Monthly Archives: May 2022

I am in a completely jasmine mood at present.

Just the life force of it.

So on this beautiful hot sunny day with a delicious breeze, a set of unexpected perfumes from Hong Hong by new niche brand One Day, arriving in the mail including a perfect jasmine tea, could not have been more welcome.

There has been a series of Asiatic-themed perfumes I have reviewed on here recently, Le Jardin R’s Mousse Arashiyama, Meo Fusciuni’s dark and damp, Laotian- inspired Encore Du Temps, and the unusual green tea mint eucalyptus release by Art De Parfum, Kimono Vert. All have merits, but it is interesting to compare these Euro-hybrids with more authentic smelling tea perfumes from Hong Kong, where Chinese teas are a part of daily life at dim sum restaurants and the like, and there is perhaps, I would imagine, a higher degree of verisimilitude needed to outfox the tea connoisseur doubters.

Local tea masters, presented with the olfactory mirages of their work, will probably be pretty accepting of this collection.

Jasmine Tea is especially lovely. Although usually I am not a fan of clary sage as a note, here it is used very cleverly with an extract of Tieguayin tea; the tannic tang of the tea essence married deliciously with the abundant sambac jasmine and a delicate vetiver musk. Less soapy and peculiarly indolic than L’Artisan Parfumeur’s (not dissimilar) Tea For A Summer; less hardcore, overbrewed oolong than Kilian’s comparable Imperial Tea (which I adore), this is a lighter, more harmonious iteration that I am going to wear when I go out to Sakuragicho later today.

Osmanthus Tea ( more romantic ) is similarly well-blended, with a gentle, poetic ease: a full osmanthus flower – very realistic – with some jasmine, oolong tea leaves and vetiver; far more in tune with itself and softly seamless than the Hermes’ Osmanthe Yunnan, for instance, which for me always had a sharp, apricot/orange twist that was momentarily uncomfortable in its too overtly watercoloured base. This osmanthus is dreamier and full; but light at the same time. I took the sample bottles round to a Japanese friend’s house round the corner from ours immediately after they arrived this morning, and both the jasmine and osmanthus smelled quite beautiful on her – serenely sensual; my skin bringing more of a sobriety.

Moving on from the floral, the more masculine, or at least androgynous, teas in this collection include Pu’er, a much woodier proposition than the Jasmine or the osmanthus : (cedarwood, cypress, patchouli, incense and vetiver blended with pu’er tea leaves):

” Brew and pour the aged water anti-clockwise, breathe the moment, reverse time. Remember when the tea was new, when we still wrote letters, when it tasted fresh, bitter, and left a sweet aftertaste”

-which I will need to try later at more leisure, possibly on D, to discover its rootier depths; initial impressions are warm, aromatic, if less overtly tea-like ; while

Oolong tea is quite the opposite: a much bolder, more symphonically experimental proposition that smells of very rich oolong tea: wheaty; piquant with smokier undertones (vetiver, tonka bean, similar perhaps in texture to Mona Di Orio’s Bohea Boheme but less medicinal) all layered on a richer, jasmine honeyed heart and a bright bergamot (and again, clary sage effusion), the whole making you slightly pucker and wince while being simultaneously seduced. Though definitely the oddest, Oolong Tea is in some ways the most erotic of the four tea scents presented here, as

the ‘clear bitter brown twists an aftertaste in your mouth….. ; between the trees, scent of tea and beans waves in from the quiet Japanese courtyard in a tranquil Taipei alley. The sun beams through the papered window; under the aged wood, the flow of hot water brews dried tea leaf into astringency”.

As a relevant aside, we have only ever been to Hong Kong once: a quarter of a century ago or so, when it was probably a completely different place.

I remember being dazzled by the lights at night from Victoria Peak as we sat drinking sparkling wine in a park garden ; the utter deliciousness of Peking Duck in a traditional restaurant packed to the rafters: gawping at all the locals and all the noise at the amazing banquets from those lovely round revolving tables. The Chungking Express apartments, in Kowloon. But I don’t think we ever went to a Chinese tea house in the short time that we were there.

A situation that one day might have to be rectified.

In Hong Kong.

Many moons ago

I had a fantastic day yesterday. It was the first time in a long while to be out filming again with D and his crew, the penultimate scene before they start editing Spoiled Identity in earnest, and my job was simply to watch the bags and equipment in Isezakicho park, where all the flowers were out, and all the world was walking by, and the main protagonists were being assailed by two political parties on the street – The No Change Party vs The No Shame party (the whole is a great piss-take of ideologies generally and it was absolutely hilarious to see the fake, but really quite realistic, politicians shouting ‘ZERO CHANGE!’ on the streets as perturbed passersby were wondering what the hell was going on.) I felt utterly happy and relaxed, just taking in the scents all around me; free from any restrictions; the stimulation of meeting new people and chatting deeply with one that I did : this was bliss for me.

Starving, after filming was complete, we dragged the suitcase and bags of paraphernalia through the streets towards the old arcade at the north end of Isezakicho to find something to eat. The great thing about living here, and about coming up to this area of Yokohama particularly (it is pretty much our second home) is how varied the people are; of many different ethnic groups and ages, social status from hobo to middle class and beyond; a sense of life moving by with energy – a real positivity in the air – and knowing that it is extremely unlikely indeed that some white supremacist (or the local equivalent) will gun you down while you are out shopping for Korean sundries at the local supermarket. People live and let live here; but abide by the social contract (ie. wear masks and just shut up about it); you compromise a little for the sake of the society as a whole, and then you live your life freely, smoothly, happily. This is a political environment in which I can thrive.

Settling on thisThai karaoke/ restaurant place, which we have been to several times before with its generous portions, a delicious red curry and tom yum gai soup that really did the trick, we sprawled here for a long while, relaxed by the family atmosphere – the owners hanging out with Japanese friends and FaceTiming a younger brother in Thailand simultaneously (I think a wedding was taking place) ……….we were zoned out; contented; and ordered and ate until very full; fully satisfied.

Afterwards, having had a look in an abandoned love hotel and seen that they were throwing away an orange Eames chair in the garbage, I hooked it up with my umbrella from beyond the fenced off area and instinctively nabbed it (it is illegal to take things from the rubbish in Japan, but we have got a great many books by ignoring this; Friday is great for finding treasures, as they are thrown away on each corner, neatly bound with string, and in any case now that we seem to be tentatively socializing again we do need more garden chairs and this one goes perfectly with all the others). It was hard to lug home, I will admit, especially when it started raining, but at the same time, I could just take a rest whenever I felt like it; under my umbrella.

Also: typical Japan style: a gaijin weirdo is sat in the middle of the carriage on a chair, but nobody is bothered, nor even looks.

Though it admittedly looks a little like a scene from a zombie film, in this picture, the live and let live style of living here – is personified.

Naturally, it probably goes without saying that before coming back to ol’ Kamakura, I needed to see if I could pick up some perfume or other as that is always an unstated part of the plan when we go out for the day; even just a cheap little gem I either don’t know, or else something I do and am stoked to find in some old antique shop. On this occasion, we took it in turns sitting outside (we had a chair) – on the pavement while the other one went in; D got a plate and a gold belt; I am still tempted for some reason by a bottle of Givenchy III edt even though I know I don’t like the parfum (is this the nature of a true optimist? You still always live in hope? That perhaps there might be a lighter, greener facet to the more diluted version of this much sung about scent that would make it click?),but I didn’t buy it; nor an old Montana, because I still have enough left for a couple of outings with Burning Bush in a leather jacket; I declined a Via Lanvin; some Madame Rochas as I have tons; some Baiser Lalique because it smells vile; and a few other things I can’t remember; but my eye did alight and glint on a miniature bottle of Jean Desprez’s Sheherezade, a perfume I may have smelled once before but I am not sure, as it may have been in this bottle –

The parfum though, wow : look at that. It is gaudy, sure, but if I ever (impossible) came across one of those dark tinctured chandeliers on felt plinth I would certainly be buying it without hesitation, although looking it up, this bottle is currently going for about $750, and no surprise: I am presuming that the extract version of this must be astoundingly glamourous and deep. Jean Desprez perfumes are quality: they are rich, dense, concentrated gorgeousnesses – I have written enough about Bal A Versailles; an utter masterpiece; I was less keen on the slightly tackier Revolution A Versailles (see my review) from 1989, and imagine that I probably wouldn’t much like Versailles Pour Homme, which I hadn’t even heard of until I started writing this piece even though the idea of owning it utterly fascinates me : in this ad it looks like a proto Paco Rabanne One Million with its manly bullion, although the sweet pomaded hairies of the 1980’s were always so multicomplex, leering overorchestrated – all the Lauders For Men and the Oscar De La Rentas, and their ilk and I imagine this being similar; I might feel that I needed to move to Texas and install myself in a side building, drink single malt in cut crystal; and swagger about, on thick carpets, in a half open bath robe.

While the ultrarare Jardanel – I am hoping that Queen Of Vintage Gabrielle will tell us more about this one, allegedly from 1917 (?) and the ur-Mother of the spiced orientalized amber a la Youth Dew – in its green box looks especially mesmerizing, I remember G also riffing on Sheherezade on here on some thread many moons ago, so I was really glad to finally pick up my own tiny bottle for a piffling 500 yen (￡3.13) and give it a try ( as a child, I would dance to Rimsky Korsakov’s Sheherazade ballet in my room for hours at a time so this perfume’s name has a particular resonance).

While the opening notes of this obviously unpristine edition – unboxed, it may have been affected – are rather GOP (general old perfume), once this settles down on me, I get sent back to the yore days of all the spiced prima donnas- the dried spices here palpable, tingling in the Max Gavarry (Dioressence; this bears a resemblance but is less scathing) created myrrh and benzoin dominated carnation-cassia amber with its surprisingly masculine sandalwood depth that took me almost to the edges of Fendi Uomo; I see the seductive possibilities here, but imagine the full extrait version also having the full sumptuousness perhaps lacking in the lighter strength of the edt.

While Jean Desprez was still revelling in the past to some extent with this one, at the tail end of Opium, Cinnabar and the like, not entirely in touch with the spirit of 1983 when such fresh rose/floral innovations as YSL Paris and Diptyque L’Ombre Dans L’Eau, Annick Goutal’s criminally discontinued Eau De Camille as well as Ungaro’s more of the moment Diva and my personal favourite, Courreges In Blue were all debuting, there is still something quite enjoyable in Sheherazade with its calm, and its lack of spiked edges; a quiet, anchored, contentment. All is balanced and smooth, deep; confident; a perfume to go out and just let yourself go a little……. …basking in the richness of life.

Weil was a Parisian furrier turned perfume house (founded in 1927), initially specializing in parfums de fourrure, scents that not only masked the sometimes unpleasant animalic undertones of natural furs, but complemented, beautified them. Perfumes such as the house’s classic Zibeline, alongside Chinchilla Royal, Hermine, Flamant Rose (Pink Flamingo), Padisha, Secret de Venus (a magical bath oil) and Une Fleur De Fourrure were all popular in the day, until the family was eventually expelled by the Nazis during World War II and were forced to emigrate to New York.

The company continued to create perfumes in America, but later made its peaceful return to Europe in 1946 with the release of the phenomenally successful Antilope, an incomparably serene aldehydic chypre I sometimes wear for its yellow-grassed tinges of calm and intrinsic elegance (and which was once chosen by the French Ministry Of Culture as a souvenir to be distributed to tourists visiting Paris). There is nothing quite like it, and even in tiny miniature parfum, Antilope is a scent I always look out for because sometimes, there are certain days when you just need to retreat to the tranquillity of its haven.

Weil, as a perfume house, now has fallen into anonymity since its grand heyday; the maison, as is often the case, deteriorating in scope and quality; fallen into the hands of numerous investors, passed along from one aromacompany to another, releasing populist sugar florals and gourmands of the current type (as you would expect, in order to keep up with the times), just at cheaper prices and with unfathomable names (‘Greedy Essence’, for instance, and………’So Weil’, which is of course quite problematic if, as I suspect, the first letter of the name might be pronounced like a ‘v’).

Weil De Weil, a perfume from 1971, released around the same time as Chanel N⁰19, Estée, and others in the 70’s vogue for green detachment, was a scent I was completely unaware of until some was kindly sent to me last week by a reader for whom this scent has a particular sharp poignancy. Weil de Weil comes from a more storied time in Weil’s history when the name still presumably had cachet in Europe and elsewhere, and was synonymous with a certain Frenchness and inscrutable panache (from the 1960’s, this was one of the first perfume houses to break the iron curtain and expand into Poland and beyond into U.S.S.R, based on its couturier reputation, and the success of its key perfumes, such as Cassandra).

As can be seen from a contemporary magazine of the period, Jean-Pierre Weil writes of wanting, with Weil De Weil, to create a perfume that was ‘fully floral’, light but enveloping; lovable, but ‘serious, like happiness’.

The perfume is, in fact, as the poster at the beginning of this piece announces, ‘as well as all these things, troubling, sumptuous and enigmatic’, a lovely green floral chypre with a mélange of fresh flowers (honeysuckle, mimosa, ylang ylang, jasmine, rose, neroli, hyacinth and narcissus) freshened further with green galbanum and tangerine, but pulsating softly simultaneously with a warmer, mossier interior of oakmoss, vetiver civet, musk, and sandalwood in the classic style: beautiful: but unrevealing; quite difficult to pin down.

When I opened the the package from England, from the slight seepage in the plastic envelope, my first responses on smelling this treasure- were the perturbing end vestiges of the classic seductive floral aldehydes like Lanvin My Sin or Detchema by Revillon, another furrier, though the perfume I most thought of when I actually smelled it properly was that regal arch-romantic, Capricci Nina Ricci; a similarly cushioned, quiet, ladylike extravagance. When sprayed, the piquancy of the citric leaf freshness instead brought back memories of Lancôme Trophée and Ô De Lancôme, as well as the slightly more bitter quinolic Quiproquo by Grès, but each time I go to approach Weil De Weil I get something quite different from before. I don’t think, in fact, I have ever encountered a scent that refuses to give its identity in quite this way, that keeps revealing new facets I can’t grasp; I will have to wear it on different occasions and weathers to see precisely where it wants to lead me. Weil De Weil is a delicate shapeshifter, for sure; its own creature; complex, quite difficult to ‘place’. But also kind of ravishing: which, as a lifetime signature perfume, on one you love, I am sure must have been extraordinarily captivating.

Stop this unconscionable fuck.

NOW

As I was walking down the escalator of the Saikaya department store – a fusty institution in Fujisawa from the sixties or seventies that seems to be perpetually haemorraghing money but is still somehow clinging on and that I use as a shortcut to the station, in the cramped Shiseido concession on the third floor, hemmed in at the back on the left side, through the glass of a cabinet, I saw the above.

Always a sucker for Shiseido packaging and their general aesthetic, I couldn’t resist having a quick look (although I was already late). I had never heard of Cymbidium Sinense – though looking it up I find we have one growing in a suspended hanging vase on our balcony, I just didn’t know its name; but without even properly smelling it, at ￥2200 – about £13 – I spontaneously got it for my collection of florals, and just because I like looking at the box.

Purchasing perk aside though, I must say there is something slightly baffling about this product.

As you can see, ¥2200 is the suggested retail price for this perfume, which is extraordinarily cheap for what we initially would naturally imagine to be a special niche, limited edition and probably ultra expensive.

And as it turns out, this perfume is a limited edition, and a collectible.

It is a one off fragrance for the Tokyo Grand Prix Orchid exhibition.

The official orchid website tells us that :

“Each year at the Tokyo Dome Grand Prix Orchid Festival, Shiseido releases 3 orchid-based perfumes.

They are only ever released once, as the next year will be 3 different orchid fragrances.

The cym. sinense perfume has a slightly sweet musk scent (similar to the flower). Typically Japanese perfumes are not overbearing. They are sweet and light overall. Since these are only ever released once at Tokyo Dome and not sold anywhere else, they are instant collectibles!”

Who knew?

And how, also, if they are exclusively sold onsite at the orchid Mecca, did this unofficial boutique scent creep its way down the Tokaido line all the way to Fujisawa?

Was this, in fact, an illegal purchase?

If not, it probably should have been. As a perfume, it is dreadful. D’s pronouncement when I got home in the evening was was : “Foul” – a one word review, but I wouldn’t go that far. Part of me genuinely kind of likes it : a childishly potent peach pourri oil blended with mandarin, some greenery, and a mystifying, slightly unreachable florality lurking somewhere in the inner mists; on me, it smells a little like taking out a half sucked fruit boiled sweet and then rubbing it on your hand; but there is also a coquettish muskiness as well that I l know could probably be very seductive on the properly cutesy coy lolitagoth pretender. It’s all about the lace, and how you use your eyelashes.

Ultimately, I am not sorry I bought it. This scent is yesterday: embottled forever now, going to bed with an oversugared ‘orchid’ floating somewhere in my night conscious. And, like the bizarre fortune tellers booth I found in the corner of the semi-deserted restaurant floor at the top of the building later that day, the whole enterprise for me captures some of the unexpected (for westerners expecting only neon and robots and gleaming skyscrapers) dowdiness of Japan; its unwillingness to sweep away the cobwebs of the past; its embrace of the clandestine layers.

There have always been Japan-inspired perfumes, from Mitsouko through Eau Parfumée Au Thé Vert to Japon Noir and Plum Japonais; Gaiac 10 Tokyo by Le Labo; Mousse Arashiyâma by Le Jardin Retrouvé to Art Et Parfum’s Kimono Vert and Nightingale by Zoologist : the incense temple of the first Aedes De Venustas…..a very particular niche of the fragranced landscape usually based on ideas of subtle eroticism and tact; ancient forests; powdered silk. The Tokyo-Parisian hybrids of Kenzo, Comme Des Garcons and Issey Miyake further globalized notions of Japaneseness in the modern mind : a sensual simplicity; a strictness; one step removed.

But what of Japanese perfumes created specifically and domestically for users in the home market?

Do these perfumes also necessarily rely on the country’s own historically exquisite cultural tropes stretching back millennia, as a way of distinguishing them from the equally popular European perfumes worn here by Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, Guerlain ?

Or do these creations merge with them in some way, creating home variants?

I would say a little bit of both.

At the drug store (and there are so many pharmacies and chemists and toiletry stores here it is overwhelming; perusing them is practically a pastime for a lot of people on their days off) you can get every possible variety of sweet, cute, erotic, soapy, woody, or fresh themed fragrances at ultra-cheap prices, skin scents for schoolgirls essentially. Further up the adult ladder there are of course the iconic skincare brands such as Shiseido, who have their own range of mid-range (and in truth, somewhat dowdy in image) perfumes such as More and Koto and Murasaki sold exclusively in their Japanese boutiques (the Serge Lutens cooler-than-thou variants were international exportations that were never really part of the domestic repertory).

Likewise, other popular makeup brands here such as Kanebo, Pola and Decorté have historically had their own perfumes as part of the in house product selection (the latter’s recently released Kimono Tsuya is priced at around ￥8,800, which would be seen as a luxury product by most average people on the street, though nowhere near of course the outrageous cost of niche, which becomes even more extortionate through import taxes and exchange rates and is exclusively for the purist fashion conscious with money to burn in the metropolis at Hankyu and Isetan).

Kimono Tsuya, a new release, is a quintessentially 21st century Japanese perfume for ladies that is very pretty and prim with its roses and peonies and magnolia and plum yuzu trimmings: I know exactly the type of person here it would suit, though I wouldn’t necessarily be wanting to sit next to her at the wedding. I find this kind of thing pleasant to an extent – a fresh floral quite well done, with its ume undertones giving it a vague hint of poignancy, but it is also really quite annoying for me personally in a ‘passively aggressive perfect kind’ of way – as though it were a Japanese relative of Chloé and L’Occitane’s heinous Eau Des Quatres Reines – a rose perfume of synthetic mien that polluted the airwaves for way too many years here and denotes a very precise socio-economic age bracket and culturally moulded, typical personality.

Too much exposure to this would seriously grate.

The perfumes of Osaji, on the other hand, a very reasonably priced perfume and skin care brand that I tested again properly yesterday in Fujisawa, most probably would not.

Like other perfumeries here that deliberately mine ‘Japaneseness’ in their blends, such as the mysterious, understated romanticism of Parfums Satori, or the more novelty-ish/gimmick (but still very nicely harmonized) perfumes by J-Scent, whose Sumo Wrestler and other perfumes I have reviewed on here before and whose thick, floral powder aldehyde Paper Soap I am thinking about possibly investing in next, this range of very natural and rather dreamy smelling perfumes combines a very full-bodied, powdered burst of one thematic accord which then rapidly dissipates into something more attenuated and ‘background’; thus Hiba – a wood oil related to cedar and hinoki – encapsulates the renenergizing and strengthening spirit of hiba wood but surrounds it with a gentle cloud of heft that makes it softer and wearable; Jinkou perhaps taking off the bite of the Japanese agarwood tradition a little too much, but despite its unfanged gentleness, still irrevocably enigmatic.

While a new limited edition perfume by the brand, another coniferous blend called Kuromoji, is possibly the most unsexy date fragrance I can possibly imagine, a kind of reverse Spanish Fly that smells just like pine disinfectant, the same cannot be said for the florals……..which are definitely their own kind of unique gorgeous.

When going through all of the the range with me yesterday and photographing the bottles, D jumped back and said ‘blimey!’ or something more salted, when smelling Suisen (Narcissus), which I have reviewed before and actually ending up going back to buy a few months ago because I simply needed to have it in my collection. When compared with the other perfumes in the range, it really is the stand out , as an extraordinarily indolic and potent jasmine and narcissus perfume whose photorealism and audacity I greatly admire but which to a lot of people is probably quite shocking and revolting. Today on my hand it smells lovely – fresh and jolting, but at other times it is as though something has withered and died, an animalic pissiness that is slightly vile in its later stages even if the opening floral triumphalist blast is simply fantastic.

Fuji, or Wisteria, unfortunately doesn’t quite rise to the occasion in the same way as Suisen, which is a shame when this flower is so blousy and psychically overpowering in nature, and still flowering in all the mountains around here (stand under the great bower of wisteria trees here, as my friend Katie does – see her picture below – and you will be drugged into an immediate trance).

To be rendered properly, a real wisteria perfume needs gusto and colour, but Fuji, though purple in spirit, unexpectedly also has an ozonic/sport element running through it that makes it curiously androgynous, toning down the heat with a certain coolness but not the curvaceous bombshell that I was hoping for (on the subject of wisteria, I personally adore Diptyque’s jasmine/’wisteria’ florically maniacal Olène, my bottle of which I wore with great pleasure the other day alongside some Glicine (wisteria) by Borsari 1840, but just like CdG’s Wisteria Hysteria, this doesn’t really plug into the flower realness I am aching for : have you ever smelled a convincing version of this floral in a perfume? If so, i need to know).

Yūsuge (golden day lily) – another gleaming, living Osaji flower scent – was very pleasing on me : a yellow floral that shone, then faded, as we sat in a retro 70’s cafe drinking cold bottled beers with yolk yellow plastic banquettes- which is how I like it (ideally, all floral perfumes, for me, would be like this with no woody underpinnings or musk – I like a soliflore to be a soliflore). D wore Botan on one hand (peony), and this was also bright and fully rounded and vastly more pleasant than the tight artificiality of the teeth-whitened ‘peonies’ in Kimono Tsuya, though the best of the bunch aside the narcissus was definitely Sumire (Violet), which he wore on the other; a perfume I would consider actually getting as it combines so many facets that feel correct to me in a Japanese context; a very sensual, almost voluptuously warm steamed aspect that brings to mind the beauty of hinoki soap at a hotspring, alongside a powdered violet that verges on lustful, but maintains its good behaviour; while still definitely hinting at the flesh beneath an elegant attire. There is something deeply atmospheric about this one: enough to draw me in.

– guest post by Katie Hughson

I have NEVER seen lilacs before in Japan.

I came across this inconspicuous little patch completely by chance outside a 7-11 last month, and of course I had to go over and sniff it.

I immediately felt homesick.

Where I grew up in Canada, our house is almost half surrounded by lilacs that have been there since before me, thanks to my dad, who was an avid gardener .

Despite the fact that I was only nine years old when my dad passed away, we developed a pretty tight relationship. He let me ‘help’ him with the gardening from as far back as I can remember, planting, admiring, and harvesting flowers and vegetables.

He’s the one who taught me the names of most the flowers I know.

He brought me to gardening shows – at least one focused on tulips – and I ran around, gathering all the cards displaying the photo and name of each kind of tulip; when I got home I proudly put them into my sticker album (even then I was particularly taken back by the deep black purple one; I can’t remember the name……but I feel it had ‘queen’ in it.)

As I ran around playing in the back yard during the spring and summer, I would always shove my nose into flowers, discovering what smelled and what didn’t (and what smelled bad: I decided daisies smelled like bum); picking veggies to eat after rinsing them under the garden hose.

To this day, freshly-picked carrots with garden soil on them is probably the most nostalgic scent that I haven’t smelled since then…………………. but I think I can remember it perfectly.

The lilacs: Dad had planted them all along the back border of our big back yard, with a couple of teasers in the front yard, too. When they were in bloom, and when I had a friend come over to play and it was time for them to go home, Dad would come out with the shears and cut a bouquet of lilacs for my friend to take home to their mom.

But back to that random 7-11 in Japan by the train station.

I didn’t want to leave the spot, but I eventually had to.

It was a pretty busy area, and I was standing there huffing with tears in my eyes for long enough that I know I looked weird.

Whatever. Passersby don’t know what they’re missing.

– guest post by D

D and I chew the rambling cud about everything in a shared podcast.

https://www.sarahfuruya.com/legends-interview-series?fbclid=IwAR1-EQa9UeBnWovQAsdo6Ke4dhntj_Xtnk4FAtaPxNVKtuhfAvYcLyJQ1Qk

Some perfumes change name. Yves Saint Laurent’s Champagne famously turned into Yvresse due to the fury and chagrin of French grape farmers. Heeley’s white flower orgy and extrait de parfum Bubblegum Chic is now Jasmine OD; veteran rock gods Metallica forced Guerlain in court to change their marvellously mellifluous orange blossom carnation to the name of Metalys – but then Guerlain probably wouldn’t have minded too much in the first place as they have always had a field day discombobulating Guerlainistas by pouring the same perfume into different bottles (often at twice or three times the price to add insult to injury): Lui is now Oeillet Pourpre (!); Mahora – an unsellable name to begin with – became the weaker and attenuated Mayotte; Chamade Pour Homme the more macho-acceptable Soul Of A Hero (L’Âme d’un Heros), Guet Apens became Attrape-Coeur became Vol de Nuit Evasion became Royal Extract (sometimes the formula are slightly tweaked but the perfumes are still basically the same); Figue-Iris became Promenade Anglais – and I think Baiser de Russie (Russian Fuck) was once something else as well – but I can’t quite remember what it was.

If I were at The Different Company, I am sure I would also probably try and change the rather outdated and generically titled Oriental Lounge, which, rather like Creed’s ‘Asian Green Tea’, is both sweeping and staid in one stale breath – even offensive, in a climate where ‘oriental’ as a fragrance category has been replaced by ‘amber’ even at the highest echelons of perfume stratification à la Michael Edwards due to its colonialist overtones (while still not quite capturing perhaps the full range of the former scent genus with its preponderance also of flowers, spices, earth tones and resins, the new classification is less racially stereotypical and does feel much more in keeping with the times).

Despite its ungainly name, I have had brief, cursory sniffs of The Different Company’s OL in the past, having quite liked a few perfumes in their extensive range including their other ‘exotic’ offerings, Adjatay and Al Sahra, and thought that at least it had olfactory potential, in an Obsession or original Moschino kind of way. Sometimes I like the full-on, balsamic erotica, and what better time to try this one finally, albeit semi-ironically, properly on the back my hand and wrist for the first time than yesterday, at a department store in Fujisawa after finally leaping into the darkness and booking a flight with Etihad Airlines of the United Arab Emirates from Tokyo to London via Abu Dhabi in August at a fifth floor travel agency (which felt so weird and overwhelming and exhausting it is hard to explain, as though we were virgin travellers going to terra incognita, never having been anywhere abroad before). All the rigmarole and viral precautions and necessary apps and vaccination checks and new passport and alien registration card checks – we were roiled, avidly eating our delicious Chinese lunch afterwards in virtual silence.

The journey from Kamakura will be unbearably long – and in a mask all the way I can’t even quite even imagine it. Nor how utterly foul and grotty I am going to feel by the time we finally get to my parents’ house in Birmingham, months later. But direct flights were howlingly expensive ($3300 per person for economy class?!!!! – we laughed out loud ) and somehow, we both felt irrationally slightly safer going the ‘sub-continent’ route than going even ANYWHERE near the north of the world or the Baltic region where that rubber-faced and botoxed, grim-lipped dickhedski could press any missile button he felt like at probably any moment he liked and take out commercial air liners just for the fun of it (if he takes ours out, though, so be it – at least I will be with Duncan, drunk, and thoroughly enjoying a film on the in-flight service as I soar my way down crashing into flames in the scorching desert sands); if not, and we make it, I will be in simple human ecstacy perusing all the Arab hair creams and body products at Abu Dhabi airport as I did, once, many years ago in Dubai, where I picked up nice soaps and deodorants and some cheap, almond and saffron-tastic fragrance masterpieces that I still use to this day. A new location – even a stopover somewhere – is always exciting (I will never forget the utter thrill of the jolt of a freshly squeezed pomegranate juice in Istanbul airport I once drank that electrified me with health before the final leg of the journey back to Blighty) – for me there is always something intriguing and stimulating to try; an unexperienced ambience, even just the mesmerizing excitement of International People watching, as you wait nervously near the gate for the announcement of the next endless stage of your airless, compressed, flying odyssey.

One perfume I know I definitely won’t be wearing on this mega-haul flight from hell is Oriental Lounge. Yesterday, in the moist humidity of a sunny/cloudy day I found it clammy, sweet and suffocating, even if at the same time it was obvious to me that this is a very well made perfume with ingredients that work from start to finish : the proper, amber musked vanilla base that one expects from a fragrance of this ilk, long-lasting; ogle- eyed; and sensual. The fresh and alluring top notes of curry leaf, bergamot and other citruses over rose and labdanum and robust tonka bean suitably create the required come-into-my-parlour-and-rub-my-genie-lamp ambience, but for me, the sandalwood and ‘satinwood’ of the scent, smudged up against the petals of white flowers lurking in the backdrop create a somewhat sickly tension that I have never liked in comparable perfumes of this type such as Ormonde Jayne’s Tolu;, Christian Dior’s Addict, and particularly Jean Louis Scherrer’s Nuits Indiennes, which this reminds me of the most; but all are similarly sultry. These perfumes – full bodied, lusty – can be genuinely seductive on the right adult woman, even if this slightly obvious and vulgar seduction does tend to involve certain unavoidable clichés in the process, such as speaking in low voiced and whispering, warm husk-breathed sentences, letting the hand and lacquered talons linger just slightly too long on said-target’s shoulder; gold and dangled, heavy jewellery, gently clanking down deliberately and caressing the back of hair; meaningful, kohl-lidded glances……………..and all the other predictable, traditional, yawnsome trappings of the sloe-eyed, occidental beguilement.