Be Spring Now. I insist.

A list sounds like just the thing to turn the stark weather of late to balm and blossom.

1. Prescriptives Flirt-A recent reunion with the marvelous Calyx by Prescriptives reminded me how I miss this lychee scent that I wore back in the days when I didn't go on about perfume, I just wore it con mucho gusto.

2. Jean Patou EnJoy - Patou makes the ideal fruity fragrance with its house accord of mai rose and jasmin de grasse. I didn't grasp the beauty of this one until I smelled it in the Monclin, or smelling globe.

3. Chanel 28 La Pausa - I began to crave this again on the floor of a ravine on Oahu's North Shore where a jungle grew and fruit ripened, fell and turned to a tropical liqueur of root and soil and fleshy flower.

4. Balmain Vent Vert, I have not forskaken thee. Especially not since I found one ounce of 1950s vintage Vent Vert in a local antique shop a couple of weeks ago. It has not suffered since statehood. Score.

5. Invasion Barbare lends some peculiar herbs to the spring mix. I like the scent of thyme and I imagine this fragrance in a shade of "distressed oatmeal" like the jumper a character named Matthew in an Alexander McCall Smith novel wears.

6. ELDO Encens et Bubblegum. This one smells both sweet and dusty, like April wind tussling the dust of the withered winter ground newly uncovered. It does recall sunny days after school when we burned orange blossom incense and planned our future careers in espionage to our parents' record collections.

7. Boucheron is to me a red stained pair of ship lips and a beautiful stranger in the dark at the movie theater whose name you never discover because the perfume is so affecting that you cannot speak in her presence. I think the opulent mystique of this scent would keep them guessing among the marshmallow peeps of the cheeriest, most innocent season.

8. Tinkerbell perfume. They sold this treasure at The Family Market up the street from my house around 1978, when I had just got permission to cross L street by myself. I did NOT ever get to buy any of this elixir of life, but I did smell it. Deprivation elevated the perfume for me. Now I always think of Tinkerbell Perfume whenever I taste a particularly cold and heavenly Viognier.

9. Fresh Mukki. Milk, they say. They say milk, I say .... lemons and yummy soap. Watch I don't hurt myself drinking out of the drink bottle it's so tasty.

10. The perfume in my future.

Givenchy Le De (Reissue)

Le De is a cluster of purple soap bubbles flowing between a citrus sky and a sandalwood floor.

The bubbles are purple like the delicate petals of wisteria. I know wisteria very well. Flowering vines were none in my Northern town, so my move to college thrilled me with many botanical marvels, one of which was the Arts and Crafts Church of Christian Science in Berkeley, the first building I'd seen that was made completely of blossom. Wisteria hang in clusters there like grapes whose intoxicating quality is in its perfume rather than its wine. Le De is no where said to be a wisteria perfume, but its delicate sweet jasmine and orange blossom air is tinted purple to me, with wisteria's fresh humidity and hush, the kind of hush that I felt in seeing such delicate blooms have enough warmth and light to cover a church. The intrigue of an ornate blossom colony or a mysterious perfume is to notice all the detail laid out like a feast for the senses.

Hot Robot Love: Kiehl's Original Musk

I am thirty-six years old. In my short life, musk has been a popular trend in perfume. Even so, for a long time I succeeded in ignoring or detesting musk. As a youth, I cringed at drugstore musks and aftershaves and overdosed on The Body Shop White Musk as slathered on by a school friend. Musk just always said sadistic male P.E. teacher or secretary in chenille cowl neck sweater to me. True devotion to perfume, however, has made me broaden my horizons. Musk is one of the UFOs that has appeared on my newly wider screen. Tonight, Kiehl's Original Musk eau de toilette has landed.

Rose and ylang glow like lighted panels on a flying saucer or toys of yore like Lite-Brite. The floral accord's warmth is immediate and the flowers really dominate the whole experience for me. A mist of powder gives the scent a blurry and potentially stale feel. All along, there's this initially gigantic fading to invisible musk. Under these layers, there are hints of ripe rump and healthy scalp. According to a recent study (see excerpt here) by Aaron Peck, Emily K. Linebaugh and Keri C. Hornbuckle, "Two sediment cores collected from Lake Ontario and Lake Erie were sectioned, dated, and analyzed for five polycyclic musk fragrances and two nitro musk fragrances. The polycyclic musk fragrances were HHCB (Galaxolide), AHTN (Tonalide), ATII (Traseolide), ADBI (Celestolide), and AHMI (Phantolide). The nitro musk fragrances were musk ketone and musk xylene."
It's odd how my sense of what smells animalic is now synthetic. Always wanted to be a robot. It's hot. I say to the makers of synthetic musks: "DOMOdomo. DOMOdomo."

Hermes Kelly Caleche

Today amidst an April blizzard I consider a Jean-Claude Ellena creation from 2007, Kelly Caleche. As a steady customer of L'Eau d'Hiver and The Different Company Osmanthus, I got my hands on Kelly Caleche at the earliest chance.

I'm not a leather fetishist like some of my perfumista friends, but I have my favorites. L'Artisan Parfumeur Dzing! and Hermes Eau d'Hermes are at the top of my list. Kelly Caleche distinguishes itself from those two as a floral leather. With notes of leather, iris, lily of the valley, mimosa, tuberose and climbing rose, Kelly Caleche smells of an old fashioned hair tonic. That is to say it smells of animal skin dressed with floral water.

I am reminded of Osmanthe Yunnan by Ellena but even more of L'Artisan Parfumeur Fleur de Narcisse, which I have written reminded me of my little toy cradle made of a caribou jaw, of animal skins and booze scrubbed with ivory soap drifts. Ellena's much discussed minimalism again seems directly descended from the thought of Edmond Roudnitska, who didn't brook synthetic musk and candy coating.

Kelly Caleche is an unsmiling but thoughtful perfume. It's like a storm cloud that follows the wearer around. I don't remember my dreams from last night but the perfume gives the impression that I did have difficult dreams that I will continue to try to reassemble.

Missoni

It does not smell edible though almost every note is a food. With oranges and hazelnut chocolate and mint obvious to my nose, Missoni the perfume also has a hint of that odd tomato/bell pepper effect of certain blockbusters of the 1980s, but it keeps that headache under the hard exterior of its mouthwatering febreze candy armor. No interesting thoughts come to mind as I wear it. It leaves me unsentimental. It doesn't meld into my skin or become me or make me feel I have slipped into any aspirational tableau. I feel altogether different about Missoni the perfume than I do about Missoni the knitted items and Missoni the Margarita and her apartment, which were featured in a now lost feature in some interior design magazine. I cannot find that article and I want to steal some of that apartment's chops. It has a palette of coral and red and an art deco dresser in a swollen light wood. It had the feel of the poster for Kubrick's Lolita, all lollipop and nymphet but not at all too. It would be near impossible for Missoni the perfume to match up to my projection onto Margarita Missoni's apartment, which has come to incorporate the way I feel in the presence of my favorite Greek poet Odysseas Elytis, Brazilian Tropicalia like Os Mutantes or Gal Costa, and great movie houses of the 1930s and 40s, to mention a few shreds from my mental montage. Throw in a giant banana leaf and happiness.

Missoni the perfume evokes instead the high charm aesthetic found in Jonathan Adler and Domino, with its robin's egg/mint and chocolate combo recalling that color combination in both Domino and Adler products. I confess that 1. I just bought a chocolate brown sofa; B. I purchased a mega kitsch ceramic item from Adler's shop in SoBe (that's South Beach below all the old cockers in Miami); and 3. an intervention is needed for my bi-minutely visits to www.dominomag.com.

Nonetheless, I hope my intended distinction is clear. In case it is clearly not, I will elaborate. While Missoni as seen in The Apartment is joy in upholstery, Missoni the perfume is artificially flavored euphoria.

Fake can be great in its own way. Case in point: McDonald's soft serve is not real vanilla nor is it even guaranteed to be a dairy product, and yet it is mouth-stuffing sculptural creamlike perfection.

Missoni the perfume, to extend the illustration, is a mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwich as eaten while a jet stream of honeydew and neroli is propelled up the nares and a fog of Orange Crush encircles the head like an icon's halo, in anime.

Comme des Garcons Red Series: Palisander

I love red. I do. I just have to displace some of the many beige objects in my psyche to make room for intensity.

Comme des Garcons Palisander smells like swaths of red wrapped around the trunk of an incendiary tree. Certain scents are painted like Palisander. I am tongue-tied with excitement to describe how it feels. It has the surprising feel of wet paint; volatile, flammable and shockingly hot. First it flames in carmine tannin, then extrudes with almost obscene and also edible aspects before mellowing into a resinous,smoky culdesac of smell. I try to isolate what gives Palisander this coated or painted feel and think of other scents that do the same. Donna Karan Black Cashmere or Serge Lutens Bois Sepia flash into my sense memory. Before smelling Palisander, I would have thought patchouli responsible for the painted effect. Maybe it is, but palisander gives rosewood top billing. After a winter of milky comfort scents, gourmands and hushed irises, Palisander barges into my world with bright red courage.

Palisander (2001) by Francoise Caron and Yann Vasnier

Yves St. Laurent Paris

There was a time when every girl I knew at Romig Junior High School, The Purple Prison, wore YSL Paris with abandon. It was 1985 or so. The humid, fruity burst of rose was indivisible from the mucky uncovered grass scent of breakup, the smell of hot lunch and that pure cool Alaskan air you only smell when you sneak out the bedroom window to roam the neighborhood in the unreasonable three o'clock dawn. Birds sang. A stray car drove by every so often. I should have been in bed. We Reagan-Bush youth heard all about "Just Say No" and, yet, peer pressure seemed stronger than ever. At any given time, every item in a teeenage girl's toilette was proscribed by the shapeless, formless thought police that lived within us. For a time, Paris was the perfume. Although I conformed in other ways, like the wearing of pegged pants, the refusal to wear boots or even socks in winter, Paris I would not wear. Thus, I was thoroughly puzzled to see Paris mentioned in Chandler Burr's new book, in blogs, and in a food memoir I read by Kim Sunee. Paris seems to be having a revival. If there's any question as to whether I am conformist, it took me less than a month of hearing the Paris buzz to buy myself a bottle. Oddly enough, it's just about breakup here as I try it for the first time again.

Other People's Perfume

So, I've been quiet for over a year but I read perfume blogs. I note what it's hip to like, what is considered "surprisingly likeable" in spite of its mass market packaging or composition, and what is reviled far and wide. I keep my nose in. I even masquerade from time to time by wearing "other people's perfume." Today, for instance, I am wearing Juicy Couture, a magnolia bonbon that somehow has escaped widespread hatred among the snifferati in spite of the fact that it is advertised by pastel tinted fashion dogs. Eight hours after application I feel like a fruity coated jelly bean wearing slush stained snowboots. Glamourous youth is still not mine. But I have other disguises.

Sometimes I wear a combination of Vintage Tabarome and Ambre Canelle. When the saleswoman showed me the blend in Neiman Marcus about eight years ago it was mouthwatering and brash but not me as others saw me or as I saw myself. I wore Fleurissimo, Grace Kelly's wedding perfume. That shining floral bouquet was never too much and always elegant; just my aspiration. The Tabarome-Ambre Canelle mix belonged to someone with a very different persona.

The reason I wear perfumes as disguise is, in part, a sense of play. But it's also because so many people hate perfume and to evade their judgment, I play hide and seek in and out of different perfumed identities.

Perfume is considered "perfumey" or "old lady." These slurs never fail to amaze me since we are all inundated by strong fragrances in our cleansers, shampoos, soaps, deodorants and everything else we use. Don't get me wrong. I don't hate ambient fragrance. I just see little division between strongly scented industrial fragrance and fine fragrance in terms of menace to society, whereas many people let fine fragrance shoulder all the blame.

The less you wear perfume, the less natural it seems. The less perfume you wear, the more aware you become that it is a getup, a scary face of makeup. I never wanted to become a clog wearing hippie. Then, too, I think that all this thinking about consumption is thoroughly boring. But, hey, this is my blog and my New Year's Resolution was to be as boring as I want to be on my blog.

I don't want all perfume to become other people's perfume, but my sensibilities are changing and I believe I am adapting to my surroundings. Wait! That's not a snow berm! It's Cait! Jesus! Don't run her over. She used to give us warning with that strong French perfume of hers, darnit!

Roudnitska Again

My taste remains the same. In the middle of a panic attack about personal finances or professional pressure, I make lists. The lists seem quirky to onlookers. A typical list might go like this: "Scallions, ginger, tampons, call IRS, discovery requests, Chanel lipstick, Persepolis 9:55 p.m., New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Joy, Diorissimo, Parfum de Therese, Diorella, EAU D'HERMES." My lists are actually a litany of different lists; shopping lists, wish lists, lists of favorites.
I am in the habit of naming those things I need to get or, like my favorite poet, Odysseas Elytis did, list "What I Love." Elytis wrote "What I love is always beginning." There's something so marvelously prescriptive about that, yet, my lists reflect my taste and as I said at the beginning, my tastes remain the same. Look at any of my perfume lists and you will see, it's always Roudnitska again. From my childhood introduction to the spare, live muguet of Diorissimo to my recent rapture with Parfum d'Hermes, it's as if Roudnitska wrote his perfumes for my skin to read. On me, Roudnitska's perfumes stand like architecture with an integrity that makes sense in an instant. At the same time, Roudnitska's perfumes have an astonishing development. As I wear these perfumes, entrancing compositions play off my skin, stating and restating themes and evolving in an ideal fashion. Best of all, Roudnitska's perfumes flatter me as they seem like my semblables, my soul in fragrance. It's an ideal work of art that appears as an idealized reflection of the wearer's body and soul. Roudnitska confounds me with this ability. How did a Frenchman born in 1905 know the body and soul of an Alaskan woman born in 1972, the same year as Diorella?

Eau d'Hermes (1951) is the latest Roudnitska perfume to thrill me. I can tell that it will be another lifelong love. It gives me that entrancing feeling of smelling myself in the mirror, if that makes any sense at all.

Chanel No. 19

At first, a frisson of sugar snap pea scented galbanum and the nearly floral fresh sap of neroli combine to evoke the almost peppery scent of marigold. Unlike many green fragrances, Chanel No. 19 always travels with a shadow. In true Chanel style, it is an abstract rather than representational perfume, a green tone poem with puzzling interludes. Iris of Florence smells simultaneously of wet paper, of sun baked soil releasing steam when watered, and the memory of snow so dry and cold that it tickles the nose hairs. The rose de mai diffuses its scent with abandon, as if the petals were newly torn as they rise in a cloud from the skin. It comes along a bit after the iris has played its delicate role in concert with the fresh, almost bittersweet opening of the neroli and galbanum. In the wake of its opening accord, there is a somber chypre accord in the base that hints of hair or scalp. Among other notes, it includes vetiver and an accord from Daltroff’s Nuit de Noel: “mousse de saxe” or saxon moss. This accord contains geranium, licorice, leather, iodine and vanillin. The accord oscillates between oily and dry as powder, much like the leaf of a geranium rubbed between thumb and forefinger. Too, there is a friction created between sweet and bitter. The genius of this perfume is that it amplifies the complex effects of the accord it borrows. It is not mere pastiche. Whereas Daltroff introduced mousse de saxe in Nuit de Noel as a temporary disturbance in a perfume resolved in a dark midnight sweetness, Chanel No. 19 suspends this storied accord in a permanently ambiguous work of art. Chanel.com says that Henri Robert created N°19 especially for Coco Chanel. The fragrance was released to the world in 1971, just before her death. The number 19 celebrates Coco's birthday on the 19th of August. Among this perfumer’s creations Henri Robert is credited with the following fragrances: Coty Le Muguet des Bois (1936), Chanel Pour Monsieur (1955), Chanel no. 19 (1971), and Chanel Cristalle Eau de Toilette (1974).

Chanel Bel Respiro

Bel Respiro begins with a soft galbanum. The scent of crushed leaves harmonizes with the creamy sweetness of lilac and warms into an atmosphere of herbs and green tea. For most of its hazy flight, Bel Respiro is a featherweight skin scent. Bel Respiro is so understated, it’s like a scent drawing of what’s not there. Bel Respiro gestures toward the bitter brightness of Balmain’s Vent Vert, but transforms the green glass shards of Vent Vert into a soft green gauze veil. Its floral heart of hyacinth, rose, and lilac is pleasing but disappointingly weak. My brain strains to remember what a rose looks like, and finds a blousy sketch of the tea rose featured in scents like Yuzu Rouge or Stella. My nose flounders as it tries to find its way back to a flower called lilac, finding something vague and creamy sweet. As the fragrance wears, I do smell green tea with a honeyed brown finish that may be the mark of myrrh. Leather is reputed to be in the scent, but it is so light, it must be of the spray-tan variety. In such transparent form, I can’t adequately enjoy the quality of Chanel’s much touted natural materials. Bel Respiro is a line drawing of a fragrance that lacks the anticipated texture of its admittedly fine ingredients. Bel Respiro contains the following notes: hyacinth, fresh cut grass, galbanum, crushed leaves, rosemary, thyme, rose, lilac, hyacinth, green tea, aromatic grasses, myrrh, leather

Etat Libre d'Orange Divin'Enfant

Divin’Enfant by Antoine Lie is a fragrance I wear purely for my own pleasure. Many’s the times I don’t want to seduce, I just want to amuse myself. Infantile and gourmand but a trifle adult, Divin’Enfant fits a particular niche in my fragrance wardrobe. The first burst of the fragrance powders the skin with a dusting of the potato flour used in the guimauve, or French marshmallow, flavored with strawberries and orange blossom. The scent's orange blossom suggests a marshmallow at first but opens into something soft and quite sensual as it wears, especially as the light amber and clean musk notes warm up. The scent doesn’t develop too sequentially. Almost immediately, the leather, cold coffee, and tobacco notes of Divin’Enfant make themselves known as a backdrop to the marshmallow accord. In spite of the composition's simplicity, the addition of body heat and time does deliver something quite appealing. Applied with a light hand, the fragrance weathers into a clean and hauntingly sexy scent that recalls makeout sessions with freshly laundered teenage boyfriend. The concept is winningly quirky. Somehow, I immediately grasp the image of a spoiled James Dean type in a tobacco scented leather jacket drinking a mocha and eating marshmallows. Queerer still? I relate. I identify. I want to smell like this Divin’Enfant.

Michael Kors Island

I am an indoor person. Most days, my skin smells of milk and honey, synthetic musk and aldehydes. Not everyone favors such an "indoor" scent. Where I live, lots of people unintentionally carry the scent of fish and woodsmoke with them from the great outdoors into the mall. But even when it comes to intentional perfuming, there are those in the North and beyond who prefer to join the woodland nymphs and water sprites with their decidedly outdoorsy fragrance choices. A subgroup of outdoorsy fragrances unwittingly reflect the synthetic quality of our idea of nature. Michael Kors Island is one such fragrance.

The whiff of chlorinated water you get at the swimming pool on a balmy tropical day; a first spray of Michael Kors Island releases that so-clean-it's-got-to-be-corrosive quality. The flacon, a carved rectangular pool of aqua, is like a house that's all window, an architecture that brings the outdoors inside. Michael Kors Island does the same for perfume; it transports the outdoor smells of water and flower fresh air to the indoor locale of human bodies. The pitfall of a fresh fragrance like Island is that it masks our riper animal odors under sanitized chemical cover in the banal mode of an underarm deodorant.

Cool, bleached, verdant and fruity notes shine and fade into an imperceptible base of beachy woods. With early smelling flowers like tulip, champaca, ginger lily and stephanotis mixed with a brisk note of rose, this is a bouquet at a casual outdoor wedding, complete with "white bark accord" and "galapagos driftwood." This aquatic ectomorph of a fragrance is a bit of a throwback to 90s Issey Miyakesque minimalism; all stems, no tits.

Michael Kors Island is available from Sephora, Nordstrom and many other online retailers. It contains the following notes: Kauai Waterfalls, Oxygenated Water, Chinese Kiwi, Hydroponic Honeysuckle, Parrot Tulip, Champaca Flowers, Ginger Lilies, Bulgarian Rose, Stephanotis, White Bark Accord, Galapagos Driftwood.

État Libre d’Orange Putain des Palaces

Juicy orange mandarin, rice powder, and powdered sugar aldehydes combine to evoke the old candy Pixie Sticks, those striped paper straws filled with sweet tart powdered sugar.
In the presence of the orange candy and rice powder notes, ginger plays as a warm and comforting gourmandise, like gingerbread soaked in a sweet syrup.

As the fragrance ripens, the gourmand cakes and syrup effect morphs into a rose-violet jam. Due to its spicy candied rose violet powder composition, Putain des Palaces reminds me quite a bit of Caron Aimez-Moi, in spite of the obvious differences between the two perfumes. Aimez-Moi features notes of anise, mint, cardamom; violet, magnolia, jasmine, rose; orris, heliotrope, tolu, vanilla while État Libre d’Orange Putain des Palaces contains mandarin, rice powder, lily of the valley, rose, violet, ginger, leather, amber, animalic notes.

Putain des Palaces is one of many current fragrances that simulate a face powder and lipstick aura, including Lipstick Rose by Frederic Malle Éditions de Parfums, Drôle de Rose by L’Artisan Parfumeur, and Teint de Neige by I Profumi di Firenze. But powdery floral perfumes have existed long before a few perfumers decided to label them Mommy Kisses Marcel Goodnight or Eau de Painted Lady. In Putain des Palaces, there is a glance back to the 18th century of Lady Pompadour and Marie Antoinette, when the toilette of a courtesan and the construction of a croquembouche were not dissimilar.

The difference between a perfume of the classic 18th century tradition and Putain des Palaces is that Madame’s veil isn’t hiding much in the way of unwash. Unlike the great perfumes of Guerlain, for instance, that incorporate troubling fecal or sexual notes in the base, Putain des Palaces goes from fizzy mandarin to gourmand to floral to a safe base of musk and amber. Its base is more vanillic than animalic or sensual. A hint of leather, ripe but not smoked or in any sense virile, complements the bright aspect of ginger in the base. This Putain is as tasty as a pastry puff, shiny, and clean.

État Libre d’Orange Putain des Palaces is by Nathalie Feisthauer and can be purchased in the United States at Henri Bendel. For more information about the line, go to État Libre d’Orange.

Congratulations to Now Smell This, Bois de Jasmin, and Perfume Smellin' Things for winning the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Awards for Best Fragrance Blogs!

Perfume Bores Me ... Rien Entrances Me.

Perfume bores me. This sinister thought has entered my mind quite a bit lately. A dangerous thought for a perfumista. I didn't want to admit it, but the onslaught of new releases has left me tepid and even my old favorites don't always interest me.

Perfume bores me. Rien entrances me. In the last few months, I had begun to think that there was nothing, rien du tout, that could stimulate my mind and senses.Rien, that is, until I braved a bracing January wind in the Marais district of Paris. I found Rien and realized that Rien, nothing was the solution to my jaded palette -- Etat Libre d'Orange Rien.

Incense. The palpable waft of tart and resinous smoke drifts in the nose and hits the tongue. Instant salivation. In Rien, incense acts the way salt does in food; it whets the appetite for the flavors to come. That's on the uncontrollable level. On a subtler plane, there is something vaguely illicit about this smoke, as in "What's that I smell coming out of your apartment? Oh ... Rien!" A taste of Japanese plum, tangy and winedark, plays hide and seek with an increasingly velvety texture made by a vanilla opium base accord.

Rien carries a carpetbag full of perfume materials including incense, rose, leather, iris, labdanum, oakmoss, styrax, patchouli, amber, cumin, black pepper, and aldehydes. Blackcurrant buds, responsible for the tartness, lend a feline fringe to the perfume, which is part hot skin and part sweet and sour fruit. The sharp bright spicy tang and velvety effect alternate like the flip flop of louvered blinds.

For a perfume named Nothing, Rien is, in fact, all perfume classifications in one. Rien is at once floral with its prominent plum-tinted rose and blousy grey iris; oriental with its panoply of incense, labdanum, amber and black pepper; and chypre due to the inclusion of that familiar patchouli, oakmoss, amber accord. In spite of the complexity of the composition, all the parts work together to create a perfume that works and bears contemplation over many wearings. A dusting of aldehydes polishes the perfume like the ash left behind a joss stick, or a shimmer of fairy dust.

Of all the fragrances in the Etat Libre d'Orange line, I credit Antoine Lie's Rien with reviving my interest in the world of samsara, or worldly delusions. They call it a perfumer's confession, an essential. I agree.

The Spectre of a Rose by Denyse Beaulieu

It was the first of François Coty’s compositions, yet the last link of modern perfumery with the 19^th century’s figurative tradition: an impressionist rendition of the fragrant, dark red ancestor of long-stemmed roses, the Rose Jacqueminot, named Général Jacqueminot in 1853 as a tribute to a hero of Napoleonic wars – a fitting inspiration for the fledgling Corsican perfumer who would soon conquer the world, only to end up, like his compatriot, a ruined and lonely man.

François Coty was a novice, but no slouch. When he offered his newly minted scent to the Nouvelles Galeries, the Paris department store that had Belle Epoque ladies swooning, the manager turned him down, upon which a furious Coty smashed the bottle on the counter. It crashed to the marble floor, and ladies swooned a little more. They clamoured to have the scent; the manager ordered fifty bottles. Coty and his wife spent the night in their kitchen pouring the elixir into vials. A house was born...

In 2004, to celebrate the firm’s 100^th anniversary, Henri Coty, François’s son, commissioned the re-creation of his father’s Rose Jacqueminot, house in a Baccarat flacon. I don’t know if there were other scents, though in an NZZFolio article, Luca Turin states that Daphne Bugey of Firmenich reconstructed L’Origan, Emeraude, Jasmin de Corse and La Rose Jacqueminot in 2005.

I have the extravagant privilege of owning one of the 200 bottles re-edited in 2004: it was a gift from my publisher, Martine Assouline, a fellow perfume lover who also published two books on Coty.

What does it smell like? A rose, no: THE rose. After all, “La” is a definite article... Just the one, then. The archetype. Dark red edged with white like the Général Jacqueminot, slightly animalic in its heart, powdered around the edges, all smoothness with none of the metallic undertones of some contemporary rose notes.

It is also a poignant scent. Blooming, like the bullfight, is a deadly performance art ending in the death of natural beauty – perfume preserves the ghost of a flower for years, sometimes decades, but it still fades. When the perfume in question is a the limited reproduction of a long-gone scent, beckoning from a past era – pre-Chypre, pre-Chanel n°5, a late blossom of the 19^th century – each drop spells fragrant oblivion. Like Nijinsky dancing Le Spectre de la Rose, Fokine’s romantic ballet based on Théophile Gautier’s poem – a girl falls asleep and the rose comes alive in her dream – La Rose Jacqueminot leaps out of sight and out of scent, through an open window, with an amazing, seemingly never-ending grand jeté.

Denyse Beaulieu aka Carmencanada is a new contributor to Legerdenez.

Image Credit: A Georges Barbier illustration of Nijinsky in Le Spectre de la Rose in Paris, 1911 from Wikipedia

American Beauty: West Side by Bond No. 9

On the brink of cacophony, West Side delivers harmony. But wait, isn't West Side that overly common little number with the amber-rose neon highlights? Yes, it's common. Common in the sense of a hit musical. Common in the sense of Hitting the Bigtime common.

With its petals outlined in gold and its stem studded with thorns of blue green ink, all West Side needs is a heart and the letters M-O-M and it would be at home as a rose tatoo on a bouncer's arm. The prodigious muscle of this perfume's idea is its sentimental verve. Not difficult in any way, but lovely and strong and fine and a mite overfed. How American.

You want rare and refined? Search elsewhere. Bond No. 9 is a New Yorkian ship of industry, a crew of French perfumers in disguise as American profiteers, with the canny Laurice Rahme at the helm. I've got to give it to them. West Side is a winning perfume, a true American Beauty. So it doesn't matter if none of the creative and market geniuses at Bond No. 9 are actually American. The infectious quality of their perfume is as American as a gritty old city turned into a themepark, complete with gum wrappers rolled into the pavement. West Side's a phoney, but a real phoney. I take off my hat to this American Beauty.

Can a perfume be toe-tapping? If so, West Side is that kind of perfume. I didn't want to love West Side. I took one look at the notes (rose, ylang ylang, peony; sandalwood, amber; vanilla and musk) and thought it sounded like a drugstore fragrance. But once I tried a sample from Fragrances & More, I started humming, "You made me love you. I didn't wanna do it! I didn't wanna do it!" Okay, okay, I realize that's a Hollywood reference, not New York. But it strikes me that Bond No. 9 pushes a very Hollywood version of New York. Technicolor, with extra schmaltz. Phooey! I love it.

West Side pollinates the air with a fleeting whiff of boozy plastic doll hair, that evaporates to reveal roses sliced open and bleeding their rouged hearts out, a salty vanilla-toasted amber, and a dewy, grassy peony that verges on vetiver as it melds into a powdery skin musk. A couple of hours later the rose still smells fresh and sweetly lemony and the ambered vanilla sandalwood drydown has a clean, polished warmth.

I know a lot of people who say they hate musicals but that always strikes me as a posture more than a deeply held conviction. The truth is, few can resist corny lyrics, snappy dance steps, and a grand finale. Similarly, lots of people claim to despise that storied bloom of prom, the rose. I suspect that the rose haters (earnest allergics aside) may just be envious.

As Ethel Merman was known to sing in Gypsy, "Some people got it and make it pay. Some people can't even give it away. This people's got it and this people's sprrreadin' it around!" West Side is that blockbuster musical of a scent that you can't help but wear and sing.

Cue Ethel one more time: "Ready or not! Here comes Rose!"

West Side by Bond No. 9 is available from Fragrances and More as well as other online retailers.

The Lavender of January

On the first day of January, I drove out the highway from Anchorage alongside the water of Turnagain Arm where the icy tides moved rapidly and the light shone on the bits of open water like marvelous jewelry of opals or two thousand year old glass windows amidst the frosty snow cover. At other times the snowy water looked like a giant milkshake being churned toward the shore. The waterfalls were frozen into pale aqua and yellow formations to the left of the curving road. There was something particularly lavender about this moment in its clarity, its vivid action and winter silence.

To warm myself from a ramble in deep snow, I bathe with a green brick of lavender glycerine soap sent to me by the perfumer, Andy Tauer, who is developing his next fragrance as an interpretation of lavender. Tauer describes his lavender as a complex character in his blog:

"The fragrance is green, with a Lavender top note, a rose line, some spices, a musky, flowery resionous fir note with a hint of a tobacco line, a Frankincense airiness and woods in the background...stretching far out into unknown landscapes and exotic forests, an airy and crisp, classy scent…."

The soap leaves a breath of May air on my skin. I glance outside, where skaters cut black figures against the white field of snow. I crack open the window. The vivid blue of a car radio, snow and woodsmoke travel inside. To explore the mood of this lavender instant, I choose Serge Lutens Encens et Lavande. It is an ember of flaming wood inside a cocoon of glittering lavender ice. Encens et Lavande is a passionate surrender to this moment. Whatever perfume I wear will meld with the smoke from the barrel fires out on the ice.

Photo Credit: Turnagain Arm Sunrise by Ron Niebrugge at http://www.wildnatureimages.com/Turnagain%20Arm%20Sunrise.htm

Living in Paris by Denyse Beaulieu

Living in Paris may seem like heaven to a perfume lover... But like my fellow Parisians, who only see the highlights of their city when they have visitors, I very seldom venture into perfume shrines without the pretext of a perfumista friend from abroad.

Being in such close contact with so many sources of perfume is a true exercise in restraint... Everything is there to be sampled, so when I step in a shop, I know I’ll be able to go back for a second or a third try. There are never any discounts or special promos, so I have no reason to rush a purchase. And like the Eiffel Tower, I feel that whatever it is I want to discover will still be there when I’m good and ready.

Then, there is the lack of time: teaching at the Place Vendôme, I walk at least once a week past Jean Patou and have never, ever, plunged my nose into the Monclins; Annick Goutal, their neighbour, I’ve only visited once after discussing Songes with Tara, a lovely dark Californian woman whom I met through a perfume forum. I’ve never pushed the door of Chanel on the rue Cambon. Montale on the rue de la Paix? I’ve walked in once, and walked away with Jasmin Full.

A stone’s throw away, Frédéric Malle’s second location on the rue du Mont Thabor, right behind the rue de Rivoli, I’ve only been in once, to smell, and immediately acquire, Le Parfum de Thérèse which fills me with irrational joy. This was to celebrate the signature of a book contract, oddly enough with a publisher who actually knew Edmond and Thérèse Roudnitska: I thought the coincidence was magical enough to warrant a purchase...

With so much access, I will only buy a scent once it has crept into my soul and taken utter possession of it. It is a prudent exercise in courting before succumbing: meeting with it once, twice, thrice, spending time with it, listening to its story unfold. If a scent provides me with memories I never lived – the bright, taut love of Edmond for Thérèse; the warm evanescent gusts of fragrance blown in by Sous le Vent; Serge Lutens’s bittersweet spicy childhood memories in Chypre Rouge; Derby with its stately choreography of notes – I let come into my life.

If it permeates me in that odd, transformative alchemical exchange of essences that comes with love – vintage Femme has that effect, the sweat of a goddess fed on spices, precious resins and flower petals – I let it eat its way through my skin.

Some scents are non-narrative though, and then I must stand inside their “it-ness” as in a space – Carnal Flower doesn’t tell a story, it surrounds you imperiously as tuberose is wont to do. Bulgari Black, my latest love, is an object pulverized into a haze: strong smoky tea brewed for hours spilt on the crumbs of a Ladurée vanilla macaroon; powder puffed on to a fetishist’s rubber elbow-length glove. Jicky, only just discovered this year, is one of those long-standing masterpieces who can wait for decades or centuries until you are ready to take them in: there it stands, whole and haughty, strangely reticent in its playfulness, a scent for the sealed, smiling lips of an androgynous Renaissance angel...

They are all there, waiting for my skin or yours to warm them to life. After all, we’ll always have Paris.

Legerdenez is proud to introduce Denyse Beaulieu, who is known as Carmencanada on the blogs and forums, as a new contributor in 2007 with this article.

Photo Credit: New Year by Richard Myers

The Year of the Perfume Blogger

My favorite things of 2006 marks the one year anniversary of Legerdenez. 2006 was a year without precedent. Many bloggers have emerged as important voices on the subject of perfume, moving from writing their online articles to writing copy, publications in industry magazines, and book deals.

The Year of the Print Media Perfume Critic

In 2006, the New York Times recognized the existence of Perfume Criticism and named Chandler Burr the paper's Perfume Critic. But even as the print media discovered perfume, the internet continued to be a forum for the discussion and creation. Made by Blog was the first project in which bespoke perfumes were developed with the input and commentary of the blog reading public.

The Year of the Niche Perfumery

Niche perfume houses including Le Labo, Tauer Perfumes, Ineke Parfums and others, made brave entrees into the world of fragrance, with Les Nez taking the lead with the poetic and cutting edge perfumes of Isabelle Doyen.

The Year of the Fragrance Installation

For me, 2006 was the year of the fragrance installation. A dream came true as I collaborated with artist Indra Arriaga (and consulted with perfumer Yann Vasnier) to create an installation featuring nine scents for a Day of the Dead Scent Altar. Of the fragrances, my favorite was Dry Palm. I would wear that note in a personal fragrance in a heartbeat.

PERFUMES OF THE YEAR

Sous le Vent by Guerlain

(review 6/7/06)

... is a thing of astonishing beauty. The scent of wet pavement and limes paves the way for a jasmine and carnation heart studded with lavender and dries down into the whisper of cinnamon sand. This rereleased 1933 scent, made for Josephine Baker, is enchantment.

Sira des Indes by Jean Patou

(review 4/16/06)

... reminds me of my most recent trips down the rainy streets of Paris for its complex, humid spiciness. Aromatic cardamom veils the lush heart of banana milk, champaca, and mai rose and dries down into a soft sandalwood base. Jean-Michel Duriez has created a keeper for Jean Patou.

L'Inspiratrice by Divine

(review 11/27/06)

... has real style. Richard Ibanez's stunner of rose and patchouli is what a perfume should be; a work of art rather than a realist interpretation of a particular primary material. Divine is one of my favorite perfume houses at this point.

L'Ame Soeur by Divine

... has stolen my heart. Yann Vasnier created an aldehydic floral to rival the best of classic French perfumery with L'Ame Soeur, reinforcing my passionate love for Divine and my continual respect for Vasnier, who advised me on a Day of the Dead Fragrance installation this year while he worked on such blockbusters as Gold for Donna Karan.

Azuree Body Oil by Tom Ford Collection for Estee Lauder

(short mention 5/29/06)

... means summer. Estee Lauder is not allowed to discontinue this soft woody gardenia body oil if I have anything to say about it.

Songes Annick Goutal

(review 4/18/06)

... is a melancholy ghost of a perfume that haunts the cinema of Marguerite Duras in her India Song. A dream of jasmine and creamy vanilla with smoke; wisps exuded from the Annick Goutal boutique on the rue de Castiglione this spring. Isabelle Doyen and Camille Goutal made an inspired perfume that breathes glamour.

Vanille Exquise Annick Goutal

(review 2/4/06)

... is an incense spiked vanilla like my sharp intake of breath when I realized I was in love with a vanilla and incense perfume. Isabelle Doyen and Camille Goutal turn out more consistently brilliant work than any team out there.

Carnal Flower Frederic Malle Editions de Parfums

(review 2/6/06)

... is a panacea. This green tuberose by Dominique Ropion spreads a joyful air wherever I go. I desperately want both the eau de parfum and the body butter.

L Eau de Parfum by Yann Vasnier for Apothia

(review 2/13/06)

... is a fully developed gesture in perfume with interest in the top, heart and base. I think of it as a feminine take on Vasnier's L'Homme de Coeur for Divine.

Fleur de Narcisse by L'Artisan Parfumeur

(review 10/16/06)

... seduces me with its strangeness. Moose hide and sinew, hay and a white flower that blossoms in new driven white. Fleur de Narcisse is the sort of scent that gives you time to sit and think about what you've done.

Chinatown by Bond No. 9

... let me love it even though I was late to the party. Last year Chinatown won awards and topped everyone's list of favorites with its unique cocktail of peach blossom, white flowers, cardamom, patchouli, and cedar. To all of you I say, you were absolutely right about Chinatown.

Narciso Rodriguez Pour Elle Eau de Toilette

... is the closest I have come to the scent of sex. Orange blossom lilts on top of a new school oriental chypre. If pleasure could be turned into perfume, this would be it.

Please comment on your favorite things of 2006 before you peruse the other lists on the other fabulous participating blogs.

Afrobella :: All About The Pretty :: Aromascope :: Beauty Addict :: Beauty Blogging Junkie :: Beauty by Nadine :: Beautiful Makeup Search & Beauty Blog :: Beauty Hatchery :: Beauty Jones :: Blogdorf Goodman :: Bois de Jasmin :: BonBons in the Bath :: Brain Trapped in Girl's Body :: Capital Hill Barbie :: C'est Chic :: Coquette :: Crazy Jay Blue :: eBeautyDaily :: Girl's Handbook :: Hautemommastuff :: Koneko's *Mostly* Beauty Diary! :: Legerdenez :: Makeup Bag :: Monkeyposh :: My Muse :: No one knows why the wolf laughs :: Perfume Smellin' Things :: Peppermint Patty's Perfume Posse :: Platinum Blonde Life :: Product Girl :: Scentzilla! :: She'll Be Feverish After So Much Thinking :: Slap of the Day :: The Customer Is Always Right :: The Daily Obsession :: The Great She Elephant :: The Life Of A Ladybug :: The Non-Blonde :: Urbane Girl :: Victoria's Own

Jasmin by Guerlain

Jasmin by Guerlain is the purest Jasmine soliflore as I have ever smelled. Jasmin smells more like the work of Mandy Aftel than Guerlain in any of its incarnations. It smells stranger and more animalic and closer to the natural source material than any other scent inspired by that most exquisite of perfumery flowers. With a sandpaper whisper, there's a dry palm leaf followed by a funky undertone; the smell of a bird body underneath its feathers. Guerlain's Jasmin, a discontinued treasure from 1928, is banana scented with the semisoft cushiony texture of those orange marshmallow peanuts that make you throw up your hands in puzzlement. A hint of nostalgia hits with the starry night in the bungalow laundry room smell of mildewed Mary Jane and Sniffles comic books.

Thank you to March who gave me a sample of this discontinued Guerlain Jasmin. The images above are as follows: a Georgia O'Keefe painting, The Lawrence Tree, that depicts the sort of setting in which I first smelled jasmine, and a frame from a Mary Jane and Sniffles Comic book.

L'inspiratrice -- Parfums Divine

There's nothing like the sight of an international postmark in my mailbox to lift me out of the winter doldrums. So you can imagine my delight when I found that the thoughtful people at Parfums Divine had thought to send me an announcement of their most recent release -- L'Inspiratrice by Richard Ibanez. Parfums Divine is one of my favorite perfume houses with their creations by Yann Vasnier including L'ame Soeur, L'homme de coeur and L'homme sage as well as Divine and the adorable L'infante. Each of Divine's perfumes is a fantasy of its own. Unlike many niche perfumeries that highlight particular natural ingredients for inspiration, Divine spins an olfactory idea with such mastery that no one ingredient comes to the fore. This gives the line incomparable allure. I've had my love affairs with L'homme de coeur, Divine, and L'ame soeur in succession and all it takes is a whiff to reawaken my crushes on these perfumes.

Between the lines of my scented letter from Parfums Divine, I began to read the smell of L'inspiratrice. Something effervescent, boozy and bohemian. As I inhaled this olfactory muse, I smelled the distinctive quality of a Divine Parfum. Not a hair out of place, but a vision of a supple rosy woman adrift in Spring Green Vitabath bubbles, glass of wine in hand, and a rose alternately stashed between her teeth and in her swept up curls. Those who know me will instantly recognize that not only did this perfume instantly evoke a fantasy, but it created such desire that I inserted myself into the scene. This L'inspiratrice, she is me!!

If I were to selflessly share this fragrance with anyone, it would suit Charlotte Rampling in Paris in 1973 as photographed by Helmut Newton. L'inspiratrice has the patchouli tinged attitude of a 1970s fragrance but it hasn't been done before. It is no Coriandre, nor is it Agent Provocateur, Rose de Nuit, Rose en Noir or Rose Barbare. As I write, I realize that we may be in the midst of an age of the patchouli rose or the rose chypre, yet L'inspiratrice stands in a class of its own. It is more wearable than any of the above with its multifarious range.

It's almost a crime to deconstruct L'inspiratrice because it is so well balanced and blended. The composition effortlessly encompasses a bubble bath of fizz, fresh green notes, a winningly bright bergamot, melodious ylang, dewy peony, voluptuous and never bitter rose with white musk, buttery soft vetiver and the warm but understated base of tonka and vanilla. But enough of my daft attempt to put a true work of art into words. It must be smelled. Suffice it to say that a muse cannot be reduced to a type.

L'inspiratrice eau de parfum is available from www.divine.fr where the customer is queen, shipping is international, and the wrapping is absolutely lovely. The other Parfums Divine are available from www.luckyscent.com and I imagine they may carry L'inspiratrice in the future.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer -- Reviews on Rotten Tomatoes

The reviews are coming in for this anxiously awaited movie. Perfume has an 83% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a site that compiles a variety of film reviews and renders each film an average rating on the fresh to rotten scale. Among the reviews listed on Rotten Tomatoes, Rich Cline of Shadows on the Wall wrote: "This tale of a brilliant sociopath is disturbing and often uncomfortable to watch. And it's also magical filmmaking." The Hollywood Reporter says: "Succeeds reasonably well in achieving what many said was beyond the scope of cinema: conveying the world of scent and smell."