Cheap thrills and ritzy pleasures...
Last year I tried to modernise myself a bit, cause being half-covered in spider webs had begun to look a little unsettling. Thus I decided to sort of give up my 30 years old smoking habit and convert to e-cigarettism, the newfound religion for nicotine repenters. At some point I bought a new battery cause my old spare one had already raised its leg for kicking the bucket, but it went on strike upon first day. So I returned it to the shop to have it fixed or replaced. And as it's often the case with something that we're not in any immediate need of using, some ten months passed. In the meanwhile some things changed. One of them was that I decided that electronic cigarettes were subtracting a shedload of points from my tough guy facade (although they added a certain hi-tech value to my ancient mien), so I relapsed in ciggies again. This rendered my long-fixed battery of no use anymore, so I exchanged its 20€ value with three ridiculously cheap fragrances, since the shop was a former cosmetics selling one and still had some scents available. Against all odds, two of these cheapos proved to be absolute stunners!
The non-stunner one was called Sweetie and judging from the ribbon print on its box, I guess it's a dupe of Nina Ricci's Ricci Ricci. It comes from a rather shady house called Street Looks and it was a gift set, including an 85ml Eau de Parfum along with a 50ml shower gel, All this for a mere 7€. Since I have no idea how Ricci Ricci smells, I thought it was a very good deal for my niece, for it smelled like strawberries and raspberries with a hint of rose. And what's more important, it had something that counterbalanced the fact that my niece is not a sweetie at all. Something that is always an extremely desirable factor for girls her age, even if they're made of serial-killer-to-be material. It was pink.
Since pink is my favourite colour only when it comes to electric guitars and open '59 Cadillacs, I was quite glad that the next scent's earthy colours washed away all this bubblegummy holocaust and soothed my eyes.
It's called Soul for Man, although its box's layout could trick someone into thinking that it's called Soul Man. It comes from the same house with Sweetie, in a very cheap-looking box and bottle. But all cheapness ends there. It's a very lush vanilla based fragrance, that opens with an old-school boozy vibe and ends in a captivating incensey amber aura of liquid rose gold. It could pass for something tenfold its price, whistling nonchalantly all the way. Pretty much for something costing 5€/85ml I guess, although it made me wonder if the bizarre 85ml volume encountered for a second time is some kind of putsch attempting to overthrow the 50ml, 75ml and 100ml status quo.
Thinking that the third fragrance, statistically speaking, ought to be an example of equilibrium between success and fiasco, I was completely taken aback by how wrong I was.
Enter Lapacho. I don't want to sound ignorant or offensive, and while I know that lapacho is some sort of herbal tea, the name still sounds funny, not unlike a Mexican sitcom character. However the fragrance itself rocks! It comes from an obscure, to say the least, French perfumery, called Louise de Maurillac. It's not in Parfumo's database, but I'm working on it. Its box and bottle are actually quite good and don't feel flimsy at all. For starters, it smells soapy, green and confused. Somewhat like an out of wedlock offspring of Paco Rabanne pour Homme and Azzaro pour Homme, if old masculine powerhouses could procreate. Only this one's on speed, and it decides halfway that Grey Flannel would be a better choice of kin. So it takes a sharp turn towards dry bitterness, and starts running for these bay laurels on these sun-baked rocks over yonder. Upon reaching them, it rests for a while under their poisonous leaves before finally deciding that nuts was what it always desired to be. Nuts as in "squirrels" and in "Are you nuts?" Believe me, it is. I think that this kind of olfactory phantasmagoria surely deserves much more than its 8€/100ml price tag.
However, this fortuitous (by two thirds) happenstance made me ponder over a branch of perfumery which had never concerned me thus far. The vast kingdom of cheap fragrances.
The problem here is that cheap fragrances are subdivided in numerous clusters too. Trying to categorise them is like trying to understand the differences between the doctrines of the various factions and sects of a widespread religion. The fact that the question whether Adam and Eve had navels turned into a big theological debate, which is alive and well till today, speaks for itself. However, I'll try to classify them the way I understand them, but I'm not sure at all about how every category should be called.
1) Counterfeits
They're the proverbial swindlers lurking in the dark corners of the internet and waiting for their unsuspecting victims to be lured. They're the nightmares that every perfume afficionado wishes (s)he never ever encounters and have her/his bank account thinned out. They're things like this bunch of Chanels and they feed on your expectation than you might be lucky once in your life for a change and get your paws on a real online bargain. You shall not. "Online" and "bargain" in the same sentence is a chimeric stillborn dream.
2) Mimickers
These are some sort of quasi-knock-offs (pardon the barbarism) which don't have the guts or the monies to afford a lawsuit, but have the nerve to hope for occasional oversights. They always hope that you're gonna be some 2000 miles away when you'll discover why evolution provided us with eyes. Like the following bunch which could serve as a "Find the dupe 101" for perfume junkies in the making.
I haven't smelled any of them, but it wouldn't surprise me if Fahrenheit's notorious imaginary diesel note was replaced with the real thing in these ones. If so, it would come handy to pack a couple of bottles in your glove-box. Or inside your motorcycle jacket if you think that riding a bike and reeking of motor oil is an unequivocal proof of badassery, a certain trait that some people think is a sine qua non in order to handle Fahrenheit. However, I can't help but laugh my head off when I try to imagine how faces in Dior would grimace with sheer terror if they were ever privileged to behold these "beauts". Not to mention the feverish nights that would follow, with said fever apparently reaching lava temperatures.
3) Smell-alikes
These are duplicating the smell of a well-known fragrance, without necessarily trying to trick you into thinking that you got the original in most cases. The're actually hard to tell from the previous category, but I think there's a slighter bigger slice of honesty in their struggle, since they don't hide the fact that they're wannabes of their famous cousins.
However, I have no idea what they were thinking when they subtracted 12 men from Carolina Herrera's 212 Men and put the rest into Davidoff's The Game bottle.
4) Straight from the vat
This is a very good thing when we're talking whiskies, but rather dubious when it comes to scents. I'm talking of course about the kind of fragrances that are poured from large jars into plain bottles. We call them "type scents" in Greece, and there are even some small retail chains selling them.
5) Cheapies
This is the most diverse category of them all. Anything goes here! They range from toxic fumes to staggering pieces of perfumery. They can be widely distributed brands like Lomani or virtually unknown like my lonely Lapacho. Being cheap here is a way of life, allowing you to own many exceptional fragrances for the price of an often overestimated one. Like having the following for just under 40€. Sounds like 400ml of pure perfume heaven to me for half the price of Dior's latest cocky balderdash.
And although I'm not much acquainted with less known cheap brands, my enlightening experience with the fragrances which took the place of my e-cigarette battery assures me that there are many back alleys to be walked and explored.
Now, I understand the need behind having an original fragrance, partially because I've felt it too. Perhaps it's a matter of prestige, although this prestige comes at a high price, however often highly disputed whether it's worth it or not. Aye, I know that upon seeing a bottle of Chanel No.5 on a lady's dressing table there's a good chance you'll automatically think she's somewhat classy, but smelling its cheap knock-off on her nape when dancing cheek to cheek is what makes you tick.
Cheap fragrances often offer some good laughs by being shameless facsimiles and smelling like tragedies, but in some cases the smiles are frozen upon spraying them, cause this is the exact moment when you realise you could have saved some 50 bucks. All the more that there's also a good deal of expensive fragrances that have made me breathless with laughter too. Many of them have intercontinental sillage and longevities that could outlive the Byzantine Empire. My Soul Man stayed a good 12 hours on my hide and it makes the air in a 3 feet radius reek with it just by having its bottle standing there. Many designer and niche scents, allegedly made with top-quality ingredients, are gone in half that time. Last but not least, I think that cheap fragrances are not reformulated, especially when they are clones of well-known ones. After all there must be some kind of rock bottom in how cheap their ingredients may come. So in some cases, if the cheapie was a successful duplicate there's a good chance it smells way better than the current version of the original which has become a watered-down version of its former self.
Sure thing is I'll never look down on any cheap fragrance again, no matter how cheap it is. Not that I've been practicing it till now, but I think this is a rule that I should have already known it does not apply on people only. After all my all-time favourite One Man Show can be found for a mere 20€ in a gift set containing an 100ml Eau de Toilette, along with a 200ml shower gel and a 200 ml after shave balm. But since each one of us craves for some luxury every now and then, we sometimes tend to overlook that "luxurious" and "expensive" are not necessarily synonymous with "worthy". Some of the vilest people I've met in my life were obnoxious pricks wearing 1000€ suits and driving 50,000€ cars, while the total sympathy of a thousand of them wouldn't outweigh even my cats' whiskers. And I've also met humble people, who despite being one step away from saintdom through abnegation I would defend them with my life. Guees which of the two are thriving as we speak. It seems that scents imitate life. Or is it the other way around?
So if I disappear for an unsettling while, rest assured it'll happen because I shall have gone on a "Cheapie Tracking" spree...
GothicHeart