I am bringing you something new and fresh this time! I have many friends that are into perfumes, but only few are crazy as hell and on fire when it comes to very good perfumes. The author of this review is very particular - please welcome Zoran Kurelić. Zoran is a full-time professor at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science who graduated with his Master thesis at the London School of Economics and was a professor at The New School in New York. One of his specialties is political theory, so I warmly welcome you to Google his articles. He was my mentor during my Master thesis and that is how we met, but we became friends because of perfumes, of course. We were both on fire when we heard about BeauFort and that's why I asked him to write his own, independent review of this cool, English perfume brand. I thank him for this appearance on BL'eauOG.
A long time ago, in the early 1980s, I had a vision of Hell while I was listening 23 Skidoo’s The Culling is Coming. I thought I unwillingly tuned in to some ancient mythical vision but a few years later when the war in former Yugoslavia started I realized it was a prophetic vision. The problem with visions is that you find out that they were prophetic only retrospectively. The same is with art and dreams. Yatagan was my perfume at the time.
I have been aware of BeauFort for almost a year. From the first contact with the brand it felt good. The perfumes were original, the web page elegant and the story behind the first three perfumes was presented with one cool sentence – “Come Hell or high water.” All three were originally presented as a triptych: Coeur de Noir, 1805 Tonnerre and Vi et Armis from left to right. I did not get the triptych bit but the individual parts got my attention instantly. Coeur reminded me of my father, a Mediterranean guy who was a captain of the ship by education and who told me what Beaufort means when I was a boy. He would not wear it (he was an old Old Spice kind of man) but I will. It is a dark and warm masculine scent which I will wear interchangeably with my other recently discovered favourite Histoires de Parfum’s 1740. They smell differently but feel like cousins. Tonnerre is inspired by Nelson’s Trafalgar victory and it smells like wooden ships on fire. It reminds me of my childhood obsession with playing with candles. Any self-respecting pyromaniac should wear it as his signature perfume. Vi et Armis is described as the one “explaining Britain’s complex relationships with other nations.” The idea was to play with notes of opium, tobacco and tea. Most of my friends recognize smoked ham first, but for me, it smells more like char marks on a red grilled pepper. Whichever, it can beat the opening of Olivia Giacobetti’s Chaman’s Party without any problems.
As I said, I did not get the triptych, a picture of all three working together, but then I made an experiment. I put Coeur first, Vi second and 1805 third and smelled them from left to right and completely new meanings popped in my mind. Coeur is about the darkness which existed in Britain before the Romans arrived, (Conrad’s opening of Heart of Darkness), Vi is about the glorious imperialism and 1805 is a ship in flames. And then it hit me, the colours, the smells, the sounds. Triptych is ‘The Hellish Brexit Delight’, a beautiful vision of Britannia floating in flames in perpetual twilight. The Great Divorce on the sea. Hell and high water. The flame not strong enough to sink the ship and too strong to be extinguished. They were not talking about the past after all. What a difference a referendum makes.
Strongly recommended on all levels.
For BL'eauOG, Zoran Kurelić
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