With its new creation now available in Paris at le Bon Marché, The Different Company writes a new and rather different chapter in its beautiful history. The house that gave us an exceptional woody orris and a strong rose follows the paths of its design debut. In fact the art director of this perfume is Thierry De Baschmakoff, the designer of the house, who pays a tribute to its Russian origins. The perfume called De Bachmakov smells like the first images I had many years ago about the brand, with their heavy cubic bottles, their metallic cap and the other metallic "jars". Before I had the access to the first perfumes, The Different Company was "smelling" to me like the purest form of design - cold, metallic, sharp, abstract and not sensual at all. It was this feeling that I discovered in the new creation - a Nordic freshness infused with botanic accents with a great tenacity. This is a perfume that has the freshness of a minty vegetal cologne with the longevity of an amber. The metallic-green-lemony and terpenic freshness seems to last forever but in fact it is replaced with a very warm woody ambery drydown. It is rather amusing to see how ambery notes (like ambrox, cetalox) have almost lost their animalic tone to become the symbol of a new freshness. De Bachmakov smells indeed like vodka or gin with ice and green leaves. Is it the juniper with its woody facets?
The perfume De Bachmakov is infused with images from the personal history of the designer - a Russian fiction or a Russian trip in time and space. It starts in 1662 the year when the tsar granted several privileges to his family (this can be seen in the beautiful red seal that closes the paper packaging) and continues in 1917 when his grand father left Russia. 2010 is also "L'année de la Russie en France" and we can see here a beautiful link with the past.
The creation seems to be inspired by scent of alcohol, ice, snow and Siberian forests and here I have already 2 strong historic images - first is the metaphor that gave birth to Chanel No 5 (the arctic vision & the aldehydes) and second a famous Russian cologne with a bear on an ice (created before the revolution but sold also during the soviet era).
The cedar evokes the forest, the pines and the vegetation found at high altitudes. It is combined with a very cold lily of the valley, fresh like linalool but floral like freesia (un peu DMBCA) and the woody elements of a cold green tea. Green and aldehydic notes are combined to express a vegetal freshness with a very Asian touch - coriander leaves and shiso leaves - where the cold spicy notes plays an important role (nutmeg and maybe a touch of cinnamon) in the soft jasmine cloud.
Cologne Mugler introduced the green notes in a fresh and musky context while this year La Cologne du Parfumeur (Guerlain) did almost the same with a modern touch. 30 years ago Polo did the same in a heavy chypre woody context. With "De Bachmakov" Celine Ellena rewrites the page in a new and daring way putting together the green and the tree from an imaginary Siberian forest. It smells the nature condensed in a glass of vodka like people did in the past to extract through maceration the principles of plants. The green sap of a magic forest breathing the life.
On a metaphoric level we are back 500 years ago when a perfumer would bring together herbs, spices, flowers in an alambic to be distilled with "esprit de vie". The result, different from the modern blending of oils, was an elixir, both remedy and perfume.
The tree of life and its magic green scent - what a beautiful metaphor to express the genealogy of a family!
The tree of life and its magic green scent - what a beautiful metaphor to express the genealogy of a family!
"C’est bien ce doux mélange que j’ai tenté de traduire, un coin de terre où le réveil a des allures de révolution…Une rencontre improbable entre les deux Russies, la beauté gracile face à la beauté virile, la beauté dans son romantisme le plus essentiel. Là où perdue dans une immensité colossale, une femme regarde un homme avec une douce provocation, comme dans un roman russe où le drame côtoie la joie." - Thierry De Baschmakoff
Official fragrance ingredients for "De Bachmakov" from The Different Company: cedar, coriander leaf, bergamot, white freesia, shiso leaves, nutmeg.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
