The Oriel Window, Lacock Abbey by William Henry Fox Talbot, 1835 or 1839
Halloween is upon us and with it the possible question of what perfume to wear to partake of the festivities or honor the dead. Halloween is not really celebrated in France. There was an attempt in the 1990s to implant the tradition there but it eventually failed although by 2000 it seemed to have picked up a bit. By 2006 however Le Monde and Le Parisien both declared Halloween to be dead.
One can still remember an encouraging picture in a daily showing a spectacular row of pumpkins at the esplanade du Trocadéro with the Eiffel Tower in the background. It seemed to be opening a Roman Appian way or inroad into French culture. But somehow the symbolism of the pumpkin never took hold nor the horror movie cultural references past a few fashionable force-fed years. One can see it as a fashion, like the Christmas trees garbed in artificial snow and dyed in red or blue a couple of years ago in Paris and it soon died as a new tradition. Perhaps what the French were lacking was a vibrant Irish community to keep the fire of Samain burning. Cultural resistance to a wholesale import of a cultural practice now perceived as very American is faulted too.
Halloween in the US on the contrary is a monster event for the majority. The olfactory images it conveys are rich or at least potentially rich.
But before we leave the shores of France, a country where a tradition of Halloween perfumes could have developed, we can evoke an immediate All Saints' Day association with the scents of Chrysantemum and Immortelle flowers that are laid out on tombs on the day of La Toussaint . We know one perfume that can suggest this tradition and it would work well in the US too with its dark maple syrupy tones, Sables by Annick Goutal........
Halloween party invitation on an old ice truck by Walker Evans, 1973-1974.
Continue reading "Halloween - Perfumes from the Crypt....... {Perfume List}" »
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