GothicHeart

If Givenchy Gentleman is a "Stairway to Heaven" (although a slightly begrimed one), then Play Intense is "What goes around...comes around". And it's just as alpha male as Justin Timberlake compared to Robert Plant. It's also like the difference between entering a mouldy basement rehearsal room and entering a noisy mall with a greater than usual ratio of patisseries and sweet shops. Yes, there's noise and smells in both places, but only one of them has the potential to make a legend out of them.

I don't know if that's the case with other countries too, but seeing samples delivered in cheap plastic sachets instead of glass phials (let alone miniature bottles) gets on my usually stolid nerves. Especially when they require a crowbar to be pried open. I guess that Justin's check swallowed all the glass available, just like those guys in sideshows of yore did. Or maybe it's just a hint that plastic is here to stay, slowly casting out all natural ingredients and burying them in polymer caskets.

Now, I DO NOT like so-called gourmands. Don't get me wrong, I love the smell of coffee and all these little pieces of heaven that usually come with a cup. It's just the fact I believe that the only people who should smell like candy are the ones exiting a candy workshop, and that coffee without the smell of smoke is like Bonnie without Clyde. And I don't really understand why a fragrance containing coffee and caramel is a gourmand, while one containing lemon and sage isn't. Did herbs and citruses ceased to be edible at some point?

Anyway, let's skip culinary debates and talk intensity and presence. Well, my take on playing intense goes like this.
I still use an antediluvian CEC turntable and a Wharfedale amplifier/receiver for listening to music when at home. They both come from the '70s, and despite being heavy, bulky and by no means portable, they're made of wood and metal and they have something that no iPod will ever have. Soul. They behave in the selfsame way that their contemporaneous fragrances used to do. By filling a room with their presence. Visually, acoustically and olfactorily. Yes people, music does have a smell. Or at least it used to. It's the smell of the vacuum tubes being heated, the smell of air perturbed by monstrous speakers, the smell of a brand new vinyl record, the smell of sweat mixed with notes. Like the smell that once rendered Givenchy a linchpin of the fragrance world. Like the smell which used to foreshadow that something serious was coming our way. Like the smell which assured us that a scent's ingredients were born in the fields an not in test tubes. Like the smell that my Givenchy Gentleman bottles from the '70s pack in shedloads. Like the smell that Play Intense is the farthest cry from smelling anything like it.

This is not how the labyrinth or the beast dwelling inside smelled like.

This is how ancient Knossos, after Theseus's sword and Ariadne's thread delivered it from its horned plight smelled like.

This is how a sandalwood ship, beaming her eyesome graciousness while sailing on an primordial sea smelled like.

This is how seven lads and seven maidens crowned with flower wreaths, dancing and falling in love on her deck, for their lives had just been spared, smelled like.

This is how the breath of ancient gods smelled like.

This is how the sidereal veils over Crete, bedecked by the beast's blood, whose real name was Asterion (starry), smelled like.

This is how Paloma Picasso's fragmented memories, in the morning after a febrile dream about a heroic antiquity smelled like.

This is how an unparalleled specimen of audacious perfumery smelled like.

This is how my reveries about early '90s trysts, adumbrated by the shadow of time smelled like.

Dare to be a modern Theseus and tame this beast of yore.

The Ariadnes of this world shall hold your hand for all time...

Have you ever heard "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways?

"Hey, street boy, want some style?
Your dead end dreams don't make you smile.
I'll give you something to live for.
Have you and grab you until you're sore."

Lita Ford and Joan Jett (long before start sweating in leather pants) along with Cherie(!) Currie were surely some sort of punk seers back in 1976 when the song was released. For their "Cherry Bomb" finally came. And it absolutely delivered!
Joop! was unleashed in 1989 and blew every oakmoss stronghold and vetiver fortress to smithereens.
To the point that half of the next decade will always be the "Cherry Chronicles" for many of us who were around twenty back then.
I can still remember the way that sometimes by entering a cafe you could swear that everyone inside had just finished smoking a pipe the size of a didgeridoo stuffed with cherry tobacco.
But you know what? No cherries were used in building the damn thing's pyramid!
Since internet with its detailed notes pyramids was not around when Joop! entered the scene, imagine my surprise when I found out about the "no cherries" thing many years later.
So where the hell do all these orchards come from? What kind of olfactory sorcery made them thrive? What spell transmuted three brown spices, vanilla, cinnamon and cardamom, into a claret fruit? Were the acidic citruses the catalyst for bringing this chicanery to life? Help!
Let alone that none of its ingredients could justify its hellish hue, which makes it one of the very few fragrances that its colour tempts me to quaff it.
But the most amazing thing about it was it being a very serious joke in all its potential to apply its suffocating sweetness with a sledgehammer. Very few fragrances since then have equaled its epic sillage and longevity and I don't think that any has surpassed them.
Its bottle had always the strange ability to look like it constantly craved a brawl, assuring you that "Joop!" was the sound that its fist would make when landing on your face. Probably inside a pink balloon, all comics-style and stuff. And patching you up afterwards, since it also had a medical degree, being the first graduate of a yet to be founded academy. The one that would create the medicinal genre in the following years.
But who didn't love any variation of the archetypical toxic-pink, cherry flavoured cough syrup as a kid? It was so yummy that many of us ocassionally pretended a sore throat, in order to slake our addiction.
No wait, this sounded wrong somehow. I'm not talking codeine-laden cough syrups here. No, not that kind of addiction. I'm just talking about the sensuous phantasmagoria that pharmaceutical companies had come with, so that kids would drink their stuff without any Ancient Greek Drama antics. Being Greek, I and my compatriot toddlers were always inherently good in such stuff.
I just can't remember if it was the medicine that made me love the smell of cherries or vice versa. But I guess it doesn't matter anymore. Sweet medicines casting sweet memories, rekindled by sweet scents. Joop! in a nutshell...
Thus being addicted to it was an one-way street, and I'll be eternally thankful to these nice people in Germany who thought that the world was getting boring and decided to do something about it.
Ignore the fact that I always loved to hate it and it hated to love me. Sure thing is that neither of us could live without wrangling a bit every once in a while.

I don't know whether something can be categorised under a label that didn't exist when it came out. Thus I don't know if Joop! could qualify as a gourmand. However, what it certainly qualifies for is the title for the one of the loudest entries ever this side of the Big Bang.

Since I'm good in crafts, I'm thinking of making a belt with two holsters, all Far West and stuff, and pack two 200ml bottles of this little wunderwaffe all the time. Cause this looker is a life saver in all its salience. And a delight savourer in all its clarity too. It carries an one of a kind charisma to dissipate any troubles that may be thrown your way.

Traffic jam? Spray some!
Boring chore? Spray galore!
Dulled desires?
Galling quagmires?
Psychic vampires?
Spray some more!

There's nothing this beaut can't handle. Even getting the "poet" out of me. Even enjoying its own bipolarity by being two different fragrances, depending on where you spray it. Citrusy and musky clouds on my wrist, salty bitter woods in the crook of my elbow (whilst crooking it).
It almost changed my attitude towards Calvin Klein, since I never thought of them as a truly memorable perfume house producing fragrances with the potential to become legendary over time. Who knows, perhaps they were never meant to concoct august heavy hitters, but rather sanguine and happy carefree vagrants.
Oh, and its bottle makes an excellent atypical and kooky case of a hip flask when empty.
Cheers!

OK. let's see...How about a total paradox in modern perfumery's logic, living mostly in supermarkets and hiding (or is it lurking?) in their lower shelves.

Although it came out in 1993, its one of the most '80s fragrances out there. Perhaps 1993 was too close to the '80s to leave their influence out of the picture.

Compared with the watered-down versions of the '80s classics, it totally stands out, being in a league of its own.
Nothing sweet or dainty about it, just acrid citruses, bitter woods and tangy herbs, all mixed up in bucket-loads of excavated soil. If you wanna smell like a landslip, or like a lumberjack roaming the log-made bars in his vicinity during his day off, look no further. Whether these bars are in Alaska or Siberia doesn't really matter. Since he stands amongst the ones who built them, he'll always be welcome to every single one of of them.

Bought for pocket change, it coped extremely well with a little trick I played and managed to convince people that it's an outrageously priced and very hard to find niche creation. Yes, I know I should be ashamed about that, but I never let a chance to bash the occasionally arrogant niche foofaraw slip by unused. After all Ulric de Varens does sound like something that costs a gold sovereign per bottle, and the UDV acronym sounds hi-tech enough to support my scenario and worth my imaginary price.

It also kinda proves my theory that since there must be some sort of rock bottom in how cheap their ingredients may come, cheap scents are less likely to be reformulated over the years. So in some cases, there's a good chance that cheap fragrances smell way better than the current versions of pricy designer fragrances which have become the ghosts of their former selves.

It's strange, unexpected, behind the times and way more Azzaro pour Homme than Azzaro pour Homme. In other words, a true real deal.

So yes a total paradox, but by no means a fallacy. Fallacies are the privilege of fragrances tenfold its price, when they try to convince us that their reformulations were inevitable, due to whatever lame arguments they may come up with. Ulric de Varens doesn't seem to believe them. And neither do I...