I was in Frankfurt today at the 270 year old perfumery Albrecht on the city's high high street. A breathtaking selection of fragrances. I picked up a bottle of Caraceni for a fellow basenoter, but used the opportunity to sniff around. The store consist of two separate but close locations, though I can't quite figure out why they have somne lines at both and others at only the one or the other. Whatever...
Interestingly, the 2nd store has replaced smelling strips with glass sticks. They are sprayed, handed to you and then washed to be reused. More ecological and no paper-smell intruding. The diffusion pattern however is different from paper and general intensity seems lower. I'm not sure I find it entirely convincing.
I tried a lot of highly vaunted BN favorites I didn't know yet. These are only brief impressions, and I'm painfully aware that skin wearing and longer trials can lead to completely different impressions, but there was not much time, as I had an (excellent) inaugural lecture and turkey dinner to attend to
. So these impressuons are to be taken with big lumps of salt
Profumum Thundra struck me as good, not hugely interesting, not my cup of tea, much less at the price.
Odori's Iris, leather and tobacco were complete disappointments. Boring, and misnamed - no leather in the leather and not too much tobacco in the...you get my meaning. The iris was good quality, but plain boring. dior or prada does better than that, and the iris in Bois d'Iris, though not lasting enough, is much more satisfying. Two that grabbed my attention were Timbuktu nad even more so Fougère Bengale, which I had thought I would hate after reading reviews here. It actuallyseemed the most substantial of the lot, well balanced, not overly animalic and delivered a very fine note of dried tobacco leaf far preferable to Odori's meek showing. I was diappointed in Miller Harris' Feuilles de Tabac as well (boring and too little tobacco) and learned that Cuir d'Oranger has been discontinued as of July 08.
On to the other store. The winner here was Caraceni. Measured against the other scents it emerged as a beautifully crafted, substantial composition of rose, balsamic incense and dark tobacco, melancholy, but with a charisma that shoved the lightweights aside effortlessly. Serious competition came from Amouage Jubilation XXV, which is a sublime incense indeed. Contrary to dia, I can actually smell this. It has the same fruity florality as Paestum trose, but, thankfully, toned waaaay down here and set beside spices and a mediterranean herbaceousness that keeps it in check and lets the incense evolve. Yeah, it's Paestum rose without the garish make up. I would have gladly layed down $50 for a small bottle of this, but who knows - I started out liking Paestum and grew sick of it very quickly. Would this suffer the same fate? They made me a small decant of this, so I'll be able to play around with it some more.
I'm unhappy to report that the two male follow-ups to Washington Tremlett's Black Tie, a current favorite of mine, were utterly disappointing. Both Royal Heroes and MPH started out smelling rather generically of spicy-woody and spicy-green masculine, only to deteriorate into caricatures of British classics. Imagine paying 140 Euros for a bottle of juice and then a jack-in-the-box pops out of them shouting "4.99 drugstore frag." There is a recurring narrative here, it seems. A line begins, having its stuff made by Forester Milano. The result is an excellent perfume made from supreme materials, frequently featuring a stunning dark licqurous rose essence (No. 88, Caraceni, Black Tie, the Campagna line). Forester then loses the account and the next release in the line is generic drivel (not C&S, though No. 88 has suffered, but Caraceni Ivy League and the Tremletts. Campagna is virtually invisible anyway).
I got a sample of Tremlett's Neroli (still made by Forester) which was very nice. The excellent neroli blended with hesperides for zestiness over a simple light musk - nothing special though and no reason to shell out 140 Euros when Roger Gallet's Farina is just as good at a fraction. My nose was too exhausted at this point to try the Swarovski Iris spectacle and I was too numb to smell much of Goutals Encens Flamboyant and Musc Nomade. Besides the Jubilation decant & WT Neroli I left with samples of diptyques Vinaigre de Toilette and Bond No. 9 Hamptons - which is an incredibly poor attempt at creating a generic "modern Creed" scent that nearly makes P. Diddy rise in my estimation again (only nearly).
To recap the winners of this little slam sniffathon:
Domenico Caraceni
Fougere Bengale
Amouage Jubilation XXV
Timbuktu
As always, this was lots of fun.
Interestingly, the 2nd store has replaced smelling strips with glass sticks. They are sprayed, handed to you and then washed to be reused. More ecological and no paper-smell intruding. The diffusion pattern however is different from paper and general intensity seems lower. I'm not sure I find it entirely convincing.
I tried a lot of highly vaunted BN favorites I didn't know yet. These are only brief impressions, and I'm painfully aware that skin wearing and longer trials can lead to completely different impressions, but there was not much time, as I had an (excellent) inaugural lecture and turkey dinner to attend to
. So these impressuons are to be taken with big lumps of saltProfumum Thundra struck me as good, not hugely interesting, not my cup of tea, much less at the price.
Odori's Iris, leather and tobacco were complete disappointments. Boring, and misnamed - no leather in the leather and not too much tobacco in the...you get my meaning. The iris was good quality, but plain boring. dior or prada does better than that, and the iris in Bois d'Iris, though not lasting enough, is much more satisfying. Two that grabbed my attention were Timbuktu nad even more so Fougère Bengale, which I had thought I would hate after reading reviews here. It actuallyseemed the most substantial of the lot, well balanced, not overly animalic and delivered a very fine note of dried tobacco leaf far preferable to Odori's meek showing. I was diappointed in Miller Harris' Feuilles de Tabac as well (boring and too little tobacco) and learned that Cuir d'Oranger has been discontinued as of July 08.
On to the other store. The winner here was Caraceni. Measured against the other scents it emerged as a beautifully crafted, substantial composition of rose, balsamic incense and dark tobacco, melancholy, but with a charisma that shoved the lightweights aside effortlessly. Serious competition came from Amouage Jubilation XXV, which is a sublime incense indeed. Contrary to dia, I can actually smell this. It has the same fruity florality as Paestum trose, but, thankfully, toned waaaay down here and set beside spices and a mediterranean herbaceousness that keeps it in check and lets the incense evolve. Yeah, it's Paestum rose without the garish make up. I would have gladly layed down $50 for a small bottle of this, but who knows - I started out liking Paestum and grew sick of it very quickly. Would this suffer the same fate? They made me a small decant of this, so I'll be able to play around with it some more.
I'm unhappy to report that the two male follow-ups to Washington Tremlett's Black Tie, a current favorite of mine, were utterly disappointing. Both Royal Heroes and MPH started out smelling rather generically of spicy-woody and spicy-green masculine, only to deteriorate into caricatures of British classics. Imagine paying 140 Euros for a bottle of juice and then a jack-in-the-box pops out of them shouting "4.99 drugstore frag." There is a recurring narrative here, it seems. A line begins, having its stuff made by Forester Milano. The result is an excellent perfume made from supreme materials, frequently featuring a stunning dark licqurous rose essence (No. 88, Caraceni, Black Tie, the Campagna line). Forester then loses the account and the next release in the line is generic drivel (not C&S, though No. 88 has suffered, but Caraceni Ivy League and the Tremletts. Campagna is virtually invisible anyway).
I got a sample of Tremlett's Neroli (still made by Forester) which was very nice. The excellent neroli blended with hesperides for zestiness over a simple light musk - nothing special though and no reason to shell out 140 Euros when Roger Gallet's Farina is just as good at a fraction. My nose was too exhausted at this point to try the Swarovski Iris spectacle and I was too numb to smell much of Goutals Encens Flamboyant and Musc Nomade. Besides the Jubilation decant & WT Neroli I left with samples of diptyques Vinaigre de Toilette and Bond No. 9 Hamptons - which is an incredibly poor attempt at creating a generic "modern Creed" scent that nearly makes P. Diddy rise in my estimation again (only nearly).
To recap the winners of this little slam sniffathon:
Domenico Caraceni
Fougere Bengale
Amouage Jubilation XXV
Timbuktu
As always, this was lots of fun.
