THREE PLEASING AND AFFORDABLE FRAGRANCES BY JEAN CLAUDE ELLENA : : : LE COUVENT DES MINIMES’ NUBICA (2019) + THERIA (2021) + AGAPI (2022)

The concept of what constitutes ‘affordable’ is all relative. Those milling around the Guerlain counters at Isetan the other day willing to spend over 60,000 yen, on, say, on a full bottle of the middling carnation and benzoin perfume Oeillet Pourpre from the Art Et Matiere collection, objectively have much more money than the regular Joes on the street here in Japan where that amount of cash would make up more than a quarter of the average person’s monthly starting salary (the poverty rate is slowly rising in Japan at present, currently estimated to be around 16% of the population). In dollars that is 427, still not peanuts for the vast majority for people, myself definitely included – I simply don’t have that kind of disposable income and never will – but 60,000 yen feels more akin to 600 dollars in real terms here: unimaginable as a daily perfume. The yen has been sliding precipitously recently – like the pound – and such a price, for a perfume that is exactly the same formula as Guerlain’s semi-mainstream release of a few years ago, Lui, merely in a new and rather medicore bottle but tripled in cost, strikes me as something akin to outrageous.

In global terms, obviously, all of this luxury we spend our time feasting on is beyond unfeasible for most of the world’s population. We are living in a bubble. I have just been reading about the misery of climate catastrophes in Madagascar, where the population seems to be living in very dire circumstances scrabbling to make a living from day to day, and where even the production of vanilla, the country’s most important export, and which will of course find its way into the delicious elixirs of Guerlain, has been imperiled by a poor flowering and harvesting this year. Hypocritically, I don’t suppose I will try to do anything practical to try and rectify this situation ( I once met a Japanese man working in the field of vanilla bean trade and production who invited me to go out to Madagascar with him ; we lost touch), but it also doesn’t necessarily hurt to sometimes be aware.

Walking along the upmarket, if slightly twee and old fashioned – all ribboned teddy bears, sparkling jewellery, and porcelain knick knacks alongside bakeries and tea shops and specialists selling honey and coffee ; the dearly beloved shopping district of Motomachi on Saturday, dinky and chichi as ever and gearing up for Christmas, we passed by the youthful emporium United Arrows, always popular with the voluminously cream coloured baggy ungendered twenty year olds of today. While D had a look at the clothes (nothing ever fits me there so I don’t even try) , I had a quick browse through the perfumes and scented novelties, the imported French and Portuguese soaps, and of particular interest, the set of fragrances created by Jean Claude Ellena for Cologne Of The Cloisters meisters, Le Couvent Des Minimes.

Le Couvent Des Minimes is one of those mid-range perfumeries that offer appealing products which please all the senses – their Cologne Of Love , a really lovely orange blossom, nasturtium and vanilla perfume is divine and helped preserve my soul when I was in hospital and rehabilation five and a half years ago. I like the bottles and packaging of this brand very much personally – though with their themology and animal characters there may be a whiff of nicking from Zoologist. Still, they are good: and very reasonable. The above colognes are 55 pounds in the UK for a 50ml. The current equivalent, 7,500 yen here in Japan, feels a little more pricey, but still, given that they are all made by a perfumer like Jean Claude Ellena, who certainly needs no introduction, in trying one of these you know you are in capable hands.

We don’t do oud or ‘amber wood’, but I am liking the hibiscus wolf and the spike leaved kestrel

These two were quite pretty : the butterfly on the bottle!

Theria – the zebra – is a workaday iris, but then saying that is a contradiction in terms. Iris butter is expensive, and this is pure orris at the beginning, with a galvanizing cardamom and narcissus heart and vanillic cedar in the base that went a bit sweet on me but which struck me as a very good ‘off to the shops’ in-expensive-cotton-wear type of spritz (rich people need such things in our daily lives). Nubica, the lion, is also a nice amber patchouli that would be the perfect Christmas present for someone who likes the more exotic vanilla bean in their lives without it being too overcaloried; I like this one and would like to explore it further as a possible option for myself, even if in truth, I haven’t been in gourmand mode for quite a while now, finding the tonka and vanilla bean as a genre rather suffocating (wearing something like, say, the very overpriced and molar-melting Dior Feve Delicieuse now, in my current state of head, would be a gluttonous castigation, like the greedy boy in Roald Dahl’s Matilda being force-fed Mrs Trunchbull’s chocolate ‘gateau’.).

No. Instead, I think I would invest in the new Agapi – by far the most experimental, and indeed, singulier of this range which was the one I decided to wear for the afternoon as we walked away from the restricting shopping area and up to the hillside and trees of the Yamate Bluff with its addictive oddness (a quite original combination of cloves and ambroxan in the base over a heart of ylang and a piercing top accord of very realistic passionfruit melded with an orange cultivated in Cyprus, the mandora). This is one of those scents you are never quite sure of – in the shop it took me back for a few fleeting moments to when I bought my first ever bottle of perfume, Xeryus by Givenchy, down a rabbit hole back to my teenage self – a spray of forest freshness, the initial effect almost coniferous, definitely androgynous, engrossingly sniffable, and an unusual attention getter I would imagine – (a head turner for someone jogging by in a tracksuit, through the woods and past a outdoor swimming pool lido, closed and barbed wired off for the winter, and next to it, a Japanese archery practice – Kyodo – area, where archers in traditional uniforms and still poses, shot their arrows in comfortable silence).

‘Agapi’ – which means love in Greek, is, according to Le Couvent Des Minimes, an ode to this perfumed, ornithological scenario :

“High up in the branches of a tree, a pair of birds sing and dance with boundless tenderness. Sparkling citrus notes mingle with sun-drenched exotic fruit: a colourful, joyful and carefree fragrance……………..like the inseparable lovebirds.”