WHITE PERFUME EXTRAIT BY PUREDISTANCE

Photo Credit:+ Q PERFUME BLOG

I haven't been quite active in my blog not only due to lack of time, but also because I haven't been presented to fragrances that I find worth writing about.

Since my last article about niche I have been feeling really disappointed with perfumery in general. Too many dull creations, too many blogs writing about them...too much of everything.

Last week I had a huge surprise when finally my newest PUREDISTANCE creation arrived.

The brand presents a dream in white & gold; a flow of happiness. An intimate escape from harsh reality. And that is exactly what it is. The harsh reality of 1000s of niche fragrances one copying another, one using more OUD than the other and finally an ESCAPE. I am happy to see that among so much olfactive stupidity someone finally presents something that it is worth buying. (I know many perfumers are hating me right now or shouting who she thinks she is...but that is the freedom of speech that millions are fighting for these days. In my blog, I say what I feel. Simple as that!*)

How beautifully crafted WHITE is. JAN you excelled yourself with this one!!

No wonder it is another Antoine Lie creation. He has also composed BLACK for the brand, which is a very sensual perfume. White is a mood transforming perfume that makes you fall in love.

Photo credit: PUREDISTANCE website

Following the trend of looking for local exclusive ingredients and their uniqueness PUREDISTANCE is presenting the following composition of Olfactive notes: Rose de Mai (France), Orris (Italy), Patchouli (Indonesia), Bergamot (Italy), Vetyver (Haiti), Tonka beans (Venezuela), Sandalwood (Mysore) and musk.  Concentration: 38% perfume oil

WHITE PERFUME EXTRAIT is a complementary fragrance to BLACK IMO. The sensuality continues to flow in a subtle, gentle and smooth provoking way.

At the very first whiff you understand what the brand is about. Happiness is a smile that does not show gum. It has style.

PUREDISTANCE is 100% niche because it reflects JAN E. WOS' personality: PUREDISTANCE is JAN and JAN is PUREDISTANCE. Impeccable manners with a sincere humor. 

The fragrance itself has an opening that brings a whiff of greens evolving a beautiful real rose. In my last article I mentioned the smell of real roses remember...well, PUREDISTANCE would never think of using something else in its compositions.

After a few minutes the creaminess of sandalwood will be rounded with Tonka unfolding the sensuality to the perfume shaped by a luxurious orris note. Vetyver brings a smokiness and a rare bitter chocolate undertone which is not so easy to find these days. Most vetyvers are simply earthy and dirty.

It is a delicious gourmet perfume that reminds me of another one that provoked as much as this one: Le 6 by Ida Delam. While Le 6 is a pure into the panties perfume, WHITE is more of an invitation. Just as BLACK, it won't press you against a wall and penetrate you right there. It will whisper something very charming with an understated wish to penetrate you. ;-)

Photo credit: Lucien Clergue

WHITE could be easily understood as the olfactive interpretation of French photographer Lucien Clergue black and white nudes.

Truth is that WHITE is not so white...it has shades of BLACK.

*sample was provided by the brand as many or most of the perfumes are, and yet many of them I don't review because I didn't relate to them in a positive way. I keep an objective view even being friends with some of the brand owners. I am not paid or encouraged to write articles.

Black Code in Fragrances & BLACK by PUREDISTANCE - TREND RADAR

In the beginning of this year this blogger has analyzed a bit of our fascination for the color black and how it is expressed in perfumery (click HERE to read the article if you missed it). Today I want to expand and explore this theme a little bit more.

Can we actually smell BLACK? Are we all synesthets? Are Black inspired perfumes really black?

Synesthesia is a disorder in which the signals from the various sensory organs are processed in the wrong cortical areas resulting in the sense information being interpreted as more than one sensation. People with this condition is rare - 1 in 25,000 according to Cytowik, 1989. That means that we are not all syntesthetes! 

That also means that only 1 out of 25,000 people can actually see black when smelling a BLACK inspired fragrance (or any other fragrance) and the rest of us, well... we are not exactly smelling the color black!

BLACK by PUREDISTANCE 

Photo credit: Puredistance

I received this month a sample of the latest fragrance by niche brand Puredistance and in fact, that is what inspired me to write this article. PUREDISTANCE BLACK is going to be officially launched this coming December at MiN NYC (Mindy and Chad's), but some of the lucky ones like me  have already received a preview!

SO, Puredistance BLACK is a concept created by Jan Ewoud Vos (brand owner) and developed by perfumer Antoine Lie (who has developed Wonderwood by Comme des Garçons also reviewed here - a fragrance that do remind me A LOT of Black).

“Deep beauty is best experienced in the dark.
 Envision. Smell. Feel.
 Don’t analyze. Today's trends to know everything
 (and to show everything) mute our magic feelings of intuitive beauty.
Puredistance Black treasures 
the beauty of the unknown.”

BLACK comes with an interesting proposal: the brand will not reveal its composition. That said, nobody will get info of the notes of this fragrance by press. Instead, Jan wants us to FEEL the perfume. If Black is about the beauty of the unknown, Jan wants us to discover this beauty by simply applying the fragrance and enjoy it as whole. He wants to send an emotional message to the wearers - feel the sensuality, embrace the mystery. Don't analyze it; be intuitive.

Illustration by Gabriel Conroy for Puredistance BLACK

In Jan's brief for this fragrance he brought David Bowie as Jan sees him as elegant, creative, mysterious) and Jeremy Irons playing Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune. The idea was to blend the delicate and sometimes fragile tone of Bowie's and the dark and noble tones of Jeremy Irons to construct a darker elegance to BLACK.

What do I FEEL/SMELL when I wear BLACK?

I smell a more luxurious and more elegant vibe of Wonderwood by Comme des Garçons.

Reviewing that fragrance I mostly did what Jan proposes to Black - I let my imagination flow:

"Rooty, burnt, fruity-floral, but in essence extremely woody, Wonderwood EDP is the sexy lumberjack fragrance. As natural and synthetics are the opposite, so is fire and lumberjacks to wood forests! And that is exactly what makes this fragrance interesting! In fact, from the development to dry down nothing new came along. Pretty known and found in many other fragrances, the notes of vetiver and cedar tend to overtake the entire base. You will find patchouli, Oud and other delicious scents in the composition, adding a sensual touch to this perfume, but do not expect extreme luxuriousness.

If you ever had fantasies about getting lost in the woods and finding a sexy sweaty muscular lumberjack out of nowhere...well, probably would never happen in real life! (unless you live in Canada...then maybe....). But once you spray Wonderwood on your skin, you will definitely encounter Mr. Wonderwood, the lumberjack".

In BLACK you will find the extreme luxuriousness that Wonderwook lacked. It is an exposed luxury, but a subtle close to the skin fragrance, with understated sexiness. You won't feel the lumberjack sweat all over you. You won't see muscles. (In fact Jeremy Irons attended "Walk in the Woods" to support the campaign agains selling the harvesting rights of public forests in Ireland - yeap - a man with many facets, including the elegance of fighting for Nature). So I can't evoke Jeremy Irons wearing a lumberjack shirt, cutting wood and sweating close to me, can I?

But what does BLACK evoke in me?

A gentle touch of an elegant man who does want to take me to bed and will succeed doing so in the most subtle way. There is mystery surrounding this man. But once he does come close to you he will reveal his hidden soul. Could be Jeremy Irons, not as Claus von Bülow but as Dr. Steven Flemming in Damage - a member of the Parliament, elegant, well mannered, with a hidden secret of a forbidden passion.

Jeremy Irons & Juliette Binoche in DAMAGE

To evoke is not to see. To evoke is to provoke, to call to mind, to create anew specially by means of imagination. It is to feel, to bring out emotions. BLACK by PUREDISTANCE evokes lustful, hot SEX in me. As simple as that.

You won't see the color black in this fragrance, as you won't see in any fragrance inspired by the color black. Which brings us back to the questions asked in the beginning: 

Can we actually smell black?  The answer is NO. 

Are really black inspired fragrances black? The answer is also NO.

So how exactly one relates to the color black in black inspired fragrances?

Perception is a process by which the brain takes all sensation people experience at any given moment and allows them to be interpreted in some meaningful fashion. Perception implies individuality. Although it implies individuality,  similarities exits as people perceive the world around them (consistency), and sometimes we are lead to involve ourselves in perceptive illusions (I also wrote about this subject in the beginning of this year - read TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE if you haven't read it till now).

An illusion is a perception that does not correspond to reality.

Hermann Grid

A classic example of a visual illusion is the one presented by the Hermann Grid matrix of squares. Look directly to the grid and you will see in the intersections of the white lines gray dots that pop up and fade away after a while. Those gray dots are illusions of visual perception.

What factors influence human perception of things? Besides cultural and upbringing, Perceptual Expectancy is one of them. It means that humans have a tendency to perceive things in a certain way because their previous experiences or expectations influence them. Humans use what is called top down processing, which means that we use preexisting knowledge to organize individual features into an unified whole. That is one form of Perceptual Expectancy.

That said, when a black inspired fragrance is presented in the market it comes with a preexisting concept that is presented to consumers.

Words such as Black, Noir, Nuit, Night or Dark are included in the name of the fragrance  evoking the color black. Black bottles, black packages and the use of the color black in the fragrance's advertising are also perceptual expectancy tools to evoke the perception of the color black. When a brand calls its perfume Black Afgano (Nasomatto), Coco Noir (Chanel), Back to Black (By Killian), Polo Black (Polo), Armani Black Code (Armani) etc..., presenting a perfume in a black flacon, there is already a preexisting knowledge of the association of the color black. The obvious, presented in a very direct way. But there are more understated ways of influencing perception.

Black is also associated to mystery, power, sophistication, elegancy. Let's call it the Black Code. These associations are deeply rooted in our cultural perception of the color black. When the brand presents its fragrance as mysterious, sophisticated and elegant they are influencing you to think of black in a more subtle refined way.

So you cannot see black or feel black in a fragrance. You can only have the illusional perception of it. 

Maybe if you receive a fragrance such as BLACK by PUREDISTANCE  in a small transparent vial with no name marked on the juice and you don't know who created or which perfumer have developed it you might not think of the color black. You may say it is a woody slightly floral sensual fragrance. It might remind you of Wonderwood or any other fragrance alike...you might say it is oriental, classic, elegant; it contains musk or oud or any other note you smell in it... but you won't say it is the olfactive interpretation of the color black. Because the black color does not actually have a smell. But if you are a synesthete you might actually see the black color smelling a perfume because the signal that had to be interpreted as smell could be interpreted as more than one sensation and you might also get a visual.

Truth is that you associated situations, feelings, emotions, memories, desires, fantasies related to the black color and the smell of the perfume altogether. Just like I did: "A gentle touch of an elegant man who does want to take me to bed and will succeed doing so in the most subtle way"/lustful hot sex...

Perfumes create illusions and perfumers combine ingredients to create olfactory representations. It is up to the marketing department to create the perceptual expectancy. To understand how human perceive the world around them. To translate an olfactive experience into a Black Code.

The black code in fragrances - TREND RADAR

Franknweenie by Tim Burton

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

If you think that both movies Frankweenie and Les Misérables, and fragrances like Tom Ford Noir, Coco Noir by Chanel, Bulgari Jarmin Noir L'Elixir, Armani Eau de Nuit, Boss Nuit pour Femme, Gucci Guilty Black, or even Bertrand's Enchanted Forest have nothing in common, you are not really following marketing trends. It might look like they dont have a connection, but in fact they do.  They are all part of a trend that Li Edelkoort explains like nobody else:

“Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.” Charles Baudelaire

Since the dawn of time, black has a lot to tell, it expressed mourning, poverty, denial, revolt and it exalted the avant-garde and haute-couture. Both rive gauche and rive droite. From lacerated and studded leather to the perfection of the little black dress, from brutal bondage clothing to the gorgeous prom dress, from mods’ modest turtlenecks to the monks’ modern hoods, the same black made a lot of ink flow, black or almost black too. It is able to express love and romanticism as well as hate and racism, in equal proportion and with the same ardor.

Black matter will be forever engraved in our teenage souls; film noir, black coffee, the black jacket, pinot noir.

Today, black is lustrous and magnificent, swallow-tailed, raven or horsehair, is seen in lace of a domination mask, veil of seduction and burka of discretion. Black reflects opinions like a pollster of the air of the times. The surveys all agree; again, we vote for black. However, behind this dark veil hides a myriad of attitudes, divergent tastes and disparate characters.

In a chaotic century, which still cannot find its way, it seems that there is only one way out. One direction to take. In one way or another, we have to merge opposites and erase contrasts to embrace and exploit the idea of creative hybrids from various disciplines to finally bridge the gap between the two brains. To abolish bipolar thinking in favor of a universal and holistic reflection.

Suddenly, black seems to be the unifying of disciplines, the cloth becomes language, drawing pretends to be text, the volume is seen as flat, materials bristle, painting becomes textile, while the photo is thought of in monochrome and videos are selling like paintings. We are the witnesses of an artistic scene in fusion in which all the arts combine to make a single movement, a single vision and a single discipline addressing all the senses, suspended between dimensions.

As such, revisited romanticism can be seen as a reaction against reason, capable of enhancing the mysterious and fantastic. A romanticism to escape from reality and enter into the enchantment of dreams, finding the sublime in the morbid and millions in a skull. The vanity of fashion and design calling us from beyond the grave.

This is probably why black is coming back strong, because everything can be merged into it, anything can unite. Color mixing and blending genres, black becomes silent and dull, can absorb everything, and erase everything. Black sunblock. a way to move on, refocus and fade differences. Suddenly, the black becomes the flag of a political movement that does not yet exist, an altruistic movement is being born, a morality becomes capable of boosting creation outside of economic tracks, instead of suffering a cultural fatality.

To live our time, black establishes itself as a romantic expression, even frenetic. With a return to rural life combined with a deep respect for the ordinary spirituality, a return to a normal life. A romanticism to have great experience and feel a need to escape, a visceral craving of landscapes, seeing the horizons of one's life. A desire to disappear too, like an urgent need of anonymity. An abstraction as a retreat which becomes the study of black, material expressions, alarm cries. The icons commit suicide, forget themselves, disappear.

Following, the grand return of cloaks, redingotes, of long dresses and sweepers skirts. All underlined with boots and many hats. Painter shirts, cigarette pants, monk robes and terrorist hoods. We ironically mix all the exterior signs of religions to make a point of devotion.

So black draws life, silhouette and fate at the same time.

(extracted from The exposition - The Black Code - by Li Edelkoort)

Besides using words like Black, Noir, Nuit, Night, or black shinning flacons, or seductive and mysterious advertising ads, perfumers translated this trend by using odorants suggesting obscurity, mystery, the sensual aspect of the night, and romanticism.

In the composition of Enchanted Forest by The Vagabond Prince, Bertrand used black currant the main core of the fragrance, suggesting that when combined with the odor of the forest, it would result into a dark, mysterious  and super natural aura that was never explored this way in perfumery.

In Coco Noir, Chanel brand reveals a black that is intimate, seductive and intensely brilliant, translated in a combination of notes of grapefruit, bergamot and a sumptuous blend of woods and resins. 

In Oriflame Amber Elixir Noir, notes of patchouli, vanilla, amber, incense, benzoin provided a darker and more mysterious version of a night scent.

For Gucci, patchouli is the key ingredient for the duo that is said to aim fearless, shameless and unpredictable people. A frantic romance translated into a black version of the previous launches.

Researches have been publishing many essays and theories about the relationship between scents and colors. A vast majority of them agree that dark colors are related to oriental and woody fragrances. Also many florals (specially narcotic ones also give a sense of darkness - specially flowers blooming at night). 

According to professor Brian Moran (expert in Business Anthropology), the black color in perfume advertising is related to femininity and seduction. In his work he presented tables with results of 20 years of research in the field of perfume advertising, and the shown results were such as: the notes associated to black are patchouli, sandalwood, jasmine, vanilla and musk/fragrances with this dark connotation are mostly launched during winter and autumn time by the perfume industry.

Shinning black in perfume advertising shows excellence, while black in general can be also used for exclusivity, and that is the reason why many limited editions come in black and gold colors.

So there you have it my dears. 2012 winter and many months to come in 2013 will be populated with "black" perfumes, for the same reason why the movie "Les Misérables" will ace many Oscars, or for the same reason that Frankenweenie is simply a must see. Because we are craving for black.