The gauziest of the gauzed, the softest, most feminine angelic of the soapiest soap – Nina, the original from 1987, was the sole creation of perfumer Christian Vacchiano, a floral aldehyde masterpiece of extreme, crystallinic beauty and shadowy powdered underpinnings of chypre.
Though in many ways a ‘typical Ricci’, what is important to realize about Nina is that it was quite a bold move to release a fragrance of this type at this particular moment in history. While Cacharel’s chaste white lilies portrait of misty-mirrored proto-70’s innocence, Anaïs Anaïs was still being worn by quite a lot of people, chastity in scent - if not in the public discourse on sex- was generally going out of style, and Nina was a prim, eighties (very) classical floral aldehyde: seemingly a contradiction in terms when such perfumes were anything but du jour. Constructing a ‘pillar of femininity’ type fragrance in the mode of a Van Cleef & Arpel First or Hermès Calèche, must thus have felt dated and anachronistic to many upon this perfume’s release, when the fashion of the time was for big and bold strokes of acrylic colour – the ogre-like gorgeousness of Obsession, Poison, Loulou and Giorgio Beverly Hills, perfumes that were intoxicating as hell but quite grimly potent to the wrong inhaler. Nina was fantastically demure and conservative in comparison; you might even say reactionary (Reaganite – there is something stolid within despite the wiles): a conscious step back to try and reclaim some ‘womanly grace’.
This is, I believe, the key to understanding Nina. There is a very elaborate, complex, parodoxically ‘powerhouse’ aspect to the perfume that distinguishes it from the lighter, deceptive simplicity of other exquisite Ricci flower meisterwerks from the 60’s and 70’s such as Capricci and Farouche (all of the alabaster vestal virgins of antiquity from the other golden years of the house are also prettily beautiful, such as Fleurs De Fleurs,the ravishing Coeur Joie (the feral Fille D’Eve - see my review – a bestial outlier, salacious in the extreme); but Nina feels fuller, richer, duskier, in comparison, despite its very carefully spun light – the base notes of oakmoss, civet, vetiver, patchouli, sandalwood, iris, musk and ‘blackcurrant syrup’ alongside an interesting note of Indian bay laurel creating a crepuscular darkness that exquisitely offsets the luminousness of the green, fresh citric and aldehydic opening (leaf notes, bergamot, basil, blackcurrant bud, marigold and delicate peach), a celestial chorus as precedent to the complex floral bouquet of the heart – rose, jasmine, ylang ylang and violet, naturally, but also bright mimosa : the whole as gloriously executed as an Italian renaissance sculpture in white marble.
Nina is both showy, and cool; recondite. Quietly loquacious; not shy, physically, but a little secretive. Vacuous? Possibly. A little. I am not sure. Perhaps she is just conforming to her archetype: a performatively understated femininity. But there is still, despite this, a lot going on. You can think what you like about her, but you know you will ever only be knowing at most half of the story; she is keeping a lot back: quite consciously. And this is precisely why you are drawn in, the toile veils in the advertisement above (‘A perfume must be a work of art‘), draped over the timorous and decorous young ghost bride rendering her untouchable; an explicit indicator of the intricate webs that are deliberately being woven. While Nina will probably feel much too traditionally ‘ladylike’ to some people, too passively unfeminist and Nancy Reagan white-floral-dress-garden-party, to me, while understanding these concerns, this perfume for me is at once an object of beauty (I adore the bottle; the extrait edition’s crystal glass stopper an ergonomic delight) and something of an olfactory marvel.
Yesterday I woke up craving it. We were going up to a friend’s housewarming party in Tokyo - sometimes I forget how big the city is; in a residential area in the North East, more affordable, we left our house in Kamakura at 11:30 am and didn’t get to Chie’s new apartment until 14:30 – a full three hours of different train lines and buses- but the large doses of Nina parfum I had emanating from my wrists, a fountainhead of green leaves and soap and Grecian engravings in cold stone, were giving me life in the stark Sunday urban atmosphere. In truth, I am not sure how much of my emotional reaction to this scent is intrinsic to its aesthetic inspiration and artistry alone; perhaps the strong feelings evoked come because I do associate this scent with a particularly happy summer in 1987 when my mother had started wearing Nina - one of the great things about working in a department store every weekend was that she was always in contact with the very newest releases and would often buy them, much to my obvious delight (and actually did, also, incidentally, wear Nina, one hot July day, with a hat and floral dress and white hat for a day at the races at Ascot); to me, now, all these years later, the perfume still gives a dignifying feeling of calm and refuge, a maternal caress.
I don’t know. Despite Nina’s slight obviousness (Mitsouko and Miss Dior and Ma Griffe make snide remarks regarding her intellect: First and Calèche have snobbish class issues, other chypric aldehydes gloat and close their eyes in distaste and won’t even mention the upstart’s name (Arpège is having none of it……..) – all these perfumes are, ultimately, at the end of the day, just jealous because Ms Ricci is so much more floaty and alluring and actually liberated – happier in her body – than they will ever be). Nina is Nina. She knows what she is. And I think this is why I find this perfume so uniquely calming; there is an assurance; a place I can hide in tranquillity and find rest. One August night, a few years ago, after teaching a hard schedule and not hydrating enough, in the evening after work around midnight I was suddenly floored with a rather excruciating pain in my back – semi-immobilized by a kidney stone. Groaning and in the beginnings of agony, D called my Japanese friend from next door who came round immediately to see me writhing on the futon not sure what to do. It was a toss between calling an ambulance, which I found slightly too melodramatic given the non lethal situation, as the whole neighbourhood would have immediately come out of their houses in their pyjamas and street slippers to see, red lights flashing; I couldn’t bear all the fuss – and a taxi, to take me down quietly to the hospital. Before the latter arrived, I had managed, hauling myself along the tatami mat, to stretch my hand out to the perfumes next to my bed and grasp the one I wanted – Nina, by Nina Ricci, and only Nina by Nina Ricci : it had to be that perfume and no other (like yesterday, for some unfathomable reason). I needed to be wearing it. And I didn’t quite know why. It just felt necessary. Protective. The fundamental benevolence of this scent: ethereal musks that transcribe your person with those soft tendrils of flower ; the pure savon of its elevated, swan-like soapery…….. …. I don’t know if the Botticellian fragrance surrounding me that night seemed odd at all to the night staff attending to me at Ofuna Central Hospital, as I crashed to the floor clutching my side, screaming, but there is such a deep tenderness to this scent that it kept me serenely anchored in the elsewhere the whole time in some kind of eternal primavera. I felt the same yesterday: a timelessness (but this time, more anchored within myself ); and yet again, when I woke up this morning; the perfume still lingering gently, but resiliently, on all my clothes.
