Winter Wardrobe, Part 2: Wishlist

One of the most maddening things about being a collector is that it’s never a straight line from one absolute desire to the next. Too many desires happen simultaneously, tugging mind and wallet in all different directions. Because I both hate making decisions and think about things too much, I try to separate the fragrances I want into those that are reasonably accessible to me and those that are perpetually out of reach, whether due to price or availability. And with that dreary explanation, here are three exquisite scents that I can’t seem to get my hands on:

Maison Francis Kurkdjian Absolue Pour le Soir ($2.50 / milliliter)
I’ve actually never smelled Cologne Pour le Soir, from which Absolue draws its foundation (a creamy, benzoin-heavy amber accord, incense, rose and honey), but I already know I prefer Absolue. I’m convinced that this foundation only makes its mark at full tilt, as it is in the latter. The magic-hour hue of that sticky, sweet core gets darkened several shades by cumin, sandalwood and an unmistakably dirty civet that’s earned Absolue many a carnal-themed review and the title “Skankfest of the Year."

My reasons for keeping it off the immediate buy list? A) I already own Musks Kublaï Khan, which is enough of a “skankfest-sweet-oriental” showpiece already, and B) $175 is too much to spend on something I could only get away with four days out of the year. Still, I do pine for those zinc bottle caps…


Mark Buxton Around Midnight ($1.73 / milliliter, according to current Euro exchange rate)
I know I said in the last post that Annick Menardo is my perennial number one among perfumers, but I was a Mark Buxton groupie first (as I also mentioned in the last post, the first perfume I loved was 2 Man, easily Buxton’s best for Comme des Garçons). To my surprise, Around Midnight is the only scent from Buxton’s eponymous collection that seems to be anywhere near my own wavelength.

I’ve read people describe it as a stylistic chameleon, moving eerily from aromatic fougere territory to chypre to oriental. You could certainly think of it that way, especially if you never want to actually enjoy it. Or you could just stop thinking and take in the pepper and chamomile (fresh and aromatic like lavender but without that Irish Spring sourness that gives me the heebs), the brilliantly structural (versus ornamental) jasmine, and a powdery wood-amber base.

The overarching sense I get isn’t all that chameleonic. While there doesn’t seem to be a discrete incense note per se, there is very much an incense ‘feel’ or character that lingers over most of the development; a smoky haze obscuring and blending a disparate (and quite saturated) riot of color, and a very familiar Buxton effect. 

I’ve enjoyed my tiny sample of Around Midnight down to its last drop, and with Lucky Scent now sold out of it, I can only turn to First in Fragrance, where as you may have guessed, I would have to pay out the nose in Euros. The last time I ordered a scent from Germany I paid €19 - nineteen! - for standard shipping and it took three weeks and two trips to the post office in Bed-Stuy to get it. Whee.

Tom Ford Private Blend Italian Cypress ($3.80 / milliliter)
This is terribly handsome, utterly desirable and very Tom Ford-priced juice. Imagine original Polo in a Tom Ford black tie look (and in case you’re thinking this is strictly a masculine exercise, it actually works for whichever gender you dress; ditto for the fragrance itself).

In lieu of a “Top 10 of 2010!” listicle (if you’re craving that kind of thing, you can go here or here or here or here), I'm presenting a list of things that feel direly inappropriate while wearing Italian Cypress:

• Spilling coffee on my sleeve while stumbling through a subway turnstile
• Tapping my foot to Blondie’s “Slow Motion” on the subway
• Being on the subway at all
• Being clumsy enough to give myself a papercut
• Wearing a sweater I didn’t realize was completely covered in lint
• Sniffling, sneezing or any other sign of infirmity
• Being under 5’10”
• Cheap underwear
• Cheap anything
• Eating dinner alone

In other words, wearing Italian Cypress with any kind of regularity would probably result in some very unnecessary self-esteem issues. Happy New Year!

Winter Wardrobe, Part 1: What I’m Wearing Now

I started this post before the East Coast blizzard that smothered 50 million people. Unable to get a flight from Georgia back to New York, I was a bit sad not to take part in that scary but thrilling moment when all New Yorkers' delusions of a "mild winter" start to buckle. Now those delusions have been blown cleanly away, and all I get to enjoy is the aftermath, peeking cautiously around hills of plowed snow before I slosh across the street.

The silver lining, as you might suspect, is that I love scents that suit the cold -- the smoky woods and soft, heavy ambers and resins; the oddity of sillage blooming intensely when you walk inside instead of out. My taste in the frigid months leans toward the contemplative and the cozy and my tolerance for the gourmand expands. Here are a few scents where those inclinations have led me so far:

Le Labo Pathchouli 24

May I take a brief moment to share my boundless admiration for Annick Ménardo, my all-time perfumer crush? Her style, to my nose, manages to be both familiar and startling -- familiar because of the uncanny olfactory impressions she paints (the root beer of Hypnotic Poison or the rubber of Bvlgari Black) and startling in the depth and immediacy of one’s emotional reaction to those impressions. Okay fine, that’s waxing way too poetic, but frankly I challenge you to give yourself a spray of Bois d’Argent and not think immediately of milk and honey (or, in my memory, milk and Cap’n Crunch).

She’s been called the “David Lynch of perfumery”, and accordingly, when she goes niche she doesn’t just go. She sprints. Which brings us nicely ‘round to Patchouli 24 for Le Labo. Administering a blatant overdose of birch tar and styrax with such precision and balance clearly takes technical expertise. But underneath that up-front toughness, the aching, lonesome beauty of campfire smoke, glove leather and a faint VapoRub effect remains one of the most convincing arguments ever made that perfumers are fine artists. Much has been said about the dry vanillic ‘smell of old books’ aspect that underpins the heart of Patchouli 24, but my favorite effect is the lingering sensation that something nearby is smoldering, in a good way.

Frederic Malle Bois d’Orage / French Lover

There are exceptions to the tastes I described above. On some cold days -- bright ones in particular -- I like to wear something as sharp and invigorating as the weather, rather than a figurative blanket to comfort against it. Those days I’ve been choosing Pierre Bourdin’s brilliant interpretation of angelica for Frederic Malle: Bois d’Orage (“thunder wood”), or as it’s known in non-American markets, French Lover. The opening is indeed bright with ultra-green galbanum and pimento; the heart and later phases are marked by a medium-warm cedar, discreetly extended by vetiver and iris. Those two branches support the star ingredient, amplifying both the spicy and musky aspects of the angelica while keeping them securely linked. Dry without being thin, masculine without being animalic, every-day wearable but dressy enough for a winter wedding; it’s like a waxed cotton utility jacket that magically reverses into a tuxedo.

Penhaligon’s Opus 1870

This was my second perfume love affair (after Comme des Garçons 2 Man). This is a classic chypre pulled carefully and thoughtfully into the 21st century. This is an old sweater that only gets better with age.

I can’t for the life of me find who actually authored the perfume, but whoever it was struck gold. The whole composition, from the citrus-black pepper opening through the mossy rose-and-incense heart to the cinnamon-dusted base woods, glows like a dimmed Edison bulb hanging over a white marble bar. A fair amount of people (myself included) consider this one of Penhaligon’s best, but it also seems to fly under the radar, especially relative to the house’s splashier new Duchaufours (Amaranthine and Sartorial), and truth be told I’m glad for that. In addition to having one of the best cedar drydowns I’ve ever encountered, Opus is one of the best secrets I’ve ever kept.

Telling Stories: Gorilla Perfume Pop-Up Shop and Gallery

(Updated with further thoughts on The Smell of Weather Turning)

My trudging work week ended yesterday with an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. The earth-loving artisans at Lush turned three floors of a building on Crosby street into a makeshift gallery to launch a number of new scents in their Gorilla Perfume fragrance line. Groovy!

The exhibit comprised a series of rooms dedicated to particular fragrances, each one furnished with an illustration of what inspired the scent (live dancers in one room, audio recordings of thunder in another, a bubble machine, dirty bathroom sinks, etc.) and a VERY friendly storyteller ready to translate smell into narrative.

In my typically nerdy fashion, I prodded these ladies and gentlemen for as much nerdy detail about the perfumes as I could, but they seemed far better-versed in the stories than the hard facts. After a while I didn’t even mind, because the stories (all drawn from the global adventures of Lush co-founder Mark Constantine and his son Simon, who author the perfumes themselves) were at the very least entertaining, and more importantly, in most cases they really did seem to relate to the final product, rather than feeling like a cut-throat marketing move. Kudos to these Willy Wonkas, then, for giving their scents more of a soul than one is apt to find in most perfume these days.

A fine example is The Smell of Freedom, which combines three olfactory portraits of people who have suffered extreme hardship into a ‘triptych’ of sorts. The scents were based on a Tibetan monk (clove, black pepper, ginger-honey tea), an Australian Aboriginal (fire tree, lemon myrtle, lemongrass) and a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner (oudh, jasmine, orris and sustainable Australian sandalwood). Each of the three portraits is available as a perfume oil in addition to the combined scent sold in an atomizer bottle.

Other highlights were the new Imogen Rose, a blushing Damascus rose swathed in vetiver, bergamot and soft ambrette; Dirty, a slyly marine-tilting alternative to Axe aimed at unshowered dudes; and three custom scents blended for an actress, an heiress and a dutchess (all of whose hair Mark Constantine had tended to in the 70s), each made available to the public for the first time and exclusively at this gallery for a properly luxurious $2,400 a pop.

My clear favorite, though, and the one that coaxed my credit card from the safety of my wallet, is The Smell of Weather Turning. The perfumers were encouraged to create this ‘thunderstorm in reverse’ by an employee of theirs who is also a white witch. They drew further inspiration from the musician Simon Emmerson, who is a member of an order of druids, as well as a dream Mark Constantine had at an Iron Age inn in Finland where they were fed nettles and dark rye bread.

All of these experiences led Mark to insist on only using materials that would have been available 5,000 years ago in the fragrance, and they pulled it off with aplomb.  Weather Turning turns up an herbal bouquet of English peppermint, chamomile and nettle that anchors quickly to a heart of stately oakwood mixed with what I smell as mossy notes, which provide just the slightest hint of marine saltiness. These first phases bring it initially close to Dirty, an older scent from Lush’s now-closed Be Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful line that Luca Turin dubbed “marine mint.” Where the newer scent differs is in the sweet hay and beeswax absolutes underneath, as warm and dry as anyone could want. The combination imparts both a vague smokiness and creaminess to the last (and longest-lasting) phase, and the beeswax seems to fix the entire composition in place. Those herbs that kick everything off don’t so much collapse into this last phase as they do sink slowly into it, such that one can still apprehend their dull silhouette many hours after their opening act. Minty scents rarely work well on my skin, but Weather Turning marks a bewitching (see what I did there?) halfway point between fresh and cozy. Wearing it out of the exhibit, it actually made me feel at home in the otherwise oppressively humid, pre-storm Manhattan night.

Some of the Gorilla perfumes will be available in Lush stores, but all of them, aside from the “three ladies”, can be purchased from the Gorilla Perfume website in 30 ml bottles or as solids. Many of the former Be Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful perfumes (Dirty and Ladyboy among them) are also available on the site.

The Smell of Deep-Fried Marc Jacobs

As can be expected given today's prurient pop cultural tastes, most of the online chatter about Marc Jacobs's upcoming men's fragrance, Bang, is about his near-full monty ad.  Personally, I'm amazed that someone found an even more tasteless way than Tom Ford to juxtapose a flacon and a crotch.  I'm also impressed at how, with this ad, Marc Jacobs is straddling (heh) the line between 'designer' and 'celebrity' fragrance. But I think the honors for most entertaining response to the ad goes to Michael K at DListed: "Based on this ad, Marc's nectar probably smells like Jiffy Pop, butt sweat, Molly McButter sprinkles, and cups of grease from the jar my abuelita keeps under her sink. Basically, this is what I wish my apartment will smell like on a Friday night, but it ends up reeking like lonely tears and burnt Hot Pockets."

Alas, if Michael K had read just a bit further he might have discovered that Bang will not, in fact, have a butt sweat accord. Rather, it features a trio of peppercorns (black, pink and white -- evidently MJ likes pepper), er, "primal masculine woods", elemi, benzoin, vetiver, white moss and patchouli.  Peppery top notes and a vetiver-moss-patchouli dry down sound pretty on-trend for an explicitly masculine scent to me, so I'm wondering if the elemi and benzoin will have that great sweet-medicinal character to give it something different or, conversely, if they will manifest as a disappointing approximation of cheap vanilla extract.  To be priced at $55 / $75 for a 50 ml or 100 ml eau de toilette, Bang was created by Ann Gottlieb, author of (among other commercial powerhouses) CK be and Sarah Jessica Parker's Covet.  So yeah, I'm guessing cheap vanilla extract.

Translating Margiela

I.

Shall we get right to it? (untitled), the first fragrance from Maison Martin Margiela, was composed by the gifted Daniela Andrier, a watercolorist of a perfumer and the author of Prada’s madly successful Infusions series, and it proceeds something like this: a splash of fresh wet green to start; soft, cuddly resins wrapping a statuesque bigarade; a polite suggestion of jasmine and warm cedar; pretty-but-anemic musk and a drop of sweat. It generates more than decent sillage, but after the opening blast of galbanum fades (it doesn’t take long), all I smell from a distance is pillow-soft amber and bitter orange. If I really hound my wrist I get the faintly animalic musky base and traces of incense.

These are lovely notes, every one, and elegantly interwoven, yet I’m left wishing for twice the effect packed in half the volume, and more importantly, something to skew it a degree or two off-trend. (untitled) is a very nice fragrance, but in the way that a Margiela t-shirt is just a ‘very nice’ t-shirt.

Luckily for the Diesel Group (Maison Martin Margiela’s new corporate parent), very nice is plenty good enough for a lot of people – especially, I would wager, the kind of people who prize expensive simplicity and prefer to smell ‘like nothing.’ I can’t help wondering, though, what might have been if the same devil-may-care daringness had been applied to this project as has been devoted to the house’s most thought-provoking designs. What if the bracing, bitter green notes were prolonged, kept aloft by brighter, headier incense instead of giving way to the woody-floral heart? Or what if the musks were even dirtier, saltier, suggestive of a wet animal coat made strangely desirable (think of the wet fur facet of L’Artisan’s Méchant Loup)?

I’m not suggesting either of these ideas would be better than what ended up in the bottle. The trouble with (untitled) is that I can’t seem to find its identity. It somehow feels overdone and incomplete at the same time. And while I know it’s splitting hairs to say so, even the way it was introduced lacked the intelligence and straightforwardness on which la Maison stakes its reputation.

Last week’s event at the New York Margiela store, for example, featured no experiential process by which to try the scent, unless you want to count the precious scented cloth buttons that were pinned to lapels here and there. Unlike the comparably lavish Paris launch, there was no tower of bottles, no flashy reveal, and no white confetti either. There was merely a pair of tester bottles on a sober white pedestal – arguably more in sync with the house’s aesthetic and yet not very exciting – and a surplus of hors d’oeuvre-bearing waiters. I was kind of hoping I would have to follow the scent across an unlit room to its source on the gaunt neck of a nude model, or something to that effect. I gave up a ticket to Die Zauberflote so I could attend, for pete’s sake! Admittedly, that imaginary scenario is more for-its-own-sake wackitude than something actually meaningful, but surely the passing of lukewarm beet canapes isn’t the only alternative.

Conversely, the house appeared intent on taking its fragrance seriously even if no one else cared to. The testers bottles were accompanied by a handful of small vials bearing samples of (untitled)’s featured raw ingredients (galbanum, galbanum resinoid, bigarade orange, lentiscus resinoid (mastic), and incense) – a thoughtful way of being informative that, by my count, about three partygoers took advantage of. Considering the fashion-oriented crowd and the mill-about, free champagne mood of the gathering, that forlorn display seemed to cry out for all the perfume geeks who weren’t there. It worked as a visual reminder of the house’s preoccupation with construction and process, but then if they really wanted (untitled) to live up to its name and “to hold different meanings for different people” (which itself is not a particularly unique sentiment about perfume), they might have considered not publicizing the list of notes at all, as Hermès did with their new Voyage.

I like (untitled) more than I’m letting on. But at the end of the day, I would’ve believed any number of other designer names slapped on the smart, paint-dipped lab bottle, and I find it difficult to believe (as the house insists) that Martin Margiela himself had anything to do with the project.

II.

The most curious part of the whole enterprise, though, is the deliberately obfuscated marketing copy being used to promote it. In the interest of mining the true intentions behind (untitled), I took the liberty of translating a few breezy excerpts into more everyday statements:

“Everyone can feel called into question by a colour, a shape or a garment… We wanted to give perfume the same chance. Stripped of any reference to an influence of precise climate, (untitled) can be interpreted and worn for all occasions by every one of us.”

Translation: “Everyone can feel befuddled from time to time by our most overwrought pieces. We wanted to disorient our audience with perfume as well, except in the sense that it has little to do with our founder’s vision, which really no longer directs the house anyway, you see. (untitled) takes Margiela into an entirely new market, bearing an instantly familiar, purely pleasurable character.”

• • •

“For its first olfactive creation, Maison Martin Margiela has chosen to strike out on a new path, reformulating the forgotten green fragrances that symbolised the femininity of the 1970s… The principal element of this woody green floral is Galbanum, a fine and rare raw material. Its incisive notes are boosted with the bitterness of box green, the vibrancy of lentiscus and incense, and the smoothness of bitter orange. Like a huge armful of plants harvested just after the rain, its raw state recalling pared-down garments and hems cut open, emblematic signatures of Maison Martin Margiela.”

Translation: “For our first scent we chose to try one of those green fragrances we learned about. It’s said they are reminiscent of a perfumery style from the ‘70s, and we totally heart the idea of ‘reinterpreting’ and ‘reinventing’ things from the past… The best way of blasting someone with green freshness is evidently a double-hit of galbanum, which is suitably uncommon and smells enough like wet plants that people can describe it as something other than just ‘clean.’ Then we loaded up on that awesome bigarade and some other, more subdued notes that make it smell discreetly expensive.”

• • •

“Faithful to its philosophy of metamorphosis, of finding a ›second life‹, Maison Martin Margiela turns this exhumed classical foundation upside down, and contrasts it with resonances of sweet jasmine and musky cedar. Its striking pedigree is then edged with a dense, almost filmy warmth.” (weird emphasis theirs)

Translation: “We had this retro style that we needed to bring into the ‘now’, so we included some airy jasmine and cedar notes for that luxury soap feeling, and finally some slightly dirty white musk that makes people think of their own skin. We figured that would make it attractive to people who are too cool or too confident or simply embarassed to wear perfume."

• • •

“I know that perfume must not follow a fashion or a trend, but an instinct. This first perfume expresses a femininity which does not fit into formal categories… I am grateful to Maison Martin Margiela for whispering the formula for this perfume into my ear.”  -- Daniela Andrier, perfumer

Translation: “I know that it’s important to this brand to believe in themselves as perfectly unique, so I designed their first perfume to evoke the kind of woman who works hard at her ‘effortless’ look, and is willing to go a few weeks without washing her hair for that bit of grit. I’m grateful that the imprimatur of a brand like Margiela made this gig a walk in the park. I mean, really, who’s going to object to galbanum two ways with an orange julius on top?”

• • •

“By creating fragrances woven in the most beautiful raw materials and melted with poetic impetus that is found in the inspired wearer, perfume can be saved from the terrible trivialization that threatens it. This is how I wrote the formula for this first perfume for Maison Martin Margiela, with that special grace that comes with the perception of the obvious, that clarity that gives us wings in the wonderful encounters of our lives.” -- Daniela Andrier

Translation: “I feel so fortunate to have been selected for this project. Thank the lord Diesel put up enough cash to give it some teeth! And all you catty perfume freaks who think I’ve cloned an easy hybrid of all my recent work can screw off and die. You know it's good! And it was actually a very welcome break from simply formulating the next flavor of Prada-ade.  But, please, don’t tell Miuccia. A girl has to eat, right?”

• • •

(untitled) is available in 30ml, 50ml and 75ml sizes at Maison Martin Margiela boutiques and online at Colette.

Sibling Rivalry is a Bitch: Acqua di Parma Colonia vs. Acqua di Parma Colonia Intensa

In my admittedly short time as a perfumery geek, I’ve known flankers to go one of two ways. The first kind comes about as a mildly modified version of an established original, and further revisions often follow. This is how Dior Homme, a perfectly desirable eau de toilette on its own, ended up with Dior Homme Intense, Dior Homme Cologne and Dior Homme Sport (which doesn’t smell ‘modified’ to me so much as ‘tampered with’) all nipping at its mojo.

I don’t react well to the type of unnecessary choice created by flankers in this mode. If I enjoy Scent X, I’d rather not have to choose between it and three other interpretations of the same idea. Likewise, if I don’t care for Scent Y, then ‘Not Quite Scent Y But Close’ is a pretty unappealing alternative.

That skepticism, paradoxically, leaves me less prone to encounter the second kind of flanker: the kind that has nothing to do with the original but shares its name because some marketing people said it should. Being the youngest of five children and the only male, I tend to gravitate towards younger brothers and sisters, especially those who aren’t inclined to compete with elder siblings and go their own way. So among the figurative younger siblings of the perfume world, I’m sentimentally drawn to flankers that have nothing to prove.

Family dysfunction masked by swell design

Acqua di Parma Colonia Intensa is a favorite example of a flanker with an independent streak. It’s the youngest in a family of eaux de cologne that started with the original Acqua di Parma Colonia, the classic Italian cologne born in a citrus essence factory in 1916 and worn by the likes of Cary Grant and Lana Turner.  Colonia Intensa was born under the present-day ownership of LVMH and is worn by the likes of me – a clear indication that it’s not really even in the same game as its much older and much-celebrated brother.

And yet Colonia Intensa suffers the indignities of being evaluated against Colonia because of its name, which suggests merely a concentrated version of the original. It’s also packaged in the same art deco-style bottle, but rather than Colonia’s iconic black tie label and cap, it wears an unimpressive third-place bronze. Even the family’s middle child, the highly regarded Colonia Assoluta, comes dressed in plucky silver and boasts of being composed by star perfumers Jean-Claude Ellena and Bertrand Duchaufour. I haven’t spent any real time with Assoluta so I left it out of this comparison, but as you can see, it’s easy to mistake Colonia Intensa for yet another dull variation jostling for a share of the family cachet.

But it’s just not. It’s as warm and characterful as the original Colonia is brilliant and aloof. It’s gregarious where the original is discreet. If, for example, you were somehow able to ask Colonia where its citruses originated*, it might answer: “Well if you must know, my lemons are Sicilian, my bergamot from Calabria. Any other questions?” And if you could ask the same of Colonia Intensa, it might simply say: “I can’t recall, but they’re nice, aren’t they?”

*Having undoubtedly suffered one or more reformulations since its heyday, it's quite possible Colonia today relies solely on synthetic citruses. But hey, a cologne can dream, can't he?

Where are your lemons from?

In both colognes the citrus comes right up front and at a fairly high volume, faithful in that respect to the classic cologne structure (citrus top, floral heart, woody base), yet the difference between the pair is hard to miss even at this stage, when they’re most similar. Colonia’s opening is strictly citrus, signaling its uncompromised quality; Colonia Intensa sports a dash of ginger with its lemon. It still reeks – in the best way – of old Italian luxury, but lightened, a bit effervescent, maybe a little kicky. Like its predecessor, Colonia Intensa calls to mind a crisp white shirt, but this shirt is more in the vein of Band of Outsiders than Brioni.

From there they diverge further: Intensa drifts with extreme nonchalance towards its mildly spiced, resinous and woody middle notes (officially cardamom, myrtle, mugwort, benzoin and guaiac wood, although they're blended seamlessly enough that picking out any individual note is futile), while Colonia strides purposefully through a high-strung heart of astringent herbs and some seriously powdery rose – Bulgarian, if you must know – and ylang-ylang. (Aside: ‘ylang-ylang’ is very unpleasant to type.) In its last stages Intensa is an afterparty for fun people; a waifish troupe of leather, incense, sweet patchouli and musk supplants its aristocratic veneer. Colonia meanwhile collapses on a stiff mattress of soapy cedar, smelling like fresh laundry. I’m sure it’s clear by now which of the two I prefer.

A handy chart illustrating the respective structures

of Colonia and Colonia Intensa

The same voices who give Intensa grief in the perfume forums for lacking direction and broadcasting a sort of generic, weak-willed masculinity often praise the original Colonia for having an unmistakable sense of purpose. In addition to reminding me of why I avoid people who use phrases like “sense of purpose,” this also reinforces my primary complaint about Colonia: it produces what you could call acute straighten-up syndrome, wherein one furiously resists indulging in even the most harmless slouch. If you like feeling superior even though it means you rarely get to know anyone (something I can’t deny about myself, frankly), it’s likely you’ll favor the classic over the arriviste. Yet as partial as I am to things with pedigree, I’ve come down on the side of Colonia Intensa: outclassed but still classy, and far less exhausting to wear.

The larger point, though, is that Colonia Intensa really deserves its own name and should be judged on its own merits. Measuring it against the original Colonia is like parking a charming little Lancia Fulvia next to a Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California.

I wish the Acqua di Parma Colonia family were pitched as a series of loosely related but distinct scents (a model epitomized by Comme des Garçons’s ongoing series of series) rather than just variations on a theme. The increasingly trendy simultaneous release of multiple scents from one house, e.g. D&G’s 2009 sextuplets, seems to annoy some of the olfactorati, but it would also seem to let black sheep like Colonia Intensa step out of everyone else’s shadows.

Images from Images de Parfums and Acqua di Parma