Perfume / Cologne

Musc Ravageur by Frederic Malle is still my s**t: two sprays at 10am today and still present at around 5pm. This after lots of bike riding, a bit of rain.
Worst recent buy was CDG Kyoto EDT - a scent I fell in love with via samples. No longevity whatsoever. Barely 30 minutes. Bah Humbug.

I love Kyoto and I find the opposite with longevity, but I do find that some perfumes that people online praise for their sillage seem to evaporate off me :( I have a bottle of Cinéma that I love but after an hour it’s almost entirely faded. Maybe that’s part of why I like Angel so much, that stuff survives baths.

I love Kyoto too but like xp I find it doesn't last very long on me. I don't mind re-applying throughout the day though. My current fave from the CdG Incense series is Zagorsk--cold, austere, piney, vaguely soapy, and perfect for winter. Supposedly smells a lot like Eastern Orthodox church incense, which I'm not familiar with.

I also tried Guerlain Jicky (EDP, new 2021 bottle) for the first time a few days ago, and the opening has to be one of the most beautiful things I've ever smelled. Lavender, citrus, herbs, hay--clean and rustic at the same time. It smells old but feels timeless rather than dated. I got a bit of the infamous civet funk in the drydown, not in an unpleasant way. Similar to the clean/dirty dichotomy of Kouros but mellower and more welcoming.

Got Frederic Malle’s 12 piece discovery set as an asked-for present yesterday and the Imaginary Authors perfume as a surprise Fox in the Flowerbed.

Wore Fox in the Flowerbed yesterday and tried Portrait of a Lady from the Malle set today, so these are just initial impressions.

Fox in the Flowerbed:

My husband said he thought of this for me because it has a jasmine top note same as Alien, which I’ve worn and loved for years. Alien is a beautiful fragrance but it’s not for everyone and some find it a lot. Turin and Sanchez don’t particularly rate it but I’ve always found it to be very special, and have gone through several bottles in the last twenty years. Anyway, Fox…is a fresher scent than Alien, it’s designed around the theme of a whimsical book about a fox that falls in love with a butterfly. Insufferable as all that sounds, it’s a beautifully presented bottle (in a box that looks like a book), and the notes echo the fiction it’s supposedly inspired by. The jasmine ofc is pretty notable, but the pink pepper lingers on as well for a little kick. It’s very pretty and well done, and was a nice touch of spring in this dour winter. I wish all surprises were this great.

Portrait of a Lady:

I’ve owned Carnal Flower (another Christmas present), and wanted to try some more Malle fragrances but haven’t made it out to anywhere in 2021 to do so in person :( This one came highly recommended and I was keen to try it first. The notes are very reminiscent of Twilly eau poivrée (which I also own and love). The initial impression is of the rose, warm and luminous, but after a while some of the other notes come to the fore. I got the cinnamon and sandalwood hints a bit stronger but other people may perceive it differently. Am I the kind of person who wears this, I wonder? Maybe not, it’s very sweetly feminine and ladylike and I think I might slightly prefer Twilly au Poivrée’s slight bite but I have a few more goes of this. It’s a very beautiful perfume, I can’t quite work it out.

Also just realised that Dominique Ropion, who did Carnal Flower and Portrait of a Lady, was also behind Alien so that was nice to think about the similarities between them.

More Frederic Malle:

Musc Ravageur

Was excited about trying this one but undecided on it. I had read other people's impressions of this as this towering, sexy fragrance and it's...a bit weak? I don't know. Will try it another couple of times, but it doesn't come close to Fracas for sexy.

En Passant
Well named. Evaporated almost as soon as I put it on.

Une Rose

The description of this interested me.
An earthy rose is tinged with Périgord truffle for a subtle taste of the gothic. This crimson femininity is bound by wine dreg to a darker base, the rose’s secret roots. A garden flower with hidden depths.

It's sweet, it's warm, and I definitely get the wine dregs - like an evening after an engagement maybe, but the word I keep settling on is nice and it's not £172 nice.

I'm not a hugely perfumey person but I want to smell all these!

Next time you're somewhere they have perfume you can try, try Twilly. Incredible. I bought it in the airport on the way home from Ireland in the summer and I haven't liked anything so much in years.
https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Hermes/Twilly-d-Hermes-46145.html It's fresh, it's bright, it's warm, it's gorgeous. Haven't loved anything like this in a long long time.

Isn’t that the one you bought Gyac? The one with the bottle that looks like it’s wearing a little hat?

My trusty fave is still Narciso Rodriguez “For Her” but I also recently got Juliette Has a Gun’s Not a Perfume and I love it so much.

xp yep, I have the Eau Poivrée one as well!

btw I've never tried Narciso Rodriguez For Her but Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez gave it a good writeup in Perfume: The A-Z Guide.

But give Narciso Rodriguez to someone you like, and stand at attention as she sweeps past. You then realize that some fragrances, like gravitation, reliably generate an attractive force day in and day out, without fuss or explanation, though theories abound. LT

Memorable mostly for mating a big, somewhat masculine patchouli-musk to its harsh, chemical-smelling orange-blossom floral. TS

It’s gorgeous.

Musc Ravageur

Was excited about trying this one but undecided on it. I had read other people's impressions of this as this towering, sexy fragrance and it's...a bit weak? I don't know. Will try it another couple of times, but it doesn't come close to Fracas for sexy.

I went to a Frederic Malle store a couple months ago, mainly to try that one and Monsieur. I had a similar reaction to Musc Ravageur; it was definitely more subtle and less aggressive than I expected. Monsieur, on the other hand, I loved immediately. The drydown smells exactly like Minorien Fu-In Kyara japanese incense, which is amazing stuff and worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing.

A couple weeks after that I got a sample of Le Labo Labdanum 18, which smelled really familiar to me in a way I couldn't articulate. Turns out it's basically Musc Ravageur with a slightly more animalic edge (also by the same perfumer). I really like it; it's both soothing and sexy at the same time. Makes me want to give Musc Ravageur another shot and do a side-by-side of the two.

Also gyac, you're OTM re: Fracas. Easily my favorite "women's" perfume ever. Fun, sexy, glamorous, and miraculously undated for a perfume from the 40s. I got my girlfriend a bottle of it, but I keep my own decant just to sniff once in a while and spray some on if I'm feeling adventurous

my friend who like me loves Frederic Malle was taken aback by Musc Ravageur, he said wearing it felt like the experience of waking up in a bed next to a stranger

Carnal Flower, Lys Meditérranée, and Portrait of a Lady are my favorite Frederic Malle scents. My friend asked me for Bois D'Orage (renamed French Lover) as a Christmas present. He really likes that and Angeliques Sous la Pluie

Une Fleur de Cassie is also amazing, kind of feral and animalic but compelling

Musc Ravageur and Vetiver Extraordinaire have been my faves for some years now. And Guerlain Vetiver (og, not Extreme). But I really love FM and their creations.

I went to a Frederic Malle store a couple months ago, mainly to try that one and Monsieur. I had a similar reaction to Musc Ravageur; it was definitely more subtle and less aggressive than I expected. Monsieur, on the other hand, I loved immediately. The drydown smells exactly like Minorien Fu-In Kyara japanese incense, which is amazing stuff and worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing.

Curious about Tyler, The Creator's debut scent.

Got recommended Dear Polly as a high end dupe for Elizabeth Arden’s Green Tea and my sample finally arrived today: the green tea is sort of underneath but the top is an incredibly soft smoke. Love it, and it def smells high end, but not quite green tea enough. I think it might layer really nicely with a little of the Elizabeth Arden though.

i think the hardest thing is finding exactly what you want, specially if it's a single note thing with whatever else it takes to make a complete fragrance, but mostly you want that one note, with the extras rounding out the corners and adding lift but not being overly obtrusive. bring on the dancing horses is playing on kroq2 right now, and i don't know how to tie it in to what i'm saying as is my shtick, but it reminds me of the "bring on the dancing horses, tuff stuff" quote from the ilx archives, and that's a moment we can all reflect upon wistfully. they just don't write 'em like that anymore.

like, i asked for and got lalique encre noire l'extreme for birthday presents. because of the supposed incense note. it's mostly a cypress thing. i can tell there's incense in there, if i sniff the wrist and apply my knowledge base to the task at hand, but upon initial sniffage i wouldn't say it's an incense frag per se. also azzaro visit, it's supposed to be incensy and i can tell but mostly it's peppery and sweet salty ambergris. fragrantica says top voted notes are cedar and then incense but these aren't distinct as individual notes. it feels woody and smoky, but obliquely. cdg 2 man has a prominent incense note, but there's other stuff, too.

on the other hand, i have miller harris fumee or whatever and montale full incense, as samples. just incense, but mostly labdanum, which to my nose is really sticky and gummy. also mostly expensive. texturally incense should be dry and not gummy.

also i have these issues with fig leaf and tomato leaf. joop! what about adam is a great tomato leaf perfume but it's long discontinued.

anyway, i like the lalique, but mostly as a cypress fragrance. there's the gucci guily absolute, which has nothing to do with the guilty line; it's an old-timey leather with a strong cypress opening, which means it stinks real bad in a glorious way. the lalique is also pungently medicinal in the opening with the cypress but then it goes right to a warm balsamy elemi resin and benzoin drydown. now they're playing "talk yo you later" by the tubes. all the early 80s characteristics and qualifiers. how f*ing specific is that particular sound? i know what kind of shoes you were wearing when that song came out, i know what kind of haircut you had. the gears of timekeeping used to leave imprints on cultural artifacts but it doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

i also got a frederic malle sample set for birthday presents. musc ravaguer. old-timey aniamlic musk like khiel's plus old-timey concpetion of oriental, i.e., vanilla plus cinnamon. but it kinda rocks, in a near-modern old-school way, like jaipur homme or opium pour homme from the same period. last mohicans.

also en passant: realistic floral. lilac. i dunno from lilac but it smells like real flowers, not the impression of flowers like a lot of things. it's also supposed to have water and cucumber notes and can confirm. it's an olivia giacobetti so if all you know of her is philosykos you should smell this if only to expand your library of who and what different noses are.

l'eau d'hiver. powdery floral. jean-claude ellena. mostly heliotrope and iris, so, powdery. if i had to be reductionistic, i'd say it's intimate. cdg 2, the light/ inky one is intimate. the ds & durga coriander i talked about is intimate. it's the right kind of hug.

for crimmus i got lalique l'insoumnis, which for i asked. because it's herbal and barbershoppy both. the herbal is basil, the old-school is lavender and moss, plus the rum note gives it an aftershave vibe, sorta of. i feel it's like guerlain's homme, which is thierry wasser's attempt to bring guerlain into the modern era but still retain ties to the past and whatever. ppl on fragrantica say there's a generic bent to it or something clean and fresh that compares to dior sauvage. i didn't see it before but now i do. god help me. luckily it's not so egregious that it can't be forgiven. hopefully the look of love will pull me through. i love the half that is old-school, and his time will be the last time that we will fight like this. i don't want to have to fight with my fragrances.

been getting back into colognes after taking a few years off, didnt feel the need since i was working from home and not seeing anyone. but then i realized i miss smelling good even if im working with no one else around. i guess i used to do it for the compliments now im doing it for the loooove. i pretty much stick to designer fragrances and havent really gone down the niche road yet.

just got a bottle of paco rabanne ultrared man on a blind buy and im not sure i like it yet... it does smell much better after 30 minutes or so, might be coming around on it. very sweet, grapefruit/blood orange but not quite masculine enough for me maybe.

also got a bottle of banana republic tobacco & tonka bean. this one is unisex but more masculine than the ultrared i think. the pear and plum top notes really pulled me in when i was sampling at a store and i had to have it. lasts quite a while on me and the vanilla/tonka/tobacco dry down phase is really nice, love it. do wish the tobacco was a touch more pronounced.

in other news... the youtube frag reviewer culture is something else.

Is anyone here familiar with Etro Messe de Minuit? Reviews speak of a complex, luminous church incense. It's discontinued but FragranceNet seems to have found a few bottles in the back room. As of this post there is only one left, and I'm seriously considering blind buying it (feel free to scoop me on this; I really shouldn't be dropping $100 on something I've never smelled before). I love incense and really like everything else I've smelled from Etro (especially their Patchouly and ManRose) so chances are high that I'll dig this one. Would appreciate thoughts from anyone who knows it.

Lately I've been really into Le 3e Homme de Caron. I bought it blindly a few weeks ago, and it immediately triggered a dim olfactory memory of having smelled it when I was a kid in the early to mid 90s. I can't place it precisely though--maybe a male family member or a boyfriend of my mom's wore it at the time? At any rate it makes me feel like I'm in an art gallery or a high-end clothing boutique in that era. It smells so so good--fizzy citrus, fresh spices and florals with a woody musky base that is unambiguously masculine without being skanky. Actually not sure why I'm thinking about buying that Etro when I can just wear the Third Man all the time...

I love Caron - 3e Homme isn't my thing but I admire it a lot, and I adore my gigantic bottle of Yatagan.

I bought Le 3e Homme along with Pour Un Homme and Yatagan, and I think they're all wonderful. Le 3 is the one that resonated with me the most, and my lavender-loving girlfriend likes Pour Un Homme for herself--her reaction to smelling it on me the first time was "Wow, I want to smell like that all the time." Which is fine with me!

i had a sample of the le 3e homme and i thought it more or less was a precursor to later 90s light fougeres like eternity and egoist platinum, just because it also seemed really familiar to me but i'm sure i never encountered it at the time it was released, so there must have been something about it that was replicated in things i knew of. i dunno. fragrantica says this reminds ppl of pour monsieur, lancome sagamore, mitsouko, eau sauvage, insense, passion for men, bel ami, and even stetson, so who knows. doesn't mention eternity or egoist platinum, but it doesn't exactly smell like those, the connection wouldn't be that direct. being a perfume detective is hard work and i haven't even been paid yet. then there are also things like paco rabanne xs and ysl l'homme which aren't structurally or categorically similar but are function progeny, ie, carefree anti-macho-bullshit stuff for the regular guy who still plays the bass in his suburban basement sometimes and remembers the time thurston moore was in the audience for his college band but now the highlight of his week was when his son malachi almost scored a goal. you should have seen how happy malachi was. we all piled into the mini-van and went out for pizza and i remember looking at my wife sarah and thinking i'd trade all my dreams of being a famous graphic designer in the david carson mode to do it all again with her for the rest of eternity. that's l'homme, it's who you are. i think i lost the tread but i think le 3e homme might be the genesis of the comfort scent, not in the sense of comfort scents being a surrender, but an embrace of what's close.

also i still haven't smelled dior jules, chanel egoist, or ysl jazz or live jazz. or anteus. i hope they're like rive gauche. it was this great thing i didn't have and then i got it. i don't know what i'm expecting from jules et al, but, i just sprayed on rive gauche, and it's glorious. it's not the height of artistic expression qua artistic expression in absolute terms, but it's the intersection of that thing and a world that i can touch that has buildings with businesses inside them and people that make them work and highways and plastic packaging and songs that were on the radio and standing in the soup isle for fifteen minutes figuring out whether i want the creamy chicken noodle or the butternut squash. if you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you. niche arrows can go really high because what do they have to lose but designer arrows have to penetrate a much denser atmosphere, i think, so if there's any artistic achievement at all i guess that bronze medal is as good as gold.

Would subscribe to a slugbuggy fragrance reviews substack.

^

i like it here just fine. i don't know as much about fragrance as i know how to go off on tangents that end up somewhere else so i'm good with starting off with low expectations and seeing where that goes. hopefully that adds to what i was trying to talk about.

It’s not an insult, your posts are great to read, that’s all we mean!

Absolutely - you are a star sb!

oh, i'm greatly amused by the stuff i post, but then i'm embarrassed by acting out in public. i just figure ilx is a nerd community where you can nerd out in yr own particular way but the emphasis is still on whatever it is we're talking about.

Sluggy you gotta try Antaeus. It's not like Rive Gauche though. It's a luxe rose/patchouli with gothic dandy vibes. Makes me feel like a rock star with a private jet for a couple hours.

Jules was harder for me to wrap my head around, but it's real nice too. It's proper PERFUME. Green cooking herbs + jasmine + cedar + piss (might be the sage that gives it that urinous quality).

you have to forgive me; my english is inelegant. by "like rive gauche" i mean in the sense that rive gauche was purported to be this really great thing, and it was! if it were still on the shelves it'd be my main man in the way ewan mcgegor uses that phrase in velvet underground. i think jules or anteus or egoist could be my main man, but i haven't been there yet to know.

also, which version of jules do you have? the vintage or the recent? either way, hard to get, i assume.

also, have you smelled voleur de roses by l'artisan? it's mostly patchouli and rose with plum and it's too described as gothy but the sample i got turned rancid on my skin so say no go (i can't go for that) but maybe it was just a bad sample. it smelled great out of the vial, though. don't know how it compares to antaeus.

probably every niche house has a patchouli plus rose thing. it seems so obvious, but in whatever the inverse is of retrospect, i assume antaeus outshines them all. don't and can't know yet. because of my primary thesis statement, which is that any individual niche achievement may reach such great heights because niche houses are free to pursue artistic achievement without regard to mass culture, but designer efforts have to take into account the entirety of the zeitgeist and landscape and still dare to be stupid, i figure antaeus has to be this outstanding accomplishment.

dreaming by blondie or beautiful world by devo are such distillations of the the time period they were rooted in that when i die and am reborn i'll have them in my pocket as a remembrance of the person i was just because i was alive back then, and i figure antaeus is the same for those who have it deep inside their psyche, it's forever 1981, and me too, once i smell it. no pressure, jacques polge. this is what i,m expecting from antaeus, although there's a good chance it might just be pretty much ok. i'm cool with either outcome.

have you seen the video for dreaming? that smile debbie gives to the camera at the beginning, it means so much. the people in the video are bopping along like it's a fun pop song but debbie is deconstructing your romantic fantasies and leaving you with the bare banes of human interaction. you're better off even if you don't know what just happened. but she'd build a road of gold, just to have her dreaming. antaeus is a dream in which everything that rises must converge, but you know, i'm no debutante.

i expect antaeus to be pretty good, is what i'm getting at or at least better than ok.

i never met antaeus, i'll never forget antaeus.

I’m wearing Alien today, which is still incredible. I know it’s a bit much for some people but it’s always felt perfect to me.

xps @Sluggy, I have the current Jules. Not at all hard to get; I blind-ordered it directly from Dior and it shipped to me in NYC in 2 days. If you're just looking for a sample you might find it on one of those decanting sites or eBay, but I guarantee you're not going to encounter it in an IRL store these days. The online consensus re: current Jules is that it's pretty high quality compared to the original, though as usual there are still some folks out there claiming it's a "shadow of its former self." It smells complex and expensive to me, so I'm in no hurry to get my nose on the vintage. It doesn't hit my pleasure centers as squarely as either Kouros and Antaeus, the other early 80s animalic masculines I'm familiar with, but there's something about it that's more intellectually stimulating than most other perfumes.

I have not smelled Voleur de Roses, but you're definitely right about every niche house doing a rose/patchouli thing. I think Malle's Portrait of a Lady is the modern benchmark for that kind of thing, but Antaeus is enough for me. Also, come to think of it though, I don't really do "layering" but I'll make an exception for Diptyque Eau Rose + Santa Maria Novella Patchouli for another version of that combo.

I wasn't born until 86, and I don't recall ever smelling Antaeus before I got it last year (the biggest olfactory touchstones of my youth are Drakkar Noir, which my dad wore in the early 90s and which I'd frequently steal sprays of, and CK Eternity, which my elementary school best friend's mom wore heavily). It smells less dated than either Jules or Kouros to me, or maybe "outside of time" like some early Guerlains. I just watched the Blondie "Dreaming" video and sprayed some Antaeus in the air, and there's definitely some synergy there. For its reputation as a "masculine powerhouse" Antaeus actually radiates strong feminine energy to my nose. I mean its definitely a man's perfume, but there's a powdery softness to it as it dries down, hence the "dandy" aspect. I don't think you'll be disappointed in the least, but either way I'm excited to hear your thoughts once you finally get ahold of it.

Egoïste, Polge's other towering masculine masterpiece, was my girlfriend's Christmas gift to me last year, so I'll forever associate it with that time of year. Which is appropriate, I think, for its blend of warm sandalwood/watery rose/cinnamon/tobacco. Absolutely beautiful--in theory I think a guy could start and end his collection with Antaeus and Egoïste and be set. That guy is not me, but my bank account definitely wishes it were.

Also, like a proper Chanel, Egoïste has finely calibrated citrus and aldehydes at the top. As good as the drydown is, I'm frequently tempted to re-spray it just to get that opening hit again.

I finally tried Chanel Cologne yesterday, I had no intention of buying it but this was the first place where the tester hadn’t run out! They were sold out of all their stock of it though, just like in the other places I visited. No such stock issue with the other Exclusifs. Anyway it seems pretty great, I’d want to try it a few more times, not sure if buying it is for me though (not that I’ll ever get the chance).

Also tried Petit Fracas which is a younger diffusion scent of the original Fracas - pretty interesting and nice but I’ll stick with the classic.

Btw speaking of Portrait of a Lady I have a voucher I was going to spend on a perfume and I’m torn between that and Monsieur (also Malle). Leaning more towards the latter because I own a lot of very feminine fragrances already but only a couple of more masculine ones and I really like a masculine scent on my skin sometimes (and this one is one of my favourites I’ve tried).

Also also also I really want to try Egoïste now as well

Egoïste is amazing but there’s something poisonous about it, for good or bad. I could imagine someone being turned off by it. Not as challenging perhaps as something like Bulgari Black, but not innocuous.

xp I'd definitely go for Monsieur over Portrait of A Lady too.

Re: Chanel Eau de Cologne I've been meaning to try that, will need to check it out the next time I'm around the Exclusifs. For me the Exclusifs are the epitome of "things I'll smell in the store and gladly accept samples of, but will probably never buy." Maybe one day when I'm in a better situation financially I'll splurge on a bottle of Coromandel or Boy or Cuir de Russie, but right now that's some pipe dream shit.

Would be curious to try Petit Fracas too. I think the original is the best women's perfume ever made, and to me it smells remarkably un-dated for something from 1948. What about Petit Fracas makes it "younger"?

i finally smelled the tf beau de jour and i agree. it's modern-day old-school. it reminded me of something i couldn't place and then i thought zino and when i looked it up on fragrantica zino was first on the smell-a-like list. i awarded myself points for that. still, bdj is kinda its own thing and a step in the right direction.

you'd think the clone houses like alexandria fragrances would do rive gauche. if anyone asks, tell them to do that, they'd make hella bank.

I haven't tried it, but "River Fougere" by Dua is supposedly a decent Rive Gauche clone.