Several people recommended I look into Rogue Perfumery, so I asked and they kindly sent samples of their entire collection. Rogue is an unusual niche firm in that it seems to focus on a type of fragrance I never thought would become extinct: a well-built, not particularly ambitious, solidly pleasant fragrance made from a sensible mixture of good naturals and synthetics. As Rogue owner and former chef Manuel Cross says, “ I can’t say I’ve made anything groundbreaking; I just make what I enjoy.”
This style used to be the staple of perfumery. With a couple of exceptions, the entire Rogue range could have been offered by a second-rank French fragrance firm in the 1980s. What is amazing is that it now feels like high luxury. What happened? Well, for a start, the absurd IFRA regulations have nixed many staple materials. Bear in mind the principle of IFRA is so daft that it could only have been dreamt up with the help of dermatologists.
It goes something like this: if enough people complain about allergies to a given raw material, it gets restricted. This requires two things. First, the material must be in wide use so that enough people complain and appear on the radar of EU authorities. Second, the material must have a relatively weak smell, therefore used in decently high concentrations. There is no correlation between odor intensity and allergenic potential, so very strong materials (javanol, woody ambers) will never become allergens because there’s just not enough of the stuff in the fragrance.
Add these two mechanisms together, and most “5–10%” materials in wide use will, in good time, cause some sort of rash and end up banned or restricted. That is how the perfumer’s palette shrank, and that is why very powerful materials now rule. Add to this that there’s less money to be made from commoditized materials than from patented specialties (patents last 20 years), and maybe it becomes clear why the IFFs of this world only fought half-heartedly against regulation. This reminds me of DuPont (now moronically renamed Chemours) fighting tooth and nail against CFC regulations until they had a replacement, whereupon they gave cash to the greens.
Anyway…IFRA and EU rules do not apply to the US, so you can ignore them as long as you are happy not to sell in the EU and wherever else all this BS has taken hold. Manuel Cross saw an opportunity. As he says, “entire genres of classic fragrances are being either discontinued or completely reformulated.” His modest but entirely valid project seems to have been to revive, for lack of a better word, the sound of classic fragrance. To continue the musical metaphor, his collection feels like fragrance played on original instruments, or better yet, given the synchrony between the disappearance of LPs and oakmoss: like vinyl.
For paying subscribers, capsule reviews of Fougere l’Aube, Bon Monsieur, Chypre-Siam, Jasmin Antique, Champs Lunaires, Derviche II, Tabac Vert , Mousse Illuminée, Tubéreuse Oakmoss, A L’Oud Ancienne, L’Homme.