Antaeus

Chanel launched Antaeus in 1981, at a point when masculine perfumery was drifting towards clean fougeres and bright citrus, and then went the opposite way entirely. It is dark, mossy, faintly animal, and unfashionably heavy. The house named it after the giant of Greek myth who could not be beaten while his feet stayed on the ground, and still describes it on its own site as the story of a hero both virile and vulnerable. That is a better description of the fragrance than most reviews manage. Chanel credits no perfumer anywhere on it, and the work is generally laid at Jacques Polge's door.

The first ten minutes are herbal and slightly bitter, clary sage and coriander over bergamot and lime, with a green myrtle edge. It does not stay bright. Within half an hour a rose emerges, but a dry, dusty, almost metallic rose rather than a pretty one, threaded with thyme and basil. Chanel's own copy points at the heart of the matter: a lavender accord tangled with a complex leather, lifted by wood and spice. The drydown is where Antaeus earns its reputation, a warm animalic leather sitting on oakmoss, cistus labdanum and thick Indonesian patchouli. Skin, earth, damp bark, old books.

Worn honestly, this is a cold-weather fragrance and an evening one. A Cape winter evening suits it far better than a summer lunch, where the moss and leather can become oppressive. It is also, straightforwardly, a formal scent for people comfortable smelling like an adult rather than fresh from a shower.

Performance remains strong by modern standards, generally eight to ten hours with a first hour that carries some distance, then a long, close skin phase that can still be found the next morning on a shirt collar. One honest caveat: the materials that made Antaeus so heavy in the early eighties, particularly oakmoss and animalic notes, are now restricted, and Chanel has reformulated accordingly. A current bottle is recognisably the same fragrance with the same shape, but thinner and cleaner in the base than a vintage one. If you have smelled a friend's twenty-year-old bottle, expect a somewhat gentler animal. Two sprays remains plenty.