Category Archives: Cologne

An old-school Barneys classic, Route du Thé: Homme is a cologne based on a slightly spicy green tea platform with the very slightest tinge of musky undertow. It’s unobtrusive enough to wear in any season, though I’m partial to it in the late spring and summer, when heavier scents tend to overwhelm. For some reason it reminds me of New York, when the city empties out for summer weekends, and places once stocked with crowds of people ease up and become pleasantly inhabitable.

Hot sidewalks open up, loosening the tightness of their usual hold like the businessmen loosen their ties on the subway. A hint of citrus enlivens the languid proceedings when the murky humidity threatens to overcome with its stranglehold. This scent manages to cut through that sultry air, while maintaining its integrity for a surprisingly decent length of time. Summer is not so kind to most colognes, which makes this all the more refreshing.

The doldrums of any winter, even a mild one, can only be broken up by certain jolts. A vacation, a good book, an amazing song, or a new fragrance. I’ve tried them all, but it’s the fragrance option that has always turned the winter around for me. On a recent trip to New York, I ambled about the gift shop at the Standard High Line and waited for my friend Chris to finish his look-see. At the time, I wasn’t scouting for a new cologne, but that’s always when you find a good one. I pulled the small square bottle of black from its shelf and opened the top. It was peppery and fresh, clean and light. A smoky underside fit into the border between fall and winter, and it was so instantly likable that I spritzed some on. (I’m a last-resort spritzer, in the event that I end up hating a scent, or if I might want to try one on later in the day. Entire vacation days can be ruined by a haphazard cologne try-out.)

This one was a safe choice. Perfume 11 by BLK DNM is unisex fragrance, named for its launch year of 2011, and it has some of my favorites in it, which is why I instantly loved it: black pepper, cardamom, musk, cedar, balsam fir, birch, amber and incense.

It begins in a soft way, and stays as such throughout its trajectory. Black pepper and incense are where it’s at, making this ideal for fall or winter. Despite its smokiness, it’s actually quite a clean fragrance, and that smoke will dissipate, leaving a woodiness that’s more than pleasant in these dimmer seasons.

Now for the super-secret, which the salesperson whispered almost apologetically to me in the cloistered confines of the shop: Perfume 11 by BLK DNM actually falls under the Levi company, which initially caused me to turn my nose up at the whole thing. “I can’t tell people I’m wearing Levi’s cologne!” I shrieked to my friend Chris. Yet another instance where I fell into the stupidity of labels and image over what is truly decent and enjoyable. At this point in our friendship, Chris wisely ignored the matter and moved on. I almost did the same, until a few weeks later, when I found myself pining and yearning for the elusive peppery scent and it was nowhere to be found online. Such exclusivity always lends things a bit more magic than they might inherently hold, but it also meant that no one else was likely to wear the scent in the environs of upstate New York. Chris was back at the Standard a few weeks later, so I asked him to procure a bottle, thus resolving the dilemma on a happy note.

Presenting the amber mandarin glow of a recent Hermes fragrance acquisition: this is Eau de mandarine ambre, a fitting number for the height of citrus season. It’s a deeper take on the mandarin orange, thanks to its amber aspect, and one that works better in the winter than the lighter and more fleeting orange scents that make-up much of my summer cologne arsenal. The fact remains, however, that a true citrus fragrance is not meant to last. Their very nature indicates a delicate, and quick to fade, timeline. Anything that goes beyond that carries a chemical taint that should only be found in cleaning products and urinals. Certainly nothing that belongs in the rarefied air of Hermes.

It took me a while to come around to this one. Initial try-outs left me unimpressed, precisely because I was expecting that pop of a freshly-peeled orange. This isn’t that kind of sun-kissed fizz. It burns slowly, it doesn’t explode. It smolders, never rages. It is a surprisingly potent charm against winter, one that I’d almost forgotten about, having relegated it to fall fragrance status a few months ago and not thinking to revisit until we received a crate of Florida oranges from Aunt Elaine. There’s just something about citrus in winter that makes one’s outlook a little brighter, whether you eat it, wear it, or peel it in your deliciously sticky hands.

When the calendar year turns its last page and begins anew, I like to strip down and simplify things as much as possible. That means the sparkling over-the-top indulgences over the holidays are being replaced with something quieter, something with subtlety. Such as my favored fragrance. To that end, I’m making an early Valentine’s request (it’s just one month away…) for a bottle of the magnificently refined Bois d’Orage (50 ml is just the right amount). A more potent take on the exquisite Angeliques Sous la Pluie, this is the winter version of that gin-inspired summer tonic. Created by Pierre Bourdon for Frederic Malle, it exemplifies the elegance that Malle has made a hallmark (as in the equally-excellent ‘L’Eau d’Hiver’ as crafted by Jean-Claude Ellena).

“A serene manliness, both brutal through the overdose of single notes and subtle thanks to the sophistication of the raw materials, Bois d’Orage is the ultimate man’s scent. Pierre Bourdon has composed a perfume that is powerful, sensual and refined, aromatic and spicy. Its heart is built around angelica and its natural complements: cedar wood and vetiver. Shaped by an accord of Florentine iris, pimento and galbanum, it lies on a bed of patchouli, incense and musk. A perfume with an unusual vegetal animality.”

In Europe its christened name is “French Lover” – a rather cheesy moniker for a fragrance too refined for such cheap tricks. The powdery presence of angelica stays close to the heart, the way one keeps many things at this time of the year.

One of my favorite Christmas gifts (given by both Andy and my parents) is my very first bottle of Bond No. 9 – ‘New York Oud’. Up until this year, I’d kept an agreeable distance from the fragrance behemoth, put off by the price tag as well as the garish bottle design. Yet as with certain parts of life, the very things we resist are those that become the most valuable to us later on. Perhaps it just took some time for me to appreciate the Bond house. A little fruity concoction like this aided in that as well.

I was browsing The Tannery in Cambridge last month – well, not so much browsing as waiting for Kira to work through her shoe complex – when I stumbled upon a few random bottles of Bond No. 9. Normally, I would veer away from those star-shaped vessels and questionably-emblazoned flasks of fragrance. To be honest, the sheer number and variety of their offerings had always been overwhelming.

However, I was on the lookout for a holiday fragrance, something that sparkled, something that had a little more of an edge, something that I wouldn’t wear every day of the year, but only for special occasions. Based on the price point alone, that would signify a Bond fragrance, the cost of which heads into the stratosphere of Tom Ford Private Blends.

I sniffed a few of the bottles at hand, dismissing them all until I found the New York Oud. A sucker for most things oud, I inhaled this take on the expensive olfactory elixir, and marveled instantly at how much I loved it, and how different it was, even from its close relative ‘Oud Fleur’. The latter was smokier and muskier than ‘New York Oud’ – even as both retained a sweet, rose-hued opening. Bond’s version was brighter and fruitier – just the sort of sparkle and pizzazz I was trying to capture for the holidays. I sprayed it on and fell a little more in love. If only I hadn’t done that, I might have escaped, listening to Kira’s admonishments (even as she looked longingly at a pair of $400 boots).

Instead, I was caught by the beauty around my wrists, enraptured and enchanted by the exquisite scent. It was boisterous and cheeky, yet elegant and jauntily refined. It didn’t read New York so much as a universal sophistication, which was much more appealing to me. As we walked through the sun-soaked afternoon, I felt a little more alive when surrounded by such gorgeousness.

I knew then that it was my next holiday fragrance.

A holiday fragrance requires a little extra oomph. It’s the one time of the year when we’re sanctioned to be glitzy and over-the-top. For this season, I’ve been at a loss as to what to wear in the weeks leading up to the parties and the celebrations. While I’ve had my eye on my first Bond No. 9 (New York Oud), BLK DNM Perfume 11, and the new Oliver Peoples collaboration by Byredo, none of those will arrive before Christmas Eve (assuming they’ll arrive at all). I almost forgot about a limited edition Frederic Malle fragrance that my parents gave me a few years ago for Christmas – ‘Outrageous!’ – created by Sophia Grojsman. At the time, I knew little to nothing about the vast array of scents that Malle had had a hand in creating over the years, I only knew that I loved the scent of Barneys whenever I walked into the second floor and browsed the wares in their Boston store. I figured that with the scant collection of bottles that they put out in the men’s section, it would be easy to find the overriding scent that signified Barneys. How foolish I was…

While trying to pinpoint that amalgamation of sweet scents and which one it might be, the salesperson wasn’t much help, telling me the scents were sold downstairs (they can be incredibly bitchy at the Boston Barneys) so I walked down the staircase and made my way to the counter, where the entire Byredo and Malle lines occupied extensive space with their crisp and clean bottles.

I asked if there was one scent that was what I smelled every time I came into Barneys – Barneys in a bottle if you would – but they were completely clueless. Instead, they sold me on the new limited edition by Frederic Malle – Outrageous! – and I gave it a spritz. After trying a few of the others, I was lost in a delicious haze that no cup of coffee beans could cure. Overwhelming olfactory overload.

When it arrived on Christmas that year, I wasn’t as enamored of the scent as I thought I’d be. An impulse choice based on lack of research and trial. A lesson learned. And a bottle that it would take me years to appreciate. Since then, my tastes in fragrance have evolved and grown, and the challenging sparkle of Outrageous! may have finally found its way back into my heart. It’s a candy-like thing, colorfully-kaleidoscopic, and sweeter than my usual woody preference. Yet there’s a clinically-antiseptic feel to it too, bordering on harsh. It has some sharp points – all shining stars do – and it has its flaws, but for those days when you need a jolt of something different, something that bursts like a sugar-plum fairy, Outrageous! – and all its punctuated exclamation – will do.

As the main fragrance front-man for Hermes over the last decade or so, Jean-Claude Ellena has made a name for himself and brought the venerable company an elegant edge in olfactory matters. His Jardin series is a masterful collection of woody, water-like florals – as distinctively evocative of their inspiration as they are of a standard summer day in anyone’s mind. Unlike some florals, these don’t dominate, they gently ease the scent of the season delicately out of one’s countenance. It’s a subtle and sly sleight of nose, and somehow Ellena manages to make these deceptively lasting (in brilliant counterpoint to the main obstacle of a light spring/summer fragrance, which is that they’re gone too soon).

His latest, and final, contribution to the Jardin line was released this season: Le Jardin de Monsieur Li is an ode to a fictional Chinese garden of one Mssr. Li, with notes of kumquat, jasmine and mint. (Just once I’d like to go along for the planning part of these visits – I’m so easy-upkeep they wouldn’t even know I was there!) Ellena indicated that this fragrance was conjured by an imaginary place for meditation:

“I remembered the smell of ponds, the smell of jasmine, the smell of wet stones, of plum trees, kumquats, and giant bamboos. It was all there, and in the ponds there were even carp steadily working towards their hundredth birthday.” – Jean-Claude Ellena

For me, it feels like a not-so-distant cousin, or somewhat-distant sister, of Un Jardin apre la Mousson, which was his ode to a garden after a summer storm. Both are based in watery, fruit-like richness, yet both are light enough for the humidity that signifies such moisture in the summer. Perhaps Mssr. Li bears a slightly more refined bearing, less messily aquatic, more contained, like a pond of manicured water plants, and for that reason I’m a bit more partial to it. Such a spectacular way to end his line for Hermes, this is an impressive addition – the final gem – in a crown of delicious creations. He will be sorely missed, but I’ll hold onto the hope that some other house might coax him out of semi-retirement someday.

Anything affiliated with Richard E. Grant simply oozes elegance and sophistication. Scene-stealing turns in ‘Gosford Park’ and ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ along with caddish portrayals in ‘The Age of Innocence‘ and ‘Downton Abbey’ are what I remember most of Grant’s vast catalog (along with a hilariously-cheeky strut through the Spice Girls’ movie). I’m happy to report that his first foray into fragrance, ‘Jack’, upholds the sterling image he’s crafted for himself, while treating us to a remarkable cologne that reeks of classy potency, managing to be both refined and somewhat edgy. The very best of British attitude.

Opening with a lime and mandarin punch, it soon settles into something warmer, with notes of pepper, clove, and nutmeg. This spicy interlude then gives way to a richer layer based in vetiver, oud, white musk, tobacco, and olibanum resin. Orchestrated by Alienor Massenet, it’s a refreshing whiff of London gentility. Defining ‘dapper’ and ‘debonair’ with one sniff, ‘Jack’ attacks in playful prissiness, as fresh as a summer day, and surprisingly sinful as a summer night.

I’m hoping to score a sample of his follow-up frag, ‘Jack – Covent Garden’, named after one of my favorite places in the world. If it were possible to take a specific piece of a city as a lover, I’d make mine this delicious corner of London. In the meantime, there’s just ‘Jack’ – and I think I want it for my birthday. Parents and husband, take note.

{‘Jack’ by Richard E. Grant is available at http://www.jackperfume.co.uk.}

Unlike Tom Ford’s hit-or-miss forays into the florals, Hermès – under the reign and guidance of sadly-soon-to-retire perfumer Jean Claude Ellena – knows how to cultivate a garden series in exquisite manner. Their Jardin line was recently capped by the final installment by Mssr. Ellena in the lilting ‘Sur Jardin Mr. Li’ – an elegant swan song that took its namesake and creation from an imagined garden in China. (I’m saving that for a little later in the summer.) While the line is decidedly sweet and feminine, it grounds itself with a green and woody base that runs through each individual offering, uniting but setting them distinctively apart. The first in the series – ‘Sur de Nil’ started things off on a delicious note, with the gardens of the Nile in Egypt used as the inspirational starting point. Green mangoes formed the slightly fruity base of it, and it’s the perfect spring scent as it ripens into summer – light enough to dissipate in the heat without overpowering, but deceptively lasting, throwing off unexpected notes hours into the day. It made the perfect anniversary gift earlier last month, and I’ll wear it until high summer, and likely beyond.

The creation of ‘Sur de Nil’ was immortalized in the exquisite book ‘The Perfect Scent’ and the journey to Egypt, the rides on the Nile, and the inspirational mangoes in the air all come to mind when I smell the fragrance now. I don’t always enjoy learning how a fragrance came to be – it can fall short of expectations and the impossibly-grand imagination, but on occasion a perfume opens up even more when you know the history behind it. That was the case here.

The Jardin line from Hermès has come to mean different things in my years of wearing it – I think of summer elegance, the sound of running water sparkling in filtered sunlight, and the languid repose required when the heat gets turned up to high. Somewhere, in the background, a tree blooms and invisibly disperses its sweetly-scented elixir.