John Varvatos, Essentric Molecule, and How I Got Into Perfume.

The first fragrance I ever bought was John Varvatos. For someone heavily into perfume now, to the point where I can identify the smells of individual chemical components in certain fragrances, this is a bit of an odd scent to choose, insofar as it’s so ordinary. It’s not particularly amazing, nor does it have ay cult following, nor is it particularly important. It’s nice – with non-offensive fruity top rush with a spicy hit, but smells a little cheap and needy. It’s unessential, I guess is what I’m getting at.

The story of how I came to own a bottle of John Varvatos, a perfume I am pretty indifferent to, is more interesting then the fragrance itself.

One night working in the bookshop, a day before Mother’s Day a few years ago, an attractive young woman approached the counter asking for recommendations. She was well spoken (if somewhat nervous) and sublimely pretty. She stole my heart in an instant – to the extent that one can have one's heart stolen by a customer when you work in retail (which is a lot – but you’ve probably forgotten them by the next day). She bought a safe gift, the transaction went through, and my romantic pessimism assumed I would never see her again. Sure enough, by the next day I had forgotten about her.

Jump ahead five months. In that time I had quit honours, decided I was never going to be a writer due to a lack of both drive and talent, decided I was going to become a brilliant and renowned product designer instead, and had my first and only panic attack, after a kiss attempt went rebuffed after a dull first date. I was in one of those empty parts of my life – having left one destination but not yet arrived at another, wandering through that desert at average speed in search of its end, its break into society, or at least an oasis. At this point, she came into work again. It took me a while to remember her, but I picked up on the nervous-yet-rehearsed way of speaking and the infallible posture. I decided, despite that recent panic attack, that I would ask her out on a date, lest I live to regret it. Thing is, I felt it unprofessional to do it with other customers around – so I devised a plan: if she came up to the counter while the store was empty, I would ask her out, plain and simple. If she did so while there were others around, I would pass on a charming note. I got writing on the note. This is what I came up with:

Hi – this is kind of lame and embarrassing, and I don’t like to do things in note form because it’s too indirect, but there are people around and it would be awkward, so: did you want to go out on a date sometime? I should let you know I am a frightfully un-cool man, but get to know me and you’ll discover that I’m actually wonderful.
- Kita, 04XX XXX XXX.

I left this for a while in my pocket, then impulsively tore it up and wrote another, less neurotic one:

A date sometime? – Kita, 04XX XXX XXX.

Thankfully, I tore this one up too, and she approached the counter alone, and I asked her out on a date, and, with visible glee and surprise on our faces, we exchanged numbers. Unprofessionally, I spent the rest of my shift texting her, and almost forgot to close the store. If anyone I work with is reading, let me state: I was young.

The date was curious. We flirted, but the conversation was terribly contrived – we were both clearly using up our ‘Things which would sound interesting on a first date’ lines. But we bumped arms affectionately as we walked, and followed up the coffee with a few drinks at the local.

In an odd moment, it was decided that we should air out anything the other should know – about our lives, and what the other might be getting into. I offered my troublesome relationship with my father, as well as my fairly long history of depression. She offered the death of her best friend, and her previous boyfriend, who had left her at the airport some 4 months earlier, who was a semi-succesful (and now much more successful) writer, and was due to land back in town in a few hours. She was picking him up from the airport. I must admit: she won that round.

We went back to her house. She invited me in for a hot chocolate. We sat on her kitchen floor because, apparently, this is what she always did. Her house was dimly lit and impeccably kept – it made my house look like some wretched sty. It was heavily ornate, with not a trace of dust on anything. After we finished our drinks, she took me into the bathroom to show me something which would, in retrospect, become a defining moment in my life – one of those points that don’t seem particularly important at the time, but later reveal their affect with the aid of distance. Eager to make myself appear to be some kind of designer hot-shot (despite knowing very little about design beyond what I imagined) I had talked about all the things I had been designing – several of which were perfume bottles. I liked the perfume bottle as a design object, because its required function is very little, and the vast majority of its purpose is of aesthetic communication. It was like the architecture of the hand-held world (the fact that many architects have designed perfume bottles seems to suggest a connection). With this in mind, she revealed to me her medicine cabinet – and behind its doors, rows and rows of perfume bottles. They were an odd collection of art nouveau crystal shapes and sly, modern rectangles with minimal prints. I can’t remember what they specifically were, but knowing what I know of perfume now, some looked Guerlian, and there was definitely some Chanel. I only smelled one: out of curiosity of what it would smell like on my skin, she sprayed a healthy dose of one on my left wrist. According to her, it smells differently, depending on the person. I remembered this fragrance: it was Molecule 01 by Essentric Molecule. I might have got the number wrong, but to be honest, apart from a few top notes, the Essentric Molecules are pretty much the same. It was a strange scent which to me, at first, smelled like freshly cut capsicum, which eventually turned into a dry, pencil shaving smell. It was a fragrance I would smell again and again, and eventually scrub off my repulsed arms some 10 months later.

If you’ve never smelt an Essentric Molecule fragrance then they’re difficult to describe. This is because they’re very minimalist compared to most modern perfumes, but their essential ingredient isn’t based on any smell you could recognize right off the bat – you would never say ‘Hey, they used grapefruit!’, or even ‘This smells like grandmothers!’. This is because their main ingredient is a fragrance chemical by the name of Iso E Super. Now you might actually know this smell – it’s in a lot of fragrances adding effects here and there and lending an almost sharp, almost grainy (but still so light it floats) wooden texture. This makes the fragrance almost post-modern, insofar as it’s a fragrance which pays tribute to the act of making fragrance in itself, by basing itself so heavily around this single, artificial note.

The effect of an Essentric Molecule fragrance is odd. At first, you wonder what it is – so familiar yet really undefinable without using works such as ‘like’ and ‘sorta’. It is woody, but not any kind of wood you’ve ever actually experienced – it’s a light, sandy coloured grain, a bit like balsa wood, but denser. Unlike most other fragrances though, this concept of “familiar but different” is so bizarre because it is constructed via so few elements – most perfumes work in another way: Comme Des Garcons 2, for example, smells like a “future flower”, a very beautiful, very Japanese, very technological, very refined flower, and it does this by mixing numerous florals together and also utilizing sumi ink, which lends it its alien charm. Essentric fragrances though have their alien quality via only one main note. As such, it is initially interesting, but ends up feeling flat very very quickly. At first it may even be beautiful, until you see it has no depth at all, and as the day goes on, and it stays on you powerfully (it is impossible to wash off), you start to spite it more and more, for essentially just singing the same note, over and over again.

Regardless of my less then stellar introduction to perfume, this was the point where I, for the first time in my life, started to think about perfume as an actual *thing*. She went on to light scented candles which smelt as fruity as they did waxy (though still very nice), and we sat in her living room. She played on her keyboard and I reclined on her sofa. After a while of not talking much, I started to wonder what I was doing there. I was certainly not going to make any kind of physical move: for one thing, she was off to pick up her ex-boyfriend in a very short time, and for another, I was afraid if I were rebuffed, like damned clockwork, I would have another panic attack. In retrospect, when we did talk, it was like we were trying our best to make it all seem meaningful and romantic. I played a very sweet act of a very sweet lad who was falling for a very sweet girl. Unfortunately, I fell for my own act.

The night finished, many hours after it had started, as she finally had to get ready to drive to the airport. We hugged tight, and she assured me she’d see me again soon. As I walked home in the cool spring air I texted her:

‘Bathed in your scent still, it is a warm walk home.’

I realize, only now as I write, that the vast majority of my romantic texts have been vastly unappreciated.

For the next few weeks, we would see each other here and there. She’d invite me around to her house, she introduced me to her friends, I introduced her to mine, we’d have drinks, and made CDs for each other. It felt like we were becoming some sort of couple – if I looked at it only on paper, and never felt the long silences in our conversations. At some point, I decided I needed to be wearing a fragrance. Since I was after a girl that was obsessed with smell, this was of utmost importance. With a spending limit of $150, I walked into town determined to not return home empty handed. My plan was simple: walk into an expensive menswear store, admit that I know nothing at all about fragrance, try everything, work by their suggestions, and but whatever came out on top. For the first time in my adult life, I asked for help in a clothing store, and abandoned all pretense of knowing what I was doing. I tried many, but they all smelled too alcoholic (this was because I was smelling them too quickly, and was not giving time for the most volatile of alcoholic smells to evaporate and reveal the actual perfume). This made choosing a perfume difficult, but eventually I came across one that the woman their noted their boss wore – it was thick, drippingly sweet and spicy. It was the exact opposite of what I wanted – I wanted something light and cutting – but perhaps simply bored or unenthused, I decided to buy it based on her recommendation and the fact I didn’t hate it. It was John Varvatos, and its empty bottle lies face down on top of my bookshelf. I would start to appreciate it more with time, and when, many months later, I opened it up to smell it again, I felt an intense rush back to the past, of me dousing myself in this stuff and walking over to her house, and I felt all the emotions again: the fear, the stress, the elation, and finally, the despair.

She went back to her much more successful writer boyfriend only a few weeks after that first date. She admitted this to me during a friend’s housewarming party I invited her to, shortly after I tried (and failed) to kiss her. I should have gotten angrier – asked her what she was doing with me then if she was still in love with him – indeed, was back with him, asked her, simply: what are you doing here, at this party, by my side? But I didn’t. Instead, I opted to forgive her right away, and tell her she bore no responsibility, and instead, for this reason, I was consumed by my own unhappiness. Eventually, with nothing to hold me back, this lead to despair. I still have trouble understanding why I got as bad as I did, but regardless of the reason pretty soon I hit the single darkest time of my life. Concerned friends were trying to pull me out here and there, but the real breakthrough would not happen till a few months later – seeing her again at an art show, and realising, as she talked quickly and nervously to me, how I imagined most of the things I liked about her, and ignored everything that I didn’t. She was still one of the prettiest women I had seen in my life, but, like most of the lines between us on that first date, it was, like an Essentric Molecule fragrance, mostly surface.

Eventually I forgot about her. Then one day I opened my envelope from luckscent.com to smell the samples I ordered that month. Among them was Essentric Molecule no.1, and it all, even just very briefly, came rushing back. I scrubbed my wrists under the bathroom facet till they were red and raw.

*

Despite it all though, I am eternally thankful I met her. Because of her I not only learnt so much, discovered so much about myself, I also discovered this strange perfume thing I devote so much of my time to now. If we ever see each other in the street (like we do a lot), and if either has the guts to stop and talk (like we never do), I must remember to thank her for this reason, and this reason alone.

Mystery Fragrance.

A woman came into work today wearing the most alluring thing I've ever smelt. It reminded me of lines of mid-morning sunlight cutting into a living room, and those floating specks of dust you see now illuminated, and of dry, unvarnished wooden floorboards, and of saliva and lips, and peeks of underwear under clothes, and of being 11 years old and in lust.

It had a very peculiar saliva-like note which seemed to come from a rotting rose or the like. It might have had a type musk I wasn't overly familiar with (it had that musk-y depth and texture). But it never felt like it was trying to be overtly sexual or even attractive - it didn't announce itself at all, only had a small sillage and stuck very close to the skin.

The most attractive people are those who seem not to see how attractive they really are - thereby, nothing they do is an act or pretence. Attractiveness is merely a casual by-product of their other traits, but one which does not concern or affect them. They are completely innocent to their own charms, and this blissful, un-cynical, unfamiliarity is just so intensely desirable. Because they don't see it themselves, we feel, perhaps a little arrogantly, that we then are privy to this area of their personality so intimate that they themselves do not have access to it. It intrigues without obtuseness. This is what this fragrance was.

I don't know what this fragrance was. I didn't ask her what it was.

You know why I didn't ask her what it was? Honestly? It was because I was afraid she wasn't wearing any fragrance at all, and it was merely her natural smell, and that would mean I would be completely and terrifyingly in love with this woman, this stranger, this person who I would never meet (or smell) again. Le sigh.

Angry Smells

I have a theory, not based on any tests or even any kind of evidence or observation, which states that if you smell like something, you don’t impose yourself to be that something.

If we take as given that a certain percentage of our emotions and actions are through compensation (which is certainly not a given, but just for now…), then this perhaps makes a tiny amount of sense – if, through smell, we have convinced ourselves we are something, then we lose that compensatory motivation to be that. If we smell very very sexy and alluring then our attempts to convince the world that we are, in fact, very very sexy and alluring through other means – via what we say or how we act – are perhaps lessened. Again, this is entirely a theory pulled out of thin air and not based on anything at all apart from a mild amount of experience, and I make no pre-tense about actually being correct about this (or anything). I do believe that with the world of smells though it is worth a thought – I know that when I have worn very sexy fragrances like Nasomatto’s Duro my propensity to communicate sexiness is unconsciously stifled. This, more than anything else, is perhaps the greatest that can be said for a perfume increasing one’s confidence – all it works in is alleviating insecurity through a kind of emotional self-manipulation.

Or the entirely opposite thing happens: if you wear something that you utterly do not believe yourself to be, then all the smell informs you is of the chasm between who you are and who the smell is suggesting you are. That is why Jubilation XXV does not make me feel more secure about my financial status, it simply feels like I am too poor to pull it off successfully. Chanel no.5 does not make me feel more feminine, it informs me how unfeminine I am by comparison. The effect of this though isn’t so much an increase of insecurity though, rather, since smell is more visceral and operates from the gut (not literally, of course), it rejects outright these contradictory smells. Jubilation XXV makes me feel poor, but not insecure about not having much money – I viscerally reject it, and accept my paltry lot. Similiarly Chanel no.5 does not make me aspire to be more feminine to match it, rather it recognizes the length of this chasm and pedals back accordingly.

So, to summarise: if you wear a fragrance which communicates something you both aspire to and are able to display, then the experience of wearing it will reduce your insecure motivation to display said thing. However if you wear a fragrance which communicates something which you have no self-belief in achieving, or else doesn’t communicate anything of either your aspirations or realities, then you reject this communication and similarly don’t display said thing.

What happens then if a fragrance is communicating something you don’t aspire to, but at the same time can’t remotely deny as being part of you? What if a fragrance communicates something which, in fact, you don’t like about your personality? Say a fragrance that made you smell greedy, or shallow, or deceitful. What happens then, how do the rest of your actions compensate?

*

Today I tried on two different fragrances from two different houses which, to me, smelt angry. One, Vetivier 46 by Le Labo, is a kind of charged, fiery anger. The other, Sandal De Mysore by Serge Lutens, is a brooding, manly anger. But they both carry in them something which communicates fury.

To start wirh Vetivier 46: vetivier absolute, when smelled un-diluted, is one of the most rough and jarring of all perfume ingrdients: it smells of burnt coffee and dirt, and you wonder how it ever became such a perfumery mainstay. When controlled however, and its best attributes highlighted, it becomes one of the most beautiful of notes. Similar to how patchouli can transform from being a dirty, hippy smell into a sweet, elegant note, vetiver transforms from this ugly earth demon to this pinnacle of class and sophistication. Vetivier 46 works so well however because of its success in leaving some of this demon in. This has a cave-dwelling, indolent, extravagantly earthy smell – the gaiac wood and vetiver lend the masculine beauty, while the black pepper and patchouli allows it to crackle off. This is where it becomes angry – it is so stubborn and uncompromising in itself and those crackles – the points of the scent which splinter but do not fizz like citruses (though it has bergamot in it, which I imagines adds to this effect) – hint at an emotional fragility (which contrasts with the calm vanilla on the base) and the cloves lends the fieriness. And that’s what it smells like really: fire. Disarmingly beautiful fire – not just the smoke or incense of so many other scents, but proper, burning fire.

Sandal De Mysore is an entirely different equation, but really just as beautiful. It starts as this almost funky, sweet-sweaty, spicy smell, but soon (but not too soon, it flashes its ugliness around a good deal first) smoothes into an unapologetic calm of Mysore sandalwood. But it is unerring. With that calmness, that ugliness is still there – the body odour, and the all too edible smell. It’s as if it forces itself into this calm beauty in spite of itself. And this is why it is so marvellous: in using its notes so delicately, it communicates a kind of restraint. This is where its anger appears: it seems so acceptable, now so well meaning, but you just saw it as this ugly, putrid beast. You know it’s lying now as it sits still, and you wait for it to break, to snap.

It doesn’t, it just sits and occasionally reminds you with a whiff of something animal, which is then all the more alarming.

*

My un-scientific, un-proven (un-provable) theory about smell and insecurity would suggest this: if our fragrance carries with it an attribute that we deem negative perhaps the wearing of it would lessen the uncontrollable, invisible effects and motivations of that attribute. Especially because it is beautiful, it gives us a chance to own it, to claim it as our own and then gain some control over it, rendering it more articulate, and at the same time, less dangerous. If we wear an angry fragrance the emotional experience is not one of making ourselves angrier, but rather that of recognising and bringing to the surface such things so they need never surprise us, and reach out from the dark corners like clawing hands.

Of course, as always I am quite willing to be completely wrong, but I hope I am right. It is a nice thing to believe.



(image on top, as well as samples, from luckyscent.com - who do a wonderful job and I am very glad of the existence of)

Why You Should Pay More Attention to Your Sense of Smell

Two Reasons:

1. The sense of smell is the only one connected directly to the limbic system, the part of our brains which govern initial emotional and sexual response. Smell then goes on to stimulate the cortex, which allows us to recognise it on a concious level - but long before this we have already made our emotional reaction.

When we meet a lover, the first sense to register the pleasure that comes with this is the sense of smell, for this very reason. Perhaps, then, if you are wanting to make a good impression, there can be no better consideration than the consideration of how you smell, as opposed to what top you're wearing or how you've done you're hair.

2. Smell exists almost exclusively in the moment. We can remember and recite chords of a song very easily, and can mentally put together simple visuals without too much trouble - we're even, to some extent, able to recall the sensations of touch, even enough to make our tiny body hairs bristle appropriately. But smell is notoriously difficult to recall, granting little more than vague approximations, incomparably weak compared to the actual real life sensation.

This is why, I suggest, smell is an oddly useful sense in the staving off of depression and general anxiety. So much of depression and anxiety is perpetuated by the inability to live life in the now, and instead dwell over the past or worry about the future, thus allowing our at times brutal imaginations to run riot on our hypothetical lives. The experience of smell forces us to exist within a single moment - we can recognise and remember the experience of smelling it, but our recollection does not allow us to even remotely recreate this rich feeling. Nor, do we miss smells - it is akin to a death of a dozen thousand of Cupid's arrows in the back to smell a former lover's scent, we will not generally consider the smell when we have no access to it - we will not miss it (though we will miss their warm presence in bed and clever, articulate eyes), and now will we fear it (though we will fear the sound of their disembodied voice from behind a telephone reciever).

In practical terms, smell could be useful for a sufferer of depression and anxiety to simply learn to ignore the shame of the past and the nightmare of the future and simply posit themselves in a fragrant now. I am not suggesting smell is a magic bullet to happiness, but rather, it could be very useful tool in training our minds to simply be, rather than simply implode in panic and despair.

To try and see, why not next time you're feeling overwhelmed, just run a bath with a few drops of some essential oils - a good, and oft repeated blend is a few drops of bergamot, a few drops of lavender and a few drops of cedarwood - and just concentrate your mind to just dissect the smells.

L'Eau D'Issey pour Homme, or, the Problem with Popularity.

L'Eau D'Issey pour Homme was the last bottle of perfume I bought before I started becoming interested in perfume. This gives hint as to what it really is: the perfume for men who don't think to much about perfume. It is fresh, zesty, and with its strange combination of yuzu and sandalwood, quite unique.

My reason's for buying a bottle though had nothing to do with the smell. In fact, even when purchasing it I still hadn't warmed to the smell - it was too fresh and too zesty, like it was beckoning on insecurely for humid afternoon. My reasons for buying a bottle then, were very very stupid: it was because of the brand. At the time I was really into the work of a designer by the name of Tokujin Yoshioka. I loved his amazing chairs which communicated a real playful elegance and wit, but at the same time maintained a kind odd humility: it was as if the chairs themselves didn't know their own genius (this was, I should note, before I found and sat on one, and found it to possess a terrible texture and a generally over-bearing presence in real life). But Yoshioka was the young fledgling designer working under Miyake's wing, and I got into Miyake's curatorial design work for that. His watches collection in particular is very fun (though bounces between the stupid and the beautiful, depending on the watch). Feeling I trusted Miyake's judgment, I gambled on the bet that I would eventually warm to his perfume.

I did for a while. I really liked the fact that it didn't smell like I had imagined male fragrances to smell, but at the same time still smelt masculine. There was a real Japanese masculinity to it, a type of iki-masculinity - kind of dandy-ish but androgynous rather than feminine. The handsome young Japanese men you see on variety shows, extroverted and elfin and adored by women. And this last point is important.

Wear Issey Miyake and you will probably hear in female whispers around you "Someone's wearing Issey...". They then may ask you if it's you. You say "Yes.". They say:
"I love Issey Miyake, I had an ex who wore it..."
Or maybe it's their current partner. Mention the fact that you wear L'Eau D'Issey pour Homme and, far more so than any other fragrance, women will gush over both how much they adore it, and how they probably have had someone in their life who also wears it (without excaggerating, if the 5 women I've conversed with about Issey Miyake, all have had more or less this reply). Which tells you two things:
1. Women love Issey Miyake.
2. Probably because of this, men over-wear Issey Miyake.

I had no idea of Issey Miyake's reputation for either of these points when I bought it - had I known I probably wouldn't have laid down the cash. But it proved a very interesting investment as the experience of wearing the fragrance taught me something very important about fragrance: It does not pay to be popular.

This is why: Issey Miyake will never be You. Or they will be You, but not only You. If you were to walk down the street wearing Issey and passed someone who got a whiff - they would smell it, and more so than any other perfume, think of someone else - not You. Smell and memory tends to work on a first come, first served basis - the first person who wore lots of Issey will then claim the smell, and you may in fact become this person for one or two people - but for the vast majority you won't be: you will be their ex who once called them fat then locked himself in the bathroom for 2 hours for reasons they're still unaware of, you will be their brother that once sat on their bed crying after his lies about sleeping with Laura Bradley caught up with him in the most painful way, you will be their boyfriend that loves going into work everyday solely for the reason that he can stand and stare at the bikini-girl posters from Zoo magazine plastered on the storeroom wall. But you won't be You.

In fact it is so over-used it becomes a kind of fog. I smelt it on three men tonight just walking through the store. Eventually that Yuzu-Sandalwood combination becomes this general feeling of man: the zesty smell really blends badly with BO as well, so it generates a kind of lazy, "Was working, came home and stunk, sprayed something on over it to hide it", Lynx-effect male mentality. It becomes a man, undoubtedly, but a nameless, faceless man, existing somewhere in the general area of society. And maybe this works for you - maybe all you want in a fragrance is something that lets people know you are a man - any man. But you should want more, because without this fog, a good fragrance communicates so much more. Absinthe by Nasomatto, for example, communicates an earthy yet temperamental genius - a faulty person for sure, but someone whose pure world view is so profound you couldn't really doubt them. Antico Caruso by Profumum is a tremendously succesful man who has never forgotten his roots - he still has Sunday dinner with his family each week, and doesn't show off his wealth, as he is completely comfortable with his position in life. L'homme Sage by Divine speaks of such tremendous sensitivity, such awareness of the senses, that there is no way they can be anything less than a divine lover.

In the face of so many other fragrances, why settle for something that just says "man"? A nameless group, sweaty shirts and gelled hair, annoying you because they took their drinks onto the dance floor. You deserve better.

I have a sense of smell again!: Invasion Barbare by MDCI

I've had hay fever for the past few days and thus my capacity to smell things has been severely limited - everything - rose, new car, baby, sardine - smelling of the metallic nastiness of mucus. It has been very unpleasant.

But I can smell again now, so I thought I'd write up a review of a scent I tried out yesterday: Invasion Barbare by MDCI.


In other reviews I've read that this fragrance ultra-masculine, but a kind of rugged, muscular, barbarian-like (in a Schwarzenegger sense) masculine, which evokes bronzed bodies, animal hide and unrealistic muscles. But I feel these reviews are largely missing the point of Invasion Barbare - that is, it still smells like a torrid, sword-wielding fight, but one done through a certain kind of aesthetic, largely contrary to the aforementioned image.

To me, Invasion Barbare, with its musk/vanilla/leather base and lavender/grapefruit tops, smells of exquisite flesh. It is fresh, clean and sun-soaked flesh. It is lavishly smooth flesh with all the spicy notes (ginger, cardamom) playing finely nuanced supporting roles.

Because it is really an imagined, idealized flesh, it has the effect of being something quite familiar-yet-strange. It becomes the concept of flesh rather than anyone's actual flesh, but in doing so, highlights the nature of flesh to a degree that disembodies it. It is too beautiful a flesh to be actually attached to any living thing, it is rather flesh which is just kind of floating there in mid-air. Much like Luca Turin talks about fruit scents evoking giant imagined fruits, this fragrance evokes a giant hunk of flesh. Now, a giant piece of fruit is all very well and good - this in itself is desirable and playful. But a giant hunk of flesh? No matter how beautiful, there is something violent about it. And no doubt, this is a violent fragrance.

The name is the first give away: Barbarian Invasion. More than enough sliced, disembodied flesh in those two words. Then, there is the slightly carrion-like smell that just juts under everything else - it is not sickly though, but utterly entrancing. Like a slight fecal smell can make a floral scent narcotic, the slight smell of death here makes this all the more desirable. It ends up then being not-unlike a Japanese envisioning of a beautiful, aesthetic death, with its puzzlingly alluring dismemberment and spurts of blood on rainbow arcs. It is truly the most romantic, divine death imaginable.

There is a particular way it blends with your sweat as well that is very clever, but I'll talk about that another day (when I talk about M.Micallef's Gaiac, another tremendous masculine scent). This is really one of the best fragrances I've ever smelt.

Jubilation XXV by Amouage.

I've often held fantasies of being fantastically wealthy. These are guilty fantasies because I like to downplay the importance of money as much as possible - deep down I do believe that materialism obstructs more happiness than it creates. But still the less dogmatic, less mature side of me occasionally envisions a future of sizable, if not infinite, wealth.

Jubilation XXV could be said to represent such a fantasy. It is the fragrance equivalent of Uncle Scrooge's giant vat of gold coin's from Duck Tales. It is simply full of opulent ingredients: a very striking frankincense, gaiacwood, ambergris, oud, musk - and spices like cinnamon and clove, ad sweet smelling honey and orange and rose - it is basically a lot of perfume in one single perfume. It dries down to a very comfortable, dark, rich scent. But before this it fizzes. Fizzes very strangely, right in the back of your nose. Like when you take the first sip of freshly poured champagne. After that it sparkles. Like gold. I assume this is what they were trying to evoke - images of lavish, high-society parties with all the trimmings of a financially over-zealous existence.

Which is essentially the problem with the fragrance: it's trying to smell rich. It's trying to evoke wealth, and the moment you detect the attempt at something is the moment you doubt its sincerity. Which is odd. Because it is rich and it is opulent and it is stupidly expensive ($245 US for 50ml), but by giving away that hint of effort to appear this way it ends up undermining it all. Because a truly wealthy fragrance would never go out of its way to appear wealthy - much like an accomplished fighter doesn't start fights in front of kebab shops - knowing they have nothing to prove, they forgo their insecurity.

As beautiful and as well crafted as it is, I think it's a rather idiotic fragrance to actually wear, as it suggests immediately: this is who I want to be. Of course, all perfume does this to an extent, but usually its ideals are connected to character or personality or sexual archetype - we want to smell professional or sexually mysterious or playful or such. By smelling like Jubilation XXV you admit to a kind of superficiality in which your ideals don't even have personality traits, just wealth. They are merely wealthy mannequins, their arms positioned they best they can to sip, but the champagne just cascading over their plastic lips and staining the expensive fabric which covers their nipple-less chests.