Monthly Archives: November 2025

I have been very intrigued to smell Tonka Latte. For a number of reasons. Firstly, I love tonka, vanilla, and almonds. Secondly, I couldn’t quite imagine how Dusita perfumer Pissara Umavijani would pivot from her usually intense, woody, fresh green tropicalia + floral delectalia; the weirdness of a perfume like the enigmatic, complicated Pavillon D’Or with its odd combination of mint, thyme, boronia, honeysuckle, oak; or the husky depths of another favourite, Montri with its saffron, dried fruits, nutmeg, oregano, cinnamon, petitgrain and coriander and a whole fangled list of other sensual ingredients that I like to combine with my favourite perfume from her collection, the divine Douceur De Siam- champaca, rose de mai, frangipani, Thai woods – for a full throated spiced rose duality – and still come out icecreamy.

Put simply, I couldn’t help but wonder: would she overegg the pudding?

How on earth would a Dusita gourmand turn out to be?

Might there be, if she chose to overorchestrate, extraneous woods and patchouli, oud lying somewhere unwanted beneath the souffléd whip, ruining the simplicity of the concept of a comforting, honey latte? And would the honey itself, often an intensely problematic note for a lot of people, Duncan especially, who hates it in perfume (it can go sour, urinous, clingy, sweaty very easily; intrinsically ruinous) be an ultimate dealbreaker?

In short, if we are talking about a perfume whose notes include milk, honey, almonds, white chocolate, caramel, and vanilla – could this thing not end up sweet to the point of dental emergency?

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It is anything but.

I love this.

One of those perfumes I was born to wear.

Completely delicious, not cloying – just extraordinarily charming and soothing.

And I am very glad I waited for the opportunity to smell it in unexpected circumstances. The perfumer herself – like a luminous phantôme from the dark – came to our house on Friday night. It was a cold, fresh, starry late November night, and absolutely ideal for a nuzzlesome gourmand. In Tokyo for various promotional events for Tonka Latte in tandem with Nose Shop, I had asked her over for a quick bite and survey of my vintage perfume collection before heading out to our local station Ofuna later on for a rerun of of last year’s excellent Ginza karaoke experience.

I can’t possibly walk up and down our hill at the moment. So D went down, after work, to pick her up from the entrance of the Engakuji temple, one of the most important Zen temples in Japan, and a lovely contrast from the neon whirlwind of Tokyo : the best thing about where we live is the darkness and quiet, the towering confiers, the second you get off the train. You breathe in the starry starry night and smell the trees, reconfigurate yourself for a second- even though just 45 minutes earlier you were in the heart of the biggest urban metropolis in the world.

When they arrived at our house, P breezed in smelling almondy and lovely – at first I thought she was perhaps a wearing a Chanel exclusif like Comète. Although there are no flowers in Tonka Latte, there is still an overal floral delicacy to the composition, a surprising freshnes. The second she sat down at the kitchen table, falling in love with our cat and she handed me a flacon of the new perfume, I sprayed it on the back of my hand and immediately said oh my god Olivia needs this right NOW –

(O and I first met at my Perfume Lovers London presentation on vanilla perfumes in 2014 or so and we both share a love of Yves Rocher’s beautiful Noix De Coco – a perfume I picked up once in Mexico City and declared, perhaps overambitiously, to be the best perfume ever made – and with which Tonka Latte shares some cuteish similarities.) The confectioner-ish gratification you get from a well made almond croissant served with a honeyed hot milk drink on the coldest of winter days and momentarily lose your troubles, sinking instead, into the cosier, more internal,present moment. On occasion, I sometimes like to have a Tully’s Coffee Honey latte when am feeling my physical or emotional temperature dropping too much on a difficult day, and even though honey is sometimes just that little bit too sweet for my overall taste (at other times I will admit I can just eat it straight from the jar like a grizzly bear, Winnie style): this perfume fulfills a similar need – it is a perfume you can truly cosy up to.

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But, just how sweet, in actuality, is this thing, I hear you ask?

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Ok. It is true, that if you put your nose right up to the source, a slight worrying of your front enamel might occur; you can feel the sugar. But then again that’s the whole idea behind this experience – a sweet indulgence. And the reason I like this one so much is that nothing feels overdosed here; it is a tonka bean vanilla perfume with a pronounced almond feel, and an ethereal miel up top that feels necessary- it wouldn’t be the perfume it is if you took out the bees. What is nice is that there are no bludgeoning vulgarities, as there are in so many less dignified gourmands, when the heaviness of elephants on the pull makes you gag in a British pub on a Friday night an clueless surrounders sicken you with their predictable synthetic sickeningness. Providing you get the dosage right – too much could be too much – Tonka Latte is much more of a private concern; it floats perceptibly in the air around, but has a very soft and cute, anchoring quality as well. The dry down is a long lasting benzoin-touched vanilla, slightly powdery, that lasts for hours. On the evening we met I was wearing my favourite combination of the recent Guerlain Vetiver Parfum layered with a vintage sixties Shalimar edt – they complement each perfectly;on the right wrist I splurged on a couple of sprays of Tonka Latte- and it was delicious to alternate between the two wrist universes, as the singing and revelry progressed.

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On Saturday afternoon, there was a Nose Shop-produced event at a posh space in Akasaka for forty attendees who would be able to meet the founder of Dusita in person; buy signed bottles, and be guided through her fragrances in tandem with a simultaneous translator. I had told her that, unfortunately, I would probably not be able to go. My physio has told me that the reason my knee is still so swollen after three and half months post surgery is that I am doing too much walking: D was to go on my behalf instead, as he did last year for a Frassai event up at a different event space in Tokyo. I was to lay supine, do some stretches, and ice my prosthetic – I mean limb. And that had been the plan in the taxi queue on Friday night. When I woke up though, after such a fun night at karaoke in Ofuna, I simply could not bear to spend another day alone (loneliness has become a real thing this year; I have realized my limits to solitude and am looking forward to going back to work – something I never thought I would ever say: I like my own company, but only up to a point.) No. F it! I wanted to be with D,; I wanted to meet P again, and I wanted to talk about perfume. I wanted to be there.

I decided to go.

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N: We only just got up in time.

D: Karaoke hang over!

N: Glad we did, though: it was another really good day out.

How was my Tonka Latte on the train? How did it come across? Were you induced into a slow sugar coma?

D: No, it was more a macaron halo.

N: A gorgeous way of putting it. That is how I experienced it as well.

D: I went out as a blank canvas for what the day would bring.

N: And came back smelling nicely of Issara, your favourite perfume from her line and one that is also apparently one of the three most popular fragrances sold at both the Tokyo and Paris boutiques. This was the first perfume she created and the initial scent she discussed at the presentation, saying that it represented freedom for her. Why is that, do you think? And how do you feel wearing it? I love it on you actually.

D: Well, I took to it instantly the first time I smelled it. It is very serene and ‘together’ for me. Though very different, it has a similar effect as my other two staples, Pu’er Tea by One Day and Beads by Comme des Garçons. It has an autumnal feel.

N: It’s very smooth, and as you say, quite a tranquil scent (to me it is almost a less cluttered Paco Rabanne Pour Homme, as if it had finished womanizing and gone up to heaven). There is quite a lot of white musk in there, which predominates for me, but also that green freshness Pissara was talking about at the event.

D: Ah yes, I am such a sucker for musk. I love what it does to scents: the velvet melt. I feel that Issara effortlessly gets there without trying too hard. That is a sort of freedom isn’t it?

N: On me it would be an albatross, as I don’t like musk on my skin – but it does emanate from your person beautifully. I naturally gravitate towards hugging you in scents like these. One potential sticking point for me is that there is a top note of clary sage, which I have an extraordinarily deep aversion to, particularly in ultra high dosage as it is in another best seller from Dusita, Erawan (and which I will come back to in a minute); in Issara it is tempered with sage and pine needles, fresh green notes, vetiver, and works as a beautiful prelude to the mossier finish.

D: Oh all those fine ingredients and grounding vetiver – I think Issara has a warm timbre whereas Erawan is cooler more smoky and more masculine in that Modern Man way – though Issara is also definitely masculine to me. I don’t mind clary sage – though I seem to remember in our younger days diffusing it in an oil burner whilst drinking wine seemed to engender some psychedelic after effects!

N: Not ‘after-effects’. It was an immediate, psychotropic hit – aromatherapy manuals warn against using this essence while imbibing; I thought it was a load of bull until I realized we physically couldn’t get up from the sofa. On another occasion, as Emma will unfortunately remember, it made me quite aggressive. Something in me is intolerant to clary sage: because of these two weird experiences, I am hypersensitive to the smell of it now and thus can only smell clary sage when I smell Erawan. Potential customers at Dusita boutiques, though, presumably not all aromatherapists – it is one of the most popular – smell it entirely differently; like green tea, like the junglish lushness Pissara intended. Stimulating, strange. And it is green, bracing- and who knew there was a note of white cacao in the base? Not my cup of tea, although I do have to say though that I think it is an original perfume, which is presumably why it won a FIFI ‘breakthrough’ award when it was launched.

D: Yesterday, it was intriguing to learn about Montri – named after her father – and how the plush aspect of the scent was owing to his love of L’heure Bleue (which he apparently bought bottles of all the time) with its violet-to-end-all-violets effect. It made perfect sense when she was telling us as we sniffed it. That is the great thing about these in-person events, you can get insights you wouldn’t otherwise get.

N: I agree. And it all brings home once again how deeply subjective perfume appreciation is. As a scent was being discussed, staff were passing out scent strips, and it was very interesting to me to see how the audience, all Japanese aside ourselves and Pissara’s Thai friend and son (who we had a fantastic izakaya evening out in Shinjuku with afterwards) reacted, or didn’t react – Japanese people being famously good at concealing their emotions. I could still sense, though, when a particular perfume was or wasn’t going down as well as another one – at least I thought I could. You could feel ripples of appreciation when Rosarine – which I got a new understanding of, it really is very rosy, and Japan loves roses, was distributed, and La Douceur De Siam, which I don’t think was part of the original schedule but was passed out to the audience after you asked a question about Thai perfume culture.

D: Yes, you can sense that ripple as you say. I asked about Thai perfume culture/traditions and Pissara pointed out that because of the climate, Thai people never mixed scent with alcohol, but rather had a culture of flower water – different tropical macerations which were used to scent everything from robes to food to babies.

N: Melodie De L’ Amour, an extrait de parfum of intense white flowers and fruit notes – was beautifully described in its Thai inspirations; Pissara’s father, a wandering poet, had not always been ‘vocally affectionate’ in saying his I love yous, but had expressed his love in other ways that she intuitively understood; Melodie was therefore created as an expression of olfactive emotional exuberance without using words; the love you can feel from the smell of a beautiful flower emitting its odour in a vase in an empty room. This perfume was, in fact, the first time I ever heard about Dusita the brand, as my Belgian friend Catherine had discovered it earlier and was so passionate about it and put me onto Pissara (thanks,C): to me, this is the strongest and most overtly tropical of all the perfumes, to a point that goes way beyond my own capabilities – I will never quite understand this one, but it was fascinating to be standing next to the perfumer herself as she said that in fact it had been inspired by Fracas. After hearing that, I delved into the floral mania one more time and could feel the tuberose inspiration. This one really is only for white hot white floral lovers who can deliver the requisite sultry, though. Neither I nor Burning Bush can pull this off.

D: I’m surprised that you don’t just swoon in submission given that you love a tuberose blockbuster ordinarily – Fracas, Bubblegum Chic etc.

N: I can honestly imagine being floored by the right woman – let’s face it, this one is going to be a woman – walking into a room wearing Melodie De L’ Amour; it is extraordinarily sensual and sexy and I am dying to smell it on someone else – but this is not just tuberose, it is gardenias, jasmine, champaca, peach – and some indefinable animalic woodiness in the base that makes me want to run a mile. It is a knock out – but with perfume, you don’t necessarily want to be rendered unconscious.

D: Well sometimes you do! Regarding the talk, it was also fun to learn about Pissara’s process with the storytelling and water colour illustrations she makes to accompany each scent (that appear on the packaging) – and that she was a self-taught perfumer. She also later told us about her sudden decision after a couple of years as a medical administrator to quit her safe stable job and emigrate to Paris with the dream of becoming a perfumer. Her friends at the time were surprised she would ditch a good job for a pipe dream – but her friend, Mol, said that knowing Pissara, she wasn’t in the least surprised – and I guess there was the example of her father, writer and poet, whose is often quoted in her work, especially: “It’s true that a man should not give in to the dream; but without it what is life?”

It was fun to hang out with her, because she is so curious and open and life-affirming. In the restaurant after the event I thought she looked like Billie Holiday – she just needed a gardenia.

N: This is why, swollen leg tissue be damned, it would have been so boring if I had just stayed at home dithering by myself when I could have been out with your discovering all these new things (but, I will also say, that seeing that poem again, it really did cut me to my quick: it seemed to encapsulate our whole life ; trying to balance the innate hedonism we have and the desire to go into the dream so easily we fall into, vs embracing the mundane, which neither of us have ever been good at tolerating at all…..)

But anyway. Indeed, next time we do karaoke, and that is guaranteed, there will certainly be more jazz standards – you put in Nature Boy into the machine for me to sing, which almost made me cry as I did so (“the greatest thing, you’ll ever learn, is just to learn, and be learned in return” – so true) and she sang Unforgettable later on in the night (P and I erupted into Don’t Explain in the izakaya in impromptu fashion when Billie Holiday’s name came up). I love discovering shared loves like this; we were both practically collapsing and screaming when our mutual love of Ang Lee’s Lust Caution came up in the conversation- a film I know you also adore –

D: – oh one of the best films of this century – so tightly wickedly intense – and the chemistry between the mains is a master class of acting. Maybe Pissara should work on Lust Caution, the scent!

N: What an idea……I wonder what it would smell like………… Funnily enough, Lust Caution is also one of the films that Dariush/ Persolaise and I go nuts talking about; forget Life Of Pi, Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger – pffft, whatever ,- you don’t often hear about Lust Caution in cinema conversations even though it won at Venice, but the buildup, the emotion, in that film, all the repressed and then released emotion, the betrayal, and yes, the lust, in this film. The absolute mastery all raoun. . Oh my goodness. It is like none other. Erotic A F.

But again – takes a breath of fresh air – back to subjectivity.

P’s Thai/Japanese guests, Mol and son, are completely obsessed with The Godfather, to the point they did pilgrimages to the filming sites in Sicily the way we did to the Scarface locations in Miami back in the day, as we found out to our great pleasure as they were guzzling on revolting looking crab brains and fish eggs and necklaces of ultra green seaweeds and sashimi and all the other things the Brits Couldn’t Eat at the izakaya: they both seemed quite scandalized that I vastly prefer Michael Corleone to Vito; and that I dare to like Part III as much as I do (it is possibly my favourite of the trilogy and I will argue you to the death to defend my decision if you need me to do so). Everything is subjective: perfume particularly; I love good natured ‘arguments’ like this, when enthusiasms bust up against other enthusiasms; Mol definitely smelled best in Splendiris – ” so fresh! ” which goes dull and flat on me, and her son smelled great in Rhapsodie Noire, which he had cleverly decided to layer with Tonka Latte to very instinctively pleasing effect – but I can’t personally do anything remotely resembling a classic fougère – I think I might have ManPhobia; and yet, after Pissara had passed this one round and talked of its influences in smoky Parisian cafes, at the end of the event a young woman bought a bottle of Rhapsodie and said yes, she had been on holiday in Paris and this perfume really had actually reminded her of the smells she had encountered there – to me, it is a well crafted, licorice-y, lavender masculine; to this other person, it plunged her right back into some personal memories I will never be a part of: hence the myriad possibilities of perfumery, the way it really can touch people in entirely individual ways.

And speaking of private experiences, and the tales that lie behind them, many of the backstories to the perfumes in the Dusita collection are connected to quite esoteric experiences – I once interviewed Pissara for my review of Pavillon D’Or, which you sometimes wear and which pulsates slowly from your person in a rather beautiful fashion; in the piece she and I talk about her love of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasthukul – who, she told us last night, she had lunch with once in Paris, omg-

D: — I know. Amazing. Would love to chat with him. Tropical Malady is another in my top five films of the century! I can see why she would have met him though.

N- They both definitely have a lot of mystique…(not to mention Mystère: P’s reaction to some of my treasures, some of which I have duplicates and can live without, means that she will be taking a bottle of the mulchy darkness that is Rochas’ most unusual ever perfume back home to Paris in her suitcase- smelling the original Balmain Jolie Madame she proclaimed, ‘oh my god, it’s alive………’)

But in any case, going back to Tonka Latte -probably now my favourite of all her perfumes – this will be a staple – but still, during all the rambunciousness in Shinjuku, I made the dumb mistake of saying, later in the proceedings, that compared to some of the other more ethery inspirations, the perfume, even the name itself – seems perhaps simpler, even dare I say it, simplistic (which certainly hasn’t stopped it from becoming a viral hit, sold out everywhere in Japan and elsewhere it would seem, totally understandably as she has nailed this accord ). But I think this is one of the reasons I was so desperate to smell it: the whole project feels like a next step, like going out on a limb: the first gourmand, the first without an obviously ‘poetic’ title, and I found all of this inspiring. Like film makers, novelists, musicians, anyone, it sometimes it is necessary to take a break, if you have the luxury to do so; take in new stimulations; move to the next stage of your creative development. Dusita’s previous release – aside the limited edition Budapest only release, Blue Danube, had been Pelagos, a fresh green aromatic marine that she had spent two years working on – understandably, also a big hit at the Paris boutique; but then there had been very big life changes and she needed to stop and take stock for a while, to intuitively decide what the next direction would be.

At the talk, where Tonka Latte was the final perfume to be discussed, she told the audience about the profound experience of motherhood; the skinship and beautiful overwhelm of the feeling she was trying to capture here; the desire to just retreat under the blankets or duvet sometimes with a hot drink with your baby or your beloved dogs; just zone out in a cafe and hoover up some cakes to block out the blues outside. And that, in essence, is hardly a banal subject of conversation.

It can’t all be Thai pagodas and ravenous lagoons.

D: Yes, Laotian princesses can’t be transforming into catfishes at every turn; people need hot milk and cashmere, too.

‘Tis the time for gourmands. If not now, when ?

A sample of Francesca Bianchi’s latest deep confection, Once Upon A Time, arrived in the post the other day, just as the temperatures were dropping correctly in readiness for it.

My first reaction : familiarity. There have been a lot of dusky, musky, orrissy/ oudhy amber orientals of late in the perfumer’s own line, as well as in the overtly erotic fragrances she creates for saucy Amsterdam leather-maker Hedonik : famed for her quality materials and long-lasting, figure-hugging base accords, even when in less experimental mode – as she arguably is here, settling into her tried and tested, leathery laid vanillisms, I nevertheless usually enjoy her protracted plushness; the slow burn and tactility of the thick balsams she loves to generously smear into her drydowns ( my brother and partner went crazy for one of the perfumer’s biggest hits – a viscous, patchouli – vanilla – Sticky Fingers, as an example – the woman is undoubtedly something of a temptressy Amber Alchemist).

My second reaction to this perfume – despite a slight aversion to the palpable castoreum note immediately apparent to me on first spray – I am quite sensitive to beavery animalics – was one of those sniff, sniff, keep sniffing addictive responses : the perfumer often displaying a knack for nailing a particular, cravy feeling, a calorifically heavy tug on the thalamus. I am quite dismissive with perfumes I don’t like immediately – this one plagued, troubled and slightly annoyed me in its apparent oversimplicity at first, but then it greedily lodged itself in its own special nook, in a specific part of my brain.

Once Upon A Time is mooted as an ‘Adult Gourmand’, presumably alluding to the musk, patchouli and castoreum underlaying what is otherwise a child-like delight of sugared almonds, vanilla, candy floss and a delicious streak in the top notes of pure mandarin; there is a darkness here that shadows the puff puff chinchillas of the general angelics.

The whole comes together rather huskily and smooth; one spray fills the room (“Blimey that’s sweet, isn’t it?! said Duncan on approaching the bedchamber), and it is; this is heady stuff, and certainly not one for a meeting in an enclosed room with your tax accountant.

But it is also very nuzzly and huggy; gap-filling : good gourmands are comfort scents – they take you to a sugar guzzling refuge of white chocolate bunny rabbits and the childhood luxury of not quite realizing how hard the world is going to be in the long term future; – and this was Bianchi’s explicit aim : to soothe your red-raw nerves; create that thick, cortisol-sapping cocoon, and let you luxuriate in it.

(Silver Walk. Rose Strang 2022)

The Perfume Papers.

GUEST POST BY ROSE STRANG

Firstly, many thanks for having me on your blog again Neil. 

During the wintry quiet months of January and February this year I decided to write, rather than paint, scenes and characters inspired by perfume. This led to a book called The Perfume Papers. Volume One – a book of short stories inspired by perfume. 

I’ll dive straight in with a painting (see Silver Walk, above), then a fragment from a short story so you’ll see what I mean …

Sýko (excerpt)

“She looked away, still smiling, as though she was still amused by something. At least she no longer cried, but she got up and walked off, picking figs from the trees and collecting them in a fold of her silk dress. She walked to an old crumbling wall in the sun and placed the figs on it, formed them into a triangle and turned to me. Then, still looking at me she held out her arm and pointed away from us, down the valley towards the sea.”

 And here, the rainy Highlands …

(Through Kintail. Rose Strang 2020)

And in words ….

Northern Star (Excerpt)

“Driving back to the village, I stopped and got my thoughts in order. How would I tell Duncan? Appropriately, the weather was dreich, the sound of water everywhere – gushing white cataracts tumbled down the rockfaces, clouds obscured the mountain tops, rain drops hung like tears in the auburn ferns. I couldn’t cry though. I didn’t know what I felt.

Nearing the cottage, there was the scent of a fresh-lit peat fire. Duncan was home. A deep breath, and in I went …”

Excerpts from The Perfume Papers. 

To explain more; these stories were created because I wanted to lose myself in imagination, as a break from painting, which is what I do as a profession, since doing something creative professionally can get really pressured. 

I took small ideas from the perfumes; snow, say, or figs. Then I played around with them in my head, letting them steep … 

Often, a character would just walk into view, fully formed! Then I wanted to see their thoughts and what they felt.

The perfumes themselves I already love, but I always wanted to write about perfume in a way that shows how emotionally meaningful it can be. My concern is that people (publishers for example) might see perfume stories as frivolous because they perhaps haven’t lived the fact that perfume can be emotionally meaningful or evocative. 

I think that anyone who reads these stories will immediately understand that perfume is a doorway into something deeper. From the inspirational spark of perfume I’m writing about love, trauma, survival, and the healing power of art, for example.

So these are universal human experiences. The perfume is the catalyst, the memory trigger or the sensory anchor.

We know how perfume works in human memory and emotion, it’s generally understood as the most primal sense, directly connected to the limbic system. A whiff of something can transport you decades back, which is neurologically profound!

When I think of the ideal reader, it might be someone like my mum, or some of my close female friends, who’ve really enjoyed these stories. I know the collection will probably appeal most to women, but my partner Adam – and some of my male friends – have equally enjoyed the stories. My concern is that the publishing world might shove them clearly into ‘women’s fiction’!

These stories are also literary fiction which happen to have a unifying thematic element (perfume). They span centuries and continents – Renaissance Italy, Mughal India, 1940s Paris, 1990s England. And they explore power, trauma, class, love, survival, beauty. Not a narrow category at all.

I’ve now written fifteen and there are many more I’d like to create. Being a bit ambitious, I’m now en route to getting them published, at which point I can release all the stories in their entirety in the form of a book.

https://substack.com/@rosestrang

In the meantime,I can’t give away too much before the stories get published, but I can show little excerpts, or fragments. Here are a few (feel free to guess the perfume 😊) …

Unbreakable (excerpt)

“One day she asked if the wall-climbing rose was thriving. Perhaps it was wrong of him, but he exaggerated its demise a little.

It had the desired effect.

First, she rose in the morning and took breakfast with them on the terrace. She was still so weak, so he was glad she took her time. Then each day she wandered slowly around the garden, examining, touching each plant. The papers wanted to speak with her, and some friends from the Resistance, but he turned them all away. This time was so fragile – she needed protection.”

A Cool Head (excerpt)

‘WHAT the actual f— Phew. Oh God!’ Mathilde emerges from a roiling sea of scarves.

Thinking ahead, Trudi has already brought down their hand luggage from overhead lockers, stored it on her lap and on the extra seat that Mathilde has booked in case she wants to stretch out (or even worse, in Trudi’s experience, invite over and chat up a random male passenger en route).

As they descend into Linz Airport, Mathilde’s hand clamours for her.

‘Oh God, bring me my, in my, my … for fuck’s sake, Trudi, get my eucalyptus oil.’”

Daffodils in the Snow (excerpt)

“Patches of snow cling to the grass verges even now. It’s almost twilight as she steps carefully across the muddy field. The wood hut beckons with its plume of smoke from the stove and firelight in the window. She hurries, worried he won’t be there because if she’s late he’ll go home. She doesn’t want that tonight since he’s the only one she’d say goodbye to.

In haste, she steps on the tiny daffodils that line the verge. Cold as it is she bends down, begins to straighten them. Aach it’s okay, they’re tough. She walks on, pushes open the wood door without knocking.”

In the Wolf’s Mouth (excerpt)

“Isabella pulls her coat tight against the icy, damp air, grateful for the plush wool that drapes warmly over her shoulders. Maybe she should stay inside her hoteltill evening, but the over-heated air in there can be so dry at this time of year – like being in a rest home. Not very poetic.

She inhales gently and deeply – breathes in a tiny snowflake … now that is poetic!

The slap of water against stone announces the arrival of her taxi. There’s no need for it really, she could walk but she wants to continue in this floating mood – if only she can avoid any dissonant encounters on these busy streets.”

~ ~ ~

And that’s it for now, there are many more! Many thanks again Neil, and thanks to everyone for reading! I’d love to know what you think here in the comments. 

Does anyone else write stories about perfumes? Maybe an anthology could be in the works?

visual artist ( https://rosestrangartworks.com/ ) 

perfume writer ( https://substack.com/@rosestrang)

The anti-foreigner sentiment in Japan is getting out of hand.

I had quite an unpleasant experience on Friday night .

Ironically, three of us had got together – ageing expats, two Brits and an American – to catch up and specifically lament the current environment in Japan where a xenophobic tinge is becoming more mainstream and palpable; the fact that so many long term non-Japanese residents of this (still fascinating) country are coming to the sobering realization that Nihon simply DOESN’T WANT THEM and never did. A point most clearly illustrated by the number of people I know who are currently being chased for back payments of the nationally mandated pension and health insurance requirements for visa extensions in the country that they thought they had been paying out of their monthly salaries, only to find that their companies had deliberately not being paying them all along, keeping them on renewable six month visas or on teaching schedules with just few enough hours in week to allow the company to think of these employees as ‘temporaries’ – and thus not eligible for the same rights as J-citizens even when they have been here for many many years. One friend has had his salary seized by the government for the next few months and is leaving in a fury; a Canadian woman I know, who loves Japan, her job as a kid’s teacher, was horrified to recently discover the true circumstances behind her working situation and is now seeking legal action with a labour bureau: childlike and innocent at heart herself – probably why her Japanese students love her so much – she has really had her eyes opened to the blatant discrimination that often lingers beneath the surface here – and is being squeezed out now with new hard-hitting legislation into the open like insidious poison.

2025 has been The Year Of The Foreigner. The government long wanted to increase the number of tourists here for sake of the economy, but 40 million of them has proven just too much (there were less than a tenth of that number annually when I first came here; the yen was stronger; the country a lot more mysterious). Japanese citizens in tourist-overrun places feel overwhelmed, exacerbated by the media who are obsessed with the topic; it becomes a vicious cycle of foreigner-obsessed sensationalism. As we were saying to each other on Friday night, to the sensitive expatriate who has absorbed and partially been absorbed into the Japanese culture, many of the foreigners who rock up here do in fact come across as oblivious elephants trampling on their surroundings, speaking too loudly, dropping litter, wearing hideously obnoxious perfumes, insensate to the people around them; not even trying to tune in – an ancient archipelago nothing but a weird and wacky playground for them to put up on Tiktok and Instagram.

On the other hand, the right wing wave of stringent nationalism means that The Foreigner now gets blamed for everything. They sit on the streets. They carve out graffiti in sacred bamboo craves. They swing like monkeys on the torii gates of shrines. They don’t take their rubbish with them (NOTE: taking your garbage home with you is a recent thing in Japan; it is not an inherent part of the culture. Yes, this is a much tidier nation than average, but THERE USED TO BE RUBBISH BINS, EVERYWHERE. On streets, especially in stations; Japanese people availed themselves of them just like anybody else from any other country. Who wouldn’t? Then they suddenly disappeared; because of the coronavirus, or because of some foreign dignitary or other requiring security protection (or just to save money)and the whole country was immediately inconvenienced. But the foreign visitor is somehow supposed to intuit in advance that there IS NOWHERE TO THROW YOUR LITTER AWAY – and it’s bullshit.

Now, authorities are starting to be a bit more realistic and pragmatic and I have been delighted to observe recycling receptacles, or gomibako, your old fashioned rubbish bins, are returning; one had popped up in Yokohama station the other day, with easy to understand instructions for foreigners! : there was also even one on the high end Omotesando shopping street in Harajuku the other day – Hallelujah!- but this is only one of the gripes of the locals, who do want the cash to prop up their ageing society, but not to have to endure the waddling sight of mouth-breathing, ruddy faced cargo pants shouting in loud voices and not being cowed and self-negating enough like the locals. They jangle the exquisite Nipponesque nerves; they ruin the atmosphere. It has all become a bit of a clash, and you can FEEL it in the air if you have the antennae I do. You start to feel a bit embarrassed and overly self-conscious in your own skin (apologies for my off-putting, rather intense green eyes!) Twitter feeds and Instagram are apparently full of gaijin hating sentiment, one Australian friend tells me, but this is also, obviously, part of a more general veering in that direction worldwide. People in general, in all countries, tend to get whipped up by the crowds and the prevailing winds; the whole world is obsessed with immigration right now and I get it; it is a complicated topic. Humans are ethnocentric and want to preserve their original culture; change is frightening. Almost overnight a couple of years ago it seemed that anyone working in a Japanese convenience store was Nepalese or Vietnamese – for an island nation famous for its centuries of isolation from the world, a sense of’uniqueness’ and apartness that is part of the country’s DNA now, I can understand that this has taken some getting used to; I understand also how the locals in Kamakura feel now that they can’t even get on their local Enoden train line there are so many jostling tourists licking green tea ice creams on their way to take selfies in front of the Great Buddha. The country needs the immigrants to fill the jobs that either nobody wants or there are not physically enough people to do them, but the demographic change makes them uneasy. The economy does need tourism; but the logistics of this ‘invasion’ have none been properly thought through and neither has the cultural impact (Kyoto is ruined, I would never go there as things are now, and hopefully Kamakura is not going that way entirely – at night it returns to its ancient zen capital atmosphere to an extent – thankfully the tourists don’t realize this – although the station does sometimes feel more like Shinjuku on a Friday afternoon with all the throngs and the loud tannoy announcements in English, Korean and Mandarin in a tone that is too declamatory and urgent; the serenity, secluded, and quiet peculiarity of Kamakura has definitely been partly shattered.)

Friday night, we old timers had had a great time at the marvellous Saizeriya two stations up from there in the direction of Tokyo – Ōfuna- at the cheapest restaurant imaginable, something of a national institution here that everybody in Japan likes, from young to old; tasty Italian at mindbogglingly low prices, busy but somehow cozy; I stayed talking and eating and drinking the ridiculously cheap wine until it was time for me to queue up to get the last bus. In truth, I was happy to go alone and decompress in the cold air for a while, but my friends insisted they join me in order to continue the conversation (and thank god they did), including Liverpool Neil’s Japanese girlfriend Mai who had arrived a bit later on. My left leg is still quite swollen, and was very painful on that day (sometimes I overdo the walking and pay the price as a result) so it is necessary for me to get to the front of the line, put my bag there, and sit in the cold for the twenty or thirty minutes until the last one comes to ensure that I get a seat.. The buses in this area used to come much more frequently, but with the population decreases the country continues to suffer from, the bus companies have been shedding services left right and centre in order to maximize profits; the last one is now more packed than Noah’s ark, and if possible, I usually avoid it like the plague or at least get on first so I can sit on the back seat on the left, next to the window, and pretend there is nobody there .

There was a man on the bench. Drunk; in his forties; bearded; wild. He was spread across it, asleep. We had had a few ourselves, so although I should probably have been more wary of disturbing someone who was obviously behaving antisocially, at that moment in time I had no compunction in asking him to budge up a bit so I could sit. I expected him to just be affable. As would usually be the case.

Upon being roused from his stupor, however, and realizing that a foreigner had had the audacity to ask a holy JAPANESE person to move, when he was having a nice sleep, and a foreigner with a FAKE WALKING STICK TO BOOT; IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT IT WAS A SCAM, WASN’T IT..; THAT I JUST WANTED TO BE ABLE TO SIT DOWN ON THE BUS, wasn’t it, AND THAT THERE WAS ACTUALLY NOTHING WRONG WITH MY LEG AT ALL, IT WAS A LIE, wasn’t it; —-how DARE such a sneaky foreign invader demand that he not take up the very bench made for the precise purpose I was using it for; how dare how dare – and he was getting angrier and angrier, a very physically powerful man who was beginning to terrify Mai, wide-eyed and petite as a sparrow, and me, in a very physically vulnerable position on the bench as he stood up and started bellowing like a minotaur (and where the hell were the other two? Why were they taking so long at the convenience store? It felt like an eternity………..we really needed some backup).

Within a few minutes the situation was becoming untenable. He was getting more and more aggressive, and simply wouldn’t have it that I have in fact had THREE operations on this leg now; he refused to believe anything of what we were telling him even when I mentioned the specifics of the operations and the hospitals in question, not that I should have had to do that in the first place, ASSHOLE! – but just to calm him down; it all just felt like a matter of time before something violent occurred; at which very serendipitous moment a woman in her thirties crossed hastily over the busy street, asked if we were ok, and intervened magnificently on our behalf. M whispered some things to her about the situation, I explained to her what was happening as she looked me in the eye and understood, and then she went to work on mollifying him as best as she possibly could, standing there patiently trying to defuse the situation; cleverly understanding and entering his racist, blasted mind and trying to placate him, although I was also starting to get riled up now at the sheer injustice of the situation, which, admittedly, caused a few F Us to start issuing from mine own lips (can’t take the hooligan out of a Brummie); it was then quickly decided I had better get into a taxi instead of trying to stubbornly get the bus after all (the whole point of this had been to try and save money by NOT having to pay for one), but it felt very dangerous now and there was no other option. Neil and Drew finally made their way back to us just at the last minute as I gave them a hug, and I was sped off in the taxi, breathless with what had just happened. Looking out at the scene from the car window, I saw three sturdy police officers approaching the bus stop in firm haste, summoned to deal with the xenophobic maniac that had been terrorizing all those around him, and, drama-queen yearnings to get in there and tell them what was what (yeah, good luck with that, because the police are obviously going to listen to the foreigner) notwithstanding, I was glad I had been able to avoid all the bureaucratic hassle and also remain unmaimed. Mai had been filming some of this on her smartphone, as I am sure had some of the bystanders waiting for the bus just in case things got truly hairy or I was being beaten to a pulp; they looked very alarmed by what was transpiring – ‘LOOK! SEE! HE CAN WALK! IT’S ALL BULLSHIT! I TOLD YOU! ‘ – the man shouted out self righteously as I stood up and walked away like Lazarus (it is true, I can walk, and my gait is normal, thank goodness and I am hardly a wizened Methuselah myself ).

With this unnerving experience, I had an inkling for the first time in my life I think, of what it must be like for people who are lynched for false crimes, when the impetus for the accusations is nothing other than simple racial hatred and bigotry. That sense of UTTER WRONGNESS – someone verbally attacking me for faking my knee problems when I have had the year that I have; the exasperation of not being able to change a bigot’s fixed state of mind; and I think if the situation had not been de-escalated by that kind Samaritan, he might even have attacked my physically because that was the energy that everything was building up to – imagine if he had kicked my leg and actually broken it in this situation, it could have been really horrendous ! ……………….it all made me understand, for a moment, the sheer hopelessness a person can feel from being accused of something that is totally unfounded and merely founded upon the basest and most disgusting discrimination. If I had been Japanese with a cane, there would have been no problem. But because I was a foreigner, and because this man has probably been influenced by the general mood in the country right now and the media and the Internet that foreigners are no good, my walking stick was a fraud. Fake News (thanks, Donald, for that contribution to human culture). It was obvious! For him, it was a simple as that. I was a Bad Foreigner.

Yes. If it hadn’t been for that kind, quick thinking and open-minded Japanese woman who crossed the street without a second thought, an empathetic and quick reacting person who could have just ignored the situation like all the other cowards int the bus queue did, and who was undoubtedly held up in hassle-heavy police questioning for a long time afterwards as they arrested or questioned the man and wrote up a report ; her evening impacted in who knows what unforeseen ways: and also my ultrasensitive Japanese friend who also did her absolute best to contain the situation, I am not quite sure what might have transpired. Sometimes, people really do step up (I am really no saint, but I do stand up for people in similar situations- I have, defended women against angry drunken men who sometimes get scarily violent in Ofuna night frenzies, once even having to make a statement at the local police station); not everyone is a monged out zombie; some, thinking and feeling people actually do look up from their smartphones and self absorption on occasion, and notice what is happening to other people around them. A tired looking woman, miraculously, gave me her seat on a crowded train the other day when I really did need it — though she, very obviously, needed it as well- she looked exhausted. But at that very moment, she had noticed me with my stick in the crowd, and needed the seat at that particular moment in time more than she did. Sometimes, strangers really do have enough empathy to forget themselves for a moment and not think of a person in need as just a foreigner, or an immigrant; or a liar, or a fraud.

Their purer instincts are just to help.

Citruses are usually destined for summer – for obvious reasons. But sometimes, an aromatic lemon scent with chypric undertones – think Annick Goutal Eau Du Sud, the original Eau De Rochas, can be bewitching in Autumn and Winter. They become not mere sweat reductors — but sing more silverily on the air; purer: a more wrenching suaveness of melancholy.

I was delighted the other day to get a message from my old friend Peter who has been sojourning in Rome for ten days, revisiting our old haunts and immersing himself in the art, churches, and magnanimous atmosfera.

At the Choistro Del Bramante exhibition bookshop, he came across some copies (with the original gold-leaved pages!) of the Italian, now out of print, version of my book Perfume — and has just very kindly sent me a copy.

The whole package was scented with Acqua Viva, which at first I confused with the similar Goutal (in fact I don’t think I have ever smelled this one before; I associate Profumum more with its thick, luxurious tooth melting confectioneries such as Battito D’Ali, Gioiosa, Confetto and the like; any other favourites from this velvety decadent profumeria?)

This citrus couldn’t be further from that style, though : Amalfi lemons form the main frame, but there is a mossier, darker element from the cedarwood and cypress undertones; a certain adult sternness. I can easily imagine Peter wandering around the ruins in this : he always wore the aromatics well at university : scents such as Aramis Devin that were quietly enigmatic.

Acqua Viva must have smelled beautiful in the yellowing, auburn and russet trees of Ancient Rome, the quiet somnolence of St Paul’s pyramid; the indolent, strolling cats at my favourite place in the city; John Keats’ grave at foreigners’ cemetery, Testaccio.

We had a great ‘birthday weekend’ in Atami. I was supposed to be in surgery again for the Main Event – yegadz I hear ye cry : how can he STAND it : exactiy ) :: so we came two and a half weeks early; the very day the same as Britney Spears’ and the death of the Marquis De Sade.

I just wasn’t ready, after being mauled by the scalpel twice already this year, so am going for the final chop in January instead.

We stayed in our favourite hotel, whose room resembles a lighthouse and where all the senses can breathe.

We went to familiar places and restaurants, but also to new haunts, including the Trick Art Museum high up on the mountain by Atami Castle: I haven’t had such childlike, silly and innocent fun in a very long time.

Perfume : d was wearing Electimuss Puritas; I Hermes Vetiver Tonka.

We were also road testing Puredistance’s releases from this year – Divanche and Ysayo – both very good – reviews to follow, and both enjoying a step away ( though the crowds, this time domestic tourists rather than the foreign hordes in Kamakura ) were slightly stupendous.

Cheers.

Sometimes I have rose cravings. And those cravings are not satisfied by the spicy rose chypres of the 80’s nor by the powdery Guerlains that are replete in my collection – Nahéma is very beautiful but it suits a very particular fragile and vulnerable state with its peachy talcum and that is not what I am thinking of right now.

There are a hundred million prissy artificial rose perfumes out there in the mid-price ranges of department stores that sicken me: the contemporary rose tends to induce a lurch in the stomach. Certain chemicals – I don’t know what they are – pins in the head that I imagine are supposed a represent a ‘contemporary virginality and chaste put-togetherness ‘ – are supremely offputting to me – although I realize I am not the intended candidate in the first place, nor the mouthbreathing pursuants of such insipid individals.

There are an equal number of rose ouds around. I like some of them, but it depends on the oud; the quality, the naturalness, the ratio of the formula. So many have that note in the base, that inescapable black vinous cypriol – or ‘nagarmotha’ if you want it to sound more exotic – that even if you paid me I could never wear them.

But I don’t mind a bit of oud in a scent every once in a while. Particularly if it is the gentler, richer, barnyardy kind (as in Cartier’s lovely Oud & Pink, which you can read about here, along with L’Heure Osée and Pure Rose – one of the better rose trio variegations of recent times) There is also some oud, in the base accord of Dusita La Douceur De Siam, the modern rose I wear the most but which I cannot rely on exclusively. There is certainly too much oud in Electimuss Octavian, a classic saffron heavy Arabia-ish ‘oriental’ I have a strange affiliation with, and I do sometimes suffer a little in the later stages as a result of this if it is not the right day for that muddier plasticene, but the opening of Octavian is sublime: a really high quality rose oil with pink pepper and what smells like raspberries – it is a very haunting accord, and – drat! – I have almost got through my samples now. I enjoy wearing this when I want to feel anchored and a bit heavier in the bones :it has got past my defences, It is also very expensive at 500 dollars, and comes in the most unattractive bottle; my visual brain cannot handle the Trumpian eagle insignia set against that light copper topper – and I would have to hide it away out of sight even if I were lucky enough to obtain it: not the ideal reaction when you shelve out for a luxury product….surely you want the whole package, not to shame it away like Jayne Eyre’s lover’s aunt in the dusting attic?

A nice rose I have in my collection, but which I had forgotten about until just now – a travel sized bottle from a Collection Noire gift set I received once during my brief stint at Vogue Japan – is Serge Lutens’ La Fille De Berlin.

Why have I failed to wear – or write about – this more? It is jammy, syrupy; rich red rosey, soft with geranium and palmarosa, and it works. It caresses. The base of Fille De Berlin is a warm, musky honey and patchouli, but subtly done. The red tint of the perfume is also gorgeous ; hue-tastic. I am wearing it now. And I like it. But why…….. does it ultimately bore me? (it always did, from the first time I smelled it in Shinjuku Isetan, overly excited.). It’s just…… so….nice. Which sometimes I want. A wrist of nicety with a slightly traditionalist edge.; a cosey rose. But somehow, La Fille De Berlin is just a little too fuzzy and drab about the edges, lacking any bite (and I think it has too much Body Shoppish White Musk, ultimately) even if I may still wear it when I go out for lunch with a friend on Sunday in Motomachi, the chichier part of Yokohama where a waft of such an odour will not go amiss. Perhaps with an added touch of Rose Trocadero by Le Jardin Retrouvé on top? This rose goes perhaps too much the other way; an acidulousness of rose morning fresh-hood that almost strains credulity with its photo realistic I AM A ROSE!! desperation, but which still makes for quite a pleasant rose spritz. It makes me want to own again a bottle of the original Annick Goutal Rose Absolue, which was more genuinely heavenly dewy. (You can read about Rose Trocadero here, along with reviews of Mona D’Orio’s Rose étoile D’Hollande and Ormonde Jayne’s Rose Taif Elixir if you want to continue to rose up your day now that the Halloween pumpkins have been put aside).

Tom Ford has a few roses up his tight-muscled sleeves: I quite like Cafe Rose and Rose Prick is alright, but like so many of this house’s releases with their ‘shocking’ names, the juice inside the bouteille often does not match the lascivious projection of the fragrance’s title. ‘Rose Exposed’ is another such item : perfectly fine, a peppery rose oil and rose water opening that was moderately exciting, but ceding quickly to a leatherish /oudish / cashmeran base that belies a fundamental lack of concerted creativity and immediately dulls the senses. What is being exposed here exactly? The project manager’s cowardice?

This is the thing with Names With Claims: Lancôme’s new Forbidden Rose also does not really live up to its name – if you are going to call something that at least give it even a minimal shock of the new- but it is a pleasingly fruity rich rose / fig / amber and earthy patchouli that took me nearly back to my beloved L’ Artisan Parfumeur Voleur De Roses – which wasn’t even called ‘niche ‘perfume when I wore it back in the early nineties – and was my favourite of the large rose selection the house now has at department stores available for your gullible, rosaceous delectation (Rose On The Moon; Hot As Rose; Hell Of A Rose; Not Your Rose; Storm And Roses; I Flamed A Rose (what?); most of these are worth a sniff if you are in the market for a new fresh rose, although Rose Or Die, my second preferred of the roses from this overpriced collection, is a green tea rose and doesn’t quite merit its melodramatic name; suggesting nothing about the kind of passion that would require any form of killing, or throwing yourself from the trellis onto the spiky white garden fence with a pair of rose shears protruding from your gullet because your hybrids for 2025 hadn’t quite bloomed as you’d been hoping).

Of course, despite the vague disappointment we all experience when a fragrance doesn’t live up to its hype, I am not averse to a touch of melodrama, as anyone who reads the Black Narcissus will attest. And I almost miss the verbal garbage , the lavish verbiage – that used to come with each new Serge Lutens release, when pretentious-beyond-endurance mystical ‘poetry’ was given instead of detailed note listings and you had no idea what the hell he was trying to say (though you liked the underlying suggestivity of this rubbish anyway because you were a perfume freak and were lured into bullshit about phoenixes rising from the ashes and the like). As a result, the current releases, both in descriptors and in execution, do seem rather tame in comparison with the past, when the perfumes were so much more potent (can anyone forget how tart and full bodied, green and acidic the original formula of Sa Majesté La Rose was? It was so bitter and twisted! A startling entry into the perfume market at that period of time unlike anything I had ever smelled before or since, and it is a shame it has become the wan attenuation it once was (you can read my original review of that perfume here in an old article, ‘Some Roses For Winter’, which features some other all time rose classics and personal favourites, such as Caron Rose, Creed’s Fleurs De Bulgarie, Maison Parfumeur et Gantier Rose Opulente, Sisley Soir De Lune; – in fact, if you type in ‘rose’ at the top of this page in the enquiry space it is surprising how many reviews of rose perfumes do come up that I have written over the years. Do I really like the scent of this flower this much? I think I probably do… ).

But I was supposed to be discussing the contemporary rose. And although other reviewers describe La Fille De Tour De Fer (‘the girl in the iron tower’? hardly) as a tad dull and inferior – simplistic – to the Lutensian rose precursors, I happen to personally disagree: this was the only perfume I smelled the other day at Yokohama Takashimaya that I thought, ooh — maybe, maybe I can get this as a birthday or Christmas present or sneak myself a treat on pay day – the 50ml was not too extravagantly priced and I felt that want want want feeling that I haven’t had for quite a long time with a recentish perfume. What I don’t like about it, just to nickpick – is the colour – why not that deep bloody red of La Fille De Berlin, which would make the perfume so much more irresistible (even drinkable) ? Why this pale tedious lavender purple more suited to a bathroom cleaner when the main ingredients, very prominent, and very lovely, are the immediately recognizable essences of Bulgarian and Turkish roses that both stimulate and mollify the heart? I love the natural oils that perfumer Christopher Sheldrake has chosen for this scent, but it seems odd to have coloured them in this way. Was this tint chosen to represent the iris at the centre, or the metallic edge that is said to come later in the dry down? I don’t know. But though I do get a strange kind of anti-synaesthesia from the colour/smell amalgam, I want this in any case. A rose dab, simple, fresh, deep, real – voluptuous- can sometimes be exactly what the doctor ordered.

I experienced a severe case of SRHG (Sudden Rapid Hair Growth) on the morning of Halloween and by evening had bleached and frizzed it into a nice Boy George meets Hanoi Rocks’ Michael Monroe.

It was a freezing rainstorm but it suited some Halloween cosiness. After some mulled wine – over Dario Argento soundtracks and some mariachi musica – perhaps a little too heavy on the cinnamon and cloves – it was almost mouth-numbing – we headed out getting soaked to the local bar one minute away.

A perfect bottle of vintage Poison had been sprayed on copiously before we entered the premises, the perfume by far the most frightening thing happening. It got passed round by everyone and multiple further spritzes were executed to the point of asphyxiation

Kunihiko – right – liked it best but then he always likes sweet heady perfumes – and the musky, purpled fleurs du mal – all plum and pimiento and vanillically addled tuberoses was a general hit – in many ways it is a work of genius, though in truth I am getting a little tired of it now as Burning Bush’s signature – maybe next time it will wear Shiseido’s Enchanting Rhinestone. What perfumes did you wear for Halloween ?