My old friend Balenciaga pour Homme

by: Mike V. Shilov

Recently I felt nostalgic about discontinued fragrances but today I'm happy to discover new and rediscover old beautiful fragrant names. Firstly, I've found and ordered on-line amazing Havana Vanille and Black Afghan. And once, surfing beloved Fragrantica, I found a real gem in the dust - Balenciaga pour Homme issued 26 years ago. Having read the description and passionate reviews, I started looking for it over the web and found it having a good bargain, considering its rarity.

photo by Mike V.Shilov

A bottle of Eau de Toilette and its olfactory pyramid recalled bright and self assured fragrances of the 80s: One Man Show, Furyo, Phileas, Lauder and my permanent companion since early adolescence Tuscany per Uomo. At that time perfumers still had free hands in their work, IFRA recommendations did not endangered to transform real perfumes into their pale copies. That's why trying Balenciaga pour Homme just brought by a courrier became a thrilling immersion into nearly forgotten feeling of real richness and deepness of a scent. Oak moss, leather, incense, patchouli, amber are just several treasures of this vintage masterpiece. Its age appear itself only with value of ingredients and there is neither retro-feeling in it nor stuffiness or &granny's coffer& effect.

Telling you that I'm struck and amazed, means to let partly truth, only emotional side of perceiving this newly opened old scent. Rational side is that sniffing it, I immediately felt the quintessence of what many modern niche fragrances want to create. Being less dependent of marketing dictate, they can afford themselves this level of sophistication and ambiguousness, this way of expression of a free talent, that was a standard in perfume industry before. But irony is that some niche brands look like excessively chic demi-mondaines wearing fur coats on naked body and others -like capsule H&M collections' fans who delude themselves with a sense of belonging to an Haute Couture world.

Against them a severe monolith of Balenciaga pour Homme looks like a reminder of "comme il faut", considering a certain level of upbringing, education and social status. This fragrance is sophisticated and elegant, multi-layered and intellectual. One can make sense of it as of conundrum listening to a finest trembling of perfume waives changing with your every move and with the time flow transforming into long sweet veil.

Malachite drop on the stopper adds an important accent to understanding the scent: it isn't smug, but full of joy and timeless beauty. I want to admire it again and again, - each time when I take it and push the spray button, seems that I see my reflection in a mirror. Its amalgam is a bit fade, but patina doesn't prevent from seing what is the most important: the only destination of a soul in a bottle is to find its twin soul among us.

Translation: Eugeniya Chudakova