Legerdenez

Trick

2012-01-22T11:39:00.000-09:00

Ginger grows like jewelry in the jungle. In the kitchen it becomes obstreperous. Come close and I'll give you a trick. Apply the edge of a teaspoon to the ginger root and the skin scrapes off like it was begging to be naked all along.

Drive-Through Blood Bank

2012-01-21T16:53:00.000-09:00

The drive-through blood bank on Northern Lights Boulevard is a gold box with green windows off at the edge of the parking lot. Don't try to tell me they were always First National.

Small Fate

2012-01-11T21:35:00.000-09:00

To become visible on a map, she uploaded a photo of herself taken in front of the sad cage where Star the Reindeer lived by a house on "I" Street.

A Mystery

2012-01-04T07:35:00.004-09:00

By chance, I met a strange man with a long beard at the market. He asked me the time and when I glanced at my watch he lunged to grab me. I sprung away. He chased me down a narrow path away from the market until I lost him in a temple filled with women where I covered my head with a scarf from my bag and blended into the crowd. I saw the man ask a lady if she’d seen a short, middle-aged, round woman enter the temple, to which the lady merely shrugged her shoulders at the congregation, most of whom fit the description.

As I watched the man tug at his long, rather unclean beard, I tucked my scarf under my chin with feigned modesty. Why the crowd of women congregants all wore scarves in the temple was puzzling, as there was no one there but us chickens, save the bearded man. Whatever the reason for the custom, the scarves offered a welcome anonymity. I resisted the temptation to wait and see whether the man could locate me in a crowd of look-a-likes. As I exited the temple, rain fell in dark splotches on the silk on my head.

The temple plaza was unfamiliar. There was a quiet hum from distant prayer and the swish of traffic. Overcast skies prevented me from orienting myself based on the location of the sun, so I retraced my steps with a ruined bicycle chained to a post at the end of the narrow corridor I’d traveled. It was too small for a car. I heard my footsteps echo as I made my way down the alley, past closed blue doors and a few slender cats none too concerned for my welfare having been chased by a strange, bearded man. After a few minutes I emerged into the noise of the marketplace. I bought tomatoes, which are necessary for life, and went home.

Resolutions for 2012

2012-01-03T14:37:00.003-09:00

1. Finish gestures, emotional and intellectual, with passion and courage.
2. Move to a city.
3. Work for human rights and the rule of law.
4. Live love.
5. Write and draw with my hands every day.
7. Dance again.
8. Pray for my friends' health.
9. Meet my imaginary friends in person.

Tauer Perfumes Incense Rosé

2011-04-27T15:58:00.017-08:00

Surrender is unbidden manna to the fractious. While the perfume world went gaga over incense, I remained nonplussed. Floral perfumes are my true love. So a few years after the fact, I get to be surprised, and to surrender to a perfume I never dreamed I would love. I'll tell you how I smelled it like a kid who doesn't know the lingo. It's spiky and round. It's a bonbon and a bonfire.Frankincense is the resin burned at an Afro-Cuban tambor. It's not churchy or ragged and gaggy though incense can be that. In Incense Rosé, the frankincense, enriched with the tannic and honeyed and ethereal qualities of cedar and labdanum and myrrh, brandishes both its power and its sweetness, the qualities that recommend it as a cleansing substance. A bright-eyed opening is rendered with clementine and bergamot and there's a bedroom heat about it from the the creamy chalky orris, the flushed dishevelment of ambergris. Cardamom makes it a perfume that is a food that is a candy. Roses from Andy Tauer always have the plangent flesh of flowers plucked from a family garden, fed by the attendant stories, secrets and regrets. In his perfumery and intimate notes, Tauer has always displayed a sensitivity to history and love, to terroir and its issue, and has brought rare and limited naturals to our lucky noses. This is a risky perfumery and in Incense Rosé, a smashing success.

www.luckyscent.com
www.tauerperfumes.com
Photo, Cait Shortell

Confession

2011-04-23T15:36:00.007-08:00

I want the crackle and soaring flight of new love. I want it to last forever. I always kept a diary. Before I ever fell in love I was writing in little books with golden keys as if great passions were the story of my life. It's an irreplaceable feeling that I never tire of chasing. The unreasonable desire for desire itself defines me. It, and not a mere penchant for posies, is the reason I love perfume. A drunk wants that whatever it is, that ease, that cushion, the numbness that booze provides. I want the sensation of the most crushingly beautiful ache, and I want it to become my sillage. When the sky is as expressionless as a blank page, I turn to perfume to read into it the warmth of sun. I smell a heart of jasmin de grasse and rose de mai and turn breathless, as if my lover had brought them. The smoke and friction of resins and wood conjure body heat and danger. And the appeal of pudeur goes without saying.

The romantic aspect of perfume is obvious. But perfume is more than just cosmetic frippery. It's the fetish and prosthesis of a swoon without end. Rather than embrace the void, the end, death and diffidence, I wear perfume as a mark of my fierce attachment to desire, without which, shackled soul that I am, I wouldn't know what I was missing.
Photo, Cait Shortell

The Different Company De Bachmakoff

2011-01-02T21:59:00.008-09:00

When the subarctic winter blots out every hope of light, a scent of the sap to come is an elixir of life. With De Bachmakoff, Celine Ellena has composed an icy herbal perfume that shines brief and bright, the way the sun points its index finger low across the horizon before it sets into the icy sea. Although the fragrance features tonic rather than overtly beautiful notes, it has a surfeit of dreaminess. Bergamot dominates the first impression, smelling like a glass of cold tea left sitting by a grey window. Cedar is the centerpiece, a raw and very tannic wood, softened into sap by freesia (thematically out of place under all this ice but a fittingly cool flower), moss and herbs and spices including shiso (the jagged leafed Japanese herb served with sushi), a dusty nutmeg, and coriander. Together, the effect is a distillation of lichen and grasses steaming up through snow melt. Yet De Bachmakoff remains an aloof cocktail, never releasing the riper notes of nature under the snow. In keeping its herbs and woods in a crisp block of alcohol and ice, the fragrance captures the suspended animation I know as the essence of the North. Reading about the history of a perfume famously designed to evoke polar freshness with its aldehydes, Chanel No. 5, it occurs to me that De Bachmakoff could have used these famous chemicals to the same effect, but I haven't heard anything about their use in this fragrance.

The Different Company De Bachmakoff is available at www.thedifferentcompany.com and www.luckyscent.com

Help Raise $5,000 by New Year's Eve to Build a Well for 250 People

2010-11-11T18:31:00.004-09:00

Dear Fiends and Associates,
I decided to do something really good and I want everyone to be a part of it.

There's a great organization called Charity: Water that builds wells in developing nations around the world and inspires people like us to use our time and money to make it happen. I started with my first personal donation of $300.00 today and I'm asking everyone to give a little to this campaign so a well for a village of 250 people can be funded by New Year's Eve. If you have gifts to give to your own friends and family or to me (as materialistic as you all know I am) or a desire to add a little health and life to the world, please give as much or as little as you can. Charity: Water is an efficient organization that is highly rated for spending very high proportion of funds raised on the building of wells. That's why I believe in this project and urge you to join in the fun.

Love, Life, Charity, Water.
xoxoxo
Cait

Here are the facts:
$20 means one person can get clean water for 20 years.
$250 means two families of six can get clean water.
$5,000 means clean water for a community of 250.

Buddha's Hand Citron

2009-12-08T23:43:00.007-09:00

The Buddha's Hand citron has slender, curved fingers like a sacred statue. A strange fruit, it is used to perfume clothing and rooms with a scent so strong it can be smelled within a five foot radius. Floral and melancholy, the scent is distinctly different from the brisk zing of a lemon or the sweet spiciness of an orange. Like an amalgam of jasmine and tea, osmanthus, neroli, and bergamot, and the sea, all of these comparisons are inadequate to describe its incomparable scent. I am now dreaming of a perfume that stars this contemplative, exotic fruit.

Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyprée

2009-11-17T12:27:00.003-09:00

Tauer Perfumes has made a sex act with Une Rose Chyprée. While bouquets of roses are so ubiquitous as to be ho-hum around Valentine's Day, there is still something brilliant and passionately hot about a real rose. Wear this perfume and first you feel fondled by real, velvety petals. It's the kind of rose that's always reminding you of its moist flesh, like roses from the garden, roses with a history, perhaps even a vendetta attached to them. Tauer says he made this rose 3-D with two natural extracts of rose damascena, the absolute and the steam distilled oil. It certainly is steamy. Even in dry, cold winter, Une Rose Chyprée brings on a hothouse humidity. Green Bourbon geranium oil highlights the diffusive, realistic effect of a surreal, sensual rose blossom. Like a new fling, this perfume makes me imagine all kinds of colors and sensations to convey the pleasure of being wrapped in its embrace. I imagine it has a golden heart, the tart, sweet citrus notes of bergamot, lemon, and clementine wrapped in a filigree of hot bay and cinnamon. A strong, muscular quality is hinted at from the first spray and grows stronger and warmer over time, so that hours later one is left with the memory of a rumpled bed that still smells of the haunting accord of labdanum, oakmoss, patchouli, vetiver and vanilla.

The very generous Andy Tauer sent me a bottle of Une Rose Chyprée. He says it's the first of a series called Les Memorables, all perfumes built around "hard to get, outstanding, traditional materials." To buy Une Rose Chyprée, go to Tauer Perfumes.

Ineke Field Notes from Paris

2009-11-11T17:54:00.008-09:00

I met with Ineke at a tea shop in San Francisco halfway between the Castro and the Mission called Samovar. We drank luscious iced jasmine lemonade on an unusually hot November day. The conversation was framed by discussion of West Highland White Terriers. We both adore our respective dogs. At some point we turned to our other mutual interest, perfume. What strikes me when I talk to Ineke is how thoughtful she is. Every aspect of her work, from naming, package design, to the creation of the fragrance itself, is driven by earnest, unpretentious exploration. It is no different with her newest fragrance, Field Notes from Paris.

Ineke brought me a sample of Field Notes and we sprayed it on the tobacco-hued tissue inside the sample box. An opening of coriander seed sounded a lemony citrus note because of its terpenes linalool and pinene. This is a tangy, flirtatious material I've noticed in many fragrances, which is at once warm, nutty, spicy, and orange-flavored. Rounded out with orange flower and bergamot, Field Notes from Paris projects a dynamic citrus impression in its opening that combines so well with wood and patchouli.

At the heart of the fragrance is tobacco flower AND leaf, patchouli, and cedar. I think I mentioned that Ineke is thoughtful. The pairing of a composed tobacco flower accord to replicate the particular moonlit white blossoms she grows in her own garden, with the essence of the earthy, virile leaf, now this is an example of how Ineke's fragrances are created from her own ingenuity and personal ideas. You don't see that process much when a fragrance is mass produced for a giant brand. I feel lucky that Ineke's line exists to give birth to unique works of art, little windows into her own world.

Patchouli is almost running through my veins lately, since I've been ferreting it out in all the perfumes I test. Here, patchouli blends as just one element of the woody tobacco floral heart, but it activates Field Notes with patchouli's buzz.

In a nod to old French masculine fragrances, Ineke chose tonka bean for the base accord. We discussed how tonka bean is now also being used in current patisserie and was once used to flavor tobacco. Leather, beeswax, and vanilla are applied with a light but confident hand to give a mellow feeling of plenitude.

Field Notes from Paris represents the evolution of a perfumer's art, as Ineke Ruhland turns her talent to the project of creating a diversity of fragrances from the raw materials of her own unique mind.

Ineke's Field Notes from Paris is available on her website.

Photo: ironburst door by Cait Shortell

The Different Company Sublime Balkiss

2009-11-10T20:48:00.008-09:00

I spent last week wandering around old San Francisco, my favorite city. While there, I visited my favorite wall of jasmine near Bi-Rite Market on 18th, spotted magnolias like so many creamy eggs on trees, was caressed by the whispered, sweet scent of daturas, and soaked up as much sunlight as humanly possible before my return to winter. On a tip from a friend, I obtained a dram of The Different Company's Sublime Balkiss by Celine Ellena. Sublime Balkiss didn't interest me at first. It's supposed to be a new school chypre without oakmoss of any kind and this type of perfume has become kind of a catchall category of late. Shop talk aside, Sublime Balkiss is as bright as the California sun and as tart as the tears of a former San Franciscan who can't find her way back home again. It's a fruity chypre that starts off with a rich citrus and black currant burst combined with herbs and shifting into patchouli cum warm musk. With notes of bergamot, cassis, blackberries, rose, lily of the valley, violet leaf, lilac, patchouli fraction, patchouli essence, and heather, it's harmoniously composed and sentimental in that it smells like something good from the past you want to smell a little more of. It's as colorful as the label from a Roger & Gallet soap box with some of that house's rich cologne qualities. It has all the dreamy rose blackcurrant I've dreamed of with a soft green and cocoa dusted patchouli. It's vibrant yet fine-grained, a perfume for an erstwhile dandy who is too busy daydreaming to work at being beautiful.

Photo: Flowers at Bi-Rite by Cait Shortell

Autumn Nostalgia for Perfume Mania Circa 2001 Before the Blogs

2009-10-26T20:03:00.010-08:00

It's the end of summer and the time when my mind shines its spotlight on objects inside: sculptures on tables, a riot of roses from South America flown here almost all the way to the North Pole, and memories of my obsessive perfume loves from 2001.

It wasn't the first time I loved perfume. It was just the first time I loved perfume on the internet with so many new "imaginary friends" who shared my madness. I was living in Alaska and hogging a dial up internet connection to chat on Makeupalley. I was also swapping. Between the swapping and the chatting, I found a few perfumes that seem inaccessibly fine in 2009. In 2001, the chat wasn't always about how perfumes had been reformulated beyond recognition. 2001 was before perfume was de-barked and we were nuts for all of the decants we sent to each other in adorable little packets with teabags or hard candies. These are some of the perfumes I remember discovering in the fall of 2001:

Caron Parfum Sacré - a rich elixir redolent first of pepper and coriander, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom and lemon with a heart of mimosa, orange blossom, jasmine, rose and solid bedknobs of brazilian rosewood. With a drydown of amber, musk, civet, vanilla, cedar and myrrh Parfum Sacré had this mystique and sheer power that could have been too much but instead turned to mutifarious magic. Whether it suited you or not, Caron was a primer in perfume.

Christian Dior Diorissimo The lily of the valley of them all, I knew this one from childhood but echoing through cyberspace, the greatness of Diorissimo was only more obvious.

L'Artisan Parfumeur This house was sold by www.aedes.com and getting to know their offerings was a great introduction to both the classifications of perfume and the new waves of gourmand fragrances and soliflores. Perfume maniacs were crazy for the Tuberose and Tea for Two and each new release had to be sampled. I followed the trend and obtained samples but the more recent releases have been more interesting than what was offered in 2001. The exception and my all time favorite L'Artisan? Dzing!

Creed The house of Creed is much maligned by your 2009 perfume snob, but back in 2001 I pored over the key to which princess wore what Creed and imbibed a profound amount of pleasure from smelling all of the Creeds with my favorite sales representative at San Francisco's Needless Markup. Most memorable? The combination of Tabarome and Ambre Canelle, Tuberose Indiana, and Fleurissimo. Don't forget Jasmal, even though it did smell kind of plastic, I was thinking of poor dead Natalie Wood. And remember the mad lemmings for Fleur de The de Rose Bulgare?

Parfums de Nicolai Victoria Frolova brought these alive on Makeupalley, often with memories of her grandmother's garden. As much as I loved the stories, many of these scents didn't suit me, but Cologne Sologne was tailor-made for me, with its orange blossom sandalwood lightness. I still love it unreasonably.

Serge Lutens Remember when the bois was affordable and you could swap for bell jars without breaking the bank? I do. Un Lys was my first bell jar. It was sumptuous and sadly, it made my throat close up. And I'm tough when it comes to irritants! Next I rambled through all of the bois and Chergui and Fleurs d'Oranger and of course, Tubereuse Criminelle. There was a truly exotic richness to these perfumes I'd never known before I went mad over perfume in the new millenium.

There are so many more, but these stand out as the guideposts of what my mother called my "smelly little secret," the obsession that kept me at my computer and nose to vial starting around 2001.

A Talk with Kim Sunée, Author of Trail of Crumbs

2009-10-20T15:13:00.027-08:00

Kim Sunée is the author of the bestselling memoir, Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home (Grand Central). Trail of Crumbs was a Barnes and Noble Discover pick and a Booksense Pick, and has been translated into Korean, Chinese, and Hebrew. Sunée has been featured in the New York Times, Ladies’ Homes Journal, People, ELLE, and Glamour. She was the founding food editor of Cottage Living and a former food editor for Southern Living, and she has appeared as a judge on “Iron Chef America.” Visit her Web site at www.kimsunee.com.

When I read Trail of Crumbs, I was captivated by the sensual, often exquisitely scented elements of Kim Sunée's memoir. I struck up a correspondence with Kim and asked her to brainstorm possibilities for perfumed stories and a sensualist's tour of Paris. Listen in on our chat below.

Cait: You wrote a book, Trail of Crumbs, about your lifelong search to find your way back home through travel, love, and food. The book follows you from your early childhood in Korea to your childhood adopted by a family in New Orleans, and to Europe where you fell in love with Olivier Baussan, founder of L’Occitane en Provence. I wanted to ask you to speak with the readers of Legerdenez about your work and the role of scent in your sensual memoir. In terms of sensual experience, and within that I include food, sex, and perfume, which do you find most compelling, excess or minimalism?

Kim: Excess vs. minimalism? For food and sex, and scent as well, balance is everything. Although, I admit, excess can be exhilarating. Who can resist a meal or moments with someone so complete and intense that you forget what you were craving in the first place? And when it’s so good, you always come out wanting more, even if you know it’s not good for you. Sex, scent, and love and food—they’re all entwined. They reveal themselves as different types of longing perhaps but they all haunt with a distinct and lingering melancholy.

A PERFUMED STORY...
Cait: If you were to create a perfumed story, what would be its olfactory elements?

Kim: That’s an interesting question. Here’s what comes to mind: the damp saltwater marshes of Normandy, oyster liquor, newspaper, linen drying in the sun, the Diptyque candle scent cuir, toasted hazelnut, toast with salted butter, the bottom of a glass of Meursault, Peychaud bitters (not Angostura), a roux just on the verge of burning, a simmering pot of ratatouille, lamb roasting—a leg of lamb boned, stuffed with fresh lavender, thyme, and rosemary then rolled, summer seafoam, garden roses, steam from a pot of boiling rice—jasmine or sticky, sweet olive blossoms, crushed anchovy, still-damp sheets after pleasure, Lapsang Souchong tea, the dregs of a cup of espresso, hazelnut biscotti dipped in a glass of vin santo…and that’s just part one of the story.

Cait: Are any of your memories that you wrote about in Trail of Crumbs especially linked to scent? If so can you tell us a little about the most notable scents you have encountered in your life and travels?

Kim: La fleur d’oranger; linden blossom, lemon verbena, lavender, of course; tobacco—I don’t know why; a Louisiana seafood boil; bread baking from the boulangeries; raw, green almonds; first pressing of olives; pond water; summer peaches; wet streets at outdoor markets… The notable scents always relate to a time and place of hunger and longing, memory and desire.

KIM'S MOST MEMORABLE SCENTED RECIPES
Cait: Do you have any recipes that you most adore because of their fragrance? If so would you share one with us? What does the scent of this dish evoke for you?

Kim: I do love the first recipe in Trail of Crumbs for peaches poached in Lillet Blanc with lemon verbena. And there’s a recipe for almond-saffron cake; orange, almond, and saffron are a perfect ménage à trois. I also love dried porcini with pasta and cream, and dried morels cooked in vin jaune from the Jura; and anything that captures the brininess of the sea—anchovies, capers, oysters on the half shell, sea urchin.

EXPLORATIONS OF FRENCH PERFUMERY
Cait: You lived and gardened and cooked in Provence, the old homeland of the French perfume industry. Did you make any particularly fragrant discoveries there in terms of fruit and herbs and wine? What about perfume? What was your encounter, if any, with the art of perfumery while you lived in France?

Kim: We visited a friend in Grasse who had a company that provided matières premières to parfumeurs (including L’Occitane). He was the Willy Wonka of Perfume. There was this incredible machine in which you could insert a scented object and it would process that object and spit out a formula so you could recreate the fragrance. It was amazing. I also remember one room filled with shelves and shelves of vials with labels marked rain, iron, leather, tobacco, sky, wind, etc. I’d open different vials and smell rain, iron, leather, etc. It was like walking through a poem. Of course, ever since that day, I've dreamed of creating my own scent that would somehow capture my favorite sensual pleasures.

RUMORS OF A SENSUALIST'S TOUR OF PARIS WITH KIM SUNEE?
Cait: If you were to show like-minded sensualists around Paris, what five places would you show them to share with them the most outrageous or exquisite tastes and smells?

Kim: We’d go to a fromagerie, a tiny favorite of mine in the 7th arrondissement, piled high with all shapes and sizes—hearts and cones and cratered half-moons. We’d smell and taste all those wonderful flavors, from the ash-coated to the blue and hairy. A boucherie at the Marché d’Aligre in the 12th, a poissionerie, a chocolaterie, and a cave à vins. And some of my favorite old bookstores. You’ll have to come along for more details.

WOMAN OF MYSTERY
Cait: Do you wear perfume?

Kim: I have friends who try the latest scents but I’ve been loyal to the same perfume since I was 19 years old. It sounds boring to some and I keep trying other scents but always go back to this one. I’ve had strangers come up to me on the street and ask for the name of my perfume. Sometimes I tell them and sometimes I don’t—it’s such a personal question, isn’t it? I sometimes worry that they’ll stop making this perfume because I’ll be lost without it.

Please share any questions or remarks about Trail of Crumbs, Paris, and perfumed stories in the comments below.

To read about Kim's ongoing travels and recipes, go to www.kimsunee.com and follow her on Twitter.

Interview with Painter and Perfume Lover Bella Foster

2009-10-06T23:07:00.008-08:00

Just the other day, I was browsing at Kate Spade on their page of Things We Love and I came across a link to the website for the artist, Bella Foster. Born in 1975, Bella lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York. Her paintings made my heart sing. There were many still lives of her friends' things, flower paintings, and a few magical portraits. Somehow the work reminded me of all kinds of things dear to my heart like E.E. Cummings book of fairy tales and Matisse's stripes of sunlight. I had a hunch that with all the flowers in her loopy yet exquisite tableaux that Bella Foster might have something to say about perfume and it turns out she's a perfume maniac herself. Please enjoy our conversation and explore Bella Foster's work at www.bellafoster.com and her blog, Here, There, and Them. Look out for items she designed for Kate Spade later this winter, too.

INTERVIEW WITH BELLA FOSTER
Cait: Dear Bella, you are an artist and you paint people's stuff. You have a blog on the subject, in fact. How did you begin to take people's homes and their things as your subject?

Bella: I started painting interiors and still lives around 5 or 6 years ago. I used to make them up. A mix of things from magazines, books, art history, and my imagination. One day a couple years ago I did a big watercolor directly from a spread in World of Interiors magazine, and it was so fun to just paint that room without any idea of how it would turn out. It felt like I spent an afternoon in the room. Recently I started doing paintings from pictures of my friends apartments that I've taken with my phone camera. The photos are super low resolution, but I like working from them because when I can't tell what something is in the image I make it up, or just do a blob of color, or 'the general idea' of a thing... and I like how personal it is to paint someone's stuff. It's not about great fabulous objects or furniture that you see in magazines (which, don't get me wrong, I love looking at great fabulous stuff).....but I love finding the beauty in the way people live. Which is generally with a bit of mess around. Even the neatest people have some piles. I like the alchemy of taking an image that would never make the cover of Elle Decor (heh), and finding the magic in it. Isn't there some Kafka quote about when you stare at something long enough it will reveal all this magic - I could be totally butchering whatever that quote is, but that's kind of what happens. I'm always surprised at the end result.
It's like doing a person's portrait through their stuff.

Cait: Many of your paintings of people's homes and stuff don't depict the people. Why do you often paint rooms without people? Have you been inspired by any other painters of rooms, empty or otherwise?

Bella: There is a good freedom in paintings someone's stuff, no pressure to make someone look 'good' when you paint their things. When I do put a person in, I like them to fit into the interior the same way a lamp or plant does, so that the 'portrait' is about more than just the figure depicted. I love patterns, and I think this has something to do with it, I like the figures to be part of the pattern of the interior.

Inspiration: About 6 years ago my grandparents took me to the "Duncan Phillips Collection" at LACMA in california, and I saw this Bonnard painting that struck me as very contemporary in it's weirdness - I fell in love on the spot. I became a Bonnard fanatic. Still am! There's some really good ones here in NYC, and of course the recent show at the Met. OH, I've been obsessed with Matisse for a while. (No surprise there, huh?). I also love the prints of Mary Cassatt. Her prints are a huge inspiration in my work.

Cait: Some of your work verges on reproducing textile patterns, but in a loose, very de-ranged watercolor freeform. What if anything does this mean to you? I ask because I've always been enchanted by textile patterns but have a very messy curly personality. Watercolors are difficult to control and yet give an impression of freedom. I notice this play of control and freedom, pattern and play in your work. What do you think of that?

Bella: I am a textile fanatic. Josef Frank is one of my heros. Matisse came from a textile family, correct? I also love Alexander Girard. And Anni Albers. Quilting. embroidery. rag rugs. Kilim rugs. Morrocan rugs. Indian quilts. Liberty fabric. Vera scarves. Marimekko. My all time favorite: the UNICORN TAPESTRIES. have you been to the cloisters and seen them in person? so good.
I like letting the watercolor do it's thing. And I like when things are both abstract and suggest an image. Like with a Bonnard, when you look at the painting you get that it's an interior, but the things making the interior are not always defined. Like when you squint your eyes and look at something. I also like to be surprised in the end - watercolors are great for that. They have a life to them.

Cait: I notice flowers inhabit many of your paintings. How do you regard the flowers? As a decorative motif? as still lives? or living characters?

Bella: Characters. Kind of all the things in a room end up being that for me. The best characters happen when I let myself paint without trying to make it any certain way.

Cait: You've said that you love perfume? Which are your favorite perfumes? (I know you mentioned these to me already) Some of the perfumes you mention have patchouli as a featured note. Do you have other favored notes? Tuberose?

Cait: Where do you most love to shop for perfume? What perfume do you most want at this moment?

Bella: You know what got me into perfume craziness? Buying Serge Luten's Datura Noir after thinking it was terrific, amazing, incredible, 'definitely the one for me', and then hating it weeks later after wearing it. I was so confused. What had happened to the amazing smell? It was one of many perfume mistakes. So I went online and looked it up, and got hooked on the NowSmellThis website. I became addicted to reading perfume reviews, and making lists of everything I wanted to smell. Next thing I know I joined the Sniffapalooza mailing list and started going to their events. I made a couple more perfume mistakes. There are so many things that can influence your opinion of a fragrance. The bottle, the story, the brand - like I love Dyptique's packaging so much, but don't own a single one. I loved and bought Songes by Annick Goutal and now I can't wear it because something in the sandalwood just takes over for me. oh well......

I should draw a perfume graveyard for you! all the ones that didn't work out.

So perfumes I love:
I love Santa Maria Novella so much, I mean who doesn't? Their patchouli is amazing. For me it's top on my list of what I own because I can wear it day or night and it works well with others. Try it with a little L'Artisans Ananas Fizz :)

I did get to meet Isabelle Doyen at a sniffapalooza event and was charmed by the story of Mandragore. She told us how her son was watching Harry Potter over and over, and twice in two days she walked into the room during the same scene with the villain, and she took the coincidence as inspiration to make a perfume inspired by the character.

Histoires de Parfums Vert Pivoine is one that smells so good to me at the end of the day.

Commes de Garcons Kyoto is another love. but sometimes it has the faintest trace of what smells like french fries to me. Weird right? So I reserve it for days where I'm okay with the french fry thing. Similar to that I have a friend who loved AG's Eau d'Hadrien, but it smelled like tacos to her when she tried it on. We were at an event with Camille Goutal, and if memory serves right Camille confirmed to my friend that there was cumin in it. Perfume is so personal and weird in that way. AND it's weird to me how smell preferences change. how you can love something and then hate it later, OR vice versa.

Favorite notes: Geranium. Anything woodsy. Tuberose (which is a new love, used to not like it). Patchouli. Any citrus blossom (don't have a favorite fragrance with this one, would love recommendations). Pepper. Jasmine, Gardenia. True rose notes. Bitter almond....

I'm into chypres. let me know what your favorites are and I'll go smell them.

Note from Cait: And so I did, and Bella traipsed into the streets of New York to smell and smell and smell.

Bella: I love the smell of dirt and earth. Some red wines have that amazing dirt smell/taste in them and I love it! And green smells. And water without the dreaded marine note. And, of course, flowers.

Oh! Speaking of dirt that reminds me that I bought CB I hate perfume's Wild Hunt because of the dirt smell, and then later couldn't deal with the sweetness in it. That was sad.....I gave it away. guess I liked the Wild part, but not the Hunt. another one in my perfume graveyard.

I have loved Carnal Flower for years. I've never owned it. This makes me want to get on the train and go straight to Barney's to put some on. Also I'm very curious about their new carnation.

BELLA'S FAVORITE PLACES TO BUY PERFUME: Aedes de Venustas and Lafco. I must say that Aedes deserves an award for best place to buy perfume. They have great events, and are always generous with samples. They totally get it that you have to sample something before you buy. I've also met more perfumers at events there than anywhere else.

Lately I'm just doing samples. I never finish a bottle, and I like to switch around.
SMN tuberose is on my wish list.

My grandmother wore Anais Anais. oh, how I LOVE that one. I haven't smelled it in years. Sort of preserving the memory. I would hate to see it end up in my perfume graveyard :)

Image: Painting by Bella Foster 2009 (Bella indicates this is NOT the perfume graveyard.)

Tauer Perfumes Reverie au Jardin

2009-09-23T10:26:00.004-08:00

I first tried this scent when Andy Tauer sent around a little bar of transparent soap with its fragrance. It enchanted me then but I appreciate it more fully now. It's a high altitude lavender that hits the skin with a wet, clean air sense about it. None of your chemical fresh scents here, but instead a winsome lavender like eyes watering in the wind on a peak somewhere above messy, difficult humanity. This un-cliche freshness is rendered with an accord of galbanum, and fir balm, which supplements the oily herbaceousness of the lavender. Bergamot lends its zing, too. As the scent wears, a grassy, tangy vetiver emerges with a muted rose and the sweet but almost carroty, saffron elegance of ambrette seeds. Body heat makes the frankincense bloom on the skin but never so as to make incense upstage the lavender. The drydown is a sweet but transparent accord of tonka, vanilla, ambergris, sandalwood and cedar. Never jammy or overwhelming, the sense of alpine air with a shaving of living wood predominates in spite of the heavy basenotes listed. Reverie au Jardin is not to be confused with Serge Lutens Encens et Lavande or any other lavender scent I know. It is unique.

Hermes Eau de Gentiane Blanche

2009-09-11T10:35:00.004-08:00

Imagine sitting a grey afternoon inside the shade of a stone house shuttered by venetian blinds. The dizzying explosion of pollen, the travels of birds, the decay of trees as fungi eat them from the inside out, all of this is an object of curiosity seen from the dry, quiet perch inside. Hermes Eau de Gentiane Blanche gives the same effect of dry, almost entomological contemplation.

Before the cologne settles into its more unusual stages, it opens with an utterly delicious salvo of citrus. I could write a sheaf of love letters to Jean-Claude Ellena's way with citrus but I won't spill my adoration in a terse medley here. Although Eau de Gentiane Blanche ends up very dry and strange it begins with a mouthwatering and elegant citrus that smells like a fruit from a tree both orange and grapefruit, like some mutant trees I've seen in Berkeley. It's tart and sweet, green and orange, wet and immediately takes flight, but while it alights on the skin it's wonderful.

Once the fruit has flown, an aridity takes over, as if the skin were sheathed in impossibly soft, white bark. The dryness of this perfume takes the breath away. One has the experience of eating wood. I tend to repeat myself when I speak of popsicle sticks in reading perfumes, but the stick fits. Here, unlike other fragrances of popsicle stick, there is no succulent red juice. Just an ocean of dryness as far as the nose can see.

At the same time the dry wood arrives, there's a potent but discreet note of green pepper and a sober spore print of iris. I find my knowledge lacking here. I smell green bell pepper but wonder if this is rendered with violet leaves as it reminds me of that scent in Les Nez The Unicorn Spell. The difference between violet leaves and this green pepper note is the lack of any moisture in Eau de Gentiane Blanche.

As I walk outside wearing this fragrance, I smell a million other smells invading Eau de Gentiane Blanche. A tart and pungent woodsmoke makes incursions. Wet soil. Puppy. Even inside there is not a blank enough olfactory slate to really smell Eau de Gentiane Blanche. Coffee beans on my hands release their oil and a roasted scent verging on cigarettes.

I reapply and start the olfactory movie over again.

The delicate, strange aridity of Eau de Gentiane Blanche is not of this world.

Blackcurrant Rose Dream

2009-09-07T12:23:00.004-08:00

I have scented dreams. I often dream of my mother, who died six years ago this summer. In a recent dream I stood at a sink, arranging a tiny bouquet of roses from the garden. A blackcurrant more sweet than catty or green filled my nose. My eyes were lowered to the bouquet, where a cascade of petals fell into the porcelain basin. I turned and gasped in delight and just as soon grief because my mother stood smiling behind me but as soon as I saw her I knew it was a dream and she wasn't really alive. That scent stayed in my nostrils as I opened my eyes to the day.

The Mnemosyne Project by Daphne Guinness

2009-09-07T00:50:00.005-08:00

Here's a bit of daydream I found in the New York Times. Daphne Guinness has made a short film inspired by a perfume she made for Comme des Garcons. The limited edition perfume, called Daphne, features bitter orange, incense, saffron, oud, jasmine and tuberose. It will be available at Barney's New York on September 18.

About the film, Guinness says:

"…it is something of a sensory path, evoking snapshots of one's past as you smell it. It has the power to transport you from the room in which you stand, to a place buried within the depths of your memory. I wanted to demonstrate that scent can take you on a journey.

In making this film I wanted to avoid any element of exclusivity. I believe that ideas are free. That in order to engage with an idea, you should share it. The prospect of strangers stumbling across my film online and perhaps passing it on, is gratifying. I'm not a commercial person.
It is the creative process that fascinates me.

This is not an advertisement for the perfume, it is a film inspired by the essence of scent."

The film plays with ambiguous images, veiled in swirls of what could be smoke or silk, of a body and flowers and austere trees that could be coral floating in a night sky or a deep black sea. The perspective is shifting and surreal, like images inspected by the mind's eye in a dream. The music has the meditative effect of the chimes composed for the clock of the long now. I would like to try the fragrance and see how it relates to the film.

Michael Storer Winter Star

2009-08-18T18:08:00.009-08:00

Winter Star exudes a nonsensical but enthralling glow of butter and anise on a backdrop of flinty incense. It gives me the feeling I've been to Notre Dame for a midnight mass and heard the choir, breathed the scarlet fumes of spiced wine entwined with the smoke of swinging censers, and absorbed the fragrance of butter pastry. On a snowy day.

Winter Star is more of a mystery to spark the imagination and memory than a literal fragrance. Make no mistake, this is no cosy candle scent in spite of the winter spice theme. It bears the mark of a skilled artist who has experimented with materials for years to offer Winter Star as an essay on a particular material that intrigued him. Karanal. On his website, Storer writes:

"Winter Star was a new creation just before the holidays last year. This warm and powdery fragrance is built around the theme of Karanal, which is woody, caramel-like and very rich. It's augmented with balsams Peru, Benzoin Siam, Tolu and Labdanum.

Spicy notes of Carnation and Lavender absolute help complete the spirit of this silky-smooth eau de parfum. Bergamot orange oil and Oakmoss absolute provide a chypre-family base. This EDP lasts and lasts!

Winter Star contains several of the finest musks available to perfumers today. One of these is the very costly civettone. Another is an unusual new topnote musk called Helvetoilde. This EDP is so delicious that I could almost classify it as a gourmand."

Storer has created a gourmand woody incense fragrance sure to trigger fond memories. Crazily, in the midst of our brief, fragile summer, Winter Star almost makes me want to draw closer to that heightened sense of smell of mid-winter, when the cold and snow narrow my sensory focus. Against the quiet white heft of winter, exposed berries are especially red. A walk outside veils us in the scent of woodsmoke and an unexplainable sweetness. Forced indoors to huddle against the oven door, we wear the caramel, spicy perfume of cookies and cakes baking inside.

The chypre drydown of this perfume, with oakmoss absolute and bergamot orange and a bevy of musks, is tangy and shadowed, like the fringed overhang of evergreen trees with their catty needles.

Like a favorite fairy story, there are thrills from Winter Star on each retelling, and more nuances to grasp. I imagine this effect would be even better for a perfumer than it is for a layperson. It's a perfume to restore innocence and wonder in perfumery again.

Michael Storer Winter Star is available on Storer's website in a 2 fl. oz eau de parfum for $78.00

Image: Illustration from the fairy take Silvershod by Adrienne Segur

Are You Tired of Hearing About IFRA Yet?

2009-08-17T20:50:00.010-08:00

Here are some FAQs from IFRA's website for the perfume lover:

Is IFRA voluntary? Does IFRA have the force of law?

IFRA is a voluntary organization with national and regional member assocations that encompass 90% of fragrance producers in the world, according to the IFRA website. The fragrance producers/customers (labs who produce fragrances, for example) agree to comply with the IFRA standards. IFRA operates worldwide and its Code of Practice is binding on all members. Violations of the Code of Practice result in publication of the product in violation on the IFRA website.

Does IFRA enforce its standards? How?

IFRA began with self-regulation in the 1970s but has obtained a compliance arm that tests fragranced products. The compliance program has been in effect for two years and so far they report 100% compliance. In other words, the tests revealed that none of the tested products violate current regulations. They have tested only a handful of products in a sea of new launches. It remains to be seen how they select the products they test and what those products were.

Does IFRA publish what fragrance ingredients are being used in products?

In a recent press release, IFRA announced "IFRA will publish a list of fragrance ingredients being used by the industry’s customers in consumer goods by December 31st 2009 on its website: www.ifraorg.org . This proactive initiative will supplement the fragrance industry’s overall safety program communication and respond to the changing marketplace where consumers are seeking more information about the ingredients in the products they use safely in their everyday lives." Why doesn't IFRA publish the ingredients in various existing perfumes, if its aim is transparency and public education?

Why Can't IFRA make the world safe from perfume with warning labels?

Many have asked why IFRA couldn't simply require products that are potentially harmful to bear a label and or warning. The research performed by IFRA has restricted and prohibited the use of certain substances but has in some cases turned to warning labels to meet its goals. For example, IFRA's website discusses a shift in Germany from the old practice of labels that simply stated contents: parfum to labels specifying certain chemicals and including warnings regarding potential allergens.
What is the benefit to the industry to prohibit or limit certain substances rather than merely using warning labels?

Is IFRA's research supporting restrictions sound?

It may be possible to challenge the research that supports the restrictions. For starters, the research is not exactly independent, but is performed by scientists who work for the fragrance industry, which makes money from patented synthetic molecules and from the implementation of IFRA's regulatory scheme itself. Obviously, more work needs to be done to establish bias and to viably challenge the research. It is notable that many of the substances are restricted based on merely being an irritant rather than being carcinogenic or toxic to the planet. Some suggest that we should explore and challenge the methods and conclusions of IFRA's restrictions and prohibitions.

Which fragrances are in danger of reformulation?

Although IFRA does not identify a list of these fragrances, you can scan the IFRA standards to find out what are the acceptable levels of specific fragrance ingredients. The 43rd Amendment includes added restriction on a long list of synthetic and natural molecules and compounds. This is not consumer-friendly for the non chemist but worth a look.

What do the IFRA standards say about Jasmine?

To give an example of what you'll find if you try to use the IFRA standards, when I looked up the standard for Jasmine Grandiflorum I found that the most recent update was Amendment 43 dated July 16, 2008 and the implementation date for new submissions is August 16, 2008 and for existing fragrance compounds is August 16, 2010. These dates only apply to the formula and not the finished product in the marketplace. The standards lay out the acceptable levels of this substance for different applications but there is no reference to products currently on the market and the levels of Jasmine Grandiflorum in those products. Jasmine is being restricted by IFRA as an irritant.

Asking Why Instead of Saying Because

2009-08-16T22:55:00.025-08:00

In 1965, Brian Eno discovered perfume back when no one had yet coined words to describe the sound of rock and roll. Malcolm X was shot, MLK marched on Washington, the first U.S. troops went to Vietnam, and birth control became legal for married couples. The world was riven with social conflict and two different spacecrafts crashed into the moon. Then, as now, technology held a promise of an ideal society as well as the danger of an easy and total control over ignorant masses.

Which reminds me of one of the most unsettling movies I've ever seen, Alphaville (also coincidentally made in 1965) by Jean-Luc Godard. According to Wikipedia.org, in Alphaville, the protagonist Lemmy Caution "must destroy Alphaville and its dictatorial computer, Alpha 60. Alpha 60 is a sentient computer system created by Von Braun which is in complete control of all of Alphaville. Alpha 60 outlaws free thought and individualist concepts like love, poetry, and emotion in the city, replacing them with contradictory concepts or eliminating them altogether. One of Alpha 60's dictates is that "people should not ask 'why', but only say 'because'.""

In trying to grasp why IFRA is regulating certain substances in perfume, I wade into a highly technical language that few speak and even fewer care to learn. Why should anyone care about the shifting fields of data and regulations that shape the products on our shelves? I haven't figured it all out, but I know that it has to do with asking "why" instead of saying "because."

As I was researching the aromachemical Karanal today I came across an article by Brian Eno from Details Magazine in July 1992 in which he describes his first forays into the world of scent, "I started thinking about smell in 1965. At art college, a friend and I made a little collection of evocative aromas, housed in about fifty small bottles. There was rubber, naptha, motorcycle dope, cuir de russe (used to make leather smell like leather rather than dead animals), gasoline, ammonia, juniper wood."

Eno went from collecting aroma materials to mixing them. He wrote, "I was fascinated by the synergies of combinations, how two quite familiar smells carefully combined could create new and unrecognizable sensation. Perfumery has a lot to do with this process of courting the edges of unrecognizability, of evoking sensations that don't have names, or of mixing up sensations that don't belong together."

He noted the absence of a language for describing scent as compared with, say, sight. "You don't have to dabble for very long to begin to realize that the world of smell has no reliable maps, no single language, no comprehensible metaphorical structure within which we might comprehend it and navigate our way around it."

Frustrated with this situation, he set about trying to develop a taxonomy of smell. "I wanted a system, a map. I briefly thought I might be able to make one myself, but this plan foundered as I jotted down the resemblance between strawberries and egg yolk, between breweries and certain types of horsehair bedding. I just knew I didn't have enough stamina to collect, let alone collate, all those sensations. I'd also noticed to my confusion that the substances "coriander" and "vetiver" were never quite the same twice."

At this same time in his life, Eno embraced the ineffable "texture and timbre" of music not captured by the discourse of musicology. Yet, he struggled with his inability to organize or systematize the world of smells. Finally, he resigned himself to the fact that in all of the arts as well as perfume, "[f]or many reasons this idea of intrinsic, given value becomes less and less tenable."

Eno embraced this fragmentation and mutability of our efforts to describe the world around us or to create hierarchies of meaning and value. He closed the article by welcoming a fearlessness toward the unknown:

"Perhaps our sense of this, the sense of belonging to a world held together by networks of ephemeral confidences (such as philosophies and stock markets) rather than permanent certainties, predisposes us to embrace the pleasures of our most primitive and unlangued sense. Being mystified doesn't frighten us as much as it used to. And the point for me is not to expect perfumery to take its place in some nice, reliable, rational world order, but to expect everything else to become like perfume."

Since July 1992 there is a whole lot more information available to map and pin down the fragrance molecules that Eno smelled. Taxonomies have also mushroomed to describe and catalogue all sorts of data and metadata. Technology has advanced to give me, at least, the impression that it is in fact possible to know and describe the relationships between coriander and vetiver and to continuously generate new analogies between natural and synthetic molecules, between lived experience and invented realities that originate in novel cyber-hothouses. At the same time, the most ornate examples of bureaucracy have been used to exterminate entire peoples. Some elected officials can barely read and write but their tweets threaten to launch a thousand ships.

We find ourselves in an advanced state of technology at the same time that our society is torn by a conflict between ignorance and history, between demagoguery and information. Just read, or more likely, watch the news of the town meetings and the health care debacle in which hordes of people protest the possibility that they'd one day have affordable public healthcare to see the chasm between the few who are educated and the large numbers who simply follow, or sadly, are easily led, in spite of the facts.

Just fifty miles from my house today I saw two separate Chevrolet trucks with counterfeit stickers of the comic book character Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) peeing on a Ford logo. Two separate trucks within a two block radius bore a variation on that same sticker. It's a good thing that Brian Eno long ago accepted the chaos of the world and perfume, because no matter how technology advances, most people do not come along for the ride, or if they do, someone else is driving.

If most of the people know nothing, does it matter that very few know a lot? Whether we are talking about torture or healthcare or the relative safety of our perfume, I believe that this is the question of our time. If there are irreplaceable textures and timbres to the scent of jasmine and oakmoss or eugenol, but no one bothers to preserve these lost moments of our fragrant history, will humanity know what it has lost by their restriction? Jasmine may become a sapphic pot shard in the future, if we do not make an effort to become fluent in the language of chemistry before it is forbidden.

And by the way. Why?

Image: Poster for Godard's dystopic noir film Alphaville (1965)

The Chanel No. 5 IFRA Controversy

2009-08-15T20:09:00.010-08:00

There are few perfumes I care more to preserve than Chanel No. 5 parfum. With a very high concentration of Jasmin de Grasse in its formula, I was under the impression that the IFRA amendments would force Chanel No. 5's reformulation as of January 1, 2010. Today IFRA (the regulatory body that governs the fragrance industry) and Chanel said that Chanel No. 5 will not need reformulation.

While reading Facebook status updates today, I came across a somewhat cryptic update by perfumer and fellow fragrance blogger Octavian Coifan. In it, Octavian asks "Chanel No. 5 new or not new?" and links to a post on his blog 1000 fragrances.

A few clicks later, it made sense. It turns out Octavian was responding to an article from The Independent in which he was quoted by journalist Geneviève Roberts as saying that Chanel No. 5 would be changed by the new regulations. Roberts wrote, "This year, some perfume enthusiasts had feared that new regulations from the International Fragrance Association (IFRA), which come into effect next January, would spell the end of Chanel No. 5. The use of natural jasmine will, for the first time, be restricted in all perfumes to 0.7 per cent of the finished product, to ensure that wearers have no allergic reaction to the flower."

Roberts asked Jean-Pierre Houri, head of the IFRA and he said Chanel No. 5 would not be reformulated. Roberts continued,"And a spokesperson for Chanel said that 'Evidently when the new standards were issued we immediately checked the percentages in our finished products and in none of our fragrances is the recommended level exceeded.'"

Coifan, a perfumer, does not believe Chanel and IFRA's claims. In response to this story in the Independent Octavian raises a fair question on his blog, "And by the way, what other fragrances have today more jasmine absolute than No. 5 and Joy? If this expensive ingredient is used less than in No. 5 (that would not be affected), then why did they restrict its use? All this is complete nonsense."

"You set up new standards when something from the past was maybe wrong and if everybody in fine fragrances (like Caron) is in denial it means that the standards are in perfect harmony with the past formulas and we could deduce that there was no need to write them. Are we already in Alice in Wonderland?"

Coifan then issues a warning to perfume brands like Chanel,"I believe that several brands should reflect with a lot of care about their transparency because this mascarade (sic) might have bad effects in the near future if somebody will publish side by side analysis of several perfumes. Remember that formulas are not protected by any law and so 'revealing' them to the public by a third part(y) is not a crime."

If IFRA's aim is to respond to a public call for greater accountability and transparency in the fragrance industry, then why not test the contents of perfume? Why not test the contents of vintage Chanel No. 5 as compared to the current pure parfum and again test a bottle of parfum purchased after the amendments take effect next January. The results of this experiment would be fascinating to behold.

I would also like to know from IFRA and perfume companies which perfumes will be reformulated next January and how.

At the same time as we test our perfume, we can also write to the great perfume houses and ask them which perfumes are on the chopping block. Reading about the IFRA amendment from 2007, I thought that only the big fragrance firms had the bureaucratic scale to implement the new requirements of measurement and documentation of their products. If the idea is that the public deserves to know what is in the perfume and must be protected from potentially sensitizing ingredients, then one would think that the industry would be happy to answer any questions we might have about reformulations.

The information is out there and the analysis can be done. It seems a worthy project to test whether the amendments in fact have led to greater accountability and transparency.

In the meantime, the press and the blogosphere are abuzz with the issue.

Givenchy L'Interdit

2009-08-11T23:25:00.003-08:00

Can there really be a need for a hundred words for snow? I haven't counted them, but I know that there are quite a few variations on the Aldehydic Floral Perfume. The original version of L'Interdit was composed in 1957 by Francis Fabron for Givenchy. It is a somewhat anachronistic aldehydic floral because although it is as fruity as the fruitiest floral from the year 2009, but it is both dusty and demure in proportions. I wager that it may be the lack of dramatic angles in this perfume, along with issues regarding aroma materials that relegated the original version to history when it was reformulated in 2002 and again in 2007. Bergamot and a feather dusting of aldehydes smell remarkably blonde for Audrey Hepburn's bespoke perfume. Strawberry is first fresh, then sweet and jammy. Peach adds a voluptuous dizziness. The fruit notes warm and sweeten the floral composition, which feels dominated by ylang ylang and rose. Cinnamon persists throughout the light but incredibly extended display of this perfume. A base of amber, musk and sandalwood smells like house nectar rather than wine of a particular vintage and provenance. After almost a full day on the blotter, the grassy scent of vetiver becomes palpable. In spite of the duration and stability of the perfume, the most affecting part of vintage L'Interdit is its fleeting, mysterious opening. It isn't trite in spite of its strawberry ambrosia accord. It haunts me like the smell of an old shampoo circa 1977, always fading into the distance.

Image: Audrey with her fawn, Pippin. L'Interdit may have been composed as a shared scent for Audrey and Pippin, if you ask me.

Guerlain L'Heure Bleue

2009-08-09T22:01:00.007-08:00

What better way to begin this elegy to great perfume than to gaze into the depths of L'Heure Bleue. Composed in 1912 by Jacques Guerlain, L'Heure Bleue is a nostalgic arcade of a perfume, an evocation of shards of life and time lost.

The use of synthetics in combination with naturals intensifies the magic of this perfume. At first scent, the fruity, baby ointment innocence of orange blossom combines with a powdery sense of violets with tears in their eyes, little woodland flowers cold with dew. If you smell it yourself you'll realize it's not my description that's twee, it's the perfume. But don't forgo the experience, for smelling L'Heure Bleue is one rare way we have to regain the past and the sensibilities of our forbears.

Leave your own self image out of it and let it captivate you like the silver screen of old. A bitter note of clove almost immediately tempers the dewy sweetness of the orange blossom. This is eugenol. What began as a damper on the exuberance of top notes becomes, in combination with jasmine and rose, an effect of spicy carnation.

Flouncing its tulle free of powder in the background of this bouquet is the chalky, somber fog of iris and what is described as the woody violet tone of methyl ionone. First as raspy and separate as grains of granulated sugar, these facets of L'Heure Bleue blur into a warm, fleshy, powdered confection.

The powdery layer never entirely masks the golden notes of the orange blossom, rose, and jasmine in the heart, saving this perfume from merely repeating accords found in antique Flavigny Violet Pastilles with the little anise seed in the center. L'Heure Bleue is an amalgam of the floral, oriental, and gourmand. As the perfume lives on the skin it orchestrates such a masterful hide and seek with its constituent materials that it is hard to imagine a perfume of the future that could outdo its magic.

The famous guerlinade accord is like a painting in thick impasto strokes, echoing notes in the top and heart with its gilded confiture of bergamot, rose, iris, tonka bean, and vanilla. The salty, savory finish of sandalwood is the piece de resistance. L'Heure Bleue bristles with life in spite of, or perhaps because of its almost gluttonous excess.

As Van Gogh said of his two paintings The Olive Trees and The Starry Night, "[T]he olive trees with the white cloud and the mountains behind, as well as the rise of the moon and the night effect, are exaggerations from the point of view of the general arrangement; the outlines are accentuated as in some old woodcuts." In freedom from slavish representation of an object, both painter and perfumer succeeded in capturing infinity in a moment. With L'Heure Bleue, Jacques Guerlain practiced his expressionism with the aid of both clever synthetics and irreplaceable naturals.

Images: The Olive Trees and The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

A Marathon for the Perfume Apocalypse

2009-08-07T16:18:00.005-08:00

Today I decided that for the rest of 2009, I am going to smell and review as many endangered great perfumes as I can before the amendments to IFRA, the international regulations applicable to fragrance, go into effect on January 1, 2010. I am doing this because life is precious and too short and I want to cram as much high-intensity jasmine and oakmoss into my nose as I can before it's all in contravention of international law. Please join me in my marathon. I hope it will take me around the world and back in time from my laptop (and hopefully back to Paris this fall). To life!

Annick Goutal Matin d'Orage

2009-08-03T22:04:00.005-08:00

At first spray, Matin d’Orage comes out gritting its teeth with enormous tension. Quite unlike other perfumes’ tender or seductive renditions of gardenia, Matin d’Orage conjures a weather system, the morning of a storm. I imagine a tiny magician walking onto a black and empty stage. With a drumroll, first quiet then building, the magician strikes a match in the palm of his hand and LEGERDENEZ! a quivering, effulgent bloom explodes in his hand! Matin d’Orage highlights the dewy, salty, lemony aspects of gardenia rather than its sweet, creamy or waxy qualities. Some noses also detect something ammoniac or urine-like, although it could just as well be described as the scent of bamboo mats left out in the rain. Perfumer Isabelle Doyen used notes of Sicilian lemon, ginger, gardenia, shiso leaves, magnolia, champaca flowers, jasmine from Indonesia and sandalwood. Matin d’Orage improvises on the gingery theme explored earlier in Annick Goutal Mandragore and Le Jasmin. The dewy lemon ginger shimmers into the simultaneously chaste and voluptuous floral heart of magnolia, champaca, and jasmine. The flowers share qualities, including animalic, woody, creamy, and fruity aspects, and their montage with overlapping and bits of difference give the effect of an unfolding gardenia with petals in different degrees of unfurling. All of this pulses into the sandalwood base, which was made for the woody textures of magnolia that preceded it. Unlike many jasmine sandalwood compositions, this one is always en pointe, never recumbent. It is the scent of agile movement rather than indolence. This perfume will have its fans as well as detractors, but as I adore Le Jasmin, I am particularly enchanted with the added ornamentation I find in Matin d’Orage.

Image: Horse's Skull with White Rose, Georgia O'Keefe

Chanel Gardenia Eau de Toilette

2009-08-03T19:14:00.007-08:00

An ethereal sweet summer juice, Chanel Gardenia is undemanding and reserved. As transparent as glass, the eau de toilette begins with the cool, almost astringent feel of ivory soap shavings and the sweet fruitiness of a popsicle stick still stained with juice. Orange blossom and tuberose star in the top notes, with the grape juice sweetness that many remember as it was more forcefully featured in Dior Poison. Vanilla is a scalloped edge to the white petals of this see-through fragrance.

The easy sweetness and piquancy of orange blossom, jasmine and tuberose evaoporate quickly. Only hours later does a soft musk drydown emerge, but subtly, like a gardenia corsage warmed from being worn at the decollete.

Note: I visited the Chanel Boutique at the Bellagio in Las Vegas this year and had a wonderful experience shopping for perfumes in les exclusifs, the collection only available at Chanel boutiques.

Creed Acqua Fiorentina

2009-08-01T14:18:00.005-08:00

The House of Creed has come a long way from making perfumes for royalty in its storied past. With Acqua Fiorentina, Creed may have officially come to understand the tastes of the masses, if only the rabble could afford Creed. The sweet tart flavor of watermelon jolly rancher hard candy is followed by a slippery texture of fruit flesh dripping with juice and water, its scent almost more cantaloupe than plum, then the bite of laundry detergent, a bracing citrus combined with an as yet unbloomed rose. The clove spiciness of a carnation note and the cedar and sandalwood sound muted notes in the distance, but are more present as they combine with the citrus rose accord found in many other fragrances like Parfums 06130 Yuzu Rouge or Hermes Pamplemousse Rose. The greengage plum note may be an effect of mixing citrus with the fruit and aquatic notes. It's a success, because over time Acqua Fiorentina does evoke the sour and sweet contrast between the first bite of the tight green skin of a plum and the sun sweetened burst of juice inside. For Creed, Acqua Fiorentina is light years younger than their usual lofty creations. It does build on earlier themes for the house. Acqua Fiorentina is Creed Spring Flower but with a tart hard candy accord layered on top of the acquatic floral. It's described by Creed as containing greengage plum, lemon and Calabrian bergamot, Renaissance rose, carnation, cedar and sandalwood. Acqua Fiorentina is just the scent for a chickie at dance class who gets scolded to spit out her gum. Sweet but tart, young but hard. I like it.

Tom Ford Arabian Wood

2009-07-24T12:14:00.003-08:00

Tom Ford Arabian Wood releases a spray of galbanum like a scrim behind which the recent past of fashion unfurls, first remarkably reminiscent of Chanel No. 19, then becoming something more brash and drag king virile. The oily, herbal surface of lavender gives way to a fabric of flowers and resins in the brown, green, and red tones of a Gucci Monogram, with all the tart outré chyprosity of their 1980s fragrance, Gucci No. 3. Arabian Wood reanimates a powerful hermaphroditic trope in perfume, that of the smooth operator with the balls of a brass monkey. This style is achieved by mixing a brew of flowers like rose, freesia, orange blossom, ylang ylang, jasmine, orris, and gardenia, with bergamot and galbanum for tartness and honey to give it a little funk. Arabian Wood preens on a base of patchouli, oak moss, sandalwood, tonka bean and amber, like an old school chypre would, but can’t shake the deep throated tang of its flowers in the drydown. Although I delighted at the first sniff of Arabian Wood, it suffered from a long play on my skin. While I first conjured a lost daydream of Orhan Pamuk’s schoolboy romance in Istanbul, a 1970s nostalgia in a fog of galbanum, I found myself restless as I stewed in its too forward florals and amber patchouli base. Arabian Wood is a brutish fashion plate from a period we longed to escape and now, confronted with it anew, I can better appreciate the genius of its more delicate semblables. All of this is to say, Arabian Wood has me working on a love letter to Chanel No. 19.

Tocca Giulietta

2009-07-23T18:04:00.005-08:00

Tocca Giulietta is a candy wisp of a perfume named for an actress of monumental import, Giulietta Masina. With a blast of alcohol followed by a pale pastel bouquet of chemical "pink tulip" and "green apple" and a thoroughly milquetoast base of creamy musk and sandalwood, Tocca Giulietta has no palpable signature or sillage. An hour or two into wear, it smells like nothing as much as the traces of ice cream licked from the skin by a very sanitary puppy. In the nonfeasance of Tocca Giulietta,there's something almost as tragic as the betrayal of Masina's character Cabiria by the suitor who promises to rescue her from a life of loneliness and prostitution, but robs her and tries to shove her off a cliff. At the full purchase price, I would feel as robbed and wronged.

Image: Giulietta Masina in The Nights of Cabiria

My Perfumed Ravings of Summer

2009-07-16T23:08:00.010-08:00

Summer makes me wistful. I am more awake to my senses as the air becomes moist and just warm enough at our Northern rung to smell the world around me. Because I am more alive in the summer than in any other season, I long for and remember these few things, many of which have no commercial incarnation:

Peonies, a pink torrent, fermented and rosey and ready to turn to a pile of duck feathers.

A rose. Sitka Rose, Rosa Rugosa, is spicy and single petaled around a golden eye. Is there such a pefume in a bottle? I want to make one. Until then, I will continue to search for a perfume, beyond Jean Patou Joy, to render my dream rose.

Summer rain is melancholy as once youthful Diorella or as sweet as Faberge Straw Hat.

Wind through the trees with its sweet sap and green wood is fairy singsong, like Gobin Daude Seve Exquise.

Forest fires veil the mountains, turn the sun red, and candy coat the air with their smoke as in Serge Lutens Chene.

Please visit these sites for more Best of Summer Lists:

Smelly Blog

Bitter Grace Notes

The Non Blonde

I Smell Therefore I Am

+ Q Perfume Blog

Scent Hive

Savvy Thinker

Moving and Shaking

Hermessences Brin de Reglisse

2009-04-28T16:59:00.004-08:00

Imagine the dissection of a flower into its molecular components and the reassemblage of that flower to represent its imaginary ideal. That is Brin de Reglisse. Made to summon the scent of Provencal lavender blowing in the wind, Jean Claude Ellena conjured lavender by way of licorice. Ellena's signature transparency sets off aspects of the smell of lavender and licorice as if they are precious stones suspended in thin air. Or the scent is a cocktail served in a superbly sterile crystal glass, from which you drink resinous, piney airs, as well as maple richness, a particularly herbal gin, the woody, sweet chewy texture of licorice, and a cooling, antiseptic aura. Worn for more than a moment, Brin de Reglisse will evanesce. Reapply and wait, and the floral warmth of orange blossom develops. Like a figure on lucite heels, Brin de Reglisse stands without a palpable base. Much like Diorissimo hovers, Brin de Reglisse has arguably revised the conventions of the perfume pyramid to dispense with the finish in a lasting base accord. Or perhaps Brin de Reglisse is another sapphic pot shard made to be appreciated for what it lacks. There is also always the possibility that Brin de Reglisse is more of a gesture than a completed fine fragrance. I draw no conclusions as to which, if any of these theories is correct.

Note: Many bloggers and writers have commented on Brin de Reglisse before me and these writings are worth a google.

Hermessences Vanille Galante

2009-04-27T17:49:00.010-08:00

A haze of metallic pollen gives way to green honey and the floral tones of ylang-ylang. There is a bitterness and powdery white texture, like unripe bananas. As the scent heats on the skin, the scent conjures sultry shadows, with a woody dryness and a complex of sensations: unsweetened cocoa powder, fresh manure, and dusty hay, moistened and fuming in the sunlight. Throughout the development of Vanille Galante, ylang-ylang strobes. Jasmine, too, spurts its at bittersweet nectar, just like it tastes when sucked from the blossom where it is anchored in the stem. This white floral is similar to countless other vanilla/ylang-ylang compositions on the market, especially this year, but it is more ethereal than the others. By its spacious composition, Vanille Galante positions itself in the same niche as a smart fabric; it is breathable. Made from natural vanilla as opposed to the synthetic vanillin, the eau de toilette evokes the vanilla orchid on the vine rather than pastry cream ... most of the time. In its drydown, a soft-spoken musk leaves room for the wearer to catch the suggestion of an edible vanilla. The skin is never totally occluded by any of these notes. This perfume begins with the delicate shimmer of a densely faceted accord evolves entropically. Put another way, it's as if the perfume starts at the smell of the teeming metropolis then zooms out to render the scent of the Milky Way, on a scale where there are light years between stars. The fact that Ellena demonstrates this shift in scale with the humble and ubiquitous vanilla is at once cosmic and concretely sensual.

Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums Dans Tes Bras

2009-04-24T17:25:00.015-08:00

Meant to evoke a comforting embrace in salty skin, Maurice Roucel has created a most troubling perfume with Dans Tes Bras. Dans Tes Bras is troubling because it causes an unhappy synethesia, as if one had eaten something that should be smelled, or smelled something that should be felt. With notes of bergamot, clove, violet, jasmine, sandalwood, patchouli, incense, cashmeran, heliotrope and white musk, it doesn't sound like it should be so disturbing, but it is.

The air of Dans Tes Bras wafts the scent of wet construction paper as smelled from the back of the mouth; pulp and popsicle stick chemical fruit. I imagine this mystery fruit effect is the product of bergamot's citrus burst combined with violet, jasmine, clove, and incense. Remember the old breath mint Sen-Sen? On tasting Sen-Sen recently I kept skimming the surface of a scent memory that I couldn't quite disinter. Buried under the humid, feverish flesh of Dans Tes Bras is Sen-Sen's antiquated pastille accord, a cologne for the breath.

And there are loose ends. In musical terms, Dans Tes Bras is a tragic phrase of impending loss rather than a triumphant symphony. Smell it and you feel a desire to cradle the tender nearness of the scent, followed by repulsion at the bittersweet, ambiguous funk, then a brave attempt to love it for what it is, and again more repulsion. As no perfume has done before, Dans Tes Bras renders the expiring body of a loved one, steeped in chemicals. I guess they couldn't call it Chémotherapie, because that would kill sales, but it is a difficult and frightening evocation that makes Dans Tes Bras worth smelling.

Disguised in the cashmeran, heliotrope, and white musk accord, the stuff of plush stuffed animals and post-coital laundered bliss, Dans Tes Bras never quite fumigates its disturbing fungal core. In that sense, it is a latterday Four Thieves Vinegar, the herbal concoction once thought to fight Bubonic Plague. The swaddling of the grim reaper in the "salty skin scent" accord makes this a wryly contemporary work of art. Or perhaps it is unreflectively like modern life, a sugar-coated poisoned pill. Like a lot of contemporary art, it is not pretty and it does not make you feel good without a measure of boredom and mystery.

Ayala Sender Releases Hanami Perfume Today

2009-04-18T22:19:00.004-08:00

It all started with a poem: In March 2008, perfumer Ayala Sender was invited along with 14 other leading perfumers in the niche perfume industry to interpret a haiku-like poem by Ezra Pound, “In A Station of the Metro” for a project titled “Perfume In A Poem” Memory & Desire blog. One year later, Ayala Moriel releases the perfume at Blunda Aromatics in Los Angeles, in the 2nd of their 8-part Natural Botanical Perfume Exhibitions. “As I was reading the poem, I envisioned a perfume that is subtle and urbane: flowers and dusty dirt”, says Ayala. She drew on her olfactory experiences in the metro stations in New York and Montreal, and the cherry blossom boulevard in Burrard SkyTrain station, which is the heart of the Cherry Blossom Festival (Hanami) in Vancouver.

“The challenge was to create the feel of concrete, asphalt and metallic surroundings using natural aromatics only”, says Ms. Sender, who used Haitian vetiver, cabreuva oil, French Cassie and Oleander to create the feel of metal, wet wood and concrete. These serve as a backdrop for the cheerful lightweight floral notes of sakura, mimosa and magnolia, creating a perfume that is ever changing, ranging from “sweet floral notes in the sunshine to cool dampness of concrete and steel."

I wish I could have been there for the launch today. To learn more about Hanami click here.

2009-01-07T00:08:00.008-09:00

My summer skirt kept flipping up in the wind. It was that current from the Golden Gate that goes right through that area round Hyde and McAllister. I was headed up to Polk Street to visit a few buildings and preach the word of lead paint remediation through mime to refugees from Bosnia and Iraq renting in the Tenderloin. I confess I never believed a bit of the dangers of lead poisoning. I mean, how did smart, healthy people come out okay, like Einstein or say, the baby boomers before they realized they could coast on the royalties from their greatest hits? So I didn’t really buy the lead poisoning hype, but I threw myself into the job with zeal.

I made my way with stealth, ringing every doorbell on the front of a building until someone buzzed me in. Once inside I diligently performed my gesture acting, showing newly arrived immigrants how -- hand scraping wall and into mouth-- makes a baby --- arms rocking an invisible doll--very sick--- tongue out like Mr. Yuck Mouth. That part was the most comical but not the most difficult to convey. To explain that we could remove the dangerous paint and make it safe was near impossible. I’d been working for several hours already that day and once I finished a building or two on Polk Street I found myself in front of a boutique with a man on display behind a gilded display window. He may have seen me stare, but he kept his lips pursed like a baby doll and didn’t budge as I announced my entry into the store with a jostle of bells on the door knob. The shop sold soaps and bath salts that were placed sparsely on the shelves behind the counter.

This was before Polk Street became French with Boulange de Polk and La Folie and before Polk Street became Mediterrean with the Mediterrean Deli (sic but great green beans). Before Polk Street had Moroccan imports, there were still working movie theaters with ornate old facades like The Alhambra, now a gym called something like Punch! or Snap! Back then, it was mostly porn shops, boy hustlers, lunatics, and outside agitators.

This soap shop had sprung out of nowhere. I’d never seen it before. It was a soft red inside, like a womb from which its proprietor prayed to be aborted. He was all comb over and tucked shirt and lips. After an awkward silence as I gazed around at what looked more like wartime rations than merchandise, he spoke to me at some length.

He wore his lips like falsies, to show how French language and culture had permanently changed his needs and attributes. From showing me a shabby carton of Valobra soap, he quickly moved to telling me his life story.

He was Daniel Dubois, you haven’t heard? Oh, well, he was used to the rife ignorance. People today are most ignorant of great art. The House of Dubois has operated from Alsace for generations. It has a most esteemed reputation for creation of perfumes. I didn’t know? He became instantly irritated and more so when a guy with dirt locks stumbled in and rang the bells before Daniel gave him a withering look and he left.

What followed was sort of a hurricaine of pretense and contempt for the prevailing taste for mass market perfume, not that I’d raised the subject. Dubois became increasingly agitated as he showed me his oeuvre that he kept hidden behind the counter. He didn’t need to ask me whether I knew of peony, he visibly assumed my ignorance and spun the tale of a Chinese princess that belonged to one of his masterpieces. I flashed on my grandmother’s peonies battened down with panty hose.

As he discussed each flacon, his speech became more and more frantic and nonsensical. His accent was not French. His speech was a scythe sharpened with spit. The phone rang. He answered. It was a bill collector who had the nerve to call. He slammed down the receiver. Talk shifted to his troubled business, his difficulty paying his phone bill and then turned back to the perfumes, which he jealously guarded and never let me smell. He made the motions of going over his whole repertoire, scent by scent, but in fact, he only made sounds or grimaces to fill in the whole explication. It was like seeing what a very detailed dream actually contains: a skeleton of a narrative whose motions give the facsimile of detail and reason. He continued, surely, his art was just too fine and elegant a passion for me to grasp. After some time, I began to shift my weight from foot to foot from fatigue. He kept talking.

I escaped from the Parfumerie of Daniel Dubois before quitting time. I had the idea to have all of my friends call him and ask, “Hey, is this Art’s Crab Shack?” but I wasn’t mean enough. He’s still doing business, but I think he’s moved north.

Photo Untitled by Caitlin Shortell

Perfume is Only One of My Sensual Interests.

2009-01-06T15:57:00.002-09:00

This video of Mark Bittman makes a compelling case for what's wrong with what we eat.

Lez Nez Manoumalia

2008-12-31T16:07:00.007-09:00

Manoumalia is a perfume by Sandrine Videault inspired by the South Pacific Island of Wallis and its olfactory culture. It contains exotic components that will nonetheless smell somewhat familiar to connoisseurs. Manoumalia is Videault's attempt to present relatively obscure notes in a Western composition. Its exotic profile challenges me to break it down to its components and analogize. The scent begins with a neroli note like the pale, translucent flesh of cucumber wrapped in a straw mat that has been sitting on a dirt floor. The aquatic freshness of neroli ripens into an olfactory stop. The perfume is paced by some kind of pause, a “talk to the hand” of perfume that confounds me. There is a wall erected inside the scent (by the vetiver? the suggestion of curcuma?), partitioning its more exuberant aspects with a saffron and almond tinged mystery forcefield. This cool, strawlike, saffron and almond effect evokes the lesser known charms of the tropics. What begins as a serene oddity ripens into a peacock display of ylang ylang and the especially exotic Fragrea. The trumpet blooms of fragrea, also known as perfume flower tree, puakenikeni, or ten cent flower, are used as lei flowers and are similar in scent to tiare or gardenia. Manoumalia's flowers smell like the blinding sun trapped in a drop of dew. This scent is richly ambered and yet sings in a pure, girlish voice, like early Gal Costa. The hushed tones of sandalwood dust powder the scent with a dusklike warmth. In spite of the anthropological research that Manoumalia represents, it is not didactic. Manoumalia is an understated and thoroughly wearable perfume, more successful by far than Guerlain’s ylang ylang perfume Mayotte, which explores the same territory. Maybe that’s because Manoumalia gestures toward something so particular and as yet unhyped as to be irreplaceable.

Manoumalia will be available in early 2009 from Les Nez. Photo above, perfumer and perfume historian Sandrine Videault smelling Fragrea, from the Les Nez website.

2008 Retrospective

2008-12-30T10:35:00.009-09:00

2008 was a good year for perfume, if only because I had neglected to sniff and to write on these pages for so long that I returned to it recently with the fervor and the modesty of an amateur. My favorite perfumes of 2008 are perfumes that I have yet to review as I madly sniff to catch up with the breakneck pace of fragrance releases.
Not only did I return to my love of perfume in 2008, I became yet more loyal to one of my favorite houses, Chanel, and regarded other houses with greater appreciation than I had in the past.

Chanel Sycomore is an astonishing vetiver fragrance that haunts me. In part, this is because I spilled about a quarter ounce of it all over one of my bags. Consequently, I find myself thinking about Sycomore quite often as I use my computer, pens... Sycomore is part of the renaissance at Chanel begun with the release of Les Exclusifs and intensified with the addition of Christopher Sheldrake to the team. In one year, Chanel gave us Sycomore, Beige and Eau Premiere, all of which were distinctive and exquisite perfumes. Chanel has outdone even Monsieur Ellena with its release of truly unforgettable transparent modern fragrances.Chanel's exclusives are available from Chanel boutiques, Bergdorf Goodman, and Neiman Marcus. Eau Premiere is now widely available in department stores. Ala Moana Chanel Boutique, my wallet will see you in February!

Parfumerie Generale Ombre Fauve, a fauve shadow, is the perfume that clinched my newfound love of amber fragrances. My discovery of Parfumerie Generale only really happened late this year, as I mused on the perfection of Ombre Fauve and Drama Nuui and sampled all the perfumes I missed since this house released its initial collection. Parfumerie Generale is available at Luckyscent, Perfume Shoppe, and at Parfumerie Generale.

Jo Malone Kohdo Wood Collection was an unexpected delight. The fizzy tonic of Lotus Blossom and Water Lily was a perfect foil to the rich but wearable Dark Amber and Ginger Lily. My latter day enthusiasm came almost too late to snap up bottles of these limited edition fragrances before they dissappeared.

Le Labo Musc 25 left me speechless with perfume lust far from Los Angeles. Le Labo was already one of my favorite houses, ever since I first explored their fragrance and interviewed the founders on this site in 2006. Since then, Le Labo has created a line of home fragrances and unique products like a leather notebook scented with their sandalwood perfume, opened several new boutiques, and released a series of brilliant location exclusive fragrances, each more tempting than the last. Look forward to more details about Le Labo on Legerdenez in 2009. Le Labo is available at Le Labo and Barney's New York.

L'Etat Libre d'Orange piqued my curiosity with rumors that it would expand its Marais boutique and partner with Taschen to create a "perfume publication pole." In a time when publication and entertainment itself is entirely in flux, I am on tenterhooks to see what L'Etat Libre d'Orange has in store for the world. I repeat my dare for the house to create a perfume about queer civil rights that would befit the house's legendary wit and brashness. L'Etat Libre is available at Henri Bendel and L'Etat Libre d'Orange.

Lez Nez Manoumalia is my last blissful discovery of 2008. Sandrine Videault has added an imaginative treasure to this bravely avant-garde house. With its willingness to take chances and give perfumers license to explore the unconventional, Lez Nez is a rare gem. Manoumalia will be available online at Lez Nez in 2009.

New Year Dreams and Wishes

1. May 2009 be a year bursting with creativity for artists, musicians, dancers, perfumers, and writers.

2. Let my two top secret perfume projects materialize!

3. Let there be an end to torture and war and equal rights for all in the new and, we hope and pray and insist, improved America.

For the new year, I wish you all good nose.

Please visit the blogs below for more 2008 Retrospectives.
1000 Fragrances
Ars Aromatica
A Rose Beyond the Thames
Bittergrace Notes
Grain de Musc
I Smell Therefore I Am
Notes From the Ledge
Savvy Thinker
The Non Blonde
Tuileries
the Perfume Shrine

Persephone by Sali Oguri

2008-12-22T17:09:00.005-09:00

Persephone is a limited edition perfume by New York musician, tv personality, perfumer, blogger, and thinker Sali Oguri. Oguri is notable among perfume bloggers for rare but refreshing social critiques. Whether the subject is the perfume industry's exoticization of whole groups of consumers on the basis of race or national origin or the recent push for equality on gay marriage, Oguri finds a way to discuss the beauty of perfume alongside things that matter just as much, like love and equality. What further distinguishes Oguri is that her art as a singer and perfumer informs her critical thought and vice versa. Persephone is a prime example of one creative endeavor enriching another. Persephone is a fragrance composed to inspire and be inspired by a body of music in process. Now that I have experienced the perfume I would love the chance to hear the music in the future.

Persephone is a precious extrait of perfume using a high quality natural sandalwood in concert with notes evoking chocolate and Persephone's symbolic fruit, the pomegranate. The tart red fruit combined with dark chocolate makes for a euphoric opening. Persephone begins in a confected riot, as deep and sweet as a tootsie roll. An intense, sweet unctuousness recalls tropical oils used to dress the hair, giving a radiant and expansive quality to the fragrance. Once the fruity and chocolatey top notes develop, elegant plumes of sandalwood emerge. In Persephone, sandalwood has the uncanny sense of a presence in the room. This warmth and nutty, saltiness of the natural sandalwood is part of what gives Persephone its vibrancy. Yet the sharper woodiness and milkiness accentuated in other sandalwood fragrances are smmoothed out in Persehpone, and given a different interpretation. Persephone is unabashed and diffusive. It is a fragrance that would suit agile and robust dancers in neon colored printed costumes. Ironically, none of the fragrances that use an exoticizing approach to sales have captured the heat and exuberance contained in a tiny bottle of Persephone, and Persephone steers clear of any of that nonsense.
Chalk it up to the fact that Persephone was written by a working musician. Persephone was obviously made by a person who understands that art has the power to save lives.

Drama Nuui by Parfumerie Generale

2008-12-22T09:24:00.009-09:00

Does jasmine spell big drama for you? Drama Nuui is, I surmise, some Polynesian/English/French slang for Big Drama. Nuui may be an unusual spelling of Nui, as in Rapa Nui, Big Earth, or aloha nui, big aloha. This is pure speculation on my part, of course. Many of my personal dramas are tied up with jasmine so it was a given that I would get my hands on Drama Nuui as soon as I could transport it to my subpolar perch. Jasmine carries with it memories of wandering under starry skies by California fences in bloom, shards of Greek poetry, buying little necklaces of jasmine in Cairo and Paris, of faraway places and dreams of love. By December, I have been dreaming jasmine dreams for months. Just a glance at the notes of petit grain, absinthe, jasmine, spices, guaiac wood, sandalwood, musk sold me unsniffed. Drama Nui is dramatic but at once the tenderest rendition of jasmine I've smelled in a long time. The petit grain and bitter green absinthe give an ethereal loft to the scent. Jasmine's creamy petals crushed between fingertips release a kind of thrill as they do when plucked in the very early morning. Rather than turning too bitter or astringent, the touch of citrus and absinthe evokes the coolness and prickle of the morning air.The combination of luxurious pink jasmine with these verdant touches recalls walls of star jasmine still cooled by morning fog or even the clutches of wild flowers called pink ladies that smell of banana and sugar-flavored candy necklaces.Jasmine's heady, indolic scent seques into very faint spices that warm on the skin; guaiac wood, sandalwood, and musk. Although the pairing of jasmine, sandalwood and musk is a classic, Drama Nuui sings in a reedy, high voice, rather than the deep throat of other compositions that take a heavier, oriental approach to the jasmine sandalwood combination. Whereas Patou's opulent Sira des Indes or Parfums Delrae's achingly beautiful Amoureuse offer us the Taj Mahal of jasmine,in Drama Nuui, the emphasis is on the opening and heart notes. The base serves but never upstages the perfume. Its restraint and lushness makes it a sensitive work ripe for dreams.

Putain des Palaces by L'Etat Libre d'Orange

2008-12-17T15:10:00.009-09:00

L'Etat Libre d'Orange may be the most controversial perfumery currently releasing wafts of scent on the market. There is no consensus on their racy, sexy, queer, retro trade dress and advertising. Everyone's a critic. With titles like "Don't Get Me Wrong, Baby, I Don't Swallow" and "Sécrétions Magnifiques", some consumers are disgusted, some underwhelmed, and still others delighted at the cheekiness that is Etienne de Swardt's Marais District perfumery. With over seventeen fragrances in their stable and limited edition scents for Rossy de Palma, Tom's of Finland, and last year's Noel au Balcon for French Sephora, this house has only begun to explore its potential.

There are rumors that L'Etat Libre d'Orange may partner with the publisher Taschen and expand its Marais boutique for larger digs. While I don't know what is meant by
"perfume publication" my mind runs wild just thinking about what the partnership betweeen Taschen and L'Etat Libre d'Orange might create.

Putain des Palaces (Hotel Whore) is one of the house's most popular fragrances. When the line debuted, it got the most positive reviews in the blogosphere, even among reviewers who were offended by the ads or dissappointed by a number of the fragrances themselves. Now that the hype has settled and perhaps completely dissipated to make room for the next big thing, Putain des Palaces deserves reexamination.

Nathalie Feisthauer, recently named a senior perfumer at fragrance firm Symrise, has said that she created Putain des Palaces based on the brothel scene in the Jeunet et Caro movie A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles)(2004). While the unsuspecting consumer may have imagined the cliche of a high-priced French Whore or even the savvier notion of a sophisticated modern callgirl of a certain Parisian milieu, a view of the film reveals a very different inspiration.

Marion Cotillard, acclaimed for her later work as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, plays the WWI-era prostitute Tina Lombardi, a secondary character in the film starring Audrey Tautou of Amelie fame. The scene in question gives new meaning to S/M. Lombardi, in the guise of a putain des palaces that she is, orchestrates an impalement by shards of mirrored ceiling of one of the military officers implicit in her pimp/lover's execution. Screwball comedy meets revenge murder in that inimitable Jeunet et Caro style, where we follow a shard of the story, across thousands of miles and unexpected tales home to its target.

Like the fragrance Putain des Palaces, when the shard hits its target, you want to cover your eyes, scream, and delight in the ingenuity of the invention. Feisthauer's inspiration reveals something of L'Etat Libre's sensibility, brazen with kitsch and fantasy and baroque with sensory detail.

Putain des Palaces was billed and reviewed as an opulent floral. It is that, but on further reflection it is a highly adorned amber fragrance. Its ornamentation reflects its stated themes; there's lipstick (violet and rose absolute) and lace, a courtesan's rice powder, and the leather of the dominatrix who turns out to be dead serious about her sex games. But Putain des Palaces is more than spin off merchandise for a movie. It is a marvelous perfume in its own right.

For some reason, it's Putain des Palaces that is the smell of L'Etat Libre d'Orange for me. Later, Feisthauer rolled Putain des Palaces into a new masculine (with a difference) fragrance called Delicious Closet Queen. Putain des Palaces may be in some sense constitute a signature base or style of ornately playful perverseness equivalent to the Guerlainade for this niche house.

There is a piquancy to the mandarin and ginger-spiked, but never stuffy powdered scent, that tempts and provokes and blossoms out into a richly satisfying amber accord. It is at once candied, effervescent, coated, dusty, and feminine in the most ragingly unlimited way.

L'Etat Libre d'Orange delivers more than shock value with Putain des Palaces. I can't wait to see what they will invent next.

Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere

2008-12-14T19:08:00.009-09:00

Podcast about Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere from Youtube

Repetition and zoom focus are the signatures of contemporary pop art, from music to film to mixed media to Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere.

Think about it. How many songs on the radio simply repeat the same melody or words or tasty beats with minor variations until the song slides into another song of the same ilk? Even your favorites. You may find this to be kind of a depressing revelation. If so, I'm sorry to ruin your fun by pointing it out. But good, bad, or indifferent, repetition and zoom are undeniable hallmarks of now. Since collage art and hip hop and house, we can't unring that bell.

The difference between a great pop song of some decades ago and the hits of today is the difference between the intricacies and grandeur and narrative arch of Homer's Odyssey and say, a single phrase from a limerick from Edward Lear, repeated ad nauseum, so close you can taste it. Like this:

There was a Young Person of Crete,
Whose toilette was far from complete;
She dressed in a sack,
Spickle-speckled with black,
That ombliferous person of Crete.

She dressed in a sack,
Spickle-speckled with black,She dressed in a sack,
Spickle-speckled with black,She dressed in a sack,
Spickle-speckled with black,She dressed in a sack,
Spickle-speckled with black...

Sample the snappiest, percussive bits of the verse. Add some luscious sounds and studio effects. Cut in some retro tunes or something raw and ambient to bring the zoom focus, so you get snagged on the fiber of the song.

Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere is very now like one of these pop songs; repetitive and zoomed into the signature phrases of the original composition.

After so many hair sprays and other fine fragrances have borrowed Chanel No. 5's landmark style, Chanel itself gets to sample its own masterpiece. To renovate No. 5, Chanel made its story more concrete and consistent than the original. Where the original No. 5 is a walk down an arcade lit by rose windows, Eau Premiere snags a single screenshot of the movie of that walk and plays it again and again on the skin. This kind of sampling is designed to be user-friendly. Eau Premiere zooms into the tastiest bits of No. 5 and plays them on an endless loop. Unsurprisingly, this makes for pure pleasure. It's like getting to relive a trip to Pierre Hermé's patisserie and the church of St. Suplice in Paris again and again and again, with every detail just as poignant and delicious each time you remember it.

Eau Premiere plays an exquisite music box peal of spun sugar, ripe peaches, jasmine, roses, musk, a mist of citrus, vanilla, vetiver, and woods on an endless loop. Check and recheck over hours of wear. Eau Premiere delivers the same concise but marvelously warm phrase with each sniff. No fragrance on the market is as influential as No. 5. Eau Premiere succeeds off the bat just by riffing on the original.

But what is missing in Eau Premiere? Some of the unexpected textures and mysterious effects of No. 5. For instance, the bell tones of the ylang ylang do not chime in Eau Premiere. The starchy pressed linen effect of the aldehydes? Turned to supernatural presence. The original No. 5's infectious, dry and musty lavender that recalls grasses on the sea shore of Northern California? That turns into cinnamon on hotter skins? All of that is absent from Eau Premiere. All the little plot twists and questions that No. 5 prompts in me are reduced to blissful, simple answers in Eau Premiere. Spun sugar, ripe peaches, jasmine, roses, musk, a mist of citrus, vanilla, vetiver, and woods. Fin.

L is for Longing

2008-12-01T15:50:00.007-09:00

When I was a kid I was sure I could talk to whales. With my mind. I know it had something to do with the plight of the fat kid I was, but it was also about longing. Neither truly of land nor sea, H.C. Andersen's Little Mermaid knew the feeling. She tortured herself to dance on land in the hopes of ensnaring a human prince, and when he didn't go for her she couldn't even bring herself to kill him and so, turned to foam. Clearly, that's not the Disney version, but the unreconstructed melancholy of terminally unrequited lover and writer Andersen.

In 1979, I didn't go to Europe, but I received postcards every day from my mother's travels, with paintings or sculptures that reminded her of me. When she returned, in her duffel bags, covered with embroidered patches from cities of Europe, she brought me dolls and music boxes and a bottle of perfume in the shape of the Eiffel Tower.

On her vanity she placed a tiny blue and ghost white figurine of the Little Mermaid from Copenhagen. When I heard she visited the statue I came to take the story more seriously, as if the erection of a statue meant that it commemorated a real life mermaid and a historical tragedy. But The Little Mermaid didn't plague me half as much as other Andersen tales, like The Little Match Girl or The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Unlike many of today's children's writers, Andersen didn't make the world safe for the fragile young psyche. His stories were full of real sorrows and terrifying events. It didn't surprise me at all to learn that he didn't much care for children. As I reflect on the greatness of his stories, I thank him for his unconcern.

L is for longing, one of my favorite words. We don't have saudade or huzun or wajd, or any other word in English, so longing will have to do. L is also a perfume. L Lolita Lempicka is offered in a flacon of green beach glass in a liquid heart imprinted with a starfish and adorned with a mermaid's jewelry and gold fishnets. L wriggled its way into my own daydream. With a sparkling opening of oranges and bergamot, it also dreams a bit of anise and then broods along for hours with a cinnamon and immortelle spiced, laundered and faintly camphored musk, finished with the air of salty, sweet biscuit. After the first enticements of citrus and anise, the perfume takes on a powdery, hushed texture. L recalls the skin of someone longed for and lost. It is a pathetic memento in the form of a cosmetic, as if all the tears have dried and you wear only the salt.

Saudade, or why so much of my music collection is not in English

2008-12-01T14:20:00.006-09:00

Julieta Venegas & Otto from the film Solo Dios Sabe by Carlos Bolado. Written by Diane Weipert and Carlos Bolado.

Check wikipedia for the listing on saudade:

Black Cashmere by Donna Karan

2008-11-28T14:21:00.008-09:00

Black Cashmere was released in 2002, just about the time I was going irredeemably mad for perfume. With its zen styled black massage stone flacon and its searing spices, woods and resins, it was one of the fragrances that broadened my horizons. Black Cashmere was a departure from my olfactory homeland of aldehydic florals like Chanel No. 5, pristine, naturalistic florals like Christian Dior Diorissimo, and opulent florientals like Sublime and Allure. Chatting about perfume releases on internet forums led me to explore all the classifications in perfume, and to pop for a bottle of Black Cashmere without even once sniffing it in advance.

The craze for Black Cashmere was irresistible upon its release. Somehow the hype on the internet gave me the hunch that this perfume would possess the full range of color in the depth of its blackness. Black Cashmere did not dissappoint. Perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux had no fear of drama in his masterful blend of exotic notes: saffron, masala spices, white pepper, clove, nutmeg, pimento berries, broom flower, patchouli, rose, incense, wengue wood, bois de miel, and labdanum. Because it came out just as I was teaching myself about the perfumer's palate, it served as a primer to teach me about many of the primary materials, like wengue wood and labdanum, that had previously been unknown to me.

Black Cashmere was also one of the first fragrances of its type to illuminate its constituent ingredients for the buying public through a novel and starkly elemental brand and trade dress of the glossy ebony stone. Whereas earlier oriental fragrances in the mainstream market like Opium made only oblique reference to their ingredients, Black Cashmere's marketing proudly highlighted its curious notes.

While other oriental fragrances chose to sell themselves on mystery, Black Cashmere beckoned me on a path of discovery, from the fields of crocus in Spain where saffron was gathered, to hillsides in Portugal where goats brushed past bushes of rock rose or labdanum, getting their coats sticky with the fragrant sap. Wengue wood, I discovered, is a deep black, incredibly hard heartwood, otherwise known as Congolese Rosewood or False Ebony. Common Broom is known in French as "genet" and it is this golden petaled, syrupy sweet bloom that became the family name and emblem of the Plantagenet Kings of Anjou.

Black Cashmere was novel to me because it used culinary notes like masala spices, white pepper, clove, nutmeg, and pimento berries to a very un-gourmand end. This cavalcade of spices joined with a bracing belt of patchouli, silken gusts of rose, and an omnispresent black velvet cushion of incense. It reminded me of entering the panopticon at Ocean Beach, where from inside the softness of a black little room the whole Pacific Ocean arrayed itself through a pinhole. Black Cashmere was as engrossing to a budding perfumista as say, The Annotated Lolita. Each reference was an adventure waiting to be smelled and researched.

Beyond the marvel at its odd ingredients, the most astonishing thing about Black Cashmere was, in fact, its smell. To my virgin nose, it was all climax from the first whiff. Its waft was as shocking as being caught in the buff in the middle of a public address. I felt the need to spritz the smallest imaginable amount so that my family and intimates would not protest. I kept it as secret as Black Cashmere could be kept. Not to ruin the meditative marketing patter, but Black Cashmere can project about as well as Ethel Merman. There's no keeping it a secret.

In 2002, it smelled like liquid flames of patchouli and an intoxicating gas made of roses and spices and syrupy sap. It smelled almost corrosive, with the mixture of incense and woods and saffron and rose. It smelled like a statue of ebony colored wood trapped in a shellac of honey and alcohol. It was an embarassment and a revelation.

When Black Cashmere was discontinued and then re-released, I revisited it this winter, just as we were electing a new President, in 2008. Today, Black Cashmere strikes me as a startlingly elegant, well-balanced fragrance, but it doesn't frighten me anymore. I apply it with the calm I do any other fragrance. I no longer fear reprisals for spritzing Black Cashmere with relative abandon. Black Cashmere now conveys a tenderness that is anathema to my original memory of a volatile elixir. It is no less brilliant, and perhaps more so because it is more wearable to me now than it once was. The newly modulated Black Cashmere wears its drama and intrigue in a refined fiber; a perfume that unfurls with fluid grace and yet retains architectural gravity.

Other reviewers have also noted a change in perception with this fragrance over the years of its dissappearance and re-release. Perhaps Donna Karan remodulated the fragrance to a mellower pitch the second time around. Perhaps. But I would wager that our sensibilities have evolved due, in part, to the scandal that was Black Cashmere.

I was inspired to try Black Cashmere again when reading articles by my fellow bloggers. See Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin for lists of notes and changing perceptions.

Onda by Vero Profumo

2008-11-19T13:58:00.005-09:00

Onda delivers forceful undulations of intense fragrance. Vero Kern's perfumes have evocative names, and Onda is no exception. Onda means wave, fashion, and commotion. The first waves are the boldest, smelling of roots and fur and the honeyed almost urinelike scent of a sneeze or the inside of an ear. Onda is a nest. It goes against the trend of clean fragrances and even of seduction, and so, defines a new wave in perfumery. Without cliche, Onda evolves from its initial stage to a spicy, salty phase that recalls dense cakes of incense that have not yet been burned, but warm the air around them. Like waves of water or sound or scent, that join one another ceaselessly based on celestial forces beyond our immediate ability to observe, Onda develops with a masterful grace. Hours into the experience, Onda emits some of the buttery, woodsy and floral aspects of its contents: vetiver, ginger, mace, and coriander. Onda does not smell like a spice cake, a pomander ball, or any familiar object of the household arts. It does not particularly smell like a perfume. An untrained nose would be hard pressed to divine these notes without the perfumer revealing to us her recipe. Onda is beautifully weird, and in its weirdness, says more about desire than the blackest rose or 1001 nights of tales could tell.

Kiki by Vero Profumo

2008-11-18T11:48:00.007-09:00

Kiki announces herself with an exhilirating rush of blue. If a sky could sing, you'd hear the intense surge of lavender in Kiki at first sniff. After just a couple of minutes on the skin, Kiki turns soft, like it's rolling on casters. There are hints of sweet tobacco and then the texture of the perfume smooths into a grassy finish. Beyond these early moments, a toasted, powdery quality precipitates, that almost but never quite hints of cinnamon. This perfume has the dapper edge of a men's cologne to be worn by an iconoclast.

As suggested by my own multisensory experience of Kiki, there is something of the surrealist's visual punning and synesthesia in Kiki. Named for Kiki de Montparnasse, the artist, writer, and muse who often modeled for photographer Man Ray in the 1920s, Kiki calls to mind the expression "le violon d'Ingres" and the Man Ray photo that wryly translated that expression into a visual pun. Un violon d'Ingres refers to a hobby or avocation, like that of the French painter of Odalisques Ingres for his violin. Man Ray's photo shows Kiki de Montparnasse, seen from behind in the convention of an Ingres odalisque, painted with the f holes of a violin on the small of her back. When such photos emerged, they created shock and laughter in viewers, to question what they were seeing and to laugh again later while grasping the allusions behind the name. Kiki de Vero Profumo employs its own witty reversals in overturning received notions about what is a conventional masculine fragrance when it is offered for a subversive and witty woman. Vero Kern's choice of lavender and musk creates a caramelized warmth that is only as gourmand as a kiss and not one whit more.

Photo: Le Violon d'Ingres, by Man Ray (1924) at Centre Pompidou

Rubj by Vero Profumo

2008-11-17T16:00:00.006-09:00

Rubj begins with the dual chimes of ylang ylang, both high pitched and balsamic, like lemon oil rubbed into gleaming wood. Next comes the ticklish whiff of green pollen, a fecund mist like to draw bees, or at least a mesmerizing confusion. Rubj is a humid perfume, though never cloying. Considering the forceful character of orange blossom and jasmine, its subtle proportions are surprising. The magic that Rubj weaves is almost tailored, so measured is the composition. The effect is stunning. Nectar glistening in the stigmata of orange blossoms, the liquid twinkle of a starry eyed orange tree. Instead of becoming matte or lackluster as it segues into musk, Rubj becomes succulent flesh, like a flower that is forever blossoming and fruiting into magical golden globes. All throughout there is a hint of the animal in Rubj, not easily reduced to musk, but with honeyed, haylike, dusky, and even tart aspects, like the nearly invisible tracks of some particularly fetching animal that trod the path in front of us. What's animalic is balanced by the pristine floralcy that dominates this perfume.

Rubj is offered in extrait on Vero Profumo
and at Lucky Scent.

Spiritueuse Double Vanille by Guerlain

2008-11-14T11:15:00.008-09:00

Spiritueuse Double Vanille is a most straightforward perfume from Guerlain, in theory. A boozy vanilla is what you'd expect, with as much mystique as a bottle of vanilla extract. Sorry, no. Some vanilla, I have learned, is more mysterious than others.

The feathery texture of wood shavings emerges first, like a condiment on the surface of this rich, doughy vanilla. The perfume builds on an association between vanilla and the yeasty rise of dough with strong liquor and the fizz of fermentation. It is unapologetically gourmand but not at all vanilla if you know what I mean. There is something quite alluring about guilelessness, both in life and in this perfume. I still remember when I came across the man who called me by that epithet vanilla. I was so young I didn't even know what it meant. The same fellow taught me an alternative meaning for tomato shortly after he showed me the proper way to make a marinara, blanching and peeling the fresh red fruit. But I digress. Spiritueuse Double Vanille has a lot of lessons in its bag of tricks and some bizarre emanations in the bargain. Unexpectedly, today, an air of Chinese herbs wafted from its usual woodsy, liquored vanilla. A perfume that has been gourmand and yeasty and alcoholic and firey became at once medicinal and meditative, like the smell of burning moxa or long brewed Chinese tea. Spiritueuse Double Vanille is an opportunity to discover one's unknown olfactory anatomy and the sensual knowledge of a truly innocent idea. Vanilla.

Fight the H8 November 15, 2008

2008-11-14T11:04:00.004-09:00

Please join the fight against hate in your town all across America tomorrow. To find out the time and location of the rally in your state, visit this website

Walt Whitman from Song of Myself

2008-11-07T10:02:00.003-09:00

I celebrate myself, and sing myself

And what I assume you shall assume,
For every belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odourless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of shore and
dark-colour’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching round of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rish of the streets, or along the fields
and hillsides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? Have you reckon’d the
earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poetry?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poetry
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

I was very cheered by Jeanette Winterson's monthly column and email today, as well as her choice of poem, so I grabbed it to cheer all who read this blog today.

Encens et Bubble Gum and The Darkness of Time

2008-11-06T09:01:00.014-09:00

A story without an armed guard to lead the way. That's the kind of perfume I smell in Encens et Bubblegum. With Encens et Bubblegum, L'Etat Libre D'Orange has capitalised on the complementary textures in orange flower incense and powdery pink bubble gum. Powdery pink bubblegum in soft pressed sticks surrounded by powdered sugar melds with the soapy, dry finish of orange flower incense. I am reminded of teenage sessions of listening to Leonard Cohen and Roberta Flack with my best friend as she burned incense to summon a groovier retro atmosphere to match our parents' record collections. This perfume also reminds me of a time when scents were still mysterious, when I hadn't stopped to know and analyze the notes in every ambient and culinary fragrance. She burned incense, but I didn't know it was orange flower until years later I wanted to find out what that scent was that reminded me of my best friend's magical teenage world. The halo of powdery sweetness is equal parts incense and bubblegum. The perfumer intended to make a perfume that was both chaste and erotic, but did so by choosing a floral, rather than a woody or resinous incense. The sense of a fine dusting of sweet powder in this perfume is an umbrella that covers both incense and bubblegum. There are no rough edges here, just bubblegum with its pink signature accord of raspberry and peach and flowers and incense, in orange flower. Musk and an "essence of incense resin" complete this olfactory snapshot to give it the dusty, brown tone of old photographs. I smell hardwood floors where ballerinas practice or coveted sanrio erasers. The matte texture of powder is delightfully nostalgic because it does not go steroidally sweet and pink in a more current mode. It's got the brown smell of Nabokov's nymphet. La Boum Trailer
When I was about fifteen, French class became the venue for films that were hilariously uncool and/or strangely risque. Of course, back in the 80s, we hadn't been completely invaded by religious zealots and the morality police, they let us watch movies like the above clip La Boum (1980) in which a 13 year old Sophie Marceau gets her first kiss. My class of Alaskan nerdlet teenagers in 1988 found the kids in the movie ridiculous as they partied and played at some kind of American, rock n' roll cool. After all, we were clearly at least two years older than some of the characters in the movie. It was at the same time that I saw Diva (1981) in school more than once. I think my French teacher was having a crisis, as she was French and had moved from Montana, which sounded, if it can be imagined, more bleak than Alaska, to Anchorage, where she found a passle of snotty children who gave her hell in the classroom. Watching bizarre films kept us occupied and gave her time to zone out into the darkness of a winter night. What I remember from that period was smelling before I had a name and a formula for what I smelled and watching and reading sometimes challenging fare before I knew, or could pretend I knew, what it all meant. Innocence as a state of being leads nicely into enjoyment of art that is full of feeling but does not demand that you follow its story or any ideology. I remember watching strange Godard movies at the converted porn theater in my hometown. There was Je Vous Salue, Marie and there was a film of his that included a prolonged display of a blank screen. I got to stew in my puzzlement. Story is not necessarily commandment, as we see. Certain works of art leave us with mysteries we can return to throughout the darkness of time.
Dans le Noir du Temps -- Lean-Luc Godard

Victory and Forbearance

2008-11-05T15:06:00.008-09:00

I challenge a sometimes controversial perfumery that loves to name its perfumes after twosomes (Jasmin et Tabac, Encens et Bubblegum...) to create a perfume to honor this occasion, the day that the USA got its first black president and yet, saw setbacks for equal rights for another group of Americans, gays and lesbians. My tears of joy over the presidential election hadn't even dried when I realized that we have more work to do to ensure that all of us are recognized as people with equal rights before the law. Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American and a veteran activist for social change from Detroit, told me in July of 1993 that change requires patience and fortitude, as it occurs in fits and starts over a long period of time. Grace's life is a testament to a "protracted struggle." Grace was born in 1915 and she's worked on countless projects for social change. What truly inspired me about her was that after some sucesses and many setbacks, Grace continues to work for change with incredible positivity. The possibility of defeat has not dissuaded her from continuing to dream and to work toward a better community and humanity. Grace's point of view gives me some encouragement on this bittersweet day: “change must be viewed as a two-sided transformational process, of ourselves and of our institutions, a process requiring protracted struggle and not just a D-Day replacement of one set of rulers with another.”

So, in spite of the blow to gay rights, I have picked myself up to live another day. I wore Encens et Bubblegum today. I am collecting my thoughts for a review and I hope that L'etat Libre d'Orange hears my challenge to create a perfume in honor of this historical moment. And since their perfumes are usually named after pairs of concrete things as opposed to concepts, does anyone have proposed twosomes for this forward thinking perfume?

Vote for Change

2008-11-03T21:13:00.004-09:00

Beige de Chanel

2008-11-03T19:56:00.006-09:00

There are natural materials we tend to consider artificial because we have used them so often that they seem like our inventions. When I think of silk or leather, I think clothes, not animal skins or mulberry and worms. Wood is houses. Resin is incense. Even certain flowers evoke cleansers or shampoo rather than a living thing. When perfume or art is abstract, there is more room for personal interpretation. In Beige, I smell a dusting of powdered sugar, the chill of snow, a blonde, candied jasmine that instead of warming and blossoming turns unripe and fruits into an irrepressible scent of green banana. With Beige, Jacques Polge spins frangipani, freesia, hawthorn, and honey into one of these cultivated emanations that we have come to think of as endemic to the house of Chanel. Just as the author was a ghost in Flaubert's art, Chanel hides the primary materials of Beige behind a deceptively innocuous facade of elegance.

Photo: Unfinished Temple by Cait Shortell

Viva the Axolotl!

2008-11-03T12:26:00.005-09:00

Once, these carnivorous amphibians swarmed in the great lake system around Mexico City. They are amazing because they appear to smile and retain the ability to regrow amputated limbs throughout adulthood. Like the beluga and the polar bear, efforts are being made to protect them as they reach extinction in the wild.

Even in Alaska, There is Hope for Change

2008-11-03T11:46:00.006-09:00

AK: McCain 47, Obama 44 (Hays-11/2)By Eric Dienstfrey
Hays Research (D)
11/2/08; 400 Adults, 5%
Mode: Live Telephone Interviews
Alaska
McCain 48, Obama 45 (8/9: Obama 45, McCain 40)
Sen: Begich (D) 49, Stevens (R-i) 42
At-Large: Berkowitz (D) 49, Young (R-i) 43
By Eric Dienstfrey on November 3, 2008 3:11 PM

© 2008 Pollster.com

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

2008-11-02T00:04:00.003-08:00

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Photo: Lost Cat by Cait Shortell

Stop Coping

2008-11-01T12:39:00.004-08:00

People say Albert Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." A few days after I heard this on the radio, I awoke realizing that I have been trained to solve problems or win arguments by turning the same weapons of corrosive unconcern or criticism used against me on my imagined opponents. What I call "mirror warfare" is used to our detriment in legal disputes and our most intimate relationships. Fighting this way is encouraged in the law and can result in great success. If you simply repeat your opponent's premises and point out her own failure to meet her own professed standards, you will likely prevail. But apply that procedure to love and you have unyielding coldness that withers hearts, most obviously your own. What is lost when you show no weakness and go for the jugular? The opportunity to understand the cause of the conflict and solve it at its core.

Photo: Stop Cope by Cait Shortell

Mood Altering Meme

2008-10-25T12:24:00.009-08:00

My dear e-friend Ayala Sender of Ayala's Smelly Blog has tagged me to name six things about myself for your reading pleasure. I woke up today in a foul mood, so her invitation was the perfect chance for me to adjust my attitude.

Six Things About Me

First, A copy of the novel Kiki Strike The Empress's Tomb is to my right, alongside a (2) nautical themed demitasse cup of Bluebottle Coffee's A16 blend coffee that tastes, inexplicably, of cardamom. Next to this is (3) a postcard of Delacroix's Liberty Leads the People in a burlwood frame. (4) My firstborn son, Roquefort, the west highland white terrier, lounges in his circus cage. (5) A big abstract painting that I used to view from my bedroom window on Pine Street in San Francisco at the artist's studio across the street hangs behind me. Much further behind me across Cook Inlet is (6) Mount Susitna, or Sleeping Lady.

Now that you know what's about me, I will invite six others to join in this folderol in the hopes that it will amuse you as much as it did me.

Rules I despise rules. What's to be done about it, though, right?
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

I hereby tag Liz of Gastronomy Domine,Denyse of Grain de Musc, Marina and Tom of Perfume Smellin' Things, Jamie and Vonn of Isengard.gov or wherever they want to post it while concealing their true identities and well, I'm kind of tired of rules, dealing with rules all week long, so that's all for now, folks.

To all of you surprised to see a new post on my long neglected blog, please leave a comment with six things about you. Please tell me what delights have been making your life worth living lately, from music to art to perfume to politics and the demise of your enemies. Go nuts.

Fight Voter Suppression for a Fair Election!

2008-10-16T12:30:00.004-08:00

The upcoming election is more important than any in my lifetime. Up here in Alaska, I know of one person who was forced to vote a "questioned" ballot in my precinct because her driver's license address did not match her registration. That is one of the many forms of voter suppression.

Wikipedia defines voter suppression as:

the use of governmental power, political campaign strategy, and private resources aimed at suppressing (i.e. reducing) the total vote of opposition candidacies instead of attempting to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters. This method is particularly effective if a significant amount of voters are intimidated individually because the voter might not consider his or her single vote important.

We can prevail over voter supppression to protect our votes, whatever they may be. Please visit the Voter Suppression Wiki. On that site, you can:

1. LEARN what voter suppression is
2. REPORT incidents
3. ACT to protect votes

The Voter Suppression Action Center allows you to:

check your registration and know your rights. Voters Unite has a state-by-state list of how to check that you're registered, or use Vote For Change's online form. Elections 101 page is a good place to go to start learning more about your rights -- and make sure to have their 1-866-OUR-VOTE and 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA hotline numbers with you when you go to vote.

spread the word. Make sure our friends and family have double-checked their registration and know where they're voting. Share this page and other resources with your friends. If you're a blogger or journalist, write about voter suppression and the grassroots election protection movement -- and let your readers know what they can do about it.

get involved. Introduce yourself and help out with the Voter Suppression Wiki, volunteer as a pollworker, or join in one of the many other great projects working to bring "one person one vote" closer to reality.

Specific Action Campaigns Underway
Color Of Change - Demand McCain stand up against Michigan GOP's threat to challenge home foreclosure victims
Progressive Future - Get Their Hands Off Our Votes Petition
"We'll send the petition to the chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties in every state. It's our way of telling them: We're watching. We're spreading the word. And we're not going to let you get away with it."

Steal Back Your Vote - a new voter guide from journalist Greg Palast

This Sublime Alaskan Crater

2008-10-10T09:10:00.002-08:00

Photo: Anchorage Daily News

Mansion for Mavericks

2008-10-06T20:00:00.002-08:00

Be Spring Now. I insist.

2008-04-17T23:53:00.009-08:00

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)

2008-04-15T21:51:00.003-08:00

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

2008-04-14T23:34:00.009-08:00

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

2008-04-09T11:37:00.004-08:00

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

2008-04-07T22:07:00.004-08:00

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

2008-04-06T16:40:00.006-08:00

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

2008-03-09T21:36:00.005-08:00

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

2008-02-27T17:34:00.004-09:00

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

2008-02-21T16:37:00.005-09:00

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 Eau 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

2007-03-23T13:46:00.002-08:00

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

2007-03-23T13:45:00.004-08:00

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

2007-03-23T13:44:00.002-08:00

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

2007-03-06T17:38:00.001-09:00

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

2007-02-21T11:50:00.001-09:00

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.

Perfume Bores Me ... Rien Entrances Me.

2007-02-16T19:28:00.001-09:00

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

2007-01-09T23:37:00.001-09:00

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

2007-01-07T15:47:00.001-09:00

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

2007-01-03T00:44:00.001-09:00

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

2007-01-02T01:29:00.001-09:00

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

2006-12-29T09:17:00.001-09:00

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

2006-11-29T18:02:00.001-09:00

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

2006-11-27T01:06:00.001-09:00

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

2006-11-23T10:13:00.002-09:00

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."

Givaudan Buys ICI Perfume Unit Quest for $2.3 Billion

2006-11-22T13:14:00.001-09:00

Now that Givaudan has acquired Quest, I wonder what effect we'll see in the realm of fine fragrances. Reports on the acquisition indicate that the sale will make Givaudan the industry leader in fragrances. It remains to be seen what will be the impact on the creation of perfume. Does the acquisition of a prominent perfume company mean that the perfumers who worked for Quest will now work for Givaudan? Will Quest retain whatever distinct identity or hallmark it formerly had in the market? Will noses be "monetized" along with the rest of company assets? Feel free to comment, speculate or share anonymous industry intelligence on this issue below.

Sources: Reuters and Bloomberg

Wildcrafted Scents from Juniper Ridge

2006-11-16T20:28:00.001-09:00

The woods have gone to my head. That must be the explanation for my mad passionate affair with Juniper Ridge. Or it could be just that these products smell fantastic. All the items are wildcrafted, which means harvested from the wilderness in a sustainable manner. 10% of their business profits go to groups that help defend western wilderness. The devoted folks who run this small business drag giant tree branches from the wild wild West and fashion them into all kinds of stuff to drink, display and to scent the home and clothes. They sell the most gorgeously fragrant wreaths, teas, soaps, saches, wild herb tinctures, and incense you can find that combine elegance with true wildness.
Their website features products made from a variety of trees including California bay laurel, Cedar, Desert pinon, Douglas fir, Huckleberry, Juniper, Prickly pear, Sweetgrass, and White Sage. They have products and gift packages to inspire nostalgia for all your old western homes, from Douglas Fir idylls of the Northwest, to Marin County Manzanita to Pinon and Sage scented New Mexico. I first noticed their soaps on sale at Beautyhabit and tried quite a few. I loved the California Bay Laurel but my favorite may be the exotic Port Orford Cedar, also called "Ginger Cedar." It's got an inimitably spicy scent that caused me to pop for wild herb sachets in that scent as well as the beautiful glycerin glazed Siskiyou wreath of the same provenance. Luckily I also investigated the Christmas Fir sachet, which smells exactly and poignantly like a Christmas Tree. What strikes me about this line is its ingenuity in delivering such authentic and lasting scents. Juniper Ridge treats their wreaths with glycerin so they retain their live color and last for 1-2 years. These wreaths don't have that dreaded dried flower smell; they transport you to the outdoors. You can choose to immerse yourself in one particular tree, like I did with my recent order, or display more Catholic tastes. Hell, they even sell Alaskan Birch Syrup, which I love to use in a Birch Syrup Creme Brulee.

They have high quality incense if you like that and rare teas made from sweet young Douglas Fir tips and White Sage and Mint. Juniper Ridge started as a vendor at the Berkeley Farmer's Market. They still sell their products at a variety of Bay Area Farmer's Markets (click here for Farmer's Market Calendar). To order, visit the Juniper Ridge website call 1-800-205-9499 or visit Beautyhabit for select products. My next visit to a Bay Area Farmer's Market will definitely involve a little Juniper Ridge shopping spree. And you'd think living in Alaska I'd get enough of this kind of stuff. It must be good. It is.
Image Credits: All of the above images are from the Juniper Ridge Website and Blog. The first image is "Jane Cutting Juniper," which shows the wildcrafting in process. The second is the remarkably lovely Mt. Tamalpais Wreath, which includes Manzanita twigs, Golden Chinquapin leaves, dried and preserved Coyote Brush flowering branch tips, and the last is a table covered with gift packs including sachets, soaps, incense and teas.

LE LABO HOSTS SELL NOTHING PERFUME WORKSHOP!

2006-11-15T10:42:00.001-09:00

On the heels of the Day of the Dead installation, here's another learning experience in the world of perfume from LE LABO, who just sent out this announcement:

"As an echo of the Buy Nothing Day which is an informal day of protest against consumerism, Le Labo decided to do the "SELL NOTHING DAY." That specific day, our NOLITA boutique at 233 Elizabeth Street, New York, NY 10012 will sell nothing but knowledge, and share its passion with everybody. Because "the more you know, the less you need", we believe that the more you know about perfume, the less you need a naked girl on a ad page or Calvin Klein on a bottle to choose a perfume: you'll be able to make the difference between an industrialized mass-marketed perfume and a high end creation that is freshly hand made. We have decided to do this on BLACK FRIDAY, the busiest shopping day of the year. So on November 24th, we have decided to slow down....as Walter Hagen suggests "you are only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry, and be sure to take the time to smell the flowers along the way".

We invite everybody to come on that date for a day of workshop where you will learn more about perfume making."

LE LABO tel:(212)219-2230, fax: (212)219-2231

Dia de los Muertos Scent Altar

2006-11-03T18:35:00.002-09:00

In Mexico it is said that we die not once, but three separate deaths. The first death is when our bodies cease to function; the second death comes when the body is lowered into the ground and returned to earth; and the third death, the most definitive death, is when there is no one to remember us.

The scent altar, an installation of nine fragrances for Day of the Dead, was inspired by the need to obtain traditional holiday items that weren't readily available in the fall in Alaska, like marigolds. The scarcity of such items evolved to inspire the idea that hundreds of visitors to the installation smelled before them November 2 and 3 at a downtown Anchorage art space.

With the consultation of perfumer Yann Vasnier, Caitlin Shortell and Indra Arriaga created nine single note scents for our altar: marigolds; chocolate with cinnamon; beeswax candles; coffee; the Mexican fruit tecojotes used in a traditional holiday tea and candies; orange; anise for the holiday breads called semas and teas; panela, the solid molasses; and dry palm leaf, used to build the framework of traditional altars. These nine perfumes symbolize the soul's journey from life to death and beyond on the first nine days after death. The altar in the photo shows how we placed each scent inside wooden boxes that bore a miniature painting that represented each of the fragrances.

In Mexico, the first nine days after death are thought to be the most painful for the departed. For nine straight days people pray around the clock for the soul of the deceased. The scent altar is intended as an olfactory prayer or vigil with scented offerings to delight both the living and the dead. With these evocative scents, we hope to create and enrich our collective olfactory memory, to prevent that third and most painful death, the death of forgetting.

The scent altar's success with children and adults was proof positive that fragrance is a most accessible artform. Compared to many other art show openings where people can appear perplexed or nonplussed by the artist's intent, people instantly grasped the use and pleasure of the scent altar. Our youngest visitors, members of a folkloric dance troupe, were very hands-on with the installation and had strong reactions due to their sensitive noses. Many adults who live in Alaska but hail from points south, said they thought the installation was a delight and transported them home with its atmosphere of local Mexican fruits like tecojotes.

I am thankful to Yann Vasnier for his assistance and consultation and would definitely like to try mount more fragrance installations in the future.

Tuberose 40 by Le Labo

2006-10-29T11:42:00.001-09:00

Tuberose 40 (Alberto Morillas) is an intense white floral citrus tonic that is only available for purchase on the premises at Le Labo's New York store. The company plans to release other scents exclusive to its stores in Paris, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Dallas in the future.

The market seems to grow endless mutations in order to pique our interest. Sometimes the market spawns a truly unique perfume. Other times the hawkers try to get our attention with packaging or the marketing strategy. And sometimes, as with Tuberose 40, a company combines a novel marketing gimmick and an innovative juice and succeeds in getting the attention of even the most jaded of noses. Tuberose 40, Le Labo's first perfume exclusive to a bricks and mortar store, is that sort of perfume.

The New York juice combines a sharp green sweet citrus feel as in Frederic Malle Cologne Bigarade with a fat twinkling star of tuberose. The result is bracing and rich enough to make you feel faint. With a few minutes on the skin, the perfume settles into a buttery musky finish. Tuberose 40 strikes me as quite feminine, but it would be interesting to see how it performs on different people's skin, male and female. I know it's supposed to be for New York, but Tuberose 40 seems like a perfume for California or Mexico, with its citrus zest and lusty crinoline ruffle of tuberose.

Tuberose 40 is available at Le Labo's New York store at $230 for 50ml and $360 for 100ml. Visit Le Labo for more information about the Le Labo line.

Guerlain Jicky

2006-10-25T23:12:00.001-08:00

Refreshing and decayed, sweet and bitter, Jicky is both a rakish eau de cologne and a feminine delight of the patisserie.

As brilliantly as it evokes the patisserie, Jicky suggests the boudoir or the toilette with its rich floral notes and animalic base. Jicky's lasting appeal is in its metamorphosis from clean to sweet to effulgent and ribald. It begins with the bright astringency of lavender, lemon, mandarin, and bergamot of an English garden then stoops to the round, sumptuous accords of orris, jasmine, patchouli, rose, vetiver and a base of leather, amber, civet, tonka, incense, and benzoin.

Fans get rabid about what formulation of Jicky is best -- eau de toilette, eau de parfum and parfum, to name the most common weights. It is a matter of taste, with people of taste generally falling in lock step after the scenterati to prefer the parfum or extrait for its depth, balance and the richness of its animalic notes. I adore the parfum, but the eau de toilette has an herbal brightness that highlights the Englishness of the composition neatly.

In Jicky we breathe elemental smells: the freshness of nature, the sweet luxury of pastry, as well as the intimate smells of sex and the profane airs of what we leave behind.

Image credit: Bayreuth University Chemistry

L'Artisan Parfumeur Fleur de Narcisse

2006-10-16T17:56:00.001-08:00

Fleur de Narcisse is a flower that's scrubbed clean and back in the bush after a binge on booze and smokes in town. It's scotch soaked leather, damp, honeyed hay, green sap, the ripeness of moosehide and animal sinews from freshly woven baskets. A smoky, difficult virility blossoms into a green floral and fades to a distant snowdrift of ivory soap. Fall asleep in girlish solitude wearing Fleur de Narcisse; you wake up sniffing for the invisible man whose scent clings to your skin. The dregs of this fragrance are heavy on the leather and blond tobacco of real man land.

The rustic experience offered by Fleur de Narcisse is perversely exorbitant. Fleur de Narcisse is one of L'Artisan Parfumeur's single harvest limited release fragrances, so it goes for upwards of $300. L'Artisan Parfumeur used notes of narcissus from Lozère, France, hay, hyacinth, blond tobacco, iris, blackcurrant bud, moss and leather. This is one of those scents that evokes disparate associations for me, many of them surely unintended by the perfumer. Whenever I try Fleur de Narcisse, I can't help but think of the toy dogsled made from a caribou jaw I used as a doll cradle. Jaws have the natural shape to rock a baby.

Image Credit: Photo of toy qamutiq from the blog for the Making of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

Stars and Prizes: Criticizing Criticism

2006-10-12T11:22:00.001-08:00

Today, Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for literature. Some see the prize as a western organization's political choice; Pamuk was prosecuted in Turkey earlier this year for insulting the nation when he acknowledged the Turkish genocide of Armenians and Kurds. In spite of such controversy, Pamuk has spoken for Istanbullus when he described hüzün, a collective melancholy that he claims has pervaded Istanbul since the demise of the Ottoman Empire.

Whether you side with Pamuk or the Turkish nationalists about the facts of history, Pamuk's work must be recognized for its ability to summon the complex feelings of a city and a culture. Pamuk writes of Hüzün, a complicated and nuanced kind of melancholy that can't be reduced to a political slogan. Nor can hüzün be taken up or decried as a political position. Instead, Pamuk's fiction and his recent book Istanbul enervate and move the reader, create a physical and emotional atmosphere. Prizes be damned; let the reader decide to acknowledge hüzün with a nod or a tear.

Great literature and art does what Pamuk does when he conjures Istanbul's hüzün. When reading the news of Pamuk's Nobel prize, it occurred to me that great perfume works the same kind of magic. With its wordless symphony of notes, a perfume can conjure a milieu or a feeling. Luca Turin has spoken of Guerlain's Mitsouko as a perfume that represents the scents of the 19th century bourgeois household with its furniture and gastronomical delights. Time and again, perfume writers liken fragrances to particular times and places that they evoke for the wearer. Criticism will always try and ultimately fail to capture the artist's virtuosity.

In this time of seemingly endless military and cultural conflict, the wordless arts such as perfume have genuine appeal for their ability to summon a milieu or feelings without giving any rhetorical foothold for prosecution or argument. It's pretty hard to argue with a perfume's politics. Sure, the likes of Chandler Burr, Luca Turin and fellow perfume critics debate the meaning of perfume all the time. Yet, the beauty and value of perfume as an art form is that it evades interpretation. No matter how witty we are with our perfume rants, our words remain flat and scentless on the page.

The New York Times' announcement of Chandler Burr as Perfume Critic and the star rating system is both exciting and somewhat farcical because perfume is too subjective and wordless an art to judge by a quantitative standard. The star system for perfume will suffer the same attacks as the Nobel Prize for Literature or Peace. Perfume lovers will always quarrel over the purported objectivity of a star rating system. Who is the Nobel Foundation or The New York Times to tell us who best chronicles hüzün or which perfume merits a five star rating?

What's more troubling about the whole business of prizes and stars for my most beloved books and perfumes? Is it that objective rating systems oppress us with their strained attempt to be authoritative? Or is it that an objective or authoritative rating can never be a satisfactory description of a true work of art?

I can't choose which is my primary objection. If I did choose, I would likely change my mind down the road. In the meantime, I will continue to follow the bestowal of prizes and stars as a devoted and outspoken gadfly. And I pose a question to my fellow interested spectators: what perfume summons the feeling of hüzün?

Let Me Play the Lion by Isabelle Doyen for LesNez

2006-10-09T18:29:00.002-08:00

Let Me Play the Lion is the most wearable scent of the three first LesNez scents by Isabelle Doyen. At the same time, it is an extraordinary set of contradictions. At once dry as the dusty road and wet as a summer sambuca, Let Me Play the Lion is closer to a weather zone than a perfume. Doyen's composition is sweet, spicy, austerely woodsy, and hot as fire. If I had to guess, I'd say the spicemix here is dominated by a sharp peppercorn and what smells like anise or cinnamon or nutmeg. Doyen offers a poetic rather than qualitative description for the scent, so my amateur nose is left to guess at the notes. The effect is surprising; the scent's many aspects unfurl with my breath as I snuff my own skin. Without warning a sweet cool plume of scent gives way to a flame that dries up the inside of my nose like a sauna. A honeyed sweetness mediates the dry peppery blasts. The drydown is a quiet base of woods. The title's analogy to Shakespeare's lion in A Midsummer Night's Dream is apt; Let Me Play the Lion is an olfactory roar.

Let Me Play the Lion is available only from the LesNez website.

Image Credit: Let Me Play the Lion by Arthur Rackham from Antique Prints

L'Antimatiere by Isabelle Doyen for Lez Nez: Topless Perfume

2006-10-05T06:26:00.001-08:00

To trace the influence of classic perfume on contemporary releases is one of my favorite pastimes. To test something strange and original is a rarer pleasure. L'Antimatiere is unconventional to its core. Made with a precious infusion of ambergris and no top notes, L'Antimatiere defies expectations. It begins with alcohol and smells vaguely of a salty ocean wave for several minutes until its animal bouquet unfolds like the scent of sweet animal body warmth. It doesn't smell like anything but what it is, really, but the closest thing to it is the irresistible scent of familiar skin or fur in the darkest sleep.

L'Antimatiere suggests where other perfumes declaim. Its creator, Isabelle Doyen, calls it "{A}n invisible ink that leaves a trace, foreseen rather than felt, persistent yet whispered, like a creased bed linen scent wandering along your curves..." Rene Schifferle of Les Nez says that Doyen has been working on L'Antimatiere for a decade. It is available only via the Les Nez website. The perfume resembles no other I've tried. I think its subtlety may be lost on the hoi polloi, a group of which I am a card carrying member. Yet several moments into wearing L'Antimatiere it blooms and it's the sort of olfactory refrain I can't get out of my head for the next day, even after its quiet denouement.

In the world of perfume, apparently top notes are the crowd pleasing junk food, the "hook." L'Antimatiere foregoes a hook and proposes an unadorned idea where other perfumes tell a marketably fragrant story. Although I believe the highest art both entertains and challenges, L'Antimatiere is a project in minimalism well worth a try for its whispered animalic confession.

Image Credit: Sculpture Bottle for Les Nez Perfumes by Gillian White: "On the Wind."

The Unicorn Spell by Isabelle Doyen for Lez Nez

2006-10-01T20:25:00.001-08:00

slugs back a shot of vodka, no, gin, and licks his lips. The green bean tells the bartender to send a drink to the end of the bar for a creamy iris root. The green bean sidles up to the iris and he shivers at her frosty demeanor. At first, she's cold as the grave. But a few sips and card tricks later, the green bean and the iris root are intertwined in a lovelock spurting candy coated velvet violets.
The Unicorn Spell
The Unicorn Spell is one of the strangest perfumes I have ever smelled. Stranger still, this magical beast is the work of Isabelle Doyen, the talented nose behind a host of patently pretty Annick Goutal perfumes. I have long admired Doyen's work at Annick Goutal. None of what I have enjoyed with Songes and Mandragore could have prepared me for the three creations for Les Nez: The Unicorn Spell, Let Me Play the Lion, and L'Antimatiere. All three are utterly unconventional.

The Unicorn Spell jolted me out of my olfactory torpor. At first, I found it disturbing the way the scent of frosted leaves smelled of decay, difficult like a green bean or a green bell pepper. Yet, The Unicorn Spell etched itself on my brain with its uniqueness. Repeated tests unfurled a frozen autumnal berry tartness and a distinct scent of upturned roots. Snow glistened on the scent's surface as it melted on my skin. The green notes are not fresh but both cold and dark, like leaves that have suffered an early frost. A hint of cream and powder in the body allows the scent to settle into the sweet floral warmth of violets that inevitably fades into a haunting breath of a half forgotten daydream. The scent is magical, but like a unicorn it can't be held in captivity for long. The more I wear The Unicorn Spell the more curious I become to unravel its mystery.

The Unicorn Spell is available on Les Nez website.

Image Credit: Two fragments of a lost tapestry from the Unicorn Tapestries, ca. 1495–1505 from The Metropolitan Museum of Art