The Tar Trio
By Tove Solander
Today’s theme is tar. I’ve compared three tar scents – in fact the only tar scents I know of: Comme des Garcons Synthetic Tar, Tauer Perfumes Lonestar Memories and Le Labo Paychouli 24. Only Lonestar Memories has tar listed as a note, although the Comme des Garcons scent has it in the very name. Patchouli 24 is composed of patchouli, styrax, birch and vanilla, along with twenty secret ingredients I assume. Lonestar Memories is known as a leathery scent, but the notes are geranium, carrot seed, clary sage, birchtar, cistus, jasmine, cedar wood, myrrh, tonka, vetiver and sandalwood. Tar, finally, takes a more urban approach with town gas, vapours of bitumen, bergamot, earth, opoponax, styrax, grilled cigarettes and pyrogenic notes.
What they all have in common, apart from smelling like tar, is that they’re on the sweet side. I guess tar has a rather sweet aroma naturally, but I could easily imagine a more butch take on it. In fact, there might be one – Comme des Garcons Synthetic Garage has hints of tar along with gasoline, chrome and faux leather car interior, without the sweetness. Tar, on the other hand, has hints of gasoline and asphalt so they’re really sister scents. Compared to Lonestar Memories and Patchouli 24 it comes off as very urban, very minimalist, very cool. The sweetness in it is almost the sweetness of anise or liquorice, as opposed to the more syrupy and vanillic sweetness of the other two. However, it’s mostly compared to them it comes off as so very urban and modern. Compared to the rest of the Synthetic series it feels rural, nostalgic, even cosy. Occasionally, I get a feeling of walking in a sunny pine forest rather than a metropolis.
Lonestar Memories is even more rural and nostalgic in feeling. It’s simultaneously sweet, thick and dry. I get a feeling of cracked, grey wood, so old it hardly has a wood scent anymore, and of dirt floors too dry and worn to smell other than dusty. It’s like being in an old boathouse or workshop – there’s the sweetish smell of hemp rope, perhaps some hardened leather gear oiled long ago, and dust speckles in the sunlight that shines in between the boards. The rich, musty sweetness makes it more of a summery childhood scent than a macho cowboy scent for me.
Patchouli 24 is, I think, my least favourite. It’s smokier than the other two, and I usually like smoky, but it’s also the sweetest of them all, and sugared smoke tends to get a bit nauseating. Rather than asphalt or boats, I’m thinking of barbecue. Barbecue with lots of crème brulée for dessert. Maybe even a steak drenched in custard, at its worst. It’s a viscous scent, like syrup so thick and dark it’s almost black. With less vanilla, it could have been the pleasant scent of a wood pile burning, but with the vanilla it’s just too much. I like it best when it’s a faded smoky-sweet trace on my skin.
Image source: luckyscent.com, barneys.com
9 comments August 1st, 2007
Chestnut & Vetiver is the stronger of the two scents, easily overpowering Tam Dao when smelling them side by side. The boozy and buttery quality is more pronounced in it, strengthened by a toasted or roasted note and perhaps even hints of coffee. It would be entirely gourmandy if it wasn’t for the vetiver, showing its darkest and most earthy and rooty side. The overall effect is perhaps one of wool: soft, warm and cozy but distinct smelling and even a little repulsive in its lack of freshness.
Tam Dao does have a similar warm, smooth feeling, but it’s also much lighter and more transparent. The cypress gives it a hint of green in the top note but not anywhere near the strong, dark vetiver of the other scent. The “perfumey” quality shared by both scents is more pronounced in Tam Dao, mostly due to the sweet, aromatic, vaguely floral rosewood note. It’s also ever so slightly soapy, which I presume is from the ambergris, commonly used to scent soaps. Overall, it’s a more sophisticated take on a boozy, buttery comfort scent, and if Chestnut & Vetiver makes you nauseous in its intensity, Tam Dao might do the trick.
I don’t know what has possessed me in the heat of summer to even think of Angel but I have, and today’s post is about venerable Angel substitutes. Why venerable? Because in this day and age we live amongst numerous Angel clones, and most of them in my humble (but educated) opinion are rather pathetic. No matter how you feel about Angel, it is undoubtedly a modern day classic, and as is the case with classic perfumes, they’re bound to be replicated. Personally, I see no wrong in replicas as long as they have a certain twist of their own, are able to make a statement, and have a general healthy olfactory self-esteem. Below is the list of such smell-alikes of Angel. I’d also like to add I call them “Angel substitutes” for a reason - they can be easily liked and worn if Angel is just too much for you or if you like only certain aspects of it.
Probably my favorite Angel substitute, this Italian-made scent features the notes of bitter orange, bergamot, pineapple, peach, red fruits, honey, patchouli, vanilla, chocolate, ambergris. You get the same chocolate/caramel/patchouli blend but with added honeyed fruity depth (which in this case is a positive thing). Smooth and polished.
A playful take on Angel, with notes of bergamot, rhubarb, melon, rose, jasmine, hyacinth, patchouli, vetiver, cedar, caramel, vanilla. The emphasis here is on the green, freshly picked rhubarb that’s made into a luscious dessert on your skin. I’d call this the best summer version of Angel. Very gourmand but extremely wearable.
Nuits de Noho is a sophisticated, glamorous take on Angel. Built around the notes of musk, vanilla, bergamot, rosewood, jasmine, and patchouli, it’s unbelievably urban and chic. The scent is pleasantly free of Angel’s caramel, gourmand theme, with emphasis on floral notes underlined by soft patchouli. Guaranteed to warrant compliments.
Created in 1955, Nirmala can easily be called Angel’s Grandma. Based on mango, passion fruit, grapefruit, mandarine, jasmine, tonka bean, sandalwood, vanilla, and cedarwood, this sensual blend showcases tropical fruits on the creamy, woody base. Not a hint of patchouli, hence a great Angel substitute if patchouli is what bothers you.
If Nirmala is Angel’s Grandma, then Borneo (although created only a couple of years ago) could easily take Angel’s Grandpa’s place, the kind that loves his patch like tobacco, drinks his bourbon like there’s no tomorrow, and occasionally treats himself to coffee liquor filled dark chocolates. A smoky, hay-like, dry version of Angel. Patchouli, camphor, cistus, cardamom, galbanum, cocoa.
This smell-alikes post is a little different since I don’t own one of the fragrances and hence can’t do a side by side skin test as usual. Thanks to Chayaruchama, I have a decant of Chanel Coromandel, and upon trying it I was surprised to find the top notes smell just like a soft drink in the vein of Sprite or 7-Up! I hadn’t expected something sweet and sparkling and charmingly childish like that from an exclusive oriental. The rest of the scent is all dry patchouli and, yeah, it works. I get what people are saying about Chanel: they manage to make even a patchouli scent sheer and never heavy like most orientals. Even the sweet top note has the watery and transparent quality of a soft drink and is not rich and syrupy at all. In the drydown, another kind of sweetness appears, a more traditional ambery/vanillic sweetness, and on the whole the scent is a bit on the sweet side for me. I do however love the dry, earthy, evocatively musty patchouli note.
A while after I first tried Coromandel, I finally found a working tester of Prada. All I can say is it’s a perfectly decent replacement. And released before Coromandel, too, which doesn’t reflect too well upon Chanel. Prada has the same combination of dry patchouli and Sprite-like top notes. Perhaps the soft drink in Prada has lost more of its bubbles – it’s more like the soft, synthetic sweetness of apple and pear flavouring that made me not like D’Orsay Le Dandy. Here the fruitiness is more subdued and balanced by the patchouli, however, while in the pale Le Dandy there were nothing there to balance it. I’m amazed something so patchouli-heavy and dry can survive among the fruity-florals, and that alone makes Prada a greater achievement than Coromandel. Sure, Prada might not smell quite as expensive. The patchouli is not as exquisite, and I get more vaguely fruity sweetness than I’d like, especially in the almost gourmandy drydown. But I still think Prada is a better value if patchouli with soft drinks is what you’re going for.
The original: Yatagan is the man, the Seventies macho man who aspires to be a fox-hunting English gentleman but whose tweed suit has flared legs, oversized lapels, and a chequered pattern in orange, brown and green. Yatagan knows nothing of British subtlety. Sometimes he’s refreshingly bold and outdoorsy, like a walk on a forest floor covered with pine needles and pine cones. Sometimes he’s just a loud drunkard picking fights at the disco. Wearing Yatagan requires a certain energy, otherwise the sharp, dry, herbal notes might give you a headache or just get on your nerves. I think I prefer just smelling it from the bottle as a refreshing aromatherapy kick - wearing it I tend to tire of its one-dimensional harshness. There’s something dirty hidden in the vast forest but not dirty in a good way, more like wet dog. Now there’s an animalic note I fail to appreciate!
The copy: wearing the scents side by side, they’re more different than I expected. Or perhaps I just develop partial anosmia from smelling the one and can only pick out the notes that differentiate them in the other. Sure, Eloge Du Traitre has spicy herbs and dry pine too but it also has a hint of powdery sweetness which I guess is from the jasmine and the musk which oddly seems to be a clean white musk. It reminds me both of green chypres like Cabochard and of more conventional soapy men’s colognes, while Yatagan firmly belongs to the family of ruggedly masculine scents like L’Eau Du Navigateur and Jules. If this is a competition in machismo, Yatagan easily beats the more effeminate Eloge Du Traitre which even has – gasp! – a floral note. If it’s a competition in wearability, the slightly softer and “chicer” Eloge Du Traitre wins. Perhaps being a nancy boy dressed up as a lumberjack in borrowed clothes is a winning strategy?
The original: Well, you know this already, don’t you? Ambre Russe is such a great scent: deliciously gourmandy without being cloying, cozy without being boring, heavy on the amber without being a single note… It’s sweetly intoxicating, but saved from sugar hell by its powdery dryness. Dry ambers like this one remind me of desert sand and cookie crumbs, ever so slightly burnt. The leather is very subtle and refined, more like an added dryness which might honesty just as well be the tea note. Something in it is vaguely fruity to balance the dry notes; it reminds me of apple or tobacco or apple tobacco, but I’m guessing it might be the champagne.
The copy: In Atelier d’Artiste the balance is reversed. It has a similar ambery atmosphere, but the dryness is hidden underneath a hefty dose of anise/liquorice (the heliotrope?) and sugar, just like most of the line. Thankfully, I don’t get any berries. The leather is more pronounced and animalic like the manure note in Dzing! What else could you expect from an anything-but-subtle line like Nez à Nez? Dirty minded as I am I enjoy it. It’s what elevates this scent to something other than a poor Ambre Russe dupe. And better yet, the leather note evolves from downright dirty to cozy, old, worn leather. Pity there’s so much plasticky candy on top…
Lust is the most evocative one but not of lust! The name made me expect something animalic or perhaps hypnotic and sickly-sweet. Instead, Lust smells like murky crypts and dusty old museum halls. There may be brocade curtains heavy with the dust of centuries, there may be church incense stuck to old fabrics, there may even be stuffed animals, mummified bodies of saints or skeletons in the closet. But no living, lusting beasts. If this is lust, it’s Hieronymous Bosch’s depiction of Luxuria in Hell. And for me, the ex-metal fan and history nerd who visited the ossuary of Kutna Hora without a shiver, a great comfort scent! Colour: dusty, shadowy earth brown.
When I first tried L’Ombre Fauve I found it highly evocative of cool cellars and dusty attics. I wrote a rave review on how it was just like seeking shade in a musty old cellar when the sun is blazing outside, on how it captured cold stone walls, cool dirt floors, warm brown velvet, and sun-heated wood. Upon retrying it, I’m afraid it’s less evocative, more of an ordinary rich, powdery, ambery/woody oriental, sweetened with a hint of high quality vanilla. Still a great scent but perhaps not original enough for the price, as I first thought. At least I can tell myself it isn’t so I won’t mourn the fact that I can’t afford one of Luckyscent’s remaining bottles… Colour: different shades of reddish brown.
Labdanum 18 is not very far from L’Ombre Fauve, especially not in the latter’s less evocative incarnation. Although amber isn’t listed among the notes it’s still for me a decidedly ambery oriental: rich, sweet, dry, powdery and slightly burnt, like burnt sugar. It has more vanilla than L’Ombre Fauve but it’s a much less cloying vanilla than the one in Patchouli 24 (am I the only one who found that scent overly sweet?) It also has a sort of refreshingly sour top note which conventionally could be called citrusy but which oddly reminds me of rhubarb. Mmmm, rhubarb… With the vanilla and cinnamon, Labdanum 18 is at some moments close to a freshly baked rhubarb pie. Think Burberry Brit Red but better. Colour: burnt sugar.
I have Tabu eau de parfum in a vintage mini bottle, and I’m not sure how much it has aged but it still smells good (I guess some of you will say it never did…). It has more green and floral notes than the other three, and it shows. Next to the others, it almost verges on chypre, although a decidedly oriental chypre. The citrusy/green chypre notes are sour, sharp and musty in the old-fashioned way I no longer find entirely unpleasant. During the drydown, the sharpness recedes, and what’s left is more of a smooth, powdery, resinous oriental. The orange blossom still shows, lending it an air of orange liquor-drenched cake. The cake is, however, old and dry - the kind baked by some elderly relative who no longer has the hang of it and who’s too cheap to eat it while it’s still fresh. If this sounds awfully negative, please keep in mind that “dry” is higher praise for a perfume than for a cake. Colour: the brown and orange hues of the seventies.
Fine Leather is supposed to be a sophisticated leather scent for gentlemen. The leather is refined indeed, so refined I can hardly detect it at all. What dominates is the cool, sweetish, slightly stale scent of birch sap. The first time I tried it I got a lot of cool, unsweetened, slightly soapy/sharp violets, and I didn’t find it particularly masculine. I thought it was a scent for a sentimental, very young, early 20th century poet wandering around in a birch grove on a melancholy spring evening. Retrying it, I get a lot less violet and find it much more masculine. In fact, it verges upon the generic type of supposedly “fresh” men’s scents I loathe. It’s not the coolness of mint, luckily, it’s the coolness of birch sap, which makes it a little more interesting. The birch and leather also make the scent slightly spicy or aromatic, verging upon a fougère rather than some horrid ozone/aquatic. Still a huge letdown after my romantic first impressions.
When I first tried Cuir Amèthyste it reminded me a lot of my first impression of Fine Leather: cool violets and birch on soft, subdued leather. Unlike Fine Leather, it had the added sweetness of rose and a subtly earthy tone, but it was just as melancholy and beautiful, like a cool early summer night in a palace garden. Upon retrying it, I find it powdery sweet with candied violets, more in the vein of Putain des Palaces. It’s still cooler and less sweet than Putain des Palaces, with a more pronounced violet note and the slightest hint of birch. It reminds me mostly of the soft, supple floral leather that is Chanel’s take on Cuir de Russie. They share a quality I associate with white musk: a certain soft, powdery sweetness not uncommon in luxurious scented lotion. Alas, where did my palace garden with a variety of natural odours floating upon the cool evening breeze go?
The violets in Putain des Palaces are definitely candied, and it’s more evocative of a boudoir than of a garden or grove. Still, it has something in common with Cuir Amèthyste. Judging from the last time I tried Cuir Amèthyste, they’re both soft, sweet and powdery with some candied yet cool violets thrown in. Putain des Palaces isn’t all sweet either. It’s almost sweet-and-sour, with emphasis on sweet, but still with a rather mouthwatering green/citrusy sourness which I assume is the ginger. It makes it more chic than white thrash, despite the candy sweetness. Another quality I really enjoy is a feeling of warm skin with smudged makeup and a hint of fresh perspiration. Just a hint. This may be due to the face powder and the powdery warmth of amber, one of my favourite notes.
I remember when I first smelled Bandit eau de parfum, I thought it was unbearably sour and sharp and musty and herbal, a real old-fashioned scent. When I revisited it this year I fell in love, wrote a rave review in my blog, and changed my Basenotes rating from one star to five! In the company of Cabochard, Bandit is the feminine and pretty one, yet I don’t find Cabochard unwearable or old-fashioned at all, that’s how much my taste has changed – or developed, if you like. They are definitely sisters: dry, green, bad girl scents with leather undertones and light floral overtones. Bandit is softer and more powdery, while Cabochard is sharper and drier. They share a sort of juicy sourness, without being citrusy, but the sourness of Cabochard is more pungent, more like fresh-cut grass, while Bandit is almost sweet-and-sour. Speaking in colours, I envision Bandit as a bright yet creamy light green/yellow, and Cabochard as more of an acid green/yellow with specks of brown.
When I first smelled my Cabochard sample I thought it was a dead ringer for Bandit, only denser and more hardcore, but smelling them side by side I discern some differences. Cabochard is the greenness of Bandit without the hay fever and animals, it’s a field or a forest (deciduous) rather than a farm. In the opening I get the vintage-style bitterness of oakmoss, but not very strongly, not a monster chypre (then again, considering my first reaction to Bandit, it might just be that my bittersweet meter has gone bananas, perfumista style). It’s cooler than Bandit, the level of coolness you could expect from a green scent. It’s also drier, the way lichen is dry, or wood, that’s where the brown hues come into the picture. It does have some amount of soft, powdery sweetness though, especially in the drydown, it’s nowhere near, say, a hardcore masculine vetiver in bitter greenness.
Barbara Bui Le Parfum and Sonia Rykiel Woman (Not For Men) - both created for two female fashion designers by the perfumer Anne Flipo, the nose behind such scents as L’Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons, Rochas Poupee, Trussardi Skin (courtesy of