My video review for Chanel Coco Noir basically amounts to five minutes of me saying "meh". At the time of recording it, I imagined I was offering a vaguely edifying analysis of noir-yness in the context of Chanel. But watching it back now, it's the equivalent of one big tragically-heaved sigh.
I blame Coco Noir.
Coco Noir is available from Amazon.com and Chanel.com starting at $98 for 1.7 oz
It's often pointless to talk about a perfume an hour after first applying it, but my Geranium pour Monsieur arrived today from Frédéric Malle and I'm just so baffled by it. It's like a post-modern Comme des Garçons scent for men with broad shoulders. It's minty and planty and herby out of the bottle but then it shifts into a cool sheen, like the little green plants hopped onto a space ship. So far, I'm loving it!
So when I started hearing talk about a new Frédéric Malle scent combining incense, rose and oud, composed by Carnal Flower master Dominique Ropion no less, I went a little doolally. I pestered my local Barneys, I peppered Malle HQ with emails. When, when, oh WHEN was Portrait of a Lady going to be available?
Now, now, oh NOW is when it's available, dear whiffers, and NOW is when Portrait of a Lady is my newest favorite perfume ever. This Lady features a vibrant patchouli that smells uncannily of fresh, wet dirt whipped up into a dusty benzoin cloud. There's minty geranium, muffled cinnamon and tart berries. Even though the rose is billed as “a daring dosage of the best Turkish rose essence,” I perceive the rose as a kind of backwards echo drifting through the composition, rather than a front and center “I am rose, hear me roar” flower power player.
The slight sharpness of the incense contrasts beautifully with the musk's plushness. The suggestion of oud is barely, but beautifully, there. It's just a niff of that odd oudy floor polish before it swells into a leathery sourness, lacing all the prettiness together. For such a complex perfume, the brush strokes are blended beyond visibility.
And catching an unexpected huff off my t-shirt during yoga class the other day, I also flashed on Agent Provocateur. Without being as overtly “busy knickers” as AP, Portrait of Lady does share an echo of its unshowered musky rose closeness.
For all of its dusty patchouli rosy oudy musky minty berry divinity, Portrait of a Lady isn't bombastic. This is a big perfume, but incredibly, not a loud one. Despite the supergroup ingredients, the scale isn't stadium-sized, but human. The keenly calibrated blend emphasizes the players' affinity for each other, instead of their individual tendencies to showboat. The sillage caresses, rather than oppresses.
Like expensive jeans pre-worn in all the right places, Portrait of a Lady comes out of the bottle already broken in. Even when freshly applied, it smells comfortably lived-in. There's no lag time between hitting the skin and shrinking to fit.
And the fit is universal, according to Portrait of a Lady's many dedicated male wearers. Some think Frédéric Malle has painted himself into a girly corner with the name, but for those men loving the Lady on themselves, might I suggest an alternate pronunciation: “Portrait of a Laddie”?
A couple hours after liberally spritzing myself with this at the Barneys perfume counter, I was browsing at a nearby mall when a young woman near me gasped, "What perfume are you wearing? It smells beautiful!" (She really did gasp: a genuine, pearls-clutching gasp.)
You'd think this happens to me all the time, given the amount of juice in which I regularly marinate, but it doesn't. I filled her in on the details, and she confidently told me that her mother probably owned it, since she was a fragrance nut with “800 bottles of perfumes.” I just as confidently responded that I was sure her mother didn't own it, being as Portrait of a Lady had only been available for about 2 minutes, practically.
Like something out the Marshall McLuhan scene in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, the young woman's cell phone rang, and it was her mother. After bringing her mom up to speed on our chance meeting, she handed the phone over to me. Yes, Susan was a fumie. No, she did not have 800 bottles of perfume (“only about 200”). But yes, she was indeed the proud possessor of Portrait of Lady. Psych!
Even if you consider my fume ramblings an amusing diversion at best, take it from Susan — a lady who knows from perfume and is smart enough to train her lovely daughter to sniff out the good shizz: Portrait of a Lady is a must-smell, and a must-have. Malle says that in overseeing this Dominique Ropion creation, he was inspired by 80s-era Guerlain perfumes. Hearing that, I instantly thought: Nahema! Not that the two fragrances smell anything alike. Nahema is a proper adult perfume that smells like Maria Callas' dressing room after a long night: wilted rose bouquets, bowls of overripe fruit, and cigarettes stubbed out in half-drunk cocktails.
Portrait of a Lady is also a proper adult perfume, but it strips the hauteur from couture and renders luxury accessibly sensual. All that posh rose may be shot in high def, but filtered through the soft focus of benzoin, musk and oud, it becomes intimate, not intimidating.
But like Nahema, Portrait of a Lady is a swirl of sensation compressed into a halo that generously gives you all the credit for its worldly complexity. I'm thinking Portrait of a Lady just might be a Nahema for the new century.
Have you ever smelled the men’s fragrance Minotaure by Paloma Picasso? One review described it as “a fresh oriental with sandalwood and patchouli." Another mentioned a note of vanilla. Many describe it as sexy, yet subtle and unique.
My husband says this has been his favorite fragrance in the past, and I just ordered it for a Valentine's Day surprise. I can't wait to smell it myself!
I would be thrilled if you could recommend a female version of Minotaure. The idea of an earthy vanilla sounds appealing...something in between “cake bakery sweet” and “just stepped out of the 70s patchouli”. Something sensual and intimate that need not be advertised from across the room.
Thanks,
Ashley
Ashley, I'm inspired by your Patchouli Cake question, because my very favorite fragrance (still holding the number one spot despite being forced to constantly re-audition) is a vanillic patchouli: Chanel Coromandel. It's earthy and spicy and luxurious with a not-too-sweet vanilla.
The tedious part of the equation is that Coromandel is only sold in Chanel boutiques (and a few select department stores) and is pricey (though you do get a huge 6.8oz bottle for your 180+ bucks).
By the way, a quick Google on Minotaure’s notes revealed no patchouli, only sandalwood and leather along with the vanilla, citrus and florals. So if you want to amble down that enticing path, you could try the following:
Guerlain Shalimar Bulgari Black
Estée Lauder Sensuous
Also pay a call on Vanille Sauvage de Madagascar by La Maison de la Vanille, though this one is pretty much holed up in the bakery, even with its woods and lavender/thyme aromatics)
And if you want to cover all the patchouli/sandalwood/vanilla bases, you can go with the latest perfume to seduce my nose: Parfumerie Generale Intrigant Patchouli. I’ve been smearing myself in Intrigant Patchouli’s delights: the sharp nag champa-esque opening, the low-key vanilla, the animal-adjacent drydown with its blend of sandalwood and a niff of mongoose hindquarters (otherwise known as civet).
(By the way, I’m still married to Coromandel, but we have an open relationship. I just haven’t told Coromandel.)
Fumeheads, do you have any Lady Minotaur thoughts for Ashley?
Your obsession for a big rich and round rose got me thinking, and I have nothing like that in my collection. My only rose is the dry and dusty Eau d'Italie Paestum Rose, which I like but which better fills the "dry and dusty" category (to be known from now on as the "L'Air du Desert dry dry dry" category) than it fills the rose category.
Also, many of the roses I've smelled either remind me of Mom or their decks are stacked with spicy smoky incense, probably so they won't remind me of Mom. (Which kind of rose one prefers is almost certainly a good litmus test of one's relationship with one's mother.) So now I'm looking for something in between: no big fat rose mirrors with Mom in them but no scaredy-cat rose incense that tries to make you forget you ever had a mother.
It does get difficult to be satisfied with these post-modern scents when you have a gallon of Chanel Coromandel sitting around. Which is what I wore today. What a wonderful perfume. And it ends up only an inch or two from By Kilian A Taste of Heaven, the green lavender, which also features patchouli. I guess the lavender hits the road first.
Dan
Dan,
I have that exact same feeling about post-modern scent satisfaction when facing the indies off against Comomandel. Every time I take a passing sniff of Coromandel, I end up spritzing myself all over like a kid playing in a lawn sprinkler.
Will check out A Taste of Heaven when I go to Scent Bar next...TO BUY CHERGUI. As you've indicated, our communal frothing over perfume might not be such a good thing for the finances. Discussion stirs the thirst. Bartender!
Katie
Katie,
You HAVE A Taste of Heaven, Katie! It's part of the decant package I sent you.
Chergui? But you already own L'Air du Desert bullshit bullshit. How many Moroccan desert scents does one girl need? Wait, don't answer that. Because I'm not the one who should be asking it. I don't come to this subject with a clean record. I'm pretty sure I bought four different woody scents just last week.
Dan
Dan,
Whoops, you're right - you did send me Taste of Heaven, and I've just sprayed it on the back of my hand. Hmm. Lavender. And a cardboard box shaped somewhat like my square head. That's all I'm getting right now, one minute in. Square cardboard lavender. Might have to go back to drug dog school, cuz I can't imagine a drydown reminiscent of Coromandel. We'll see.
Ooh! Now getting something animally from Taste of Heaven.
Okay, T of H now smelling like cardboard smeared with Icy Hot.
I don't own L'Air du Coughing Fit, okay? I just enjoy smelling it, and spray it on liberally at Scent Bar from time to time, to experience its curious arid Coca-Cola accord. And Chergui, even though the name supposedly refers to a Moroccan desert wind, is
a) nothing like Coughing Fit
b) not really all that dry
c) a more natural-smelling, herbal version of Bulgari Black, which I do own and love
d) will be great in the dry dry dry sauna dryness of LA - as is Nasomatto China White
But you're right, I'm a sucker for the same shit over and over again. The LuckyScent site links China White to Tann-Rokka Aki and Josef Statkus, and I own all of those, all right.
Taste of Heaven has now settled at cardboard smeared with Icy Hot. With beaver butt in the background.
Katie
Katie,
Taste of Heaven lasts FOREVER and in a couple hours, it will smell nothing like it smells now. I know you don't believe me but I'm telling you, it's lavender and rose and patchouli (and "medicine", I think), but the patchouli ends up vanishing and it smells a lot like Coromandel. Not as good, mind you. Not as rich or sweet or soft, but patchouli on the same patchouli continuum.
My ex loved Bulgari Black and so I got rid of my bottle and I can't wear it. Not because of any emotional trauma but because it's her favorite fragrance and there's nothing I can do about it.
Dan
Dan,
Y’know, you like to "give me the needle" on L'air du Desert Marocain, and there you are guffing back the internal organ-desiccating Paestrum Rose.
And I don't associate roses with mothers. My Mom was a Chanel No. 5/Estée Lauder Youth Dew lady all the way.
Katie
Katie,
My mother LOVED rose anything, so I only associate rose with her. I didn't have a Chanel mom, I had an Avon mom. (Fabergé for fancy occasions.)
Dan
Fumeheads - what perfume do you associate with your mother?
i would like to know if u ever come across a fragrance that smells like soil, earth, wet dirt, rocks. if possible i would like to smell like that.
danyellabelly
Hi danyellabelly - “dirt, soil, earth” - talk about giving me a task to “dig into”, kee-yuk! The tricky part was keeping the recommendations fairly accessible - things you might find at a department store or a Sephora. If you up your budget and go niche, you could explore the soil-dusted patchouli and spiced vanilla of Chanel Coromandel, or head-clearing salty grasses of The Different Company Sel de Vetiver. And there’s a whole earthy world from there. But I thought I’d give you a break and start cheaper.
To address your geological fragrance needs, I’m conjuring the dirt with patchouli, the earth with vetiver and tobacco, the rocks with salty mineral notes and wetness with aquatic notes. My A-number-1 choice for you is Demeter Dirt, which is wonderful and smells like rich, fertile soil after the rain. It doesn’t have a lot of staying power, but it’s inexpensive, so you can just spray on more when it fades out.
You’ll note that there’s a lot of skipping back and forth across the men’s and women’s aisles for these, but that’s OK – Mother Earth belongs to all of us.
Can anyone else suggest dirt and rock perfumes for danyellabelly? I’d be interested to hear which niche options would apply, too. Off the top of my head, I’d say Profumum Thundra, with its mushroomy wet leaves, would be a doozy.
I literally recoiled when you said no one else likes our beloved Chanel Coromandel. Then I stuck out my chin and got all tough like, "I don't care!" Kind of like when an angry Britney fan wrote to me on YouTube a while back telling me I had a "head like a square box". Yeah, kind of funny, kind of true, then I deleted it.
Anyway, back to Coromandel. She is a little eccentric. The way I pile it on, I have friends begging me to roll down the car windows. But then others go in for a hug, get ensnared by Coromandel, and don't want to let me go. Maybe your women friends couldn't process a guy wearing something so filled with personality? But goodness knows your perfume collection has more personalities than Sybil, so they should be used to that.
The Different Company Rose Poivrée: I never experienced the original. It's still pretty armpitty, and I enjoy taking long draughts of it. Couldn't see myself wearing it though.
I’m circling Creed Angelique Encens at the moment. If only it didn't come in that flippin' bulk-buy sized bottle. You don't have Angelique Encens, do ya, Dan? Because I would definitely hit you up for some of that.
Have you smelled Profumum Thundra? It's unusual and potent and handsome: mushrooms on the damp forest floor. Wonder if you might like it? Might be too butch for you.
Katie
Katie,
On Coromandel:
I wandered into the Chanel boutique yesterday to talk perfume with Venis (his real name) - before we were pen pals, I've had no one with whom to talk perfumes and I'm starving for conversation - and Venis told me that Coromandel is his favorite of the Exclusifs, too, but that it's the worst-selling one. I hope they don't discontinue it. It's odd that they launched so many scents at once and I can imagine them trimming back. I did smell the new one, Beige, which is very pretty, more of a traditional Chanel, and definitely more female than male.
On Rose Poivrée:
TDC changed it years ago, not long after the original came out, and while the new one smells armpitty, the old one was positively offensive. It smelled like several kinds of pits at once. It's the only perfume that has made me gag. And that includes Etat Libre d’Orange Sécrétions Magnifiques, which is actually kind of nice if you're in the correct mindset. (Which means you can't be thinking about blood or sperm or sweat when you smell it.)
On Angelique Encens:
I don't have it. I don't have any Creeds. I've smelled a few and not liked them at all. They all smell like my Uncle Tony, RIP. And while I'm sure people thought Uncle Tony smelled fine in his day, his day was fifty or sixty years ago. (Though in fairness I've only sampled the male Creed scents.)
On Thundra:
I've liked everything from Profumum, Thundra the most. Also, Acqua di Sale, which is a salty sea scent, but a very good one. I already own Heeley Sel Marin, though, which is similar, so Thundra is first. Thundra is next! (I can already tell you're not going to be a good influence on my budget. Maybe I've instinctively avoided these kinds of conversations for a reason.)
"Might be too butch for you."
Ouch. A fellow perfume lover taking a shot at my masculinity. I expect that from my dumb friends, but you? Although I guess it's better than saying I have a head like a square box. What an odd criticism.
The young people never fail to get all ad hominem on everyone's ass. You should tell that kid that having a head like a box means having good bone structure and having good bone structure means aging well and he and his stupid fleshy egg-shaped head can look forward to prematurely droopy jowls (if he lives that long). You've got to learn to speak the kids' language, Katie.
Okay, I've gone off the tracks and I'm surely infuriating you by now. I'm decanting for you tomorrow night. I'll just send you a bunch of stuff you might like. And, seriously, I have no perfume friends and over a hundred bottles of perfume. And I wear one scent per day. I can't possibly live long enough to wear everything I own. And I own more almost every week. My days are getting fewer, my bottles are getting greater, something has to give, Katie!
You owned Parfums MDCI Enlèvement au Serail? At $610 a pop? Hey, big spender! I haven’t smelled it, but it sounds absolutely gorgeous -- you're right, like the DNA of the new Eve.
I will point my trotters in the direction of Scent Bar and clippity-clop over there to investigate. And it will be an excuse to take another surreptitious whore's bath in Amouage Homage Attar, the transcendentally beautiful perfume of goddesses.
And speaking of men (like you) who appear from the ether of cyberspace to discuss baroque perfumes, I recently heard from a kid I knew in 5th grade at the Anglo-American School in Moscow. Except now he’s a law professor at an Ivy League college. He'd stumbled upon KP Smells and wanted to share his love for Jean Desprez Bal à Versailles. Are you familiar with this one?
I checked it out on the fume blogs and it sounded right up my furry alley: opulent, incensey, civet-y, so I tracked down a teeny bottle of parfum.
It's so interesting: Nag Champa hippie incense, overripe jasmine, dirty leather and "clean" horse poop. With hay. It smells old-fashioned and a little cheap, too. Of course, I'm desperate to know what those vintage bottles on eBay smell like. But I tell you what: I love layering BàV with Le Labo Labdanum 18. Good clean dirty fun.
When I reported my horse-poop findings to the former 5th-grader/current law professor, he was rather discomfited. There he was tipping me off to a lovely, cherished scent, and then he gets an earful of manure from me. Sometimes, it's best not to know the darkness that lies beneath loveliness.
My big love at the moment is Chanel Coromandel. Got a Costco-sized bottle of that in the fridge.
Procrastination question:
What do you love wearing?
Katie
Katie,
Coromandel is a marvel! I, too, have the big Exclusifs bottle. But here's the thing: no one else likes it. Or at least no one else I know. And that's the conundrum of wearing fragrances: how much do you let the people around you influence what you wear? A loved one? A lot, I guess. A once-a-month brunch friend? Screw 'em. But with Coromandel, I've literally had three otherwise sane women tell me they hated it.
As for civet-y goodness, did you ever smell the original version of The Different Company Rose Poivrée? I used to have a giant canister hidden away (you couldn't leave the stuff out in case young children were ever around) and it was absolutely obscene. Luca Turin wrote about it and I guess TDC changed the formula and added some actual rose, but that original version was, as the kids say, wicked.
I've not tried Amouage Homage Attar nor heard of Bal à Versailles. But of course I'll read all about both now. But I will not look up vintage bottles on eBay. That's dangerous territory when you already have a too-expensive habit for the new stuff.
I was shopping for a loft a few months ago and an agent was showing me one place with cute little library. And on the shelves were all of these vintage bottles: Chanels and Guerlains and stuff I didn't even recognize. "Wow, a perfume collector!" I said. And the agent, without missing a beat, said, "Yeah, the guy who lives here is kind of creepy." Ouch. No respect, Katie. If I ever sell my place, I'm hiding all my bottles.
Oh, and I didn't pay $610 for the Enlèvement au Serail. I got the $235 refill bottle, which is the very same thing but without the little faux marble head. (Little faux marble heads are more expensive than I thought.)
It's a straight peach-jasmine, but it's unbelievably luxurious. It smells like I imagine women smelling ages ago. Same with Etat Libre d’Orange Jasmin et Cigarette, except that one refers to a slightly different kind of woman, the kind of woman your father fancied BEFORE he met your mother.
Have you tried S-Perfume's scents? They're very odd and maybe up your alley. I have the faux-leather S-ex, which will remind you of sex only if you have sex fully clothed in brand-new cars with thick vinyl interiors.
Dan
Dan Rolleri is a guy who likes perfume and music and baseball, and most days he sits around the house working on a book that regrettably includes none of these things.
Chanel Coromandel is the fragrance that finally scooped me up in a butterfly net and dragged me off to the funny farm of perfume obsession.
Here’s how it happened: I was wandering the mean streets of Rodeo Drive last summer, when I stumbled into the refrigerated poshness of the Chanel Boutique. Facing down the original ten Les Exclusifs in their jumbo bottles, I was stirred by their solemn grandeur the way the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey were moved to chimpy frenzy by the mysterious black monolith.
Apes love Chanel.
I dibbed and dabbed my way through each glass brick of a bottle, until Coromandel shanghaied my nostrils. Its heady mix of roughness and refinement seemed too strange, too awkward.
I didn’t like it. Or did I? I needed to go back for another sniff. Before long, I was paying regular visits to the Chanel Boutique, to confirm just how much I didn’t like Coromandel.
Yep, as always, there’d be that dirty-faced Patchouli & Spice Man, brutally pulling the pretty Vanilla & Amber Lady into an uninvited embrace.
“Get off of me, you brute!” Vanilla & Amber Lady would cry, pounding her dainty fists on his chest.
Patchouli & Spice Man would smirk at her not-quite-believable attempts to extricate herself.
“You want me to let you go? Is that it?” he’d murmur, softly touching her chin, tilting her face closer to his.
Vanilla & Amber Lady would hesitate. “Well...maybe....”
Cue passionate kiss -- and there I was -- caught up in the sexy conflict and drama of Coromandel.
