Best of 2011: Spritzing away while Europe sinks (and smelling lovely)

2011 was a bumper year for chypres. Which isn’t especially surprising: chypres are perfumes for tough times. Though they go back centuries, the Coty template was composed while lethal clouds of mustard gas were still blowing over the trenches. The second wave blossomed in the midst or aftermath of the German Occupation. There’s something about chypres, a gravitas in the earthy, iodic facets of oakmoss grounding the sweet flesh of fruit and flowers – soil and tears -- that suits troubled times.

Chypre may well have been, from the outset, a genre teetering between nostalgia and toughness, and if there’s been an uptick recently, it may be for the same reason we’re craving the aesthetics of bygone eras in movies like Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Martin Scorcese’s Hugo and Michel Hazanivicius’s The Artist or television series like the BBC’s Downton Abbey or HBO’s Mildred Pierce.

Today’s best chypres lead us by the nose back to a time when perfumes were grown-up, complex and a little brooding. And it may not be by chance that the two that moved me most last year were drawn from their authors’ poignant childhood memories…

Mon Parfum Chéri (Annick Goutal) is Camille Goutal and Isabelle Doyen’s wine-dark, ripe-plums-strewn-on-moist-earth tribute to Femme, a fragrance worn by Camille’s mother Annick. This is less 40s film noir than a Coen brothers rewrite – as damp, earthy and tough as Miller’s Crossing – but it’s got a satisfyingly hefty retro feel, and is one of the most beautiful launches of the year.

Azemour (Parfum d’Empire) is the polar opposite of Mon Parfum Chéri’s autumnal hues: ocean breezes blowing through sun-baked dunes and orange groves. But it owes its unusual salty tinge to tears as much as sea-spray: the scent is meant as an evocation of the land where Marc-Antoine Corticchiato was born and grew up, which his family lost forever, and where he only recently found the courage to go back. As a result, its robust juiciness hides a tender, elegiac quality.

Aromatics Elixir Perfumer’s Reserve, Laurent Le Guernec’s Bordeaux-in-Baccarat-crystal reinterpretation of the Clinique classic, issued for its 40^th anniversary in precious extrait form, showcases the seminal herbal-rose-patchouli accord created by Bernard Chant by glazing it with an aldehydic floral accord that regally snubs contemporary trends.

Conversely, Bottega Veneta Eau deParfum is a thoroughly modern product. Michel Almairac, renowned for the elegance of his short formulas, has lifted the skin off the fruity chypres of yore (a genre he had already radically revamped with Gucci Rush) to graft it onto a novel leather accord. Probably the best surprise in the mainstream this year, and one I hope will be successful enough to prompt other luxury houses to veer off the fruitchouli river…

If Bottega Veneta is perfect because it fits the Italian house’s brand identity as snugly as a pair of kid gloves, Prada Candy’s charm lies in its very dissonance: a hot pink piece of caramel stuck on a $3000 handbag. But once that caramel coating melts, Candy bears the signature composed by Daniela Andrier for Prada, revealing a delicate work on musk and iris wrapped in fluffy benzoin. Snorting your sugar fix rather than sucking on it is like sinning without penance – not even the tiny humiliation of wearing an un-classy, girly fragrance. After all, this is Prada.

Beyond the regressive charms of the confectionary shop, we’ll certainly be seeing a lot more cross-pollinating between cuisine and perfumery in coming years. Thierry Mugler, the ballsiest mainstream brand to walk the earth and neighboring galaxies, has paved the way with the Le Goût du Parfum collection, which the chef Helen Darroze has translated into recipes (click here to download in French from Nicolas Olczyk's blog). 

Comme des Garçons is the other fashion/perfume house that’s got weirdness branded in its DNA, and with their new, eponymous oddity – aka “The Blob” – they’ve gotten back in touch with it after a series of co-branded ventures. Under Christian Astuguevieille’s direction, Antoine Lie, then Antoine Maisondieu, grew a flower out of brown packing tape; Rei Kawakubo stuck it in a misshapen glass blob. The resulting monster is urban, romantic and oddly wearable: a brain-exploding demonstration of the secret complicity of synthetic and natural smells.

That industrial/romantic contrast is also what I love about Frédéric Malle’s Perfume Guns: utterly functional gray plastic spray guns spouting utterly refined compositions – my current darling being Bruno Jovanovic’s Chez Monsieur, which basically smells like the place where I’d love to live: a book-lined study with leather chairs and a whiff of cigar. This is my favourite home-fragrancing device of the year, conceived for hotels, and one spritz really does fill a large room.

I haven’t bothered counting the number of new niche brands that sprung up over the past year, but I’ve been thinking that instead of bemoaning the fact, we should embrace it. 

Granted, we’ll never again be able to keep track of it all. But this “long-tail” effect means more voices and sources of inspiration can materialize. It may also, at some point, reach a critical mass that will compel the industry – not only the big labs selling materials and blending oils, but also glass manufacturers and various suppliers – to reconsider its policies vis-à-vis “small” clients and, further along the line, to rethink distribution schemes and circuits…

I’ve been quite impressed by Olfactive Studio, not only because the scents are beautiful, but because the concept – using original photographs as briefs – is very consistently and professionally developed. Céline Verleure, a former perfume industry exec, rounded up a proper creative team and scared up enough of a budget to give the whole endeavour a big-brand effect on a small-brand scale. Her “photography” angle also clicks with a trend that’s gaining ground: the explicit cross-inspiration between perfumery and other art forms.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are the tiny, labour-of-love, one-person operations like NeelaVermeire Créations. This time the source of inspiration is Neela’s native country, India – a market not yet mature for niche brands, but a rich olfactory seam to be mined. Like Sandrine Videault’s Manoumalia for Les Nez, Bertrand Duchaufour’s French-Indian trio hints at the possibility of cross-cultural perfumery. And at the intriguing possibilities that will arise when non-Western perfumers trained in Western techniques start breaking loose… Perhaps the next fragrant breakthrough will come from the BRICs?

I'm optimistic, if not for the world in general, at least for the future of perfumery. It's not all bawling about reformulations or griping fruitchoulis and iFrags, is it? There's still gorgeous stuff pouring out of the labs...

And now, on to you... 
What will you be wafting on New Year's Eve to usher in 2012?

For more 2011 round-ups, check out Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, Perfume Posse and Perfume-Smellin’ Things.

 Picture by Roxanne Lowit.