Buenos Aires by GALLIVANT via the brand
The latest city to be featured in the British brand GALLIVANT’s olfactive world tour is the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires introduced by Michelyn on CaFleureBon. Buenos Aries by GALLIVANT is the brand’s first foray into the Southern hemisphere and sees the brand’s creative director Nick Steward working with longtime collaborator, the independent perfumer Karine Chavallier.
Nick Steward and Karine Chevallier
“I have such a strong memory of arriving at Ezeiza Airport and being hit by the smell of leather and that cologne that the Spanish and Latin Americans put through their hair. That was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the city, and its residents, called Porteños.”-Nick Steward
Tonka Bean Unsplash
Together they have hit upon a fragrance that unites tonka bean with Argentine traditions like the ceibo flower, yerba maté and dulce de leche which, despite being built with such culinary ingredients, performs nothing like a ‘gourmand’ in the traditional sense. Indeed, it’s nutty and there are sweet elements in the base bonding it to the skin, but it’s airy, flighty and at first sniff feels more like a nonchalant almost-Fougère with the tonka bean’s freshness cranked up to ‘maximum possible’.
Buenos Aires Mood Board via the Brand
The grape accord and Paraguayan petitgrain makes the opening feel wholly unique and quite hard to place, but once the pieces start to settle the perfume becomes a big ball of bright tonka that’s coloured slightly with the green, lightly smoked elements of the yerba maté (a traditional tea) and underscored gently by the brittle caramel tone of the sweetened milk that’s slowly heated to make dulce de leche.
Nuance – as always – is key, and Buenos Aires by GALLIVANT excels at taking these location specific touchstones and making them polished, carefully dosing the accords to color a recognised perfume style in a new hue. The perfumer, Chavallier also leans into the tradition of Argentine leather manufacture using a leather accord to counterpoint any lactonic sweetness in the dry down. Thankfully her work is never heavy handed; more of the leather or the maté and it might feel too dry, too much caramel and the fragrance would be operating more within the boom of enriched vanilla fragrances that are currently popping up here, there and everywhere.
Paul Parquet’s Fougere Royale (which was released in 1882), put the coumarin rich material at center stage (which for many years gave it a more masculine leaning connotation), but Buenos Aires by GALLIVANT bears little relation to such a gendered style of composition. It’s perfectly unisex, rounder and deceptively simple, presenting more as a pert, sweet tonka fragrance that tips the brim of its well-worn gaucho hat to the Fougère style. It seems perfectly content for noses to notice all the closer, subtly unique flourishes and olfactive intricacies in their own time.
Notes: grape accord, petitgrain, ceibo flower, yerba maté, tonka bean, dulce de leche, leather
Disclaimer: A sample of Buenos Aires by GALLIVANT was provided by the brand.
–Oli Marlow, Contributor
Buenos Aires Travel Spray
Thanks to the generosity of Gallivant we have an 8ml travel spray of Buenos Aires available for one registered reader in the UK & EU only. You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what sparks your interest based on Oli’s review and where you live. Draw closes 11/12/2024
Please read our reviews for: Brooklyn, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Amsterdam (*Amsterdam is discontinued), Tokyo, Los Angeles, Naples Bukhara, (written by Former Senior Editor Fragrance Foundation Award Winning The Silver Fox) and Abu Dhabi and Accra (Karl Topham), NIDA (Nicoleta) and (Oli) Ta’If. ÇaFleureBon was the first fragrance site to review GALLIVANT in 2017 Nick Steward was featured in our roundtable Artistic Perfumery 7 Indies Speak out and was Michelyn’s Hardest Working Perfume Person of 2023. Now with Oli’s essay, we have gallivanted to every olfactive city to date.
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