Amouage Memoir Woman

A mirage of moments lived and imagined, of people past and present, places travelled, of occasions long forgotten and those yet to happen; scent association is a strange and compelling thing. Who among us hasn’t come across a scent – perfume or otherwise – only to be transported in time and place, or left racking our fragmented memory to place it? For me, it happens day in, day out: CHANEL N°5 recalls childhood bath time when the Extrait de Parfum was used to scent my bath water; Velvet Splendour, the onset of springtime in Australia; and, frankincense, a midnight mass shivered through in a freezing church on the outskirts of London some Christmas Eves ago.

This mirage of moments, or rather, the discovery of past and present in our fragmented memory on the back of these olfactory encounters was the inspiration of Amouage’s Memoir Woman – a hypnotic masterpiece of a fragrance as dense, dark, and bittersweet as scent association can oftentimes be. Appropriately too, Memoir Woman is a perfume of references and recollections, of Fracas and Poison.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

Soloman

Described by Amouage as an animalic leather chypre, to wear Memoir Woman is to recall the great animalic chypres before it, that of Robert Piguet Fracas and Christian Dior Poison. Conceived by fabled perfumer Germaine Cellier in 1948 for Robert Piguet, Fracas is the precursor of the animalic chypre family; a hot and fleshy composition of indolic orange blossom and tuberose absolutes in overdose proportions, brightened by bergamot in the top, sullied by oakmoss and woods in the base. It quickly became an icon. Given enough time though, even the memory of icons fade.

As Marie Antoinette once said, “there is nothing new except what has been forgotten”, and what had been forgotten by the ‘80s was Fracas. Instead, there was Dior Poison. Launched in 1985 as a response to the powerhouse olfactory provocations that were Yves Saint Laurent Opium and CHANEL Coco, Poison was something different. Not a spicy oriental like Opium and Coco, Poison was a reworking of the animalic chypre concept of Fracas, just as the era’s shoulder pads were a reworking of 1940s concepts. In the ‘80s, what was forgotten had become new again, only amplified, and this was very much the case for Poison’s psychotropic composition of carnal tuberose, overripe plum, venomous berries and incense better suited to sacrificial rites than Sunday mass. Like Fracas, Poison shot to stardom, but its success was also its downfall. Its omnipresence made it the perfume everyone loved to hate, and it was eventually reformulated into submission.

Having been lost to time and changing market taste, in 2010 the animalic chypre was back and with it the memory of Fracas and Poison, bigger and better than ever before, this time in the form of Amouage Memoir Woman.

Rightly abundant, Amouage offers this in the way of an official notes list for Memoir Woman:

mandarin, cardamom, absinthe (wormwood), pink pepper, pepper, clove, white florals, rose, jasmine, woodsy notes, frankincense, styrax, oakmoss, castoreum, leather, labdanum, fenugreek, musk

An eruption of thorned greenery, Memoir Woman’s opening is as dark and hypnotic as they come. A poisonous plume of anisic absinthe/wormwood concealing a supporting accord of peppered spiciness and bodily cardamom-mandarin, the opening is bitter, herbal and cold. The mandarin proves short-lived, leaving the creaminess of the cardamom to roundoff the prickliness of pepper as absinthe leads the charge towards the heart.

Like absinthe which is be traditionally prepared by dripping iced water over a sugar cube into the neon green spirit to dilute and louche it (turn it milky and opaque) before consumption, Memoir Woman makes a marked shift in the heart. The neon green of the opening is turned opalescent and sweetened by the emergence of tuberose, jasmine and rose from the darkness, while clove lends a warmth lacking up to this point. The green anisic edge and herbality of the absinthe/wormwood is still very much present, though it serves now to contrast the abundant florals, which it does in together with the increasingly prevalent smoke of Omani frankincense. Light and dark, inviting but still poisonous, Memoir Woman’s floral heart is one of intriguing contrasts.

The eventual drydown, which is a long-time coming, is a balsamic commingling of incense, wormwood and animalic notes. The wormwood is rendered much drier now with the addition of oakmoss, and the incense, despite still billowing smoke, feels more resinous. The subtle sweetness of styrax lends fullness to the base, while castoreum and leather tinged by the funk of fenugreek lend a fleshy, almost sweaty animalic edge that growls from the shadows, all the while Memoir Woman flashes glimpses of its neon opening and plush heart like a recurring memory.

Now, for all my talk of Fracas and Poison, Memoir Woman doesn’t sound much like either, does it? And it shouldn’t. Being immeasurably darker, woodier too, Memoir Woman is night to Fracas’ day. There is more similarity to be found in a side-by-side comparison with Poison, though it is the maximalist feel of the perfumes that share a common thread, not the compositions themselves; Memoir Woman has none of the fouling fruit that was at the core of Poison, nor did Poison have the bitter anisic sting of Memoir Woman.

Weaving the villainous tendrils of bitter absinthe and billowing incense through an abundant bouquet of white florals before settling into a caravanserai of dry spices, dark woods, moss and leather, Amouage Memoir Woman is a fantastical fragrance no less dense, dark, and bittersweet than the scent associations and forbear animalic chypres that inspired it can oftentimes be. A wintertime favourite of mine, Memoir Woman is an Amouage for the ages. A must-try for any lover of perfume.

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Year of Release: 2010

Creative Direction: Christopher Chong

Perfumers: Daniel Maurel and Dorothée Piot

Alternatives: Dior Poison, Frédéric Malle Musc Ravageur

Available: Libertine Parfumerie and www.amouage.com for $459, 100ml