Quick Sniffs: Hermes Caleche; Ormonde Jayne Tolu; Susanne Lang Tamboti Wood; Farmacia SS. Annunziata dal 1561 Ambra Nera

HERMES CALECHE: Since Hermes has just recently released a concentrated version of their Kelly Caleche (which many consumers and reviewers considered a whispery, mild-mannered disappointment to the leather fragrance genre — Grain de Musc goes so far as to call it “one of Jean Claude Ellena’s many variations on the smell of water”), I thought it might be nice to take a virtual time-travel jaunt and visit the original Caleche, first released in 1961 and spawning numerous flanker fragrances since then: Caleche Soie de Parfum, Caleche Eau Delicate, Kelly Caleche and the previously mentioned Kelly Caleche Parfum.

Caleche was one of Hermes’ best selling fragrances for several years after its release — bold and classically structured, it dispenses with any sweet, flowerpot pleasantries and aims its arrow straight for the warm, musky bullseye.

There’s a small floral bouquet that sneaks in about halfway and chats up the amber in the base, but then both of them exit the party and pile into the back seat of a waiting taxi, leaving us to the one-two cha-cha-cha of skin musk until it fades away altogether.

I expected Caleche to exhibit a good to excellent lifespan on my skin, but it turns the volume way down not three hours into it; meanwhile, Tolu and Ambra Nera are still chugging from the keg and scoping the joint for lampshades.

Okay, Caleche doesn’t disappear entirely, but it turns into a far more muted affair than I really want out of something that calls itself a leather fragrance. So, great, it suffers from the Hermes curse: “Help! I’m so classy, mannered and calm that no one can even tell I exist!”

This lack of vitality (or is it a lack of passion?) is a common complaint I have with Hermes fragrances, especially when they’re of the Jean Claude Ellena variety, though I don’t know what excuse Caleche can offer since it pre-dates by several decades Ellena’s arrival as head perfumer for Hermes.

Short and pithy version: nice first impression, too bad it wimps out half-way through. The plus side to the equation is that you can wear it in close quarters without asphyxiating anyone, which, now that I think about it, is actually a pretty big plus.

UPDATE:

A commenter chimes in below with the notion that Caleche is not stated as including musk in its ingredients, but while the jumble of “notes” for Caleche appear to vary wildly from site to site, I found a listing on Amazon that states: “Caleche has a floral heart composed of jasmine, rose, iris, gardenia, ylang-ylang, and bergamot. Lingering notes include: sandalwood, oakmoss, cedarwood, vetiver, amber and musk.”

There’s even a listing for Caleche at Costco (Hermes at Costco — I love it!) that says: “A refined and classic floral fragrance. Hermes Caleche offers a subtle blend of gardenia, bergamot, and iris with natural undertones of oak, amber, and musk.”

I guess I’m not the only one with a nose for the musk in Caleche.

ORMONDE JAYNE TOLU: Based on the scent of Tolu Balsam (the resin from a tree in Peru), Ormonde Jayne’s Tolu opens big and orange-rind sweet, then settles into a much more sophisticated and balanced groove, with wafts of green herbs and a light medicinal touch weaving in and out of the tonka and amber sweetened mix.

Robin at Now Smell This gives Tolu a reluctant thumbs-down, claiming “Tolu is the only fragrance from the (Ormonde Jayne) line that I simply can’t wear. It starts with a lovely, spicy-aromatic orange blossom, then quickly turns into a heady mixture of sweet resinous notes.”

Which is true enough, but what Robin doesn’t note is that Tolu evolves — it isn’t heady and sweet for its entire lifespan, though, to be fair, it might be heady and sweet for, like, an hour or two longer than she could really bear. I blame the tonka.

But the redeeming factor about Tolu is that it gets lighter and brighter as time passes, so if you can hang on through the initial heavy, oriental sweetness, you’ll emerge on the other side in a shimmer of almost cool, herbal freshness; still sweet, but no longer huge and overpowering about it.

SUSANNE LANG TAMBOTI WOOD: I don’t have a lot to say about Tamboti Wood, except that it’s probably unfortunate that it finds itself in the company of Caleche, Tolu and Ambra Nera.

While on another day I might have admired its simple, direct character, next to these other three powerhouses, it merely comes across as overly linear. This isn’t necessarily a fault in and of itself, but Tamboti Wood’s lack of development is not scoring any points today.

Don’t get me wrong — Tamboti Wood is well-enough a decent, woodsy perfume, and it is terrifically dry (not a dollop of sugar or a bouquet of flowers for miles, with plenty of crisp, crackling logs to throw on the fire), but Tom Ford’s Italian Cypress beats the stuffing out of it for sheer, wearable, wood-fragrance pleasure. Le Labo Rose 31 would also be a much more interesting choice, imo, though Tamboti Wood’s price point is a hell of a lot more affordable than either of those.

Tamboti Wood does score points, however, for lasting on the skin longer and stronger than Hermes Caleche, and its earthy, salty drydown, a combo of grass roots and what I could swear is a dusting of cinnamon (is that the sandalwood?), ranks as a positive on the overall scale.

FARMACIA SS. ANNUNZIATA DAL 1561 AMBRA NERA: Just like Farmacia SS Annunziata’s Patchouly Indonesiano was a no-holds barred, take no prisoners version of patchouli, so Ambra Nera is a rich, potent brew of an amber, enfolding the bright knife-edge of eucalyptus and the inky green stain of vetiver root into a thick, resinous, vanilla-sugar base.

Imagine stumbling across a huge sugar-cookie house at the center of an old growth forest, and that pretty much sums up Ambra Nera: dark, woodsy, grassy and impossibly delicious, with an aroma so bewitching you’ll find yourself shoved face-first into some old crone’s pizza oven before you can rouse yourself from your amber-induced stupor long enough to object.

The amber at the perfume’s core does tone itself down little by little as the fragrance develops, making space for drier, more forested elements to stretch out and breathe. The result is a drydown that’s not nearly so viscous as its sticky-bun introduction, but there’s still the persistent stamp of powdery sweet vanilla to the end . . . and it lasts for a really long time.