A few weeks ago, I scanned the tall grass of the Ranthambore sanctuary looking for the tiger who, the rangers
assured me, was sleeping inside. Though everybody else claimed that they could make out where the tiger was hiding, I was much less perceptive. The long grass formed such a
perfect camouflage that I was unable to make out the tiger.
What intrigued me about the experience, however, was when one of the trackers told me what the grass was. It was, he said, khus, a name (and smell) familiar to every Indian.
All of us have some experience of khus. We have drunk the sherbet made from the grass. We’ve enjoyed the cool scented breeze that results when a window shade or a window blind of khus has a little water sprinkled on it. For most of us, it is a particularly Indian flavour and smell, something we associate with our own country and its heritage. As I searched in vain for the tiger, I recognized that even our wild animals like relaxing in khus fields.
But khus is a really big deal everywhere else in the world these days too. Only they don’t call it khus. They call it vetiver and rarely acknowledge the Indian connection.
While the taste of khus/vetiver does not appeal to Westerners, its sweet woody-grass smell is the basis of some of the world’s greatest fragrances. Earlier this year, Estee Lauder launched Tom Ford’s Grey Vetiver on the mass market with a multi-million dollar publicity blitz. Bang, the new Marc Jacobs scent, plays down its khus/vetiver accord but it is there for everyone to smell. The new Comme des Garcon scent is being pushed as the ultimate woody fragrance but there is khus in the mix too.
The sudden rush of vetiver-based fragrances is a fad. In the perfume industry, ingredients rise or sink as fast as hemlines do on the fashion catwalk. But khus/vetiver is a perfume ingredient of long standing and has featured in many classic fragrances over the decades even if it hasn’t always been regarded as fashionable.
Ironically some of those classics are also benefiting from the new fad-popularity of khus. One of the all time classic khus perfumes is Vetyver by Givenchy. I first smelt if years and years ago and it struck me as being a vetiver fragrance that was rooted firmly in the French perfume tradition. You got the distinctive smell of vetiver all right but this was not a back-to-basics fragrance. It was meant (like all of Givenchy’s stuff in that era) for people who liked to dress up.
These days, Givenchy makes a lot of crap but fortunately the great classic fragrances of old (Givenchy III, Monsieur de Givenchy, Interdit etc.) have been re-launched. Lost somewhere in the rush is Vetyver which apparently was Hubert de Givenchy’s favourite before he sold the company (at which stage they discontinued Vetyver before relaunching it recently).
I like most of the new vetiver fragrances. The Tom Ford version (Grey Vetiver) is rakishly elegant, the sort of thing you spray on when you wear a 5000 dollar suit with no tie (to show how coolly informal you are). The Marc Jacobs (Bang) is packaged as being loud and assertive because of the ‘crushed’ look of the bottle and the ad campaign featuring naked pictures of Jacobs himself (not a pretty sight for straight people) but is actually one of my favourites with a delicious spicy smell (pepper?) that grows on you.
"Remember that vetiver is a distinctive smell and no matter what you mix it with, vetiver tends to break through. So niche perfumers work overtime to find blends that tame the vetiver." |
Not that you need to buy the new vetiver fragrances – there are already enough khus fragrances in the market. My favourite of the duty free shop scents has always been the Guerlain Vetiver, a classic, widely available fragrance that I have worn for years. I gather that it has become thinner over the decades. Apparently the original was even richer. But I like the current avatar anyway.
Guerlain does two other vetivers. One which is quite easy to find is Vetiver Extreme which has a more modern, slightly detergenty smell which I don’t like very much. And there is also Vetiver pour Elle, a very expensive, hard to find, scent which I have only seen in the shops in Paris and Tokyo. It is a girlie floral with a vetiver heart and is, I think, very French. It has its adherents (Luca Turin gives it four out of five stars in his fragrance guide and prefers it to the original) but is not vetivery enough for me.
The mass-market vetiver that I think is seriously under-rated is Kenzo Air, for my money, one of the best of the ten million fragrances that Kenzo seems to make these days (better even than Flower). Vetiver can be woody and heavy in some fragrances but Air is light and peppery and is the perfect male fragrance for the Indian summer. Sadly, it seems harder and harder to find these days.
Once you get to the niche perfume lines, a whole new world of possibilities opens up. The best of the niche vetivers is Chanel’s Sycamore from its sold-only-in-Chanel boutiques line. It is one of Jacques Polge’s greatest creations, can be worn by men or women and has the unique ability to seem warm in cold weather and marvelously cooling when it is hot.
The Hermes boutique line has Jean Claude Ellena’s Vetiver Tonka which is like everything else Ellena does these days, a work of art. But I am beginning to question whether Ellena actually likes strong distinctive smells like vetiver or vanilla. For instance, his vanilla fragrance for the Hermes boutique line uses the smell of the vanilla flower rather than the pod, giving it a light, evanescent feel. Likewise his Vetiver Tonka is a marvelous fragrance but one which works to overcome the strong smell of vetiver and therefore holds little appeal to anyone who wants a classic vetiver fragrance.
Before Jean Claude Ellena joined Hermes, he ran a niche perfume house called A Different Company. When he became the Hermes perfumer, he put his daughter Celine in charge. (I suspect she will eventually succeed him at Hermes as well. Perfume has more dynasties than the Congress party.) Celine made her reputation with a fragrance called Sel de Vetiver, an extraordinary scent which combines Haitian vetiver with the smell of salt. The astonishing thing about the perfume is that most of us think of salt as having a taste not a smell. In fact, when we talk of a salty smell, we mean a marine, sea-like smell. But Celine Ellena found a smell that anyone will recognize instantly as being reminiscent of salt.
Unfortunately, like her father, she is not that keen on the smell of vetiver itself. “Usually vetiver is quite harsh. It smells of the jute sacks you put potatoes in” (which I guess it does) she told the writer Chandler Burr some years ago. So as magnificent as the fragrance is, it is meant for salt-lovers, not vetiver fans.
If you do like salt in the sense of sea-water or marine air then the Annick Goutal Vetiver is the one for you. It has a sea-side air to it but is unmistakably a vetiver fragrance (though a little girlie). Also recommended is the Frederic Malle Vetiver Extraordinaire. Fredric Malle runs a niche perfume house whose conceit is that his fragrances break with industry practice and identify the individual perfumers who have designed each fragrance by name on the bottle. Vetiver Extraordinaire is made by Dominique Ropion. It is technically an excellent fragrance though my sense is that Ropion, one of the world’s most commercially successful perfumers (Ystis and Amarige for Givenchy), tends to go the other extreme when he does niche stuff.
On the whole however, if you like the distinctive smell of khus (and my sense is that most Indians do), you will rarely go wrong with a vetiver fragrance. Remember that vetiver is a distinctive smell and no matter what you mix it with, vetiver tends to break through. So niche perfumers work overtime to find blends that tame the vetiver. This is a worthy technical exercise. But for you, me and the tigers of Ranthambore, the whole point is the grassy smell of vetiver. We have no need to hide it or overpower it. We are Indians. We grew up with khus.
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