smell bent

liberty for all, or: phoenician adole-scent

            any knowledgable phoenician 5^th grader will happily recount arizona’s famous 5 Cs - cooper, cattle, cotton, citrus and climate – the historical driving forces of the state’s economy.  they helped turn the desert into a city.  but what most 5^th graders will take for granted is the smell of those citrus trees come spring. 

            imagine the gay 90s, the gay 1990s.  impossibly young and finding myself in a new city, i was enamored with the differences between the lush ohio landscape i had known and the beige desert i was now inhabiting.  in OH, we didn’t have scorpions or javelinas or quail.  and we most certainly never had a coyote strut across our backyard.  but when we moved to the desert, we got more than just a change of scenery; we got a whole new menagerie.  they don’t tell you the animals will change when you move, but they do.

            phoenix is a new city, relatively speaking.  it’s a big grid spotted with mountains.  it was once the retreat of those with health problems seeking refuge from the cold and hay fever.  that ended when everyone put in front lawns.  but before we all had sprinkler systems, only hearty vegetation could thrive.  orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit trees proved up to the challenge – we even had a hybrid in our backyard called “a cocktail tree.” 

    in march, just around my birthday, the orange blossoms come out.  the dry, dusty air is filled with the most intoxicatingly sweet, heady aroma.  i remember driving down camelback and smelling it for the first time.  i fell in love.  i fell in love with the smell and with the city at that moment. 

  when liberty wildlife asked me to come up with a perfume for their annual fundraiser, this was the memory i thought of first.  living in phoenix means living in the desert and liberty wildlife would like to keep it that way.  their work is focused on the care and rehabilitation of desert wildlife.  and we’re glad they do what they do. 

    starting today, our newest scent, liberty for all, will be available on smellbent.com.  for every 50ml bottle sold, liberty wildlife will receive a check for $25.  if you’d rather make a donation, for every $10 you donate, we’ll give you a free travel spray.  all you have to do is pay shipping.  let’s help keep the desert, the desert.

thanks for your support,

the chairman  

 

on vo·cab·u·lary

            I caught “perfume obsession” in the summer in 2006.  I had just finished a bottle of Bois d’Encens, a pricey masterpiece by Armani and was on the hunt for a budget alternative.  Scanning the interwebs, I found an olfactory cousin by Commes des Garcons called Avignon.  But something unexpected happened; I fell down the fragrant rabbit hole.  If I had just bought that Armani, I wouldn’t have become a collector.  And I certainly wouldn’t have become a perfumer.

            I spent the next 3 years reading all I could about perfume.  I was on the blogs, at the perfume counter – always sniffing, sniffing, sniffing.  But as my fascination grew, I began to notice a natural shortcoming when it came to talking about perfume.  Why didn’t I have the words to talk about my new love?  Why did articulating my experience prove so challenging?

            I forget who suggested it, but I once read that it is because we are not given words to talk about smell.  Of all our senses, it is the most overlooked.  Sublimated but never completely shut off, we go around tongue-tied when it come to talk about smells. 

            I do shows and sell my perfume out in the real world from time to time.  I meet normal (non-perfume) people and talk to them about smells.  I ask them what they like and I watch as they smell my perfume.  In many ways, this is more exciting than playing with a more experienced nose.  The reactions are less filtered, more associative.  They don’t have the vocabulary that comes from being an insider.  They haven’t learned the jargon.  But this comes at a price.  They are often relegated to terms like “sweet” and “lemon”, borrowed form the culinary world. 

            I still struggle with articulating the nuance and mood of a scent.  I am constantly in awe of bloggers who paint subtle and delicate portraits of a perfume.  As with any skilled critic, they create a longing to see the world as they do.  It often causes me to revisit scents which were only ho-hum at first sniff.  What did I miss?  How did they have such a rich experience?  I think the answer lies in language.

            vo·cab·u·lary started as the fusion of 2 difference ideas for collections.  The first was a “do-it-yourself” perfume kit that I thought about for holiday.  It was going to be a set of single notes to play mix-n-match with.  The second was a spring collection of sheer sprays.  I realized that they could come together as something more than the sum of their parts.  The idea was create scents that embody the language of the perfume world.  The idea of abandoning our normal note listing came a little later in the game, as most of my ideas do, during a workout at the gym. 

            If you live, work, or play in the olfactory world long enough, you’ll see a language which has been carefully developed and refined.  The aim of vo·cab·u·lary, outside of making great perfume, is to help open up this secret realm a little more.  smell bent has always been about making perfume more accessible.  And this is one more way to lift the curtain a little.   It’s a little departure from what I normally do, but sometimes you gotta flex your creative muscles.  The characters will be back shortly.  But for now, let’s just play with our words for a bit. 

 

 

he said, she said: werewolf edition

            it seems the great obsession of the average perfumista is to find a scent that gets as close to the line of filth as is generally acceptable.  i even went on npr to talk about it a few months back.  we love our dirty smells.  perhaps it’s just our animal nature. 

            i’ve gotten something of a reputation for walking up to and/or crossing that filthy threshold.  when i made commando i thought he was pretty benign, but revisiting it, i see that he might be a bit much for the average joe.  untitled #8, which was a commission by lucky scent, was all about taking the idea as far as possible.  many consider the scent unwearable, but it’s as much an intellectual exploration of “dirty” as it is a functional perfume. 

            last fall, i introduced werewolf lumberjack.  it was hot on the heels of the untitled project and i wanted to bring the idea into a more accessible range.  actual musk, that sourced from deer, and which was a staple in the industry for centuries, is incredibly potent.  it’s beautiful, but wearable only in minute doses.  the musk used in both werewolf lumberjack and she-wolf is a synthesized reconstruction of this musk.  it’s warm, acrid and sexy. 

            i was shocked last year to find lumberjack emerging as one of the most popular scents in the line.  his fame actually outlived the run of the series and he became the most requested limited edition in sb’s short history.  that’s when i knew he needed a girlfriend.

            while lumberjack is a potent dose of musk, tempered with spiced woods and animal notes, she-wolf is a play between musk, patchouli and vanillin – the molecule in vanilla responsible for it’s sweetness.  i was messing around in the lab one day when i got frustrated and went for a nap.  when i went to bed that night, i was greeted by a lovely smell on my pillowcase.  some of the test batch had gotten on my sheets and i raced back to finish the project the next morning. 

            she-wolf is sugary and trashy and delicious.  she’s daisy dukes and a tube top.  she is vulgarity done right.  and best of all, she gives lumberjack a run for his money!  if you haven’t tried our lupine friends, they’ll be on sb.com through december.  

 

totem eclipse of my heart

            back in june, i started work on sb’s new fall collection – working title idiomatic.  it was a collection of scents inspired by linguistic idioms.  i’ve been a grammar and word nerd since sophomore year in high school and sb has had a tradition of wordplay since day one.  i had the collection roughly sketched out and had completed 2 of the 5 scents.  i met with matthew, our genius illustrator, to come up with some fabulous art.  by the time august rolled around, i was confident i could get everything done before my summer vacation up to alaska.  i work best under pressure anyway. 

            the alaska trip was kind of a coup.  i had really wanted to go a couple years back after watching too many episodes of northern exposure.  but when my mom suggested i join her and her boyfriend on their summer vacation, i said yes immediately.  i had only been in alaska about 2 hours when i decided to scrap idiomatic and start over. 

    we were standing in a little hut and a man was carving a totem pole.  it was a very touristy moment, but the tradition and artistry were clear.  what struck me more than the photo op was the smell of western red cedar.  i had bought some western red essential oil a couple years ago and had always found the aroma a little overwhelming.  it’s sweet and musty and very particular. having no reference apart from my little bottle, i found it challenging to work into a composition.  standing there, i knew immediately what kind of tree this man was carving.  the smell was intoxicating and i decided then and there what needed to be done.

    totem eclipse is the aromatic translation of that experience.  it’s a blend of the forest smells that surrounded that hut.  it’s the shaving of the totem pole and the fresh western red cedar.  it’s the skunk cabbage that lines the Alaskan forest floor and the earth we tracked back with us.  it’s the moment i found inspiration for north by northwest. 

    the first thing i did when i got home, i pulled out that western red and got to work.  it was finished that first morning back.  you never know when the muse will strike or the wind will change.  totem is all about surrendering to the moment and recognizing it when it shows up.  happy smelling kiddies,

the chairman

 

hey mr. smell bent, put some perfume on!

            while it might not always seem it, the creative process is sometimes like finishing a giant puzzle.  it’s about making sure everything fits in the end, creating cohesion out of disparate elements.  this can sometimes mean sacrificing good ideas for ideas that fit a theme or work in a group.  i’m speaking vaguely, but as an artist, creation can sometimes be vague, and it’s the artist job of bringing it into reality and defining it. 

            when i get to work on a new project, i always want to bring freshness to the process.  it’s partly selfish, but mostly it’s to keep the kiddies engaged.  who wants to hear the same song over and over again?  or buy the same perfume again?  i like working with new ingredients and new ideas, so it’s not much of a chore.  but ever so often, there are combinations which call to me and which, for not wanting to repeating myself, i overlook.  and now we find ourselves at the smell bent remix project. 

            the fragrance industry has a practice of creating what are know as flankers – perfumes under the same name with a new formulation – for their big sellers.  guerlain has a hit with shalimar, they introduce shalimar light, or shalimar black mystery or shalimar parfum initial.  you get the idea.  instead of just updating or softening my scents, i wanted to take the foundational elements from their structure and create entirely new fragrances around them. 

with sunshine: mama's spiced tea, i kept the orange and sandalwood combination which i believe is the crux of the original perfume’s charm.  around this, i added the spices and tea which my mama used to cook up her summer spiced tea.  technically, it was neiman marcus’ recipe and she made it with crystal light and sugar-free tang, but i loved it and drank it by the jug.  the result is a scent which smells exactly like the sweet, spicy and brisk beverage of my youth.

debonair has always been my most traditional scent (that’s western tradition, mind you).  and so for eau dandy, i went to the roots of classical perfumery for a traditional cologne recipe, but with a slightly modern twist.  the result is a meatier version of one of my favorite scents, 1966’s eau sauvage.  i have an advantage over dior these days, as i use natural ingredients like rose absolute and oakmoss which have been striped from the modern formulation.  you’ll also notice the first appearance of lavender in the line.

tok’yo mama fizzzzz is perhaps the most playful of the bunch.  i always like to throw a wild card into the bunch – and he’s it.  i removed the soothing green tea from the original composition and added a bucket of aldehydes and more woods.  without the tea, you get the full camphorous force of the hinoki and the whole structure gets a little butcher.  kind of like an odd ball masculine which would never get made by the big guys. 

if you haven’t tried these yet, we’re doing a sample pack for $20 which includes shipping and our newest frankensmellie.  i’m also throwing in a sample of our pink party perfume oil which will be available through september.  

 

spray my name, spray my name

as most of you already know, last week we relaunched our fabulous smell bent sprays.  in addition to new boxes and bottles, we added a few scents to the lineup.  when you have creative control, sometimes things get a little wacky.  it’s one of the perks of owning your own business.  i guess what i’m trying to say is don’t let the names of our new friends scare you. 

since i started smell bent, my interest in other people’s scents has slowly waned.  then, without warning, my perfume passion came back this spring.  partly, it was justified as research for the fall collection i’m planning.  another part of me was just getting my groove back.  when my hobby became my business, it changed.  i guess it was naïve to think it wouldn’t, but i almost completely stopped wearing fragrance.  all my perfume energy went into smell bent.  so it was a lovely surprise to see it return … with a vengeance.

chastity begins @ home was inspired by leather and galbanum scents of the late 80s and early 90s.  i had a bottle of galbanum sitting in my ingredient library for a long time, but was too intimidated to ever use it.  galbanum is incredibly potent - even a fraction of a drop can overwhelm a composition.  i had also found it to smell of green peppers, which i don’t care for.  but in sniffing it other perfumes, i found the confidence to try it.  chastity is a dark, sexy leather scent with classical roots.  it smells much like jil sander’s woman iii, which i adore and is no longer in production.  i also used a bunch of glorious damask rose in there, after having a brief love affair with l’arte de gucci, another discontinued gem. 

the spray tan incident started as a prototype for custom scent i was working on for a boutique here in la.  i sourced some clementine co2 extract which smells exactly like fresh squeezed orange juice.  co2 extracts are a modern way of extracting the oil from natural substances, but i had never seen it used on a citrus before.  with a dose of sparkling aldehydes and some dark green notes, spray tan transformed from a sweet, vanilla orange confection to an effervescent summer cocktail.  i fear that the name will discourage some, but you try rhyming something with the word orange!

the idea for frankensmellie appeared after a customer stopped by the studio one day.  when i was cleaning up all the test strips, i sniffed a handful of them together.  i thought, “what about mixing our smellies together?”  if you’ve ever seen “the main event”, barbra streisand has a similar thought.  the reality wasn’t great, but doing an ever-changing blend seemed interesting.  as i refine my perfume-making skills, i notice myself becoming more self-conscious about my work.  the spontaneity and joy can sometimes get sapped as i go round after round of “perfecting” a scent.  frankensmellie is my way of letting go a little.  perhaps using ingredients i’ve never worked with or doing a scent which i don’t think would work in the line.  the first scent is mix of bright gardenia and dark, smoky woods. 

hungry hungry hippies made it’s debut in our original collection, back in 2009.  when i started making our spray scents, i mixed up a bottle, but the chocolate absolute made the perfume dark and stain-tastic.  it’s bad enough to have a dark chocolate slathered on your wrist, it’s another to have to all over your shirt.  i found a fantastic (clear) replacement this spring and slightly reformulated the scent.  i think it’s going to be fabulous come fall, but i couldn’t wait that long and neither should you.             

those are my thoughts on the new smellies and if you haven’t tried them, stop by and pick up our special sample pack.  you get a price break and shipping's on us!

 

toodles,

the chairman

 

never never land; or a dingo ate my perfume!

            Oh how I’ve always wanted to go Down Under!  Does that sound dirty?  No matter, the point is Australia is on the bucket list and part of the fun of Leisure Cruise is that I get to “spiritually” visit places I otherwise have no place being.             

            Given their exports – Eric Bana, Baz Lurhmann, Toni Collete, Rachel Griffiths, JUDY DAVIS, Kath & Kim – I think very highly of that big island we call Oz.  I’m always delighted when my perfume makes it down that way too.  It never ceases to amaze me that it’s warm at x-mas and chilly in July.  People get hung up on the toilets flushing the other way around, but who sticks around long enough to watch the toilet flush. 

            For those wondering, The Never Never is what Aussies call the Outback.  Not wanting to have anything remotely in common with the steakhouse of the same name, I thought it best to avoid references to shrimps, barbies, and awesome blossoms.  So we went with a reference to two classic books, Peter Pan, and the Australian novel “We of the Never Never.”

I knew immediately that the scent should be golden.  Watching Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, one sees the gorgeous vastness of the outback – that sea of land.  I grew up in the desert, or what’s left of it, in Arizona.  I wanted to convey dry heat and the sharpness of the air while contrasting that with the splendor of the setting.  The base of the scent is built upon a labdanum-rich amber.  I went through about 6 before settling on one I liked.  From there, desert rose and the dry and slightly rosy guaiac wood are added to the mix.  Green pepper and vetiver help add sharpness to the final product and give the composition a dusty quality that balances out the sweet.

This was the final scent I worked on in the series and I think it’s really stellar.  It’s certainly suited well for both lads and lasses.  If you haven’t tried it, pick up a sample pack of all the new scents, and shipping’s on us.  At least until the 10^th!

 

enjoy

prairie nymph, the story of a floozy

            happy tax time kiddies!  i hope uncle sam is good to you and gives you a big refund check to blow on perfumes (or silly frivolities like rent and groceries).  if you’re one of those tea baggers, disregard this message and put on a pot of earl grey for me.

            it’s been a couple weeks since we launched our edts and i thought i’d tell you a little bit about them.  prairie nymph has taken an early lead, sales wise, and for good reason.  she took a long time to get right, but when she hit, it hit dead on.  but i’m getting ahead of myself.

            long, long ago, when we first decided to do sprays (last fall), i came up with an idea for a perfume called Floozy.  now, i thought this was absolutely brilliant for several reasons, but mostly importantly because no one had ever named a perfume Floozy before.  it utterly shocked me.  in a world where names like Scoundrel, Tigress, and Ambush had been snatched up, why did Floozy get left out in the cold?

interior, 1950’s cocktail lounge:  a glamorous woman in her mid-twenties struts in – full skirt, tight up-do, red lips.  a dashing gentleman leans his face into the nape of her neck.  he breathes in her scent deeply.  “what are you wearing?” he begs.  “floozy,” she says with a knowing glance.

 i don’t think so.

cut to me 50 years later, floozy is a half joke, like most of the names of our perfumes.  but when the idea of a western themed series hit me, floozy didn’t really fit.  she’s more a sloppy flapper than a saloon girl – a roaring twenties booze-hound who’s been around the block in several jalopies.  i spent an afternoon pouring over a website full of cowboy lingo.  you’d be surprised how many words they had for hooker, but only one stood out.  nymph du prairie (pronounced in cowboy french as nimf do prayer E) was the prettiest and most evocative.

by the time i had found her a new name, i was 10 or so versions deep in the lab.  looking for inspiration, i found a little pot of beeswax absolute i had loved but never found a home for.  with carnation and clementine, it was pretty and sweet, but also womanly.  she was certainly a lady, but a brassy one.  think mae west crossed with a young shirley maclaine.  if you haven’t tried her, order a sample, i hear she’s worth every penny!

 

Bollywood or Bust; or A Rose in Any Other County

            My mother has worn the same perfume for as long as I can remember.  Actually, she’s worn the same perfume since 1984 – Yves Saint Laurent's Paris in the EDP.  It might not sound like it makes a difference, but the EDP definitely has an edge up on the EDT.  With one whiff, I’m taken back to being a kid in her bright off-white closet as she got ready to go out.  Smell is so transporting like that.

            For those of you not familiar, Paris is a big 80’s rose and violet powerhouse created by perfume genius Sophia Grojsman.  It’s bright and bold and makes movie stars out of its wearers.  It’s certainly not a scent for the faint of heart.  Scents like Paris are the reason the 90’s perfume market spent so much time repenting – but that’s another story for another day.

            Why I’m talking about Paris is because it made me fall in love with roses. Few flowers hold the throne the way roses do.  They’re symbolic, they’re sensual and they’re expensive.  A good batch of rose oil can cost you a king’s ransom, but the payoff is worth it.  In the US, roses are the height of femininity – they are Valentine’s, your Anniversary and opening night all rolled into one.  They are classic and clichéd.  However, travel east and you’ll find that the rose is another flower all together.  In the Middle East, rose oil is traditionally worn by men.           

            Part of what I love about having my own line is that I don’t have to label scents masculine or feminine.  Anyone who wears a lot of perfume will tell you, after a while, distinctions are unreliable and downright restrictive.  So while some of the other florals in the Leisure Cruise may lean towards the feminine, I wanted Bollywood to be a scent that would wear beautifully on both men and women.  Besides wanting to do a rose scent, I had been searching for a formula I could sneak some cumin into.  Cumin by itself is a beast of a note and most of the time smells, well, hideous.  I found that in conjunction with a blend of other spices, sandalwood and of course, our star, the rose, cumin added a bite that imparted a kind of animalic sexuality to whole composition.

            Bollywood or Bust has been the best seller from the Leisure Cruise and I’m not really surprised.  The scent is seductive and mysterious, bright, but also darkly brooding.  If you haven’t tried him yet, take the plunge.  He’s certainly worth it.

ps - the picture is of an amazing sculture called "Fist and Rose" by Grzegorz Wysocki located in Oslo.

St. Tropez Dispenser; or Sexy on the Beach

            Perfume lets me experience all sorts of things I don’t get to enjoy in real life.  In fact, I’ve never been to any of the places in the Leisure Cruise collection.  I remember Isaac Mizrahi, in the documentary ‘Unzipped’, saying that he didn’t have to go to Australia to do a collection about it – he could just watch a Flintstones episode about it.  I thought at the time it was a little glib, but I’ve come to identify with the sentiment more recently.  An artistic project is usually more about the artist than the subject anyway.  Here, it’s my idea of St. Tropez, which I like to think of as the South Beach of France – glitzy, sparkling, glamorous and kinda trashy – rather than the actual reality of the place.  I have no idea what St. Tropez actually smells like.  It’s not that I’m opposed to finding out; it just isn’t completely necessary.

            Now, I’m thinking this all sounds a bit narcissistic.  Panda would say art is narcissistic by nature.  I don’t know if I agree, but I’m going farther with this thought than I should.  The point is when I think about St. Tropez, I think about beaches and tanning oil and Versace.  I think about rich women in high heels and lots of jewelry.  I see Joan Collins (pictured, upper left) and I smile.  This I know to be a fantasy St. Tropez, but it is my fantasy and it is the basis for our little scent.

            I found myself with some gorgeous Jasmine Grandiflorum absolute.  This is a very costly substance and I had been holding onto it until I found a suitable and worthy project.  You’ll notice 3 of my favorite flowers in the cruise collection – jasmine, rose and orange blossom.  You’ll say, à la Miranda Priestly, “Flowers for spring? Groundbreaking.”  But I was feeling festive.  Jasmine is a bit of siren, big and loud and very sultry.  To me, this is perfect for my imagined St. Tropez.  With a bit of creamy coconut, a squirt of aloe (for those of you who’ve taken in a bit too much sun on the first day) and a base built on vintage musk, you get a scent that is feminine, exotic and utterly beachy.

            For those of you who like the beach, I invite you to give St. Tropez Dispenser a shot.  She starts big, but mellows into a creamy, dreamy musk that will have men nuzzling on your neck.  Pretend you’re a young Joan Collins, at least for a day, and take a trip to a little place called St. Tropez.

the chairman