From bottle to scent
Spritzzzzzzzz!
No doubt about it, it is indeed ‘for him’! But rest assured, the man drawn by this trail is no caricature. You can make out the muscles, and a balanced body, the character too, with as much strength as charm, but there’s nothing body-builderish about him. It slips lightly, as though there were nothing to it, between cool freshness and thrills, over a sensation of green leaves framing a bouquet of violets. Intensely purple petals start by flirting with the greenness, the better to celebrate the dazzling wood effect emanating from a light haze of patchouli that was suggested from the very first pulsations. A carnal forest floor carpeted with moss and scattered with flowers gradually welcomes us into its universe of matte velour with nuances of spicy plant notes turning delicately ambry, that vibrate on the skin without a trace of arrogance. Livelier than a fern scent, not as sweet as an oriental, though it’s a distant cousin to chypre, you’d need to look towards patchouli to find the discreet relationship. It’s a furtive blend of memories of Grey Flannel (Geoffrey Beene), with the green breath of a more-masculine Silence (by Jacomo). But above all – and this is rare enough to be worth pointing out: it flaunts a true agility in “fragranistic” terms, conjugating as it does classic references with the demands of modernity, matter and the idea of it in one’s mind’s eye. Fluid, pleasant yet rigorous, for him narciso rodriguez’s is a branch on the family tree of men’s scents perfect for a one-night stand… or more if desired. So what if you don’t know the designer’s fashions all that well – what difference does it make? At least we know that he can turn a fragrance into a noble object of desire with a perfect blend of marketing skills and inspiration that will set your olfactory libido aquiver. The way things are lately, it’s all good!

Fabienne ANTONIEWSKI Fragrance journalist From marketing to journalism, the world of cosmetics and fragrance has been the common thread in her career for over twenty years. A frequent contributor to Elle magazine’s ‘Beauté’ column since 1995, she reconnected through her writing with one of her first loves: perfume. Helping readers smell and dream, inventing new scenarios, putting feelings into words; she aims to evoke the most intimate and emotional facets of a fragrance, the better to resist reducing it to a banal consumer product. She still considers that defending the artistic side of perfumery and encouraging creativity and the search for meaning and quality is one of the main points of her profession.