Monthly Archives: January 2015

Apologies for the delay in replying to all the interesting comments about our nightmarish journey back from the U.S. Not only had we also managed to lose the computer adaptor somewhere along the line, meaning I couldn’t write anything, but the jet lag and exhaustion that ensued was so extreme that I am only now just about compos mentis enough to be able to put fingertip to key.

The kind of jet lag where even when you have slept eleven hours and almost feel lucid, there is still something always there, heavy and somnabulent, tugging at your eyelids and fuzzing up your brain like sickness. A weird, zombie-like state you have no control over whatsoever, no matter how much coffee you drink or how much ginseng you take.

You plan to do something, unpack your suitcase that has finally arrived, or think that, maybe, you should go out to get something to eat, as there is nothing in the house, but mid-film – the only activity possible – you just, suddenly out of the blue, plop your head forwards; plod towards your bed, brainwashed for a ‘nap’…….

“just a nap” you say, and wake up lost somewhere down in the depths with your alarm clock bleeping somewhere on the surface at the mutually agreed prescribed time (“Let’s go out for Thai”), then….”No, let’s order a pizz…” and find you have both conked out again fully clothed with the lights on, and wake up another eleven hours later still hugging the futon in the fog of melatonin weirdness, hardly able to get your bearings, not washing or showering, and finally realizing you haven’t left the house for two days.

Yesterday we did. We had to get out and embrace Japan again.

I absolutely had to see the new David Cronenberg film “Maps To The Stars”, which had just come out in Tokyo (it was a mesmerizingly acidic affair starring Julianne Moore I found quite compelling), while Duncan was out and about in Yokohama. We met up later, as previously planned, for Thai (desperate for real Asian cuisine, with its fragrance, its liquidity, its herbs, its vegetables, after two weeks on the meat’n’fries’n’salads American Diet!).

We met at a Yokohama station, and the first thing that greets my blistering ears is ” I’ve found you a new vintage perfume shop”.

“Take me there now!” I order, and we thus meander our way down our overly familiar streets of ‘recycle’ shops and discounted ‘brand bargain’ emporia, me thinking, no, I’ve probably been there before he just doesn’t know it:

“Is it this one?” “No”. “The one just down there on the right that has all the antique samurai swords and ceramic leopards and stuff?” “No”. “How much further up is it, my leg is killing me”. “Just up here on the right”. “On the right? In that case, I definitely don’t know it”.

“You are going to love it”, I am told.

I am tight with anticipation. What unsuspecting perfumed riches are going to greet me this time? I love the mystery. Every time. The only thing is, I am broke after the holiday in America and can’t really afford to buy anything. But I walk in, a bric-a-brac shop full of god knows what (my eyes settling immediately on the perfume), and the very first thing I see on the shelf isthat familiar zebra box, my beloved, and always always sought after Guerlain Vol De Nuit parfum.

But which flacon will it be?

O

H

M

Y

G

O

D

it is the bottle. The classic propeller design, still in use for the current parfum, but containing 14ml (slightly evaporated), messieurs et mesdames of the vintage. I grab it close to my chest….Yes, 3,500 yen, 35 dollars you sneer, but it is money I don’t really have, but I would gladly forfeit the evening’s dinner if necessary, starving though I am, as I have wanted to own this bottle for two decades, have wanted it for so long, and here it suddenly is, affordable, just propped up ungalantly on a shelf next to some old batteries and comic books.

Swoon.

In the U.S , the only taste I had of vintage perfume was at one market we discovered down Magazine Street, in New Orleans, a place full of intriguing trinkets and gaudy Americana (which I like, actually – I would gladly have exported a box or two of objets if I could have done), but Duncan and his parents were suddenly saying excitedly, Look Neil: Perfume! and I whizz round corners of glass and dolls and old records and statuary to take a look, but then I immediately begin to understand what you all say in America and England about there being nothing really comparable to what I keep finding here in Japan, at least not on the whole (except for those heart-raising random garage sales or even better those estate sales you mention, where you rummage about like a necrophiliac for loot like at such dreadfully low prices and know in your heart it is a sin). No, here there was none of that, as you can see, just tons of White Shoulders, a perfume I was never aware of in England but which I gather is a kind of Institution in America, a sort of Chanel 22 ish tuberose, powdery number, not bad at all, actually, but not something I can be bothered to buy for some reason, and except that – just half empty, or worse, bottles of old things that are vastly overpriced.

What I found in yesterday’s new treasure trove (which, I must selfishly say, I am keeping somewhat secret for the time being) was entirely different. Mystère parfum, sealed Weil Antilope parfum as well as Revillon Carnet De Bal parfum (don’t know it: can anyone tell me what it is like?), Balenciaga Fleeting Moment, in eau de toilette, and a huge bottle of the tulip bottle parfum of Mitsouko (if anyone requires information on that one, you can e-mail me on opoponax8@.hotmail.com), but I can live my life fully without Mitsouko and anyway, it is always turning up in Japan. I could start a vintage Mitsouko business.

Which brings me to this. Aside my beautiful Vol De Nuit, which I will eventually open and use myself (the joy and beauty of’cutting the strings’, the ritualistic pleasure of it all), the other amazing treasure I got (leaving all those other beauties behind for the time being, taking the terrible risk), was this:

A sealed, pristinely preserved extrait of Moment Suprême by Jean Patou!

Look at that box. The bottle, so obviously from near the time when the perfume was first released in 1927. So elegantly nautical and tactile. The thick glass. The sealed stopper……

I haven’t smelled it. I haven’t opened it. And this is the dilemma:

If you were me, and kept finding such things for 20 dollars – though it is usually more –  as I did yesterday, would you, as I am, in my heart, inclined to do, just keep and treasure such a perfume, use it, love it (I gather it is a lovely and strange amber clove scent – again, any information on this one most welcome) or, be more business savvy, dollar-eyed, and actually start thinking about your retirement and making some money rather than the homeless-on-a-park-bench-but-at-least-he-has-a-box-of-amazing-vintage-perfumes future I am looking at; start trying to flog such things on e-bay?

Were I not the person I am, were I more profit and money- minded and less living-in-a-dream I would start a business (but I am glad that I am not, in truth, and, sweetly, Duncan also said spontaneously said the same thing in the Thai restaurant when I brought it up ” I wouldn’t feel right about it. And in any case, could we even ship them out of the country?”)

But, to just assuage my fears of being a fool, do you think perhaps, in fact, I should start the whole e-bay thing? The surrender to chance Perfumed court thing.

Would you? Could you be bothered?

Or would all this, the money orders, the horrendous hassle of the post office, would all this sully the pure pleasure and beauty of just coming across these things at such advantaged prices (he even gave me a discount) and enjoying them for what they are…

Would I be compromising the magic?

Should I open it?

I have just got back to Japan from the U.S. It was a really great trip that will probably continue to filter into the next few posts for some time, as it was exciting, stimulating, and gave me a lot of food for thought. The people were lovely, the places intriguing, and spending time with D and his folks got my love batteries recharged up nicely after a period, at the end of term,  of feeling estranged and unsettled . I feel more optimistic and human again.

But while the actual experiences of each place we went to will linger in the mind, I would really rather forget all the transportation and the getting around. Because from the moment we left Narita Airport in Tokyo and got onto the plane with shitty American Airlines, I have nothing but pissed off and frustrated feelings remaining about a company that seems to be falling apart at the seams and doesn’t provide a decent service for its customers. It is shambolic. A really bad stain on the image of the country it is representing and a total third rate experience. This, coupled with the unpleasant, aggressive, and badly organized system of U.S immigration, in which people, who have paid good money to come to a country that they are curious about seeing, and are shuffled about like dumb and guilty, disrespected cattle, could honestly all make a person seriously think twice about going there again.

Perhaps I am exaggerating, as usual, but having had many years of international flying experience, with a great number of different airlines, I have a pretty good idea of what constitutes decent service. While the Japanese airlines JAL and ANA always offer predictably excellent flights, I also love the more relaxed, yet always efficient KLM, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, Malaysian Airlines (recent disasters notwithstanding) and Virgin Atlantic, which has by far the best entertainment system, something that is essential for a person who cannot really sleep on planes, can’t read on them either, and so is dependent on a good film selection to maintain his sanity, with a hopefully flowing selection of drinks as well, as he flies in a flimsy metal box with man made wings across the latitudes and longitudes of the globe praying that the whole thing doesn’t crash or get shot down.

From the moment you got on the AA flight from Tokyo, you sensed a tired, disgruntled atmosphere, something grubby, as if the poor, put upon attendants, faces lined and careworn with the gradual deterioriations of their working conditions and quality of their airline, could hardly be bothered to do their jobs. I sympathize, but then again I have also paid a great deal of money to be on board this plane and I want to feel that it was worth it. But where other airlines now all have back of seat screens and huge selections of movies, TV programmes, documentaries and so on to keep your mind occupied (so much so that you are so spoiled for choice that you almost wish the flight were longer), American only had about five films in all, nothing I wanted to see, and even if I did ( and I did, because I had no choice), you had to wait until the next program began twenty minutes later or so, and even then the film would just inexplicably go off, the images on the screen breaking up and fragmenting, just as you were finally getting into it the corny Hollywood crap and could hopefully kill another half an hour, squeezed into your seat grumbling under your breath like a spiteful old man.

After a repulsive breakfast (a watery egg pancake with undercooked franks and a tropical strawberry hot sauce), we arrived at our transit stop Dallas, which had the worst immigration procedures I have ever encountered. Though people were exasperated, even panicked, adamant they were about to miss their connecting flights (and would be told in that militaryish, uncaring tone by some rude fat person ‘…then you’ll just have to miss your flight’), there were way too few officers checking and carefully, interviewing candidates for entry really taking their time (as though we were all despairing refugees, clawing our way to get a chance to enter the Greatest Country On Earth, whatever the cost, and should be intensely grateful to be even considered), (“REAlly? The last time you came here was ten years ago?!”) (Er, yes, there are actually other places I have been in the meantime……..) as the line snaked slowly, slowly, slowly forward, and you began to lose all hope that you would ever actually make it to the end, but looking back at all the other poor people at the beginning, saw how far that you had come.

And then that disgusting pancake, which you ate because you were starving, starts to mess with your digestive system, squelching, sugared, full of additives and deleterious, and you think, oh no, not now, no, please…….. that you might be about to commit perhaps the most ignoble act in the history of mankind in the middle of the roped in crowds, you try to control it and and then just think no fuck it and dart under the security rope, rushing to the bathroom just in time cursing and sweating and wishing you had never come. Disjointed, rattled. Like everyone else. But you crawl back in line, and two hours later, at LAST you are finally through, rushing for your connecting flight to Miami feeling dirty and disgusting on a flight that has no service except for water and orange juice and that has messed up your specific request for an aisle seat, because for as long as you can remember, you have always had an aisle seat, as otherwise you get anxious and claustrophobic. You don’t want to feel this way, but you do, so it is a very important detail for you personally. This is an unquestionable necessity. Sat in the middle of two people you begin to feel really and genuinely anxious. This is pure neurosis you realize, but it is something you  have and you therefore always make sure in advance that it is a situation that you can avoid. But no: they have downsized the plane at the last minute in some money saving, seasonal maneuver and have therefore changed the seating plan. There is nothing they can can do about it so you will just have to lump it.

Which I do because it is an exit seat with more space to get out if I really need to, and I look back at Duncan, a couple of seats behind for reassurance as I am strapped in between two sullen, bulky, businessmen, but I still don’t enjoy a single minute of it. My throat is dry and there is nothing at all to do.

Perhaps a glass of wine.  I could really do with some wine after the horror of Dallas, but, ah I see, you can’t pay in cash, only with credit card and I don’t actually have one. Yes, unbelievable, I know (but with this perfume addiction I am sure you can understand why). Even so, I don’t expect the cabin attendant serving the drinks to say to me, in such a condescending tone, ‘You don’t have a credit card?’

Shudder. This is not a pleasant journey to Miami at all, and, later, I realize that I vastly prefer travelling by Amtrak in the sleeper car to Tampa, where you can see the orange groves and swamps go by, meet interesting people in the diner cars, and chat to the friendly train staff who are down to earth and warm and who make the journey really enjoyable. The other domestic flights we take, with Delta to New Orleans via Atlanta are infinitely better as well : as soon as you enter the cabin you feel it – a more relaxed and light-hearted atmosphere, more space, jovial cabin crew, and pleasant flights that seem to pass in no time as you touch down excitedly at your destination.

Today’s/last night’s  flight, though,  was awful.

I have no concept of time anymore, and have just literally got in, after hours and hours of travelling; picked up the computer and started writing this as I need to get it out of my system and we try to heat up the freezing house and soothe the cat who is berating us for leaving her here alone with just the neighbours to feed her and a programmed heater to keep her warm at night. We spent the morning on whatever day it was, though I think it was yesterday, or maybe it was today, it seems impossible to calculate and meaningless anyway, just wandering around downtown Miami in the last moments of sun, to some areas we hadn’t been to yet, and then took a taxi to the airport, pleased that the holiday had gone so smoothly (because you never know with these family get togethers), but then realized quite quickly that we had, in fact,  spoken far too soon.

Firstly, arriving at the terminal clutching our e-tickets and travel itineraries, we found, to our blood freezing, heart-sinking worry that our flight didn’t even exist, that no one had ever heard of Japan Airlines flying out of Miami International, the first AA assistant we spoke to wondering if instead we should be flying out of Fort Lauderdale. And how far away was that? Oh, about two and half hours away or so. Fort LAUDERDALE? We would ever make it. Our mellow anticipation of a pleasant voyage home with Japan Airlines thus melted, at the drop of a hat, into instant adrenalized panic as we realized there had been a fuck up and we might not even be able to get back. What, the flight doesn’t even exist? How is this possible? It had cost a fortune.

What the hell are we going to do?

We rush (always running with American it seems), Duncan developing an immediate, penetrating headache, me with grim visions of us sleeping outside on the concourse  (we have almost no money left, and D has maxed out his credit card – we have no money for a hotel or another flight, and my bank card is not working in any of the ATMs: I see us stranded); the American Airlines person, who could have just checked for us, sending us running through the terminals A down through to D to search for the Information desk, where to our great and immense  relief a laconic, dry, and very funny lady tells us that of course, American and Japan Airlines do code shares my dears, you are fine, are you sure, yeah what do you think they hire me for, my pretty face and body?

D’s temples excruciating further from the temporary relief of stress we rush back to American Airlines dragging our baggage to the inscrutable machine-driven self-check in process ( call me old school, but I so prefer the old method where they just used to do it for you), the check in process for our flight from Miami to San Francisco, our hugely inconvenient stop-over point for our long haul flight back to Asia.

GATE D45. It is written quite clearly there on the ‘ticket’ (which actually tells us, again disconcertingly, that a seat cannot be designated for us yet, but please go to gate D45 and you will be issued with your Boarding Pass!)

So we wait there. But of course, there are no staff, and the one person who is there keeps disappearing, as time keeps ticking, and police with machine guns arrive for some security anomaly on the flight to Costa Rica, and we are getting closer to boarding (we cannot miss our connecting flight back to Japan!) and I check the Departure Boards just in case it has changed without warning and …..fuck! they have changed it to E9, unannounced – no! which turns out to be miles away, with rail transit cars and endless corridors, running, stressed out to the max to arrive at the departure gate where people are on standby waiting to get on, scores of them (they are, of course, overbooked). And again, VASTLY understaffed. For a whole room of people there is one person again trying to deal with all of this (one!). I feel sorry for her, but people are already boarding, the line isn’t moving, and we havent’ even got a seat yet. Are we going to be able to even get on the plane?

Eventually we get called to the front desk and get issued last minute boarding passes. I have a seat. Which of course, isn’t on the aisle, though some kind people let me swap, and Duncan sits next to a woman who tells horror stories earlier that day (‘American Airlines? Don’t get me STARTED!) of being stuck on the tarmac in the Bahamas for two hours (with no one passing around any refreshments or real apologies), and she rolls her eyes again as we then get an announcement that ladies and gentlemen, we are sorry but we have been told by the engineers that the plane is not currently structurally safe as there are too many people on board (?), and too many bags have been loaded on the plane meaning it is not properly balanced. Great! I feel really safe and secure! Knowing that I am about to take off on a plane that is not even structurally safe. Marvellous!! Keep it coming!

They unload some bags, and we joke about passengers also being thrown off the plane with the suitcases. And finally, an or so hour later after the scheduled time, it takes off, for a six hour flight to San Francisco with no meal service, not even a small packet of pretzels (at least Delta gives you those), no entertainment options ( I just pick up a note book and pencil and write a piece for the Narcissus that you can read in the next couple of days), an old fashioned way to keep my mind off the stress of this bullshit that AA keeps subjecting us to, as we finally, finally arrive in San Francisco, and have to run run again to try and catch our connecting flight to Japan, where there are no staff anywhere as it is almost midnight, and we finally, after rushing down endless corridors dragging my aching leg and carry on luggage, find the international departures section, seriously stressed and sweaty and stinking now, go through security again, endure the barking orders of the airport security staff (who really COULD be a bit more gentle and nice about it all, yes I know they are protecting us all from The Terrorists), and we finally get on to the lovely haven that is Japan Airlines and its reliable sanctuary of true and decent flight service.

It is like slipping into silk. Nice food, much better entertainment, decent seats, and a big, airy, cabin, but I fall asleep in any case, as it just feels so smooth and relaxing as the day has been so stressful, and we think finally, things will go without any hitch and we can just get home.

Eleven hours later, having traversed half the globe, we arrive at Tokyo International Airport and to the baggage claim and then we have the final denouement to American Airlines’ beautiful, seamless performance.

I had so been looking forward to opening my suitcase and looking at my souvenirs, those lovely Hové perfumes, the hand made soaps I bought on Anna Marie island, the curious hemp and vetiver lotions I bought from Nubian in New Orleans,  but on arrival, though Duncan has his suitcase, and the conveyor belt goes round, an assistant at the airport then lifts up a sign which reads ‘LAST’.

All the suitcases have been loaded on but  I don’t have mine. American Airlines, probably in that disorganized mayhem of baggage-shifting from the plane back in Miami, has lost my suitcase.

I come home empty-handed.

There are some cities I love but could not live. Kyoto is one. New Orleans is another. While diametrically opposed in many ways, both of these places are so drenched in their own atmospheres, so full of ghosts and their self-prolonging essences, that when I am asleep they pervade my dreams; insinuate themselves perniciously in my bloodstream, leaving no room for space.

These are places that could possess you.

I only spent four days in New Orleans, but it has made quite an impression. Compared to Miami, Tampa, and Anna Marie Island, with their clear, ocean-kissed florid air (and where I had almost dreamless sleep), walking around the so-called City Of The Dead, built upon the colonial conquests of an all-pervading, palpable Louisana swamp (the city is fading; sinking, it is the Venice of the Americas), the air there is damp, tainted; flourished. There is something inexplicably unsanitary about the place, somehow: not just the large numbers of shuffling, homeless alcoholics who walk through the streets and city parks like zombies, the jazzed up ‘sinfulness’ of Bourbon street and its fleshpot, boozy indulgences, but also entire districts, places that feel a little uncanny despite their tremendously warm and friendly atmospheres, places that thrill the imagination- the glorious Southern Gothic feel of the Cemetery Lafayette with its eerie above-ground tombs vampires, the trailing, succulent plants from the balconies of the French Quarter and its impossibly pretty and mysterious houses; the music – (all pervasive, everywhere, in the very water, it seems, music that at first you think is just there for the tourists to continue the city’s clichés perpetual, but which you then soon begin to see as something real, instinctive, inevitable: the lazed, rangy spontaneity; the true musicality of those jazz musicians scattered throughout who  pick up a trombone or clarinet nonchalantly, dismissively almost, as if they were casually about to  just blow their noses but then come out with the most fantastic, heart-real music of pure jazz intuition, totally in step with each of their crew,though none are probably looking at each other; pure improvisation that seems to rise up as naturally from their bodies and souls as the vapours and encroaching waters from the levees that flow up from down beneath in the sewers and up to the sidewalks; insidious, and everywhere, from down in the drains).

Yes. I can’t claim to know this place at all really, in such a short space of time, so forgive me if any of this comes across as being presumptuous or excessive. There is no doubt, though, that New Orleans is definitely a place of imagination. It is like a palimpsest, the present traced over what is past, but not succeeding, feelings ascending up through the membranes of actuality, piled on top of one another like the bodies in the cemeteries that lie there altogether in Cemetery St Louis No. 1, tens of thousands of them, stored together in families or anonymously, but shifting and moving with the temperature. Closed shutters. Secret gardens concealing former slave houses. The enticing idea of real Southern Belles, lounging on the terraces of their Antebellum trellised, abodes, fanning themselves slowly in the heat as they sip on an iced drink, sit prettily before the elaborate mirror of their boudoir: glass, ornamental tables of creams and powders, of lotions and perfumes; flower waters for the brow, headier scents come evening. Toiletries, real ones – foam baths to troubling the waters, talcum powders for cooling the skin; the ladies’ signature scents.

For me, this mix of sultry, flowered sensuality and easy Southern elegance is quite present in the lovely Hové Parfumeur on Chartres Street, a sanctuary from the madness on Jackson Square, the cathedral, and a place where the perfume lover can close the door, shut out the world, and pick out something that us unique to the boutique, a native New Orleans Scent. He can then bathe in it top to toe, with those powders, and creams and soaps and solids that stack the shelves neatly, and willingly, in soothing, waitful silence.

Though the shop wasn’t at all crowded when I was in there, people would come in from the street into the hushed, sound absorbing space where there is nothing to do for the real lover of perfume (and these were: I recognized myself in them) except carefully peruse the fragrances, trinkets and quaint little objets that dot the place, many of the antiques, picked up by the owners on their travels actually for sale, one lady saying to me with a slightly haunted look: this is my favorite place, you know, I love it. I always stock up on my perfumes when I come back here. I can’t get enough of it. Have you tried Pirate’s Gold?

I had. In fact, I had just chosen a dram of that very scent, in parfum, as it had been the first one to strike my fancy as I walked into the shop and then smelled it, intrigued, from the scent strip. First impression: Mystère, as in Rochas, shrewdly erotic yet fresh, with a brisk unwashed undertone, perhaps patchouli, castoreum, labdanum, an unusual herbal element (cascarilla ? there is an apothecary just down the street), and a powdery, ambered top facet that when on skin almost brought to mind Bal à Versailles, albeit more transparently. It was damn sexy at any rate, and it was no wonder this attractive, coiffed and soignéed woman of a certain age, hair maintained magnificently, should want it as part of her collection .

Yes, both of us loved Pirate’s Gold, a small bottle of which I got as a new perfume for Duncan, and it was the scent which he then wore for that evening’s New Year’s Celebrations (wild: boisterous shouting and singing in the streets, beaded necklaces being tossed, everywhere, all over the place, by champagne-quaffing, well-dressed people from the city’s most exclusive balconies towards the partying, upstretching crowds; throngs of people: families, couples, mad drunkards and homeless people surging through the streets down by the river front, D’s mother clinging on to me for dear life (genuinely quite afraid, as we sheltered in a door way and tried to not get dragged under by them all), but it did smell fabulous, both tender and delicate, rich, yet sexually disturbing, and it made a very nice entry point into an extensive collection of scents I found to be very well made and appealing.

Ranging from fresh and light-summery, to mossy and old fashioned, there wasn’t really a scent that I didn’t like here. Elan d’Orange was an uplifting citrus orange blossom that would work delightfully in the summer heat, as were all the soliflores: Azalea, Ginger Blanc (a delicate white floral), pleasing sultry flowers like Jasmine, Carnation, Magnolia and Honeysuckle, but also a finely tuned lilac, Lilas D’Avril, that fit my image of a young southern dame accurately, with her frilled and bonneted, ribboned-up accoutrements.

There just wasn’t enough time to smell them all, though. Had I not been on a family holiday with more hours alone to just please myself, I would have spent longer there in the perfumery getting to know all of these perfumes (because, who knows, perhaps I’ll never smell them again). I looked around, smelled, and took some notes, but a cursory experiencing of perfumes is never really enough – we had snuck out before breakfast to be there at opening time (but before the itinerary for the day); I must have spent an hour there at most that time, and much less the second, when I went back excitedly with dollars in my pockets, like a school kid at Christmas, to buy the coveted bottles of Vetivert and Plage D’Eté that I couldn’t quite stop thinking about as we toured the city.

Every scent in this perfumery is available in either cologne or parfum format, and I love this idea. Obviously there are small, subtle differences in the makeup and throw of each fragrance depending on its strength and proportion of ingredients. You could wear them altnernately, one for day, one for night – the very best kind of layering. The house of Hové is chiefly known, though, apparently, in New Orleans, for its best selling and signature fragrances, Vetivert and Tea Olive (a version of the silver osmanthus bushes that I smelled in the air around the city, but which in perfume format I found to be bright and cheering but overly aldehydic and oily). Vetivert, on the other hand, was an immediate winner. Although the use of Haitian vetiver has been a long tradition in the city, with spiritual connections in the rituals of voodoo, Hové grows its own vetiver locally in fields outside the city (available in bunches to buy from the shop – you can scent your linen draw with it, or use it to repel insects, and New Orleans apparently gets a lot of those when the weather heats up). I like this idea very much. Something local, with terroir, rather than the generic niche vetivers we know so well that follow the standard patterns (sharpness: fruitness: wood). This take on vetiver is just vetiver, to be honest, practically just an essential oil suspended in alcohol, but the thing is it is a good one; warm, rich and earthy, real; direct, but not rough and tarry, as some vetiver essential oils can be. Although the perfume format of Vetivert appealed to me immensely as well (green, bitter and strange at first before it settles into a clear and tangible vetiver), the cologne seemed more approachable and balanced, so I bought one of those (already about an eighth or so gone – when I like something I really go for it), a scent I will wear on its own or in cahoots with others as I find the scent of vetiver very versatile. The other scent I bought in full bottle, this time in parfum, was Plage D’Eté, or ‘summer beach’, perhaps the least New Orleansy of the collection in some ways (most of the perfumes have something quavering, tremulous: mossy and spiced, this being the land of Creole and Cajun ( delicious, incidentally: I had a lobster bisque soup at Galatoire’s that was one of the best things I have ever tasted – I found, while I was eating it, that I had drifted off into some sensual, subterranean sea scape. Dreamy. Aphrodisiac. Uncoincidentally, I stopped talking for a while and so did Daphne, who had also chosen the same): scents on these themes are in the shop such as Creole Days, a parfum sample of which I picked up as I thought it made a nice souvenir, lightly spiced and aromatic but with a mellifulous, sing-song heart, like the accent of the people here. Plage D’Eté is a rather predictable choice for me as it is based on coconut, but as I found out on the voodoo tour that we attended on New Year’s Eve, coconut is also the usually proffered gift to one of the particular voodoo lua, or spirit guides: Papa Legba, which seemed in keeping with the specifically Louisiana theme but in any case, being the native coconut freak that I am, I just inevitably gravitated towards it anyway (in a past life I am sure I swayed from a branch). Rather than the standard creamy and milk-fleshed noix de coco scents we know so well, however, Plage d’Eté takes a fresh and clear-smelling coconut heart – pure, simple, and pairs it with glinting fruit and citrus essences, creating a scent that reminds me a little of Lutens Un Bois Vanille before it bit the dust, or perhaps Chopard Casmir, and its mango fruitbowl lusciousness. Unlike those two perfumes though, Plage d’Eté has none of the molar-melting heaviness or sweetness that can mar your enjoyment – I liked this Hové take for its unfussiness. Also the idea of a coconut parfum : the cologne was lovely, but the extrait was tighter, more precious, and it reminded me, almost, of a purified, more intense concentration of Malibu rum, something we got very drunk on last night as we danced our way through various clubs in Tampa, a memorable evening that has nevertheless left us like feeling like brain-dead husks as we cross the state in sleeper car on our way back to Miami for our final night here in the States).

Husks. Yes, husks. Hové’s Patchouli is a husk. A very good scent indeed that one. A bit unclean, somehow, as the lovely assistant Ashleigh explained to me : ” Yes, our patchouli is dirty “. With obvious similarities to Pirate’s Gold (they clearly share some accords), this is a smoky, dusky patchouli troublant that would not be out of place in the niche collections of Parfumerie Generale and the like, only looser, more bodied, with suggestive qualities that make it much more natural and at ease with itself. I had put some of this perfume on my left wrist on my initial visit, and as the day wore on, its strange and souled character traits rose up in a ghostly and perturbing fashion: very characterful, very impressive, even if I don’t think I could wear it myself. Like Le Labo’s Patchouli (though with none of the meatiness) this spreads itself out tantalizingly into the air around it and won’t let go. It is inescapable: perhaps too musky and disturbing for me, personally, but undoubtedly one of the highlights of the shop. For patchouli heads who need something different, this is a must.

As for the other perfumes, well I didn’t have the skin space or nose space to try them all. There was a gorgeous rose, Bulgarian, resplendent and honeyed, that may or may not have been Radiance or Serenade I got confused. A Kiss In The Dark was a little like a less complicated Shalimar, quite nice; Louis Quartorze sensual, powdered and beautiful, and Fascinator a sexy, androgynous aldehyde. As I said, because of time restrictions I didn’t get to smell everything properly, to my great frustration, though I did do my best, as Duncan went round the shop taking the photos you see here from every nook and corner and I chatted to Ashleigh, who really seemed to enjoy working there(apologies if that is spelled incorrectly). I love the idea of small, independent perfumeries with character, perfumeries that chime with their surroundings and give you something distinctive. Overall, in terms of scent design and aesthetic, Hové strikes me as being a bit like the Angela Flanders of the South. While many of the perfumes do have a powdery, nostalgic sensibility, there is also a streak of something quite modern and innovative running through them as well. Where Parfums French Bourbon, on Rue Royal (which I will discuss in another post) go for a more sweet-rouged, Caron approach, Hové strikes a more limpid, almost contemporary balance. Like the city itself, which is a living, modern city, a functioning, hedonistic place full of friendly, courteous and people with a flair for the humourous and the dramatic (so nice, warm, and genuinely polite – the British and Japanese could learn a lot from them, I tell you), the perfumes do also seem relevant to the current.

At the same time, though, you cannot escape the deeper sensation that the whole place, despite its volatile, still, voluptuous beauty, is essentially decaying : moribund, caught between two worlds (there is definitely something quite surreal about New Orleans; something heightened, touched). The perfumes, and the shop itself, consequently do, unavoidably, also look firmly in the always fascinated direction of The Past. They seem to embody that romantic yearning, the stories, the desire to not relinquish those essences that make New Orleans New Orleans. And this city, ‘The City Of The Dead’, is a place so palpably steeped in history, in blood, slavery, disease, and a beautiful, half-winking decadence, that in truth it would be probably futile to attempt to do otherwise.

To all the readers:

Thanks for all the stimulating discussion and support this year. I love doing The Black Narcissus and I am grateful and delighted that others seem to enjoy it too.

Happy New Year from New Orleans! I hope you have a wonderful 2015.