Vero Profumo Onda : A Story of Mud, Honey and Flesh

“The original idea was to create a leathery Vetiver surrounded by flowery and chypre notes and I had a fantasy like this going with:
Isabella Rossellini as mystery Dorothy Vallens, wearing this beautiful blue velvet gown, and Johnny Depp as Ed Wood wearing Glenda’s {from the character "Glen or Glenda" film by Ed Wood}sexy glamorous white-haired wig, dancing together a very slow Tango Argentino at Manhattan Roseland Ballroom.”

Vero Kern interviewed by Helg on The Perfume Shrine, July 30, 2007

I must’ve been one of Onda’s early adopters. I discovered Vero Kern through Helg’s interview -- Helg was, I think, the first to introduce the new, über-niche Swiss house of Vero Profumo to the blogosphere. One of Vero’s scents was called Kiki, as a tribute to Kiki de Montparnasse, Man Ray’s muse and lover. It was my beloved cat’s name. I wrote Vero to ask for a sample. She generously offered me samples of all three of her scents, and after exchanging several e-mails and meeting in Paris, she gave me her friendship.

Which makes it all the more difficult to write a review of Onda: not only was it authored by a friend (though I loved it before I came to know Vero better), but it’s also been reviewed in such poetic terms by so many excellent bloggers that one would wonder what’s left to say. While Helg talks of “pre-lapsarian carnality”, Marina of Perfume-Smellin’ Things calls it “a comforting scent, an urban person's vision of bucolic utopia.” For Christopher of Vetivresse, it spans from “a conjured place of ritual, high-altitude sacrifice” to “rowdy, sweat-and-mud-caked high school locker room post-game rubdown”. But my favorite image is probably Tom’s, again on Perfume-Smellin’ Things: “It's Garbo joyfully tearing a root from the ground with her manicured fingers, brushing the dirt and laughing, biting in heedless of the juice that may stain her Adrian gown.” What’s not to love? Garbo laughs.

What more can I say? Vero Kern’s perfumes have soul, and like souls, they’re full of sublime beauty and dirty secrets.

Onda is about earth, flowers and flesh smeared in spicy honey. The honey and musk wrap the earthy notes of iris, patchouli, oakmoss and vetiver Bourbon in a human funk that makes you feel you’ve sunk your nose in the lustily worn and discarded garments of your lover – there is more than a hint of the petite culotte in there… Ginger and sandalwood heat up the mix, basil gives it an almost minty radiance.

But the weird thing is, in the midst of this sticky, thick rush, cutting the density, a green floral note soars upwards hours into wearing Onda, and you are suddenly reminded of Diorissimo. So much so that you sniff around you to find out who could be wearing it, and it might be the old lady sitting next to you in the bus (after all, you’re riding smack past the house of Dior on the avenue Montaigne), but no, the muguet follows you home.

Onda's secret is that single note of spring-like purity soaring out of the leathery brew -- a secret it shares with old-time fragrances: they almost always hide in their formulas a dollop of hydroxycitronellal, one of the oldest floral synthetics in the book, to open up the composition (see my post on the Great White Green Bubble).

There's an unrelenting density to Onda that brings to mind vintage perfumery (Visa, Tabu, Shocking). Yet its syntax is different, deeply idiosyncratic. Somehow, the base is pushed to the top and Onda's evolution upends the classic pyramid: whatever's delicate in it hovers in the drydown. The phenolic honey -- push its concentration up a notch and it would smell like piss -- subsumes into its floral notes, and the ambery musk takes on the sweetly salty tinge of cat pads.

Like all of Vero's compositions, Onda is only available in extrait. While I find it deeply compelling, because of its intensity, concentration and peculiarity, it is not, to me, an everyday scent -- much like my prized vintages: it requires too much attention to be worn in a casual way, though it is oddly comforting.

But sometimes, when I open up my fragrance drawer, it calls me. When I does, I surrender to its earthy, sexual delights.

Image: Ana Mendieta, Tree Life, 1976