A Nose for Smell: Perfume Essentials

Anybody who writes professionally about fragrance, as I do, will find that there are three questions that are almost impossible to answer. Those questions are: what is your favourite perfume? What scent are you using these days? And do you like some women’s scents — if you are a man — also?

The reason they are impossible to answer is because most people who write about fragrance do not restrict themselves to any one scent. Instead, we try different fragrances throughout the year so that we can keep abreast of what is happening in the world of perfumery. Asking a fragrance writer to name a fragrance he wears every day is like expecting a restaurant critic to eat at the same place every day.

The favourite fragrance question also poses problems. Most of us have no favourite food: you try to eat a meal that is appropriate for the time and occasion. Few of us would have biryani for breakfast or a rasgulla as an appetizer.

So it is with fragrance. Certain fragrances seem right for certain times of day. Some fragrances make sense when you are by the sea. Others should only be worn to parties. Some smell best in the winter. And so on.

When it comes to the men’s fragrances vs women’s fragrances question, the broad answer is that there is no such thing as a gender-specific fragrance. Fragrances are either good or bad, not masculine or feminine. These days, a so-called ‘feminine’ just consists of a fragrance with a shot of flowers while a ‘masculine’ is a fragrance made to smell clean and sporty with the addition of synthetic molecules stolen from the detergent industry. Most people who are interested in fragrance wear both so-called ‘masculines’ and ‘feminines’. For instance, when Issey Miyake first launched his femme fragrance, I wore it all the time. Even when he launched a male version, I stuck with the original.

But because I am asked these questions so often, I thought I would formulate a response based not on the scents on my dressing table, but on the ones I carry with me when I travel. There are times when even a fragrance writer has to make a choice. Packing a suitcase is one of them. You can only take two or three fragrances with you. So, you are forced to choose.

I looked at my toilet bags before I sat down to write this piece and discovered that these days, I carry two fragrances. Neither is a rare, limited edition, niche fragrance that you have to seek out. The first is Body Kouros by Yves Saint Laurent. And the other is Voyage by Hermes.

My reasons for liking Body Kouros are complex. In the late 1990s, I used to wear a perfume called Yohji Homme, named for the Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, whose clothes I was then partial to. I liked the Yohji fragrance because it seemed to me to manage the almost impossible feat of combining a light freshness with deep sweetness. Then, the fragrance was suddenly discontinued and I wondered what had happened to it.

Some years later, Luca Turin, the most influential fragrance writer of our era, wrote his guide to perfumes. Turin gave Yohji Homme five stars, his highest rating and complained that it had been discontinued. But Turin also praised Body Kouros, which he said reminded him of Yohji Homme.

Some of you may remember the original Kouros from the 1980s. It has a sage note which many people find urinous. It is a loud scent with an overtly animalistic (and therefore, sexual) edge to it and continues to sell well all around the world. I admire the formulation of Kouros, but, these days, I find that the smell is slightly bathroomy. And the white bottle it comes in reminds me of a urinal.

Body Kouros is what is known in the trade as a ‘flanker’. These are fragrances that draw on the appeal of the original (say, Coco Noir or Coco Madamoselle that are flankers to Coco by Chanel) but are reformulations often created by completely different perfumers. Body Kouros differs from the other flankers invented for Kouros (I think YSL has done five flankers over the years) in that it came out two decades after the original and has almost nothing at all in common with the urinous appeal of Kouros.

Instead, it manages the Yohji Homme trick of taking a sweet, deep smell and marrying it with a fresh top note. It is not easy to find in England and in some other markets but, these days, I see it in duty-free shops everywhere. In India, the Parcos chain sells it in its outlets at malls and it is easy to find all over the Middle East.

A few months ago, I discovered that Yohji Homme had finally been reissued. Over the summer, I bought a bottle at the Yohji store in London and found that it smelt pretty much as I remembered it. And yes, it was a lot like Body Kouros. The difference is that Body Kouros is sweeter and heavier while Yohji Homme is lighter. I use both fragrances now but it is still Body Kouros that I travel with.

Voyage is a fragrance that I have some understanding of. When it was created, a couple of years ago, Hermes invited me to Grasse to spend a day with Jean Claude Ellena, the master perfumer who had formulated it. Ellena was trying hard to top the success of his blockbuster Terre d’Hermes, one of the world’s best-selling fragrances. He opted for something subtler and came up with Voyage. It was a success but it could not top Terre d’Hermes’ sales.

Like most perfumers, Ellena hates the idea of dividing fragrances into masculines and feminines. He insisted that Voyage should be sold as a unisex scent because it smelt just as good on men as it did on women. He showed me how he had constructed the scent and I remember being incredibly impressed by his genius. I bought a couple of bottles, wore it off and on for a month, and then forgot about it.

Recently, I discovered a travel bottle of Voyage on my dressing table. Hermes had the sensible idea of creating a smaller bottle which could fit into toilet bags and continues to sell refills of Voyage in larger bottles topped with a funnel so that you can refill the travel container when it runs out.

I have been travelling with Voyage for two months now and have fallen in love with the fragrance. It does not have the slightly loud character of the bestselling Terre d’Hermes but is shares its originality. It is an astonishingly versatile fragrance that smells as good on the beach as it does in a boardroom. I find that I wear it all the time and have yet to tire of that opening grapefruit-citrus note.

Will I still be using these fragrances a month from now? Will new bottles have taken their place in my travel bag?

Probably, yes. I would have discovered something new and interesting by then. But both these fragrances have stamina and a lasting appeal. So I am sure I will return to them again and again.