An extraordinary machine among clones
I believe that anyone who becomes obsessed with perfume, particularly those who maintain a strict budget like myself, eventually starts making a list of white whales. Difficult to find or discontinued Moby Dick-ian perfumes you build up in your mind and chase, fragrant phantoms in your imagination, haunting you when you least expect it.
For me, one such fragrance has been Bvlgari Black. I first read about it years ago in Tania Sanchez/Luca Turin’s Perfume Guide in which Turin waxed rhapsodic and anointed the scent with a coveted 5-star rating. Its pyramid hit all the notes for I love smoke, woods, rubber, jasmine. And then there were the descriptions. Innovative and modern yet wearable. Complex and perfectly balanced. Scintillating, smoldering, daring, original. More CdG than CdG, more L’Artisan than L’Artisan. Black has been described as all of these things and so much more.
In my mind, Black by Bulgari began to take on mythical proportions. I read reviews as if they were travelogues from Atlantis. I imagined the burning asphalt of Nasomatto’s Black Afgano, but with subtlety and grace. The effortless cool of CdG’s Black, but something more innovative and daring. The patent-leather insouciance of Etat Libre d’Orange’s Rien, but without its brattiness. You get the idea. Black was the Alpha and the Omega. Holy Grail status before I’d even smelled the thing.
Of course I’ve had Black sightings in online stores and flash sales over the years. I’ve always known samples and decants were readily available. But I never bought it. I told myself this was because of prohibitive shipping costs but the truth was, I was avoiding the crushing disappointment of getting what you want and finding you don’t really want it afterall. What’s more valuable? A wonderous fantasy of the most perfect fragrance, THE Platonic Angelus Novus ur-fragrance, or 40 bucks plus shipping for the real thing?
Well, I came across a tester of Black today. I hesitated. They say you should never meet your idols. But it was time to kill a god. I sprayed my wrist, and inhaled.
Black is good. It starts off innocuously, but give it time to breathe and that smoky, rubbery, synthetic accord starts to come alive. It’s nothing like the acrid smoke monsters I often flirt with, burning a black swath through the air with cade and birch tar. In fact, there’s a transparency to Black that contrasts well with the smoke. It’s also a lot less cerebral and more approachable than one might expect. It’s the vanilla, which manages here to impart a soothing quality to the composition. The jasmine seems gentle, the leather becomes friendly. There is an attractive warmth to Black that reminds me that synthetic arts can in fact be very human, kindly even. This is a fragrance for urban types who do not find cities intimidating or overly exciting, but rather, welcoming and familiar.
After 4.5 hours, Black dries down to a warm vanillaic wood skin scent. My chief complaint is that Black seems weak overall and does not last very long to the point where I was tempted to knock my rating down to neutral. And if I am to be honest, I personally prefer something more aggressive. I’m afraid this was not FB worthy for me.
So there we have it. What was once limitless potential has been met with finitude. Although it was not a hollow disappointment, it’s strange to think that the chase for Black is now over. How shall I comfort myself, murderer of all murderers? Why, I shall steep a pot of tea, curl up with a book of poetry with my nose to my wrist, send in an order for another round of perfume samples and call it a day. Because I’m just a lady who enjoys smelly water. And it’s one white whale down with countless others to go.
If you have read up to this sentence, thank you for indulging me with this unnecessarily long and tangential review. Le parfum est mort. Vive le parfum!
