seemingly unmotivated sighs (where do they come from and what is their exact reason?) that were unheard at a young age become more frequent. The sense of smell as on the one hand the most disordered, most difficult to grasp analytically and thus at the same time the least filtered of all senses through reason and comparison, plays a powerful role here, who wanted to deny it. So it's no wonder that not a few reviews - at least half of my own I count explicitly and without shame! - in the Summoning always the same more beautiful, the same more touching, but also more or less the same Super 8 movies: "Understand, I can't do otherwise. My father, his shaving mirror, my mother humming at the sink, the trips to the Taunus." Wonderful, but, if not formally mastered, basically self-talk (sometimes in front of graves).

It's a good thing I'm connecting Knize Ten to Nüscht. All blanco. But now I don't have in any way the scent historical wealth of experience and the essences library of our experts, such as the forum trickster Catch22 (I'm airing the hat!), which I hold in high esteem. I don't have much to objectify - and when I wrote: "Quite nice, but now without moss, something annoys me, 5 points" - that wouldn't work (yet).
Then on to failure on the second path, that of the imagination. I hope at least it won't be a self-published angel thriller.

The setting is clear to everyone who has worked his way through the other comments and statements: Vienna, inner city, early twentieth century. World cities? Paris, London, Vienna. Closing time. Fiaker; coffee house; kiss the hand; all somehow melancholic, somehow exhilarating: the fin de siècle has survived, albeit with damage; Mei, the Ensign is smart; Mr. Section Council, how is the state of health; the k.k.tobacco director convicts large amounts of Turkish and Virginias - modest prosperity etc. etc.
Does Knize Ten then get caught in all these anchor points as if by itself, without any great effort on the part of the imagination? Yes, it is. Unrestricted. The jamy strawberry or stone fruit note described by many is still the most difficult to locate in the top note. Please: What would Art Nouveau be without strawberries and apricots in green glass bowls? The leather comes back, somewhat worn. Worn coffee house upholstery (red!). Over it a slightly pointed aftershave note. Not specific, more generic. Privy Councillors were with the barber to celebrate the previously frozen assets successfully retrieved from England after the war. Among them roses (kiss the hand, Mrs. Section Councillor!, we already had that above) and then always this slightly burnt one. Well, coal stoves, a light, constant smell of fire in streets and courtyards. Homeliness without fat and onion smell - quite fine. Others have associated the smell of fire with plastic and the dawn of a new era. Thinkable and conclusive, but not for me. All this in noble disparity and yet at the same time in changing intensities. A fragrance like a social evening.

Is that still portable in 2018? How do you answer this question? What is always meant by this question, which somehow doesn't want to have a right salary for me? Food for the blog? I might. Until then, I don't know what the honored reader wants from a scent. If he wants to smell good (and didn't want to spit on himself while reading my scent impressions), he should buy it and wear it. Little helps a lot, 15ml do not cost the world and should last long.

In the perfume chapter of his book "Der Gentleman" Bernhard Roetzel writes about "Grey Flannel" and others:
"Fortunately, you don't notice that this fragrance came onto the market in 1976, in the middle of a decade not exactly known for its timeless style. It goes best with a more classical wardrobe."
I didn't understand that at first. On the contrary: The impression of the uncomprehensible that was conveyed by many commentators on this page also came up in me at the beginning. The end of the fragrance was still quite obvious: Discreet soap. Quite classic. But what was the purpose of the floral bouquet in the opening and in the heart, which seemed to be artificial and did not want to combine harmoniously with the soap-clean base, but on the contrary smelled almost like an unripe papaya to me in combination? Not at all balanced, rounded, unobtrusive - not all that one would associate with a fragrance that is to be understood as the perfection of a classic (i.e.: old British) wardrobe. So it's the awkward seventies after all? But Grey Flannel" doesn't understand its task in such a striking way!
It is well known that today there is a popular fragrance category within the genus "Freshies" (as the English-speaking Youtuber probably call it), whose representatives are supposed to convey the impression of refreshed ability to go out or visit: Freshly showered, fresh laundry from the line: Everything concentrated in the bottle. "Grey Flannel" basically doesn't do anything else, only in the old and - in my opinion - more interesting way. In concrete terms, this means not taking a shower, but taking a bath. Not with liquid soap and shower gel lubricated, but with curd soap rubbed off (whose parents and/or grandparents did not have this almost endlessly productive piece of curd soap, possibly with pine smell, in the bath lie?). The laundry is not treated with Lenor's "Sommerwaldstrandbergquellzauber" fabric softener (which also damages the fibres), but refreshed with a shot of the herbaceous-floral ironing water additive alone (the housekeeper says her great-grandma already swore on it).
Only from this perspective do the first impressions described above make sense: that is why the fragrance components may seem so unconnected and stand next to each other. That's why "Grey Flannel" is a "spray-on suit" to a certain extent: it underlines, reinforces and extends the essential steps of the morning routine of the gentleman of the old city. No wonder that his habits and preferences for our modern noses at first do not give a harmonious, i.e. immediately and easily classifiable picture. Roetzel was right.

I'm not allowed to wear Tabac Original EdC. My lady of the heart allows me, as she expresses it, to smell "old man", but to be alive, please, he should still be...
Well, the lady of the house has flown out for today, which gave me the opportunity to reach for the white bottle in the back corner of the shelf with a quick grasp. Against this scent, the analytical confrontation with a complex monster like Sartorial was downright simple, because it is THE scent that is loaded for generations of Germans with a plethora of associations, memories and "living worlds". As a melancholic and sentimental perfume newcomer, it's hard for me to keep my distance. An example: Is Tabac Original a year-round fragrance? Yes, of course! What's the matter with you? My best answer is: Because in my childhood I smelled him on my grandfather all year long. I have no idea whether the citric top note is sufficient to make the wood and spices suitable for year-round use. Just this much: Who has ever mothballed their oak furniture for the summer? ;)
Because the oak wood, softened by clear chamomile, is next to the carnation fired by the lavender as a sharp-fresh counterpoint the impression determining for me. And this in a "Uniqueness" that should make every international YouTube reviewer jump up with enthusiasm.
In the past centuries, German tailors have been able to give only a few original impulses to men's fashion. England, Italy and, with some exceptions, France. That's it, that's it. The bland case-like appearance of German cuts never became international. But with Tabac Original you can confidently bring a touch of olfactory, always friendly patriotism into the world. An old federal republican business card, so to speak.
But now I have to close, the woman will return soon...

I love it when fragrances want to paint a clearly definable, easily comprehensible picture. So if the individual components are easily identifiable, then one concentrates on them, but their functional character in the service of a superordinate whole is still clearly in the foreground. Sartorial is without question one of these fragrances - and how delightful its designed image is!
You don't have to do long research to find out that the "model" for this fragrance was the studio of a particular tailor in the legendary London Savile Row. The list of Sartorial's fragrance components is not so confusingly long for no reason: if you want to depict the manifold, tinted fragrance panorama of a traditional London tailor's shop, a whole series of notes/colors are necessary, which - sufficiently gently dabbed - make the whole world of the old tailor's shop and thus also a piece of old Europe as immediately present as only a fragrance can. One really thinks here of impressionistic painting techniques, of Monet's "bridge" and others. This and no other comparison forced itself upon me almost by force.

The metallic notes of the entrance introduce first of all generally into the world of textiles. Not yet defined, it could be a small laundry: Steamy-metallic notes of many hours of ironing, in addition something discreetly soapy-chemical (very pleasant!) - the laundry of my great aunt smelled very similar. But then it becomes more specific: worn, crumbly leather, old wood (not often polished, but cared for by decades of constant contact with hand grease) and the smell of... People. Sartorial has an elusive aura of quiet hustle and bustle and old money. Customers, all well groomed and well dressed, have left traces of their old colognes from Trumper or Harris in the curtains. This isn't a small 60s suburban laundry. This is older.
Soon the honey-warm wax note of the yarns made more stable in this way is added, mixed with warm, also clearly "textile" dustiness (tailor's chalk!). Now it's clear where you are. One has stepped back sufficiently far; the picture is unambiguous.
All that remains in the base the next morning is soap. How extremely polite and discreet this fragrance is, that it lets us keep just this of its elements for the next day!

Not my first comment for Parfumo, but still my first consciously, i.e. with consciousness and consideration bought fragrance.
Anyone who has read my introduction in the blog knows about my tender love for the work Heimito by Doderers, and anyone who in turn knows this knows about the prominent place occupied by the lavender water in it.
Since I could now find out that Filz from Vienna did not send his lavender water (according to literary research the same water that Doderer himself used) and I did not want to and cannot fly to Austria alone for a scent, a substitute had to be found. And here it comes: The lady in the drugstore giant (the one with the big 'M') had a hunch (!!). After a short conversation (and secretly! Forbidden! Certain colleagues squeal like the branch management!), a woman of slightly elevated age, who was formerly probably, as I was told, more deeply involved in the industry, wrote down the name of an allegedly ancient, quite different lavender scent, which was neither here, nor at the Türkisen or elsewhere, but only in the real, traditional specialist shop - in this case Vollmer in Bonn, as I was told. Male, distinguished, created long before lavender was declared a slippery women's fragrance. So I went to Bonn with wet hands, to Vollmer. Lots of old wood marvelled at, as if I knew what I was doing and carried home the last dusty OVP "pour un homme".

Should I - as a determined lavender adept - have been disappointed that after a short time the vanilla even sets in so dominantly? I would have. Pure gauge etc.
But I wasn't. The elegant, at the same time emphatically casual and skilful simplicity of the lavender-vanilla-dual sound (no "real" chord, rather a power chord, guitarists will understand...) is too self-confident in the room. Like an Italian gentleman in his prime, who knows how to master the art of the "Sprezzatura", so that it is forbidden to point out to him the apparent carelessness, empty spaces and "mistakes" of his outfit. Everything exactly considered, wanted and - skilfully.
I hardly or not at all smell the other notes listed, which leads me to assume that they alone serve to enhance the refinement; vanilla, for example, I suspect, becomes warmer due to the traces of musk, rose and woods, less sweet than dark, so that lavender can still do its work in the background after hours without sticking together. Sillage and durability are appropriate, i.e. withdrawn but still subtly present. Just as Doderer - forgive me the crowbar - wished for his waiters in the coffee house.