China: Fragrance Culture, Fragrance History, & Oud (沉香)

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Kafkaesque

Photo: Don Daniele at 500px.com (Direct website link embedded within.)

I read a fascinating article the other day on China and fragrances which set off my curiosity on a few issues, got me digging into others, and made me ponder a few impenetrable questions that only time will tell. The article is called, “Sweet smell of success: Foreign fragrances dominate China’s perfume market,” and it’s written by David Dodwell for the South China Morning Post. Mr. Dodwell is the Executive Director of the Hong Kong-APEC Trade Policy Group and appears to write extensively on China. This time, he turned his attention to perfume after spending a day in Heathrow’s Duty Free section in Terminal 5 and seeing “a flock of fashionable mainland Chinese women scenting their way through the Jo Malone part of the fragrance section.”

That led him to the following question: given China’s global manufacturing process and the emergence of so many Chinese brands, why couldn’t he think of a single Chinese-made perfume? I have my own personal theories on that issue, but what interested me more were other points he made in passing, like Mao‘s Cultural Revolution or the role of oud (chen xiang (沉香)). I’ll be talking about all of that today, in addition to China’s fragrance history, fragrance culture, and its changing attitudes to scent over time.

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Grab Bag Round-Up: January to June 2016

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Kafkaesque

It’s been more than a year since I did one of my monthly “grab bag” posts, inspired by the “Currently” series of posts that my friend, The Non-Blonde, does summarizing various personal things in her life from books, music, television shows, cooking, to other things. I don’t know why I stopped doing mine, but the hot, lazy days of summer and the long 4th of July holiday weekend in the U.S. seem like a good time to start again. There may not be a lot of interesting newspaper articles on the state of the fragrance industry for me to share with you as I did before, and all of it is a departure from my usual focus so it may not bear any interest for some of you but, sometimes, one just wants to hang out with friends (as so many of you have become), relax, and chat.

As some of you know, perfume actually ranks rather low on my list of passions and I’m far more interested in things like history, German shepherds, gastronomy, photography, or even television, for that matter. So, I’ll tell you what’s interested or amused me over the last six months, and then I hope you will then tell me your news.

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Hiram Green Dilettante

Posted on June 29, 2016 by Kafkaesque

Photo: Jana Martish via her website. (Direct link embedded within.)

Hiram Green‘s latest release, Dilettante, is rather deceiving at first glance. You’d think it was a simple, sunny soliflore, capturing the essence of an orange tree, from the sunshine gleaming around its lush floral petals to the unripened, green (neroli) fruits hanging on the spicy, bitter petitgrain of its branches, down its trunk to the earth in which it grows. If you thought that, you’d be right because that is partially what the fragrance is about. At least initially…. You see, Dilettante had a surprise in store for me, moving beyond its initial “sunshine, Vitamin C, and orange blossom tree captured in a bottle,” to turn into something molten later on. Truth be told, I’m not sure the version I experienced is the normal one for Dilettante, rather than an atypical oddity due to some strange interaction with my skin, but I was smitten anyway. Irrespective of how the later stages turned out, though, all of it feels like another solid, well-crafted, wonderfully appealing release from this small artisanal house.

Hiram Green. Source: Fragrantica.

I have a lot of respect for Mr. Green, a shy, humble, and gifted perfumer who deserves a lot more attention than he gets, in my opinion. In fact, I think he should be applauded for a really rare trait, one that the best chefs aspire to but not enough perfume houses, if you ask me. Namely, being good to great on consistent basis. Again and again and again, Mr. Green produces solid, good, and sometimes great perfumes that are rich, polished, seamlessly blended, easy to wear, and extremely high-quality for a moderate, reasonable price. There is zero pretension or over-the-top marketing hyperbole; no ever-increasing prices that don’t match the scents in question; and no interest in following the latest hot trend. Just one perfume a year, worked on carefully and quietly with the simple aim of making it the best he can. That’s it.

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Eris Parfums: Ma Bete, Belle de Jour & Night Flower

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Kafkaesque

Eris Parfums’ Barbara Herman (right), and perfumer, Antoine Lie (left). Source: Fragrantica. com

Eris Parfums is a new brand, founded by Barbara Herman, a vintage perfume expert who wrote the book, Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume (2013) after many years of being a blogger on her site, Yesterday’s Perfume. (Book links provided at the end in the Details section.) When she decided to launch her own line, she turned to perfumer Antoine Lie whom she’d first met as an interview source for her book. As she explains in her biography section on Eris Parfums, she wanted to “create a collection of fragrances as daring and erotic as fragrances of the past.”

Eris Parfums trio. Source: erisparfums.com

The results were three eau de parfums launched earlier this year: Ma Bete, Belle de Jour, and Night Flower. I’ll look at each one in turn. As part of my new resolution of providing a more succinct analysis whenever the perfumes permit it, I’ll give a more generalized breakdown of a perfume’s development instead of my usual detail, and also skip discussing comparative reviews.

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