Sometimes you have to adjust your expectations.
I am a jasmine freak – well documented on The Black Narcissus – maybe no one thinks the flower suits me, but I do, and practically marinate myself in the stuff in the early summer months . It euphorizes me like no other perfume ingredient – a robust ecstacy that supercedes the supermarket concrete of daily banality.
I tend to go for tropical jasmine soliflores rather than the French Colonel Pinkertons with all their petty civet and unnecessary aldehydes; I just want to smell like Indonesian garlands, not pissed on pearls.
My Eclat De Jasmin has lain unused, trapped in its African wood box for many years – mainly because I didn’t take to it, but also because the spray didn’t work. The juice stayed impatiently inside until I found another usable spray from another bottle after my Armani obituary the other day – I thought I would give this jasmine another whirl.
*
Since getting back from the hospital I have been trying to get used to my new knee replacement (still not convinced with the horrible clicking and pain, but anyway), I have also been embroiled in the horrors of Japanese bureaucracy – trying to get physio from nearby hospitals rather than crunching my way halfway to Kawasaki on my orthopedic agony; off to immigration for visa renewal : trying to navigate the extreme suspicion of Japanese banks who assume you are a international money launderer if anyone sends a transfer through – with all the shite happening all around us on the news, all the time, relentless – it has been trying.
At the same time, although my body seems to be saying Neil, no more perfume for the time being as my skin is suddenly more sensitized and reactive since my post-surgical rash – I often cannot resist. Today is a literal layering of vintage Givenchy Gentleman (leather patchouli) with Dusita Douceur De Siam (a woody rose champaca) and it is perfect. Not being in artificial lighting nor fucking air conditioning, having fresh fruit and vegetables and the d and our projector and films is heaven – and I have been writing prolifically for my Japan book which I think will probably be quite dark, crazy, revelatory, and, hopefully, very funny.
In the meantime, if I am going out, even in a hospital environment, there will be at least some perfume – go strangle yourself in the toilet if you don’t like it. Particularly , inexplicably, a particularly decadent YSL Champagne in my collection I am obsessed with : the fizzing, cassissy lychee and roses over powdering rotting mosses is driving me wild : I need another bottle and kneau where to get it ( good walking practice ! Come on bitch ! Just a bit further on ya cracklin fake cartilage and Sophia Grosjman’s most peculiar and weird creation of over abundance awaits ya !)
The other day on a whim I had two sprays of Eclat De Jasmin on a whim on the other arm in tandem with Champagne for a proper test drive. What an odd one ! No classical jasmin de grasse here, nor Southeast Asian sambac: instead, this is the fruitier, but grumpier, Egyptian jasmine absolute, meddled with dark roses and an incredibly persistent, purified – almost aquatic – patchouli that coalesces – quite stylishly – into a contemporary chypre. Given my hobbling visual presence, I thought I smelled quite chic and untypical in this. I don’t know if the physio sgreed, or the commuters on the train, but bap de la bap, I don’t really care.
I am all for a bit of gauzy enigma when it comes to perfumery. On Fragrantica there are some worried reviewers warning young women not to wear Eclat De Jasmin because they might come across as power hungry, angry businesswomen – not feminine and pliant enough ( all in a similar vein of the current fascism taking over a certain nation where a pundit can get away with saying ‘Taylor Swift, shut up and submit to your husband’ or whatever he said on top of all the sick racism – fuck off !! – NEXT !!), — reason enough for a person, anyone, male or female, giraffe or unicorn, to wear a perfume like this in protest against the Encroaching Edicts That Menace. A scent that is bit an anomalous, curious, brooding, and (kind of) sensually interesting. Armani’s raison d’etre – aside amassing a massive fortune – was, ostensibly, to make elegant creations that drew you in to the mystery of another person – not just the stark chromosomes and gun totin’ oversimplifications of the current pink and blue. Fragrance should not be a furtheration of these head splitting cretinisms. It should be an expression of individuality – hanging on the air with an intriguing question mark …..your own immutable paw print.
I will be wearing it again.
It’s exciting to see you writing again. It’s ashame it took knee replacement surgery for you to wake up starving for fragrance and craving a perfume revolution. But here you are again. The writer is awake and brilliant.
He is ?
DOMO ARIGATO
Glad to hear you’re up and about!
I’m a big fan of Italian style but not Armani.
I do recall sampling the Armani Prive 1,001 Nights collection (the one in the black bottles) in the Delhi airport around 2013(?). I was very impressed with all of them, I did think they were way overpriced at the time tho.
Yay for writing! Keep those writing chops razor sharp – the flesh may be weak but the spirit is willing.
On fungal rashes: very common while taking antibiotics. While your usual bacterial flora and fauna are wiped out by the antibiotics- yeast blooms and takes over.
Coming at you from the ashes of Nepal,
Kate
I have been wondering about you – glad to see you come through ( and thanks for the medical tip).
Nepal, yes. Yet another shit show.
I hope you alright and that the country sorts itself out. We were thinking about going there.
Er, maybe not right now.
Still I would rather be there than Frumpistan
delicious, delicious – sasuga neil-san – you could write about the production of plywood and I would still be charmed and delighted.
landing at haneda next week!! so happy you are back out in the world.
we shall be a meetin’ –
– great chess move
– d is about next Saturday – as you know – perhaps hang out if that king of thing is yohrth g – I will be free, hopefully – within a month or so
come and sniff the noize
I was going to say I can’t imagine what you are going through, but in fact I can as you describe your pain and battles so well! Fascinated by your feelings about Champagne – when it was first launched I really didn’t like it, but a decade ago I suddenly yearned to smell it. Could only get it in the later iteration of Yvresse, but I liked it! Strange…our tastes do change. Hope you continue to improve and enjoy the delights of freedom and fresh air and fragrance.
Helen and I were really excited about Champagne when it came out; went to Debenhams; and were also horrified / disappointed – it felt so teeth melt and retro – and was definitely very wrong for its time
The years have seriously changed my viewpoint and now I absolutely adore it – so WEIRD – the lychee is just incredible – and my not buying the extrait at the flea market when I had the opportunity is my biggest fume regret
That parfum was extraordinaire
https://theblacknarcissus.com/2012/11/11/i-was-abducted-by-a-giant-lychee-spaceship-champagne-by-yves-saint-laurent-1991/
I lied !
Rackhams, not Debenhams !
How will you ever trust a word I say again !!!
„Quite dark, crazy, revelatory, and, hopefully, very funny“: Ooh, I‘m looking forward to reading it! We plan to visit J. next spring, so hopefully it will have been published before!
I mean … YOU won’t think so
But your perfect admonishments over my dull police chapter – which wasn’t remotely finished, just a drunken spur – are my ultimate propulsion – zero sarcasm included
I would love to meet up – and we absolutely will x
Would love to meet! I‘ll keep in touch via-à-vis our plans!
You had me giggling at “pissed on pearls”.
I sniffed Champagne when it was released, actually in Debenhams, and was rocked in horror. To me it smelled of fizzy yeast infection. Unpleasantly fermented. I have never sniffed it again.
The Armani sounds interesting but I struggle with the plight of the Egyptian pickers, exploiting vulnerable women & children.
Excellent news that you are up & about. Even better that you’re writing again.
Although I have hardly stopped – think of all our exchanges on here..
Fizzy yeast infection — YES ! So wrong ! H and I laughed it out the house – but somehow it crept back up on me
Also yes – I remember a terrible article about Egyptian jasmine pickers
I wonder how such ethical consciousness would play into all the other perfume ingredients though. Would there be anything left ? Haitian vetiver, Bourbon vanilla ..
For me it confirmed my disgust at the disconnect between the prices asked for many fragrances & the pay of the workers all along the lines of production
One of the reasons I don’t actually want to be part of the ‘luxury’ industry despite my love of perfume – the idea of all those rip off handbag manufacturers and their slave labour conditions is sickening. In truth, are any of the fashion houses exempt from this ?
Burberry still produces its check cloth & trenches in Yorkshire but has cut around a third of its workforce this year.
Mulberry handbags are still made in Somerset but the small leather goods & luggage are now made in China.
If I really want something luxe I buy used but authenticated. Saying that I haven’t done so since I retired & have sold on all that I had bar my Ginas & Choos.
As you say all luxe goods made in sweatshops aren’t actually luxe
Pissed on Pearls would be a great band name.
Hi Neil 🙂
I wish that I could have provided more moral support, even if internet acquaintances ain’t full-blossomed friendships per se.
I wrote two sketch of messages for your knee replacement, that I never posted.
(I, too, must be on some place, on a light autism without deficiency spectrum. So I kinda doubted, that a sh!tload of text would have helped.)
(I’m no doctor, but I’m quite knowledgeable about conventional medicine (French public television is good for that), and I’m handicapped by an illness of mast cells (so I’m used to juggle with lot of symptoms) ).
This message summed up to :
1° Japan is a first rank developed country, with a LOT of elderly people. So you’re in good hands, with doctors with a lot of experience.
2° An opiate might be prescribed to you.
2-a° Expect pain at night, if you don’t have opiates.
The body shut down its own anti-pain system, at a moment of the night.
(Because less endorphins are pumped by the brain, or something like that. I had a wounded ligament at the shoulder, once).
At those moments, the pain is alarmingly raw, yet it’s a normal pain.
This pain is normal when muscles and ligaments are under recovery, and self-constricting. They can feel like knife stabbing, night after night. It’s normal to lose hope in the recovery, when the healing is so painful and so slow (it takes weeks).
Regular counter medicine (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs NSAID) don’t cut the raw edge (pun unintended 😀 ) of the pain at all, at that moment of the night.
After the recovery of a few weeks, electro-stimulation (under professional surveillance) (the device looks like the fake muscle-growing gizmo) helped alleviate this pain greatly, for my wounded muscle and ligament. It dampened the self-constriction of the muscles at night, and made the muscle produce anti-pain molecules.
2-b° Opiates makes one’s shit hard.
It’s a constraint to have shit problem, when one can’t move easily. Usually physicians add an oral medicine to make one’s shit soft, but sometimes they forget to prescribe and to talk about this part about constipation. (Because you know… taboos about the anal).
An healthy diet with fiber can help.
(An apple a day ; soften dried plums in hot water ; or prescribed vegetal granules taken orally with water ; etc. ; and water obviously).
Elderly don’t grow a fondness for dried plums for nothing. Several prescriptions induce constipation. Take the advice about plums from the century-old neighbour of my grand-ma, a lively gardener. She knows her shit, so to speak 😀
2-c° With opiates, if you keep a form of addiction afterwards (on the scale of months), don’t hesitation to speak to a specialist, .
If your family has add issue with addictions, it’s a hint that you could have a higher odd of getting addicted.
Prescribed opiate are not that different from illegal drugs, and it’s the social insertion in society of the patient (family, work, passions…), that makes regular people have more success with the withdrawal, and makes them less likely to struggle with an on-going dependency with prescribed opiates.
3° The recovery is slow, and the benefit are very gradual. It takes numerous weeks.
It’s OK to loose hope, at some moments of some days. Ask for help from friends, and maybe health professionnal, to keep your moral afloat.
4° You already recovered from surgery on your legs, in the past. That’s another good point.
Former surgeries give a good hint to doctors, on how your body deals with cicatrization and recovery. Cicatrization can vary a lot from one person to another. It’s a form of injustice, when one thinks of it.
Doctor can forget to tell you, that they weight the expected good result, and the “benefit / risk” ratio of doing the operation or not, depending on your alleged ability to heal.
Also, there is a very small proportion of people that have articulation problems, because the DNA of their collagen is shit, and they have had repeated inflammatory problem to articulations since the dawn of their life. (I summarize to the point of caricature).
Those, who fall into the diagnosis of “fibromyalgia”, are expected to get bad results from such surgery. Fibromyalgia” is a one-size-fit-all diagnosis, and a blind spot of modern medicine. Some doctors are making out of fibromyalgia a category for unproven EDS, Ehlers–Danlos syndromes. Because their articulation problems comes from bad collagen and inflammatory onset, because they recover poorly from surgery because of the collagen issue, and because the onset of inflammatory problems to articulations will keep on happening, then surgery doesn’t really help. (And doctors are not prone to admit explicitly, that nowadays medicine and themselves are near powerless, towards some illnesses).
If you don’t fall into this diagnosis, the bone doctors really know what they’re doing, and they can do a lot.
Hi again ! 🙂
About the grandiflorum jasmine, not the sambac one, I read bad news on this topic in the last months. The allowed percentage in the end product is dismal.
As an amateur, I learnt that IFRA restricted the use of its absolute from 0,60 to 0,70 % in the end product, depending of the source that I read. For Sambac, it’s about 4%. I use both ScenTree and TheGoodScentCompany for that purpose. *
I get my dose of jasmine from old “Arpège”, “Joy” EDT, “Femme” PDT, and “N°5”.
I think that they are mostly grandiflorum jasmine. Those brands prided themselves for their sourcing of high-grade jasmine natural extract, and it usually meant grandiflorum jasmine. And maybe those compositions are gone, if no tricks exist with synthetics.
I miss the peachy opening and clove phenolic aspect of the former grandiflorum. The eugenol and phenolic aspect are almost metallic, like the taste of zinc oxyde, from the products of teeth doctors. I miss its sense of density, almost of oiliness. The present composition, with sambac jasmine, are mostly treated in a transparent and luminous showcase.
Long story short, maybe you’d be better off buying directly grandiflorum jasmin absolute, if you dilute it with care.
I’d like to bring forward a factoid : There is almost no such thing, as an essential oil of jasmine. Only the absolutes exist.
For jasmine, there is no practice of an natural extraction by water distillation. It would have lead to an essential oil of jasmine and to a floral water of jasmine. It’s likely that the result would smelled bad, and the yield from the extraction would have been disastrous.
In the history of perfume and science, engineers jumped from jasmine enfleurages, to downright light solvent distillation giving waxy concretes giving absolutes. That’s odd, but that’s the truth).
On the same topic, you might be detecting patchouli absolute, with its leaner silhouette, compared to the mostly used patchouli essential oils.
It’s been used to structure chypre, as a replacement for oakmoss, among other ingredients. I see it as a sort of flower-shop green sponge : One can stuck flowers and branches in it, to build huge flower bouquets.
But either the patchouli absolute nor the green sponge has real appeal to me otherwise.
You could try to smell “Illusion captive 1896” from the Lalique “noir premier” range, if you spot it for cheap, or can try it for free in Tokyo.
(When I can, I buy a spare bottle for 100-160€ on the second-hand market. The retail price is exaggerated at 310€. Only the 100ml volume makes it worth it, on the second-hand market. Bonus, nifty bottle).
It’s a beautiful transparent sambac jasmine, with a hue of a hidden rose, with an apricot-y side (osmanthus? mimosa?), then a fig leaf and light citrus and Ceylan cinnamon transparency, on a chyprish patchouly absolute of no great interest. But the first half of the music is alluring on fabrics! I like its complexity. (And the added dry-down have no flaws either, no overdose of bad woody-amber detected).
“Illusion captive” is a perfected medley of the other perfumes of the range, that are rather average otherwise, for niche perfumes at niche prices. Mainly, it adds the expensive flowers and a fig accord, to the spicy mulled-wine and rum effect of “Fleur universelle 1900” (rum, rose, spices, immortelle flowers, amber leaning on myrrh and using as few vanilla as possible).
It’s funny that your bottle of “Éclat de jasmin” had a stuck spray.
At my home, it’s my bottle of “Champagne”, that is stuck. I hope, that the issue is about the head of the spray, that would be replaceable, compared to a damaged pump.
(It’s a former 50ml extrait tester paid 85€, and indeed, it has a freesia accord, with natural extract of mimosa, and some of the neon pink blue of some 80ies rose accord. I could share some photo, if you want to increase your chance at spotting a similar tester bottle).
“Champagne” reminded me, of how “Champs-Elysée” uses real natural extract of mimosa, and has a freesia accord endeavor to it.
I get my fix of mimosa absolute from “Montaigne” extrait from Caron.
The reissue of 2017 (urn bottle) (haven’t tried the EDP) and the actual version in the current bottle are excellent.
Just an advice, mimosa absolute works better on fabric, to my mind. It’s an ingredient that lasts long. And my skin kinda kills white flower absolutes, and makes most compositions loose their balance.
Jasmine, orange blossom absolute, mimosa, all wadding in a long-lasting white sandalwood : an enduring pleasure, specially while sleeping.
“Tanagra” from Maison Violet, is the best well-rounded freesia accord that I came across lately.
Nathalie Lorson has fashioned something lovely and well-rounded out of a mediocre theme. It’s a sort of… “Infusion d’homme” by Prada (clementine, iris, transparent base of cedar and white musks) veered toward a small neon rose, with a hint of pear, maybe natural mimosa, and some vanilla pod absolute.
Their “Compliment” reminds me of “Songes EDP”, for the vanilla pod absolute, jasmine load, real monoï fragrae flower and a hint of tuberose, all wrapped and balanced perfectly. It’s not miles away from her “Love tuberose” for Amouage.
Éclat de jasmin
I had bought back a booklet, made for the sales assistants of the Armani privé line.
I find it interesting, because it gave pieces of information on the first generation of perfumes, for this line.
My favorite have disappeared, like “Ambre soie”. I have a bottle of “Cuir améthyste” that is quite good, close to “I miss violet” from Duchaufour for The Different Company. And I’m not sure that Bois d’encens smelled the same, once it’s been repurposed in a glass bottle instead of the original wood case with 50ml refills ** . (My old partial glass bottle of “Bois d’encens” has a strong radish note. The olibanum and pink pepper CO² absolute has been done to death since, and with the radish note I’m reminded of wasabi for sushi instead of church 😀 ).
The original line had a theme, about a reduced choice of ingredients (number listed), with a “cost no object” to it, being gifts from Armani to close relatives or to himself. The original retail prices made them near unattainable for most perfumelovers.
I translate.
Éclat de jasmin
Nez : [late] Laurent Bruyère
20 ingredients
Olfactive family : floral
Sublimated note : jasmin absolute from Egypt [I’d say it has the grandiflorum one]
The notes that are around :
Bulgarian rose and osmanthus : reveal smooth and metallic tonalities, reheated by a touch of amber.
Labdanum and vetiver : duality of labdanum’s balsamic warmth and the slightly smoked moist of vetiver roots, for a facette with an asserted character.
Key words : voluptuous, sensual, generous, intoxicating.
Gesture : vaporise around the head and the shoulders.
“The composition, precise and peculiar, is akin to haute couture.”
About women versus conservative opinion leaders :
Proper women go to heaven, the others go wherever they want 🙂
* (Both ScenTree and TheGoodScentCompany are excellent sites. And they’re free. But the TheGoodScentCompany is plagued by a bad search engine. I hate when that happens.
Instead of the website’s own search bar, I use the regular search engines of the web. For example, I use the tool “site:” and what I search, on Google or Duckduckgo. And it works wonder.
For exemple : ” site:https://www.thegoodscentscompany.com/ jasminum grandiflorum “.
** On the photo of your article, you have the glass bottle, the second issue of the Armani privée line, not the original wood case.
On the original wooden case with 50ml refills, there was no golden medallion with the name on the bottle itself. (Only the case of the bottle had the medallion). I point this detail for the reader who would like to hunt second-hand bottle.
I spotted a seller for refills in France month ago, but at 60e for 50ml apiece, I was hesitant to pick the two “Éclat de jasmin”, “Eau de jade” (the over-glorified cologne), and “Pierre de lune” (an iris that is a bit sour because of cassia absolute), because I prioritized the hefty ones.
If I now that you are interested by refills of “Éclat de jasmin”, I will endeavor to stash those two refills, knowing that someone I know might be interested in them.