A Necessary Evil

THE DEVILSCENT PROJECT XIII

– a review of Neil Morris’ ‘Lilith’ for the Devilscent Project

Do you know that feeling when the fine hairs on the back of your neck rise up in some numinous awareness you can neither articulate nor define, you just have the sensation that something – or someone is… there?

You see a glimpse out of the corner of your eye, hear steps on the stairs, scan the room as you enter, look down the street and yet, nothing and no one is there. Your imagination plays its tricks on you again, that occupational hazard all writers have that will manifest those shadows and echoes of their mind into being and another kind of reality.

I’ve felt that way for weeks, felt as if someone hovered just out of sight, just around the corner, just down the street from where I stood. Someone leaving a lingering trace behind, a fleeting memory, a touch of another human awareness, a nearly undetectable ribbon of interwoven light and dark, a few scant molecules hovering on like motes of dust sparking possibilities forth from the sun streaming through an open window.

It was like that. I was being stalked in some indescribable way, but what it was I didn’t know and couldn’t guess until today, when finally, the return of the sun and intimations of heat became too much for even this sun-starved, workaholic writer, and I could bear it not one minute longer. I put on my boots, my Poiret-inspired fur-lined winter coat and my teal scarf, and walked to the beech woods that hug the hills and line the fiord of this town I live and write in, searching for this slippery spring I couldn’t find, trying to forget that ephemeral presence of something …or someone who wanted to elude me.

I walked out along the path that led through the woods along the fiord, seeing the patches of melting snow that clung against a few north-facing beeches, saw the green beginnings of wood violets peep through last year’s weather-blasted leaves, saw celadon shoots that would soon become star-dotted carpets of aconites on the forest floor, and the wild garlic’s emerald tide that sang its own lusty, aromatic aria with the wood doves billowing in the trees above.

They all told me the same tale, all sang the same melody despite the chilly, easterly wind:

It’s spring, it’s spring, it’s spring!

I walked through the woods until I came to a favorite bench by a bridge across a stream, out of the wind but well in the sun, until I sat down for a while to breathe in April, and suddenly, without warning, the fine hairs on the nape of my neck rose up underneath my collar, and there it was again, that interwoven dark and bright, a revealing trail…of perfume.

It was sweet as the wood doves, heady as the promise of heat that lurked underneath the leaves, lusciously dancing somewhere between rays of champagne bubble aldehyde and lemon, bergamot and a deeper, candied apricot the color of September, the faraway taste of an unimaginable, future October.

Which was when I saw a fleeting shadow underneath a beech across the bridge, and as I inhaled that perfumed ribbon in the air and the ambient perfume of burgeoning spring, that shadow froze, grew deeper, darker, ever more substantial and less spectral, until finally, it materialized, as real and as solid as the soaring gray columns of the beeches around me. A woman, impeccably clothed in a black wool suit and coat, flawlessly coiffed, impossibly, inhumanly perfect, with the April light caught in the ambery glints of her hair.

It was Lilith, Queen of the Succubi. Long dead yet never, never forgotten, she haunted me still with her presence, her story, her tragedy and her beauty, too. She walked across the bridge, her boots tapping out a steady 4/4 on the mossy, slippery boards and sat down next to me on the bench.

For a moment, we sat in silence, listening to the birdsong and the wind in the trees above, watching the squirrels chase each other on the boughs over the stream.

“Did you know,” she said after a while, “I was born only a few miles away from here, some very long time ago.”

“I did know. I promised myself, if I ever write the prequel, I would write your story, of how you came to be what you are.”

“What I was, you mean. Ah, the promises of writers, as substantial and as solid as anything I could scribble on the water in that stream.” She nodded toward the gurgling water down below us, chattering to the birds above as it rushed downhill to join the water in the fiord. “You’ll have other ideas. And an agent who tells you which ones to sell and ways to sell them, and which ones to drop.” She picked up a pebble on the ground and threw it into the stream. “You’ll move on to another life far away and other stories and other demons you’ll conjure on virtual paper to haunt your readers, whereas I…” her voice trailed off. “I’ll live between the pages of a book you wrote a long time ago and a story you told the world.” She kept her eyes on the beeches across the bridge.

“So long as one person remembers you, you are immortal,” I quoted. “You’re forgetting something. You’ll live on in four perfumes that illuminated you in four different ways.”

She stretched out her legs. “How fitting, it was four perfumes. The first, Ellen’s, that of power, initiative, will and domination, one perfectly poised and perfectly poisoned fragrant attack, Maria and Alexis’, such a velvety balance of contradiction and opposites when I see what the protagonist will do, Kedra’s majestic Babylon Noir, culmination and advantage. Fully appropriate for the Queen of the Succubi. And now…this one. Fitting, it should be the fourth, and the last of my perfumes. The number of persistence and endurance and evolution.”

As she said it, she looked up into the crowns of the trees far, far above us, where the buds on the branches echoed the intricate lace of her suit against the sky, the nearly abstracted complications of an opulent rose and decadent narcissus thrumming her floral secrets out on an April wind. Rich, beautifully evolving, endlessly compelling, as mysterious as midnight and as dark as her heart.

Down below, the stream carried our words out to the fiord and into the Baltic, out to the world and its endless, roiling oceans.

“A bit ironic, how imagination works in such nefarious, diabolical ways.” This time, she turned to look straight at me. I was struck yet again how much my creation resembled me, and then again, not at all. “I mean, ironic, is it not, that it took a woman to understand the Devil – at least as you did – and it took a man to understand my motives and reasons, and then captured them in a perfume?”

“Well, I’m not surprised. Neil is exceptional at that. It’s what he does so beautifully, and so successfully. Perfumes are hardest of all to articulate, unless you know how.” I shifted on the wooden bench, and now, I supposed we looked nothing more nor less than two friends chatting on a bench in the sun on a spring afternoon.

“You do that well. This…” she breathed it in deep, “is a Lilith to remember. That narcissus! Is it narcissus? The illusion of vanity, or just its reflection writing on water, on hopes and dreams that are just as substantial. The rose to tell another tale, that once upon a far-off time I did love and I did care, and I was not so evil nor so unforgiving.”

“I think it’s funny that we always need to explain evil,” I said. “We have to understand it, understand its motivations, and the evil we can never comprehend is the evil that has no reasons, no rhyme, no…rationale except its own existence.”

“You’re right, of course.” She breathed in again, and in the air, the rose faded to a memory as the narcissus drew up smoke and mirrors, more illusions and mysteries, was it tobacco, subversively, seamlessly folded into Lilith’s depths, a touch of arcane labdanum, the unifying theme of all the Devilscents, and coumarin – all grassy, new-mown hay, lighting its own bonfires beneath narcissus, the fires it took a woman like Lilith to inspire.

“Except sometimes” she pushed her hair back over her shoulder, “evil is a necessary counterpoint to good, like dark to light, to make us appreciate what we would otherwise take for granted.”

If evil were the sum and total of this lascivious, decadent drydown, it would be hard to imagine it as anything bad.

“Like antagonists in suspect first novels,” I said. “They have to be bad to make the hero look good.”

“No,” she stated, with a flat finality, with shades of her former resolute self and to my complete surprise. “They have to be bad to get the hero to move, to get the story to evolve, or otherwise, what story is it? Who would read it? Human lives and real life stories are plenty banal enough. Readers want to live vicariously, want to feel that thrill of suspense and the awe of the unknown, because so much of it has been eradicated from your lives.”

“You’re right.” I was not so arrogant, I couldn’t concede that much. It was impossible to be arrogant on such an April afternoon.

She stood up. “Of course, darling! I always am. So what was I, caught in the liquid filigree of this perfume of Neil’s? Was I that paradox of femininity, the sweet and the light, or the deeper, darker floral heart? Was I all illusion, as all characters in novels must be, yet an illusion you somehow made real? Or did Neil do that, explicating all that Lilith of the Succubi must be, should be – less a villainess for the ages and more…a tragedy of beauty? I’ll tell you. But first, you must make me a promise.”

“A promise? To the Queen of the Succubi? That sounds like a dangerous prospect!” I laughed, laughed since I knew where this was headed, I knew Lilith that well.

“Yes!” Her face was so earnest, her voice so adamant, I felt it as much as I breathed it in that perfume of promise and deliverance, of enigma and explanation. I rose to my feet, and instantly, she grabbed me by my collar. “Promise me…to take it out into the world, promise you won’t let this hope die, promise me I’ll live on forever after today.” She looked me right in the eye as she said it, not as the Lilith I had known and feared for so long, but as the woman she must have been one very long time ago, not so far away.

“Promise!”

There was nothing else I could say. I thought – in that heartbeat from one moment to the next where all possibilities lie, where stories are written, where everything, everything changes – of all my fears of failure, and all my black and far bleaker terror of success, and then, I knew it. I could feel it in my bones and in the wind, feel it in this liquid filigree of a perfume and its potential.

“I promise.”

She walked toward the bridge and began to cross it, and as she did, as the wind carried her perfume with her, wrapped her warm in her secrets and her story, she grew more and more transparent, more and more ephemeral, like the breath of a narcissus in April. I saw her go, felt that perfume fade with a pang in my heart, for I knew I would never see her again except where I saw her first – in that dark place in my mind I never knew I had until she told me through my words.

“So what was it?” I shouted into the wind. “What were you?” My voice sounded haunted, misplaced in this spring wood of beeches and flowery covenant.

I heard a laugh as a puff of wind blew her away into the air, blew her perfume into a limitless blue sky.

“You didn’t know?” she called out, from beyond the bridge now, gone with her evanescent perfume, her own promises and portent. “Tell Neil – he got it right! That I’m all of this and one thing more, one thing you should have known.”

As if the trees wanted the answer too, the wind quieted down, the birds in the trees stopped singing for an instant, even the burbling stream ceased its song and Lilith’s voice was all I heard.

“A necessary evil!”

She laughed again, laughed with all her smoky promises, laughed like that narcissus must have at the wonder of the spring, and was gone.

The stream carried out her words and her perfume into the fiord, into the Baltic, and into the ocean of the world.

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Neil Morris’ ‘Lilith’, created for the Devilscent Project, is available through his Vault collection of perfumes.

Illustration: Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, ‘La Mort Parfumée’ (1921), pencil, watercolor, gouache and gold paint on paper, The Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow, Color edit by me.

With profound gratitude to Neil Morris, and to Lucy, who inspired this review in a recent Skype conversation.

Sweet Little Monster

– a review of Etat Libe d’Orange’s ‘Divin’ Enfant’

You see them everywhere, such a pop culture staple they show up on postcards, bags, posters, coffee mugs, internet memes. Cherubs. Those two trouble-making Raphael angels peering up into the heavenly domain, wondering what fun they’re missing.

But in Renaissance iconography, there is no such thing as a simple ‘cherub’. All those lovely, rosy, plump babes come in two varieties, the Cherubim, who are mainly preoccupied with matters celestial and not much interested events down below, and….Putti, who also have wings and also are babes whose cheeks you want to pinch.

The Putti are only interested in worldly matters – such as getting into as much trouble as they possibly can. I’m in no position to determine whether the Putti were simply a pictorial metaphor for toddlerhood (although I suspect that’s the case, having survived two, if just barely), or simply a secular, philosophical counterpoint to the celestial Cherubim.

What I know is this: I have a thing for Putti. Something about them appeals to my sense of humor, or is it mischief?

Now, another kind of babe trouble lurks for the unsuspecting, only this trouble is an Etat Libre d’Orange perfume called ‘Divin’ Enfant’ (Divine Child), and this creature is no cherub, but all putto, all the time…

I know not a few perfumoholics who scorn the Etat Libre line for either creating that ultimate in <ahem> performance art perfume, Secretions Magnifiques, or else for cheeky, irreverent marketing and a penchant for iconoclasm – in their copy, their (stellar) artwork and even the juice itself.

Nevertheless, the fact is that Etat Libre d’Orange creates perfumes that are every bit as beautiful, as complex, and as arresting as anything at all else in niche perfumery.

This post-punk iconoclast happily dived into their line, enjoyed every minute and loved not a few. And in a fragrant world that has elevated itself in the collective mind as being above all else ‘haute’ (if not ‘haute-y’, or simply haughty!), with lofty inspirations and super-heated ad copy, it does wonders for my own internal perfumoholic bs-meter to come across a perfume house who makes no bones about their core philosophy, which I could sum up as:

Perfume should be…fun!

Enter this li’l Devil…Divin’ Enfant.
See those perfectly pink, pinchable cheeks? It’s the olfactory phrase – with all that might imply – of ‘Oh, Baby!’ Literally in this case, since the sweetest orange blossom you’ve ever had the pleasure to sniff bubbles forth like froth in a champagne glass, but this is no sultry siren awaiting her moment to lure you in, this is very much…Eau Baby, Eau! All insouciant, ebullient allure and innocence, it’s all you can do to restrain yourself to only being able to articulate vowel variations on a theme. That theme being…

Awwww…

How darling! How cute! How sweet! How utterly, totally adorable!

Adorable, yes, as all babies must be, and sweet, as they also must be or we’d surely eat them.

Don’t think that idea didn’t occur to me with Divin Enfant, since orange blossom – apparent from top to bottom – is soon joined in by a sweet, vanilla-tinged marshmallow, and go ahead. Shrug off your foibles and surrender to such charms. You might as well, since you’re feeling quite a bit fluffy yourself by now, with a grin on your face the width of the candy aisle, but who cares when sugar babies make you this happy?

Right at the instant when the perfumed permagrin is tattooed from one ear to the other, you sense ominous thunderclouds rumbling in the distance.

How can that be? This baby was eau so sweet and happy, exuding nothing at all but dimpled, rosy candied orange blossom charms when suddenly, what is this? Coffee and tobacco and leather, too?

Ah, yes. Remember, this enfant is divine…and those thunderous rumblings come ever closer as Divin Enfant pinches your cheeks and chews on your nose, as sweet and as alluring as ever, but this baby gets into all kinds of trouble, drinking your coffee as you look the other way, locating that clandestine stash of smash-glass-in-case-of-emergency cigarettes in the secret compartment of your handbag, chewing on the leather falls of that hand-braided flogger you snagged from a ‘friend’ last night that no one was ever, ever supposed to know about.

Naughty bébé, indeed! Or is it, come on, ‘fess up, you who are one naughty bébé?

It’s you. I know…

Right when you give up, right when every ounce of your ‘get up and go’ just got up and left, Divin’ Enfant sighs one last, spent sigh, a sweet baby’s breath of amber and musk, the far off vanilla tinges and that sublime orange blossom both fade away in the sunset hours (some very long time later), and…is out like a snuffed candle with that abrupt surrender to the inevitable all babies have – one second going at about 350 km/h, the next, sleeping sweet, cherubic dreams perched upon an amber moonbeam.

Divin’ Enfant is a putto and no cherub, despite all those angelic orange blossoms and that fluffy vanilla marshmallow. If I were to set an image to it, it would be Margo Nahas’ famous artwork used as the cover for Van Halen’s album, 1984 – that very worldly putto holding a cigarette in his hand that may (or may not!) be candy.

As it is, the best way to describe it would be either cutely subversive or else subversively cute, I’m not sure which.

Who cares? It’s fun.

In other words – one sweet little monster indeed!

Etat Libre d’Orange Divin Enfant is available at Luckyscent, everywhere Etat Libre d’orange perfumes are sold, and for EU customers, directly from the Etat Libre d’Orange website.

Perfumer: Antoine Lie

Notes: Orange blossom, marshmallow, rose, coffee, tobacco, leather, amber, musk

Image: Leon Perrault, ‘Sleeping Putto’ (1882)

Disclosure: Sample provided by Anthony of NKDMan, who likely thought I forgot. I didn’t. But I’m very, very grateful!

Chiaroscuro in Amethyst and Onyx

– a review of Amouage Opus VII

Among all my many moods and frequent fancies, one moves me more than nearly any other and sets my imagination alight, the delicious, delirious champagne bubbles of …anticipation. That timeless moment when anything and everything is possibility, when hopes and dreams and wishes slither inside to fuel the fires of your imagination, assert themselves and remind you that anything can and will likely happen, that you might know and experience what you never did before, go places you never knew you could.

Even now, even today, even as it seems in this endless dreary winter that sent Spring straight to an icy fevered limbo, anticipation takes hold and bubbles away in my mind, even as I have a slight hint that my anticipation might be just warranted enough, justified enough to make these fragrant hopes and ephemeral dreams a little more real, a little less dream to catch as it flies.

This day, this instant, my anticipation has a name, a prosaic name from an anything but prosaic house, the house of Amouage, and the name is nothing more and nowhere less than… Opus VII.

Once upon a time, the Library Collection line of Amouage seemed to be a counterpoint to their main line, scented sonatas as opposed to symphonies, Schubert lieder rather than full-blown Wagner operas, or novellas as opposed to doorstopper novels.

So I even believed at the time, until an inkling that arrived as the same time as Opus VI became a definite suspicion, if not a proven fact with the arrival of Opus VII.

You see, I suspect that the Library Collection is where Creative Director Christopher Chong gets to play with ideas and concepts that somehow fall outside the scope of the main line, where he might want to do things and say things on a different scale and to a different end.

Here is Opus VII at last after months of speculation, here is another concept and another idea. I have no press release to cling to nor any reviews to eye at a distance, no list of notes, nothing to go on. I am simply flying blind by my nose, walking that tightrope walk between my words, my emotions and my impressions without a safety net, and all I can hope for is not to fall flat on either my words or my face.

It is like nothing I expected, nothing I thought it would be. Nevertheless, it is an Amouage, and therefore, nothing if not surprising.

What would it be, so many of us wondered, would it be an iris, asked some people, would it be a leather, would it be anything at all like its predecessor?

I could answer all of those questions, but that’s no way to review an Amouage.

Opus VII is an iris, an iris apparent to my questionable nose from start to finish, an iris that refracts and shimmers and sparkles not with intimations of a light and airy, chilly spring, not at all like any famous irises you might think you know. Instead of light, it gives you a decadent, delectable and nearly Gothic twilit dark, instead of repeating all those famous orris commonplaces, it delivers something else, something unexpected – it gives you an iris with a haunting, slightly foreboding edge. Not ominous so much as arresting, compelling your attention in an instant.

Orris butter has so many facets on its own, far more than the flower its rhizomes sustain. With Opus VII, you will find in the opening alone not a few of them, interlaced with each other in compelling ways I can’t recall ever having encountered before. An earthy, spicy jolt to my senses of black pepper, an opening sunburst song of bergamot and maybe a touch of grapefruit that winks on your skin and is gone before that most regal, midnight purple iris steps forward to command your attention, as it surely will. Not a cold, chilly iris, not even so haughty as many irises are, but still a touch…imperious, as all irises should be.

This iris – borne up by a supporting cast that might include davana, a note that always, always haunts me and stops me cold, glows with a whisper of dark chocolate which could be patchouli, a basso profondo, poised pulse of labdanum and frankincense (that glorious frankincense Amouage uses like no other brand I know), and another arresting note that also always compels me like few others, a note I think might be a supple, silky smooth myrrh.

If that were all Opus VII were, I’d be beyond thrilled.

It’s not.

Understand, all these disparate elements take hours to show themselves in the spotlight. They wend and weave and dance their separate measures throughout, sometimes appearing clear as day, clear as a key light shone upon them, before they imperceptibly recede and retreat, only to reemerge from the shadows when you least expect them.

Now you smell them. Then, you don’t.

Suddenly with a shock of awareness, they appear again.

And then.

Then comes another thread, another ribbon of dark, refracted light that spirals from top to bottom, from start to finish and back again, and this is called leather in still another midnight shade and hue. As soft and as pliant as a flawlessly fitted glove, as luxurious and dense as suede, it seems neither one nor the other, but the hide of some otherworldly animal, caught and tanned if never tamed by some sleight-of-hand, arcane secret we mortals may not know, but only have the privilege to breathe in.

Call it hyperbole, call me out on my exaggerations and verbal excess, yet I tell you…this is what Opus VII is and these words are the story it tells me.

Since my sample arrived, I’ve spent not a little time with its wonders. I’ve sprayed my skin, I’ve sniffed the bottle, I’ve immersed myself by spraying not just myself, but my pillows and my Tibetan prayer flag, too. I’ve been more than a little obsessed with it in a way I’m not normally accustomed to. Through not a few days and the nights that followed those days. I’ve tried to capture the djinn as they flew and listen to the story they told, wondering where that story began and how it ended.

When my own realization hit, it hit through music, as happens often in this musically obsessed household. I sat and listened last night to Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Rites of Spring’, and as I did, the djinn within Opus VII began to dance with far more abandon than even the great Nijinsky could manage, dance as they told a story of emerging from the depths of an endless, icy winter, of springing forth from the shadows and next, running back to the twilight gloaming that conceals them.

They laughed at my pretensions and my anticipation, only to wrap me snug and warm against the sudden, shocking chill of early spring with that otherwordly, chiaroscuro silk velvet pelt of amethyst and onyx, of iris and pepper, frankincense and labdanum and a deft touch of patchouli, of leather and myrrh.

An emergence, a story, a dance, anticipation, a plush, velvet olfactory pelt of an otherworldly animal the world will soon know as…Opus VII.

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Amouage Opus VII was created by perfumers Alberto Morillas and Pierre Negrin in collaboration with Amouage Creative Director Christopher Chong. It will be available from Amouage boutiques and Amouage retailers from mid-April.

Image 1: A black iris bud, via Wikimedia Commons, adapted by me.

Image 2: Opus VII presentation, courtesy of Amouage. Used by permission.

Disclosure: A sample of Opus VII was provided for review by Amouage. The Alembicated Genie is never endorsed by any perfume house or company, all reviews are original, I’m never compensated for reviews and all stated opinions are my own.

*********Addendum*********

Since writing this review yesterday, I’ve been informed by a reliable source that Opus VII does not, in fact, contain iris at all. So I’ll proclaim the Humpty Dumpty rule of (terrible) perfume analysis and say…Your Mileage (and sillage) May Vary. But such were and are my definite impressions, and as it is, my review remains.

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A Rose of a Manifold Stripe

– a review of Serge Lutens’ ‘La Fille de Berlin’

So rich in facets and form, so varied in color and so infinitely complex the perfumes that lingers within its velvety folds, it’s no wonder the rose has so many names, and so many smell so sweet. Some roses imbue the ambience of a summer day when they sing on the skin and other roses emote in alto, moonlit voices of alto, starlit dreams.

By any other name it might well smell as sweet (as not all roses do), and yet somehow, I feel that simple syllable ‘rose’ is much too simple and much too short to encompass all the many stories a rose can tell on the skin. Or is it that such a short, euphonious name for such a beloved flower contains at least as many stories, dreams and associations as the petals we can count?

Now, we have another rose, another tale, another song a rose can sing in all its dulcet hues, a rose with a new, untold story all its own … La Fille de Berlin, the Girl from Berlin.

Supposedly, La Fille de Berlin was inspired by that golden cultural renaissance of Berlin during the Weimar Republic, when everything bloomed – the arts, literature, the architecture and even the people to such an extent that 1920s Berlin today is a byword for a certain exuberance of mind and spirit that danced on the edge of decadence, and only too often fell all the way in with a defiant, Berlinerisch laugh.

But let M. Lutens tell the story:

She’s a rose with thorns, don’t mess with her. She’s a girl who goes to extremes. When she can, she soothes, and when she wants …!

Such a girl isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I consider all things ‘rose’, yet I’ve dived into enough roses – and a few Lutens perfumes – to know I should expect the unexpected and brace myself for this story of a girl from Berlin.

Having never tried those other, famous roses, Sa Majesté La Rose or Rose de Nuit, I’ll take La Fille de Berlin on her own terms, thorns and all, such being the price you gladly pay a rose…

She is no ordinary rose, no common cliché of ruby red, sunlit yellow or moonlight white, she is a rose of variegated hue, striped in folds of crimson and cream, reality …and dream.

The dream is all a rose, and the reality is a luscious, luminous rose in a photogenic pose. It breathes a husky, sweet, innocently raspberry-tinged song which tells me a violet is laughing in the mix somewhere. A violet without a hint of powder or lipstick, a violet that coaxes on this lovely rose to other places, places that crave the fire and heat of peppers pink and black and determination, places that demand instead of asking nicely, places unexpected.

Surely, I never did expect what happened next, for inside this glowing daydream of a rose lie her thorns and her backbone, with an icy-metallic twist. Not iron, not any obvious kiss of steel or stone, but altogether lighter, tighter and thoroughly new, titanium thorns you never thought to see through those rose-tinted glasses, a faraway taste of blood and kisses, the price you willingly pay for knowing this girl and this rose.

Ah, but she has so many stories, so many tales, and even this one is still evolving, still opening up its petals to bloom as you watch and you breathe, still reeling with the surprise of those thorns and that determination.

Now you know her secrets and you know to keep them well, for now she shows her softer, muskier self, now this rose will all her pleasures prove with her animal, feline purr, she’ll kiss and laugh the pain away to make you forget those fatal thorns, make you forget all you thought you knew in one blinding bright surprise, make you forget there ever was any other rose or any other girl than one unforgettable, indelible girl from Berlin.

When she wants…watch out!

With such a story and such an inspiration, the obvious association would be that most fatale of femmes, Marlene Dietrich as Lola-Lola in ‘The Blue Angel’, as she entices her ardent admirers ever onward to despair and ruin.

Camilla Horn in 1927, hot off her breakthrough success as Gretchen in F.W. Murnau’s ‘Faust’

My impression is another one, another – regrettably forgotten – girl who came to Berlin and claimed it for her own, a girl who went on to fame and fortune, but a girl who somehow embodied not just all the allure of all ‘les filles de Berlin’, but also her many charms and her underlying innocence as Gretchen in F.W. Murnau’s ‘Faust’ (one of my own favorite movies), and that is Camilla Horn.

She is all of a piece as Gretchen, with all the hope and innocence of her kind – but with all that titanium will and determination. All the many beauties of a rose of manifold stripe, all the seductive secrets of this…Girl From Berlin.

So long as you remember – she rocks …and she shocks!

_________________________________________

Longevity is outstanding, and although this slants toward the feminine, this would be devastating on the right kind of man.

Notes: Rose, pink pepper, violet, black pepper, musk.

La Fille de Berlin is available from the Serge Lutens website for EU customers, and from Luckyscent and Barneys NY in the US.

The Adventures of Ms. Hare and Madame Hyde

– help to look as good as you waft!

As a blogger myself, I also read a lot of blogs. I don’t always comment as much as I know I should, but by golly, I read them. Of all those many blogs I read, not all of which are perfume-related, I have nothing at all but bottomless admiration for those intrepid ladies who (also) blog about the perilous business of beauty. My idols are not those countless twenty-somethings who wax poetic over the anti-aging benefits of Korean snail extract BB creams (I can’t take them seriously), but ladies like myself ‘d’un certain age’ who haven’t given up and packed it in. Who try stuff so I don’t have to as one of them succinctly states, who go where I can’t, test what I can’t afford or am able to obtain and always keep their sense of perspective in order, as well as their sense of humor.

Therefore, before I incriminate myself any further, may I say it: Jane, Gaia, Jen and CharlestonGirl – ladies, I bow down before your utter, jawdropping awesomeness and dedication. You have never led me astray. And although this isn’t strictly speaking a perfume post, I’m no competition. Nevertheless – your stellar advice has changed my life in more ways than you know.

Yet, after a winter that has seemed to drag endlessly on and a milestone birthday ahead I dearly wish I could hibernate through if not bypass altogether, even impoverished perfume bloggers in the BFE sticks (that would be me) can sometimes get lucky and try things that neither cost the sun, the moon or all the stars but also deliver good on their promise without ever promising more than they deliver!

To that end, I recruited some help from my intrepid former roommate and present downstairs neighbor for an alternate perspective on some beauteous goodies I was dying to try. We can call her Ms. Hare. She’s 32, a definite Leo, and thanks to knowing yours truly, a reformed and dedicated lover of all things niche, including the contents of my perfume cabinet. Ms. Hare has a thick, wavy bush of dark brown hair – apart from the color the kind of hair I once had before age, offspring and years of coloring abuse caught up with it. She has taught me the proper use of a hair dryer. (And much else besides). She is therefore uniquely qualified as a test bunny for one particular product I shall get back to in a bit.

Meanwhile, there’s yours truly. I stubbornly refuse to make Botox or cosmetic surgery part of my future, but south does seem to be the general direction in which I’m heading, in spite of all I do, massive amounts of daily sunscreen for over twenty years and a year-round perma-pallor. And something has to be done. I’m not dead yet. Neither, much as it pains me to say, is my vanity. Which received a bit of a dent last year when a dermatologist diagnosed me with atopic dermatitis and put a serious cramp in my style.

What to do, what to do…

The Miracle Workers

Skye Botanicals African Gold Shea Butter

Shea butter has long been the ingredient du jour in the battle against dry skin, psoriasis and other epidermal ills. I had never encountered the Real, Undiluted Deal until Monica Miller of Skye Botanicals/Perfume Pharmer was sweet enough to send me a jar of Skye Botanicals ‘African Gold Unrefined Shea Butter’ when I complained about my horrible traitorous dry skin. This is – let me say it – marvelous, magnificent stuff. Bright yellow and with the consistency of a salve, I’ve used it on my face, the frayed ends of my hair, on scaly elbows, knees and heels, dry hands and everywhere else I could think of, which is basically – everywhere else. I haven’t woken up with the face of a twenty-five year old, but that’s OK, too. A little goes a long way, my skin and I have been on very civil speaking terms since and I never want to be without it again. As if those wonders weren’t enough, it won’t break out your skin or even the bank. Run, don’t walk, straight to Skye Botanicals and buy it. Your skin will thank you by looking the best it ever has, considering that compass is headed south…

Also from Skye Botanicals is the gentle Rose Facial Toner, which has not only convinced me to use toner after cleansing (this is called progress, darlings), but is also great for setting my makeup. Plus, it smells deliciously of wild roses. What’s not to love?

No Snake Oil In Sight

Aroma M Camellia Facial Oil

Skincare oils are suddenly everywhere, even here in the BFE boonies. Had you told me even six months ago I’d be a convert too, I wouldn’t have believed you. Aroma M’s incredible Camellia Face oil – concocted from camellia, carrot seed, golden jojoba, apricot kernel, evening primrose, virgin argan, jasmine, geranium, frankincense and neroli oils – was inspired by Maria McElroy’s expertise with both Western aromatherapy and Japanese Gion Geisha beauty rituals and not only combines the best of both worlds, but also does wonders to rehydrate and nourish the skin, even mine. I love nothing better than to eat my own words on facial oils. My skin adored it. I adored it. I woke up in the mornings without wanting a steam iron for my face. Although I still haven’t woken up with the face of a twenty-five-year-old, I certainly feel far more fabulous than I ever did! Which is also the perfect description of the scent – fabulous.

Aftelier Jasmine Face Elixir

Jasmine oil, so says my aromatherapy research, has anti-aging properties, works to calm the nervous system and relaxes. Mandy Aftel has combined the organic oils of grapeseed, sweet almond, rice bran, squalene, camellia and rose hip to concoct a heavenly, jasmine-scented blend. I’ve used it at night both over and under my night cream, and this has really put the capital G in my g-l-o-w. If that’s not a recipe for sweet dreams, I don’t know what is.

Aftelier Lavender Fresh Ginger Body Oil & Hair Elixir

Since I was brainwashed in childhood with Yardley’s English Lavender soap, I’ve had a soft spot for lavender in perfumes and body care products. I was a bit disconcerted to discover that this dark green gem has since been discontinued, but in the “I can’t believe it’s good for my skin” department, Lavender Fresh Ginger Body Oil checks all the boxes. It’s a favorite color. It smells utterly divine, with both the calming green, herbal and floral scent of lavender and the kicky, spicy fire of fresh ginger. It smoothes my crocodile hide to sensuously silken softness. It has also gone on the frayed ends of my hair with great results, so long as I remember a little goes a long way. All that’s missing is someone to appreciate it, but at least Hairy Krishna has been known to snuggle a little closer and purr a little louder when I wear this to bed. It comes in several other varieties that are not one whit less delicious – for your skin and your senses.

Aftelier Ancient Resins Body Oil and Hair Elixir.

Originally custom-made for the legendary Leonard Cohen, this is the classiest skin-solicitous celebuscent ever – an oil with all the same benefits for your hair and skin as the Lavender and Fresh Ginger. It smells impossibly luxe, dense and incredibly deep – the olfactory equivalent of Mr. Cohen’s plush, silk-velvet baritone, and I have a thing for those…With frankincense, poplar buds, benzoin, elemi and labdanum. I’ll happily take Manhattan – right after I take this along with it. Or any guy who wears it. They have been warned.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Aroma M Camellia Hair Oil

No kidding, there we were, my friend and I – one bushy-haired brunette Amazon Leo, one pint-sized Doña Quixota Taurus with rather fine, limp, slightly wavy hair color-treated nearly every shade of the rainbow since the early Palaeolithic. These days, however, I stick in the general neighborhood of my own shade if slightly lighter, what with lighter being younger, or so they tell me. Basically, we both have fried hair, although I’ve had a haircut two months ago, so my hair is in better shape and with far fewer split ends.

To put it another way – we were both of us in dire need of some hair therapy, but in a manner of speaking from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Aroma M’s Camellia Hair Oil was created according to the very best and most effective traditions of hair care known to geisha – and Japanese women in general. They take protecting their skin and hair from the elements very seriously, and camellia oil has been used for centuries as a hairdressing aid, protecting and purifying the hair and scalp. It contains camellia oil, virgin argan and golden jojoba oils, and the essential oils of rosemary and Moroccan tuberose.

First impressions first – this is without question the most heavenly scented dedicated hair oil I’ve ever used, and I say this as a diehard tuberose lover and sometime user of Moroccan argan oil.

Ms. Hare and I used it in three ways over a period of three weeks. As an overnight hair mask, as protection before blowdrying, and as a pick-me-up on the ends before the onslaught of hair clips and elastic.

She noted her hair was in noticeably better shape than before. It was smoother, much less inclined to frizz in high humidity and far easier to manage. She did say – despite my warnings that a little went a long way – it seemed to weigh her hair down more than other oils, but she couldn’t argue with the results. Not so that ever stopped her. You can’t argue with a Leo!

Next, yours truly, wimpy-haired blonde. Whether wishful thinking, that sublime tuberose scent or just using a little less oil, since I began using aroma M’s Camellia Hair Oil, I’m no longer tempted by the idea of a really drastic haircut. My hair is definitely smoother, softer, more manageable and certainly glossier, and given I’m blonde, that’s not to be sneezed at. I’ve styled it, curled it, braided fishtails, blowdried it and French braided it, all with no ill effects. The bottom line – I feel a bit like the girl in a cheesy 80s shampoo ad. Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. I’ll tell you my secret. It’s not my hair, it’s my hair oil.

You can keep a secret, right?

Everyone knows it – whatever can protect a delicate camellia flower – or a likewise delicate flower-like complexion – from the frost, snow and ill effects of a winter that seems never to end can’t possibly be bad!

Disclosure: Samples were provided for review by Skye Botanicals, aroma M and Aftelier. For which I thank them most sincerely!

Skye Botanicals products are available from the website and Perfume Pharmer’s Etsy store. Aroma M Camellia Hair and Face Oils are available from aroma M’s website and select retail outlets. Aftelier Face Elixirs and Body Oil and Hair Elixirs are available from the Aftelier website. With thanks to the intrepid Ms. Hare. And the very inspirational CharlestonGirl, the Non Blonde, Jane and Jen.

Photo: Dabney Rose. Used by permission.