Furyo Jacques Bogart

Company Jacques Bogart SA, founded in 1975 by Regina and Jacques Konckier, is known not only for its perfumes and cosmetics. For example, in 1986, the company acquired the rights for fashion house Balenciaga, to resume production of its perfumes, and to revive the production of clothing. (Now the Balenciaga fragrance license belongs toCoty, and the couture belongs to Kering). Jacques Bogart Paris manufactures and distributes the fragrances of its own brand, but also has the licenses of some other fragrances brands: Ted Lapidus, Carven, Chevignon, Naf Naf, Ettore Bugatti, Faconnable, Lee Cooper Originals, John Players Special, Ventilo ... For example, it was Jacques Konckier who dreamed up such popular perfumes of the 80s-90s as Ted Lapidus Creation and Ted Lapidus Pour Homme,Balenciaga Rumba and Balenciaga Talisman. Furyo Jacques Bogart also appeared in the 80s, and while it did not become as popular as masculine Bogart or One Man Show, still it had some charm of a Hollywood actor. I did not have any idea where the name Furyo (really, fury? Or maybe o-furo?) came from so I had to explore this question to understand the perfume. And I have absolutely no idea what is pictured on the box with its gravel color and texture.

by: Serguey Borisov

It turns out that “Furyo” means “prisoner of war” in Japanese. The other times I'd ask myself why a POW image was chosen as a romantic or heroic image, but not this time.
Furyo is the Japanese title of the British-Japanese film of 1983, starring David Bowie as POW Major Jack Sellers (the film is better known under the name Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence!). Furyo was directed by Nagisa Oshima, who admitted that he chose David Bowie for the lead role of the film because he “embodies the inner strength that cannot be destroyed.”

We will not retell the content of this film about the clash of the steely characters of a British Major POW and a Japanese concentration camp commandant. We note only that the movie is marked as “for adults,” which can be represented in the perfume. Sword against shield, and both have been destroyed, despite the “special homoerotic feeling” of one for the other.

In essence, Furyo Jacques Bogart recalls an Asian palm civet that eats leaves of patchouli, jasmine flowers, coriander seeds and cinnamon bark instead of the ripest coffee berries (remember the famous rare Asian coffee Kopi Luwak?). Her special diet … ummmm ... let's say, affects the overall odor of the animal and its secretions. Anyway the owner loved his pet civet, and constantly shared his own cologne with the pet—it is some very potent and rough manly cologne. And here's how Furyo comes along, a half-man and half-beast odor, the smell of a POW ruled by the instinct to live and a sense of duty.

Laurel and lavender notes modestly adorn the beginning of Furyo, a spicy thick wall of smell in the spirit of tje aromatic spicy masculine colognes of the 80s, “the beast with two backs,” which seems like it combined the chypre and fougère skeletons. The strong spirit of the British gentleman and a Bushido samurai spirit in one perfume—classic jasmine, geranium, carnation. And the animal civet and musk appear naturally—a civet cat's nature is like this. The jasmine patchouli of Furyo's drydown differs very slightly from the lemon jasmine of Ungaro II Pour Homme, but both are civet-based.


Remember the dense and muscular Rochas Macassar, Yves Saint-Laurent Kouros,Lapidus Pour Homme, Christian Dior Jules, Salvador Dali Pour Homme, Gianfranco Ferre for Men—here are the comprehensive smokescreens in fragrance reincarnations, the stun grenades of perfumery, which were difficult to classify at once, as if their creators did not want to choose one way and went in all directions at the same time. Remember this fashion of the 80s, with its impermeable and dark colognes? Remember their dark bottles, in which the spray was mounted into a plastic stopper?

Furyo just fits the description of 80s masculines, densely packed with testosterone, codes, rules, problems, flowers, spices and animals, and then actions, deeds and experiences. Nowadays the perfume would be divided to three or four different easy-going modern colognes. A half-spray of Furyo today is enough to be called a "mossy creaker," a man of the past —but in the 80s it was the scent of young tough guys, the scent of every disco king and club hero.

Still, the perfume could be The Perfect Time Machine —and there's no other useful (non-comedic) application.

It turns out that Jacques Bogart with Caron Paris and Alain Delon Parfums embodied the same business strategy: to create fragrances based upon acclaimed films.
There's Le Troisieme Homme de Caron devoted to the namesake film (screenplay by Graham Greene, Orson Welles, Carol Reed) and Samourai cologne based on the namesake film of Alain Delon. By the way, judging by the latest fragrances from Mark Buxton, starting with L’Air de Panache from Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, the strategy of emotional involvement returns after simple celebrity-scents.


One question remains: what is shown on the Jacques Bogart Furyo cardboard packaging? Is it a hot dog in a brazen magpie's beak? Or a sword and shield? Or is it a plane without a wing? Tell me.

(Song "Forbidden Colors" from Furyo / Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence!):

Jacques Bogart Furyo

Top notes: Lavender, Coriander, Bergamot, Ambrette, Laurel;
Heart notes: Carnation, Jasmine, Geranium, Cinnamon, Thyme;
Base notes: Amber, Oakmoss, Musk, Vetiver, Castoreum, Patchouli, Tobacco, Civet.