Dear creatures of the male persuasion -- a treat for you! Penhaligon's commissioned Bertrand Duchaufour to make a new scent for men. It is called Sartorial, inspired by the bespoke artistry of Savile Row, where suits are completely hand made. Oakmoss, beeswax, tonka bean and lavender, woods, ozonic and metallic effects, leather, violet leaf, honey and spices to recreate the atmosphere of the tailor's workroom. It smells like steam ironed fine white linen sewn with silk thread run through beeswax, with a little of the hay they use to stuff the lapels of the suit jackets. It has a subtle, freshly washed and shaved tone.
I feel my sophistication factor has risen exponentially because thanks to Julianne Zaleta of Herbal Alchemy, a local Brooklyn natural perfumer, I had the most fragrant summer cocktails recently. I have never been much of a drinker, but this made vodka into a deliciously scented experience. I felt like I was in a contemporary Brooklyn version of a 30s Thin Man movie, or a Mad Men party scene, only we were in the vine grown back garden of the Prospect Wine Shop with community garden herbs infusing the vodka and all ingredients were all natural.Julianne has made a set of essence dilutions you can add to cocktails, that bloom in the alcohol and make it fragrant and exquisitely delicious. She also infuses the alcohol with fresh herb and nectars ahead of time, then straining it and finally shaping it with the various infusions to a unique taste. She used vodka, but I imagine gin might also be a candidate for such treatments.
For example, the Sprite: Basil infused vodka (crush fresh basil, pour the vodka over it, keep overnight in the fridge, then strain), add two drops of her yuzu dilution and black pepper oil, with tonic water, shaken with crushed ice. This creates a subtle fragrance in the cup of the glass that blooms out fully inside the warmth of the mouth.
The Silk Route: vanilla infused vodka (the soft inner scrapings of a vanilla pod, shaken thoroughly into the
vodka) adding her jasmine and coriander oil, and apricot nectar, to be served in a chilled martini glass. Most elegant, very soft, the jasmine wreaths the apricot nicely, and the vanilla softens all.
Summer Crush - lemon verbena infused vodka, passion fruit nectar, and one drop of her pettigrain dilution, strained into a chilled martini glass. The citrus tone of the pettigrain works well with the alcohol and pulls up the nectar to the nose. Most civilized!
See her recipe online for The Bloody Hell, which is a form of mojito - essences of mint, cocoa, and blood orange infused in rum.
If you do not drink alcohol yet like this idea, Julianne suggests the use of her hydrosols, such as rose and jasmine, to flavor chilled spring or sparkling or tonic water.
Julianne also has perfumes to explore on her site. She likes to create perfumes based on defined local areas, such as different parts of Prospect Park, like The Ambergill (the area based on the Adirondack mountain region of New York State – recreating its waterfalls and mossy rocks and ferns) also the Park’s Nethermead; and The Vale of Cashmere, and the local community garden she works in most days, where she gets many of her natural materials. The Vale and Nethermead 
are in the process of reformulation at this time, but the original versions are still available. She is an avid collaborator and is in the midst of producing a number of fragrances in close association with other people, not necessarily perfumers, who bring their personal influence into the concept of the scent. One such result is Tourmaline, based on a song by Rachel Garniez (link provided to the song on her site) made with tobacco, bitter orange, honey and fern.
Garden Walk is based on the gardens of Victorian Brooklyn, in Clinton Hill, a small neighborhood of many private and community gardens, moving from orris, ambrette and hay notes to tuberose and elemi to the honey of the bees that have become the hobby of a number of rooftop gardeners in Brooklyn these days.
I discern a Victorian/contemporary feeling to her aesthetic, which makes sense because she is reflecting her everyday experience and environment. There is so much Victorian architecture in Brooklyn, which keeps a low-rise sense of neighborliness. Many residents have become enamored of gardening and a green organic life while being modern people occupying the older structures that are tied into the powerful energy grid of NYC. Sometimes it seems like the natural materials are what connect our past into the future and reach out to all the other continents and personal histories.
In addition to making perfumes, Julianne
is also a certified aromatherapist, working with massage and meditation, together with the healing properties of essences and herbs, to make a number of medicinal creams and salves. I see there is an Agita Oil, for massaging into tense abdominals. She has extensive experience comforting the seriously ill with natural perfume and aromatherapy materials. She makes her own lavender augustofolia essential oil, and othe
r essences, from plants she raises in her local community garden. She also makes her own Rose, Violet, Hungary and Carmelite Waters, which are generally fine things to have in your beauty/medicine cabinet.
It's interesting that she has found a way to be local, natural and yet very much of the city and the sophisticated tastes thereof. Julianne has been giving lectures around Brooklyn on the uses and pleasures of natural perfumery - and has doing much to get our local neighborhood open and used to the idea of the use of fragrance in many different contexts.
You can access a set of her infusions for drinks on her site, as well as more information about her perfumes and medicinal salves and lecture schedule.
D.S & Durga are a young couple whose chance meeting on Brooklyn street corner led to romance and creating beautiful perfume together. They are inspired by their mutual American and Indian experience. I have always liked the idea of a couple who work together to create one thing, or on aspects that make a whole, like the couples of the past used to do. As in the middle ages and the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, or like the farmer family who work together, couples have often built their lives and livelihoods together over the centuries and this model may well be experiencing a revival. The male and female aspects translate well in this case to scents that are geared towards masculine or feminine, even while a number cross over into both areas and I personally never let such gender demarcations keep me away. I had six to try:Masculine:
Boston Ivy - A breath of air through dark green leaves, clinging to a brick wall that is drying out from a soaking rain. It is described as gritty Irish Boston, green ivy, moss and fresh clover by the seaside.
Burning Barbershop - Thoughts of the charred remains of the contents of an upstate NY turn-of the-last-century full service place. This is a mix of burnt shaving tonic mints, lime, vanilla and lavender. I smell smoke and cleanliness together, the clean wind whistling through the smoldering ruins.
Orris - Extract of iris root, cedar and violet resin, for dandies preparing to enter their personal night-lives. Gentlemanly, while looking for a wild time. The cedar and resin warm the cold iris, and the violet sweetens it infinitesimally. Like a well turned out Mark Twain after he got rich and clubbable kind of thing.
Feminines:
My Indian Childhood – Kewda and osmanthus, a very serious almost animal low note of sweetness that crosses both the floral and the gourmand style.
Shake, Shake Senora (limited) - I sense vanilla flavored gum, patent leather shoes, a little pineapple, a hot pink and lime green kind of olfactory dance. Marigold, heliotrope and vanilla orchid, a young fragrance.
Pettigrain Sur Fleur (limited edition) - Herbal scented clean fur, worn with a small strongly fragrant corsage. Notes of orange blossom wood and flowers distilled together, tuberose and lavender.
They all have a vintage-chic feel to them, witty and bright, and not painfully expensive (about $58). The masculine scents seem like a good choice for the bike riding young dandy set. The feminines keep a classically Indian tone of very soft sweet lushness. They are hand made in small batches by the two of them, using a high proportion of natural materials, some of which they distill themselves. Thereby they have a gentle throw and are somewhat fugitive, so safe for close quarters in public such as the workplace, and a need for re-application to be expected.
There are many intriguing titles I have not yet tried: Siberian Snow, Poppy Rouge, Silent Grove, Mississippi Death Cult, $, Resin, Cowgirl Grass, they've come up with lots of great names and ideas. They are to be found at boutiques such as In God We Trust, Steven Alan, Anthropologie, Matter, Hayden Harnett, Una, The Darling Room, Rural Residence, and others, and at their very literate website, which is also self created.
Photos above of themselves in their live-and-work space, from an interview in Refinery 29 taken by Nick Wolf.
I’ve been trying a set of Nasomatto samples sent to me by a friend, via the Babalu Miami shop, and while thinking they were a lot to assimilate at once, I realized that as a group they present a defined stylistic theme. For me they are the essence of the modern EU brand of an international style that I like and find inherently glamorous, which is the convergence of a number of cultures. Informed of the background of the perfumers I find the cool and bright clarity of Amsterdam is inhabited by an Italian sensuality that respectfully uses traditional fine materials. All of the perfumes in the line are smart in both senses of the word, as fashion and as intelligent references to nature and the past. These are wearable across a range of environments, from work to home, from fancy to plain occasions. I found a note of clean musk behind them all. Nasomatto doesn’t put out detailed note lists, so I may well be projecting my interior concept of clean musk on account of some personal unconscious rigmarole, but what I mean is there’s a clean skin note that blends with your own skin scent so that it becomes part of your own aura instead of a layer sitting on top of you. Refined and clear in tone, without an overwhelming throw, the compositions hold the notes tightly together from start to finish.
I see them as having potential for use across a range of seasons too, from heat and humidity to cool sweater weather. I think they would cling to nice wool or leather beautifully and thereby add their own seductive dimension to a scarf or pair of gloves accidentally on purpose left behind at an admirer’s house.
I have tried Absinthe, Hindu Grass, Silver Musk, Narcotic Venus, Duro (all EdP) and Panama 1924 (EdT).
They are all lovely in their own way, but my favorite two were Absinthe and Silver Musk, with Hindu Grass a close third. Narcotic Venus is very pretty, with its tuberose tang hovering over a muskier base, but I have been so taken by the Absinthe and Silver Musk I became focused primarily on them.
Absinthe: “A collective experience, extreme and prohibitive, purposely exasperated to search and grasp the smell of hysteria”
I take the quirky phrasing of this ad copy as a continental European’s imperfect sense of what works in English. It reminds me a little of the subtitles in the Goddard movies of my youth, when attempting to take in the translation of the rapid French dialogue and becoming ever more bewildered.
In any case, Absinthe is a beautiful composition, sparkling, green, faintly boozy with a smooth vanilla and refreshing bitter herbal tone bound seamlessly together, balancing cool and warm. I’ve mentally placed this one on my wish list.
Silver Musk (“mercurial liquid love sensation”) is incredibly soft and mild yet also sparkling in its lightness. This is something you could wear every day, even on occasions where you don’t want to seem like you are wearing perfume at all, because it’s like a translucent layer or a tint of a scent that enhances the sense of being in your own body. While you’re walking around, I-phone texting and multitasking, this scent could remind you of your corporeal being in a very pleasant way, keeping your head from floating too far away from the rest of you. To me it comes off as a light musk scumbled over ozone, layered against the memory of a creamy flower.
Hindu Grass is a “dry grass meets green grass”, a darker vetiver concept crossed with sparkly (again) version of cut sweet hay, out in the full sun, evaporating the chlorophyll released right away.
Duro and Panama 1924 are adult masculine scents, to my nose very masculine. Meaning this is one of the few cases of a masculine scent that I can’t wear because of the specifically male grooming scent aura they project. I get woods, shaving soap, citrus, a little cigar smoke and polished leather.
I kept getting a sense of sparkle from each of these scents. Like dry champagne, they have that pale tangy element that presents the scent to you with lightness and energy.
Above, a photo of the sparkle of absinthe from an comprehensive Absinthe Buyers Guide - with the essence of thujone effects and info.
