Anarlan

In a nutshell, it's like rolling out a wet hemp mat in front of you, so that you can walk across the stands with green and yellow fruits and herbs, while strolling through the market of fruit and herb sellers in the middle of Tokyo. The countless box-shaped displays of the stands made of bamboo cane form narrow alleys, neatly piled up to cubist backdrops, at their ends revealing the view of the hazy outlines of the skyscrapers of an endless city. The streets breed under the sultry heat of the rainy season, everywhere a film of moisture seems to lie on the surfaces. As soon as you stroke over the exposed skin of your forearms, you want to dry, cool and disinfect your hands at the next colorful flashing, beeping and talking automats.
You are sure that there are vending machines for this, too, but unsuccessfully in your search, of course, because none of the purpose and purpose of the colorfully labeled boxes that seem to stand at every corner would be understandable to you. As if by a biological peculiarity it seems granted to the locals that no moisture seems to stick on their faces, the housewives, businessmen, teenagers in their baby clothes and dyed hair hurrying through the narrow alleyways all seem to have stopped sweat production as if on appointment.

The short turmoil that the earthy smell of moist hemp gives you when you enter the market has vanished after a few seconds, and the bitter, sour, stunning liveliness of the scent of bitter oranges that seem to be omnipresent here hits you like a blow. They have a sour scent, similar to the scent of freshly grated lemon peel, but more complex, deeper, reminiscent of grapefruit and limes, without spreading the sulphurous mattness of grapefruit or the haunting exoticism of limes. Cool smells it, a boon on this rainy hot day.

Right next to it are the stalls of the herbalists, the bundles standing in vase-like woven containers of bamboo or lying, following a geometry unknown to you, arranged in small wooden boxes. Mint, you grind a few leaves between your fingers: No chewing gum mint, as expected, it would fit well into this incomprehensible environment, but a herbaceous, dark, stalked-woody mint aroma, the plants as if dried in the warm wind and by secret magic brought back to life. Among them another bundle of a small explosion of scents: Aromatic, green, citric lemon verbena, with its metallic tart scent, which you can almost taste, a dark, herbaceous tone, which lies very delicately under the tangy bitter oranges.

You still think you perceive the earthy smell of the rain-wet hemp mat, which occasionally rises in this exquisite sour-bitter mood, but soon the harsh impressions are mixed with the shimmering woodiness of the cedars and the warm, deep, pleasantly dry and slightly rubbing musk. Something reminds you of the mineral darkness of oakmoss, but it is only an illusion, the heat plays a trick on you, the astringency and eccentricity of the fragrance creates this impression. Nevertheless, and this surprises you the most, the smell of your damp skin is like a cooling, dry, ideally tempered, powdery silk cocoon, everything fits, you've arrived at yourself, and the heat and the city around you, they can't harm you anymore.

...

The Corsican Marc-Antoine Corticchiato, the nose behind perfume d´Empire, wanted to create with Yuzu Fou a homage to modern Japan, according to the marketing saga, and his point of view on it, without me being able to give it concrete form or explain it, is French, just as the exquisite fragrances he creates are French. Whether it may be because his fragrances always have a certain bulkiness and eccentricity, with fragrance components that at first often take getting used to, but then find a refined use in the overall composition and exert a strong appeal, or whether he obviously likes to use historical fragrance models or historical figures, to give fragrances a story, or because he always uses the theme of chypre (the most beautiful orange chypre I know comes from him) in an exciting way (with which he meets black people at in´s anyway), his fragrances often have their own elegance and delicacy, which I associate with "French". This may be as clichéd a characteristic as it wants to be, perfume d´Empire was and is one of my personal brand discoveries of the past year and Yuzu Fou is currently my summer favourite, unfortunately undervalued here on Parfumo in a hair-raising way.

I very much hope that the brand's fragrances will soon be available again, in Germany they are obviously only available from stock since the beginning of the year, if you know more, please let me know.

"Harder days are coming.
The time deferred on revocation
becomes visible on the horizon."

They are two works of the great Jacques Guerlain, which almost force me to deal with temporality:
L´Heure Bleu and Mitsouko. L´Heure Bleu is the crueller of the two, because it lets me feel what time means as it passes. It is completely oriented towards the present, but knows that the clock is ticking.
Mitsouko has overcome the suffering of transience. Mitsouko's done. Brittle and immortally beautiful, lies down on her bitter, mossy bed, a handful of overripe dry apricots in her arms and lets her youth race.

Although physicists and philosophers alike bite their teeth at explaining time, language knows time in all its beautiful and terrible qualities: When time flies by, disappears between the fingers or seems to stand still, language depicts time. Even the greatest of all monstrosities can illustrate it briefly and aptly: That my time would run out one day. Tick-tock.

Already in childhood there were these approaches of introverted, dreamy melancholy when the last rays of sunlight of the day filled with light fell through the kitchen window, while the night drew up on the horizon and the clock on the wall with its relentless tick-tock announced change. The twilight blue-tinted passage of the Heure Bleu, this transition between the past and the future in the making, has always been an hour of bittersweet pausing, of wanting to hold onto the present.

"There's a sweet melancholy that's nothing but a pleasant dream, a lovely melancholy. It is the state of a soul that closes itself off to the vivid temptations that would exhaust it and rather surrenders itself to the illusions of the senses and finds its comfort in thinking about what causes it pain." (Dictionnaire de Trévoux, 1771)

When Jaques Guerlain created L´Heure Bleu, the city of Paris experienced its melancholic blue hour. The world was on the threshold of a radical change, the preparations for a world war were in full swing everywhere in Europe. I see the introverted master in the old photographs in front of me, the snow-white hair strictly styled to the back, white cloaked, more a scientist than an artist, serious. He seems to shy away from the camera, turning his vulnerable gaze away from the viewer. I get a quote from his grandson Jean-Paul Guerlain when he was once asked about the story behind L´Heure Bleu on the Threshold of the First World War:

"Jacques Guerlain once said he had a hunch about the misfortune that was about to happen. "I couldn't put it into words," he told me. "I felt something so intense, I could only express it in a perfume.""

The quote describes the awareness of the transience of the present, which dwells for me in this terribly beautiful fragrance. The top note, aniseed and bergamot, tells the story of the last light summer end of the passing day. Violets, irises and carnations soon immerse the fragrance in a floral, blue-toned sparkle in twilight, so multi-layered, brilliant and melancholic. It surrounds you for a long time before you are released into the night with the comforting velvet warmth of vanilla, benzoin and tonka. It's not so bad. Ticktack.

I have a sample that contains a version of the fragrance that seems to have little to do with the current reformulation because vanilla takes a long time to come and doesn't get too loud either. But it probably doesn't matter to me either to ponder subtleties about reformulations, which L´Heure Bleu passes on the story of the transience of the present from generation to generation, regardless of whether it is transported by shellac or binary codes. L´Heure Bleu tells me to pause in the blue hour as the rupture of the river becomes quieter, taking the present with it, forever driving it away from me as the past, while the future is still in the making.

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

They are my first choice for casual trousers, they almost always fit, the wardrobe is full of them, and you always buy them again because you think you still don't have enough. According to this, if you're looking for a new summer fragrance and don't want to buy any more perfumed black jeans, you shouldn't ask for one in the store. My perfumed black jeans are my citric summer visitors, I love them, but they are just enough for me. So a short announcement was made to the specialist staff of my trust, with a request not to pick out any black jeans. Said, done.

In front of me are a few modern looking, not really sharp-edged, yet rather striking flacons that look as if they are filled with engine oil. Black. Fragrances by Pierre Guillaume, French fragrance prodigy, chemist, perfumer and freethinker, a modern, urban type of his craft who has been creating perfumes for a little over 15 years, at home in science as well as in his craft. Exciting Type.

One of the candidates presented to me stands out in particular. The start is alcoholic, medical, tart, the comparison with Voltaren ointment from DaveGahan fits perfectly, the nose gets stuck because it smells surprisingly attractive, but already tart, dark shakiness mixes into the picture. Lime. No tropical cocktail lime, but a bitter, bitter lime that reminds me more of grapefruit and bergamot, even if none of it is listed in the list of ingredients. The impression is firm, matt, a dark, defined tone that is additionally tinted by coriander. Coriander I can't smell isolated, no contrast, so it lies on the lime more like an extra layer of varnish that gives it even more strength and edge.

A further facet now opens up as the fragrance develops: black currant, properly peppered, with matt, dry, light musk. As soon as berries and musks play a central role in a fragrance, I like to get into an inner fight-or-flight state. The range, with which both are used in fragrances, is enormous, from animalistically sweaty to clean-dry is everything in musk, both I like depending on the environment sometimes more, sometimes less. Berries are harder there. In such beautiful and proven contrasts as raspberry/leather they inspire me exceptionally, in synthetic-sweet blackjacks with Happy Berry permanent grins in the face they rob me of the last nerve. Here currant, diamond black, completely unsweet, aromatic, somewhat smoky and with a lot of pepper, presented in a dry, matt musk setting. In addition, there is a cool, light wood note, which at first, however, only suggests itself.

What a great idea. The scent now feels like driving through a pine forest in a convertible after a hot day on the beach at dusk (in my case I would wish for a Jaguar E-Type, it should be suitably black), from the Pacific a cool, foggy breeze. During the day one has sweated, but now one shivers slightly, while the skin is still burning from the sun. The slight dry sweating can also be found in the fragrance, I lean out of the window so far as to attribute it to the animal musk part, but this is by no means unpleasant or repulsive, but quasi just perceptible vibrates with and increases the charm of the impression, and that's how it should be. In this phase of cooling down, the fragrance remains quite a while, berry, musk, pepper, citric, wood, all there and polished to a very harmonious overall.

The fragrance slowly cools down towards the base, becomes lighter, almost menthol-green and resinous-woody, the light, I think synthetic wood tones stand out more clearly, while the dark green citric of the start, the blackness of cassis and pepper linger for a long time.

Aqaysos is an exciting, atypical dark, yet cool and fresh scent for the summer, which creates a harmonious picture from atypical components. He looks completely modern to me, I place him completely in the here and now. He goes his own way for a fragrance that fits perfectly into the hot season and will play a special role in my summer fragrances in the coming season with its cool and edgy facets

The animal is allowed to stink and sniff at each other with fervor, the human being who considers himself cultivated, however, forbids himself and his contemporaries this animalic pleasure.
In the late nineties, at a party on the East Coast, I met an over-candidate older American woman who told me with obvious comforting horror about her travels in Europe in the sixties and seventies. She found it incredibly amusing to tell me eye rolling how smelly and funky the Europeans would have smelled from her point of view back then. This was not only insensitive towards me, but also somehow met me personally. In the nineties, the global standards of personal hygiene were now so standardized that at least for most fellow human beings, physical products of their scent glands - and in relative terms, humans more than any other mammal - were reliably showered and deodorized away every day, apart from individual deviations. The use of perfume was also part of daily body hygiene, and for me it was actually a matter of course to reach for the bottle every day - sparingly.
But ironically, that's where the stinking dog is buried.
With the production of perfume, man has found a cunning and aesthetic way to present his archaic scents in a cleverly transformed form as a cultural product and to satisfy his desire for physical and sexual smells in a socially accepted way. Stinking of sweat is shocking to use a perfume that cleverly combines fragrance with sweaty bottom - and nobody merkt´s! - can be perceived as totally amaaaaazing by the same cleanliness apostles.

If you believe eighty-eight percent of the comments and statements on Parfumo that you feel, APLS is an example of sensual eeriness and animalism.
I don't see it that way. I have recently had the pleasure of getting to know some more extreme representatives of the genus "animalic scents", who deserve this name in its entirety, thanks to the donors. In this respect, my perception is probably not a suitable yardstick. The fact is: In APLS there is no pisel cat, no lardy animal secretions, no hot sweaty musk breath, no damp steaming wild shaggy, no indoly digestive products of any kind. On the other hand, there is cumin aka cumin, dusty dry, massively spicy, hard, so dry that it scratches my throat. Cumin is perceived very differently from person to person, some people are strongly reminded of the smell of sweat, I don't feel that way. I find his use a little sweeter in the Lumière Noire pour Homme by MFK, which is also highly praised here, but not really in such a way that the term "sweat smell" would be justified even rudimentarily. At APLS, this whole bowl of dusty crushed cumin is poured into vast quantities of honey, woody, resinous, tart sweet honey. In addition Benzoeharz, which I recognize often well in smells. The story is that because of its wound healing and skin caring properties, benzoin tincture used to be used in certain surgical dressings in South America, which I was able to get to know during a professional exchange many years ago that lasted almost a year. I loved the smell of benzoin tincture and never forgot it again. In APLS, the combination of honey and benzoin resin, in contrast to the dusty dry cumin, creates a loud duet that has its charm, the other components I see as subordinate. I perceive this at best as an abstract kind of illusory animalism, which arises from the contrast between sweet-honey-soft and sharp-dry-hard. The end product - dosed in minimal quantities - is really cuddly and attractive, but I miss a bit of the refinement that Cologne pour le Soire might have, unfortunately I don't know it yet. APLS is undoubtedly attractive, quite loud, for me only conditionally animalistic, but I think that is strongly dependent on one's own perception.
I thank Ergoproxy for the sample.

If Mark Rothko had not been badly shaken and internally torn apart by his severe depressive illness throughout his life, he would not have had to experience the escape with his family from anti-Semitic persecution in the USA as a ten-year-old boy, what would his painting have looked like?
These pictures, which have made him one of the most important representatives of American color field painting and abstract expressionism: If there had ever been a sufficiently strong neurotic impulse in him to paint them?
Pictures that are meant as decorative art prints, misunderstood in almost all cases, hang in every second office of the authorities. Pictures that sometimes form vibrating color spaces of several square meters in the original, dark, violent, from which the light is sucked out and in which an all-encompassing darkness spreads. The painter wanted them to be hung in darkened rooms which the viewer should approach at a distance of 45 cm in order to directly experience their desperate emotional world - drama, tragedy, fate.
If he had been a happy, life-affirming man, this Mark Rothko, and his painting had served confidence, not despair, his paintings would have become spaces of horizontally stacked lightfulness.
I imagine these reduced colored areas of a mentally healthier, joyful Rothko, floating, white, gray, green, pastel, creating brightness, silence and hope like a sunrise seen on a foggy morning.
I'm sure there never would have been these pictures.
But there is L´Original by Andrée Putman.

"When I wear L'Original, I can rest in myself instantly, no matter how upset or depressed I was before."

These wonderful words do not come from me, but they describe very aptly how this fragrance works. I see his layers of colour in front of me: an almost white surface, central, determining. White pepper. A much more subtle, precise quality than "peppery hot", better: aromatic, focused, defined.
A further colour space, green, pastel, fresh, floating: coriander, it mixes with the pepper on the edge, but remains independently perceptible as a green quality.
In the background, in the lower image area, a gray tone, wood, whichever, withdrawn, solid, matt, the base.
The coloured areas are surrounded by a rosy shimmer, a hint of a watery unsweet floral scent.
I don't know what water lilies smell like. I own a water-filled whiskey barrel, planted in a sawn-through whiskey barrel, hibernated at this time of year, standing at the entrance to the house, delighting me and our visitors all summer long with pastel yellow flowers. I've never noticed a scent before, but the scent name "Water Lily", perhaps also an allusion to a long-running theme of impressionistic painting, fits perfectly, even if it's possibly a fantasy creation.
I hardly know of any other fragrance that is so reduced, simple and noble that it creates such an effect of silence and focus. I remember Mojave Ghost hovering in a similarly pastel way, but here a strong alcoholic juniper blue-green, on top a surface of rosy, powdery iris.
Especially at this time of year I find this fragrance impression very appealing in its simple elegance and reduced casualness. One has smelt oneself a little tired at all the loud, resinous, incense, balsamic winter scents, the operatically elaborate compositions one loves so much, and this scent sends one a wonderful premonition of light, vastness, new beginning, collection.

"Silence is so accurate." Mark Rothko

I thank Turandot for the opportunity to get to know this beautiful fragrance.