As we all know, fragrance the exclusive domain of the fancy glass bottles in the perfume department. So many things in our daily lives – candles, detergents, lotions – have carefully crafted scents. Usually such scents take a back seat, serving as the muzak of the olfactory atmosphere. But every now and then, one of these unassuming smells catches the nose of a scent enthusiast and becomes a guilty pleasure. One of my personal favourites is classic Chapstick. It is really a non-scent and I realize that expressing an affinity for it is somewhat akin to revealing that one’s favorite color is beige. Still, I rather like the vague jar-of-ointment-being-opened-in-the-next-room smell that emanates from a freshly opened tube. Then every now and then, an unexpected scent leaps from the background demanding your attention, leading you to ponder why someone isn’t bottling this. This recently occurred when I received a free sample of daily hand moisturizer for Sephora by OPI. This lotion has one of the most intriguing floral scents I’ve ever come across, mainly because at first it has hardly anything to do with the blossoms of flowers. Instead it is the smell of freshly cut stems dripping with water – the very same scent that pervades every flower store. Only when the lotion warms up and sinks into your skin does the fragrance of flowers begin to emerge, developing into the bouquet of long-stem roses and the tingling anticipation leading up to your rendez-vous with its recipient.
Guilty Pleasures November 19, 2009
Theme and Variations November 19, 2009
In a world where so many creators of fragrances remain anonymous, the fact that Jean-Claude Ellena’s name is so frequently attached to his perfumes provides fragrance fans the opportunity to join in his artistic explorations. Ellena is a man of themes and variations. He introduces a theme in one scent, such as the initial juicy shock of an overripe mango in Un jardin sur le nil, and continues to vary and develop theme within a different context in a subsequent perfume, the suggestion of juicy overripeness in the drydown of Eau de Pamplemousse Rose.
My favorite of Ellena’s themes and variations occurs with two of his lesser known perfumes each created for a different perfume house. His Osmanthus by the Different Company, an outfit Ellena created before joining Hermès, came first. The eponymous Asian flower continued to provide inspiration when he subsequently created Osmanthe Yunnan for Hermès. In both of these fragrances the delicate citrus notes of the flower play a leading role. Osmanthus is very simply a reproduction of the plant following its botanical processes starting with the warm sunshine, which causes chemical reactions within the leaves giving energy to the buds that gradually unfurl and produce their enticing scent. Osmanthe Yunnan is somewhat more refined and more removed from the actual flower itself because with this version Ellena has paired the floral scent with the creamy, earthy flavor of tea. On skin this pairing comes alive: it is one of the first warm, sunny days of spring and you sitting in an Adirondack chair underneath a giant budding tree sipping a freshly brewed infusion.
Cyclone November 12, 2009
You will be in the right mood to try Cyclone for the first time on an evening when the sky is blood-red with tiny ash particles spewed from a raging forest fire hundreds of miles away. Cyclone is a chaotic captivating whirlwind of a perfume. Brief glimpses, fractured perceptions and vertiginous sensations swirl and overwhelm you. You hear the rumblings of a haphazard gypsy band and catch a momentary vision of bare foot dancers. Amidst the confusion the pungent smell of a campfire hits your nose softened by the hay-like smell of burlap.
As the chaos and confusion subsides, you find yourself left with the feeling of losing your footing. Three women pull you in different directions. Grasping your left hand is a dark and mysterious, musky-smelling gypsy woman. A fair-haired and utterly unattainable woman who smells like finely-milled French lilac soap gently caresses your right hand. A fierce red-headed woman has you by the waist. She is dangerous and as she exhales you smell the slightly metallic odor of blood on her breath.
Bal D’Afrique October 25, 2009
My latest obsession is the Swedish perfume house Byredo. Each one of their eight fragrances is extraordinarily well crafted, like a symphony whose composer combines and balances the timbres of his brass, wind, percussion, and string instruments creating a sonorous orchestration throughout the first, second, and third movement. Also like music, time plays an important role in these perfumes. The metamorphoses undertaken by these fragrances once you spray them on skin keep you captivated, to the point where you find yourself nose to forearm in all sorts of public places: the drug store, the museum, the city bus.
The first perfume I tried on was Bal D’Afrique, which was supposedly inspired by the French infatuation with all things African in the 1920s. This emerges in the form of the contrast between prim and proper and exotic and wild that dominates the first two acts of this perfume. The initial impact of this scent is that of a sun-soaked spice market seen through a chaste veil of white flowers. This slowly transforms into a perfectly milled ivory cake of jasmine soap that washes the lingering scent of spice from your skin. In its final act, Bal D’Afrique transforms into the sweet, gluey, and faintly floral scent exhaled as you flip through the pages of a glossy fashion magazine.
The Unwanted Sample September 25, 2009
Beware, when you go to your nearest department store to try out fragrances, of the unwanted sample. Every couple of months, my mother and I go on such an expedition to try out new scents and rediscover old delights and with more reliability than Old Faithful, the salespeople force samples upon us that are completely unrelated to anything we express an interest in. At best, you might get a small vial of the cheaply and quickly produced ‘seasonal’ variation of a scent you mentioned that you liked. That’s how I procured my Warning Toxic Spill Yellow vial of the summer version of Thierry Mugler’s Alien.
Then there are the samples that both you and the person behind the counter know you’ll never like. They have a giant basket of these miniscule sprayers and the only way to get rid of them is to press them into the hands of any breathing soul that walks within five feet of the counter. On our most recent outing, my mother and I parked ourselves by the Hermès perfumes, sampling everything and discussing the scents with the man and woman working there. In the middle of a conversation on the complexity of these fragrances and how they make everything else smell boring and cheap, the woman interrupts with “And we also have some samples of the latest fragrance from Halston, here, take two!” Even without having just smelled Hermès perfumes, Halston Woman smells boring and cheap. It is also not for anyone over the age of seventeen. This is the fragrance that Stephanie sprays on after her second period gym class and it in lingers in the Girls’ restroom near the locker room.
Midnight Orchid September 12, 2009
In general, I don’t tend to be drawn toward floral scents. Being more attracted to challenging scents such as flesh and decay, I find the generic commercial floral somewhat boring. What’s worse is that once on my skin, these things have the unpleasant habit of turning to pure sugar after about twenty minutes. Every now and then, however, an intriguing floral manages to challenge my prejudice. More often than not, these expectation defying florals are of the oriental variety, meaning that in addition to flowers, they also include a spicy or woody element.
I must admit that I was already predisposed to like Susanne Lang’s Midnight Orchid, even though the title suggested floral leanings. So far every single fragrance in her collection has thrilled my senses. However, I did not expect the emotional power embodied within this scent. I first tried Midnight Orchid on a grey dismal day with a mood to match the weather. This perfume is best worn with a slight shade of melancholia tinged with an over tone of loneliness.
Never have I experienced such an intimate and delicate fragrance. At the start this perfume is heavily dominated by the floral note and is quite cold and distant. As it settles into your skin, it draws you further into itself captivating your attention. The fragrance tells you the story of a crisp but clear night, where an especially tired moon shines pallid rays over a lonely town. Just inside the window of a forlorn young girl’s bedroom lies a finely inlaid wooden box. Although you wouldn’t know as she opens the box because the moon drains the colour from every object it touches, the inside is lined with sapphire crushed velvet and nestled within this velvet is a slightly imperfect pearl.
Plongée August 14, 2009
In French, the verb plonger can mean to plunge, to dive, or to swoop. When made reflexive as in ‘je me suis plongée’ it means ‘to bury oneself’. At the first inhalation, the fragrance Plongée is all about water. (Incidentally, plongée the noun can also mean diving). As you continue to smell the perfume, the scent of water slowly materializes into a drenching evening rainstorm in a busy city.
Suddenly you are plunged into a dark wet November night on Oxford Street in London. It’s pouring and you smell the grit of the city, the spots of gum on the pavement, and the harsh neon signs advertising sixth-form colleges and English courses. Each shop you walk past briefly exhales its own concoction of generic shop fragrance. As Plongée dries down, but it never really ‘dries’ because the rain soaks you to the core, you smell the wool of your companion’s new and first ever winter coat. The two of you have had the most wonderful time searching for the perfect coat and now, though you’ve found it, you’re lingering because you don’t want the day to end. As you walk, you hold hands, but in the innocent way that children do, for interlaced fingers would be too intimate, too precarious.
Rayon de Lune August 8, 2009
At first Rayon de Lune by Bonneville stuns your nose like the crisp dry air assaulting your face as you race up the steep moonlit mountain on the back of a motorcycle. But rather than fear and pain, this scent instills in you a sense of exhilaration and freedom that one can only experience when careening around hairpin curves on a vehicle engineered exclusively for danger and destruction.
The roar of the engine combines with the smell of fuel and the lingering incense in your companion’s hair. You singe your flesh attempting to dismount. By the dry down, you’ve reached the top of the peak and the two of you are nestled in the brittle, dessicated wildgrass searching for constellations. Meanwhile, the burrs are surreptitiously implanting themselves in your clothing.
(Photo courtesy of Jesse Ryan)
L’Air du Temps August 8, 2009
A classic and inspired use of aldehydes, L’Air du Temps by Nina Ricci is pure familial comfort. It evokes a pleasant breakfast you had the last time you visited your parents. Of course due to the aldehydes, golden orange hues play a major role in this perfume, but what is surprising is that the brilliance of the scent is that it is constant from the first instant you spray it in the duty-free shop at the airport to the moment you smell your wrist at the climax of the painfully dull film chosen by the corporate dunces at British Air, in a vain attempt to conjure the warm and loving comfort you’ve just left behind.
All at once you are transported to a bright, lush sunny morning at the breakast table. It’s been raining more than usual, the sunlight filters through the lush vines draped around the East-facing window and you’re drinking orange juice that’s slightly tart, but you like it that way. Mum and Dad are also there and you’ve each claimed your own section of the newspaper. The sweet tang of news paper and ink combine with the musky, animalic scent of the dog on your lap and the citrus flavour in your mouth. And you are happy.
Un parfum des sens & bois July 15, 2009
Generally when we think of woodsy scents we think of forests or antique furniture, or even the pile of split wood for the fireplace stacked behind the log cabin. But the wood in un parfum des sens & bois, one of a brilliant little trio from The Different Company, conjures a rather different image, the violin.
I’ve recently developed an overwhelming infatuation for a strikingly beautiful and talented violinist named Harriet, which may have influenced how I smell this perfume. Though it starts very green, sens& bois dries down to the rich, dark resonant wood of Harriet’s instrument. The tall blonde is on a small, warmly lit stage, playing an Astor Piazzolla tango accompanied by a Serbian accordionist. We smell not only the earthy tang of the spruce and maple in the violin, but perhaps there is also a sweet hint of the rosin on her bow and the slightly waxy scent of her lipstick. On the skin, the fragrance reverberates with the amber tones of her violin’s low register.
