Does all Italian perfume smell Italian? No, but it’s a hook on which to hang this jaunt through ‘perfume Made in Italy’ from the seventies to the noughties.
In a collection of short reviews, the author navigates her way through the rocks and whirlpools of perfume criticism, neither dashing the reader on a dry list of notes or drowning them with adjectives. Blending enthusiasm with an understanding of how perfume works, her writing has an appeal which is part coffee table chic and part perfume lore.
The reviews are mainly variations on three different styles.
There is the note list approach:
‘An aquatic accord of crystalline purity [spreads its] bright presence out until [it] encounters the floral accord of rose, carnation and geranium, whose green undertones bind with the aromatic top notes, bringing a green tinge to the heart, and conjuring up an image of open spaces stretching out beyond the horizon.’
It continues — ‘the grassy, aromatic note of [tobacco] strikes a further connection between the top and the [oriental] base, keeping the green/fresh aromatic sensation clearly perceptible throughout the entire development of the fragrance.’ - The Dreamer
With this approach it can be hard to see the wood for the trees, but the author Marika Vecchiattini does it quite well, not getting too bogged down with detail but staying at a more impressionistic level.
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As well as listing nouns and adjectives, some reviews set the perfume in context:
Yendi is ‘a surprising hybrid of floral with green nuances, a descendant of “Vent Vert” (Balmain, 1947) and a classic example of the typically 1970’s lush green chypre (“Chanel N°19”, 1971; “Diorella”, 1972 and “Alliage” by Estée Lauder, 1972). Green chypres share a compositional structure of great charm and delicacy that was to continue until the 1980’s with “Ivoire” (Balmain, 1979) and Jean-Louis Scherrer (1980). Yendi plays the role of the younger sister: naive, fresh, sincere and full of promise [and it feels less dated than] other perfumes released in the following decades’.
There is also a list of accords which -together with the family tree- add up to a more complete picture of Yendi; what she calls ‘a rounder, more mature chypre [with] innocent brio’.
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And finally the anthropomorphic method:
‘Giò is a woman in a simple, crisp, white shirt, with her hair tied back and no visible make-up, her only embellishment a slender, beautifully stylish bracelet. She has a slightly introspective, contemplative air that’s both tremendously appealing and just out of reach.’
This kind of approach is popular on the German website parfumo.com.
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Stylistically, these reviews are the sort of thing that appear routinely in perfume criticism, and are nothing out of the ordinary; but they are nicely written (the translation not withstanding).
As well as the critiques, there are interviews with people in the Italian perfume industry and a long perfumography, which don’t add much.
The different modes of writing, coupled with the occasional asides by Vecchiattini — like the admission that Colors is “teenage” and ‘over-the-top’ — bring a variety to the book that makes it easy to dip-in-and-out-of. In short it’s a fine blend of style and substance.
The Handbook of Great Italian Perfumery is published by silvanaeditoriale.it
37,05€
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