jtd

The start: Grès Cabochard, 1959.Expectation works against Grès Cabochard, poor dear. Many compare it in its current form to a vintage model. I’ve never smelled vintage Cabochard, so that expectation isn’t an issue. Cabochard is the reference leather chypre of the mid-20th...

Authenticity is perfumery’s Achilles' heel.Classical perfumery is wounded. The IFRA barbarians are at the gate. The chypre has left the building, orientals have deflated into gourmands, leather is now ‘notes of suede’ and flowers have lost their bite but gained a sweet-tooth....

Notes describe qualities of a fragrance. They offer a side door into the discussion of perfume with points of comparison. If you have smelled a lemon, then a "lemon" note will make sense to you. Notes are used like similes. A “rose” note smells like rose. Bvlgari Black smells like rubber. (I exclude imagistic...

By the late 70s, perfume came from large corporate brands (eg. Estée Lauder, Coty), commercial fashion brands (eg. Halston, Pierre Cardin, Calvin Klein) and the old guard like Caron and Guerlain. The common thread is that investors saw perfume as a cash cow and designer-celebrity culture was a cheap...

de Nicolai Patchouli Homme.  Without a warm atmosphere, this smells rosier.  Still, sort of brutal .     Lonestar Memories.  Wear it in the desert. It sears your nose just like the winter high desert air does.      Joy.  Crystalline in the cold....

Sables. Butterscotch sawdust sweating under a raincoat. It's cozy to you because you know what it is. To everyone else it's a pleasant enigma. Nahema. Glam rock meets disco and comes out all the sparklier for it. Mahora. Close your eyes and dream of Kauai. L'Ombre...