The Black Narcissus

A typhoon is approaching, but for now I have the kitchen window open with the combined fragrance of ginger lily -: a cold warm spice – its chastity ambiguously lucent – and the fresh lilting apricot of the new osmanthus – which, unusually, bloomed two weeks early on d’s birthday last Wednesday.

I thought I would share some just taken photographs — wish I could transmit the smell as well — before it all gets blown away.

In Japan it is said that ‘O-kyakusama wa kamisama desu’ – ‘The customer is God.’ While The New Xenophobia has eroded some of that traditional deference – alongside the now widely recognized phenomenon of kasuhara –an abbreviation of kasutmaa harasumento – aggressive harassment by unreasonably irate customers of business and restaurant employees that has created a retreat into the shell of staff who were already on occasion a little coldly robotic – in general, politeness and good service do still prevail in Ye Nippon.

The service in England over the summer was also generally good : friendly; more laid back. Less anxious. You notice the striking cultural differences the second you get on the plane: We Brits place a lot of emphasis on humour, perhaps sometimes excessively: I was telling a surprised Japanese colleague yesterday that there is virtually no situation in which some wry, jesty aside is considered unacceptable in the UK- even court cases and funerals, nothing is off limits for a little joke to puncture the solemnity – when here, a far graver mien is generally considered more appropriate in a multitude of scenarios – a gravitas that for ho ho ho anglophones can get quite wearing. Flight safety videos on most Asian airlines will be more conservative in their approach – i.e just telling you what to do in the event of a crash, which is their main purpose – rather than the rip-roaring Bridgerton spoof on the British Airways long haul flight that had a couple of cheery Brummies nearrolling in the aisles ( I admit that I chuckled a couple of times on the way out from Tokyo, but the joke had worn thin by the return). The rolling bucolica of the pastoral classical music on the plane’s tannoy – Oh Green And Pleasant Land! – was also so ear-bleedingly loud I thought I might have an aneurysm even before take-off: they did turn it down when I asked, but it still wasn’t enough to curtail the sensation of galloping across the glen and about to go hurtling off a cliff.

Another difference I noticed straight away was the slovenliness. As a slovenly individual myself – a slob, a mendokusagariya who can’t be bothered – I say this as one who knows this state of being intimately even if living in Japan for so long has tidied me up to a significant extent, you could see the visible difference immediately in requirements for self-presentation. The staff looked fine; normal; not dressed to the nines and hair pulled back into painful, eye-splitting facelifts as they normally are, but it was unusual to be asked at the beginning of the flight not to take photos of the staff – I have never been asked that before. Asian flight attendants are, per the rule book, tip-top neat and immaculately presented – the airlines probably a bit fascistic as well in their beauty standards when hiring, so a part of me thus enjoyed the ‘let it all hang out’ attitude of the multi-sized/shaped, and very friendly crew who provided a good service during the mammoth flight – although when one of the staff was there huffing and puffing, almost stuck in the middle of the aisle serving drinks with his waistcoat off, trousers half down, shirt come loose and hanging down the rump, literally letting it all hang out, I did, I have to say, rather blush on his behalf and then understood the social media photograph edict. It wouldn’t be great for PR – and particularly not in Japan.

Arriving at Heathrow, I knew I was naive to expect the baggage reclaim to be up to Japanese standards; the usual explanations and excuses on the tannoy…‘this is because….’not alleviating the fact that we were just desperate to be out of there and on our way. Suddenly I smelled raspberries: realizing that that 80% of those waiting were now greedily licking down on some kind of summer iced swirly, presumably given out by the airport as a token of their apology: the air was sweet, I was whisked to the British seaside on a nostalgic raft through time, but it did all look rather odd I must say, as though the whole airport had suddenly been bewitched by Willy Wonka.

Once ‘reclaiming’ our suitcases, we hopped in a taxi and do what we always do now, rather than head into the headfuck of London after an endless flight and instead have a short respite in Windsor, only about 15 or 20 minutes away, whisking you into a more charming Englishness to begin your stay- always nice to wake up to the castled picturesqueness and the cries of gulls in a wispy blue sky………….if, that is – and this is a big if – the hotel you have booked is actually open.

Again, to the cultural comparisons – something I have been doing these last two weeks in my classes, as in fact I rarely talk that much about Britishness, there being plenty of other things we need to be getting on with in terms of vocabulary building and doing past entrance exam papers, but having just returned, and sensing their interest in my origins, a bit of a UK cultural run through does feel very relevant and apposite. I of course get to hear the oft repeated ‘fact’ that British food is terrible; a very strong cultural stereotype entrenched in the national psyche here to the extent that one of our school textbooks even features an entire reading comprehension passage, a rather snide one I must say, about how dreadful our ‘cuisine’ – ha ha ha! -really is; just boiled and slopped onto a plate: in Japan it is seen as the worst food in the world. I tell them that I love much of it personally, and that Brits don’t actually subsist purely on greasy fish and chips, and that we do in fact have a lot of delicious things to eat – try a Sunday roast dinner! – even if admittedly on the whole it doesn’t remotely rise to the elevated standards of the most exquisite washoku Japanese food (half of which I find repugnant, but that is just my personal stomach; I don’t do softly cooked fatty meat and seaweed or just sliced sea creatures with eyes still moving topped with a raw egg).

Moving from that hackneyed topic, which always brings out a curious nationalistic fervour in them – they are obsessed with their food – I tell them about how nice it is over there to have so much greenery as a natural fixture in and between towns and cities – whole swathes of country!- rather than the one vast urban conurbation all the way from Chiba through Tokyo, Kawasaki and Yokohama – the megalopolis of 36 million people in which I personally reside, just at the edge of the part when the zen hills of Kamakura punctuate the concrete carnage for a minute or two on your train ride; I do find that the greenbelts between towns on British journeys, restful to the spirit. The only issue in the UK being whether your train does actually come. My students were quite flabbergasted to be told that sometimes in Ol blighty, trains are simply cancelled, often without explanation. Two personal anecdotes then make them crease up in disbelief, namely the time when travelling from London to Norwich and the passengers were told over the crackling speakers; ‘We are very sorry. This train will be delayed for up to an hour. This is because this train has no engine’; the other a jostling commuter service from London Euston to Birmingham New Street – the equivalent of an Osaka to Tokyo train in importance – and the pitiful – but laughable, I do remember some cynical guffaws among the groans of those on board – excuse; ‘We are very sorry. But this train has no driver’.

Suffice it to say, the taxi driver dropped us off at the Cushion and Crown in Windsor – yes I am naming names – and it was dark. Admittedly, we had arrived late, and probably should have given them a heads up that we were arriving after 9pm – we had sent some messages but a call might have been a good idea but considering we had paid in advance and were desperate to get to bed after the exhaustion of the flight, to find the lights out was very demoralizing indeed.

‘There’s no one there’, I told d.

‘There must be’ he replied.

‘There obviously isn’t‘ I said, already looking for another place that was open as he went round the back and sides to make sure that the hoteliers weren’t crouching in the dark avoiding our arrival for some reason.

Being a decisive type, I was already dragging my overstuffed suitcase, whose wheels were coming off – definitely time for a new one, but who wants to spend money on luggage? – towards the George Inn just a couple of houses next door, just about to close, but upon seeing our desperate faces – we felt like Mary and Joseph – were happily to oblige us with beers and a room for the night. We were told that the proprietors of the hotel in question were not very nice folks and had a bad reputation – which was then borne out the next, deliciously crisp and bright English morning, when the surly fellow in question offered not a single apology – and along with Agoda, the crappy travel agency – avoid like the plague! – refused to answer our inquiries or give us our money back.

GRRRRRRRRRR!

And grrrrrr to the ladies of Cologne and Cotton in Leamington Spa while we are at it and about to finally get to the perfume(s) in question today, a real shame when I had money to spend- an early birthday present from mother and a place I always look forward to going to.

I ask you: when you have a willing and obviously perfume-knowledgeable customer waiting to throw money at you, why would you act like a trio of cold dummies and give the least personable service imaginable?

It was like pulling teeth.

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I like (d?) Cologne And Cotton because it presents a hotelier’s alternative to the two main options in perfumery: high street/ duty free, with its belching molecular stenches – and niche, which often isn’t that much different (power! projection! the rarest, most precious materials!) – but does at least often a tad more artistry and experimentation.

Being a boring one, though, I often don’t want experimentation and the whole ‘let’s imagine what a skunk on a metal morgue table might smell like, sutured into a tapestry of toxic tuberose and night-blooming bluebell ‘- I just want, as I have said multiplissimo times before —a perfume that feels comfortable, intriguing- nice.

I suppose I also have a predilection for pretty, vintage-style, apothecary-esque labels and flacons, so am drawn to simple colognes and colonias from France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, in big, towering glass bottles that haunt the dresser. I like the brand’s own range – pleasingly designed – such as the incense-infused Niobe, and I was delighted to see Molinards – wow! a new version of Habanita – – Fragonards, and a whole range of locally French produced lavender waters – chypre, fougère, soliflore roses, ready to dip into along with a new Italian profumeria from Venezia, Speziata di San Marco, a new range that struck me as very 007 wakes up with Babe in sunlit 1% bedroom overlooking Palace of the Doge, but my natural enthusiasms were blunted the sloe-eyed trio’s woefully unfriendly countenance; sullen as freshly slapped arses; eyes matte as chocolate buttons. It was almost as if they were in cahoots; the woman behind the other woman at the counter deliberately egging her not to give me any help or information as she plonked down a Vetiver here or a Patchouli there wordlessly, with suspicious glint.

In truth, I felt as if I were robbing a bank.

Self-consciousness, neuroticism, is a curious thing. When someone makes you feel suspicious, you can become suspicious, taking on that identity.

Partly because we are partly Japanized in some subtle ways that we ourselves are not even quite conscious of – something in the eye contact; the way of moving, perhaps- different ways of dressing (walking into d’s local pub one lunchtime in Norfolk one afternoon I couldn’t get over how huge; pink, bald, ungainly, everyone looked, how appalling the cheap ambery ouds that had melded with hot sweat were reeking and imagining a Japanese person trying to discreetly clap a hand or two over their face to mitigate the vulgarity of the miasma; how d and I felt, basically, like newts beamed down from Venus- so clearly very different in a whole variety of unplaceable ways that made us uncanny both to the guffawing locals and to ourselves). I suppose the same phenomenon was at work in Cologne and Cotton. This shop is the freshly laundered and linen’d epitome of the semi-upper middle class aspiration; ladies post pilates popping in for liquid hand soaps and the finest Egyptian threads; aroma sticks and expensive soaps to garner the lavabos of their many upstairs bathrooms; it is a cushioned place of quiet luxe for the well-to-do-with-nothing-to-do; hair-do poised; woollens, tees and dresses removed carefully from dried-lavender’d wooden chests; a trip to the C and C a cherry on the icing of the Georgian white houses that they are fortunate to live in and the whole reason I love the town, with its fadedly majestic fountains and gardens, swans gliding obliviously along the lush reeds of the unkempt river, gaggles of brown-tinged cygnets in their wake. There is an elegance to Leamington; posh but grotty at the seams – you only have to walk a mile or two to get to the toothless and unwashed on the other side of town – that we both love; and perhaps that was the vibe that I was bringing into the pristine premises: who is this weirdo who seems to know almost everything about our wares with his flat hair and anorak? Why is he in such a hurry and garbling on about this ‘Habanita’? (the dunces seemed to know almost nothing about what they were actually selling, so maybe I was showing them up, I don’t know – but Jesus, get a grip, slightly on what you are selling, you hoary porcupine in mauvey, cruddy pink lipstick ) : : : : : : : : : : : : THE CUSTOMER KNOWS BEST.

In truth, we were in a hurry, because we only got to Cologne And Cotton fifteen minutes before closing time. This probably heightened the thrilling sensation that they were in the middle of an armed robbery; I was a bit breathless and sweaty and talking ten to the dozen, as my ‘accomplice’ – so disgusted with these frozen mannequins’ ‘service’ that he walked out in anger – presumably had gone to wait in the getaway car before their heads went all Aunty Sally in Wurzel Gummidge after I pulled out my sawn off shot gun from my rucksack – and I tried to work out what I was going to buy with my walletful of cash.

Yes, perhaps it was my appearance. The weather was weirdly hot and cold at the same time; raining but clammy. We had arrived late – a fallen tree had stopped all trains on the Chiltern line and my dad had to pick us up and take us to Birmingham International for a different route; a packed, boiling Noah’s Ark, disgruntled passengers cheek by jowled with the breath of others unavoidable onto each other’s faces as the train snaked past Coventry and eventually into Leamington Spa. We had then gone to a lunchtime soul concert in a lovely cafe bar on the main high street; followed by the exquisite discovery of an utterly charming Ukrainian restaurant hidden inside a church; refugees providing adelicious borscht and savoury mushroom pancakes laced with dill and sour cream in a sacred place and- it was magical. You felt for the people working there, could feel sadness seeping into every corner from the displacement – but it was the perfect place to spend a rainy day, very hard to leave.

On our way to the three cardigan’d Margaret Thatchers at the perfume shop via a fascinating photography exhibition at the Royal Pump Rooms by queer Indian photographers exploring Colonialism,we had had to go emergency shoe shopping as my light breathable black Nikes had let in rain : wet socks are my ultimate bȇte noire. There are far worse things in this world, obviously – bomb strikes, genoicide, you name it – but bringing it back to the every day, there are few things more dreadful for me that sogging socks – I become deranged; utterly intolerable – so we were detoured by new footwear purchases and hunting in the charity shops before being entranced by the sound of Jolene drifting out from Murphy’s, the down at heel anarchist pub we love to go to with its Saturday night disco and free flowing pints of Guinness. Dolly Parton had died a day or two before and was all over the news: it was fantastically poignant to thus be able to hear such a perfect rendition of this song by a local folk singer – via perfume purchasing we were then going to meet my singer songerwriter friend and partner for a Nepalese dinner – a wonderful catch up that was also a Perfume Handover: learning that Julianne loves and wears her rapidly running out Eau de Gucci Concentree ( 1982 )- a preppy and green, mandarinic Anaïs Anaïs I also have in my collection and enjoy wearing on occasion for its soapy, Gabriela Sabatini-esque white lilies that plunge me into nostalgic revere of the eighties carefree, I was to give her a brand new vintage still plastic wrapped bottle I had miraculously discovered for next to nothing at my undisclosable vintage trove store (my dad was given a bottle of Givenchy Gentleman; my mum a Chanel Gardénia as their Japan omiyage (souvenir); it is always most enjoyable to confer a treasured scent on someone who really enjoys it; who breathes it in, lighting up with the pleasure of it all.

Unlike these motionless vacuum cleaners in their orange blossom paradise wishing the urchin rogue standing before them would just leave, getting more monosyllabic and wary by the minute (were they about to become hostages?!) – panic buttons fingers-edged towards under the counter; ready to clobber me over the head with giant bottles of lemon water if I suddenly made to go postal; call in the local constabulary to drag me away to where I belong……… in the moss-templed shrine precincts of Kitakamakura, but no – I still. Had. To buy. Something.

I was hell bent on it. Despite my growing desire to shear off their bouffs with plastic scissors ; I wanted to augment my perfume collection here in Japan with some nice colognes or perfumes, and that was what I was going to do – unacceptable service or otherwise.

What to get? I wasn’t sure.

And the clock was ticking. And I still had to work out how to get to the cash register without being captured on CCTV. (No, sorry —– enough!)

But a customer doesn’t want to be rushed. He wants help. And as the options piled up on the counter – I got a charming gardenia cologne – very English Kate Bush pillow – from Nicolosi Creations, Paris, a pleasing lavender for d from the same company; plus two 250ml bottles of eaux de cologne extra by Jean Aigle – a rose and a lavande; clean, uncomplicated -Habanita was drawing me in but I didn’t have quite enough cash for it, but I wanted just one more cheapie I could use with abandon once home. So mmm… …….what else?

By now I had finally ripped the ladies’ tights that I had covering my face – as well as my balaclava – and was ready to make my final decision. Eeny, meeny, miney moe…

..but finally realized that I hadn’t gone through the LT Pivers. This is a very appealing heritage French brand whose bottles adorn shelves most agreeably – I remember Helen getting the Cuir De Russie back in the day – and had the raccoons that ran the shop – permed, immobilized with scorn by their embroidered tea towels – done their job and shown any motivation to help me make my decision – I might also have made a better one.

As it was, I settled on Rȇve D’Or – or Golden Dream. In its plump, 130ml bottle, very turn of the century boudoir I thought, this was a new release by the house – or at least a remake of a very old classic; ridiculously aldehydic, like a clovey Nº5 – very eugenolic as well – incensey (saffron, cedar) and apparently a lick of raspberry. Something about it appealed in that rushed moment, even though in retrospect I am not sure – these old fashioned things cloaked in contemporary guise don’t often work- there is an element of quease in the mix that curls my nostrils and duodenum a little – but the clock was ticking, only five minutes to go before the glaring register was shut tight with a security key – I moved whatever else I had lined up with my sleeve like a chess piece and said to the staring befuddled —‘Ok. I’ll take these’.

All breathing sighs of relief as they totted up my purchases and placed them quickly in a nice bag with the pleasant green of the brand for me to parade along the high street of Leamington Spa; I requested samples – I guess they dared not refuse in case I lobbed a silver hand grenade into the store behind me for good measure – and was given, grimly, the full selection of the aforementioned Venezian citruses, which I will review at a later date. I don’t know if I said thankyou — I probably did, because I was raised that way and I live in Japan – not sure if they did – probably not,even though I had just bought a load of stuff from their shop – but by that point we were already on our way for a quick sojourn in the lovely Jefferson Gardens by the river; the waters darkening, the clouded skies with banks of evening light still breaking through; birds flitting; a beautiful English scene.

It was a shame to cut them down. They were budding – much more than usual – and would have brightened up the winter.

But the infestation of camellia moths was just too entrenched ; phalanxes of seething double-sided hairbrushes itching to lay toxic hairs under your skin

( not only the cat sitter’s mother but also our neighbour, we found out, had come out in a horrific rash : and when you see how many there were just on one leaf – we kept discovering new batches and were jeebed out beyond pesticidal comfort: even spraying the blighted with horrible chemicals, might they not still come back? Could we ever actually have fully enjoyed going out into the garden again in reality, hiving up in anticipation just in case ?)

So they were given the chop ( I got a message from d last night : “the camellias have gone !”)

Cut down on their prime.

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Getting home I was worried the garden space would like bare and forlorn.

But in fact it just looked more spacious, at ease.

I know we certainly were.

I feel that I have been a bit boring and reactionary in my knee-jerk reaction to L’Heure Bleue 26, so I decided to revisit it on my way to work via Yokohama Takashimaya.

I still don’t really like it, but I would be intrigued to smell it on someone walking past; lived in a little; how it blends with human skin.

At least it is original. The vast majority of ‘new’ perfumes are facile retreads of done-to-death tropes : L’Heure Bleue at least doesn’t smell like anything else ; yesterday, the ozonic facets came through to me as more muted, and the blue iris and orange blossom accord had the eerie sway of a sirenic, futuristic lagoon.

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I also had time to have a quick sniff of the entire Loewe (a brand in a current renaissance) contemporary collection – all too brash and obvious to me, I am afraid to say, except Iris Root, which, with its chalk-cliff, cold emotivity, had me going back for a second trial.

I am not really sure what I feel about iris anymore. I think I prefer it as a supporting actor: as a powdered, cushioning effect as in the classical Guerlains or with a verdant touch like the best iterations of No 19.

This iris soliflore has texture, heft; the requisite melancholy (amazing how quickly it lowered my mood from the raspberry violet irises of that morning’s Dior Purple Glow; I quickly regretted having the blotter emanating a particular kind of sadness from my shirt pocket); sophistication, definitely – and I suppose a certain nobility.

At the same time, the perfume feels amorphous; muddled: its message unclear. Yes, there is a very obviously high quality orris root front and centre stage, with a fresh top accord of Timur – apparently a Nepalese Szechuan pepper), and Angelica – a peculiar, green and herbaceous note that always evokes ambiguity in me, as well as plenty of high-level aromachemicals burgeoning under the surface (in the later stages this Loewe becomes tight; sweet, like nougat on drying concrete): and though a drift of this fragrance would undoubtedly be quite alluring on some individuals -dressed for the part in stylish uncoloureds, not batting a lash at the semi-stratospheric ¥68,000 /$500 price tag, I know that I couldn’t wear this on myself. Ultimately, I did find it suffocating.

What irises do you think I might actually like ?

If I were a teenage girl, I would wear Dior Addict Purple Glow.

In fact, I am going to wear it anyway.

But imagine being cute and new; all dolled up and clean, and then, just before leaving your bedroom spritzing on a sugar high sweetness of perfectly proportioned (I had forgotten that Francis Kurkdijan was working at Dior – his effortless perfectionism is all over this) delectable trip of Tuscan iris, candied violets and perhaps the best raspberry note I have ever smelled over a delicately chalky, meringue-y vanilla sealed with a kiss.

I think I probably could / ( will:I might have to get me a bottle) pull this off in the right, sly circumstances ), but imagine how a lip-glossed beaut could melt the Love Hearts with this, drifting into a club or party at the height of her confidence …

Yes, I admit that this type of gourmand – Dior calls it gourmet, which I prefer- has been done / attempted many times before, and do be careful if you are diabetic – but the way in which the summer trifleish framboises continue to float through the other notes is sina qua non here. This is the end of the line.

Is this, in fact ,the way brands should deal with ‘heritage’ names in order to extend their commercial appeal to younger generations ?I personally never liked Addict, though I (kind of) tried to. The name annoyed me (give me Opium instead – maybe Dior Meth would have been more exciting); I found it crude, flat; tactless.

This perfume, though, has nothing to do olfactively with that whored out balsamic, but is a new, vivacious creation entirely all of its own. It lives anew.

Could L’Heure Bleue not have gone a similar route ?

It was somehow very fitting that I got to smell the new ‘L Heure Bleue’ with my best friend Helen. We have a history with this perfume; with this house; as does any true perfumista worth their bath salt. As teenagers we would roam the department stores obsessively, smelling everything: one gravely important day, she discovered her ultimate holy grail, Après L’Ondée. Created in the same classical Golden Era by the genius Jacques Guerlain, the doleful, fresh almond anise pallor of this exquisite scent immediately brought tears to her eyes after we had asked the Guerlain assistant to show us the hidden treasures that were stacked beneath the more current sales desk. At that time we also discovered Jicky (‘No! Too pooey’ our fresh adolescent response; were nonplussed by Mitsouko, which just smelled fusty and old; but I know that although I have never, never been able to remotely pull it off, I was also uttery and totally mesmerized by the thick, mellifluous langour of the powdery paradisiacal heaven that was L’Heure Bleue; viscous with French pastry – almost a fried doughnut aspect in some iterations under the triumphal florals nosing their way up through the trappings of poudre, this was a delicious perfume to me from the very first time that I tried it – and one that could practically make me swoon when anyone walked by in its ardour-leaden trail. Is any perfume, in fact, more gorgeous?

At the Honolulu Museum Of Art, the day after my talk in the auditorium when I was practically fainting with nerves but somehow pulled it off, D and I did a workshop in the courtyard garden; frangipani flowers falling slowly onto spongey grass, the paying punters who had come along to sample perfumes and be led through the varying types of fragrances available in the mondo profumeria – we had made a catalogue; niche brands had sent along bottles; it was a bit of a stravaganza; we had sprayed multitudes of perfumes into little vials to the extent that I had tendonitis; we had labelled everything, and I had written all of the perfumes up in an indulgently described catalogue that was far more effective than my presentation skills (I went to pieces at the beginning of it all leaving it all to Duncan to take over until I pulled myself together), at which point I found myself sitting down with each individual and spontaneously leading them to what perfumes I thought would suit them the most – as long as they didn’t fight over them, punters were free to take home the samples in question with them).

I remember at one point that one person in the group was practically screeching in delight over an eighties L’Heure Bleue edp that Tora had sent me back in the day and was probably the most divine iteration of this illustrious scent I have ever come across: as a result of her hysterie bleue I decided to make everyone present give it a whirl, and, despite the myriad of perfumes available on that day of every possible type – we really did try to make the selections as eclectic as possible – L’Heure Bleue was pronounced the greatest perfume that was there on the lawn. Almost everybody loved it, even those that couldn’t wear it. It was unanimously decided to be gorgeous.

When Helen came to Japan the first time to visit me in the nineties, she brought me a bottle of the edt that I used judiciously when I simply wanted to dive into its pleasures. D bought me an extrait a couple of years ago, that though not as plush as I was hoping it would be, still gets inhaled or worn on the back of my hand on a regular basis. With Emma in Norwich a few years ago I tried the contemporary edp and found it heavenly; we both agreed that that version at least suited me very well; she herself has since acquired a bottle and I would love to know how it smells. I remember our friend Claire rocking it back in the nineties and being practically beside myself; there is something about the iris and the orange blossom and the anisic thrill of the vanilla bed madness; the texturality of this perfume – is there a perfume more textured? I think not – that makes me plume with madness. I love L’Heure Bleue: it is unique, unshakeable; a bastion of the Guerlain gauntlet. One of their sacred pillars. It should have been untouchable.

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As we strolled together through our hometown of Solihull the other day – the first time in decades, as we tend to avoid the shopping centre like the plague for its depressing banality – though we did dance to a Prince 12 inch in a delightful record shop in only old building, the Manor House, which felt like an oasis of sanity and beauty in a desert of soulless commercialism – and realized that I had, typically, left my phone – with its Vol De Nuit zebra stripes its under glass decoration so easy to find – back in her car, we ambled back to where we were going via John Lewis, having just smelled some crap reorchestrations of YSL favourites Rive Gauche and Kouros in one of those Superdrug type tack caverns floor to ceiling full of ugly bright packaging (both were alright; but very defanged (‘I preferred the Kouros pissy’ stated Helen, and I definitely agreed – when you castrate these things they become eunuchs, just as you would expect), and practically spitting on the ground at the new Balmain – Destin or something, which smelled worse than a toilet cleaning product, which is the case with practically every perfume now by any major brand (ironically she was wearing a 70’s Ivoire I had brought in my suitcase, a beautiful perfume we both love, even if it came without a nozzle), but as we were lost – which is often the case – we somehow ended up in the main perfume department section of John Lewis.

Oh my god, the new ‘L’Heure Bleue’! I exclaimed, happy for once to not be late to the party for a brand new release when usually they take months to come to Japan or I just never get the chance. ‘We have to try it’.

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It is boring to be purist for the sake of being purist, and I don’t think I am a traditionalist – and I like the rebellious nature of Delphine Jelk sitting down in the Guerlain headquarters and thinking fuck it, let’s be iconoclastic, let’s renew this bitch for the youth market. Let’s decimate this classic and see if the name resonates strangely with Le Youf (the ‘blue hour’? I am curious as to what this might mean for Generation Z or Y or whatever they are called; is it a call for ‘self care’ in times of inevitable depression? When they are feeling porny? Does it represent some form of Francaise Freshness?)

No matter what they had called this new ‘major release’ – I personally think L’Ocean de Guerlain, Fleur Bleue or L’Iris Bleu would have worked better with the right advertising campaign — and no, I have to completely disagree with some Perfume People who like the bottle. I think it is hideous, as are all the photos, which is why you are getting no picture to go with this post – but if you are basically going to make a Glade Iris Air Freshener with a prominent calone/ ozone top accord then you may as well go for the aquatic sales approach. The Wateries are apparently making a comeback with les jeunes – as are many things pre and post millenial of course. Those of us around the first time either weathered or actively participated in the Calone Crush – I myself went crazy for the most aquatic of them all, Kenzo Pour Homme, which I still think is genius, and D has a secret stash of quite a few of them, in particular Nebbia Spessa by Fillippo Sorcinelli – a brilliant olfactory work of art that makes you feel as if you are actually drowning it is so ocean realistic – but in general I do avoid them like the plague. To add that note to L’Heure Bleue though, of all perfumes, the powderiest of powderiest surely – do you want your cheesecake floating in algae filled brine, do you? To me it just seems the height of stupidity.

So what does this abhorrent aberration actually smell like?

Ok, let me tell you.

My brain smells things instantaneously, almost synaesthestically and I see three simplistic stripes here, just three things (I know there are nasty ingredients like ambroxan lurking in the base, but they are there to simply exacerbate the main atrocity, which comes together geologically like the three different colours of Colgate toothpaste).

There is a clear, perceptible, probably quite high quality, (lab messed with) natural/ artifical iris that probably could have been used quite effectively, were it not melded with a partycrass orange blossom note – that overused floral absolute that has lost so much of its original more mysterious erotica in recent years when combined with disgusting ‘vanilla’ – I just find it tacky and dunce-smelling now.

But imagine this dull and boring floral accord then shot through with acquatica – and probably some nod to the balsamic qualities of ‘L’Heure Bleue 1912’ – the new name for the original- but let’s just be happy they are still going to make it, I am not going to go there – a really horrible insistent, aqueous note than in conglomeration with the unedifying florals honestly smells worse than an industrial airport lavatory cleaner.

In two words?

Vile.

Ghastly.

And even when we had exhausted ourselves with nobly sniffing this rubbish on the tester card (just to give it a fair chance) and Helen had declared that she was just going to put her chewing gum in it instead, the noxious chemicals continuted to linger on my nostrils; a partially lobotomized mermaid I had given no permission to be lying in there.

The after- effects stayed for a long while; I never want to smell it again.

We have just got back from England.

I say ‘just’. Yesterday – but what is ‘yesterday’ or ‘last night’ when you are flying across different time zones, sleepless, then enter a narcoleptic fug for hours on end only to enter it again, headachey, the ‘next day’?

We have a nineteen year old cat, Mori, which makes travelling harder. Her one experience in a Japanese cattery or ‘pet hotel’- yeah right – was so traumatic for her (essentially just fed and kept in a small cage with other animals in the same space) that we have never done that again : we either have neighbours on a roster feed and check on her or – as we did this time – have cat sitters as she gets increasingly distressed being left alone and wails furiously on our return with various toilet revenges to follow at the sheer indignation of not being treated like a queen.

I don’t really like anyone staying in my house while I am not there. It feels invasive. I feel self conscious and probed – our collective hoarding a window into our psyches and predilections – not to mention the terror of the space smelling terrible with an unpredictable, ageing cat.

I of course took precautions. Incense, aroma sticks, small bowls of spiced pot pourris; we did a good clean up before leaving; the house felt bohemianly both haphazard but with its own aesthetic logic; the sitter, my best friend in Japan’s daughter, Lily, an arts student, surely intrigued by all the records, tapes, books, objets, pictures, perfumes ( she is an avid cat lover ).

The garden spaces too.

We have really cultivated the greenery of late – the voodoo tropical balcony ; the ‘bower’ out front with its entangled hydrangeas, wisterias and osmanthus ; our new area round the side, ‘Miami’ with its palms and banana tree and papaya; though it clashes with the landlord’s more minimalist requirements he knows how much we love it and lets us overgrow.

We had been warned about the camellia. My ever sensible friend round the corner, Sachiyo, who helps us out with all manner of crises — lost wallets, phones, malfunctioning washing machines – “You use too much soap !!” said she would never have one in her garden because of the ‘poison’ – something I have never associated with this elegant, regally unassuming flower

I associate the camellia – tsubaki in Japanese – with Chanel, sumo wrestlers – who wear camellia oil in their tresses – and Shiseido, whose nineties-y Tsubaki extrait ( above) I bought recently – as well as their ultra popular Tsubaki hair products – which is practically the National Scent Of Japan.

I don’t associate them with severe dermatitis, dizziness and anaphylactic shock, some of the symptoms that can result from coming into contact with the larvae or adult moths of the species

Arna pseudoconspersa, or tea tussock, a toxic haired moth that apparently has a yen for camellias, although our three shrubs have been growing nicely for the last eleven years without any incident or the least trace of the suckers and all threat of them had receded into a once heard factoid.

That is until we landed at Haneda airport, I got my internet connection back on and had a message from Melanie on our MoriSit Whatsapp group chat that she had an angry torso of itchy red spots spreading over her arms, chest, neck and legs as did a teenage friend of her daughter’s who had come to stay. The dermatologist she had panic rushed to asked if she had been in contact with any moths; M told me I should check in the front garden on our return.

Finally emerging from a taxi, so tired we couldn’t speak to each other; grimier and grubbier than I could possibly bear wearing the same clothes that were suitable for the cooler Autumnal morning in Paddington twenty two hours earlier or whatever it was but not for the muggier Nihon and the bipolar excesses of the British Airways flight which tended towards frigid – d was in hoody and three blankets throughout- but then suddenly reheated at mealtimes having me throw off my triple jumpers, I thought I was going to go mad with my grime and the misguided base notes of what I thought would be a fresh vintage Rive Gauche, so matinal and aldehydic and blue silver in the morning but so glandularly musky and feral a whole day later when melded with my jaded body chemistry, but my eyes, though very very tired, were still, luckily, able to see these creatures writhing scathingly on the edge of a camellia leaf that we very nearly brushed past.

Clearly this was quite a dangerous public health hazard ( does anyone know how frequently this happens with camellia trees in Asia ? They are everywhere ) but we were simply too destroyed to deal with it there and then; desperate to shut out everything and everyone there and then and sleep – which we did on and off from 12pm to about 8 the following day.

We both awoke buzzing though with the dangerous awareness of those foul creepy crawlies sending hairs out into the air ( ‘burn them !, advised a Japanese friend – but then AI said no no never burn them as they release their jagged hairs into the atmosphere and down into your throat and chest where they can do some really serious damage (some individuals die in this situation).

So I called Kamakura pest control.

No. no appointments available. Maybe next week?

So I ran round to our J father and landlord, the 87 year old superhero you see above with Duncan in a self improvised Hazmat suit with a plastic bag over his head ( he had called Jiro, his son who is a professional gardener and works at the Meigetsuin hydrangea temple down the hill but he was busy elsewhere).

If there is anyone who is the precise opposite of a procrastinator it is Mr Mitomi; he once came round in seconds to bash down a nest of killer hornets that had taken a fancy to our roof – he is more feisty and energetic than most people half his age – and was raring to go to get chopping off the affected areas – that turned out, according to d, to have at least ten times the number of caterpillars on them than you see in these pictures. They were everywher ; no wonder I also had a mysterious rash just before we went away and was taking antihistamines ; these hirsute camellia multilegged insecto-vampiri were already all over the place and we didn’t even know !

G r o sss!

I would like to keep the camellias – they are soon to bloom and have far more flower heads than usual; they do have a certain prettiness, that though virtually scentless, confers some kind of sturdiness to the general proceedings, but the consensus seems to be that with a potential mothmaggeddon looming every year – and even if the garden will look rather bare for a while just when it was going into autumnal flourish – these prim shrubs, now home to legions of lethal grubs that will soon grown nasty wings, are simply going to have to be cut down.

As she usually is, Sachiyo-san was absolutely right.

‘NO CAMELLIAS!’

What was already so nauseating has been rendered more so.

That sickly patchouli amber, but now with an added kitchen cleaner swill of grapefruit and lychee vacillating in the top.

I do hope that no one is wearing it on the plane.

Parfum Satori is unique in its quiet tucked-awayness; elegantly concealed inside a non-descript Tokyo apartment. If you didn’t know already what you were looking for you would never find it; a simple, small metal sign on a wall outside discreetly announcing its presence.

It feels more like a private residence than a standard perfumery. You ring the doorbell and are led up the staircase by one of the gracious assistants: asked to remove your shoes as you would do in any Japanese household, and are welcomed from the standard genkan domicile entrance into what would usually be a living room / kitchen but which here is the heart of Satori, complete with a perfume organ comprising hundreds of ingredients, the full range of fragrances on offer, as well as gulp-inducing glass/wooden cabinets that include ancient Carons, Diors – and an unopened, scarab beetle-esque extrait of Guerlain Djedi.

As a Personal Shopper curating a One Off Exclusive Experience for The Client, undoubtedly it would have been better to contact perfumer Satori Osawa in advance to request a one to one consultation – they are her creations after all, and she is as enigmatic as a sphinx. We have met a few times, and I am sure she would have obliged (I really should have; a nice touch, it would have been more on point for the kind of ultra-Japanese experience Monsieur was hoping for but I had no time to think the day before let alone make my way to the off the beaten track atelier; instead, having eaten virtually nothing all day and light headed from the exertion. we ended up slumping down in a delicious Turkish restaurant off a side street in Ginza I remembered from many moons ago and got drunk.

Still, although it would have been nice to refamiliarize myself with the entire collection in advance – I am actually quite conscientious in my own way – I was familiar with enough of the Satori collection to already have some ideas, my mind racing in the taxi as I took in his atmosphere, skin type, and we discussed his olfactory profile further ( it was immediately obvious that we definitely had one thing in common : uninterested in smelling weird or edgy for the sake of coming across as a cut above or beyond the rest — this had been my ultimate nightmare before the meetup- some Furious Fashion Bitch after a (passive) aggressive Ho-Horror Woody with burnt hojicha tea leaves and macerated crow in which he would wow the crowds at Martin Margiela or CdG while dousing his hair in pure gasoline — but no, our laid back, affable Gentleman just wanted to smell NICE.

That is pretty much my smell agenda also : I like unusual facets: a dash of mystery, elevation suavity; but harmony is key : a touch of discordance sometimes fascinating, but not something that makes my spleen wince.

This gentleman winces quite easily; like me, he knows in an instant ( I have never understood perfume lovers who need days and days to decide what they think about a particular scent : yes, occasionally unforeseen facets do surprise you and cannot be fully discovered at first huff but usually I can tell straight away – within a split second – I see the whole thing top to bottom like an x-ray scan; this dude would shake his head or nod unselfconsciously – here you saw The Power at work, a certain unshakeability of self-confidence -.as d and I presented him with scent strips hoping he would take a liking to at least one of them.

My first profferance was Iris Homme, smelling which Our Client’s eyes did light up. ‘Perfect post shower when The Gentleman is ready to put on a clean white shirt and chair a meeting: very refined’ I heard myself say with a certain oiled obsequiousness as though I had been doing this for years, finally finding my rightful place in this world – and he said yes, I really like it – but isn’t it a little too fleeting ?

I had to agree he had a point.

Lovely though they generally are, I have sometimes wondered if the Satori perfumes are almost too delicate; aqueous: deft watercolours rarely gouache; and certainly never oil paintings.

But this is also their strength.

The man comes from a country of Strong Perfume; those roiling stomach churners that have become the norm worldwide – and he wanted something separate from that; distinct (of course, he is part of The Elite); I told him that the powdery, nioi ayame iris and jasmine of the heart were buffered by sandalwood and a light musk/amber that could never come across as overtly floral; the flowers were hidden in the heart, the overall impression a silken comfort of cardamom, lemon and orange blossom in the top notes that is soap-clean, dreamy, but also curiously sensuous; he looked at me and said, ok, I will take this one.

Next up:

I was pretty sure he would like Satori, the founder’s signature perfume. I really like this one myself: almost a riff on Shiseido / Lutens Feminite Du Bois, this is a spiced (clove, cinnamon, vanilla) sandalwood/agar – but only a little ! I heeded his warning !) scrumptiousness that is distinctly wearable with an almost tactile Japoniserie I felt he would enjoy (he did; he also snapped up this one without a second thought)

Would we be able to make it three or more lucky strikes ?

We hovered over Hyouge, a very original -,if coolly offputting- I understood his reservations – patchouli, fresh mown grass matcha

— but more anon

We met at a designated street corner in Roppongi. The driver approached me first to give me an update on the itinerary. The Gentleman emerged from the back of the SUV. He looked normal; down to earth; casually dressed (I had bought some new trousers and bag and wore a trusted ochre coloured grandad shirt I knew looked artsy enough if not part of the one per cent – but then he wasn’t that either; actually a hard working professional who had brought his family to Tokyo for a holiday and wanted a few moments to himself to indulge his love of perfume. I breathed a sigh of relief as we entered the taxi and I asked about his tastes in perfume. These were:)

Fresh.

Citrusy.

A little bit woody. A little bit floral.

But not sweet.

And absolutely no oud in any shape or form.

Nothing too girly.

But nothing too crass and chemical either

(though he had worn Sauvage in the past as well as Terre D’Hermes…..yet the niche, dry as tindersticks, slightly spiced clean woody citrus whose name flew out my ears the second I heard it because I was nervous in the car, did smell very good on him I must say; stylish, not overdone, slyly clean and erotic- he had picked up himself at some Japanese niche perfumery the day before, so clearly knew what he liked; had good taste….)

But this was the problem.

He had already been all over Tokyo himself, including some of the potential joints I had lined up….

–

the quintessential problem of course being that I have never really penetrated the inner sancti of the Tokyo perfumisti,

the reasons for this being as follows:

1. I couldn’t be arsed.

2. My Japanese is crap.

3. I am not wealthy enough.

4. It is too far from Kamakura (which kind of bleeds into Fact Number One).

5. I got caught up in a war between two of the Leading Ladies; great Fragrance Friends until they fell out, I remained loyal to my side but was then silently blacklisted from anything Salons De Parfums oriented; she even publically sent my book Perfume:In Search Of Your Signature Scent back to the company she ordered it from in a pique of bitchness that maligned my good name.

No, now I am being a bit facetious.

But all the things written above are in fact true, meaning that I didn’t, unfortunately, have any remote and security guarded, moss-gated traditional Japanese tea rooms at my fingertips, where maidens in kimoni would slide silently across the tatami offering holy matcha of the very exquisitest quality while essences of kyara and live nightingales would be blended with crawling sakura petals and snake eyes boiled in exclusive plum wood urns

etc etc :

No, I had none of these things.

Just the same shops as the other plebs.

Perhaps, had I had more than 48 hours to get a more elevated and private ‘tour’ organized I could have rustled something up something a little more drop dead nipponesque; wielding my legendary Rolodex of contacts in the perfume world — the only issue being that I don’t have one.

So. Yes. It was going to simply have to be what it was.

I made a list of possible venues; and started with the best place I knew personally: Parfum Satori.