North-American Originals: Perfumers on Fall & Winter -- Part 3 {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume List} {Shopping Tip}
End of a fall day in Paris
If you missed the previous installments, here they are: Part 1, Part 2
Today, we continue to follow the thoughts and experiments of Anya McCoy of Anya's Garden, peruse the fall perfume catalog of Fabienne Christenson of Perfume Possets who announces an upcoming perfume Elegance and intrigues us with her Cambienne which changes with the seasons. We meet with Ayala Sender of Ayala Moriel Parfums, an independent perfumer from both Israel and Canada who also makes tea, chocolate and offers among other things a very Canadian-smelling perfume inspired by the maple syrup festivals.
"...I needed to determine what do the cool temperatures do to
the intake of air in the nasal passages in the absence of humidity? How can a
perfume be constructed that would work well in that atmosphere when I live in
the tropics and cannot walk outside and test? Well, a huge bowl of ice cubes
held under my face while sniffing the progression of the drydowns on MoonDance
and StarFlower helped!
The cool, floral softness of MoonDance can be paired with slightly chilled
nights and mornings when you wake up and find frost on the ground. A light,
very, very light touch of mint, cooling and refreshing, starts the MoonDance,
almost imperceptible, but a great combo with the woody violet flower and dusky,
dry rose of true Rose de Mai from Grasse. A slight splash of apple-scented
Roman Chamomile appeals to the engrammes of those raised in northern climates
where the apple is a true harbinger of Fall. Since I do not use synthetic
scents, and there is no natural aromatic yet available with an apple scent, I
used the Chamomile to that advantage. It's more like a slightly dried,
concentrated apple scent with a bright edge, and it plays off the tuberose
heart/base note as the perfume slides into a warm, cozy, skin-hugging sensual
drydown.
StarFlower is a chameleon-like sexy gourmand fragrance, almost deceptive in the
almond, cherry and lemon opening, then raising the temperature quickly with
tuberose that melts into a chocolate, maple and patchouli drydown that seems to
pair beautifully with leather coats, turtlenecked sweaters and boots. It's dry
and serene, not sweet at all after the initial topnotes, and utterly enveloping
in its warmth and sensuality. That to me is Winter up north, being wrapped in
something new and comforting, the promise of wintertime romance and snuggling
by a fire."....
North-American Originals: Perfumers on Fall & Winter 2 {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume List} {Shopping Tip}
A view of Paris fall from last year. You can spot the French gardening principle right away: trees need to look tailored, like clothing. Isn't Paris the capital of fashion? The lines were so straight I had to make them dance a little.
North-American Originals: Perfumers on Fall & Winter 2
We continue our excursion into the visions of fall and winter translated into personal fragrances by North-American independent perfumers. These are such glorious seasons, there is such richness of sensations when the world seems to have become more economical of its natural bounty. Maybe it is time, more than ever, for man-made scents to relay nature?
Isn't it a testament to these perfumers' sense of independence that they choose to interpret the seasons rather than follow trends? In individual observations lie kernels of truth.
Today, we get inspiration from Anya McCoy of Anya's Garden who as a Miami-based perfumer has launched for the first time into the challenging exercise of creating fall and winter perfumes in a tropical environment; Candice Jurko of CJ Scents relies on her friends instead of focus panels for testing new scents and proposes to keep things simple with just a dash of sophistication ; Fabienne Christenson of Possets Perfume has a rich catalog of fall and winter scents but first let us hear her on the seasonal change of taste; Christopher Brosius of CB I Hate Perfume reminds us that unique personal memories color our perceptions of the simplest smells...
American perfumery is as varied as its landscape. One of its most notable traits is the fact that in spite of the presence of giant corporations like Coty or Estée Lauder, there exists a strong breed, I am tempted to say, of independent perfumers who appear by contrast even more like the necessary missing pieces of a vast puzzle. And without them, one could argue, American perfumery would be forgetting the flip side of anonymous efficiency, large-scale organization and big business, that is, originality, primitivism, naïveté, a sense of community, intimacy, individualism and let us not forget, the can-do attitude. If we only had the big labels, we would still have rivers of perfume, but we would have less of a certain moral spirit, the individualist one. And I don't know really what is America without the individual.
She or he is like the flavor of home-grown local herbs added to a standard national recipe...
Online Perfume Design with P&G Downy Simple Pleasures: Be a Nose! {Fragrance News}
Procter and Gamble have set up a dedicated space for inviting consumers to try their hands at online perfume designing with the tag line, Express yourself. It's simple. There is perfume designer Kavin Morgan who guides you through the different steps. You could be the name behind the next Downy Simple Pleasures scent. Last year, the approach was to ask hand-picked young fashion designers to create clothing inspired by the Downy Radiance Collection. This year, the angle is clever in that it allows to poll consumers' olfactory preferences.
He reminds visitors that every Downy scent starts with an emotion, so you have to select one on a colored nebulous scale, then you move on to choosing one top, mid and base note amongst a selection where each is explained in psychological terms. Pick one you like, have fun.
Morgan even gives advice on how to appreciate perfume. Smell your clothes like you would wine and to try to decipher the various olfactive layers that are found in the perfume scenting your clothes...
"Judging from besteller lists of fragrances around the world, shoppers
prefer scents created by or associated with their compatriots.
Fair enough. Here is an article in the fashion section of The Independent today entitled Trendwatch: Global beauty customers are patriotic with their customers, that wants to demonstrate that consumers prefer to shop for national brands when it comes to electing their favorite scents (or that they at least tend to instinctively gravitate towards made-in-their-home-country blends.)
In fact, we know that perfumes are often custom-sized to general cultural preferences and attempt to fit snuggly within a certain national or regional market like in the case of the well-known, well-publicized Asian predilection for light perfumes.
But this article states as facts things that do not make sense and might lead you to think that, perhaps, the desire to prove a theory or to sell a product was stronger than the facts themselves.
The piece says that in the US currently (at Sephora at least), the top 3 fumes are American brands: Michael Kors Very Hollywood, Marc Jacobs Lola, and... Leslie Blodgett's Perfume Diaries Bare Skin!!! The exclamation points only apply, for the moment, to the latter.
The problem is that the perfume has not officially launched yet.
I, in fact, am aware of this as I received a mail today outlining the dates of the upcoming launch and telling me the dedicated website just went up. The perfume is currently only available to Beauty Insiders at Sephora and the article is saying that it's a national trend!..
Faguenat, Faganat: How The French Described a Host of Stinky Odors after Rabelais with Notes on Fug {Perfume Vocabulary} {Scented Thoughts}
Faguenat, Fagana...Fug
Faguenat, Faganat are two very interesting words as they are all but forgotten in contemporary French, omitted by the contemporary dictionaries I checked, yet have rich, precise and diverse historic meanings in the field of historical olfaction. In this sense, they are revelatory of what the French have classified as meaningful, typically obnoxious smells in the course of their history.
The 9th edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française does not even mention them today....
Dior Hypnotic Poison Rubis & Thierry Mugler Angel Liqueur: Sniffing Rich Orientals in Paris Lead Me to New Flankers {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume Reviews} {Perfume Streetwear}
One of the pleasures of taking a stroll in Paris or simply going from point A to point B is picking up on sillages of perfume on the streets. When a repetition pattern appears, it becomes a bit intriguing.
Paris ca. 1925, from art.com
In early September when the weather was still summery and sunny, I started smelling Hypnotic Poison a few times. What I found anomalous was the fact that it felt as if several women had decided to anticipate the colder days and pulled out their fur perfumes, the same one for some reason, seemingly showing the same concerted impatience to get done and over with summer. I couldn't help but think several things: that Parisian women indeed like their oriental perfumes and are all too ready to stop pretending summery scents can be satisfying; it was interesting that these women were young (with one exception) and finally that maybe they could have held on a bit longer to envelop themselves with the rich, sensual volutes of this boudoir oriental. I felt pleasure at smelling the heliotrope and rich tonka but at the same time felt there was a discrepancy with the pace of the season. I somehow liked the idea that in the near future when the gray of autumn would cover the sky and mesh with the zinc roofs and coldness would be inescapable, that it would make the scent be even more irresistible. But now? Wasn't it a bit early?...
Do You Think We're Seeing a Christmas-in-July Trend with Perfumes?
After reading a both funny and sad article on marketers attempting to push the Christmas-in-July agenda with such immortal lines as "Given the dreary economic climate, we thought we could bring customers
a little more cheer in the middle of summer," said QVC Chief Executive
Mike George", I had to wonder: have we seen this happen with perfumes?...
Spring & Summer Notes: Peonies Red, Pink and Yellow {Scented Images of the Day}
I was eager to plunge my nose in the spumy peonies as soon as they appeared last spring. Peonies always remind me of one day in spring in my childhood when I arrived at the country house of a friend for the Easter holiday. As soon as I got out of the car I was welcomed by the sunny, undulating spectacle of gusts of wind blowing hard on a large seemingly frenzied bed of peonies which despite their mass were dancing as if in a wild ballet, surging episodically like rustling waves of foamy silk chiffon. The froufrou sound they made against the wind is still in my ears. I ran towards them in order to instinctively hug them and we were all laughing hard trying to prevent them from breaking but also a little out of our minds of happiness to be able to dance with the wind and flowers so soon after we arrived. The flowers seemed to be about our heights...
Some time ago, I had the opportunity to smell red lilies over the course of several days and I became progressively enchanted by their olfactory complexity. Lilies are not spring flowers - so I am taking some liberties here - but rather greenhouse breeds that can be had any time of the year. For a change I had decided to get an enormous bouquet of dark ruby-colored lilies instead of the white kind. Their scent seems particularly powerful and diffusive when I compare it to my memories of white lilies' wafts although they seem to smell exactly the same at first.
Red lilies initially when they are at their freshest smell custard-y, salty, offering a light sweet aqueous vanilla facet but as if infused with tropical flowers...
Les Fleurs du Guildo & Jicky by Guerlain: An Early, 19th Century Precursor of Marine Scents & a Reexamination of Jicky's Gender & Fresh Factor {Perfume History & Facts} {Scented Thoughts}
So called marine scents have known an explosion of interest that came from the top in the 1990s, with the use of molecules such as Helional and especially Calone (discovered in 1966 by Pfizer), but that does not mean that in previous eras the motif of the sea was completely left outside of the history of perfumery. Even before Calone came into existence - pardon me for being so didactic - people had noses, enjoyed promenades by the sea or breathing the salubrious coastal air and if a perfumer happened to be amongst that crowd of strollers or dreamers, then an impression for a perfume might be born.
Common sense can make us see retrospectively that it would be exaggerated a view to think that perfumes have not incorporated the experience of the sea side in one way or other and that perfumers never contributed this experience to perfumery. In fact, going further, one could point out that the famous oakmoss found in the island of Chypre is a very early reference to the aromatic palette that can be experienced by the sea, if for nothing else than sensations of dried heat and salty vegetal nuances.
One case in point of an early, 19th century seaside motif is that of Les Fleurs du Guildo by Guerlain, which is a fascinating example of an early, avowed attempt at capturing the quality of the olfactory atmosphere in the region of Brittany, and in particular in the specific context of its moors expanding around the ruins of the castle of Le Guildo, as it was advertised at the time. Just by choosing this locale alone, Guerlain is telling us something about an interest for an earth-and-sea contrast. As its name indicate, this perfume wanted to distill the scent of flowers growing on the coast, the Côte d'Armor here....
The smell of muguet (Convallaria majalis), or lily of the valley in English which has also retained the French word, especially in the field of perfumery (and it must smell even better and more refined if you say it in French, no doubt), is instantly delightful, delicate and Fresh, with a capital letter. The scent of a little sprig of muguet evokes by its own self without any exertion of the imagination whatsoever the woodland and the cool of the forest. When closing your eyes, the aroma bespeaks of damp grass and sitting sessions ending with clothing moist by an over-application of dew and patterned with water-rings.
When you further smell lily of the valley, you have to realize that it is really a miraculous kind of freshness compared to the sizes of the shapely little bells. If you approach your nose close to the flowers, it suddenly feels as if it had entered halfway inside a refrigerator and next, that your nostrils and the tip of your nose just turned into ice. Those slender blooms are like mini air-conditioners working at the maximum of their power with no perceptible sound of a motor humming. How can something smell so fresh? Isn't it also rather that they create a micro-climate of freshness around them and then send out all the atmospheric cues of re-processed air to our noses?
A lily of the valley smells is this paradox: it smells as fresh and glacial as blue spearmint without smelling minty at all...
Springtime is generous with floral and fresh notes. Like a natural calendar that unfolds over the weeks, you can discover a variety of delicate to heady notes when you put your mind to it wherever you are, at the florist's, the farmer's market, or the countryside.
White Broom or Retama Monosperma, Bridal Veil Broom or Genêt Blanc is one of those discreetly sensual notes of spring that can insistently permeate the air thanks to its strength in numbers. It seems to concentrate the essential olfactory imprint of the renewal of nature in its aroma and even though it is a flower in the flesh, it seems to embody the general abstract, ideal scent of spring...
Chanel will release a new flanker to Cristalle called Cristalle Eau Verte (Cristalle Green Water) set to be introduced on April 17th 2009 in the French market. It is signed by in-house perfumer Jacques Polge (who works with Christopher Sheldrake now).
Cristalle was originally composed in 1974 by then in-house nose Henri Robert. An eau-de-parfum version created by Jacques Polge saw the light of day in 1993.
Cristalle Eau Verte is an Eau de Toilette concentrée like Cristalle...
Givenchy Harvest 2008: Ange ou Demon Jasmin Sambac, Amarige Ylang Ylang, Very Irresistible Rose Damascena, Organza Fleur d'Oranger - On Perfume Vintages {Scented Thoughts} {New Fragrances} {Blotter Notes}
Scented Thoughts -- On Perfume Vintages: No Leap Year for Givenchy
Since 2005, Givenchy has turned to the concepts of natural harvests and vintage years to create renewed interest for some of the mainstay compositions from their fragrance catalog (see 2006; 2007). As one can witness the incessant stream of creative ideas nurturing French food culture on a daily basis, a country where edibles - from vegetables sold on market stalls to elaborate cuisine dishes and from hip yogurt flavors to breads at your neighborhood boulanger - follow or rather set fashion trends on a par with clothing, perfume, furniture design, and more, it is little surprising to see this fresh idea being adopted, at long last. In fact, it is surprising that the inspiration did not occur sooner. But let us see what measure of newness one can ascribe to this idea.
As it is, the inspiration was born not in the middle of a picturesque produce market or a field in Grasse but as Alain Lorenzo of Parfums Givenchy was perusing champagne descriptions on a new LVMH site, eluxury, and became struck by the similarities between descriptions of the luxury beverage and perfume. The Harvest idea emerged, and as WWD reported in 2005,
"Each has been reworked to highlight key ingredients culled from harvests judged by perfumers to be of above-average quality."
Lorenzo further explained the similitudes with champagne-making and the nature of the Givenchy project,
"...to maintain consistent standards of flavor and
quality, every 12 months champagne companies blend reserve wines from
prior years' harvests with the current year's crus (growths).
"When there's a great year, they stop blending and there is a vintage," said Lorenzo.
Like champagne, the ingredients used in Givenchy's
scents are a blend of ingredients culled from several harvests. With
the launch of the new line, however, the house will create special
juices to celebrate exceptional harvests of particular ingredients."..
Best Unique-Smelling Perfumes for a Unique You on Days Like Valentine's Day: Part 1 {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume List}
As announced previously last month, here is my follow-up article on the idea of turning to "Perfumes That Smell Unique Because You Are Unique" on how to pick fragrances that have an unique signature to them and seem to defeat the notion of fluctuating "skin chemistry" the most. That reflection is motivated by Hermès Vanille Galante. It is also, I realize, the second article in our Perfume Streetwear column where scents come alive in the hustle and bustle of a city, in the beautiful anonymity of strangers you pass by that smell familiar, or perhaps not.
Psychology and perfume, love and scent, all these partners seem to have been brought up in the same house since their childhood and share existential affinities. As I have come to reflect a little about the topic of uniqueness as applied to the perfume one wears (leaving aside the personality of the wearer), some fragrances seem to possess an uncanny ability to retain their personality whole even when worn by thousands of different people (statistically speaking). It makes you wonder exactly how these particular scents can resist melting into people's skins and blending in with their "skin chemistries" whatever that notion may cover in reality other than a somewhat vague metaphor with a pseudo scientific ring of legitimacy to it.
A perfumer like Jean-Paul Guerlain does not believe in skin chemistry and imply tongue-in-cheek that unless you haven't washed for some time all perfumes should smell the same on different people's skins. Another perfumer like Jean-Claude Ellena has said that on 1000 skins one perfume smells in 1000 different ways. Others attempt to classify people's skins according to their innate, never-evolving, inborn scents, correlated to their hair color or even race...
Salvador Dali Sea and Sun in Cadaques & Jean Paul Gaultier Ma Dame Fraternel Twin Bottles {Scented Thoughts}
Do you notice the similarities between a perfume by Salvador Dali called Sea and Sun in Cadaques launched in 2006 and Ma Dame by Jean Paul Gaultier introduced last year in 2008?
The Tova Signature/Tova Reserve Saga: All In The Eye Of The Beholder?{Scented Thoughts}
When I initially posted about the 25th Tova Anniversary, I soon had to realize that Tova Signature perfume was somewhat of a pop culture phenomenon thanks to the popularity the scent had gained over the years of being sold on QVC. If the thread at The Scented Salamander is but the emerging tip of an iceberg, you can well imagine how many - reportedly millions of Tova wearers - are thinking similar thoughts. At the same time that affection and love was lavished upon the perfume, or rather upon its former glory, much disgruntlement was voiced too regarding its present formulation. And from time to time, a Tova Signature wearer drops by perfume café Scented Salamander to gripe, mostly (and I am guessing) in the hope that the message will come across to the Tova people...
Article on Vanilla & Preview of Upcoming Hermes Vanille Galante {Fragrance News} {Fragrant Reading} {Scented Thoughts}
Vanilla, which has been in the recent past showcased as a main source of inspiration for perfumes such as Tihota by Indult composed by perfumer Francis Kurkdjian and Spiritueuse Double Vanille by Guerlain created by Jean-Paul Guerlain, while being announced as a key note in the upcoming Vanille Galante by Hermès in the Hermessence series, a work by Jean-Claude Ellena, has visibly awoken the interests of some of the major perfumers of the day.
L'Express is devoting an article to this beloved, indispensable ingredient of perfumery in more or less high doses including a Q & A with perfumer Jean-Paul Duriez of the house of Patou.
From that article we excerpt, translate and comment on a quote regarding the new Vanille Galante (Flirtatious Vanilla) to be launched in February 2009...
Miss Dior Chérie: The Official Ads & The Unofficial One + A Perfumista Hit by Reverse-Associations {Perfume Images & Adverts} {Scented Thoughts}
Here are the new print ads for the fragrance Miss Dior Chérie shot with model Maryna Linchuk. Sofia Coppola has been hired by Dior to film the TV commercial version of the ad featuring the same model but the latter has not been released on the net yet as far as I can tell.
And here is an anecdote about the perfume: last summer as I had feasted on ripe French-bred strawberries and some were left on the table and forgotten, I started smelling Miss Dior Chérie in the air in a very distinct manner after a while. It is only after a few quizzical moments that I realized the strawberries smelled exactly like the strawberry note in the perfume, complete with its chypré overtones. I don't know if the scent of these strawberries have been enhanced or if Miss Dior Chérie just captures the natural scent of this varietal wonderfully, but it was funny.
I have been doing involuntary reverse-associations more and more by the way. I smell this cumin and I think, mmm, it smells like L'Autre or that other cumin and mmm, it smells like Kingdom...talk about living in a different world! It does not happen systematically but it looks like the world of perfumes is taking on a life of its own...
Perfumes That Sing Vs. Perfumes That Eat: Rooting for the Return of the Aerial in Perfumery {Scented Thoughts}
1931 advert for Un Air Embaumé by Rigaud from Memory Pub
Smelling some recent releases in the past few days, one of them being Lyric by Amouage, it has struck me how, precisely, perfumes might have lost their lyrical, limpid and aerial quality and that this is the reason why artistic director Christopher Chong, an opera singer by training, might have wanted to recapture that quality with both the Jubilation (2007) and Lyric (2008) duos. These fragrances do make me think of the opera, but do they make me feel that they are like a voice that soar with longing in the air and makes an opera house come alive or even riotous as in the olden days? Not necessarily. In the case of Jubilation for Women I readily think of a sumptuous stately marble and golden staircase strewn with ladies in evening attires making their way to the deep velvety reds of their private boxes; in fact the image that superposes itself on the impression of the scent is that of an advert from the beginning of the 20th century depicting such a scene for the once wildly popular Un Air Embaumé (Balmy Air) by Rigaud. In the case of Lyric for Women, I also think of the ruby reds of the opera house but more also of a fine dinner by candlelight taken after the performance, a little Dame-aux-Camélias like. Somehow, the first perfume by Amouage, Jubilation, seems to allude to the anticipatory moments of emotion prior to going to listen to the opera. Somehow, the second fragrance, Lyric, makes me think of a night after the opera, of a meal taken à médianoche with its hedonistic hints of wine, roses, and something palatable like chocolate and vanilla. Lyric is billed as a floral oriental and the rose is its major floral note, but it seems to my nose to contain the olfactory allusions of a gourmand oriental as well, like so many other perfumes nowadays. It is even more subtle than that; it is not really gourmand, it is gourmand by allusion as the oriental notes have been worked in such a way as to be on hanging on the cliff of a gentle precipice called ganache...
Notes on Lavender in Eaux de Cologne & Further Thoughts on By Kilian Prelude To Love {Scented Thoughts}
Lavandin Abrialis
Reviewing By Kilian Prelude To Love yesterday, I puzzled over the question of why this young and exclusive niche perfume house had decided to compose a bold citrus-y fragrance, quite literally plugging into a group of notes that from a certain perspective can smell a bit plain. Or perhaps I would not have asked myself this question had the jus smelled different.
The next puzzle I have had in mind is why they had decided to take on the added challenge of doing not only a citrus-y perfume but also do it in a rather minimalist, even straightforward style? It seems to compound the difficulty of attempting to uplift the lemons and mandarins from the level of the mundane. Indeed, the resulting impression makes you perceive the difference existing between metaphorically expensive and literally expensive...
Prince Matchabelli Wind Song (1953): A Perfect Fragrance {Perfume Review & Musings} On The Perils in Comparing Vintage & New Formulations Side by Side {Scented Thoughts}
Prince Matchabelli Wind Song by Parfums de Coeuris, no doubt in my mind right this instant - and has been for the past few days - the most perfect fragrance in the world and never has this type of preposterous, fleeting, yet sincere axiom sounded more subjectively convincing and worth a public review than in the, at times, sweltering heat of a glaring Cantabrigian summer (Note: this review was initially written, but not completed, in July 2008).
If the latter qualification seems to diminish the very notion of a perfect scent, it does not in reality; it just expresses my genuine sense of bewilderment at finding the added, heavensent desirability of a complementarity discovered between the hotness of July in New England and the perfectly collected coolness of this subtle and fresh green powdery scent that seems to encase an elegant pin-thin-sized hand-rolled lady's clove cigarette, maculated with traces of rose-scented lipstick in its heart.
The subtle greenness is charming is what at first pulled me into the scent. I am finally not let down by the creamy, smoky and dry herbal-y vetiver in the drydown. The ylang ylang is discreetly sexy. Ah but that carnation is enigmatic and metallic yet completely alluring as a beauty with a steel prosthetic leg is: you note the silvery flash from the corner of your eye, yet quickly forget about it and are enchanted by the general aura of the person. And there is so much more to say that I will probably need to review it several times before I can let go of it.
Wind Song is, however inconspicuously, related in regard with the clove-carnation accord to perfumes like Tabu and Opium, with their central hot-and-dry carnation accords. But it is also at the same time a fresh aldehydic related to Chanel No. 5. There is something also of l'Origan in that orris chewing-gum effect. The dry woods in the base, cedar, vetiver, add a subliminal perfecting masculine touch that contributes to the sense of wholeness of the scent as in the circle of assembled yin and yang symbols. Together with the exotic suggestion offered by ylang, it comes to smell like sandalwood.
This perfume, I realize, is a hidden gem of the drugstores and the perfume world more generally speaking....
This advert, from 1995, is reportedly the favorite of Parfums de Coeur.
The White Musk Trend In Paris...Really? {Perfume Streetwear} {Scented Thoughts}
An early engraving of the musk deer, here called the "musk-cat" - Hortus Sanitatis, 1490
PERFUME STREETWEAR: THE WHITE-MUSK TREND IN PARIS... VRAIMENT? by Marie-Helene Wagner
Being in Paris, a capital-city bigger, more kaleidoscopic than Cambridge or even Boston, with more clusters of villages in it, I started experiencing first-hand how one can catch a meaningful glimpse, or rather sniff, of current perfume-wearing trends trailing sensually along the sidewalks, the subway corridors and as showcased in the intimacy of steamy, thronged buses in the summer. Finding myself in the privileged historic environment of an urban culture that is keen on burning incense at the altar of the gods of seduction and of the art of "paraître" (looks) through recourse to personal aromas (but without neglecting the interior life as the contemplative gazes of the cigarette smokers indulging in street-smoking reveals), and which is moreover conscious of its beautiful, multi-secular scented and fashion traditions, makes it all the more interesting to observe or rather take in while simply walking about.
Just as fashion-conscious Parisian women and men love to check out each other's shoes, accessories, clothes and style sense on the street, with more or less discreet patrolling surveillance-eyes that sometimes reveal a startled look of realization, one can bet one's bottom Euro that lovers of beauty are silently inhaling perfume inspiration when brushing past discerning perfumistas in the many busy areas of the city. Or is there such a thing as a perfumista in Paris and is my vocabulary just being contaminated by professional lingo? I muse on: aren't all French women and men expected to have been lulled to bed by the scents of their mothers and developed a seemingly innate appreciation for perfume from the time they were falling asleep in their cradles? Come to think of it: what if one were not just a perfumista but if one were just, is...perfume... in some meditative and deeply reflective sense? The thought is too deep to tackle right now, of course and besides I am thirsty, so I leave it aside. But it's about this idea that early education becomes something like second nature, and that other idea that perfumes that have authenticity about them are psychological constructs that contain doors one can open with invisible keys to enter in their universes...
In typical fashion for our general approach and perception of a perfume, images come first and then the first inhale. How much this precedence of the visual over the olfactory guides our thoughts about a fragrance is hard to decipher, yet we can recognize this shaping, almost hierarchical quality of vision over our nose where fine fragrances are concerned (except when a reviewer is offered the opportunity to sniff unnamed and unadorned lab samples, but then again, we see something before we smell it). Left to fend off in a less civilized environment or simply put in such conditions as to be able to smell natural aromas freely and unaware, the relationship of precedence inverses and we will experience oftentimes the sudden intrusiveness of a smell before finding its origin and identifying it with the help of our sight as we request for further clarification.
Happy 4th of July...And What does Skunk Cabbage Smell Like? {Scented Thoughts - Journal}
Hope everyone is having a lovely 4th-of-July weekend! There are still fireworks planned for this evening so the festivities are not quite over yet in the part of the country where we are. The other day the countryside smelled fresh and cool in the evening mixed with gunpowder.
I took some olfactory notes on Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus Feotidus) or Swamp Cabbage. Depending on whether you smell the crushed leaves or stem, the smells differ slightly.
Despite its name, the plant is not repulsive at all, making you think more of savory culinary associations and wondering whether it might work in a recipe. This source indicates that Native Americans even used skunk cabbage as an underarm deodorant, which points in the direction of a buttery, garlicky aroma being considered attractive, as it is in some other cultures....
Linden Blossoms in Cambridge {Scented Thoughts - Journal}
Linden Blossoms in Cambridge
Thinking of Tagore I want to say, "Linden, linden, linden!"; the past few days have been an olfactory feast for linden blossom lovers. First, branches that were usually high-up in the sky have descended towards the sidewalks, escaping the confines of terracotta-colored brick garden walls as if eager to share their bounty; now they have started to reach a person's height, then like an eccentric Alexander Mc Queen butterfly hat, but without any opening here to allow for normal vision, they also gradually descended upon my head, willing to coiffe me with their featheriness and ethereal pompoms and finally slapping me in the face as I walked, preferably, underneath them. At that point where the linden tree blossoms and leaves were hovering just above my hair, a cascade of pale green cotton mimicking heavy succulent grapes zeroing in on earth, and maybe before that getting off at a station before to tickle the noses of children, it made me stop dead in my tracks. I was suddenly surrounded in the heat by the isolating capsule of a cool sensation smelling of fresh green melon and immediately I recognized it "Un Jardin Après La Mousson!" Then I asked myself, puzzled "who might be wearing Un Jardin Après La Mousson with so much gusto?" Nobody but the linden tree apparently; the blossoms were just displaying a hitherto unnoticed facet: an aquatic green melon one, which together with the natural buttery nuance of the flowers made for a sketch of a moment in the development of UJALM. Then of course I asked myself, "Was there any linden in the perfume and did I mistake it for a green melon note?"...
Isabela Capeto by Isabela Capeto (2007): When Niche is Niche-y & Not Much More {Perfume Review} {Scented Thoughts}
Isabela Capeto is a Brazilian fashion designer who last year launched her debut signature fragrance, Isabela Capeto. The flacon in the shape of a toy-art logo-like red plastic doll oozes cuteness and hipness. It won a 2007 Worldstar prize for packaging.
The perfume itself by Carmita Magalhaes from Mane is much less interesting than anticipated for a project that promised to be a creative one. The composition is reminiscent of a school of predecessors in the woody-spicy category of perfumes. In fact it elicits the general hard-to-grasp idea that the scent feels both familiar and niche, two terms that should never be uttered in the same breath nor in the same sentence in principle for those who live and breathe for niche-perfume discoveries. It creates a much more twisted and subtle effect than when a niche brand copies a mass-marketed perfume, say as in the case of Santa Maria Novella Angels of Florence copying Elizabeth Arden Fifth Avenue, which itself copied...we forget. In the latter case, it only reveals some commercial anxieties. In the first case, it has more of a perverse effect as it copies some of the hallmarks of the - according to common sense - more creative side of perfumery. Here is a good example of how "niche" can come to mean a phenomenon of stereotypical olfactory branding by integrating some signature effects such as "pared-down", "spice-overdose", "photo-realism", "back-from-an-olfactory-trek-from-which-I-brought-back-new-unknown-aromas, except here it is a local flower (Brazilian marshland lily)......
Le Guide du Parfum by Rebecca Veuillet-Gallot: Book Review {Scented Thoughts} {Fragrant Reading}
Le guide du parfum pour elle et lui by Rebecca Veuillet-Gallot is a popular, conveniently sized perfume guide first published in 1995 and last reprinted in 2005. One can only assume that most people in France who are seriously interested in perfume (as in the jus ), its descriptions and history own a copy of it or have read it at the library, especially so since its only alternative in French is the review guide by Luca Turin (1992;1994), which is out of print.
We wanted to do a review of it because we almost bypassed it in favor of more copious tomes not expecting to find a tremendous amount of information in the rather slim copy. Once we started reading it, we had to realize that underneath its understated character, it is a wonderfully rich little book that one will go back to, finding new details each time depending on the questions you ask yourself.......
Power Gourmand Fruity- Florals Are In & What Do They Mean? {The 5th Sense in the News} {Scented Thoughts}
There is an interesting article in The Earth Times on "sweet fruit and flowers are basis of summer fragrance trends" in terms mostly of interpretive discourse about perfume about how recently fragrances have become distinctive. If we are to follow them, the whole industry has decided to take risks, mainly by overdosing fruity and floral notes in recent compositions and lest this might be considered to be too daring, adding woody notes to counterbalance the audacity of the thought, in some cases like Burberry The Beat.
"The new fragrances are not to everyone's taste. That's because the trend is going in the direction of distinct fragrances that don't necessarily appeal to the masses."
The fruity-floral category is probably the most commercial one in the women's market nowadays. One could decide that such fragrances are now de facto the least distinctive category if you just focus on the group itself as a perfume family.....
Estee Lauder Pure White Linen Light Breeze (2008): Reflections on Clean {Perfume Review} {Scented Thoughts} {Notebook: Fresh & Clean}
Pure White Linen Light Breeze inscribes itself in the direct genealogy of White Linen (1978), which had a Breeze version as early as 1996 and was adapted to contemporary tastes with Pure White Linen in 2006. Like each year, Estee Lauder put out their summer collection of fragrances, which are usually made to smell of-the-season with the addition of fresh notes and dressed in pretty shades and patterns to accent the mood of relaxation. So this year there is also a Pure White Linen Summer Fun. This review is for Light Breeze only which was issued in the beginning of 2008 to herald the early days of spring.
By now our representations of what crisp linen smell like - and an immaculately white linen at that - has been heavily codified by a whole school of perfumes that aims to capture the quintessence of clean. Given this constraint and given the simple purposes of such fragrances, it is tricky to assess them beyond the fact that they appropriately seem to deliver the promise of an eternal youth for your white t-shirt. With this type of perfume on, your t-shirt will never age, wrinkle, nor smell bad. No, the Ozonic smell takes over and imparts a permanent jus-showered effect that even clean little babies can only dream of......
Some Thoughts on Class-Connoted Smells Around Avon Flower and Petal
At the time that David H. McConnell set up the California Perfume Company (1886-1939) the forerunner to Avon, perfectly desirable perfumes were designated with the term “odors”, a word that has come to be negatively connoted in the contemporary period in the English language. If a “scent” generally smells good today, an “odor” in 2008 mostly does not.
This historical semantic shift recently took on a new meaning for us as we smelled the new Avon for Cynthia Rowley duo of perfumes for mothers and daughters called Flower and Petal, which will be issued this year for Mother’s Day. The scents which at first smell pretty in a standard albeit retro way for Flower and in a more interesting, unexpected way for Petal turn out both to reveal some suprisingly frank notes in their base notes. We were so surprised that it felt suddenly like experiencing a time warp and going back to a noisy malodorous street in a Victorian era city (for Flower) and a turn-of the-century Belle Epoque garden (for Petal) where children are playing, running and stopping to catch their breaths covered with summery perspiration. The perfumes at some point smell unnaturally and shockingly natural in a realistic manner.....
Perfume Tolerance & Consumption Is Down A Notch or Two in the US {The 5th Sense in the News} {Scented Thoughts}
There is an article in the New York Times that attempts to interpret the drop in sales and perfume-wearing in the US which was reported recently by the NPD Group.
Interestingly, this exacerbation of invisible social tensions between people who are wearing and smelling perfume in the public space seems to be more characteristic of North America and Canada and has been frequently covered in the press in that region (this specificity was not expounded upon in the article).
Taking a step back, one could think that it may be linked to over-sensitization and change of sensibilities as a result of anti-smoking policies in public spaces. Some people have noted that while they did not use to notice cigarette smoking so much twenty or thirty years ago, they have been made to be hyper conscious of the smell today. New social boundaries have been defined where volatiles are concerned and perfume may be logically following suit....
Of Gabrielle Coco Chanel & Roses: Chanel No. 5 As The Anti-Rose Scent {Scented Thoughts} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 20}
If one is to attempt to diagnose the causes behind rose perfumes going officially out of fashion in the course of the 20th century, notwithstanding exceptions such as Tea Rose by Perfumer's Workshop, Trésor by Lancôme, YSL Paris, (Guerlain Nahéma was not a success), one is tempted to turn one's gaze in the direction of Gabrielle Coco Chanel as one possible culprit. Chanel had an enormous influence on the redefining of the woman's silhouette and her self-perception as being modern, updated, dans le vent. Rose as fashion may have well ceased to exist with one of the utterances of Coco Chanel who never felt shy about pronouncing aesthetic diktats.
She claimed to hate natural flowers and instead pushed flowers cut out of material. She also pronounced real jewelry to be grotesque and pushed bold, fake costume jewelry. Would you wear real flowers? Ridiculous, so same thing for jewelry, she would snap.
If you walk in the streets of Paris today, you can still feel this principle at work. Very few Parisian women wear real jewelry, it is almost considered impolite it seems. It may be both tastefully Republican (egalitarian) and Chanel-esque not to give in to any nouveau-riche foibles. Of course, never mind that a Chanel costume jewelry piece today may cost more than gold jewelry. Never mind.The subtext seems to be that it is much more stylish to wear fake pieces, affirm style rather than money, and hide your heirloom jewelry where it belongs, in the recesses of your jewelry box and your consciousness (you will wear them internally or know that you can).
Real flowers in hair or in buttonholes are even more of a rarity as if people might be afraid to suddenly hear the sardonic laughter of Coco Chanel coming out of mouthpieces hidden in some street corners. How ridiculous! Real flowers! Ha, ha, ha! The Chanel police, somehow, has left its imprint and the violet vendors are only occasionally spotted in My Fair Lady.
Roses to her connoted of naturalness, too much so probably to merit her admiration. If you cannot improve on the perfection of the rose, is it really interesting to a creative mind? Chanel No. 5 may well rely on the magic of a superlative Rosa Centifolia cultivated in Grasse in fields reserved for the fashion house, this does not mean that it had not to be fully domesticated and stylized before being deemed suitable and couture.....
Emilienne d'Alençon, one of the inspirations behind Chanel No. 5
The rose-patchouli-amber accord was particularly popular in 2007 in women's perfumes although it is fair to say that it has always been popular. If a competitive exam topic had been handed down from the skies to the perfumers' community asking them to come up with their own rendition of this accord, it would not have felt any different. To some extent, it all goes back to the agricultural roots of the trade. Just like one might visit an annual agricultural exhibition where the best Camemberts and Charolaises from France are shown and compared, one might be standing in front of shelves with perfumes such as Gucci by Gucci, YSL Elle, Dior Midnight Poison on them and see who got the gold medal of excellence. It is perfectly respectable that perfumes be about the refining of a traditional idea. In this case, originality is partial, and like good perfumes, subtle. Or if you prefer a more palatable comparison brought about by the thought association between Midnight Poison and 'Round Midnight and the idea of circularity, it is like a jazz standard that would be interpreted each time in different, personal, and creative ways.....
Skarb by Humiecki & Graef (2007): How Men Cry - Part I {Perfume Review & Musings} {Scented Thoughts} {New Fragrance} {Men's Cologne}
Daniel Craig by Sam Taylor-Wood in Men Crying
Skarb means "treasure" in Polish; it is the name of the first fragrance put out by the niche perfume brand Humiecki and Graef, named after the two grandmothers of founders Sebastian Fischenich and Tobias Müksch: Helena Humiecka z Humiecina (1908-2000) and Katharina Graef (1906-2004).
There exists here so many networks of meaning on which the existence of this perfume rests that it is worthwhile to try to present a few of them. First the fragrance is said to explicitly refuse the traditional order and hierarchization of notes. Skarb is an attempt to reflect the intricacies of life and history - especially as impacted by National Socialism in Eastern Europe, the points of rejoinder and departure, the memories and emotions that beset and nurtured human lives in that region - into the language of perfumery........
If one has had the good fortune of getting an advance copy of the upcoming book by Chandler Burr entitled The Perfect Scent (release date, Jan 22, 2008) focusing on two case studies of fragrance development in the industry, Un Jardin Sur Le Nil by Hermès and Lovely by Coty, one then gets the full meaning of what "going to Dadeland" might mean when it comes to boosting fragrance sales. Is Paris Hilton visiting Dadeland (and other malls for that matter currently) because she is eager to meet her fans and do a little fieldwork or in anticipation of through-the-roof sales and to thank her fans? Not quite........
Perfume Advice From The Noses: Yay for Drugstore Fragrances & Nay for Body Chemistry {Fragrant Reading} {Scented Thoughts}
Three young perfumers from Drom, Pierre Constantin-Guéros, Valérie Garnuch-Mentzel, and Dephine Jelk offer liberal advice on dos and donts to perfume afcionados and attempt to debunk a few myths in passing. Guéros for example advises to overlook the shape of the perfume bottle and says, “You’d be surprised to know that a lot of drugstore perfume companies spend more on the juice,”. He does not believe in the alleged all-transforming power of each individual's body chemistry either,
“Unless you eat very spicy food all the time, your body chemistry won’t change a fragrance,” explains Guéros. “That’s a bit of a myth—you’d have to have a trained nose to be able to distinguish how a scent smells differently on two people.”........
Chypre, Oriental, Poudré by Jovoy & Chypre by Coty: On Perfume Names {Perfume Shorts (Reviews)} {Scented Thoughts} {New Perfumes}
The perfumes issued by Jovoy the newly re-established house founded by Blanche Arvoy in 1923 and now revived by François Henin, Henri de Pierrefeu, and Marie-Laure de Rodellec (see also post on the "patrimony movement" in French perfumery) pose the interesting question, to us, of the significance of the name and concept behind a perfume in their influence over the composition of the fragrance and the communication of its personality to the wearer. If a perfume is art, then it is about the attempt to establish a bridge of communication between two imaginations, two universes, those of the creator(s) and the wearer(s). Perfumes named with non-particular names, but rather with names denoting the whole group or family of perfumes might well be in danger of blunting precise images, precise sensations. It is very difficult to assess how much a name influences our perception of a perfume without doing psychological tests about olfactory creation and perception and expectations. Perfumes might very well be inevitably linked to stories and names as the other halves of themselves, which includes the shape of the bottle, another story told with different materials........
Resurrecting Vintage Perfume Brands: Robert Piguet, Lubin, Jovoy, & Now Gabilla! {Fragrance News} {Scented Thoughts} {Trend Alert}
Parallel to the activities of innovation and sense of sheer child-like liberty of creation in perfumery that are perhaps best exemplified by Etat Libre d'Orange who seem to be delighted to be sticking their tongues at starchy perfume wearers and complementary to it, we see a more curatorial-minded movement that aims to resurrect antique and vintage French perfume brands, some of which are all but forgotten.
It would be interesting to see how this current (for the French-owned brands) parallels another cultural movement in French-movie making, that of the so-called heritage movies. The preservation of national patrimony has become a core Republican value of the French. Is its seeming equivalent in perfumery similarly minded or animated by a different spirit? More generally and beyond the French frame of reference (for Piguet for example) it certainly signifies an aesthetic choice......
Iris Noir by Yves Rocher: The Reassuring Smell of The Middle Class {Perfume Short (Review)} {Scented Thoughts} {New Fragrance}
Iris Noir (Black Iris) by Yves Rocher is the latest and third installment in the brand's more upscale collection of perfumes called Secrets d'Essences (Secrets of Essences). This new perfume is already out in France but US-based customers will have to wait until the beginning of 2008 to be able to purchase it.
Iris Noir comes after Voile d'Ambre and Rose Absolue. Each fragrance is dedicated to the showcasing of one key exceptionally sourced ingredient be it amber, rose, or iris. The stress for the collection is put on both this use of rarer ingredients and the partnership with "talented perfumers" although it must be noted that Yves Rocher has always had a policy of recruiting excellent and even great perfumers, such as Sophia Grojsman, Annick Ménardo, and Francis Kurkdjian, even for their more mundanely presented fragrance creations. According to Osmoz, 86% of natural ingredients were included in the composition.......
Dior Midnight Poison Extrait de Parfum {New Perfume} Too Many Chocolates, Too Many Perfumes {Scented Thoughts}
As advertised, each bottle of Dior Midnight Poison is said to be unique reflecting in this manner the demanding haute-couture spirit that presided over its creation. Here is a picture of the slightly more tantalizing bottle for the extrait or pure parfum. We cursorily reviewed Midnight Poison mostly under the heading of it being a smell-alike and should probably just smell it on its own to be both fair and realistic given the context of hyper-production of scents these days. This year is significantly more frenzied than last year. Could this get even more feverish next year? We're afraid to ask lest the gods have major plans for the exponential development of the perfume industry in the years to come. Somehow we are reminded of the episode of I Love Lucy at the chocolate factory where she has to frantically hurry more and more to try to wrap, then eat, then stuff her clothes with all the chocolates passing in front of her on the conveyor belt. Just put perfume bottles instead and do a remake of that scene. Enlightenment guaranteed.
Perfumes are becoming more and more of a zapping activity. Why do we zap? That is the question. Because the program is shallow and bad? Because you are afraid you are going to miss a good program? Greed? Because it gives a false sense of freedom and choice? Because you are bored and hopeful? We are sure we'll have occasion to return to the topic, meanwhile......
Venice by Memento {New Perfume} The Beautiful-Italy Trend {Scented Thoughts} {Trend Alert}
The Italian group Eurocosmesi is going to unveil a new niche perfume brand in October of 2007 at the TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes, which was christened Memento. The collection is dedicated to presenting an olfactory tour of Italy.
Their first creation is a women's fragrance called Venice. Interestingly, Italian perfume brands lately seem to offer an almost nationalistic flavor and derive inspiration often from the national landscape. It might be that it is this idea of turning perfumes into objects that tourists will feel moved to buy as souvenirs from their trips or it might be that there is some sort of ideological current running......
Fishnets on Perfume Flacons are In! Les Flacons de Parfums Adoptent le Bas Résille! {Scented Thoughts} {Trend Alert}
Perfume bottles this fall are adopting the sexy fishnet look to stress their sex appeal, sense of style, and surprise the consumer -- Le bas résille a le vent en poupe cet automne en parfumerie sélective et même dans celle dite de niche! Témoins, trois parfums qui optent pour plus de provocation vestimentaire et de références fétichistes à la Bunuel:......
After having mentioned yesterday the iconic Revlon Charlie perfume ads of the 1970s as presenting the counter-archetype of the woman seen as object as proposed in several recent perfume adverts, we decided to revisit some of these 1970s and 80s ads to reconnect for a time with Charlie's bouncy step.
Many of us remember energetic Charlie walking with a conquering spring in her step. She wore pants and to show off that she really knew how to wear them, her stride was amplified, made almost exaggerated at times, like the stylized idea of independence and confidence. Man, she could walk some giant steps on behalf of all women.
Here are some images to remember Charlie who could even reveal herself to be on occasion (unfortunately) paternalistic, if provoked by the behind of a man; sexual harassment you said? Connais pas. What a change of scenes in the current adverts we talked about yesterday which contain allusions to a rather crude sexual assault, a woman with half a face who is really the dream of an inflatable sex doll, and submissive femininity in general. Blame it on cultural eclectism and trends rather than on an overall ideology but still.....
Rue du Petit Musc, Quid? {Scented Thoughts} {Fragrances of Paris}
The other day, I posted a picture of a street in Paris, located in the IVth arrondissement, which is called "Rue du Petit Musc"(literally reading as "street of the little musk"), thinking that I should double-check its meaning and learn more about the history of that street. I have found a couple of books which will offer more complete information, but for right now I was already able to determine that the word "musc" here does not make reference to "musk", but to a history of illicit pleasures in the city......
Happy 4th of July! & Perfumes for the 4th of July {Scented Thoughts}
Happy 4th of July!
We are reposting articles published last year on the blog regarding perfumes and politics and in particular what fragrances are good to wear on the 4th of July!
L'Instant Magic by Guerlain {New Perfume} {Scented Thoughts}
Guerlain will introduce a new feminine fragrance called L'Instant Magic on September 1 2007. As reported by the brand, the new perfume has no filiation whatsoever with the original L'Instant except for a sensation of freshness that cuts across the whole fragrance.
Wouldn't it be more exciting to give it an altogether new name then? Apparently the needs of branding have overcome. Not only are the juices becoming more stereotypical, but the names of the perfumes are following that trend as well. Although please note that in this case, the perfume will be different, but the name will be confusingly similar to the original L'Instant........
Today, I was planning to propose a review of Serge LutensEncens et Lavande followed the next day by the latest Sonia Rykiel Belle en Rykiel as they both offer a central incense and lavender accord. It amused me to no end to read that the perfumer for Belle En Rykiel had told his customer that this accord had never been done before. We can also have a pious thought for Guerlain Jicky and see it as an illustrious predecessor of that main never-done-before accord. I will however have to postpone this project for the next coming days, hopefully starting tomorrow. Instead, I wanted to share some thoughts with you about an upcoming reflection theme for the blog......
Les Exclusifs by Chanel: An Overview {Perfume Review & Musings} {Scented Thoughts}
The Total Chanel Look in the 1960s
In the weeks leading to the release of Les Exclusifs by Chanel (please read our previous post for a description of the line) what we had to go with were the names of the perfumes, the descriptions of the notes, and the interviews of the perfumers who composed the new fragrances, namely Jacques Polge in association probably with Christopher Sheldrake although this last point is left rather vague.
One could identify two aesthetic orientations in the comments: the evocative-artistic one and the tradition-bound house-of-Chanel-inspired one. Names like Bel Respiro, 28, La Pausa, Coromandel were almost Baudelairean or Proustean in their appeal promising us an art of evocation, what perfumery is best at creating: immediate emotion, a sense of place. We would travel on the wings of La Pausa and alight in the villa haunted by Chanel's spirit while feeling the soft breeze caressing the palm trees and even hear the creaking noises of the furniture and smell the fresh velvets of the cushions or something like that. Coromandel would be, could only be terribly poetic and rare. Instead it seems that the tradition-bound Chanel-inspired current of thought has weighed in heavily in the creations of the perfumes......
Love Potions Or My Top Super Sexy Scents for Valentine's Day & Beyond {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume List} {Shopping Tips}
Valentine's Day is upon us; don't you feel the excitement? I have a date with my husband and I know what cologne I will be offering him (see below included in the list of perfume recommendations for V Day.) I have taken this opportunity to compile a list of perfumes I think are particularly sexy - men on the street tend to sniff harder around these or smile brighter smiles - or which alternatively have that reputation and that I plan to try. They are usually one of two kinds for me; either they offer a kind of dry, feminine, and sophisticated sillage which puts a certain seductive distance. Or they are perfumes that have been made to blend in particularly well with your skin. I am not referring to one's personal body chemistry but to fragrances that explicitly use ingredients or bases that enhance the scent of one's skin.
Perfumes as Love Potions
In popular parlance, terms like "love elixir" or "love philter" and even more commonly "love potion" have come to designate perfumes that have such mysterious effect ascribed to them as to be capable of arousing extreme sensual thoughts and even invite deeper amorous feelings through the sheer power of their scents. The very word "philter" speaks of love as it comes from Latin "philtrum" which borrowed the term from Greek "philtron" which in turn is derived from Greek "phileo" meaning "to love".
We see a transfer of meaning from the original notion regarding what a love potion is. Originally - and nowhere else is it more famously illustrated than in the myth of Tristan and Isolde in the West - a love potion would have had to have been ingurgitated so that the magical combination of the various ingredients contained in it would have had the effect of securing eternal love through their absorption.....
Overview of New Perfume Line Etat Libre d'Orange: Libertinage of the Nose or Pornochic? {Scented Thoughts}
Before the very moment of olfactory apprehension of a perfume, there are those important preceding instants where the perfume lover anticipates smelling the jus, dreams about it, fears disappointment, and finally lets the dices of fate roll by taking a stroll to the perfumery.
[...] On my way to Etat Libre d'Orange, I stop in front of the attractive window of a store called Les Mille Feuilles and lose myself into the contemplation of an array of whimsical objects. One item catches my attention: a bust of an 18th century-looking masculine figure with a feminine virginal narrow bejewelled crown on its head. It suddenly reminds me of a terrifying anecdote told to me by a friend whose grand-father had indulged in the heights of, seemingly, ancien régime libertine debauchery. Namely that the marquis' moral cruelty and esprit de libertinage had led him to spend his wedding night with revellers all the while dressed up in his new wife's bridal gown and virginal veil. To crown it all, the marquis' wife many years later ended up being institutionalized by the family......
A Comment by Will Andrews On TSS About Rock 'N Rose By Valentino, Some Thoughts on Authorship in Perfumery {Perfume History & Facts} {Scented Thoughts}
We got an interesting comment by perfumer William Andrews regarding Rock 'N Rose by Valentino. He turns out to be one of the creators of the fragrance and not its sole conceiver. In this case also we had initially quoted our information from Cosmetic News. Here is the correction that he added:
Hoping To Sing Another Te Deum For Mitsouko by Guerlain {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume Short Reviews}
This is a follow up to my previous post about Mitsouko Eau de Toilette. During my recent trip to Europe I made a point of sampling Mitsouko by Guerlain in different places and in different concentrations because it was so hard for me to believe that the perfume's quality had completely gone down the drain. I still believe in a Guerlain gold standard of quality I suppose.
As I already mentioned in that previous post I was in shock when I tested Mitsouko at Marshall's last fall because it was so bad-smelling but at the same time thought there was perhaps a possibility that a cheaper version might have been dumped on sections of the export/US market....
First Impressions of the Thierry Mugler Coffret Based On Perfume The Novel by Süskind & Perfume The Movie by Tykwer {Scented Thoughts}
The red velvet box finally came. I smelled it before opening it as I was wondering whether all put together the perfumes created an interesting dissonant or harmonious smell that might have transpired through the walls of the coffret. One end of the box smelled moldy, you will know why later, the other one was neutral....
Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Will Be in Theaters on December 27th 2006, You Have To Go See It!
Why do you have to go see it? Stay tuned! The Scented Salamander was invited to an advance screening of the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer that will be in theaters in a month on December 27th 2006. She will fill you in soon!
I am letting myself be penetrated by the charm of the movie and trying to figure out how to write a review without including too many spoilers:)
Beautiful Black Perfume Bottles & Smelling Black {Scented Thoughts & Perfume List}
I have finally come up with a list of Beautiful Black Perfume Bottles. Writing down these names and comparing the bottles amongst themselves made me realize certain common points that they share and some of the ideas regarding the treatment in black of perfume bottles. I will pick a few to see if the contents match the aesthetics of the flacon.
I have already come up with the thought that some perfumes should be dressed in black to convey the full impact of their personalities, like Dzing!, Femme, Youth-Dew, Royal Secret, Réglisse, Sables, Patchouli Antique, or Lonestar Memories (yes, Andy). Which brings me to think that Coffee scents, as I see it, would be enhanced by black flacons for containers although if that became a dictum it would soon become boring. When I try imagining a coffee scent held captive in a pink bottle, it somehows makes me feel ill in the stomach...
Scented Thoughts: Perfume Symbolism in Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter
The Night Porter (1973/74) was a very controversial movie at the time of its introduction and remains to this day. It is the story of the destructive and sado-masochistic relationship uniting a concentration camp survivor and her former Nazi torturer. The movie was based in part on interviews done by Liliana Cavani with concentration camp survivors.
As the characters, played superbly by Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde, Lucia and Max, meet again in post-war Vienna 13 years later in 1957, the intensity of their relationship, to say the least, fully resurfaces, this time to demonstrate the impossibility of its continued existence and its doom. Lucia was 15 when she became Max's victim and lover and she seems to be irremediably marked by the experience.What had been limited to a game, paradoxically, when millions of people were being killed, notwithstanding the fact that it had been a dangerous and sickening one during the Nazi period, becomes suddenly something much more threatening. Max, who is trying to preserve himself from the new historical context by living like a "church mouse" in a hotel patronized by covert former Nazis, will not be able to fulfill his modest plan upon reconnecting with Lucia.The re-established rules of normal society now fail to be able to preserve their deviant behaviors and will even call for their condemnation by former Nazis who fear Lucia could stand as a witness against their crimes.
It is easy for someone external, like a spectator, to decide that Max is a deeply deranged individual whose pathology found expression and nourishment in the Nazi period and, were it real life, would have to be avoided at all costs. The problem of course is that looking at Max through the eyes of Lucia makes the situation much more ambiguous as it becomes quite evident that the former Nazi officer is able to have her experience an almost animalic joy and happiness that is best expressed by her strange, deep, and happy laughter punctuating her descent into oblivion. Undeniably, Lucia is happy, much more than she ever was with her conventionally handsome American husband who represents by contrast urbanity, culture, civilization and who happens to be a renowned music conductor. She may be, we suspect, at the center of Max's life in a way that she never was at the center of her husband's life...
Scented Thoughts: On Chandler Burr's Take on Dzing! by L'Artisan Parfumeur
I just went reading Chandler Burr's latest reviews of three fragrances in the New York Times: Puissance 2 Jean Paul Gaultier, Dzing! L'Artisan Parfumeur, and B*Men by Thierry Mugler. In it, the author develops the idea that these perfumes are to some extent reflections of a range of olfactory notes found in construction works. They all get 3 stars for succeeding in doing that.
I can only speak for Dzing! to say that I think it deserves better than a 3 star rating, even if that translates into meaning "breathtaking" by NYT standards. I feel that the originality of the fragrance is not properly recognized in this article as it is reduced to a flattening realistic interpretation of its personality. Chandler Burr is saying, in other words, that he smelled those notes before on the street around construction workers, hey, no big deal. "L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Dzing!, a unisex fragrance created by Olivia Giacobetti, the author of Diptyque’s popular Philosykos, is similar to the scent that daily bathes the urban hard hat, with his hammer and nails. I bet this guy never thinks about this complex scent, and I bet he would recognize it instantly". Does that do justice to Olivia Giaocobetti's imagination, originality again, and artistic risk-taking? I think not....
They don't know yet that they are wearing Dzing! by L'Artisan Parfumeur but they will soon, when they open the New York Times....
Scented Thoughts: Not Knowing How To Perfume The Season
Bliss! I am starting to smell the crisp cool autumnal air of New England. This sensation is a forerunner of little celebrations of warmth, hot steaming mugs of mulled apple cider, coffee that sharpens the senses, candle lighting, breaths of warmth on one's frozen fingers, cosy fluffy ample enveloping scarves, smell of leaves and walks in the forest, and best of all a cool ambient air that needs to be infused with spices and amber. Now is the season for the deepest and richest Oriental scents to reveal their mystery. I want my perfumes to feel like glowing amber, rich cognac, and dark molasses...
The 5th Sense in the News & Scented Thoughts: Two Articles by Chandler Burr in the NYT
I just read Chandler Burr's new column in the New York Times. I am somewhat relieved to see that the author is not so keen on using the much advertised 4 star rating system which I cannot help but find a bit crude (please note, Burr does not even get to use 5 stars). But more to the point, I can only express scepticism regarding that approach to evaluating perfumes, so outrageously simplistic it is. It fails to convince because it does not leave room for the temporal, psychological, not to mention individual biological dimensions influencing one's appreciation of a fragrance. Stamping a perfume with one's four stars of approval could look ludicrous. In my opinion, there should be significant room left for doubt and openness, as a perfume, to use Umberto Eco's aesthetic notion, is perhaps more than any other art form, an open work of art...
Scented Thoughts: The Flacon of M.A. Sillage de La Reine by Le Château de Versailles
We love perfume flacons and in this sense we are the children of 20th century perfumery as defined by François Coty. This innovative entrepreneur and perfumer was a man of instinct and vision as he helped define the perfume concept as a mass-marketable object of luxury in which the container played an equal aesthetic role to that which was contained in it. He once said, "a perfume should attract the eye as much as the nose." The adequacy between the two signalled to Coty a successful fragrance, that is a fragrance capable of becoming the focus of women's aspirations and desires, their very expression in fact, until then perhaps only confusely felt and dreamt about. This message of Coty's is famous but not necessarily ingrained, even today 102 years later, in people's mentalities. Many a perfume wearer today will still consider the juice itself to be more significant than its container. This is a perfectly acceptable proposition but it does not explore fully what beauty and luxury can be as fuller, more complete experiences...
Since with time our ideas tend to become simpler, the notion has struck us after writing our previous post on Patriotic Perfumes that a convenient way to address the question of the relationship between patriotism and perfume is to turn towards the testing of the whimsical project for now of creating a national fragrance.
Countries have national anthems and flags with recognizable national colors but so far, to our knowledge at least, there has not been any governmental attempt at promoting an emblematic national scent or perfume. This may appear paradoxical because as we know, olfaction bypasses the conscious mind and is thus capable of recreating the past or transporting us to a place other than where our physical body is. This means that within the context of a nationalist project, the motherland or fatherland and the history of a country could theoretically be always present, contained in the few droplets of a national perfume and conjured up with each application. With such a powerful tool to influence people's consciousnesses one would think that it would have been deeply exploited. But, curiously enough, not really (Added: until Dec 2007 that is when the Korean presidential candidate Lee Myung-Bak is reported to use perfume as a means to influence voting)........
Scented Thoughts: Patriotic (American) Perfumes to Wear on the 4th of July, Some Modest Suggestions
Patriotism on holidays which celebrate national independence is expressed through many semiotic activities and foci of symbolic activities worldwide. In America, manifestations of patriotism vary from region to region of the American motherland (or is it a fatherland we should be speaking of?) -- in Boston for example, people feel Bostonian by going to listen to the Boston Pops -- but we can rest assured of two things: there will be national barbeque-partying and fireworks illuminating the many corners of the sky all over the 50 United States tomorrow.
From an olfactory standpoint, we can muse on and say that the 4th of July smells in the base notes of gourmand smoky burgers, burning hot coal, gunpowder, tangy, sweet and sticky tomato ketchup, rich boozy beer and maybe sweet cotton candy and apple pie with spicy cinnamon and let's not forget, musky sweat. In the heart notes there are green grass, tangy-green citronnella, soft wheat, aqueous cucumber, sweet corn, iceberg lettuce notes, and a dash of car interior and car polish. In the top notes you might find fresh mint, tart pink lemonade, coca-cola, frosted ice cubes, and light, cool, and fresh baby powder notes. This olfactory rêverie may smell hellish a priori to some but since each year the same note combinations reappear and people still throng the 4th of July events, you might have a formula of success here.
Napoleon once haughtily remarked, "Impossible n'est pas français" (something like, "the word 'impossible' is not to be found in the French language.") This seems to be the motto of many a perfumer today and since many of them are French you might get a phenomenon of double-whammy hubris due to the fact that they are French and due to the fact that they are perfumers.
In any case, since no one has yet dared to combine these multifarious aromas of the Fourth in a single bottle, let's turn to alternative, ready-made solutions to express patriotism and love of the motherland through perfumes. How shall we convey that patriotic message? It is often said that olfaction is the neglected sense and hence, in our case, a clearly neglected source of rich patriotic symbols. As of today, it is not consciously tapped into by the vast majority of the population to express patriotism alongside with wearing star spangled sartorial signs. So if you contemplate wearing something more celebratory of Americaness than just deodorant, please read on and see what my practical suggestions are.
Scented Thoughts: My Favorite Summmer Scents, Part 0
Finally, I am coming around to finalizing my list of fantafabulous scents for the summer. I hesitated between offering a hyper selective list of my top favorite in the different families of perfumes or composing a list revealing clusters of my most cherished scents for summer. I have decided to go for the second option because lists are also fun as exploratory tools, not just as embodiments of a perfect world and ideal life transliterated into perfumes. This allows me to bring together both old, historical favorites and new favorites; I could even include future favorites thanks to my uncanny sense of intuition, but I will stop there and not revel in the unseen...
Scented Thoughts: Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas & A Scented Palace
"Vanity of vanities and all is vanity" wrote the Ecclesiastes.....how very true; regardless, I am posting here a link to a lovely fashion blog, Are You A Beauty? owned by Ivy which features The Scented Salamander in her "Beautiful Blog Hunt Wednesday" column. I just learned about it yesterday and am thrilled to report that I got good press from her.
I will post a review of the book by Elisabeth de Feydeau, A Scented Palace, either today or tomorrow as I see that much interest was generated by it. This will be a review of the French edition, Jean-Louis Fargeon, Parfumeur de Marie-Antoinette that I had the opportunity to read several months ago.
I must confess however that, on occasions, I actually do like to compare perfumes. This week, for example, I undertook a systematic practical and empirical investigation that undermines Roudnitska's very ideal of unicity regarding the perception of a perfume; I deliberately attempted to unearth a collection of perfumes that address the same theme, namely, offer an interpretation of the same dominant note ( I will unveil the results of this investigation-cum-quest later).
One can wonder whether Roudnitska's distaste for artistic comparison entailed distaste for comparison at all levels of reality. I have not studied his method of teaching perfumery. The only information I have about his pedagogical method comes from an account by his son Michel. It appears that in this case too he priviliged a great economy of means and intense focus on a sole object of study.
His son recounts how his father's teaching method would be to ask him to re-create the formula of a given fragrance that he had composed and now handed to him as an exercise to complete. Michel Roudniska (the creator of Noir Epices and Bois de Paradis, among others) then had unlimited time to try to recompose it, guess the notes as well as their relative proportions to each others. He was not allowed to divert his attention apparently from that one task. It was a tremendously subtle and difficult enterprise that could take up from several months to a year.
Edmond Roudnitska was interested in elevating perfumery to an art form. To this effect, he wrote aesthetic treatises on perfumes and sought his inspiration in the works of André Sourdel, an art historian. His efforts were aimed at making perfumery statutorily be less of a craft and more of an art. Nevertheless, it still remains, despite his best efforts, that perfumery continues very easily to be apprehended more as a craft than an art. And there is undeniably great pleasure to be derived from, in all simplicity, well-crafted scents. In this sense, certain fragrances are completely satisfying; they will not open new vistas onto an imaginary and visionary world, they will not cultivate dissonance, be revolutionary, but they will have the capacity to sublimate natural aspects of our world.
This being said, the instinct of the craftsman was never dead in Edmond Roudnitska, for in the end, a perfume had to smell good to him; this still stood as the ultimate test. But if you think of perfumery as an art, liberated from all constraints of bourgeois good taste and necessity to please not only you, but others as well, then you would have to accept the idea that a perfume could smell bad, even foul intermittently, be disturbing, difficult to wear, provided it was thought out, interesting, and meaningful.
This idea is probably still difficult to accept because at a fundamental level we use our noses in a very primary manner to distinguish between good and bad smells. The foul is linked with danger, poison, death, corruption etc. The pleasing smell is linked to sustenance of our life force; it is to be interpreted as a sign that a natural balance exists, that a food is edible, that a person is healthy, that all things in our environment were checked and found out to be normal. There is a strong sense of normalcy and harmony as reiterated values attached to our sense of smell.
The basic sexual instinct is also a problem. The innate disposition in a perfume to be seductive and pleasing in order to attract sexual partners to allow for the reproduction of the species makes it less free to be just an art medium. Even the sublimation and transformation of scent as sex into scent as fashion in the 20th century pushed it further in the direction of being an harmonious medium of expression. A perfume has to go with your mood, with a certain social occasion, with your skin chemistry, even be a reflection of who you are. A perfume is not supposed to clash with any entities; it is supposed to take on an espousing contour. The intervention of our persons within the creative space allocated to fragrance creation makes this art form very tributary of our own inclinations.
If we take the example of portraiture in painting, we can see that even it does not have to go to the extent of being a reflection of who you are, it can just be a reflection of you as seen by an artist. Renaissance portraits that were commissioned by wealthy patrons still reflect more the manner of an artist than the personal, unique individual style of the subject in the painting.
The crucial difference is that Renaissance painters did not paint on bodies. Tattoos, for example, are more like perfumes because they adorn the skin and thus are made part of the representation of the self. You are also made morally responsible for the display of that art on your body, even if the author is not you. However, perfumes have more material to play with than flat tattoos; they have time and memory to play with. One should also keep in mind that perfumes are only contingently applied to the body.
Serge Lutens' creations are closest to this art conception that puts preeminent stake in the artist. His fragrances are the most indifferent to our skins, to our persons and center more on his vision, you be damned. The result is that his scents are sometimes truly difficult to wear, i.e. not "pleasurable" to wear, and I personally feel at times that I am just being used as rented space/ skin/ gallery for an exhibition of paintings. Being a person, I can resent being treated like a simple space, an ambulatory venue for art creations. This sentiment is not just about a good or bad fit between the perfume and me, it is more about a sense of self-respect - I am more than an inanimate object and a blank canvas - and therefore, yes, a certain conception of humanity.
So here again, we go back to this idea that perfumes have to do with human relationships and interconnections and not just with art. Perfumery - the most humane art form, the one that is most called upon to develop the idea of the common social and moral good, of life in a community of social ties. Of human bondage.
Many more things could be said, I will stop here for now.
While I was reviewing Coeur d'Eté and wearing it for the second time, I realized that this time I was comparing it to other sister scents. Smelling it then, I was less lost into it; I had switched on to an annoying analytical mode, or so I thought. As I felt somewhat disturbed by this, I decided to jot down some notes. Here they are:
I think that it (Coeur d'Eté) smells, however briefly so, a little bit like Champs-Elysées by Guerlain, a little bit like Carolina Herrera, and a little bit like Le Dix by Balenciaga, but all these being fused and made more subtle and complex. This, I think the second time that I try the scent. I cannot help but feel that it is rather reductionist on my part to try to break down the perfume into tiny bits and to find external references for it. In the end, it is not interesting.
It has a practical purpose which is to communicate better about a perfume with another person who has never smelled it, but might have come upon the other ones you mention. yet, I realize also that it is unfair to the perfumer. It is like trying, too soon, to decompose the colored pigments found on a picture instead of contemplating it. It is also unfair towards yourself as it distorts your perception of the perfume.
I am reminded of Edmond Roudnitska's advice. He once said that one should never attempt to compare a perfume to other scents because a perfume is by essence unique, meant to be appreciated on its own terms and that it was composed with that ontological orientation in mind. Doing otherwise would be like attempting to read two books at once or listening to two musics at once or deciphering a book instead of reading it. Confusion, cacophonia and analytical poverty will ensue.
I find that, perhaps, this strong idealistic streak we find in the perfume creative process, as envisionned by Roudnitska, is somehow irremediably linked to an idealization of womanhood and femininity. The perfume is unique like a woman is unique to a man who loves her; it is meaningless to situate that woman within a series of comparisons for that man. In other words, Roudnitska is begging us to view a perfume with the eyes of love in order to take in its full beauty and uniqueness. So, we should resist the temptation to say "Y is a little bit like X."
This idea is not lost on women; instinctively we look for the quality of uniqueness in a scent. That uniqueness will help underline our own uniqueness, make us true objects of love. An erotic dialogue is thus expressed through perfumes in our cultures.
Roudnitska's ideals are embodied in Le Parfum de Thérèse which he created originally for his wife Thérèse. It is now available to the wider public of those other women through the Malle Editions de Parfums. We can thus touch that dream both aesthetic and erotic with the tip of our fingers and be reminded of a principle of unicity that was very important to him.
Of course, this principle does not need be applied to serially produced perfumes who enthusiastically copy each others. But when we encounter a perfumer-composer with integrity and personal vision, we should, I think, forget about the other fragrances that fleetingly juxtapose themselves on the perfume you are smelling. It is perhaps like saying that an ensemble of seven notes are similar to that other musical passage in that other musical partition. It does not make much sense and it gives too much importance to the external reference. It makes your view of the perfume superficial.
However, I must admit that if I feel bad doing this for a work by Roudnitska and a good one by Harris, I am much less embarrassed to do so for a perfume that is mass-produced and whose artistic aims are set lower. In this latter range of products, the defining mode of creation is extremely referential and fully aware of the externality of fashion trends in fragrances. One does not seek uniqueness in this case because it is simply too demanding and too risky. You seek variation rather or a twist on an idea. The irony is of course that people in fact crave uniqueness in perfumes. A perfume like Angel was mass-marketed, yet it was innovative and daring, and it has now taken over Chanel No5's place as the most popular perfume in France. And of course, Chanel No5 was daring too.
Coeur d'Eté, to me, cannot be approached in a comparative manner. It has an integrity of its own which is the result of the artistry that presided over it and this should be respected, I think. At any rate, something in this perfume made me feel guilty for looking sideways at others.
Scented (Good) Thoughts: Happy Mother's Day! & Charity Fundraising for Orphan Foundation of America
Starting today just past midnight and until midnight I will donate $1 to the Orphan Foundation of America for each message that you leave on this blog today. This effort is part of the Benevolent Blogging effort organized by Katie from Scentzilla!
I will also hold a drawing for a bottle of Eau de Patou from amongst all the people who leave a comment (please see my previous post for more details about the charity event). If you do not wish to be included in the drawing for privacy reasons, for example, please let me know. I will ask either my husband or my three-year-old to draw (preferably my boy if he is not in too mischievous a mood!) You can leave a simple Hi or if you want, you can tell us what perfumes or scents you associate most with your mother as a way of celebrating Mother's Day. You could also tell us what is the best perfume compliment you ever received or the one that pleased you most.
When I think of my mother, I think mostly of four perfumes that seem to have marked different periods of her life: Eau de Calandre, Chloe, Joy, and Femme. But to tell you the truth, she is not that into perfumes.
Orphans are children who one day lose a necessary presence in their lives and are made even more vulnerable than other children because of that. I hope we can help them a bit, but I also know that beyond this action we are undertaking today, what they most need is to find a good family.
I have a friend who is an orphan who was abandoned at birth and she told me that, "Anything is better than the orphanage." She was saying that to explain to me how she had had the will to survive the mistreatment, even the torture, inflicted upon her by the companion of her adoptive father who would sometimes burn her legs with cigarette butts.
There are many different reasons why children are given up for adoption. I saw a program on TV once where a woman decided after having had 3 children to give up the one she was pregnant with, mainly for financial reasons -- it was a matter of survival for her, for her family, and for the child. The program showed her giving birth and then not even wanting to take a closer look or have a close contact with the baby. It was heartbreaking to see the physical distance separating her from her baby and to think of the future life of that child.
Coco Chanel was abandoned by her father who left her in an orphanage after the death of her mother because he could not see himself taking care of her as a single parent.
A friend told me that her father had been abandoned by his mother as a little boy in the midst of a crowd at the open market during winter. He remembered how she had let go of his hand at some point. That man, her father, buit a family afterwards but he was only able to speak about this event when in his fifties. She told me that her father had been so unspeakably scarred by this event that he had been able to talk about it and allude to the scene of his abandonment to his family only then. They never knew. I remember meeting her father and thinking how hard this man was, not mean. Just something in him felt as hard as stone.
I wish that orphans may find other people who will love them. I also wish all of you much love in your lives.
Please visit other blogs participating in Mother's Day fundraising!
Scented Thoughts: More on Eau de Stilton & on Milk, Seduction, and Fragrances
The pilot launch of Eau de Stilton is generating quite a stir. People are adopting a wait-and-see attitude to see if this perfume concept will flounder or not. The dairy farmers who have come up with the idea are selling at this point about 200 sample-bottles (the price was not mentioned) hoping that the perfume will catch on. If it does, it will go into mass production. At any rate, even if the perfume does go down, the SCMA will have succeeded in drawing much attention to themselves. There is indeed a successful advertising campaign going on right now for the association of Stilton makers...
Scented (Good) Thoughts: Mother's Day Fundraising for Orphans of America
This is just a small reminder that on Mother's Day, Sunday May 14, a group of participating perfume and beauty blogs will each be fundraising for the charity of their choice. For each comment that you will leave here, $1 will be donated to the Orphan Foundation of America. There will also be a drawing for a 1 oz bottle of Eau de Patou, a hard to find fragrance (sorry, it's the only size I was able to find).The event was initiated and organized by Katie from Scentzilla!
Orphan Foundation of America has served thousands of foster teens all across the United States. From teaching youth how to balance a checkbook, write a resume, and apply for that first big job, to testifying before Congress and State Legislatures, OFA has long been a vocal champion of foster teens… Each year OFA and its scholarship partners award more funding and provide a stronger safety net for those pursuing post-secondary education.” OFA also received a four star rating from CharityNavigator, which can be viewed by clicking here. In addition to financial donations, OFA also has opportunities for knitters to donate the products of their artistry. There is additionally the option for women to join the Pink Panel, run by The Benchmarking Company, who will donate $5.00 to a scholarship fund run by the OFA each time a woman joins or fills out a beauty survey.
You can go to Benevolent Blogging for more detailed information on the participating blogs.
Scented Paths & Fragrant Addresses: Of Scents and Spaces
I am inaugurating a new column and in it, I will offer information about travel intineraries, promenades, and places that are perfume-related.
The search for perfumes leads to travel in time and the discovery of new imaginary geographies that are enhanced by the spatial setting, the place in which we may find ourselves. Oftentimes we may think that the experience of a fragrance is limited to the liquid art form itself, then perhaps sometimes extending our perception to the bottle in which it is contained as the architectural form that gives shape to fluidity and transiency incarnate. But we cannot stop there, for if, we become conscious of the influence emanating from one's physical environment and which impresses itself on our thoughts and emotions, then we become aware that the perfume, as an object to be seen, apprehended, and not simply inhaled, is contained in a room, a space ot its own. At the same time, the scent will open up the confined limits of that particualr space and tear down the wall of that particular room, for we are transported elsewhere, while being irremediably present.
In the 17th century, special perfume drawing rooms were created to, not only attract a clientele of perfume connoisseurs, but also to have them stop their steps and engage in the sensory plenitude of a reserved space dedicated to the cultivation of the fifth sense as well as to the visual, tactile pleasure of holding bottles and aesthetic contemplation. Conversations in these "Salons de parfums" were lively too. Today, we can see a distant echo of that more complete, elegant, and insightful practice in the design of a Maître Gantier & Parfumeur store or of an Annick Goutal store.
But we do not need to rely solely on a pre-designed architecture, we can also mentally compose that geography of desire, following paths, taking the road, meandering through the streets, and stopping at last in scented havens of our own choosing. We may also stroll in gardens or near fields and in doing so associate promenades, spaces and scents more closely. We thus become connected to the world in ways richer and fuller, imagining and remembering and searching, always.
My scented address of the day is a store address:
Parfums de Capucine, 18, rue des Capucines, Paris 2ème. Tel: 01.42.96.02.46.
This store specializes in niche perfumes and hard-to-find vintage fragrances.
Scented Thoughts: Perfume List-Making and The Meaning of It
For whatever reasons people decide to compile lists, and lists of perfumes in particular, I find the results of this activity to be usually both interesting and entertaining as well as informative for the consumers that we are. The activity itself is fascinating, pointing to a seemingly innate urge to categorize the world and bring added meaning to it. Making lists is also a cataloguing activity; we want to store knowledge and preserve it in a clear and accessible way. How do we classify fragrances and symbolically re-work the ready-made, packaged material presented to us by perfume brands? How do we symbolically re-order nature and society through the classification of scents? What values are expressed through that activity? How aesthetically satisfying can lists be? These are some of the questions I want to raise.
Lists, furthermore, are fun, beautiful, creative, personal, normative, erudite, informative, etc. They reflect a critical and selective activity and usually are meant to be helpful as well as be aesthetic pronouncements pointing to a more ideal world. They tell us what they think are "the best of" and where to find meaning, beauty, and harmony. They also offer us condensed, essential information. So, I've decided I will post lists of perfumes or of perfume-related information I come accross. I will probably pitch in too at some point. Don't hesitate to chime in to let us know what you would have put in any given list.
Tomorrow, I will post a list regarding the types of fragrances that certain types of men should be wearing.
Photo is from Institut Très Bien. It is a beautiful, poetical list of perfume notes. No selection here obviously, except in the choice of words, like Siam instead of Thailand. An a priori boring commercial list of ingredients is turned into a little work of art.
Yesterday, sitting on the couch, sipping my early morning cup of coffee, the lamps unlit, the blinds still un-drawn, and the laptop on, I suddenly became aware of the presence of an exquisite scent surrounding me. It made its presence felt and then disappeared, came back, tenuous and all the more delicate and intriguing for that. I tried hard not to let go of it, now inhaling carefully and more deeply while concentrating on trying to recognize it, focusing even more intensely as I wasn't distracted by any glaring object that I could visualize in the semi-obscurity. Was I dreaming, was it some sort of illusion, or maybe was I just unknowingly recreating an olfactory memory? Now the scent became more tangible, felt intimate, and stayed on. I suddenly remembered my woolen shawl hastily thrown at the back of the couch and the perfume I was wearing the day before, Fragonard by Fragonard! I had never suspected until then how lovely it smelled. That moment served to help me objectify its beauty and I simply had to wear it for Easter egg hunt day, with a renewed, deeper appreciation for it.
I've discovered that it is the sign of a truly good perfume when it can become something else than you thought it was. A truly moving fragrance will possess the power of metamorphosis and will surprise you by taking on different olfactory hues and identities along time. Its nature will be to be both elusive and present.
It is hard to write about perfumes when you are in Paris. First of all, there are too many things to get busy about and secondly, if your mind starts craving certain scents, the craving can so rapidly be satisfied that you can hardly call it a craving and certainly not a longing. In sum, not much to write about. Back in the States, I start forgetting about that sense of satiety and plenty, perfume-wise, that you experience in Paris. I start imagining perfumes, rather than living them and therefore it comes more naturally to me that I should wish to write about them. Scents to me cannot be dissociated from certain places, streets, atmospheres; they add that extra dimension of mystery and imagining of forgotten universes to the present world. So, perfume almost stands to me as a mere excuse, a means of making time stand still and recreating lost spaces.
Certain streets; I gaze absent-mindedly through the window, abstracting from my surroundings, almost forgetting about the very boisterous courtyard outside. In my memory, I go back to la rue Saint André des Arts, la rue de l'Ancienne Comédie and I recreate with great pleasure the impressions of a certain day that smelled of vanilla and patchouli. The scent is Vanille, from Des Filles à La Vanille. There is a boutique there on the corner of the rue de l'Ancienne Comédie and another one on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. "Vanille" just goes well with the neighborhood, I don't know why. I am not the only one to appreciate it, both bottles of "Vanille" at both locations are almost empty. They have been sprayed away by anonymous and familiar hands, women most probably, sharing similar tastes. Passers-by on boulevard Saint Germain are invited to sample three bottles of perfume from Des Filles à La Vanille, sitting on a stand situated on its threshold, half-way standing between the boutique and the street. The "mouillettes" (paper strips) are lovely and fancy, all gold-lettered and rather full of flourishes; I wish I had taken a close-up photo of some of them. They are fanning out in their glass cups. So much inconspicuous attention given to details. Why? It's so ephemeral. I suppose a taste for luxury, a good supplier, and some idea of what civilization means.
Women here like heavier, earthy scents and men do as well. You smell them and they make you think of the depth of history and experience. Of some sort of roots and at the same time, it's evocative of their skins, of the dry warmth of unknown bodies. People are not shying away from their corporeality but emphasizing it. How courageous of them. I am at ease sporting heavily sensual perfumes in Paris, but I think of the trip back home to Massachusetts and this compels me to buy a parallel set of perfumes, lighter, more proper, ones that won't run the risk of being judged offensive. I think more of the risk of invading someone's private space and less of the pleasure of scenting the air, on the street, for strangers to be appreciative of and intrigued by.
This morning in Cambridge, I nevertheless put on Vanille and yes, someone did turn suddenly toward me and looked a bit surprised, an unusually strong scent wafting toward him? I almost did not buy Vanille, the patchouli had such an explosive force at first that I had to take a step back away from the spray in utter shock and olfactory revulsion. Berk, berk, berk! Yet, soon enough the beautiful, rich vanilla took over, appearing deeper and more interesting thanks to the patchouli, softened further by the almond note. It's certainly not typical of what you smell on the streets of Cambridge and Boston. But what then is typical of a Cantabrigian and Bostonian smell? I don't know. I think of a medley of scents escaping through the doors of a The Body Shop, sweet and nice. My husband just mutters now that he hates the smell of The Body Shop, although he is one that pays no attention to scents, he confirms to me that there is such a typical smell imprinting that corner of that street. I think of iodine, of the scent of the sea that sometimes runs through the streets with the wind and reminds you that there is a coast. What else? Maybe Happy by Clinique, because of the many young students who live in Harvard Square? Did I really smell this that often or am I just imagining it? Well, I do remember spying a bottle of Happy that sat almost empty on the Clinique counter at the Coop. I should pay more attention next time and follow the scent trails.
Scented Thoughts: The Archangel Michael, The Demon, and The Salamander
This is where part of me lives, St Michel in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Good old Archangel Michael is slaying evil, a demon with wings and a tail, amidst the bubbling waters. Once a year, at least it used to be so, the students from the faculty of medecine, called "les carabins" literally take possession of the surrounding streets, throwing flour and eggs at passersby and then emptying bottles of shampoo in the fountain in order to complete their rites of passages. The waters turn to overflowing froth until the municipality has to intervene.
Not far from the square proper, there is another mythical animal, a salamander made of stone and gracing an antique portal that very often smells of an incongruous and acrid pee left by passersby, glad to find some modest shade in its corner during the day or at night, the shadows. The house of Gabrielle d'Estrées, mistress of François Ier used to be located there where she borrowed for herself the emblem of her lover.
I find now in this antique stone animal a symbol of my childhood as I remember how I used to contemplate it or glance at it while playing the "marelle" on the street with the grocer's son. It represents for me a world that endures, somehow, the representation of a faithful animal that never lives the house and waits for you to return from your travels, your long exiles. It was there even before I left and will be there long after I die, at least I hope so. And it is scented in the sense that memory is most extraordinarily composed of lingering smells and perfumes.
Scented Thoughts: A field of Eiffel Towers & Flowers
I miss my home city, Paris, and so I evoke her through images, words, and...scents. Here, the Eiffel Towers almost smell of flowers. A fabric for a coquettish boudoir where perfumes mingle with the imagining of fresh-cut flowers and the odor of steel?
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End of a fall day in Paris ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=415f9fd6-26a8-47ff-997f-36a7dd252be2)
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A view of Paris fall from last year. You can spot the French gardening principle right away: trees need to look tailored, like clothing. Isn't Paris the capital of fashion? The lines were so straight I had to make them dance a little.
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This is just a small reminder that on Mother's Day, Sunday May 14, a group of participating perfume and beauty blogs will each be fundraising for the charity of their choice. For each comment that you will leave here, $1 will be donated to the Orphan Foundation of America. There will also be a drawing for a 1 oz bottle of Eau de Patou, a hard to find fragrance (sorry, it's the only size I was able to find).The event was initiated and organized by Katie from 
