When a baseball player hits a single, a double, a triple, and a home run, in one game, that is called “hitting for the cycle”.  It is nothing short of extraordinary and shows the versatility of the hitter to be able to hit safely in every way. Jo Malone’s new in-house perfumer, Master Perfumer Christine Nagel has accomplished a similar feat in the newly released four fragrance collection for Jo Malone, Cologne Intense.  Mme. Nagel has fashioned four different fragrant hits and at the same time shown her versatility as an artist. Each one of the four fragrances has a distinct personality and at the same time feels as if they are also part of the Jo Malone collection of fragrances. While I am using one of the most American of analogies to describe the success of the fragrances, the inspiration comes from half a world away. Dominic De Vetta , Global General Manager at Jo Malone, describes the Cologne Intense Collection like this:

“Our olfactive signature is characterized by a simple composition that is distinctly modern- and we’ve brought this to the creation of Cologne Intense. We have embraced the richness and beauty of Middle Eastern culture, connecting with its ancient traditions and working with classic luxurious ingredients, but with the wit, elegance, and originality that is synonymous with Jo Malone.”

With that as her starting point Mme. Nagel created four fragrances for which, “Every ingredient has a reason for being, nothing is superfluous……With Cologne Intense, I chose to take potentially opposing ingredients of very high quality to create unexpected yet harmonious fragrances….because when fragrance elicits an emotion, the story begins…”

The four fragrances; Iris & White Musk, Rose Water & Vanilla, Oud & Bergamot, Amber & Patchouli all are strikingly different and will appeal to different sensibilities. As a collection there is a surprising amount of coherence between all four fragrances as I feel they all achieve the goal of exploring the dualities of Middle Eastern culture.

Iris & White Musk

I am going to move from the lightest of the Cologne Intense Collection through to the heaviest hitter. Iris & White Musk might be the lightest of the four but it also has the sharpest distinction between its titular ingredients. The iris source is orris concentrate and it adds an aspect to iris which keeps it from being too sharp and allows a bit of warmth to creep in around the edges of iris’ steely façade. To assist in that Mme. Nagel uses violet in the early stages to add some green aspects and lily to add a different shade of green as the iris heads toward the base of white musk. Usually I find the sheerness of white musk leaves me wanting more and often wishing the perfumer would’ve gone for a fuller animalic musk. In Iris & White Musk, Mme. Nagel knows exactly how to use the lighter white musk as lighter animalic contrast and thus amplify the floral quality of the orris. The dry down of Iris & White musk is a lovely study in contrasts that just gets more complex as time goes by. The lightness of this fragrance makes it an ideal office fragrance or evening garden party choice.

Rose Water & Vanilla

This fragrance brought to mind one of my favorite Middle Eastern desserts, knaffee. Knaffee is a pastry that has a layer of chopped nuts and honey over which a double cream is placed followed by shredded wheat. Poured over it all is rose water. Whenever I get the opportunity to eat knaffee it is the fragrance of it as the rose water and the vanilla and the cream rise to my nose that makes my mouth water. Mme. Nagel’s Rose Water & Vanilla fragrance also makes my mouth water but it also delights my nose, as well. The opening is dominated by the watery light note of rose water and it is joined by light applications of neroli and petitgrain. The rose water eventually deepens into a full Rose Loukoum note and that keeps Rose Water & Vanilla tilted to the sweet side of rose as opposed to the spicy side. That allows the entrance of the vanilla in the base to blend seamlessly and it adds a sweet depth to the latter stages of Rose Water & Vanilla. This fragrance is very much a gourmand feeling fragrance on my skin as throughout I am reminded of sweetness and light……and knaffee.

Oud & Bergamot

If you were to ask any perfumista to quickly name a note emblematic of the Middle East, oud would very likely be the answer you received most often. Particularly over the last year as a number of fragrances have explored the possibilities of this note derived from the heartwood of the aquilaria tree. One reason it has proven so popular is that it has an almost malleable quality to it and how it is eventually perceived has as much to do with the source of the oud as with what notes the perfumer has chosen to surround it with. Mme. Nagel has made a most interesting choice by employing bergamot as her chosen dance partner for the oud. Bergamot is perhaps the most ubiquitous note in all of fragrance and to use the familiar citrus aspects of that note to play with the smoky resinous oud seemed an odd choice. In Mme. Nagel’s hands it becomes an example of just how flexible oud can be. The opening is that familiar zippy citrus and slightly herbal nature that bergamot possesses. To enhance the citrus Mme. Nagel adds lemon and orange to keep the bergamot tilted firmly to that side of its nature. As the oud begins to interact with this bright citrus accord it feels somehow cleaner and sunnier than any oud I have encountered recently. Often oud can be said to have a medicinal quality to it but not in Oud & Bergamot. Like a well-behaved delinquent the oud instead offers strong woody lines for the citrus to glisten against throughout the middle part of Oud & Bergamot’s development. In the base cedar takes the oud and turns it more cleanly woody but it never lets it return to its more well-known reprobate status.

Amber & Patchouli

If Iris & White Musk offered the starkest contrast within the Cologne Intense Collection then Amber & Patchouli offer the least. Even though the source of amber in Amber & Patchouli is the aromachemical ambroxan which adds a clean woodiness to this fragrance these are still two fairly similar notes. Mme. Nagel really doesn’t try to convince us that the contrast is so different. By choosing ambroxan as her amber source she can use it higher up the pyramid and it is the ambroxan that Amber & Patchouli begins with. Ambroxan gives a lighter sharper woody aspect with a very slight spiciness lurking in the distance. The woodiness melds perfectly with the patchouli used here which also tilts much more woody in its character. The patchouli initially arrives on a woody wave before the more familiar sweet and earthy aspects of patchouli eventually catch up. The base is the lightly earthy presence of guaiac wood to enhance the combination around the two central players in Amber & Patchouli.

All four fragrances in the Cologne Intense Collection have excellent longevity and modest sillage with only Rose Water & Vanilla carrying perhaps a little more projection to it than the other three.

In baseball as in perfumery a hit is a hit no matter whether it is a single or a home run. In her four creations in the Jo Malone Cologne Intense Collection, Christine Nagel has shown her command of the perfumer’s batter’s box and crafted four special and unique fragrances; all of which are hits on my scorecard.

The Cologne Intense Collection is available exclusively at Sak’s Fifth Avenue, New York City; Jo Malone Shops and on jomalone.com.

Disclosure: This review was based on samples of the Cologne Intense Collection supplied by Jo Malone.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor