#bl smells

Top: Cuir Oud Padishah (Auphorie)

Top prides himself on knowing about niche things that are considered high-quality by discriminating people so of course he likes Auphorie. The fact that the label is from Southeast Asia (Malaysia, specifically) appeals to him as well. This fragrance is heavy on animalic, musky notes which I think Top would think makes him some kind of sexy badass (it doesn't), and it has a prominent oud note, and the rare and fancy aspect of oud is something that would appeal to his snobby side. Whenever someone compliments Top on this fragrance he launches into a whole spiel about Auphorie and small-batch natural perfumery that comes off as pedantic to anyone who isn't already convinced he's the second coming.

Mew: En Passant (Frederic Malle)

Mew likes that this is from a fancy, niche label that isn't that well-known, and he likes that it's a unisex scent because he likes being a little hard to pin down in that department, but his favorite thing about this fragrance is that the combination of lilac, cucumber, and springy green notes reads as really innocent while actually being low-key alluring. The sweet drydown is another aspect that is like the version of himself that Mew presents to the world. Someone on Fragrantica pointed out that "en passant" is, among other things, the name of a chess move in which a player captures an opponent's pawn while passing by them during an opening move and I think that is just so Mew.

Sand: L'Eau d'Issey Pour Homme (Issey Miyake)

This is a pretty affordable fragrance but definitely an interesting enough composition to interest a guy like Sand who is a little particular when it comes to his aesthetic preferences. It's also from the 90s, like some other things Sand likes, and I can totally see him checking ebay to get a vintage bottle. In theory it hasn't been reformulated but he'd be convinced that older was better. This would also be a likely crowd pleaser across genders which is something Sand would be into. L'Eau d'Issey (the fragrance for women, which came first) was kind of an un-perfume perfume, fresh and translucent but practically nonexistent. The Pour Homme variant is more balanced thanks to some low end from woody, aromatic, and spicy notes. It's still on the subtler side, though, so he wouldn't have to worry about seeming like he's trying too hard even if he oversprayed, and you know Sand has a horror of seeming like he's trying too hard. My choice of this fragrance for Sand may be influenced by a certain singer/guitar player/songwriter person I dated in the early 2000s who was very popular with his gender of choice, had a whole collection of different-colored Converse low-tops with contrasting shoelaces, and used to spray a puff of L'Eau d'Issey Pour Homme into the air in front of him then step into the cloud because a girl taught him to do that once.

Ray: Philosykos (Diptyque)

This was Ray's mom's signature perfume. It's distinctive and sophisticated but easy to like, exactly how she wanted people to see her. She's kind of like Ray in that way--like him, she was high-maintenance but always wanted to seem just the opposite. The shift from mother to son worked out well because it's a very gender-neutral fragrance. At first Ray wore it in remembrance of his mom and then he just stopped thinking about it and just kept wearing it out of habit. He can hardly perceive it anymore after all these years but every so often he gets complimented by a stranger and it makes him get a little bit full of himself. Philosykos often gets described as the photorealistic scent of a fig tree--not the fruit, but the whole tree--and Ray likes to imagine that it's the smell of a particular tree someone would remember fondly from their family home even though he has never felt that rooted in any place ever.

Boston: Sauvage (Dior)

Boston's taste in fragrances is basic as fuck but that works really well for him, because what he needs is something that appeals to the lowest common denominator of dudes. He secretly wishes this was more overpriced because while he doesn't like to admit he's a rich kid, he has a secret love of pointlessly exclusive things. But he gets more attention with this one than he did when he wore Gucci Guilty so he keeps wearing it. He originally tried it because he saw a review by some straight guy complaining that he didn't get compliments from women on this scent, only other dudes, and he's had the same experience, but doesn't see it as a problem for obvious reasons. Boston has become inured to the smell of this stuff and barely notices it anymore, but then he barely noticed it in the first place. It was and is only a means to an end for him.

Nick: Bleu de Chanel (Chanel)

Nick's last job was at a kiosk in a mall and he used to visit the perfume section of this one department store on breaks because a hot guy worked there. The hot guy recommended this stuff, and when Nick smelled it he thought it smelled like something an extremely cool and attractive person would wear. After that he was determined to get it somehow despite its ridiculous price tag. He never got the hot guy's number but he did convince him to sell him a half-empty tester of this under the table for (relatively) cheap. He uses it sparingly to try to make it last but sometimes he sprays it on his sheets and pretends the hot guy from the perfume counter stayed over.

I’m a bit of a fragrance nerd, so when the scent of tea olive/osmanthus started to be a sort of symbolic theme in Utsukushii Kare season 2 I looked into what osmanthus is supposed to smell like and how it’s been used in the fragrance world. Among other things, I was curious about how someone who doesn’t live in a region where tea olives generally grow might experience something resembling the smell of the actual flower. I thought I’d share what I learned here in case other folks were interested. 

The tea olive, or osmanthus fragrans, is a specific variety of osmanthus, and it’s the one that’s used in perfumery, so either term is correct here. Normally I’d use whichever term was more specific (in this case, “tea olive”), but in the perfume world, it seems the term everyone uses is the more general “osmanthus,” so that’s what I’ll use here.

Caveat #1: I’ve never smelled osmanthus in real life, nor have I smelled any perfumes that feature it heavily (at least, not that I know of--it wasn’t really on my radar before). I’d love to hear any thoughts from folks who’ve experienced it firsthand, especially if they know of a fragrance that captures the smell faithfully.

Caveat #2: I really am just a bit of a fragrance nerd, so apologies if I flub any details here. There are so many levels to this hobby that while I’ve been getting increasingly into it for some time now, I’m still very much a beginner. A couple more things to note first:

The processes for preserving the scent of osmanthus tend to result in an end product that is fairly different from the smell of fresh osmanthus. Of course, this is hardly unusual in perfumery. But the distinction matters if you’re curious about the scent that comes up in the show. (Personally, I went into this curious about both approximating the smell of osmanthus on the branch and about how the preserved form is used.)

Also, osmanthus mostly grows in East Asia but a lot of the biggest fragrance producers are based in the U.S. and Europe. So a lot of folks end up smelling osmanthus in a perfume context while having no way to tell if it resembles the actual plant. This means well-regarded osmanthus perfumes may smell good but not resemble the real thing much at all.

So, what do we know about what the tree in Hira’s backyard smells like? I mean, for those of us who don’t live somewhere where osmanthus fragrans is plentiful. There aren’t a ton of detailed descriptions of the smell of fresh osmanthus flowers online (or, not in English, anyway), but I found a few. It’s almost always supposed to have a jasmine-like quality as well as a sweet, fruity component. One person on BaseNotes described it as “buttery, warm, bright, only slightly fruity, with hay-like and wine-like qualities” (they seem to be in the minority in downplaying the fruity aspect). Some describe it as having a more noticeable green note than the osmanthus absolute used in perfumery, including a bitter greenness that could help to account for the “bittersweet” descriptor used in Utsukushii Kare. I also noticed that reviewers of osmanthus perfumes that are supposed to be on the realistic side often included references to suede, green tea, and/or soap, but I’m not sure how faithful those really are.

Then there’s the osmanthus absolute smell (or osmanthus extracted into other forms, like “concrete”). Not the fresh flower, but the scent that you get when you preserve it. People tend to describe it as having three main components. One is a fairly standard (and apparently, quite pleasant) white floral smell, similar to jasmine. The second is a fruity aspect. People usually compare it to stone fruits, especially apricot and peach, sometimes adding something about honey (e.g. “apricots in honey”) or even cream. The last of the three is a component people usually describe as “animalic” and/or smelling like leather. (”Animalic” refers to scents like musks that, when done right, stop just shy of actual stank and instead smell to us like sweat or a person’s skin scent, with all the affecting associations that come with that. In the past, the materials used to create those notes were usually from animal sources like civet oil, hence “animalic.”) This makes sense given that chemicals called indoles that show up in white florals are also often somewhat animalic (with the potential to cross into being downright foul). In addition to these three main aspects, osmanthus in its absolute form is also sometimes described as having green notes and/or woody notes, especially really resinous woods like oud.

If this sounds more complex than the average floral scent, that’s because (according to everything I’ve read, at least) it is. There’s a reason osmanthus is such a sought-after perfume ingredient. The complexity is a big part of it. Complex smells are just more interesting. Also, since it straddles a few different classes of scents (floral, fruity, and animalic), it’s useful as a note that can blend those types of notes together or place them in a more harmonious composition with one another. It’s also just more distinctive and novel than the typical floral scents we’ve all encountered time and again, at least to European and American noses.

Getting back to the smell of Hira’s tree, there are a few osmanthus perfumes that people say smell a lot like the real thing. Some of these are scented only with straight-up osmanthus, while others are sort of like collages, putting together a lot of different scents to create an osmanthus-like gestalt.

In one forum post I read, someone recommended the osmanthus balm from this China-based Etsy shop, saying that their wife, who was very familiar with the real thing, said it was the closest perfume she’d smelled to the real flower. It was also one of the most affordable options I saw. Some folks praised L’Occitane’s osmanthus line or the osmanthus soliflore oil from Dame Perfumery, but both have somewhat mixed reviews. (They’re also both on the affordable side, though the L’Occitane line doesn’t seem to be for sale from them directly in the U.S.) Inlé (Memo) is also supposed to be good, and on the realistic side. Osmanthus by The Different Company seems to have a big fan base, but also some detractors. The most well-regarded osmanthus perfume I ran across was Miyako (Auphorie). It gets great reviews and is supposed to have convinced legendary fragrance critic Luca Turin to come out of retirement to write about it because he was such a big fan.

In addition to all of these soliflores (single-flower perfumes) and perfumes where osmanthus is exclusively centered, there are a lot of interesting perfumes where osmanthus plays a notable role, but in a more varied context with other scents. A search on Fragrantica yields a long list of fragrances containing osmanthus, many of which sound promising. A few of the ones I ran across in my search made it onto my “to sample” list: Gucci’s Flora EDP, Serge Lutens’s Nuit de Cellophane, and Perris Monte Carlo’s Absolue d’Osmanthe.

Of course, while reading about all of this I got to thinking about what all these qualities of osmanthus might mean for Utsukushii Kare’s story. It has been brought up in a couple of ways on the show so far. The tea olive apparently blooms twice a year, in June and September, but it’s the latter that’s been referenced on the show. For Hira, it’s symbolic of the passage of time. Osmanthus represents his and Kiyoi’s “autumn of immaturity” that comes before “a winter of judgment.” He has a related belief, almost a superstition, that because he was separated from Kiyoi in the winter once before, it’s bound to happen again.

The bittersweet quality of the fragrance is also highlighted in the show. I think this is in reference to the combination of sweet fruity/floral and bitter green aspects some describe in the fresh flower scent. It’s fitting that bittersweetness, commonly a metaphor for ambivalence, is mentioned almost in the same breath as both Hira’s and Kiyoi’s contradictory feelings about their relationship.

Although the smell of osmanthus absolute is a further step away from what’s represented in the show, I think it has a kind of resonance with the story’s themes that is worth exploring. Basically, the combination of notes within the scent suggests youth, innocence, and sweet romance on the one hand and a kind of sweaty, dirty sensuality on the other. To break this overall picture down a bit: At the core is the jasmine-like white floral scent. White florals are associated with romance, femininity, and on the indolic end of the spectrum, a kind of heady, hypnotic sexiness. The apricot/peach aspect provides literal sweetness that mirrors the metaphorical sweetness of a loving relationship. The combination of apricot/peach and white florals is also often associated with youthfulness, even innocence. At the same time, the animalic aspect of osmanthus is sweaty and suggestive. When it links up with the indolic aspect of the white floral notes, they balance out the innocent associations with something more libidinous.

This combination could be said to be metaphorically fitting for any number of BLs or romantic dramas in general--what romance story doesn’t balance sweetness and sexuality?--but I think it’s a particularly good fit for Utsukushii Kare, in which a thread of somewhat warped sexuality is often intertwined with something surprisingly innocent and fundamentally sweet.