A new kind of niche firm has evolved in the last decade to satisfy all the motivations of the current fragrance buyer. It must be “niche,” so not one of the big brands; it must smell reassuringly like past perfume while flirting with novelty; it must be associated with a creator, not a company; it must offer a large range to be visible in the store and detain the customer long enough for an inevitable purchase. Maison Francis Kurkdjian is the prototype, and the huge success of Baccarat Rouge 540, the very essence of money for old rope, has all the copycats in heat.
Ella K, like MFK, is run by an experienced perfumer, Sonia Constant. According to Michael Edwards’s database, she has 179 perfumes to her name, not quite in the league of Kurkdjian’s 319, but still enough to know how the sausages are made. And these are French sausages. The French are brilliant at adapting everything to their taste and serving it up attractively. Anyone who has had “curry” sauce in a good French restaurant will know how they deal with the exotic: béchamel in weird colors.
You make the perfumery béchamel not with natural materials like flour and milk but with cheap aromachemicals, enough of them to achieve an illusion of natural complexity. This is the hubbub you experience in the air of a duty-free. Only perfumers who have seen and imitated hundreds of formulas know how to make those right noises. Once you’ve achieved that familiar perfumey clamor, to turn it into some sort of recognizable jingle you need to add two obligatory things and one optional one.
Obligatory: first, you must have a striking topnote, lasting just long enough for the punter to tap their credit card on the machine while the sales attendant intones the word “fresh.” Second, you must also have a cool name, preferably involving some faraway place currently being ruined by tourism. Optional: an interesting drydown. (It is hard to achieve, so it’s often left to fake sandalwood, woody ambers, and various vanilloids, because by the time the customer smells that, the payment has gone through.)
The Ella K range is impressive in that it includes all three of these. The top notes are fairly interesting, though never enough to frighten horses or in-laws. The orchestration says “fancy” in a pleather sort of way. From long experience, you expect it to fade to something trivial, but instead a pretty good drydown takes over. Sonia Constant clearly has exceptional skill, and if there was a state medal for Mérite Olfactif (and there jolly well should be) she would be a contender.
But mere skill counts for nothing much in the long term, and it takes exceptional talent to shake skill off. For every Debussy there are a dozen Saint-Saëns, for every Douanier Rousseau there are twenty Millets, and for every Dominique Ropion there are countless hacks cutting and pasting GC-MS analyses of the competition. I’ve often said perfume is a message in a bottle. Ella K’s messages are snippets of dinner party conversation delivered in that uniquely French voix de gorge everyone loves. The moment you step out into the fresh air, you forget what was said.
Luckyscent sent twelve Ella K samples. I smelled them all over two days. I tried hard to feel some sort of emotion. All I got was modern mass perfumery with inconsequential twists. I could not in conscience write detailed reviews, good or bad. Ghibli, Camelia K, and Poême de Sagano seemed nicer than the rest.
Thank you for making me laugh with “fancy” in a pleather sort of way 😂👏🏼
I can't stop laughing. And when I do, I'll write a warning: Luca, no one will ever send you anything again!