Sleeper Standout 4: Bombay

A few weeks ago, I received a selection of fragrances by Montreal perfumer Claude André Hébert. Hébert has created 12 fragrances for men and women, inspired by the continents. Among them, I managed to find two very pleasing masculines, Dundee and Bombay. Of these two, I precipitated to the latter. It was dry and spicy and sexy. Manly but not dirty, elegant but not dressed up. What appealed immediately was Hébert’s apparent restraint in not over-improvising as so many industry noses do. He knew where and when to stop in this gorgeous quartet of vetiver, Indian sandalwood, cardamom and cinnamon. Each element played its part but, taken together, there was a clarity and expansiveness I found myself quietly admiring. Again, as with the others in my Sleeper Standout series, there was something here worth noticing; in this case, a micro-perfumer who is turning out scents which, by rights, deserve a much wider audience. Wearing Bombay on a cool autumn afternoon renewed my confidence in a generation of noses who, despite the trend to unisex fragrances, extract minimalist odes from classic masculines, as if scrubbing the dust from the gold-leaved escutcheons of Guerlain and Givenchy to rehabilitate some past splendor.