Silences (1978)
by Jacomo

Silences has been one of my all-time, absolute favorites, one of my "BIG LOVE, can't live without" perfumes since I first acquired it in 1981. I love it as much or more today as I did when I first sniffed it, and through the intervening years have always somehow managed to hold on to at least a sampler vial of it. It is one I've had to miserly ration or even only sniff the cap because there was no way to obtain more. In a much leaner time I was once *thrilled beyond measure to score a small handful of tester vials at an estate sale.

But, I do not wear it as often as one might think, what with being so madly in love with it. And that has caused me a great deal of self-reflection over the years. I don't wear it as often as others even though I love it more than some in my regular rotation. At times I've even second-guessed my commitment to it. There are other perfumes that are similar, and I have them and love them and wear them, but they are not Silences. It is special to me for reasons I can not fully articulate.

The initial blast of crisp and cold - no, icy - galbanum is like no other and must be what it is that hooks my heart. The hyacinth and hint of rose that follow and unfold is what sets that hook and the oakmoss reels me in.

Silences is deliberate, straight-forward and no-nonsense. It is sleek. It is high-speed and low drag. It is retro-contemporary architecture in the genre of Frank Lloyd Wright, with Milo Baughman and Russel Wright furnishings, a Modigliani hanging on the wall and a Henry Moore out in the shade garden. It is Dave Brubeck. It is Ansel Adam's black and white photography. It is a chilly, grey, early spring day.

It so perfectly conveys a part of me, and I wish to never be without it.

24th January, 2012.

Continuing my (maybe interesting to no one but myself, but absolutely fascinating to me!) total n00bi journey into vintage green-floral-chypres, this is my next-favorite after Niki de Saint Phalle. I've also just tried Molinard de Molinard yesterday, and Paloma Picasso and Ivoire de Balmain recently. My nose isn't smart enough yet to describe the actual differences between these closely related frags, so I can only talk about them in terms of how they make me feel. (So if you want a comparison of notes, you're on your own. I have no idea what makes them do what they do.)

- To my mind, NdSP is basically perfect, and these others are variations on her theme. It's deep, fascinating, laughing, thoughtful, and everything I want to be. Everything I want to be perceived as.

- I don't love Paloma and while I wouldn't turn down a free bottle, I don't think I'll be buying one. It doesn't do anything . . . more. Or better. (Plus the bottle design is hard to open! At least in mini form. No way to get at the juice in the middle without scratching up that ominous barrier ring of blackness, which turns out to be just basic plastic, which kinda detracts from the glamour.) And the drydown is unsatisfying.

Ivoire de Balmain is more assertive and has absolutely monster sillage on me -- to the point that my husband can tell when I'm wearing even a dab (and he is actively bothered by it, so I try not to wear it at home). It has all of the interest and none of the kindness or joy I feel in some of these. I would wear it to impress and intimidate underlings, or middle-school students, or phone company employees, and make them not even THINK of defying me.

Molinard de Molinard, conversely, has all of the joy and less of the interest. It's all about the happy side. I will wear it to cheer up on gloomy days, or to make people want to be nice to me. No darkness here at all. Also no longevity! It's gone on my skin, except for a whisper, after two, maybe three hours.

Silences is lovely. It has that one delicious element in the drydown that I most crave from NdSP . . . but, somehow, not as much complexity. It gets to the drydown much faster, with fewer facets along the way. There's less there there. But I do want a full bottle, to wear it often over time, to figure it out -- and, by comparison, to figure Niki out. Right now, I have this sneaking, unfounded suspicion that what draws me to Niki above Silences is something odd, something off; something akin to a wild artistic streak that some might call mental illness. A personification of a hint of the "nervous breakdown" that the wildly talented, real life Niki de Saint Phalle had in her early adulthood, when the pressures and vile ridiculousnesses of her time and station (well-heeled but no longer well-off, brilliant, liberated in thought, conventional in practice) got to be too much for a while. Silences might make all too much sense. It might be too well balanced.

I know -- maybe it's the mythos of NdSP, of her life, of my associations with it, that make me prefer it slightly to Silences. I'm not sure yet. I am excited to figure it out. I'll come back and write more when I do. :)

8th June, 2011.

So many components point in the same direction: green. Galbanum, narcissus, hyacinth, hedione, lily of the valley, oak moss, vetiver. At various points in its evolution, Silences is cool, dewy, radiant, fresh, grassy, powdery, dark. Although Silences follows the traditions of both green florals (Vent Vert, No 19) and green chypres (Bandit, Ma Griffe, Miss Dior, Y) it doesn’t go the leather route. The moss balances out the florals and galbanum, but it never gets truly bitter in the leather fashion. It shares so many notes with other florals and chypres, but in the end veers smartly away from them. The drydown gets both woody and cozy with a strong cedar note wrapped in musks. Still it remains green with both a slightly peppery vetiver (that perfectly transitions from the floral/galbanum opening to the cedar) and a resinous moss.

There’s nothing slack about Silences. It is precise and to the point at all times, yet skirts the ice-queeniness of so many green florals and chypres. Silences demonstrates the difference between cool and cold.

25th January, 2011.

Silences is very much in the vein of No. 19, but despite its hushed, mysterious name it comes across as remarkably bright and bubbly. It starts with a rush of bracing green that has a fruity nuance, and develops into a slightly sweet and very inviting floral heart. The drydown is refined but not aloof in the way that some chypres tend to go. As a male, I find No. 19 a bit easier to get away with, but on a warm, sunshiny summer day Silences is irresistible.

21st July, 2010.

Silences is a lovely green floral scent built over a soft, translucent chypre foundation. It is a bit more yielding and forgiving in nature than its precursors, Yves St. Laurent Y and Chanel No. 19, though clearly of the same lineage. Bracing galbanum, muguet, and hyacinth top notes give way to rounder, sweeter notes of green jasmine and velvety iris root, warmed by moderately animalic musk and indole, but still fundamentally crisp and clean, thanks in part to judiciously applied aldehydes. The chypre character is less pronounced than in say, Givenchy III, perhaps because any mossy notes are counterbalanced by a degree of fruity sweetness until well into the drydown. In all of this Silences is closely allied with Capucci’s beautiful but defunct Yendi. Whether Silences is still in production is not clear to me, but it’s far easier to come by than Yendi, and makes a good accessible alternative.

I’m of the mind that strongly green-influenced fragrances lean toward gender neutrality, and Silences is no exception. Floral content or not, this would make a crisp, yet distinctive warm weather fragrance for the an open-minded man. Heck, even the stark black bottle looks the part.

9th May, 2010.

Ah well..."meh". I tried to like this one, but it just doesn't ring my bell. It's pleasant enough - green and spicy/stemmy/resinous - all of that is good, but for me it's like a florist's bed of greenery awaiting the spray of orchids or gardenias. The star of the show never arrives. My expectations are all purely subjective of course, but I find this fragrance rather bland and boring after a half hour or so. I bought the bottle a little over a year and a half ago, and I don't think I've worn it once this year until today. Now I remember why.

29th November, 2009.