Monthly Archives: October 2024

Rose basically doesn’t suit me. It goes sour. And yet I have been wearing nothing but rose perfumes for the last two months. How can this be?

Blame the Mustafa Center. Situated in Singapore near Little India, this bargain shopping Mecca features an entire megafloor of perfumes and toiletries that make me homesick for the place already. Because how can I live without the $2 roll on Yardley Rose deodorants I should have filled my entire suitcase with? Yes, the lavender ones we got were great too: very suave (especially ensembled with the talc and the hair pomade), but it was the roses that have fuelled my recent roseathon: roll ons that smell so nice under a sweater or shirt with just a spray or two of another rose scent on top for gentle complementation. English Rose is more classic Elizabethan red; London slightly sweeter with a touch of the original Bulgari Pour Femme; both at work and on weekends I have been pairing them with Dusita’s La Douceur De Siam, a perfume that has become a staple for me now ; while billed as a ‘tropical floral’ with frangipani, ylang and champaca layered over a little sandal, vanilla and a base of ‘Thai woods’, by far the main player here in the composition is a beautiful rose de mai that settles down to an accord that, on me, is at times reminiscent of vintage Magie Noire.

Other rose patchouli dry modern chypres pale in comparison. Wanting to re-acquaint myself with what is currently on offer rose-wise, yesterday I resampled Rose Of No Man’s Land, with its sheer rose raspberry ambroxan patchouli and found it acceptable, but wanting – a bit thin and miserly; I would probably choose Rose Noir over this or else just source out a vintage bottle of the gnarlier L’Artisan Parfumeur Voleur De Roses, which I used to wear with wild and dark abandon (happy Halloween by the way).

The new Diptyque- Rose Roche – well new to me anyway, was equally clear and minimalist – a rose patchouli that smelled like disinfectant – it must have been the lemon and ambroxan which came across like hinoki and cost a staggering ¥47,500 before tax – a fifth of many J-employees’ monthly take home pay. Granted, it had a certain ‘high quality’ superciliousness I can imagine coming across as a bit koolkat-sinister fashionista, but I have to say that I personally hated it.

Roses don’t, of course, have to necessarily smell naturalistic. I have been wearing a lot of current formulation Calandre recently (thanks Emma), which no one in their right mind would describe as a ‘rose’ (in fact it is a powdery, metallic mossed chypre very similar to Rive Gauche – very early seventies – they were both created by the same perfumer, Michael Hy – just less busy: warmer and more serene.) Yet the undeniable essence at the centre of Calandre is a lovely green, aldehydic, silvery rose that lays the enigmatic foundation for the other ingredients : a rose wrapped in grey velvet. Though the opening salvo of this modern edition is a bit ammonia nose twitchy compared to the sublime vintage, within a short while it softens nicely to recognizable Calandre – which feels completely like me. I love to just spray this one on a hoodie or track suit trousers on a cosy autumnal morning – and let the day roll.

Some roses can be too rosy and mouldering pot pourri, a bit too death in an English cottage. I couldn’t resist buying a bottle of Aoyama Flower Market’s Rose from the namesake florist in Yokohama the other day, for example, because I rather like the packaging, it’s cheap, and the top note is a very appealing rich Bulgarian essence that works as a lite spritz in the middle of the day. After that, though, it unfortunately sours up, as roses tend to – the Serge Lutens’ – Rose De Nuit, Fille De Berlin, Sa Majeste La Rose (which for some reason I have recently been yearning for again) didn’t in all honesty ever work on me for the very same reason. A bit soiled undies. Synthetic Prissy Missy Roses are also anathema on my skin and on the women who wear them; I do like a richer rose, however – like Perris Rose De Mai by Jean Claude Ellena – a gorgeous damascena and rose geranium elixir with a touch of immortelle and musk I would consider getting if they totally repackaged it (I just don’t like the bottle design at all, being an inveterate beige-phobe); but scent-wise, it has all the drama and depth, the plushness of a Guerlain vintage extrait of the glorious Nahema. Ultimately I like the deep romanticism of rose – which, miraculously, the cheap Yardleys do capture perfectly, especially with a little upper tier embellishment. Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times sometimes talks in her regular column of mixing up the economical – head to toe Uniqlo, say – but with one lavish and more curated item to elevate and intrigue proceedings. These last two months i have also realized you can do the same with scent – extend the use of an expensive rose – with a layered, considered mutual reinforcement of perfume.

This morning I was cycling past Muji in Kamakura and thought ‘GERANIUM’.

This is not an essential oil I use with any frequency. I don’t have a real affinity with that pungent minty green rose citronella the way I do a good quality frankincense ( there is a Japanese aromatherapy brand called Marks & Web whose Somalian essence is ethereal, translucent perfection- and deeply healing. On my very cut and bruised :swollen left knee after last week’s bike accident I used copious amounts at night neat on the area and was amazed by the results- the local doctor was too).

But that really pales in comparison with this morning’s derma-regeneration miracle while using geranium. The skin on part of my right hand was raw and grazed off, and because it has been difficult to keep dry – what with brushing one’s teeth and no longer feeling that I can legitimately get out of washing the dishes – it has been a bit wet, dark purplish and weepy.

Cue my instincts. The Giants Of Aromatherapy- Tisserand, Fosse, Lawless et al, always say that your body and mind will intuitively ‘reach’ for an essence in the same way you might crave citrus when deficient in vitamin c.

My body this morning said ‘geranium’. So I stopped off and bought a small bottle, checking beforehand online if it was supposed to be good for wounds. It is apparently one of the best. And smelling it from the tester bottle, my body gave its own immediate physiological approval and knew it was somehow right.

Back at home, I took a hot bath with about 15 drops of the essential oil; also applying some directly to each cut , as well as putting in a couple of packets of German apothecary powerhouse Kneipp’s Happy For Me Lotus and Jasmine : instantly mood boosting, I could feel, or imagined I could feel, the ancient sea salts and floral essences blending with the power of the geranium to get to some real inward business – I don’t always like the scent of pelargoniums, but today I loved it, a form of craving.

Perhaps more importantly, so did my skin.

I would say I was in the water for about 40 minutes. But upon emerging I looked at my hand and it was healing before my eyes at CGI speed – the dark red visibly pinkening and tightening – exposed flesh becoming brand new skin (I should have done before and after pictures). I am now letting it dry in the natural air rather than using any more bandages, thinking about applying some more before going to bed this evening. Honestly, I have experienced some aromatherapy miracles in my life but this was one of the most extraordinary.

Geranium-san. – I am SOLD

crap

I do still ultimately believe that Amarige de Givenchy is fundamentally horrifying.

But what a thrill nonetheless to get a vintage extrait at a Fujisawa recycle mart for twenty one dollars eighty seven.

For a second on skin I thought I were smelling a rebirth of Guerlain Mahora.

Then, the ‘other ingredients’ – take a look on Fragrantica for Dominique Ropion’s Full Kitchen Sink – take over – and for me, just eight minutes in, tank the whole enterprise, with a cloggingly sweet and artificial, beseechingly sickly – if admittedly somewhat thrilling – overabundance.

I had a dream the other night in which a friend of mine was opening a bottle of Amarige – a dab on, not a spray.

And then I walk into a recycle shop and find the very parfum.

This would not even be in my top 200. But I am thrilled to have dreamt into being, psychically predicting its existence – one of the original Floral Perfume Monsters. What are the odds ?

Will report on the impressions on skin later – it smelled golden and smooth from the bottle – but we are NOT trying this thing in the workplace – no m’aam

Joy parfum is a troubling creature. D had to use pliers this morning to unscrew the broken cap – the red top of whose destiny I will come to later – so I could re-smell it. Phew what a whiff when I laced the back of my hand with its oily tincture so intense it almost smelled like old paint : the jasmine and rose essences boiled down to real civet, lacquered florals and micturous musk a real nose-wrinkler until about 45 minutes later when it began to smell like Familiar Joy. I always think that the knee jerk uncomprehending reaction to a fragrance ‘It’s very strong’ is for the perfume moron I mean newbie, but in this possibly dehydrated’s vintage extrait’s case, it IS too strong.

I needed to update my nose on the original Patou classic in order to be able to properly smell Eau De Joy, a fresher, more aldehydic and florally orchestrated variant released forty years after the original
Joy- in its heyday one of the top three selling perfumes in the world – that I found for ten dollars in that divine black and red that made my heart leap when I saw it on the glass shelf and which now is one of the first things I see when I wake up in the morning. Recently I decided to not just look at it while I drink my tea and read the newspaper but to actually wear it; just a spray on the back of my hand, surprised by how much I didn’t hate it.

Today, in comparison with the inchoate slick on my right hand sheening its chic, but filthy way into my conscious, , Eau De Joy smelled positively divine. Firstly, as the jasmine de grasse and rose de mai are so cleverly attenuated in the aldehydic glacial spritz borne of lily of the valley and a lovely, perceptible tuberose, which I hadn’t overtly noticed before until the side by side experiment – and what smells more like the living jasmine you smell creeping up summer trellises than the amphorae of macerating tinctures kept under lock and key in the dungeons of Patou – the perfume leaps from the skin unbound : vernal, indeed joyful. The musk is much prettier – something about the deep piss of old Joy extraits can induce a unique form of dread – but in this extraordinarily pristine edition there is a delicate, timeless , filigreed femininity that could remind one of Diorissimo, or perhaps Dior Dior.

Yes, in today’s match, Eau is very much the winner. But the parfum is still something I warily venerate. It’s just that this particular bottle has a very repellent anecdote attached to it.

Last year we suddenly became aware of a sweetly repugnant odour at the bottom of the stairs. ??? Was this our cat having another renal issue and not quite making it outside in the middle of the night ? Surely not – it smelled very different : not cassissy and feline, but overpowering, hormonal, malty – utterly utterly foul.

This waxing and waning stench was unfamiliar – and at first we couldn’t come by the source. Eventually the mystery was revealed when one sunny afternoon d heard some alien scratching sounds and to his great surprise saw a large mouse – or was it a rat? – that had made its domicile in a nest of rodential droppings and pilfered cat food behind a big pile of books – pungent as old hell – obviously we threw out all the soiled literature and the bookcase – as well as the very bottle of Joy you see at the top of the page that was part of the mousey’s home ( did it sleep on it at night ? How did it feel about the shiny black flacon and the Patou lettering and the faint traces of rose musk and jasmine that may have seeped out a little from the sealed perfume’s neck ?)

All I know is that d gasped; the cat came running down, the critter escaped when d opened the door (did it make off with the red cap as a memento of its short stay? I never saw it again and I know today’s tale is revolting and I probably should have just tossed out the parfum when it was smothered in mouse musk and wee but somehow I couldn’t : I just screwed down the top very very tight and then washed it precociously until it only smelled of polished Patou and then put it back on a higher shelf.

But how DID THE PATOU GET INTO THE POSSESSION OF THE MOUSE IN THR FIRST PLACE I hear you cry.

Well that is easy. As the clumsiest person in the world I must have knocked it off when lumbering down the stairs one day ( as I write this I am laid up on the sofa after a bicycle accident yesterday where I tore down the hill in the drizzle of the late morning and went skidding and flying off, bashing my cheery and hand and elbow and no ! my left knee ) : I am a dyspraxic fool who shouldn’t be let near anything really, especially vintage Patou perfume.

But we persevere. And we enjoy these old beauties. And by telling you about the ratatouille of wet cat biscuits and reeking mouse dung , you can see why – given the associations – I now vastly prefer the Eau.

We chop and change. Yesterday I was besotted. I was also this morning – these pictures are just outside our kitchen. But there is a reprieve, a moment of respite from the abricot fromage floral frais, where it lingers like a whisper in the foreground, and then the onslaught when you move past a pumping bush and feel sick

A perfect flowering tonight – a whole avenue for smell gazing – at its apricot utmost.

Reader, this stuff smells UNBELIEVABLE

On first look it could be any of the 80’s Rochas round bottled editions : Madame Rochas; Byzance; Lumiere – all of which are gorgeous perfumes. In fact, it turned out to be a particularly pristine edition of Mystere (less strange – you might even say sinister) than the dark soiled silvery murk that was housed in the asymmetrical original 70’s bottles I own; a smoother, more wearably smooth ambered version (this is the edp) that on this October Monday feels edgy and atmospheric – but soothingly perfect.

Excuse the absence!

My original review of Mystere:

MYSTERE by ROCHAS (1978)