Caron Tabac Blond is quintessentially 20s:  a fragrance for a time when women were discovering their independence (and – woohoo! – a freer sexuality).  It’s Charlestons and over-made-up silent movie stars and Lucky Strike cigarettes and illegal hooch:  daringly naughty, especially for that period – but (I think) delicious.

The Scent Critic knew all of this already, but it was brought home by an afternoon gathering I attended a few days ago, orchestrated by the wonderful Scratch+Sniff fragrance events (co-ordinated by a knowledgeable perfume-lover who glories in the nom de parfum Odette Toilette).  The salon – the latest in her series of ‘Vintage Session’, and fuelled by generous quantities of ‘fizz’ and cake – was to explore the scents of the 20s, among which Tabac Blond featured.

I already had a bottle lurking on my shelf, waiting like planes in a Heathrow holding pattern for a blog posting to land in.  But Saturday’s pleasurable event sent it shooting up the priority list, because I was so taken with Tabac Blond.  Fascinatingly, it smells overwhelmingly carnation-ish on a paper blotter – which only goes to show what a poor substitute for skin those are.  At first whiff, I thought this was Bellodgia:  Caron’s true, almost ‘single note’ carnation scent.  Initially, I was thinking:  Roger & Gallet Carnation soap.

What emerged, actually, as we sniffed our way through an octet of the 1920s enduring biggest hits, was that carnation was a key ingredient in the other two Caron fragrances we tried (Nuit de Noel and En Avion).  Carnation must have been that era’s equivalent of the iris trend we’ve encountered in the last few years.

On the skin, though, Tabac Blond is something else:  more sophisticated, contemporary and much less great-aunt-ish.  It has the nose-tinglingly powdery clove-spiciness of carnation, for sure – but there’s much more depth.  The base notes rush to the front surprisingly fast (does this even have middle notes…?):  a fug of mysterious incense, luxurious leatheriness, a pulsing amber warmth, a sort of crème brulée vanilla quality and enough patchouli to satisfy my eternally greedy inner hippie – but to be honest, I don’t get much of the ‘promised’ tobacco, except in the first whoosh from the atomiser.  (And even then, it’s a drift of grandpa’s pipe, rather than smoky nightclub, never mind old ashtray.)

If you like Chanel Cuir de Russie, you’ll enjoy this.  (And less expensively, NB.)  Meanwhile, while Youth Dew-haters will loathe this observation, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Tabac Blond was Estée’s inspiration for her ground-breaking blockbuster.  Though a Parisian fragrance house, they were a huge hit in the US in their time, shipping bulk fragrance to be bottled when it landed Stateside.  Allegedly, Marlene Dietrich was a Tabac Blond fan (and wearers don’t get more sophisticated than that).  Today, Caron has dwindled a niche brand reserved for those-in-the-know, who – thankfully – are on the increase, at least on this side of the pond.

Tabac Blond was, apparently, unisex when it came out.  (As, of course, was the trouser-wearing, cigarette-holder-toting, swing-both-ways Dietrich herself.)  Today, I can’t imagine anyone but the most blatant metrosexual drenching himself in Tabac Blond.  It’s a scent for dressing up and playing up;  definitely not for the office.  (Unless you run a burlesque troupe, perhaps.)

Having sprayed it lavishly on for the past few days, I can report that it smells wonderful on clothes (I now have a ‘Tabac Blond’ pashmina) – interestingly, much truer to what’s in the bottle than that blotter was.   Lasts for ages on the skin, too.  If you don’t bathe (it is way too cold in my bathroom right now to take all my clothes off), the sillage can be measured in days, which is impressive in an era of blink-and-they’re-gone sheer-scents.  You don’t dab Tabac Blond.  You pretty much drench yourself in it, and hang the consequences.  At night.  Definitely, at night, with seduction in your sights.  Although alternatively – take it from me – it is divine to cocoon yourself in this while snuggled under a silk eiderdown with a Persephone book and a hot water bottle, for a little extra warmth.

Accessorised, in this weather, by a somewhat-less-than-sexy  faux fur Davy Crockett hat on the head.

www.scratchandsniffevents.com

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Everything about it shrieks the cliché ‘understated luxury’ – but for once, with this modern chypre, created by Michel Almairac, that couldn’t be more appropriate.  We all know that the raison d’être of the scent industry – at its more commercial end – is to drive ‘you-can’t-afford-the-bag-so-buy-the-perfume’ sales.  Simple as that.  Ker-ching, ker-ching, ker-ching.

Mostly, I wouldn’t want the perfume or the handbag – but Bottega Veneta is different.  Well over 30 years ago I found myself virtually licking the window of their first little shop near Harry’s Bar, lusting after the so-unusual woven leather bag I saw there.  I can remember it vividly:  chocolate brown, butter-soft, no logo.  I loved its absolute discretion:  this was a bag that only those-in-the-know would recognise.  (I’d never heard of Bottega Veneta, notwithstanding my Vogue subscription.)  And there was absolutely no way, then, that I was going to find the £700 it required – in 1976, for God’s sake! – to acquire it.  One day, I vowed, I’d own one.

But the Bottega Veneta in my possession isn’t a swanky bag:  it’s a (satisfyingly weighty) bottle.  Bottega Veneta (the scent) is constructed, artisan-style, like a true, classic chypre:  the required blink-and-you-miss them citrus topnotes (here, bergamot, plus a twist of pink pepper);  flowers at the heart – while swirling mistily around the very generous quantity of leather in the base is a an equally hefty dose of oakmoss and patchouli, which gives it plenty of staying power, as well as a little musk and that vanilla.  Some chypres are frankly old-fashioned – yet this feels totally contemporary.  (Funnily enough, this is exactly what I expected the debut Jimmy Choo fragrance to smell like – but no, not a leather note anywhere near that composition.)

This is not saddle-y tack-room leather, or shiny-new-shoe leather, or dominatrix-outfit-in-an-Old-Compton-Street-sex-shop leather;  Bottega Veneta really, truly is put-your-head-in-a-very pricy-handbag-and-inhale leather.  Indeed, there’s a distinct touch of ‘Mummy’s handbag’ in the heart:  not exactly lipsticky, but an iris note that delivers a fleeting, takes-you-back-to-childhood flash.  Then it skips its teenage years entirely and goes seriously sophisticated on you.  Soft as naked skin (and just as nuzzleable).  Silky as ice cream, melting on the tongue;  that’ll be the sweet but super-subtle vanilla undertone, delivering a sense-blurring action.  And almost intoxicating, actually:  it also conjures up a very fine Cognac, clinging stickily to the curved sides of a balloon glass.  (More pleasurable to smell than drink, for me, not least as a hangover-from-hell-avoidance tactic.)

You could wear this in daytime:  it’s versatile, and will get you noticed – and probably get you taken seriously.  But for me, it really only comes alive, vampire-ishly, after sundown.  There’s something sensually dark about it:  the click of heels on limestone echoing in a foggy backstreet behind the Campo San Polo in November, as you weave towards the warmth of a candlelit restaurant off the Rialto Market.  Personally, I’d say it quite simply absolutely begs to be taken out to dinner.  And fed squid ink risotto, and frutti di mare, and one of those little zabaglione-filled pastries, for dessert.  Only it’s impossible just to have one of those – and Bottega Veneta has the same moreish quality as those pastries:  as I sit here, I can’t stop spritzing and re-spritzing, each time enjoying the heft of the Murano-glass-like bottle, with its embossed ‘woven’ base and (naturally) a slim taupe leather tie, at the neck…

What’s really encouraging, to me, is that Bottega Veneta comes from the fragrance house Coty – better known for blockbuster celebrity and designer scents (although some good ones in there, nonetheless:  from SJP to Marc Jacobs, who’s barely put a foot wrong fragrance-wise).  Distribution’s more limited for Bottega Veneta than those crowd-pleasing Big Name Brands – but this still smells daringly like something that a genius niche perfumer would have come up with, unpressured by mood-boards and budgets.  Genius, yes, but Almirac isn’t niche at all:  his long-as-your-arm list of previous creations includes Gucci’s Eau de Gucci, Dunhill for Men, Burberry Body – not to mention (yes, really) Naomi Campbell Cat Deluxe, one of his less enduring creations.

The bottom line, then:  I’m way better off than I was in 1976, for sure – and the identical handbag is still available.  For fifteen hundred quid.  (Now recognisable by many, many more people than in the 70s.)  But I’m not merely resigned to the fact that the closest I will ever get to the bag that I fell in love is this perfume:  given the choice, now, though, I’d actually rather get my leathery lust deliciously satisfied several times a day by this sensational scent,  bank the extra £1450, and put it towards the customarily painful January tax bill.

And I certainly make no apologies for that, either.

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But this is a Labradoodle of a fragrance, as it turns out.  Or a Cockapoo.  You know:  those dogs which are created by taking two fairly attractive breeds (for instance, labrador and poodle), and creating something altogether more cute and appealing.  (Though not a ‘dog person’ – The Scent Critic has plastic bag issues – I have been known to melt when encountering a Cockapoo on the end of a lead.)  Lavender on its own:  aromatic, but a touch antiseptic. Vanilla?  Great in an ice cream, or a sponge cake, but over-eager use in a fragrance sends it speeding in the direction of ickiness.  Together?  In über-nose Jacques Polge’s hands, at least, somewhat delicious.

It took me a few wears to really get my head round Jersey, nevertheless.  (And a few ‘Wow, you smell nice’-es, from friends and colleagues, which always helps.)  It’s crisp and clean at the start:  I really am trailing my fingers through a lavender bush, which obviously is the effect Polge was going for.  Now, classically, lavender is a masculine ingredient.  Or a Little Old Lady ingredient (familiar from brushing your lips against a favourite great-aunt’s slightly hirsute cheek, and getting a whiff of her Yardley).  But here, the herbal cleanliness mellows in just a few minutes, and Jersey becomes cloud-soft and cashmere-snuggly.

OK, I lie.  Jersey is soft like those microfibre socks and blankets which feel like swansdown, are spun from some earth-plundering petrochemical, no doubt – but which are (ssshhhh!) the guilty textile pleasure of many an otherwise soignée woman in my social circle…

In reality it’s intended, I’m sure, to be soft as jersey itself:  the fabric which Coco Chanel embraced in the early 1920s, taking it out of the underwear drawer – it was worn, by chaps, in vest form – and using it instead to create drape-y clothes which liberated women from whalebone corsetry in one French-seamed bound.  Why, the bottle I was sent – not sure if this is standard issue or Scent Critic privilege – actually came with its own drawstring jersey pouch.

The lavender, FYI – grown close to Montpellier – is apparently unusual in that it’s extracted in a ‘dry steam’ distillation, which doesn’t ‘cook’ the raw material in the usual way.  Is that why it has all the lightness, and none of the familiar antiseptic qualities?  Peut-être. (What I do know – having recently been privileged enough to be present at the Chanel jasmine harvest in Grasse – is that they’re obsessive about provenance.  Which is partly, of course, why Chanel is Chanel.)

Rose and jasmine give Jersey its necessary structure – the Little Black Dress ingredients in every fragrance – but the vanilla (and a touch of tonka bean) sweep in pretty smartish.  There’s an element of ‘baby’s head’ about it:  the nuzzleable quality of a freshly-bathed toddler.  Indeed I wouldn’t label Jersey as ‘sexy’, at all;  it’s comforting and soothing (in aromatherapeutic terms, vanilla and lavender are both calming), which probably make it just what the doctor ordered in a global financial meltdown.  (Although, like all the Les Exclusifs creations, Jersey’s exclusivity comes at a pretty hefty price.)

As I fossick around in my scent memories, the fragrance it most reminds me of is the original Tartine et Chocolate (from Givenchy):  originally marketed as a children’s scent, because of its subtle delicacy, but loved by grown-ups, and – just like Jersey – unfolding to a vanilla warmth, on the skin.  Were you so inclined, and despite the white musk whispers in the base, you could also safely spray Jersey on a 4-year-old.  (Not that you probably would, at this price, unless you happened to be wedded to a Russian oligarch).

Equally, it could be worn by a man, I’d say (though probably not the stevedore type), and would smell très elegant as he wafted around.  It doesn’t hang around for that long, to be totally honest, but I think it’s nice while it does.  That might sound like damning with faint praise, but I like both the bold Provençale lavender overture, and the pretty, powdery dry-down.  And I’ve found myself fairly compulsively re-spritzing, since Jersey landed on my desk, which probably speaks volumes.

Plus:  I really love it when perfumers, like dog breeders, break the rules.  Rule-breaking is a great Chanel tradition – why not make frocks out of vest fabric, or be first to try to balance lavender with vanilla? – and while this may not be the greatest scent creation of the 21^st century, and not quite up there alongside Sycomore or 28 La Pausa in the roll-call of Chanel Les Exclusifs triumphs, Jersey deserves a rosette, for trying.

A black and white rosette, please.

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There are some scents that, worn by younger women, are the equivalent of stepping into Mummy’s high heeled shoes.  For a 15-year-old, Aromatics Elixir wasn’t akin simply to slipping into her shoes, but borrowing her fur coat, nicking the car keys and her Balkan Sobranie cigarettes and going for a long, illegal drive, topped off with an illicit back-seat snog (with a cigarette chaser) in a wooded clearing.

Although I don’t often wear Aromatics Elixir, nowadays, every few years we have a bit of a reunion and I’m invariably thrilled – upon re-encountering what has gone on to become one of the all-time classic chypres – to rediscover its confident refinement.  It’s the silk lining to a couture coat.  The snap of a vintage alligator evening bag closing.  The click-click-click of heels on a marble floor (Mummy’s, Bette Davis’s, Suzy Parker’s, anyone’s, actually), to me.

Our latest assignation was triggered by the unveiling of a ‘special edition’ to mark Aromatics Elixir’s aforementioned big Four-Oh.  Rather scarily, I not only remember the original launch, but recall saving up weeks of  pocket money for an early bottle.  (Waiting till there was a gift-with-purchase, I think – a concept pioneered by Clinique and other Lauder brands – to make it worth my while to bundle a bottle of the golden juice with one of Dramatically Different Moisturising Lotion.)  This new version – a little ‘tweak’ on the original (though very, very slight, if you ask The Scent Critic) – is Limited Edition Perfumer’s Reserve, a ‘modern reinterpretation’ as they put it.

Now, Aromatics Elixir, were it a person, would probably be celebrating its 40^th birthday with lunch at Le Cirque.  Or perhaps a getaway to Florence with some skinny-hipped girlfriends for a private art tour of some Palladian villas.  It is that grown-up:  a swirl of sensuality that virtually drifts from the bottle like the smoke from Aladdin’s lamp.  (And it’s the limited-edition bottle that will entice Aromatics Elixir fans back to the counter, actually:  a dark, amber, flower-etched collectible flacon.  Although do beware:  this is not a spray, as I discovered when I unstoppered it while sitting at my desk, and wound up with deliciously fragrant… knees and skirt hem.)

It’s a ‘woody-floral’, technically, with lashings and lashings of patchouli giving that smoky character, without unbalancing the composition.  Allegedly, this reworking is fresher, but it still has the exotic chypre tones of the original.  Definitely exotic from the kick-off:  sandalwood, and rose, with a white flower that never quite tips from woodsiness to florabundance, in my book.  Really, it’s the boom-boom-base of Aromatics Elixir that I love (and which is perhaps a little more understated, in this version):  the thump of musk, amber and vetiver, alongside the patchouli.  Actually, if Aromatics Elixir were a woman, she’d be my kind of chick:  deep, intelligent, bookish, but not too much of a bluestocking to understand the power of lipstick and perfume.

Clinique like to portray it as ‘aromatherapeutic’ (it was the first time I remember reading those words), confected to work on the emotions and moods.  It does have the slightest medicinal quality, in my opinion – those aromatic herbal elements – but all I know is that Aromatics Elixir in all its incarnations makes me feel instantly dressed-up, even in denims.

Nowadays, of course, I have my own rather large collection of high heels, my own car – and heck, even my own wooded clearing, where I’ve been known to go in for a kiss or two.  (With my own husband, FYI.)  But part of me knows that even when I’m tottering on my (leopard-print-covered) Zimmer frame, I’ll still be re-encountering this, with delight.

Aromatics Elixir’s 80^th birthday…?  Bring it on.  (But just don’t ask me to help blow out the candles.)

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Indeed, if you’ve ever stood beside a candy floss machine (cotton candy, to transatlantic scentophiles), Sensuous Nude has that same spun-sugar quality you breathe there, too – and since I live in a seaside town where candy floss is omnipresent you’ll have to trust me on this.  (Er, have you guessed by now that my specialist subject, in the unlikely event that I should ever be invited onto Mastermind, is ‘British confectionery from 1960 to the present day…?’)

Famously, Chanel No. 5 gives that same ‘head-rush’ when you unstopper the bottle:  a sort of champagne fizz (down to the heavy lacing of aldehydes).  Maybe it’s an aldehyde delivering the same effect with Sensuous Nude, but it dances out of the bottle like a 1920s flapper doing an absinthe-fuelled tabletop Charleston.

With whispers of lily of the valley and jasmine, there’s a slightly vintage floral Guerlain quality to phases of this, actually:  that softness which is such a signature of the legendary French perfume house.  (Since ‘Guerlain-esque’ is about as high a compliment as The Scent Critic pays, please take note.)  I’m faintly reminded of Vivienne Westwood’s Boudoir, too.  But after the initial honey-sweetened whoooooosh, the tempo slows and gradually, gradually, g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y, it acquires the come-closer ‘skin scent’ quality which the name alludes to.  And it does become one of those fragrances that has you slightly compulsively (and mortifyingly) sniffing your own body, if there’s no-one within nuzzling distance.

The ultimate lingering base notes, meanwhile, are angora-soft and – well, cuddly as a cashmere-covered hot water bottle.  If I say sandalwood and musk and Melted Woods NaturePrint® (that’s the note’s somewhat clinical proper name), it maybe sounds a bit butch.  And this is never butch, because the woods tiptoe around in the base wearing pale pink satin ballet shoes, alongside what here are almost gourmet-esque elements of amber, heliotrope and vanilla.

Sensuous Nude is a mwah-mwah-sweetie-darling of a scent, actually.  It will not, perhaps, be everyone’s cup of demerara-sweetened tea, but it’s as pretty and girly and flirty and organza-sheer as perfume gets, in its early stages.  With a name like Sensuous, that’s probably not quite what Lauder perfumer Anna Buzantian (who works alongside the legendary Karyn Khoury) had in mind:  was it designed to be more ravish-me-in-your-E-type than bat-your-lashes-at-me-over-a-milkshake…?

I’d say so, wouldn’t you?  But let’s not quibble, because the result is delightful, and very wearable by anyone who wants to feel instantly feminine. By which I mean:  you could stagger through the door after a bitch of a day in which you needed to draw on every bit of authority that your padded-shouldered pinstriped trouser suit, towering heels (and several assertiveness training courses) could help you muster, spritz on Sensuous Nude and basically feel the oestrogen surge through your endocrine system.

OK, I exaggerate.  But you get my drift:  swathe yourself in this and you’re in marabou mules and a satin dressing gown before you’ve so much as put down your briefcase and unbuttoned the pinstripes.  And it’ll work much, much quicker than gin.

Never mind a sherbet lemon…

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So yes, please, give me Miller Harris’s new La Fumée, which is my first love affair of the new harvest of autumnal fragrances.  (There’s a surprising number of real gems, which I’ll work my way through in upcoming postings.)  Woods, of course, are something that British perfumer Lyn Harris does particularly well:  girliness just isn’t her ‘thang’.  But this is probably my favourite of her couple of dozen creations to date.

I wouldn’t call it the most original creation in the fragrance world – there are not-so-distant echoes of Serge Lutens’s light-the-blue-touch-paper-and-retire Ambre Sultan, not to mention Nez à Nez’s cedar-and-amber Atelier d’un Artiste, which has recently had a cameo role on my dressing table.  But this is really, really worth discovering by anyone seduced by amber notes, or drawn to dry woods, because it’s just so darned snuggly and wearable.  And just as soon as this heatwave ends, and I’ve retrieved my opaques from the bottom drawer, I’ll be wrapping myself in its pashmina-warmth pretty compulsively, and it’ll almost compensate for the drop in temperature.

La Fumée has a fleeting dry, aromatic resinous quality at first encounter, which I put down to the cistus – but then the tendrils of incense creep stealthily, and linger.  Real, proper, church-y incense (so that’ll be lots of frankincense, then – such a favourite note of mine I sometimes wear the essential oil, on is own.) It’s subtly spiced, like a cup of chai.  To me there’s also a vague demerara sugar quality – almost certainly from the amber – which stops it being too masculine.  (Though there isn’t a male neck in the land I wouldn’t want to smell this on, frankly.)  It’s the perfect counterpoint:  without sugar, what would chai be…?  (Bitter, is the answer.)  Just sometimes, if in need of extra oomph, I’ve been known to add a few grains of sugar to my afternoon Lapsang – not something I do with any other tea – for the same reason:  it softens its butch woodsmoke character.

Just as Lyn Harris is a dab hand with woods, she’s a maestro (or whatever the female equivalent is) with geranium (viz her scent Geranium Bourbon) – another reason this appeals to me:  there are moments when you can almost feel the hairy leaves being crushed between fingers, in your granny’s greenhouse.  Oh, OK, my granny’s greenhouse.  (Odd, though:  such is scent’s memory-trawling power that even though I’ve got my own Alitex, and my own scented geranium plants, it’s still my grandmother’s that I think of…)

La Fumée stays a tad religious, throughout, but at some point travels through space from Vatican City to India:  all of a sudden, you sniff your wrist again and realise that this has become more Buddhist temple than cathedral-esque.  Now I love, love, love sandalwood, as a fragrance note – I still treat myself to Roger & Gallet’s Sandalwood soaps (the smell of which is still discernible in one box I’ve kept for over 30 years) – and every time I stumble into it, in a scent, it still lifts my heart.  Here, the sandalwood hangs out with birch tar.  So, no need for me to loiter roadside for my tarry hit, here.

What Lyn seems to have resisted, cleverly, are the tobacco notes that can make some smoky scents smell a bit old-ashtray-like, after a few hours.  No, this is fireside embers, in a velvet-curtained room, before you throw them open to let pale winter sunshine flood through the windows on the morning after a sensual evening before.  (Did I mention it was sexy?  Because it is, in a come-closer rather than an in-your-face way.)

I adore it.  And even more pleasingly I gather it comes in a scented candle, which I can’t wait to get my hands on, too, with a hunch this could go instantly rocketing up my home fragrance charts.

Miller Harris, you just lit my fire…

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Happily, both wrists are now spritzable again, and to restart this blog I thought I’d look at an audacious twist on an all-time classic:  Jacques Polge’s Chanel No. 19 Poudré, which was launched on what would have been Mademoiselle Chanel’s 128^th birthday, 19^th August.  (Hence the name.)  Audacious, of course, because it’s always brave to play with a classic, even if there’s an imperative to introduce it to a new (and in this case, presumably, younger) audience.

Now, the original No. 19 was one of The Scent Critic’s favourites:  my ‘workday’ fragrance when I was pretty young myself, typing up conveyances in a Sloane Street solicitor’s office, reading magazines rather than editing or writing for them.  I thought it was le dernier cri in sophistication, and I loved that it was crisp and green and not too girly.

So for me, this has happy, nostalgic echoes of that No. 19, with the green edges slightly buffed off.  There’s less of nose-tingling champagne-like head-rush of aldehydes which is as much a signature of many of Chanel’s scents as that double-C logo, because it heads straight for the sharp green galbanum, such a key ingredient in the original.  It’s wet, cool, crisp and intriguing:  all crushed leaves and stems in a dark wood with maybe a little waterfall playing somewhere off into the undergrowth onto limestone slabs.  And at this point, it’s très, très No. 19, but without the slightly bitter edge that makes that fragrance rather love-it-or-hate-it.

The much-touted ‘poudré’-ness of this, we’re told, is down to orris – that so-precious iris root, and a note that’s become a bit of a Little Black Dress in the perfumer’s repertoire, in the past few years.  In reality, orris was always a key element of No. 19.  But Monsieur Polge has earned a reputation for himself as an iris-meister, placing it at the pulsing heart of 28 La Pausa, in Chanel’s Les Exclusifs collection.  Indeed, having for decades controlled the production of jasmine and rose for their fragrances, in Grasse, four years ago Chanel planted their own fields of iris, which will produce their first harvest this year.  Clearly, iris isn’t a ‘moment’ in fragrance fashion, to them, but a key element in scent’s future.

The irony?  To my nose, here, it’s used so sparingly that actually I don’t get much of iris’s famous candied powdery sweetness, at all.

That’s not to say that No. 19 Poudré doesn’t soften and warm up, after its flurry of ‘galbanumania’.  There’s the merest breath of orange blossom, and the usual garland of jasmine and rose which are the pillars (pergolas?) that support virtually every scent created – but especially so Chanel’s.  At this point, to me, it slightly loses its way:  goes fuzzy and a bit formless.  The heart, to be frank, is a bit ‘so-what?’.  (On the plus side, No. 19 devotees will just keep sprtizing, to grab another galbanum fix, and may not be bothered by its lack of heart.)

But do hang in there.  Just go about your business and return to your wrists later.  There’s enough vetiver in the (eventual) dry-down to keep even The Scent Critic smiling, with a little bit of gentleman’s clubby leather and some tonka.  And Polge has also played up the musks, delivering a (very) subtle, sueded sexiness, apparent to anyone withing nuzzling range, that was absent from the original.  (At 19 myself, I was scared to death of remotely sexy fragrances:  No. 19 seemed almost virginal, to me.)  These base notes kick around for quite a while, which makes ‘the missing middle’ even more of a mystery.

The big favour that this ‘flanker’ has done me?  It’s reminded me of the glories of No. 19 itself, made me want to go back and fall in love with it again.  And one of these days, if I keep up the physio, my right hand may even be strong enough to open the cellophane encasing the box, without help…

The Scent Critic lives in (fragrant) hope.

PS  To watch a rather wonderful interview with Jacques Polge and Christopher Sheldrake, Chanel’s resident perfumers, click here.

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Actually, I believe fragrances have a ‘colour’, too.  And in fact, a lot of work goes into creating a ‘juice’ inside the bottle, to ensure it matches the fragrance’s ‘vibe’.  In the case of Maison Martin Margiela (Untitled) L’Eau, this slight mouthful of a scent, I think they got it spot-on:  a limpid pale green – which couldn’t be anything but refreshing, could it…?

Quite simply, it smells green.  Close your eyes and sniff, breathe in the mossy mid-notes and the buchu – a relative of blackcurrant (this has a decided Ribena tang, like rubbing your fingers on a Ribes plant).  And I defy you to get anything but visions of green swimming into your mind’s eye.  I’m right there, myself, in a shaded wood, lying on slightly damp ground and looking up into a leafy canopy.  I’m seated in a French chateau garden, one that’s bi-sected by immaculate topiary, with limestone gravel underfoot.  (There’s a sort of ‘flinty’ quality in this scent, somewhere – the scent of a statue, or a piece of chalk – adding an even more intriguing dimension.) 

Or maybe I’m clipping a privet hedge on a leaden afternoon:  this has a definite note of privet, that archetypically suburban hedging plant, which – when allowed to flower – has a seductive sweetness, to contrast with its leafy sharpness.  (Trouble is, privet hedges usually belong to men who regard stainless steel garden shears as the modern equivalent of a warrior’s blade – and feel compelled to slash everything in sight.  So alas, privet’s usually given a short-back-and-sides long before the deceptively dainty sprinkling of powerfully fragrant white blossoms is allowed its moment in the sun.  Or even its moment in the shade.)

Last summer, I fell heavily for the first incarnation of this fragrance.  Found myself compulsively going back into a Sephora store, to spritz and re-spritz, before finally getting my hands on a bottle.  I like this just as much, if not more:  a fresh-in-every-way new take on the original, squeezing in extra citrus notes in the overture – a squirt of grapefruit, and lots of mandarin (reminds me of a favourite old L’Artisan Parfumeur, because of that).  Thanks to the citrus, it has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Eau Sauvage moment, too.

Fleetingly, it goes slightly ‘soapy’ – good soap, expensive soap, but soap nonetheless.  (I’m thinking Palmolive…?)  Maybe that’s the promised orange blossom.  There’s curly mint, in a dry, aromatic rather than a toothpaste-y way.  For me, there’s also a nose-tingling, almost black-peppery quality to it, at times.  But then the deep green notes ricochet back in again, taking you deeper into the fragrance’s chlorophyll heart.  Base notes?  Hard to put my finger on any, except maybe the pepperiness.  Instead, it goes sort of dreamy and airy and softly, to the point where compulsively you just have to hit the very sexy pump-action ‘trigger’ spray, and re-spritz.

The reality is, alas, that if you poll the average Primark or M & S customer, they probably wouldn’t have a clue who Martn Margiela is.  Quirky, famous for swimming against fashion’s tide, he creates clothes that those-in-the-know collect like Fabergé eggs, Victorian watercolours or (much more likely) mid-Century modern furniture.  His clothes are sophisticated, intelligent, for connoisseurs – rather than something you can just shrug to schloomph around the shops.

All of which could apply to (Untitled) L’Eau, too.  This scent certainly deserves to move Margiela out of his tiny ‘designer’ niche, and make him familiar to a wider audience.  Though it isn’t something you’d wear to make you feel sexy, but for yourself.  It belongs on someone who’s comfortable in her skin.  (Or his.  I’d happily smell this on a man, BTW.)

On a hot, hot, day, preferably.  In a shady garden.  With an icy Gin & Tonic, within easy reach.  (Well, a Scent Critic can dream, can’t she…?)

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However, Ambre Nuit is the perfect finale to the week.  Sexier and more smoochy than the either Milly-la-Forêt or Vétiver, which I reviewed earlier this week.  Not one for the office.  (Unless you’re actually having an affair with one of your co-workers, that is.)

The clue is in the name:  Amber Night.  Although actually, despite its seductive qualities, to some extent it could be Amber Lite:  not as intoxicating as some ambers (I’m thinking Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan, or Laura Mercier Ambre Passion), which have a heady, pendant stillness, like the air before a big storm.  It’s on-your-neck rather than in-your-face.  And as a result, maybe Ambre Nuit isn’t quite racy or down-and-dirty enough for some amber-lovers – but for those who are just discovering this sensual, warm category of fragrances, it’s an exquisite amber ‘starter’ perfume.

In fact, Dior have tagged this as ‘unisex’.  And yes, it could work on a guy.  (Thanks to the spicy undertones in Ambre Nuit, I’m even vaguely and slightly bizarrely reminded of Aramis:  that great classic male scent.)  But at the heart of this is a pulsing, beautiful Turkish rose note, and the tingle of pink pepper, which made its debut (as I remember) in Lauder’s Pleasures, which have it listing in a feminine direction.  Then a buttery-soft leather note creeps in, and more spices.  (Cumin?  Nutmeg?  Bay?  To me, it’s mouthwateringly Christmas puddingy, at this point.)

At the base, you’ll also eventually get to pencilly cedar, and blissful patchouli, once it’s been skin-warmed.  And ‘warm’ is the active word, here.  It’s cosy, nuzzleable, a faux fur blanket of a perfume, for snuggling up with when North winds are rattling your double-glazing, or for making an-already sultry summer night even steamier.  At the same time, it has a sort of comfort-blanket factor:  a skin-like quality that encourages self-sniffing.  (Slightly embarrassing, in company, that, although I’ve often found myself doing it.)

There are soft, resinous whispers of incense (shades of Andy Tauer’s Le Maroc Pour Elle, here), which mean it’s right up my street – or rather, right up my (kashbah) alley.  And there must be vanilla, too, because if I close my eyes, I get Nestlé’s Condensed Milk, momentarily.  Or maybe the sweetness of smoke from a vanilla-scented narguillé pipe, wafting from an adjacent table in an Arabic restaurant.  That kasbah-esque quality, again.

It strikes me Ambre Nuit literally see-saws between masculine and feminine, rather than being ‘unisex’, or AC/DC.  The bergamot intro is fresh and sort of clean-male-straight-out-the-shower-esque.  Then that floral heart goes all girly, powdery, pretty-pretty.  And as it segues into the enduring, lingering base, all that leather and smoke in the base seems definitely more testosterone than oestrogen.  And then there’s that vanilla.  But it’s smooth.  S-o-o-o-o-o smooth.  Like a stair that has been worn to silkiness by a thousand slippered feet.  Or a baby’s skin.  A very, very expensive suede jacket.  A glass of Bailey’s.  All those fragrant transitions take place within Ambre Nuit seamlessly, beautifully, without so much as a discordant quaver – never mind a discordant note.

The Scent Critic would swoon to encounter it on a man’s neck.  It makes me wish that my paramour would drench himself in something more complicated than neat patchouli oil.  But since that’s not about to happen, I’ll have one more top-to-toe spritz of Ambre Nuit, slip into something more comfortable – and see what happens, when he smells it on me.

The weekend starts here…

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But no.  What François Demachy’s creation ever-so-slightly reminds me of – and don’t scuttle away at the mention – is none other than that love-it-or-hate-it Dior blockbuster Poison, which (together with Giorgio Beverly Hills) created an entire category of rather scary scents, in the 80s:  the ‘room-rocker’.

Until I smelled Dior Vétiver, I never realised there was – well, quite so much of this grassy ingredient in Poison itself.  Then I looked it up, and voilà!  There’s the vetiver.  So as I breathed this new creation, I realised:  vetiver totally underpins Poison.  Which I thought I hated…

Now, technically, Dior Vétiver is a masculine fragrance.  But I know lots of women who are so drawn to this ingredient they’re perfectly happy to drench themselves in anything vetiverous (in my case, Chanel Sycomore until this point), and will be pleased to discover Dior’s exclusive (and accordingly) pricy vetiver offering.

It’s pretty much vetiver, pure and simple.  OK, there’s a twist of bitter grapefruit – and I get bergamot and lemon – in the very first cologne-y whoosh.  Then the vetiver sways stylishly in and hangs around like a gentleman snoozing in his club, after lunch, and who’s still there when the last glass of Port’s been passed around and the cleaners are lurking keenly by the green baize door with the Dyson.  Staying power?  This has it in spades.  I could still distinctly make it out 24 hours after spritzing.

Vetiver – Vetiveria zizaniodes - is a fascinating note in itself.  Smells woody, yet it’s a grass.  Grows a couple of metres tall, with rhizomatous roots that look a bit like couchgrass.  (Oh, if only couchgrass had a scent, how happy we gardeners would be…)  In folk magic terms, it’s said to provide safety, sealing you off from negative energies – and increasing wealth.  It certainly has a ‘grounding’ quality – and as for wealth…?  Well, Mr. Ford and Messieurs Guerlain haven’t done so badly out of vetiver.  In perfumery, vetiver also a first-class fixative (hence the Duracell bunny staying power of this).

Here, all that Demachy’s done to deepen the vetiver is add an espresso-strong jolt of robusta coffee, though that disappears pretty smartish.  There are softening elements, too, albeit officially unidentified:  a little musk, maybe a smidgen of amber, and something (iris?) which rounds and sweetens the smooth woody dryness, slightly.  Overall, though, I’d call it a soliflore – a single note scent.  (Although that description applies to floral notes, so would this be a soliherbe, perhaps…?)

But after it’s been on the skin awhile, my tennis-elbow-nostril exercise returns me to those whispers of Poison.  To be fair – or rather, unfair – I’ve got good reasons to have taken against Poison, which has little to do with the scent itself.  Back in the 80s, when The Scent Critic was editor of a glossy magazine for teens (by the name of Honey), I went to Poison’s launch.  We were stacked in tiers in The Hippodrome, to watch an interminable ballet marking the scent’s debut, an art form on which the company’s president, Maurice Roger, was very keen.  (There was another a year or so later, for the launch of Dior Fahrenheit, on a freezing summer’s evening in pre-Canary Wharf moonscape Docklands, at which canapés were served out of bowls of dry ice, in a draughty tent, while we bare-legged journos – who’d been taken there on the open deck of a breeze-tossed boat – shivered with collective hypothermia.  Happily, we all held the Dior PR in huge affection and were happy to jump through flaming hoops for her.  Which, on reflection, would have been rather handy on that frigid night.)

Throughout the Poisonous ballet – I’m still trying to figure out what it meant, 30 years on – this olfactory innovation was pumped intoxicatingly into the air.  As we left, we were given Poison-drenched hankies.  By then, I had the mother of all headaches and have given it a wide berth since.  Now, knowing that within its smoky depths there lurks a large dollop of vetiver, I’m going to have to go back to Poison with an open mind.

And – well, this is a turn-up for the book – I actively want to.  That is so not where I thought I’d end up, when first I spritzed this.  But once again – aided by a little grass – I’m reminded of fragrance’s magical-mystery-tour powers.

The grass, in my case, being vetiver.

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