Monthly Archives: August 2026

What was already so nauseating has been rendered more so.

That sickly patchouli amber, but now with an added kitchen cleaner swill of grapefruit and lychee vacillating in the top.

I do hope that no one is wearing it on the plane.

Parfum Satori is unique in its quiet tucked-awayness; elegantly concealed inside a non-descript Tokyo apartment. If you didn’t know already what you were looking for you would never find it; a simple, small metal sign on a wall outside discreetly announcing its presence.

It feels more like a private residence than a standard perfumery. You ring the doorbell and are led up the staircase by one of the gracious assistants: asked to remove your shoes as you would do in any Japanese household, and are welcomed from the standard genkan domicile entrance into what would usually be a living room / kitchen but which here is the heart of Satori, complete with a perfume organ comprising hundreds of ingredients, the full range of fragrances on offer, as well as gulp-inducing glass/wooden cabinets that include ancient Carons, Diors – and an unopened, scarab beetle-esque extrait of Guerlain Djedi.

As a Personal Shopper curating a One Off Exclusive Experience for The Client, undoubtedly it would have been better to contact perfumer Satori Osawa in advance to request a one to one consultation – they are her creations after all, and she is as enigmatic as a sphinx. We have met a few times, and I am sure she would have obliged (I really should have; a nice touch, it would have been more on point for the kind of ultra-Japanese experience Monsieur was hoping for but I had no time to think the day before let alone make my way to the off the beaten track atelier; instead, having eaten virtually nothing all day and light headed from the exertion. we ended up slumping down in a delicious Turkish restaurant off a side street in Ginza I remembered from many moons ago and got drunk.

Still, although it would have been nice to refamiliarize myself with the entire collection in advance – I am actually quite conscientious in my own way – I was familiar with enough of the Satori collection to already have some ideas, my mind racing in the taxi as I took in his atmosphere, skin type, and we discussed his olfactory profile further ( it was immediately obvious that we definitely had one thing in common : uninterested in smelling weird or edgy for the sake of coming across as a cut above or beyond the rest — this had been my ultimate nightmare before the meetup- some Furious Fashion Bitch after a (passive) aggressive Ho-Horror Woody with burnt hojicha tea leaves and macerated crow in which he would wow the crowds at Martin Margiela or CdG while dousing his hair in pure gasoline — but no, our laid back, affable Gentleman just wanted to smell NICE.

That is pretty much my smell agenda also : I like unusual facets: a dash of mystery, elevation suavity; but harmony is key : a touch of discordance sometimes fascinating, but not something that makes my spleen wince.

This gentleman winces quite easily; like me, he knows in an instant ( I have never understood perfume lovers who need days and days to decide what they think about a particular scent : yes, occasionally unforeseen facets do surprise you and cannot be fully discovered at first huff but usually I can tell straight away – within a split second – I see the whole thing top to bottom like an x-ray scan; this dude would shake his head or nod unselfconsciously – here you saw The Power at work, a certain unshakeability of self-confidence -.as d and I presented him with scent strips hoping he would take a liking to at least one of them.

My first profferance was Iris Homme, smelling which Our Client’s eyes did light up. ‘Perfect post shower when The Gentleman is ready to put on a clean white shirt and chair a meeting: very refined’ I heard myself say with a certain oiled obsequiousness as though I had been doing this for years, finally finding my rightful place in this world – and he said yes, I really like it – but isn’t it a little too fleeting ?

I had to agree he had a point.

Lovely though they generally are, I have sometimes wondered if the Satori perfumes are almost too delicate; aqueous: deft watercolours rarely gouache; and certainly never oil paintings.

But this is also their strength.

The man comes from a country of Strong Perfume; those roiling stomach churners that have become the norm worldwide – and he wanted something separate from that; distinct (of course, he is part of The Elite); I told him that the powdery, nioi ayame iris and jasmine of the heart were buffered by sandalwood and a light musk/amber that could never come across as overtly floral; the flowers were hidden in the heart, the overall impression a silken comfort of cardamom, lemon and orange blossom in the top notes that is soap-clean, dreamy, but also curiously sensuous; he looked at me and said, ok, I will take this one.

Next up:

I was pretty sure he would like Satori, the founder’s signature perfume. I really like this one myself: almost a riff on Shiseido / Lutens Feminite Du Bois, this is a spiced (clove, cinnamon, vanilla) sandalwood/agar – but only a little ! I heeded his warning !) scrumptiousness that is distinctly wearable with an almost tactile Japoniserie I felt he would enjoy (he did; he also snapped up this one without a second thought)

Would we be able to make it three or more lucky strikes ?

We hovered over Hyouge, a very original -,if coolly offputting- I understood his reservations – patchouli, fresh mown grass matcha

— but more anon

We met at a designated street corner in Roppongi. The driver approached me first to give me an update on the itinerary. The Gentleman emerged from the back of the SUV. He looked normal; down to earth; casually dressed (I had bought some new trousers and bag and wore a trusted ochre coloured grandad shirt I knew looked artsy enough if not part of the one per cent – but then he wasn’t that either; actually a hard working professional who had brought his family to Tokyo for a holiday and wanted a few moments to himself to indulge his love of perfume. I breathed a sigh of relief as we entered the taxi and I asked about his tastes in perfume. These were:)

Fresh.

Citrusy.

A little bit woody. A little bit floral.

But not sweet.

And absolutely no oud in any shape or form.

Nothing too girly.

But nothing too crass and chemical either

(though he had worn Sauvage in the past as well as Terre D’Hermes…..yet the niche, dry as tindersticks, slightly spiced clean woody citrus whose name flew out my ears the second I heard it because I was nervous in the car, did smell very good on him I must say; stylish, not overdone, slyly clean and erotic- he had picked up himself at some Japanese niche perfumery the day before, so clearly knew what he liked; had good taste….)

But this was the problem.

He had already been all over Tokyo himself, including some of the potential joints I had lined up….

–

the quintessential problem of course being that I have never really penetrated the inner sancti of the Tokyo perfumisti,

the reasons for this being as follows:

1. I couldn’t be arsed.

2. My Japanese is crap.

3. I am not wealthy enough.

4. It is too far from Kamakura (which kind of bleeds into Fact Number One).

5. I got caught up in a war between two of the Leading Ladies; great Fragrance Friends until they fell out, I remained loyal to my side but was then silently blacklisted from anything Salons De Parfums oriented; she even publically sent my book Perfume:In Search Of Your Signature Scent back to the company she ordered it from in a pique of bitchness that maligned my good name.

No, now I am being a bit facetious.

But all the things written above are in fact true, meaning that I didn’t, unfortunately, have any remote and security guarded, moss-gated traditional Japanese tea rooms at my fingertips, where maidens in kimoni would slide silently across the tatami offering holy matcha of the very exquisitest quality while essences of kyara and live nightingales would be blended with crawling sakura petals and snake eyes boiled in exclusive plum wood urns

etc etc :

No, I had none of these things.

Just the same shops as the other plebs.

Perhaps, had I had more than 48 hours to get a more elevated and private ‘tour’ organized I could have rustled something up something a little more drop dead nipponesque; wielding my legendary Rolodex of contacts in the perfume world — the only issue being that I don’t have one.

So. Yes. It was going to simply have to be what it was.

I made a list of possible venues; and started with the best place I knew personally: Parfum Satori.

Anyone who knows me knows that the idea of Neil Chapman being anyone’s personal shopper is entirely ludicrous.

This is principally because I hate shopping.

I sometimes ask myself why this is. Why I feel so asphyxiated and stressed out in any department store; so irritated. So overwhelmed by the plenitude (the greed, the waste?); the artificial lighting; the plastic air; the conspicious snobbism……the vaunting. The stench of the perfume and makeup counters. The ludicrosity of the fashions on display; the sheer amount of pancake foundation and more spidery mascara’d false eyelashes than there are tarantulas in Amazonia. Basically, I cannot breathe from all the capitalistic suffocation and have to quickly make my way to the nearest exits before my serotonin completely runs out.

Funnily enough, d is the same. He will occasionally have a quick up and down the escalators of Shinjuku Isetan’s Men – the most pretentious fashion mecca I have ever encountered, but then I have never been to Brookyln – while I do a quick recce of the latest niche perfumes downstairs. If only there weren’t swarms of black clad shop assistants assailing you from every direction eyes on you like hawks:::::::::it’s about as enjoyable as going through prime time customs at an international airport.

All this being said, despite my deep allergy to brainwashing, brand bullshit and mindless commercialization, I do still deeply love perfume and have always had pretty good instincts in intuiting what other people may like; the same friends who might laugh at the idea of me actively concierging a wealthy stranger’s next fragrance purchase have also in all likelihood been dragged by me around Harrods or Harvey Nichols or Rackham’s and Beatties back in the day to smell and buy the scent I insisted they at least try: I do have instincts in these matters sometimes – can feel, sense, within my body and brain what someone might be drawn to and suit.

Which is why and how, contradictory hypocrisy notwithstanding, I somehow ended up having a one off gig in Tokyo recently taking a rich client – to remain anonymous- oh how seriously I was to take this issue – the anonymity and the comfort, well-being and enjoyment of The Client to be paramount at all times (so it was not particularly great seeing him yawning his head off at a later stage of the afternoon, half dead in a taxi, but then again I suppose we had walked rather a lot around Ginza in the hot sun, me overriding my creaking orthopaedia and powering my legs along the crowded pavements in search of something the very particular and perfume-clued up gentleman who wanted something exclusive and Japan-made, could take back to his home country the following day).

I wasn’t the first choice for this sacred mission.

In fact, I only heard about it two days before the fact – having been ‘off’ for a year for various leg procedures and so on as you already know, which already made the mere idea of me pretending to know what I was talking about all the more daunting.as even if I did have a vague idea of what places to take this unknown individual, would I physically be able to do this convincingly? (not knowing anything about him in advance except his gender freaked me out no end; would we get on? Did I still have any social skills remaining after my fourteen months of sour troglodyte living? And never mind that, would I myself be able to tolerate him if he turned out to be one of these supercilious assholes born to look down their noses? I am pretty proud and arrogant myself, and knew there was a possibility I might lose control and snap at any Entitled Baloney, my inner Middle Finger rising up into the sky like a giant inflatable hologram. But that in itself made me want to say yes – the person organizing this ‘bespoke experience’ was in a desperate pickle, having advertised the job months in advance apparently – I have basically disappeared from everywhere recently and didn’t see it until it was forwarded to me by a friend saying ‘surely you could do this? – deciding to accept as a way of caterpulting myself back into the world).

Sometimes you have to (do you, though, actually?) force yourself to do things you instinctively don’t want to for the sake of your career or ‘growth’ or whatever or simply from a deep Fear Of Missing Out and What This Might Lead To etc etc. Examples of this in my case include appearing on BBC London radio between Brexit and Bananarama (I wish I had waited to meet them in the corridor but I was being escorted out by security) and appearing on stage at the Honolulu Museum Of Art to deliver a talk on The Language Of Flowers; in both cases I was absolutely paralyzed by fear internally, and essentially hated both experiences even if I was told I acquitted myself perfectly decently by other people afterwards ; I suppose all this stems from an acute and peculiar social anxiety I do suffer from despite being a teacher of three decades; the whole extrovert/introvert conundrum we have discussed on here before but which makes these undertakings far more complicated psychologically than they need be otherwise.

I had been in my own glum world, getting ready for work that Friday morning, and then got the message out of the blue about The Curation; was piqued; asked D what he thought – the fee ended up being nothing more than useful pocket money but ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ and I was grateful for it in a way; thought about it for about two minutes, said fuck it, ok, let’s do it, even though the idea of trying to find a total stranger an exclusive Japanese niche perfume when I am so completely out of the loop utterly terrified me. Saying no was too boring though, and I have often used that as a way of going through life – choose the less tedious option – go on, push yourself a bit. Otherwise you will just turn into a mouldy old brick.

(would I need to buy a 6,000 dollar Loro Piana outfit in order to fit in properly like the crap below? I actually (by)passed the superexclusive Ginza store on my pre-day reconnaissance mission; wow, such hushed luxury you need a kalashnikov to even get past the front door bouncers/wax-lipped sentries)

On a hot Saturday afternoon, the day before I Was To Meet The Gentleman, we had gone to a travel agent’s to book our absurdly expensive plane tickets home (thanks, Donald! Thanks Vladimir! Really looking forward to our interminable flight back thanks to your micro-penile machinations!) and I was trying, in my mind, to think of all the perfume places I knew – to all the girls I’ve loved before – which felt like aeons and aeons ago, probably because it was ; this perfume world whizzes by like zooped up carousel and once you have stepped off it you lose track of everything that was ever in fashion, and I suppose I have become more cynical and exhausted with it all seeing as hardly anything seems to actually smell nice anymore to me as I enter my seven hundredth decade on earth: I was getting very ratty messages from the organizers ordering me to please contact The Client and Confirm Itinerary!! He is getting very anxious! felt like I was in The Matrix, and suddenly realized that as soon as I had finished bankrupting ourselves on travel costs we would, in fact, despite the boiling sun, absolutely need to physically do an actual runthrough of the Perfume Odyssey in advance so I knew precisely where to go within the three hour limit; I couldn’t face making a total tit of myself, and I am no good with GPS on phones and Google Maps and all of that: once d has fathomed up where a place is; like a cat, I have an excellent internal navigation system that remembers exactly where to go and how long it takes: I knew The Gentleman would not want to be kept waiting as the hapless handicappee dithered about er, where was it again, oh sorry, oh no, yes, er no, I think it is back here a bit or maybe around the corner or – you get the point. Though wiped out by the working week, and in need of regeneration the day before this ridiculous experiment, I had agreed to do it and didn’t want to let anybody down. Off into crowded Tokyo we went.

(I am no Kristen Stewart, who was brilliant and as exceptionally cool as you might expect in the film Personal Shopper, zipping back and forth across the English channel buying Chanel for Rich Ladies – d wants to do a spoof video with me in the role as Burning Bush but how would we ever get convincing enough props? Or would we just be rumbling through the jumble at the junk shops as we are more wont to do? In my mind, though, she is the zenith of the PS )

Kristen – playing Maureen Cartwright, the wardrobe consultant for Kyra Gellmann, a supermodel, knows every inch of her client’s tastes – and can shop til she drops – while simultaneously trying to connect supernaturally with her recently deceased twin brother (this is quite a weird, spooky film and I love it, unbearably pretentious as many find it)

– but unlike Maureen, I knew nothing whatsover about this individual I was supposed to be leading into ‘exclusive, precious Japanese experiences’; just that he knew his stuff, loved perfume, and had high expectations.

Shit!

To be continued.