Tobacco: 8 posts

What can one expect from a fragrance inspired by Billie Holiday’s gardenia, called Une Voix Noire (Black Voice) and created by the dream team of Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake? Heady, dark, convoluted, perhaps? Well, Une Voix Noire is none of these things. It has a surprising combination of softness and warmth. Its presence is generous, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s dramatic without being heady or dense. Une Voix Noire feels velvety the moment you put it on, and it gracefully moves from one stage to another. Frankly, if Lutens said that he was inspired by ballerina Maya Plisetskaya’s Black Swan, rather than by Lady Day, I would have believed him.

I admit that this Lutens wasn’t love at first inhale the way Bois de Violette or De Profundis have been for me.  I anticipated the heady, the dark and the bittersweet, and I missed them in this soft perfume.  Nevertheless, I’m glad that I went along for the ride, because Une Voix Noire forced me to take our courtship slowly and to fall in love with it one layer at a time.

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Star rating: 5 stars–outstanding/potential classic, 4 stars–very good, 3 stars–adequate, 2 stars–disappointing, 1 star–poor.

After Flowerbomb, Antidote, and Eau Méga, the Amsterdam fashion house Viktor & Rolf has launched Spicebomb, a new masculine fragrance. While the clothing by designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren is avant-garde and edgy, the fragrances feel to me driven mostly by the desire to boost the company’s profit margins. They are well-made, polished, but perhaps stay too close to current trends. Spicebomb is a pleasant surprise in the line up—a fragrance that blends gender boundaries as effortlessly as Tilda Swinton—V&R’s muse—in Orlando and that has a few dark and smoky surprises in its layers.

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Star rating: 5 stars–outstanding/potential classic, 4 stars–very good, 3 stars–adequate, 2 stars–disappointing, 1 star–poor.

The sad truth is that the price you are paying for prestige fragrances in no way reflects the quality of the compositions and the ingredients, and often the perfumes with luxury price tags are made more cheaply than your laundry detergent. Therefore, it is best to cast off the prejudices instilled by the price and simply shop with an open mind. If what you are after is “cheap and chic,” then the Demeter Fragrance Library can offer plenty of interesting options. At $10 for 1/2oz, these fragrances can rival many luxury perfumes on the market today. The large portfolio includes both pretty and romantic things like Wet Garden as well as strangely appealing ones like Paperback. My personal favorite is Whiskey Tobacco, a delicious accord of almond, cherry scented tobacco and smoky woods.

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Star rating: 5 stars–outstanding/potential classic, 4 stars–very good, 3 stars–adequate, 2 stars–disappointing, 1 star–poor.

Vanilla, rum, tobacco, woods… Was Bertrand Duchaufour trying to follow in the footsteps of Molinard Habanita with his Havana Vanille created for L’Artisan Parfumeur. If so, the references are vague at best, and Havana Vanille (recently renamed Vanille Absolument to avoid a trademark infringement) is a composition that toys with the fantasy of an oriental bazaar much more than with the decadent glamor of Havana.

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Star rating: 5 stars–outstanding/potential classic, 4 stars–very good, 3 stars–adequate, 2 stars–disappointing, 1 star–poor.

Cutting the banana jam sweetness of jasmine with the smoky tobacco is a genius idea. The result is not the fragile flower petals, but the leathery richness of cured tea leaves. Perhaps, for this reason, Jasmin et Cigarette (now called Jasmin et Tabac) created by Givaudan perfumer Antoine Maisondieu for Etat Libre d’Orange is one of my favorite fragrances from the line. It is unpredictable and thus surprising….

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