Brent Leonesio began his life as a perfumer about a year ago. He had lost his job and instead of trying to keep on doing what he had been doing, Mr. Leonesio had the courage to immediately go to Plan B. Plan B was to create a perfume line called Smell Bent. Mr. Leonesio was a fixture on many of the fragrance forums and was a frequent contributor. As such I and many others came to respect his knowledge and passion about perfume. As he embarked on creating his perfume line he was going to try living the dream that many of us harbor about our passions……Can I Do This?

 

In the fall of 2009 he released his first ten fragrances and they had many more hits than misses. I had three favorites from the initial offerings:

 

–Horny Little Devil which was an incredibly intense and balanced cinnamon and full-on musk. It was dirty and flirty at the same time.

 

–Sunshine which showed Mr. Leonesio could also use musk in a subtle way as this time it complemented an opening of tart blood orange combined with sandalwood and vanilla. Almost 180 degrees different from Horny Little Devil and a real eye-opener to me about the skill Mr. Leonesio could apply to his compositions.

 

–Hungry Hungry Hippies was a case of the munchies made into a perfume. The mix of chocolate, the note list calls it brownies, cassia and patchouli gave me a contact high of pleasure and made me look forward to what Mr. Leonesio would create going forward from this impressive start.

 

The answer was called the Leisure Cruise Collection which was released in two five fragrance bunches spaced about three months apart. As with the original ten fragrances the successes were more numerous than the ones that were less appealing to me. I had one clear favorite from each group of five. In the first group Monaco Dependent showed the same lightness of touch on display in Sunshine. This time in a green fragrance full of the light of orange blossom and opoponax. In the second set Tibet UR Bottom $ was the incense fragrance I was feeling Smell Bent was lacking. Resinous and opulent it bound to every available incense receptor in my nose and settled in for a long welcome visit.

 

Now one year under his belt Mr. Leonesio finishes out the year with four Halloween inspired fragrances; Bewitched Bothered & Bewilderness, Lucy Fur, Helen Carnate, and Lumberjack Werewolf. For the first time this group of fragrances felt more incomplete and not up to the high standards the fragrances mentioned above had set. Fortunately there was one more fragrance in this group, the anniversary fragrance, One. One shows what a year of working on perfume can do as it feels like the most mature fragrance of the entire Smell Bent line to me.

 

One is a beautiful piece of assured composition which starts with a delicate zephyr of cardamom which then is matched by a soft woody accord slightly cedar-like but not quite. The heart is described as an aging paperback books accord. The slightly sweet smell of yellowed paper comes alive and rises out of the lightly spicy woody top notes like an apparition. All of a sudden it feels like you’ve walked into a used paperback bookstore. The base notes reflect what have become two “go-to” notes for Mr. Leonesio, vanilla and musk. A large number of Smell Bent fragrances contain vanilla and/or musk. That level of familiarity allows Mr. Leonesio to expertly attenuate both of the notes so that vanilla acts as complementary sweetness to the aged paper and the musk adds a bit of natural decay to the mix. If you are a fan of CB I Hate Perfume In The Library, One is the middle class version of Christopher Brosius’ fragrant milieu. Both get that aging paper accord spot on and it sets both fragrances apart.

All of the Smell Bent Perfumes I have tried have above average longevity and average sillage.

It is a pleasure to watch someone like Mr. Leonesio take a belief in his abilities and be able to succeed on an artistic level so quickly. His past career seems to ensure that Smell Bent will also succeed on a financial level as he has kept prices below $50 for all of the fragrances and has distributed them at Urban Outfitters, through his website, and on indiescents.com. The mix of price point and wide distribution I hope ensure we will be enjoying Mr. Leonesio’s puntastic titles, child-like drawings and confidently composed fragrances for many more years to come.  Here is hoping I eventually get to review a fragrance called Ten.

Disclosure: The review of the first Smell Bent fragrances and the first Leisure Cruise set are based on samples I purchased from Smell Bent. The second five Leisure Cruise and Halloween fragrances plus One were supplied as samples from Smell Bent.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor