New Arrivals

I received some hotly anticipated arrivals in the mail today.

S-eX by Shaping Room (aka S-Perfume)

Shaping Room is a niche fragrance company out of New York (they call themselves "the world's smallest fragrance house") that contracts stellar perfumers such as Christophe Laudamiel, who has created fragrances for the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch, Frederic Fekkai, Estee Lauder and Harvey Nichols. He co-created (along with Carlos Benaim, who additionally contributed work on Pure Poison and crafted the masculine version of Calvin Klein's Eternity) Ralph Lauren's Polo Blue for Men, which won the 2003 FIFI Award for Fragrance Star of the Year, as well as the Perfumers' Choice Award.

Christophe Laudamiel created S-eX for Shaping Room, and Luca Turin reviewed the fragrance for Perfumes: The Guide, dubbing it "space leather" and granting it five stars out of a possible five: ". . . S-ex is a leather fragrance in the grand manner of (Chanel's) Cuir de Russie: rich, smooth and suitably soft, only overlaid with a shiny plastic accord that obliterates the retro feel common to most leathers and turns it into the smell of a machine nobody has yet had the good fortune to strap himself into."

I look forward to hopping into the driver's seat and taking this souped-up, razzmatazz baby for a spin around the galaxy.

I also received this:

Discovery Set by Le Labo

Le Labo is another niche fragrance company based out of New York. Founded in 2006 by Fabrice Penot and Eddie Roschi (both formerly of Giorgio Armani fragrances), their passion is to produce daringly luxe, formulated-on-demand fragrances "far removed from the industrial and global forces that are driving boredom right down into the perfume bottles." Formulated-on-demand means they blend the formulae of essential oils with alcohol and water fresh for each order. It's rumored they "have little french elves with their black berets who work downstairs 24/7" -- but that can't be confirmed.

Le Labo started off with ten fragrances designed by superior talents in the world of perfumery. One of these, Patchouli 24 created by Annick Menardo (the number in the perfume's name refers to the specific number of ingredients in the formula), also received a five star review from Luca Turin who pronounced it "strange leather" and stated that it reminded him of the times he frequented a hot, airless storage room above the biology department while working summers at Moscow State University: " . . . the vanillic sweetness of the decaying old books had struck up a phenolic conversation with the harsh chemicals in the jars and the fragrant refrigerant oils in which pickled specimens swam blindly. The smell was at once beguiling, salubrious and toxic, and felt like a perfume composed for a fiercely intelligent librarian."

Of course, I had to find out for myself just what that means.

Le Labo allows the curious to sample its wares before splurging on an entire bottle, as there are few experiences less satisfying than plunking down good cash for something later discovered to be personally repellant. They call this sample pack their Discovery Set -- a box containing three 5ml glass vials of separate fragrances. I chose Patchouli 24 (natch), plus their Labdanum 18 and Vetiver 46.

So many combinations of molecules to sniff, too few days in a life . . .