Soap

I like scents that spontaneously provoke a comment, or rather: compel me to comment. Then I can't really help but sit down and (un)orderly pound the keys - without knowing in advance what there is to say.

I just write from the feeling and don't worry about structure. That will come on its own, I'm sure of it. Moreover, especially in this case, I am the first commentator - the thought pops up: "Get on with it, boy! You'll win this one." Exactly. And then: "Get to the point already!" Ouch.

So. The buzz around Gucci pour Homme (2003) Eau de Toilette has seemed somewhat chewed over to me for a while. The child in the well. Blah blah. Everything was better back then.
I mean, there are so many other and better fragrances. I'm not the big tester in this community, my statistics speak for themselves - even if they aren't really reliable because I'm too lazy to maintain numbers. In terms of racing, I'm surely in the rear guard here. But I have also been able to ascertain that nothing really gets lost in fragrance; everything is (re)creatable in some way, in some more or less successful variation of the original idea. Moreover, there are indeed completely different, better fragrances than those one thinks are missed. So far, so good.

Atomica starts with a bright explosion of spices. Really spectacular, crackling, and radiant. I could even imagine that Gucci pour Homme (2003) Eau de Toilette opened much more moderately in its time than this stuff here. Impressive! Relatively quickly, however, a sour cedar also reveals itself. That pencil that I can't recall from Gucci. The Gucci was more green-resinous, viscous, and singed smoky. Well, here it's the cedar that fortunately soon settles down and then - yes, only then do the notes take over that certainly make it a worthy Gucci successor.

Atomica splits cypresses and becomes quite smoky. Alongside it, there is a distinct and authentic, viscous and core-warm amber mass that gives the fragrance the necessary woody-smoky sawdust density, which effortlessly holds what one expects in terms of longevity. The sillage is moderate and suitable for social situations or the office: this is certainly not "1805 Tonnerre / 1805 | Beaufort". You might imagine the scent as a more fully realized Bentley for Men Absolute: distinctly nuanced and refined, with much more depth and a significantly better longevity. At a much higher price, of course. Crap. That’s all that needs to be said.

At this point, there are just a few more thoughts on why one can't just let it be good and continues to search for what has passed. Despite the many alternatives, one always perks up when something familiar comes in a new form, to remind of that illusion of former carefree days. Or? Or did they actually exist? That time when one was sure they could eventually master the world: to win, to do the right thing, to be the smarter one among the fools. As a role model. Strong and just. Such nonsense too. Only the Gucci was real! And now you can have it again: as Atomica.

Vetiverus is one of the four Avant-Garden Lab fragrances that I recently tested. And it is one that clearly stands out from the quartet ("Veil / Nebula 3 | Avant-Garden Lab / Oliver & Co.", "Nebulae Series - Orion / Nebula 1 (Eau de Parfum) | Avant-Garden Lab / Oliver & Co.", "Ambergreen | Avant-Garden Lab / Oliver & Co.", "Vetiverus | Avant-Garden Lab / Oliver & Co.") due to its - albeit only seemingly - naturalness.

The scent starts off herb-sweet and tarry-smoky: as if one had ripped open meaty, amber-colored dried apricots and immediately enjoyed them by dragging them through a bowl of tar.

This harsh and bitter combination may indeed seem animalistic - it reminds me of Salamanca: but well-balanced with the original version of Bat (2015).

Vetiverus could easily come from the idea box of Dr. Ellen Covey - it appears so surprising compared to the otherwise monothematic and carefree synthetic experiments from the lab of avant-gardener Oliver Valverde.

Tarry smoky notes and bitter, overripe, fruity sweetness create a wonderful and versatile, medium-weight fragrance:

When sprayed on clothing, the first chords get caught in the fabric and freeze.

On the skin, however - after several hours - a green vetiver unfolds with a beautiful osmanthus note. As a hobby nose, I believe I can perceive both notes well, and the long black asphalt path through the humid-warm fruit leather jungle pleases me immensely.

Garnishing tar and smoke with flowers or fruits may no longer be the absolute avant-garde, yet Vetiverus, with its two ignition stages - the beautiful metamorphosis from sweet and pitch-black to green and zesty, is hardly a provocation, but rather a well-thought-out composition.

That "Ambergreen | Avant-Garden Lab / Oliver & Co." had scooped up the judges' accolades with its vegetable freshness is somehow understandable; Vetiverus, it seems to me, did not appear prominently on the radar - unjustly, in my opinion. A remarkably powerful substance, a bold olfactory experiment - and a successful one at that.

It is morning. I get up and go to the kitchen; I decide to make myself some oatmeal. I put the milk on to boil and throw in the oats.

Before I continue, I quickly jump into the bathroom to shave. However, I don't have enough shaving soap, so I simply stretch the remaining bits with some soap flakes. It works quite well and doesn't smell as mossy as usual.

Shortly after, I head back to the kitchen, and I arrive just in time: the milk is boiling, and I manage to lift the pot off the stove - the rising milk foam doesn't spill over the edge - Phew, that was close... Pscchhhht! Pschhhht! A few drops obviously managed to escape. They sizzle on the hot plate and rise in fine tendrils of smoke. It almost went really wrong.

I set the pot down, remove the annoying milk skin, and stir everything vigorously. It can continue. But the olfactory mixture of improvised shaving soap and burnt milk is getting to my head.

I put down the wooden spoon, open the window, and look down at the legs of people rushing by. I take a deep breath. With the cold air, the smell of wet earth and decaying leaves flows in - spring is coming soon, and it rained heavily during the night. The streets are wet, and the cloud cover must be low - it’s quite gloomy out there.

I close my eyes and inhale all these impressions. Good morning. Fantastic.

I, who can’t make sense of floral stuff, am now wearing Celluloid x Galbanum.

There’s little to hear of Galbanum here: that is, if you assume that Galbanum - the “olfactory cry for help from cut flowers” (Luca Turin) - smells green or like a flower shop.

This is the opposite of a flower shop. The scent starts shockingly for me: like the good old 90s toilet spray. Aggressive canned flowers! Sometimes you see them in café restrooms: those scent spray systems that you have to be hellishly careful around to avoid suddenly getting sprayed - they seem to be filled with more moderate stuff.

Jasmine is overwhelmingly present in this clash and only reluctantly lays back.

The celluloid note can only be guessed at. Too bad - that’s what I was hoping for. Campsite, rubber ducks, inflatable boats, 35mm film rolls - none of that in my nose. Just jasmine. Maybe a bit of musk.

But wait, at the very end a hint of synthetics unfolds, and the scent becomes hesitantly more bearable and interesting.

I must say, after the first spray, I wanted to send it back immediately. I looked up how returns for opened fragrances work - of course, it’s not possible.

Immediately, another phenomenon set in, which I had described in another context: the attempt to convince myself that the scent is somehow good, after all, it’s Comme des Garçons. Come on, I just need to understand it. Exactly.

Yes, it’s somehow good if you have a preference for jasmine - maybe. Or if you have the patience to wait for the dry down. I don’t know if we’ll become friends, but I’ll wear you nonetheless - out of protest. In quirky satisfaction.

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P.S.
After a few days, I realized that this is not an “und fragrance” after all, but actually quite an interesting thing. The scent is brutal - that might be off-putting, but in fact, here, synthetics and galbanum, in my impression, are not clashing against each other, but in inseparable unity, like fragrant rubber boots: the boots can be separated, but the scent in the rubber remains. Something different.

I had prepared myself for this scent: read statements, studied comments - some even multiple times. Of course, I also borrowed the Ali Gualtieri documentary (The Nose) on Vimeo. I thought it was great, a very likable guy, incredibly playful, like a child - fascinating! And to frame it all, I searched for a dozen YouTube reviews - in several languages, of course.

And then luckily I had a small Comme des Garçons 2 sample on hand, the supposed scent twin, so to speak.

Many report nearly the same about Blamage, which is quite astonishing and naturally made me feel optimistic: Peach, peach, peach. Cream. Milk and rancid milk. Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry. Petrochemistry. A rose turned inside out, the green on top, in chemistry! Great!

When the scent finally arrived, I made further preparations to approach it safely: this is going to be the true "liquid special waste," I thought, and cautiously sniffed the underside of the bulky, yet light, cap. I shouldn't wear it before eating; either it ruins my meal, or the meal ruins the scent. So better eat first, then apply. And not too much at once - many have warned about that; so really just press lightly on the sprayer. Now. Right away.

Go.

Yes. This stuff works for me up close. No chemical accident that I need to be wary of. No punch, hardly any sci-fi synthetic. Little peach. For me, it is indeed just a softer version of CdG 2.

Blamage was originally conceived as a mistake. And it seems to me that the desire to conceive a mistake is the actual - conceptual - mistake with this scent. Conceived mistakes are controlled mistakes, and they simply do not exist. At least not in the sense that such a mistake should lead to something entirely new, according to the principle of "too many aldehydes" in Chanel No. 5.

One can only stumble into the new. Intentional and unconditional, mind you - that is crucial. Every intention is result control, every condition a limitation of the experiment. Conditions testify to intention. Analysis is paralysis, and interpretation is projection.

The mind works restrictively and is therefore always limited. Because it is limited, it can only think restrictively. The mind struggles with paradoxes. It can neither consciously bring them about nor place its actual role within them. In the "normal case," it operates, following logic, only linearly. It prefers to go in circles to avoid stumbling. Even with synthesis from thesis and antithesis, it doesn't really get far, because a paradox is not a figure of dialectic, but rather something like a quantum physical phenomenon that cannot be measured with compass and ruler.

The mind is limited - but its actual limits are not physical. It is rather a virtual "realm" of linear infinity: a circle from which only a quantum leap of one's own perception leads out - or a true mistake that one must recognize as such, instead of trying to "grasp" or avoid it. Then it is no longer a mistake, but an insight. And thus, one probably reaches the next level of understanding.

That as an artist, what is possible within one's own realm of thought has already been tried out, is evident in that the new increasingly appears as the newly arranged old. Seemingly new, yet not unexpectedly new. Actually not new at all.

If one continues as before, one only spins in that invisible circle - into infinity, if you will. Discipline, endurance, and persistence - the engines of the mechanical-linear world - keep this downward spiral in motion. One becomes increasingly active, and further away from joy. The same applies to the intention to leave this mechanism, for it is intention that grants this realm its linear infinity and keeps the "I" trapped within it.

Outward-directed intention, thus "every action to," is always resistance, i.e., a struggle with what is. The Daoist masters in ancient China also knew this. Therefore, they elevated the thought of "wu wei" (無為 = "not for") - the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese 無心 "mu shin" = here translated as "without heart(blood)" - to a life maxim. For if one removes the outward-directed intention - thus every "to" - it does not lead, as many fear, to aimlessness or uselessness, but to a coherent naturalness and self-evidence: a childlike openness, to which any mental blocks are foreign. Therefore, the path of the wise always led back to being a child, that natural state which was so diligently and painfully unlearned in Confucian society.

Playing is thus the only thing that provides relief. For play knows no intention, is without control and without a goal. Here, the activity itself is its own meaning: it suffices unto itself. If one surrenders to it, the fog of believed boundaries lifts. Eventually.

Well, then I must say, Ali plays like there's no tomorrow! The shining eyes are not feigned; he is fully enthusiastic! I believe him; I can hardly detect any calculation. But that in his play, CdG 2 comes out, is quite strange. Fifteen years after the release of CdG 2, Nasomatto re-invents CdG 2 as Blamage, but not new. Yet in play. Wow! I mean, there's this example that if you let all the monkeys in the world pound on typewriter keys for eternity, eventually a literary masterpiece or at least a large dictionary must come out, so they say. So theoretically-statistically-computationally speaking, right? From that perspective, the probability of blindly reconstructing CdG 2 in just under two years, and without any intention, (at three times the price), is probably close to zero - I don't know. So is it calculation? Or a brilliant mistake?

The packaging states that this product is the result of (bad?) care and poor decisions. But these decisions cannot have been that bad. The very idea of leaving the circle of the mind through conscious "bad" decisions is just another illusion. For conscious decisions testify to judgments, and judgments counteract play because they testify to intentions. A cycle and a trap.

Oh yes.

Blamage is solidly built, that much is certain - I would also wish for the scent to be more aggressive and long-lasting. I had hoped for quite a bit from it - hence all the Bla-Bla. Blamage is certainly not the scent, nor is it a mistake at all.