Cologniac

Like many new fragrance lovers, I found Creed baffling at first. The more famous millesimes did not smell familiar, nor did they move me. I did buy Original Santal for its distinctive, strong fragrance, but it was not an everyday scent, so I thought that I was all done with Creed. And then I smelled Bois de Cédrat. This is the fragrance that brought me back to Creed, and made me understand the house.

Bois de Cédrat is simple - it is cédrat - or a modification of it - and a bit of wood. It is cool citrus with just a tiny hint of a woody base. It is really little more than an eau de cologne, despite being an eau de toilette, technically. And yet, because of the marvelous quality of the citrus, and the painstaking purity and polish of the composition, it is a very, very beautiful smell. The listed notes are lemon, mandarin, cedar and ambergris. What one smells is a clear, cool citrus which is closer to lemon than mandarin, but lacking almost any sharpness or sourness. Behind this, the tiniest bit of cedar, softened by something, presumably the ambergris. The latter is synthetic, I assume, but synthetic ambergris is very nearly the real thing, so no harm done. This fragrance smells incredibly natural - as if you could drink it.

I recommend Bois de Cédrat for highly formal situations where a universally loved scent would be welcome, and one doesn't want to take a chance on being malodorous by forgoing any kind of fragrance. A few sprays inside one's jacket will last for an hour or two. It doesn't last long, but it can be applied immediately before leaving for an engagement. It is also wonderful for things like dances, airplane flights, working closely with others in the office, dinners (goes will with foods, particularly fish), or just for a cool spray on a hot summer day. It is also a wonderful bedtime fragrance.

Not everybody would pay for a bottle of Bois de Cédrat, but almost nobody dislikes it. This is a highly recommended scent for anybody - man, woman, or even child.

I finally got a sample of "A New Perfume", and I must say that it is Comme des Garçons in truest form. The fragrance has a strange beauty - in a way that only CdG can provide. The odd appeal of the fragrance is a perfect match for the flacon - and a clearly correct interpretation of Rei Kawakubo's visionary approach to fashion, specifically her "lumpy" stuff. Just in the same way that it's hard to stop looking at her fashions, so too is it hard to stop sniffing this fragrance.

There are times in many perfumes, when the flatness and synthetic aspects of floral aroma chemicals such as Lyral and Lilial provide an unwelcome distraction, grating on the nerves like an uncentered jacket, or a loop-skipping belt. Here, the deficit is magnified but then put in balance with the "florally correct" aspects of the fragrance. The result is a beautiful melange - a dry, bready, synthetic white floral that seems pretty and pretty wrong at the same time. It's almost gourmand in a way, but only in the same way that white latex paint seems appealing when you're hungry.

There is a certain chalkiness that rides along with the fresh and floral notes - it seems to add to the appeal. The composition is excellent on both paper and skin, without a lot of obvious differences.

Overall, this fragrance seems readily wearable by a guy, even though it's quite pretty as well. It is very unisex, and yet does not seem to compromise in being so. As a lover of fresh scents, I have to think that this offering is a cut above most fresh scents. It is definitely worth investigating, despite the difficulties that one is likely to face in procuring a sample.

Trouble was a nice, spicy fougère, much better than its popular contemporary, Hai Karate, and on par with the much more famous Brut. Trouble had a peppery, green scent which was a bit edgy at the time, and matched the bright green juice color and the humorous advertising theme very nicely. The scent was less minty and cool than similarly priced offerings, and thus had the feel of a really good cologne, at a slightly inflated drugstore aftershave price. The splash flacon was clear glass - it had a wide oval base, which drew down to a wide circle at the top, with a large, flat, circular, silver screw cap. This juice was very, very good for a cheaper offering, and I always regretted that it didn't last on the market. My teenage friends used to love to borrow it from me before our double dates. In some ways, Ralph Lauren Polo carried on the spicy green genre, and filled that hole in my wardrobe. I believe that the name was singular, not plural, but it is very difficult to find any information about this fragrance, and it is often confused with similarly named fragrances marketed to both men and women.