Sweet and clean

I have been trying to figure out what bothers me about the modern trends in fragrance fashions, and no, it's neither the oud obsession nor the unreasonable idolisation of vintage scents.

It's not even the sad rise of sports ''fragrances'', mostly among the masculines. These are simply boring, but I am not fond enough of classic masculines to be bothered, and anyway there are still some pretty good ones to be bought easily and cheaply, from Aramis and Polo aromatic fougeres to the Old Spice.

Before I go on, here is a picture:

And, to put a very candied cherry on an already thickly iced cake, here is another picture:

These are both screencaps of the voting screens of the 2017 Fragrance Foundation Consumer's Choice. I don't know how the shortlist is determined. It might be done by sales (FF is an industry organisation, even if it claims to be passionately devoted to increasing the awareness and appreciation of fragrance in all its forms) but if it is based on sales than so should be the winner, just the same way charts work.

And the interesting thing about all these fragrances, both the 2017 five and the Hall of Fame candidates is that, apart from the only ostensible masculine on the Hall of Fame list (Calvin Klein's Eternity For Men) which is a cheap and cheerful, youthfully aspirational aromatic fougere, they are all the same. So, of the nine nominally feminine fragrances on these lists, nine are are the same.

Before someone (if there is anyone out there reading this, which I sincerely doubt at this stage) starts to accuse me of ignorance, I will freely admit that I haven's tried all these scents. But I did look up the ones I didn't know and really, I didn't need to. The names would have been enough.

They are all sweet and clean. Or rather, they are all clean and sweet.

Yes, even Pleasures, which (incidentally to the subject of this rant but obviously) stand out from the others in a towering manner as a historical monument to a certain style of fragrance, not even style but a certain message, and which I personally don't like much, firstly because that particular message is not what I usually want to either explore or transmit, and secondly because it smells close to a lily of the valley soliflore on my skin.

Now, as much as I might personally dislike ''clean'' in its feminine expressions (which usually seem just too buttoned up for me), I can appreciate it (see below). I also don't object to ''clean'' as such, and for example classic barbershop masculines are an excellent expression of that, as are straightforward citrus colognes. From Azzaro Pour Homme to 4711 and Hermes' Eau d'Orange Verte (the latter available mega cheaply at least at the moment so one can literally douse oneself in it).

But I have a huge - HUGE - HUGE - problem with ''clean and sweet''. When the sweet part is figurative and manifests as prim florals evoking either débutante virginal muslins and pale pink bedrooms, or a scrubbed and douched to perfection vibe of a soccer mom who hasn't found her inner MILF yet, I can appreciate it even if  I don't like it.

But the modern sweet is fairly literal and often distinctly food-evoking, as in all the gourmands spawned when Angel somewhat incestuously deflowered the original Lolita Lempicka (I reluctantly but undoubtedly like both of these). Honey, chocolate, vanilla and candy, red berries covered with mountains of icing sugar, vanilla, hazelnuts, caramel, latte and did I mention vanilla?

Now, I love vanilla and chocolate and berries. With some spices it's just about a perfect way for a house - especially kitchen - to smell and sweet, spicy warmth is one of my primary reason for loving classic and not so classic orientals. Shalimar and Hypnotic Poison are among my favourite scents.

But c'mon. These are not clean scents. Sugar and all things related is one of the key categories of dirt in the life of even a semi civilised human. Ask anybody who ever gave a chocolate bar to a toddler and had to clean up the fallout. Sure, sweet dirt doesn't have the naturally repulsive characteristics of organic waste, human, animal or vegetable which we have evolved to avoid as it promoted survival (there is a very good reason why the vast majority of people are disgusted by the smell or even the idea of faeces, vomit, rotten animal flesh, to a lesser extent rotten vegetables, and to even lesser, rotten fruit, and it's not merely the social training we undergo in childhood). But sweet dirt attracts insects (with their danger of bites and contamination) and because it's very sticky, it attracts other types or dirt, not necessarily as innocent as smears of chocolate, caramel or jam. So there might be something in it even from the most wanky ev psych perspective.

Sweet is not clean. Sweet when fruity (i.e. with sour and floral notes woven in) is sticky, juicy and can be heady. Sweet when non-fruity (as in vanilla, honey, chocolate, various sugars raw or burnt) is sticky, oozy, creamy and heavy. In the so-called nature, in ''real life'' outside glossy mags and design offices and possibly outside shopping centres too, sweet is dirty.

But mass-market (which includes large swathes of ''designer'') feminine fragrances nowadays, while maintaining the sweet factor sky-high, also insist on being clean, on invoking the idea of cleanliness as it was so well discussed by Bryan in this post on the meaning of ''soapy''. Those two current prerequisites for a feminine fragrance with a reasonable popular appeal seem to be tad contradictory to me and yet countless scents seemingly manage (as in the FF voting shortlists above).

The result is a weird kind of sweetness, a sugar-free sweetness which I would call ''chemical'' or ''synthetic'' if these poor words weren't abused enough as they are. What I mean is an artificial, kind of fake sweetness (the cleanliness has to feel real), a sweetness that is an olfactory equivalent of aspratame: it is there, it's undoubtedly sweet, and it generally tastes all right, especially in combination with other strong flavours, but it isn't quite the same. It might be sweet enough, very sweet, too sweet even, but it's not sticky.

The success of Angel, and the fact that in all its monstrosity, it is a wonderful fragrance miles above most of followed it, lies partially in that it isn't clean.

The choco sweetness goes hand in hand with (earthy = dirty) patchouli, and the initial outpouring of fruit is neither horrid nor trite. There is a solidity about it that's surprising. Angel is like a woman who seems like a bimbo with a boob job but who turns out to be not just a decent human being but not stupid at all. And amazingly, she also has a sense of humour. So few fragrances laugh but rather remain full of themselves and dead serious, but Angel has this dirty belly-laugh that means you can forgive it the Barbie heels and berry-pink lipstick. Unlike its aspratame sisters and daughters.

Sources (1)

I'm not sure if I read the (in)famous Luca Turin book before, after or just at the time when my interest in fragrances switched up a gear. But without any doubt it was a seminal influence on me. before you go away tutting in disgust, let me assure you that I don'ty take The Guide as a bible. Or, since I am not of religious persuasion, I don't take it as an equivalent of a Rough Guide.

But the whole thing is delightfully readable, entertaining and honestly informative if idiosyncratically opinionated. And it made me realise that it is possible to write - and think- about fragrance in a way that goes beyond, and occasionally entirely bypasses the whole notes/chemicals part.

Also, I do like Luca Turin. I often don't agree with him (not just on perfume - I read a collection of his very enjoyable columns whose half had nothing to do with perfume ) but both his style, and his GENERAL sensibility, if not necessarily his particular preferences appeal to a part of me. There is another part of me that thinks he's a pretentious wanker with head up hiss ass, but then the same part of me thinks that the first part of me is a pretentious wanker with head up my own ass.

Turin writes about perfume the way the best music reviewers write about albums, or the way Jane Grigson writes about fruit: with knowledge and with love, treading a precarious path between technically accomplished, analytical criticism and impressionistic playfulness. The scents are described in a heady combination of technical perfumery terms, real-world references, pop-culture analogies, high-culture metaphors and personal associations. Turin manages to capture the essence, the idea, the sheer soul of the perfumes he reviews. He's opinionated and clever, but most of all he is fun. The short hatchet jobs are devastatingly effective while the longer eulogies will make you want to go and buy one (or two, or five) now. Sometimes, though, the history and eulogy takes over the description, and I ended up with many words that told me nothing about the scent itself. I forgive the good Doctor because he is intensely passionate about fragrance: he accepts no holy cows and seem to have no prejudices either, doling out scathing criticism to weaker offerings of the most esteemed brands and unafraid to praise the unexpected (including even some - admittedly very few - celebrity fragrances). His personal taste is extremely diverse and sluttily promiscuous and he gives an equal attention and admiration to the loudly vulgar and to the subtly elegant, provided both are made well.

You might notice that I focus consistently on Turin here. It's not an ellipsis but a conscious choice. In a book like this, the personal click, the imaginary rapport one develops with the columnist (excuse me, the reviewer) is crucial. And for some reason, I can relate to Turin's notes much more than to Sanchez's ones. I know that they claim they agree on the star ratings. But I don't really care that much about star ratings (of which in a second)|. What I do care about is the impression of the fragrance I get from the few words or few paragraphs, and while Turin's mostly do it for me, Sanchez's don't.

It's not that they are not entertaining to read -- they are, even if a tad too bitchy for my liking (and that's the positive ones), or maybe bitchy in a way that doesn't appeal to me -- but it's more that I don't seem to share Sanchez's emotional and cultural vocabulary. She writes of notes as well, if tad differently, than Turin, but it's in the around-scent, associative realm that I don't quite get her. It might be as simple as the fact that Sanchez is American, and a few years younger than I am, which together probably create an equivalent of something more like a fifteen-year gap. It's interesting, though, that absolute majority of the five-star reviews in the Guide are Turin's.

Still, as uneven and crap as it might be as an encyclopaedia, The Guide is a tremendous source of inspiration. Witty, lyrically creative and honest, this book doesn't claim to be a reference volume or even really a proper guide to the olfactory delights of modern perfumery but it's an immensely entertaining collection of set pieces that can't fail to both amuse and inspire.

Do I have any qualms, aparat from the fact that some highly rated fragrances are still not described and that I prefer Turin to Sanchez? Well, no, not really. The star ratings are subjective, as any star ratings, and Turin and Sanchez don't claim anything else, so I don't have a problem with them.

I suspect that even if you disagree with their judgements, you will find reading the reviews stimulating. Personally I ended up feeling smugly satisfied that nearly all of my favourite scents were given four or five stars. And many a time I looked something I felt distinctly ''meh'' about in The Guide and it was there with two or one star.

Still, it's worth remembering a few things in addition to the essential subjectivity of ratings.

Both Turin and Sanchez like originality bordering on weirdness. This applies particularly Turin: Sanchez is a bit more concerned with actual wearbility. This actually isn't an issue for me. In fact, I can't think of any fragrances they gave five stars (or four, of the ones I tried) that I thought were carp, even if some were not for me.

But as a consequence they both despise clones or uncreative ''versions'' and derivatives. They down-grade ''me-too'' scents almost as a rule. A more casual user might be perfectly happy to wear a me-too of the original scent, which The Guide rated 2* simply for its lack of originality not original,

The corollary of the above is that they are passionate about perfume which means they - particularly Turin - rate high for artistry and construction, which are not necessarily usability criteria. and they certainly rate some very controversial scents as 5* ones. The fact that I personally ''get'' this, and can imagine spending money on them, is neither here nor there. Although Turin talks about the ''must smell good'' imperative, I feel that ''must smell original'' he holds in as much esteem.

Having said all that, I still consult my copy of the dog-eared Guide on a nearly daily basis and I really wish Turin started to write about fragrance again!