Caron Tubereuse - A Hidden Gem ( Attention all folks seeking DRY tuberose! )

"Odd" is such a relative term. A lot of people find Tubereuse Criminelle odd - and in the sense of conventional perfumery, it is. Loud wintergreen top notes aren't common anywhere, let alone paired with something sweet and creamy like tuberose. Yet, while it's Avante Garde and elemental, there's something straight-forward about it, too - big, perceptible building blocks of tuberose, wintergreen, musk, and vanilla.

If anything, Caron's Tubereuse is the opposite. There's nothing I smell here I haven't smelled elsewhere, in many classic fragrances, yet the proportions and contrasts involved mean there's a strong sense of the alien. If Tubereuse Criminelle is a cubist canvas of broad strokes and bright colors, Caron's Tubereuse is a Rene Magritte, familiar forms in odd juxtapositions.

Tubereuse's top notes arrive in a state of exaggeration and diminution, certain facets of the flower turned up, and certain others turned way down. A burst of caramelized sugar is quickly beaten back by an odd accord of sweetened, creamy mushroom ( possibly Cashmeran? ) and sharp, astringent green. There's the olfactory equivalent of a floral aftertaste, but If there weren't certain key elements of tuberose in the mix, I wouldn't recognize this its presence.

The heart is a lot of astringent green for a while, as the mushroom looms less large in the palette. It immediately reminded both myself and a friend of witch-hazel tonic. I wonder what this note is? I've only ever smelled it one other fragrance - DSH's Viridian, an unusual and powerful green fragrance I had the pleasure of smelling last fall.

The base is an interesting development for a floral. Just when you think "Okay, the green and the mushroom are going, here's where it's going to open up and get pretty," it stops and morphs into something else yet again. A dry, wan tuberose note blends with the green and a certain creaminess that's attractive in a remote, brooding way. Without being a chypre, the drydown is strongly redolent of classical leather chypres like Bandit and Azuree. In fact, if you drew a spectrum and places Fracas and Bandit at either end, this, alone among the tuberoses I've smelled, is far closer kin to Bandit than Fracas and its relatives.

Fragrances like Fracas and Beyond Love will not prepare you for this at all. If "green tuberose" has you picturing Carnal Flower or Amoureuse, think again - this is removed from those kinds of green notes, relying on a very different dry, almost bitter-green supporting accord. Nothing like Tubereuse Criminelle, either, or for that matter, anything I've tried that lies in the category of white florals. If it didn't sound crude an unappealing, I'd say tuberose and dried dill, but it's not quite that dissonant.

I must applaud Caron for releasing such a unique statement in today's market, quite estranged from modern ideals of beautiful florals ( it would fit far better amid the green chypres of the '60s and '70s ). I'd have never thought tuberose could be transformed into something dry, sombre, and austere, but my nose is telling me otherwise.

I'm posting this here because I know a lot of men like dry florals with dark or astringent modifications, and I feel that this one has really been unfairly ignored by the fragrance community at large.

The strong sugary part disappears quite quickly on my skin - maybe two minutes, at most? But there is a sweet, creamy vibe that stays on in the background. Actually, Scent's description of "bubblegum" is more apt that burnt sugar ( it's not like the cotton candy in Dzing! or the burnt sugar in Fille En Aiguilles ). It kind of gets pushed to one side for a while by the herbal/mushroomy component and doesn't really resurface until it becomes part of the tuberose accord of the base.

The mushrooms are almost exactly like what you smell in Frederic Malle's Dans Tes Bras, at least that's my perception ( Hence the "Hey, is this Cashmeran?" ) A lot of people just love that, and don't even smell mushrooms, but to my nose they're too prominent in Dans Tes Bras ( and married to something like latex - yikes! ) Here that note isn't too much, and kind of works, as tuberose naturally has a bit of a mushroomy undertone ( it's weird - sometimes I smell it in Carnal Flower, too; sometimes I don't ). As the fragrance develops, the mushrooms are less and less present.

The witch-hazel tonic accord lasts throughout the fragrance but morphs into something less sharp and more mossy ( just slightly mossy - this isn't a chypre, it's a soliflore, it just has a bit of a leather chypre "feel" in the drydown ).

I find it quite hard to describe the notes of this fragrance without heading into exaggeration, as it's not freakish or incoherent; it probably doesn't smell as odd as my review makes it sounds, yet, all the notes I described I did and do smell. All of this oddness is linked by a solid, floral backbone that stays in the background on my skin. At every phase of the development, when I smell it, I'm hit by the surface of whatever phase of its development it's going through, but always linked by that sweetly floral "aftertaste" that links the fragrance top to bottom.

Something I should note, though, as an important after-thought: as I usually do when reviewing a fragrance like this, I sprayed some on paper, too. It develops very differently there! Much sweeter, and without that peculiar leather accord in the drydown ( I guess I just smell like tanned hide ). However, it still has that dry green quality counterbalancing the tuberose, and those funky sugar, sweet mushroom, and dry herb top notes.

And availability. And pricing. Really, if it wasn't for the fragrances themselves and some decanters with excellent pricing, I'd never even consider most Caron urn parfums... Yet, all my favorite Caron fragrances have been among the urn parfums so far.

I just looked up Shalini now; it's new to me. Unfortunately it's a little out of my price range. For something I truly love I might put up 300$ ( nearly did so with Luxe: Champaca ), but Shalini is over twice that... So unless a sample finds its way to me, or I run across it in my travels, I'm afraid my curiosity will have to go on unsatisfied.