foreverest

En Passant is a move in chess where you can take an opponent's pawn by moving your pawn past it. It's a situational move that is also quite quirky and relatively low-stakes, and honestly I don't know how often it happens in high level chess. But in my experience it's quite flashy and you have to either trick your opponent into letting you get one, or it comes up randomly when an overzealous opponent isn't paying enough attention to the board.

En Passant, the fragrance, feels so beautifully matched to this because it too is flashy - that note pyramid screams 'inventive niche freshie' - but is also gorgeous and elegant. It feels genuinely starchy and tangible with a wheat note that is possible to identify even without much fragrance knowledge, and the cucumber and lilac make a gorgeous floral-fruity pairing that feels rainy, lush, aquatic, but not thin. The detail and precision push this well past 'this smells like a soap' territory. Or maybe it does smell like soap, but one of the most expensive soaps you've ever smelled. As it dries down, a plush but beautifully balanced musk begins to make this a gorgeous second-skin type fragrance. This is one of those transformative and beautiful developments that so many fresh fragrances seem to lack. To me, this is one of those perfumes that really showcased Frederic Malle at the height of its powers.

My love for this fragrance is unabashed and it is one of the fragrances my fiancee most adores. It glimmers like dew in the heat and offers a pond-like zen in the cold. Step too close and you'll be taken - what a move.

And it's full of sweaty, tightly dressed men dancing to Perfume Genius. The horse walks over to the bar.

"ID?" goes the bartender.

The horse doesn't have one. It doesn't even understand what the bartender is trying to do, doesn't understand the concepts of an occupation or monetary exchange. The horse sweats, shakes its head slightly, starts to walk away from the bar over the beer-stained floor.

A kind young man strolls over.

"Lost?" he says, stroking the horse's mane.

Horse knows it has been addressed, doesn't respond.

"Wait, it's friendly!" says the young man. "Let's get selfies with it!"

The young men dance over, pull out their cell phones, begin taking selfie videos with the nervous horse in the bar. The waft of stale alcohol rises out of the floor as dozens of aggressive masculine perfumes clash in the air. Human and horse sweat mingle with the odor, and underneath it all runs a repulsive, electronic metallic scent of overworked phone batteries and camera flashlights.

One of these photos will be shipped overseas, get tossed in a pile of images selected at random by large corporations and magazines to sell products, and be dragged out by a bored Montale executive who, by some miracle, slaps the horsehead on a bottle of perfume that smells exactly like that horrifying bar night so many horse moons ago.

Lads, ladies, and all romance-seeking beings in Hades, gather round, for I am about to share with you a deep and profound secret of perfumery. There is such a thing as...one of THOSE perfumes. The one that wafts through the air like a love potion, turning the heads and hearts of well-dressed young people who wear large-rimmed glasses and expensive hats, the one that will bring you the person of your dreams happily ever after the end...

I have shown my perfume collection to many, many people over the years. As an artsy young person of questionable gender and sexuality, I befriended many other artsy young people over the course of my existence, and every time I held a gathering or threw a party and foreverest here had about three drinks, out came the perfume collection because it was PERFUME TESTING PARTY time. Over the course of these extremely enthusiastic and at least somewhat reliable testings, I have gathered dozens of data points on what is loved by who and how often and what is the perfume everyone loves. Well, I can tell you that there are two perfumes that are the most consistently beloved amongst the male and female noses I've encountered. Men LOVE L'Air du Desert Marocain, and maybe some time I'll wax poetic about that one, but now is not the time! Because the other...well...

Almost every woman I've known loves Philosykos.

GASP. It's over. All the young men will go off and buy Philosykos now, I'm sure. Ok, now that they're gone, we may continue.

Is Philosykos the sacred text by which many hypebeast woods fragrances descend? It feels like a Comme des Garcons wood fragrance built specifically around fig wood where the perfumer messed around in the lab and was like, 'wouldn't it be funny if i added every other fig-related note too?' Yes, it was hilarious, haha, we are all having a grand time here. You crazy genius, you've made us all realize how cool it would be to sit in a fruit tree eating the fruit of that tree and rubbing the tree's leaves in your face. A cosmic 3-D tree experience.

Such a friendly and well-realized vibe is irresistible. The secret I discovered via Philosykos is that we don't want to date PEOPLE, we want to date DATES. We want to go out with The Moment You Sat On The Bench Together Looking At A Rainbow Form In The Waterfall In The Japanese Gardens, or we want to go out with Watching Dune Part 2 In Theaters With A Hot Guy Who Also Isn't a Creep. And we all definitely want to go out with Eating Figs In a Fig Tree While Rubbing Fig Leaves On Your Face. So be that experience, young people, and the young ladies will flock.

It may also be important to know that I always ask people what they like and not what they like to smell on other people so all of my data is probably invalid.

We're out here wearing African cat scat for fun.
Sit back and relax as the scent web is spun.
It's giving Prarie Dog exhibit in hot zoo.
It's giving pavement sizzle under summer sun plus poo.
A rumor of rose turns out true if you listen,
And styrax and elemi, also some pissin.
It's perfect for staying at home with your cat
Or going out hoping to hear a, "What IS that?"

It's not difficult to see why this became a new hypebeast of sorts. This is a vanilla dressed up in several very classy, popular notes. To my nose, suede is the main secondary player here. We do get a slightly animalic, smoky bent to the vanilla that recalls the rubberiness of Bvlgari Black, but Babycat Raw Bourbon has been polished to perfection - nary a rough edge in sight. It's classy, elegant, universal, a real blockbuster of a high-end fragrance.

All that being said, I can't see the need for this in my own collection, and I'd rather have any number of (to my nose) more interesting, unique, and beautiful vanilla or amber scents than this one (Tauer LADDM, Chergui, Guerlain SDV, Feve Delicieuse, Shalimar, the list goes on). Also, I feel like I just couldn't justify Babycat RB when it feels like the tame, polite interpretation of the magnificent Bengale Rouge, a true amber lioness of a fragrance. I still highly recommend trying this one, if anything just for a cultural touchpoint. I am certainly not surprised that so many people love this as much as they do. It might just be your perfect vanilla.