Mary Greenwell, how do I love thee…?  Let The Scent Critic count the ways.  First, Mary is one of the most gifted make-up artists ever to whisk her brushes over a famous face (including, as many know, countless supermodels and [...]]]>

Mary Greenwell plum photographed by The Scent Critic on a background of unwaxed organic lemons

Mary Greenwell, how do I love thee…?  Let The Scent Critic count the ways.  First, Mary is one of the most gifted make-up artists ever to whisk her brushes over a famous face (including, as many know, countless supermodels and the late Princess of Wales…)  Secondly, she is an inspiring, charming bundle of energy:  a whirlwind of tips, ideas and anecdotes.  And thirdly – relevant here – she has now created two fragrances of some considerable note.

Plum, Mary’s debut scent, is in The Scent Critic’s opinion one of the most dazzling fragrances of the last decade.  (You can read my review, here.)  But Lemon, while less opulent, is no less lovely.  Quite some time ago, garnering second opinions, Mary gave me a teensy sample bottle of Lemon.  When it squirted its last, it was all I could do not to take a hammer to the bottle, to get the weensiest last drop.

In its whacking great final flacon (as lethal a weapon as Mary’s first fragrance), Lemon does not disappoint.  I get Limoncello.  Sherbet lemons.  A bowl of lemons on the kitchen table.  In the wrong hands, lemon can go – well, pear-shaped, rapidly headling downhill in the direction of loo cleaner or furniture polish.  Not here.  It’s like zesting lemons into a spring risotto, or (something I can only fantasise about on yet another bloody freezing British Sunday), plucking a sun-warmed lemon from a Sicilian tree.

It literally couldn’t be called anything but lemon.  The opening burst is citrus-a-go-go:  not just the eponymous fruit, but a head-rush of other citrus – bitter orange (quite a fragrance note du jour), Calabrian bergamot, lime – and a squeeze of mandarin.

But underneath the shimmering, peel-powered surface pulses a green and sophisticated heart.  I get a surprising whisper of Floris Rose Geranium soap (not a clue why), and then the floral note tiptoe in – spring flowers like hyacinths and narcissi, which really ought to be blooming outside right now, yet there’s nary a daff daring enough to blow his yellow trumpet, even on the south coast.

Like Plum (which is also a chypre), it was created by fourth-generation ‘nose’ François Robert – some coup, and definitely elevating this above the potentially disparaging label ‘make-up artist’s fragrance’.  (Mary’s raison d’etre for creating perfume, rather than the more obvious range of lipsticks or foundations is that for her, scent was always the finishing touch, applied to photo-ready supermodels before she sent them in front of the camera, to get them in the perfect sexy, feminine mood for their close-up.)

And like Plum, it lasts almost forever on the skin.  Days.  Literally days.  Not the top notes, of course, or even the green floral heart, but the woody, aromatic dry-down.  Emphasis on the dry.  It’s a Mediterranean backstreet, at the end of a baking hot day, with grey-leaved plants tumbling over rock walls.  It’s strips of high-wattage sunshine, filtered through the slats of a shutter while you take a siesta.  It’s a little bit Santa Fe cedar and pinõn, to me, too.  (Reminds me, actually, of a fabulous shop in New York’s Soho, called Zona, where I bet Mary used to sink a lot of cash, too.)  I definitely get the signature chypre oakmoss and patchouli, but fundamentally, it’s hot-hot-hot holidays, in a bottle.

The challenge of an independent perfume house, though, as Mary’s is, is a classic one:  without massive advertising or PR budgets, retailers don’t always take niche fragrances seriously.  House of Fraser had the exclusive on Plum, at its debut, and strikes me they didn’t have a clue what a gem they had on their hands.  The best place to get yours on Lemon, right now, is probably Mary’s own website, www.marygreenwell.com, where (oh, why doesn’t everyone do this?) you can buy a very affordable sample.

Personally, I feel that perfume-lovers should be shouting from the (terracotta-tiled) rooftops about Lemon, to get it on the fragrance map.  Lemon should be showcased in fine perfumeries, around the world, a worthy shelf-mate for the countless designer fragrances out there.  So that these two fragrances – Lemon and its sibling Plum – become the first in a long, long Mary Greenwell line.

Lemon?  It’s my new perfume squeeze…

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The Scent Critic is writing this review with a slightly broken heart – because not long after snapping this photo, I dropped my precious bottle of Bois de Paradis in the sink, shattering it, only to watch $140 of fragrance glug down [...]]]>

Bois de Paradis photographed by The Scent Critic against vintage San Francisco postcards

The Scent Critic is writing this review with a slightly broken heart – because not long after snapping this photo, I dropped my precious bottle of Bois de Paradis in the sink, shattering it, only to watch $140 of fragrance glug down the sink.

You see, despite being in the fortunate position of being dispatched literally hundreds of bottles of perfume every year, this was one I splashed out for (and splashed on) with my own hard-earned. (I suppose I should count my blessings: last time this happened, it was the sink and not the bottle that smashed…)

But quite aside from not exposing fragrance to heat and humidity (its enemies), it’s another reason to keep my ‘wardrobe’ of scents in the bedroom, not the bathroom. I encountered Parfum Delrae’s exquisite confection in the perfumery at Barney’s in San Francisco, aided and abetted by a most passionate sales assistant. (Who then proceedd to put Delrae Roth directly in touch with The Scent Critic, which is beyond efficient.) Having previously flirted with Amoreuse (when Les Senteurs brought these fragrances into the UK for a while), this was the Parfums Delrae masterpiece I had to flex my Amex for: a warm, woody but somehow breezy scent, garlanded with full-blown roses and tangle of ripe brambles.

It’s soft and fuzzy round the edges, right from the ever-so-slightly-lemony start – even as I sit here reeking. It’s also lusciously fruity – and by that I mean luscious wafts of jam cooking on a stove late-summer at berry-preserving time: ‘fruity’ has become such an insult in perfume circles, gotten itself a bad name – when in the right hands it delivers a luscious, sexy juiciness, rather than sickly-sweet bottled goo. To wit, Jean-Claude Ellena’s 1986 In Love Again for YSL, or the fruity-chypre qualities of Cartier’s fabulous So Pretty. (Note to self: must go and smell that old favourite again, soon.)

Unlike scents which have a definite season, this is something I believe could be worn year-round. I bought it on a sunny summer day in San Francisco, after the fog had burned off, and it was just perfect then. I’ve been wearing it as autumn sweeps in on Atlantic storms, and it’s just fine with opaque tights and cashmere – and for me, that’s unusual: I have summer scents, and winter scents, but few that bridge the season. It lasts forever and a day on the skin, the woody/ambery/incense notes hanging around for days if I don’t shower. (And as a non-sweat-er, I don’t, always… Which will horrify my American followers, perhaps, but not my French…)

To me, Bois de Paradis’s ultimate triumph is that it’s so perfectly-balanced. Not too much of this, not an overdose of that. So exquisitely balanced, actually that it conjures up an image of a ballerina en pointe, with one wood-blocked toe on the head of a man riding a unicycle across a tightrope strung between the two sides of the Grand Canyon. So poised that it almost takes my breath away, then. I shouldn’t be surprised that it sprang from the imagination of Michel Roudnitska, who’s as close to perfume royalty as it gets. (Along with the Polges and the Guerlains, of course.)

Only now we’re parted. Almost. Because the fact is I was wearing a silk shirt when my fragrant accident happened, and it got drenched. As it happens, Bois de Paradis has a fantastic sillage, and some time after the event is still wafting away. So I’m now carrying my shirt round in a suitcase (The Scent Critic happens to be in Paris, perfume capital of the world, for some meetings) – and retrieving it regularly for a sensual fix, sniffing it like a grown-up little girl and her blankie. What I get, now, are the warm, walk-in-the-woodsy, hint-of-bonfire notes that are Bois de Paradis’s lasting signature. Just glorious. But my ‘sniffie’ is going to have to last for another six weeks or so when I’m back in the land of Parfums Delrae, with access to a Barney’s, and part with another 140 bucks.

Small price for a mended heart, though, eh…?

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Every now and then the folks at Guerlain have a go at tweaking Shalimar to make it more appealing to a younger audience.  Or bring in a groovy bottle designer (groovesters don’t get much groovier than Jade Jagger), to sassy up the flacon [...]]]>

Shalimar Parfum Initial photographed by Jo Fairley at its One Marylebone launch

Every now and then the folks at Guerlain have a go at tweaking Shalimar to make it more appealing to a younger audience.  Or bring in a groovy bottle designer (groovesters don’t get much groovier than Jade Jagger), to sassy up the flacon and add a dash of style that will attract a younger wearer.  Shalimar Parfum Initial is the latest of these efforts (following in the ballerina-pumped footsteps of Shalimar Light and Eau de Shalimar, to name but two…)

What’s fascinating to The Scent Critic, however, is that back in 1959 when her paramour was a teenager (on a US Airforce base in Chateauroux, in France’s flat-as-a-pancake intérieur), Shalimar – the original, un-tweaked, va-va-voom, wrap-yourself-in-icing-sugared-cashmere animalic Shalimar – turns out to have been the scent-of-choice of all the American teenage girls-about-town.

If you stood on the streets, he tells me, you’d encounter great gusts of Shalimar as these young women went past on the back of sundry French boys’ vélos (while their parents waited, biting their nails at home, no doubt…)  He therefore has a certain Pavlovian attraction for it, and indeed:  Shalimar is one of the handful of scents that he’s bought me in over two decades together.  And something quite funny happens to him whenever he smells it.  (Good funny.)

So:  like many women, I used to write off Shalimar as an old lady’s scent, but over the years I’ve come to believe that it should be rehabilitated.  Personally, I don’t think Guerlain need to change a darned thing – and as for appealing to younger women…?  Surely its powdery, almost candied sweetness is just the thing to attract cupcake-baking, pink-wearing, giggling teens, if it was just pitched right…?

But still, try Guerlain does, repeatedly, to reposition their most iconic scent.  Yet in reality, to The Scent Critic’s nose, this soft pink juice bears only glancing similarities to the original.  Thierry Wasser has siphoned off many of the sugary/vanilla elements that have always been Shalimar’s unmistakable signature, removed the come-roll-in-the-hay base notes – and replaced them with a pretty, sheer white musk, layered on traces of amber, tonka bean and quite a bit of patchouli (though there can never be enough of that, in my book), giving a gourmand edge to the dry-down.

He’s delivered floral whispers in its mid-stages:  pretty, fairyish traces of rose and jasmine (goes without saying, though I will), and iris – but with a positively dainty touch, compared to many of the iris-focused scents out there.  It’s also quite leafy and green, at this point, in contrast to Shalimar original (which is like someone rolled you in a basket of fresh-picked petals, to deliberately tickle your soul).

And since for some reason I seem to be talking about the notes in reverse order, let’s talk about the overture:  a whoosh of lemon and bergamot, which gets the whole thing off to a very clean-linen-sheets start.  But actually, it’s not illogical to look at this upside-down, because those first notes hang about, throughout.  What else comes through for me as it develops is an unusual almondy/birch tar/bonfire element – not unlikeable, and maybe it’s my skin chemistry that does that, but it’s there, like the smoke lingering in the air after a neighbour’s backyard blaze.

In the end, it’s pretty and well-rounded, and never tips into the marshmallow territory of many modern Orientals heat-seeking younger wearers (or indeed, the peerless Shalimar itself).  My 16-year-old recipient, once I’d done with the bottle and passed it on, was delighted with it – and that’s probably Guerlain’s aim.

But it doesn’t make me worry for a moment that it’ll have bad boys gathering round like moths to a candle, dragging her to dives to sample absinthe while listening to heavy metal (or whatever teenagers like to listen to, these days).  And I can’t help loving it just a little less, for that.

So maybe I’ll just give spring for a bottle of Shalimar parfum itself, and wait for the real fireworks to start.  Because isn’t that, after all, what being a teenager is all about…?

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The Scent Critic has never been to a real speakeasy – but (in the nicest possibly way), I’m still in recovery after a perfumed version, hosted by the knowledgeable and highly entertaining Odette Toilette as the latest in her series of Scratch+Sniff evenings.

Think:  fragrances [...]]]>

Urura's Tokyo Café photographed against cherry blossom by The Scent Critic

The Scent Critic has never been to a real speakeasy – but (in the nicest possibly way), I’m still in recovery after a perfumed version, hosted by the knowledgeable and highly entertaining Odette Toilette as the latest in her series of Scratch+Sniff evenings.

Think:  fragrances overdosed with ‘lost’ or banned (or at least, under IFRA, restricted) ingredients – like storax and angelica.

Think:  a whiff of actual musk.  (PETA supporters will hate this, of course, but the real, warm, indescribably sexy thing is almost enough to make even a long-term bunny-loving veggie like The Scent Critic want more, more, more.  Though I did say ‘almost’.)

Think:  an encounter with an incredibly gifted and entirely off-the-wall self-taught perfumer, Sarah McCartney (more of her anon), who single-handedly gives the finger to those who sniffily say you need a chemistry degree and several years hanging around the great and the fragrant good in Grasse, to become a ‘nose.’

Oh, and I had gin.  In a Negroni.  On a Tuesday.  I never drink during the week.  Never.  But heck:  what’s a speakeasy for…?

It was, quite simply, the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on for quite some time, and The Scent Critic came away beaming from ear to ear (never mind nostril to nostril) having discovered some seriously exciting new left-of-field names in perfumery, who I’ll be exploring further over the coming weeks and months:  Pappillon Perfumery and Darasina.  We had to shout out what crime we thought their fragrances might have committed.  (Which degenerated into a bit of Miss-Scarlet-in-the-Library-with-the-Iron-Bar Cluedo-ness, suggestions-wise.)

And then the second half of the evening was given over to Ms. McCartney.

Don’t bother Googling ‘Sarah McCartney Perfume’:  the first approximately million and a half entries are for her near-namesake Stella – but I predict we’ll be hearing much, much more about this particular McCartney.  Provided she decides to take this career swerve seriously:  for now, her scents are pretty much under-the-counter purchases by those-in-the-know.

They glory in titles like The Lion Cupboard (she wanted to create a scent that reminded her of her late dad, who kept his things in a piece of furniture called – yes – ‘The Lion Cupboard’:  all tobacco and woods and general masculine dad-ness).  Then there’s Evil Max – what a name! – which was created for her co-writer in her copywriting business:  turns out, Ms. McCartney used to edit Lush Times, which neatly explains why she could basically do stand-up as a fall-back career choice, if a) the copywriting and b) her new career as a perfumer don’t pan out.

The Scent Critic walked out with several little vials, having opted to buy the larger version of Urura’s Tokyo Café.  It’s probably the ‘easiest’ of her scents to wear:  a gorgeous fuzzy marshmallow of a perfume, baby-powder pretty but with a touch of green grass.  And then when you’ve had it on for a while, quite a while, it gets quite sexy.  But it’s probably the hardest of the 4160 Tuesdays fragrances to review:  so seamless it’s virtually impossible to identify any one note.  To me, it is essence-of-spring blossom.  Imagine lying under a cherry tree in a dream, while petals gently float down and shroud you in their floral sweetness, as if on time-lapse.  It smells like all the edges have been lovingly buffed off this perfume, till it’s smooth and soft as a baby’s bottom.  (Only a lot more deliciously-scented.)  It is also quite seriously, seriously addictive.  I’ve spritzed my way through almost a quarter of the reasonably-sized bottle of (cloudy) juice in barely a fortnight.

It was named, so she explained, for a colleague who opened a café in Tokyo, where Sarah went to help with a fund-raising event after the earthquake/tsunami.  The Negroni had kicked in by then so I can’t honestly remember if they sold the fragrance to raise money, or cooked rice and vegetables, or unicycled topless across the Ginza, but there’s a definite Japanese link somewhere.  (And you wonder why The Scent Critic doesn’t drink, mid-week…?)

She calls her company 4160 Tuesdays because if we’re lucky enough to live till we’re 80, we have exactly 4160 Tuesdays to make the most of.  (As well as the other days.)  As she puts it, ‘Whether you fritter them, sleep through them or work all the hours you’re awake, do it with awareness.  And on a Tuesday, do something different.  The 4160 Tuesdays project is about mindful observation, nerd-like fascinating, endless exploration and – fingers crossed – mixing it all up and having good ideas.  At least once a week.  If we can’t be bright and brilliant every day of the week, let’s have a crack at making Tuesdays more interesting.’  (Or in my case, more gin-soaked, which may not be what she meant at all.)

Sarah started playing with perfume ingredients when her boss, Lush founder Mark Constantine, gave her his encouragement – and some ingredients.  (He’s a lovely man, and like that:  no ego, just a great sense of fun and bottomless creativity.)  Who could have predicted, though, that she’d turn out to be quite so bloody good…?

Thus far, her website (www.4160tuesdays.com) doesn’t sell Sarah’s fragrances.  My only advice for trying to get your own hands on Urura’s Tokyo Café is to e-mail her via the GET IN TOUCH section on her site.  What I will say is:  you won’t regret it.

And if she’s reading this, I have only one thing to say.  (Slur?)

‘Sarah McCartney:  DO give up the day job.’  Because the world of perfume needs shaking up, and you’re the gal to do it.

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One of The Scent Critic’s favourite smells in the world is a flower shop:  the damp, mossy, earthy scent that assails and delights me upon stepping over the threshold of, say, Kenneth Turner in London, or Christian Tortu (in Paris), or the fabulous little Japanese [...]]]>

Photographed by Jo Fairley against a vintage Sanderson screenprinted chintz

One of The Scent Critic’s favourite smells in the world is a flower shop:  the damp, mossy, earthy scent that assails and delights me upon stepping over the threshold of, say, Kenneth Turner in London, or Christian Tortu (in Paris), or the fabulous little Japanese florist Shimizu that to my great joy (and fairly eternal astonishment) happens to be just a few steps from my doorstep in Hastings, and showcases some of the most beautiful and creative bouquets I’ve ever seen.

So it’s pretty obvious why I’d fall for this:  one of a trio of limited edition (darn it!) scents from Jo Malone, which just launched.  (My advice:  if you want to smell them, make it snappy;  last year’s limited edition tea range just flew out of the door.)  Like that tea-inspired range, the London Blooms collection is the work of Christine Nagel, who really can’t put a well-shod foot wrong, in my book.  This collection cleverly contrasts notes that you wouldn’t necessarily put together, but she totally pulls it off.

This is damp and green and totally, totally mossy.  Indeed, it’s a Japanese moss garden, in a bottle.  Frankly, I might as well be lying on the moist ground in a shaded forest and basically inhaling the colour green.  There’s a cassis sharpness to it, too.  (Looking at the notes, they do feature blackcurrant – though I always think that’s cheating until I’ve had a darned good sniff, or I end up mentally seeking out certain elements, rather than embarking on a journey of discovery.)  Rather than the juicy fruit of the blackcurrant bush, this is more akin to the Ribes plant, whose leaves and drooping flowers are currently bursting into life.  There’s a bush between my house and my best friend’s and I’m incapable of resisting the temptation to rub its faintly furry leaves between my fingers, where the tart scent lingers for a surprisingly long time.  Ribes is a bit love-it-or-hate-it (it tips over into cat wee at the end of its life), but I’m a fan.

With plenty of oakmoss, Peony & Moss is ever-so-slightly chyprée, without the smouldering spices and musks you’d associate with one of those.  On the one hand, this is light-as-air.  But it’s also got a real hands-in-the-dirt quality to it.  And it really is wet and damp:  a garden after a massive, stormy downpour, when lightning’s nitrogen fix has green shoots twining up obelisks almost before your very eyes.  (I have always thought it supremely clever that noses can impart a sense of wetness, a genuine watery quality, to scent – Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey being the consummate example.)

The peony whispers, if it breathes at all:  a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sweet flash, and boom!  Gone again.  Airily pretty, the one thing this isn’t, though, is ‘sexy’.  The Ribena-cordial-ish tang isn’t necessarily what a man wants to nuzzle, I’d say, when he buries his nose in your clavicle.  So this is one The Scent Critic is currently wearing for my personal enjoyment, then.  It is the fragrant equivalent of a solitary potter in my greenhouse, scarifying sweet pea seeds, potting on tomatoes and pruning my grapevine.  Until now, my favourite ‘florist shop’/greenhouse/conservatory scent has always been Antonia’s Flowers, but I might just have a rethink.

Last but not least, the flacon is super-pretty, too, decorated with old botanical illustrations.  All three bottles do look splendid lined up together.  And I will be reviewing one of the others – Iris & Lady Moore – imminently.  Not convinced about the last of the trio, White Lilac & Rhubarb, yet.  But then loving three scents in one collection is the perfume equivalent of getting three bars on a fruit machine:  you don’t hit the jackpot often.

This ephemeral floristic creation, though?  A definite winner.

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Perfume doesn’t bite.  It won’t kill you.  So at fragrance press launches The Scent Critic is eternally gobsmacked, frankly, when fellow journalists don’t bother to do more than waft a blotter under their noses when being shown a new perfume.

Fact:  they’re not everyday [...]]]>

Puredistance M photographed at Kettner's by Jo Fairley on a slate tabletop

Perfume doesn’t bite.  It won’t kill you.  So at fragrance press launches The Scent Critic is eternally gobsmacked, frankly, when fellow journalists don’t bother to do more than waft a blotter under their noses when being shown a new perfume.

Fact:  they’re not everyday customers, who can quite justifiably smell a blotter in a department store to find out if a fragrance is a ‘no way’, or a ‘just possibly…’, before shortlisting a few to try.  But beauty editors?  It’s our job to smell a scent on their skin, because only then does the true nature emerge.  (Which is how come The Scent Critic found herself the other day lecturing to some wet-behind-the-ears beauty journos who politely wafted a pre-spritzed blotter under their noses and then shunned the actual bottles of this perfectly acceptable scent as if they were wired to sticks of dynamite.  We had been invited to the Ritz, to the room where the Queen dines, for heaven’s sake – and it wasn’t just lazy but downright rude not to put the fragrance that was being unveiled properly through its skin-warmed paces…)

Nevertheless, there are some fragrances which – on first sniff – absolutely beg to be sprayed onto every square centimetre of skin, and Puredistance M (which I discovered only yesterday) is one of those.  Slightly embarrassingly so.  No sooner had I unstoppered this than I was rolling up my sleeves, unbuttoning my Henley and anointing myself with smokey, sensual come-hither wondrousness.  It’s so dark and smouldering and tarry and very, very naughty, M reminds me of that feeling in in the early, hormone-wracked stages of a love affair.  You know:  those relationships where you just can’t keep your hands off each other and keep nipping into darkened doorways or over the railings of locked parks, throwing caution (and clothing layers) to the wind.

The inspiration – unlikely but true – is the inside of a grey Aston Martin, a lust object which remains top of the wishlist of Puredistance’s entrepreneurial driving force, Dutchman Jan Ewoud.  Puredistance M’s inspiration is actually James Bond, the most famous Aston-driver on the planet.  Take the sleek, bullet-like metal flacon (it comes with a sort of ‘test tube holder’ if you want to stand it on the dressing table).  The minimalist concept:  M is actually very contemporary and sophisticated (and right now does make me want to sweep everything on my dressing table aside to showcase this.  Only my mother-of-pearl inlaid dressing table’s not nearly understated enough:  this calls for something by Eileen Grey or Charles Eames.)  Even the name:  M, if you recall, was in charge of James Bond’s gadgets.

Most James Bond of all, however, is the outrageous, blatant, daring sexiness.

The outside may be all smooth, cool steel but inside the contents are virtually molten.  There’s absolutely zilch light and airy about M:  bergamot and lemon top notes whizz by fast as a Formula One racing car, and M cuts right to the chase:  outlandishly rich leathery notes, resinous incense, the forest-floor crunch of autumn leaves and damp mosses under a Tod’s loafer at dusk…  I get amber:  lots of amber.  Plus bonfire a-go-go:  a woodsiness that almost crackles, audibly.  The Scent Critic’s twin passions for vetiver and patchouli are also more than assuaged by M.

Technically a chypre, the spices and incense nudge this true unisex modern masterpiece into Oriental territory:  any ‘M’-wearing, chiffon-clad concubine lolling in an Istanbul harem, aswirl with ‘M’, could smugly have looked forward to being summoned by her sultan for more than her fair share of passionate nights.  (Provided James Bond didn’t abseil through the skylight and kidnap her, first…)  It’s Moorish – and moreish. I defy even the most junior beauty writer not to be tempted at least to dab this on her pulse points.  As for me?  I’m still drenched in the stuff, despite falling asleep in the bath last night.  24 hours and quite a lot of shower gel later, it’s still pulsing erotically away.

Indeed, this is so seriously provocative and seductive a fragrance that I’m surprised that Mr. Roja Dove, who created M for Puredistance, can still appear in public without blushing.  It’s like he’s headspaced Daniel Craig, Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan’s pheromones and distilled them into a 17.5 ml canister.

Puredistance M may not bite.  But man, does it roarrrrrrrrr…

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The Scent Critic doesn’t quite know how Roja Dove has secured some of the raciest fragrance names ever for his signature creations, but Danger is the latest in a line of brilliant light-the-blue-touch-paper-and-retire titles emblazoned across his naughty purple labels.

First came Reckless, [...]]]>

Roja Dove Danger photographed by Jo Fairley against a vintage silk sari

The Scent Critic doesn’t quite know how Roja Dove has secured some of the raciest fragrance names ever for his signature creations, but Danger is the latest in a line of brilliant light-the-blue-touch-paper-and-retire titles emblazoned across his naughty purple labels.

First came Reckless, Scandal, Unspoken and Enslaved – the last of which pretty much sums up how journalists are, in relation to the professeur de parfums, and why we refer to him so flipping often.  There probably isn’t a perfume ‘anorak’ on the planet who knows more, or gives better quote.  If he could but clone himself…

Actually, Danger probably isn’t my No. 1 of Roja’s signature creations.  (I’m seriously fond of Scandal.  Albeit not in a News of the World way…)  But his scents are always noteworthy:  to me, they have the allure of legendary long-lost vintage fragrances (this is a man whose own collection of historic perfumes is probably unrivalled outside the Osmothèque), but with a modern spin.  Danger is the airiest yet:  bright-as-a-button from first eau de parfum spritz, with a see-thru burst of classic, fresh-squeezed, undeniably Mitsouko-esque citrus grove topnotes.

He’s borrowed a touch of peach from Mitsouko, too, for Danger’s heart.  (Nothing wrong with that;  it’s a scent that both he and I happen to be eternally – yes – enslaved to, with good reason.)  To be honest, it’s this middle phase that’s just not me:  seriously floriferous, certain to seduce a white-flower-wearer – and I’m not one, really.  It’s propped up by the traditional pillars of jasmine and rose, with a  sweet-breath kiss of violet and an if-it’s-good-enough-for-Chanel-it’s-good-enough-for-Roja ylang-ylang hit.  At this point I also, strangely, get almonds, maybe a nibble of marzipan, and a slight damp, green tinge, beckoning like Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, forest-wards…

However – I can’t deny it – I am also slightly distracted by a subtle metallic quality…  This is going to sound seriously bonkers, but pour moi, it’s ‘essence de filing cabinet’!  (I went and sniffed my own filing cabinet, to be certain that I’m not just ready for the men in white coats here…  But this, you see, demonstrates the real bewitchment of perfumery:  with a different body chemistry you may not encounter that metallic/almond moment at all…)

Anyway, in the blink of an eye, the quiver of a nostril, it’s gone again, and I’m tumbling into the sensual embrace of the base notes which are much more up my boulevard. Scrumptious licks of vanilla and tonka bean, with (my money’s on white) musk.  I’m well-known to be a sucker for patchouli and sandalwood, too, which is spiced here with a happily un-dentisty rub of clove.  Around it swirls a sort of iris nebula, so the overall lingering effect is soft as a baby’s bottom.  Or, which is probably more Roja, a courtesan’s inner thigh…

With this heavy mob hanging around in the base, it’s no surprise that Danger has serious tenacity:  spray it in the morning (and it’s airy enough for that), and it’ll be accompanying you to dinner, in a much subtler form.  You could also layer one of Roja’s more OTT creations over this, for a dinner date, and there’d be no disharmony.  And like all of those, Danger is seriously sophisticated.  It’s a Bentley, not a BMW;  a tiara, not a lapel pin;  a villa in Cannes, not a gite in Brittany.  He knows his clients (pilgrims to his fifth floor Haute Parfumerie, in Harrods) inside-out, and how to push their buttons so that before they know it, they’re pushing his.  (On the credit card machine…)

Personally I’d say this is the most ‘youthful’ Roja Dove to date.  Danger’s predecessors are dark, mysterious and full of shady nooks, but this is (mostly) delightfully drenched in spring sunshine, for The Scent Critic.  ‘Rich, powdery and semi-oriental’, Roja’s tagged it – but The Scent Critic begs to position it as slightly more lightweight (and probably more wearable, for a lot of women).

But – the $64,000 question – dangerous…?  Not freefall-parachuting dangerous, or driving-on-an-Indian-highway-dangerous, or adulterous-affair-with-a-handsome-stranger dangerous, I wouldn’t say.  But if your idea of peril is to flirt lightly over a glass of Ruinart with someone who isn’t your husband, or gamble £100 on a horse at Goodwood just because you like its name, or paint the front door of your Grade-II listed house shocking pink, probably quite excitingly dangerous enough for you to have a little fling with.

Just don’t say you weren’t warned.

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