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Dorian’s Fougère by Darren Alan (2023) is pure shot straight out of the early 20th century, before the fougère became vanillic and smooth thanks to Dana Canoe (1936), and before it was refreshed in the 1960’s, only to be laden down with soap by the late 1970’s. Imagine if the barbershop and “fresh” tropes had never occurred in the evolution of the fougère, but instead some sense of purity to its form enforced, skipping right over those particular epochs in the genre progression and injecting the intensity of green notes one might expect from the chypres of the 1970’s instead. If you can, you’re halfway to knowing what this smells like, and it is not for wet shaving or splashing on casually to work. This is a reinforcement of the Victorian-era austere elegance, rife with a rich cast of supporting players surrounding the primary players of bergamot, lavender, geranium, tonka, and oakmoss. Fans of those pre-war fougères, many of which have been discontinued and lost to time thanks to greedy corporate ownership or overzealous material regulation, can look here for their classic fougère fix.

The main point of this scent is to do as one might expect from a classic fougère, to subliminate the hay, mosses, sour animal musks, and wood notes in a bright citric-floral parade led by bergamot, petitgrain, and the lavender-geranium tandem that defines the category. The supporting players of mastic leaf and iris powder further sharpen the composition, adding that woody/mossy and powdery countenance defining so many upper-class mens fragrances choices from the era, top hats and canes in tow. The carnation is also an old friend to the nose of one enamored with this particular stylistic period, as men did wear carnation flowers in their lapels, and the scent of such flowers was as identifiable to men as rose was to women of the period. Obviously, the hawthorne cannot be underappreciated either, bringing its sweet smell associated with death (due to the chemical trimethylamine also produced by decomposition), but also common in the UK countryside and fitting with the theme of Dorian Grey making an infernal pact to avoid aging or death. Similarly, performance of this scent is immortal.

This is after all, the hypothetical signature scent of a man who assigns all aging and harm to a painting he must hide from himself, or else be stricken with it all belated, all at once, losing immortality in the most instantaneously-painful way imaginable. As such, Dorian’s Fougère fits the brief (even if that brief is one Darren Alan assigned himself as an independent creative force), being a long-lost peer alongside fragrances like Guerlain Mouchoir de Monsieur (1904), Penhaligon’s English Fern (1890), Geo F Trumper Wild Fern (1877), or the genre-defining Fougère Royale by Houbigant (1882). Perhaps the key difference here however is that touch of powder from the mastic and sandalwood that veers this ever-so-slightly towards the fashionable chypres that took over for fougères post-war, like Zizanie de Fragonard (1931), English Leather by MEM (1949), or Knize Ten by Josepf Knize (1924); something I find of particular interest as a “what if” alternate timeline sort of progression for the fougère genre. Thumbs up