The dangers of first impressions raise their leering heads again. The other day, in one of my Love At First Scent live broadcasts over on YouTube, I reviewed the new-ish Nez 1+1 Hong Kong Oolong – the first scent released by the rightly lauded French publication. According to their own blurb, it’s the debut of a collection that will see perfumers collaborating with figures from other arts and disciplines – in this case, Maurice Roucel and the Hong Kong based designer, Alan Chan. As you can see in the video (watch above or by clicking here) the fragrance didn’t exactly wow me on paper. But wearing it on skin was quite a different experience.
It goes without saying that final judgements on a scent can’t be made until it’s been given flesh time. (Unless of course it was never designed for a living, breathing canvas, but let’s park that to one side for today.) But when a composition relies as heavily on musks as Hong Kong Oolong does, the pulse and the heat of skin become even more important. Paper finds it near-impossible to bring out the complexities of these materials and, by extension, to display the notes which have been used to punctuate them.
So yes, as I say in the video, the latest from the man who gave us Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist, Rochas Tocade and Guerlain Insolence is overloaded with clean, well-behaved musks. But when placed in the right setting, it reveals subtleties and surprises. Sunlight streams through the branches of a magnolia tree. A sea breeze picks up scattered jasmine petals. The dew bristles with the effervescence of ginger. And there’s even a suggestion of something less salubrious – the hair-tousled remnants of the night before? – shimmering just out of reach.
The latest issue of Nez informs me that ‘Hong Kong’ means ‘fragrant harbour’ and while this scent doesn’t represent the din and hubbub I associate with the city, it does somehow convey the sense of a very decorous entry to a place brimming with life. A linen-clad saunter through back-roads and alleys crackling with surprises and confrontations. If E M Forster had set a novel in Temple Street Night Market, this may well have been its perfume soul-mate.
Persolaise
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