The Snarl of Supermarket Meat-Eaters (ROUND 1)
scent of the day: Tabac Vert, by Rogue
Dry tobacco (herbal-vegetal tobacco bent in a cigarette direction of outdoor jazz festivals) and bright moss (cool-mentholated soap bent in an Irish-Spring direction) that together might bring to mind smoking Newport 100s at an outdoor jazz festival in an ocean-breeze sun—perhaps even wearing a neon green and neon peach Newport cap from the heart of the yacht-rock era. Here we have a fougere that takes me back to the 80s power masculines and their signature soapy-and-dirty architecture just as much as if not more than the “real deal.”
I have the earliest version. So I cannot speak much to the newer formula, which I can recall from a LuckyScent dabber (lost now in the superposition Rich Mitch had in mind when he spoke of “Schrodinger’s 2ml”) being unimpressively soapy. But the version I own literally smells like one of my aged vintages. I am not a vintage whore. I made the wise decision early to go down in the artisanal path instead. But I have the big hitters: Kouros, Furyo, Lorenzo, Lapidus, Smalto. Balenciaga, Salvador Dali (perhaps my favorite), and so on. And this competes—more than competes. Bringing the anchor of sandalwood and labdanum like many in that era but going in the cold-stark-unsweet direction of Kouros and Furyo rather than the warm-cozy-sweet direction of Balenciaga and Lapidus.
When I say that it might even be better than the real deal, when I say it more than competes, I don’t mean it in the way one might imagine. Sometimes an homage to an era, a nostalgic recreation of a bygone decade, inserts every possible detail of the era that its like a hyperreal version of that era. Yes, malls in the 80s had neon and there were a lot of trapper keepers with the grid-line flatscape aesthetic and a gradient sun on the horizon. But not everything looked so intensely 80s as the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” depicts. Sometimes, to say it another way, a caricature of the era is so over-the-top that it is more that era than that era—like, one might say, certain Trump impersonators, through unreal exaggeration, are more Trump than Trump (and even allow us, like a hit of weed, to see Trump with new eyes, as if for the first time). Tabac Vert as an 80s-style frag does not take that caricature path.
When I say that Tabac Vert bests many of the hits of the day I mean it does so in a more straightforward and sober sense: (1) it does that era’s classical American masculine style (clean-meets-dirty) exactly like that style (very authentic, in that deep sense that you can tell Manny actually lived through it); (2) it limits itself to the same sort of ingredients of that American context (that silky-ashy tobacco we get in Lapidus, that dusty-nectar combo of jasmine and carnation we get in Kouros, down even the synthetic-soapy musk all these sons of bitches had) instead of making additional exotics twists like others of that same era (Gold Man, for example, with its S-tier olibanum); (3) it is too high quality, too meticulously thought out in composition, to think that its goal (which would have been fine enough) was merely to stand among the frags of that era instead of to stand above the frags of that era.
Again, the temptation whenever someone makes a nostalgic throwback is to cram every stereotype of the targeted era: every poster, every band reference, more neon, more Blade Runner atmosphere, more Tron allusions, and so on—turning up ever dial in that overcompensating way that announces “I am 80s!” Nothing is wrong with that, but many cannot resist the temptation. Tarantino’s exploitation-odes to the 70s era do just that: more film pop overlays, more brightness in the oranges, or whatever. The thing is, Tabac Vert categorically refuses to take that angle. And despite limiting itself in that way it still outcompetes many of the frags to which it pays homage.
The point cannot be overstated. Tabac Verte competes without resorting to caricature, fine. But many others do that as well. Notice, however, that Manny here does not take the approach of, say, Russian Adam, who pretty much trounces every older fragrances it honors (whether Mitsouko or Cuir de Russie) without any overt caricature and yet by using ingredients that the perfumers of that era could only wish they had. (Btw, if that Areej approach sounds wonderful, now you know why I am deep in the artisanal.)
Saying all this really emphasizes the feat that Manny accomplished with Tabac Verte. He took all the constraints of the era. He did not “cheat” with better ingredients. Imagine a boxer today eating and living like the boxers of yesterday (no steroids or spa treatments every second or even air conditioning) and still going back to give Marciano and even Lewis a shocking fight. That is what we are talking here. Hats off. If this were acting, Manny’s Tabac Vert would be method-acting of Daniel-Day Lewis in My Left Foot and Lincoln.
*Let’s workshop this poem about the grotesque moral hypocrisy by which a “civilized” public prefers the sterile concealment of the cruelty-full needle to the bloody honesty of cruelty-free guillotine.
The Snarl of Supermarket Meat-Eaters
Insisting upon lethal injection (clean white lie) over humane guillotine (dirty red truth),
prudish hangups trump the sheeted thrashing of vein-fire, the gasping of lung-juice—
or just might piggish cruelty, our clit-smacking need for stretch, be what really reigns?
