Eau de Maman

painting1

 – a Mother’s Day tribute

Of all the many guises of womanhood, perhaps none are so revered – and sometimes reviled – as motherhood. As I recall saying to an old friend two days after becoming a mother the first time myself:

From now on, everything I do or say will be wrong!

But when I think of mothers, as you do on Mother’s Day and your mother’s birthday and other days when your mother pops up unaware and takes you by surprise, I also and maybe even first of all think of perfume.

Because of all the many things that define and explain my own mitochondrial DNA – and thus, my mother – perfume more than anything is what I remember. All the many shades and colors of her existence and my own memories of her were somehow encapsulated in the perfumes she wore, her femininity, her ferocity, her passions and her perils.

She had me very young, at a mere eighteen, and although I was born a scant two months after a hastily arranged wedding to a dashing Creole, he was not my father, and I may never know who he really was or is.

Today, that doesn’t matter so much as the memories I know I have, and all of them – arranged chronologically here – are the perfumes she wore and the memories I have of a truly remarkable woman who cast – as the saying goes – a very long shadow behind her – in her daughters and in the many memories of the many people who knew her.

It was a rare day my mother didn’t wear perfume. I can’t honestly recall her ever wearing any drugstore or Avon fragrances – she knew what she loved and made no excuses for her choices – which were French, expensive, classical and timeless – much like she chose to define herself.

She was a petite, beautiful, passionate, eighth-generation redhead, and mostly was forgiven everything for much of her life because of it. So it should come as no surprise that my first memory of Eau de Maman was the likewise passionate, beautiful (and not precisely ‘petite’):

Jolie Madame by Balmain.

My very first fragrant memory of her – I doubt I was much more than about two at the time – was being wrapped up in her beaver coat after being collected at the babysitter’s. There had been a party somewhere where she usually stopped both conversations and traffic, and as I cuddled half-asleep on the back seat swathed in fur, I breathed in Jolie Madame, with all its verdant opening promises and dark violet heart wrapped in a velvet-soft black glove leather that explained a few things about Maman and perhaps those grown-up parties I was surely far too young to know at the time. Even these many years later, I can close my eyes and breathe in the aroma of that Jolie Madame-saturated fur coat – and wish I had it with me still.

Later, as I was older, her tastes changed. She favored airier, lighter perfumes by then, perhaps because she had gained a certain level of confidence only maturity can acquire, or maybe it was something else, that heady time of rapid change and possibilities where optimism was in the…

L’Air du Temps by Nina Ricci

If post-war optimism had its own perfume masterpieces – and we know today it certainly did – surely, it was L’Air du Temps by Nina Ricci, with its dazzling chiffon beginnings and its sparkling, seamless, floral carnation pulse? This was one of my mother’s all-time favorites, an effervescent blend she might well have called Hope Springs Eternal, since it never failed to lift up her spirits and elevate her days, to fly away as perfectly as that crystal Lalique dove perched on the cap of the parfum that adorned her dresser. Then, some long time later, we moved to tropical South Florida, and she found the great escape that was an island, namely…

Fidji by Guy Laroche

A woman is an island, went the tagline, and Fidji is her perfume. This breathtaking fragrance – as far away from tropical perfume tropes as you can dare to imagine – defined her longest and nearly the best, and for that and another reason, Fidji holds a special place in my own heart. A green, ultra-feminine and peerless chypre – not a family my mother was normally inclined towards – it comes with another memory engraved upon my mind. Around age eight or nine, I had a habit of hiding in her closet. Not to hide, exactly, so much as to try to assume something of its feminine, floral wiles by olfactory osmosis, or else my mother’s fragrant, Fidji-soaked whims. Somewhere between the Pucci silk jumpsuit, the hand-embroidered flares, the eveningwear in their cellophane bags that swished in dizzy chiffon cascades to the closet floor, the shoes both high and low, all of them somehow exuding all her many perfumes – or else that perfectly rendered scent that was Fidji’s glorious blend of ylang ylang and carnation, galbanum and hyacinth, sandalwood and a vanillic amber lay the secrets of womanhood itself, and all I had to do for inspiration was to breathe it in… At seventeen, it was the only one of her perfumes I chose to wear myself, and so it became a secret we shared, my mother and I.

By then, I was already ruined for life, and how could it be otherwise with a mother who wore such wonders? Some mothers sit their daughters down for ‘the talk’ once adolescence hits but my mother had other ideas, and took me on a whirlwind trip to Paris instead, for now, it was time to make my own definitions, and to prove myself my mother’s daughter.

I’ll never forget that Friday afternoon on the Champs Èlysées at the door of the Great Temple of Womanhood known as the Guerlain flagstore.

My mother, still young, still turning heads even in Paris, gave me a certain assessing look, as if to establish whether there might be some hope in store for this gawky jeune fille, if even Ms. Bookworm might perhaps be able to metamorphose into a butterfly and slay a few hearts when the time came. Then, she said:

Never forget the importance of two things – a really good bra and…a stellar perfume!

Words to live by, and once again, much as it pains me to admit – she was right!

So I chose my own path to fragrant perdition that day and a very long time after – the fierce green chypres so in fashion at the time, for I knew – our mutual love of Fidji notwithstanding – I couldn’t choose what my mother wore, and that spring day in Paris, she shapeshifted again, and now her sights were set far away on the Opulent Eastern dream that was

Shalimar by Guerlain

Shalimar – that very French dream of a very Indian love story – is one of the most beloved perfumes – or perfume memories in the world. That it was incredibly complex, unbelievably lush and indescribably opulent somehow seemed to fit my mother at the time, and defined her personal aesthetic so emphatically and with such finality, I can never, ever wear it. The few times I’ve tried since becoming a perfume writer have made me feel like a three-year-old in Mommy’s heels and marabou boa, which is more than a little unnerving in your late forties. But Maman was nowhere finished with Orientals just yet, for along with Shalimar came another Eastern and far more modern and far more audacious dream, the olfactory fever vision that was

Opium by Yves Saint Laurent

In this day and age, it’s hard to understand what kind of impact Opium had on the female consciousness in the late Seventies and well beyond. These days, the fabled perfumes of the fabled M. St Laurent – personally involved with his eponymous perfumes to a degree that would appall many so-called ‘designers’ today – are no more than hollow, heartless echoes of their former glorious selves. Opium had the impact of a literal pulse bomb – on the wearer, on her surroundings, and on the public perfume consciousness, and certainly my mother’s, too. She slayed her surroundings and several masculine hearts with the fire and spice of Opium, and only relented in spring and summer with another fragrant souvenir from Paris that was no less famous and no less fragrant, the one and only

Diorissimo by Dior

This, the lily-of-the-valley to end all lily of the valley perfumes, was another of her ‘hopes in a bottle’, the green and verdant covenant she made to renew her self and her life every year with every spring and every sillage-laden step she took. I haven’t had the pleasure to breathe Diorissimo for a very long time, and thanks to those memories of my mother, I’m almost afraid to, for fear it will break my heart all over again. But even the heartstopping spring of Diorissimo didn’t stop my mother for long, for another classic made a brief appearance in all the midnight shades of

Narcisse Noir by Caron

I’m still not sure what prompted my mother to acquire Narcisse Noir, but knowing her, it could very well have been a late night viewing of ‘Sunset Boulevard’. It’s hard to argue against Norma Desmond or even the stunning Narcisse Noir. Harder still, since she had it only a few days, until that shameful evening her wretched oldest daughter – by now with several Gothic inclinations not even Gloria Swanson or Billy Wilder ever dreamed of – came for dinner, found it and…stole it! Trust my Scorpio mother to enact a chilling revenge of her own some time later, when she came home with the radioactive mushroom cloud that was

Parfum de Peau by Claude Montana

I’ve always admired Claude Montana the designer, whose Glamazon, Wonder Woman clothes embodied the excess of the Eighties perhaps more than any other designer of the time. But when this arrived on Maman’s doorstep, it caused an intervention by both her daughters. This patchouli-laden, musky, literally breath-taking (not in a good way) bombshell would do Thierry Mugler’s Angel in, and that says nearly everything you need to know about it. My sister and I howled our most eloquent protests so loudly and ferociously, within a week, Maman was frogmarched right back to our family favorite department store and ordered to find something, anything, whatever she could find that wasn’t…Parfum de Peau! She redeemed herself, this time for the rest of her life, when she chose

First by Van Cleef and Arpels

I’m fairly certain it was something more than sheer relief from Parfum de Peau’s monstrosities that made both my sister and myself equate all that was our mother with this incredible perfume created by that later perfume Le Corbusier minimalist we all worship today, and that is Jean Claude Ellena. To us, it smelled of the very best of the French perfume traditions, it smelled of money and Bentleys and diamonds in platinum settings, of Class with a capital C, of all the bottled beauty of a perfect summer day in a chateau garden in the Loire Valley. Maman, of course, saw First rather differently. As time went on, she came to see First as the embodiment of all her best and most memorable selves, as if M. Ellena had somehow managed to bottle not only all her selective realities but also her most fervent aspirations, and at long last, her elusive quest for a signature scent came to an end – with First.

As for my mother, pictured below on the day she wed my dearly beloved stepfather, she died much too young and much too soon, aged fifty-two after a two-year battle with breast cancer. Throughout our thirty-three years together, we loved and we hated, we fought and made up, we lived with and through each other in ways that all daughters and mothers do. As daughters do, I defined my own self in her despite, and as daughters also will, I’ve been confronted with the stamp of her when I least expect it. Both her daughters went on to become writers, and I suspect she had not a little to do with that, too.

She lies buried in a rural churchyard next to her mother beneath a Japanese granite garden light instead of a tombstone, imposing her own style and stamp among the more mundane epitaphs. Both her daughters buried her with a bottle of her beloved First, and even these many years later, when I least expect it, a tantalizing, faint trail of First will sometimes appear to haunt me, which is how I know that although she’s gone, she never left and is with me still – and always.

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In memory of Alice Ruth Samuelsen Johansen Anderson Witt Caruana

(October 29th 1944 – January 7th, 1997)

And for all mothers everywhere, of children, of projects, and of creatures great and small. 

Image: ‘The Madonna of the Pinks’, attributed to Raphael.

Spring Flings!

spring-flowers

 – the Genie’s favorite Scents of Spring

After a long, dismal and dismally cold winter that seemed as if it would never end, Spring has finally…sprung. Even here in the North, even now as I wriggle my sockless painted toes in the glow of the sunlight through my window, and the cats show off their bellies in the warmth.

It’s finally Spring! Time to throw open those windows, time for those deep breaths of sunshine you can feel from the roots of your hair to the tips of your toes, time to wake up, smell the flowers and feel utterly, totally alive in a way the dreary depths of January just can’t muster.

When all of nature is bursting at the seams and exploding right before your eyes, those thick, plush ambers and Orientals seem a bit, well…obvious. Time to pack away those olfactory cashmere and lambswool sweaters and bring out the silks, chiffons and Egyptian cottons of the fragrant world, time to waft a little springtime of your own in your wake, for who knows what can happen when everything you breathe and all that you see exudes hope, new beginnings and promises that may – or may not – be kept?

Because you never know where a spring day may take you, or the glimpse of a flower may surprise you, so long as you carry the spring where you go.

Here, you’ll find the Genie’s own favorite Spring flings, the ones that put the spring in my step and the smile on my face, in an April shower or the depths of a May flower, so long as it’s Spring, my very favorite time of year.

Spring perfumes veer toward either the green, floral or green and floral, and this personal list is no exception. Perhaps one of the most famous of spring perfumes, Dior’s Diorissimo, embodies spring best of all, but since I haven’t had the privilege of trying it since sometime in the Eighties when we were both very different creatures of Faërie, I’ve had to omit it from my list. Some of them you might recognize from this blog or elsewhere, but all of them are loved and adored, and never so much as in the merry month of May, when all of Nature beckons us all to come out and play.

– The Greens of Spring

If ever a color sums up a season, surely it would be green? That scorching chartreuse that burns away all horrid memories of dun and brown, gray and white and lets in the sunshine for our souls.

If you love those great, glorious greens of old, if you could once be encapsulated in all the phrase ‘green/floral chypre’ contains, these are the ones to look for and breathe for.

April Aromatics Unter den Linden

Although linden blossoms in high summer in my part of the world, is there anything quite so honeyed or verdant as the perfume lurking within those fragrant yellow blooms? I think not, since Unter den Linden comes as close to my own inner vision of an exemplary linden blossom perfume as any I’ve ever tried.

Balmain – Ivoire

Ivoire has been with us since 1980, and last year was reworked and redone for a new and hopefully just as appreciative audience. Ivoire – I own the vintage EdT – is a green floral chypre that is consistently surprising, perpetually beautiful and perfectly seamless.

DSH Perfumes’ Vert pour Madame

Lots of potions lay claim to that hackneyed phrase ‘hope in a bottle’. Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’ tribute to those green wonders of our misspent youth doesn’t have to, simply because it is – hope in a bottle. Soft, elegantly restrained and effervescent as all the best greens are, this is suitable for both Mesdames and Messieurs.

Jacomo Silences

This underrated classic (if not by perfumistas), a close cousin to the rosier Chanel no. 19, is unique in that it manages in the space of its evolution to bloom through both spring and summer. From that lovely lemony lily-of-the-valley opening to the almost austere, dark, mossy depths of the drydown some very long time later, you’ve wafted a May morning, a flaming June noon and a hint of July thunderstorm, too.

Puredistance Antonia

I must have heard it not a few times before I ever tried it, but sometimes, the hype over a new perfume doesn’t do it justice in the slightest. Annie Bezantian’s Antonia for Puredistance is nothing more and never less than the flawless spring of your most fevered January dreams. Totally modern and totally timeless.

Green With A Twist

Spring reminds us workaholic writers of the sweet joys of dolce far niente, of sitting in the sunshine with a pastis enjoying the passagiata of a spring afternoon, entirely present in the moment and entirely content to be nowhere else but there watching the world go by. The perfumes below somehow wrap up the whole experience in several happy ways, and whether you prefer a pastis or the more subversive pleasures of La Fée Verte is entirely up to you…

Aroma M Geisha Green

Geisha Green is without a doubt one of the best and most bracing of absinthe perfumes I know, bright with that bittersweet twist of Artemisia, sweet with the promises of violet flower and leaf and herbal with a fabulous thick licorice facet that almost makes me want to drink it if I could over a sugar cube. As it is, I get to wear it, and dream of those passagiatas under sunny spring skies.

Opus Oils Absinthia

Another sweeter and more floral take on the fabled absinthe is Opus Oils’ Absinthia, which somehow manages to pair glorious wisteria, a sinfully sweet vanilla and that decadent wormwood and turn it into a green fairy with a positively wicked gleam in her eye. Et in Absinthia ego…

Parfums Lalun Phènomene Vert

If you prefer your greens strictly that – a bracing herbal kick in the winter doldrums to shake you awake and aware that yes, indeed, it’s time to come alive again, Phènomene Vert will deliver. Glorious on a guy, gorgeous on a gal, with a deft touch of jasmine to hint of the wonders of summer to come.

Vero Profumo Mito

One of the wonders of 2012 was Vero Kern’s spectacular Mito, an unusual green-floral take on all things marvelous, magnolia and green as a breath of fresh air in a beautiful Roman garden on a May afternoon. Wear Mito and write your own springtime myth any way and in any shade of green you please.

Burning blooms

In the story of Ferdinand the Bull, one magnificent bull had no intentions of moving from his flowery meadow just to fight in the bullring, and so he wouldn’t have, if not for a bee in those flowers…

There are no bees in these flowers, just all the fragrant wonders of the blooms themselves, so sit back, breathe in and live for a moment and a flawless, odiferous flower. This bouquet of wonders counts all my own favorite blossoms, and not a few of my own favorite florals, too.

La Vie En Rose

Spring arrived so late in my part of the world that I can’t expect to see the roses bloom until well toward Midsummer, but whoever needed an excuse to wear the Queen of Flowers on a gorgeous spring day? Not I!

Olympic Orchids Ballets Rouges

If it were somehow possible to drown within the depths of a rose, a rose so perfectly rendered people have turned to see the bouquet that wasn’t, Ballets Rouges would surely be it. I’ll happily dance a pas de deux with this rose on any spring – or summer – day.

Parfums Lalun Qajar Rose

This rosy wonder is a magic Persian carpet ride through the roses, with all the twist and turns of Sheherezade’s fairy tales, with its leaps and bounds and flourishes woven in to the weft and warp of pomegranate, rose, a tiny dab of oud and coffee too, just to color you surprised.

Serge Lutens La Fille de Berlin

So it’s not Her Majesty the Rose, it’s the Girl From Berlin, and such a lovely, soft rose she is – or so you’d think before she surprises you with that chypre-like bite. This is a rose that is as young as heart as you wish you were on a May afternoon, and who is to say wishes can’t come true?

Think Pink!

Caron Bellodgia

It wouldn’t be a proper spring list without at least one classic. Caron’s sunny, spicy Bellodgia is pure olfactory sunshine from its peppery opening kick to its spicy sunlit carnation heart, and whenever I wear it, I can’t help but laugh – that May skies can be so blue, that life can feel so effortless and carnations made so perfect.

Ringing all the Bells

Aroma M Geisha Marron

Lily of the valley is not a note I’ve usually sought out, since the ones I’ve tried have made me feel I wasn’t frilly – or girly – enough to wear them. The exception to that rule is another aroma M creation, Geisha Marron, which pairs a lily-of-the-valley with chestnut blossom and other wonders, and in an instant, I’m taken away to a spring day in Paris long ago when the chestnuts bloomed and a young girl’s life was changed forever on the day she truly discovered the art…of perfume. For some, it reminds them of autumn and roasting chestnuts, but on me, it’s a spring day in Paris a very long time ago when the chestnuts and the muguet bloomed and a perfumista was born.

Consider the Lily

Editions de Parfums Lys Mediterranée

Nothing turns me to absolute putty faster than a big, bold, odiferous bouquet of Easter lilies. (Now you know!) And although many, many perfumes claim to be lily perfumes, only one other I’ve tried is as beautifully rendered as Lys Mediterranée. It passes for spring and summer both, but surely, angels wear this one? If they don’t, then maybe they should?

All the flowers!

Aftelier Secret Garden

If like Ferdinand you think there is no such thing as too many flowers to sniff in the sunshine, then Secret Garden is a bottled bouquet of marvels from its fruity, herbal start to a delirious floral heart and a dizzyingly sexy drydown. Just so you’re reminded that not only sap rises in the spring, and there’s more than one way to bloom…

So tell me – what makes you bloom in spring?

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Note: I was reminded that I had forgotten to link to the perfumes previously reviewed here on TAG. This has now been amended, and where I’ve reviewed a perfume earlier, the title/name now links to my review. 🙂

A Mischievous Muse

lavenderkiki

 – a review and a tale of vero profumo Kiki

Today was one of those breathless summer days in Paris with the metallic taste of impending thunderstorms in the air, a hot tetchy, moody afternoon where the dark gray clouds that loomed so ominous to the south had somehow worked their humid, moody, tetchy ways into the very paint and canvas, and even Foujita had to give up and shrug that Gallic shrug he worked so well, to say…

“Pas plus aujourd’hui, ma chèrie. The paint…it sweats even more than I!” At that, he mopped his brow and polished his glasses, shrugged again, and laughed that laugh an artist laughs when he knows the moment may be lost for now, but the time will come again, as time always does.

And even though I lay on the chaise as naked as the day I was born under the dappled shade of the plane tree in the courtyard, finally cool after a long, sudsy soak in his bathtub, I could only agree, and we said our amiable goodbyes as I dressed, tweaked his nose with a laugh as I left, and made my way down the Rue Delambre.

What could happen on such a hot afternoon, what to do and who to see? I felt the summer work its way beneath my dress, felt my stockings rustle against my skin. Even they seemed too much, too thick for such a summer day, where all the windows down the street were open to the still air, when all of Montparnasse and therefore all of Paris groaned beneath that leaden sky, and so I turned the corner and came to La Rotonde, which was nearly empty at this hour, most of the clientele sleeping off the wine of dejeuner in their studios with their loves and muses.

“Gaspard!” I called to the waiter as I walked in. So much cooler in here, out of that merciless heat. “A pastis today, I think, cigarettes of course and perhaps a citron pressé as well. Make sure the water is very cold!”

“Kiki! Foujita paid your tab this morning, Said you were posing for him this afternoon. So how is l’art moderne on this hot afternoon?” he laughed back as he wiped the counter down with a rag.

“Très moderne and très artistique, Gaspard, always!” I pointed to a banquette table beyond the bar, unoccupied except for a dark man with an interesting face who sat at the other end and eyed me with a great deal of interest, but then again, they always did at La Rotonde.

I headed for the Ladies room to wash off a dark green splotch of paint on my hands I must have received when I tweaked Foujita’s nose and to take off those beastly hot stockings and the garters that held them much too close and far too tight to my skin. Even silk was too torrid for such a day.

Madame Lenois, who normally tended the Ladies’ powder room, snored away in her chair behind her counter full of face powders, feminine sundries and eaux de toilettes, overcome by the July afternoon, but someone had left a pink felt pochette tied with a silk string behind on the sink since she slept, or it should not be here…

I glanced to the door, but it remained closed.

I removed the garters and rolled my stockings off with a sigh of relief as I felt the air on my legs. After washing the paint off my hands with Madame’s excellent Marseilles soap, I opened up the pochette and discovered two small vials. Perfume? The elixir of youth? Divine madness?

Only one way to find out!

Perfume! Alors! Oh…and such a one…

As I dabbed a few drops of one on my left hand and down my décolletage, a few sprays of the other on my right, I was transported in a heartbeat, far, far away from Montparnasse to Bourgogne and grand-mère so long ago, to M. Simon’s lavender field beyond the village church, blooming such a burning shade of purple amid the endless vineyards it seemed to dance beneath the summer sun, when simply to breathe in became its own singular happiness, that happiness I kept so close in spite of all the hard lessons and sharper secrets Paris taught me. There was no hard and no sharp in these two little vials, no secrets I couldn’t sing in any cabaret with all the conviction of my almost twenty years, just the eternal green, herbal, floral dance of lavender itself repainted sweet as crème brûlée and more daring, reinvented as new and as artless as a limitless blue sky.

On my right, that lavender bloomed as just as purple but perhaps not so sweet. It wore its mischief cut a little lower and a not a little fruitier, and danced a measure of its own around and around its lavender heart, no less grand and no less burning.

I had to sit down a moment on the setee in front of the mirror, overcome by the memory, as Madame Lenois snored her siesta away and all of Paris groaned beneath a heatwave outside, as Gaspard prepared my pastis and my citron pressé, as the dark man with the burning eyes in the corner no doubt waited to watch me again.

These two little perfume vials were like nothing I had ever encountered before. I was so surprised, surprised at how lavender could dance not just in the wind but in a perfume, overtaken by a memory of long-forgotten Bourgogne and grand-mère and the Alice Prin of long ago, astonished most of all that a memory of my childhood and the scintillating life of my present had somehow come together all in a rush, all in a moment, all of it entirely contained in these two perfumes that now defined me, Kiki. Fresh from Foujita’s chaiselongue and canvas in a Rue Delambre courtyard in search of new adventures and new mischief and …

Wearing this, I could well end up anywhere – on a wall, caught in a sculpture, capturing that concealed thread all those artists needed me to pull out and call forth inside them with a laugh, a bawdy joke, an impromptu dance among the pastels and tubes of paint on a dusty studio floor, or another kind of dance…

Wasn’t that what muses did?

Somehow, these two little vials had found a way to define me as deftly, as brilliantly and as assuredly as Soutine, as Foujita, as Derain had ever done.

I breathed in their promises, breathed in that dusky purple laughter and delicious crème brûlée, and then I checked my hair, reapplied my lipstick, pulled my neckline a little lower, and walked out to introduce myself to that dark man, his own eyes burning with the fires of any artist in any era, a cool tendril of the thunderstorm – or was it that lavender? – twining itself up my legs in the heat of the afternoon, chill with future possibilities.

I slid into the banquette with a sideways glance. That dark man was still there, looking toward the end by the bar where I sat down, and even at the other end, I could recognize another kind of mischief when I saw it, a mischief not unlike my own.

“Monsieur? We have not yet introduced ourselves, you and I.” I lifted up my glass of pastis, mercifully cool and wet on such a hot summer’s day.

“I am Kiki. No more, nothing less.”

“The Queen of Montparnasse!” shouted Gaspard from behind the bar. “Nothing less than that!”

“Ah.” I saw him hesitate for a moment as he wrestled with his words.

Un Americain? They were everywhere in Paris these days.

The next instant, he rose and slid in beside me on the banquette.

Indeed an artist with indeed a vision, I could see it so clearly in the fires behind his eyes, tell in the way he held his glass of pastis, the way his shoulders shifted towards me as he spoke.

“Pleased to meet you, Mademoiselle Kiki. I call myself Man Ray.”

For a long moment, we simply sat and watched each other over the edge of our pastis, breathed in the purple promises of lavender and the sweeter pledges of crème brûlée beneath it.

And in that moment, life and even art was reinvented and made anew, wrapped up in all its burning purple promises, on a July day on Montparnasse.

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Notes for Kiki extrait: Bergamot, citron, blackcurrant, lavender, geranium, musk, patchouli, opoponax, amber, caramel

Notes for Kiki eau de parfum: Bergamot, citron, passionfruit, blackcurrant, lavender, geranium, musk, patchouli, opoponax, amber, caramel 

With a thank you to the beyond wonderful and hugely inspiring Vero Kern.

vero profumo perfumes are available from Luckyscent and First in Fragrance.

My samples were sent by Campomarzio70 as part of a promotional Facebook draw.

Original photo of Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin) by Man Ray.

An Unexpected Majesty

mariafeodorovna2

– a review of Ormonde Jayne’s ‘Tsarina’

Opulence, luxury, complexity. What do you think about when you read these words as they relate to perfume? Do you think of perfumes or houses that come to mind with all their own associations and aspirations, or are you anything like this slightly jaded post-punk catastrophe and begin to wonder whether there’s a particular thesaurus for perfume copywriters that pulls out these words at the drop of a new perfume launch and think jaded, cynical and more than a little sarcastic thoughts:

Right. Of course it is. It couldn’t possibly be anything at all else!

Then again – such are the tribulations of a perfume writer’s life – there are moments when those words light their own fragrant bonfires underneath a combustible imagination with all that entails.

In perfumista terms, such moments are when lemmings are born. Your curiosity is aroused, your fragrant imagination awakens, and all cynicism instantly thrown right out the window.

Maybe this one. Maybe this time. Maybe…

That jaded cynic was yours truly reading of the launch of Ormonde Jayne’s ‘Four Corners of the Earth’ collection of perfumes, but my own experience with Linda Pilkington’s line told me that this wasn’t so much a product of florid PR copy but instead more firewood for that superheated imagination I call my own.

I can count on one hand the Ormonde Jayne perfumes that weren’t instant – and consistent loves, as well as the ones I’ll keep close by always – Tolu, Frangipani and Orris Noir, and the ones I’ll covet with a fury until I can call them mine. All with their own unique stories to unfold, all of them perfect for my own chemistry, all of them their own redolent bywords for, well, opulence, luxury, complexity.

Not only do I admire Linda Pilkington’s dedication and meticulous attention to detail, I also emphatically admire the imprint of her personal and highly refined aesthetic in her line.

So there I was those months ago, reading up on ‘The Four Corners of the Earth’ collection and the extravagant launch at the Orient Express, no less – Nawab al Oud, Montabaco, Qi and finally, Tsarina, and I knew I was in trouble. So much so, when a fellow Ormonde Jayne fan and perfumista friend offered a little Tsarina for sale, I swept in with no qualms at all and bought a decant – blind.

‘Baroque, complex, silks in sweeping dresses and fabulous jewels…’

Bring it on!

Now that I have it and have spent time with it, now that I know something of this Tsarina’s moods and caprices, I’m thrilled to say that this time, this one delivers on all my aspirations and wraps them up in sables and silks, but that’s no way to pay homage to such imperial – and imperious – majesty.

She enters the room and begins her story with a bright, sharp, diamond flash of mandarin and bergamot, but it takes no time at all before an elegant and supremely restrained hint of coriander and cassis usher in that opulence with fragrant, silken intimations of the florals at the heart, and such a bouquet of marvels they are, too.

Hedione – with its airy jasmine facets sparkling in the candlelight, freesia and jasmine sambac wafting all their flowery allure, yet these are no blushing ingénues but ladies in bloom, announcing an arrival in their clarion tones…

Iris. A magnificent, regal, velvety-suede iris that doesn’t require your adulation so much as demand it, just this once, so you don’t forget your proper place. This is an iris neither cold nor intimidating, but make no mistake – it knows to display its majesty well, and it waltzes so flawless, so perfectly beneath those crystal flower chandeliers, as you admire and adore her, you glimpse something of those warm, sweet secrets underneath. Vanilla and sandalwood, cedar, labdanum, the musky intimations that for all her majesty, she is still very much all woman underneath the silks, jewels and brocades of jasmine, iris and suede that declare and define her.

There are many surprising twists and turns in Tsarina, ostensibly a floral oriental but in fact, much, much more than that. It is nothing like the notes list originally led me to expect but very much more – a statement, unforgettable entrance and indelible memory both, undeniably feminine yet with strength and steel underpinning it. Not for the unassuming, the diffident or the eminently discreet – it makes a declaration and makes no apologies,demands no excuses, unless it were an excuse to wrap yourself in a sable-lined brocade mood, to sparkle spectacular in a baroque heartbeat beneath a crystal chandelier as only you can.

I could say this another way. No matter what quotidian, mundane life you lead and decisions you make, some days and some moments, you want to feel invincible, imperious, regal.

Wear Tsarina. Remember – for a moment, for an evening, for yourself, for posterity, for celebrating your own unique and unexpected majesty:

You own your world and everything in it.

It’s time to go and claim it for your own.

__________________________________

Tsarina was made by Linda Pilkington of Ormonde Jayne in collaboration with perfumer Geza Shoen. It is available at Harrods Black Hall Perfumery, London and at Ormonde Jayne boutiques.

Notes: Mandarin, bergamot, coriander, cassis, hedione, freesia, jasmine sambac, iris, suede, sandalwood, cedar, vanilla, labdanum and musk.

With thanks to Andrea, who made it possible.

Illustration: Her Imperial Majesty Maria Feodorovna at her coronation, 1881.

SotSolipsism

conversation

– SotDs, sensibilities and virtual soapboxes

That ‘life’ – even the virtual ‘lives’ we lead online, can prove stranger than anything an aspiring fiction writer can cook up, was brought home yesterday evening, when I had my own daily dose of an oversized WTF moment.

Another perfume blogger posted a polemic/satirical rant about the proliferation of what he saw as utterly pointless SotD (Scent of the Day) posts and tweets on Facebook perfume groups and Twitter feeds. To this gentleman, such posts/tweets were not only deathly uninteresting in and of themselves, he frankly didn’t give a flying what anyone else was wearing. He saw these posts – often accompanied by links to a Fragrantica page on said SotD, or an image found elsewhere – as nothing more nor less than desperate cries for attention happily perpetuated by other members, who could then ‘like’ the post, start engaging the poster, and then start – or not – a conversation about it.

Dear readers, the horror! The very idea!

I would have liked nothing more than to link to the blog post in question, but alas, the blogger then proceeded to effectively shoot himself in his metaphorical mouth by deleting the post. I’ll be getting back to that.

The ensuing debate that raged across two Facebook perfume communities (and probably elsewhere) I know of is still ongoing as I type.

What really rallied my inner Doña Quixota was not just the blithe obliviousness to the role of engagement in social media (which is quite heinous enough) but a total and what I thought an arrogant disregard for one of the founding principles in human interaction.

If you don’t want a conversation, don’t start talking!

Unless, of course, you’re trying to convince yourself of the validity of your own opinions, in which case – go for it! I explain my interpretations of Schopenhauer to my cats several times a day, and so far, they still disagree, unappreciative wretches that they are.

Once upon a time – and it was only last summer – I posted two heavily shared posts on the role of social media on Planet Perfume. It explained something about how we’re conversing or communicating our shared passion for The Ephemeral Art, how those conversations are evolving between the customers of perfumers and houses, and how, if you think about it, we’re very poorly equipped as a species to even have these conversations to begin with, dealing as they do with an art form that bypasses all our neocortical verbal abilities and heads like a Cruise missile straight for our amygdalas which hold our non-verbal, most emotional memories.

This is why – bear with a little arrogance on my part here – not everyone who buys perfume and/or is an active member of a fragrance community/group is a perfume blogger.

It’s bloody hard to write about.

If you could see yours truly mid-review, you’d see a barefaced, disheveled slob in leopard print PJs wearing a cloud of said review, sniffing a wrist and/or a strip of Arches watercolor paper, pacing back and forth between the teapot and the laptop, thumbing a thesaurus, chewing on pencils, blasting (and singing along with) vintage punk records and suspect over the hill metal baritones while muttering sotto voce, tearing at hair, pulling faces and displaying an impressive command of blatantly offensive swear words in several languages. All of it performed in front of the most terrifying space of all – a blank Word page. Now you know!

The Rule of Engagement

In social media, there is a term called the rule of engagement. It boils down to something like this:

If a given online community is set to a value of 100%, then 90% of it will enjoy the show, so to say, but only rarely be driven to participate. Ten percent of them will engage – that is to say, participate in any ongoing conversation, comment on a blog or put up a Facebook status, respond to a tweet and so forth. One percent of that total – this holds true everywhere – will quite independently of everyone else feel compelled to create original content for whatever reasons and always or frequently participate in one form or another.

I see this again and again – on Facebook, on Twitter, the very comments I’m privileged to receive and conversations I initiate on this blog by readers I feel privileged to write for, concerning an art form we all feel so passionate about. And if all you as a reader and perfume aficionado are capable of contributing is your SotD with a Fragrantica link, then that’s perfectly acceptable to me. Trust me, I have more than enough words and opinions for at least five thousand people.

The Facebook Freakfumista Show

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, whether we choose to participate or not, Facebook and social media are revolutionizing our very lives and the way we interact with each other every day.

Why?

Because all of them give us a unique and unprecedented opportunity to reinvent and redefine ourselves every single day – and every single moment, if we choose. Whether we post LOLcats, memes, links or simply what we had for dinner, we’re all of us reinventing our own lives and how we choose to represent them – every day.

Not only that – we’re driven by nothing more nor less than our need for being acknowledged, being seen, being told – in an increasingly fragmented, crowded, anonymous life – that we as individuals have some validation in the footprints we leave on the planet.

Personally, I will go to my grave stating that perfume – that ridiculous, expensive, aspirational, superfluous art – has made everything in my life possible.

I became a perfume blogger for one reason – to become a better writer, since that’s my bottom line in self definition. I exceeded beyond my wildest expectations.

As I evolved from those distant beginnings not even three years ago, I also joined perfume groups on Facebook, was invited to join in those online conversations, became known and accepted into that elite one percent. I observed what people were talking about and how they talked, commented on SotD posts, was pointed in several directions I’ve never known otherwise. I posted my own navel-gazing SotD posts, and sometimes, sparked conversations as I did. They were – and still are – a revelation.

While I may be a resident freakfumista and post-punk midlife misanthrope in my own all-too-real life, to find a kind of community and acceptance in the online world of social media has changed my life forever – for real. I have one real life true-blue friend in my immediate vicinity and a sister in faraway Copenhagen. That’s all, two argumentative Schrödinger cats notwithstanding.

But I also have standing invitations, true-blue and exceedingly real friendships and instant community – and another kind of family? – on three continents, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and those endlessly boring, irrelevant SotD posts.

I’ve learned details about lives and personalities I would otherwise never know from finding out what people choose to waft, wear and adore. I’ve shared in their lives, their loves, their woes and their joys, celebrated their successes and cheered them up when they were down. I’ve met people, found readers, I’ve connected, I’ve had long, involved Skype conversations. I’ve fallen in love and certainly laughter with not a few of them in a way that feels less like fake, superficial acquaintances and more like family in the best sense of the word, and to a writer in BFE nowhere who has not much at all, that has meant and still means more than you know.

So those silly, volatile, vociferous Facebook groups and Twitter conversations – the endless revolving virtual happy hour across time zones of SotDs and discussion and dissent, where fellow freakfumistas just like me argue, laugh, post bad jokes and share ourselves, our lives and our preoccupations are far more important than they appear on the surface. For one thing, it’s nice to know you’re not alone in your obsession and have a place to share it.

For another, you may have far more in common with your fellow freakfumistas than just perfume, and isn’t common ground where all true friendships often begin in real life?

The Towering Ivory Soapbox

Any kind of creative expression – regardless of the medium you choose – is in itself a kind of narcissism – or solipsism. If it’s just an exercise in preventing your head from exploding, you might choose to stick with the decidedly old-school method of a pen and a notebook. Alas and alack, so very many of us don’t stop there. We begin to believe our own brand of blarney. We begin to think we have an opinion and what-the-hey, why not commit that ultimate exercise in vanity…put it out there?

Publish a blog post, put the link up on Facebook and elsewhere, tweet it and tell the world, tell the world that you exist?

It’s a free world, we have freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, and the online world has plenty of room enough for everyone. Say whatever you please. Stand by what you say.

So long as you’re aware that nothing – not even in the blogosphere – exists in a vacuum, and whatever you do say can and often does find a level – or an audience. You may get a reaction to your words and your opinions, if not always the reaction you would choose. But blogging is itself a social medium, and by choosing to blog, you are also opening yourself up to criticism, dissent and discussion. How you decide to deal with it says very much about the courage of your convictions and very much more about your social media credibility.

I think it’s a crying shame that particular blogger deleted the post – as if he didn’t get the reaction he was hoping for, so he then chose to erase it. I would have respected it very much more if he hadn’t, and had the determination to stand by what he wrote.

Dissent, discussion and even the occasional satire is a many-splendored thing. All too often though, it backfires on the writer. Not because of the mode of expression he chose, but because the writer didn’t have the necessary writing skills to make his intentions crystal clear – or perhaps the motivation or resolve to explain them properly, and if that’s true, then he might have chosen a better angle for a better reception.

Yet, there it is. We live in a social world. We redefine ourselves within that context every single day of our lives, with LOLcats, memes, links, tweets and status updates and SotDs.

Some of us haul out the virtual soapbox and preach to an unseen choir, but in a social world, it isn’t up to us to decide what happens once we do, or even if we might topple from our ivory soapbox towers.

Only that our SotSolipsism might have consequences we could never have foreseen.

Image: via The Globe And Mail