The Green Fiend

– A review of Jacomo’s ‘Silences’
Once upon a time in the Seventies, women were not afraid to be audacious or unique, either in their choice of perfume or their personalities. “Not for unassuming women”, read the copy for Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Rive Gauche’, and if any perfumey slogan sums up an era, that would be it, equally applicable to Rive Gauche, Chanel no. 19, the teen-market version Revlon’s ‘Charlie!’ or any number of chypre/green/assertive scents of the time.

It was a bolder, more individualized decade, and the scents launched in the 1970s reflected that boldness, that audacity of spirit and daring and ‘You’ve come a long way, baby!”

And so I have, no longer anywhere near the 6- through 16-year-old I was in that decade, but one thing has stayed with me always – my penchant for the Green Fiends – scents that wave their galbanum flags loud and proud, scents with serious intentions for women you don’t mess around with.

Along the way, I found it was a perpetual quest to locate the ultimate Green Fiend. Chanel no.19, a perennial favorite, is very ladylike in its assertiveness, the kind to rap you lightly with a Japanese fan if you ever go too far. ‘Knowing’ by Estée Lauder is a rosy-green chypre that is as bracing as it is bitter, and this lady is not afraid to use her very expensive handbag, should you overstep your bounds, nor timid in the least to admit her relationship with her siblings, Lauder’s ‘Aliage’, Clinique’s ‘Aromatics Elixir’ or Prescriptives’ ‘Calyx’, none of them in the slightest unassuming, and all of them carrying metaphorical Hermès Kelly handbags with some serious punch behind them, or else some serious books inside them.

So on a whim, I wished for a bottle of a Green Fiend I had somehow managed to miss in my quest for green with a capital G.

Creeping in on sinuous, snaky tendrils of emerald green, Jacomo’s Silences arrived. Right away, I could tell this was no unassuming woman, this was a quietly commanding Helmut Newton glamazon, standing tall and proud in her six-inch spikes, not shouting her presence so much as insinuating herself into yours.

You can tell she is a blood relative of Chanel no. 19, the family likeness is right on her face, but whereas Mademoiselle Chanel is intimidating, Silences is intimate and more muted and by far more…green. This is the green of deep, uncharted forest, where unexpected flowers bloom.

After that sharp, bracing burst of galbanum, almost bitter, almost resinous, a hyacinth begins to bloom and grow, gathering more flowers in its wake, a hint of rose, a whisper of narcissus, the slightest touch of lily of the valley that keeps the hyacinth in check, keeping it from becoming too heady, too much, always erring on the side of class and elegance, always cool but never cold.

Those flowers stay with you a long, long time before they fade away to a verdant whisper of woods, a touch of amber, a tinge of something akin to regret. It lasted at least six hours on me, and was never less than stunning.

If Silences were a Tarot card, she would be the Major Arcana card called The Priestess, for that slightly chilly self-sufficient air she wears, that intimation she knows infinitely more than you could ever think to ask. She keeps her distance, and the distance only intrigues you more and lures you further in to those secret, green depths. She carries a touch of melancholy about her, a slightly pensive, eerie air, and even so, she inspires devotion, love and acolytes.

I’ve worn this during a heat wave this past summer, and it was the olfactory equivalent of air conditioning, keeping me cool, calm, collected and above all – grounded in the heat. But even in this wet and far cooler autumn, she reminds me that all things return, that even Spring will return, and so will I, longing for the secrets hidden in that emerald-green shade that is ‘Silences’.

This should receive far more attention than it does, but some of us do what we can to spread the word.

Can be bought for much less than the blood of your firstborn child in many locations, among them Amazon and here:

Notes according to the Jacomo website:
Top note : Narcissus absolute, Iris from Florence, Rose, Blackcurrant absolute, Galbanum
Heart note : Calendula, Bulgarian rose, Lily of the valley
Base note : Oak moss, Ambrette, Sandalwood, Vetyver

Notes according to Basenotes:
Top Notes: Galbanum, Green Note, Bergamot, Lemon, Orange Blossom .
Middle Notes: Orris, Rose, Muguet, Hyacinth, Jasmin.
Base Notes: Moss, Cedarwood, Sandal, Musk .

The Human Beast

Imagine we’re playing a word association game, where I say a word, touch your nose and you then tell me the first thing you associate with that word. No thinking! Here goes.

Perfume. Ah, see – already, your nostrils are flaring. Perfume – heavenly scents in beautiful bottles, exorbitantly expensive, conjuring up any number of images and emotions – the clay-like smell of a newborn baby, the fragrance of baking bread wafting through a room, the aura of evergreen and orange pomanders in December, an exquisite scent in the air, trailing after a beautiful woman – or a man. All of these bring out any number of associated images and accompanying scent-memories, all prompted by one word – perfume.

Which is to say – by choosing the word ‘perfume’, our brains have already taken sides on the qualifying line of good vs. bad: perfume = good. The word ‘smell’, on the other hand, is neutral. Something can smell good or bad. Stink, on the other hand, is all – bad. The phrase ‘the heavenly stench of humanity’ seems to contradict almost everything we’re indoctrinated with in this hygiene-obsessed age, which at the very least is to smell like nothing at all.

The thing is, we all do – smell like something even when we don’t, all leaving behind an imperceptible trail of our own unique selves, all of it registering on a gut level of awareness our brains record and that we react to emotionally, but aren’t consciously aware of. Science has proven that women in particular have acute noses due to hormone levels, are able to perceive which men have differing immune systems, and be attracted precisely for that reason, no matter what we can articulate to the contrary. It even works in the opposite direction – during menstruation, we gravitate toward more nurturing, caring men, but during ovulation we want the bad boys, the alpha males, the heartbreakers who give us babies with survival instincts and superior genes.

Perfume – the word – makes us associate something good, the smell of roses, of lily-of-the-valley, of incense and cinnamon and Shalimar and Narcisse Noir and Mitsouko and any number of names branded into our awareness of – perfume.

At least, that’s how it used to be. Because in 2006, the renegade French niche perfume house of Etat Libre d’Orange decided to push the buttons of perfume preconceptions everywhere and gave an unsuspecting world a stupendous creation named ‘Sécrétions Magnifiques’ – Magnificent Secretions. A liquid love letter, if you please, to the ‘heavenly stench of humanity’. Sweat, saliva, milk, sperm, blood – oh, yes! Let’s not forget, these are the folks behind such euphonious perfumes such as ‘Putain de Palaces’ (Palace Whore), Jasmin et Cigarettes, and my own favorite, ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong, Baby, I Don’t Swallow’. I would love to see that advertising…

I came across a few drops – I wasn’t fool enough to try it on my skin – in 2008, and I think my olfactory synapses exploded. That’s what I got for thinking that perfume should be beautiful, that scents should smell good. Because it was – at least to my nose – the stench of humanity, and no heaven in sight. Spunk and funk in a bottle, with added blood. Or I could put it another way – the kind of night to remember you could never, ever, tell your mother you had, or even your best friend, because it involved hair-raising activities neither would approve of.

Katie Puckrik, video perfumista extraordinaire, put it thus: “This smells like a crime scene.”

But is it perfume if it stinks? There are people, I’ll have you know, who actually buy this stuff – and wear it, in public even. Is it possible that this is in effect one overlarge and very hyped practical joke – to turn our perceptions upside down, to make us aware of just how far we’re removed from our animal origins, to make us aware, in fact, that no matter what we wear, no matter what we buy, dab, spray or embalm ourselves with, underneath it all, buried beneath layers of soap and shampoo and body lotions and deodorants and scents in all permutations – people, let’s face it. We stink.

In a famous letter, Napoleon wrote to Josephine: “I arrive home in three days. Don’t wash.’ That got many laughs since those letters were published, simply for being so alien to our modern sensibilities. Ew. Three days without soap and water, in an age without deodorant, even. Napoleon wanted Josephine, not Josephine with an overlay of the musky scents she loved to wear, but the musk that was all her own.

Once upon a time, I had a boyfriend, if not as extreme as Napoleon, who could relate to that. The day after a rip-roaring party, when I wafted hangover, leftover scent traces and cigarette smoke, always did him in. So far as he was concerned, I only lacked one thing to be perfect.

The extra layer of ‘human’ that Etat Libre can now supply in a bottle.

I live for many things – for music, for literature, for my writing, my loved ones, for art and for the art that is – perfume. I live for the epiphanies in bottles that make me…walk taller, feel better, feel prettier, sexier, more in command of strange situations, more confident and at ease. Just as Jean Grenouille in ‘Perfume – the story of a murderer’ was shunned for not having any human aura of his own, I feel somehow diminished without perfume, less complex and even – dare I say it – less human and definitely less female.

I also live for those moments that turn my world on its head, that make me change my perspectives and question my assumptions and the Big Fat Why of It All. I live to be challenged – even by a perfume that so far as I can tell, is the complete antithesis of what I believe perfume should be. It’s another form of artistic expression that’s every bit as valid as any other, even if it leaves me cold, indifferent, or in hives.

So long as I live, I can honestly say I never want to smell this ever again. And so long as I live, I can also say – I’m glad I did. Simply because – it challenged me.

Which is more than I can say about 95% of the contents of perfume counters these days.

Image: Steuben sterling silver/glass perfume bottle, ca. 1910

Ms. Frigidaire

A review of Chanel no. 19

Indulge me for a moment. Imagine the year is 1982. The location Copenhagen, Denmark. Nothing like the Hipsterville it is today, nothing like the romantic, copper-roofed old Nordic city seen in movies, but a dire, dour downer of a town. Unemployment is high, spirits are low, and an entire generation is busy declaring they have no future at all with all the passion of the very young and disillusioned.

Picture this: Hanging around the fringes of political activism, underground art, the squatter’s movement and general malaise is quite possibly the world’s cleanest punk. Second-hand Doc Martens, fourth/fifth and sometimes sixth-hand clothes hanging by one thread, black of course. This young lady – for that she is – has few hopes of anything much at all, and maladjusted doesn’t even begin to describe her. She’s eighteen going on nineteen going on a very crotchety ninety, a dangerous age, getting into scrapes, getting into trouble, getting arrested at demonstrations for her fast and furious mouth, hurling old toilet commodes out of the windows of squatted buildings at the police who are there to kick her out, along with her closest eighty rabid activist friends.

When she’s not wreaking havoc with her fellow anarchists, she hangs out in one haven for the misfits and Misfits fans, a book café in a side street that never sells that many books, but people club together for vegan potluck lunches, argue about music and political theory, and where to run if the cops crash the next squat.

Remember, she’s arguably the world’s cleanest punk. Despite her demeanor, despite the forbidding eye makeup and the safety pins and the scuffed boots and bitten fingernails, she is scrupulously clean. Her beloved grandmother did not crawl out of the gutter of the working class just so she could wallow in her own brand of dirt. That, too, gets her into trouble, because soap and water are so oppressing, so bourgeois. So not punk. And there’s that other thing, that other not-cool thing to do that she does – she wears perfume.

One day, when no one is looking and she has a little cash that didn’t go into the communal anarcho-syndicalist potluck/LP/herbal tea kitty, cash she didn’t say she has, she sneaks into a local department store feeling in the mood for something sneaky and stealthily subversive. Two hugely guilty if very happy hours later, she leaves – with a bottle of Chanel no. 19 eau de toilette.

Sure enough, one warm spring day just after her nineteenth birthday, her sometime boyfriend notices an aura that has nothing in common with stale beer, herbal tea or cigarette smoke. Being her boyfriend, he makes a comment, and the poor girl is instantly lambasted for supporting such a capitalist, commercial enterprise as Chanel. Suddenly, even her very political stance is called into question – because of her perfume. She may be a punk – but she’s also a g-i-r-l. At age nineteen, someone finally notices!

Stealth subversion at its finest. A punk in French perfume, and not just any perfume, but Chanel no. 19, as opposed to the far more common no. 5.

These far too many years later, and the former punk is no longer quite so angry or so defensive. All these many years later, she still wears Chanel no. 19, whenever she’s in the mood for a little subversion. It calms her, grounds her and focuses her attention on the things that really matter.

Taking over the world, for instance. She can name at least two occasions where her qualifications – and possibly her Chanel no. 19 – landed her some very high profile jobs.

Chanel no. 19 is a chilly, green and even slightly intimidating perfume. The kind of perfume you’d imagine Sigourney Weaver wearing in ‘Working Girl’ – not compromising on femininity, or much of anything else, for that matter. It’s a take it or leave it scent, from the first cool, muted burst of galbanum to the far dry-down of earthy vetiver, and all the silky-smooth stages of iris and rose in between. It has no need to be loud, no need to wear its heart on its dark green sleeve, but you will notice it, you will pay attention and you will do as she bids you – or else. The perfect scent for Ms. Phrigidaire.

The different concentrations offer a surprising evolution of the same scent. The parfum is like cold, slippery, gray-green satin, emphasizing the happy marriage of iris and rose. The eau de parfum is less focused on the rose/iris and more on the leathery, vetiver and oakmoss base notes, whereas the eau de toilette is lighter, with more of a galbanum kick and a flirtier, more lemony iris middle.

It has certainly been reformulated due to IFRA restrictions. The Chanel no 19 I remember at age 19 was much richer, more faceted and less fleeting than the one you can find today, but having said that, some loves last well beyond the age of nineteen. Even this one.

Notes according to Basenotes

Top notes:
Galbanum, Bergamot, Neroli, Hyacinth .
 Middle Notes:
Rose, Orris, Jasmine, Narcissus, Muguet, Ylang-Ylang.
 Base Notes:
Musk, Sandal, Oakmoss, Leather, Cedarwood .

Image: © SexyEyes69/redbubble.com

L’Eau Déesse – Goddess Water

A review of Serge Lutens’ Fleurs D’Oranger

My mother always said I’d come to no good. My mother also said that one should never underestimate the importance of a very good bra – and a killer perfume.

She was right in both instances. Then again, in a certain manner of speaking, it’s all her fault anyway. She should never have taken me to Paris, never have taken me to Dior and Guerlain, never have bought me my first bottles of Miss Dior and Jicky, never, ever worn so many of the glorious perfumes I will always associate with her – Fidji, Shalimar, Mitsouko, Narcisse Noire, First. As a child, I remember sneaking into her closet and closing the door, breathing in Eau de Maman, and thinking – if this was what womanhood smelled like, it couldn’t possibly be bad.

Now that I’m a woman grown, now that my mother has passed away, now I discover that – it is. Not just bad – but horrific.

Because now, I have graduated into the perfumeaholic equivalent of heroin, of crack cocaine, of…one is far too many and two not nearly enough.

Now, I own my first bell jar of Serge Lutens, and it’s all a slippery downhill ski jump from here. My bank account may never recover.

Back when I first grew addicted to perfume blogs, one name kept coming up. Serge Lutens. The sweet, occult secret of the initiated few. It was said that Serge Lutens perfumes were emotions bottled, olfactory journeys caught in glass, the epitome of what all true perfumes should be, but in this over-regulated, mass-market, youth-obsessed fruitchouli age, so rarely are. They are not mass market, not made to definite demographics, not…common.

These epiphanies are not advertised and in a few cases, rather discombobulating as perfumes go. So…some long time later, I made an effort to investigate the brouhaha for myself, draw my own conclusions and sample them for myself.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes to determine that in my quest for liquid divinity, my perpetual search for something as unusual and unique as myself, Absolute Essence of Tarleisio, I had, at last, arrived.

It was just a matter of time before I had my hot little hands on The Drug – a bell jar but which one? So many of them and so little cash.

So when I finished my first ever novel – all 170000+ words, and in less than nine months – I decreed that my carrot henceforward would be a bell jar of Serge for every completed book, and another – it is to be hoped – for every time I have a hardcover copy in my hand.

A good thing I’m just young enough to be prolific, because so far, nine bottles have my name on them, and those are just the ones I’ve tried.

Alors – a bell jar. I finally decided on the one that completely swept me off my feet from the second I tried it – Fleurs D’Oranger. Orange, bergamot, lemon and all citrus notes have always been my favorites, and orange trees are my favorite trees. I blame my Florida childhood.

Orange blossom is one of the most used notes in perfumes. You would be hard-pressed to name a few classics that don’t contain at least a little. Orange blossom can be…innocent, bridal, fresh, summery, invigorating or – ask anyone with access to an orange grove in full bloom – heady and dizzying.

A few years ago, I invested in a bottle of Dior’s ‘Escale à Portofino’, another orange blossom perfume, and loved it. Sultry, however, was not a word I would use to describe it. It was flirty, lighthearted, summery sunshine in a bottle.

Staring a long, dismal winter in the face in the not-too-distant future, heady sounded like just what I needed to put the va-va in my voom.

My precious arrived the day before yesterday. I almost swooned with pleasure, and that was before I had even opened the box.

I was not disappointed. Because this is the scent of Happy In A Bottle, distilled Absolute Essence of Tarleisio. From the first exuberant arpeggio of true orange blossom and the swelling orchestra of jasmine and tuberose building to a honeyed bright yellow-orange crescendo and finally, to a zesty drydown of orange and nutmeg, this is – heavenly. Not in the light, flirty, fashionable way of Escale á Portofino, nothing in the least like Prada’s wan, anorexic Infusion de Fleurs d’Oranger, this is hot-blooded, sultry, sexy, all-out w-o-m-a-n, drawing honeybees and testosterone bombs by the dozen. Small children will come closer and snuggle on your lap, strange men will ask for your phone number and a dinner date yesterday, just so they can breathe it in. Resistance will be futile. They will be assimilated. Other women will eye you askance, wondering what on Earth is THAT…that breath of celestial happy you exude?

Some have complained about the note of cumin that sneaks in, adding a touch of human sweat to the proceedings, but on me, the cumin combines with the nutmeg to become spicy and smoky, and I don’t get so much as a whiff of skank, or if I do, I could care less.

And that was only three drops. Three drops applied with a cotton swab that permeated my entire apartment, my clothes and even my pillow thirty-six hours later, wafting through my dreams. This is potent to the max. So potent, so outrageously sexy, I really can’t see this on anyone under the age of thirty-five. It takes experience to handle this kind of mojo with conviction. It takes confidence to handle this kind of sillage. A little dab will do you, and if you spray, spray wisely, otherwise your surroundings will be swooning.

On my skin, which usually eats citrus-based scents in nothing flat, it lasted over twenty-four hours, and on cloth, even longer. The orange blossom is apparent from the first seconds all the way to the far drydown, and that’s another unusual thing about this perfume. It’s all about the orange blossom, but it is not boring, not bland, not one-dimensional.

I breathe it in, and I am all of a piece, happy, comfortable in my devastatingly sexy skin, wafting blossom and promises I may or may not keep, knowing I have become – if only for a while – a Goddess walking the Earth.

If this perfume were a Tarot card, it would be the Queen of Wands. Self-contained, sexy, secure, creative, inspiring and strong.

A lot like the woman I try to be. So I better finish off those bestsellers…

Fleurs D’Oranger, an eau de parfum, is in the export line of Serge Lutens perfumes, and available in the 50 ml oblong bottle at Barneys NYC, Luckyscent and Aedes in the US, and at Salons Shiseido in Paris. The 75 ml bell jar – the limited edition – is only available to customers in Europe. I have read elsewhere that there is a definite difference in strength between the oblong bottle and the bell jar, with the bell jar being stronger.

Image: Parfums Serge Lutens, Salons Shiseido, Palais Royal, Paris

The Djinn in the Bottle

A review of Magie Noire (Lancôme, 1978)

She knows tonight will be the night it happens. She knows because it has built up to this since the beginning, since that August afternoon she looked up from her book at a sidewalk café and a man she had never met before asked her if the other seat was taken.

His smile had been just wide enough for her to put the book down. The rest of him had been so interesting they had sat there and talked like old friends until the café closed nine hours later.

So it began. All this civilized concourse later, the conversations at that café, the dinner dates, the movies, the exhibitions and openings and the concert, and all the while, it was a question of time and opportunity before it came to this moment, this instant, this very particular kind of anticipation both intellectual and erotic.

Oh, yes. Tonight. It had been hard enough to wait this long, but that was also half the fun – to put it off, to wait, to get to know him, to torture and titillate him just enough to make him realize how good it will be.

He won’t stand a chance, he’ll never know just how much she has planned for this. The black silk velvet and the satin under, the embroidered lace, the smooth and polished heated skin beneath it all – all of her nerve endings tingling at the idea of his touch, of what happens when.

But even despite her preparations, she knows it will not be her clothes, her laugh, or her conversation that makes him cross the line.

It will be her perfume. Tonight, only one of them will do. Tonight of all nights is when the djinn gets out of the bottle, the bottle shaped like the glowing reliquary of some satanic sacrament, with the contents that smelled of danger, of desire, and of desires that are dangerously alluring, perilous to resist.

Like hers. Like his. Like tonight. Like not being able to resist any more.

She opens the bottle, and the djinn slithers out.

“So then, mistress. It has been a while. This one? Are you sure?”

The heady floral blend shapeshifts into a velvet-black and thorny rose, a rose with eerie secrets.

“Oh, yes,” she whispers back. “I’m sure. I’ve known it for weeks.”

The rose unfolds and glows in the light of her bedroom, whispering the secrets she needs to know. And the civet, the patchouli, the oakmoss, the dark and witchy blend that exhales smoke and fire and double-dares only the bold and audacious to come closer, unfold their potent bloom upon her skin.

She is ready. The djinn is out of the bottle, lurking in the scent-trail she leaves behind her, an invisible ghost in the room.

The doorbell rings. It’s him. Tonight it will finally happen.

Tomorrow, she will blame the djinn she let out of the bottle. Tomorrow, the djinn will make sure that he stays for breakfast, too.

——————————————————————–

The bottle I reviewed was a pre-reformulation eau de toilette sold in the flat, long bottle with the black top and cap, not the glass, gold-capped bottle sold as such now, a ghost of what it was. It can be found, if you’re lucky and know where to look.

Top notes: Cassis, bergamot, hyacinth, raspberry, green note
Heart notes: Honey, jasmine, lily of the valley, tuberose, narcissus, orris, rose oriental
Base notes: Patchouli, castoreum, civet, vetiver, musk, oakmoss, benzoin

Image and note information: Yesterday’s Perfume

The Alembicated Genie

Perfume is definition, mood and literature in liquid