Monthly Archives: January 2025

The smell was immaculate. I still want it. I adore Patou 1000. And the extrait is to die for. That patchouli !

But as I enter a period of relative impoverishment, ¥5,000 right now is too much. Plus, the way the antique shop presented the flacon, leaking, like an abandoned, bandaged leprosy patient, was, I would say (wouldn’t you ?) …. a pile of tripe.

Sometimes you want gradation; development; shadows; psychology. All of which I experienced last night wearing vintage Hermes Amazone edp on the back of my hand all evening —— what a perfume. But at other times, you just want simplicity. A SMELL.

Fernanda’s Apple Mango was one of the quickest impulse buys I have ever made. I sprayed it on a sample card; started walking away and then turned right round and bought it.

This is one of those creations where everything is just right. There is a flash of apple, a few barely perceptible floral whisperings, but then a photorealistic just-picked giant mango afore your eyes, fresh, tantalicious ; morphing, eventually, into a soft and very satisfying vanilla ice cream a la mangue.

Apple Mango has been waiting a while. I actually bought this perfume at Ofuna Lumine department store last year but only debuted it properly today , not sure why. Maybe just for some fruity uplift to colour the Monday doldrums, I sprayed myself down post shower with the light, tropical ditty- a whim on a cold, white-skied- day. I then realized I needed to go into Kamakura City Hall for some unavoidable administrative tedium, but also that I was smelling like living dessert. The polite and gentlemanly employee I was assigned didn’t seem to remotely mind, though.Who knows. Maybe a brief midwinter encounter with Mango Man gave him a boost as well.

Nosferatu is a clever marketing tie-in with the same-named and fonted Robert Eggers directed vampire film currently riding high in the world’s box office. Creating what is surely the first ever ‘eau de macabre’ – although I could have done without the ‘de’ – the house of Heretic, usually focusing on all natural plant based fragrances, here veers off in far more synthetic territory in the name of fashioning a very specific olfactory apparition: a bush of wet, wilting lilacs outside Count Orlok’s castle as the centuries old nosferatu appears, blood starving in the cold, stony mists..

The results are interesting. I am still waiting for the film to come out here in Japan, as I am sure an epic goth horror of this standing will merit the proper big screen treatment, even if I am not really, in truth, a big fan of the director. I found his Big Norse Mythology Blockbuster THE NORTHMEN laugh out loud terrible; we watched half of it on the plane and were rolling in the aisles; The Lighthouse, starring Willem Dafoe – who I can’t stand – and Robert Pattinson – nice to look at – was alright, if a little self serious with all the tiring foggy black and white; ; ; though I do have to confess that his first film, The Witch – insidious as they come – was rather brilliant : stark, laboured ( but horribly convincing – let’s not talk about the goat ) —- – … .. it was just too scary for me personally, striking obscene levels of satanic terror, in my punily palpitating heart.

Nosferatu the perfume might have a similar impact on those around you. While some talk of soft, spectral musks; heart-tugging violets, a plaintive orris concrete all set against a glistening petrichor – all I really smell is

H A L I T O S I S. I don’t know if it is the oud in the base or the indoles used to create the ‘lilac’- always a difficult note to replicate authentically : Pure Distance’s opalescent but overpoweringly soapy Opardu bears some similarities to this vampiric hallucination with its high powdered florality – but the menace of really, really bad breath being exhaled from old / / young lungs , irrefutably hangs, icily, despite the lacy filigree, ( deliberately ?) over the entire (de)composition. The spectre of worm-tongued Nosferatu himself, lord of the malignant undead, hovers stinkingly above; eager, ready, to French kiss his fevered lover.

As such, the scent is strangely effective. It is repulsive, and yet perfect (like, say, Zoologist Tyrannosaurus Rex which makes me want to run for the hills but is undeniably very sexy; or vintage Guerlain Mouchoir De Monsieur with its overdose of faecal civet that smells filthy yet ultra refined and horny simultaneously): there is a lightness and vulnerability to the scent; a plangency that certainly emotes – I can imagine it bewitching on younger, less contaminated skin – so hats off to Heretic for not surrendering to the tedious blood and smoke tropes you might expect from such a project. Nosferatu is original; arresting —— and genuinely strange.

For those still after a semi- gothic vibe but who do not want to smell as though they haven’t cleaned their teeth since birth — just feasting on carrion — Coeur Noir is a welcome alternative. A familiar warm patchouli melange based on a soft and powdery heart of quality labdanum and vanilla Madagascar, the more unusual element in the scent lies perhaps in the (over)application of sharp rosewood up top that lifts the petticoats out of too much fresh-bottomed talcumed complacency; and confers a certain vibrancy.

One can imagine the object of the vampire’s affections beginning the film like this : subdued, but subtly, unconsciously emanating erotica. Later, when her all consuming passion for the count takes over, I see her succumbing instead to an overdose of Tabac Rose: a devouringly sweet, thick, rich and chocolatey Bulgarian rose that really seized my attention at Yokohama Nose Shop yesterday and had me glued to the nozzle (I shall have to go back). Like all the best perfumes that inspire deep ambivalence — that intoxicating mix between hate and love, Nosferatu included,, – this fetishistically suffocating floral: : : too much, but kind of gorgeous, easing its way slightly too forcibly into the oesophagus, immediately sunk its claws right into me ….. ….. … …… … …. 。。。and I was unable to turn away.

Kamakura is currently awash with suisen – narcissus of many varieties – but the air is filled with the scent of newly flowered ume. The gardener at Hokaiji temple told me just now that the plum blossom is a little earlier than usual this year and few trees are fully out yet but it is amazing how pungent the plum is; acidulous, slightly savoury; poetically severe.. I find that the suisen sometimes take a while to properly fume the atmosphere; startled to be awake, they then, eventually, realize it is time.

I was a little disappointed in Hokaiji, one of the less well known temples just down from the Hachimangu lotus pond. I have always loved it for its rambling, ramshackle, overgrown and even disorderly entanglements – thickets of narcissi, which I was hoping to see today, but it has been overly tidied – made too kempt —a shame ( I used to refer to that particular spot as my own personal garden of eden ). The tranquil, secluded place does still have some lovely corners though

( a highly scented plum blossom tree )

( scentless camellia )

Daigyoji, nestled between municipal buildings, is a very pleasant short cut right in the middle of the city that the local residents seem to love to stroll through ; taking their time and admiring whatever flowers are in season ; here the scent of ume was particularly potent, but also chastened by the narcissus, gently floating about the perimeter

Timing is everything in pop culture.  Though Denis Villeneuve’s Timothée Chalamet-starring Dune Part 2 was considered by many space geeks to be an Oscar-worthy Science Fiction masterpiece, it was released near the beginning of February 2024. Any spiced melange buzz it may have created at that time will have fizzled with the last minute contenders like eighties ‘pop-corn actress’ Demi Moore, who is currently having a moment with her Golden Globe win for feminist gore-fest The Substance; other, more garish and contagiously edgy films have edged their way into the Academy’s fray like Anora and Emilia Perez; overcostumed good guys and bad guys, giant sandworms suddenly seem a little passé. Brian De Palma’s politically difficult Vietnam film, Casualties Of War featured a performance of poisonous and brilliant intensity by Sean Penn, but the director released it in 1989, after a surfeit of Awards Season Mania for Platoon and Born On The Fourth Of July. No matter how good the film, the theme felt tired. People were ‘Nam’d out. 

Pop music is even more hyper-plugged in to what feels new or cool and what doesn’t. Culture Club were Pop Emperors in 1983, nailing some androgynous lipsticked need the public had – especially in Japan, which was experiencing an epidemic of imperial Boy George hysteria – but their chameleon had atrophied by 84 and was plugged in to life support : by the end of that year they were considered has-beens; Katy Perry, similarly, in chart terms, is now considered defunct. 

Popularity is not always easy to achieve. As with music, perfumes can be commercial hits or misses. The albeit legendary house of Rochas is a bit like that; Femme (1944),  Madame Rochas (1960), Eau De Rochas (1970 – for those in the know) and Mystère (1978 – a cult hit)  aside, no matter how many perfumes Rochas release they are never quite finger on the pulse; always slightly too late and somewhat unnecessary, or not quite what the public wants; either too future forward (Lumière, an incredibly sheer and beautiful solar beach jasmine that was simply before its time and wasn’t, to my knowledge, a hit). Yes there were mid-tier successes like Byzance (1987) a great floriental, but – though this is debatable – do weigh in- it was  no way near as to-die-for as the masterpiece it was copying, Givenchy’s Ysatis (1984). And anyone remember Globe? 

Sometimes the big houses, just like singer/artist megastars, can have bifurcated success or failure. Lady Gaga’s big ‘comeback’ single from November, ‘Disease’ was a much fêted and superproduced ‘return to form’ to the bluster and boister of Bad Romance and Applause and all the other rugged hits, and like all of her most effective earworms, it ate our brains for a few weeks until we were crying out for  surgery. But the metaphors and emotional aggression and ultrafashion in the video ultimately all felt a little forced – a  turd can always be smelled a mile off, and the song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at 27, disappearing completely from the charts the following week. ‘Die With A Smile’, the global duet with Bruno Mars which was released in August and which to me is much more of a grower (and more genuine/ emotionally accessible), on the other hand, finally reached Number One in America last week after being the world’s most popular single the entire summer.

Fragrance houses also wrestle with similar issues; will the smell, like a melody or vibe, actually resonate with the person on the street? There is never any guarantee. Much as I loathe Dior’s Sauvage personally, as you know, I do understand its core strengths in terms of theme and olfactive construction – and the way it has manifested what the mainstream populace is searching for means that the powers that be at Christian Dior – to use its eighties name – were definitely right ( for some reason this scent does speak to many; and you should see how it flies off the shelves in department stores in Tokyo – Chinese tourists making the most of the weak yen, buying in bulk – there are whole designated areas for it in-store, in all its loathsome, haggard J Depp iterations). But what, you may ask happened to ‘Joy?’ Aside the utter travesty of stealing the name of the Patou classic, this was Vileness Bottled, truly execrable, and I can’t deny a certain schadenfreude in seeing it flop – it is no longer in display in Japan as far as I can see –  because it was a chemical disaster from the pits of atrocity that no one needed to have inflicted on them as they innocently trot along the pavement – suddenly felled by an industrial migraine, parading as an aqueous and iridescent, ‘ delicate ‘ pink bloom. 

GUY LAROCHE CLANDESTINE (1986)

The fact that Clandestine was released in 1986 never fails to astound me. The whole endeavour feels so late to the party. I actually feel a great deal of tenderness for this scent – it makes me feel like a teenager going to my first school disco with early Wham! and the Human League blasting under the flashing lights with my girlfriend Jessica and her hooped earrings and pink lip gloss, all fruity and full of plum. It captures some of that excitement, yet is automatically jaded.  

The perfume feels  as though it should have been brought out in 1982, 83 at the latest. The artwork is pure Visage/ early Duran Duran – it even smells like the Rio album or even the eponymous first release, Duran Duran – not Notorious (1986), when they had lost their cool – at least in the UK and gone all Nile Rogers. Groundbreaking and mesmerizing freshness was just around the corner in the world of perfumery – the unrivalled, green orange blossom gleam of Romeo Gigli (1989)- a masterpiece of florality – which smelled so new and nineties, even before the decade had begun (the mark of true fashion instinct) – see Deee-Lite in music – not to mention the coming Calone Catastrophe in the form of Aramis New West and the rest. Eternity came out the same year as Clandestine, but it was as if the latter had been living under a rock. 

The perfume also suffers from a problem common to many from the era – a generic fust, a ‘perfumey’, ageing and very dated base note that just reeks of tired glamour.  Parfums Lagerfeld’s divine Chloé (1974) by the creator Betty Busse  – who also made a slightly anachronistic but lovely Fleurs De Fleurs (1982 – pretty and very 80’s movie secretary initially, but far dirtier than you would ever imagine in the base  – good grief, she is now having her way with Charlie Sheen under the desk ) has one of the most exquisite tuberosesque green sheens ever in its opening accords – just swoon – but always, unfortunately, ends up smelling like a pair of old tights. (I was quite excited recently at Isetan when I saw, in the Chloe Atelier Des Fleurs collection, that among their floral library, all transparent fleurs with singular, flower titles, that there was a Tuberose 1974, which was doing exactly what I wanted; to take the beauty of the top notes of the original Chloe while snuffing out the climax). Clandestine suffers from the same problem to First Chloe; wear it and you will smell forever like a teenager with one foot in the grave. It is no wonder that the still popular Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche outsold it by about ten million to one. 

COURREGES IN BLUE (1983)

In more timeless, contrast, the lagune-chic promise of the beautiful Courrèges In Blue (‘un parfum de rhythme’), created by the great Edouard Flechier ( just two years down the line the perfumer would unleash the Dior Secret Project No 2, Poison) still holds true. Like all the best perfumes, Blue holds something slightly beyond your reach;  keeping its inner mysteries intact. It is fresh, almost aqueous – a pre-aquatic – but also baroque-spicy, floraciously vivid – a whole tone of marigold up top which keeps things glinting. I proudly possess this soapy, vivacious, but still somehow demure perfume in edt and parfum (thanks Helen), and it is one of those creations whose bottle I love just looking at, as well as wearing once in a while – to just close myself off from the world and daydream. A friend of a friend at university, a somewhat cutting and moody, sybaritic blonde named Dawn, studying Art History at Queesn, who would laze about all day in satin pyjamas smoking and fretting and sending us out to buy cigarettes and sandwiches for her – looking back, she was a bit like Dianne Ladd in Wild At Heart; beautiful, self-centred, slightly daunting….Dawnting  – — but what taste in perfume! I had never smelled Balmain Ivoire or Courreges in Blue until I went to her rooms, and she always smelled gorgeous beyond belief in whichever of the two she was emanating. Like a cat near a radiator I would sit near her perfumes – she had others too, perhaps Chanels I am not sure, but I had rarely come across a situation in which a perfectly chosen duo of signature perfumes were so becoming. She smelled tasteful; sleek, but ravishing and ravishable.

Courreges in Blue is a great example of pre-mid eighties perfumery. Flowers were then bouquets; but they were getting gradually stronger and stronger – Guerlain’s Jardins De Bagatelle – also 1983 – was blindness-inducingly overconcentrated, yet still sharply seductive with the best tuberose/cedar/ musc scent trail, in history – this is, after all, the perfume I began my book with. Before that there had also been Caron’s equally delightful mandarin/ stephanotis/ vetiver/ vanilla semi-seductrice, Nocturnes (1981), which I wore today and loved. Despite superficial appearances, these perfumes were not for stiffs; some may have found them conservative but there was also a lot of sensuality beneath the starch. Courreges in Blue, similarly, has echoes of tuberose, peony, violet, orange and blossom, and predominantly rose, but a rose sharpened up like a pencil with aldehydes, blackcurrant, coriander, basil and bergamot, and that mandarin/marigold watering glitter up top that guiltily seals the deal for me,, while a spiced (clove) semi-chypric base of oakmoss, amber, patchouli and musks brings you off to the tighter, more erotic conclusion. Whenever I smell this scent, I think of a silent someone. in the most luxuriant white bathrobe, slowly opening a door of a high mirrored room to an as yet unseen other in an uptown hotel.

CREATION by TED LAPIDUS (1984) and CAPUCCI DE CAPUCCI 

(1987) 

One problem in talking about vintage perfumes is : how can you be sure you have good specimen standing there before you when you are discussing and analyzing a liquid that came out into the world over forty years ago? Is it still the scent it once was? Is it off? Has it changed in other subtle ways over the years, meaning that you shouldn’t necessarily be even talking about it? I don’t know, but both of these perfumes, at least the ones I have, smell pretty pristine to me and yet I don’t really like either of them especially – feel free to enlighten me if you have a more positive perspective. 

For whatever reason, the fuzzy tropical fruit bonanza of so many perfumes of this slightly predictable ilk – Creation is similar to Azzaro No 9 and countless others, with its shining pineapple palisades but with an extra splayed open mango salad decorating its flagrant and fluorescent florals – the scent just doesn’t speak to me. On Fragrantica, that repository of dreams, some fans describe Creation as a garden of Eden; an extremely emotionally positive fragrance, exuberant – and I can see that ( D quite liked it when he smelled it) but in the miniature I have at least there is something unbalanced in the heart – a bright alacrity and overlit quality, that to me, acts as some kind of a deterrent. 

In Woody Allen’s depressingly brilliant film Interiors (1978), a furtive and melancholy drama about neurotic, cheating intellectuals who just think too much about everything but don’t have much sense of humour, there is an unforgettably poignant, yet also somewhat bleakly hilarious, scene in which the patriarch of the family, having left his depressive artist of a wife (whose heart is completely destroyed in the process), introduces his new flame – Pearl, a doll and a very condescendingly perceived-to-be-crass older woman in a blazing red dress who finally brings a bit of colour into the muted surroundings of the family gathering  – but who totally disgusts the snobbish sisters and their ash-mouthed philandering husbands (“she’s a vulgarian” – mutters one of them under her breath). Though these perfumes hadn’t been invented yet, and you imagine that Pearl might probably have been wearing Cinnabar, or one of its lustieroff-shoots like J’ai Osé – because her obliviously gusto entry into this disfunctional family is indeed very daring; you would ideally have her wearing Giorgio Red (1989 – genius, ingredients; everything in the kitchen sink, as rich as sugo di pomodoro), though, in actual fact you suspect she may actually have gone instead for Capucci De Capucci, an Italianate, bright and brassy chypre floral with spiced carnations, an intriguing, almost manly pinch of fougere patchouli – huskily sensuous in some ways, and a touch of coconut in its mossy, generic base. It’s fine, it’s okay, it’s floral, it’s fruity, and you wouldn’t mind smelling this on a relative you meet once a year around the Christmas tree; but unlike the best eighties megaliths, it doesn’t have enough distinctiveness, sufficient originality, to be truly memorable. I am afraid that, ultimately , we are back to tired hosiery. 

COME ON IN: THE CERRUTI IS FRUITY  –  CERRUTI CERRUTI (1987)

I am a sucker for the 80’s spiced chypric fruity, and Jean Claude Delville, creator of Caron’s densely packed amber blackcurrant sandalwood cassis freakshow of a mimosa from the same year, Montaigne – love it – delivers a very competent example of the form that will please perhaps the likes of those like me who enjoy the unfettered pleasures of perfumes like Diva (Ungaro, 1983, a rose-spiced precursor to Coco by Jacques Polge). The proportions of the ingredients in the Cerruti lead to a more generic, less recognizable scent – after all, perfumes in any given decade end up copying each other to a greater or lesser degree – have you been to a Duty Free recently? – and can very often end up blending into a bit of a much of a muchness, but I do know that were some fine dame to saunter up in a fur coat drenched in Cerruti, it would lend an enjoyable twang to any evening out on the town; perfumes like this are always so sassy, gregarious, generous, and sexily self assured. 

VERDICT : 

As will probably be obvious, I do love this era, even if in truth I am not as nostalgic a person as I might seem( I go back and forth between all the eras of my life , from earliest memories, to yesterday to everything in between on a whim as we all do in our active minds and subconsciouses on a moment’s notice; it is piercing and yearnful and heartrending to let your mind go back to years in the past sometimes  – though I have no desire to live there; if there is a time I long for more than any other it’s more like 2016 than 1986 for me when life still seemed future oriented… but it’s still interesting to see those from younger generations almost cos-playing the eighties perfumes now in (semi-ironic) Dress You Up mode, purposely donning vintage scents from the decade to further decorate the package with fragrance and coolly expedite the 80’s ness.  For me, the icons speak for themselves: if they didn’t have that extra element of originality or uniqueness that separated them from the other wannabes in the fashion pack, they wouldn’t have survived until the present day. Whether in reformulated format or not, the essential DNA flesh and bones of a big commercial success – like the chord structures of a song – have to hook the interested party in some way that makes it stand out. That’s why Poison will always be Poison, and Eternity will be Eternity for eternity. You can’t UNREMEMBER these perfumes, even if you hate them. The perfumes we were looking at today, instead, are, at least in my opinion, much more forgettable – background noise — with the exception, perhaps, of the Courrèges In Blue, which I personally think is something of an undersung classic. There was a cool, greedy poise on the breeze in the eighties : and this complex, yet unruffled, chic Parisian perfume effortlessly captures that essence.

Forgive me if scroll away from the news for a moment and go back in time.

The other day I mentioned we had dinner at Justin and Setsuko’s, friends of ours for over thirty years (he and I used to teach together in London back in the early 90’s and was instrumental in persuading me to come here; my Japanese students sensed something in me and urged me to give Nihon a try (how did they know?) and by chance they now live just under an hour away near Yokohama Sea Paradise. After our Chant D’Arômes conversation, in which I said I would decant Setsuko some of that delectable sixties chypre we both treasure, and pleasedly receiving a bottle of very old Chanel Nº5 Eau De Cologne that her mother had never used – so cold and fur-coaty and different to the current versions, I must write about it some time- I got a message her the next day with a photo, asking whether I would also like another perfume she had come across at her mother’s place (she has just been moved into a care facility nearby) and which she didn’t need. It was Cerruti. And the coincidence was so strange; serendipitous. A familiar story to you, with my regular slippages, but I had noticed a rich, womanly 80’s scent coming from somewhere – was it my Elizabeth Arden Red Door rare extrait that had somehow slipped out of its box – we all know how accident prone the collection is – but, no it wasn’t quite the same; the same era, for sure; that decade’s glam and insouciance and ignorance but also the upbeatness that pervaded almost all of perfumery; spiced nectars drenched in tuberose and tropical fruits and orange blossoms and sweet musky bases the order of the day, and though so many of them at times almost merge into one – there were a lot of ‘also rans’, which is the topic of today, those scents that never quite made it; the Tiffany/s and Stacy Qs, not the the Madonnas and Cyndi Laupers that continue on in one form or another just like the bastions of eighties extant perfumery – Poison; Obsession; Beautiful; other forgotten perfumes like Cerruti, Guy Laroche’s plummy Clandestine and Ted Lapidus’ Creation have faded into obscurity, now hunted down only by the otaku on Fragrantica like myself and those souls who somehow discovered these lesser perfumes back in the day when they were kids and still cling onto them sentimentally as plumed fountains of lost youth.

It was such a bizarre coincidence though that the very scent I had been smelling in my sleep – Cerruti – and ruefully awoken to find almost emptied for whatever clumsy reason in the chaos that is my life – then realizing that the composition wasn’t quite as reductive as I thought; fuller, more nuanced – it was only a miniature but the bottle itself is so intriguing that I could see myself dabbing it on when in 80’s pop culture reverie and I was sad to see it gone – was the very perfume in question.Ha! Up pops a proper size bottle of Cerruti not much used — the very next day. What are the odds?

I am a child of the 70’s but a teenager of the 80’s. The fragrances of the Seventies were more elegant and refined, or else louche and scuzzy : the Eighties were more fun. Vibrant. Bold and brassy; saturated in colour, not nuance, and French je ne sais pourquoi. They were like giant flagships, unmistakeable (at least the Greatest Hits were; you couldn’t mistake Obsession for Loulou, nor Beautiful for Eternity; distinct to the max, these monuments had been developed for years and years in secrecy but with such artistry, precision and crowd testing that they had reached climactic perfection and were irresistible commercially); a new release in the eighties by one of the main Houses was a very big deal. Dior only released one women’s perfume in the entire decade; Poison, and it is utterly unforgettable (D got me a vintage bottle for my birthday…..I smell absurd in it; but Burning Bush can pull it off pretty well; I do enjoy just inhaling it, though, and remembering friends’ bedrooms and bathrooms and dancing to Jack Your Body in the dark: it’s just so noxious, but in a brilliant way, and nothing else smells remotely like it, even if the tuberose/spiced/fruit/musk/vanilla melody had been placed firmly in the public’s consciousness with the clamoring Dior release and took years to melt away; the legacy continuing with sexy, but inferior, hair-sprayed dressing room impostors who could never quite make their mark on you in the same way.

There were several noticeable trends back then. Patchouli was dead. Dirty musk was dead. There was no citrus (for women); if you wanted fresh and delicate in a new release back then, good luck to you (it would have been necessary to rely on one’s Ô de Lancome, Eau De Rochas, Diorella etc originally from many years before it you wanted to maintain that kind of image).

No. The domination of Opium and Cinnabar in the late 70’s had created a veritable spicebomb that continued reverberating into the eighties with Lagerfeld, Fendi, Ungaro Diva, Gucci L’ Arte et al, perhaps, most notably, top chart hit Coco De Chanel (a great little perfume, especially in extrait), while the dark mistresses of chypric leather in the ultimate conjuress form of Magie Noire led us eventually to Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum – an absolute eighties classic and unimprovable – although the mode in general in the fashion was gearing up towards brighter, more defiantly optimistic roses in the hands of Sophia Grosjman and her astonishing triad of iconoclasts; Beautiful, Eternity, and YSL Paris —-which threw a rose violet hand grenade into the stuffiness of all prior proceedings, dazzling lucently like a nest of fake diamonds. Earlier eighties roses had actually been more demure – Ombre Rose, the beautiful Armani Pour Femme I featured the other day being a perfect example, while past the 85 mark, as in pop music, things were Reaganized up into trumpeting regalia and Dallas/Dynasty levels of saturated ruched seduction; Givenchy Ysatis (amazing!) Giorgio, good heavens Samsara – things were definitely not subtle.

But look at the time.

I have to go to work.

To be continued …

(to actually be continued)

I get Perfume Posse’s posts in my mailbox. I love all the writers : the variety, the emotional openness, the weaving of life with scentology.

(The only reason I don’t often respond is the hassle of technology – all the ‘this field is required’ crap – otherwise I would be on there all the time.)

I particularly love Tom’ s passionate affection for LA and its lore, architecture, the vivid conjuring of his scented exploits in all the storied pits of Los Angeles – a city we visited once in 2004 because of consuming obsession with David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive: ( good Lord, the Beverly Hills Perfumery is somewhere I still dream of). The laconic, gently lacerating pieces he writes on the Posse are drenched in LA: I can feel them in my body, he captures its sun-shadowed weirdness so well – and it saddens me greatly to see the metropolis he has such a profound affection for now engulfed in flames.

May the fires be brought under control as soon as possible.