SOTD: Robert Piguet Bandit

I may be officially Disappointed.

I got a sample of what I thought was the current Bandit, a few months ago. I loved it. I finally broke down and bought myself a small bottle. And now I don't like it so much. There's a lot of spice and very little of the clean sun-warmed cat that I got before.

Hrmph.

Maybe I just need to wait for winter.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Balmain Vent Vert (Modern)

This time, I tried two sprays of Vent Vert. It started out a little too strong, and disappeared within an hour. I am befuddled.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Robert Piguet Fracas, or, The aliens are among us

Huh.

Fracas is the queen of tuberose perfumes. In-your-face, unsubtle tuberose.

I don't like tuberose. I've mentioned this before. It annoys me. It reminds me of people that annoy me. It's indolic. Tuberose bad. No tuberose for me.

I like Fracas.

Did aliens swap out my nose while I wasn't looking?

Now, I was able to understand why I liked Parfumerie Generale Tubereuse Couture. That perfume soaks the tuberose with fruit and citrus and green jasmine and sugar cane and, y'know, stuff. It changes the tuberose into something else, into not-tuberose. Ex-tuberose. That explains my substantial fondness for Tubereuse Couture.

None of that is true of Fracas. Fracas is tuberose. It's practically the definition of the stuff. Sweet and, well, more sweet, and a smothering creaminess, and the orange blossom...

OK, I pause here to say that I also dislike orange blossom.

... and the orange blossom just adds more sweetness, and makes the combination even more floral, because tuberose is a little too creamy to have quite that sharp edge of floral'ness that makes me often dislike florals.

So, to summarize: I dislike tuberose. I dislike orange blossom. I dislike florals. I dislike indolic notes.

Fracas is packed to the rafters with all of these things, and I like it very much.

If you see the aliens, please send them to me. I want an explanation.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Perfume-Smellin' Things again and Perfum-Smellin' Things a third time and Sweet Diva and Yesterday's Perfume and Feminine Things and Chandler Burr and Scentsate.

Link Roundup: WAFT and Boomtown Boudoir.

Edited to add to the Review Roundup and add a Link Roundup.

Image: By Lordoftheloch, Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Robert Piguet Visa

This is another Germaine Cellier classic - except, no, Bois de Jasmin tells me that the Osmetheque credits Jean Carles. Hmm. Well, I'm glad that my hunt through Cellier's perfumes led me to this one, even if it's not one of hers.

Originally released in 1945, it was reissued in 2007, formulated by Aurelien Guichard, who was the creator of the much-praised Bond No. 9 fragrance Chinatown. I can't speak to the original Visa, though I may send off for a decant one of these days, but I like the reissue.

Remember how Robert Piguet Bandit's leather was unexpectedly shy when dabbed? That's not a problem with Visa. After decanting my vial into a sprayer, I found myself with damp fingers and a damp vial, so I applied those traces to my skin and waited a while before spraying any on. That minimal application produced a distinctive cloud of rich, rather sharp leather, with just an edge of fruit.

Sprayed, the proportions flip - the leather is still evident, but the fruit is dominant. This isn't the usual sweet summery-fresh sort of fruity - it's autumn fruit, slightly overripe and starting to ferment. I'm very familiar with this scent right now, because much of our summer pear harvest is still lurking in the refrigerator, determinedly ripening despite our best efforts to slow it down. It's really a glorious scent, though the pleasure of being enveloped in it every time I open the refrigerator door is somewhat marred by worry over whether we'll ever eat it all.

So I'm enjoying Visa's guilt-free version of the same experience. It reminds me of descriptions of the "boozy" fruit notes of some Serge Lutens fragrances. But while I never seem to like the fruitier Lutens creations, I like this very much. The fruit is rich and thick, and so is the leather. Neither of them drown you with honey or syrup - this fragrance is sweet, but it doesn't quite cross over into too sweet.

The only problem is my strong suspicion that I won't like it at all in the summer. But I'm disregarding that; this is definitely now on the "want a bottle" list.

Review Roundup: Bois de Jasmin and For The Love Of Perfume and The Non-Blonde and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Shoes Cake & Perfume (about the vintage) and Yesterday's Perfume (about the vintage) and PereDePierre and WAFT and The Scented Salamander and Fragrantica and Eiderdown Press and Grain de Musc (vintage and new) and ThinkingShift and My Perfume and WouldSmellAsSweet.

Edited to add to the Review Roundup.

Image: A Garland Of Fruit, Cornelis de Heem. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Balmain Vent Vert, or, Is it possible to have too many greens?

I was debating what to wear for my Scent Of The Day, when the doorbell rang and a package addressed to me landed on the porch.

That usually means perfume, and it did: Balmain Vent Vert. So that answered that question. After the Cellophane Opening Ceremony, I applied four spritzes which, judging from Himself's reaction, was about three too much. But I'm enjoying it. I'm finding that the drydown, which was nice enough with the sample, is much nicer when you're wearing plenty of the stuff.

But looking at The Collection, I became uneasy. Why did I buy Vent Vert? Well, it's the matriarch of classic green florals, as I discussed in a previous post. It's a galbanum perfume, and if you've been reading along you know that I'm a galbanum freak. And it was, frankly, cheap. And I can give away decants!

And I'm sounding like a hoarder. This isn't good.

Because there are reasons against it. This isn't the classic version of the classic - it's the second reformulation. There would be ample reason for buying the original, dark green, slightly ominous version of Vent Vert. Is there any reason besides history (sentiment - the hoarder's excuse) for buying this one?

Yes, it's a pretty green floral. And so is Chanel Cristalle, which is a better green. And Chanel No. 19, which is a much better green. And so are Issey Miyake A Scent and Estee Lauder Jasmine White Moss, both of which I, um, well, already own.

And so are Le Labo Jasmin 17 and Hermes Vetiver Tonka and Miller et Bertaux Green, Green, Green, and Green and Balmain Ivoire, all of which I want to own. (OK, those aren't all green florals, but they're all green.)

I'm sure that there's such a thing as too many greens. I'm just not sure if I'm approaching that line, or if I passed it long ago. It may be time to get a grip.

Photo: Michele Ahin at Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.

SOTD: Robert Piguet Bandit

The classics continue.

When I read that Robert Piguet was very kind about sending out free samples, I left a blatantly-begging message on their website, and quite promptly received vials of Bandit, Cravache, Fracas, Baghari, and Visa. Woohoo!

So, Bandit. Bandit was created in 1944 by Germaine Cellier, the creator of Vent Vert. It was re-introduced in 1999 after a long absence, reformulated by Delphine Lebeau. If I understand my perfume history correctly, it's the leather perfume of leather perfumes, the originator of a leather dynasty just as Vent Vert is the originator of a green floral dynasty. This is a, the, big classic leather.

While is why, when I first dabbed this on from a sample vial I was startled with how very mild it was. This is what all the fuss is about? Maybe the excitement is in the development.

Three and a half hours of development later and, no, it's even milder. So I came to my senses and decanted the vial into a sprayer, spritzed it on, and, yowza! There's Bandit.

Leather, indeed. Serious, intense, no-fooling-around leather. And while I can't tease out the galbanum, I was enjoying something bitter and sharp in the opening, and few things make bitter and sharp that I enjoy more than galbanum.

That faded, and we're back to just leather - no doubt with other things to wrap and direct it, but all I get is leather. And that is certainly not a complaint.

I mentioned before that someone, somewhere said that leather fragrances smell more like the substances used to treat leather, than like leather - because those substances are what we think that leather smells like.

There's certainly a lot of that in Bandit, but there's also a very strong undercurrent of animal here. There's contented cow, clean stable, clean-cat-sleeping-in-the-sun. I've always thought of the circus-horses smell of Dzing! as some avant-garde innovation, but here's that same idea, from way back in 1944.

Freakishly, that warm-cat vibe means that after it dries and settles for a while, this isn't the shocker fragrance that it's reputed to be, at least for me. It's almost a comfort scent. An adult's scent, without a doubt, but there's something comfortable about that big cat.

Review Roundup: Bois de Jasmin and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Perfume-Smellin' Things again and Now Smell This and The Non-Blonde and PeredePierre and Perfume Posse and Aromascope and Yesterday's Perfume and Nathan Branch (on the parfum) and Polish, Platforms, Perfume and Left Coast Nose and Perfume Nerd and Perfume Patter and Perfume-Smellin' Things yet again.

Edited to add to the Review Roundup.

Photo: Art G. Wikimedia Commons, click for details

SOTD: Balmain Vent Vert (Modern)

 

Today I dug into the Classics Ziploc and pulled out a sample of Balmain Vent Vert - the modern version.

Technically, I'm not sure if the modern Vent Vert qualifies as a classic. The fond descriptions are always about the vintage, which is one of the galbanum classics, and I am without a doubt a galbanum freak. But it's also a struggle to obtain, so I'm trying to evaluate the modern Vent Vert without reference to the old, to see if I like it as a separate perfume.

And I think I do, but perhaps not even enough to buy one of the heavily-discounted bottles widely available.

It starts out powdery, a girly-powdery, but that settles down to a reasonable level almost immediately. And there's galbanum, of course, severely tamed. It shows its bitterness and intense green for a few minutes, but then it's muffled with soft florals. And then I think it's done - a slightly powdery, not-too-sweet floral veiling a declawed galbanum. Compared to Issey Miyake's A Scent and Estee Lauder's Jasmine White Moss, it's less sweet and less cluttered. Compared to Cristalle, it's less sharp. Compared to Chanel No. 19, it's less wholeheartedly, aggressively, bitterly green.

The vintage Vent Vert is a critical ancestor of all of these green fragrances. Even the modern version seems somewhat true to this history, in that it makes galbanum the center and purpose of the composition - it may be afraid to let the green loose, but it also makes no attempt to pacify with other notes, disdains to offer sweet floral candy like the Miyake scent. (And, yes, I love the Miyake scent, but it is a scent that's eager to please, unlike many of the classic greens.)

But in the end, it fears its central player and works too hard to protect us from its sharp edges. It ends up just Nice, and a classic deserves better than that.

Review Roundup: Bois de Jasmin and Now Smell This and Basenotes (modern) and Basenotes (original) and Legerdenez and Yesterday's Perfume (original) and The Scentimentalist (original) and hortus conclusus and Perfume Posse.

(Edited to add to the Review Roundup.)


Photo:  Christian Staebler, Wikimedia Commons. Click for details