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Greysolon
Very helpful Review
8
Pastoral perfumery
Thanks to Sherapop’s recommendation I purchased my first “vintage” fragrance, Crown Perfumery’s Town and Country. Even though Town and Country hasn’t been produced since the late 1990’s it is still widely available, brand new (but over a decade old), from online discounters at very reasonable prices. One thing that gives away its age is the list of ingredients: Alcohol, fragrance and water. That’s it. You won’t get 21st century required listings for ethylhexyl salicylate, butyl methoxydibenzoylmethane, alpha-isomethyl ionone, etcetera, etcetera....
Town and Country is an aromatic citrus so it opens with a sunny lemon top note that, early on in its development, is burnished with herbal notes. The first few sniffs might have you thinking it's an ancestor of Dior’s Eau Sauvage. But as it dries down Town and Country takes a wonderful turn revealing a quaint, rustic character. There is a sense of purity to the ingredients, as though someone was walking through an English country garden, snipped an armful of lavender, rosemary and thyme; popped into the kitchen of their thatch roofed cottage and macerated all those herbs with lemons in a big stoneware bowl.
Certainly, Town and Country consists of more essences than are hinted at in the pyramid -likely synthetics too- but what makes this rustic presentation so endearing is that the work of creating complex accords seems to be done by combining straightforward notes. For instance, rosemary lends just a hint of aromatic pinyness that, with the addition of a mint-like note, keeps the accord pleasantly camphorous. Also, you can smell thyme in the overall scent but, in addition to its herbal qualities, it adds a woody base note to the fragrance.
But the effect I find most interesting is how the sweetness of the lemon and the bitterness of the herbs create a slightly dissonant accord giving Town and Country its sense of masculinity. There’s no need for the addition of a stereotypically masculine note, like leather or sandalwood, to prove its manhood. The contrary characters of bitter and sweet read to the nose as masculine without sacrificing the simple elegance of this fragrance.
