Hey folks! I've begun writing fragrance reviews again on my new blog, Mannscents (I used to write them over at /r/wet_shaving, but it closed). I'll be reviewing easily accessible and inexpensive fragrances, offering ingredient spotlights, and covering various other fragrance topics there too. Here's an excerpt from my second review. If you want to read the rest, or download an audio version, please check out the article here. Have an awesome week!

What Does Geoffrey Beene Grey Flannel Smell Like?

It opens with the sharp bitterness of petitgrain, the tiny, green, unripened fruits of the bitter orange tree. This is brought into sharp relief by subtle flashes of shrill, intensely green galbanum, a plant whose oil smells like nothing so much as fresh celery juice. The galbanum imparts a fleshy, petal-like character to the opening, reminiscent of burying your face in a patch of wild violets. Beneath all of this rests the soft, silvery powder of an elegant iris note, dry and dusty and fabulous, like the olfactory reflection of a 1920s feather boa.

Wrapped around the entire top-note architecture is an assemblage of oakmoss and violet leaf, expertly blended with subtlety and style that you just don't often see from designer houses these days. At ~$16/oz, there is absolutely no way in Hell that Grey Flannel contains any real violet leaf absolute, and the IFRA's 43rd revision of its Code of Practice basically guarantees that there's no real oakmoss in it either. Instead, the oakmoss note is created through the use of synthetic Veramoss (also sold under the name Evernyl). The violet leaf accord is almost certainly produced with the incorporation of methyl heptine carbonate (a peppery, swampy aromachemical) combined with leaf alcohol, a strange compound produced naturally by most plants that smells of freshly cut grass and crushed leaves.

Curiously, Grey Flannel was, as nearly as I can tell, the very first fragrance ever to incorporate violet leaf as a listed note. While many often point to Creed's massively overpriced (and unremittingly harsh) 80s flagship Green Irish Tweed as the source of what eventually became a flood of violet leaf scents, Pierre Bourdon and Olivier Creed are believed to have gotten the idea from Geoffrey Beene and Andre Fromentin, who had released Grey Flannel nearly a decade before.

The galbanum and violet leaf eventually fade into the background, allowing a more floral violet and the aforementioned iris to come forward. At this point, the fragrance strikes a lovely balance and develops an almost humid quality, rather like the inside of a greenhouse. I've wondered over the years whether the composition includes geosmin, the molecule that creates the smell of damp soil after rain, but, given the fact that geosmin clocks in at around $40/g, it's not terribly likely. Pretty convincing effect anyway, though.