"My Own Private Classic" by Grain de Musc

No perfumer has ever been as fearless as Germaine Cellier, a cult figure in my book. The author of the 1947 Fracas was the first to introduce two partners in crime who’d go on to spawn a whole dynasty of divas: orange blossom and tuberose. Think Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr.: the untapped sexual potency of a fresh-faced ingénue hooked up with the simmering hysteria of an ivory-skinned femme fatale… Cellier was also the woman who butched up the simpering violet by slapping it with a leather glove (Jolie Madame by Balmain) and invented a whole new perfume family by pouring an overdose of galbanum into Vent Vert (also Balmain).
But she never raised the stakes as much as with the 1944 Bandit. Conceived in the midst of a tough period, the German occupation, it is the toughest fragrance ever offered to women – the olfactory equivalent of the street-smart, give-as-good-as-they-get dames of 1940s movies. In fact, the blonde, couture-clad, potty-mouthed Cellier could’ve probably shown a trick or two to Barbara Stanwyck or Lauren Bacall.

When Fracas nudged me towards her snarling big sister, I was thrust back to my adolescent film-geek days, obsessively viewing film noirs while wafting Van Cleef and Arpels pour Homme, a leather and ashtray chypre directly descended from Bandit.
Bandit’s toughness is what drew me in. What kept me interested were the film-noirish twists and turns of her plot: a languid, jasmine, tuberose and gardenia heart, caught up between the earthy green galbanum and bitter artemisia of the top notes, and the dark, smoky-leathery base notes – castoreum with its ink and black chocolate facets, the burnt licorice of isobutyl quinoline, oak moss and sweaty vetiver. As though Fracas had shed her flamboyant femininity – so flamboyant it borders on cross-dressing – and slipped on her lover’s leather trench-coat to slink off on some secret mission. A crawl through a garden, wet earth and grass sticking to her stockings; a tar-roof shed where she shares black market American cigarettes with a hunted man. Is that a gun in his pocket or…? Bandit may be an outlaw, but she’s no femme fatale; in a pinch, she’s as good as any man. In a clinch, she’ll stub out her cigarette, take that kiss, and go one better.

In its current formula, restored by Jean Guichard, Bandit is particularly good in parfum concentration. But the vintage version is so stunning it shocks me into strings of expletives – Germaine Cellier would’ve been tickled – each time I dab it on. Given its androgynous stance, a man could easily swing it. If he’s man enough: Bandit isn’t for wusses. Which is probably why it was made for women…

My future classic?

Manoumalia, by Sandrine Videault for Les Nez. Trailblazer Sandrine Videault studied the fragrant rituals of the Pacific Island of Wallis and brought back a lush tropical blend based on fagrea, flower of the “taboo tree”, vetiver and sandalwood. Manoumalia takes the travel sketchbooks of contemporary perfumery one step further into ethnography, and opens up new territories for inspiration. I’m betting they’ll turn out to be bountiful.