Czech & Speake No. 88
Czech & Speake claim No. 88 is based upon an old Elizabethan recipe, and it certainly has that texture. The arrangement seems vaguely familiar, but the excellence of No. 88 resides in its elegant style. My enjoyment of it is akin to watching artfully made Hong Kong action films . Many of the wuxia-type movies I like best seem embedded in an old recipe, too. But nowadays what elevates a flick to a film has much to do with the way the stylistic choices are made, and the depth and resonance of those choices.
A bittersweet bergamot opens No. 88, brightening my skin with shafts of cold sunlight. A clean floral element amalgamates into this note as if it were a herbal tonic. As the scent warms, the light remains cold while the cologne’s colors intensify in tone.
A rose then actuates, moving through the golden liquid. Its path is defined by the sandalwood rooted in place. While this mix may read as ordinary, in No. 88 it is anything but.
Green elements lurk inside its heart. A barbered tang* of geranium somehow fills the fragrance with both stealth and stridency. When I’m not paying attention I don’t notice it at all for a while. And then BOO! its there.
Vetiver is often noticed in No. 88 by other perfume fans, but I think if this note is used in the base, it is to cast a stemmy shadow against the brighter shadings of the rosy sandalwood backdrop.
As a whole, the scent wears remote on me, as if it is distancing itself from my skin.
It’s like being close enough to stare at a warm glow, but too far removed to feel the heat. This may sound like a negative quality, and for some folks it will be, yet I find the effect strangely beautiful.
Starting from the top, with image source cited in parenthesis, the movie images above are: Fong Sai Yuk (cinemafareast.de), Hero (Yahoo! Movies), House of Flying Daggers (Yahoo! Movies), The Bride With White Hair (portlandstreet.com), and The Legend of Zu (hkcinemagic.com). I especially recommend Fong Sai Yuk, since it’s my favorite Jet Li movie. (He didn’t always make crummy Hollywood movies with second-rate pop stars.)
*Pun not intended, but there it is I guess.
October 26th, 2005 at 6:51 am
I did to try it at last. Rose and sandalwood combination can never sound boring to me! Thank you for your review.
October 26th, 2005 at 7:17 am
This has got to be the most original comparison in the history of perfume reviews…a Hong Kong action movie…Incredible review, K!
October 26th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Fabulous review as usual!
I have to admit that No88 is my favourite C&S next to Dark Rose. I get quite a strong frangipani note in it too. Did you notice it? I quite like frangipani, I even liked Guerlain’s short lived Mahora. Ormonde Jayne’s Frangipani is to die for.
Scentzilla, if you would like to try out Dark Rose, send me an email and I will organise a decant. I presume you can access my email..hope so. I just don’t like to put my email address up for public view.
Barry
October 26th, 2005 at 10:09 am
Have a sample & will dig it out as soon as I wash off this morning’s fragrance. It sounds lovely.
October 26th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
V - glad you think that, and I do hope you enjoy this one.
M- thanks, it is a rather silly thing to do, of course, but I’m happy someone appreciates my multifaceted geekiness.
B - will email you later this evening, and I understand exactly about not making your email public. I hate even asking for them, but unfortunately I hate those pesky comment spammers even more. I do get frangipani from it as a matter of fact, but it’s not anything that occurs to me naturally. I have to think about it, and how it’s blended here causes me to not instantly recognize it at all. I read somewhere a mention something about how when you mix frangipani with cassie the texture of the smell changes a lot, and I wonder if that isn’t true.
R - can’t wait to hear what you think of it finally! Do let me know one of these days what your impressions are.
October 27th, 2005 at 10:54 am
I must say, I can’t tell whether I’d like the scent or not (not being a huge rose fan) but the Hong Kong film treatment was a blast. Particularly liked the “Green elements lurk inside its heart” with the green-clad faceless warriors behind the bamboo. That actually got a giggle out of me.
By the way, what is a barbered tang? Because I’m an idiot, I imagine, like, a jar of Tang getting a haircut. Clearly, this is not what you meant. And yet I am having some kind of brain malfunction that does not allow me to figure it out.
October 27th, 2005 at 11:15 am
T - Kind of what you’d think, actually. Barbered, as in barber shop, and tang as in sharp and distinctive. There’s this general smell I associate with barber shops, probably gotten from always visiting the shop my grandfather ran when I was a kid. I likely was just smelling all the rampant scents of old-fashioned hair pommade and aftershave that he’d use on customers after finishing the hair trimming portion of his services.
Glad you got a giggle out of that bit of geekery - now that I’ve gone and done a HK perfume tie-in, I am thinking at some point I could attempt to tie in my 8 track tape collection to perfume, too. No? Oh, alright, maybe not. Maybe a perfume review ode to David Foster Wallace? It could be made of 10% text, and 90% footnotes.
October 30th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
You still have 8-tracks?
Dude.
Actually, my family had an 8-track stereo well into the mid-’90s. Dad bought a stereo with a cassette player right about the time they went obsolete. My favorite 8-track was a compendium of Disney songs. Really. I kinda wish I still had it.
Hmm, what *is* the scent of David Foster Wallace?
I went to see him read once at Barnes & Noble. He was chubby, unwashed, unshaven, with a disturbingly mime-reminiscent black-and-white horizontal-striped longsleeved t-shirt tucked into stonewashed tapered jeans, the hems of which were tucked into his hiking boots. In his back right pocket was visible the clear outline of a large circular tin. Chaw? we wondered.
See, that’s why I fear I shall never become an Important Writer. I get out of the house and check myself in the mirror once in a while.
October 31st, 2005 at 3:20 pm
I hear he’s got a serious chaw problem - like, students from his classes report him spitting in class and such. Ew.
Don’t mock the 8-track, it has personality. You really haven’t lived until you’ve heard the strains of Copacabana thumping out of a four dollar 8-track player.