Cumming (2004)
by Alan Cumming

I experienced an episode of instantaneous recognition when I first smelled Cumming: take Olivia Giacobetti’s Dzing!, pare away the vanilla candy to isolate the pungent barnyard and riding boots accord, and you’ve got Cumming. Or something very like it, at any rate. Where Dzing! uses sugary vanilla, Cumming employs smoke, tobacco, and dry aromatics to set off its intensely animalic leather. The resulting scent is more than a little raunchy, but never crude. References to cigars and whisky in descriptions of this scent are accurate, but the unabashedly animalic accent keeps Cumming far from the stuffy men’s club territory occupied by Vintage Tabarome and Baladin.

While Cumming is by no means weak, it does wear close to the skin, so I doubt those beyond arm’s reach will detect it easily. Lasting power is adequate, if unexceptional, with a mossy wood and leather drydown setting in after four to six hours. Lovers of animalic leather scents like Montale’s Oud Cuir d’Arabie or Eau d’Hermès ought to give Cumming a try. It’s just as bold and distinctive, but less loud, and hence easier to wear. Very good stuff.

OK, I just tried this again today. I tried it years ago. And really, I shouldn't be reviewing something that I just tried today, as I don't feel like I "know" it, but here's my quick impression:

First sniff: phenolic, burnt wood note. It reminds me of the leather fragrance I bought from The Good Scents Company. It also reminds me of a Bois 1920 scent which has the same phenolic character. The burnt-ness reads as leather. Wasn't crazy about that.

As it dried down, to me it seemed almost completely a leather scent--it got softer, a little oily maybe, kinda chemical and then inky. I loved it; I wanted it; but I'd just gotten Bel Ami a few months ago and Yatagan a few days ago. I couldn't buy another scent. Besides, it seemed like something good for layering, but maybe not as a dazzling main scent.

But the more I smelled that inky, chemical leather, the more I kept thinking, "I could make this." And if I could find some kind of castoreum or an extreme, extreme dilution of something grotesque like skatole, I could make it even "dirtier." I thought, "I could use that leather scent from tGSC and the oil called Baseball Glove by Christopher Brosius, which smells like chemical leather (and when I blended it with something--I think a caramel note--it smelled like just-washed hair)."

So of course when I read the notes here, and that it was a collaboration with Christopher Brosius, I wasn't surprised. And to be honest, when I think CB I think bullshit. Go to his store in Brooklyn and look at his "absolutes," which are all crystal clear and have the same viscosity. I think it's misleading to call something an absolute when it appears to be something ordered from a chemical company and diluted in something ending in "glycol." Also, what exactly is "white truffle"?? Isn't the smell of truffles androstenone and androstedienone?? It's a chemical found in human male sweat (2/3 of people can smell it and rate it with terms like "urinous, sweaty, chemical, woody"; 1/3 of people, who have a slightly different genetic makeup, rate it as pleasant and vanillic). It's also a pig pheromone, and it's used in stuff called "Boar Spray." I saw a can of this spray at a presentation by the New York Academy of Sciences.

At any rate, I like it as a leather. I wish the top note wasn't so burnt, and I wish there was just more to it.

And I wish "fragrance marketing" would go away.

Strange opening accord – quite suspect as far as I’m concerned: a little dirty and little more belch, but interesting enough to make me want to keep smelling to find out what’s over the horizon. I think it’s the rubber note in the near recesses that holds most of the mystery / intrigue / nausea. It isn’t long—five or ten minutes – that the accord rearranges itself to become quite…pretty, or, as odysseusm, says… “precious.” Yes, it is “precious.” The list of notes is misleading. There are whisky and rubber and pine and cigar notes there, but they seem to last less time than it takes to type them and I’m a 94 wpm typist. It is a pretty heart accord, though, and the dominant note is heather, according to odysseusm, and I am certainly going to take his word for it – I have never smelled it that I know of. The dry down is too much of a skin scent for me to identify notes – it has a definite component of rubber (burnt) in there that gives a rather incensy background; other than that it is a rather neutral accord to my nose. Cumming ends up being a pleasant fragrance with an interesting but short lived top, a nice but rather neutral middle with transient fly bys of various cool sounding notes, and a short lasting, neutral drydown that closes in on and hugs the skin surface for an unacceptably short embrace. Hmmm… I kind of wanted to like this one.

The top notes are very interesting, as I got barely anything. The top smells like... steamed pool water laced with cinnamon, approximating the smell of slightly damp dirt. The scent is seemingly natural as it does occur in nature but it's almost scentless. It's like the first streaks of steam from a freshly cleaned sauna. This isn't "clean" or "fresh" to me. It feels "cleaned" and "freshened" as if something was done to it to make it clean. I can't explain it but it is truly a unique scent and experience. I'd give it a thumbs up for originality but I do not enjoy the fragrance and I find the scent fleeting.

I wasn't to pleased with this the top notes, just horrible the worst I ever smelled but after a few minutes it settles down to a pleasant scent soft and close to the skin but the longevity is terrible last only a couple of hrs on my skin and that’s rare fragrances last forever on me

Maybe too unique and different to my taste. The top notes are just terrible and I found to hard to wait the base notes come. Besides, the longevity is so poor...