Elephant
Zoologist Perfumes (2017)

Odd as hell. Weird mucillage or glue note with green leaves and coconut milk, sandalwood and jasmine as a perfumey base. Drying soft and actually pretty gentle, but something about it smells more like industry to my nose than jungle. Possibly the coconut is reading as printer’s ink? There’s a phenolic plasticy note that sings pretty high up over the greens and tips it away from jungle as well. An animalic poopy note comes in more as it dries, but not offfensively, odd as that seems. Overall it’s a strange melange that doesn’t quite meld on my skin. Hot wet greens and that coconut milk note don’t quite settle with the perfumed sandalwood jasmine-musk. It smells simoultaneously natural and forced.

50% cocao, 20% coconut, 30% tea.

The fragrance opens with a powdery coconut note accompanied by a light woody aroma. The tea note is also present but takes a backseat to the coconut. The cocoa note adds depth to the scent, but overall, it's not very prominent. The blend is pleasant, but given the price point of Zoologist fragrances, it may not be worth the cost.

Yes! It’s definitely an elephant! This one is absolutely amazing insofar as putting you in mind of the spirit animal.

But that’s just it—it’s an elephant. You probably don’t wish to smell of elephant. I’m almost 127% positive I don’t. So I’m torn as to how to rate such an animal, as it were.

Of course you could wear it at home only. But are we really sure it’s not still there, somewhere, lingering? Power lunches are all too often interrupted by wafts of elephantine essence. And there’s honestly no recovering from that.

I suppose that exactly this is what Neutral was created for.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with me because I seem to smell entirely different things to the reviews posted on various fragrance sites, which mostly seem to wax lyrical about how they can smell all the listed ingredients in exactly the way the copy says.

My latest bout of olfactory dissonance was with Elephant by Zoologist. Apparently, I should be able to detect the light nights of tea, green leaves and magnolia before it goes all coconut and ends up in a sandalwood and amber drydown. Reviews have described it as 'light and airy.' Here's what I get: there are no topnotes. No tea, no green leaves. This goes straight into what smells like a raw and rancid cumin / dirt smell which stay with you for quite a long time (well, I had to wash it off my hands because it was so foul). It's like that unidentifiable but over-intrusive perfume that once assailed you on the bus or train that turned out to be being worn by some eccentric person, apparently with no sense of smell. Eventually it does ease into that quite sweet and pleasant chocalate-sandalwood dry-down, that I will agree with. But this it not 'light' or 'airy', it doesn't conjure images of tropical forests or anything like that. That's the copy speaking. This is unbalanced, harsh and bad for too much of the time until it's finally, blessedly, gone.

Green flowers, coconut and vanilla. How original and gorgeous. Fresh and yummy. It makes me think a bit of Mugler's Aura but it's unlike anything else.

When I first tried this one, I thought oh, coconut, I don't much like coconut, and set it on one side. That just shows you how perceptions can change over time, as your nose educates itself to any new fragrance presented to it.

If you thought this would be a heavy, lumbering composition, you are in for a big surprise. It is light and airy, almost delicate. There is a green, sappy background. Maybe fig, I thought to myself, and I don't like fig. But I do like this one, so maybe it isn't fig. No point in speculating, because with any well blended perfume you can't pick out the component elements, it is a total gestalt.

Probably my perception of coconut was conditioned by the over-sweet processed variety in confectionery bars. Drinking the milk from a freshly cracked fruit is totally different, and that refreshing milky quality is nearer to what you get here, alongside the lush greenery which is definitely not fig.

The elephant is a lovely animal, which has suffered terribly at the hands of humans, so a tribute to it is long overdue. And Chris Bartlett's creation does the ancient species proud, as well as educating me that I do like coconut after all. At least, this leafy green variety. Elephant is a masterpiece, which richly deserves its place at the top of the art and olfaction awards