I have spent the day reading ‘Damage’, Josephine Hart’s intense, almost harrowing, potboiler about a wealthy, middle class family whose lives are on the verge, at the point that I am at in the novel, of being completely destroyed when the patriarch of the family, a respected doctor and politician, falls quite maniacally in love with his daughter’s fiancée. The two embark on a brutal, strange, but compellingly realistic affair that is all consuming and sadomasochistic (the storm – thunder and lightning that we have just had outside – it is now passing – has most certainly done nothing to detract from the bruising intensity of this book, which I am two thirds of the way through, and must finish by the end of the evening.) Things are building; suspicions are being voiced, and this is one denouement I definitely need to witness: it is building up, unravelling, all rather beautifully.
I reach out for perfume. I have been tired this week, very – the first week back at work, and could hardly move today. Duncan is with me in the room, we have been in here all day just listening to old compilations in the background while he types away on the computer, the cat in and out, competing for his affections, the sunshine turning to heavy rain. When reading, I love to also survey my collection, see those gorgeous perfumes in their beautiful boxes – their unvoiced pleasures; the dense, scented liquids that await me like museum treasures from an olfactory palace : rich, exterior comforts. I reach out, instinctively, for Rochas Femme, a vintage eau de toilette : it seems in keeping reading this story of a dark, and secretive woman who has a father and son both in her thrall; damaged, deeply, by an incestuous secret in her past, but so vital and essential for them both that she is pulling these people, the whole family, deep into a black, erotic vortex of something bleak, destructive, and inescapable.
Femme does not smell like Anna Barton. This perfume is probably more suited to the doctor’s wife, the delicate, but forceful, Ingrid (though she would more likely wear Caleche). Yet it is so rounded, so fruited, so beautiful and spiced, so full of itself and generous : so much better than Mitsouko – its obvious inspiration – that I suddenly felt great pangs of regret.
There was once a woman at the flea market in Tokyo that I saw there only once. On that day, in one of the corners, she had a whole chest of vintage perfumes that she was getting rid of at quite ridiculous prices – I remember crouching down with other eager and scrabbling onlookers and panicking about what I should buy up. I know I bought quite a few of them, I can’t remember it all in detail, but I know that she had a whole stack of Femmes, and I though I contemplated buying them all up at the time, I refrained. I didn’t know how much I was going to like the stuff at the time, but tonight this perfume smells grand, gorgeous: deep, plush; refined. A soundtrack: sweepingly, damningly, erotic.
Hey Neil,
“A soundtrack: sweepingly, damningly, erotic.” WOW! An excellent way to describe vintage Femme.
Portia xx
Oh Portia. Tonight it smells so fucking beautiful.
MMMMMM Glad to read it.
Speaking of books. Have you read Canticle for Lebowitz? By Walter M Miller. I am nearly finished it and it has been very interesting to read in a time like this.
Portia xx
Tell me more.
Ok, so its written in the 1950/60s and talks of the aftermath of WWIII. Basically the world is nuked, anarchy reigns and all knowledge is destroyed except for what one small monastery manages to collect and reproduce over centuries.
What they revere, how words change and the cyclical nature of humanity is explored. Also people’s adherence to dogma in the face of reality.
I’m not finished yet.
Portia xx
A nice bit of light reading for the weekend!
Ha Ha ha! Surprisingly, not as heavy as you’d think. it’s all wrapped up in interpersonal relationships.
Ha Ha, you are funny.
Portia xx
Just finished the book. Emotional incineration!
I adore this book, and the film with the intense and incredibly erotic Jeremy Irons.
Such a beautiful post, your language is a way into dreams.
Thankyou. I found the book quite disturbing, actually. It is very potent, with the central, incestuous tragedy. Usually such things feel forced in fiction but it felt real, somehow.
I am am home, letting my cat indoors, then out. Recovering from my work week. Applying all sorts of weird emollients to my skin, nails and hair-my favourite way to recover my energy. Wearing Grandiflora-Michel, planning on wearing Eau de Patou once I scrub up in the shower.
But… I too have a bottle of Femme, and maybe I should wear it in honour of your post. Damage had a big impression on me, and the movie was just as good as the book. Don’t overlook the brilliant performance of Miranda Richardson… ” Did you ever really want this?” has to be one of the most powerful movie scenes eve filmed.
I have to see it again.
I’m working at home today, blissfully alone, in kimono, and before reading this I cracked open a new, vintage bottle of Femme for the first time this season. Something in the air? Just hopping on Amazon and ordering this book which sounds swell. Have so been enjoying your posts. Secret indulgences in hostile environments.
A gorgeous way of putting it! Isn’t Femme the one you put in watering cans to indulge in?
And I love how you have this constant source of vintage perfumes, that you know you can get without batting an eyelid.
Vintage Femme is an amazing composition. It’s super sexy and gorgeous. I think its creator (Edmond Roudnitska?) must have been a perv – in the best possibly sense of course.
Last night it felt ALIVE. Positively undulating with something ripened and ready to be plucked.
I enjoyed that book – and the film. Love a good dark tale. And I ‘inherited’ a tester of vintage Femme in parfum form and quite agree about it having seductive fruity depths. I was surprised at how much I liked it.
Me too. It could have been something that I would have quite easily ignored, somehow, but it has a STORY that scent, I tell you.
Femme is a true balm for the spirit, especially when one is truly needed.