Category Archives: Neroli

March 13, 2021 · 5:06 pm

IF, LIKE ME, YOU ARE CRAVING ORANGE BLOSSOM AND NEROLI : : :: : ZAGARA by ORTIGIA SICILIA + LUMIÈRE DORÉE by MILLER HARRIS (2016) + NEROLI ORANGER by MATIERE PREMIERE (2019) + INNOCENT LOVE by TOBALI (2020)

I tend to get seasonal cravings in advance: the smell of orange blossom and neroli have been tugging at me in yearning fashion the last couple of weeks – partly because they are rejuvenatingly ‘rise above’ floral notes for me that soothe and uplift the spirits (there is a definite headspace created by both ingredients that is apart from other flowers: a sense of spring madness, in the best possible sense, when the rising exhilaration of everything budding around you and bursting into green is always worth the wait).

Except this year I can’t. Reality has been shit, so let the dreaming begin. Today there are flood warnings because of the cold torrential rains outside slamming against the window, but I am in my own zone. Still unsteady from the labyrinthitis that has made me lose my bearings, but not spinning or on the verge of vertiginous collapse. A little anxious that I will never return to my wildly dancing normal self, yet still in a semi-blissful state at home at my desk, sampling new scents, keeping it all beautifully at bay.

Recent neroli orange blossoms I have reached for when the desire for some back-of-the-hand floralcy has hit me upon returning home – and soon, the actual orange blossom will be out on the trees at the top of the hill : I will be able to bury my head in it – include Penhaligon’s Castile, and Ortigia Sicilia’s Zagara/ Orange Blossom – a dense, simplistic, but sassy blend of petitgrain sharpened orange blossom, neroli and sandalwood with a confectioner’s glaze and a zest of brittle glamour. I have gone to bed wearing this a couple of times recently as it is quite rallying and vigorating: like the leopard on the bottle, it has a pleasingly gaudy pizazz.

Miller Harris’ Lumière Dorée

– described by the British perfume house as ‘intoxicatingly fresh’, is an outlier in the orange blossoms I sometimes use as it is almost rapaciously forthright, with a just opened orange flower neroli rinsed in an almost saline solution of ‘crisp ambers, cashmere and white musks’ counterpointed with orange bigarade and heady jasmine. The effect is coruscating but also shimmering: the scent goes straight to the heart nerve : once inhaled: never forgotten.

Precisely when I am in the exact mood for orange blossom, two perfumes fortuitously arrived in the last two days founded on these vernal ecstasies. Hallelujah.

Today I shall begin with the lovely Matiere Premiere Neroli Oranger by perfumer Aurelien Guichard:

The designer’s brief:

INITIAL IDEA: ‘A work around the purity of orange blossom’

MAIN INGREDIENT: Absolute Orange Blossom Tunisia

CREATIVE APPROACH: ‘Highlight the fresh and radiant facet with Neroli Oil Lebanon and Bergamot Oil Italy. Amplify the delicate floral character with Ylang-Ylang Oil Comoros and Floral Musks’.

The result : a definite success: : a very sensual and bodied orange blossom that starts out fresh and bright, almost explosive (and thus perfect for evening-wear entrances in summer), the ylang ylang more of a cushion to the orange flower notes than a main feature, the overall effect much more sundown perfume than niche soliflore….. a smooth, buttery, gilt underscore that brings to mind Piguet Fracas ( Tora I think you need to try this ): a definite mood enhancer and easy to wear and just the ticket for the coming weeks as winter finally leaves us for the year and the trees and the flowers take over.

Next: Tobago’s Innocent Love. While all the perfumes so far discussed dance to a contemporary neroli/orange blossom tango, Innocent Love by Japanese brand Tobali veers at once in a more traditional yet also unexpected direction : a beautifully embellished neroli cologne that I think might need to acquire a full bottle of for my own usage. While an open citrus lover (‘he was in the closet but was never afraid of declaring his love for lime and bergamot peel)’), I have never really liked the rosemary/old fashioned musks that taint and ruin the lemons and oranges in many colognes, the classic templates in citrus/herb/nerolis like those of Santa Maria Novella or 4711: I have always prayed for the beginning to continue without the end (a bit like life itself). Others, of the more urban modern template such as Grand Neroli by Atelier Colognes dazzle you initially but then fade to bland – and I can never stand the disappointment.

Innocent Love, in contrast, begins with one of the best citrus openings I have ever encountered, with ‘white neroli’, bergamot and a very vivid tangerine revitalising the senses from first touch, over a very light ambered musk and base of ‘Hidden Japonism 834’ – this Tokyo company’s very own Guerlinade – and a deliciously gentle middle section of buoyant jasmine sambac plus a perfectly judged hint of lavender to keep everything deliriously optimistic and pleasant throughout.

A delight: sometimes I really just need perfumes like these: florals that are alive and instantaneously happy.

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August 6, 2020 · 10:08 am

SUMMER OF (DIS)CONTENT : CASTILE by PENHALIGONS (1998) + NEROLI NEGRO (2015) + MENLI by COQUI COQUI (2012)

 

 

 

 

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I must admit that I am rather struggling at the moment, as I am sure a large majority of us are.  I simply don’t feel safe. And that is because I am not safe. None of us truly are, unless we lock ourselves away in confinement, and that brings troubles of its own. D is safer than I am – he walks to work and back home again in Kamakura – but his classrooms are full of girls whose parents work in Tokyo where the virus is becoming more rampant (or is at least being more revealed through increased testing). Yes, they wear masks, but the required social distancing in Japanese schools just simply isn’t happening.

 

 

 

 

 

My own situation is more precarious. Two days a week I can ventilate to my heart’s content and teach in what I would call sensible conditions; students spaced out; windows and doors open. Two days I cannot. Buildings packed with kids. Up close. On Wednesdays, I work in a school in Yokohama which has NO WINDOWS. And I am in a classroom  – just four walls, within that space, an epidemiological matyrushka doll. We have a fan, and an extractor. And we wear masks. But the students are too close to each other  –  it is Russian roulette.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I wonder why I can’t just quit, or whether I have become brainwashed into servility;  some kind of samurai ‘valiance’. It literally does feel like that at times, a kind of ‘fuck it – it’s too late, I am working now, there are only eight days left until the summer holidays, just get on with it like everybody else’ mentality, as if I have no choice (and in many ways I don’t: the very last thing I want right now is to be unemployed and out there looking for work)  as the teachers huff and puff behind their masks and look drained and overheated and dehydrated and exhausted just like most of the students – really, none of us, neither the students nor the teachers should be there, but because as yet there have been no cases in our schools, at least not that I am aware of, we ‘soldier on’. Japan is a country of education. It is the national obsession. And naturally, though some of the people I am mingling with will be asymptomatic, many even – there can be no doubt of that – all I can do is keep breathing through my mask and get through the days. It is terrifying. But somehow I am weirdly resigned to my fate, almost as though I have lost agency and the autonomy I always pride myself on having no matter what.

 

 

 

 

These last two days I have been battling with extreme burn out – which in my case involves furious muttering to myself like a loon and extreme sociophobia – I just want to be left alone as much as possible, even in the classroom just  going through the motions overly aggressively unable to properly connect to anyone. I can barely look at the other staff, and retreat to other rooms as much as is humanly possible. I am courteous, hopefully, even if exquisite manners have never been my forte – that would be Duncan’s domain –   – –  I am just too shot through with intense emotion to ever not let that show in my eyes, which I am sure glower coldly and green above my surgical mask. I wear a beard, obstinately, because no one can see it and that is my real person, though it goes against the rules (something I always feels is like an infringement on human rights) : however,  the last thing I need right now is to be an emasculated eunuch when I already feel like an apoplectic and semi-broken sad sack. But no one would ever say anything to a foreigner in any case. In many ways we are strangely untouchable.

 

 

 

 

The world is insane right now, it can feel as if you are losing your marbles. Curiously, despite the strains of it all, though, I am finding that just manoeuvring the week to its conclusion – the marvellously mask free weekend at home, where I love, puts on blinkers of selectivism that let me enjoy all the small details, all the other pleasures,  and revel in the more restricted being-aliveness. Yes, I am constantly aware of what is happening in the global news; I never ‘lose touch’ in that regard, but it can get too much, the ‘doom-scrolling’ that is only beneficial to any individual in terms of awareness and cognisance up to a certain point. In the city, out doing my job I feel half alive; a drone. Condemned to a potentially fatal virus that is swimming in the hot air all around me. The same position that we all find ourselves in; dimmed; daunted. At the same time, though, I have always felt blessed in the sense that even when I have a bad day – and I have just had two; I came home last night like a cup full of poison full of hatred and annoyance, I could have punched a hole through a wall –  I have a natural joy of life that rises up like the dawn after sleeping, particularly in summer, which I adore (so boring to hear everyone complain about the sun – no no no no you fool, haven’t you just suffered six weeks of incredible doom and gloom in the longest rainy season ever; it is glorious ; a chorus of insects; a frenzy of birds; a feeling of energy and power and life surging up in spite of (alongside) this tedious microorganism that is self-replicating like a motherfucker but whose time is limited; there WILL be a vaccine, and it had better be soon……) In spite of myself, this morning, as I open the window on the balcony and hear life coming into the room; moreover feeling it coursing through my veins, I feel something bordering on elation. Yes, I return home at night like a sodden washcloth devoid of personality, trying to walk up the hill to save on taxi money (there is no way in hell I am getting the bus), covered in sweat, stuck on thoughts like a broken record, barely sensate;, thinking shower, shower, shower; D is usually already asleep ; futon on the tatami, fan whirring, often next to the cat; but then I take a long shower and feel immediately human again, on a smaller scale, in the house with no mask, listening to the night.

 

 

 

 

 

Orange blossom has been one of my refuges. It soothes me. Especially before bed on clean skin – it’s like reinventing yourself. Something sacred and calming; a child-like innocence of refuge in nature. There are a thousand and one takes on the neroli and orange blossom theme, of course, and everyone has their own preferences; some like it sensual, erotic; for me, on the whole,  I tend to prefer the note done more simply. Some orange blossoms are green, rasping; Annick Goutal’s Neroli is perfectly lifelike but too exhilarating (and it just reminds D immediately of my traumatic time spent learning to walk again three years ago when I wore that perfume all of the time along with Sana Jardin’s equally uplifting and luminescent neroli scent, Berber Blonde. D doesn’t want to remember that time and so I don’t wear those). Orange blossom can also be too muted; Etat Libre D’Orange’s Divin Enfant for example; I don’t need any marshmallow leather or too much vanilla; I like it subtle in the finish without too much babying or coochy coo;. I like it more refined and preferably delicate; and Penhaligons’ Castile gets it absolutely right. 

 

 

 

If you are more of a Serge Lutens Fleurs D’Oranger or a Houbigant Orangers En Fleurs wearer;  and I love both of those; they are fantastically yowzer off the shoulder evening exuberance kinds of fragrances, but I am not Halle Berry and cannot carry off such a schmooze myself – you might probably find Castile a little uninspiring- a fresh, but refined neroli and orange blossom scent with just the right amount of bergamot and rose, and a gentle denouement that I think fits the skin in a beautifully understated manner (there was an interesting mention of this perfume on Fragrantica which reimagines Daniel Craig as 007 in Casino Royale coming down to the hotel reception in a perfectly fitted crisp white shirt and hints of post-shower Castile as the hotel reception staff try to concentrate on what he is saying and keep a lid on their inner reactions). Indeed, the perfume is perfectly androgynous and elegant. Last night, I found it beautifully restorative.

 

 

 

 

Another night time orange blossom of very different stripes is Neroli Negro by Coqui Coqui, a Mexican brand based on the Yucatan peninsula. I love the packaging and design of these perfumes; such things make a great difference to my appreciation of a scent, the whole experience; an appealing aesthetic, and there is something about the Gatsby-ish gold-embossed lettering on the pristine white box that really appeals to all my senses. The perfumes are not complex; Neroli Negro is a husky, honeyed growl of orange blossom, musk, and, unusually, a strongly dominating note of depressurised myrrh, that comes across to me nevertheless as almost liquorice-like and edible. Self-contained, it could also be a real passion ignition key in the right circumstances, peculiarly moreish and sultry. At night, it helps me draw a velvet curtain on the day.

 

 

 

Menli, another perfume in the Coqui Coqui extensive range, is an almost absurdly simple, or simplistic, take on the Mojito –  just lime and mint. And yet for a minute or two, it is the best mint smell I have ever smelled; a variety of mint from Mexico that I have never personally encountered in real life but now want to. The mint smell is almost fiery in its coolness; pure as leaves  – so minty – and incredibly invigorating, before it cedes to a fainter mint-citrus synergy that while less exciting, is still quite pleasant on a t-shirt and as an all round pick-me-up. D has taken to this one like a duck to water  – he is also very fond of a well-made mojito, that delicious and perturbing swirl of ice and lime and mint and sugar and rum, the best one we ever had being down a back street in Barcelona several Augusts ago watching local kids skateboarding by the steps of a beautiful old cathedral.

 

 

Good times.

 

 

 

 

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February 6, 2020 · 5:02 pm

HEARTLESS HELEN by PENHALIGONS (2019)

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I had promised myself I wouldn’t write anything today as I am feeling mind-wiped, but seeing this just-out-in-Nippon release in Takashimaya ( a take no prisoners, self confidently fresh and sharp mandarin tuberose neroli that she would never wear in a million years though I might ),  I am simply putting this up to pique the amusement of my best friend Helen – who is anything but heartless

 

 

 

 

 

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– though she can be severe and cut to the core and tell it like it is because she seems to understand me better than possibly anybody else: a soul twin, telepathic understanding that, though we speak far too little ( as we are both lazy and crap ) we know, as long as we remain intact, we will always have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

( the picture above is H giving me a pep talk before my Perfume Lovers London talk of 2014 ….. god how time so quickly flies……)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen has talked me through many a difficult situation: like my mother (in the earthquake, my operation, both were amazing ) they tell me just the right combination of reality and boost. A hotwire to my sensibility;  fraternal umbilical straight to my fevered, potholed  brain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We are also both hypochondriacs. So god knows how she would feel being here where I am today, in Yokohama,; the biggest China Town in all of Asia, where a cruise ship is quarantined off shore walking distance from where I have lessons with passengers coming down like flies with the coronavirus, and where, as you can see, masks are selling out and there is a very uneasy feel in the air – as there is globally – as people are wondering what to believe, and whether they are over or underreacting; where being on packed trains feels unpleasant and dangerous, and where tempers get frayed —

 

 

 

 

– —- my ragged own, especially ( I had an argument with my closest Japanese male friend on the bus earlier this afternoon. about a common colleague who was espousing theories the other day about only the ‘weak’ being in danger of contracting the virus and being very arrogantly ‘unconcerned’ about the illness –  —- so would that include me, then?  having had very serious pneumonia in my left lung twice before ; I didn’t like the almost Nietzschean Ubermensch implications of what he was saying (and what of the immune stressed sleep deprived students, just before the most important exams of their lives ?); my friend said it was a linguistic misunderstanding: I responded with something below the belt about the man’s appearance…., oh when I get on the defensive I can be very venomous ; bile slips from my tongue with slippered ease.,..  …. never mind Heartless Helen; it is more like Noxious Neil (so should I wear the partner in the set, then  : the devilish and dastardly woody tobacco scent, Terrible Ted? )

 

 

 

 

 

No : I think Helen would suit me much better : we need proud nosegays in these pestilential times; bright flowers (Penhaligons calls this a ‘fearless conquistador’), and everybody knows that I love oranges.  don’t think about it, H would say, rationalize, hone in to the very best perspective; reverse or brake my hysteria  —-   ———- or at the very least, just try and  steer me towards a more pacified lucidity

 

 

 

 

 

 

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April 6, 2019 · 10:50 am

BLANK SLATE ::::::::::: SESAME CHAN by ANIMA VINCI (2018) + MUGLER COLOGNE : LOVE YOU ALL (2018) + ALL ABOUT THE BOOK LAUNCH AND MY STRANGE, INTENSE, TRIPLE LIFE

 

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Sometimes it is difficult to distill experiences into words. Especially when they have been  among the most intense and memorable of your life (this post might take several chapters; or alternatively, realistically, as time gets swallowed up in the living of the regular week, not even amount to much at all – yesterday I went back to work, shaved my beard off, and became someone I am not again, with all the damage that entails to the body and the soul). The flight home was exhausting, memories gestating in my head, the bifurcation of cultures, the rabbit hole of my existence.

 

 

 

England was fantastic. It was great to have our own pad in Pimlico to slink back to this time, rather than carting suitcases on the underground and half-sleeping on other people’s sofas (those days are gone: I am too old). It meant we could retreat and conserve energy. And wake up on white, Georgian streets, and see England with new eyes. Night taxis past the Houses Of Parliament and the London Eye; gliding silently past midnight clad in new perfumes to demarcate new experience: I had been given a bottle of a perfume by Anima Vinci, and also something entirely not me (and yet me: I wore it in great profusion……after meeting Monsieur and Madame Persolaise for a catch up at an Indian restaurant, though exhausted from the night before – the launch and the gathering afterwards – there was one more assignation to Dalston to go to the house of one Lyall Hakaraia : a fascinating creature from New Zealand who lives in  permanently flower drenched air, on this occasion an almost suffocating pleasure of lilies, hyacinths and tuberoses, his own club in the basement – Femmetopia – but it was too cold for me to dance; my heating needs are now beyond reptilian – Garrick, the host of the party where I played with Anne Pigalle (did I really?) there, resplendent in what looked like black Issey Miyake……it felt like a stage set, I was in The Matrix, Lyall in silk Japanese dressing gown, classical music coming from Radio 3 as they waited for JT Leroy, who was staying there and drinking at a pub around the corner………(surreal).

 

 

I had been unable to bear the smell of all the fried onions on my clothes, to the extent that I couldn’t even wear my coat (death for me): instead I had had an emergency shower and different, boring clothes, and sick of bloody No 19, which I have been signaturing all over the shop, felt like a new skin: : :: Mugler’s Love You All sprayed all over me like a waterfall: all steamed, laundry fresh ultramodern neroli and probably lime and the most innocuous, almost angelic, white musks, for that moment it felt strange but absolutely right, and our host made motions of pleasure as he inhaled me brushing past, climbing the stairs away from the revellers in the basement to the unbelievable florality of the reeking fleurs du mal of the living room and kitchen where we sipped neat Zubrowka vodka and rambled coherently about all kinds of nonsense until it was suddenly 3am and we had to leave in order not to miss our morning trains.

 

 

 

Back home at my parents’, I was completely drawn to wearing Anima Vinci’s delicious Sesame Chan, a perfume of extreme, soothing comfort that fits me like a glove and is my new favourite scent. Those that like Hermes’ Vetiver Tonka will in all likelihood also like this warm gourmand based on vetiver with delicately balanced notes of ginger, hazelnut, cereals, sesame and an eventual base note of pure, soft vanilla……I was LOVING myself on the train ride home, past fields of green, lost in thought and a novel, constantly aware of the aura around me: sweet, but not too much so, fresh, light, yet long lasting and completely pleasurable ; for me this is a perfectly blended comfort blanket and I am going to wear it today in Tokyo as well (tonight, in a sharp reverse from yesterday’s dungeon of condensed office culture I am attending the launch party of a Canadian poet, Joy Waller, and her first published book of poetry, Pause: Heartbeat, at which a range of foreign Tokyoites are going to interpret some of her works, including Duncan, who will be Icarus, and myself and Lola his Grecian tormentors (Burning Bush in a sack and a rake….I am getting whiplash just thinking about it: sometimes I feel that my own life is happening beyond my authorisation and I just watch it salaciously).

 

 

 

It was somewhat similar at the Launch party. The day before, I had been on BBC Radio London, live, which was a terrifying experience (have I already talked about this? probably), but it was so heightened and heartbeaty arriving at Broadcasting House, getting through all the levels of security, going up to Jo Good’s floor, where she was doing her show, talking about all kinds of things: Brexit, the price of tuna steaks, Neil Chapman’s perfume book – and feel free to call in and ask him any questions about fragrance! I am also going to ask him to guess what I am wearing…….as I sat in the lobby, knowing that I would be on after the news and a song::: holding my bag o ‘ perfumes close to me, knowing I would be talking live and having absolutely no idea how it would turn out…Neil you are on in five; Neil you can come in now, as the new single by Bananarama was playing –  who were being interviewed after me – I now wished I could have hung around a bit longer and met them as I used to love their early stuff, but I was already being ushered out at that point, the fifteen minutes having gone by so quickly. Ms Good was a lovely woman; really enthusiastic, and she loved the fact that I had taken so many scents in for her to try. I found myself quite enjoying myself by the end, getting into my stride.

 

 

 

It all took its nerve toll, though, and although D and his parents came round in the evening, fresh from the Norwich bus and staying at the Windermere Hotel next door to hear me on the radio – like families gathering around the wireless in the 1940’s there was something very special and beautiful about this, my mum having also called up having just got back from the hairdresser’s, hearing something about tuna steaks and then not being able to believe her son was on the radio, she and dad gathered around the computer back home……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day though I had to be alone to get my act together for the evening. The Launch. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are times in your life that you know are going to be defining moments. And this was definitely one of them (hopefully not the apex, but who knows? Perhaps this was my small moment). Whatever it was, it involved people from my life coming together – ‘characters’ from my book : girls, women from the past -(and present, we are still in contact) Rebecca, Natasha, Julianne, Julia, of course Helen, but in the flesh – friends from university I hadn’t seen for twenty five years (Lesley! Artemis, it was divine to see you, seriously), my family, and Duncan’s – plus The Perfume Society, hosted by Jo Fairley, who had just rushed across London fresh from winning a Jasmine Award, and though I have realised that in truth I am not entirely comfortable with eyes and attention on me (hence not wanting to teach any more – at times I feel violated by it: : :I get more and more sensitive as I get older, not less – I thought it was meant to be the opposite); this was different: in essence a celebration. The book, with its gold-embossed pages, was piled up on a table near the entrance. The handsome duo of my cousin Dominic and his husband Scott arrived (both architects/ designers) and seemed quite taken with it; there was Mrs Dalloway from The Black Narcissus too, and Catherine, standing shyly in a corner (very nice to meet you!), Samantha from I Scent You A day, with a friend (so sorry we didn’t get to properly talk: it was like that with everyone though: I was jealous of people being able to just relax and have conversations): Emma we hardly spoke at all, which I regret: Rachel and Sally, hardly at all either (sorry!): a lovely Japanese lady who has given me some introductions to perfume people in Tokyo (I am trying to get a Japanese co-edition put out for the small but passionate fragrance lovers of this city), all kinds of people, but in truth within the swirl of the champagne and the food – which I didn’t touch, weird for me I didn’t even get a chance to relieve my bladder- and with everything going on I had to be interviewed in front of everyone and read from the book, and I was not entirely present. At the time, or immediately afterwards, I couldn’t even remember anything I said: : afterwards I realised that despite feeling like the heaviest person in the world, heavier than lead, an animated corpse jolted by electric batteries to come alive and say something, as though I was rallying myself and battening down to the primal basics, eventually I started flowing; Jo was down to earth, relaxed and saying very nice things about the book, and I let my eccentricities out – I do remember quite a few times that people were laughing.

 

 

 

 

 

I signed books – by the end of the event there were none left, or maybe one (Georgia, I can’t believe you bought four, or was it five?) and we all piled next door to a cocktail bar, where everyone met and talked and the time went in no time in a blur of booze and love, and we found ourself in yet another taxi going home.

 

 

 

 

So: the book is out. It came out in America on April 2nd. There have been some extremely glowing reviews from The Perfume Society, Persolaise, I Scent You A Day, Australian Perfume Junkies, The Fragrant Wanderer, and Old Herbaceous (thanks very much), all of which I am so delighted with, – you never know how things will be received,) so it does seem that my crazed and pressurised labours of last year were not in vain. I expect the intense and touching memories will eventually decompact themselves and I may write more on all of this again, but for now I have to get ready for Duncan’s piece tonight, again on stage: : what has happened to me! Am I an extroverted introvert or the other way round: (how about you?). His piece, based on another’s poem, on the intense desire to escape life, or at the very least reality. Which, ultimately, in many ways, is what my book is basically about. The desire for beauty, and the transcendental.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reviews:

 

 

 

 

 

https://thefragrantwanderer.wordpress.com

 

https://perfumesociety.org/delve-into-the-best-perfume-book-weve-read-in-years/

 

https://iscentyouaday.com/2019/03/22/perfume-in-search-of-your-signature-scent-by-neil-chapman/

http://persolaise.blogspot.com/2019/03/persolaise-review-perfume-in-search-of.html

 

https://scentsandsensibilities.co/category/books-i-like/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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June 13, 2015 · 12:31 pm

TWO WILDLY DIFFERING ORANGE BLOSSOMS : : APOM HOMME by MAISON KURKDJIAN (2009 ) + NEROLI by ANNICK GOUTAL (20I3)

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One of the joys of the Tokyo and Yokohama thrift shops is that you just never know. While you can go into them week after week, month after month and there not be anything you really want – just the usual uninteresting suspects – suddenly there can be a windfall of perfumes; not just vintage beauties, but thrown-out niche: the kind of perfumes you might never consider buying at full price, but which presented to you as a cache of vastly reduced bargains in the glass cabinet of a thrift shop you think why not: go on then: they might help me to upgrade my repertoire.

And the other day, at ‘Crystal’, a very hit and miss place, I came across a cabinet of Goutals and Penhaligons and L’Artisans and Maison Kurkdjian (something I have never seen reduced before: all these expensive brands found exclusively in the snazzier Tokyo department stores at vastly inflated prices, so what the hell was going on?), snapping up Tea For Two and Opus I860 for Duncan, and APOM Homme and Néroli for me, also debating over Mandragore Pourpre (always intriguing – I now regret not buying that one as well), and Goutal’s peculiarly acrid Vanille Exquise.

 

I would probably never even have given either of these perfumes more than a cursory sniff at Isetan if I had come across them:  anything with ‘pour homme’ in the title immediately puts me off as I anticipate gender clichés that don’t fit the image I have of myself (I had definitely liked the feminine equivalent though and was very disappointed it wasn’t that one instead when I first saw the bottle), and in any case colognes, and neroli in particular, are not something I necessarily go for as I don’t think I can really carry off orange blossom.

 

Although I am drawn to the smell of these flowers in nature and am definitely an acolyte of the essential oil (for skin preservation purposes), in fragrance it doesn’t quite work for me. I was never a fan of the classic cologne formula (the petitgrain, rosemary and musk added to the neroli), and there are very few scents of this type I can imagine wearing on myself. I quite like Divin Enfant, Castile and Dilmun, – all padded, creamily softened nerolis – but they are a bit pampered and cotton woolish for my own tastes. The sharper, more vivid perfumes of the type, Lutens’ Fleurs D’Oranger, Fragile, or Atelier Cologne’s Grand Néroli, are glinting extravagances that I can appreciate but not wear persuasively, and until discovering this rendition by Goutal, I would never have seen myself leaving the house in this flower’s leafy, potent gaze.

 

But Annick Goutal’s Néroli has the green rasp of bitter orange leaves; the snap of a twig and the fresh floral white breath of natural orange blossoms. The full bower; a replenishingly brisk, yet deeply felt neroli that is refreshing in its simplicity yet impressive in its true to lifeness. More than a portrait of orange blossom flowers it is an enactment: a reappearance, almost, of the living flowers on each spray: it is more true than any other neroli I know, yet simultaneously more pleasing than the neural harshness of the pure essential oil. Although as with all colognes the zinginess inevitably fades, this is still quite lovely throughout its duration: cool, yet warm; removed, yet romantic; enveloping, yet subtle. It is excellent, and I am very glad I bought it.

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The almost diametrically opposed APOM, a curious and original scent by Maison Kurkdijian, is woozy, sexed and direct, centred on the same smell of orange blossom as the Goutal – if less sharply defined – but where the Néroli is all concerned with nature and the sweet outdoors, APOM (‘A Piece Of Me’), is all about urbanity. ‘Lifestyle.’ Signatures. Where the Annick Goutal delights and uplifts, APOM disturbs; a prowlingly plasticky leather and cedared amber base (erotic); steam-ironed synthetics in the top accord that reek of freshly pressed, exclusive clothes in a penthouse city apartment.

 

 

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APOM’s creator, Francis Kurkdjian, is in many ways a modern genius. Unlike the vast majority of niche perfumes I smell, his creations are indelibly created with character. Unlike Bertrand Duchaufour and his (often pointlessly) overegged puddings, brimming with details but for me at least difficult to digest, FK seems to pare down his formulae to the essentials, yet avoids the pale minimalism of an Ellena or a Giacobetti, rendering them full-cheeked; replete, and immediately memorable. It often seems to me in fact that the best new scents are still somehow instantly familiar and recognizable in some way that does not detract from their innovation. Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male, a Kurkdjiian creation, had echoes of earlier perfumes but still packed an immediate punch as a zeitgeisty fragrance that became a mass seller. APOM, a perfume I am not sure I entirely like (in fact in some ways I could even say that it repels me; I felt very strange indeed wearing it out in public on the day that I did as it was like being a different person; guised in a costume that was alien, unholy, yet fascinating: I was unable to stop constantly inhaling myself), is nevertheless hotly distinctive and commercial. This scent is pointed; and blunting. Sexy. As I came out of the cinema, alone (“The Tribe”, a brilliant, almost silent film acted entirely in sign language without subtitles), feeling stunned and quite dislocated by what was a very singular cinematic experience, the smell that was rising up from my clothes only added to the disorientating feeling of being suspended in dense, thick time; where the outside reality felt uncanny and heightened – a man cycling slowly by a canal; the mist covered waters, the memories of the beautiful but very violent film rising in splintered vivid  fragments in my scentless brain.

 

‘A Piece Of Me’ thus feels like a very apt name for the perfume. A tattoo; a memento of someone left on a trace of the air in a room. It is intensely modern, of the times, but fully realized, as though it had willed itself from ether into existence….

 

 

 

 

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Later on in that evening, I met up with Duncan and a group of friends who had just done a ten hour marathon charity walk for Medicins Sans Frontières around the Yamanote Line in Tokyo ( I wasn’t able to take part because of my knee), but in any case, rather than feeling lonely or left out as I might have done at another time, on that particular day I was revelling in that particular kind of solitude when existence feels glassy, liquid, double distilled, when you have entered it and own it from the inside. And as the pungent, insistent base tones of APOM began to fade on my skin, I then found that the linking note – the orange blossom, the neroli – meant that despite their great differences in conception and execution, I could also spritz on some Goutal – revivifying, natural; fresh, more innocent – just before meeting everyone at the station

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March 7, 2013 · 12:25 am

Here comes the sun, little darlin….. SOLEIL LIQUIDE by MEMOIRE LIQUIDE (2009)

Today was the first day of proper, unbridled sunshine we have had this year : blue skies, cold breeze, but in the sunshine directly it was hot enough to not need a jacket; proper soul-warming sun up to the the mid-sixties, the kind of day in London where people strip off their shirts in the parks and soak up some rays on the grass with beers and the first picnics, as multilayered foreign tourists from much hotter countries look bemusedly on, and we pretend to ourselves that this is going to be what the weather will be like for the foreseeable future.

A day, then, for mood-enhancing, summery scents (even though it is only the beginning of March and I am totally jumping the gun…) I have been lucky, though, to receive a lot of perfume samples in the post in recent weeks, and livened by the light, and having just finished my post on piquant greens from this morning, I felt like trying something new and refreshing.

Scrabbling through the vials (all over the house, anywhere, everywhere, total lack of organization I am afraid) I came across one that had ‘Soleil Liquide’ written on it (no name of the perfume house on the vial, inviting me in, cryptically, as a ‘drink me’ bottle might do Alice) as I was ironing my shirt,  with my coffee; music on; the window wide open and the sounds of my  neighbourhood flooding in; my cat, Mori, fighting with the ginger tom across the street (there is some territorial battle going on);  kids on their way to school, birds beginning to ‘twitter’ (I have had the windows shut for so long!)…a quick sniff before applying: ah yes, that will do, one of those nice, unthreatening,  contemporary florals I like in measured doses;  those jasmines and tuberoses like  Beyond Love, Marc Jacobs,  and the new Oscar De La Renta Mi Corazon; sheer, but not too sheer; fresh, clear, but with enough exotic suggestion for me to acquiesce (just on one wrist and one cuff, my guilty, bucking-the-rules pleasure for school, as ‘gender-bending’, nectarous, fleurs emanate from my tutorious person….)

In any case, Liquide Soleil has been my school scent of the day, and I have to say that have enjoyed it. A modern, citrus white floral that is easy on the nose and spirits for its cheering, American summer goodness,  its barely  whispered memories of France (Tendre Poison, even the eighties incarnation of Vent Vert, or am I just imagining it?), its simple, immediate, pamplemousse-gorged uplift.

Neroli, tangerine and lightly candied grapefruit; a pleasingly blended triumvirate of yellows that coalesces very nicely together over the standard, familiarized accords of subtle sandalwood and white musks, yet mixed together knowingly and judiciously to cleverly bring the ‘liquid sunshine’ to the whole.  Conventional if you really have to nit-pick, but something that really does to me smell good, and those were today’s quite simple criteria. Make me smell nice. Make me smell clean and laundered but also nice; handsome; comely.

You may have smelled this type of fragrance many times before, these citrus-boosted nerolis like Fleurs D’Oranger and Cologne Grand Neroli that abound quite frequently in the perfume world;  but a perfectly blended, dependable bottle of summertime happiness is nothing to be sniffed at ( I find most perfumes these days go wrong at some point: there is always some vile woody addition that ruins it; some sweet, banal chemical that turns me off, but I didn’t really get any of that with Liquide Soleil, apart, perhaps, from a sense that by the end of the day, when the sun had actually gone, it was slightly beginning to outstay its welcome (probably because it was clinging, still zinging with orangey, persistent neroli to my chalk-flecked shirt…)

No. The carefree, citrus florality of this perfume is really  appealing, and it is something I would happily wear quite regularly, particularly on warm sunny days like today. If it is nice tomorrow as well, I think it might be getting another outing…

 

 

 

 

 

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Today, 5.36 pm, Hiratsuka station, as I made my way to my evening classes…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

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