LA Sunset By Nick Steward©
‘Streets like a zoo
Through a city of lights, love at first sight
Silent rays of blue
They slowly glide
Right down my spine’ From ‘You’re Not The One’by Sky Ferreira. Music & lyrics by Sky Ferreira, Ariel Rechtshaid & Justin Raisen
Mulholland Drive 2001 David Lynch
Los Angeles seems mythical, ok a real sprawling thing sure enough, soaked in celluloid, musical, war, racial and iconic cultural history, but a place that somehow defies accurate definition after decades of filmic, artistic and literary representation. A dazzling array of facets have been reflected on the pacific waters, it is hard to communicate really the vastness and energy the place has, the sprawl, the sucked in overlaps and styles of communities, histories and architecture. I think of it I like many of us do as Hollywoodland, where dreams live or die. David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is my ultimate LA movie, but as with all with all things mythic, no matter how much reality there seems to be, the dazzledrama of myth seeps through everything, colouring all.
Nick Steward Creative Director at Chrisp Saint Market makes his home in London where he makes his home photo from Nick
On the landing page of the Gallivant website it says…’Small is beautiful’. This could apply equally to the perfectly formed 30ml travel-size bottles, the gathered mindset of this lovely indie brand and the charismatic brand founder Nick Steward himself.
An impish globetrotter, he is back in some style, gallivanting as you probably guessed this time in the City of Angels, launching his eighth fragrance Los Angeles, created by Parisian perfumer and long time collaborator Karine Chevallier.
Karine Chevallier
I have been writing for CaFleureBon on Nick’s fragrant flaneur series of city-inspired perfumes since the beginning, a long-kept promise to both Nick and CaFleureBon Editor In Chief and friend Michelyn Camen. What could have been a wander-by-number set of fragrances, city after generic city, is anything but. Ok, they don’t shatter boundaries and shock, but that was never the intention. Nick and his harmonious team of nomadic noses, Karine Chevallier, Georgia Navarra and Nicolas Bonneville are creating wearable compositions that have playful urban personalities influenced by Nick’s years of travelling for business in the perfume and beauty industries.
Gallivant Map of 8 Fragranced cities via Nick
Counterpointing simplicity and a delicious discursion of aromatic déja vu with Gallivant’s own sense of identity and city odour brief was always going to be intriguing. What I think is interesting is the reflective nature of the work. It would have been easy to make simplistic blocky pieces, broad stroke portraits that merely wave loud flags and click a million cameras from garish tour buses. But in each of the Gallivant perfumes to date there have been interesting elements, things that sit nicely off the tourist track vibe that Nick & Co aim to share. There is still of course a simplicity and sense of abstraction to the perfumes. Wet roses and a fresh magazine frisson In London, squeaky tulips and damp rush of flower markets in Amsterdam, the contemplative muted hinoki temple wood and backstreet calm of Tokyo; these three are my personal favourites.
Sky Ferreira via Weheartit.com
Gallivant Los Angeles is sunset dry, pop star. Sky Ferreira waking from a sultry slumber, asphalt haze from distant buzzy tailbacks drifting through luminous rooms. Her 80’s tinged heartbreak electro rock, gravel-gargled and dark yearning has a DNA of Venice Beach. Sand, heat, boys, shattered love, neon, Pacific ocean breeze; the notion this is the foundation on which so many hearts lie breaking. The most noticeable thing about Los Angeles as it opens on skin is a fibrous pineapple note, not at all juicy, thankfully avoiding any kind of pina colada nausea. It is not a note I like particularly and I think perfumers these days need to be careful with it after Creed destroyed any credibility it might have had with their duty-free exec-sweat behemoth Aventus. Karine Chevallier perfumer for Gallivant Los Angeles has used it desiccated, the dried rings like weird chewy flowers mixed with medicinal sage, eucalyptus and sweet mandarin.
Narcissus by The Silver Fox©
I know a lot of folk will adore this fruity opening; I am however ambivalent to its charms, but I do like the narcissus/tuberose combo that rises thru the pineapple creating an off kilter creaminess that sits only just on the right side of turned. I always forget that pineapple is often used as a tenderiser in certain cuisines; the enzyme bromelain in the fresh fruit can naturally break down meat fibres. If I think of this it adds a weird, savoury aspect in my scent brain to the way I approach pineapple. It popped into my head the third or fourth time I was wearing Los Angeles and I has this unique image of fresh pineapple juice tenderising sheaves of indolic narcissi and tuberose. Such is the way my mind works.
Photo by Nick
I have said it before in my Gallivant reviews that the base notes can sometimes feel a little disregarded. London was an exception, everything fitted together with panache and perfect scented timing. The base notes on paper seemed a tad generic but on skin felt like an old Burberry Mac, loosely gathered around the gorgeous rose de mai, violet, cucumber and cool, calm orris. Gallivant Los Angeles has cade, guaiac wood and cypriol in the base, three theoretically sooty, deep-smoke effects but they are very soft in usage here, like months old memories of LA wildfires, ghosts of fumes in stones, bridges and houses mixed with Pacific breath rolling over skin and land.
I personally find the Gallivant perfumes on the hushed side; Istanbul is punchier, red thyme, geranium and a generous sacrifice of myrrh give it more of a spicier growl than the others in the collection. But hushed does not necessarily mean a lack of complexity or longevity. Nick and his perfumers are aware that shouting in an olfactive sense is often just vulgar and covering up the fact you have little to say at the end of the day.
Sky Ferreira’s Boys from the video
Ultimately I think Gallivant Los Angeles is a chic and nimble collection of odour Polaroids; perfumes with a certain mood and frisson that flicker somewhere on the spectrum between analogue and digital but never quite settles on either. Los Angeles is another success, despite my better judgment I like the pineapple, mixed as it is with a queer asphalt vibe and the sound of Sky Ferreira’s Boys in the dry freeway air. Nick says neon lights, tiki bars and limo wheels cruising; I raise him gold sandals in warm beach sand at midnight, laughter lost in mouths, a car with an open door, flesh illuminated by dashboard light.
–The Silver Fox©, Guest Contributor
Sample sent of Gallivant Los Angeles, opinions as always my own.
Gallivant Los Angeles from Nick
Editor’s Note: On a personal note, thank you Alex for your eloquent essay/review, photography and for your much valued friendship. Nick, as always, ÇaFleureBon is honored to be the first to “gallivant” to Los Angeles. Nick Steward was my Best Creative Director 2017 and was featured in our independent perfumery roundtable –Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief and co art director
The official global launch date of Gallivant Los Angeles is Wednesday 14th August, 2019. There was an embargo on this announcement that might have been leaked before it was allowed in Europe. We honor embargoes. It was with Nick’s permission that we post today as this review was ready 2 weeks ago.
30 ml/USD 95
Thanks to the largesse of Nick Steward, we have a draw for a 30 ml of Gallivant Los Angeles Eau de Parfum for one registered reader in the EU, USA and Canada. Please be sure to register. To be eligible please let us know what appeals to you about The Silver Fox’s eloquent review, where you live and if you have a favorite Gallivant Perfume. Draw closes 8/12/2019
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