Carner Barcelona Rima XI Review: Misty Over You - With Both Rhyme And Good Reason

Carner Barcelona is a perfume house that first came to my attention thanks to its brooding, spicy iris scent, D600, reviewed here. Well, I'd say it manages to be brooding and upbeat if that is possible, and the Carner website does describe it as inspired by "the urban lifestyle and the Mediterranean spirit of Barcelona", with an added "touch of mystery". Now that I have walked up and down the bustling thoroughfare of La Rambla for myself, I can relate to the tie-in between D600 and the rhythm of Barcelona's daily life, with its kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and scents.

I have also tested the other perfumes in the Carner stable, namely Tardes, Cuirs and Rima XI. Tardes was a bit heavy on the almond for my (admittedly almond- and heliotrope-averse) tastes and reminded me a bit of Miller Harris Fleur Oriental, with which I never got on; Cuirs was too leather-forward, though it can hardly be blamed for that, while Rima XI - a sample of which has just arrived from the Carner press office in response to my request - is Another Matter Entirely. I tried it briefly on skin during my recent trip to Spain, and have been giving it my undivided attention today.

Rima XI was created by Sara Carner in collaboration with Sonia Constant, the perfumer behind Cuirs. In my opinion, Rima XI tops D600 for mystery. It is much lighter and more attenuated. Woody orientals are my favourite category of oriental, and this may turn out to be my favourite of them all, because it has been given that wan, wistful treatment I so admire in a scent, which is a pretty nifty stunt to pull on a fragrance with a fair few spices in it.

Top notes:
Guatemalan Cardamom, Madagascan Black Pepper, Moroccan Nanah Mint, Saffron

Mid notes:
Ceylon Cinnamon, Indonesian Nutmeg, Indian Jasmine Sambac, Coriander

Base notes:
Virginian Cedar Wood, Australian Sandal Wood, Madagascan Vanilla Absolute, Benzoin from Laos, Soft Amber, Musk

If you like DKNY Black Cashmere, but wish it could be more vanillic and less austere, if you like Penhaligon's Elixir but find it a wee bit arid and dusty, or Kenzo's Flower Oriental but you are not always in the mood for such an in-your-face whallop of patchouli, this could be the spicy oriental for you.

Rima XI is a gauzy web of spices backlit by a soft, sheer glow. It is pale and interesting, with a warm hum from its amber and vanilla base. It should be worn by heroines of romantic novels draped languidly on chaises longues, though never in a dead faint. I am so affected by the wan yet robust beauty of Rima XI that I feel myself most uncharacteristically waxing lyrical, turning purple and generally coming over all Mills & Boon.

Which is my cue to introduce the background to the perfume, a much finer work of literature by one Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, a postromantic writer most famous for his anthology of poems and stories called the Rimas & Leyendas (Rhymes & Legends). The scent takes its name from poem No XI. So just in case you were asking yourself: "Does it go up to eleven?", the collection most certainly does, and well beyond in fact. But we won't go there, not least because No XII appears to be a bit rude (in a Georgia O'Keeffe kind of a way, if you know what I mean...)!

And it is a single verse of Rima XI the rhyme which Carner cites as the inspiration behind Rima XI the perfume. I shan't include the original Spanish, but it is readily google-able for any Hispanic speakers reading who would prefer to appreciate the original text. That said, even my fairly remedial Spanish can confirm that it is a pretty literal rendering, with little if any of the atmosphere or emotional charge lost in translation.

"I am a dream, an impossible
vain ghost of mist and light
I am bodiless, I am untouchable
I cannot love you.
Oh come, you come?!"

On its website Carner also provides a summary of the ethos of the perfume - it could relate equally to the will-o-the-wisp scent itself or the siren-like charm of its wearer:

"Mysterious and sensual, with a hidden power of destruction under her radiant innocence, captivating and unforgettable, impossible to conquer..."

So as with D600, Rima XI is intended to be a double-edged fragrance, with a darker side to its beauty, presumably because the woman in question - though feel free to subsitute a Lorelei-type man if you prefer (I'm sure we all have one in our cupboard of crushes, even if it is only the ghost of David Cassidy, and I've got him as well : - ) ) - is emotionally unavailable. Hey, those are some of the best relationships - you don't stand to get hurt if the unrequited goalposts are clearly established at the outset!

Now to be honest I don't really get this undercurrent in Rima XI - it is just plain beautiful to me, with no kind of "iron fist in a velvet glove" vibe going on. D600 is more edgy in that way in my view. At the end of the day, Rima XI is a delicately nuanced, barely there, warm caress of spices on my skin. Yep, it's the Bonkers-friendly Woody Oriental scent from Central Casting, and my latest heartbreaker of a lemming...


Photo of Rima XI from pinterest.com, photo of male siren from mangaslife.centerblog.net, photo of G A Bécquer from Wikipedia, "The Ghost Of A Skeleton" photo of Brighton West Pier from Wikimedia Commons via Robin Webster

Carner D600: Ambles On Las Ramblas – The Perfect Scent For El Paseo

Ask anyone in Britain over the age of 45 what is the first thought that pops into their head when you say “Barcelona”, and they may well reply: “Manuel from Fawlty Towers”. Played by Andrew Sachs, Manuel was the mightily confused and browbeaten waiter in the long running sitcom, for whom John Cleese famously tried to make allowances:

“You'll have to forgive him. He's from Barcelona.”

I am sure that the choice of the Catalan capital on the part of the scriptwriters was completely arbitrary. It could have been Cuenca or Salamanca or Valladolid, which – as never ceases to amaze me – does not rhyme with “stolid”, but is in fact pronounced “Bi-ya-doe-leeth”. The point being quite simply that Manuel was foreign, and so in Basil Fawlty’s warped view of the world, inherently defective as a human being. His poor language skills can’t have helped.

But that was way back in the 1970s, when package holidays were in their relative infancy. Nowadays, Barcelona is one of the top destinations for a city break, with its flamboyant and quirky architecture, museums, nightlife, chorizo- and churros-centred cuisine, parks and broad Las Ramblas boulevard. The recent popularity of the gothic works of literary fiction "The Shadow of the Wind" and "The Angel’s Game" has served to put Barcelona even more firmly on the map.

As for me, I have only ever driven through the city to get to the airport, though I would very much like to visit at more leisure. This is for all the usual reasons and also because I own the picture above, painted by an artist friend in 1991; it depicts a statue in a Barcelona park, and I would love to go some day and find the original. In preparation for this post, I quizzed my friend about the exact location, and after a modicum of head scratching and googling, he is pretty sure that the statue is from the gardens of the Palau Reial de Pedralbes. I just looked this palace up myself, and found it in the middle of the city, on Avenida Diagonal 686.

Which seems spookily fitting, because the perfume I am reviewing – the other main hit from my Düsseldorf sniffathon apart from Truly by Stephen Burlingham – is Carner D600. Yes, you’ve guessed it, the name stands for the address of the company’s offices, on Diagonal 600, just a stone’s throw from the site of the statue….

Carner, a perfume house founded last year by Sara Carner, was not on my radar before my German trip. Its two début scents, Tardes and D600, were created respectively by Daniela Andrier and Christophe Raynaud. D600 is inspired by a morning scene, Tardes (as its name suggests), by an evening one. Actually, rereading the description on the carded sample of D600, it is associated with both ends of the day…

“The early buzz of the city mixes with a gust of fresh morning air. Las Ramblas and La Bouqueria full of fresh picked bouquets, ripe fruits and spices, release an exotic mixture of aromas. As the Mediterranean sun warms the day, all senses are captivated by the dynamism of Avenida Diagonal and the grandeur of Paseo de Gracia…A seamless blending of old and new. At night, the pulse deepens and darkens as the city reveals its mysterious and most sensual side.”

I shan’t focus on Tardes, whose almondy/heliotrope-y/geranium accord disagreed with me rather, so it would be better to allow someone partial to that note combination to give the scent a fair critique. It reminded me of Fleur Oriental meets Barbara Bui meets SL Louve, which as anyone who knows my taste will tell you, is not a good thing.

But D600 was a different proposition altogether. According to Frau Berchem of Beauty Affair, both scents are positioned as unisex, and while I think D600 is the more masculine of the two, I could definitely see myself wearing it. I also think that it lives up to its PR blurb and is simultaneously a bright and piquant day scent and a sultry choice for evening.

Top notes: Madagascan black pepper, Sicilian bergamot, grapefruit

Heart notes: Guatemalan cardamom, Italian iris, Egyptian jasmine absolute

Base notes: Virginian cedar wood, Madagascan vanilla absolute, vetyver

So what is it like? Well, the opening is the most masculine part – a whiff of pepper and spice and possibly the cedar and vetiver poking through – the overall effect is quite dark and green – I’d almost be inclined to say a note like cypress, though I see none in there. But even this, my least favourite stage, is still beautiful. The overall effect is soft and rounded, not scratchy or overly resinous as those notes can be. If there is bergamot and grapefruit in the opening I can’t say I can detect them, though maybe they are keeping it from being too sombre and butch.

Then by and by, the iris and jasmine assert themselves and the composition becomes perfectly balanced between the more feminine floral notes and the manlier spice and woods. The iris and jasmine are like the fondant cream in a dark chocolate. Faintly sweet, yielding, and contrasting in taste with the bitter exterior of the candy shell.

All the perfumes in the ever changing kaleidoscope that is my top 5, 10, 20, whatever scents, share one thing, regardless of style: they are all affecting in their own way. D600 is one of very few unisex scents to move me like this, an all the more impressive feat for a scent that is “dark green” in my mind’s eye. Ormonde Jayne Man or Woman and Chanel Sycomore are all impressive compositions, but don’t stir my emotions as this one does. How does the strapline for that ad go for SEAT cars? You know, the one with the play on the words “automatic”, “emotion” and “motion”? “Auto Emoción”, that’s it. One whiff of this, and I am instantly filled with Auto Emoción!

Yes, this is a moving scent in every sense - also for ambling along Barcelona’s wide boulevards. It is the perfect pick for that typically Spanish custom of “el paseo” - “walk”. But not just any walk, mind, as in one that gets you from A to B. No, Spaniards walk to be seen out walking. It is the custom for whole families to go for a stroll in their Sunday best with no particular aim in mind other than to wander where the mood takes them, as long as it is down the main arteries of their town, for maximum visibility. Or that is what our teacher told us in my Spanish classes 20 years ago… Maybe they do in fact all jump in their SEATs now...

And this scent would be good not just for walking, but for standing still, and taking in the buzz of city life all around you...from the early morning markets till the last tapas bar kicks you out at 3am or 4am, four glasses of Rioja to the wind. And when I say standing still, I don’t mean like the woman in the painting – even though the mysterious dark greenness of the painting perfectly conjures up the overall vibe of D600 for me otherwise. The thing is, I don’t reckon she can get down off that plinth, not to mention her apparent lack of an upper torso.

No, if I were you I would apply a generous spritz of D600, get on down to Las Ramblas, and put your best foot forward...

Photo of Gaudi architecture from lifeinthetubes.com, photo of Palau Reial de Pedralbes from flickr.com, photo of D600 from fragrantica.com, photo of fondant creams from chocablog.com, photo of Las Ramblas from dbowman.com, photo of statue my own.

Düsseldorf Sniffathon: Schnitzler, Beauty Affair, & An Olfactory Tardis

My post on Kate Middleton's wedding scent is still attracting a phenomenal amount of interest - over 1500 new visitors since Saturday, and counting... It has popped up in the forum of the Czech equivalent of Basenotes, been translated into Romanian, and syndicated as far away as Florida and India. The vast majority of people who found their way to Bonkers over the weekend did so with predictable permutations of keywords such as "Kate Middleton perfume" or "What scent did Kate Middleton wear on her wedding day?", though intriguingly two new visitors were routed here by putting in the search terms: "slime" and "Diane Kruger naked". The buzz around the royal nuptials rather eclipsed the account of my Berlin sniffathon - though interestingly, there is a district in central Berlin called "Wedding"... But the precise identity of Kate's wedding fragrance was a matter of such public interest that I was more than happy to disrupt the flow of my German sniffing reports with coverage of this important news item!

So to resume where I left off, after my stay in Berlin and a brief stopover in Hamburg, I met up with fellow blogger mybeautyblog.de in her home town of Lüneburg, about an hour's train ride north of Hannover. I met her fiancé and her fiancé's best man elect(!), and we sat in a shady courtyard sipping long drinks before installing ourselves at an Italian restaurant in a prime riverside spot (see photo). We whiled away the afternoon enjoying a long, lazy lunch, to which my friend kindly treated me. I must say the pumpkin ravioli with sage was the finest I had ever tasted!

Now it so happened that the day we met up was Good Friday, so we could only press our noses against the windows of the small perfumeries in mybeautyblog.de's town. This was probably a good thing, however, as the boys in our party had "normal" levels of interest in men's fragrance, and as it was, mybeautyblog.de and I couldn't stop ourselves from nattering away at least 40% of the time about recent fragrance launches, our current lemmings, respective approaches to blogging, and of course the all-important question of what scent my friend was thinking of wearing on HER big day.

This will be in December, so there is still plenty of time to wrist test scent candidates. The current front runner is Parfum d'Empire Eau Suave, in case anyone is curious: a green rose scent with fruity and spicy notes. And in amongst our snatched conversations about perfume, mybeautyblog.de recommended that I take advantage of the shops being open on Easter Saturday to visit Beauty Affair and Schnitzler in Düsseldorf, which she said had a particularly fine selection of niche brands...and so it proved.

I made it to the Königsallee, Düsseldorf's main shopping artery, at about 4pm on that hot spring afternoon (it was at least 25 C!). On my way to Beauty Affair I came across a different - and smaller - branch of Schnitzler than the one for which I had an address (Breidenbacher Hof, at Königsallee 11 instead of 56), but I didn't notice my error at the time! No 11 still carried a large selection of beauty brands and niche fragrances (including a mini-Guerlain concession with the L'Art et la Matière range and other limited distribution scents such as La Petite Robe Noire, plus lines such as Maison Kurkdjian, Juliette Has A Gun, Piguet, Lalique, Ligne St Barth, Bond No 9, Parfumerie Générale, Keiko Mecheri, Etro, Bois 1920, Sisley, Caron, E Coudray, M Micallef, Montale, Czech & Speake, Amouage, Annick Goutal, Nasomatto, and a whole clatter of brands with "Profum-" in their name: Il Profvmo, Profumi del Forte, Profumo die Firenze...and so on!

I sniffed my way through a few JHAGs, and reconfirmed my preference for Lady Vengeance: Calamity Jane was well done, but too lavender-y, while Citizen Queen was too full-on and gourmand - what the Germans might refer to as "üppig", as in a "lush" or "big bosomy" style of scent. I also sampled Maison Kurkdjian's Lumière Noire pour Femme, which was a rather sultry rose-patch number, even on card. I am writing this 10 days after the event and the card still smells unmistakably of the scent in question; I feel moved to mention this as it is so rarely the case, especially after the smelling strips have all mulched down in my handbag. Now I am sure I sampled Lumière Noire pour Femme on skin once and was not especially taken with it, but maybe it is one of those fragrances that takes a bit of a run up. I couldn't top Denyse's description of this one on Grain de Musc, so here are some choice highlights:

"...a courtesan trussed in velvet the colour of drying blood trimmed with jet beads, hair tumbling down her back as she downs a flute of champagne. Her shawl carries the smell of the patchouli leaves it was packed with to repel the moths on its way from India. A bunch of jasmine exhales its dying breath between her breasts. A sweaty tendril of cumin rises from her corset…"

What else? I had a sniff of Kimono Rose by Bois 1920, which was a powdery rose with a pretty name, and that is about as much as I can recall about it. I also tried in vain to blag some more Lalique samples. I was seriously contemplating a purchase of White at the time, and would definitely have copped for a 50ml bottle of Piguet Calypso, but they didn't have it in; from the dismissive way in which the male sales assistant - who had the haughty bearing of a flamenco dancer - informed me of this fact, you would think I had been asking for Britney Spears' Midnight Fantasy.

So I hotfooted it out of there and was soon in the oasis of customer care that is Beauty Affair, a tiny jewel of a store set back from the Königsallee in a courtyard area within an exclusive mall. I spent a good 40 minutes shooting the breeze with the assistant manager, Marita Berchem - in between customers, I hasten to add - she did a brisk trade during my visit. The store is hands down the best stocked niche perfumery I have ever set foot in.

It was neither as happily higgledy-piggledy as Fascination in Lytham nor as stylishly sparse as Les Senteurs. It was rather the merchandising equivalent of high rise living in Hong Kong or Tokyo. It was a Tardis, a Sprite towing caravan with every inch of living space cunnily maximised. I could have spent an hour looking at two square feet of fixture, there was so much going on in such a compact area. Other high end perfumeries with average numbers of niche brands, averagely merchandised, will now forever look to me as though they are having a closing down sale...! I wish to goodness I had remembered to bring my camera on this trip, so I could offer photographic proof - but sadly I forgot.

Now I could not do justice to Beauty Affair by attempting to reconstruct a definitive list of the brands it carried, so I will just list some of the highlights:

Frédéric Malle! (in a cute little fridge like a supermarket ice cream cabinet), Puredistance!, Atelier Colognes!, Huitième Art Parfums!, Yosh, Heeley, By Kilian, Parfums 06130, L'Etat Libre d'Orange, Les Parfums MDCI, Miller & Bertaux, Frapin, Ineke, Biehl.parfumkunstwerke and gazillions more...

I was also astonished to see the Designer Shaik range: a musician friend of Mr Bonkers owns Opulent Shaik No. 77 and I have marvelled at the wacky hard shell case in a vivid shade of cobalt blue when he has come to stay, but never encountered the range in store. Now he won't need to go all the way to Dubai when his (admittedly humungous) bottle eventually runs out.

Realising that with such a wealth of options before me, option anxiety - or "die Qual der Wahl" as the Germans so charmingly term it - was rapidly setting in, I decided to focus my sniffing on the Huitième Art Parfums range, and tried all of them on card. I knew a little bit about the creative background to these scents, thanks to an interview by Michelyn Camen with Pierre Guillaume here. They are, for example, minimalist fragrances, which depart from the traditional pyramid structure, as PG explains:

"...in terms of their different structure I want to simplify the analytical approach… these fragrances are created on the basis of two or three accords or original materials; they need to be experienced in their entirety."

I have not bottomed out the ins and outs of "phyto-perfumery", and PG's methods of creating odorant molecules from plants, but I gather that the whole idea is to get even closer to the authentic scent of materials, some of which - like pear tree wood - are quite new in perfumery.

So...Sucre d'Ebène, Fareb and Ambre Céruléen all got the thumbs down (too gourmand, or resinous or spicy or leathery - or some unhappy combination of the foregoing), however, I was very favourably struck by Aube Pashmina, Naїviris, Vohina, Ciel d'Airan and Manguier Métisse. With the exception of Manguier Métisse, which I liked because of its Dolby surround sound ripe mango note - something I have never smelt in a perfume before - the others are all delicate, airy, pared back compositions that are very much in the subtle vein I favour. Frau Berchem broadly shared my preferences, though she said she also liked Fareb in cooler weather.

Unfortunately, the scent strips of all the ones I liked don't smell of anything anymore(!), and I am blowed if I can remember much about them individually. I did remark to Frau Berchem that Aube Pashmina reminded me of Diptyque's L'Ombre dans L'Eau, whereupon she promptly nipped out back and returned with a tester of the Diptyque so we could conduct a side-by-side comparison. She could see where I was going with the sappy green note they shared, but pointed out that L'Ombre dans L'Eau had more rose in it - and so it did!

I think I will have to get hold of a sample set of these and retest them at my leisure, preferably on skin. Meanwhile, I will direct you to this press release on Now Smell This, where there is a blurb about each scent. Even having read these back, I can't truthfully say that any of the descriptions of the scents I liked rings a bell with me, except for the mango one, which was particularly distinctive.

Woolly and feeble as that "review" may have been, I did come away with samples of three other scents, which I have been able to test in a leisurely manner on skin since my return. These were two unisex fragrances from the Barcelona fragrance house Carner - D600 and TARDES - plus Truly Madly Deeply by Stephen Burlingham for Tiffany. Two of the three were so impressive that they warrant separate reviews.

Special mention also goes to Frau Berchem for the generous and no-nonsense manner in which she decanted a sample of Truly Madly Deeply into a plastic atomiser for me - of the very sort I carry around with me on spec but am usually too shy to deploy!


To be continued...


Photos of the Kö and Lüneburg from tripadvisor, photo of Guerlain corner from Schnitzler's website, other store photo of Schnitzler from kaestner-consulting.de, photos of the Beauty Affair store, Huitième Art range and Frau Berchem from the Beauty Affair website, photo of caravan from outandaboutlive.co.uk, photo of Opulent Shaik No 77 from cafleurebon.com