Aedes de Venustas Oeillet Bengale: Carnation Deflagration

Real carnations are hard to find, and the ones that do turn up in flower shops are desperately bereft of that burning spice they used to give off when I bought them from gypsies in Seville… Fragrances? Floris’ Œillet Malmaison (Floris) and Roger & Gallet’s Œillet Mignardise (except in soap form) have been chucked into the dustbin of history. L’Air du Temps has ditched most of it; Poivre and Bellodgia are ghosts of their former selves. But when you smell vintage Carons, or old Guerlains like L’Heure Bleue, Mitsouko, À Travers Champs or Cachet Jaune the way God (a.k.a. Jacques G.) intended them to be, you realize just how much carnations fired up the perfumers of the Golden Age.

Today, between IFRA-enforced Brazilian wax jobs on formulas and marketing-driven eradication of the note as “old-ladyish” (of course, since any note that’s not offered for a while will tend to go out of fashion), we’d just about given up on the beleaguered blossom.

Then, BOOM! Aedes de Venustas co-owner Karl Bradl reached out to Mexican spitfire Rodrigo Flores-Roux – the Givaudan perfumer, who’s got both red and flowers in his surname, was born to grow what the brand calls “a flower on fire”.

Oeillet Bengale demonstrates the way words and notes can cross-pollinate when a fragrance is developed like a poem. The initial concept sprung from a print by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the artist who depicted the roses developed for Empress Joséphine in her garden at the Malmaison. The flower is actually a rose despite being called a carnation, and the idea of a rose stuck with an identity crisis appealed to Karl Bradl.

With their fiery scent and jagged petals, carnations smell explosive and look like fireworks. Neither the artistic director nor the perfumer thought of Bengal fire when they worked on the Oeillet Bengale – though their muse’s name did suggest the Bengal tiger that lurks in the ambery base notes. The pyrotechnical subconscious of the project emerged as an afterthought (or rather like the backdraft of the blaze). The fire was there all along, in frankincense that is the trademark of Aedes: it sets off the powder keg.

The old-school rose-and-ylang carnation accord is centered on Givaudan’s methyl-diantilis, which smells like iso-eugenol with guaiac, vanillin and slightly burnt facets (though unlike iso-eugenol, it is IFRA-compliant, in case you wondered how such a clove-y blend made it through the regs). This accord – with green lily and tiny strawberry effects – is stretched between the bright bergamot and black pepper top notes (the latter boosting the peppery facets of the former) and the more animalic white pepper extracts that dirty up the amber and balsams base.

Thought it revives the grand, glamorous tradition of carnation fragrances like Bellodgia, Oeillet Bengale shows its edgy, decadent streak by brushing its petals with black, almost singed notes. Fiery at the outset, it quiets down to a slow burn of sizzling resins that flares up in the wind – this isn’t so much a sillage monster as an airborne perfume.

With this third fragrance (or fourth if you count the partnership with L’Artisan Parfumeur), the brand shows it has consistency and a vibrant, baroque style which truly reflects its owners’ tastes – these are proper developments started from scratch, not the tweaked off-the-shelf formulas many niche brands make do with. Already a major player as a boutique, Aedes de Venustas is shaping up as one of the most interesting new(ish) niche brands, and one that is drawing top perfumers to its fold…

For reviews of the brand’s previous offerings, Aedes de Venustas signature and Iris Nazarena, click here and here.

Oeillet Bengale : Ma fleur fait boum

Allez trouver un œillet chez le fleuriste. Un qui sente le clou de girofle et le poivre, comme ceux que j’achetais jadis aux Gitanes de Séville… Nada. Des parfums ? L’Œillet Malmaison de Floris et l’Œillet Mignardise de Roger & Gallet (sauf son forme de savonnette) ont été consignés aux poubelles de l’histoire. Ceux de L’Air du Temps, de Poivre et de Bellodgia se sont étiolés. Pourtant, quand on sent des Caron vintage, ou de vieux Guerlain comme L’Heure Bleue, À Travers Champs, Cachet Jaune ou Mitsouko, formulés comme Dieu (alias Jacques G.) les a créés, on se rend compte à quel point l’œillet a enflammé les parfumeurs de l’âge d’or…

Aujourd’hui, entre les épilations brésiliennes imposées par le règlementaire et le « ça sent la vieille » du marketing (toute note ratiboisée par les restrictions tendant à se démoder puisqu’on ne la sent plus), on avait failli faire son deuil de cette fleur persécutée. Puis, BOUM ! Karl Bradl, copropriétaire d’Aedes de Venustas, en a planté l’idée dans les fioles de Rodrigo Flores-Roux, parfumeur mexicain qui pète d’autant plus le feu que les fleurs et le rouquin sont inscrits dans son nom. D’où ce que la marque appelle une « fleur enflammée »

Oeillet Bengale démontre à quel point les mots et les notes peuvent se polliniser lorsqu’un parfum est développé comme un poème. Le concept initial naît d’une estampe de Pierre-Joseph Redouté, le peintre botaniste à qui l’impératrice Joséphine demanda d’immortaliser les roses de la Malmaison. Car comme son nom ne l’indique pas, l’œillet de Bengale en est une : l’idée d’une fleur prise dans une crise d’identité a plu à Karl Bradl… Dont acte.

Avec ses épices enflammées et ses pétales en pétard, l’œillet sent l’explosion et ressemble à un feu d’artifices. Ni le directeur artistique, ni le parfumeur n’ont songé au feu de Bengale en assemblant leur engin infernal – le nom de leur muse leur suggérant néanmoins le tigre de Bengale qui rôde dans le fond ambré. L’inconscient pyrotechnique du projet a affleuré en après-coup (refoulé en retour de flamme). Il était là, dès le début, dans cet encens qui brûle dans tous les parfums d’Aedes. C’est lui qui met le feu aux poudres.

L’accord rose-ylang de cet œillet old-school tourney autour du methyl-diantilis, molecule Givaudan qui, avec ses accents gaïac et vanilline légèrement brûlés, sent l’iso-eugénol (mais qui n’est pas, contrairement à ce dernier, limité par l’IFRA, au cas où vous vous demanderiez comme une mixture si giroflée a pu être autorisée). Cet accord, relevé d’effet lys vert et fraise, est tenu comme par un tuteur par une tête crépitante de bergamote et de poivre noir (le second boostant les facettes poivrées du premier), plantée dans un fond ambré baumé où le poivre blanc, plus animal, insinue un fumet de fauve.

Bien qu’il ressuscite la tradition glamour d’oeillets classiques comme Bellodgia, Œillet Bengale affiche ses penchants flambeurs en brossant ses pétales de notes noires : ça sent le roussi. À son embrasement d’épices, succèdent les braises de résines grésillantes dont la flamme se ranime à la moindre brise – Œillet Bengale n’est pas une bombe à sillage mais un parfum dans le vent.

Avec ce troisième lancement (le quatrième si l’on compte un premier partenariat avec L’Artisan Parfumeur), la marque démontre la cohérence d’un style baroque et culotté qui reflète le goût de ses propriétaires – les formules sont développées expressément pour eux et non glanées dans les archives des maisons de composition, comme c’est souvent le cas pour les marques de niche. Mecque des aficionados du parfum à New York, Aedes de Venustas est désormais aussi l’une des nouvelles marques les plus intéressantes du secteur. 

Pour retrouver ses deux premiers parfums, Aedes de Venustas et Iris Nazarena, cliquez sur leurs noms.

Wisteria Hysteria by Comme des Garçons X Stephen Jones: A Springtime blast of frost

Wisteria were the reason I rented my first studio in Paris, a perilous split-level job whose steep stairs nearly cost me my hung-over life once or twice. When I visited it, the high arch window was hung with the fragrant mauve flowers.

So the wisteria clinched the deal. That, and the fact that Hemingway had holed up in the hotel next door to write The Sun Also Rises, and that Valéry Larbaud lived in that very building when he worked on the first French translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

It was there my weak resolve to become an academic frittered away after I’d published my first articles in French magazines. There that I had a “Parisian breakfeast” – “You get the croissants, I’ll bring the champagne” – with a young man I’d just met on a bus. He left me a copy of Juan Rufo’s Pedro Paramo. I vaguely wondered why he’d never called back. When I finally got around to reading the novel, I found his phone number inscribed on the last page.

But I was in my twenties, the supply of men seemed inexhaustible, and I never got back to that stranger. I was caught up in wisteria hysteria: a springtime cornucopia of pleasures to sample, adventures to experience, stories to write, shot through with spicy wafts of purple scent…

I’ve often pestered perfumers about creating a wisteria fragrance. It seems that, like quite a few “mute flowers”, wisteria is a floral hodgepodge that won’t read as wisteria if it comes from a spray nozzle. I think I even came up with the name “Wisteria Hysteria” at some point: it just seemed so fitting. Especially since the plant’s embrace can actually smother whatever it’s latched onto: springtime love degenerating into the kiss of death.

So now, Comme des Garçons has gone and done it for mad hatter Stephen Jones. But Wisteria Hysteria triggers no flashback to my heady 1980s. CdG’s quintessentially Japanese vine has been hit by a blast of frost. And it’s climbing over a brushed steel wall rather than an Art Nouveau brick façade.

In fact, Nathalie Feisthauer and Christian Astuguevieille have submitted it to the same treatment as the packing-tape lilac in the “blob bottle” or the violet-on-a-meteorite of the first CdG X Stephen Jones collaboration. You didn’t think they’d want to come up with a realistic portrait of the flower, did you? How very gauche that would have been… Nope, you’re going to take your wisteria in its mutant form, as an SF flower that somehow managed to leech off the blood of the pallid, Kyoto-by-way-of-Krakow ice maiden in Henry Pincus’s short feature for the scent.

The mineral effect comes from the pepper, incense and indole boosting one another; a sugary violet seems to have shed a petal while riding that meteorite from the first Stephen Jones. A raspy puff of spiky woods keeps the frosted blossoms rustling. Whatever hysteria this wisteria is afflicted with manifests itself through what early psychiatry called a “crepuscular state” – similar to sleepwalking or dissociation… As chic and vaguely scary as a Stephen Jones hat.