18th century Muscadins (from "muschardin", a pastille perfumed with musk) are pre-dandy types who were known for their predilection for perfume
The systematic quest for artificial musk started some 130 years sooner than is usually thought of when most introductions to synthetic musks start with a mention of 19th century Musk Baur. We entered the modern age of man-made musk odorants which was going to be so prolific and fashionable at recurring periods of history as early as the mid-18th century, in 1758 to be specific according to Kopp, when German chemist Andreas Sigismund Margraff (1709-1782) managed to create a musk-smelling material by treating the oil distilled from natural resinous fossilized amber (huile de succin) with nitric acid.
As reported by several works on chemistry, it had been known for a long time that the action of nitric acid on some hydrocarbons could produce a musky aroma but this moment is recorded as a landmark and Margraff himself baptized the new substance which offered a strong musky smell and was soluble in alcohol, "artificial musk"...
A 1973 ad for Macho Musk Oil in the midst of the musk-oil craze of the 1970s
Our series on Fall- & Winter-inspired creations by North-American independent perfumers comes to a close today. See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. We hope that it will give you plenty of ideas to shop for individual presents for the Holidays.
Looking at perfumes through the lens of the seasons may be one alternative solution to feel the more contremplative, slower pace of the fragrance world which is more often than not led by trends, fashion and the latest launches (guilty as charged.)
Dawn Spencer Hurwitz of DSH Perfumes confesses to being sensitive to the passing of the seasons with fall being her favorite moment of the year. She adds that like each year she cannot imagine winter without her perfume Minuit. JoAnne Bassett reminds us of the hedonistic pleasures of fall and winter by titillating, among other things, our taste buds with cognac, Porcini mushrooms and festive baking references. Laurie Erickson of Sonoma Scent Studio says that the season's offerings and atmosphere provide her with a sort of natural artistic direction for her perfumes which first are inspired by a raw material....
Foreword: This is not a review. This started as a teaser, then an introduction and ended being a more developed commentary on the idea of the perfume, as I see it today (courtesy of the blog medium).
You can watch a short film that was shot for the launch of the fragrance after the jump.
*La version française de ce commentaire se trouve à l'intérieur de l'article.*
L'Eau Serge Lutens: The Enduring Scent of Anti-Conformismor the Anti-Anti Perfume
Serge Lutens is preparing to launch his new opus co-created by four hands or rather two noses with his old accomplice, perfumer Christopher Sheldrake, who is now working at Chanel. In an interview from the press release, he said,
"I wanted to create an "anti-fragrance" whose notes and impressions would create a lasting sensation of wearing a "clean" scent, not a "perfume." My intention was not to have it supplant perfume, but to help restore the original pleasure of wearing fragrance. This creation is my response to a world that is overscented... I might even say "embalmed"... in the sense that the ritual of wearing perfume is no longer about romance but part of a meaningless ritual.
L'eau Serge Lutens is my riposte. it expresses a longing for cleanliness and a reaction against society's compulsion to fill the air with artificial scents. it's like a breath of pure, bracing mountain air."
This new perfume called L'Eau Serge Lutens (lit. The Serge Lutens Water/Eau) is a clear departure at the theoretical level at least from the aesthetic path taken by the Lutensian perfumery on exhibit at the Palais Royal but, I would argue, not so much in essence as it is a perfumery which is intrinsically and morally motivated by an anti-conformist movement. Where Lutens's perfumery seemed to be committed without fail to a deepening of the complex Orientalist writing streamlined nonetheless by a style that is reflective, intellectualist and always a little cathartic on the personal plane, the new scent aims to stand as an iconoclastic tract penned against the outrageously perfumed air of the Zeitgeist.
Has Lutens done anything different in the past? I would argue that no, his perfumery has been an anti-perfumery from the start, based on a movement of rejection of the mold as he has explained himself. In a world where olfactory refinement, of which Lutens is a key figure and an exemplar for fine perfumery, is giving way to vulgarity and facile virtues, how to reorganize the universe of ideal aesthetic values?...
If you missed our previous posts, you can find them here: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3
Today, we feature Brent Leonesio of Smell Bent and D.S. & Durga. Both are newcomers to the scene of independent perfumery, with something of a hip flavor to them and more of an urban vibe too despite the abundant references to nature.
Cross-cultural references are like the signs of the experience of the multi-ethnic background of the big city. Sartorial sources of inspiration and social fashion cues appear in this type of indie perfumery that does not hesitate to attempt to capture the smell of tissue paper around a new sweater (Smell Bent) or that of the scent worn by red panted yachters in Marblehead, which happens to be perfect to wear with sweaters and tweeds (D.S. & Durga).
"I think winter
is absolutely the best time of year for fragrance.Living in L.A., we don't ever have much "weather" per
say.I've spent the past few
Christmases in t-shirts.I grew up
in Ohio and shaking the idea of a white Christmas can be hard - it never really
feels like the holidays if it doesn't get snowy.I can, however, excuse all this when it comes time for
holiday smells.Cinnamon, pine,
cookies, cranberries, peppermints, ornaments, the smell of frying Latkas, apple
sauce, new clothes, scotch tape, basements full of hidden presents - these are
the smells that take me back...
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."....
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...
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 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....
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?...
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?...
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...
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 left blank and pushed outside of the history of perfumery. Even before Calone came into existence - pardon us for being so didactic - people had noses, enjoyed promenades by the sea, or breathing the salubrious coastal air. If a perfumer happened to be among the 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 seaside in one way or another and that perfumers never contributed this experience to perfumery. In fact, going further back in time, one could point out that the famous oakmoss found on the island of Chypre is a very early reference to the aromatic palette that can be experienced by the ocean, if for nothing else than sensations of dried heat and salty vegetal nuances.
One example of an early 19th century seaside motif which I have discovered is Les Fleurs du Guildo by Guerlain, which is a fascinating illustration 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.
By selecting this locale alone, Guerlain is expressing 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 so-called Côte d'Armor....
18th century Muscadins (from "muschardin", a pastille perfumed with musk) are pre-dandy types who were known for their predilection for perfume 
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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)
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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