Monthly Archives: February 2016
deux parfums de bubblegum……. ENCENS ET BUBBLEGUM by ETAT LIBRE D’ORANGE (2006) + BUBBLEGUM CHIC by HEELEY (2012)
Filed under Flowers
IN WHICH THE BLACK NARCISSUS MAKES HIS CINEMATIC DEBUT IN A LOW BUDGET TOKYO HORROR FILM
Although I am passionately perfume-oriented right now – I can feel the world revolving on its axis and the newness of the coming spring unmistakably in the air – I have no time at the moment to do any writing.
The house is a bomb-site: a Bohemian pig sty. I cannot even get near the computer: half-finished paintings; costumes; props; fur coats, scripts – somehow the ironing board has got lost so I have been ironing my work clothes on the angora rug(and we only can find unmatching slippers). The cat can barely find a place to sleep, and Duncan is sleepless and hectic going to and fro from Kamakura to Tokyo (two hours each way), finalizing details and lines with his co-director, Yukiro as filming begins early this Saturday morning.
It will be a very comic and trashy, art-house horror film – whose name and content I cannot yet reveal, though it promises to be hilarious, if ultimately disturbing and schlocky (and I have a small ‘cameo’ role playing a, wait for it, ‘mute lowlife’ – thanks Dunc – and ironic considering the number of words that pour out of me on a daily basis – but it should be fun, in any case, as I scowl; smoke cigars; and mouth silent obscenities in Italian).
There is a tremendous group of individuals involved: cameramen, actors, musicians – who are working for free on the project, all basking in the general hilarity and up for it, and the logistics of gathering everyone in one place at one time have been complicated to say the least.
But it is all happening, will take all day and all evening, and then the following evening is MADONNA.
You don’t know what that means to me. I am in a state of chrysalid muted hysteria..
Suffice it to say that writing will hopefully resume early next week.
I have several half-finished articles in the pipeline, some brand new scents; some beautiful perfumes I got from Tahiti (in Japan), and piece on perfume and Colette.
BRING IT ON.
Filed under Flowers
O The Virtues: ORIGINAL VETIVER by CREED (2004) + SIGNORICCI by NINA RICCI (1976)
I just found an old bottle of Signoricci I didn’t realize I had, and have revived him with a few drops of bergamot oil.
What a refined, and delicate, masculine scent.
O The Virtues: ORIGINAL VETIVER by CREED (2004) + SIGNORICCI by NINA RICCI (1976)
Filed under Flowers
Guerlain Guet Apens/Attrape Coeur (1999) -‘Heart Catcher’
by Olivia
I came to this late – very nearly too late. I’d heard reverent murmurs about this voluptuous beauty with a husky timbre and silky spirit: a hallowed resurrection of the golden days of Guerlain in the guise of a fruity chypre. Is there any greater lure than a discontinued Guerlain? The pull of those beautiful gilded bees lures you in until you’re neck deep in their gummy honey quicksand, gulping down small puffs of hysteria and trying to regain perspective. There’s a certain promise: the magnet of something uncommonly beautiful just out of reach.
I’d managed to (sort of) ignore it, assuming that the thing would be impossible to find and that even if I did unearth a bottle it would run me out of house and home and condemn all my meals for the foreseeable to gruel and slops. Sometime in early 2012 or so I sent an email to the wonderful Place Vendome in Belgium (if you haven’t shopped there – I apologise to your bank balance in advance – it’s magical.) I was asking after another Guerlain I’d developed a fixation with and in doing so, asked for a list of their current stock. The reply came:
‘Les Parisiennes (Cherry Blossom, Attrape Coeur, Mayotte, Liu, Vétiver Pour Elle, Nuit d’Amour, Derby, L’Ame d’un Héros. Chamade Pour Homme). Les Voyages Olfactifs (London, Moscou, New York, Tokyo), Les Arsene Lupin, Vega, Sous Le Vent, Le Muguet etc etc. Of course the ‘basics’ as well such as Shalimar et al….’
I think I probably did one of those Disney-esque double takes (actually even reading back that list now pokes at my adrenal gland) how can this perfume, this unattainable unicorn be just there. I could order it! Oh god. I tried to talk myself out of it but when they told me they only had the one bottle left, and feeling the firm nudge of a more experienced Scentophile on my back (‘Just do it! You can always sell it if you don’t like it!’) I bought it blind and spend the next week trying not to wake up in a cold sweat at 3am. When the beautiful bee encrusted bottle arrived, after spending the requisite time stroking it, I twisted off the stopper. A rush – honestly, I know this sounds hyperbolic but I had one of those very rare moments when, in amongst the thicket of perfumes you smell that don’t suit/are downright dreadful, you recognize something of yourself in the bottle. Silly as it might sound, here somehow is a piece of your soul seemingly caught in liquid amber. This is really such a beautiful perfume.
Guerlain classified it as a ‘fruity chypre rose animalic’ – but I find the rose part somewhat misleading. A dark, fruity rose is nestled in the heart but this is really much more abstract as a whole: a complex melody of sequential layers and shadow play in the classical style. Weaving between liquored sweetness and smoky, soft tang there is rose and jasmine, orris and violet, peach and cinnamon held up by darker leathery basenotes of oakmoss, fir balsam and the distinctive rich and smooth tonality of the proper sort of sandalwood. It’s a conversation between vintage style powdery florals and the siren call of deep amber.
The rose and violet do their lipsticky thing bolstered by a light touch of snowy orris – the gorgeous buttery/ashy sort – whose clarifying glints shoot through the amber like light on a sapphire and glisten like snowflakes in the night sky. The orris and violet don’t make this a dry scent though, although they do temper the richness that pervades it, preventing it from becoming too sweet. The body of the scent fans out with that buxom rose and the animalic indoles of jasmine spun with nuances of just ripe, dander skinned peach and perhaps a pinch of civet before darker, denser notes of oakmoss, patchouli and that resplendent sandalwood gild the base. There is plenty of that Guerlainade hallmark duality of umami facets – leathery moss, dry woods – against powdery patisserie sweetness that make it both delectable and definitely inedible. In the end, it becomes a magenta mossy haze of the rose-cream of sandalwood and piquant powder, lassoed in dark, honeyed amber. A seductress (with just a hint of sleaze), this perfume wraps around you with velvet tentacles.
A difficult scent to describe in some ways, being at once strangely familiar (in the sense of possessing a great comfort and assurance) and disarmingly beautiful. I personally find it in no way challenging or inaccessible, but it does have that unfurling characteristic of the older Guerlain perfumes: there is a plot, an orchestra of characters that bloom in and out. Long hours on the warmth of skin does it every favour and perhaps those that expect a Polaroid perfume would leave their seats before the final curtain call. These perfumes, just like people can be, are perhaps at first a little unfathomable – puckered and guarded. But with time and touch the layers of edition melt off into what feels like a confession, leaving the essentials: a sensual interlacing of softness and carnality (we all have that mix) which wait like little secrets beneath the protocols.
There are peekaboo flashes of Guerlain greats that roll in and out of the development of Attrape Coeur: Nahema winks by with her rosey radiance and luminous colour (but leaving none of her day-glo fruity, alien hyper-reality), Mitsouko lends her sylvan boughs and peach skin (but skips the dour severity.) There are winks of L’Heure Bleue in the spiced powder and dusty orris-marizipan and Shalimar floats to the surface from the sweetly sullied leather-amber depths. But while these little homages are made, Attrape Coeur is very much its own creature: a dusky violet gem that wears like silk and panthers purrs. It’s both elegant and decadent, as soft as soot and as rich as brandy. This is a truly bacchanalian antidote to the flimsy and facile, to perfume as a last minute utensil. It is a recluse of finery in which you are allowed to revel in a particular kind of solitude; a dopamine crested wave at the sudden recognition of a rare breed of beauty.
So while this gorgeous thing has been unforgivably axed (we could be generous and speculate that restrictions and the rarity of ingredients was to blame..) there is a small solace in the knowledge that is has been re-released before. First launched as Guet Apens (‘Ambush’) as the centerpiece of the newly renovated Maison Guerlain in 1999, and housed in the covetable sapphire Flacon Lantern – a copy of the bottle used between 1939 and 1943 to house extraits of Jicky, Sous le Vent and others – it was withdrawn not long after. In 2005 the perfume reappeared as part of Les Parisiennes, now in a bee bottle and rechristened Attrape Coeur (‘Heart Catcher’.) Here it won a stay of execution until being slain again in 2009. Happily but for too brief a time, Attrape Coeur was reincarnated as the exclusive ‘Royal Extract’ for Harrods in 2014 (cue mania and me cutting a panicked dash to Knightsbridge to snatch a bottle.) Guerlain is wont to do this sort of thing: with a flourish release things from the vaults in different guises and with new names (and all too often nowadays an extra 300 Euro dolloped on top) – so perhaps at some point Attrape Coeur will rise spectrally from the ashes again. Until then, eBay is your best bet – I’ve seen several bottles listed there over the years (everything pops up on eBay eventually.) Genuinely, this is one of the ones worth the chase. If you can find it, buy it. (You can always sell it on if you don’t like it.)
Filed under Flowers, spiced ambers
SECRET INTENTION by GUERLAIN (2001)
Diving to the back of my perfume cupboard to retrieve Secret Intention, a ‘limited edition release’ I once bought, with the intention of including it in my treasure trove of affectionate disasters – I realize, quite suddenly, that it in fact deserves a category entirely of its own:
FAILED FAILURES.
For it is shit.
A kind of seaweedy Samsara : an endocrinic green tea mop.
RUBBISH.
Filed under Flowers
HEAT ME UP WITH CINNAMON : : : : : Ambre Narguilé by Hermès (2004) + Vanille Cannelle by E. Coudray (1935) + Rousse by Serge Lutens (2007) + Incensi by Lorenzo Villoresi (1997) + Ambre Cannelle by Creed (1945) + Noir Epices by Editions de Parfum (2000) + Cinnamon sherbet by Comme des Garcons (2003) +..
Filed under Flowers
SUCCESSFUL FAILURES VOL.IV: : : ‘ANIMAL IMPRINTS…………’ EMPREINTE by COURREGES (1970) + LA NUIT by PACO RABANNE (1985)
Filed under Flowers
SUCCESSFUL FAILURES VOL. III : : : TENERE by PACO RABANNE (1988 )
Now this really was a flop. Nobody quite knew what to make of it: a red, red (it really smelled red), highly complex and cultured aromatic fougere that was, from a certain perspective, a very distant relative of Kouros: all Mediterranean and hairy-chested, sexed up and ready, with its brutish, yet seductive and convincing fullness of man-juice: spice (carnation and cinnamon), a flush, honeyed, anisic rose heart poisoned with artemisia and jasmine, and a musky, leathery, ambered patchouli and cedarish base.
Despite the rabid sensuality at the heart of this peculiar ‘floral’, however, there was also a very appealing, fresh, and regenerating contrast in the opening accords of grapefruit, cassis, bergamot, rosemary, lavender and a delightfully uplifting green note that made the scent (I own two bottles, as you can see) strangely affecting, even touching, on a crisp, Autumn morning. One of those smells that contrasted perfectly with the piercing, exterior, sunlight of optimism, when you simultataneously breathe in the lung-icing air around you and the scent on your body and just feel happy.
Yet despite its appeal (to me, at any rate), the scent is undeniably difficult. Illegible. Original and daring. But really quite hard to pin down – Duncan, just smelling it on my hand as I write this said : “Wow, interesting. Really interesting. Penetrating”. It was. But, despite its very masculine credentials at base, it was a floral. And a weird, green, spiced, herbaceous one at that, with a big dollop of animalic honey lurking somewhere at the centre. And men didn’t know what to do with such a scent. Not with all their insecurities. Especially in 1988, when Thatcher and Reagan were in power; things were simplistic and crass, and men walked about in their ‘colognes’ smelled like open-chested gorillas. Top that with the fact that on the wrong day and in the wrong weather – on a hot day, the rich red hint of Tenere would boil down on me to a sweaty tomato ketchup – and it was obvious that Rabanne had a commercial failure on their hands. It was quickly withdrawn – almost as soon as it was released: just another concoction consigned to the sad, perfumed graveyard. Like the similarly discontinued La Nuit, though – by far Paco’s most exciting and audacious scent – it remains, to me at least, one of their most interesting.
NONTISCORDARTIDIME by SPEZIALI FIORENTI + OTHER CAST OFF PERFUMES AT THE FLEAMARKET
In truth, my legendary fleamarket is not what it was. Recently there have been only slim pickings, whether because we keep arriving too late – not being able to get up on time on a cosy Sunday morning in winter – or perhaps because some wily Black Narcissus reader or other living in the Tokyo region has cottoned on to this occasional Babylon of perfume heaven, pips me to the post, and does a wide sweep of the goodies while I am still fast asleep I don’t know, but it certainly is not quite what it used to be.
Or maybe it is simply that society itself I am living in is progressing and ageing and there just aren’t quite as many cast off vintage perfumes as there once were; perhaps granny’s closet is bare. What a shame if that is true, though. Although part of me really does think that it is time to start saving for my future quite seriously rather than just acquiring and accumulating scent, some of the bargains that I have picked up over the years at that place have been so cheap, and yet so thrilling, that in reality I wouldn’t change any of it for anything. It has been a wonderful ride.
I don’t know what has happened to those women who would sometimes be there, though, just selling vintage perfumes, those whose concessions I would approach saying to myself oh no, oh my god, what is that I see, dreading the effect on my wallet (these type of sellers were more canny about what they were selling – they were never dirt cheap like some other things you can find sometimes – a Calandre parfum or Miss Dior parfum de toilette might set you back thirty or forty dollars – but the fact that you had to be selective about what you were going to buy, that you couldn’t have everything there even though you did want it, gave a pleasurably agonizing tweak to the proceedings that tightened things up a bit and made things even more breathless.
I haven’t seen anyone like that recently. Usually now there will be just the odd perfume or two, nothing exciting, just tossed down in a box among other things (but then these are often worth having a look at in any case; I have a thing for Leonard vintage ties and got a great one yesterday (for a dollar): very seventies tropical, turquoise and black striped, of slightly questionable taste, but just to the right degree; there are still kimonos and oddities and the unexpected objet and stacks of clothes, so it’s worth a look, it’s just that in the last year or so it hasn’t been a bonanza: regular readers will know that in the past I have had plastic shopping bags full of perfume and not been able to buy anymore, as my inner shame was burning too bright; that I would then see one more wantable perfume standing there on some table or blanket or other and have to just.say. no.
My writing can be quixotic, so I can imagine that reading the concentrated version of events at my weekend ramblings might have sometimes given a slightly unrealistic and exaggerated impression of what the flea market was actually like. Readers have contacted me asking me where the place was, and whether I thought they would be able to pick up a Chamade parfum, (“will there be vintage Diorama?”) or a Caron Farnesiana. In your dreams. It has never been like that. Even in the most bountiful of times, ten years ago or so, there were weeks when there was no perfume at all. I think some readers imagined that this was a place for perfume, a ‘perfume flea market’ (perish the thought: I would be destitute), some gorgeous paradise for the perfume collector where cherished collectibles could just be picked up for a few hundred yen or so, but it was never like that, of course not, except for the very first time I went there and was given unrealistic expectations for all future visits when I came across one lady, Israeli but married to a Japanese man, who was selling off her mother-in-law’s collection of perfumes – all unused, all boxed, Guerlain and Caron extraits and the like, and I was practically having a brain haemorrhage racking my brain to see if I could afford it all.
I could. And I did (and even hoovering up practically her entire collection cost less, in total, than your average high end niche perfume now). But that was long ago, and these last few times I have been to the flea market, I can usually go round the whole thing in about ten minutes just to make sure I haven’t missed anything scent-wise, and not really find anything I want (except for the odd soap or two), and then just comb through it all again at leisure, afterwards, to look for other non-perfumed things that might catch my eye in any case. Still enjoyable, in other words – because I love the ambling, gentle mindlessness of it all – that lovely Sunday feeling where you feel delightfully detached from the week – just not exhilarating.
Yesterday was like that. Scant. The woman who always used to have gleaming, cellophane-wrapped parfums for my perusal still only had the tired bottle of Folli Follie she had from a few weeks ago. Other than that, there was hardly anything for the perfume hunter to get his hands on except for the lovely, always smiling and friendly necktie man who always has a few random obscure perfumes lying around as well (and always gives you discounts when you don’t even ask for them – I picked up the intriguing Nontiscordardime, or Forget Me Not, by Speziali Fiorentini, for 500 yen, or five dollars, from him at his bustling corner, as well as the aforementioned ties, and then, later, at another of those bargain bin type stalls, a Rochas Mystere parfum for three (now that is a bargain: Mystere is one of the most distinctive perfumes of all time: the earthy, peculiar ambered masterpiece really conferring on its wearer the quality of its name), so, in truth, I was happy. Two lovely perfumes for eight dollars, plus some plum blossom incense, and two ties. It was enough.
And then as we sat on the way to our friend’s birthday party later, negotiating the labyrinthine Tokyo metropolitan railway systems as the endless city sped past, I noticed that we were about to approach Jiyugaoka station, with its old fashioned arcade, and the one shop there that is always packed with vintage perfumes: if you are looking for Chanel or vintage Mitsouko, you are guaranteed to find one if you are willing to sort through the stack; and the greedy part of me, not entirely sated, wanted to get off at the station and have a quick look (addict!) before we went to our required destination: but I restrained myself (never easy, but it would have made us late), but I did, and anyway, I was really rather enjoying sniffing the Italian curiosity I had bought – (unbelievably, I had passed on this two weeks ago, practicing self-severity) – now realising that I had definitely made the right decision in buying this scent, as there is nothing else that quite smells like it – floral but woody, almost incensey; hazy but fresh – in my collection.
Speziali Fiorentini is one of the many artisan, Italian profumerie that exist across the Italian landscape simply to create rich and pleasing nice-smelling products you can enjoy wearing on your body, rather than the pretentious, verbose and over concept-heavy world of many independent niche perfumes. Another scent of theirs – Melagrana E Uva, a grape and pomegranate scent that Duncan has worn on quite heavy rotation, to the extent that I now definitely associate it with him – is a very rich and enveloping fruited amber that on a man smells quite baroque and plush, dressed up and replete. Nontiscordardime has the same, velveted base, reminding one of the smoke from scented hookah pipes, in this case possibly with a touch of sandalwood and other woods, something velutinous and tactile in the heart (which also has something of the distancing, almost marine ‘blueness’ of Eau De Givenchy) , while up top and sharp in the headnotes is a very enjoyably tart accord of what smells like green-touched violets singing with raspberries on a summer’s day (probably nothing like the smell of the flowers, incidentally, if they even have one – it’s so long since I have seen these little flowers from my childhood gardens in England that don’t grow here, and I remember them being scentless) – but it was this accord that I was dreamily enjoying yesterday, as we went on way our way to our next destination. Nothing dramatically exquisite or melancholic, true, just a really nice smell. But for an easy Sunday afternoon, just chilling in the capital with friends, for me that will definitely do.
Filed under Flowers