Donald Trump will launch Success by Trump, a new fresh aromatic fragrance for men, in April. It is Trump’s second fragrance and the first under licensing arrangements with Five Star Fragrance. His debut scent, Donald Trump the Fragrance, launched in 2004 under arrangements with Estee Lauder and reportedly was not a big seller…
I’ll confess: I had little interest in trying the Arquiste line when it was first announced. Another day, another high-priced niche line with exclusive distribution, historical-geographical references, and minimalist bottles; right? But my curiosity was piqued by Kevin’s review of Flor y Canto and Anima Dulcis, so I sniffed one or two selections during a visit to Barneys; and then I noticed that the newest addition to the line, Aleksandr, was a tribute to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. I have fond memories of reading and re-reading Pushkin’s verse-novel Eugene Onegin at one point in my overly prolonged years of education, so I needed to give this fragrance a closer look.
Aleksandr was developed with perfumer Yann Vasnier and includes notes of neroli, violet leaf, fir balsam, Russian leather, and ambrette. It is designed to tell the story of the last day of Pushkin’s life, when the famed writer was mortally wounded in a duel in 1837. The neroli and violet are meant to evoke the hero’s morning toilette, the leather to refer to his gloves and boots, and the fir balsam to evoke the winter landscape around St. Petersburg. I occasionally get irritable when I see literary or cultural references haphazardly grafted onto a fragrance that doesn’t deliver on its promise (can you recall any recent example?), but in Aleksandr’s case, the story is seamlessly joined to the scent…
The perfume line Arquiste is the brainchild of Mexican architect/designer Carlos Huber (a k a Nate Berkus’s boyfriend); the name “Arquiste” represents the ideas (ideals?) of “architecture,” “history” and “art” and the perfumes in the collection reference historical moments, from the meeting of Louis XIV of France and María Teresa of Spain in 1660 (the fragrances Fleur de Louis and Infanta en Flor) to Alexander Pushkin’s death-by-dueling in 1837 (Aleksandr).
I decided to tackle the two ‘Mexican’ fragrances in the line first, because Mexico and I go way back (and have always had a happy relationship)…
My favorite Bang Bang can be heard here. (Perhaps you’d like to listen as you read this review?) Marc Jacobs Bang Bang was released in August, and compared to the splashy debut of Bang, didn’t even merit a drum-roll, let alone a double-bang. I’ve seen no Bang Bang advertisements in magazines and the fragrance seems to be available only on the Marc Jacobs website in the U.S. — not in any major department stores.
Recently, a Nordstrom perfume sales person told me original Bang was a flop with consumers. (Clerk: “It didn’t smell good. We’re not stocking Bang anymore…and there’s a new Bang?”) All this surprised me — a Nordstrom perfume counter employee dissing a fragrance? Bang, such an original, pert, fun fragrance, a dud?
Bang Bang was developed by perfumer Yann Vasnier and lists notes of lemon, fennel, cardamom, sage, patchouli, sandalwood and cashmere musks.* Ignoring the advice I give others, I bought Bang Bang…unsniffed…
So when I reviewed Tom Ford Violet Blonde last month, I said that I may be nearly alone among perfumistas in preferring Tom Ford’s Signature Collection to the Private Blends. I like Oud Wood, but I like Yves Saint Laurent M7 better, and I’ve never been more than lukewarm about the rest of them. If anything, my interest in the collection has decreased over the years, and it pretty much hit rock bottom with the release of the White Musk collection.
The Signature Collection fragrances strike me as generally better thought out and better executed — Tom Ford tends, in general, towards loud, but the polished elegance of the Signature Collection stands in stark contrast to the blunt force of some of the Private Blend scents, especially the early ones (I still remember wondering, when I first smelled the Private Blends, if some of them weren’t maybe unfinished mods for Black Orchid). The three Signature fragrances fit together nicely; they don’t smell the same but they have a similar style, and as such they lend a sense of cohesiveness to the Tom Ford Beauty line that is notably missing from most mainstream designer perfume houses.
The Private Blends, on the other hand, seem like a mishmash…