Drunken elephant and ballet tutu: 6 underrated scents
Text: Ksenia Golovanova, author of the telegram channel Nose Republic
Fashion and the laws of popularity work everywhere, not excluding the perfumery genre, in which nominally about tastes do not argue. Aromas remain in history for various reasons, and for others, no less mysterious, are forgotten - nevertheless, among the "outsiders" of famous brands you can find a lot of bottles with unique content. If you have been looking for a smell for a long time that every third friend will definitely not have, look at the nostalgic choice of our perfume critic.
Kenzo Jungle L'Elephant, Kenzo
From 3557 rub. for 40 ml
In the famous book "The Fragrances of the World", or, as it is still honored, "perfume Bible," the main systematist of fragrances Michael Edwards calls this fragrance "soft oriental" - "soft oriental fragrance." He, of course, is right.
L'Elephant, despite its own animal power (and this is a big, powerful, diffuse composition), is kind and attentive to the owner, like the elephant from the Kuprin story of the same name - to a little girl: blows warm breath of oriental spices, delicately rustles with exotic buds, neatly , trying not to crunch bone, chews Thai mango. This elephant honestly tries not to hurt, not to trample, but the perfumers Ropion and Sjouzac generously fed him with flowers and fruits, and from satiety he got a little drunk - what a grace here.
Private Collection, Estée Lauder
5950 rub. for 50 ml
If you believe the official site, at first the Private Collection was the personal fragrance of Estee Lauder, the founder of the eponymous American corporation. The enterprising friends appreciated the bouquet and advised to put the production of the composition on stream, hence the name - "Private collection".
Perhaps this is just a spectacular marketing legend, but, on the other hand, it well explains the longevity of the Private Collection in the brand's portfolio, which does not hesitate to take good things out of production, but the things that have lost their hyip: removing Este's favorite fragrance from the collection is like removing it name from company name. This is in our favor: Private Collection - a magnificent green chypre, tightly gathered from garden herbs, bitter autumn chrysanthemums and greenhouse hyacinths. A great American classic, firmly forgotten, but no less monumental.
cK Be, Calvin Klein
£ 29 for 50 ml
cK Be came out only two years later of the superpopular cK One and unsuccessfully hit the shining tail of this comet: not everyone noticed the new flavor. He is generally a real "quiet American" - delicate, like perfumed ironing liquid, and about the same diffuse and resistant.
But for those who despised cK One for omnipresence (in the mid-1990s, he clung to the collar of every second T-shirt), cK Be became a real find - a neat glass bottle, from which Occam's razor cut off all the excess, except for a ghostly shade of peach. The slogan: "Be good. Be bad. Just be." "Bad", I must say, more often chose other, more muscular brand flavors, such as the male Obsession. But the "good" cK Be, equally relevant in the gym and at the reception of an insurance agent, came to the court.
Noa, Cacharel
From 3150 rub. for 50 ml
The small masterpiece of 1998 is completely unreadable from the blotter and shows all the beauty of its cut only in conjunction with a living person: on paper, Noa is as lively as a ballet skirt thrown over the back of a chair after the performance, but on the skin it's warm, moving and multi-layered . Abstract light flowers and herbs look through the tulle of soap musks with beautiful and modest sewing: the details of the picture cannot be disassembled, but it is very beautiful.
Dune dior
From 4713 rub. for 50 ml
Lovers of perfume vintage argue that today's Dune "is not the same." If so, then it is very interesting, why should a company reformulate a flavor that almost nobody buys today? "Dune" ignores the gloss, in the ratings of anything - floral, aquatic or eastern - it just can not be found. Why are there ratings - the composition, which came ashore from the sea foam more than a quarter of a century ago, is no longer visible behind the stern constructions of countless Miss Dior flankers.
Nevertheless, today's "Dune" is still beautiful and still difficult to parse: cold and warm, fresh and amber, salty and floral at the same time. Recall that the fragrance was released in 1991, when on the perfumery of the sea the turbulence of the aquatic industry was already rising, as a result, which determined the perfumery style of the whole decade. The managers of Dior wanted to ride this victorious wave, releasing an "oceanic" flavor, but one in which there would be no sharp ozone notes, and ordered the perfumers to make a composition on the theme "monastic garden by the sea". This is how Dune appeared, the best fragrance in today's Dior portfolio. Neither the new Poison, nor even any serious bestseller, she became - and still remains in the collection.
Womanity Mugler
From 2107 rub. for 50 ml on ebay
With Womanity, released in 2010, pinned high hopes, and not only commercial. Bloggers immediately recorded it in the ancestors of the new perfumery genre - "savory gourmand", that is, "savory gourmet". Before Womanity, perfumery had already produced fruits in a crust of sea salt, for example Escape, Calvin Klein twenty years earlier, but first the contrast between the sweet — candied fig — and the salty — unusual chord of black caviar — was not so bright and genre-forming.
Customer opinions, which ultimately determine the fate of any perfume launch, were divided: someone saw a beautiful Greek mermaid in Womanity ("groves of fig trees and a subtle fish scent", as they say in Fragrantica), others - a strange pickle ("the smell of female secretions if your girlfriend is an industrial refrigerator "). One way or another, the fragrance has become a cult in the perfumery environment, but it has not gone to the key markets - in the same Russia Womanity is not for sale, in any case officially. The Russian office reports that toilet water was completely discontinued, but recognizable pink bottles are still found on eBay.
Photo: Duhashka, FragranceNet, Priceline, Rive Gauche (1, 2), Perfume Shop