Chad and I have a shorthand now.
Whenever a fragrance goes spectacularly sideways from what we expected, one of us simply types:
HWLN.
Have. We. Learned. Nothing.
Today was a HWLN day.
It started with a mistake.
Not with the fragrance.
With my process.
Normally, when a new fragrance arrives, I enter the official fragrance description into my tracking document so I’ll have it later.
Then I don’t read it.
Usually, there is a long, long time between entering a fragrance into the tracking document and actually testing it, because I believe in blind interviews.
The interview comes first.
The official notes come later.
That rule exists for a reason.
I don’t want to be led toward smelling something. I want to discover what I smell, write it down, and only then see what the perfumer says I might have been smelling.
The fragrance should introduce itself to me, before anyone else introduces it to me.
I received several new fragrances yesterday. Normally, they would have gone to the end of my testing rotation. By the time they reached my wrist, I would have long forgotten whatever the official description had said.
This time, though, I made the fatal error of clicking one step too far.
Instead of simply copying the official description, I landed on the Fragrantica page for Féstival by NVRNAGN (“Never & Again”).
There I found what may be the greatest fragrance review I have ever read.
Brilliantly written.
Before you read another word of this post, I genuinely recommend reading Patchouli Corolla’s review yourself. It is funny, generous, beautifully written, and well worth your time. (Scroll down the linked page to find it.)
I’ll only quote a few lines here, because the entire review deserves to be enjoyed in its original form.
“I’ve attended a great many concerts over the years. Black leather jackets. Cigarettes and skunky bud. Hairspray. Cheap beer. Whiskey breath. Body odor. . . . *sigh* Sweet memories indeed. I genuinely hoped this would transport me there. Nope. Sure didn’t. Instead, I found myself in a bad trip wandering through a creepy condemned house after the furniture had been set afire.“
After describing a lifetime of concerts and all the smells that accompany them, Patchouli Corolla writes:
“My second and most regrettable mistake was four sprays.”
Later comes perhaps my favorite line:
“How did they get all that decay in that little bottle?”
And then, in what may be the finest two-word fragrance summary ever written:
Performance: Brutal.
I laughed out loud.
But the review didn’t actually end there.
Patchouli Corolla did not write Féstival off. He allowed that it might be trying to say something in a language he “wasn’t yet fluent in”—and promised that they would meet again.
“Next time . . . One spray.”
Somehow, I absorbed the condemned house and forgot the open door.
Then I made another mistake.
I believed I already knew how my own conversation would go.
Not intellectually.
Emotionally.
The next morning—with this review still very much in mind—I decided I had to try it.
So Féstival jumped the line of the other scents waiting on my Discovery Shelf.
I approached it like someone handling hazardous waste.
One spray.
One wrist.
Standing directly beside the sink.
Soap within easy reach.
If this turned into the olfactory equivalent of chemical warfare (been there, done that), I intended to scrub it off immediately.
Have.
We.
Learned.
Nothing.
The funny part is that the review wasn’t wrong.
It was simply someone else’s conversation.
Mine began differently.
The first thing I noticed wasn’t decay.
It was burning wood.
Not a cozy fireplace.
Not cigarette smoke.
Not a house fire.
Just . . .
wood actively burning.
Then something sweet began appearing.
Not vanilla.
Not caramel.
More like the sweetness left inside charred bourbon barrels.
Dry.
Woody.
A little smoky.
Then, maybe . . . vetiver?1
As the fragrance settled, another note emerged.
Leather.
Not a perfumery’s abstract idea of leather.
Actual leather.
The smell of a saddle.
Somewhere around the one-hour mark, I realized something unexpected had happened.
I had stopped smelling notes.
And I certainly wasn’t smelling a “festival.”
I was smelling a cooper—a barrel maker—whose clothes had absorbed a day’s work of smoke, charred oak, whisky, saddle leather, and a faint hint of honest sweat.
At some point I caught myself thinking, after yet another sniff:
“I actually rather like him.”
This was becoming awkward.
Because only a couple of hours earlier I had been standing beside the sink with soap and a scrub brush at the ready.
Here’s the important part.
I don’t think either of us was wrong.
I think we simply had different conversations.
Patchouli Corolla’s Féstival wandered through a condemned house after the furniture had been set afire.
Mine introduced himself quietly, smelling of smoke, oak, leather, whisky, and bourbon barrels.
Neither conversation was wrong.
They were simply different.
That’s when I realized Féstival wasn’t really the subject of this story.
The methodology of this project was.
Over the past several months, this project has slowly developed a handful of principles.
Meet before judging.
Steward, don’t hoard.
Let roles emerge.
Be willing to be surprised.
Be willing to be wrong.
Those sound like fragrance principles.
But they’re really life principles.
Apparently, they also need refreshing from time to time.
Because despite writing about them . . .
despite believing them . . .
despite watching fragrances surprise me over and over again . . .
I still found myself instinctively standing beside the sink with my hand hovering over the soap dispenser.
One brilliant Fragrantica review had persuaded me that I already knew how my interview would go.
The review itself had left the door open.
I was the one who nearly closed it.
Féstival politely introduced himself anyway.
Perhaps that’s the lesson.
Not that reviews are useless.
Quite the opposite.
Patchouli Corolla’s review is one of the funniest, most generous fragrance reviews I’ve ever read.
Read it.
Enjoy it.
Laugh as hard as I did.
Then . . .
put the review down.
Pick up the fragrance.
And have your own conversation.
Because every once in a while, a smoky little perfume arrives with an intimidating reputation . . .
. . . and quietly asks:
Have. We. Learned. Nothing.
(sniff)
ScentClub Kit #19 – Fragrance #3
NVRNAGN – Féstival (2025)
Perfumer: Andreas Wilhelm
Official Notes: Stage Smoke, Caraway, Leather, Whiskey Cola, Labdanum, Cedarwood, Dry Amber
Official Description:
A smoky, leather-driven fragrance inspired by the charged atmosphere of a live music venue just before the show begins. Stage smoke, whiskey cola, spice, cedarwood, labdanum, and dry amber create a dark, textured, slightly boozy composition that evokes anticipation, memory, and worn leather. The sky above a packed audience shifts from transparent pink to spiced plum. Moments before showtime. One last trip to the bar, a final cigarette, an oversized leather jacket draped over narrow shoulders. Without warning, the arena plunges into darkness, stage smoke wafts. And like a crack of lightning, the first guitar chord shatters the silence.
Field Notes
Opening: Wood actively burning—not a cozy fireplace, cigarette smoke, or a house fire. Clean, dry char.
Development: A restrained sweetness emerged beneath the smoke, recalling the inside of a freshly charred bourbon barrel more than vanilla or caramel. There may have been a trace of vetiver—the earthy smell of the actual roots rather than a polished perfumery abstraction. As the fragrance settled, the leather became increasingly literal: not “a leather accord,” but a saddle.
Character: The Cooper from the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. A rugged barrel maker whose clothes have absorbed a day’s work of smoke, charred oak, whisky, and saddle leather.
Mood: Rugged craftsmanship. Quiet competence.
Project Discovery: A review can faithfully describe someone else’s encounter without predicting mine. The conversation still has to happen on my own wrist.
Verdict: I don’t yet know where I would wear Féstival—or what role it might have in the collection.
But it’s one I’m not ready to put into the Traveling Library, either.
That alone says something.
- In my sock drawer, I once kept a big bunch of vetiver roots obtained from a tarot card reader in New Orleans’ French Quarter. So I mean that vetiver, not some perfumer’s version of vetiver. ↩︎