Donna Karan Gold – The Lily and The Flame

March 4, 2012
Featured Scent, Scent Reflections
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My friend The Silver Fox wrote a delicious blog recently about Vera Wang’s Princess Night.  I did give Princess Night a try the other day when i was through in Glasgow and had popped in the House of Fraser’s perfume gallery.  The kind saleslady who accosted me asked what I was looking for, and when I asked for Princess Night she thought at first it wasn’t out yet, then discovered the black glitter encrusted bottle for me.  She sprayed it generously onto a card and waved it in front of my nose – BLACK CURRANT JAM.  I sprayed it all over myself as well – BLACK CURRANT JAM, and much later that evening a friend leaned over and said, you smell like BLACK CURRANT JAM.  Which is not a bad thing to smell of, though I did feel more sticky than elegant somehow.  But it’s really yummy.  Oh yes, and it rather wonderfully brought me back to my days as a student in Bristol, drinking black currant and cider in the student union.

An important aspect of the Fox’s post, I think, is that there’s no point in being snooty about fragrances.  There are great cheap fragrances and awful expensive ones (and this goes for art too of course).  There is a way of making art (and perfume) that comes from an original and beautiful vision, and there is a way of making these things that is burdened by commercialism, critical opinion, supposed views of the masses, and so on, that often ruins the thing.

I’ve been meaning to write about Donna Karan’s Gold perfume for ages.  I’ve discovered, much to my surprise, that in my increasing (let’s not say old yet) age I have gone from being someone who doesn’t like the smell of lilies (fresh, perfume, whatever) to the point of feeling a bit ill over them to someone who LOVES the smell of lilies.  I’m saving my pennies for one day getting a bottle of Frederic Malle’s Lys Mediterranee.  I’ve got a bottle of Penhaligon’s beautiful Lily & Spice, which always makes me think of Marlene Dietrich in a black and white tux leaning against a baby grand, singing some unbearably deep heart-breaker of a tune between puffs of a hand-rolled cigarette.

I love Gold.  It’s one of my most favourite perfumes in my current collection.  I felt a little guilty about it at first, as it was mainstream rather than niche, as I got a couple bottles of it really cheap off eBay, as it seems as if it was being discontinued because of, I don’t know, I’m assuming a lack of sales?

It’s the one perfume that every time I wear it my boyfriend says, “You smell beautiful.”  It gets four stars from Tania Sanchez in the A-Z Guide, and she describes a sense of the perfume cycling ever upwards, “like those audio illusions of tones that sound like they’re climbing infinitely higher even though the series is actually repeating.”  I love that description as I do get the sense of white lily and sweet amber cycling or rotating in a sensual dance throughout the wearing of this fragrance.  The image that always comes to mind for me is of a woman on a pedestal in front of a roaring fire in a massive country mansion.  The woman is in a floor-length gown of white silk.  You see her as you enter the room and she is pale, cool, pure silken sensuality – the white mouth of the lily.  You walk toward the fire, lean against the warm stone of the hearth, and she turns to face you, glowing, golden, her dress now a sheath of dripping honey.  Walk back toward the door, turn, and see her silken whiteness, walk back to the fire, turn, and see her molten, golden sexuality.  That’s what Gold does for me!  The fact that it keeps changing throughout the day keeps me interested, delighted – one minute calmed by the cool white lily, the next warmed by the sweet as honey amber.  Just.  Gorgeous.

JUS Scent Art Festival

March 4, 2012
Scent Art, Scent Event
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Exciting news…  my friend Ali is teaming up with me to (fingers and toes crossed) bring you the JUS Scent Art Festival in Edinburgh, February 2013.  We’re currently working on many bits and pieces (like trying to get some funding) in order to get this off the ground, but I will keep you updated as hopefully it will happen and you will be able to come check it out!

If all goes well, we’ll have a perfume trade fair, tons of art installations and performances based on or inspired by scent, master classes, panel discussions and a poetry reading.  If you have any good suggestions for sources of funding, sponsorship or want to get involved in some way, do get in touch.

Yesterday we purchased a domain name for the festival’s website, so as soon as that’s up and running I will post it.

Super scent fun!

Cabotine and “Delicious” Chocolate – To Keep or To Sell, That is the Question

March 3, 2012
Featured Scent, Scent Reflections
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I recently got a bottle of this perfume – Cabotine de Gres – at TK Maxx for £11.  I had a quick look at the perfume boards on my phone while I was in the store and saw some good reviews, so I picked it up and took it home.  Then I read Luca Turin’s rather damning review: ‘nasty floral’ in short.  People were describing it as having a sharp green opening, and then warming up with a raisin-y note.  I sprayed it on and it reminded me so much of something from my childhood – I must have smelled it on someone when I was young or something very similar.  From the point of view of it reminding me of something nice from my childhood, of something like my first notion of perfume, I really enjoyed it initially.  My boyfriend said it smelled acidic, but I persisted and enjoyed smelling the raisin-y note an hour or so into wearing.  That afternoon another perfume arrived in the post – “Delicious” Chocolate by Gale Hayman (I find it funny that the delicious is in quotes).  By then I wasn’t really noticing the Cabotine anymore, and I sprayed one wrist with the Chocolate perfume which was really gorgeous – sweet cocoa and warm, fruity tobacco; tootsie rolls and chocolate flowers.  Suddenly, smelling my other wrist, I could really make out the Cabotine and in comparison is smelled incredibly ‘trite and acid’, as described by Luca Turin.  After smelling it next to the Chocolate, I had to sell it on eBay as I couldn’t bear it anymore – all i could smell was that biting acidic note.  All this made me wonder if I really do prefer sweeter perfumes, as most of the ones I really love are somehow sweet; either white lily sweet and spicy or dark, musky sweet.  Anyway, thank goodness someone else wanted it – I love that I can pick up a perfume, try it out and sell it on if I don’t like it.

I’m still not convinced “Delicious” Chocolate is a keeper – in a way it is great – chocolate flowers! – but it also really reminds me of another perfume; Exclamation by Coty, that a friend of mine used to wear when we were teenagers.  It reminds me of my early nineties adolescence in a way I find slightly disturbing.  However, after a long day of wearing Chocolate, my boyfriend hugged me and said, mmm, you smell good – always a positive, and it has the best bottle; super Hollywood bling with a big gold cat on top.  Hmmm, maybe I will hang on to it!

“Delicious” Chocolate really conjures a certain sort of outfit as well – shiny gold leggings, skyscraper high black patent heels, a leopard print blouse, red lipstick, and blonde hair sprayed into some sort of bouffant.  I don’t wear this particular outfit when I’m wearing Chocolate, but I like that it suggests this for me, it fulfills some sort of Lana Del Rey, trailer trash cum superstar fantasy that I can’t quite let go of.  Most perfumes conjure a look or outfit for me – do you get that?

Isn’t it interesting how our appreciation of a scent can be so linked to our memories and experiences.  Have you ever found yourself liking (or disliking) a scent because it reminded you of something or someone?

JUS Interview No. 8 – Andreas Keller, PhD Studying the Variability in Smell Perception

January 22, 2012
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JUS perfume interview

 

 

Your name – Andreas Keller

Your work – Studying the variability in smell perception

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

Scientists — for some reason — don’t like to study the sense of smell. As a consequence we know very little about how our sense of smell works. Such an open field for new ideas and unexpected discoveries is attractive for me as a scientist. Also, smells are kind of fun.

  1. What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

Two years ago I bought “The Scientific Explorer’s Science Kit: The Art and Science of Mixing Perfumes” for my niece as a Christmas present. Then I remembered that they don’t want you to send liquids via international mail, so I got her something else and kept the kit for myself. Shortly after Christmas I mixed myself three perfumes and those three perfumes currently constitute my entire perfume collection. I like the one in the red bottle the best, so I’d keep that one.

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

N/A

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

N/A

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

N/A

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

N/A

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

As I young boy, when I wanted to get my mother a gift, I got her perfume. I put a lot of effort into picking the better of the two cheapest bottles. That’s my earliest memory of perfume. I’m reminded of it whenever I watch the Simpsons episode in which Bart gets his Mom as a birthday present a bottle of “real French perfume” for four bucks plus taxes.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

I wore Fahrenheit by Dior when it came out in the late 80s. I was a nerdy teenage boy. Wearing any scent made me feel like a grown-up and Fahrenheit kind of seemed like a dangerous smell for real men. I remember that I thought it smelled “woody”. I don’t think I tried out many alternatives. There probably was a marketing campaign that appealed to me… but I can’t really remember.

After a couple of years I stopped wearing it because it was just too closely associated with being a teenager.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

What about a smell scientist I admire? Hendrik Zwaardemaker, a Dutch scientist who, in the late 19th century, was the first to systematically investigate our sense of smell. He invented the olfactometer, a device to measure people’s sensitivity to odors and discovered Zwaardemaker pairs, pairs of odors that neutralize each other. He also heroically filled his nose with water to see if we can smell under water (we can) and self-administered cocaine to see how it influences odor perception (it makes it more intense).

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way?  If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

When the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2010, he got $100,000 and the opportunity to exhibit his art for a few months in a gallery in the Guggenheim museum in New York. He used the prize money to get 100,000 used $1 bills and pinned the money to the gallery’s wall.

The stench of those 100,000 bills was overpoweringly physical.

Please have a look at Andreas’ fascinating website: http://andreaskeller.squarespace.com/

More about Andreas from his website:

I run the Smell Study at the Rockefeller University, where I am associated with the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior. My work focuses on the influences of genetic variability on odor perception.

I am also affiliated with the Institute for Social and Psychiatric Research at NYU, where I study clinical aspects of olfaction. If you have problems with your sense of smell, please click here.

Because perception has always been a central topic of the philosophy of mind, I investigate the philosophical implications of my work at the Department of Philosophy at the City University of New York.

Olly, the Scent Robot – Internet Scent is (just about) here!

January 22, 2012
Scent Reflections
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Have a look at this:  Olly, the web connected smelly robot.  Thanks Colin!

Often when I speak to people about scent and art, they mention that it would be interesting if films, for instance, had smells with them.

A recent Spy Kids film did have the bonus of ‘Aromascope olfactory enhancements’, or a scrach-and-sniff card that came with your movie ticket so that you could smell certain scenes.  Cool idea, but still a ways away from being bathed in the overwhelming 4D scent-sual aspects of a cinema watching experience.  I can think of a lot of scenes from movies you might not want to smell, though!

Olly is a new ‘scent robot’ that you hook up to your computer, and, if I understand correctly, add a drop or two of scent to some part of him.  This scent is then assigned to someone you interact with (presumably on social networking sites or via email?) and whenever you communicate with them, Olly blows their chosen scent out.  This all still seems rather primitive – again, it’s not quite a full 4D experience, or a true sharing of scent over the internet, and to some extent this feels like a fancy diffuser.  However I do think it’s really exciting that people are thinking about scent in this way – that our sense of smell deserves to be stimulated and is a mechanism for communication just like our eyes and ears are.

Do you think scent is a valid mechanism for communication?  What scents would you assign to the people you interact with over the internet?

JUS Interview No. 7 – Andrea Maack, Visual Artist

January 18, 2012
Scent Interview
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JUS perfume interview

 

 

Your name – Andrea Maack

Your work – Visual artist

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

I like the idea of being able to wear perfume as a piece of art. I was working on a series of artworks that dealt with the concept of wearable art and in the process the idea to make the ultimate scent came along, that´s how I created SMART (Smell art) my first ever perfume creation, that was made in a collaboration with a perfumer that translated my original drawings into a fragrance

  1. What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

I would rescue Craft from my collection it has such a strong emotional connection to me, it was made for an exhibition to accompany a dress that I had made our of pattern cutting paper and pencil the piece took about 200 hours to make so the scent always reminds me of that amazing process.

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

I would get my favorite perfumer to create a scent for me with no budget or time restrictions.

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

CRAFT

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

The answer lies in new fragrances that I am currently working on.

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

My partner (and business partner) bought me a lot of niche fragrances when we started dating six years ago. I like how they create a journey through our relationship and and end in our own line of unique fragrances.

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

Probably Christalle by Chanel, growing up in Iceland we do not have a strong perfume culture, but I remember Christalle as being a scent I felt could export me to Paris and the life I envisioned for myself as a child.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

I used to wear Balenciaga perfume because I wear a lot of their clothing, now I mostly wear my own creations.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

My long time collaborator Renaud Coutadier of DP&CO (www.dpandco.com). He is true visionary when it comes to perfume and no idea is too crazy for him, I like that attitude.

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way?  If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

I like Ernesto Neto´s scented installations they are both beautiful visually and intriguing from a visual art standpoint.

Explore Andrea’s beautiful and stimulating work and purchase her scents at http://andreamaack.com/.

Perfume Interview No. 6 – Ronny Geller, owner of UK-based webshop Scent-and-Sensibility Perfume

January 16, 2012
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JUS perfume interview

Your name – Ronny Geller 

Your work – my UK-based webshop, Scent-and-Sensibility Perfume, offering niche perfumes, launched in 2009

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

It sounds a cliché, but I’ve always been drawn to fragrance. Some people recall a longstanding interest/obsession with art, food, music – for me, it is fragrance. One of my earliest and strongest memories is of sticking my face in the philadelphus bush next to the house in which I lived as a child. I must have been four or five years old at the time. I don’t recall the smell being good or bad (though I do love philadephus), I just remember the compulsion to ‘smell’.

  1. What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

My bottle of pre-reformulation Guerlain Mitsouko perfume. A liquid work of art, I think I could get by with simply smelling this from the bottle, meaning I could make the pleasure last for a good long time. Take that, evil Mr Tax Collector!

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

Rather than a bottle of fragrance, I would bankroll Victoire Gobin-Daudé, a French perfumer whose wonderful, idiosyncratic perfume line flowered briefly in the late 1990s/early 2000s, with the hope she might re-issue a few of her original perfumes along with some new things.

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Uh, no. Can’t do this one. I haven’t worn one fragrance for my whole (adult) life so far. There’s no way I could settle on one perfume for here ever after. Body chemistry changes, life changes, taste in perfume shifts. New, surprising things are released. You never know what extraordinary stuff might come your way. It makes my head spin to think I would be limited to just one perfume. 

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

The combination of smells caught under the mimosa tree on Union Street in Brooklyn, NY, near the Gowanus Canal, on a hot summer’s day: mimosa, hot asphalt, salt, honey, ozone.

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

Over a decade ago, I wore Santa Maria Novella Patchouli exclusively. It was my signature scent and I put it everywhere: wrists, décolleté, back of neck, behind my knees. I recall early on in a soon to be very intense love affair my not-quite-yet man bending down to sniff behind my knees, which definitely made them weak.

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

My mother’s bottles of Jean Naté and 4711 cologne: sneaking a spritz or a splash. My fascination with not only the fragrance within, but the bottles and what they seemed to signify: pleasure, mystery, adulthood.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

Santa Maria Novella Patchouli. After pregnancy, my body chemistry changed and it no longer smelled right.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

I admire noses, perfumers, as a grouping. We wouldn’t be having this exchange without them.

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way?  If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

Vampire characters in novels tend to be very focused on scent and frequently are very precise and articulate in their descriptions of smells.

Michael Ondaatje’s poem, The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife, is among the most beautiful, evocative renderings of fragrance in literature. 

 

Do have a browse and a shop at Ronny’s wonderful online shop www.scent-and-sensibility.co.uk.

JUS Perfume Interview No. 5 – Gianluca Scarcella, Manager at Avery Fine Perfumeries

January 11, 2012
Scent Interview
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JUS perfume interview

 

 

Your name – Gianluca Scarcella

Your work –  Manager at Avery Fine Perfumeries

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

I think it all started down to personal hygiene. Everyone should smell good! A man that smells good raises the attraction factor for most women. I think it’s embarrassing to tell someone that they smell bad, it’s important that they know it themselves.

2.         What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

“Duro” by Nasomatto.

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

“Versilia Platinum” by Profumi Del Forte.

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

“Roma Imperiale” by Profumi Del Forte

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

Adhesive glue

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

This is a tricky question, on one hand I do not have a good memory, but I remember my grandmother wearing a powdery perfume, now every time I smell something powdery like talcum powder, it reminds me of when she used to visit our house.

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

The smell of my grandmother’s bedroom.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

One of the perfume’s that I wore in past was Kenzo Homme Boise. It is a very sophisticated perfume, the only reason that I’m no longer wearing it is that I’ve been told by many people that it is not the perfect perfume for me.

Another fragrance I used to wear is “Sculpture” by Nikos, now no longer available.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

Robert Piguet is one that I admire the most. One of my favourite fragrances is “Futur”. It is a green floral woody fragrance – for those who like to stand out in the crowd.

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc.) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way?  If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

Andrea Maack Parfums -  Iceland’s first fragrance house. Andrea Maack is an artist whose artwork: line drawings and sculptural dresses have been interpreted into fragrances. This was an idea that came for a gallery installation and has since evolved into a fragrance brand. Her scents are very distinctive and interesting. I love them all.

Have a look or a sniff round Avery next time you’re in London, or online!

Scent and Memory – Empowering and Stimulating

January 8, 2012
Scent Reflections
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It won’t be on there for much longer but there are a few days left to listen to this very interesting interview with Kate Williams, a perfumier, and a teacher from The Royal School in Manchester about work being done with scent to enable choice making for children who are blind and deaf.  It’s on the BBC Radio Five Breakfast programme (06.00 – 0900) from 6 January and it’s 2 hours 26 minutes into the show.  Thank you Ellen!

Scent is used to distinguish things like strawberry milkshakes so that the children can make selections for their meals, for instance.  What a wonderful idea and use of smells.

One of the points that comes up is how much scent stimulates memory; I have been noticing that the past few days I’ve had the strange experience of random vivid memories from all different moments in my life flashing before my eyes as if someone was flicking through my memory banks with a remote control.  I was worried this was a sign I am about to expire, or that my brain was going through some odd re-cataloging exercise – however now I’m wondering if my memory files are being stimulated by all the intense smelling I’ve been doing lately.

I wonder if there is any work being done with scent stimulation and Alzheimer’s or Dementia sufferers?

Some BPAL Experiments

January 8, 2012
Featured Scent, Scent Reflections
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I’ve been testing some of my new BPAL/Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab samples.  A few thoughts -

1.  Lampades – candied cranberry, great for the holidays but I don’t think I’d wear it all the time.  It is very cranberry; red, bitter and sweet.  A little bit like wearing the scent of a Christmas candle. Coming originally from New Jersey where we have cranberry bogs, I felt a twinge of homesickness when I tried this.   I found it slightly overpowering initially but it mellowed over time and had great lasting power.  I think my sister would really like this and I might pass it on to her.

2.  Empyreal Mist – I love this scent.  Like Lampades, I find its fruity note uncomfortable for the first 20 minutes or so.  It has a green fruit smell that blasts out when I apply it – I thought it smelled of green apple candy, though some people on BPAL Madness! described this note as tart or white pear.  I like it much better as this fades out (fairly quickly) and leaves me for the rest of the day with a gorgeous, close skin scent that smells so luxurious.  I happened to be wearing a white cashmere jumper that day, and if white cashmere had a smell it would be this.  Misty, ethereal, sweet petal-scented musk… something angels would smell of if they got caught in a summer rain storm.  Totally gorgeous.

3.  Marie – One of my gift samples which sadly didn’t work on me at all.  It’s meant to be tea rose and violet.  I’m not sure what tea rose smells like, and at first I caught a tiny whiff of violet like a much less sweet version of Gorilla’s Tuca Tuca, but then it started metamorphosing like a big bad tissue paper-wrapped monster into a horrid soapy rose scent that got worse and worse until I couldn’t even bear it any more.  I’ve read that people seem to have certain BPAL fragrances turning soapy (obviously this was the case with this one for me) or powdery, and assuming this comes down to body chemistry.  I tried a few drops on fabric and that seems to be smelling better, so maybe I’ll just drip this over clothes and enjoy it that way.  It’s meant to be Marie Antoinette-inspired… cake anyone?

4.  Pride – Another love.  This is narcissus and Moroccan rose.  Beautiful, strong.  When I first put it on I thought I almost smelled lemon, maybe this was the narcissus as I don’t know what that smells of.  Then rose, rose, radiating incense rose, really did remind me of a trip to Morocco where I spent some time being washed and oiled in sumptuous tiled baths.  The smell of this perfume took me back to the day I floated out of the bath, massaged and oiled, and wandered around the markets smelling like incense burning in a garden of antique roses in full bloom.

5.  Malediction – My boyfriend nabbed this off me, as he loved it so much when I tried it.  It has vetivert and red patchouli in it, and he keeps saying it smells of cedarwood oil.  It is very masculine smelling but I’d happily wear it with a cosy wool sweater by a fireside, though even happier to smell it on him.  Conjures up viking heroes returning from hunting deep in the forest.

6.  Hurricane – I tried this quickly and again my boyfriend suggested it was more one for him than me – but that never stops me!  I have to give this another go as I didn’t take it all in.  Some other reviews are suggesting a tangy scent that develops either into the smell of rain/after a storm or rotten wood.  I didn’t notice anything rotten about it (maybe that’s a body chemistry thing), more of an increasingly warm, woody scent.  This one is described as light China rain and vetivert.  Will try again and report back.

Still more to explore, what fun!  I really want to try BPAL’s famous Snake Oil as well, when I save up some more for my scent fund, that’s on my list.  The list is so long!  I have just been reading about Onda by Vero Profumo and Chambre Noir by Olfactive Studio on olfactorialist.com, and o how I desire them!

JUS Perfume Interview No. 4 – Kate Temple, Artist and Designer

January 8, 2012
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JUS perfume interview

 

 

Your name – KATE TEMPLE

Your work – ARTIST & DESIGNER

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

Making installations and theatre environments, I guess I’m always thinking about the ‘whole’ sensory experience – what does it look like, sound like, feel like, taste like, smell like. What does snow sound like? What does red smell like?

  1. What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

The smell of art school studios; that delicious, heady mix of turpentine, oil paint, plaster and art students. I think it’s the reason I went in the first place.

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

The ingredients to cook an extravagant and beautiful feast. I think one should always cook with one’s eyes and one’s nose. Georges Perec writes of a black banquet served on plates of polished slate in Life: A User’s Manual: Caviar, Squid Tarragon style, Saddle of baby Cumberland boar, Truffle salad and Blueberry cheesecake. Decadent and fabulous.

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Pears soap and water.

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

Cloves, Skin, Wool, Babies, Lemons, Snow, Sea, Books, Rain and Geraniums.

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

As a child, my mother leaning over me all scented and perfumed to say goodnight before going out – knowing that was what the adult world smelled like and content not to know any more.

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

The smell of my great-grandmother’s bedroom: all face powder in jars and pale green glass and mother of pearl hand mirrors and shiny ivory bedcovers.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

Body Shop White Musk: Gross ! ! ! But boy does it take me back.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

/

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way?  If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

Smells evoke memories, they bring the past back in a shadowy, ghostly form. They bring with them a sweet pain, and a sense of loss for what has gone. I’ve always loved this passage from Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook; it makes me feel sad, in a good way.

I remember the smell of the wine, cool and sharp, as Ted tilted another bottle to refill the glass, and the wine splashed over and hissed on the dust. The dust smelled heavy and sweet, as if it had rained.

Also, I remember going into Cildo Meireles’ installation Volatile made from talcum powder, candle and gas scent. Beautiful and frightening.

Image above by Kate Temple from installation called from crystal into smoke.

JUS Perfume Interview No. 3 – Lena Brombacher, olfactorialist.com

January 6, 2012
Scent Interview
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JUS perfume interview

 

 

Your name – Lena Brombacher

Your work – olfactorialist.com

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

It was the search for the ‘perfect scent’. I haven’t found it yet.

  1. What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

He can take everything, I have them all stored in my mind. But please don’t take ‘Rosenlust’ by April Aromatics. It was a present by the perfumer Tanja Bochnig, she puts all her love into her perfumes. These natural scents are magical. They have little herkimer diamonds inside the bottle that infuse the perfume with stone energy. Yes, I believe in things like that and ‘Rosenlust’ is an elixir of different roses from all over the world and smells creamy and pure with a certain depth in the end. Smelling ‘Rosenlust’ you feel inner peace, it calms you down and touches your heart.

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

I am deeply interested in the line of Bruno Acampora from Capri, these little aluminium bottles look beautiful and I have no idea of how the perfumes smell. I always wanted to know it and didn’t encounter them in a store until today.

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I think it would be something I wear for a good couple of years now next to my love for niche perfumes. To be sure that I will also like it for some more years – Coco Mademoiselle, the Brûme fraiche pour le corps. It is very subtle, feminine and goes very well with my skin chemistry.

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

The smell of sun-drenched skin after a day at the beach, sand, sea, mixed with the smell of bleached sheets in a hotel bed. When you smell the day on your skin, the sun and everything. It’s a feeling worth trying to catch.

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

I had a surgery last year, my first surgery ever, meniscal tear. I was frightened. And I used a perfume to feel better even if it is not allowed to use perfume in the operating suite. It was ‘Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clement’s’ by Heeley, my personal mood enhancer. Orange blossoms make me happy, that’s aromatherapy. I woke up and I felt so happy in my cloud of ‘Oranges and lemons…’ it helped a lot. Maybe in combination with the valium…but I remember this as one of the most peaceful moments of 2011.

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

My mother bought me a small bottle of lily of the valley perfume when I was about 5 years old. My twin sister got a small bottle of violet perfume. I will always remember those two smells. The funny thing is that as much as I liked lily of the valley when I was small, it is not my favorite flower in perfume today. I find lily of the valley sort of old-school. In small amounts it reveals a certain freshness, that’s ok for me. My first ‘real’ perfume was Anais Anais by Cacharel followed by Paris by Yves Saint Laurent and many more. I never was the kind of girl who wore one scent for years.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

There are lots of perfumes. They belong to the past, typically 80ies or 90ies perfumes like Angel by Thierry Mugler – scents I wore when I was younger and during other relationships. When I smell them, a whole universe of the past opens its doors in my mind – impossible to wear these scents today. I can’t believe how many of these stars I have emptied when I was a twentysomething – talking of ‘Angel’, the star vial.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

Bertrand Duchaufour. He’s the perfumer of the moment, he seems to be everywhere. He did some of the most beautiful perfumes for Comme des Garçons (i.e. Kyoto, Avignon, Calamus), he’s the resident perfumer for L’Artisan Parfumeur and launched the exclusive line “Mon numéro” for L’Artisan Parfumeur in 2011. My favorite 2011 was ‘Sartorial’ for Penhaligon’s.  He is the best in terms of incense. His creations are genius and make heads turn.

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way? If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

For me perfume is an art form itself. I am waiting for the time when it is possible to smell movies.

 

Have a look at Lena’s beautiful and incredibly informative site olfactorialist.com; it’s magnificent!  So many new fragrances to lust after…

Scents & Sensibility

January 5, 2012
Scent Art, Scent Reflections
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Very interesting article on scent and art – thanks Kate!

Scents and Sensibility

To quote, “Contrasting this collaboration with the more traditional artist-fabricator relationship, Raymond explains, ‘Usually you are working with things you can see and touch. In this case, we were working solely with language, and a very subjective language at that.’”

I love the idea of scent as language… perfect!

Also the idea of scent being a kind of art that can physically enter into the body, more pervasive perhaps than an image or a thought entering the brain.  Another way to touch.

 

Perfume Poem

January 5, 2012
Scent Poems, Scent Reflections
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“The road weaves upward accompanied by a drum and a flute,

Round and round the bends, where the scent is more and more honeyed.

Plaited beehives, their straw shines like brass,

Sunflowers in rows, thyme.

And there, four turrets: facing East, West, North and South.

Where you enter the gate it’s as if they were waiting for you.

Complete silence in a rose garden,

Around it, an expanse of green hills,

Of blue-green, up to the very clouds.”

 

from ‘The Accuser’ by Czeslaw Milosz

 

It’s almost like a formula for a perfume, this magical bit of poetry.  I’d love to smell it.

 

Fragments of Beauty

January 5, 2012
Scent Art, Scent Reflections
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There is so much sadness in the world.

Putting on a beautiful scent, like taking the time to make or look at a piece of art or to write or read a poem, is a way of shoring up a fragment of beauty against the darkness.

Just watched this amazing film Heima following the band Sigur Ros as they tour their homeland of Iceland.

A brass band appearing in the middle of a song, a baby reaching out for its mothers arms, the light on a river splitting two tracts of land – how these fragments can bring tears of joy.

What is the smell of a brass band?  What is the smell of snow on a volcanic mountain?  What is the smell of home?

What are your fragments of beauty?

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab – My New Favourite Thing

January 5, 2012
Scent Art, Scent Reflections
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Have you come across Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab?  I feel like I’ve just stumbled upon a unicorn in a forest glade – something rare and magical has appeared before me, and I’m hesitant to calculate how much of my Christmas holiday has been spent immersed in their delicious website.

While most of my experience thus far has been this obsessive reading of their extensive and most literate website, I have just received my first box of BPAL scents and samples from a very kind woman on eBay who sent me not only what I’d won but a number of additional vials (or ‘imps’ as BPAL call them) to sample.

Even the box smelled amazing when took it out of its envelope.

I’ve decided to try to draw out the splendour by restraining myself and wearing one scent a day – we’ll see how long that lasts.  I’m currently bathing in one called Lampades, a kind of candied cranberry scent that feels perfect for the tail end of the holiday season.  Almost all of their scents have a description that evokes not only the scent but something from literature, history, mythology, etc… for instance, for Lampades: “The Lampades are the darkly beautiful nymphs of the underworld, also called the Lethe Nymphae Avernales. They are the daughters of the Gods that govern the many rivers of Hades. The Lampades are Hecate’s torch-bearers and accompany the Goddess on her hunts, quests and revels. Their scent is the crisp, inviting bittersweet tang of cranberry with smoky dark lilies, heady, sensual musk, a tingle of ginger and a brush of Mediterranean spices. (Gender neutral)“

Seeing as three of my favourite things in the whole world are perfume, poetry and mythology, you can probably understand my unrestrained delight.

One of the other exciting wonders of BPAL is the independent BPAL fan blog, BPAL Madness!, where you can find numerous reviews of seemingly all of the hundreds of scents – very useful for those who don’t have the luck to live in sunny California where the Lab is based.

The scene has a touch of the essential oils/gothique/folks who like to dress up and dance around on the full moon quality to it, but don’t let that put you off as the end result is a plethora of gorgeous, affordable and intriguing scents with mythological, poetic, literary, comic book and other imaginative references and themes at their heart.  Who doesn’t like a wee dance under the full moon anyway?  And if ever a girl liked to dress up once in a while, it certainly was me.  BPAL seems the perfect example of the belief that I’ve been raving on about – that scent is art and that scent and art can inspire one another endlessly.

From their website:

“Inspired by a vast range of influences, from the passion and decadence of the Fin de Siècle movement to the ghastliest of Lovecraftian monstrosities, we specialize in eliciting emotional responses through perfume and creating unique, masterfully molded scent environments that capture legends and folklore, poetry, and the stuff of dreams and nightmares.“

Ah, and the smells… I’ll try to post more as I try more.  Check out their website, it’s one to lose yourself in.  And this is stunning Beth, the nose behind the BPAL scents, on Katie Puckrik’s YouTube channel: Katie Puckrik Smells Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.

Sissel Tolaas at The Selby

December 11, 2011
Scent Art, Scent Reflections
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My partner is always showing me gorgeous photographs on The Selby – have you ever been there?  It’s really something.  One of my dreams is getting my house photographed by Todd Selby.

Sissel is a proper scent expert.  You can read more about her here on Sight Unseen: Interview with Sissel.

And you can have a look at her house on The Selby here: Sissel Tolaas’ House.

Amazing!  Note photos of what I’m assuming are the scent of fear, violence, et cetera…

Layering

December 1, 2011
Scent Reflections
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And so, layering.

What do you think?

There’s a great quote on Now Smell This where perfumer Calice Becker says on layering, “We hate that! That’s like throwing bricks in the air and hoping they will come down as a house.”  That’s originally from The Perfume Odyssey; A Scent-imental Journey at the New York Times.

Yet I know some who get great effects from their layering experiments.  And companies like Jo Malone promote their range of fragrances as being designed for creative layering.

I assume that what Calice is getting at is that if perfumers spend so much time, energy and money designing a fragrance to play a particular tune over the duration of its wear, mixing them is potential cacophony, and could be interpreted as being an insult to the creator of the perfume – or maybe some perfumers would be excited by the notion of their work going out into the world and being mingled or remixed in this way?

I recently tried to layer two fragrances, one that I didn’t love, hoping I could improve on that one by mixing it with one I did love – bad idea!  All I kept smelling was the one I did like getting interuppted by the harsh notes of the one I didn’t like.

Then I tried layering two perfumes I did like, that I imagined might be complimentary.  Each scent in itself was what I would describe as a relatively ‘one note’ fragrance.  This worked much better.

My friend The Silver Fox has been writing a lot about wearing autumnal scents on fabric rather than (or rather than just) on skin… I’ve been enjoying this so much.  For some reason I thought this ‘wasn’t allowed’.  This might have got into my head after I’d stained a couple of items of light-coloured clothing by spraying perfume on them.  However if you concentrate on dark-coloured fabrics, jumpers, heavy woolens, and the relatively invisible insides of items of clothing, you’re pretty safe.  Anyway, I’ve been spraying my cardigans and tweed jackets and heavy wool scarves every time I get ready in the morning and they all smell SO gorgeous.  Also, it turns out this is an interesting way to play with layering… as I’ll spray my wool scarf one day with Cuir de Lancome, the next with Penhaligon’s Amaranthine, the next with Lust by Lush… and suddenly my scarf becomes a veritable scent rainbow of deliciousness.

What’s your take on layering?  A pile of bricks or a seminal symphony?

CIRC/US

December 1, 2011
Scent Poems
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Inspired by Ericka Duffy’s mention of the scent of carnivals I thought I’d put up my circus poem, which draws on smell as one of its means of communicating the idea of the circus.

 

CIRC/US

I

WALK AROUND LIKE THIS:

Dum da ladadada dum da lada

Ha ha la la the horses are made of sugar their heads have pink feathers get out of the car car car car car car car car car car car clown clown clown clown clown clown clown clown clown clown clown you clown you ha ha la la

My uncle ran away with the circus to be a clown.  He fell in love with the lady on the trapeze.  I met her once when I was a little child.  She taught me how to melt bits of glass into a twist of metal to make a red apple.  I remember her eyes not her face.

I remember her eyes not her face.
I remember her eyes not her face.

Ha ha la la the horses shit in a sack they lick their own fetlocks the horses are made of sugar when they dance the white sugar rises like dust and the lions ROAR get out of the cage cage cage cage cage and run run run run run run run run run run you clown you ha ha la la

This is the heart of the clown; it is a balloon.  Inside, the last of the burning gas – and glitter all over the floor.  Old violet perfume, Russian fag smoke, buttered popcorn and salt (doesn’t have a smell), manure and the hay and the oats and the rum (the strong man sailed) and the tears (don’t have a smell) and the fire-eater’s farts and the cats and the ground-up greasepaint and camellia soap the bearded lady used to shave (just her breasts) and the clean, sad lick of snow coming down from the mountain; here, have it, here.

No wonder he cries.  No wonder his lips hang down like a saggy hot dog.  Mi amor, sings the gypsy, mi amor, mi amor, mi amor, mi amor, mi amor.

II

The tents were always striped, smaller than you’d think.
Hot in there.
The hay soaked up most of the piss but the smell,
O that delicious, disgusting smell…

Some nights the lions would draw real blood.
I never let on.

There’s only one way I’ll die; feast.
How else, after all the years?

They watch me, ragged, wondering

Who will go first?
I whisper, me.

III

She fell.  He watched her, couldn’t believe – everything
In slow motion as you’d expect.

She fell.

No one even tried to catch her.

It was too,
Too beautiful.

He stood with his black top hat raised in one white-gloved hand.

IV

Silk, brocade, jacquard,
Wool, felt, tweed,
Burlap,
Taffeta, tulle,
Fur,
Leather,
Rubber,
Muslin,
Sackcloth, ribbons, rags.

V

WALK AROUND LIKE THIS:

Dum da ladadada dum da lada

There was a man with an accordion and a boy with a fiddle.
The girl sang with the voice of a virgin queen.

Sometimes when I am drifting to sleep, I can hear it…

Dum da ladadada dum da lada

Like a piece of dust caught on the skin of my eye;
If you rub it, it hurts more.
So you have to let it play itself out.

If there was a way to go back, I would.

I would.

The first snow on the peak of the mountain
But still petals on the trees and
Everyone laughing,
Even the saddest clown.

Pitch fires burning beside each caravan.

Tiny Chinese gymnasts
Making a necklace of their bodies
And an elephant spraying water at the stars.

(c) 2011 JL Williams

 

JUS perfume intervew No. 2 – Ericka Duffy, Artist, Barista, Top Banana for Lush Handmade Cosmetics

December 1, 2011
Scent Interview
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JUS perfume interview

 


Your name  Ericka Duffy

Your work  Artist, Barista, Top Banana for Lush Handmade Cosmetics

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

I don’t know what first attracted to me to the world of scent to the point of where that is mainly what I focus on nowadays, but I know that as a child I was certainly aware of smells. I was very familiar with the perfume bottles that dotted each of my grandmother’s desk, I knew the two my mom oscillated between, and each mood that went with each. I knew also the colognes of my grandfather and father and the smells of the shaving cupboards they were stored in. But I suspect this is true of most children, curious by nature. I grew up with a profound interest in food, and this came from my paternal Italian-Canadian grandmother who cooks her tomato sauce with cloves dotting an onion, with a bay leaf swirling around- I can’t tell you the rest of the recipe. It took long enough to get it from her. I am not sure how it’s gotten to be that scent has become a focus for both work and as a passion in general, but if I could narrow it down I think it would be that in taking on part-time jobs that I thought would earn me pocket money on my way to becoming, so I thought, a lawyer. Firstly, I started working for Lush Handmade Cosmetics in Canada- and this introduced me to scents that were here forthwith unfamiliar to me in scent experience if not in name. I knew what, say, jasmine was supposed to smell like, but I didn’t know how jasmine actually smelled like until, by working at Lush, I developed a skill set, as does most everyone who works there does, in being able to differentiate scents. I then moved to Auckland, New Zealand and continued with Lush, law studies, and became a barista. I was unaware yet of the grip this would have over my life, but coffee became something for me there. I say a lot that coffee is an edible perfume (as are many things we drink, really). Now, years later, I’m doing what I was doing then- sort of. I’m working with Gorilla Perfume as part of my role with Lush now, but the barista part, I guess that’s almost pretty much the same.

  1. What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

I’d keep Karma by Gorilla Perfume, created by Mark Constantine. I’ve loved and worn a lot of fragrance in my life, and will continue to do so, but Karma has been a constant with me- as I’ve worked at Lush for so long. By virtue of this, at points in the Lush time span, sometimes the only perfume in the shop was Karma. So the nice thing about working with Lush is that you can do a face mask, a deep conditioning hair treatment, hand treatments, etc, all in the line of your job, or if you happen to be going out right after your shift. The easiest thing to do is to spray Karma before leaving. And therefore, Karma thus became a part of my life. It’s been with me through many years and a lot of things. Even if I don’t wear it for months, I couldn’t bear to see it go.

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

Le Parfum de Therese by Edmond Routniska for Frederick Malle.

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I’m going to answer impulsively, as I think all “for the rest of your life” decisions should by made and say Diorissimo by Edmond Routniska for Dior.

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

The smell of my grandmother’s tomato sauce! No joke.

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

A moment of poignancy was when my lovely maternal grandmother, the most feminine and stylish of women, who never hesitated to talk to me for hours on the telephone when I was 7 years old and awake at 5 in the morning, who never failed to send a classy Valentine’s card, who taught me how to hold a cocktail glass, who was a warm, clever, funny lady- when she died, when I was 12 years old, I took her bottle of Beautiful by Estee Lauder from her vanity as my keepsake of her.

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

My earliest memory of perfume is trying to make perfume, as children do, with water and collected flower petals that they screw in a jar and forget about until their mother finds it, a month or so later. The perfume of decomposition, of mould.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

Yes! Of course. Oh dear. The list is long. Love’s Baby Soft from ages10-13, Vanilla Fields from 13-16, gifts that were bequeathed and I couldn’t let go to waste despite their unsuitability to me, like Cool Water, Light Blue by D&G, Angel. Of course it could be because of their memories they evoke from each time frame I wore them. But I think really its because they probably didn’t suit me also.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

I really admire the scent artist Sissal Tolaas. I think she is just amazing. In terms of perfume in the classical sense, I know it may seem biased because of where I work, but I would say Simon Constantine because the viewpoints for his fragrances The Smell of Freedom and Breath of God (which was just included in Luca Turin’s 100 Best) come from such an abstract and artistic place. He’s doing intriguing work with perfume.

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way?  If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

I think that there are many things where scent is used in an evocative way-but that we don’t super pay attention to. I don’t think we consciously think enough about scent. The scent of a place or event has a large part to do with how we interpret it. Carnivals and circuses, for instance, these things have particular smells, as does each and every different environment we are in. In a weird way, I consider perfume to be an art unto itself. That’s why I tour department stores perfume counters because they’re free art galleries. Presently, I think there’s interesting people working in scent, like Christopher Broszius, like Sissal Tolaas, amongst others, who ask us to consciously consider our sense of scent. I very much enjoyed scenting the film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” for the Edinburgh International Film Festival at Inspace and I would love to do something like that again. I’m also thinking of  a scented interpretive dance piece with edible perfumes. That last line sounds like a joke but it isn’t. These are the things I think about!

Nature vs…

November 2, 2011
Scent Reflections, Uncategorized
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My boyfriend was asking me if synthetic in perfumes means bad and natural good.  I replied that as far as I could tell like most ‘natural’ things, it’s the marketing that tends to convince the buyer that all things natural will taste, feel, smell and work better than synthetic.

Especially with increasingly tight restrictions on the use of certain natural materials in fragrances, it is the masterful use of quality synthetics that is creating some of the best-smelling, most interesting and longest lasting fragrances on the market.

Paula Begoun has an interesting website called Beautypedia in which she explodes many myths about products promoted by marketers keen to sell at any cost – costs to our wallet and our health.  My understanding of much of what Paula says is that there is good and bad in everything – both synthetic and natural, and that it is worth researching products and finding out what is most effective and healthy for you – and this isn’t necessarily going to be reflected in the price tag or the packaging.

A friend who works in a perfume shop was telling me how many folks come in asking if the perfumes are ‘natural’ – either because they want natural products, or because they claim they are allergic to natural products.  Most of their perfumes are a mix of natural and synthetic (like most perfumes on the market today), and he was explaining that people often misunderstand what aspects of the perfume they might be having reactions to, and that it is often as likely to be a natural ingredient as a synthetic one.

I have a tendency to think that natural stuff must be better for me – I’ll spend that bit more to get the organic vegetables or will haunt the aisle in the health food store with natural beauty products in it reading labels and wondering if this or that ingredient from an artichoke will do me more good than one that comes from a lab.  The question I always come back to, however, is isn’t everything natural?  Even what we make by combining this or that molecule in a lab is still derived from stuff of this world.  I guess that’s a bit of a philosophical question but somehow it feels important in this context.  Last night I watched Lars von Trier’s film Antichrist, and that was what started me thinking about ‘nature as evil’ – Bambi was definitely nowhere to be seen in Lars’ vision of Eden.

Frivolous, moi?

November 2, 2011
Scent Reflections
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friv·o·lous

[friv-uh-luhs]

adjective

1. characterized by lack of seriousness or sense: frivolous conduct.
2. self-indulgently carefree; unconcerned about or lacking any serious purpose.
3. (of a person) given to trifling or undue levity: a frivolous, empty-headed person.
4. of little or no weight, worth, or importance; not worthy of serious notice: a frivolous suggestion.

 

I’ve been so interested in perfume lately, and I’ve been asking myself if it’s a good way to spend my time (and money).

I have one friend who insists that it’s important to remember that perfume is frivolous, and by this I think he means it’s not a requirement for survival.  I would argue that this actually lends weight to the notion that perfume is art – art, also, much as I hate to admit it is probably a want beyond food, shelter, procreation.  Once you’ve got those sorted, though, it certainly makes life more interesting.

If you look at the definition of frivilous, however, it is actually not such a great way to describe perfume.  Perfume can be serious, perfume does serve a purpose, perfume is important, all things I would say about art as well.

Perfume can inspire, lend confidence, attract attention and even affection.  LIke clothing, it is another way of communicating our tastes and personalities to others without opening our mouths.

Perfume certainly doesn’t need any defending – enough people are interested and spending their hard-earned money.  I don’t think fragrance is in any danger of going the way of, say, handmade artisinal lace.  However I believe that it is important to celebrate perfume as art, as a worthwhile enterprise, in that it is a product that can be driven too much by the market in a way that limits the freedom of perfumers and dilutes the creativity and quality of compositions.

Niche perfumers have inspired even mass market brands to bring out limited and special edition runs of fragrances, but the cynical part of me worries that this move on the part of the big companies is a finanically-motivated response to the niche trend rather than a true investment in high quality products and creative freedom for noses.  This month’s Vogue (November 2011) has an interesting article about the trend for niche perfumes.  If we get more 3-D, high quality fragrances out of this trend rather than the sometimes disappointing, 2-D quality mass market fragrances so often spritzed at department store counters, it must be something to celebrate.

Viva la parfum!  Viva la revoluzione!  Viva la PARFUM AS ART!

That sounds pretty serious.  Certainly the big money aspect of the perfume business is serious.  But I also think creativity and freedom of expression are serious.  As are high heels, in the right context.

art

noun

1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.
3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.
4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.
5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.

Definitions from Dictionary.com

Scent of a Ballerina

November 2, 2011
Scent Art, Scent Reflections
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My friend just sent me a link to this wonderful piece about a ballerina choosing different perfumes for each role she dances (see the third paragraph):

Scent of a Ballerina

This plays on the notion of scent helping to create character – I wonder if actors use scent similarly to help them step into particular roles?  I know many people use scent in this way in their day-to-day lives – selecting a certain perfume for when they want to feel confident and powerful, another for sexy and seductive, yet another for demure or even invisible.

Do you choose perfumes based on your mood, or to help you present yourself in a certain way depending on the day’s demands?

JUS perfume interview No. 1 – Alex Musgrave, Business Manager & Fragrance Consultant, Penhaligon’s Edinburgh

October 30, 2011
Scent Interview
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JUS perfume interview

 

 

Your name –  Alex Musgrave

Your work – Business Manager & Fragrance Consultant, Penhaligon’s Edinburgh

  1. What first attracted you to the world of perfume / scent / fragrance?

I have always had an affinity with fine fragrance, an obsession with how skin smells when mixed with elixirs, oils and extracts. Our sense of smell is plugged directly into the limbic system of our brain, the part responsible for emotion. This means its effect on us can be devastating. Love, desire, hate. Sex, control, pornography, tears, memory, future past and present. All can be tripped by carefully blended symphonies of florals, woods, musks, resins, amber, gorgeous synthetics. This swirling display of aroma magic has always fascinated me. A lot of it is really to do with sex and sensuality I guess, how our skins smell close up, how other people’s skin smells, how we want to smell, how we project our desires and ourselves through space with scent. It is animalic and endlessly beautiful. Working at Penhaligon’s I get to work with different levels of fragrance; development, marketing, selling, talking scent and finding something special for people to wear. I get to wear amazing fragrances every day and immerse myself in a weird, obsessive, ruthless and often blatantly commercial world. I like the clash of vulgarity and beauty, artisanal and mass produced. High street and niche. Each has need of the other. The mirror needs a reflection. Too much niche and luxury is suffocating and soon satiates and bores. Too much street rots the soul and dulls the senses. A balance is needed.  Some Rachmaninov and Satie alongside Chase & Status and Beyoncé. Everyone needs to trash it up from time to time.

  1. What perfume would you rescue from your collection if an evil perfume tax collector came round and said he was going to take every scent but one?

If I had to choose just the one, it would have to be myTabac Blond in the perfume extract concentration, a viscous film noir scent that reeks of bitter leather and sweet tobacco rolled across the softest of thighs.  My god it’s divine stuff, like dying at the hands of a beautiful gunman in a shadow-drenched room. He’d have the cruelest lips and kiss away your tears before killing you. There are two beautiful ways a heart can shatter: Love or bullet. Caron created one of the greatest fragrances in history, a love letter to rule-breaking girls who dared to party, smoke and sexually provoke their peers. But there is darkness too, the smoke curling from the gun, a reminder of mortality. I’ve said this before in reviews, but Rachel from Bladerunner would reek of this, aloof in her fur, cigarette smoke wreathed around her, denying her cyborg soul, living every minute as if it were her very last. This is Tabac Blond.

  1. If you won the lottery, what would be the first perfume in your shopping bag?

Hmm. Tough call actually. Right now probably the exclusive extract version of Bottega Veneta’s new leather scent in the gorgeous limited edition Murano glass flacon. Or treat myself to a bespoke bell bottle from Serge Lutens Palais Royale salon in Paris filled with his extraordinary new scent De Profundis. Heaven on earth, with a touch of brimstone and candy…..  A homage to hidden depths, decadence, Oscar Wilde and the deepest of dark loves.

  1. If you could only wear one scent for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Traversée de Bosphore by L’Artisan Parfumeur.  Just the most arresting and beautiful rendition of rose and leather. Painted by Betrand Duchaufour, in-house genius at L’Artisan Parfumeur. It captures a fantasy day in Istanbul, apples, tulips, leather, musks, Turkish delight and that soft compulsive magic that Bertrand always brings to his olfactory work, a desire to be inside the scent, living the intricate play of accords and themes. I just adore it. It works beautifully on my skin, from the wonderful tumble of green apples at the top to the billowing powder of the loukhoum and musk in the base.  An ode to memory and lost time, it meanders across the skin like a dream. I have never experienced anything like it. It just stole me away.

  1. What is a smell, or combination of smells, you wish was a perfume that you’ve never come across in any bottle before?

I love the blotted monsoon scent of Parker ink. That combined with freshly dried paper and Madagascan bourbon vanilla, almond milk and a synthetic ‘frozen’ snow note would be the starting point of something for me. A portrait in scent of an isolated writer, wrapped in snow, surrounded by pages of clean, handmade paper, searching for words to lay down, ink dripping from pen to pristine frozen page.

  1. Can you describe a moment of passion or poignancy in your life linked to a scent?

Someone I knew died far too young and I could smell his woody-spiced forest smoke cologne in the air at odd times as if he were walking past suddenly. It was painful and disconcerting. I would scan the street for his face. Every memory of him would rush back. Just too painful for words.

  1. What is your earliest memory of perfume?

That is very hard to answer. Probably associated with my mother. Dabbing on Opium from her beautiful inro style bottle and realising the potential of transformation. That there were things out there that could make your skin smell like art.

  1. Is there a perfume you wore in the past that you no longer wear, and why?

Quiet a few actually. Tastes shift and change. I have outgrown scents. There are memories attached to others. Some fragrances are too precious to return to, they are best left untouched in the past like dragonflies in amber.  Bulgari Black was something I wore obsessively for years, craving the alien vanillic rubber burn of its linear weirdness. Then one day, nothing, the love was gone. It is still an astonishing scent, one of the best ever created, but I stopped caring. I had to adjust for a while, wondering how I might feel, removing it from my routine. I had plenty of other scents, and I quickly adapted. But I never really knew why. I still pick it up, sniff, hesitate, smile at a sudden memory and place it back down again slowly.

  1. Is there a particular figure or house in the world of perfume that you admire, and why?

For me there are three very important noses: Bertrand Duchaufour, Olivia Giacobetti and Germaine Cellier.

Bertrand works in-house for L’Artisan Parfumeur and has also worked for Commes des Garcons, Penhaligon’s, Eau d’Italie, and Frapin among others. His work is consistently artistic and ruthlessly beautiful, whether he is re-imagining the tuberose as a luminous Parisian lover, setting fire to the night (LAP’s Nuit de Tubéruese), creating an earthy garden on volcanic slopes with shaded terraces and terracotta tiles (Eau D’Italie’s Jardin du Poète), or a dangerous ignition of dormant plantation desires (Penhaligon’s Amaranthine). His oeuvre is littered with shards of genius. Everything is thought provoking, artistic and moody, designed with intent to enthrall and charm.

Olivia’s work is more transparent, more shaded. She offers up her work like prayers to the gods above. Her work with incense has produced beautiful things…. Passage d’Enfer for L’Artisan Parfumeur, Hiris for Hermès, Idole for Lubin and Elixir for Penhaligon’s.  Her Premier Figiuer for L’Artisan Parfumuer is still the benchmark all fig scents are measured by. It is a portrait of a uniquely Mediterranean tree, oozing fruit, sap, leaves spreading in the warm sun. Her best I think is En Passant for Editions Fréderick Malle, almost unbearably poignant, bowed heads of lilac, shaking off light spring showers. Her recent playfulness with carrot, coconut, pastries, rubber etc with her witty Honoré des Prés organic line has shown how unique Olivia is in terms of her perfume making and her ambitions for our skins.

Germaine Cellier (1909 – 1976) has to be mentioned as she arguably altered the way we viewed and wore fragrance with the creation of Vent Vert for Balmain and Bandit (1944) and Fracas (1948) for Robert Piguet, two of the most shocking and outrageous scents ever unleashed on skin. Mannequins sported leather masks and brandished guns and knives as Bandit launched. The massive rush of sexuality could hardly have been ignored. Women must have wondered if it was actually decent to wear in public.

Bandit was filthy and dangerous. Its dark beauty and arresting edge was due to a tidal wave of isobutyl quinolone, which whipped the floral notes into a brutish animalic frenzy. Fracas is a legendary tuberose, lush and buttery, a lavish and disturbing floral with a beating sense of perfect carnality.  Sadly the versions around today are mere shadows of their colossal forebears, Cellier was renowned for using pre-mixed ‘bases’, the ingredients of which were closely guarded secrets. Cellier understood perfectly what women (and some daring men….) wanted from fragrance; movement and luminosity, depth and above all, sensuality.  Her legacy is extraordinary, as a perfumer and a woman at at time when men dominated the industry.

  1.  Is there any art (literature, poetry, theatre, visual art, music, etc) that you have experienced that uses scent in a provocative or beautiful way?  If not, can you think of an idea for scent in art?

The use of fragrance in art is rare. An image that has always stayed with me is from Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. The newly married (and nameless) Mrs De Winter is continually reminded of the presence of Rebecca, the former wife of her new husband. She seems to be going mad from the strain of it. The jealously, the gossip, the silences, the secrets and even the scent of it. In a disturbing scene the obsessive housekeeper Mrs Danvers lays out a black velvet dress that once belonged to Rebecca, telling the new Mrs De Winter to touch it, smell it, telling her she can still smell Rebecca’s perfume on the fabric. This use of scent as ghost, as memento mori is very powerful and plays tricks on the subconscious, reminding us how strong an influence perfume can have over our emotional memories.

I have an idea for a short play called The Death of Mr Harlow. The MGM producer Paul Bern was famously married to the Platinum Bombshell, Jean Harlow. He was desperately unhappy. Two months into their marriage he doused himself in a whole bottle of Mitsouko, Harlow’s trademark perfume and shot himself in the head. His suicide note read:

‘Dearest Dear, Unfortunately this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation, I love you,

Paul.

You understand that last night was only a comedy’.

In Bunel’s sexual masterpiece of chilled erotic cinema, Belle de Jour, the bored Sévérine, played with glacial finality by Catherine Deneuve hurls a bottle of Mitsouko to the floor during a fit of rage. An image of decadent wastage and liberation. The frozen maiden thaws and reacts with scented violence. Wonderful.

Sex, obsession, cinema, art and death. What more could you want from perfume?

 

A Golden Day

October 27, 2011
Scent Reflections
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What a day!  When I arrived at work there were two packages awaiting me – one with my newest eBay find, an almost brand new bottle of Cuir de Lancome, and one amazing package from my friend Ericka at Gorilla Perfume.  She had borrowed my Lust spritzer at the Scent Event we did at the Scottish Poetry Library recently (see my Icon post for more details) and it hadn’t made it to me by the end of the night.  I felt rather churlish asking her to post it back as she’d already been so generous and given us so many perfumes to respond to – but it was my favourite!  So I did ask, and not only did she send me the spritzer, but also the 30ml bottle and a solid perfume stick as well.  And some gorgeous Flying Fox Sex-Appeal Honey Shower Gel.  It was like an early birthday!

I sprayed the Cuir de Lancome all over me first, and so enjoyed it from the very start.  Citrus, oiled leather, woodsmoke…

At first I kept picturing a well-shod woman having a temper-tantrum in the midst of a gang of grinning cowboys, her expensive boots stomping up and down in the remains of a campfire.  Then the citrus brought me somewhere more exotic – and suddenly I was in the scene in The English Patient when Katherine is telling a story from Herodotus’ histories to an entranced ring of sandy, aristocratic listeners.

I love that scents can do this – can move us through time and space, remind us of beautiful places we’ve been to and works of art that we’ve experienced.

The Silver Fox sent a heads up about the Blood Concept perfumes – another Halloween appropriate fragrance (see my post on Freak) and just as vampirically enticing.  I mentioned this to some friends at work and after talking about smells of blood we got started on the use of civet in perfumes – gentlemen in Victorian times wandering about smelling of fecal matter – and of medieval uses of perfumes for healing and purification.

Also today another friend sent a link to this funny article about having lunch with DBC Pierre in which at one point they talk about Pierre’s protagonist Gabriel not only wearing but even drinking Jicky in a cocktail.

A lot of drinking goes on over the course of this lunch.  Have you ever had any perfume to drink?  Is there any you love so much you’d give it a go?

I can still smell the Cuir on me… gold, gold, gold.

Treasure Hunt

October 26, 2011
Scent Reflections
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Hoorah!  My debonair friend, The exquisite Silver Fox, has given me permission to share some of his recommended treasures to hunt out and sniff up – enjoy!  I’ll be searching them out, smelling them and responding to them so if you are too please read, comment, respond and so on.  Poems inspired by and photographic renditions of especially welcome… and now, from the Fox -

Juliette has a Gun (Lady Vengeance Extreme is a showstopping rose/patchouli)

By Kilian (the very best of Luxury)

Parfumerie Generale (Pierre Guilluame is a genius….) Musc Maori (white musk and lavish cocoa…….) and Aomassai (caramel and toasted hazelnuts licked by fire…)

Miller Harris (innovative and quirky…L’Air de Rien, created for Jane Birkin, is a skanky masterpiece) Also from Miller Harris, the haunting Fleurs de Sel, a rustle of sedge by salt marshes, a Breton idyll, herbaceous, crisp and impeccably constructed.

Etat Libre d’Orange (sexy porny and very clever) So many, so little time….. Like This, Mathilde Bijaoui’s pumpkin-tinted masterpiece created for Tilda Swinton, Delicious Closet Queen, nail varnish, lipstick and violence, Charogne, a dark and shocking scent of rawhide with melted rose, a peek at the beast within. And of course Tom of Finland, a leather classic, faded suede and Harley Davidson seats, 70s bathhouses and dizzying levels of styrax. One of the most innovative and provocative perfume houses around.

L’Artisan Parfumeur

Parfums de Rosine

Boadicea the Victorious

Le Labo (the Rose is beautiful, as is the Patchouli)

Nez a Nez (Bal Musqué … a velveteen sweeping  scent, a woman fleeing a ball at midnight dressed in black, quite extraordinary. Immortelle Marilyn, a white and and frozen portrait in fur and glass of Marilyn Monroe, touches of gloss, spice and resins, weird and wonderful. Ambre  à Sade, a powerful dense sweet amber, Sadean in its corruptive design, devastating in concept.)

Les Parfums Lubin (Idole is magnificent)

Les Editions Frederic Malle (of course), though not all… controversial I know. They are not all good. But Lipstick Rose, a powdered beauty.  Portrait of  Lady,  too strong for some, but putting the thorns defiantly back on the rose, Fleur de Cassie , bestial and filthy, skin under corsets and howling Crazy Horse dancers and Dans Tes Bras, because it smells like fucked beach skin. Simple really.

The Different Company (work of Jean Claude Ellena and his talented daughter Celine, best Iris in the business) Of course the Bois d’Iris, it radiates beauty like light through stained glass and the intoxicating Jasmin de Nuit, with it’s whispers of star anise.

Penhaligon’s (Amaranthine)

River Scent – the beginning of an odyssey

October 26, 2011
Scent Reflections
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I need to learn more about perfume. This much is clear!

I would love to go on a course such as Denyse Beaulieu’s ‘Perfume: understanding fragrance‘ run out of the London College of Fashion (and held in the Hotel Pullman Dubai Mall of the Emirates!?!), however living in Edinburgh and being poor means this won’t be possible just yet.

In lieu, for the time being, I have decided to haunt all the perfume halls, counters and shops that I can find and to sniff as many scents as possible while reading about them in as many places as possible, in order to try to make better links between my word knowledge and my smell knowledge.

My iPhone A-Z Guide to Perfumes by Turin & Sanchez is coming in very handy, as are the many wonderful blogs to be found on the internet, as is the treasure hunt list sent to me by The Silver Fox of important perfumes to smell – I should ask him if he wouldn’t mind me sharing that actually, might be fun for others to hunt from!

Anyway, on my way to and from work recently I have been stopping at House of Frasers, Debenhams and Boots, saving some of the ‘fancier’ destinations for later in the week. My goal was to hit a few of the much referenced perfumes in the A-Z that seem to be basics or well-known/popular perfumes that I’ve heard of and potentially smelled on people but have not known how to put the smell to the name, so to speak.

I tried:

Cool Water from Davidoff

Man Home from Gym

Tommy Girl from Tommy Hilfiger

The sort of girl I wasn’t in high school.

Joy from Jean Patou

Old lady death by flower – this really made me think of rich old ladies in Manhattan with too much money and too few wrinkles; something preserved beyond its natural age. I feel a bit of a neanderthal when it comes to some of these bouquet florals as I can’t see the appeal and other, much more expert and worldly types than myself seem to love them. Perhaps I will someday, or maybe this is like the smell of petrol – some people love, some people hate? A dividing line to part the mighty sea of humanity?

Samsara from Guerlain

I sort of love AND hate this – I like the jasmine aspect as I’m jasmine-obsessed, and the sweetness of it as I love sugar/vanilla/benzoin/amber deliciousness, but something in it smells like plastic that’s gone off – is that the crappy synthetic sandalwood Luca Turin mentions in his review? It reminds me of a beloved, loud-mouthed, powdery-lipsticked aunt – glad she exists, but glad to get home after a Christmas dinner sat next to her. My expert friend said as I progress in my exploration of perfumes I first need to find out what I like and don’t like, and it seems to me I like indolic florals (see jasmine and lily) and gourmand scents (see chocolate and benzoin) and dislike… squeaky clean, floral bouquet, hmm, I wonder if that makes any sense?

Chanel No. 5 from Chanel

I think, may this perfume confession go straight to the foot of the altar of the gods of perfume and be burned like a little offering with a whispy puff of Chanel No. 5 smoke rising from it and a tiny figure of Marilyn Monroe gyrating for a moment in the puff before it is gone, that as a child I might have poured a small bottle of Chanel No. 5 down the sink… it seems to me my grandmother gave me a little one once, and I somehow thought it smelled like, well, grandmothers, and it sat around in the bathroom for a long time and eventually went the way of spat toothpaste… however this may all be a bad dream (she says, biting her lip).

I still, to be honest, don’t really get it. Is it something to do with these aldehydes? I keep hearing everyone talking about them and don’t really know what they smell like, but I was reminded of Chanel no. 5 when I smelled Caleche, and Turin says that is aldehydic too so maybe that’s one issue, also there is an association for me when it comes to a certain mix of florals that conjures a particular sort of old lady in my mind. I think old ladies are lovely, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t want to smell of one – not that sort of one, anyway. I get the impression that as one learns more about scent one can become more objective i.e. freeed from some of these youthful prejudices… a bit like learning to like peas? May the day come quickly! One part of my job at the theatre where I work is reading scripts, and we have to learn to read in a few different ways – it’s a bit like learning to have multiple personalities – one reader in your head is you and reflects your personal tastes and prejudices, one reads objectively for quality of form, structure, character and so on and one reads with giant £ signs in one’s eyes – will this sell tickets? Will this sell? I would imagine that as one floats further down the multi-scented River Scent one becomes able to smell with multiple personalities as well, or grows multiple noses?

Anyway, I did feel like I could appreciate it slightly more than I ever have before. I didn’t flush the strip down the toilet.

Rush from Gucci

The sort of girl I wasn’t in college/uni, but kind of wanted to be, in a naughty, making out with boys at clubs sort of way.

Mitsouko from Guerlain

A second meeting after smelling it on Stewart in the Salon (see my Mitsouko Live post) – this is such a fairytale fragrance for me, full of dark moss, overhanging branches, enchanted fruits glowing on silver platters, and everything waltzing – I love it! Also this was the favourite of my boyfriend who had all the strips stuck in front of his nose when I got home. He said it was the one that smelled the most ‘different’.

L’Eau D’Issey from Issey Miyake

Ugg! The kind of woman I was most definitely not in the 90s.

Caleche from Hermes

Grandparents again, but grandparents folded into a big Hermes steamer trunk. Reminded me a touch of Chanel no. 5 – aldehydes?

And in preparation for my much anticipated smelling of the new Thierry Mugler The Taste of Fragrance limited editions had a go at -

Angel - So weird! Smelled too sweet to me at first, then like some totally unacceptable mix of rubber sex toys and rubber baby toys, and then like a hunched up bird with its massive wings wrapped around a giant nugget of benzoin – yum!

Alien – Odd, bitter cake flowers? On Mars?

A*Men eau de toilette rubber – I could make neither head nor tail of all the different versions and bottles and starry names on the Mugler tower. I grabbed this because it was in a rubber bottle and I liked the smell of it even better than Angel. It seemed richer to me than the sickening opening sweetness of Angel. This made me super excited about the limited editions as it felt sexy/foodie to me – chocolate baths in zero gravity. I like this. I want this.

And then, because I had a few strips still in my hand, some randoms -

Coco Mademoiselle from Chanel

Pretty in pink, makes me think of Audrey Hepburn in a pink Chanel suit with white gloves on. Would be nice on a big hairy man.

Eau Mega from Viktor and Rolf

This just smelled bad to me, like one of the things you regret spraying on yourself in Duty Free before you have to run to the boarding gate without time to wash it off in the loo.

L’Amoureux from Dolce and Gabbana

Smelled boring to me for a long time, like a general man cologne smell I’d smelled a million times before, then I got a whiff of stable – sweaty saddles and horse shit, more interesting but not particularly nice – I read somewhere there was s dab of sweaty musk in there so maybe that was it. Reading some reviews on MakeupAlley, folks seem to recommend trying it on skin (I didn’t), so maybe worth another go?

So, overall, an interesting first step, or paddle… more to come!

Night Flower – Freak

October 25, 2011
Featured Scent, Scent Poems
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A friend just passed on news about this exquisite sounding new fragrance of the night.

It has a poem that goes along with it:

I wanted to write one in response…

 

Night Flower

 

 

My heart whose petals keep fading, lover can you smell

the pall of death on me?

 

I’m the white star come morning.

Remember my scent in the night,

what joys we had?

The light of darkness a violet

cloak for our tears?

 

And now this crumpled stain,

my heart, my voice,

an echo through the empty house

as sun rises.

 

JL Williams   2011   www.jlwilliamspoetry.co.uk

 

This all feels just right somehow with Halloween around the corner!  Proper gothique.

Shops to Sniff in London

October 25, 2011
Scent Reflections
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A friend is in London this week and she was asking me where to go to get hold of some good smells, so I recommended…

 

Les Senteurs

and

Avery,

though I’ve not even been there yet, how I want to go!  Any other recommendations?

My dream is to have a JUS Perfume Gallery/Boutique with space for smelling, classes, exhibitions, readings and performances, lush sofas to lounge in while drinking flavoursome teas, and a little garden in the back tumbling full of sweet smelling blooms… someday!  If anyone ever wants to help me realise this dream, let me know.

 

I Heart Frederic Malle

October 25, 2011
Scent Reflections
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Frederic Malle was my introduction to fine fragrance.

When I was little I was given a statue of a fairy – its bottom half was a glass bottle in the shape of a skirt with embossed stars on it and its top half was a plastic lady in elegant blue.  Her hand held a tiny silk bag for whatever scents fairies carry about with them, and if you pulled off her top half, a little screw cap was revealed.  Inside was a perfume for little girls.  I can’t remember what it smelled like, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I would recognise it were I ever to come across it again.

I can’t remember scent being part of my life for years after that, until I went away to Boston to study and began roaming about the city searching out luxurious things that didn’t exist in rural New Jersey where I grew up with Tinkerbell, bless her glassy/plastic soul.

There was a niche scent I picked up from a boutique on Newbury Street, wish I could remember the name of it.  It smelled so chic to me – herbal and slightly sour in what seemed an enlightened way.  I remember someone making a ‘nasty smell comment’ while I was wearing it once – it seared!  I’m not sure I ever wore it again.

Soon after that I read about Frederic Malle’s fragrances in a magazine.  I was captivated by the description of a questionnaire that you could fill out on their website which would generate a real response from someone on the other end with suggestions about which of their scents you might like.  The questionnaire is still on the website www.fredericmalle.com; at the time when I took it they actually sent me four samples of the perfumes that they’d recommended to me.  I’m not sure they do that now, probably for a small fee.

My first love was Musc Ravageur.  It was the sort of scent I felt I couldn’t get enough of in my nose every time I smelled it – I just wanted more, more, more.  I would have bathed in it, drank it.  I wore it for years.

Then I decided it was time for a change and I happened to be in Paris and managed to find their shop at 37 rue de Grenelle. My boyfriend and I walked in – I think I was quietly squealing at the time, and may actually have hopped over the threshold.  Luckily the very well-dressed man working in the shop was in the back helping another customer, so I was able to attack the beautifully presented bottles on the table with full force – I tried to spritz as many as possible onto testing strips, scribbling their names down with the handily provided Frederic Malle pencil, before interruption.

Soon the nice French man finished with his customer, escorted him out the door and turned to face me standing in a cloud of extremely expensive perfume with a pencil in one hand, about 12 damp strips in my other and a guilty, delirious expression on my face.

We soon established that the approved way to smell the perfumes, as demonstrated by Mr Malle himself in the above video, is in one of the large glass smelling chambers that reminded me very much of Star Trek transporter modules.

I left with what I had come for – Angeliques Sous La Pluie or ‘Angelica After the Rain’, which I had heard described as a ‘scent haiku’ – that was already enough to convince me to buy it even before I’d smelled it.  Luca Turin doesn’t think much of it but I loved it, and still do – though it will never be a Musc Ravageur for me – more of an occasional nod to a graceful scent picture, something like a Monet watercolour or a field of flowers pictured through a sheet of glass after a storm – the drops sliding down the glass and abstracting the flowers.  When I watched the wonderful BBC Perfume documentary recently with images of Jean-Claude Ellena in his beautiful house of glass and stone, I felt I understood Angeliques better.

We were in New York City later that year and picked up French Lover, or Bois D’Orage as it’s called in the States (why?) for my boyfriend, though I like to wear it sometimes.  The elegant lady in that shop wandered around the whole time we were there trying to remember what Bois D’Orage meant (she was French, I might add, but a New York version of French).  I remember her shiny black heels and elegant, still sexy though she’s a little older now walk.  We paid and were saying our goodbyes as she remembered, “Thunderstorm!  Thunderstorm!”

I can’t decide what one I’ll get when my Angeliques runs out… Lys Mediterranee?  Carnal Flower?  Noir Epices?  O, glorious choices…

The Silver Fox

October 25, 2011
Scent Art, Scent Reflections
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The Silver Fox

http://ascentofelegance.blogspot.com/

“On the scent of all things elegant…”


I have put this blog on my ‘best scent blogs’ list in the Scent Library, but I want to make a special post about it as well, as I think it is important.

There are myriad types of writing about scent – from the scientific to the poetic.  Many blogs, thankfully, talk about the different notes in perfumes, the chemistry of prefumes, the effect of the scent on the skin, in the air, and so on.  Some explain the ways scents work, some explain how they are made and some express the tastes of the sniffer.  Not so many bring the scent to life in image.  I think this is what The Silver Fox does.  His writing is a celebration of what scents conjure, of the power they have to dredge up memories from the deepest wells of our soul and to bring our dreams out from their subconscious lairs and into the fresh light of day.  This is connected to why I believe scent is art – it links with the parts of us that are wordless, that seek the means of art to communicate that for which normal words fall short.  One of art’s, especially one of poetry’s, great abilities is the use of metaphor to make new, vibrating connections between words (images, structures), illuminating pathways across the unsayable.  Scent can do this too.

The perfume inspires writing that is art, the writing highlights the artistry of the perfume… an intoxicating relationship.

The Silver Fox’s writing is more akin to love poetry than criticism.  It is also wildly informative and, of course, insatiably elegant.  Do have a read.

Chocolate Leather

October 25, 2011
Scent Reflections
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My grandfather owns a chocolate factory in Newark, New Jersey.  He had many sons and one daughter (my mother).  Most of my uncles worked in the factory at one time or another, if not for years – some of them still do.  The best part about all this is that my uncles always wore leather jackets and smelled better than any other humans on the planet.  They smelled of good old worn leather drenched in the deepest, most raw, succulent bitter chocolate imaginable.  I still can’t think of anything much that I’ve ever smelled that beats that combination.

My question is – is there a chocolate leather fragrance out there?  If so, what is it?  If not, will someone make it for me?  For the world!

Mitsouko Live at the Salon

October 25, 2011
Scent Art, Scent Event, Scent Reflections
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Recently at the Traverse Theatre where I work there was a show on called ‘The Salon Project’.  A remarkable company by the name of Untitled Projects recreated a Proustian-style salon in our largest space, complete with chandeliers and huge mirrors, and dressed the entire audience of 60+ people each night in full period costume.  What a dream!  The audience was treated to a series of provocations throughout the evening, but the real show was the audience itself – dressed, powdered, flowered, bedecked, and made to see itself and to interact in a new/old way.

When I attended, I had the pleasure of smelling Stewart Laing, the genius director/designer behind the Salon.  It was my first whiff of Mitsouko – a fragrance I’ve read so much about but had yet to smell in real life, if you could call a recreation of a 19th century salon real life.  Stewart smelled magnificent.  You can see him in the photo above – he looked magnificent as well.  He’s the one with the red beard and dashing mustachio.  When I think back on it, I can remember the strange, enchanting mix of sweet peaches and moss, flowers and musk… the sparkling lights, the soprano and the pianist’s delicate fingers on ivory keys.

Mitsouko on Basenotes

Mitsouko on MakeupAlley

Perfume is Art

October 24, 2011
Scent Art, Scent Reflections
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In the bible-like A-Z, Tania Sanchez says, “Tocade is not a better fragrance than Dior Addict because it better approximates the mix of odors released by a fertile female.  Tocade is better than Dior Addict because it’s more beautiful.”  This makes me want to smell Tocade.  It also makes me think that when something exists for seemingly no other reason than for its aesthetic value, and when it can be judged based on its aesthetic value, then it falls pretty distinctly into the category of art.

Do you think perfume is art?

Icon – Perfume and Poetry

October 24, 2011
Scent Event, Scent Poems
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I wrote this poem as part of a project for Lush’s new Gorilla Perfumes.  It was quite wonderful as Ericka Duffy, an officially titled ‘Top Banana’ at Gorilla or, as we like to call her, Goddess of Scent, sent myself and my friend the amazing poet and more Elspeth Murray each a box of perfumes from the new line to smell, wear, be inspired by and write poems about.  We then got to share what we’d written on Radio Scotland and at the splendid Scottish Poetry Library, at a joyous, perfume-filled scent event/poetry reading.  Have a look at my poetry website, www.jlwilliamspoetry.co.uk, for a link to a recording of the radio programme where you can hear a couple of the poems being read, including this one.

Icon
for EM

I smell her first,
and this is what I see:
a still life with a copper bowl of bergamot,
a wooden bowl of shiny apples, a pile of cloves.
And then there is her silver hair in the wind,
her leather boots,
her red cape smelling of wool and rain;
bitter, rich and sweet,
and this is her, coming from weather
to the fire in the library,
the spines of leather books whispering
her, her, as if it’s Christmas and she’s arrived
to take them down from their shelves, and rub them,
and read them to children sliding cloves into orange peel.

I smell her first, then I see her, then I see her again
as she will be someday, in a memory
that doesn’t even exist.

JL Williams   www.jlwilliamspoetry.co.uk   2011

Photos (c) Chris Scott   2011  http://www.chrisdonia.co.uk/

Poem submissions welcome – I’d like to start up a publishing stream of scent-inspired poems and flash fictions so do send them in to jusperfume@gmail.com.

Swallowable Perfume?!

October 24, 2011
Scent Art
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A friend just sent me this link:

http://swallowableparfum.com/

Is this the future of perfume?  What does it make you think?  How does it make you feel?

I find this idea to be extremely exciting, and a little scary.  How would this affect your body?  We are accustomed to spraying scent on the exterior of our body, but it feels much more invasive to ingest it and process it via our body.  Would it be safe?  Would it smell good?  Would it be possible to get a sense of the smell before you swallowed it?

When I sent this link to another friend he remarked on garlic’s ability to do this very trick.

Another told me about a perfume called Wode from fashion label Boudicca that comes in a spray paint-style bottle and magically stains the skin an inky blue for 10 seconds after spritzing, and then the stain is gone, but not the scent.  What a fright this might cause the wearer of a white blouse!  I love the magic of this.

I’ve heard of technology going under our skin beyond the already notable medical intrusions; thin digital time displays slid under the skin to make an implant watch, nano-machines able to enhance and alter our bodies from the inside out.  The new frontier.

Some more links:

http://www.lucymcrae.net/2011/08/swallowable-parfum-trailer.html

http://fuckingyoung.es/swallowable-parfum-%C2%AE-by-lucy-mcrae/

Best Books on and about Perfume

October 24, 2011
Scent Library
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The Essence of Perfume by Roja Dove

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind, translated by John E Woods

Perfumes The A-Z Guide by Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez

I’ve got this one on my iPhone so I can read it any time, anywhere – especially when browsing in the shops.  I have heard of people who have hardback, paperback and digital copies, copies for every room, etc.

The Little Book of Perfumes: The 100 Classics by Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez

The Secret of Scent by Luca Turin

More to come.  Suggestions welcome.

Best Scent Blogs

October 24, 2011
Scent Library
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Here are some of the perfume blogs that I think are exceptional…

The Silver Fox

http://ascentofelegance.blogspot.com/

“On the scent of all things elegant…”

Grain de musc

http://graindemusc.blogspot.com/

“A Perfume Lover in Paris”

olfactorialist.com

http://www.olfactorialist.com/

“I have been in love with perfume ever since I can remember.”

Bois de Jasmin

http://www.boisdejasmin.com

“Bois de Jasmin is an independent perfume blog offering articles on perfumery including fragrance reviews, essays on aroma-materials, perfume history and interviews with industry professionals.”

Now Smell This

http://www.nstperfume.com/

“Regular topics include fragrance reviews, news, perfume shopping tips, and new & upcoming fragrance releases.”

Tauer Perfumes

http://www.tauerperfumes.com/blog/

“There is only one guy when it comes to Tauer Perfumes…”

Perfume Shrine

http://perfumeshrine.blogspot.com/

“The Perfume Shrine project is an award-winning independent online publication offering articles on perfumery including fragrance reviews, essays on the science of fragrance and aroma materials, articles on perfume history, interviews with perfumers and industry professionals, trend-watching and fragrance advertising evaluation. Its aim is to provide a resource for anyone interested in fragrances and to offer an independent assessment of available products. But its most important goal is to share the passion for scents, pose interesting questions and ignite a genuine appreciation for the art of perfumery!”

More to come.  Suggestions welcome.

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