I love the colour pink.
Although I almost never wear it, the eye popping nature of pink is instantaneous stimulation. In a J-world where almost everyone has been wearing tediously muted subtlety for the last decade – beige, beige, cream, beige, camel, grey, beige, and desaturated Muji and Uniqlo ‘blues’, ‘reds’ (russet: ugh I HATE IT !!) and ‘greens’ – as well as beige, whenever someone – a student; someone on the street – has the temerity to beige-bust and actually shine in a beautiful moment of vivid colour expression I feel momentarily lifted out of the stultifying beige bog that to me signifies a puny meek surrender to the sludge of stultifying conformity that can sometimes clog the veins of Japanese society.
Admittedly, pink can certainly be annoying. Nicki Minaj overdoes it, and I didn’t like the particular ugly cerise shade of last year’s ’Barbie Phenom’ ( which almost made me want to wear beige ) – it is certainly a colour very prone to the tacky.
And yet pink neon. Searing through the soul like a Soft Cell 12” in Soho, ‘81. Peonies unfurling in a side garden. Exquisite pale pink kimonos. Dragon fruit. Cockatoos. In Japan there are even translucent pink Koshu grapes that are splendidiferous – I have never tried them – but look
:::: pink gives a lift to the soul.
The latest release from Frederic Malle, a photo of which I should have taken at the Takashimaya department store in Yokohama which really pulled in my eye deeply : bottles stacked glowing atop one another, electricly lit I stopped in my tracks bewitched – smells very pink – extraordinarily pink. I liked it immediately. Like bubblegum, it is all peaches and vanilla and ylang ylang and banana – tuberose and iso e super and aldehydes, ooh lots of modern aldehydes – sickly, perhaps, but with soul and inner complexity. It has a definite presence.
I know nothing about ‘Acne Studios’ – whose current frontice-woman is Charli XCX, whose smash hit album Brat d got me for my birthday :
The ad campaign isn’t especially appealing to me and the brand seems to be in the Dieselish bracket – high end but not Balenciaga – the Malle collaboration conferring cool on the latter, olfactive kudos on the former , but I did like the presentation and perfume itself.
Acne says
I wouldn’t personally say neo-classical, more ‘future vintage’. There is a bold, gourmand element that reads contemporary, but I was also taken back to one of the pinkiest perfumes ever made, the gorgeous More by Shiseido / which I have written a lot about before if you want to learn more, as well as the ludicrously cutesie D’Humeur A Rire from the L’Artisan Parfumeur limited edition ‘Mood Swings’ box I bought on the King’s Road some time in the early 90’s :all strawberry shortcakes, little girls’ ribbons and enameled nails – jumbled up together with the inescapable fabric softeners of your local laundromat. It is quite fluffy, fattening and nice, if utterly unaffordable (¥54,000 for 100ml to smell like Britney Spears in a tumble dryer?): I could happily have it in my collection and would probably sometimes indulge, but it is not a perfume I will be scurrying to save up for.
There is also the issue of the word itself : ACNE.
Fortunately unafflicted myself by every pubescent’s worst nightmare, I still inevitably succumbed to zits and pimples as a self conscious teenager – squeeze or leave ?- and remember clearly the fuss I would make to buy a cover up stick at Boots The Chemists, mortified to be a boy buying makeup but then I could never understand why people would just stand there in the school corridor with their eye focusing boil in the middle of their face and not at least try to mitigate its horrendousness.
No, ACNE – meaning spots and oozing facial pustules and craters – certainly does not appeal. But all in all, I have to say, this perfume rather does.
With your thoughts, I think I want to re sniff it and see if I get a new angle. I’ve sampled it twice before and laundry softener popped up in my mind. But I also think the current generation of laundry softeners can smell really nice and elegant so it’s a good association.
I agree. Laundry softeners have become an art form. Some of my students smell incredible – and I know it’s all because of what their mothers are doing with their clothes.
I discovered lipid dirtiness under the skin of this scent that really did take me back to the 70’s. I would really love to smell it on different people to get a living perspective – I can imagine it really varying on people in a way, say, that Baccarat Rouge rarely does : would love a scent vial of this to explore it further
I hear you re: ACNE. But after all it is a power fashion house—at least here in Europe—so most fashionistas won‘t stumble over that name. I personally don‘t mind pink in perfumes at all as I adore colours in clothes too (I refuse to wear anything black!).
My main gripe is the price policy of Frédéric Malle. It is completely unaffordable, and like say Chanel where in the past one could occasionaly justify the extravagance of buying an Exclusif, well these bottles are now just absolutely beyond: Euro 345 for 100 mll of the ACNE juice! Hello??
I just wonder who buys all those ultra pricey perfumes? Is it the Chinese market, millionaires, the Arab Peninsula? German consumers most certainly won‘t flock to buy these flacons seeing that inflation combined with stagnant wages hasn‘t made life easier.
I wonder when and especially if there will be a tipping point of how much you can charge and at the same time still sell enough. Chanel have stopped selling their éxtraits—a crying shame!
So odd.
I was literally thinking of you as I boarded the train home and here you were..
Bizarrely, I had also been resmelling Les Chanels just before discovering Pimple and I agree : utterly absurd re prices
80 euros or so and I would probably snap this up
How intriguing!
I hardly buy any fragrance in a shop anymore, only on ebay. But a 75 ml Les Chanel, say Jersey (I remember you trashing it, no?), for 80 Euros: forget it: tempi passati! Perhaps if you‘re lucky for 120 Euros.
I‘m sitting on a train to Berlin for the weekend. Deutsche Bahn is once again horribly late (70 minutes). A Japanese traveller would be horrified —
Unthinkable !
How could it be 70 minutes late ?
I think I tried this once and couldn’t smell what the fuss was about. Those grapes, though! I want to try those!
My favorite color as a child was pink. Even in my early 20s I would buy pink shirts in work-appropriate styles. Now I wear black most of the time, although I like colorful accents by way of jewelry, scarves, etc., and enjoy pink vicariously through my preteen niece as it’s her favorite color.
The grapes look scintillating, don’t they – if almost eerie. Translucent.
Same here with clothes – black but jazzed up here and there by colour. The beige/cream thing in Japan has saturated the whole society.
Hi, You write about perfume like no other. Was going to put your book on my xmas list but noticed it is out of print. Will there be another edition?! Thanks, Eleanor
I wish !
No. It is far too out of date now. But how nice you want to read it anyway
Worst perfume name EVER!
Dior had good pink nail lacquers in the 1970s.
Candide, Naif, Rose Glacée