Random.org has spoken, and the winners of The Alembicated Genie’s giveaway draw are…
10 ml of Mohur extrait and a ceramic perfume disk:
Sara
Samples of Mohur Extrait:
Gisela & Silverlily
Please email me before May 28th at thealembicatedgenie@gmail.com with your contact information and address, so I can pass it on to Neela.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the draw for your comments and for enjoying this story/review!
– on the perils of perfume writing
Whether justified or not, I consider myself an extremely privileged perfume writer. Not only am I lucky to have a plethora of dear and generous friends who send me wonders and marvels I might otherwise not know, I have also – rightly or wrongly – managed to make connections with perfumers and perfume houses over the past 3+ years who bear me in mind when new perfumes are released. I doubt it’s simply because of the free press they get, but because they maybe? hopefully? appreciate the idiosyncratic perspective I apply. Or so my vanity tells me.
As for me, I take this as the supreme compliment it surely is. Not only do I have something to look forward to in my mailbox besides bills, I also more often than not look forward to sinking my verbose teeth in these wonders. Because writing about perfume IS a privilege – and how else can I justify my own obsession, if not for the readers who want to know what I’ll write about next?
The thing is, I never know what will happen.
Sometimes, I’ve been borne away on a storied tide of inspiration.
And sometimes…
This post concerns one of those other times.
Usually, I much prefer to write about perfumes that move me and take me places. I prefer to write positive reviews because even if it’s something I would never personally wear, I can at least show the courtesy to attempt to move out of my comfort zone and grasp the concept, the idea of a given perfume.
But every once in a blue moon I encounter something so bad, so terrible, so poorly executed I either hurl myself into a hot Jacuzzi of seething sarcasm or else repress the overpowering urge to throw in the towel and stick to writing Gothic erotica.
Not that long ago, I received a sample of a perfume from an indie perfumer who to the best of my knowledge and research has never been the benefactor of ‘free’ blogger attention. That fact is not the reason I won’t divulge the name or the link. If anything, this blog and the one preceding it have proven my worth and my love of indie perfumery. If perfume bores you these days, I dare say you’re looking in a lot of wrong locations – there is far, far more to perfumery than ‘designer’ or ‘niche’.
What yanked the beard on my personal goat was this: The perfume sample was quite simply one of the shoddiest, shabbiest-made ‘perfumes’ I’ve ever encountered.
How can a perfume be shabby? Simple – it falls apart on impact. Literally.
Believe it or not, perfumes are emphatically engineered. Built from the base notes up, they suspend their materials in mid-air; sometimes, it’s a symphony or a full-blown Met opera production extravaganza in three acts, sometimes a sonata, an impromptu or an etude. Hot messes happen too, and that’s fine so long as they’re unapologetic. So wrong in so many ways can be so very, very right. (Guerlain Insolence, here’s looking at you!)
Well, this particular ‘perfume’ is a sweltering mess of epic proportion. I’ll explain why in a moment, but bear with me.
My happiest moments in reviewing a perfume occur when I’m able to grasp something of the mind behind it. It’s not ‘terroir’, it’s not the overall gist, it’s a fragrant intimation of the soul who conjured it from the depths of his/her creativity – that metaphorical great, cosmic grid all true artists have access to and draw their inspirations from. It’s my obligation to that soul which compels me to write a review and to be as fair and as thorough as I can.
In retrospect, the reviews that have made me happiest to write are the ones where the soul of the perfumer or Creative Director wafted out and pulled at my heartstrings and I feel that I not only grasped the concept, I nailed it.
Or in this instance, nailed it to the Perfume Wall of Shame.
Because this perfume-that-shall-remain-nameless has no soul at all. No whiff of premeditation, no coherence, no personality, and so far as I can determine, it seems to be made by someone who doesn’t even like perfume.
I’ll let that last subclause sink in for a moment.
How in the name of sacred Saint Mary Magdalene – patron saint of perfumes – can anyone claim to make perfumes if they don’t like them – to wear, to sniff, to compose?
(*Bangs head in frustration on laptop keyboard. Deep breath.*)
Ok, then. Supposedly, this is a fougère, that fabled family of perfumes that heralded the advent of modern perfumery as we know it today. I’m no stranger to fougères and love quite a few, whether the amber-carnation-y wonder that is the modern Fougère Royale by Houbigant, vintage Guerlain Jicky, Geoffrey Beene’s Grey Flannel, the fougère-ish, hyper-green, über-plush silk velvet density of Oriza L. Legrand’s Chypre Mousse, the flawlessly sparkling DSH Perfumes’ Passport à Paris or even that Amouage heartbreak-in-a-bottle called Memoir Man.
Well, for about five minutes, it’s true enough.
Ceci est une fougère, biensûr!
All the usual suspects are present and accounted for; lavender, carnation, tonka bean, oakmoss. For about five minutes, I’m quite content among the ferns and flowers. Next, without even the benefit of a shark fin on the horizon, I’m dumped into the sea with the chum wearing this horror story that wants to eat me alive and drag me down to the very depths of the damned below.
I would have thought that with the notes list, it would be impossible to go wrong: tonka bean, oakmoss, lavender, carnation, clary sage, clover.
My mistake. I’ve been spoiled/ruined by all the great things I’ve written about.
One thing I’ve learned since I began to write about perfume is that its greatness or lack thereof stands or falls on its base notes. This is where the engineering, the underpinnings of perfume construction show themselves most clearly.
This is where this ‘perfume’ falls completely apart without even the benefit of scaffolding. And where the anonymous ‘perfumer’ shows a) a lack of coherence b) a lack of understanding just what ‘makes’ a perfume not to mention c) infinitely worse – a lack of even caring.
This lack of consideration takes ‘lax’ to a whole new level of audacity. Instead, it stinks, and not in a good way. The base is bitter, shrill, and obliterates everything that made the first five minutes tolerable.
With just a little more work – and a lot more care – this could have been a perfectly passable perfume. Not ground-breaking, not revolutionary, not edgy – but perfectly acceptable nonetheless.
As it is now, I’m running to apply rubbing alcohol, dish soap and whatever else I can think of to scrub it off with a Brillo pad. (I did that, actually.)
Those sharks will have to live without their teeth in my hide.
More to the point, I won’t deign to give this <cough> creation the publicity I very much doubt it deserves. No names, no links, no anything.
Because this particular ‘fern’ died of a broken, disillusioned heart a long, long time ago. It never did receive a decent burial.
But one thing it does deserve is an epitaph:
To misquote René Magritte…
Ceci n’est fut jamais une fougère.
With thanks to the friend who inspired this review.
– a tale and a review of Neela Vermeire Créations Mohur Extrait
So it had come to this. All her plans, her hopes and her dreams had come to nothing, reduced to ashes by her own brother’s betrayal. Shahryar had lost everything.
The power, the glory and might of the Mughal and all that was India would now pass to Shah Jahan, who had hated her from the moment sixteen years ago she wed Jahangir, who loathed the way she always favored his far more sensible brother Shahryar.
She had gambled everything on Shahryar, and so she too had lost all the power and influence she had acquired these past sixteen tumultuous years. Even her beloved was no more. Then again, perhaps she had lost him long ago to the lures of wine and opium.
Nur Jahan wrapped her shawl around her in the slight chill of this November evening, looked up from the missive in her hand and gazed unseeing at the intricate winding vines and flowers inlaid in the walls of her quarters.
“Majesty…” Akbar, her faithful retainer for several years, interrupted her reverie. “Asaf Khan has proposed that you retire to a palace here in Lahore with your rank and your privileges intact.”
“Has he now?” Nur Jahan had to laugh. “All my privileges, except the one that matters most, which he knows all too well.” She shrugged and knew with the ease of one who had reigned India in deed if not in name for many years that she would never show just how much her brother’s betrayal burned, never show her sorrow for fear Shah Jahan would have yet another weapon to use against her. One he would never hesitate to use.
“And yet, Majesty, would it be so terrible to have the time to dedicate to your interests? Your poetry, your music, your gardens and your perfumes? All without the distractions of rule, of court intrigue and the endless lines of petitioners at the jharoka receptions? You would no longer rule, it is true, but…” Not even Akbar was audacious enough to finish his own thought.
“There are many kinds of power and might, Akbar,” she snapped. At this late hour of the night, her voice showed the slightest hint of strain, as if everything transpired – the Emperor’s capture and death, Shah Jahan’s blatant refusal to obey her command at Kabul and this war of Jahangir’s succession – had somehow caught up with her.
“The power of poetry, the strength we gain from the music we love, the might of a perfect rose…”
There was a thought. Nur Jahan stared again at the letter and saw not the black curves, dots and lines upon lines of doom and defeat, but instead the green leaves and dawn-pink petals of a fragrant rose, diamond droplets of dew glistening in the morning light in its silken folds. Such a rose as Jahangir had given her at Nowruz, the New Year so long ago, when she was no Nur Jahan but merely a widow and a disgraced diwan’s daughter named Mehr-un-Nissa.
What would it be, she wondered, to prove just what power a rose such as that could conceal, to leave as her epitaph not the just the Empress but the very woman she had been?
Very well, she thought. Let Shah Jahan have the Empire. Let him take it and rule it and ruin it with his extravagant ways and vaunting ambition.
She, once Empress of all India, would find her solace and her sustenance in her poetry, in her gardens and her charities, and in the perfumes she so loved, to dedicate her days and nights to the pursuit of a beauty so flawless, it could be none other than her own.
And so it came to be in the years that followed her exile from rule that she strove to capture all her myriad selves in her roses and in the perfumes those roses made, to somehow wrap up her essence as the epitaph she would choose to leave behind. It should contain the sharp, spicy scent of cardamom and coriander and pepper, to recall the laughing, lighthearted girl she once was so long ago in faraway Kandahar, perhaps with the jasmines she remembered blooming in the courtyard, and hints of the almond sweetmeats and pastries Jahangir once so loved to feed her. A dusting, like the powdered sugar on loukhoum, of the violets presented to her by those comical English in their outlandish garb, and a cool, purple touch of the elegant iris root from that remote land called Florence its ambassador had presented her with. It should contain the sharp tang of leather as well in happy memory of tiger hunts in the hillsides and the iron might she once wielded in a silken, fragrant glove, and the sacred, haunting trails of sandalwood, patchouli and oud that defined India as perhaps few other essences did. A sweet, luscious finish, as much as if to say that the Mehr-Un-Nissa she once was and the Nur Jahan she became were after all, one woman first, last and foremost.
All of these, the flowers and the herbs, the spices and sacred woods intricately embroidered onto the heart of a singular flower to prove the power of a woman such as Nur Jahan, and the might of her rose.
On a December day of chill and fog, when the Empress who once was Nur Jahan breathed her last, Akbar, an old man himself by this time, took her secret note and anointed it with that mighty rose perfume before he set it alight with a taper to release her story and her essence upon the wind for another to find and to remember… a woman once known to all as… the Light of the World.
The Shalimar Gardens, Lahore, June 1947
On this sunny day, Edwina Mountbatten wasn’t sure what broke her heart the most, that she would soon say farewell to this wonder that was India, or that she had been fortunate enough to at least experience it and attempt to grasp and encompass all it was and now soon would become. Soon, these marvelous gardens would not even be Indian, but belong to a nation to be called Pakistan.
“It seems,” she said to her friend Jahawarlal Nehru as they walked, “such a pity and yet, such a necessity, that this will be another nation born of India’s ashes.”
“There is no other way, Edwina, as you well know.”
The sunlight danced in the fountains and the mannered geometry and the blaze of flowers should surely soothe any melancholy hearts and make any spirit soar to stroll amid such beauty on a day like today, when the roses bloomed their promise of a new era and a new future.
He sensed her pensive mood as they walked, as he so often did, and bent forward to pluck a perfect rose he presented to her with a flourish and a smile.
“Did you know,” he began, “there is a story about this variety of rose?”
Edwina laughed. “I do so love your stories. You have so many!”
“One of my many pleasures,” he murmured. “Ah, but this story… is a story of the fabled Nur Jahan.”
“She was quite a woman, I gather.”
“Indeed so, and quite extraordinarily talented, so I’ve been told. They say that when Asaf Khan ‘retired’ her, she dedicated her life to poetry, to charity and to perfumes.”
“Perfumes! Only in India…” Edwina buried her nose in the rose. It was like no other rose –certainly, no English rose – she had ever known, lush, deep, both majestic and piercing in its scent.
“You forget, in India, perfume is definition, devotion and adornment all in one. Something for you to think about, perhaps? Or at least consider…” he went on with another smile as they strolled onward, a precious stolen hour of serenity amid the separation talks. “And so the story goes about a perfume Nur Jahan made, and such a perfume they say it was. They say it was all her essence and all of the world, not merely India, wrapped around the might of a rose.”
“The might of a rose. I must say that phrase has a certain… power to it.”
“Well, she was am Empress, after all.”
“But of course.” Edwina breathed in her rose. It made her own British roses seem so indistinct and pallid in comparison. “But what about it? Did someone ever find the formula? I do like the idea of such a perfume.”
Nehru watched the diamond droplets of water flash above the fountain in the sunlight and refract in the air above the pool. As he thought, as Edwina walked beside him with this extraordinary rose in her hand, she thought with a pang that she might never see this fabled garden and its beauty again.
“How does it go, this tale of Nur Jahan’s mythical perfume… Ah! Well then, they say that when she died, her retainer burned the formula and released it into the wind for another to find in time. Remember, this was not simply a perfume, not just a scent to wear, but the very quintessence of an Empress of India. So it would be powerful and immensely rich, as she surely was, it would contain all her majesty and all her secrets. Not something you’d buy in Paris, perhaps. Power and majesty are not to be trifled with.”
“Something of which I suspect Her Majesty was well aware.”
Edwina tried to open up her heart, her soul, her very pores to drink it all in… the gardens, the sunlight, the company of her extraordinary friend and this extraordinary story of a perfume that sparked a longing in her heart to know it, to wear it, to breathe it, to be remembered by its presence.
“Certainly! Nur Jahan ruled an empire, let’s not forget. With an iron hand, I might add.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a perfume that would say all those things to the world.”
“Ah, my friend, neither have I, and I am Indian, after all.”
“But that is such an extraordinary story! Power and majesty all contained in a vial of scent.”
“Sometimes,” Nehru’s thrilling voice trailed off as he looked into the distance, “it is better to take the sword than to surrender, fail or run away.”
“And should that sword be a rose?” Again, Edwina inhaled deeply from the rose in her hand. To her, it seemed as if this were so much more than a simple flower and so infinitely much more than a mere ‘rose’.
They walked on a while in the comfortable silence of friends. And then, Nehru looked at Edwina and at the rose in her hand.
“Remember…and this is something I can well imagine Nur Jahan saying herself…
‘Never underestimate the might of a rose.’
____________________GIVEAWAY!___________________
Neela has offered to give away one ceramic perfume disk (for scenting drawers & closets) and a 10 ml decant of Mohur Extrait to one lucky reader in either the EU or the US, and a sample of Mohur Extrait to the two runners-up who comment on this post by midnight CET on Wednesday, May 21st. Mohur Extrait is a must-try even for those who don’t like rose – this is NOT your usual rose! Make sure to like Neela Vermeire Créations on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. The winners of the giveaway will be drawn by random.org and announced here on TAG on Thursday, May 22nd. THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
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Notes: Cardamom, coriander, ambrette seeds, carrot seeds, pepper, elemi, iris, jasmine, rose, violet, almond, leather, sandalwood, amber, patchouli, oud, benzoin, vanilla and tonka bean.
Neela Vermeire Créations Mohur Extrait is currently only available as a limited edition directly from the NVC website for customers in the EU. For US customers, contact Neela Vermeire Creations at info@neelavermeire.com.
Mohur Extrait was created by Neela Vermeire in collaboration with perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour.
Disclosure: A sample of Mohur Extrait was provided by Neela Vermeire. The story and review are my own, but the historical context, people and events mentioned are as accurate as research allowed.
Painting: “Bani Thani”, by Rajasthani artist Gopal Khetanchi, with the addition of a 17th-century rose by yours truly.
Photo from the Shalimar Gardens, Lahore by Roland & Sabrina Michaud.
Rose petal photo from the flower market of Bangalore and presentation of Mohur Extrait bottle by Neela Vermeire. Used by permission.
The Alembicated Genie 