Great discharge: 8 flavors with the smell of the human body
Text: Ksenia Golovanova, author of the telegram channel Nose Republic
Aromas, reproducing stylized odors of the human body, there are many - it is not only blood and sperm, but dozens of other equally interesting shades. Our perfume critic Ksenia Golovanova chose eight “bodily” compositions with very different subjects.
Miel de bois
Serge Lutens
20 000 rub.
for 75 ml
I would like to speak about Miel de Bois with the lines from the Old Testament Song of Songs: “your hair is like a flock of goats coming down from the mountains of Gilead,” “honey and milk under your tongue” and so on. The most physiological composition in the Serge Lutens line smells like honeycombs, beeswax, lanolin and flowering hawthorn - things are not harmless, because, as we have already written, the smell of honey has a distinct urine aspect, and the hawthorn gives away sperm. This is where the real "magnificent selection" - against the backdrop of flowers and noble pieces of wood.
Dans tes bras
Éditions de Parfums Frédéric Malle
9170 rub.
for 30 ml
Marc Frédéric Malle is often tried to be convicted of elitism - because it is very expensive, because Frederick Mal, the nephew of an important director Louis Malle, in his interviews often talks about some special "circle of people among whom he grew up", because, eventually , in the name of the brand there are already three axans. In short, bubbles with black labels around are to blame. But the truth is that in order to humanize the fragrant world, Frédéric Malle did more than many - for example, in the early 2000s, the first to bring perfumers out of the shadows, putting their names on the bottles.
In addition, the whole line of the brand revolves around people: there are botanical sketches in it, like Carnal Flower and En Passant, but the most interesting to Mali’s perfume publisher is Dris van Notten, wife of Edmond Rudnitsa Teresa, monsieur with geranium in his buttonhole and so on. Here is “In your arms” - the story about the smell of a loved one (or a loved one), salty-musky, woody-violet, very intimate.
Obsessed for Women
Calvin klein
2742 rub.
for 30 ml
Female Obsessed came out in a pair with a male one, but of the two flavors it is he who is the most “courageous” - in terms of traditional gender codes in perfumery. This is a great wine glass: here you can have a strong whipped shaving foam, a starched shirt, lavender water, and even some nice green flickering in the window (wine glasses are a "country" genre). In short, all that modern fragrant industry can say on the topic of creaky purity - plus a bit of pure musk from Kate Moss’s armpit.
Grace by Grace Montecristo
Masque milano
€108
for 35 ml
Masque Milanese are very respectful of the poetics of the bodily bottom: their narcissus Romanza smells of flowers, manure and stale linen, and Times Square - popcorn and alcoholic exhalation of the weekend. But Montecristo, the “living room of an old villa in Tuscany” smells the hardest of all (described from the brand’s website): embers in a fireplace, unheated cigarettes smoke wooden ceilings, beautiful, not sober people in cashmere who have forgotten about a shower since Friday itself, pull basement Brunello on old leather sofas. "We wanted to make the smell of Italian bohemian," says Alessandro Brun, founder of Masque Milano, "it seems that something worked out."
Ambrette 9
Le labo
12 800 rub.
for 50 ml
The smell of infant crown and baby food with a pear is perhaps the most delicate composition of the existing ones. Today such soft and delicate aromas are more fashionable than ever: last year an article appeared in The New York Times, whose author gave them a completely viral name - “the new softies”, that is, “new sissies”. To suspect the spirits of the relevant genre in the absence of a bright personality is wrong - they are generally not made to make an impression on someone. Rather, these are peculiar filters that inform the owner of additional, not too noticeable qualities - and in the case of the Ambrette 9, this, of course, is a touch.
Vaan
NOT Perfumes
€138
for 15 ml
“Owners of goats, respond! Goat wool is urgently needed - to make a tincture. If your goats have a rut now, it's perfect at all,” wrote Swedish Facebook perfumer Johanna Venables on Facebook. The request is not idle: as part of the perfume NOT Perfumes, really brutal things really come across, such as castoreum, cibetin, amber gray and melted butter.
The high concentration of natural fragrant materials gives the perfume NOT Perfumes an interesting "haze" - they seem dense and viscous, like wood tar. Vaan, or "Vana" - the so-called gods of fertility in Scandinavian mythology - is perhaps the most airy and gentle of all: as if the bear's cavity had been pulled from the bed, and under it, in the hole that someone had left at night, spicy , slightly withered roses.
At the Beach 1966
CB I Hate Perfume
$55
for 50 ml
Perfumers have long been interested in how a living person interacts with the world and what smells it produces. One of the most sought-after stories within this theme is a very specific, recognizable aroma of warm, slightly moist skin under a thin layer of sunscreen. There are plenty of them on the shelves of shops and pharmacies, but there are only two of them for perfumery: Ambre Solaire and Coppertone. The first, French, has a tropical-floral and salicylate, "sunny" smell, the second is more coconut, both are patterns from which most of the beach-style fragrances dance. Most beautifully, the brackish-milk chord of Coppertone is inscribed in the seascape At the Beach 1966: shells crunch under the feet, the sand soars in the warmth, and the gentle vacationer sweats at the edge of the sea.
Hammam bouquet
Penhaligon's
£100
for 100 ml
Here is another story that is moderately popular in perfumery: a person goes to a bathhouse. In our case, the man is a Victorian gentleman, and the bath is a Turkish one (David Urquhart, a prominent diplomat, instilled the love of the Hammam into the English of that time). But if Hammam Bouquet - the smell of talcum powder, classic cologne and pink lipstick for hair, in short, the smell of the toilet, in which a man dresses after water treatments, then Elixir still Penhaligon's (Olivia Giacobetti's work, not so long ago out of production) smells like Hammam: eucalyptus steam, spices and a fresh, clean day.
PHOTO:Escentual, eBay, NOT-Perfumes, Fragrantica, Amoris, Penhaligon's, articoli, New London Pharmacy, TSUM, molecule