Gender Benders


– Or how to be dangerous without really trying!

The Greek philosopher Theophrastus, in his ‘Enquiry Into Plants’, once categorically stated that floral-heady perfumes worked best for men, accentuating their masculinity, whereas heavier scents, such as spikenard, malabathrum and incense, worked best for a woman, an idea that these 2,500 years later seems to run counter to everything we take for granted in the world of perfume. Which only goes to prove just how much things have and haven’t changed since then. I’ve known plenty of men, some hypermasculine exemplars among them, who loved nothing more than, say, a lethal dose of ‘Shalimar’, and likewise, ladies who couldn’t get heady, heavy or potent enough.

Subversion, any former punk and present iconoclast will tell you, can be a wonderful thing. If by subverting certain preconceptions, as mildly or as wildly as you please, you can turn your world ever so slightly on its axis, if you can make your surroundings question their assumptions, then how can that possibly be bad?

Stick around the perfumed world long enough, and somewhere in the course of your passion, you will inevitably eye the other side of the gender divide of the perfume counter and wonder what things happen there.

Once upon a time, it was considered ever-so-slightly daring for a woman to wear a traditionally ‘masculine’ perfume. If it happened, it happened on the sly, admitted sotto voce, like the time I asked my then-teenaged sister what she was wearing, and she whispered ‘Obsession for Men.’ How scandalous! How brave! How…delicious!

Delicious, to immerse yourself in the world of fougères and woods, green and spices, to disconcert your environment that expected something floral and frilly and feminine. Just as white tie and tails – or Yves Saint Laurent’s famous ‘le smoking’ – turned a traditionally masculine concept completely on its head and accentuated sexy femininity, so can ‘masculine’ scents present a double threat – an aura that should be a butch testimony to testosterone, and instead is a testimony to female.

These days, of course, it doesn’t matter any more. In all fairness, as one famous perfumer said, the only difference between men’s and women’s perfumes is – and has always been – the ‘Pour Homme’ printed on the label. Several lines make no distinction at all, and I don’t see why you should, either.

So, ladies – spray away. Go ahead. Live a little dangerously.You know you want to!

In my own perfumed life history, I’ve loved not a few masculines – loved them enough to wear them, to gift them to boyfriends, to have fun by experiencing everything they had to offer, and in so doing to come a little closer to what I love. Below follows a few of my favorites. Some are classics, some are divisive – all of them are devastating – on either gender!

The Classics
These are the Big Ones, the ones you can’t get around, the classics that have been filched from bathroom cabinets everywhere nearly since the launch date – they’re that good.

Eau Sauvage (Dior)
It may remind you of your father, it may remind you of Classic Cologne with capital Cs, but Edmond Routnitska’s Eau Sauvage was a groundbreaking scent for a reason. On women, this is Class with Sass.

Vetiver (Guerlain)
If you love Green Fiends, the kind of viridian perfumed statements that brook no arguments and take no prisoners, then Guerlain’s ‘Vetiver’ is for you. It was, in fact, my own gateway into masculines, and much later, Guerlain took note and created ‘Vetiver Pour Elle’. Surely, that was unnecessary. The original is perfect just as it is.

Mouchoir de Monsieur (Guerlain)
One of my two very first proper perfume purchases was ‘Jicky’, a ground-breaking revolution in a bottle. A fougére but not, a floral but not, a slightly leathery, elusive animal, it lives somewhere in between the spaces of its contradictions, just like its sibling, ‘Mouchoir de Monsieur’. Whereas Jicky is somewhat naughty and impetuous, ‘Mouchoir’ is rather more well-behaved. Which doesn’t mean it’s not just as naughty, in a good way.

The Subversives

L’Anarchiste (Caron)
You expect something unusual from a perfume called The Anarchist. Something Piotr Kropotkin would have worn. This is orange and spice and all things nice, and the most anarchistic thing about it is its name, for turning your expectations on their heads. Another way to circumvent convention, maybe?

M7 (Yves Saint Laurent)
I have a problem with oudh. Shoot me for my lack of perfumista sophistication if you must, but something about oudh gives me a headache. Unless, like here, it’s wrapped in the kind of woody rosemary-vetiver that sands down most of the medicinal edges to a smooth, glossy finish. On a man, this is devastating. On a woman, this is a definite threat. Wear wisely, or bear the consequences! 😉

The Modern Yet Timeless
Dior Homme (Dior)
Iris – in fact, orris root – can go in one of two directions to my nose. Either it nosedives into a hairspray vibe that turns my stomach no matter what I do (Prada’s ‘Infusion d’Iris), or it is stupendously, staggeringly beautiful in a way few other floral notes can capture. I love a few iris-laden perfumes, and of them all, Dior Homme is at the very top tier of that list. Why they call it ‘Homme’, I don’t know. Chilly – as iris often is – elegant, and timeless. And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better…Dior gave us-

Dior Homme Intense (Dior)
Dior Homme Intense is the dressed up for living dangerously sibling of Homme. I once managed to shock my (virtually shockproof) sister by drenching myself in this. This is heavier, an evening scent, if you will, with a definitely sweeter, smokier vanilla-cocoa vibe. I can only be grateful I have yet to meet it on an attractive man, because I’d eat him if he wore this. As it is, I can only just refrain from gnawing my own arm. Just.

Chêne (Serge Lutens)
Serge Lutens dispenses with gender labels altogether, and rightly so. Who cares? Wear what you love, but certain perfumes of his line tend to skew in either a feminine or a masculine direction, and certain others can read either way. I would never have guessed in a zillion years that I would fall so hard for a perfume, I’d write it into my novel, yet I did. A perfume named for a wood – oak – in all its sappy, smoky, slightly boozy manifestations, it is sexy on either gender. Perfect for days you feel the need for invisible armor. Wearing ‘Chêne’, I can handle anything. Anything at all.

Encens et Lavande (Serge Lutens)
Perfume names can be slightly misleading, to say the least. Yet ‘Encens et Lavande’ is perfectly named – incense and lavender. No more, no less, no need to gild this lily any further. It seems so simple and is incredibly complex, it is contemplative and it is comforting. Great on a guy, great on a gal, just plain…genius, any way you try it.

Traditional ‘masculine’ perfumes are often just as good – and in some cases better – on women, just as ladies in tuxes can be devastastingly feminine and more than slightly subversive. Marlene Dietrich in her white tie and tails could never be mistaken for anyone but Marlene Dietrich – beautiful, strong, slightly disconcerting yet still a Woman with a capital W, putting the ‘fatale’ in ‘femme’!

That’s at least part of the idea, right? 😉

Photo: Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s ‘Morocco’ (Paramount, 1930).

The Madonna of the Pinks


– A review of Caron’s Bellodgia
Soliflores can be tricky propositions, especially for those of us with short attention spans. Either too linear or too literal, too fleeting – or too much. If like me you have a penchant for certain odiferous blooms – in my case, lilies, roses, lilacs, wisteria, carnations, orange blossom to name but a few, it stands to reason that some days, you simply want to take that joy with you, hopefully without being bored halfway through the day.

Not so long ago, I went on an Oscar – as in Wilde – binge, and naturally enough, carnations popped up. But have you noticed something? Those rarified, ostentatious hothouse blooms have lost their scent these days. Even those glorious dark red carnations – surely a visual statement of no small order – don’t have much more than a fleeting, peppery note, nothing like the rich and heady flowers of Oscar’s day.

Failing the Real Thing, I next went on a mission to locate The Ultimate Bottled Carnation. Sadly, Floris’ ‘Malmaison’ has been discontinued, and good luck finding any – you’ll need it. Next up, I found Comme des Garçons Red Series 2 ‘Carnation’ – and thank you, Dimitri, for telling me where to locate it in my remote perfume desert. I spent an afternoon with it, and I’m telling you, if any perfume should be titled ‘Red’, or more likely, ‘Red Hot’, this is it. Wheee! Pepper and clove and Cinnamon with a capital C, this stuff puts the ‘carnal’ in carnation. Carnal or venal, I’m not sure which, but not for me. It nosedived into the pepper pot on my skin in a way I probably wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate, or maybe it was a question of time. The bottom line was…no.

I tried to locate Etro’s ‘Dianthus’, and just like with ‘Malmaison’, had rotten, lousy luck. It has also been discontinued.

Nina Ricci’s ‘L’Air du Temps’ – a classic for a reason – was another perfume that highlights carnation, and again – not for me. Almost anything my mother wore is by default out of the running. It just felt…wrong, like a four-year-old getting into Mommy’s lipstick and stilettos. I just wasn’t…woman enough!

Which was when I found Caron’s ‘Bellodgia’. Created in 1927 by Ernest Daltroff, it is considered one of the world’s finest carnations, created to evoke the town of Bellagio by Lake Como, ‘carnations soaked in sunshine’.

I took a deep breath, crossed my eyes and toes and wished for a birthday bottle of the eau de parfum.

Reading about a perfume and trying to evoke it in your olfactory imagination only gets you so far. It is…perfume by proxy, and nothing can quite prepare you for The Real Deal. Which explains the Try Before You Buy ethos of perfumoholics like myself, unless, also like me, you like surprises!

Therefore, it was with some trepidation I opened that birthday package, crossed my fingers and – sprayed. Yowza! What was that slightly…weird thing going on, that thing that said…PERFUME, BABY! The old-fashioned kind, the kind they don’t make like this any more, but right before I was ready to swallow my disappointment…it was National Carnation Day chez Maison Tarleisio, and the most opulent, heady, dizzying, erm, incarnation of well, pinks – of carnation and clove and thick, sweet vanilla, underscored by what to my nose smelled like rose, but according to the notes is actually lily-of-the-valley and jasmine – bloomed and radiated and emanated in all directions.

This was the carnation to slay all carnations, this was stupendously beautiful and viciously addictive. This carnation was a loyal soul – it never strayed and stuck like duct tape to my perfume-eating skin, finally drying down to a soft, powdery, mossy vanilla-clove-musk finish that on me reminds me of sandalwood, but sweeter, with a vanilla edge that is not at all gourmand but definitely edible. So good, I nearly wanted to eat my arm, or sub-contract the job to someone else who would. Nothing funereal about it in the slightest, but very much a living, breathing, emanating joy.

I’ve worn this at the height of summer, and I’ve worn this on icy, windy, snowy days and it behaves differently according to the weather. Heat amps up the floral notes, but on cold days, this is snuggly, vicuña comfort in a bottle. My five-year-old adores it. When I wear it, he can’t get close enough, so long as it’s on my lap and he can bury his nose in my neck. He likes most things I wear, but of them all, Bellodgia is his favorite. Eau de Maman, if you ask him. That is all, and for a five-year-old, that’s enough.

I haven’t had the opportunity to try this in parfum – vintage or reformulated – so I’m not in any position to say how much it’s been altered/ruined by reformulation. I’ve also read that in the newer eau de parfum, there is a green tea note, but I don’t get that at all. What I do get is a soliflore that holds my attention throughout the day, that is much admired by my surroundings for being in an entirely alternate universe from the usual perfumes of today, and that I have grown to love far more than I ever expected.

If Bellodgia were a painting, it would be the Raphael-attributed ‘Madonna of the Pinks’, for being so true to the scent of pinks, with their spicy, fiery heart, and if it were a Tarot Card, it would be the Major Arcana card called The Empress – the essence of motherly womanhood, caring, compassionate, comforting.

As it is, it’s what carnations are supposed to be, but sadly, no longer are. It is also what perfumes should be, and all too often, rarely are.

Image: The Raphael-attributed ‘Madonna of the Pinks’, National Gallery, London
Image of vintage Bellodgia parfum: Il Mondo di Odore

Notes according to Fragrantica:
Top notes: Carnation
Heart notes: Jasmine, lily of the valley
Base notes: Musk, clove and vanilla

Cloves But No Cigar


– A review of the reformulated ‘Coco de Chanel’

‘Tis a perilous business to venture into your local perfume store these days, perilous not because I might be tempted beyond endurance, but because I’m too afraid I’ll have hysterics over all the murder victims lurking on the shelves. Too many of my all time top-ten perfumes have been changed beyond recognition, indeed beyond repair in some cases, and sometimes, the thought makes me want to cry.

The other day I passed by one local store, and decided to bypass each and every one of the umpteen new releases and flanker editions that were even more boring than the originals. I did spray a few on paper I had somehow missed, to see if I had missed out. Among them Mugler’s ‘Womanity’ and ‘Alien’, which were neither so bad I wanted to run screaming out of the store, nor so good I was tempted. Of the two, I liked ‘Alien’ better, but man – the sillage! The sillage explains the name – surely this is intergalactic jasmine sambac sillage? This stuff could be used as an Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction. My eyes water just thinking about it.

Yves Saint Laurent Paris – the change apparent from the color scheme on the box – was once one of the most glorious rose-violet olfactory creations ever to grace yours truly – and loyal fans by the millions. No more. Now, ‘Paris’ is an anemic, wan shadow of her rosy-purple self, suitable only for tweenies with no discrimination, not even worthy of the name. No rose, less violet. Don’t even get me started on the abomination called ‘Parisienne’. Surely, Monsieur Saint Laurent is rolling in his grave? He would never have put his venerable name on that.

There was a rare bottle of Miss Dior of so many memories, not another version of ‘Miss Dior Chérie’, but plain and simple ‘Miss Dior’. My very first grown-up bottle of perfume. I tried to stop myself, really, I did. Resistance was futile. It would end in tears. I sprayed some on paper. Ah, the pain of it! They killed ‘Miss Dior’ and never bothered with a burial, but left her for the wolves of reformulation to rot in ignominy. Oh, the shame of it!

Somehow, I managed to compose myself, if barely. There were tears hiding just beneath the surface, but One. Must. Stay Calm.

On I sidled along the shelves, nope, not interested inn anything Boss Orange, or anything Cacharel. I had reached Chanel, and geez, how many ‘Chance’s can a customer stand? Chanel, one of the last independent major-league perfume houses on Planet Earth, should know better. I know I do – ‘you’re-SO-not-our-demographic, dahling’.

No. I know too much, I’m too old and too jaded. Past no. 19, known and loved to this day, and I don’t need another right now, the one I have at home is still going strong.

Which was when I saw it, when I had that Epiphany Moment. Making no fuss of itself, and looking nearly exactly the same as of yore, back in the day when neither fashions nor perfumes could have shoulders that were wide enough, sillage that was potent – enough. In those days, I wore it and some close cousins to give me that courage life had yet to teach me. So I told myself at the time, at least, but the simple fact was, I had a boyfriend at the time who liked Loud and Proud on me, and I did my best to oblige – with Paloma Picasso, YSL Paris, Cabochard, Magie Noire – and Coco de Chanel. All of them representing Liquid Courage, and none of them suited for blushing violets of any stripe.

Coco de Chanel was a constant companion and eternal favorite, a gloriously opulent Oriental that was the epitome of Classy-Sexy-Dame, a perfume even my notoriously fickle mother liked on me. That the sillage also slayed several boyfriends throughout the Eighties and early Nineties was only a bonus side effect.

Feeling like the last of the living Ostrogoths that day last week in the perfume shop, I decided to give it a go on my skin, to see if it could make me cry. I reached for the Eau de Parfum.

From that first and only blast it was apparent that it had been changed, certainly in the top notes. The peach is less obvious, the orange and mandarin not quite so noticeable and rich.

I told myself I wouldn’t cry. So I walked away and out the door and on to the other errands of my day.

Ten minutes later, that classic rosy Chanel note, this one accentuated with clove, cinnamon and orange blossom, bloomed forth and…took me away, to the woman I once was, before I lost most of my illusions. Cloves! Clover! It was all…still there, and not merely figments of my imagination.

Oh, yes! This was Coco all right, this wasn’t damaged beyond hope or repair, this was…seriously, why didn’t I own a bottle any more?

But Coco truly came into her own in the dry-down, when the labdanum, the opoponax, the sandalwood, amber and vanilla came to call. This was the eau de parfum, with more focus on those base notes, and they seemed to my uneducated nose to be as thick and as opulent as always.

Certainly, she was tenacious as always. Coco stayed – and stayed – and stayed. Forty-eight hours later, it was still definitely discernible on my jacket, even to my roommate, who has the olfactory abilities of a wooly mammoth with a bad head cold.

If Coco were a Tarot Card, she would be…the Major Arcana card called ‘Strength’. For courage, for determination, for tenacity, for daring to wrestle the lions of life unscathed and unafraid, bold and beautiful and strong.

Just like another kind of woman I want to be. Coco goes on my to-die-for list. Maybe as a belated Xmas present – from the young woman I once was to the woman I am now.

Notes according to Fragrantica:
Top notes: Coriander, pomegranate blossom, mandarin orange, peach, jasmine and bulgarian rose
Middle notes: mimosa, cloves, orange blossom, clover and rose
Base notes are labdanum, amber, sandalwood, tonka bean, opoponax, civet and vanilla.

Photo: Vanessa Paradis as the face of Coco de Chanel 1992, from chanelwiki.com

Outrage(o) Us!


Here’s a little thought experiment for you. Say…you are a painter. You are a painter who makes thousands of colors glow on a canvas, colors that emphasize, colors that delineate form and depth and story, colors that glow in the dark. It is your use of color that distinguishes you as a painter, color that has established your reputation, color…that sells your canvases.

Or…you are a musician. For years, you have created beautiful, haunting melodies, glorious soaring choruses, the music of the galactic spheres, even – all contained within the eight black-and-white octaves on your piano keyboard.

Maybe, like me, you are a writer, conjuring up empires of the mind in that harrowing space between your fingers and the keyboard, pulling emotions out of your readers’ minds, messing with their heads as you sing your Scherezade tales.

Now, imagine…the painter being told that nothing but coal tar based paints will be available in future. Henceforward, there shall be no more lapis blue, no more malachite green, no more rose madder or carmine red. The replacement paints are all garish, rather over-loud and obvious, with none of the tonal qualities of those natural hues. There’s no choice in the matter, simply that if these artificial colors aren’t used, that painter will not be able to paint at all.

The composer has been told that instead of eight octaves produced by hammers striking the strings across a richly resonant box, he or she will be limited to, say, five octaves produced electronically, with a MIDI keyboard and sound module.

The writer, used to the full register of a very large vocabulary, will from now on only be allowed to use words less than four syllables long, words with Anglo-Saxon origins, words a fourth-grader can understand, even if the writer has never written for children, but for adults who appreciate the opulence of the English language.

Does this sound a bit Orwellian? Too many totalitarian overtones? Surely, it’s a joke, right?

No. Because this is what the IFRA wants to do to the perfumer’s art, has, in fact, already done. Say you have a classic favorite, Mitsouko, maybe, or Cabochard (one of mine), or in these dark November days, Magie Noire. All three of these timeless scents have been changed beyond recognition, and the sad thing is, the average consumer is none the wiser, because, so the official story goes, many of the natural essences and notes can be sensitizing to certain people, some of them are photo-sensitive, others can be allergenic.

That’s the IFRA’s story and they’re sticking to it. Of course, it’s not even a half-truth, because the truth is even more shocking. There are scores of self-regulating research companies who have a heavily vested interest in marketing their synthetic substances – which may or may not be ‘chemically’ identical to a ‘banned’ resin/absolute/essential oil – right into the pockets of the few international companies thaty create the vast majority of the world’s perfumes, down to and including bath products, dish soap and laundry detergents.
Have you strolled through a department store perfume department lately? Did you happen to notice just how similar everything smells? Sure, there are marketing trends and fashionable themes in perfumery. There was…the Year of the Iris, the Rose, the White Musk, the Wood…(one of this year’s main themes). But they’re all a bit of the same…bland uniformity, the same fruity/floral/woody/wimpy generic…fumes, most of them targeted to a demographic you, alas, are too old and too jaded to belong to.

Too old, because you remember those days when perfumes were glorious, gorgeous extensions of your presence, your New & Improved You But Better. When they had depth and complexity, nuance and color. Before they were killed off by the dreaded ‘reformulation’.

If the IFRA has its wily way, many of the substances – used in perfumes, incense and aromatherapy for thousands of years – on the list (see the full list under Pages and the heading ‘Outlawed and Dangerous?’) will be gone forever, many natural source suppliers will go out of business, and those chemical supply companies will be laughing all the way to the bank, trundling up any amount of dubious ‘proof’ that their formulas are ‘safer’ and ‘less allergenic’ – if they don’t just subscribe to the usual marketing ‘Because We Say So’ Humpty Dumpty school of logic.

Maybe, and maybe not. There will always be perfume sensitive people, and I do believe a certain degree of consideration is only polite. Having said that, they have the option to avoid scented products if they need to, just as I would like the option of deciding for myself whether or not I should brave, say, the Big Bad Oakmoss Wolf should I choose. Just put it on the label, and trust me to make my own decisions and take the responsibility for them.

But all hope is not lost – for now, we have…natural perfumes, made of natural substances, often solely from that ‘forbidden’ list, that fly in the face of those restrictions and reformulations and darn it, dare to create glorious, outlaw statements in rose absolute and neroli concrete, in oakmoss and labdanum, to name a few. All declaring their intentions and their contents right there, on packaging and on their websites, all of them made by hand and with love and very much care, all of these natural, artisanal perfumers very much aware of the outlaw potential in these perfumes – made as they used to be made, with the materials we all know and love, made as even today they still are.

Perfumistas and perfumolics, too, are getting behind them, reviewing them with all the care and attention we give to other perfumes with far larger marketing budgets – because we, too, don’t care to conform, because we care about perfume, because we care about a future that would infinitely diminished without the natural beauty in flowers and resins and plants that inspired perfume making – five thousand years ago, five minutes ago, and thanks to perfume outlaws such as these, five years from now.

The participating blogs in the Outlaw Perfume Project are:
Perfume Smelling Things
Waft By Carol
Fragrance in Portland by Donna Hathaway, Examiner.com
Fragrance Belles-Lettres
The Non-Blonde
Indie perfumes
Cafleurebon
Perfume Shrine
Olfactarama

Photo: Jane Russell in Howard Hughes’ ‘The Outlaw’ (1943), looking several shades of trouble and very much outside the law!

Not Quite 20 Questions…on smell!


Prompted by a post on Yesterday’s Perfume and Michelle Krell Kydd over at Glass Petal Smoke, which got me thinking about some of the things I all too often take for granted…
Here are my answers…what are yours?

Q: What does your sense of smell mean to you?
A: Smell is a way of defining and explaining the world without words, it can manifest a presence, define a mood, an ambience, a state of mind. I have a terrible time imagining a world without smell, because smell centers and deepens so many other sensory impressions – sight and sound, taste and touch. It does it in a way we have a hard time explaining or rationalizing, because the brain’s olfactory center bypasses the verbal areas to head straight for emotion – and few things are so evocative of emotion as smell.

Q: What are some of your strongest scent memories?
A: The smell of wild pears in autumn when I was very young. They had incredibly tough skin and took forever to ripen, but I can remember scratching my fingernails on their skins and breathing in that smell. A fur coat my mother used to have, which was impregnated with the scent of Jolie Madame. Later, hiding in her closet and breathing in the perfume from her clothes – Eau de Womanhood, let’s call it, a heady blend of Mitsouko, Shalimar, Fidji, Narcisse Noir. The scent of the Florida Keys, where I spent my later childhood – key limes and coconuts, seashells and ocean and the frangipani on the veranda of our house on Key Largo, the fishy-pink smell of mountains of leftover conch shells and rum stills in the Bahama islands. The orange trees in bloom at another house, and how narcotic that scent was in the heat. In general, the scent of southern Florida in those days – tropical scents and Coppertone and sand and sea. The scent of elderflowers and philadelphus, when I returned to Europe, which always spells midsummer to me. The first time I ever encountered true perfume for real and for my own at age 14, when my mother took me to Maison Guerlain in Paris, and a whole new world opened up to me…

Q: What are some of your favorite smells (things in nature, cooking &/or your environment?)
 A: The smell of wild oregano, which always reminds me of Greece in the summer, the heat radiating off the earth and vibrating with that pungent, heady scent. A blooming orange grove, or any blooming citrus trees. The way that cinnamon smelled in a Moroccan souk, like nothing on Earth. The frankincense they burn in Greek Orthodox Sunday services, which I experienced once and never forgot. The smell of a beech forest in May, right after the leaves have all burst out. Poplar buds. Apple blossom. Chocolate. Pine trees, especially those vanilla-scented pines called ponderosas in New Mexico. Vanilla. It makes a long list!

Q: Do you have any favorite smells that are considered strange?
A: Horse stables. I used to ride a lot, and that smell is associated with some of my happiest memories. I love the smells of leather and suede. A lover’s armpit in certain situations. When my son leaps into my arms in the morning and I bury my nose in his neck and smell sleep and dreams, I love that, too. The smell of my cats, asleep in a sunny windowsill. Tar and the gasoline smell of old cars. The leathery smell of new, expensive cars.

Q: What fragrances remind you of the places you visited on vacation?
A: That Greek oregano. A friend recently returned from Athens and brought me a bunch. All I have to do is sniff the bag and I’m there. Cinnamon – not the cassia cinnamon you usually find, but the Ceylon cinnamon I first smelled in a souk in Casablanca – which was heaven on Earth. Roasting chiles, sage, sweetgrass, burning mesquite wood and ponderosa pines all remind me of my years in New Mexico, as do the blooming daturas I found in the courtyard of the Georgia O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe. She called them jimsonweed. I call them otherworldly, on canvas and in real life.

A: Q: Describe one or more of your favorite cooking smells.
A: My tomato sauce, bubbling away for hours. Baking cinnamon pastries, or bread. Or cake. Any cake I make. Homemade curries, bubbling on a stove or in a wok, Thai or Indian, Punjabi or Keralan – I love them all!

Q: What smells do you most dislike?
A: Bad breath. Smelly feet. Cheap, low-grade musk and patchouli oil makes my stomach turn. (Although not the good stuff!). I’m not big on litterboxes, and I own three cats! Certain perfumes make me turn green, but thankfully, they seem to have gone extinct in the Eighties, among them Giorgio! And Giorgio!Red, except for Angel, which hasn’t, alas. Certain kinds of plastic. Lovers who are not-quite-so…beloved!

Q: What smell did you first dislike, but learned to love?
A: Patchouli, which I thought was horrible, until I found how good it can be. Labdanum, which I smelled in Greece in the wild for the first time, was a shock – all goat! All the time! – until one day, it wasn’t.

Q: What mundane smells inspire you?
A: Lemons or any citrus fruit, the scent of my rose geranium plant, the scent of leaves and mold and fallen apples on an autumn day, the scent of flowers and green in spring, the heady aroma of elderflowers in midsummer.

Q: What scent never fails to take you back in time and why?
A: Jicky and Miss Dior take me back to Paris, where my mother took me when I was 14. And because they were the first two perfumes I picked for my new, almost-woman self!

Q: What scents do you associate with memories of loved ones?
A: Fidji, Shalimar, Mitsouko, First, Jolie Madame – all of these were my mother’s favorites. And with the exception of (vintage) Fidji, I can’t wear any of them for that reason. Chanel no. 5 reminds me of my sister, because it’s so divine on her, and horrid on me! Acqua di Parma, because my stepfather wore it. Drakkar Noir, because a former boyfriend did (so, guys – take note and pick something else, OK? 😉 )

Q: What fragrances remind you of growing up?
A: Coppertone suntan lotion, Seventies Clairol Herbal Essences (the one with the flowery earth Goddess on the bottle with the emerald green shampoo), Mr. Bubbles (I forgot that one!), Bazooka Joe bubble gum, Je Reviens and Blue Grass, because my grandmother loved them.

Q: What scent never fails to take you back in time and why?
A: Charlie! Makes me feel about 16 all over again, Jicky and (vintage) Miss Dior. Strawberry scented/flavored sticky lip gloss that everyone used in my teens, Magie Noire, Paloma Picasso and Cabochard remind me of certain men in my life (in a good way!), Chanel no. 19 of the subversive (if fragrant) punk I once was!

Q: Describe a piece of sensory literature that is very magical for you.
A: I couldn’t locate the quote I wanted. So instead, I’ll paraphrase from memory…
“I gave them money for food, but instead, June bought perfume, while Henry goes hungry.”
-from ‘Henry and June’ by Anaïs Nin.

Obviously, June Miller believed in hyacinths for the soul! As do I…

Do you?