Reminiscence Patchouli Pour Homme is not a strange, cocoa-sprinkled, cramp-inducing patchouli fragrance like Serge Lutens Borneo 1834 (whenever I smell Borneo 1834 my stomach begins to ache). Patchouli Pour Homme is certainly not a loud, “crude” type of patchouli perfume favored by provincial nouveaux riches. (See Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, where the prissy, aristocratic Leonid Andreyevitch Gaev enters a room, sniffs the air, and complains: “It smells of patchouli in here.” Someone’s wearing cheap perfume…and it’s none other than peasant-turned-entrepreneur Ermolai Alexeyevitch Lopakhin!) Patchouli Pour Homme is also not the variety of oily, overbearing patchouli used by old-time hippies to scent their greasy hair and beards or their sweaty leather boots. Patchouli Pour Homme is a staid patchouli fragrance.

Reminiscence Patchouli Pour Homme contains mandarin, lime, geranium, cedar, patchouli, labdanum, tonka bean, tolu balm, white musk, and benzoin. Patchouli Pour Homme opens with warm lime and geranium leaf; quickly other notes pop: ‘fossilized’ cedar (almost too “dry” to detect), sheer labdanum, well-behaved and CLEAN patchouli…

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Most perfumistas have a note, or maybe two or three or ten, that they simply can’t bring themselves to appreciate. I have a few. I don’t love mimosa or heliotrope, although I don’t really hate them either. I can live without angelica, and anything more than a pinch of cumin is too much. I’m not fond of melon-y aquatics or very clean musks. My one true bête noire, though, has always been patchouli. Six years ago, a perfume with enough patchouli that even an amateur such as I could smell it was pretty much out of the question — which basically ruled out the entire oriental fragrance family. In the years since, I’ve mostly come to terms with patchouli, that is, I would no longer say that I hate it, and oriental perfumes are no longer verboten. I still wouldn’t say I loved patchouli though, and a fragrance that actually has the word patchouli in the name isn’t one I’m going to be rushing out to try.

The Osmoz booklet from the Les coulisses du parfum, Vol III, Legendary woods & resins kit describes patchouli as “woody • camphory • green • earthy • mossy • mildewy”. All of that sounds good to me, even the mildewy part — I think of oakmoss as mildewy, and it’s one of my favorite smells in the world. But there’s something about the particular way that patchouli is mildewy, in combination with the richness and the sweetness, that just doesn’t work for me. You’d think that newer, cleaner (molecularly modified) versions of patchouli would work better for me, but they don’t always — they usually wipe out much of the earthy part, which to me is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater…

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