Arquiste Ella & El and the Cannonball Flower

One of the best things about living in Singapore has been my almost daily walk through Singapore's Botanic Gardens. Other than the Tembusu tree which I wrote about here, my favorite flower is on the Cannonball tree. These flowers look almost prehistoric and are large enough to cradle in the palm of your hand. Their petals are thick and waxy but the mechanism that holds them together on the tree disappears once they leave the tree's lifeblood. They fall apart into pieces in your hand. The interior of the flower looks like what I would expect a Venus Flytrap to look like and evidently it is a favorite with bees. The scent is not as strong as the appearance of the flower would indicate. It's a not-quite-jasmine, not-quite-magnolia scent touched with a tiny drop of lemon, actually fairly delicate compared to many flowers in the gardens. I had always thought Singapore Botanic society should make a perfume from this so when last year Carlos Huber of Arquiste Perfumeur introduced El and Ella, the latter which features a note from the Cannonball tree, I was ecstatic. Everyone else was featuring blog posts about Studio 59 and the crazy disco days but I was just thinking, Cannonball Flower, yes!

Cannonballs from the Cannonball tree, Singapore Botanic Gardens.

The thing is, though, that Ella really is all about the madcap 70's when perfumes were big, fashion and hairstyles made a statement, and the frolics of celebrities in fancy NYC bars was considered a bit shocking. Little did we know it was really the age of innocence compared to today. When I first put Ella on my wrist I flashed back to my twenties, which was quite a few years ago! I used to wear a Ralph Lauren perfume called Tuxedo. It was one of those magic perfumes that not many people were aware of but whenever I wore Tuxedo it always drew attention. If I had known how short its life would be I would have bought every bottle I could find but one day it just quietly disappeared. I really can't remember exactly how it smelled but when I applied Ella it triggered something deep within my memory that brought me back to that time in life, when I was young and men flirted, I bloomed with youth, and the possibilities before me seemed endless. Looking at the two perfumes, Tuxedo and Ella, I can see that their notes are totally different and there is no way they could have smelled alike, but I believe that Ella perfectly captures that era, and that's why I had to have a bottle the minute I tried it.

I usually try to describe a perfume's notes but El and Ella really do harken back to that 70's era when perfumes were a glorious blend and the individual notes were not meant to take precedence. Perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux took an inspiration from Carlos Huber's tribute to the memory of the glamour of Acapulco, Mexico in 1978, and specifically Armando's Le Club which was a hangout for the glitzy and glamorous. Mr. Huber is an architect by training but in truth a Renaissance man who is interested in multiple fields. He has combined his love of history and architecture to pick moments in time for scented inspiration. El and Ella are his foray into recent history and he has captured the moment as perfectly as if he lived it. My only slight complaint is that I love Ella so much that I wish it displayed the force field strength tendencies of perfumes of that era. It is a scent to be noticed but is treated to a lighter touch.

I can tell you the note list of Ella: The flower from the Cannonball tree, angelica root, rose, carrot seed essence, jasmine, honey, ambergris, cardomom, patchouli, civet, vetiver, cigarette smoke accord and chypre accord. What I can't give is a play by play of how these notes unfold. As I stated above, it's a fragrant story describing what I personally consider one of the best perfume eras of our time. Even with all the perfumes being released today, chypres make up only a small portion of this output, maybe because so many of the ingredients are unattainable today. If you like chypres I would definitely try Ella.

El is the masculine partner to Ella and though more familiar to today's perfumes, it also radiates a bit of vintage vibe. It is an anamalic fougere and opens with the classic and old fashioned notes of laurel, clary sage, rosemary, and Egyptian geranium. I can also smell the orange water in the opening and these notes combine to smell to me like a man who has lathered in very posh and richly scented Italian soap while showering in preparation for his evening out. Eventually notes of patchouli, oak moss and vetiver bring on the deeper darker notes present in fougeres. What makes this feel a bit vintage is the addition of honey, civet, and castoreum. They provide just the slightest thread of funk to this overwise traditional style of men's scent. In keeping with the 1970's Acapulco disco inspiration, I picture a tanned, well groomed man, shirt unbuttoned one button to many to be proper, a gold chain is perhaps around his neck. He starts the evening out smelling richly fragrant but as the hours pass, he dances, he sweats, his own natural pheromones began to integrate with the scent and it becomes something altogether more provacative. The scent never tips all the way over to a strong animalic on my skin and continues to waft the refined air of herbs and orange water.

In writing my review on Ella I was excited to explore the connection to the cannonball flower. If you would like to read a great review which delves deeply into the whole Acapulco disco connection, I highly recommend this review by The Silver Fox at A Scent of Elegance.

Photos my own. Scent purchased by me at www.TwistedLilly.com.