Elisa Gabbert: 55 posts

Today fragrance flankers are more numerous on the perfume counter than ever before. Elisa explores how this trend originated and describes some of her favorite examples. After all, some flankers (like Chanel Coco Mademoiselle) have become famous perfumes in their own right.

What is a flanker?

A flanker is the perfume world’s version of a sequel or spin-off: Like The Empire Strikes Back or Charles in Charge, a flanker builds off the success of an existing hit rather than starting over fresh with an entirely new concept. Flankers are a way for perfume brands to capitalize on the popularity of a successful launch, at a lower cost than starting from the ground up. The hope is that fans of the original perfume (or “pillar” fragrance) will also be interested in the flankers, and that people who found the original appealing but not quite right for them (too heavy, for example) will be persuaded to purchase a re-imagined version.

The first flankers appeared in the 1970’s. Nina Ricci Signoricci 2, created in 1975, was a flanker to Signoricci from 1966. Other flankers from this decade include Royal Copenhagen Musk (1976) and Norell II (1979). Today, nearly 1 in 5 new launches is a flanker – according to Michael Edwards’s Fragrances of the World, in 2012, out of 1,392 total perfumes launches, 252 were flankers (18%).

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Elisa questions whether Estée Lauder’s Modern Muse can be her inspiration.

I am a longtime fan of the Estée Lauder lineup. The first perfume to take my breath away was White Linen – my grandmother wore it, and one day (I was 12 or 13) she let me use a dab of the lotion from her purse. The scent rushed up at me like a blast of cold air, snow blowing into a hot room from an open window. I stood there smelling my hands in awe.

Years later, when my interest in perfume turned to full-blown obsession, Estée Lauder was one of the first lines I was drawn to return to. I bought a small bottle of White Linen, and others followed. I now own upwards of ten Lauder perfumes. With this many hits, of course I pay attention when they announce a new release, even if the marketing is suspicious. (Their first “major launch” since Beyond Paradise? What happened to Sensuous?)

From the get-go, Modern Muse smells very Estée Lauder – fresh, feminine, floral, and bright, pretty in a grown-up way, without the over-sugared sweetness of so many recent launches. There’s a crisp, leafy-green top note and a touch of juicy citrus, more like tangerine than dry, tart bergamot. These effects are layered over what the press materials call “dewy petals” – and yes, there is a petal-like feel to the floral accord, a white bouquet of lily, with its distinctive waxy, vanillic notes, plus raspy jasmine and orange blossom.

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Not just another simple cologne. Elisa on Parfums de Nicolaï’s L’eau Mixte.

If there’s one perfume category I’ve heard people call “boring” the most, it’s citrus. Perhaps it’s because there is less variation among citrus scents than, say, orientals or florals—a rose perfume, a tuberose perfume, and an iris perfume smell nothing alike, but lemon, orange, and grapefruit have a fair amount of olfactory overlap. Or maybe it’s because citrus scents don’t—can’t—evolve much on skin because they don’t last long enough to evolve; they are fleeting, volatile molecules by nature, destined to be top notes.

I must admit I have some of the same reservations about citrus-centric perfumes. I’ve got a few in my collection, and on a hot day, a few spritzes of a crisp citrus chypre like Clarins Eau Dynamisante or Monsieur Balmain hits the spot. But I don’t reach for them often, and I almost always end up putting something else on later. So to make me sit up and take notice, a citrus scent has to be pretty unusual.

L’eau Mixte, Parfums de Nicolaï’s eau de cologne release for summer 2010, was the first citrus to take me by surprise in years. Primarily a grapefruit perfume, it manages to be both refreshing and rich, hitting so many pleasurable notes at once—sweet, tangy, green, herbal—that it feels like getting out of a car to breathe in a big lungful of cool mountain air. Most citrus scents have a bracing quality, but L’eau Mixte is exceptionally bracing.

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Today Elisa discusses perfumes that she wears not necessarily because they suit her personality, but the opposite–they become her means to fantasize and play dress up.

As a child, I never wanted to be something scary for Halloween; my costumes were always aspirational. Instead of dressing up as a witch or a ghost, I was a bride or a ballerina. As I got older, I’d pile on my grandmother’s costume jewelry to be a fortune teller; for several years in a row as a teen, I borrowed my mother’s embroidered purple suede platform boots from the ‘70s and called myself a hippie.

Whether Halloween is approaching or not, I think of everyday fashion as a kind of costuming. I admire those chic women with a well-edited closet and a simple daily uniform, but I can’t resist buying beautiful but impractical items that don’t necessarily go with anything else in my closet, then trying to find ways to mix them in. I haunt consignment shops to find my costume pieces: a tie-print Diane von Furstenberg dress that makes me feel like I’m in a Woody Allen movie; the perfect ‘80s-era ankle boots for walking in SoHo (though my ankles were killing me by the end of the night); the black velvet tuxedo vest that I fantasize about throwing on with everything (but never actually wear). When I approach getting dressed as putting on a costume, I never worry about being overdressed or looking like I’m trying too hard; I’m just having fun with it.

Perfumes too can serve as a kind of costuming. I have my go-to favorites that always feel perfectly “me” whatever the occasion – Donna Karan Gold works in any season, day or night – but I also have scents in my collection that I wear to feel less like me. These are a few of my costume scents, the ones I put on to go clandestine, escape myself, or perform a character.
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Please give a warm welcome to Elisa Gabbert, a new Bois de Jasmin contributor. Elisa’s first brush with perfume greatness came in the form of a bottle of White Linen lotion from her grandmother. About 20 years later, she fell down the rabbit hole after reading “Perfumes: The A to Z Guide” cover to cover on a flight. Currently she lives in Denver and is the content marketing manager at a small software company based in Boston. She also writes poetry (with collections including “The French Exit” and “The Self Unstable”) and is a founding member of Denver Poets’ Theater. You can discover her poetry and reflections on other things at her blog, The French Exit.

If we were wired properly, the smell of smoke would read as a warning sign. Yet I don’t associate smoke with Colorado wildfires or the carcinogenic properties of cigarettes and burnt toast. Instead, smoke conjures all things cozy and delicious: passing whiskey around a campfire, worn leather gloves, blown-out candles, the whiff of vanilla pipe tobacco when you pass a dapper old fellow on the street. I love smoke in my food (lox, bacon, barbecue,  smoked paprika, chipotle chiles) and I love smoke in my perfumes.

Because smoke comes from fire, it’s an inherently warming scent, so as the air gets crisp and I pull out my scarves and fall jackets, I start craving my smoky perfumes. There’s a bit of magic in them – it makes sense that crushed rose petals would smell something like rose, but it’s somehow less obvious that you can bottle the effect of gray wisps rising in curls from ash.

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