With the return of former collaborator Maurice Roucel, Uncut Gem by Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle is a perfume inspired by Roucel’s personal pleasures.
The work of a perfumer, as the nose of a House or as part of a conglomerate, has become something abstract in recent years. While it still involves the responsibility of putting out a fragrance (and in certain cases, creating a world around it that extends to its visual merchandising and advertising campaigns), it is about trying to be faithful to the brand’s DNA as it is reinterpreting what the olfactory landscape means in the context of today. It is equal parts dialogue and direction, the pushes and pulls that determine a fragrance’s success.
Success, however, is but a small interest for Maurice Roucel whose career spans nearly fifty years. Sure, his creations which teeter more than 150 fragrances have had success (he previously created Dans Tes Bras and Musc Ravegeur for Frédéric Malle) and he comes from the Mount Olympus of Haute-Parfumerie (he was a chemist at Chanel for six years) but instead, Roucel is more interested in the idea of a fragrance.
He is excited to talk about its eroticism (“The women light a fire over the brazier and stand over the smoke so that the smoke enters their ladies’ parts.”) or wax lyrical about quotes that make a great perfumer (“Only the artist feels created, he creates as he breaths.”) but one thing he is unwilling to converse about, however, is a fragrance creation brief with a compromise from either party.
Out of respect and regard comes the brief from Frédéric Malle to Roucel after a persuasion period of five years: it had to be “an almost-too-obvious, in-your-face cologne” that is a near-faithful creation to the one Roucel blended for his personal usage. It should be akin to an uncut gem; rough around the edges and uncompromising in its make. All Malle had to do himself is to add that slight bit of polish that makes his eponymous fragrances highly refined.
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“He seems rough around the edges at first glance but it’s a deliberate choice! He’s a force: incredibly refined intellectually and filled with humour and love of people. I’m not the only one who thought that he smelled good, but I am the only one he’d work with to evolve the scent from a rough sketch into something refined. And I’m honoured because it’s autobiographical and personal.” says Malle.
Magnificently composed and with a certain self-confident broad-legged attitude, Frédéric Malle’s Uncut Gem opens with a blast of fresh ginger that rounds itself with the clear spicy top notes of ginger, bergamot and nutmeg before firing up into what makes a Roucel classic: a leathery accord, an overdose of ambroxonide (a synthetic replacement for ambergris that when used even in small quantities under the hands of lesser perfumers, becomes noxious in scent), and an animal musk that vibrates on the skin.
It is straightforward in its raw sex appeal without forgetting the subconsciousness of why we wear fragrances. We wear it to make a bold first impression as we would want it to make an aromatic imprint on the people we meet and sometimes, an olfactory medium itself is the message.
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