“ALPHA AF”

I have a little group of about a dozen friends who are seasoned fragrance collectors with impeccable taste. Although we are scattered around the world, we share our thoughts about fragrance just about every day. We each have our own style of discovery, but one that is common is to develop admiration for a particular perfumer, and then seek out every bit of his or her work to sample.

A good friend from this group, whose tastes are very similar to mine, had been running through the works of Cécile Zarokian. I believe it started with an exploration of the house of Jacques Fath, and stumbling upon the beauty of her recreation of Green Water. So, while researching her other work, he comes across a few descriptions of Private Label, including a review by Kafkaesque. And, he blind-buys a bottle, declaring that he’s either going to smell “like a badass, or someone who just sealcoated a driveway.” Color me intrigued….

Fast-forward a few weeks, and my friend with the superb taste has been binge-wearing Private Label for days. And, as he’s describing it, I can feel the sparks coming off his keyboard:

5/25-5/30 Nonstop applications of Jovoy Private Label. Vicks VapoRub moving into the best bits of TF’s Vert d’Encens and ending with Pine-Sol. Hooked. I commissioned a new perfume scarf for next winter…all hand-spun fibers…white angora bolstered with white merino and white silk. A showstopper of a perfume in the summer, this will be my signature come winter. I will walk the avenues and boulevards, chin held high, wearing a scarf reeking of lofty balsams and loathing. An absolute “fuck you if you don’t enjoy my scent” attitude-inspiring juice.

My immediate response was <swoon>. Balsams and loathing? Come on, who doesn’t want to smell like that? Sounds A-MA-ZING! And we all went off immediately to order samples. As they came trickling in and each person tried it, the comments kept coming. Cooling, tickling, enchanting, couture, black-green, “Vapo-rub perfume”, nose-hair searing, pungent, an absolute addiction, positive attention from every direction, Alpha AF.

BEAST-MODE FRAGRANCE PERFORMANCE

If I were given the power to eliminate one word from the fragrance community’s lexicon, I would choose “performance.” I mean, we are buying perfume, not race cars or cardiac defibrillators or high-precision robots. Yet, some people seem to value “performance” over everything else, and will complain bitterly about a fragrance that smells very good but only lasts for 4 hours on skin, or has a low level of projection.

I personally like to apply a different fragrance two or three times a day, so a fragrance that runs its course in about 6 hours is perfect for me. But I understand that people have different wants and needs, and that longevity and monstrous projection are a priority for some of them. So, when I applied Private Label one morning at 6:00 AM, then fully showered at 4:00 PM and could still smell it distinctly on my skin for several more hours, I thought that there would be some people out in the world who would appreciate knowing about it. This stuff lasts and lasts. Often I apply it in the morning and can still smell it faintly on myself the next morning.

Longevity = A+

If you’ve ever wanted to wear a fragrance that left a trail of scent behind you wherever you go, Jovoy Private Label is absolutely the scent to do it. It doesn’t just project, it lingers in the air. Jovoy’s artistic director (who brought the brand back from total obscurity) François Hénin describes it as “the archetypal parfum de sillage: it leaves a distinct trail while remaining constant over time,” and he is not just blowing (scented) smoke. People will know when you’ve recently been in a room. Finally, those fantasies about people following the trail of your scent down the street to ask you what you’re wearing can come true!

Sillage = A+

The thing that finally swayed me to do such an audacious (for me) review format for this particular fragrance was my experience the day that I was taking the photos of the bottle. I wasn’t wearing Private Label that day, I was wearing a completely different perfume.

After taking a few photos, I walked into the bathroom and I could smell Private Label on myself as though I was wearing several sprays — just from handling the cap! It completely overtook the other fragrance and left it in the dust. And, the smell didn’t wash away after I scrubbed my hands with soap either. I ended up having to wear Private Label for the rest of the day, because this fragrance is so commanding, it always gets exactly what it wants.

Overall Performance = A++ (BEAST MODE)

VERSATILITY AND CROWD-PLEASING ABILITY

This is usually the part of “new-school” fragrance reviews/editorials where I check out. I feel like these things are personal and highly variable. Also, to me they’re not at all important. I like what are sometimes referred to as “challenging” fragrances, and I don’t really mind if people around me don’t love them the same way that I do. Just like not everybody is going to love your kids or your pet or your taste in music… c’est la vie. I also am not a big believer in pigeonholing scents into seasons and occasions. I feel like people who do this are missing out on some spectacular experiences.

So, is Private Label a versatile cologne that can be used for multiple purposes? I’m not even sure what that means. I wouldn’t recommend brushing your teeth with it. Can you wear it to the office? I do (all the time). Can you wear it on a date? Yes please (if you’re going with me). Can you wear it to the club? Absolutely. To brunch with grandma? Sure, why not. Is Private Label going to fit your personal style in all of these situations? Well, how would I know? These are things that only you can (and should) decide for yourself.

Is Private Label a crowd-pleaser? I’m going to have to say no. To me, it smells like money and power. And it has an enormous sillage. Not everybody wants to smell the scent of money and power in their personal space. Some people only want to smell clean laundry. They won’t appreciate you wafting your potent, commanding scent all around, intriguing others with your bouquet of danger. And, Private Label is so distinctive that it won’t EVER be mistaken for any other scent, so people will quickly begin to associate it with you. And then, every time your scent of domination bursts their bubble of safety, they’ll know exactly who to blame.

The bottom line is, Jovoy Private Label may or may not fit your personal style (unless you only like to smell like clean laundry, then it definitely will not). Jovoy Private Label might be well-liked by the people around you, or they might hate it — this depends on who you know and what appeals to them. The one thing that I can guarantee is that people around you will smell it. And you won’t smell like anyone else. Everything else is variable and a matter of personal taste.

JOVOY PRIVATE LABEL – A SCENT FOR ALL SEASONS

The one thing that I actually DO want to talk about is the “seasonal” aspect of wearing Private Label. I often see it referred to as a “winter scent.” Not true! Private Label is a true year-round scent, I promise you. If you are saving this for winter, you are missing out, big-time!

Yes, Private Label is a woody-resinous perfume. But it’s not very sweet, and it’s incredibly dry. It also has this extreme cooling, mentholated effect. This makes it amazing to wear in summer heat and humidity. In fact, summertime is my very favorite time to wear it. It certainly works in fall, winter, and spring, but summer is when it absolutely shines. I wore it all over New Orleans in August, shunning all the other scents in my bag, and if that’s not a test of warm weather performance, I don’t know what is.

So, enough of this fooling around, let’s get down to business. For those who’ve bothered to read this far, you’re probably wanting to know what Private Label actually smells like. You’re my kind of people. And yet, that doesn’t mean that we will have the same tastes. I really enjoy Private Label, but it’s a unique fragrance, and won’t be for everyone.

You’ve already seen descriptions here likening it to Vapo-Rub and Pine-Sol. If you click the link to Kafkaesque’s review, you’ll see words like napalm and dildo. (Go on back and click it now, you know you want to!) So…. while I am happy to share that I personally love this fragrance, I’m not endorsing it as a blind-buy, or a crowd-pleaser. As always, try before you buy.

Also, just in case I snared any new audience members with my clickbait title, I have to disclose now that this fragrance will not get you all the girls. You have to do that on your own. Being a person who reads for pleasure will help though, so keep coming back and expanding your literary horizons. I try to have something here for everybody.

JOVOY PRIVATE LABEL FRAGRANCE REVIEW

Jovoy Private Label commands the room as soon as it leaves the bottle. The opening is extraordinarily phenolic — like pouring asphalt in the heat of the desert at high noon. If you’ve ever seen the oily, swirling gases that come off hot tar, refracting your vision slightly, that’s what you’ll be smelling. Under this viscous tar, you’ll find the most leathery, beaver-y, and phenolic aspects of cistus, giving the effect of thick, black leather that’s been soaked in gasoline. Way off in the distance there is bone-dry vetiver grass. One spark would ignite everything around you.

After about 15 minutes, the tar smell starts to subside and you can smell all of the wonderful bits that have been hiding in its shadows. Over time, Private Label becomes ever-so-slightly sweeter, as the tar and turpentine smells burn off, but it does not really change much. This might lead people to think that it is a simple fragrance, but it is actually very complex and nuanced.

Rather than describe everything that I smell in Private Label one by one, line by line, I made a word cloud. I’ll hit some of the highlights, but here is a good visual summary.

If you’ve read other reviews of Private Label, one thing you’ll probably notice is that I don’t have cade, smoke, or burnt anywhere in my word cloud. I don’t get any sense of cade from Private Label. I feel like there is certainly some birch tar, but to my nose, a lot of the leather accord comes from labdanum. It’s that half-animal, half-alien smell of waxed leather and hot circuit boards. There are billows of smoke in there, but nothing burning.

The other note that I don’t have in my word cloud is peppermint. To me, Private Label smells mentholated, but not “minty.” Especially not peppermint, which I associate with sweetness. The menthol in Private Label is not sweet. I get more of a sense of thujone than mint.

Thujone is the chemical compound that makes absinthe smell and taste mentholated and herbal. Modern-day absinthe in the U.S. has negligible amounts of thujone, so it is not a really good representation (it tends to smell far too much like anise). In perfumery, the thujonic note of “absinthe” can come from artemisia absinthum (wormwood) oil, athough there are other thujonic substances that can be used to the same effect. Some examples are armoise and davana oils (which come from different species of wormwood), and cedarleaf.

The menthol in Private Label smells mostly like a combination of cedarleaf and eucalyptus to me, although I pick up some savory herbal minty hits of spearmint now and again, along with the deep wintergreen-like smell of birch. Some of the other herbal smells that I detect are tarragon, ginger, clove/carnation, and a furry-pepperiness that reminds me of guaiac.

The vetiver in Private Label is extraordinary. I am not really even a big fan of vetiver myself (with the exception of Sycomore), but I really enjoy the vetiver here. It’s quite woody, dark and smoky, a little bit powdery, and extremely dry. (It is thankfully NOT the camphor-laden wet cypriolic type.) The overall effect is very clean, and it’s a nice juxtaposition with the tarry aspects of the fragrance. The patchouli also is rather clean and herbaceous, with a nice “chewy” texture and just the right amount of powderiness. Other woody smells that I experience in Private Label are cedar, cedarleaf, and a very fresh and sweet fir-needle balsam that smells like lush forest floor.

There is some subtle sweetness in Private Label. Mainly this seems to come from a warm, spicy coumarin, but at times I swear that I get a whiff of mimosa. There is also a sweet sandalwood in the base that smells a bit like cashew butter to me.

JOVOY PRIVATE LABEL DETAILS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ve poked a little bit of fun at the way that a lot of fragrance reviews seem to go these days, but I’ve also tried to include some useful information about the fragrance, and how it smells.

The biggest points that I have to share about Private Label are that it has very impressive longevity and (true) sillage, and that it is a very unique scent. Also, I hope that people will not hesitate to try it in summer (it’s amazing!) and that women who like daring scents will check it out. If you are a man or a woman who is looking for a bold and distinctive scent, Private Label might appeal to you. In my opinion, it would make an excellent signature scent for those who are looking for something special that people will immediately associate with you.

Private Label is a Jovoy scent, so it is available at Jovoy Paris. (I can’t wait to visit that store in person someday!) In the U.S. I know that it is also stocked at Luckyscent and Aedes de Venustas. (I don’t host any affiliate links, so enjoy cookie-free clicking).

Also, I have to mention that my husband bought my bottle of Private Label as a Christmas gift for me last year from Smallflower, (where it is also currently stocked). He chose it from my secret wishlist that I didn’t know he had found, and along with the bottle they sent a small sample vial (so that it can be tried before opening). He must have been expecting something pretty and delicate, because when he smelled the sample vial, he thought they had sent the wrong fragrance. I was so surprised, and tremendously pleased, to open it on Christmas morning, and immediately covered myself from head-to-toe with the sweet scent of “lofty balsams and loathing….”

P.S.

If you want to see other reviews of fragrances by Cécile Zarokian, check out my review of Masque Milano Tango.