Perfume Pen Pals: Jardins D’Ecrivains / Junky and George

Katie,

Have you tried anything from Jardins D’Écrivains? Its perfumes are said to be inspired by great writers and literary movements and based on the two I’ve tried, they seem additionally inspired by soap.

First is Junky, after William Burroughs (you finally made it, Bill), which is not nearly as complex as its long list of notes (hemp, rosewood, iris, violet, gardenia, cedar, Japanese vetiver, cashmeran, moss, etc.) would indicate. Instead it smells like a stale bar of soap left out in the unused room of a dingy old motel near the Oregon coast.

One of these days, some bikers will need a few hours sleep and afterward they’ll go to the bathroom to freshen up and they won’t end up feeling fresh at all. Still, how do you complain about soap in a $39 motel room?

Sparky and Gary feeling not-so-fresh.

You complain because we’re not in a motel room, KP, and the soap is actually perfume and the perfume didn’t come with a room and it didn’t cost $39, it cost a hundred dollars! I paid a hundred dollars to smell like stale soap. Which in itself is sort of fascinating, yes?

Jardins D’Écrivains puts out another perfume, George, named after George Sand, and that one also smells like soap. But good soap, specifically Caswell Massey Number Six, which is the best-smelling warm-citrus soap your father probably never wore but you imagine him wearing every time you smell it.

George is a pleasure to wear and yet I’ve worn Junky more frequently because I just can’t believe how bad it is. George smells good, George wears well, now let’s put George over there and go back to figuring out what the hell the perfumer was thinking with this Junky garbage.

I love the things I hate more than I love the things I love and one of these days I should bring that up in therapy.

Dan

Bikers photo: 'Sparky' and Gary Rogues Schererville, by Danny Lyon 1965

Cadentia Parfums / Jean d’Aigle Rose Eau de Cologne Extra

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the London Underground heading home after a long day. It was around 8 in the evening, and I boarded a car at the end of the train that looked to be completely empty. As I stepped inside, a glorious thing: the entire carriage was fragrant with roses. It was like some kind of olfactory hallucination.

Perfume Pen Pals: Frederic Malle / Iris Hand Cream

Katie,

As you know, ancillary products are not my thing. Aside from soap, toothpaste and perfume, I only use one product, this G.M. Collin Hydramucine Optimal Gel that I’ve been putting on my face for over ten years. I look okay with it and I’m almost certain I'd look okay without it, but at this point why take any chances?

Every other part of me -- which is to say every part not including my face, my teeth and my smell -- is in disarray, as a matter of both neglect and self-sabotage. My one hair concession is I’ll use a leave-in conditioner when my hair starts getting “poofy.” And I trim my eyebrows, but only when someone reminds me.

Perfume Pen Pals: Anat Fritz

Katie,

Lately I'm just wearing a bunch of lavenders and eau de colognes. Which makes me feel guilty because, jeez, why do I own so many damn perfumes if I'm perfectly fine wearing a simple lavender every day?

Maybe it's like those people who have to buy a big fat house before they realize they never wanted a big fat house. Except I always hate those people. They're so self-congratulatory about their stupid newfound life wisdom.

Perfume Pen Pals: Eris Parfums

Katie,

Have you worn any of the Eris perfumes yet? It's the line created by Scent and Subversion author Barbara Herman with Antoine Lie. I got my samples and immediately put on Belle de Jour for no reason other than I’m compulsive and it’s the first sample my pudgy fingers pulled out of the bag.

Comme des Garcons / Floriental

For a brand known for its chic eccentricity, Comme des Garçons can also surprise by keeping surprises to a minimum. I refer specifically to CdG's perfumes that comprise a virtual forest, a world of woods which includes the Incense and Blue Series, along with Black, Serpentine, Laurel, Hinoki, 2 Man and Wonderwood. (Hmm, seems I was complaining of "wood fatigue" back in my 2010 review of Wonderwood.)

Perfume Pen Pals: The Different Company / Rose Poivree

Katie,

As you know, this The Different Company Rose Poivrée drama of mine goes back over a decade. I'd owned a big canister of the original civet-heavy formulation, the one that Luca Turin famously said smelled like dirty underwear, and because I was young and I thought perfumes had to smell nice, I never had the nerve to wear it and finally sold it off.

Perfume Pen Pals: Frapin / 1270, Paradis Perdu and Speakeasy

Katie,

Have you tried any of the Frapin fragrances? Until recently, I hadn't. There are entire perfume lines that don't interest me. I don't know why and I'm so apathetic I don't care to investigate why. I see the word "Frapin" and I don't even remember liking perfume.

Clinique Aromatics Elixir

Aromatics Elixir by Clinique had been around for 20 years by the time I discovered it in the early 90s. I started off admiring it from a distance: even the most tentative spray hurled a lavish, densely-packed cloud of flowers, moss and woods into the air around me. I wasn't sure I could deliver on the promise of this perfume.

Perfume Pen Pals: Neutrogena Rainbath

Katie,

For me, summer vacation has come to mean traveling from one house in which I don't write to another house in which I also don't write. The vacation houses are always more scenic than my own but they also have more ants and less water pressure and so my state of mind remains about the same.

This year would have been no different if only on the morning of my departure I hadn't tried to carry too many things, stumbled and, with great force, slammed my leg into the stairs. People always say accidents happen in slow motion but for me the accident was instantaneous and it was the whole week after the accident that happened in slow motion.

Acqua di Parma / Colonia

Living in London, the defining perfume of my past few years here has been Molecule 01 by Escentric Molecules. Not a day goes by that I don't nab a whiff of a waft of "the little aromachemical that could" in the city's streets and tubes, galleries and supermarkets. I smell it in double-kiss hellos with film editors, yoga teachers and pop stars' himbo consorts.

Perfume Pen Pals: nu_be

Katie,

I recently tried the nu_be series, "an olfactory periodic table," which smartly counters the complaint that these new brands put out too many perfumes at once. If anyone criticizes nu_be, it's like criticizing the chemical structure of the whole world. "Too many perfumes? You try living without oxygen!"

Prada Amber

A few years ago, I smelled Prada Amber being worn to great effect by an elegant woman at a TV industry party. The party was a "class reunion" of the first TV show I ever hosted in the UK, the notorious pop culture crash called The Word. The Word was live on Channel 4 every Friday night at at 11 o'clock, an hour of the biggest stars, the hippest bands, and the most shocking, tabloid-freak-show studio events.

Perfume Pen Pals: Kerosene / Black Vines

Katie,

I know nothing about most occupations but here's how I imagine roller coaster architects work: they draw up dozens of plans for coasters that are never built because the designs are so unruly, almost every rider would get sick. Eventually, the plans are meticulously reigned in and, because of this, these architects surely see their finished coasters as a compromise.

Tom Ford / Neroli Portofino

My video review may be about the de-lovely Neroli Portofino by Tom Ford, but this bloggy blurb is concerned with swellegant Tom Ford himself. Specifically, with his declared four-bath-a-day habit.

Prada / Infusion d'Iris Eau de Parfum

Prada Infusion d'Iris eau de parfum is a real steel magnolia of a perfume. It's tender, even yielding as it works its way into an ample dust bunny of musk and iris.

L'Artisan Parfumeur / Voleur de Roses

 

I rediscovered L'Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses during a severe bout of perfume ennui. I still loved my wild herd of woody roses: Malle Une Rose and Portrait of a Lady, Byredo Rose Noir, People of the Labyrinths A*Maze, Amouage Homage, Clinique Aromatics Elixir, Agent Provocateur Signature, but overfamiliarity with these high-rotation favorites had slightly stilled the thrill.

Marni by Marni

In devising Italian avant-schmatter brand Marni's eponymous fragrance, perfumer Daniela Andrier did something clever. She distilled the label's austere whimsy / “man repeller” aesthetic into a perfume that conveys hipness, minus that pesky repelling part.

Perfume Pen Pals: Lisa Kirk Revolution

Katie,

I like organizing things, curating collections of things, I own things mostly so I can put them into groups and subgroups. I'd always classified this as a charming eccentricity (I even organize my eccentricities), but after wearing and labeling thousands of perfumes, I'm fed up. It's a lot of work and most of these perfumes, especially of late, are terrible. I'm organizing terrible things.

Hermes Jour d'Hermes

Jour d'Hermès is girlish but sophisticated. It's an ebullient floral bourrée at a time when flowers in perfume are sneered at by the young 'uns. Or seem only to be allowed smuggled under the cover of grit and oud, sheep-in-wolf's-clothing style.

But like a resolute posy pressing through a crack in the sidewalk, Jour d'Hermès asserts its right to unabashed floweriness. It's pretty and that's enough.

Jour d'Hermès is available from FragranceX.com, Sephora.com, and BeautyEncounter.com, starting at $70 for 1 oz