The Gender of Scent (III): Chanel Sycomore

Like lavender, vetiver, though it is also used in feminine fragrances, is almost entirely considered a masculine note: all the classic vetivers, Carven (1957), Guerlain, Givenchy (both from 1959), Lanvin (1964) were launched during the boom of the masculine fragrance market.

With its multiple facets – hesperedic, smoky, woody, earthy, balsamic – vetiver is just about as far from floral notes as possible (though, in fact, it does have a faint floral aspect). And like lavender, vetiver roots are associated with cleanliness, since they are used to scent linen and to protect it from moths. Dry and aromatic, vegetal and mineral, vetiver is the polar opposite of the heady and sweet aroma of flowers: to their fleshy opulence, it opposes its angular bone structure.
Nevertheless, its salt-sprinkled grapefruit notes do emit a smell that brings this ascetic back to the realm of mere mortals.

Vetiver smells of sweat. Fresh sweat after a physical effort rather than the stench that clobbers you in public transports during a heat wave. But sweat nevertheless. It’s faint, but once you’ve detected it, you can’t not smell it. And there’s something virile in fresh sweat, isn’t there?

When Chanel launched Sycomore earlier this year as part of its Exclusives, it was received in the blogosphere and fora as the first true masculine of the collection. Granted, with their streamlined bottles, most of the Exclusives – except the über-floral Gardénia and N°22 – could be thought of as shared fragrances. But when I first sampled this beautiful vetiver, with its grapefruit top note and its extraordinarily tenacious woody-smoky base, I immediately thought: “This is for a man”.
A cultural prejudice, perhaps, reinforced by personal associations: as practically everyone living in France, I know at least five gentleman who wear Guerlain’s Vetiver – along with Habit Rouge, it seems to be the French bourgeois’ default fragrance, just as the French bourgeoise’s is Shalimar or Chanel N°5.

So I was quite surprised to learn that Sycomore had been conceived by Jacques Polge, assisted by Christopher Sheldrake, as a feminine fragrance which could also be worn by men. Perhaps to lure women away from filching Guerlain’s Vétiver?
After having worn Sycomore on a few different occasions, I discovered that it alternates – perhaps according to weather conditions? – between a woody-smoky scent, a very refined, thirst-quenching vetiver and rounder, sweeter, almost balsamic notes that veer towards amber or benzoin. Somewhere along the ride, I detect a small dose of iris, maybe a smidge of jasmine, as well as peppery notes.
While it seems like a very simple composition at the outset – like the other modern Exclusives, it displays the beauty of excellent materials rather than weaving them into the complicated accords of classical perfumery – Sycomore turns out to be rather more complex. In an already crowded field – the nutty Hermès Vétiver Tonka, The Different Company’s salty Sel de Vétiver, the somewhat thinnish reedition of Givenchy’s mythical Vétiver, Frédéric Malle’s Vétiver Extraordinaire with its cedar and cold candle wax notes, Serge Lutens’ unexpected Vétiver Oriental and the vetiver of reference, the Guerlain, which lost a bit of its lustre in recent years – Chanel’s Sycomore is not particularly groundbreaking. But it is excellent. And it offers a quiet, pared-down, chic answer to the question of the gender of vetiver. It is a hermaphrodite.

For a review of the original Sycomore launched in the 1930s, see Octavian Sever Coifan's 1000fragrances.

Image: Poster for Anne Fontaine's biopic Coco Before Chanel starring Audrey Tautou, to be released in 2009.