Yosh Omniscient 0.96 and Mazzolari Zagara

YOSH OMNISCIENT 0.96: Independent and self-taught perfumer-numerologist-aromatherapist (etc.) Yosh Han took the concept of omniscience -- "the capacity to know everything infinitely" -- and created an Everything Plus The Kitchen Sink fragrance to illustrate it.

Incorporating gardenia, egyptian tuberose, fig, lilac, violet, kush (or cannabis), tunisian opium, sandalwood, vanilla, basil, clove, geranium and pink grapefruit (i.e. every trendy essence of the moment), Omniscient 0.96 is pretty much a Frankenstein's Monster of a fragrance, lurching awkwardly from a clashing intro of grapefruit, tuberose and cannabis into a thick, floral and over-spiced mid-phase until it finally wheezes to a sandalwood-vanilla finish that's . . . actually kind of nice. It's just a shame about everything that precedes it.

Omniscient 0.96 reminds me of my first experiment with making cookies when I was ten years old -- I figured if chocolate chips and peanut butter and caramel sauce and marshmallows and strawberry jam and Captain Crunch cereal (with bananas!) were all good on their own, then they'd be fantastic all mixed together and baked as cookies, right? I mean, they'd be the best cookies EVER, right?!!!

"Now I know what it feels like to be god!"

Sadly, I was oh so wrong, and Yosh Omniscient 0.96 is also oh so wrong in exactly the same way: too many favorite ingredients in one mixing bowl = gloppy disaster. To add insult to injury, Ms. Han charges $130.00 for 8ml of this mash-up, resulting in a middling (at best) perfume that's nearly $500.00 an ounce.

*blink*

There's so much excellent perfumery out there that is far superior to Omniscient 0.96, and you don't even need to look very hard to find it. Both Barneys and Lucky Scent, which carry the Yosh line, carry numerous other brands (Le Labo, Serge Lutens, Frederic Malle, Armani Prive, Vero Profumo, Sarah Horowitz and more) that beat the unholy stuffing out of Omniscient 0.96 for the same, if not lower, price point.

I hate to say it, but the one positive aspect of our present economic crunch is that overpriced, new-agey perfumers like Yosh Han might find themselves out of clients and out of business, and while I hear that some of Yosh Han's other work is better than Omniscient 0.96 -- simpler, and more wearable -- my experience with Omniscient has stripped me of the will to find out for myself.

***Note: I surfed the net to see if there were any of my usual trusted sources (Now Smell This, Perfume Smellin' Things, The Non-Blonde, Perfume Posse, etc.) who rave about Yosh, but what I encountered were reactions mostly along the lines of: "It wasn't terrible, but it's not great, either, and the price and the new-agey blah-blah clash tragically."

I agree.

MAZZOLARI ZAGARA: Zagara is definitely better than I expected it to be, with the added bonus of turning more and more beautiful the longer it hangs around the premises, but that initial spicy blast when it first pours out of the bottle is a little startling.

I read that orange blossoms have traditionally been used as bridal wreaths, that orange blossom is a common ingredient in Middle Eastern desserts and that some of the sweetest honey is from bee hives that are placed in orange groves, but Zagara is not the succulent, pretty fragrance that all this talk of orange blossoms might lead one to believe.

The opening to Zagara is green and sharp, almost medicinal in a male after-shave kind of way. I was ready to write it off as a failure until, several hours in, the bold sharpness dissipated and what was left was a soft white musk that smooths over the jagged edges and reins in the concoction to the point where it actually starts to smell like delicious orange blossoms and not some kind of Stetson wannabe.

So if you can hold out through its rather bold and odd beginning, Zagara will reward your patience with a truly lovely drydown of subtle orange flowers and gauzy musk. Much like Omniscient 0.96, however, is it really necessary (or worth it) to suffer through a beginning you don't like just to get to a drydown that you do?

Well, no big surprise here, but I guess I'm not really the suffering type. I don't have to love every single moment of a fragrance, but I want to at least appreciate what it's doing and where it's going, yet while Zagara's finale is ultimately lovely (and that's an understatement), I'm not an appreciative fan of the first three hours of its juggling act.

One positive note in its favor: the Lucky Scent site states that Zagara was "intended ... to be worn on its own or mixed with other fragrances" -- so mixing it up with a sweet amber, a soft patchouli or even a brighter citrus scent might alleviate the tension at its intro while accentuating everything that's good about its drydown. I'm off to experiment!

UPDATE (10/30/09):

I've since experienced Yosh Han's Trompeur, plus her work for Lucky Scent, Untitled #1. I like both a lot, and think that Yosh succeeds best with a less cluttered palette.

Katie Puckrik posted a nice review of Yosh Sottile 1.61 that appears to underscore this assertion.