LIKE WELCOMING BACK AN OLD FRIEND …. LAVANDE ROYALE by ROGER & GALLET (1899)

If we cast our minds back to the year 1899, Claude Debussy was in the process of publishing his Suite Pour Le Piano, Queen Victoria was still on the throne; Spanish rule had just ended in Cuba( Guerlain had created Dix Pétales De Roses. Houbigant first sold its Coeur De Jeannette this year, its legendary moss lavender, Fougère Royale, debuting seven years before in the year 1882. Guerlain, of course, had its famously still in production animalic herb-lavender Jicky (1889). Yet Roger Et Gallet, a French perfume house that continues to diligently produce fine quality and inexpensive fragrances somewhat under the radar, also made an enduring, classic lavender in this time period- Lavande Royale – possibly my favourite of all lavender scents, an ingenuous blend which disappeared from view for a long while and which I was delighted to find back on the market last week when I visitied the Roger Et Gallet boutique in Sogo, Yokohama.

Understated, a little brooding… refined, perhaps a tad dour… but at the same time elegant and lightheartedly refreshing, the errant tension in the lovely Lavande Royale comes from the deep contrast between a fresh bergamot/mandarin very low key, clean and crisp central lavender, and a musky, darker cedar – the key note being a hint of nutmeg in the heart which gives an inimitable kick. Theoretically, I shouldn’t go for this perfume – I don’t really wear classic fougères of the oakmoss geranium type, nor do I really wear many lavenders: I like Caron’s Pour Un Homme quite a bit but don’t love it; enjoy Jicky on d, but not on myself; I loved Jean Jacques’ lavender at Harrods – exquisite – but it was astronomically expensive. Probably the only true lavender soliflore I have ever truly gone for was the much more affordable and still missed English Lavender by Yardley, which disastrously underwent probably the most shameful reformulation of any perfume in history – see my furious piece from 2016 entitled The Cruel Desecration Of Yardley English Lavender.

That pious lavender scent, though, was only, for me, a kind of cradling refuge – a back of the hand hair shirt solace for moments of extreme noise; it could never have been an every day scent. I just don’t have an adequately grave mien (nor enough freshly starched and laundered bonnets). Lavande Royale is exactly that – a day scent – which is why I love Roger & Gallet. I love the unpretentiousness of this house; the always ready to wearness of it all. In fact, I think If I could only have one scent for the rest of time, it might actually be the company’s original Vetyver, a cologne I adore (naturally discontinued, probably because I like it ) and which is now very hard to find: if I could I would get the biggest bottles of that scent possible, and use it lavishly post shower on a regular basis : a light, nondescript (even – for most people, really quite boring) fresh citrus vetiver- again, with a palpable nutmeg core, a note I am always drawn to – nothing exciting, but that for me personally, somehow just right : I feel completely natural in it. And how often can you honestly say that about the vast majority of perfumes, even those in your own collection?

The reason I had ventured into the Roger & Gallet shop in the first place last week in my lunch break was to check if they still had my summer staple Thé Vert, a bottle of which I buy every year (even though I am not entirely sure I even like it (!) – I would never really recommend this one to anyone else – a gassy, synthetically sharp green tea/yuzu/ ginger spritz I just buy because it is the only scent I feel cuts through the sheer slimesweat of Japanese August when I just feel continually gross at work and need security (the eventual sheen of green tea that it surrounds you with is relatively pleasant and I have been complimented on it ) – but looking for that one among the new releases such as Feuille De Thé I certainly wasn’t expecting to see the name that suddenly stood before my eyes on the repackaged bottles of Lavande Royale that were newly and unexpectedly on display: my heart leapt a beat.

I hadn’t smelled this scent for thirty years or more. Filed into the ‘pleasant memories of the past’ area of my smell brain. I know I used to sometimes buy the 200ml bottles from posh pharmacies when I lived in London – it was cheap, and it always soothed me somehow (now relaunched as a ‘wellbeing’ eau, the onpointness of the name slightly irritating (the “Wellness” ‘phenomenon; …. shudder) but at least it is true; Lavande Royale was always the ultimate soft cardigan on a slightly cold and grey afternoon; a rudder in the urban eddy.

I wondered : would the perfume still be the same? Or would it be a completely different scent? If not, why would they bring back a template that is not quite ‘relevant’ to the times – older than old school (I wonder what the original nineteenth century version was like?).

I had to know. And spraying Lavande Royale generously, I recognized the same signature note arrangement immediately – as you would when hugging an old friend: I was suddenly taken right back to my mid twenties. Possibly a little more concentrated, a tad harder maybe, not quite as gentle, a little too ‘fine tuned’ but in essence, the same entity. Just like hugging an old friend you haven’t seen in ages – a tender moment. I now can’t wait to go back and get a bottle, as well as some of the always pleasurable soaps.