Olympic Orchids

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An extraordinary creature

 – a review of Olympic Orchids’ Night Flyer

These past far too many months, I have been wearing perfume with a non-analytical mindset. I have been wearing only what I loved, and what I loved, I didn’t think about so much as simply enjoy, for no other reason than I had plenty else to think about; graduation, future employment, a new future and vastly improved life. 

Yet as time went on, I grappled with/wrestled my perfume-minded brain. What could I write about? How would I write it? And the Really Big Question: Could I even write about it in a way that did the perfume justice? 

I’d begin a review, only to stop as if by supernatural dictate. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to even commit to the idea, when I had plenty of other and more dangerous ones. Literature, for one. 

Most perfumes these days, and perhaps feminine perfumes in particular – at least the commercially successful ones – have been made to an overriding idea: To smell good. To appeal to a millennial/Gen Z demographic. To be Instagrammable,  Snapchat-friendly, with TikTok appeal, to be pretty, to be lighter-than-air and glow transparent for an instant, and be gone, as ephemeral as a daydream and as fleeting as a mote of dust dancing in a sunbeam. 

That’s all, folks! 

Those of us who remember other times and stranger places in the Cretaceous era of 30+ years ago, those of us who remember the allure of experiential perfumes, the ones that took us places and mainly the ones that took us by surprise to places we didn’t know we wanted to visit, are left in the dust and far behind. Craving adventure still but finding not very much besides insipidity. 

Enter an extraordinary human, who knows a thing or two about adventure – Ellen Covey of Olympic Orchids Perfumes. 

Ellen and I go back over ten years by now. Her creations have to a large extent made me the writer I am. A draw for a sample set led to my first ‘real’ perfume review, to many more reviews, to a perfume project, to publication of my first novel, to, in short, a great many things I am today, and more than anything, a bigger, better person and a vastly improved writer because her work as a perfumer inspired me … that much. 

By day, Ellen is a neuroscientist and full professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, and after hours an orchid grower and perfumer with a spectacular ability to capture in essence and liquid place, mood and atmosphere. I can still recall presenting her Olympic Rainforest to my former husband, who had gone to college at Evergreen State College in Olympia, and his immediate response: “Yupp. That’s exactly what it smells like.”

So when I ordered the hotly coveted Blackbird and a refill of Dev no. 4 from her website this past spring because graduation was approaching and I wanted/needed them after these past eighteen months of global disasters, pandemic, lockdowns, cancelled Christmas, lesson plans, Zoom classes, pending final exams and a mammoth bachelor thesis, I found a surprise when it arrived. It was Night Flyer. 

You know how you can say: ‘there’s nothing like it’? Take my word for it. There’s nothing, and I do mean  nothing, like Night Flyer  anywhere  on Planet Perfume.

Night Flyer  originated as Bat for Zoologist Perfumes, before it was discontinued at Zoologist and some time later, resurrected as Night Flyer at Olympic Orchids. I have yet to try a single Zoologist, so I’ll refrain from making comparisons of the before and after variety. 

Come with me now on a magic carpet ride across the oceans west and south and west, and south and west again, across the turquoise waters of the Caribbean to Jamaica, away from all the tourist traps of the northern coast. Inland to an emerald jungle steaming in the sun over the Blue Mountains on the horizon, a jungle that like all jungles truly comes alive after sunset. 

Here, nestled deep within a dark cave among its fellows, you’ll find an extraordinary creature, Artibeus Jamaicensis, the Jamaican Fruit-Eating Bat. These tiny mammals live in small communities in the caves, and come out to gorge themselves after sundown on bananas, figs and other tropical fruits of the very ripe variety. These is not your average supermarket bananas, certainly not any fruits available in my temperate corner of Europe, but full-bodied, luscious fruit, unapologetically tropical, the very apotheosis of what bananas, figs and fruit can be. 

The bats are at the heartbeat of Night Flyer, with their musky, fruity-scented fur, cuddling with their family in those dark, humid caves by day, and flying free through the darkly verdant vetiver jungle, in search of those mythical, sensuous fruits at night. And through all of Night Flyer, top to bottom and start to finish, a thick ribbon of geosmin, of petrichor, of damp, scented, fertile earth so amazing it’s a marvel it isn’t used more often as a note, since by Golly and the grace of a virtuoso master perfumer, you are there  by the cave in the jungle, as the bats come out to feed. 

Take away that geosmin note, and you have a most unusual green perfume. But add it back in, and you are left soaring through the jungle guided by your sonar towards the fruit that glows fragrant in the dark and perfumes your very soul. When dawn gilds the mountain tops, you’re back among your family nestled together in a deep, pitch-black cave, waiting to fly out into the jungle night and to prove to all who can experience your flight, that you are a most extraordinary creature. 

Notes (from the Olympic Orchids website): Sandalwood, olibanum, vetiver, furry musk accord, wet earth, damp air, mineral notes, resins, leather, figs, banana, soft tropical fruits

Olympic Orchids Night Flyer is available as an extrait in 1, 5, 30 and 100 ml spray directly from the Olympic Orchids website. 

The Very Best of 2013 – Part One

C4crown

–  the Genie’s slightly belated guide to the perfumes that defined 2013

I’m a bit surprised – to put it mildly – at just how quickly 2013 sped by, and such a year it was! A year of an unprecedented amount of releases, an unprecedented amount of hype and blather, and most of all, an unprecedented claim to olfactory epiphanies that were anything but.

To my own personal dismay, I wasn’t able to write or review nearly as much as I wanted to. This does nothing for my review backlog or my hugely guilty conscience, but I had a rather good explanation – 2013 was the year I became a published novelist, and naturally, that took priority. It also goes a long way towards explaining why October and November seemed to vanish in thin air. As a writer, I doubt I’ve ever worked harder in my life. This holds true even as 2014 begins, because ahead looms events like book launches and Getting The Word Out and dealing with other things that strike terror in my heart.

Yet 2013 was also a high water mark in other ways. Thanks to my fantabulous readers, I was able to purchase an upgraded computer, attend Pitti Fragranze (and what an experience that was!), and more than anything else feel the connection I have with my readers more than I ever have before.

And then, of course, there were the perfumes. One of the last perfume-related statistics I remember reading was this: as of the autumn of 2013, more than 1440 new perfumes were released. Which was more than the year before, and the year before, and the year… etc.

It’s getting to where I read about new brands being launched and I clutch my head in despair. With so many brands competing for shelf space, customers and their own slice of the ever-expanding perfume slice of the beauty industry, inevitably, corners are cut and shortcuts taken, and we end up with what I saw and sniffed at Pitti Fragranze – Eau de High-End Niche, which smells expensive (and all too often is), recycles themes from other, more daring/creative/inspired perfume houses and is in its own aspirational marketing way just as generic and soulless (if far more prohibitively priced) as any ‘mainstream’ brand.

For 2013, which was a year I’m not likely to forget any time soon, I’ve decided to do things a little differently than before. I sniffed more things in 2013 than at any other time in my life, so my own personal favorites in the year gone by will be in part 2 of my Best Of list. Meanwhile, you want to know what really rocked my planet in 2013…

Best Correspondence Between Brand and Perfume:

Donato Style – Glam Monster (Donato Crowley/Kedra Hart of Opus Oils)

Donato Crowley, the LA-based stylist, photographer, artist and all-round Renaissance man, really knocked my socks off with Glam Monster, a glorious, sultry, super-unisexy take on all the very best parts of California and all the naughty bits, too. If ever a perfume somehow managed to wrap up an entire artistic statement in a bottle, it’s this one. My sample is all gone. That bottle can’t be far behind. I need glamour, too.

Best Novella In A Bottle:

Amouage – Opus VII (Christopher Chong/Alberto Morillas/Pierre Negrin)

In the Just Kill Me Now department, Opus VII wins by default by a) showing just how wrong even a perfume writer can parse/interpret ingredients and b) then humiliating herself in full public view by publishing the first review of it. I said iris. Opus VII contains no such thing. What it does contain is a swirling, whirling, spectacularly moody heart of Gothic darkness I haven’t had enough of yet, and I doubt I ever will. This is Edgar Allan Poe, bottled.

And speaking of iris, only this time, it’s very much there…

Best Iris of 2013:

DSH Perfumes – Iridum (Dawn Spencer Hurwitz)

Iris perfumes – a definite love of mine since I first fell hard for Chanel no. 19 – tend to run towards the chilly end of the olfactory spectrum. Not so Iridum, which is a feisty, spicy, incense-laden iris revelation that was love at first sniff and holds its own next to that greatest of all irises  – Iris Silver Mist. For a dedicated iris lover, that says everything.

Best Unexpected Hit:

Chanel – Les Exclusifs Chanel 1932 (Jacques Polge)

Having only ever tried 28 La Pausa from Chanel’s Les Exclusifs collection at the time, I was not quite prepared for how much I liked this twinkling, sparkling little marvel of aldehydes, iris, jasmine and all things grand and glorious. It is always classy, never inappropriate (I’ve worn it to job interviews), and perfectly epitomizes the very best of Chanel in all the very best of ways. Unlike 28 La Pausa, it also lasts.

Best “Slay ‘em, baby” perfume:

Opus Oils – Babylon Noir (Kedra Hart)

I’ll be the first to admit it – I’m biased. Babylon Noir was originally created by Kedra Hart for the Devilscent Project, but it launched to the general public on Valentine’s Day last year, and likely has been slaying scores of hearts and swollen heads ever since. I know for a fact that my bottle is often loaned to Ms. Hare for nefarious purposes with a 100% success rate, because that’s what best friends do – support each others’ nefarious purposes…

Best New Brands I discovered at Pitti Fragranze:

This was a hard decision, since I sniffed many, many things from many, many brands (don’t get me started on those bags of Pitti samples I haven’t dared touch yet) in Florence, but two dedicated perfume brands in particular stood out from the rest: Bruno Acampora and Parfums de Marly. I’ve worn several of Bruno Acampora’s oils (Iranzol was an instant love) and even a lethal dose of Parfums de Marly’s Herod over the course of this past autumn, and although I haven’t had enough time to do them the verbal justice they certainly deserve, they have taken my breath away.

Best Applied Epiphany:

Tauer Perfumes’ Noontide Petals (Andy Tauer)

One of my favorite moments at Pitti Fragranze was finally being able to say hello to Andy Tauer – and sniff ALL the Tauers, which I never had before. Andy will be another expensive person to know. I was also very curious to try Noontide Petals, which was getting a lot of press at the time. So after politely enquiring whether I was sure – Tauers are known for having the perfume half life of plutonium – Andy then proceeded to sweep me off my feet with Noontide Petals by spraying my arm. My nose was glued to my wrist the rest of the evening. It really IS… all that in a blinding burst of sunshine.

Best Perfume Reformulations:

vero profumo’s Voiles de Parfum (Vero Kern) & Neela Vermeire Creations Mohur Extrait (Neela Vermeire/Bertrand Duchaufour)

Interesting things happen when a perfume concentration is amped up. Facets only partly apparent in an eau de parfum can take on whole new multiverses of context and significance. Nowhere was this more evident that in vero profumo’s Voiles de Parfums line of Rubj, Kiki, Onda and Mito, because Vero Kern does not simply add more jus – she redefines and reconstructs her own work to breathtaking effect – as she did. Likewise, Mohur, Neela Vermeire’s no less beautiful perfume was redefined in extrait, and an already bone-chilling glorious creation was painted new in ever richer and more opulent hues. I thought it would be impossible to improve on the peerless Mohur. I was dead wrong.

Speaking of dead wrong…

Worst Perfume Idea, Ever:

O’Driu’s Peety (Angelo Pregoni)

Call me old-fashioned, call me a prude, call me whatever you like. Sometimes, I can admire the concept behind a perfume even if I can’t wear it. Sometimes, I love the perfume and ignore the concept completely. So let me just state that I truly admire the degree of chutzpah/audacity behind Angelo Pregoni of O’Driu’s Peety. It appeals no end to my inner post-punk iconoclast. That’s the idea. The reality of Peety, however, is just about the vilest thing I sniffed this year, mainstream launches included. Your mileage may vary. But this one turned me chartreuse in the worst way, and not just because it was sprayed upon a feather.

From The Bad Idea Department:

One word – oud. Enough of the oud already. Yes, it is a marvel of a raw material. Yes, incredible, astonishing perfumes contain oud. Yes, it has many facets and aspects that can all be shown in many revelatory ways. But dear Creative Directors and perfumers – who are you kidding here? Real oud is now a very rare commodity. Apparently, so is creativity. Which I frankly find hard to believe considering the number of new launches in 2013. Wait a minute…

How To Kill A Storied Fragrant Heritage, Part One:

Dior.

How to Kill A Storied Fragrant Heritage, Part Two:

Yves Saint Laurent. Belle de Opium. Manifesto. I rest my case, because once upon a fabled time, a fashion genius truly cared about his perfumes. Alas, they no longer do at either Dior or YSL.

Worst Aspirational Marketing:

I suppose it’s one thing to flat-out declare your indifference to 99% of Planet Perfume and set your price point accordingly. But since I suspect that 99% of perfume aficionados buy way more niche/indie perfume than the one percent (I could be wrong), I think Roja Dove is doing us 99% a serious disservice by creating something so flawless as Diaghilev in extrait and then pricing it in the exosphere of attainability, splits or no. If that marketing tactic doesn’t prove that life isn’t fair, I don’t know what does.

Best Witnessed Out-of-Body Moments:

I have a friend – tall, good-looking, young, green-eyed, a Scorpio (which figures), who recently stated he was in need of an image upgrade which also necessitated… perfume. His former staple Fleur du Male notwithstanding. So one evening chez Genie, I sat him down with some of the stellar contents of the Red Ikea Cabinet of Doom. And then, I experienced something most passing strange. He sniffed a perfume (Olympic Orchids’ Dev no. 2) and jumped off the floor in a flash. “Holy “#!”§€%!?. What IS that? That should be… illegal!!!” His doom was sealed with Amouage’s Fate Man. He’ll never touch anything mainstream again. Mission accomplished.

Most Extravagant Habit of 2013:

By this time, to my own surprise not least, I have acquired a LOT of perfumes. So it follows that I should use them in whatever ways I can. Mostly, I simply wear them, but in the past year, whether testing for review or simply my own decadent pleasure, I’ve taken to spray my bedding, my Tibetan prayer flag, my carpet and sometimes, the radiator of my living room. This was how I discovered that Janice Divacat is a definite Amouage fangal, whereas Hairy Krishna prefers Serge Lutens.

Greatest Vicarious Pleasure:

A friend I made in Florence took me to an English apothecary in a Centro Storico side street that also sold Frédéric Malle’s Editions de Parfums and Serge Lutens’ export line. I thought she deserved the very best and introduced her to Carnal Flower. She floated, she told me later, the rest of the afternoon on a cloud of tuberose bliss. I was so proud of her. And when I can, I’ll buy it for her in every incarnation. Because that much bliss to follow is so worth it.

Best Vicarious Pleasure, Part Two:

Furthering pleasure to a dear friend and fellow blogger, Caro of Té des Violetas, by sending her a decant of Fate Woman when Argentine customs impounded her own press sample. This made me happier than I can say, and Argentine customs be damned!

Best Fragrant Export Ever:

The ‘Mysore’/Santalum Album sandalwood plantations of Australia. This is the sort of thing that gives me hope for humankind – that we will never be without this most beautiful of perfumery materials. So long as we have sandalwood, we can endure anything. And now, we will!

Best WTF moment:

Kinski by e-scentric molecules (Geza Schoen)

My sister and I have vastly differing tastes in perfume. For one, she can wear no. 5 and I can’t at all, for another, she used to exude radioactive clouds of patchouli bombs and Obsession for Men. But when she bought Kinski to celebrate her own publication as an author, we both flipped over it. Impossibly louche, impossibly wrong, improbably sexy and possibly the greatest thing two 21st-century thoroughly twisted Sisters Brontë of dark, depraved literature could ever agree upon.

You have been so patient, dear readers, so forbearing. Thank you. You have read through my wrap-up of 2013 blather and are dying to know what skyrocketed to my very top in the past year.

Just as it happened last year, I couldn’t decide between three perfumes I had already reviewed (my criterion for making the list), so I could either roast over a slow fire as I decided which one would win or I could just wimp out and award the Genie’s Best Of 2013 awards equally to all three. They are equally great, equally grand, equally the stratospheric best that perfumery can offer. So without further ado…

Best of 2013, Part One:

Envoyage Perfumes – Zelda. (Shelley Waddington)

Are you familiar with experiencing an artform – a movie, a book, a painting, a perfume – and you have that immediate rush of recognition and revelation? Not only is it good, not only is it something your intellect can appreciate, but your emotions chime in, your heart begins to flutter, and you get it in your bone marrow? You feel it, you think about it, dream about it, want to bathe in a vat of it. It won’t let you go. One of those out-of-body moments – they don’t happen often any more – for me this past year was Envoyage Perfumes’ Zelda. If there is a Heaven, they’ll have Zelda the perfume there too (the firebrand by that same name is already there), because it makes the angels (and yours truly) sing.

Best of 2013, Part Two:

Neela Vermeire Creations – Ashoka (Neela Vermeire/Bertrand Duchaufour)

I am privileged to live in a world that has such dedicated perfume lovers such as Neela Vermeire in it. For her fourth launch, she took her time and no shortcuts at all when she created Ashoka with Bertrand Duchaufour. It is a) one of the most evocative, numinous perfumes I’ve ever sniffed b) has one of the most unusual developments I’ve ever come across and c) is arguably the greatest figgy, floral, leathery enlightenment in eau de parfum ever made. Yes, I said that.

Best of 2013, Part Three:

Amouage – Fate Woman (Christopher Chong/Dorothée Piot)

On the day Fate Woman (and Man) arrived, I remember my surprise. Amouage, who delivers epiphanies, decadent olfactory symphonies and full-blown Wagnerian oeuvres, had gone… did I dare think such a heretical thought? – a tad… mainstream? Well, almost/not quite/not exactly, but this is still very much an Amouage and very much an Oriental with no compromises or shortcuts of any kind. If this is the last chapter of the first epos Christopher Chong has to tell, I can’t wait to see what he’ll put into Volume 2.  But the biggest surprise was this: Everyone in my immediate vicinity – and I do mean everyone: Ms. Hare, my sister, my daughter, lovers and friends, complete strangers on the street, a makeup artist in Copenhagen on the day of my photo shoot – everyone loved it instantly without question or quarter. This has never happened before. So I gave small decants to them all from my press sample, and now have to hide the rest of it away in a secret location, or else it will be abducted/stolen by Ms. Hare and I’ll never, ever see it again. But one thing I came to discover for myself – the most incredible things have happened when I wore it. Such is Fate…

Best Perfumer of 2013:

Envoyage Perfumes – Shelley Waddington

Here lies a dilemma – one of my top three favorites was nominated Perfumer of the Year last year, so my apologies, M. Duchaufour. Ms. Piot – I suspect you have marvels and wonders ahead of you. If Fate Woman is any indication, you’ll very soon be exuding greatness of your own.

My nominee for Perfumer of 2013 goes to…Shelley Waddington, for creating Zelda and then, having the hugely flattering idea to send it to me to review. I sniffed it with an open mind and some expectations – I know she’s an exceptionally talented indie perfumer – but Zelda sideswiped me, stole my heart and never gave it back!

Stay tuned for Part Two, which was all I wore and (also) loved…

The Best of 2012 – Worn & Adored!

sophiemagdalenecrown

 – Being the true confessions of a hapless perfume writer…

Ah, the perils of a perfume writer’s existence. So many perfumes – according to Basenotes, 1366 new fragrances were launched in 2012 –so very little time! Without being able to sometimes club flotsam and jetsam reviews together – meaning I review more than one at a time – I’d be toast.

As it is, my ghost will probably be typing away in the afterlife long after my hopefully timely demise just to catch up on the backlog, wondering if Stygian WiFi is reliable…;-)

I also try to have a perfume free day every week to recalibrate my nose, which makes it easier to delve into the ones I do review.

Some of the perfumes I wore most in 2012 are repeats from my other two lists, for no other cause than I couldn’t live without them, others I have yet to review but I wore them anyway. Yet for all those new and/or newly discovered perfumes, sometimes, all this girl wants to do is wear a familiar favorite, and I’ve certainly done that, too.

These are the ones I have wafted and adored beyond all reason. For as surely as my readers know, reason had nothing to do with it!

Aftelier

Few things are more fun than scenting some of your favorite characters in books. It doesn’t get any cooler than to perfume the characters of your making, as my own project proved. Yet I suspect that Sophia – one important character who appears in my book Quantum Demonology – would wear Aftelier’s Fig, and whenever I’ve needed to borrow some of her own earthy grounding, Fig was a perfect fit. I loved it in an instant when I found it, and I love it dearly still. I hear Sophia’s Flatbush twang whenever I put it on. “C’mon, hon,” she seems to say, “just cut the bs already, whydoncha?” I do try.

Amouage

Some days, nothing but an Amouage will do. I’ve had a few of those this past year, especially with Memoir Woman, Beloved, and certainly Opus VI. I also came to discover that bone dry, bitter cold – as we had in late January last year – turns my Cloak of Invincibility, Epic Woman, into a very moody, oud-y creature. I suspect that’s why my sister hates it. Considering some of the stink bombs she’s hit me with over the years, it’s only fair.

Aroma M

It’s said that the scent of Artemisia – which we sometimes know as wormwood and also as absinthe – furthers creativity. Who am I to argue with the Fée Verte glories of the Belle Époque? Aroma M’s Geisha Green is one of the most beautifully rendered absinthe perfumes I know, and whatever it takes ‘to further creativity’, I’ll do. That I received it as a present from a very dear friend makes it even more special.

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz

Ah, the lovely Dawn, she breaks my heart. For creating such stellar works of beauty as indeed she always, always does, and for making me cry, as I did when she so sweetly sent me her YSL Retrospective Collection made in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum’s Yves Saint Laurent exhibition. Those lucky enough to see it were treated not only to some of the most seminal – and spectacular – creations of my all-time favorite designer, they were also tempted with Dawn’s olfactory reinterpretations of some of his designs – and perfumes. La Vie En Rose – her tribute to one of my own Great Immortals, vintage YSL Paris, was so flawless, it made me cry. To be hit over the head by a massively packed suitcase of Guilt Trip for not reviewing that collection yet. The best defense in the face of Major Procrastination is an attack. Dawn, darling, yours will be my first review of 2013. As for the rest of you – read all about it!

Editions Frédéric Malle

Last year was my year of The Tuberose. It was a note I approached with some trepidation – one does not mess with this floral diva – only to find just how much I adored it, especially when it’s as stunning as the justly celebrated Carnal Flower by Dominique Ropion. I suspect that the equally lovely Lys Méditerranée won’t be too far behind its sister in the Flawless Floral department. I am so doomed.

The Ex (Dev) Factor

I’m single now, so alas I don’t know a lot of (willing) masculine lab rats for when I needed to skin-test assorted testaments to Thermonuclear Testosterone Bombshells – also known as the Devilscents. For this reason and several others, mainly his resigned-to-the-inevitable sense of humor, I recruited Super Mario Sr. He then proceeded to ruin the female wait staff one night at a local Italian trattoria by deviously dabbing their boyfriend chefs in the kitchen with House of Cherry Bomb’s Dev. Those ladies  – usually quite clearheaded and competent in a busy, popular restaurant – were useless that night. Resistance was futile. The next day, so he told me, everyone showed up with Epic Night To Remember grins on their faces. The guys all demanded to know, as only red-blooded Italian males can – “WHERE can we buy that stuff prontissimo???” He never told them. Some things – and some secrets, apparently – are just…too good to share! Some time later, Monica Miller of Perfume Pharmer was sweet enough to send me a liquid decant of the scent of her own Dev massage lotion bar. I had just enough time to sniff it, before he declared this was his new liquid definition of awesome, and stole it with that elegant sleight-of-hand Geminis so excel at. I never saw it again.

Exotic Island Aromas

Here comes Guilt Trip suitcase no. 2. Monica also flattered me this past year by requesting my dubious services for her Primordial Scents Project. As part of it, I received Juan Perez’ – the creator of Exotic Island Aromas – two contributions, and never in my life was a sample vial drained faster than his utterly unearthly Flor Azteca. You can therefore imagine how happy I was to win a roll-on of this wonder in a draw. Full review forthcoming or I am so dead, but this feral phantasm of a tuberose is to breathe – and die! – for.

House of Cherry Bomb

As if the devastation wrought by their Dev weren’t enough, the Awesome Twosome of the House of Cherry Bomb also made Lilith, and as opportunity would have it, on one of two dates I had last year, I wore it to see a former boyfriend I hadn’t seen in eighteen years. I really don’t know what came over me. Or him. Let’s just say the reunion was a happy one. I blame the perfume. It couldn’t possibly have been me.

Neela Vermeire Creations

When your preconceptions are blown to smithereens, when you’re blown to dandelion fluff on a high summer wind by beauty, if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to wear it again as often as you can. In the case of the truly spectacular Trayee and Mohur, this could never happen often enough, and I’ve worn both of them frequently in 2012 with no end in sight. On those dire, far-too-early mornings when I told my reflection despairingly that Attitude Is Everything, I’ve worn Bombay Bling. I dare anyone to wear it without a smile on their faces! All three NVC creations have been plastered all over almost everyone’s Best of 2012 lists, and I’m not about to argue with splendor.

Neil Morris Fragrances

Among perfumistas, the astonishing Neil Morris is one of those great cult figures of American perfumery, far too cool to be a household name, much, much too talented not to be. No one was more flabbergasted than I when he chose to participate in the Devilscent Project – with alacrity and an infernal amount of glee, I might add. It pains me more than I can say to know that I only have two more Neil Morrises to review for the DSP, but on the other hand, it thrills me beyond compare to know that Neil,my darling, I’m not letting you get away! Rumi, made for his Vault Collection has become a signature I never want to be without, but I could certainly say the same for all five of his creations for the project. The good news for the rest of Planet Perfume is I understand they’ll soon be made available to the general public. Be afraid – in all the most perilous, perfumed ways…

Niki de Saint Phalle

In the Bad Old Days of the Eighties, when I wasn’t wearing my usual sock-it-to-‘em wonders, I was a definite green chypre kind of chica. No one was more thrilled than I when the opportunity to acquire this oft-overlooked gem came along. Niki de Saint Phalle is a softer, mossier and more approachable sibling of my beloved Bandit, and today, it is so unusual among the usual fruitchoulis in my vicinity, it always gets me noticed.

Olympic Orchids

One of my favorite things about inspiration is I never know in advance where it will take me. I suspect my partner-in-crime Ellen Covey would agree. So far as I’ve been able to tell, our notorious little project has redefined quite a few of her own sensibilities, and it’s certainly shown a far more dangerous, if not sinister side of her as a perfumer than anyone could have expected, least of all this longtime fan on the other side of the world. Labdanum – one of the oldest, most sacred perfumery materials – was a leitmotif of the DSP, and her opulent, labdanum-rich Dev #4 puts labdanum front and center in a whole new, peerless – and heartbreaking – light. (Ellen, I’m saving those other Devs for the (unlikely?) event I find a testosterone bomb to put them on…😉 ) Her Lil unnerved my colleagues many times this past year, before I swiped them off the floor in a photorealistic rosy swoon with her glorious Ballets Rouges.

Opus Oils

When I get rich, I want of everything Isis by Opus Oils. Because blue lotus – one of my favorite floral notes – really, truly doesn’t get any better than this. And when I want to bring out my inner hell-raising bad-gal, Opus Oils and Michelle Kredd Kydd’s M’Eau Jo no. 3 is the best intoxication to be found this side of a bottle of Jack D’s. In no time at all, I’m backstage again on a sofa in a green room with a libertine, cleavage-loving guitarist, sharing the filthiest jokes we know…

Ormonde Jayne

When a line has more hits than misses with me, I know I’m in trouble. Or I am trouble. Which is precisely what I am whenever I’ve worn Orris Noir, and that happens often with this luminous, rich and decadent iris. This past summer and early fall – or just whenever I’m in the mood for bluer skies and warmer climes – I’ve added Frangipani to my Ormonde Jaynes, simply for being the embodiment of everything tropical and happy and positively perfect, which is how it makes me feel, although I really should know better. Do I care? Not in the slightest.

Puredistance

If there is a celestial location where the epitome of spring is kept on tap, where Green reigns serene as well as supreme, then surely, it smells like Annie Bezantian’s masterpiece for Puredistance,Antonia? If there isn’t, there certainly should be.

Parfums Serge Lutens

2012 was the year I delved quite a bit deeper into the nefarious doings of Mssrs. Lutens and Sheldrake thanks to the interventions of a few perfume fairies. I’m not sure whether to thank them or curse them for that…but I’ve worn a lot of Lutens this past year, among them Rousse – I come from a long, long line of redheads, or at least that’s my excuse, De Profundis, which was everything in a chilly green kiss I could possibly have hoped for, and the breathtaking Sarrasins, which shot to the top of my jasmine exosphere in a flash and sank me to the floor in a heartbeat, overcome by this outrage of night-blooming jasmine so stunning, my world twirled, tilted and has never been quite the same since.

The Japanese Zen masters have yet another word for that instant when suddenly, all those random little factoids and odds and ends of things you know – or thought you did – fall into place as if by magic, and everything becomes as obvious as breathing, as clear and as sparkling as Baccarat crystal. That heartbeat when suddenly you get it, you get it all – the beauty, the peril, the earth, the sky, the air…the art? Zen wrapped all of it into one word and called it…satori.

Aren’t those the very moments we live and breathe for?

With thanks to all the perfume fairies!

The Best of 2012 – Perfumes and Perfumers

C4crown

 – Perfumes and perfumers

It’s that time of the year again when I have the agonizing task of determining the best perfumes of 2012. What did I love, what did I loathe? What did we write and what did I wear?

Just as last year, my Best of list will be in three (long) parts. First, the perfumes and perfumers that – and who – blew my mind in so many different ways. This list is limited to those I’ve actually tried and/or reviewed. I can’t keep up any longer, and I’m not sure what irritates me most – that so many perfumes were launched, or that no matter how I try, I just can’t try them all, darn it! Next comes an ode to the words, the friends and the facilitators who did so much to improve upon what I otherwise consider an annus horribilis of my own, and last, but not least, my personal list of what I wore and adored this year.

The more I’ve written about perfume, the more I’ve discovered the truth of that maxim – it doesn’t get any easier. If anything, quite the reverse. What does get easier is determining the duds from the dudes (and dudettes), the spectacular from the super-bad. As the saying goes – experience is a witch! 😉

Meanwhile, I have three fervent pleas.

Dear EU. You have a problem. Several powerful political lobbies and the IFRA wish to strengthen the substance ban and add far more natural substances used in perfumery for fear of allergic reactions. You also have a billion-euro industry of unparalleled history and heritage who depend on those very substances to make their money and so employ growers, suppliers and the thousands who work in the worldwide perfume industry. Here’s your problem. Do you give in to the political pressure – and lose all those thousands of jobs and billions of euros that pay your salary? Or do you wise up to an irrefutable fact – the people who might react are not the people who wear perfume. I hope for the best – and try to quell that tiny smidge that makes me fear for the worst…

Dear perfume houses – niche, indie and otherwise. Please. For the love of contraband oakmoss – no more oud ANYTHING, OK? Enough is enough. Let those poor, overharvested aquilaria trees just grow for a change, and get back to me in about 30 years.

One more thing. I do hope you’re listening. If you’re going to call something ‘Noir’, make sure it emphatically IS…Noir. (This doesn’t apply to Tom Ford, who knows better.) Instead, I got saddled with Chanel’s Coco Noir. I had such high hopes. Once again, they were dashed to smithereens. Note to Jacques Polge – next time, call it Chanel Greige.

Here are my fragrant epiphanies of 2012 – the best and the worst of what this year had to offer.

Best New Line:

Although technically launched at the very end of last year, the trio of carefully curated perfumes from Neela Vermeire Creations has taken the perfume world by storm this year – for a very good reason. Orchestrated with perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour, her fragrant odes to her native India past and present – Trayee, a numinous song of the distant past and sacred ceremony, the luminous Moghul rose that is Mohur, and the Bollywood extravaganza of exuberance that is Bombay Bling  – an homage to India’s dynamic, fast-moving present and future – are all richly complex, ever-evolving, multi-layered and textured tapestries, a bit like the mood rings I wore as a teenager, since I never quite know what magic carpet rides they will provide this time or what stories will follow, except they will be as fabulous, as colorful and as kaleidoscopic as India surely is and ever was.

Best Discovery:

Sometimes, I suspect that Fate/Destiny/Kismet has plans for me. I rarely enter draws or competitions, but one competition I did enter was a Facebook competition from Roman luxury retailer Campomarzio70 for a chance to try vero profumo’s newest launch, and vero profumo was at the very top of my Dying to Try list and has been for years. Lo and behold, I was one of the lucky ones, and lo and behold – not only did I receive a sample of Mito, I also received samples of both the extraits and eaux de parfums of Vero Kern’s line. I’ll have more to say about vero profumo, but I’m thoroughly, utterly delighted to state that they were all of them everything I could have hoped for and so very much more.

Theme songs

1. The War of the Roses

2012 was a year of some spectacular roses, not simply variations on a theme but roses reinvented and made into new, improved versions of themselves, and this year brought me three breathtaking roses – and one I have yet to review, but I’ll be getting back to that one. My personal 2012 Trinity of Rose – I can’t choose between them and wouldn’t dare to try – consists of the decadent, mossy, silk-velvet Ballets Rouges by Olympic Orchids, Aftelier’s joyously delicious Wild Roses and Neela Vermeire Creations opulent, majestic Mohur. The war referred to in the heading is simply the one that goes on in my mind deciding which one to wear!

2. The Color Of My Hopes

This diehard green-floral fan was thoroughly delighted to see that she wasn’t the only one who loved her greens and wore them, too. The most original take on that particular theme was definitely vero profumo’s Mito, which is my Green of the Year. But another new line’s highly original spin on that well-loved riff deserves singling out, and that is the Green Feral Thang that is Kerosene’s aptly named Creature. Alas, I loved that tiny sample so much I have nothing left to review it with.

3. The Chypre Continuum

Despite whatever the IFRA might say to the contrary, three stellar chypres were launched this year that bear no resemblance to those wan, pathetic, patchouli-laden wannabes called ‘chypres’ in mainstream perfumery. These three are far, far above and way beyond them all. Two I’ve already reviewed, Amouage’s Beloved and the effervescent Parfums d’Empire’s Azemours L’Oranger, the last of the three came to me fairly recently thanks to a perfume angel. MDCI’s Chypre Palatin – yes, expect to see a review soon – is a blatant, deliriously great gauntlet thrown in the face of all who would do away with those dark, earthy, mossy depths so many of us love – and wear with no ill effects whatsoever.

4. Perfume stories

Two tales involving perfume have become a huge part of my own personal scent trail in 2012, and I say this in all humility since one of those stories was my own. The one that wasn’t (which I have yet to read) was L’Artisan Parfumeur’s showstopping Seville à l’Aube, created by Bertrand Duchaufour (I swear, the man was everywhere this year!) in collaboration with Denyse Beaulieu of Grain de Musc for her book ‘The Perfume Lover’. Once that fatal word ‘orange blossom’ began to be thrown around as the rumors grew before its launch, I swept in like a hawk on the hunt and acquired a decant of Seville à l’Aube blind – and never in the history of this perfume blogger did the level of perfume drop so fast in a decant, not for lack of alternatives. This blend of rose-tinted memory and glorious orange blossom, beeswax, a most unusual lavender and thick, dancing swirls of incense is, in a word, flawless. Rumor has it that Denyse and Bertrand have plans for an extrait version called ‘Duende’. I pale to contemplate what it might be like. When that decant goes, I will cry. Buckets. Streams. Rivers!

About that other one…Once upon a time, I concocted a story out of boredom that I wrote all the way to the day I wrote ‘The End’ – and have rewritten several times since. Thanks to my partner-in-crime, Ellen Covey of Olympic Orchids, the Devilscent Project was resurrected as a group project involving some of the very best bloggers in the blogosphere – and the very best indie perfumers in the US. Neil Morris, no stranger to danger and a monumentally talented perfumer, joined the project and then proceeded to blow my poor proboscis to smithereens by bottling up the first chapter of the tale – and calling it Midnight at the Crossroads Café. All the elements of that first chapter are contained within its depths: the smoky, late-night café, the chill of looming winter, the cinnamon and spices wafting from the mulled wine, the remnants of an evening to remember, the danger, the desire, the Devil, the deal…There’s nothing at all on Planet Perfume quite like it. I cried my immensely flattered, floored, grateful tears the day it arrived and many times since whenever I wear it.

Speaking of invoking my inner Drama Queen…one august personage loves nothing more than to induce apoplexy at the post office, apoplexy that means a large, smoking trail of blackest profanity, a not-at-all clandestine spray because I can’t bloody help myself and eff-what-they-think, followed by that unfortunate I-so-have-to-sit-down-now moment. Christopher Chong has had not just an awful lot on his plate this year, he also has that on his conscience! As well as…

Best Post Office Apoplexy – and my Amber of the Year:

Amouage Opus VI. If anything redefined amber as something new and audacious, surely it was Opus VI. Dry, smoky, woody, complex and raspy, it’s extraordinary and yet a definite Amouage, and that’s precisely how I like my ambers – and my Amouages. Meanwhile, I’ve received funny looks at that post office ever since. They probably think I’m getting controlled substances in the mail. I am. And it’s all HIS fault!

Finest WTF moments:

Amouage Interlude Man & Woman

But Beloved wasn’t enough for this Perfume Torquemada. Opus VI wasn’t enough. Then came the coups-de-grace that were Interlude Man and Woman, and my doom was as total as my confusion, since I came by necessity to discover that the labels has been switched on my samples. Interlude Woman was Interlude Man, and vice versa. Or his vice was my versa. Or something. Whatever the case, these two bottled odes to the cacophony and chaos of modern life – and the deep, deep breaths we take in order to cope with them – were astonishing. And nearly impossible to review, since I barely knew where to start. Even now, even today, I wrestle with those obstinate genies who refuse to give anything away, yet insist all the same… “We haff vays to make you talk…” Oh, yes. In tongues long dead and likely forgotten, but talk, I do! The problem, as my readers are surely aware, is shutting up!

That other Christopher (Sheldrake) whose work I so adore – and the devious if not diabolical Creative Director he works in tandem with, M. Lutens  – was no slouch this year, either. Parfums Serge Lutens gave us…

My Favorite Bottled Air Conditioning:

The Serge Lutens line known as L’Eaux tend to be a bit divisive. I happen to like the original L’Eau, (a decided minority), but ‘like’ turned to love when L’Eau Froide arrived in February during an epic spell of freezing weather. It since became a summer staple on those (rare) hot summer days with its unique combination of rosemary/pine/eucalyptus and chilly Somali incense. No matter where I went or what I did, I was – literally – Cool, Calm and (very) Collected. If there were two words that encapsulate all L’Eau Froide is to me, they would be Chill and Out.

Got Wood?

Sandalwood? If we’re talking the fabled Mysore sandalwood, the answer is probably not. Over-harvested to near-extinction, adulterated and even counterfeited, the real Mysore sandalwood is nearly impossible to come by any longer. Australian sandalwood, however – a different species of tree and a different fragrance – is not. Frankly, I don’t mind too much, since the arrival of Santal Majuscule – using that Australian sandalwood – will likely completely make you forget you even miss the real thing, with its spicy cocoa-rosy ribbons wrapped around a rich, creamy sandalwood heart. Obey my commands if not my deeds, ye sandalwood lovers. Try it!

Most Dangerous/Sexy Perfumes of 2012, Masculine:

Anything named Dev, from Esscentual Alchemy, Neil Morris Fragrances, House of Cherry Bomb, Olympic Orchids or the Perfume Pharmer. Trust me. I know.

Most Dangerous/Sexy Perfumes of 2012, Feminine:

Anything named Lil or Lilith from Neil Morris Fragrances, House of Cherry Bomb, Olympic Orchids, and certainly Babylon Noir from Opus Oils, too. Trust me. I know.

Tropical Escape Hatch

Another line that was new to me (if not to the rest of Planet Perfume) was Micallef, and my shameless self-promotion on Facebook and Twitter meant that a sample package arrived in the mail one sunshiney day – with one broken vial, but I won’t hold that against them. There will be more reviews of Micallef to follow – but for now, let’s just say that whenever the winter blahs blow too hard, I now have the tropical escape hatch that is their beautiful Ylang in Gold. Just knowing it’s there glowing in my cabinet tends to make the snow, the rain, the wind somehow easier to bear.

Disappointment, Guaranteed!

It was a spectacular campaign. It was a no less spectacular premise. Even the bottle was, well…spectacular. What wasn’t quite so spectacular were the contents of Lady Gaga’s ‘Fame’. I wish I could say that might have been the whole idea – you’ve been had by a concept – but alas, that might be asking for more meta than even Lady Gaga could supply. Likewise, the much-anticipated ‘Truth or Dare’ by Madonna was a monumental…letdown. I’ll give celebufumes a chance, but throwing Fracas into the cotton candy-machine and calling this fluffy-bunny over-sugared Da-Glo pink tuberose ‘Truth or Dare’ is neither truthful nor particularly daring. C’mon, Madge. We had expectations. Until we didn’t. Sic transit…For one, I never in my wildest flu-ish phantasmagorias expected to write ‘fluffy bunny’ about a tuberose. ‘Nuff said!

From the overthought Unintentional Hilarity Department:

Brad Pitt for Chanel no. 5 could have really rearranged everyone’s mental furniture. It did, but in ways not even the marketing department of Chanel could have anticipated. We were howling with laughter…over the pretension of it all. Since Brad Pitt as a rule doesn’t make me laugh and neither does Chanel these days, that’s…something, just not what Chanel might have been hoping for.

Dear readers, you have all been so patient, so forgiving of all the verbiage. But wait! There’s more! For this year, I hand the baton of Truly And Epically Spectacular Perfumers to…a collective united by a project that took them places and made them create perfumes as perfumes might never have been created before, and an individual that means I’ll likely cook my goose most thoroughly. Since I’m not afraid of controversy – or flying bottles of Britney Spears Circus Fantasy – I’ll plow in regardless.

Perfumers of 2012 – Collective

The perfumers of the Devilscent Project as a whole claim one half of the Perfumer’s Prize. I had no idea one snowbound weekend in January preparing the brief, just what would lie in store or what marvels would be created. But in essence and absolute, Amanda Feeley of Esscentual Alchemy, Neil Morris of Neil Morris Fragrances, Ellen Covey of Olympic Orchids, Monica Miller of Perfume Pharmer, Katlyn Breene of Mermade Magickal Incense Maria McElroy and Alexis Karl of House of Cherry Bomb and Kedra Hart of Opus Oils threw away all the rules and the book they were written in, too – and made my Faustian tale of desires, dreams, love, rock’n’roll and redemption into something brand-new and most wondrous strange – strange for being impossible to classify, wondrous for being, well, some of the sultriest, sexiest, most salaciously hair-raising, inhibition-killing, zipper-popping, bodice-ripping perfumes ever made – anywhere, so long as you parked your preconceptions by the wayside and followed them down the rabbit hole, the Chelsea Hotel, a street in Ditmas Park – or that midnight café.  I’ll have much more to say about them – I have four reviews to go and a wrap-up post, but for now and for always, the technical skills and all-out sinfulness of all the Devilscent Project’s seventeen scents are staggering testaments to a maxim I learned while writing the book – that inspiration is everything, and so long as you dare to follow where it takes you, anything can happen, and sometimes, miracles, too.

Independent Perfumer of 2012

I’ve been writing this post off and on in my head since October, thinking about what should make my list and who I should single out for praise. Yet no matter which ways I sliced or diced it, my mind kept coming back to a man with a stunning string of massive successes just this year alone, and he’s given us perfumistas so many epiphanies in so many bottles for quite some time.

Therefore, I’m going to court controversy and hand it to… Bertrand Duchaufour. For his work with Neela Vermeire Creations, for his work with L’Artisan Parfumeur and Denyse Beaulieu, for the breathtaking Chypre Palatin and for never, ever falling back on a formula and repeating his own artistic predilections. Like all the best of any art in any genre, a Duchaufour is always recognizable, yet always surprising.

Having said that, one of his artistic collaborations blew up in his face and all over the blogosphere as well as perfume boards – namely, his creation of a line of perfumes for Gulnara Karamova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s dictator, who apparently has plans to become either a fashion designer or a pop star with a celebufume of her own. The problem isn’t that she at least had the supreme good taste to go for the best – the problem, of course, is whether an artist is ethically responsible for the questionable actions of his patrons.

Never mind we mortals will likely never even see these perfumes in our part of the world. The rest of Planet Perfume learned about it via an article in the UK newspaper The Independent, which was picked up by a number of perfume blogs. Next we knew, all hell broke loose as so many rushed to deride the ubiquitous M. Duchaufour, his works and his choice of collaborators. People swore never to buy another of his perfumes again. People threw out entire, costly bottles. Planet Perfume felt somehow betrayed in its illusions of the beautiful world of perfume, when the fact is – it’s every bit as dirty, as filthy, as infested and as cutthroat as any other business these days. And much as it pains me to say it – it IS…a business, for all we prefer or hope to believe otherwise.

It was an interesting debate, not least for what it never really said. If M. Duchaufour were to lose his professional reputation over his trip to Uzbekistan (one commenter stated his career was over, which is a tad over-dramatic) – one of the most severely repressed countries in the world – shouldn’t it by rights follow that the august fashion houses of Dior, Chanel, Balenciaga, Balmain, Dolce & Gabbana et al. should surely be shunned/boycotted, too, for clothing Miss Karamova? After all, it is the precise same problem.

Or – if the questionable ethics of patrons really were the point, then how do you explain the Italian Renaissance – financed by a whole bunch of emphatically and epically questionable so-called ‘nobles’ in Florence, Milan, and Rome? Do we now boycott the Mona Lisa since Leonardo Da Vinci was employed by Cesare Borgia (no Snow White!) at one point in his illustrious career? Would Da Vinci be responsible for what Cesare Borgia and the Papal armies did to Italy? He did make several lethal war-machines, after all…

Or do we simply say…even artists are people, too, and people do like to eat and support themselves and their families as best they can. So artists will go where the money is and hope for a creative challenge if they’re lucky, and the rest is…what it is. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Here’s what I believe. Anyone can make mistakes. If they’re smart – as I definitely suspect M. Duchaufour is – they’ll learn from them and…move on. As I suspect he will, and hopefully, his legions of enlightened fans will follow. The art supersedes the artist, and the art Duchaufour has created and unleashed upon the world this year alone has done so very much to improve upon my world and my life.

As for the artist – I also have reasons to believe he still has a few aces up his sleeve, and is just waiting to unleash them upon an eager world. Here’s hoping! Bertrand Duchaufour, this was your year. You do have a few more left, yes?

So many perfumes – and so little time! What were your favorites of 2012? What trends did you love – or hate – and what do you hope lies in store for 2013?

Stay tuned for Part Two of the Best of 2013 – in friends, in phrases and in facilitators…

Note: This blog expresses my own independent opinions and views and I am never compensated for any reviews or review lists.

The Hidden Art

– Is it… the art of perfume or perfume as art?

Whiling away a dismal Sunday November afternoon can be a most perilous undertaking. For one thing, I have been known to wade my way through all the internecine happenings on blogs, magazines and online newspapers I might have missed out on during the week. For another, this sudden surfeit of information overload has been known to cause something much, much more dangerous to my mind.

It makes me think. Watch out, world!

No kidding, there I was in my usual Sunday demeanor of microwaveable death-warmed-over beneath several layers of ratty wool and a cozy cloud of a favorite perfume, when my Facebook newsfeed alerted me to an item that somehow had managed to pass me by.

Chandler Burr, perfume writer and author of ‘The Perfect Scent’ as well as curator of Olfactory Art at New York’s Museum of Art and Design, has created an exhibition called The Art of Scent, the first major exhibition to highlight perfume as an artistic medium of expression in its own right, and to focus on how perfumes have evolved since the 1889 ground-breaking game changer that was the addition of synthetic coumarin in Houbigant’s Fougère Royale and Guerlain’s Jicky, the latter included in the exhibition itself.

You will find no iconic bottles, no advertising, nothing to distract you from the experience of the perfume itself, inhaled through specially designed snifters created expressly for this exhibition. In other words, not unlike Burr’s recent OpenSky experiment, where decants could be bought in plain bottles of the scents he chose to include, devoid of all marketing mystique.

But is it art? How can it be in an age that provides so many opportunities for redefining sensory artistic expression that relatively few exhibitions have focused on that most atavistic, primitive sense of all – our sense of smell?

After all, scents travel that little-understood information highway from our nasal receptors straight to our memories, emotions and associations, and completely bypasses that neocortical off ramp to language – just like another and not unrelated art form – music. And while no one will argue that an artist isn’t equally artistic in whichever medium he or she chooses whether it’s paint, Carrara marble or decomposing pork carcasses, the idea that perfume is every bit as valid as an expressive medium raises a few eyebrows among many non-perfumistas, simply for being such an unorthodox idea – or is that for turning a much-needed spotlight on the least-understood of all our senses?

Can it be that perfume straddles that great divide between ‘artistic medium’ and ‘artisanal product’, being not enough of one and too much of the other? In which case, perhaps it’s a good thing Mr. Burr chose that loaded headline-grabber for his exhibition…The Art of Scent, for no other reason that it brings us – the audience – to question and maybe even to redefine what we name ‘art’.

I haven’t seen the exhibition, so I can’t say anything you can’t already read in the press release. What riled me up and made me think, however, was Alyssa Harad’s take on Chandler Burr’s intiative, since her excellent blog post echoed many of the thoughts that ran through my own overheated Sunday afternoon mind, and Denyse Beaulieu’s own blog post did not much more to prevent me chewing on my nails.

I’m in no position to argue whether or not perfume is an art form in its own right and with its own merits – and limitations. For one, you could say I have a vested interest.

I’m a perfume writer, and perfume happens to be one of my own personal passions. To me, perfume is a means of artistic expression as valid, as rich, as rewarding, as challenging and as complex as any painting, sculpture or piece of music. To my fellow perfumoholic friends and acquaintances, I rattle off the names of famous perfumes and perfumers as easily as I can reference works by Titian, Gentileschi, or Alexander Calder. These liquid epics and novels, these allegorical redolent poems and metaphorical operas in magic, however, all exhibit a few characteristics in common no painting or sculpture can claim.

For one, I take issue with the general perception of ‘art’ (you insert your own definitions here) as a mode of creative expression that exists in a vacuum, outside any context or touch points with our ‘real’ lives. Art as a means of cultural expression  – in the sense of being ‘fine art’ – often ends up on private hands and out of reach to the general public or in the museums and art galleries who can afford to lend or buy them whereupon they exhibit them as ‘works of art’ to accentuate whatever statements the museum – or the curator – is trying to make. Art to me is something much more inclusive and dare I write it – quotidian. It is whatever enriches your life, makes you appreciate beauty, makes your personal horizons wider and maybe takes you somewhere out of yourself and into a place you would otherwise never know.

Perfume, on the other hand, is a democratic, inclusive art form. It is an instant mode of transport and mood elevator available for the price of a bottle for anyone who can afford to buy it. You can and often do take it with you anywhere and everywhere you go. It exists in a physical, concrete form in the bottle as a chemical concoction of ingredients both ‘natural’ and/or synthetic, yes – but the true story, the true art, is written on your skin every time you wear it, and no two wearings will ever be entirely alike, depending on such factors as your genetic makeup, your diet, your very mood, weather and so on.

You may have been seduced to buy it by the story of its inspiration, by the aesthetic considerations and heritage of the perfume house behind it, but as any perfumista and not a few perfumers know, the ‘story’ is nothing but a marketing ploy to lure you in, and the real story – and my own test criterion of a truly ‘artistic’ perfume – is what happens in that sublimely seductive, intimate space above your skin where it blooms. Not in whatever abstract or elusive inspirations the perfumer/creative director chooses to share with the world to sell the juice.

You may buy into the perfumer’s aesthetic, but the real reason you buy it and love it as you do is what it does to you and for you – in other words, how that perfume sings in its infinite variety…to you alone. Your family and friends, your colleagues and even total strangers can define or explain you by your choices in clothing, hair, and general demeanor – but that hidden art form, that art that may trail behind you and explicate you when you’ve left – that is the true art…of perfume.

In other words – also as Alyssa Harad stated – perfume art is ephemeral art. It exists only in the moments it breathes its wonders on your skin and invents new, untold stories of you, of its materials, of its very existence and the spaces the perfumer chose to give expression.

Even the very language we use to evoke that art form somehow lacks the ability to crack through the fourth wall and open the doors for our readers to perceive it. Which is why the best perfume writers have a large reference frame of history, literature, art and last, but not least, music to call upon. It’s no accident at all that perfumes are often described in notes, whatever Chandler Burr might argue to the contrary.

I applaud Chandler Burr’s decision to create an exhibition around the Art of Scent. I can appreciate his endeavor to create a neutral, association-free space in which to approach it anew, from another, more radical and perhaps more abstractly intellectual, unbiased angle. The question is, if perfume is an art form, is there such a thing as a lack of bias?

And yet. And yet. I look to my little sea grass basket full of wonders, signed by the perfume world’s Titians and Caravaggios, Francis Bacons and Lucian Freuds and Magrittes, the Afteliers, the Jacques and Aimé and Jean-Paul Guerlains, the Dawn Spencer Hurwitzes, the McElroy/Karls, the Tauers, the Kerns, the Lutens/Sheldrakes and the Duchaufours, the Chong/?s,  the Shoens, the Orchids and the Harts and the Morrises too, and I shake my head at such marvelous ideas and laugh and laugh.

Perfume is indeed a form of art, a medium of artistic expression, a story unfolding its unique and ephemeral pages. And as it does, as we who love its art as we do, redefine those stories each in our own individual ways, every time we wear it and every time we breathe it.

Caravaggio’s works should have been so lucky.

For an entirely different take, I can highly recommend Legerdenez.

With thanks to Legerdenez, Lucy Raubertas, Alyssa Harad and Denyse Beaulieu.

Image: ‘La Dame et Le Licorn’, ‘Smell’, late fifteenth century Flemish tapestry, from the Musée du Moyen-Age, Cluny, Paris