Month: January 2011

The Red Velvet Revel


– a review of Olympic Orchids’ ‘Red Cattleya’

Yours truly is a biohazard. I have ten black thumbs not counting my toes, and my one living houseplant is a rose geranium named Vibeke, who resembles something out of a Dr. Seuss story, smells utterly fantastic and is nearly immortal. Like her inconstant gardener, she has a post-punk attitude problem. She simply refuses to quit.

So you can imagine my profound admiration for Doc Elly, who not only grows orchids in Washington State, she makes perfumes out of them, too. One of those was a sample of her ‘Red Cattleya’.

Scented orchids, I’ve come to learn, change their scent as they bloom, growing headier or heavier, fruitier or more indolic, evolving much the same way a perfume does on your skin. You would think that with an orchid such as the all-out velvety onslaught of that Red Cattleya pictured above, the perfume itself would also be something out of the ordinary.

You would be right. It is.

Right out of the bottle, and with no preconceived notions whatsoever, I’m very much reminded of a classical French perfume, the kind they used to make before the big, bad IFRA restrictions took over. Back in the days when perfume was opulent and rich and rewarding, the ultimate gilding of the lily, or as Coco Chanel put it so succinctly, the only accessory that mattered.

Dream of a time when being a woman was a Serious Business, ca. 1950s, say, when getting out the door in the morning involved things like foundation garments and heels, eyebrow pencils and pancake makeup, hats and gloves. You know, back when women were supposed to look like women rather than overgrown schoolgirls playing with Mommy’s makeup.

Just as a red cattleya is a glamour puss of an orchid, Red Cattleya is a glamour puss of a perfume. I wouldn’t wear this to the office, but I’d certainly wear it to the opera. Provided the opera were something romantic like Verdi or Mozart, rather than Wagner. This is a done-up, updo orchid in a French twist, diamond earrings and an opulent 1950s Balenciaga creation in red silk velvet, strapless, naturellement!

It is intensely, opulently fruity, Floral with a capital F and more than a tad exotic – there is spice in the mix somewhere. It is, in fact, every bit as gaudy and showy as the orchid that named it. In fact, I could well imagine this orchid – or this perfume – scenting the conservatory that is part of the setting of Oscar Wilde’s “A Picture of Dorian Gray”, where Dorian in his innocence makes a terrible mistake…A Victorian conservatory, then, with blooms pillaged from the far-flung ends of the Empire, outrageous, show-stopping blooms that command your attention in an instant, and are ever so slightly unsettling in their overt sensuality.

Fruity, yes, but please forget everything you know about that horrid category “fruity-floral”. This is so heady, lush and ripe I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone under at least twenty-five.

I detect apricot, a whiff of heliotrope, perhaps, vanilla, rose, violet, and raspberry, all of them blended so well and so smoothly that they are a lot more than the sum of their parts – just as women should be. I say this not because I make any distinction between the masculine and the feminine, but because this is incredibly…femme, incredibly alluring, all dressed up in that glorious Balenciaga and with everywhere to go!

The sillage is stunning, even when dabbed with a cotton swab, the lasting power fully up to an evening at the opera and cocktails beforehand. What happens after that is entirely up to you!

I could imagine this being worn by Lisa Fonssagrives in her day, in that breathtaking Balenciaga gown, the epitome of feminine devastation and elegance with a capital E. For my own part, I begin to wonder about the strangest things…something in this perfume makes me want to…sit up straighter, wear gloves (because a lady must be careful where she leaves her dabs!), put up my hair in a French twist and finally hunt down that perfect shade of red lipstick.

Or maybe not. Maybe I should wear this the next time I go out for a date and report back on the results. Too bad the date is platonic, although he is a Scorpio, so you never know…

Red Cattleya is Red. Lush. Female. In the flower, and in real life!

Above all, I can remember a quote I wrote down a long time ago, which jumps into my mind as I write, and which seems perfectly appropriate for Red Cattleya:

“When two friends understand each other perfectly, the words are soft and strong like an orchid’s perfume.”


Like this orchid, and this perfume!

For another angle on “Red Cattleya“

Image of Lisa Fonssagrives, 1951 by Horst P. Horst

Where the Wild Things Are


– a review of Olympic Orchids’ “Olympic Rainforest”

Surrounded as we are by all the questionable odds and ends that in the Western hemisphere encompass the term “civilization”, it can sometimes be easy to forget that in spite of all we do or have done to “tame” them, there are still wild and untouched spots on the globe where the wind still whispers, and trees still gather to sing the songs trees always seem to sing to me.

When I think of primeval places, wild and untouched forests without the human stain, places that epitomize “forest”, an immediate picture springs to mind – the temperate rainforest. They are nothing like the tropical jungles we normally associate with the term. Mosses and ferns grow so prolifically they almost take on a sentient life form of their own, ferns so lush, so large and so green it seems they could easily eat you under a full moon, and a few hours later, all that would remain would be one heavenly scented fougère burp, a sigh, a rustle of the trees above and order is once again restored – the order of the forest, where humanity is but a passing intrusion, until the next full moon. If any location on Earth could embody J. R. R. Tolkien’s Entwood to me and make me utterly believe in the existence of Ents, it would be a temperate rainforest.

Such a forest is what Doc Elly of Olympic Orchids pays homage to in her perfume “Olympic Rainforest” – an ode to the Olympic National Forest of Washington, and the largest expanse of temperate rainforest anywhere on Earth. I have never been to Washington, never seen that timeless forest or those monster ferns and mosses, but it just so happens that a member of my household went to college at Evergreen State in Olympia and has many happy memories of the Olympic peninsula. He was the obvious test subject. With no knowledge of perfume as such – beyond the standard male “I know what I like”, and with only the name to go by, his first statement was: “Oh. Oh! Oh, I like this! I’d wear this! This is great!” He promptly demanded I apply more – so I did. These few hours later, I have not heard a word of complaint, apart from the occasional “I still like it”.

“Olympic Rainforest” is a fougère. Indeed, with those full moon man-eating ferns, how could it not be? But unlike so many other fougères of tarnished reputation and cursed ubiquity (Drakkar Noir, I’m looking at you!), this has nothing of the barbershop vibe so many of them nosedive into. This fougére is not your standard Harris tweed-wearing, well-mannered British gentleman exuding stiff-upper-lip suavity.

Instead, this fragrant green imp likes to take a walk where the wild things are, out where nature is never tamed or subjugated. It walks that verdant, fern-encrusted path where nature awes the human with its scale, its greenness and the splendor of its trees, that atavistic breath of growth and life that seems so much larger and more timeless than our own, exhaling the kind of oxygen that really does recharge all your interior batteries. And did I mention that just like the Olympic peninsula itself, it is…green?

Straight out of the bottle, there is that kick of lavender that characterizes so many fougères, but also a citrusy swirl, too, not lemon but bergamot, a bergamot with teeth, and I like bergamot with dentition. Beware the ferns!
Juniper sneaks in on stealthy feet, waking me all the way up to that atavistic forest, and a hint of wood, old-growth wood, rich in the centuries-old sap of the seasons, the quickening of spring and the slow drip of autumn, the deep, deep sleep of winter and the still of a breathless, warm summer day in the shade. There are florals in the mix somewhere, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you precisely what they are. Cedar I found and maybe a dash of pine, a smooth, fresh cedar without any of that pencil-shaving edge that Atlas cedar can have. It smells redder and somehow richer, the pine without any aerosol associations whatsoever.

I’m reminded of a few lines from an old, old Welsh poem…The Câd Goddeu, or The Battle of the Trees, from the Book of Taliesin:

When the trees were enchanted,

In the expectation of not being trees,

The trees uttered their voices

From strings of harmony,

The disputes ceased.

Breathe in. Breathe out. You are at one with the trees, the ferns, with every living thing that grows around you.

‘Olympic Rainforest’ is incredibly well-blended and tenacious – there are still verdant, woody traces over nine hours after I applied it on my skin.

If you love fougères, if you love to evoke that call of the wild and take an olfactory hike in a virgin, untouched forest, you will love this. I do, but it veers just a little too masculine to my nose. On my roommate, it’s heavenly. It must be all that testosterone. Call it the Green Man.

Thank you, Doc Elly, for that walk on the real wild side, and I enjoyed every minute of it! Somehow, ferns will never appear quite the same again…

If this is a taste of things to come – as indeed it is, since I have plans to review as many of Olympic Orchid’s scents as I can – then my nose is in for several treats. Doc Elly is undoubtably a perfume talent to watch for – and I haven’t even started on those orchids yet!

When I do…watch this space! 😉

Image: The Quinault Rainforest, WA