Hey, Bvlgari Mon Jasmin Noir. Armani called. They want Idole d’Armani back. Wait — hold the phone! It’s Estée Lauder. They’re demanding their Sensuous Noir. Now all the lines are ringing, and it looks like it’s a bunch of celebuscents. They’re complaining you stole their jasmine-plum-sandalwood-patchouli secret formula!
O.K., maybe I’m not being fair. After all, I chucked my sample of Idole d’Armani in the garbage a long time ago, and it’s been months since I smelled Sensuous Noir, and that was on a hot day in a mall in Billings, Montana. And the celebuscents? I really try not to be a snob, but if Robin doesn’t give them the green light in a review, I mostly stay away.
I also admit to having a misguided fantasy about how perfumers work. In my dream world, a perfumer — let’s say Sophie Labbé, who had a hand in both Bvlgari Jasmin Noir and Mon Jasmin Noir — pushes open her casement window. She inhales the summer breeze of Grasse, France, and asks herself, “What work of art will I make today? Bvlgari, a luxury company, has asked me to create a light fragrance based on jasmine as a flanker to Jasmin Noir. I know, I’ll devise a fragrance that evokes the sensual languor of an evening in the Mediterranean, but is airy enough — like a long ago, romantic memory — to be enjoyed during the day…”
Tonka bean is on the verge of becoming the “new violet leaf” in men’s fragrances; it’s everywhere. I bought some tonka beans (Dipteryx odorata) from a local herbal apothecary and perfumery so I could smell the real thing (1 oz of tonka beans costs around $2.50). Tonka beans smell a lot like (musky-nutty) vanilla and are used in the making of desserts as well as in perfumes (when I smell tonka beans I think of nougats, frostings, sweet syrups, custards). In the U.S., tonka beans, which contain coumarin, have been banned from use in foods since 1954 due to their blood-thinning properties, but that hasn’t stopped chefs from using the fragrant beans.