Can anyone tell me what happened to perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour? Did he go on some spontaneous spiritual junket to Tibet that blew his mind, or did he maybe slip and hit his head on a marble topped table in his foyer and suffer a near-death experience that made him question everything he’s been doing for the past twenty years?
Because the Duchaufour I’m encountering in his latest creations — L’Artisan Al Oudh, L’Artisan Havana Vanille and Penhaligon’s Amaranthine — is not the same tame, restrained, and what I had assumed was utterly predictable, Duchaufour of old.
Proof positive that Duchaufour is a new man
Okay, let me rephrase that: Al Oudh, Havana Vanille and Amaranthine are still tame and restrained — the kind of fragrances that wouldn’t feel out of place, like, anywhere — but there’s a recent tension to the compositions, a slight undertone of threat that makes me think I might need to double check the fastenings on the family dog’s leash and collar.
You know, because it *is* an animal, after all — sometimes I forget that.
While I could appreciate the artistry of previous Duchaufour works like L’Artisan Timbuktu, Comme des Garcons Kyoto and Eau d’Italie Sienne l’Hiver, they left me as cold as a series of color photographs that skew too blue. Lovely, but frozen. They didn’t so much interact with the wearer (me) as hang at a remove — finished pieces of art on a museum wall that I was meant to admire but never (ever) touch.
But this new Duchaufour? Crumble my crumpets! These latest releases are all about the touch, the feel, the reciprocating placement of warm hands on skin. Still light and easy to wear, but with a humming, even human, current of thrill running through the base of them.
Havana Vanille, which I’m sporting the second day in a row as I type this, is the best vanilla fragrance I’ve encountered, period. Now, if you’re a fan of sweet, cupcake vanillas, then you’ll likely loathe Havana Vanille for its defiantly non-food-like sweetness — the thing is freighted with the butched-up scent of dried tobacco leaves amid a lingering ambience of smoke (hence, the “Havana” in the title). This creates the sense of tension I mentioned earlier, a tug-of-war between masculine and feminine elements resulting in the perfect stalemate (or, from a different perspective, the perfect stasis).
It makes me want to just sit here, quietly, and breathe it in (mountain-top view and big brass gong optional).
The intro is quite sweet and rhum-boozy, almost surprisingly so considering the professional balancing act that comes after it, while the run-up to the finish line recalls the sweet, boozy opening, but like an ever fading echo. The main attraction to Havana Vanille, however, is the tobacco and vanilla glow in the body, and it glows for hours, revealing facets of wood, dry tobacco leaf and sugar in various combinations.
In short: Duchaufour’s Havana Vanille is what Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille wants to be when it grows up.
Penhaligon’s Amaranthine is just as surprising (and pleasing). The composition as a whole skews decidedly feminine, but wow, what a feminine. In the mention on Monday of Vero Kern’s upcoming EDP releases, I quoted Luca Turin as he wrote about the duality inherent in the scent of tropical fruits: “The proximity of beauty to ugliness is never clearer than in tropical fruit. Perhaps because they have to compete with powerful smells of decay for the attention of birds, tropical fruit have decided to play dirty.”
And just as Ms. Kern employed the Passionfruit note to achieve a fresh sparkle layered over a subtle eroticism, Mr. Duchaufour blends the ripeness of tropical banana leaves, orange blossoms and other white florals with earthy, exotic spices (clove, coriander, cardamom) and musks to achieve what the marketing materials call a “corrupted floral” effect. All I can say is, if this is corruption, no wonder we have so many people scrambling for every available political office!
The fleshy, sweaty tones of Amaranthine are expertly and near realistically composed, to such a degree that I want to recommend Amaranthine for everyone, male and female, but there’s a powdery veil of sweetness in the first hour or two that’s just girly as all get out (and I mean that in the best of ways), and the dry-down is a creamy, dreamy sandalwood/tonka bean mix, frosted in vanilla, that hovers just this side of unisex, but only if you’re willing to stretch the definition of unisex a bit.
Having said that, Amaranthine is such a striking piece of perfumery that I wouldn’t begrudge a guy for wearing it, yet I can’t help but feel that its true glory is reserved for the female of the species. If you’re looking for a real unisex fragrance that’ll rock the stuffing out of your world, you might want to go for the L’Artisan Havana Vanille, or maybe wait for the release of the Vero Profumo Onda EDP (in March of 2010). Mmmm, a spray bottle full of fresh, sunny, musky goodness, that’s what that is.
But really, if any of you out there have any idea how hard the Duchaufour hit his head, please give him my condolences, but also congratulate the hell out of him. His one small step of aesthetic change is a seriously giant step towards my own olfactory happiness. I’m now tempted to go home and bang my own head against a wall for five minutes straight just to see if I might achieve even a fraction of such a transformational plus.
To wrap it up: Dear Mr. Duchaufour, I’m delighted to inform you that you’ve been promoted to the rank of perfume hero. Much love — Nathan.
