The top notes have gone. But then so have mine. And middle, and base, possibly, as well………but I will come to that in a minute.
Vivienne Westwood enjoys a cult status in Japan, where there is still a sizeable Anglomania (Oasis, who I detest, are worshipped here – I once met Liam Gallagher backstage after an Ocean Colour Scene concert – I was once in the band – and he was a twat, albeit with a quite stunning, wolf-like sapphire lucent peepers), everybody still goes on about The Beatles, and the J-fashionistas still venerate Alexander McQueen, but even more, the late Madam Westwood. In fact, the oddball girl across the street – lips full of piercings and shaved eyebrows and tartan leggings (a few winters ago, I saw her scrabbling in the iced slush like a sped up, FX-laced J-horror movie, scooping up enough snowbricks to make an eerie ice effigy – I stood there, transfixed, wishing I could film it but then again I am friends with her mother, and we both call her daughter Vivienne as a nickname).
Though usually pretty generous with my perfumes, the mute in a leather jacket across the way is not getting my two Westwood perfumes; Boudoir and Libertine. The former, a powdery, filthy orange blossom is genius, and on me dries down to the most tobacco-y, hippiest josssticks; the latter is a deliciously green fruited honeysuckle with patchouli-ish amber basenotes – a very strange concoction that evokes the wonderful Curious by Britney Spears (a fucked up magnolia) and even the algaei-ish singing pondskaters of Cacharel’s much maligned Eden; white-musky, but laden with passionfruit and pineapple and fresh green leaves with a laundromat-cute heart of jasmine and synthetic chevrefeuille; one of those blends that you know just works on immediate application in its entirety – immaculate from top to bottom but with just enough dose of eccentricity – this is Vivienne Westwood we are talking about, after all – to render it intellectually interesting as well as physically sensual.
I reached for my bottle of this last night on an impulse. This particular flacon is one that D picked up for me in a junkshop, my second bottle. Thrilled though I was to have it again, it cannot be denied that the top notes are broken. Perhaps whoever had it left it out in the sun, or it was tossed in a cardboard box somewhere in its journey from owner to second hand landfill, but there is none of the green, and the florals are crushed. I sense its inner uniqueness nonetheless, breathing under the surface, and I am patient. Eventually, the honeysuckle musc that is the soul of the scent emerges, and I feel pleasure (it is a gorgeously sunny this morning, and I am going to wear this to the gym and then up to the hospital just cause I feel like it – and nothing you can do is going to stop me. It still has that something.
But nothing like the original, almost quease inducing like a colourful, compelling cocktail that makes you wince (but which you guzzle down anyway) with its Gucci Envy green topness and custard-like underlay- and It was strange how I got this one.
It was at my first school in Japan, about twenty five years ago – in fact probably after Libertine was released because she was a fashion type absurdly on the ball (I couldn’t be more ambivalent about Fashion; on the one hand, aesthetics are everything to me – and, bizarrely, I was in Vogue Japan again this month in a piece that feels like pure fantasy if you translate it compared to the often painful realities of my recent existence (https://www.vogue.co.jp/article/geek-beauty-2026-neil) without beauty, life means nothing to me and I appreciate every moment of that in whatever form it comes in every minute of every day on a constant basis); at the same time, fashion is the most vacuously pretentious and passive aggressive form of human endeavour I can think of – to work in the industry must surely just to be surrounded by the most fascistly judgemental c”””s in existence – and how mediocre was The Devil Wears Prada 2, incidentally, no matter how sublime our Meryl was at certain moments?)
As usual, I digress – and Jesus do I digress these days; I can hardly think straight, which has been hard, going back into the classroom after a year off work having hideous surgeries that weren’t quite successful and then on top of that spinal and other issues that have really knocked me for six, what with all the painkillers and god knows what else affecting organs and stamina and wellness in general, I have felt like a condemned jellyfish; a misdiagnosis of the terrifying sounding stenosis, where your nerves are constricting causing agony and being prescribed blood pumping drugs to widen the veins and nerves when I am already one of the most overtuned nerve people on the planet; gooosh, the head spins in the classroom as I stare at 46 eyes staring back at me and try not to collapse at the blackboard, ooh you better belooba
-sorry, I knew this would happen; that as soon as my waters broke and I finally starting writing a post all hell would break loose in the afterbirth – and I will definitely not be frying up this placenta.
Where was I ?
Oh yes, I was talking about that bobblehead.
Because she did have a bobblehead. As in, a bobblehead. Like one of those painted toys with a detachable head that wobbles on purpose when it is too big for her body. But made more difficult by far by wearing platform clogs and comme des garcons type garments that looked ridiculous – if gaggably mesmerizing – in a language school environment when all the other dullards were turning up in suits or leisurewear and she would come in dressed up every time as though she were at the front row of London Fashionweek. And sensed something responsive in me; she could talk to me; I knew all the fashion houses she was paening to; I was also a sensitive geekfreek like her and even once gave her a cassette tape compilation drenched in L Occitane Patchouli after she had arrived for the lesson one day with a bottle of Vivienne Westwood Libertine ‘;trust me, as a teacher you don’t often get gifted new bottles of perfume – and I was thrilled.
Do I sound like a bitch?
Yes.
I don’t doubt it. The drudging myself up from the sinkhole of unwellness (left knee replacement still very much a work in progress, but slowly getting there; the right one postponed because I truly couldn’t trust if the surgeon had done a proper job with the left; instead relenting to a monstrous nerve disabling operation on the right – radio ablation therapy; six syringes; three local anaesthetics that were excruciating and then three other foul substances to burn the nerve endings – what was I thinking say yes to that FFS? I don’t know, I have relinquished self authority in the last few years to the medical establishment; too exhausted to resist any longer; ok, if that’s what you think is the right thing to do, doctor, I suppose I will go with it….then ending up with a floppy right foot hanging off at the angle and walking with a slight ragdoll paraplegia that I forced my nerve endings to overcome – literally; feeling the nerve signal going from my brain all the way down and making that motherfucker attach to my ankle and walk as nature originally intended)
-this not the only way of gradually clawing my way out of the sewage strewn cesspit of my weakened physique and doom-sludging brain fog; the cliched expression just one day at a time really has been useful; getting though one day of dizzying overwhelm (at the same time, I have to say, kind of loving being back in the classroom simultaneously; the connection! the beautiful youth! the sense of connection and purpose! the rediscovering of my pedagogical talent, which was lurking underneath all along!). Still, it came with a great cost; hardly being able to see the register; vertiginous swaying as I turned my head and stood up to write something on the blackboard – I really must get a new pair of glasses; what the hell is wrong with me; obviously, these are not the right prescription any more or is it just renal failure?); but a fantastic consultation with an actually positive back specialist; no, you don’t have a trapped nerve or stenosis, so you don’t need that medicine (TF!), you do have a herniated disc in your lower lumbar vertebrae- and boy can I feel it – but no osteoporosis or arthritis in the rest of your back – you have good alignment and a strong spine so get down the gym and cycle and strengthen your core muscles and wear this Jean Paul Gaultieresque corset for good measure – no, the JPG is my addition, but he did say everything else; but how nice to actually have someone human and fun and uplifting rather than the sad racist fuck who made me feel so miserable as he spat out his diagnosis I could have happily mangled him up in his own MRI machine. Nurse! Oh dear! There seems to be a crushed bone specialist in the nerve tunnel- could you clean up the mess?
But I believe this was a review of a Vivienne Westwood fruity floral. So let me get back to that then.
I am on the up. Which is why I am back on here (so many posts I have wanted to write, and I will…I just lacked the concentration power and physical stamina to ever go through with it until this fortified morning when the smells of outside are so lusciously alluring; honeysuckle that ravages the senses – perhaps why I made for my Libertine yesterday evening; I had practically swooned riding past a whole bank of head-swimmingly gorgeous scented wildflowers yesterday); I never quite know what kind of pain might be in store on any one particular day but I am definitely stronger. Physically and mentally. And obviously, it was never going to be straightforward going from isolation and rehabilitation and in a very passive position to suddenly thrusting myself back into the classroom where I am the engine of everything. Last week I finally got on top of it all though; properly connected with each student, and even remembering their names. Perhaps I have not lost all of my top, middle and base notes after all. Imperfect as hell, for sure; degraded, undeniably, but like the lovely perfume I am going to spray on after I take a shower in a minute – then wait for an hour for it to develop into that still rather delightful heart- not totally without appeal.