San Francisco-based Ineke has just released Field Notes from Paris, their sixth fragrance. Field Notes from Paris is a perfect bookend to my year’s perfume reviews; like February’s John Varvatos Artisan (the first 2009 perfume release I enjoyed), Field Notes from Paris is an immediately likeable — and interesting — orange blossom-centered fragrance.

I’ve struggled to describe Field Notes from Paris’s effect, so I’ll use a “piano” to help me. Since orange blossom is ‘active’ throughout Field Notes from Paris’s development, think of it as the piano’s sustain pedal. Now imagine the other 10 listed fragrance notes (bergamot, coriander seed, tobacco flower, tobacco leaf, patchouli, cedar, tonka bean, leather, beeswax, vanilla) as piano keys: middle C up to A. Hold down the sustain pedal (orange blossom) and begin playing an uncomplicated tune using the ten piano keys (perhaps a melody by John Cage?) The musical notes, blending together, producing moments of beauty, moments of dissonance, are like Field Notes from Paris’s fragrance notes…

Read the rest of this article »