Fragrance Review: Parfumerie Generale Bois Naufrage

 

 Chandler Burr, the perfume critic for the NY Times, challenged a room ( April 10th Sniffaplooza Spring Fling) of perfume aficionados to stop picking apart the threads of an olfactory tapestry by focusing on the notes. He instead asked us to appreciate the perfume as a complete entity and believes that the best perfumes are those where the whole is much more than the sum of its notes. I think that he is correct to a point. When our most talented perfumers aspire to create an olfactory landscape, and succeed in doing it, one should revel in the joy of the accomplishment instead of trying to figure out what mirrors the magician used to make the elephant disappear. My quarrel with Mr. Burr’s thesis comes in the form of: not all perfumers are attempting to create art and some are just trying to make money. The best of them try to do both.

Early in 2010, based on the first three fragrances released by his Parfumerie Generale line, Pierre Guillaume is one of these tightrope walkers on the thin line between commercial and artistic and so far, like master perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour, it feels like he is working in a different way in 2010.

  

Bois Naufrage was inspired by a black and white photograph by French artist Lucien Clergue; “Nu au Bois Flotte” (Nude on Driftwood). The picture shows the lower half of a nude woman stretched over a piece of driftwood on a summer day. When I look at the picture it calls to mind a beach although there is no  visual evidence of the ocean or the sand. M. Guillaume takes this inspiration and  creates a fragrance that captures the sun-baked diptych of skin and wood; M. Clergue hints at the possibility that the ocean and sand are present if not explicitly so. Anyone who has experienced this knows to effectively capture them in a perfume and allow them to have the room to expand is no mean feat. Bois Naufrage is M. Clergue’s photograph brought to olfactory life and every time I look at the picture and smell Bois Naufrage I feel transported to the moment  in 1971 that it was captured on film. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t want to know how the magician cuts the woman in half or agrees with Mr. Burr; skip the next paragraph because I am going to talk about the notes which make up the magic that is Bois Naufrage.

 

The listed notes on the Parfumerie Generale website are Caroubier (Egyptian fig Tree), Fleur de Sel, and Ambergris. That these three accords so beautifully capture the mood of M. Clergue’s photograph is a piece of olfactory prestidigitation. The Caroubier accord is a mix of an in-house base dubbed “Seve 138”, cedar, stemone, folione, and lactones. I believe it is in particular the lactones which really hold the core of this accord together as they impart the sun-baked skin quality. Although not having experienced the Seve 138 base as an ingredient by itself I have a feeling that M. Guillaume’s magic still retains some of its secrets.

According to an email from Pierre Guillaume to Michelyn Camen,the fleur de sel accord is made up of Vetiver oil fraction, orris absolute, ionones, mint, hedione, and neroli oil. I was surprised to find that M. Guillaume used ionones as, usually, they impart a sharpness to fragrances. In this accord they must be there in small amounts so as to give that slight, almost iodine-like, bite that the ocean contains. The vetiver and orris in conjunction add the necessary heft to the ocean accord. The ambergris is the soft foundation that has to be in place to allow the subtlety, that M. Guillaume is attempting, to come to fruition and as everything else in Bois Naufrage it is expertly balanced.

Bois Naufrage has average longevity and minimal sillage. Bois Naufrage is a re-creation of subtle fragrances and as a result is a very close wearing perfume.  

 

 

Bois Naufrage is the kind of fragrance that illustrates Mr. Burr’s belief in the artistic potential of fragrance. As he wishes, when I am experiencing it on my skin I am standing on a beach breathing in the sea air and smelling the surrounding skin and wood baking in the sun. I am transported,I suspend disbelief and the specificity of the composition suddenly are washed away at sea.That’s true magic, no mirrors necessary.

 Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Parfumerie Generale.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

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3 comments

  • Kathryn says:

    Hi, Mark.
    Your verdict and analysis of Bois Naufrage are spot on.  It is magical.  Wearing it, you can almost see the heat shimmering off the sand on a beach on a hot summer day. It does seem like a new direction for Parfumerie Generale,  more sheer and radiant than any of the other perfumes I've smelled in that line.
    I understand Chandler Burr's position to some extent.  To use an analogy from cooking, French bread has only four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and salt.  However, that combination of ingredients can result in something glorious or dismal, depending on the skill of the baker.  But that's not all there is to it.  The quality of the ingredients makes a huge difference, and if you leave one of them out or substitute something else for one them (e.g. milk for water) you end up with something else entirely.
    So, I , for one, am really grateful for your deconstruction of this really wonderful perfume.  I have a further question: do you know how the ambergris was composed?  It has such an elusive quality that I think this is another place where the "magic" of the Bois Naufrage resides.  It seems to me that there may be some actual ambergris but perhaps also some synthetic molecules.  I would love to know what you think.

  • Somerville Metro Man says:

    In the fragrances that I have encountered which use authentic ambergris there seems to be an indelible extra quality that it imparts. Bois Naufrage has that quality. I don’t really detect much more than that. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that somehow M. Guillaume has conjured up one more piece of magic and found a way to make an ambergris accord from synthetics that smells like the real thing.

  • Michelyn Camen says:

    it is interesting how on every skin it  takes on a different  shimmer. For me, it is the magic of the caribouer accord. I also think there must be tonka in this…just a feeling. it is somewhat sweet  on my skin, not salty at all and feels more like a light  shawl thrown over yoru shoulders as the sun goes down and th breeze picks up at the  beach.