Q&A #2

Scented questions and smelly answers!

You’ve got questions and I’ve got answers: let’s talk perfume.

Q: what do you think of kilian as a perfume house? overhyped and overpriced or worth it??????

A: There’s a particular kind of grim soulnessness that infects a brand as soon as it is acquired by LVMH. By virtue of being born under this megacorporation, By Kilian never had the opportunity of developing a soul in the first place. If you want to find the nadir of the modern perfume industry, By Kilian is about two steps away from the utter lowest: I would never buy one of these perfumes, never recommend one of these perfumes, and feel a shiver go down my spine like the proverbial person walking over my grave whenever confronted with them. I have no qualms in naming By Kilian overpriced corporate nonsense that excels only as a manifestation of the bleakest form of nepotism. You should spare your wallet and your wellbeing by avoiding them.

All that being said, like every overpriced garbage brand that I don’t care for By Kilian’s perfumes are made by the exact same perfumers that make everything else on the market, so there are some things worth smelling here. Love, Don’t Be Shy is not one of them (apologies to Rihanna) - it’s an incredibly boring orange blossom-vanilla.

Amber Oud is a really beautiful benzoin heavy vanilla scent, reminiscent of Guerlain’s Lui; Moonlight in Heaven has got a weird almost waxy-creamy rice note going on that I think would be horrible on skin but is interesting to smell on the blotter; Back to Black has a really confronting and animalic honey note. They were all created by the magnificent Calice Becker, who did a lot of the early By Kilian scents.

I understand why Angel’s Share is such a big seller for them - and the packaging is so clever that I think they should rebottle all their perfumes in its whiskey tumbler-esque cut glass, which is gaudily beautiful - but I don’t find it particularly innovative or interesting as a boozy amber. There’s plenty out there that smells similar and costs a lot less, so I say save your money for something that’s actually worth your time.

Q: Are the aqua allegoria scents good?

A: The answer is both yes and no. Is it depressing to see Guerlain, that lion of perfumery, that house that brought us so many of the most iconic scents of all time, reduced to purple-dyed flanker scents in cheap LVMH bottles on the Sephora fragrance counter? Undoubtedly yes. But there’s still a few gasps of life in the old girl yet: Herba Fresca, from the original 90’s Aqua Allegoria lineup created by Mathilde Laurent, is still the best fresh herb perfume I’ve ever smelled in my life. It’s really hard to capture the herbaceousness of living things in a perfume but this scent smells so verdant and alive on your skin it’s like walking through an English garden in May. Herba Fresca does all this while also including a mint note that doesn’t end up smelling like toothpaste, which is a small miracle. It’s not a scent for everyone but its craftmanship is undeniable, and it still smells fantastic about 25 years on.

Also from the original lineup is Pamplelune, which is one of the best grapefruit perfumes on the market. For a citrus, grapefruit is bracing and sulphuric - it can make your eyes water like the acidic burst of essential oil that sprays into the air when you’re zesting citrus and releasing all its essential oils - and Pamplelune embraces this as a feature and not a flaw. I like perfumes that take in all aspects of a note and enhance them rather than trying to hide them, and for my money there’s no better study on the bitter-acid, citrussy sweetness of a grapefruit than Pamplelune. If you hate grapefruit, avoid at all costs: if you love grapefruit, buy two bottles.

The other scent in this line I’m quite partial to is Mandarine Basilic, which I bought for my mother a couple of Christmasses ago (I am happy to report she loves it). Citrus perfumes are usually a bad bet: either they last five minutes or the citrus notes fade and you’re left with some sickly sweet orange blossom Froot Loops monstrosity that dries down like olfactory depression on your skin. One way of countering this is to give the illusion of extending the citrus notes with a tea accord, which is the trick of Mandarine Basilic and a handful of other scents, including Margiela Replica Under the Lemon Tree (which I also bought for my mother - hunting for perfumes with other people’s tastes in mind is both fun and educational). Madarine Basilic keeps everything at a simmer, which makes the perfume last, a candle flame flickering rather than a firework flaring and then fading. It sticks close to the skin, more aromatic than anything else, but it is a lovely fresh orange-hued citrus and chamomile.

The rest of line I could take or leave: they vary from terrible to just okay. I have heard good things about the sub-flanker flanker Aqua Allegoria Harvest line, but haven’t smelled them.

Q: have you ever considered doing a substack post about Dossier? or do you have any thoughts on companies like Dossier? those dedicated specifically to creating affordable dupes for popular expensive fragrances?

A: I dodged the wider dupe culture question in the Baccarat Rouge 540 post, and that’s because it is a topic I’ll be covering in depth (yes, I do cut things before posting!).

This issue has two elements for me: the disparity between ingredient cost and unit price in the perfume industry vs. the copyright and intellectual property question. To make a very long story very short, I think dupes of indie/artisan perfumes are unethical and wrong to purchase, but when it comes to designer/Big Fragrance Firm created perfumes (especially with extravagant price tags), it’s a different story. For full disclosure, I don’t own any dupe house perfumes - but then again I own plenty of celebrity perfumes like Cloud and Lovely, which are also dupes of designer house scents, so it’s a line that I think gets greyer and greyer as the industry evolves.

What I think is undeniable is that perfume as an industry is getting harder and harder to access for the lay person who is not ultra wealthy, and that’s really disappointing to me. One of the great changes of modern society was the discovery of synthetic perfume ingredients in the late 1800s that opened up this industry to all price points, and to lose that democratisation feels like a step in the wrong direction as perfume is probably the most accessible luxury you can find. This adds another element of nuance as dupe houses are filling a need for people who maybe can’t afford a perfume, or get a perfume delivered to where they live (a problem I face constantly). It’s an interesting and ethically complex topic.

Q: Are there perfumes you’re into for the design alone even if the scent itself is not very good?

A: A great question! Part of the joy of perfume for me is definitely in the aesthetics of the bottle and house imagery - it’s why I’d rather buy a partial bottle over a decant - to the point where I’ll try to justify buying something I only kind of like purely to add the bottle to my collection! All of the early 20th century Guerlains in their original bottles are beautiful, but they are love it or hate it scents for me: the ones I love (Apres L’Ondee, Mitsouko, Shalimar) I could never be without, but the ones I hate (L’Heure Bleue, Vol De Nuit) I never want to smell again. But I love all of their beautiful Art Deco bottles and would happily have them in my collection.

I hate YSL’s Rive Gauche but I think it has the cleverest bottle of all time, designed to be thrown in the bottom of your work bag; Pi by Givenchy has a funky, Frank Herbet’s Dune-esque bottle that I love even as I dislike the scent; and I really love the feminine Amouage ‘dome’ bottles but I’ve never fallen in love with any of the scents in the line (I own a masculine, Interlude Man, which is in the ‘sword’ bottle). And I love the Gucci Alchemist’s Garden bottles - the scents are fine and well made, but the line is so expensive that it is laughable.

I also have a fondness for the Moschino Toy line. I appreciate them because they’re fun, and perfume is an industry that’s so self-serious that it is in need of fun wherever it can get it. I love that these bottles were marketed to men before bringing in some feminine marketed flankers. I didn’t like the pear-vanilla-vetiver powder bomb drydown of the original Toy Boy but it found its place on the market, and I loved seeing so many men in the fragrance community embrace this tacky Haribo bear bottle. I do quite enjoy the Bubblegum flanker of this line, and may buy a 30ml bottle both to wear its tuberose candy top note on summer days, and to see the bottle from the corner of my eye on my perfume shelf and smile.

Q: What houses do you think have the best aesthetics or packaging!

A: It’s important to note here that my aesthetic tastes are utterly Catholic, which is to say I favour opulence over minimalism. Though I can appreciate the beauty of a Frederic Malle bottle with its magnetic cap, if I really examine myself it’s the gaudy splendour I crave. On that note, I love the style of Oriza L Legrand. This is what a perfume bottle should be: gold topped, tasselled, Art Noveau labelled, and gloriously over the top in every way. The box, too, is divine - a lot of perfumery is in conversation with the classic scents of the industry and I think this brand pays homage to that era in a beautiful way.

I’m also drawn to the aesthetics and bottles of Universal Flowering (though, upsettingly, they do not ship to Australia), which I suppose is a touch more minimalist but still feels larger-than-life and beautiful. I love how architectural and evocative these bottles are: they feel like something from the vanity of the protagonist of Lana Del Rey song, or that Glenn Close’s character in Les Liasons Dangereuses would spray in her hair before a party.

Honestly, I could talk about bottles and brand aesthetics all day - these were just two I thought of off the top of my head!

Q: hi! you've mentioned a few perfume books on your twitter, but could you do like a full list of books to check out for someone interested in getting into perfume?

A: What a fantastic question! I’ve been building up my perfume library for years (see picture below!) and I’m really happy that I have a foundation from which to speak to this, because perfume books in English can be hard to find. There’s been a few more published in recent years, which is so exciting to me because it feels like something monumental is shifting in fragrance culture as more people become interested in the science and culture behind scent.

I have an article on perfumed reads in the works, as I’d love to talk a little bit about each book that I own. But for a beginner I’d say The Big Book of Perfume by Nez is the most comprehensive primer you could ever get on olfaction. The place a lot of people start is with Perfumes: The A-Z Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, because for about ten years it was pretty much the only book of note in English on perfume. It’s still an essential, and great fun to read, but the main body of the book is reviews and they are subjective by their very nature. Also, it will make you want to get out there and smell - which is a good thing! - but a lot of the five star scents in the book aren’t sold anymore or have been reformulated, which is always a bit deflating.

Don’t read Perfume: Story of a Murderer: it sucks. Do read The Ghost Perfumer: it should be handed out before anyone thinks of buying an overpriced niche perfume.

We’ll talk about perfume literature again soon!

Q: hello! do you have recs for good patchouli scents?

A: The answer is undoubtedly yes - I could name thirty great patchoulis from the top of my head - but it really depends on what kind of patchouli perfume you’re looking for. This grassy note - and synthetic replications of its scent profile - is such an ubiquitous presence in modern perfume that no two patchoulis are quite alike. Patchouli has come a long way from the 1960’s and its association with hippies but that connection still remains, I think partially because there’s maybe nothing as instantly recognisable as a huge blast of patch wafting in your face.

If you want a true patchouli with its earthy, chocolatey facets and also that camphoric bite like the bitter aftertaste of coffee, Reminiscence Patchouli is what you need, and it’s a cheapie to boot. If you want what I call (with love) a fuck-in-the-dirt patchouli, which has none of those sweeter qualities that the modern palette craves, Santa Maria Novella’s Patchouli Firenze 1221 is for you; if you want something more complex and severe, try Frederic Malle’s Monsieur.

I also love Tom Ford’s White Patchouli, which really amps up the camphoric and Tiger Balm-y facets of this note. Many will say that the Chris Sheldrake double punch of Serge Lutens Borneo 1834 and Chanel Coromandel is the apex of patchouli perfumes, and they are masterpieces, but to me patchouli is a supporting note in both and not the main star. If you love patchouli, do give them a sniff and see what you think.

And if you’re looking for a sweeter, chocolate-esque patchouli, please ask again as that’s an entirely different recommendation list!

If you would like to send a question or just to chat, my curiouscat is here. I will also answer any questions left in comments on articles like this one. That’s all for now! ◙