When I first got a sample of Statik’s Into the Wild some time back, I filed it mentally in the bleak fougère category. It’s a style I’m rather fond of, spanning from Pitralon to Paco Rabanne Pour Homme, and which I associate with the stoic, meticulous masculinity of trouser presses and dress watches. The black-and-gold look of the packaging, the Victorian riot of typefaces, the awkward slogan1 all suggested to me that it had come from a place that was recovering from a long style-free period, possibly Poland. However, I felt no urge then to review it.
A couple of weeks ago came a package that made me rethink all my assumptions. Statik is in fact based in Florida. ITW was composed by its owner Chris Martin. The firm exemplifies all that is good about American obsessive eccentricity. The US is a place where amateurs invest vast amounts of effort and money to realize their dreams and then make a living from them. This takes the form of things like custom desks made from DC-3 tail planes, some of the best woodworking and cabinet-making in the world, great jewelry, outstanding craft beers, superlative olive oil, paddlefish caviar, etc. The US—like Eastern Europe now—is a place of tremendous amateur passion and enterprise.
These four new fragrances have been composed by two self-taught perfumers of talent and erudition, Darren Alan whose fragrances I have reviewed here, and Paul Kiler who did Panda and Rhinoceros for Zoologist. They all have a wonderfully old-fashioned romantic feel, a deliberate reference to time when fragrances were expected to smell lush, sentimental and beguiling. To a critic who always hankers for novelty and surprise, they provided another kind of surprise: none, just lovely stuff.
Scarlett Lady
Scarlett Lady is a vast, lush rose with a touch of fruit and chocolate. Tania instantly described it as a ballroom perfume. It is the fragrance blast your beloved radiates when she emerges from the bathroom after what felt like several hours of secret machinations, looking drop-dead gorgeous. If you like big floral bouquets in the manner of Bal à Versailles, this one’s for you.
Finding Forbidden Love
A delicious powdery peach-pear floral remotely related to Lauder’s Beautiful with a lovely woody-spicy drydown. Could make a great suave masculine.
The Forbidden Temple
A comfortable apricot-tea accord with a good soft drydown, possibly due to a mysterious material Paul Kiler calls his “specially made captive basenote molecule.” Also a fine masculine in the unfairly neglected Globe and Insensé style.
Dead or Alive
Up top it’s a peaty, warm, woody-spicy affair, a sort of wearable bourbon. As it dries down a liquorous candied fruit and old fashioned animalic musk takes over. The whole thing is comfortable, friendly and civilised. Splash it on, take the Scarlett Lady by the hand, and fire up the ‘Vette.
“Creating static imagery through olfactive scent memory”
The PK captive basenote molecule in both fragrances, actually, combines Incense and Tea in one molecule, with a molecular weight of 424.
“The firm exemplifies all that is good about American obsessive eccentricity. The US is a place where amateurs invest vast amounts of effort and money to realize their dreams and then make a living from them. This takes the form of things like custom desks made from DC-3 tail planes, some of the best woodworking and cabinet-making in the world, great jewelry, outstanding craft beers, superlative olive oil, paddlefish caviar, etc. The US—like Eastern Europe now—is a place of tremendous amateur passion and enterprise.”
This is the stuff of the best ethnographic tradition. You would’ve made an excellent sociocultural anthropologist, Luca. Reading your social commentary is pleasurable in the same way as reading James Agee or listening to Bruce Springsteen.