The smell of Asia

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Swarms of Asiatic tourists are a common sight in the world's great shopping cities. In Paris, they line the Louis Vuitton stores, queue at Ladurée outlets, and recoup their VAT once they have the shopping bags with all of the right brand names on them. They are also big perfume buyers, with the Paris Look store on the Boulevard Haussmann proving just as popular as its more famous neighbours, the Galeries Lafayette and the Printemps.

However, just as those from China and Japan follow the latest European trends, we in Europe are jumping steadily onto the Asian bandwagon. In addition to European brands like The Body Shop scenting their products with Japanese cherry blossoms, silk, citrus, peony, red flower and green tea, Japanese perfume designs and designers also enjoy popularity with European consumers.

Kenzo is among the best-known Japanese brands, with its distinctive red flower curving through many a shop window. Their other perfumes, though, are very much in the background, and perhaps overly so: it is almost a surprise to look at Kenzo's website and find that they sell other equally lovely perfumes, which I have never heard of due to the arguable over-publicising of Flower By Kenzo.

Shiseido, however, seems to under-publicise their scents, preferring instead to emphasise their makeup and anti-ageing lines. This is a shame, as their cutting-edge, cubic packaging is almost like a mecca to the perfume universe as light reflects through the packaging of Zen and Zen White Heat. Even though the body cream packaging bearing the same scent is not nearly so innovative, Shiseido would do well to push this aspect of their line forward to enhance the range of Japanese perfumes available to European consumers.

As previously mentioned, among the genuinely Japanese brands adorning department store shelves are others which are not Japanese but which take on the country's spirit, such as the Harajuku Lovers, invented by Westerner Gwen Stefani. Possibly the cutest perfume design on the market, the four Japanese girl figures are inspired by the singer's backup dancers, and add vibrancy and colour to the sometimes serious perfume departments. Also covering apparel, stationery and fashion accessories, they bring the friendly, sweet and kooky aspects of Japanese culture to a more mainstream audience.

On the more glamorous side are sideline brands such as the beautiful Hanae Mori, with its poetically-named products such as Butterfly and Magical Moon. It seems faintly tragic that while Hanae Mori is one of the most prominent and respected designers in Japan, her work has been marginalised in Europe.

Mainstream but still marginalised is the range of Issey Miyake perfume, whose tall conical bottles perhaps add something different to the perfume market in general, whether in the cool serene form of L'Eau d'Issey or in the traffic-light Summer version. Whatever your taste, it would appear that there is something out there for everyone when it comes to adding a little Oriental fragrance to your life.

A Fresh Start

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In previous months I've worked around the fragrance wheel, showing you how to recognise oriental, woody, and floral fragrances. There are just two areas still left to cover: fresh and fruity fragrances and fougère fragrances.

The 'fresh' category of the fragrance wheel (used to categorise all fragrances) incorporates water, green, and citrus-style smells. Not as commonly found as the other categories on the wheel, this does not mean that they are any less appealing. Hermès goes out on a limb with its unisex, fruity and fresh scents, such as Jardin Après Le Mousson, and another brand to make use of the fruitier side of life is Ralph Lauren, with perfumes such as Safari. While it also incorporates spices and woody notes, it uses lemon and juniper to create a unique citrus fragrance. And if it doesn't quite go far enough for you, you could also turn to other Ralph Lauren perfumes such as Ralph Rocks. The bright orange bottle is undoubtedly lurid, but it packs a positively tropical punch with its blend of kiwi, passion fruit and citrus fruits. 

For a fresher option, Issey Miyake's perfume for women presents L'Eau D'Issey, which promises to "bring together the benefits of earth and water". It uses cyclamen, which although it is a flower, is grown from tubers, which also produce potatoes and truffles. 

 Plenty of other ladies' perfumes allow outdoor girls to pick the fragrance that's just right for them. Examples of fruity fragrances can be found at DKNY (Be Delicious), Yves St Laurent (Champagne), Moschino (Cheap and Chic), Calvin Klein (CK One Summer), and Cartier (Eau de Cartier). For fresh or green perfumes, you can plump for Bond No 9, Charlie by Revlon, Versace Metal Jeans Women, or Diorissimo by Christian Dior. By looking beyond the obvious floral or oriental scents, you should be able to find a perfume that's right for you - a task often easier said than done, I grant you.

But what do you do when all of the areas on the fragrance wheel appeal to you, and you want something that mixes them all?

This is where the fougère fragrances come in. They sit in the middle of the fragrance wheel, and their name is French for fern, which might imply that they belong more to the fresh and fruity family, but in fact they contain elements from all four of the main categories: "the freshness of from the Citrus family, floral notes of lavender, the spicy-sweetness of a Floral Oriental, the ambery depth of an Oriental and the Mossy Woods warmth of sandalwood and oakmoss." (Thanks, Wikipedia!) Another notable feature of the fougère family is its unisex quality: while often worn by men, there's nothing to stop women from wearing them too. Davidoff's Cool Water is a famous example for men, while Guerlain's Jicky is an example that is mostly worn by women. Often containing elements such as lavender and oakmoss, they offer that touch of je ne sais quoi on your skin. 

Finding fougère perfumes for women can be tricky; even in this age of equality, and in spite of the fact that the fougère family does incorporate aspects of all four fragrance families, the fougère scents are more often than not associated with men. But it's not impossible:  Eau d'Elide (Diptyque), English Fern (Penhaligon's), and De Bachmakov (The Different Company) are touted as unisex fougère options. Ben Sherman's 2Tone can be worn by women, as can Luciano Soprani's 2, O Boticario's Acqua de Colonia, and Yardley's English Lavender. But these just scratch the surface; Fragrantica offers a full and detailed list of fougères on offer. But ultimately when perfume shopping the important thing is to find a fragrance that you like - not one that necessarily conforms to the label - man or woman, fougère or non - that someone else has given it.

Flower Fairies

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In the third of my series on the fragrance wheel, I'll be throwing a bone to all the real girly girls out there who love flowery, truly romantic fragrances.

This doesn't mean that such fragrances are always superficial, trite or cheap-smelling; quite to the contrary, many floral fragrances are classics that have been adored by women for many years.

One such classic ladies' perfume is Cacharel's Anaïs Anaïs, which combines rose and lily with some of the woodier and more oriental scents previously discussed, such as sandalwood and amber, to make one of the beauty world's most-loved perfumes. Cacharel hit the spot again with Noa and Noa Perle, using a similar blend to capture the essence of forest flowers on women's wrists the world over.

Another cult favourite came to the world of floral perfume in the form of Yves Saint Laurent's Paris, which also nods to the woods with its sandalwood and amber notes alongside its dominant mimosa flower, orange and rose. Originally released in 1983, it's also packed with jasmine and violet, and has inspired many spinoffs from YSL, including the more recently released Parisienne, which is more heavily dominated by violets and is more sugary.

However, floral fragrances are not just stuck in the seventies and eighties, with many more modern floral perfumes having taken the world by storm in recent years. Daisy by Marc Jacobs, for instance, captured the world with its dreamy and dazzling gold bottle, adorned with daisies. It not only uses the popular violet scent but also utilises jasmine and gardenia along with some fruitier undertones and muskier, more vanilla-like overtones. This captivating combination has held the public's attention ever since it first hit the shelves (although it is perhaps not purely floral due to its reliance on other members of the fragrance wheel, perhaps making it more of a Fougère fragrance - more on this soon!).

Other, perhaps more obvious, examples of floral fragrances that have arrived on the scene this century include Valentino's Rock 'n' Rose. Categorised as a floral oriental perfume, it blends orange flower and rose to create an edgy, unique new scent for modern young women. Lastly for today, there's Viktor & Rolf's Flowerbomb, which almost speaks for itself. It contains everything you could think of for a floral scent: jasmine, rose, orchid, freesia, and a hint of patchouli just to mix things up a bit. This last one is one of my favourites, although I'd also recommend Anaïs Anaïs (mentioned before) - though I'm sure there's a myriad of floral fragrances out there just waiting for me to discover them.

Don't Go To The Aftershave Counter Without Me

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In the previous article in my perfume series, I mentioned the dauntingness of the perfume counter for women. However, it's also not always the most comfortable place for men either, and this is perhaps magnified by the fact that they perhaps feel that they shouldn't even being going into perfumeries at all. Boots or Debenhams is one thing; a specialist perfume store is quite another.

I also talked in my previous article about some of the negative attributes of salespeople in these shops; however, this is not to say that it's all bad. The UK and US' customer service is perhaps second to none, and it's something I've really missed since moving to France (where in the job for life culture, shop assistants do have a tendency to act like they're doing you a favour, and know that almost no matter what they do they'll still keep their job). If you're not sure about what to buy (which is perhaps especially true for men, given that they are often not as predisposed as women to be seduced by prettyful packaging), then you shouldn't be scared to talk to a sales assistant - many are friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. Nevertheless, as I have discussed in the past, there is nothing wrong with having some idea of what you're looking for before you begin, hence my little tour of the fragrance wheel, started in May.

While women's fragrances are likely to encompass all areas of the fragrance wheel, men's are likely to only fall into two or three categories, perhaps favouring woody and oriental scents over fresh and fruity ones (though that isn't to say that there aren't aftershaves that fall into these latter categories - Hermès in particular is a brand that thrives with its fruity and fresh fragrances, perhaps due to its marketing strategy of publicising them as unisex rather than specifically as male or female perfumes). Yves St Laurent aftershave boasts another wide range of scents, showing even as an example of just one brand that there really is a fragrance out there for every man. Kouros provides a highly 'woody' experience, featuring cedar wood and camphor wood, while still making mild forays into freshness with eucalyptus and into the oriental zone with incense. Woods mixed with spices come to men in the forms of La Nuit de l'Homme and (perhaps YSL's most famous fragrance?) Opium pour Homme. However, even at YSL things can still get floral and fruity for men: Jazz offers notes of rose and carnation alongside the heavier leather, Pour Homme incorporates lemon and lavender with those now-familiar woody elements, and lavender and rosemary meet clove and vetiver in Rive Gauche Homme. There - I bet you're feeling better about this whole aftershave thing already.

And now for an entirely subjective top 5 aftershaves from the man of the house:
Hermès Terre D'Hermès ("A woody, vegetal and mineral eau de toilette")
Dior Fahrenheit ("warm, subtle, and distinguished". Contains: nutmeg, sandalwood, cedar, patchouli...)
Chanel Allure Homme Sport ("Possesses a blend of vetiver, amber, neroli, Atlas cedar...")
Cartier Roadster (bergamot, mint, vanilla, patchouli, vetiver)
Dior Dune ("This masculine scent possesses a blend of leaves, basil, mandarin, moss, sage and cedar")
Hermès Voyage ("a woody fresh musky scent")

Don't Go To The Perfume Counter Without Me

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When beauty guru Paula Begoun's book, Don't Go To The Cosmetics Counter Without Me, was released in 2007, it was an immediate success. The very fact of the book's existence, along with the fact that it has consistently sold so well, with new editions coming out every year, is testament to the increasing vastness and complexity of the cosmetics market. With Paula having also previously written Don't Go Shopping For Hair Care Products Without Me in 2004, one does wonder if her next project might be a similar book on the subject of perfume, since this too is a market that can be overwhelming.

Step into any cosmetics store worldwide - whether it be a branch of Boots, Marionnaud or Sephora - and while the cosmetics franchises themselves take centre stage, look beyond them and you will see that the store is often lined wall-to-wall with women's perfume and men's aftershave, as well as spin-off products such as perfumed body lotions and shower gels, deodorants and gift boxes. While these stores are rarely short of someone to jump on you the second you walk in, with a sprightly "Can I help you?", quite often the salespeople will have a hidden agenda (i.e., to make commission on whatever they sell, perhaps even with a point of pushing a specific product), which may not always involve helping you find the right product for you or whoever you're buying for (one can quite easily see briefings of department store staff as having a Lionel Hutz-style dialogue: "The right [product] is the one that's for sale. The right buyer is anyone."). So while people perhaps do want specialist help - especially when it is so difficult to know where to begin - it's often important to the consumer to have some control over the situation.

There are, as I see it, a few ways around the intimidation that can be created by the sheer scale of the industry and the number of available products. One way is to head for smaller stores that are still specialists in perfume, such as The Perfume Superstore, The Perfume Shop, L'Artisan Parfumeur, or Penhaligon's. Smaller shops mean smaller displays, so that you can actually see what you're looking at, and more personalised attention from shop staff (as well as just more attention in general), as well as a more specialist service.

Another way to navigate the sea of scented water is to get clued up at home. Go out as an informed shopper, and you'll have more of an idea of what to look for on your own, without necessarily needing to enlist the help of a sales assistant or wander around the shops in a state of bewilderment. In this series of sponsored articles, I'll be going over the fragrance wheel, recommending different brands and types of perfume and aftershave that you and your man may enjoy, among other things.

The fragrance wheel is basically this:
This is the worldwide framework used to categorise scents, making it easier for everyone, from parfumiers to shoppers, to find their way around.

Starting today with oriental fragrances, and moving later in the series to the other categories, we can see both just how complicated perfumery is, and yet how comfortingly it can also be simplified. One such example of an oriental fragrance is Estée Lauder's Youth Dew, which, with its elements of amber and sandalwood, comes into the subgroups of Soft Oriental (the former) and Woody Oriental (the latter). Oriental fragrances such as this one can initially smell very strong when first sprayed on, but it is worth mentioning at this point that perfumes and aftershaves have three 'notes': the top note, the one you initially smell, later settles down into its base and heart notes, which is dependent not only on how the perfume develops with the minutes and hours but is also dependent on how it reacts with your body, to in a way create its own uniqueness on you. After a few hours, then, the Youth Dew settles down to become a softer and subtler blend that can be worn by all ages. Other examples of oriental fragrances (which typically include notes of orange, vanilla, spices, amber, incense, sandalwood and patchouli) can be found in Chance by Chanel, Fendi by Fendi, and Estée Lauder's Intuition.

Even then, the scents listed above still smell different, so perhaps obviously, the most important thing is still to get out there and smell them. Spray them onto yourself (but no more than 1 perfume on each arm) and walk around with them on for a few hours to see how they turn out. Many perfumeries also leave out little strips of cardboard so that you can spray onto them by way of a sample and write the perfume name on. Perfume can be expensive, and one bottle can last such a long time that it really is like an investment - so take your time before you buy.

Coming soon: finding your way around the rest of the fragrance wheel