Silences

"Silences" is, to me, an achingly beautiful chypre floral. I love chypres, and often lament that I was born too late for their heyday. They are especially liable to show a loss of complexity and identity when forced into compliance with present day fragrance manufacture regulations, which is a situation I devoutly hope to see corrected some day... It opens with a gorgeous galbanum and delightfully sparky notes of spice---cinnamon, cloves. Then bergamot and oakmoss pop in, with a hint of vetiver and sandalwood. Silences is a bit like Magie Noire in that the base notes appear early after spraying, then give way to heart notes, and reassert themselves later. A few minutes into wearing, a floral chord weaves its way in, resolving into a seductive rose note. Long into wearing, the rose remains, eventually just a whisper trailing over the fine green-chypresque drydown. As stated above, I would be as likely to call Silences a chypre floral as a floral green. I found the sillage quite moderate, especially after drydown was complete, although by no means faint or lacking. And it lasted very well indeed. I have the vintage parfum de toilette... I have no idea why the creator of this perfume chose to call it "Silences", although I like the name instinctively. For no good reason, I am reminded of the fairy tales in which a suitor must identify his bride from amongst a number of apparently identical---or at least, confusingly similar---ladies. Perhaps this fancy arose from all the other perfumes that I thought of when I was first attempting to analyze Silences...Is it she, the tall, cold one in the green veil? No, that's Chanel No. 19. The next one, who answers to Paloma? No, she is not green enough. Not Coriandre---she carries no flowers, and is altogether too light. The sister with the man's name, Jean-Louis S., has some of the same clothing on, and for a moment he hesitates; but no. The one in cobalt blue is tricky; she has some green notes woven into her crown too, and some rose at her breast...but no, she is Niki. The sorceress sister stands aloof; no confusing her in her aura of Magie Noire. Unerringly, he turns to the true bride, revealed by her emerald robe and warm rose heart...Silence has spoken. She may have many sisters, but she is uniquely beautiful. If I could be assured of a never-ending supply of this in the vintage formulation, I would drown myself in Silences all summer long...

I can't believe Silences has so many negative reviews here. I thought it's very well known with a firm fan-base. I personally like it very much. I passed through all kinds of fragrance periods, passing briefly through oriental, pepper, citrus stages, falling in love with classic chypres, only to lead me to leathers, male orientals (M7 YSL, Habit Rouge, L'eau Bleue d'Issey), unconventional chypres with either strange combinations of notes or overexposed single themes, like the supergreen Balmain de Balmain, Vent Vert, Y YSL, leather+green+animalistic chypre Bandit, superleather Cabochard, male chypres like Aramis Aramis... but with every step I drew further and further away from FLOWERS. So, all that said, I am surprised and fascinated by how well the hyacinth+overdose of green+powder+chypre base combo works in Silences. I get so much hyacinth simultaneously with that green blast from the very beginning that I was put off initially. As I said, flowers - no, thanks. But then a highly woody dry note and some powder come up to balance things and make everything work together. For me, to this day fragrances were either dry or "mouthwatering". For the first time I see one that is both at the same time. It is very interesting, original and worth trying just to see how this combination of opposites turned out. I think that any high and pretentious niche line would die to come up with something THAT new. I got it online for 18$. The best money-love deal I ever got. The bottle is gorgeous. Like the fragrance, it's both innovative and beautiful, and even though it looks like a circle, it's not! And it has a twist looked upon from the side. It stands very stable and the spray WORKS without any problem (NU YSL, you should be taking notes). @bamboowu you can actually see the quantity left in the bottle very easily by lighting it from behind with a strong pointed light (like a reading lamp, not a torch). It works perfectly for Silences, Kyoto, Bandit and even Black Cashmere - all of which are black and deemed very opaque but at the lamp they look deep purple. Same works for Agent Provocateur which is also very opaque.

Jacomo Silences This fragrance indeed invites one to sit in stillness and contemplate the silence. It’s meditative, still, deep, and expansive; exactly like the experience of “going within” while deep in meditation. It smells of mossy fertile greenery and warm earth, with light, soft florals in the background. It is classified as a floral green rather than a chypre and I couldn’t agree more. I think of a chypre as the representation of Spring – green buds bursting with life and on the verge of opening; tangy, vibrant, and fertile green. This fragrance is more like the deep mossy green of a garden that has been cultivated by an experienced gardener over years and years; someone who knows exactly when to prune and when to let nature have its way; someone who knows that sometimes the gnarled twisted bark of a fully grown tree is more than enough to capture my attention; someone who lets the tiny imperfections created by nature steal the spotlight. This is a garden that invites long hours of quiet contemplation, a meditation garden. It reminded me of Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades. This is a garden built around a lake filled with swans, water hyacinth, and lotuses. It was designed with meandering paths and frequent spots to stop in the middle of the garden to meditate while overlooking the quiet, serene lake. This shrine houses the ashes of Ghandi, and the surroundings, so peaceful and breathtakingly beautiful, seem to embody his very essence. I compared this fragrance side by side, on the same day with Chanel No. 19, vintage Vent Vert, and Niki de Saint Phalle, some of my favorite chypres. Chanel No. 19 is like a crisp, manicured garden with espaliered trees and perfectly contained flowers in complicated visual arrangements. Vent Vert is like a newly planted garden, at the beginning of the Spring, when the buds are ripe and ready to open. Niki de Saint Phalle is a colorful whimsical garden filled with art designed to remind you of your childlike sense of wonder. They are similar, but worlds apart, and each serves a different, though beautiful purpose. Jacomo Silences is a quiet, serene beauty.

Currently I live in a part of the world where there are no fashionable malls and the mail service is extremely unreliable. Since the scents I read about are often impossible to find, my newfound interest in fragrances has been mainly literary. However, today I decided to do a perfume fishing expedition at one of the local pharmacies. My catch of the day was a serene bottle of Silences. I had actually read about the fragrance just a couple of days ago, and was full of curiosity. Words like "green", "forest" and "Chanel no. 19" popped up in my head. I love the color green, I grew up in a forest and I believe I once tried Chanel no. 19 at a tax free shop... My patience is nil, so I ripped the box open in the street and sprayed my wrist. The result was a complete olfactory shock: How could anyone in their right mind relate this invasive sweet scent to cool green forests? It was a warm, blazing and very yellow experience which brought me straight back to my childhood in the 1970's: Silences is exactly the kind of fragrance that the grown-up ladies used to pour into their "cologne" bottles! Silences accompanied me down Memory Lane, but definitely not through a forest. My initial reaction was to hide from the scent, but how do you run away from your own wrist? I kept sniffing, searching desperately for the sleeping wood nymphs others had written about in their reviews. As the day passed I started sensing the moss in Silences, the verdant trees - yes, I could well imagine nymphs passing silently on the narrow paths. This is not my childhood's northern fir tree forest: Bitter, aromatic and moist. No, Silences is a Mediterranean valley, where even the moss is sweet... Edit: Could not keep my hands off Silences this morning. This is still a sunny scent to me: I see golden rays hitting the floor of the forest, covered in dried pine needles. Silences is really growing on me!

Silences has been one of my all-time, absolute favorites, one of my "BIG LOVE, can't live without" perfumes since I first acquired it in 1981. I love it as much or more today as I did when I first sniffed it, and through the intervening years have always somehow managed to hold on to at least a sampler vial of it. It is one I've had to miserly ration or even only sniff the cap because there was no way to obtain more. In a much leaner time I was once *thrilled beyond measure to score a small handful of tester vials at an estate sale. But, I do not wear it as often as one might think, what with being so madly in love with it. And that has caused me a great deal of self-reflection over the years. I don't wear it as often as others even though I love it more than some in my regular rotation. At times I've even second-guessed my commitment to it. There are other perfumes that are similar, and I have them and love them and wear them, but they are not Silences. It is special to me for reasons I can not fully articulate. The initial blast of crisp and cold - no, icy - galbanum is like no other and must be what it is that hooks my heart. The hyacinth and hint of rose that follow and unfold is what sets that hook and the oakmoss reels me in. Silences is deliberate, straight-forward and no-nonsense. It is sleek. It is high-speed and low drag. It is retro-contemporary architecture in the genre of Frank Lloyd Wright, with Milo Baughman and Russel Wright furnishings, a Modigliani hanging on the wall and a Henry Moore out in the shade garden. It is Dave Brubeck. It is Ansel Adam's black and white photography. It is a chilly, grey, early spring day. It so perfectly conveys a part of me, and I wish to never be without it.