Perfume writing

The Long Goodbye

  • How reality got in the way of … perfume (writing). 

Dear Readers,

 I stare at my MacBook screen on this scorching hot day at my dining table and struggle to find the words I know I have to write. This is hard. But write them, I must. 

As of today, July 20th, 2022, I will no longer write about perfume. 

Not because I’ve lost interest, not because I care less about the art form, the perfumes, the perfumers, the perfume houses, the connections I’ve made and deeply cherished all over the world. 

I stop because I’m deathly tired of writing into a void. Also because other writing, the kind that doesn’t float off into the ether and might even (on the off, unlikely chance) get me recognized as a writer, has become important enough to take precedence. 

Right now, I’m battling the last third of my novel rewrite of Medea. Jason and Medea’s marriage is breaking down beyond repair, the tabloids and paparazzi of Corinth are having a field day digging up dirt, Creusa knows nothing, Creon knows everything, and meanwhile, in a chapter or two, three small boys are going to die, murdered not by their mother (I did say it was a rewrite!), but by their creatrix on the page because literature! 

It may be summer vacation time, even for the likes of me, but this particular scenario is not at all conducive to upbeat, sun-soaked stories about perfume. 

More to the point, I’ve lost heart.

The Long Goodbye

One thing that stuck in my mind when first Scent Less Sensibilites and later, the Alembicated Genie took off in 2011-12, was the feeling of community on Planet Perfume. We congregated in the virtual spaces of Twitter, Facebook and later, Instagram, we commented on each other’s blogs, we promoted each others’ posts and tweets.

 As a person who at the time was going through impending divorce, the dissolution of my little family and massive psychological rewiring, the blogosphere and that community meant, literally, the world to me. They were the friendships I didn’t have in real life, the buddies I could talk to, the broad horizons and perspectives that so expanded my own. 

When I wrote, whether tweets, blog posts, long emails to my friends, or Facebook group comments, I could forget that my life was falling apart, that I hated where I lived at the time, that everything and everywhere around me flashed my fate to the heavens in 10 foot neon pink letters: Epic Fail.

And then, everything changed. Especially the blogosphere. And Planet Perfume. And. 

Former cherished perfume writing colleagues stopped writing. Others simply vanished. 

YouTube videos took over everything. One of those YouTubers, and one of the most beloved characters in the worldwide perfume community, Carlos of Brooklyn Fragrance Lover and before that of the Facebook group Peace-Love-Perfume, died unexpectedly, and this hit me very hard. 

I now avoid YouTube perfume videos like the plague, with two exceptions: Wafts from the Loft and the Perfume Guy, simply because those three gentlemen keep the content about the perfumes, and not content creators preening in front of a camera. (Ergh.)

So far as I can tell, and I haven’t kept up nearly to the extent I used to, actual perfume conversations are becoming either obsolete or don’t really take place at all except on a few FB groups, where I’ve often despaired at the inanity on display. 

As a blogger, perfume conversations were my entire raison d’etre, and if they weren’t happening, then maybe I shouldn’t, either. 

Misleading statistics

I’ve watched as my metrics – hits, retweets etc. – went up and down and all around. I still get quite a few daily hits, but no matter how I’ve tried to provoke my readers, the comments became far fewer as the years went by. 

I wrote less, more to gratify an aesthetic itch than for any other reason. I long ago lost all faith that anything at all might become of my perfume writing, although to be fair, that was precisely how (and why) my first novel got published. 

No one cared any longer, or that’s what it felt like. So why did I persist for so long? 

Underrated Gratitude

Gratitude. Gratitude kept me writing on the occasions when I did. Gratitude for those human connections, gratitude for the samples and decants that brought me so much joy, gratitude for simply being privileged enough to be able to write about perfume. 

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of those friendships, those connections, and all the people who made them possible. That would be YOU. 

Thank you.

Futurities

One important event in these past twelve years was going back to school and receiving a bachelor’s degree in education. Today, I work fulltime as a middle school teacher of art, English, history, religion and science. No job I have ever had apart from writing has been so immersive and so illuminating. My students teach me something new every single day. And yet. 

I’m still a writer. Before everything. Therefore, I write. 

One of those things is a collection of my perfume stories, including a few new ones never published before. I’ll let the world know when it will be available. 

There are other stories underway, to be published elsewhere and not by me. 

For now and the foreseeable future, The Alembicated Genie shall remain, as it is, to peruse, to read, to dream with. That’s what I did for so long – dream. 

Thank you for that, too. It meant – and it means – infinitely more than you know.

All love,

The Genie

My last perfume purchase. Hotly coveted for seven years. Seven years!

How To Be A Perfume Writer

GerhardterBorchWomanwLetter

 – some thoughts on returning to the fray

All my life, I’ve always been considered a bit … strange. Whether caused by an early childhood playing alone with my teddy bear and a rusty tin can in a cemetery among the headstones, or evolving into the dreamy, geeky, bookworm teenager I later became, never mind the pint-sized over-the-hill irrelevance I am now, weird has always been my unofficial middle name.

Yet nothing – and I do mean nothing – shuts people up faster when they ask about what I do, and I tell them among other things that I’ve been writing about perfumes these 8+ years and counting. A l-o-n-g pause ensues. Next thing I know, the punch line arrives.

“Why?”

Well …

And if not why, they ask me how.

I’m never sure what to reply to that question, either.

I just do it.

Meanwhile, erudite seminars are held at EsXence in Milan on the language of perfume, hosted by none other than the eminent Michael Edwards. Also meanwhile, scores of people who have never attended any expensive seminars on perfume writing in their lives (or if they have, they’re very discreet!), are posting YouTube reviews or comments on those reviews, or writing reviews for perfume blogs, or perfume books, or writing about perfume on one or another of the many perfume groups on Facebook, sharing their experiences with perfume A, B or Z.

Perfume nutcases/people are strange. Strange for no other reason than they’re trying – and sometimes failing – to articulate what to all intents and purposes is a wordless art. Our sense of smell is one of the most rudimentary and in evolutionary terms one of the oldest of our sensorial input methods, and for that reason, olfactory impressions bypass the cerebral cortex – home to abstract thinking, logic and other hazards to our sanity – entirely and head straight for the hippocampus, the gateway to memory.

In less time than it takes to type this sentence, we are mid-memory and in the grip of an emotional response, and this, boys and girls, is the essence of the invisible, indelible art that is … perfume.

Back to the why

Why do I write about perfume? Once upon a time, I was so destitute, I had no perfume at all. By which I mean – no perfume. At all. For someone who throughout her adult life always had at least five in regular rotation, this was akin to torture. Soap and water are all fine and dandy thank you, but not being able to establish a presence (by which I’m not referring to sillage, but simply presence) when I already felt increasingly invisible, was a horror I couldn’t handle.

So as a cruel exercise in contemplation, I landed myself on Makeupalley one day by accident, ca. 2003. It blew my mind. People were discussing perfumes I had never heard of, from brands I’d never heard of, in ways I had never imagined.

Top notes? Heart notes? Drydown? Had someone been messing with the English language?

When the first perfume blogs arrived ca. 2006-2007, I set about educating myself with everything I didn’t know. Materials, evolution, perfumers, perfumes, perfume families (thank you, Michael Edwards!) – something in my own brain was coalescing as I read. But I wasn’t quite there yet.

‘There’ arrived on the night of August 5th, 2010, at about 2 AM. I was still reading perfume blogs. I was also fast approaching the finish line of my first finished novel, and I needed a break from my subject matter, something with an aesthetic dimension, something, well, girly.

That night, after the third glass of white zinfandel, or it could have been the fifth, I thought, well, I could always start a perfume blog. Just for me. As a writing exercise. Before I went to bed, I had emptied the wine bottle, signed up for Blogspot, created a blog called Scent Less Sensibilities and called it a day.

By that time, thanks to my then mother-in-law (and fellow Taurus), who got my desperation, bless her forever, I owned three perfumes. They were Balmain Ivoire, Lancôme’s Magie Noire, and Caron’s Bellodgia, all hunted down by me at online perfume discounters for bottom basement budget prices for several birthdays and Christmases in a row.

My first review was Ivoire. I tried to write a straight-up, non-interpretive review, really, I did. Except I didn’t.

For lo and behold, someone in the ether had found my writing exercise, liked what they read, and left a comment. (Those were the days when people commented!) A comment stating something about ‘my unique voice’.

Whaddaya know, I did become a better writer. I learned by observation from the best of the best: Ida Meister of Cafleurebon, Lucy of Indieperfume, Elena Vosnaki of Perfume Shrine, Angela, Beth and Donna of Now Smell This, and the beyond wonderful, irreverent Perfume Posse, all of whom brightened my far less than happy existence.

I learned about pacing, about writing things out, about trusting my instincts and my voice. I learned to edit and pare things down in ways that are still with me to this day.

More than anything else, above the writing exercise/girly outlet/aesthetic dimension, I wrote about perfume to give myself some micro-degree of success. From 2010-2013, my life went from not-great to smoking ruins. I was too “old” to be hired anywhere, too over-qualified for the jobs I could get, and likely just too outright weird. I had no social life, no friends, and very little family.

Suddenly, I found community, commonality, and dare I write this – virtual friendships, too. I could scarcely believe my luck.

In April of 2019 with The Alembicated Genie, I still can’t.

Listen up, padawan

That’s me. Maybe you’re the one who thinks this could be something you could do. While I can’t tell you anything about your particular ‘why/how’, I can tell you something about writing.

Writing is a skill like any other. The more you do it, the better you get. Anyone can learn to be more articulate and precise in their writing. Which, I hasten to add, is not at all the same as saying that if you do it long enough, you’ll turn into the F. Scott Fitzgerald of the perfume world.

Anyone can learn to write, yes, but not everyone will do so equally well. Some people are articulate in person, while others need to think things through. It follows that having a certain degree of eloquence helps, as well as access to a good thesaurus. I use the Oxford online thesaurus, but you may prefer something else.

Like any other creative human endeavor, talent also enters the equation. Everyone can write – or learn to do so – but some people have an aptitude for language, and some don’t. Yet talent matters not at all unless you keep at it. That’s what gets you noticed. Consistent effort over time. The End.

Nuts and bolts

Still there? Now, we’re at the part that separates the wannabes from the survivors. First that maxim stated above: consistent effort over time. I’m not kidding. Second, if not in terms of importance:

The prose.

Generally speaking, perfume writing tends to land in one of two categories. There are the straight-up reviews.

This is what perfume X, Y or Z smells like, these are the notes and how it develops, this is what I think.

In other words, the kind of reviews I wish I could write, but can’t. I know, because I’ve died numerous agonizing deaths trying to do just that, and my twisted brain has other ideas. My admiration for those who can is boundless.

Remember, experiencing a perfume is a wordless act. Here you are, tearing your hair out, trying to communicate a sensory experience in words. A bloody thankless task, if you ask me. As they say in book publishing: if everyone could write a novel, they would. Yet relatively few people do. By the same token, not everyone who writes about perfume will do so equally well.

Then, there are those other perfume writers. I count myself – vain as I am – in this second category. They are usually of a literary persuasion, meaning they read, they keep informed, and have a laser-sharp eye for the well-turned phrase, the polished metaphor, the rhythm and flow of words. They use their knowledge from other culture-vulture areas for their reviews; art, history, music, literature. Given that our vocabulary in describing perfumes is severely limited, we resort to metaphor and simile, tricks of rhetoric and semiotics to get the point across, provided we even succeed. You have to be aware that when you write about perfume, you won’t always get it right. Put another way, sometimes a review will state everything you wanted to say, and sometimes, it won’t matter what you do. You still feel as if you’re falling at the fences if not being catapulted straight across them (to use a show-jumping metaphor). That’s OK, too.

I became notorious for turning perfume reviews into literature. Instead of writing a review, I’ve written a short story, a whole, short, self-contained world, to better convey my impressions of a perfume. Sometimes, that approach worked. Sometimes, it didn’t, usually when I neglected to trust my own instincts, or simply tried to force a story when I should have settled for an ‘ordinary’ (my version) review. Don’t forget, I’m also a novelist, and everything and everyone is grist for that literary mill, even – or perhaps especially – perfume. Jean-Paul Guerlain, who once famously stated that perfume is liquid literature, would be thrilled. Those reviews are my personal favorites and among my best writing anywhere, and I’d give my eyeteeth for a chance to turn them into a book of their own. One day, I will.

The YouTube conundrum

What if you’re one of those people who don’t like to read? (And read. And read.) Or for whom the idea of banging out 2000 words on latest release A, B or Z causes a) bad memories of school assignments and b) severe orthographical and/or grammatical anxiety?

Perhaps your personality is so naturally gregarious, charming and extrovert, you could become a YouTube reviewer?

Well, you’re going to need to invest in a better camera than your laptop, some good ambient lighting and a proper microphone, to start. You’ll need to become familiar with video editing software. In television production, a rule of thumb is one minute on screen equals one hour of work. Put another way: a five minute video is five hours of work. In comparison, I usually spend between two to four hours on a review, but a few have taken me up to a calendar month to write.

And above all things else, it helps heaps to have some general ideas of what you’re going to say beforehand. So you’ll also have that to consider. There’s nothing wrong with ad-libbing or spontaneity, but you’ll likely soon discover that what looks easy, spontaneous or natural on screen in reality is anything but.

I have an exceedingly low opinion of most – but not all – YouTube perfume reviews. I find them repetitive, lacking in imagination and often redundant. Nine out of ten bore me to tears, but there are definite exceptions. Who knows? You yourself might even become one of them.

The Social in Media

Writing a post/uploading a video is just the first step. You’ll have to do research on the brand, on the perfumer (presuming one is named, and they aren’t always), on the inspirations behind the perfume. For a written review, you might need an illustration or photo. You might need to invest in your own unique domain name, web hosting, plug-ins. You should think about reading up on other reviews of the same perfume to check your impressions against others’. Not because it will influence your own review, but because other people will often have a perspective that might help your own.

Should you be so vainglorious you want hits or views – as indeed most of us do – then the single most important thing you can do for your blog/vlog is establish a presence. And for that, you’ll need social media, a terminal case of what I call the fuckits, and a complete lack of shyness in tooting your own horn without being obnoxious about it.

So from the top …

Comment on your favorite blogs/vlogs. Nothing delights a reviewer faster. I lurked on all my own favorites for years before I ventured to comment, and that didn’t happen until I realized no one is expecting you to be 100% brilliant. Just be yourself. State what you appreciated, what stokes your curiosity, where you disagree – or not. This is called engagement, and engagement is (also) how you get a reputation for your reviews.

Do not, no matter how desperate, bludgeon your audience over your head by promoting your blog all the time, or even half the time you’re interacting on social media. Most people usually get it the first time. Leave it at that.

Courtesy and civility pay and pay and pay. Negativity, over-sharing and bludgeoning people over the head with your unique take on perfume doesn’t.

It’s that simple.

Next, you’ll need Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Post links to your blog/vlog to your FB profile, tweet about it, post your illustration on Instagram, and tag everyone relevant to your post. (This is reputation building, step two) This means following brands on FB, Twitter and Instagram, interacting with them, and tagging/hashtagging everything you possibly can. Join a few perfume groups on FB, and participate in the discussions you find there. Have Twitter conversations with perfume people. Again: courtesy and civility pay and pay and pay. Negativity, over-sharing and bludgeoning people over the head with your unique take on perfume doesn’t.

You will guaranteed encounter a brand that ignores you, if it’s even aware you exist to begin with, no matter how frequently you tag/hashtag them. This could be caused by that brand being narrow-minded (you’re not influential enough/you don’t have a big enough presence, followers or enough engagement, say), but could also be caused by your particular review not being ‘right’ for that brand – they can’t use it for marketing purposes. That is their prerogative to choose, not yours. Don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s them. Move on.

The Good Ship Relation

My inbox, meaning my email/Messenger/DM, blows me away on a daily basis. Many of the most touted/celebrated/platinum-coated-with-pavé-pink-diamonds/award-winning names in perfumery can be found in it, not because I’m so bloody bleeping fabulous, but because I’m a fellow human being and relate to them as such.

In writing about perfume, you are building relationships with the brands you review whether you realize it or not. Again – courtesy, gratitude and civility pay and pay and pay. Negativity, over-sharing, and bludgeoning people over the head with your unique take on perfume doesn’t. Neither does indiscretion. You might be given access to privileged information, snark on other reviewers or super-juicy industry gossip. This will be a test of whether or not you can be trusted to be professional. So your reputation among brands – and trust me, if you keep it up, you’ll get there – will also be based on your ability to keep your mouth/keyboard shut when appropriate. Pick your battles wisely. Nurture your relationships with those people. You might be surprised at what you discover; friendships, common ground or interests, a shared sense of the ridiculous. Even a life-long friend or two. Or forty.

Brands are not the only place to establish relationships. Share your love of other blogs/vlogs. Send an email/comment/PM/DM to those colleagues you appreciate. Link to them. Social media is often predicated on the principle of mutual back-scratching. They might – and often do – the same for you.

Which brings me to …

The (not so) free lunch

If you’re venturing into perfume reviewing for ‘free’ bottles or samples – since many bloggers/vloggers review new releases – Stop. Right. There.

Walk away. This business is NOT for you.

First of all, there’s never, never, never ever any such thing as a free lunch. If a brand offers to send you samples or bottles (as opposed to you outright asking for them, or worse, demanding them), bet your vintage no. 5 extrait they want some bang for their buck. And no samples arrive without strings – a sliver of hope for a review at the least.

Those samples represent a substantial investment and cost, in terms of shipping, the man hours required for decanting, packaging, postage etc compounded to whatever costs the brand have in raw materials, research, marketing (when applicable), bottles (which are expensive) and perfume development. Should they offer you samples, it will be due to two things: a) they’re interested in your particular perspective, aka. The Best Case Scenario or b) they’re just shooting samples at any blogger/vlogger who moves because they have a new release and they need the PR. Option a) is something you will have earned by your consistency, your reliability, your discretion and your professionalism.

But it must be earned.

I’ve been alarmed by stories – yes, by perfume brands you know and love – of bloggers contacting brands and demanding full bottles for reviews. Should you be or become one of those, you will be ignored and deplored. The perfume industry is relatively small, the niche/indie part is even smaller, and word will and often does get around.

Think about it.

Likewise, bloggers attending industry events such as EsXence or Pitti Fragranze have been handing out price lists. Want a review? It will cost you XXX€.

If that’s your thing, by all means go for it. Just be aware that if you choose that option, in effect that brand is hiring you for PR. You may be fine with that.

I call it corporate whoring.

Having said that, quite a few perfume bloggers have written copy for brands in other contexts and places. Even me. Yet when I have, I’ve done so under my real name and not as The Alembicated Genie. You’ll find not one sponsored post on this blog.

Not one.

One option is to buy your own samples. I’ve done this on a few occasions and never regretted it. For one, it demonstrates a definite interest in the brand and a commitment in cash. For another, it’s marvelous for keeping reviews honest. And lastly, it frees you from all commercial interests and agendas, to write what you choose.

Should I choose to review a perfume, you can be assured it’s for one reason only: to provide my own perspective. Period.

As an EU citizen, I’m not required to give disclosure for review samples, but a large part of my readership is international, so I always do.

On very rare occasions, I’ve been gifted with bottles. Notice the ‘gift’. Those bottles are considered and given in the spirit of appreciation and respect, and treasured accordingly. My entire current income is a student grant which is barely enough to live on, never mind buy perfume with. The irony of my perfume blog’s existence is that I can’t afford to buy what I review at all.

It happens I fall in love with something utterly beautiful, only to wail in despair once the sample goes. Two examples that come to mind are Palissandre d’Or and Sunshine Man. Notice they haven’t been reviewed, for no other reason than I’ve literally loved them to death, fumes and micro-droplets, and it was painful to see them go. Two hundred+  euros is my entire food budget for a (good) month, and I need to eat more than I need perfume, alas. So those ‘free’ bottles – which are actually earned the hard way, by writing and writing and writing about perfume – are treasures beyond rubies and emeralds. They shall never be sold, provide huge amounts of goodwill and heartfelt gratitude but will be drained to the last drop. While thinking fragrant, warm and fuzzy thoughts about the people who sent them. Because those incredibly kind and utterly generous people are worth it, and wonder of wonders, they thought I was, too.

Danger Zone

Some long time ago, a super-famous (and super-smart) feminist writer once wrote an essay about the dearth, comparatively speaking, of women artists. She had grown tired of all those who airily dismissed them as being afraid of failing. As she saw it, it wasn’t so much the fear of failing that held women back as artists, but the fear of judgment.

Things may have changed in countless ways since that essay was written in the 1970s. I’d say that they certainly have. Yet I would also say that she was right then, and right now.

Put your neck out, state your case, have an opinion, by all means. Just be prepared to be judged and found wanting. Since the advent of internet anonymity, any Jane or Joe Schmo can castigate anyone at all for any reason at all – real or perceived. They have nothing to contribute except their own negativity, and take it from me – that’s no way to live.

We call them trolls. They’re out there, and they are out to get you. Be prepared to stand your ground if you have to, and should you walk this perilous path of perfume reviewing, you will have to.

A few years ago, I received so much vitriol for my reviews I almost gave up writing. But that would mean they won.

Enter the terminal case of fuckits. Do it anyway if you dare, and this enormous post hasn’t completely discouraged you.

I see plenty of room in the perfume community for whatever type of reviews you choose. One form is no better than any other. Each has its own merits and drawbacks, and more to the point, each and every writer on this planet has his or her own unique voice. With just a little practice, that voice will out. Let it.

With super-special thanks to Margo and Liz for the spirited FB discussion that inspired this post.

Painting: Gerhard ter Borch, Woman Writing A Letter (1655)

An invasive species

bracken2

 – a review of Amouage Bracken Man

Are you rubbing your metaphorical hands in anticipation? Looking forward to another Amouage “story”, where the perfume is used as a starting point for a short story that may – or not – tell you something about this perfume and set your own imagination alight? In which case, I apologize in advance for disappointing you. This won’t be one of thosereviews. But it very much will be a review of something I’ve literally been dying to try since its release in 2016.

Because … fougère! Because … Amouage! And last but never least, because this review is the mother and father of all avoidance actions. I have things to read, notes to take, empirical material to organize according to theoretical models and premises and other hazards to my sanity, and even an oral exam to prepare for in a week’s time. Screw all of that.

I’m reviewing a perfume, damn it!  To keep myself sane in the midst of academic anxiety. To retain the five readers who haven’t given up on me – yet. Because … perfume.

Damn it.

Amouage Bracken Man was released – along with its feminine counterpart, Bracken Woman, which I have yet to try, along with every other Amouage release since Myths – in 2016.

The reception was a bit more tepid than usual with Amouage releases, and since then, in remote corners of perfume discussion boards and other places where Planet Perfume tends to congregate, some members have come to dismiss Amouage altogether as a brand for committing that Cardinal Sin: going mainstream.

As evidence, they offered up all the floral Loves; Lilac, Blossom and Tuberose, as well as Beach Hut, Imagination and Figment. And of course, Bracken in either permutation.

These are the people who can’t get perfume avant-garde or edgy enough, ‘new’ enough, or perhaps I should say conceptualenough in order to applaud it. If it utilizes a raw material only obtainable in a tiny patch of rainforest accessible by two weeks in a canoe in some undisclosed, remote location on Borneo to capture the headspace before two weeks’ journey back to Port Moresby, say, or glorifies creosote, gunpowder, asphalt, or industrial-grade concrete as a perfume to wear, so much the better.

Serious perfume houses should be serious, damn it. They should push the envelope and the limits of what perfumery can do, and basically forget about, well, the basics; creating something beautiful, and if you’re (very) lucky, liquid literature, perfume someone like you or me would actually want to wear.

I have no particular interest of any kind in wafting industrial-grade concrete or creosote in my wake as I go about my day in classrooms, study halls or the library, but that’s just me. (You do YOU, readers!)

Most of the time, I just want to waft enough fabulosity to cut through the fug of ubiquitous Marc Jacobs Daisy whatevahs. Because by Golly, life’s too short for such ‘target demographic’ juice. Again, this is me.

It’s not that they’re horrible, because they aren’t. It’s that they’re – and this is where I show my own perfumista stripes – so goddamned ordinary and devoid of vision and creativity, transparent as chiffon in that millenial-pleasing, unobtrusive way. And Generation Y and Z buy them, wear them in their megagallons without so much as a smidgeon of irony, and search no further.

I would never in a gazillion alternate realities categorize the justly celebrated Amouage brand as ‘mainstream’. They have since Christopher Chong’s inception as Creative Director in 2007 indeed pushed the envelope and created perfumes that were liquid literature, fragrant epiphanies that had – indeed, still has – Planet Perfume in a swoon.

In terms of material quality, presentation and olfactory heft, you very much get what you pay for with Amouage, and if all you’ve known of perfume is the mainstream, you are really in for a visceral shock, which also applies to the price tag.

Mainstream pays nowhere so much attention to detail, but then again, you pay for that, if and as you can afford it. I can’t on a student grant, and it pains me infinitely more than you know.

So … does Bracken Man smell mainstream? Unobtrusive? Devoid of vision? My personal TL; DR version of those questions in that order would be yes, no and depends on your perspective.

That may sound like a prevarication. Let me qualify.

Bracken Man is a fougère, by concept and association. Fougère = fern, bracken is the most ubiquitous variety of fern, therefore it follows that Bracken = fougère, that most ubiquitous of masculine perfume genres.

What many people tend to forget is that ubiquity tends to occur for a reason. Starting with the great revolution that was the original Houbigant Fougère Royale, and even more since the masculine fougère’s 1970s heyday, the green, spicy, herbal and earthy fougère has a lot to answer for. Barbershops. Shaving cream. Late nights in smoky clubs with super-obvious-scented ‘manly’ men who try those fatal nanometers too hard to impress. (These days, younger versions of those men who also fancy themselves perfume connoisseurs search for guaranteed panty-droppers. Argh.)

Those guys. The ones who wore Polo, Aramis, Azzaro pour Homme, or YSL Kouros to name but a few – all variations on the same overall, Fougère Royale-inspired theme of bergamot, lavender, spice and earth. Or to paraphrase Guy de Maupassant’s comment on the original 1880 Fougère Royale, an abstract representation of greenery, rather than a literal interpretation. And the fact is, that ‘abstract representation’ smells fantastic, not just to, but on very many people.

Many reviews on Basenotes and Fragrantica name Fougère Royale as a direct relative to Bracken Man, and even before you sniff it, one glance at the notes list confirms just how much DNA they have in common. It shows in the structure, if not the evolution, of both perfumes. To my nose, they are alike, but different, like brothers who share both parents.

My own bottle of the reorchestrated Fougére Royale – now reduced by the Dude’s heavy usage to fumes and a few droplets – is heavier on the bergamot, geranium, cinnamon and lavender. It is most emphatically g-r-e-e-n, a humid, well-manicured and maintained jungle green.

In contrast to Fougère Royale, Bracken Man is far dryer, more austere and pared back, without sacrificing any of the rich satisfaction of a) smelling a superlative-quality perfume or b) one fougère, flawlessly executed. Cypress – which could explain the dry feel of Bracken Man – and clove haul out the big guns for the lavender and nutmeg, and once you’re done for, the patchouli wraps you up for a soft, earthy landing in the bracken. Provided, of course, that you like fougères – and like how they unfurl as elegantly as any fern on you or on someone you care about.

If that reads as ‘mainstream’ to you, so be it. When the Dude took it for a five-spray test drive last Monday, he reported back on a lot of compliments from both men and women. Many more than he was used to wearing (my press sample) Opus VI.

Unobtrusive? As if. Amouage is NOT a brand for the perfume commitment-phobic. If your maximum attention span is below 10-12+ hours, stay well away from Amouage – anyAmouage, even this one. It will be noticed by your surroundings. It will remain on your sweaters for d-a-y-s, and your coat for weeks. A little goes a long way. Although Bracken Man doesn’t have the drop-dead sillage of Epic, Fate, Memoir or Lyric, and nestles closer to the skin after the first two hours or so, it still packs a mighty punch.

In unwrapping and dissecting Bracken Man, I also researched the name – or should I say, researched the fernPteridium Aquilinum, or Common Bracken. Common Bracken is considered one of the most common – and invasive – species of plant on Earth, and grows on every continent except Antarctica. We might admire them for their lush, green fronds, or their aura of fin-de-siècle curly excess, but they’d take over the planet if they could. Much like hairy-chested, gold-chain-wearing masculine fougères took over the 1970s Planet Perfume, only then, no one dared complain.

Devoid of vision? As I wrote above, that would depend on your perspective. If you’re coming from an avant-garde perspective, if you’re searching for industrial-grade concrete/creosote/gunpowder and ground-breaking, earth-shaking conceptualism, then yes.

It’s just a fougère.

On the other hand, it could also be that the original vision for Bracken Man was quite simple: Make a fougère. Make it inspired by the first of them all, but make it its own thing, give it its ownspin on ubiquity.

So they did. In so doing, they created their own kind of invasive species. And made it beautiful.

Like something people would actually want to wear.

A very, very special thank you to Ali Saif of Illum in Copenhagen, without whose kindness and enthusiasm this review would not have been possible. Find him on Instagram as @itsalisaif – he’s one of us.

Notes for Amouage Bracken Man (via Basenotes):Lemon, berganot, cypress, lavandin, nutmeg, clove, geranium, cinnamon, cedarwood, sandalwood, patchouli, musk

A Once and Future Genie

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– Where we were and where I hope we go from here

You may have wondered. You may (or not!) have wondered when the Genie would get her derrière in gear and start posting those reviews and musings again, checked the TAG Facebook page to see if you might have missed a post (no worries, you haven’t!). You wonder …

Is that it? 265 blog posts and <BAM!/POW!> – no more? No more rambling reviews that haul in everything from history to literature to … well, whatever I can think to throw into a review of that odiferous stuff of dream and emotion we call perfume?

Well, no.

As I’ve stated before numerous times, back in the day (2010, and I can’t believe that, either), I began my first perfume blog, Scent Less Sensibilities, as a writing exercise. The more you do it, the better you get, so both the saying and Stephen King’s On Writing go, therefore, if I could sink my verbal fangs into communicating what is in effect a wordless art, I might learn a thing or two about writing along the way.

I dare say I have. Writing about perfume taught me so much about writing, in fact, I applied every single trick I learned by the time the fall of 2013 rolled around and my first novel of over 780 pages was edited for publication from the ground up in a blistering five weeks, including proof-reading, cover compositing and final adjustments, which also taught me a thing or two about deadlines and my ability to fulfill them.

Here you and I are these four years later. You’re still reading, and I’m still writing – if rather less than I used to, not because the words have dried up, but because my time is no longer my own.

But what if it could be?

To that end, and all thanks to the Dude and his “you’re-way-too-good-not-to-get paid/far-more-people-need-to-read-you” attitude, I decided back in June to join Patreon and hook a paywall into The Alembicated Genie.

The paywall goes live on September 20th. It would have been earlier, but Mercury Retrograde got in the way.

How it will work

Patreon is basically your chance to feel – if even a little – like a Medici. You – the Lorenzo or, say, the Eleonora de Medici – contribute a token sum to the starving artist, which would be me. For this, you will have five options:

The Subscription Option:

For a measly $5.00 a month, you subscribe to the latest TAG posts – meaning, the latest two. If there’s an interest, I can add a monthly newsletter with things like rebates and special offers, short articles on materials, spotlights on perfumers, Creative Directors and so on as well as links to other revelations from Planet Perfume. TAG has – and this still surprises me – 225 subscribers at the time of writing. If everyone subscribed through Patreon, I could not only finance TAG’s overhead, I’d also have created my very own student job. The job of edifying YOU, my readers, twice a week, and not only that. You would in effect be my employers, which really puts the onus on me to deliver the smelly verbiage twice a week, posted every Wednesday and Saturday. No more, because I’m also a student at the moment with a heavy work- and reading load.

The Gift Subscription

Maybe you like what I write and you read so much, you’d like to gift a subscription to a friend, colleague or family member. For the exact same price of $5.00 a month, you can do just that. Tell the world! Tell your friends! Or simply gift them a subscription and let them judge for themselves.

The One-Off

If a dedicated subscription is a bit more commitment than you’re able to handle, you have the option to pay $0.99 for reading the latest two reviews. That might be feasible so you can decide whether or not my idiosyncratic style and perspective is a good fit for you – or not. And it’s only 99 cents. I’ll wager you’ve blown far more than that on perfume, yes?

The Tip Jar

Once upon a storied time a long, long time ago, I used to busk with a friend on Strøget, the Walking Street in Copenhagen. We sang a capella whatever we could think of at the time, but I recall a distinct predilection for Kid Creole and the Coconuts songs, and ‘Gina, Gina’ in particular. The tip jar option is that virtual hat on the ground. Contribute however much or little you please, but for reasons of logistics I’m unable to control, the minimum is $1.00.

The Freebie

Paywall, schmaywall. Blogs should be free, you might think. They have been for this long – whether with advertising or without – so why stop now? This option is for you: Pay nothing. That’s right. Nothing. Because I garnered a reputation, such as it is, for something, and you want to know why, you just don’t want the obligation or the commitment of subscribing. So in the future, all reviews, musings and general fragrant blathering except the last two are free to read, to comment upon (something I greatly applaud/appreciate, and all comments get a reply), and to link to. (I will be notified if you do, and I’m more grateful than you know.)

The Filthy Lucre

I enter this perilous undertaking on the premise that I’ll be lucky to get five subscribers, if that many. I’m only too aware that I’ve lost a metric ton of street-cred and influence these past meagerly posted years, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get back to where I was in 2011-2012, but by golly, I’ll die trying. What I’m emphatically NOT out to do is score a bunch of free cash and leave you, my dearly beloved readers, in the lurch. In other words:

I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing this for the motivation.

Say, I do land five subscribers – well, the way I see it, that’s $25 I didn’t have before – for writing about perfume. Any amount is x amount of dollars I didn’t have before.

Each of the four first options has a specific purpose ear-marked. The subscription and the one-off money goes toward overhead; web hosting (I no longer use WordPress hosting), domain upkeep, and blog templates, and the best ones are more expensive than you’d think. 2017 has been an expensive year in that regard, but I have some hopes things will run very much smoother in the future.

The gift subscription and tip jar options will go towards something equally vital to the purposes of TAG – a new computer. Four years ago, I crowd sourced a ‘new’ used 17” MacBook Pro, which has been a godsend for this writer. Four years on, I’m still profoundly grateful many of you made that happen.

Having said that, it was used. Like every Mac I’ve ever owned since 1997. It still works beautifully and without a glitch, but it IS nine years old by now, the frame around the screen has broken, and I’m no longer able to close it properly, and therefore, no longer able to transport it everywhere. (I suspect Janice Divacat and her annoying, forbidden habit of lying on top of the closed computer, something she well knows is strictly verboten.)

I’ve been given a Windows 8 laptop (which is big, bulky, and an Epic Pain) for school by the Dude, who is vehemently against everything Apple. I have no words for how much I loathe and detest Windows 8, and I can’t afford to upgrade to Windows 10. Even if I could, I’m emphatically NOT a Windows person, although I mean no slight to those who are.

As I’ve tried to explain to a linear-thinking, rational, stats-and-specs-obsessed, non-creative IT supporter, it’s not about the specifications. It’s about something else.

Since I began writing in earnest in 1998, I’ve written on Macs. Some were big and bulky and beige (my least favorite color), and two others were sleek, silver laptops. All could – and indeed still do – run my beloved Adobe package of graphics software (a necessity), MS Word and all the other bells and whistles.

So it’s become a habit and also more than a little superstition. Those two MacBooks I’ve owned since 2008 have made these very words possible. Closer to my point is this significant revelation:

A Mac lights my imagination on fire in ways Windows never, ever could. Not only that, I consider my MacBook to be an indispensible family member the same way I regard my iPhone 6. It engages my emotions daily, takes care of all the background stuff, and offers the shortest way from the A of ideas of the Z of execution in the most painless way possible. If that means I’ll be forking out an insane amount of money, then yes, I’ll pay for that lack of (daily) aggravation.

So the tip jar and the one-offs will go towards saving for this beauty. Like my battered 17”, it can do absolutely everything I’ll need a computer to do – for TAG, for my future books and stories, and for school. Also, like I said earlier, I’ve never unpacked a computer straight from the box to use, all shiny, fresh and pristine. I can take it with me everywhere. And – important for my personal sense of aesthetics, and to hell with stats and specs – it’s pretty. These things matter, or is that just me and my own demented mind? I might get it. I might not. But it would be at least a possibility, and I can hope for that.

Anything left over – and as I said earlier, I have extremely low-key expectations – will go towards keeping the Genie afloat in samples and/or decants for review.

The Future Genie

I’ve been sitting on a stash of what I dub Big Reviews. Meaning important perfume releases I can’t wait to edify you with. Some are stories, some are simply reviews, but all of them are proof of why I love to write about the art (which it is) of perfume. A few are brands I haven’t reviewed before, and that’s another tangent I’d like to go on – to review those brands who don’t get so much attention, along with some too important to ignore. I’ve found things to blow my socks off, and things to rile me up for being so uniquely horrifying.

I can’t wait to share them with all of you, can’t wait to discuss them, argue about them, and expand all our horizons in the process.

Speaking of process, YOU – yes, you! – are the most important part. I’d love to read what you might think and feel and say about all of this.

Watch this space – and let me know in the comments what you think!

Photo: A still from Fritz Lang’s 1925 film, Metropolis.

 

Writing On Fumes

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– the future of alembicating, and also the Genie…

Ladies, Gentlemen, Fragrant Humanity all —

Perhaps you might have noticed over the course of the past year or so how the blog posts and reviews on this blog have become few and far between. It would be far beyond the scope of this blog to state exactly why, or how that happened, except to state that life has been sprouting monumental roadblocks all across the superhighway of my creative process, especially the creative process that is and was part and parcel of my perfumed self – writing about perfume.

Excuses, excuses

Over the course of the past eighteen months, my life has changed to an incredible degree. A certain Dude moved in, old detritus moved out, and finding the space to get any writing done became an exercise in logistics and diplomacy, when all my former writing habits went flying out the window for getting involved with an ultra hardcore gamer who was not at all about to divorce either the monster TV or the PS4, and the garret has exactly two (tiny) rooms.

Along the way, I had to do some very serious thinking about this blog, the other blogs I own and write for on occasion, my presence on social media which has become virtually non-existent lately and even the state of Planet Perfume itself, and asked myself a rather pertinent question:

Was this really, truly what I wanted to do any longer? Why? Or more to the point: why not?

Believe it or not, and I’m still not sure I do, I have been writing about perfume – in fits and starts and stops – since August 2010. In those seven years, I’ve seen blogs come and go, I’ve seen the landscape of Planet Perfume change and evolve and not always for the better, and I’ve seen the meteoric rise of YouTube vloggers who speak fluent Adobe Premiere/Garageband, do all their own special effects and have followers numbered in the thousands.

Yet this is emphatically not YouTube but WordPress, and probably not why you, dear readers, are devouring these very words. You read this blogger’s idiosyncratic/iconoclastic words on perfume because you are a reader, not a spectator. You appreciate not just literature but liquid literature, which is to say, perfume writing with a literary bent and a metaphorical ear for prosody and phrasing.

Many of you – bless you! – have followed this blog since its beginnings and stuck with me ever since, well aware that I can’t write like anyone else, not even about perfume, which could very well be the precise reason why you’re here.

Thank you.

The Writer’s Lament

Remember those monumental roadblocks of a few paragraphs ago? Two of them will become pertinent to the future of this blog, but bear with me a moment.

The thing about reviewing perfumes, researching them, wading through acres of hyperbole-blasted PR copy, reading other blogs who reviewed this new It release, keeping up with the Joneses of Planet Perfume – it all became so much work. Work was the one thing I haven’t lacked these past eighteen months, and sometimes, it took all I had to just ignore that squeaky voice in my head berating me for not writing the next review, and the one after that, not because I had nothing to say about it, not because my inspiration ran dry, but because it felt like shouting into a void – a whole lot of headache, hassle and heartache for not a lot of payback or feedback which became harder to justify given that this blog alone costs me almost $200 a year I can ill afford and that I don’t get to blow on perfume. Somewhere, somehow, I forgot to have fun with it, which begged the question: what would make it fun again? How could I recapture the joy of 2011 in particular, when I posted twice a week Tigger-bouncing all over my keyboard and couldn’t wait to review something new?

Money, honeys!

How do you know you’re a professional writer? When you get paid to do it. After one published novel and three upcoming projects, I may now look in the mirror, shriek in horror at the sight and scream:

“Well, at least I get paid…” Not a lot and not often, but still…

Since I began on Blogspot all those years ago, I’ve resolutely steered past any notion of monetizing my perfume writing. I did not want to be beholden to advertisers or perfume houses, thank you very much, and ad clicks surely meant a sellout of my integrity, such as it was. The concept of charging perfume houses for reviews (this happens!) left a very bad taste in my mouth or my soul, pick one.

Then, two things happened. First, thanks to the aforementioned Dude, I was suddenly exposed to the biggest form of entertainment on Earth – video games. Along with that bombardment of sensory overload came exposure to a whole new kind of review; the cutthroat world of game reviews, and some of the best ones were monetized, not by ads but by subscription, via something called Patreon.

That made me think long and hard. Yet, I still wouldn’t do it.

The Dude and I had many, many discussions about Patreon, about money, about writing-for-hire and about, as he put it, “being way too good not to get paid for it.” (He was referring to yours truly.) Still, I sat on the fence, hoist on the petard of that wretched ‘integrity’.

About that second thing … In March, I applied for what the US would call college, but the rest of us education, to become a teacher in four years. In May, I was summoned for a two-part interview that would determine whether or not I was accepted on the basis of my 36-year-old classics baccalaureat, my life experience and my general (questionable) intellectual capacity. Two case studies, interview sessions and days later, I was informed that I passed my interviews and fulfilled the criteria for acceptance, although I won’t know for certain until July 28th. What this means for me personally is invaluable (I get to go back to school, yippieeee!), and yet, it will also mean that for the next four years, I’ll be living off what you’d call a student grant which is, all told, about USD$400 a month less than the pittance I pay bills with now, or roughly what it costs me to be an independent blogger every year. Meanwhile, I’m writing up a storm and will likely continue to do so – a novel is on its way, more short stories (one of which is coming to Amazon in July/August), a perfume book of stories I’m rewriting, flotsam, jetsam and …

Back to that daily morning horror story in the mirror. Am I a professional writer, or just a ditzy middle-aged D-list blonde throwing away her ‘brand’ for free? And if that’s the case, the brutal bottom line is the ‘free’ part has become a luxury I’m sadly no longer able to afford.

Future Fuming

After a lot of soul-searching, wrestling that damned integrity and removing myself from the perfume community so I could gain some degree of static-free clarity, I had some very hard decisions to make.

I could a) shut down TAG, say goodbye and sayonara and vanish into the sunset. Which made me all sorts of sad, since the perfume community – that means YOU! – had made me what I’ve become over the course of the past seven years. Each and every interaction everywhere, each comment, each blog post hit has made my soul sing in ways nothing else does except writing – about perfumes.

Or there was option b) move the blog to a free WordPress site, leave it for posterity and walk away. I could sit there among company, all teary-eyed and nostalgic, and tell stories of those halcyon days when ‘I used to be a perfume writer of dubious repute …’

But what about option c) Throw caution to the wind, sign up for Patreon and dangnabbit, see how that goes? What’s the worst thing that can happen?

I can lose every tattered shred of perceived integrity I might have, lose every subscriber/follower/perfumista friend I have acquired in the past seven years for being considered a money-grubbing, avaricious louse and swan-dive right bang-smack onto dry land from a lofty height, with the added hashtag #epicfail. A distinct probability.

So far as I’m aware, there are no perfume blogs on Patreon. There are monetized blogs and vlogs via ad revenue, but that’s all.

I would be the first of my kind on Patreon, and I can handle that. I can handle that after almost seven years, a fury/passion for perfume has got me about as far as I can go, but passion won’t pay the web hosting bills, alas.

My idea was to make TAG a subscription service. For the princely sum of USD$5.00 a month and not one penny more! (about the price of a Starbucks latte), you, dear readers, would get early access to two reviews/perfume stories a week posted every Wednesday and Saturday, smartphone wallpaper, video bottom line reviews, a monthly newsletter of coming attractions and ‘insider’ info if there’s an interest and a guaranteed ticket for sample giveaways. After a week, those early access reviews go public – which is to say, are available to read for free – by which time you will have two new reviews to read. Whatever I might earn goes toward blog upkeep, web hosting (since I’ll have to move TAG to wordpress.org) blog templates and reader goodies. You would of course have the option to cancel your subscription at any time. TAG could be kept ad-free. Yours truly would be obligated and exceedingly motivated to bring you the best dang perfume writing I can possibly supply, and it goes without saying – at least, it should?! – my reviews as always are my own opinions and impressions.

Say USD$5.00 every month is way more commitment than you can handle, but you’d still like to share your appreciation of my writing. For you, there will be a ‘tip jar’ which will give you access to the latest review at 99 cents a read, and that’s the most I’d ever ask for thanks to that damn integrity.

Yesterday – Midsummer’s Eve, an auspicious date in my part of the world, I signed up for Patreon. The Patreon page and the new format for TAG goes live in early July, but I’ll announce it everywhere when it does; my Facebook profile, a few perfume groups if I’m allowed, the TAG Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram as well as a (free-to-read) post on THIS version of TAG.

As of this moment, I have samples from … Houbigant, Ormonde Jayne, Amouage, Serge Lutens, DSH Perfumes, House of Cherry Bomb, Scent By Alexis, Opus Oils, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Memo Paris, Atelier Cologne, Le Jardin Retrouvé, Neela Vermeire Creations, Perris Monte Carlo and Oriza L. Legrand to review. Most of those samples were paid for by me in the hopes of revitalizing TAG with a bit of the ‘new’, and all of them are fully worthy of alembication. I can not w-a-i-t to sink my purple prose fangs into each and every one of them.

Would YOU be excited to read about them?

Do you think I’ve completely lost my mind? Would you subscribe or leave a tip and if not, why not? Should I just slink away and die, already?

Let me know what you think in the comments, thank you for reading and sharing our fragrant journey so far and as always, here’s to the wonders we all have yet to discover!

Love, always!

The Alembicated Genie