Chloe is not a brand that really speaks to me. Ultrafeminine, very floaty but proper, the house specializes in high end women’s Parisian pret a porter and matching modern fragrances that tend to be at the primmer end of the scale.
The eponymous eau de parfum from 2008 which re-launched the brand into the public consciousness, was hugely successful and is a best seller in Japan to this day. Fresh, brash, chemical roses and freesia, it remains one of my ultimate betes noires, a scent that can literally anger me when I come into contact with it (this happened recently at a herbal apothecary : an assistant had sprayed on too much (one spray) and for me, it ruined the natural ambience).
The recent eau naturelle of Chloe from last year was interesting though, in the way it proposed a new interpretation of the original theme with lighter, clearer, purportedly ‘all natural’ ingredients ; it was like meeting someone you think you used to know but are not quite sure. I much preferred this greener, more delicate take, even if the notes do eventually coalesce into a recognizable Chloe.
The Atelier Des Fleurs collection, light, sheer, is in a similar vein. Excepting the curious aberration of the very heart-on -her-sleeves femme fatale that was ‘Chloe Narcisse from 1992’ – cloying and sweet, a perfume that could give divas like Ungaro Senso and Moschino Moschino! a run for their money, Chloe almost always goes for transparency and bite; a ‘chic clean’ to go with the veiled beige pussybows, and these flowers are no exception. Narcissus Poeticus, a name I love for obvious reasons, is a shiny bright bubblebath of ‘ethically sourced’ French narcissus; powdered, soapy – uplifting and easy, without the obvious indolic facets of this troubling, narcotic bloom :I could happily have this one on standby for perfumed levity.
Ylang Cananga I found a tad sickly and synthetic despite the natural claims : using ylang ylang oil from the Madagascan island of Nosy Be, there is something too Chloeish about this one that I can’t quite ride with, even though I am usually drawn to ylang ylang flowers theoretically .
Chloe Iris, using a special Moroccan iris from the Atlas Mountains, combined with violet, sandalwood/cedar and musk ambrette, is one of those ‘not quite there’ perfumes – it feels almost unfinished – but I think that is probably why I like it. The Iris top note is gorgeous; just the cool, papery crushed orris bulbs you were hoping for; as this fades, a dry, sullen wood musk takes over with echoes of Feminite du Bois ; androgynous, a little empty ; you are left with the feeling that there could have, and possibly should have been more, but as so many perfumes these days feel so overfinished, , packed to the rafters with no breathing space, it is quite nice, for a change, to just have a private, daylight, churlish and moody natural iris to which you can nuzzle, switch off to — —and drift.
N had his midweek encounter with a preying mantis and so we’ve been a little in awe and terror of them; with their ominous martial prowess and camouflaging tendencies, they are indeed a formidable insect. And researching them this evening threw up all kind of magical and petallic ingenuity. Witness: the orchid mantis
I wore a unnameable (as yet unreleased) scent today; a sweet masculine tobacco that was moderately pleasing – a little too sweet and almondy to my nose but certainly interesting.
Sitting in the launderette in Ofuna after a delicious Indian/Nepali meal – the boss is away in Nepal right now and the staff have blossomed in terms of gregariousness and personality which led to an entirely different experience of the restaurant; perhaps less efficient but rather more rounded – I rather like the dry down because the sweet marzipan aspect has disappeared and a calm has manifested itself
Speaking of which, observe the mantis, majestic and delicate (yet ominous) careening over the lake on top of a turtle or a frog
I am often baffled in Japan by the extreme reactions provoked by the visitation of insects. A cockroach appearing somewhere can render grown men into quivering ninnies: a hornet mass hysteria (mind you, these can kill ; every year a number of people do die from the stings).
Even a tiny winged fly entering the classroom is a gateway to mayhem, though – much to my irritation. I am simply not bothered by them; a spider, providing it hides away somewhere, I can live with. Cicadas whirring towards me like clockwork kamikazes do make me scream, I will confess, but I like hearing them whizzing in the trees.
We are all different in our levels of entomological acceptance ; I have rescued giant stag beetles, mean no harm to them generally even if the swatting of mosquitoes happens almost unconsciously – when they draw blood I draw the line- but my personal phobia is most definitely the praying mantis.
Much as I understand some people’s fascination with them, these green, swivel-headed, limb articulated leaf gleaming monstrosities viscerally repulse me at the deepest level ; once in our old house there was one on the washing line grinning down at me like an alien from a 50’s b-movie and I was screeching in octaves I didn’t even know I had inside me; firing gallons of water from the garden hose pipe did nothing to deter the creature : ( in my mind ) it slowly advanced towards me ; I had to run, ashamed, shrieking and undignified in immediate earshot of the neighbors.
On Wednesday, I had just finished writing the previous post on The Black Narcissus when THIS appeared out of nowhere a few feet away in our upstairs hallway.
I lie. We had seen it a few days before crawling slowly on the window downstairs and I had shouted for Duncan to come a witness the horror – not ever expecting that it would enter within.
When I saw it my heart stopped.
I went all clammy and I couldn’t move. Though slow balletic, graceful, curious (etc etc), its presence – and it did feel very present, imbuing the air around it with its obvious personality – was unacceptable to me; yet I could also find no viable reason to kill it. It was just doing its thing.
BUT NOT IN MY SPACE.
And I had to get past it in order to go downstairs and get in thr shower before work. But this was impossible. Because if it flew at me – and they do fly / I might literally die of a heart attack.
I was frozen.
Naturally, when I eventually came somewhat to my senses I called up d, who very serendipitously happened to just be on his lunch break.
At first, he probably thought it was some random heavy breather, as I couldn’t exactly speak.
Bar me throwing heavy objects at it to dislodge, we then discussed it and the only option seemed to be to somehow trap it.
But, obviously, doing that involves approaching, which wasn’t something that I felt I could do.
However, this creep wasn’t going anywhere.
In fact it seemed quite happy where it was, in its natural praying position (UGH !!!!! So repellent !!!’ ‘’’’ :::: would any of you have felt similarly ?)
In the end, after hanging up and what felt like an endless passage of time, I finally plucked up the courage to seek out a plant pot with breathing holes on the balcony, and heroically managed to entrap it within in one fell swoop that also involved frenetically piling books on top so there was no escape until d could come home hours later and hurl the lot from the window (he sent me a message, later, saying it had been ‘feisty’ and ‘rattling around’ inside, making me blanch at my work desk with a profound quease).
It only occurred to me later in the evening, on my way home, that the females of the Mantodea species are ‘semi-cannibalistic’, devouring their sex partners after the act is done (as you do), and that we had just had our bizarro carnavsl Papaya: Love Goddess Of The Cannibals on Saturday,; it was almost as if we had conjured it up.
Strange as that might sound, this has actually happened before ( literally; with snakes, raccoons and once with an owl, which you NEVER see in this area but which soared up before me one night after d had performed with some owl-themed material : I was startled beyond measure as its vast white and grey wings swooped up into the night …)
Sometimes you don’t know what you are getting yourself into.
And Viking, buoyed up by the current popularity for roaring marauders in pelts torching villages and carrying off wriggling maidens in blood and axe epics such as the recent Northman by Robert Eggers, or by the matted haired musclebeards in the ragingly successful TV series The Vikings, is presumably meant, by image alone, to evoke unheard of levels of masculine potency. Women will begin screaming, or swooning, on initial contact : caves of babies will be born forthwith.
According to a 2014 British YouGov survey, roughly a third of the UK male population considered themselves to have descended from the Vikings (I can imagine it would be even higher now), while a quarter of women make the same assumption (the University of Bristol estimates the reality to be closer to about 6%, demonstrating the pull the iconic tropes of this defunct culture have on the popular imagination).
I have never personally done a DNA test, but as a white Briton it would intrigue me, at some point, just out of curiosity, to eventually do so. Mostly a historical whirl of Germanic, French, Viking, Angle, Scandinavian, Roman in terms of ethnic ancestry, but depending on which region of Britain your forefathers settled in (the further south you go the less the likelihood), it would be interesting, in some ways, for me to find out the ancestral breakdown in my own cell structure.
Although undoubtedly partially Viking myself, purely through geographical coincidence – the genepool possibly somewhere hidden in my mitochondria, emerging in the gingerish strains of my beardhair if I let it run out like enough (in the green of my eyes?) unlike many – especially on the far right; those that feel terminally emasculated and are yearning for far more testosteroned times when your vigorous might could be proved by the sword and your seed ; those who re-enact battleground slaughters in costumes bought on Amazon or storm into government buildings baying like stags
—I personally have no atavistic or instinctual pull towards Viking culture whatsoever.
In fact I feel quite the opposite – and always have. Maybe Burning Bush has some ancient link to piracy and pillaging seafarers and fiery wicks of twisted moss, but I personally can’t stand anything – particularly on the aesthetic level – that features dragon boats, hoary breath, boar carcasses turning slowly on the spit as women with long crimped trellises sew wool and the Norse gods are invoked with vein-busting sword bellowing amidst miserable freezing cold waves spewing onto jagged rocks; D is even worse. All of it just evokes feelings of the purest anathema.
(With the global rise in ethnocentrism, and the sense that everything is falling apart into chaos, it is easy to understand why many people, no matter their ‘race’, feel a deep desire to retrace their origins and roots in order to capture a feeling of belonging to something – a tribe, a clan,
– I just don’t personally share that longing. )
plaited beards: : : NO
My extreme, instinctive aversion to anything of this nature – Lord Of The Rings, anything of the Dungeons And Dragons pixies and faeries genre notwithstanding, all of it – earlier in the summer, on the plane back home in August, we did valiantly attempt (though we knew, ultimately, it would be completely in vain), to watch Viking revenge drama The Northman – but mainly to see my Icelandic hero Bjork as the soothsayer:
Good lord it was hard work though.
She, like the rest of this heinously overserious ‘epic’, which was coloured in very computerized, artificial, digitally mood ‘enhanced’ greys and blues, felt very half-baked yet vastly overcooked (I was a bit embarrassed on her behalf, actually, considering she had come out of ‘acting retirement’ for this disgraceful tripe); also, if you are going to try and evoke the reality of an ancient culture, do it naturalistically, unforcedly, emotionally, as in the utterly exquisite take on the Pocohontas story, The New World by Terrence Malick (2003), which shows the interactions of Native Americans with Captain Smith and his aliens from the outside, still with violence, but not feasting on it ; that is one of my favourite films of all time; a film that takes you viscerally and beautifully into another former world : I cry every time).
The rest of the cast of the Northman, in contrast, as another great insult to superficial upon superficial injury (it was like watching a video game), had also, very unfortunately, pseudo-absorbed Bjork’s inimitable ‘diction’ with the most dreadful pseudo-Icelandic accents imaginable, making you just want to immediately just stopper up your ears. No one needs to hear Nicole Kidman intoning thunderously in whispers, with a Sydney meets Reykjavik trrilling r’d lilt, as Queen Gudrun :
“Frret not. You will die in battle, my lorrrd. The gates of Valholl await you, I know it”.
bye Nicole!
Willem Dafoe, eating the scenery left right and centre, was even more indigestible
However, by far the most serious problem from the discerning cinemagoer’s point of view, was the casting of Stockholm Hunk Alexander Skarsgard – presumably chosen for his rock hard abs, good looks, and Conan The Barbarian Schwarzeneggerisms – who was truly overegging the lead role of arch-avenger Amleth (supposedly a prototype of Hamlet);
so angry he bleeds from the eyes
For the forty or so painful and mirthful minutes we endured before pressing abort, all this actor, with his very limited expressions, could do (a permanently furrowed brow and ‘intense’ stare – I have seen stegosauruses in the Jurassic Park series display more personality) was roar, slay, flex the triceps and kill, then, do it all over again
…there he goes again
…. and again …..
He finally takes a bath!
Yes. I would definitely nominate Skarsgard as lead contender for a Worst Actor Razzie; with him in every scene the film was intolerable, we were laughing in our plane seats at its profound insufferability, although it must be said that it was received rapturously by a lot of film critics for the detailed representations of daily Viking life and the general lightning-forked melodrama it impaled, so if you yourself are in the right mood for a dark and brooding revenge flick which features huge levels of ultrarealistic violence, wherein comeuppance is ruthlessly enacted whenever and wherever it can be, you should definitely give this a whirl (Richard Brody of The New Yorker hit the nail on the head with the belittling summary of his headline: ‘The Northman’: Just A Bunch Of Research And Gore’, callously dismissing its ‘thudding banalities’,) though it seems that he was definitely in the critical minority – most people have been apparently just swept away in its bloodcurdling passions and antlers dripping in harpooned intestines; some of my friends also liked it…
GOD KNOWS WHY THOUGH.
Anyway, though by Odin, Allfather of the Aesir – – – – – FFS!!!!
What about the perfume review, I hear you beat your iron breastplates in fury: does Creed’s Viking, in fact, capture any of this meatly brutality; does it reek of a thousand armpits, of bodies sweating endlessly in bearskins for weeks on end, of rotting teeth putrid with unpicked flesh?
It does not.
As I sheepishly approached the perfume counter towards this one, eye rolling heavily in advance anticipation of a nuclear strength synthetic woody, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that instead of what I expected to be a rival to Sauvage in the panty-dropper ‘performance dominance’ sector, slaying writhing, hotbreathing wenches in its stead, what I smelled, in fact, was a crisply and alluringly constructed orchestral ginger.
Fresh. Zesty. Kind of delightful. Affirming. Light. While ginger – one of my favourite smells and flavours in the world – is not listed as an ingredient in Viking Cologne (an airier edition of the 2017 edp), the spiced citric woosh of the juice (lots of mandarin, bergamot, pink pepper, allspice and nutmeg with a lightly fougerish base (lavender, geranium, olibanum, sandalwood, patchouli etc with a hint of sage) to my nose, added up to an overall ginger thematic; brisk and uplifting, male-tilting but could be worn by anyone, Viking glowed quite nicely on the back of my hand for a whole day as I walked the streets of Birmingham. I even briefly considered this as a possible ‘me scent’ (I sometimes wear Old Spice), until the modern masculinity went a bit too potent in the base – not enough to conjure tongue-lolling heads on poles – but still, perhaps a little too much synthetic cedar….
Nevertheless, I was glad to have my (what feel to me innate) prejudices duped. The Vikings, although probably not the most peaceful bunch of folks, surely had a lot more going for them than their very cliched, Hollywood onscreen representations would seem to suggest (and apparently there is no evidence whatsoever that they even had any horned helmets in the first place – this was merely a costume choice for a diva singing in an opera by Wagner – The Ring Of The Nibelung at a German 1876 theatre premiere). It was nice for me therefore, in a way, to discover that the Viking’s namesake perfume was a fine spice, with touches of old school tropes but not enough to be rendered duddy, you might say even delicate. A very non-marauding, and pleasingly rendered, spruced; trim; and almost gentlemanly counter-stereotype.
My second most recent (new) purchase is City Orange, by Japanese cosmetics brand Ignis – a dense, but paradoxically light, woody aromatic citrus chypre – reasonably priced; I just walked past the shop one lunchtime, sprayed some on, saw the price – ¥3000 – and bought it.)
I am debuting this today as a workscent.
With definite reminiscences of O De Lancôme in the top (a beautiful mandarin, orange, bergamot and grapefruit), over a warm, almost leathery and slightly suggestively mossy base – with refined notes of vetiver and patchouli – there is a neoclassical, but also quite simple, suaveness to this blend that nicely matches a suit and the office ; I will top up the citrus notes, which fade quite quickly, with my grapefruit/ yuzu this week made hand balm.
Recently I have noticed more of my Japanese colleagues, both male and female, wearing deeper, dryer, woodier fragrances with airily dotted spice ( one member of the administrative staff swears blind he is not wearing perfume whenever I ask him ; in that case he must be sleeping in an incense temple ); sometimes I forget how nice finely layered, flinted aromatics can be, how they can tug at the senses with a certain, dried bark subtlety..
My most recent new ( old ) purchase is a vintage Champagne edt – a scent I was brain craving after just one sniff.
As my friend and occasional Narcissus co-writer Olivia says ( nailing the actual skin effect of this fulsome but somehow also heartbroken perfume ) ‘: it does kind of remind me of that concentrated over-ripened sweetness of something like Sauternes with all its noble rot/ Botyris*elements. Somewhere between dense ancient honey and moss. Oaked and syrupy and just on the cusp…’
I removed the posts about last Saturday‘s Tokyo event, feeling a little overexposed and susceptible to unwanted, prying eyes ( sometimes it is hard living a triple life), but Champagne would have been just perfect, backstage ….
And Viking, buoyed up by the current popularity for roaring marauders in pelts torching villages and carrying off wriggling maidens in blood and axe epics such as the recent Northman by Robert Eggers, or by the matted haired musclebeards in the ragingly successful TV series The Vikings, is presumably meant, by image alone, to evoke unheard of levels of masculine potency. Women will begin screaming, or swooning, on initial contact : caves of babies will be born forthwith.
According to a 2014 British YouGov survey, roughly a third of the UK male population consider themselves to have descended from the Vikings, while a quarter of women make the same assumption (the University of Bristol estimates the reality to be closer to about 6%). I have never personally done a DNA test, but as a white Briton it would kind of intrigue me, at some point, just out of curiosity, to eventually do so. Mostly a historical whirl of Germanic, French, Viking, Scandinavian, Roman in terms of ethnic ancestry, but depending on which region of Britain your forefathers settled in (the further south you go the less the likelihood), it would be interesting, in some ways, for me to find out the ancestral breakdown in my own cell structure.
Although undoubtedly partially Viking myself, then, purely through geographical coincidence – the genepool possibly somewhere hidden in my mitochondria, emerging in the gingerish strains of my beardhair if I let it run out like enough, unlike many – especially on the far right; those that feel terminally emasculated and are yearning for far more testosteroned times when your might could be proved by the sword and your seed ; those who re-enact battleground slaughters in costumes bought on Amazon or storm into government buildings baying like stags
—I personally have no atavistic or instinctual pull towards Viking culture whatsoever.
In fact I feel quite the opposite – and always have (give me the Romans and the Norman Conquest any day of the week). Maybe Burning Bush has some ancient link to piracy and pillaging seafarers and fiery wicks of twisted moss, but I personally can’t stand anything – particularly on the aesthetic level – that features dragon boats, hoary breath, boar carcasses turning slowly on the spit as women with long crimped trellises sew wool and the Norse gods are invoked with vein-busting sword bellowing amidst miserable freezing cold waves spewing onto jagged rocks; D is even worse. All of it just evokes feelings of pure anathema.
(With the global rise in ethnocentrism, and the sense that everything is falling apart into chaos, it is easy to understand why many people, no matter their ‘race’, feel a deep desire to retrace their origins and roots in order to capture a feeling of belonging to something – a tribe, a clan,
– I just don’t personally share that longing.
My extreme, natural aversion to anything of this nature – Lord Of The Rings, anything of the Dungeons And Dragons pixies and faeries genre notwithstanding, earlier in the summer, on the plane back home in August, we did valiantly attempt (though we knew it would be completely in vain), to watch Viking revenge drama The Northman, mainly to see Bjork as the soothsayer:
Good lord it was hard work though.
She, like the rest of the heinously overserious ‘epic’, which coloured in very computerized, artificial, digitally mood’enhanced’ greys and blues, felt half-baked and overcooked (I was a bit embarrassed on her behalf); the rest of the cast had also pseudo-absorbed her ‘diction’ with the most dreadful pseudo-Icelandic accents that made you want to immediately just stopper up your ears. No one needs to hear Nicole Kidman intoning thunderously in whispers, with a Sydney meets Reykjavik trrilling r’d lilt, as Queen Gudrun :
“Frrret not. You will die in battle, my lorrd. The gates of Valholl await you, I know it”.
A much more serious problem from the cinematic point of view, was the casting of Stockholm Hunk Alexander Skarsgard – presumably chosen for his rock hard abs and Conan The Barbarian Schwarzeneggerisms – who was truly overplaying the lead role of arch-avenger Amleth (supposedly a prototype of Hamlet);
For the forty or so painful and mirthful minutes we endured before pressing abort, all this actor, with his very limited expressions, could do (a permanently furrowed brow and ‘intense’ stare – I have seen stegosauruses in the Jurassic Park series display more personality) was roar, slay, flex the triceps and kill, then, do it all over again
…there he goes again
…. and again …..
Yes. I would definitely nominate Skarsgard for a Worst Actor Razzie; the film was intolerable, we were laughing in our plane seats at its profound insufferability, although it must be said that it was received rapturously by a lot of film critics for the detailed representations of daily Viking life and the general lightning-forked melodrama it impaled, so if you yourself are in the right mood for a dark and brooding revenge flick which features huge levels of ultrarealistic violence, wherein comeuppance is ruthlessly enacted whenever and wherever it can be, you should definitely give this a whirl (Richard Brody of The New Yorker had this belittling summary as his headline: ‘The Northman’: Just A Bunch Of Research And Gore’, dismissing its ‘thudding banalities’,) though he was definitely in the critical minority – most people are apparently just swept away in its bloodcurdling passions and antlers dripping in harpooned intestines; some of my friends also liked it…
GOD KNOWS WHY THOUGH.
Anyway, though by Odin, Allfather of the Aesir – – – – – FFS!!!!
What about the perfume review, I hear you beat your iron breastplates in fury: does Creed’s Viking, in fact, capture any of this meatly brutality; does it reek of a thousand armpits, of bodies sweating endlessly in bearskins for weeks on end, of rotting teeth putrid with unpicked flesh?
It does not.
As I sheepishly approached the perfume counter towards this one, eye rolling heavily in advance anticipation of a nuclear strength synthetic woody, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that instead of what I expected to be a rival to Sauvage in the panty-dropper ‘performance dominance’ sector, slaying hotbreathing wenches in its stead, what I smelled, in fact, was a crisply and alluringly constructed orchestral ginger.
Fresh. Zesty. Kind of delightful. Affirming. While ginger – one of my favourite smells and flavours in the world – is not listed as an ingredient in Viking Cologne (a lighter edition of the 2017 edp), the spiced citric woosh of the juice (lots of mandarin, bergamot, pink pepper, allspice and nutmeg with a lightly fougerish base (lavender, geranium, olibanum, sandalwood, patchouli etc with a hint of sage) to my nose, adds up to an overall ginger thematic; this is brisk and uplifting, masculine, but could be worn by anyone, and it glowed quite nicely on the back of my hand for a whole day as I walked the streets of Birmingham. I even briefly considered Viking as a possible ‘me scent’ (I sometimes wear Old Spice), until the modern masculinity went a bit too potent in the base – not enough to conjure tongue-lolling heads on poles – but still, perhaps a little too much synthetic cedar….
Nevertheless, I was glad to have my (what feel to me innate) prejudices duped. The Vikings, although probably not the most peaceful bunch of tribes, assuredly had a lot more going for them than their very cliched, Hollywood onscreen representations would seem to suggest (and apparently there is no evidence whatsoever that they even had any horned helmets in the first place – this was merely a costume choice for a diva singing in an opera by Wagner – The Ring Of The Nibelung at a German 1876 theatre premiere). It was nice for me therefore, in a way, to discover that the Viking’s namesake perfumes was a fine spice, with touches of old school tropes but not enough to be rendered duddy, in fact quite refined and wearable – you might say even delicate. A very non-marauding, and pleasingly rendered, spruced; trim; and almost gentlemanly counter-stereotype.
The seemingly infinite well of cheap, but classic, beautiful, vintage perfume always formerly available in the recycle shops, flea markets and antique emporia in the urban, and suburban, labyrinths of Japan is now drying up, finally in the clutches of yen-eyed e-bayers cannily extracting all the juice they can. The days of just wandering into a place and picking up a Mitsuoko extrait from a shelf for a song are fading.
And yet. I have discovered a treasure trove. A blissful place full of highly covetable bottles of perfume that make my heart ache with the anticipation of ownership. An assuming little shop down a side street whose identity and location I am not disclosing for the time being as I first intend to drain it like a vampire.
The owner of this place seems slightly bemused by me and my reactions ( he also sells bags, accessories, beauty products, makeup, hats – probably what draws in the younger clientele ), rather than the glass cabinet of vintage Chanel – I NOW HAVE A SAFE SUPPLY OF VINTAGE NO 19 : the 7ml extrait goes for ¥ 1800 – twelve dollars, eleven pounds – so I will be snapping all of those up along with some edt, some 22, Cristalle, and Coco parfum as the months go by); much of the rest of the shop varying from reasonably priced pristine editions ( an Hermes Amazone here, a Monsieur de Givenchy there…) up to expensive essentials – I have my sights already on a giant half liter of Shalimar going for ¥44000 – that’s my birthday present sorted then – as well as 30ml of verifiably vintage L’Heure Bleue parfum WHICH SHALL BE MINE.
I have already also bought such greatnesses as Paco Rabanne Metal – as fresh as if it had just come out of the factory in 1979 – on Wednesday I got a Vent Vert extrait – searing green galbanum top note gloriously intact – for a stupid ¥400 (£2.40!!); a divine Ricci Farouche boxed set; I fancy acquiring some of The Disappeared, just for the hell of it – Cartier So Pretty Eau Fruitee; Tentations Paloma Picasso; a full, very potent original bottle of Calvin Klein Obsession.
And speaking of seminal formulations of scents that are no longer with us, on the shelf the other day was a splash bottle of YSL’s either Champagne – its original title- or Yvresse – I didn’t see the name on the glass ; but that bottle is unmistakable, and so is the smell. I inhaled it deeply, staining my nostrils, imprinting the inside of my mask and my smell brain and possibly spilling the tiniest drop on my work clothes….. and all I can say is that, though I was in the shop for only fifteen minutes ( a gloriously secret sneak from work …) it has been HAUNTING me ever since.
Champagne : when first released, my young self found it dated; passé; an enamel melting lychee effervescence of sick peaches and mouldering; floral oldness; the tedium of diva, the soignee hostess with the mostest; true, I could smell the inherent panache involved here: the neo grand classique; the last gasp of an era as the metallic anorexia of the ozones took over ; Champagne was a last ditch effort, alongside similar perfumes like Ricci’s Deci Dela, to hold on to some of the richer textures; the orchestrated fullness.
And this, being a Sophia Grosjman rose perfume, is certainly orchestral. Swooningly fullbodied, multiplexed: carnation, roses, all the flowers, but also aniseed, caraway, mint, and a full, woozy, sickly tipsiness base accord of patchouli, vetiver, cedsrwood, vanilla, coconut, oak moss, cinnamon, styrax…… if this sounds vomitsome, as though you had been at an all-you-can-drink on a cruiseship and are now chundering seasick over the balustrade, I wouldn’t necessarily contradict you ( the young me always found this perfume to be putridly overloaded while still somehow very predictably French and unbearably ‘tasteful’ – allowing a woman to be respectable, but vivacious, even a little bit ‘giddy’ just for the one special night when she can ‘let go’).
Time has altered my perceptions though. Rarely have I been so possessed by a perfume in recent times – this was interfering with my thought processes as I was trying to teach; the deep heartache of the warm, plaintive bed of chypric fascination ( pure genius), lilting with the mellowed apricot and greener elements to create a deep PANG of perfumed longing. So even if this just turns me into an old fruit, if I am not one already, you can be very, very sure that this will be coming home again next week when I hurry to my private assignation before school, a bottle of YSL vintage, tucked somewhere —ecstatically, on my person.
All things at once; neatly pissy; west/east hybrid, clever melding of cypriol with civet and castoreum to recreate a South East Asian oud without being too obnoxiously oudish : a thick down (no one does contemporary, thick, poreless downs like Francesca Bianchi and I mean that as a compliment: this lasts well into the next day – her Sticky Fingers basically the perfect patchouli vanilla; dense as; Calme Volupte an almost shockingly visceral spiked sandalwood – alarmingly sexual
;
on top, powdered white muskness – those who appreciate the negligence of Tom Ford Urban Musk and Jasmine Musk will like this – with a fondant balsam centre, like an oud chocolate with a liquid floral puree………… ; though White Musk, the original, is still the benchmark of this genre for me (and always has been), other comparable crystallines like Lutens Clair De Musc really just redefinitions; the classic Kiehls and Alyssas just less cleanly versions of the same (I don’t mind a touch of slovenliness in a scent sometimes – it is not usually my go to vibe even if I can’t resist gorging myself sometimes on Bal A Versailles, the musc of all time – but there is definitely a curl up comfort about a blanket of clean/unclean musk even if when worn outside, the riskier risque associations immediately clear )
Unspoken Musk piles on all this musk history, but tells its own stories – full, emotional, as the perfumer herself says, revealing the vice/virtue contradictions inherent in the human; my impression being that it smells quite different depending on the person – on D it was much more feathery and flamboyant while simultaneously too domestic – I smelled woodier, darker, and a tad simplistic, the state of initial cleanliness involved probably also crucial here: I would need to have squeaky clean after-bath epidermis to pull this one off for coziness; unwashed would be too feral – the filthometer teetering too precariously towards Total Skank – with a capital S
