Scent/Fragrance of the Day thread

[ghdvfddzgzdzg]

coteau de poche - fumabat

god, i love how this smells like weird crushed leaves

 

[HORNS]

I've been wearing Vol de Nuit for the last two days - I started seeing the daffodils blooming around town and thought it was perfect time to pull out the most beautiful narcissus fragrance, and maybe the most beautiful perfume of all time.

 

[losrockets]

Ava Luxe Bergamot.
Don't do it.

 

[taxgenius]

L’Artisan Timbuktu - was expecting a polorizing fragrance that was either you love it or hate it. Found it to be somewhere in the middle. Wouldn’t buy a bottle of it but will certainly finish the decant sample.

 

[HORNS]

L’Artisan Timbuktu - was expecting a polorizing fragrance that was either you love it or hate it. Found it to be somewhere in the middle. Wouldn’t buy a bottle of it but will certainly finish the decant sample.

I’ve always been disappointed that I don’t get Timbuktu.

 

[shoewarma]

Yesterday, I wore Lumiere Noire by Maison Francis Kurkdjian. Such a lovely rose and patchouli combination. At first, it has a dry, woody feel, but then something semi-sweet and creamy comes in and make this very smooth. Lasts a very long time, too. So glad I scored an 11 mL decant for a great price.

Edit: I'm currently wearing Tom Ford Neroli Portofino. I've always gone back and forth trying this on in stores, but I was never really impressed with it. Good thing I got a sample from Nordstrom. It smells really nice when wearing it. A lot of it has to do with my growing appreciation for neroli, and how familiar it is to me. Neroli tends to smell like Arabic sweets, and Neroli Portofino reminds me of them, especially those with pistachio. I dig it now.

 

[HORNS]

Today, after shaving, I slapped on some Alt Innsbruck aftershave. It doesn’t last long but it is such a wonderful old school yet timeless and undated scent.

 

[IsoE]

I layered Proraso red after shave with Art of Shaving 'Sandalwood and Cypress', bit disappointed how powdery it is on skin!
Will test one more time alone, and with Carven Homme.

 

[L'Incandescent]

Venetian Bergamot by Tom Ford for me today.

 

[Nemesis_4]

Anima Dulcis by Arquiste today

 

[crazn]

I've always had a visceral rejection of fragrances which cost over $200, knowing that there's just not enough raw materials out there that could even come close to justifying the price. Hell, I visited Satori in Tokyo, who showed me her tub of orris butter, which costs over seventy thousand dollars per kilogram - this is the same stuff she puts in her Iris Homme, and that only costs $180 per 50mL. There's people like her, Andy Tauer, and Bruno Fazzolari who are true artists, making their own fragrances which bear their name and made from the best ingredients they can get their hands on and charging a fraction of most of the exclusive "niche" lines that are either owned by LVMH or have a creative director that wants to put more money into bottle design than the fragrance itself.

Now this is getting interesting. I love what tauer does with his fragrances but it’s cheaper to get his stuff when in Zurich or EU. It’s simply amazing and doesn’t smell crazy. Any other true artisans the rest might be able to share?

 

[am55]

I've always had a visceral rejection of fragrances which cost over $200, knowing that there's just not enough raw materials out there that could even come close to justifying the price.

But it is art, isn't it? The rest is what you pay the artist as compensation for the art part. You could equally say there is not enough paint and canvas on a Rembrandt to justify its price tag... or what about my Kindle books (authors would reply that in this case they're not exactly getting the lion's share either)

This is doubly so with reformulations and one-batch-only being the default for most fragrances. Something like Yohji Homme or the original Givenchy Vetiver sells out fast then you are left to wonder what it was like as you're forced to buy reformulations. So even in something that ought to be easy to recreate, there is scarcity, especially as fragrance is something where being a little off in one or the other ingredient throws the entire balance (and therefore, the work) out of the window.

Niche does cut some of the marketing etc. overheads a little but I think the industry is doing itself a disservice by selling the idea of expensive ingredients as a justification for the price of the works. This is an issue affecting all industries overlapping art and craft.

 

[Quesjac]

But it is art, isn't it? The rest is what you pay the artist as compensation for the art part. You could equally say there is not enough paint and canvas on a Rembrandt to justify its price tag... or what about my Kindle books (authors would reply that in this case they're not exactly getting the lion's share either)

This is doubly so with reformulations and one-batch-only being the default for most fragrances. Something like Yohji Homme or the original Givenchy Vetiver sells out fast then you are left to wonder what it was like as you're forced to buy reformulations. So even in something that ought to be easy to recreate, there is scarcity, especially as fragrance is something where being a little off in one or the other ingredient throws the entire balance (and therefore, the work) out of the window.

Niche does cut some of the marketing etc. overheads a little but I think the industry is doing itself a disservice by selling the idea of expensive ingredients as a justification for the price of the works. This is an issue affecting all industries overlapping art and craft.

I think this is right --- the really interesting thing about fragrance as a 'designer' product (ie. one where we care about design, form, ideas, craft, and yes, brand) is how very far the production is from the design side.

Chandler Burr points out that everyone in the industry has access to a mass spectrometer, and so everyone knows precisely what is in everyone else's formulas. And any competent lab could make anyone else's product by reverse engineering. So on the production side, the cost of ingredients is literally the only thing that distinguishes one product from another. On the design side, the ideas are everything, but the people who do the making don't get their hands dirty. Someone from the Hermes board might sniff at the things Jean-Claude Ellena makes, but they've no idea how they are made. And J-C for his part just sends a list of ingredients and proportions to an industrial chemist who actually makes the things.

So on the one hand, fragrance is almost purely about form (Hermes does not use an artisanal lab to blend Terre D'Hermes, they use exactly the same kind of lab as Tommy Hilfiger's outsourced formulations; it's irrelevant where or by whom the actual juice is made) and on the other hand it's a product that's inseparable from immediate physical sensation, and from the idea of particular ingredients (whether they are really what we perceive them to be or not). Hence all the (apparently rather misguided) hand-wringing about natural ingredients.

 

[L'Incandescent]

Villoresi Musk. This has been a regular in my rotation since I first tried it, I don't know, maybe six or seven years ago. With a lot of my favorite fragrances, I have days where I think "Man, I'm not really feeling that today." But Villoresi Musk always seems right. It's a light, dusty rose potpourri type scent.

 

[L'Incandescent]

Charogne by Etat Libre d'Orange