The new Montale release Black Musk smells like the love child of Black Aoud and Musk to Musk. This isn’t a bad thing especially if, like me, you like both of the fragrances whose DNA make up Black Musk. In many ways Black Musk is an improvement on each of the originals as it seemingly manages to meld the two into a whole better than the sum of its parts.
On a Saturday morning at the Bergdorf-Goodman breakfast at the Sniffapalooza 2010 Fall Ball, Victoria Christian stepped to the front of the room to present both of the new Clive Christian fragrances. With her white gloved assistants spritzing the fragrances into the air and using antique wooden fans to waft them throughout the room I closed my eyes and waited for the scent to hit my nose. As C for Men met my synapses I realized I might have missed something special as a mix of leather and woods wrapped around saffron sent me a classic masculine oriental.
Inspired by Voltaire’s iconic satiric novella Candide written in 1759,
Mandy Aftel desired to create a perfume of optimism, an uplifting fragrance wedding innocence and sensuality.
Whereas the novella rakes Leibnizian blind faith over the coals, Mandy focuses on the
olfactory equivalent of ever-present buoyancy instead.
Honey is a delightful all natural perfume hand blended by Perfumer Laurie Stern for her Artisan Company Velvet and Sweet Pea’s Purrfumery based in San Francisco, California. I love this scent for its charming floral bouquet, fruity tartness and gentle dry down of spiced honey.
Spice and Wood was created by Olivier Creed and as his inspiration he took the romance of Antony and Cleopatra. M. Creed chose to pair notes from Italy and Egypt in each phase of Spice and Wood to create an olfactory marriage of the historical lovers’ countries of origin. I’m not sure how much it really represents the masculine and feminine ideal in the end but the one thing it does do is live up to its name, Spice and Wood.
As I enter the latter days of 2010 I begin to consider which perfumers have produced a body of work which will have me consider them for my perfumer of the year. With Coup de Foudre, Bang and now Panache I can tell you Yann Vasnier will be on my short list as I consider who will receive that accolade. M. Vasnier has fashioned his own panache quite brilliantly.
