Category Archives: Flowers

It was somehow very fitting that I got to smell the new ‘L Heure Bleue’ with my best friend Helen. We have a history with this perfume; with this house; as does any true perfumista worth their bath salt. As teenagers we would roam the department stores obsessively, smelling everything: one gravely important day, she discovered her ultimate holy grail, Après L’Ondée. Created in the same classical Golden Era by the genius Jacques Guerlain, the doleful, fresh almond anise pallor of this exquisite scent immediately brought tears to her eyes after we had asked the Guerlain assistant to show us the hidden treasures that were stacked beneath the more current sales desk. At that time we also discovered Jicky (‘No! Too pooey’ our fresh adolescent response; were nonplussed by Mitsouko, which just smelled fusty and old; but I know that although I have never, never been able to remotely pull it off, I was also uttery and totally mesmerized by the thick, mellifluous langour of the powdery paradisiacal heaven that was L’Heure Bleue; viscous with French pastry – almost a fried doughnut aspect in some iterations under the triumphal florals nosing their way up through the trappings of poudre, this was a delicious perfume to me from the very first time that I tried it – and one that could practically make me swoon when anyone walked by in its ardour-leaden trail. Is any perfume, in fact, more gorgeous?

At the Honolulu Museum Of Art, the day after my talk in the auditorium when I was practically fainting with nerves but somehow pulled it off, D and I did a workshop in the courtyard garden; frangipani flowers falling slowly onto spongey grass, the paying punters who had come along to sample perfumes and be led through the varying types of fragrances available in the mondo profumeria – we had made a catalogue; niche brands had sent along bottles; it was a bit of a stravaganza; we had sprayed multitudes of perfumes into little vials to the extent that I had tendonitis; we had labelled everything, and I had written all of the perfumes up in an indulgently described catalogue that was far more effective than my presentation skills (I went to pieces at the beginning of it all leaving it all to Duncan to take over until I pulled myself together), at which point I found myself sitting down with each individual and spontaneously leading them to what perfumes I thought would suit them the most – as long as they didn’t fight over them, punters were free to take home the samples in question with them).

I remember at one point that one person in the group was practically screeching in delight over an eighties L’Heure Bleue edp that Tora had sent me back in the day and was probably the most divine iteration of this illustrious scent I have ever come across: as a result of her hysterie bleue I decided to make everyone present give it a whirl, and, despite the myriad of perfumes available on that day of every possible type – we really did try to make the selections as eclectic as possible – L’Heure Bleue was pronounced the greatest perfume that was there on the lawn. Almost everybody loved it, even those that couldn’t wear it. It was unanimously decided to be gorgeous.

When Helen came to Japan the first time to visit me in the nineties, she brought me a bottle of the edt that I used judiciously when I simply wanted to dive into its pleasures. D bought me an extrait a couple of years ago, that though not as plush as I was hoping it would be, still gets inhaled or worn on the back of my hand on a regular basis. With Emma in Norwich a few years ago I tried the contemporary edp and found it heavenly; we both agreed that that version at least suited me very well; she herself has since acquired a bottle and I would love to know how it smells. I remember our friend Claire rocking it back in the nineties and being practically beside myself; there is something about the iris and the orange blossom and the anisic thrill of the vanilla bed madness; the texturality of this perfume – is there a perfume more textured? I think not – that makes me plume with madness. I love L’Heure Bleue: it is unique, unshakeable; a bastion of the Guerlain gauntlet. One of their sacred pillars. It should have been untouchable.

*

As we strolled together through our hometown of Solihull the other day – the first time in decades, as we tend to avoid the shopping centre like the plague for its depressing banality – though we did dance to a Prince 12 inch in a delightful record shop in only old building, the Manor House, which felt like an oasis of sanity and beauty in a desert of soulless commercialism – and realized that I had, typically, left my phone – with its Vol De Nuit zebra stripes its under glass decoration so easy to find – back in her car, we ambled back to where we were going via John Lewis, having just smelled some crap reorchestrations of YSL favourites Rive Gauche and Kouros in one of those Superdrug type tack caverns floor to ceiling full of ugly bright packaging (both were alright; but very defanged (‘I preferred the Kouros pissy’ stated Helen, and I definitely agreed – when you castrate these things they become eunuchs, just as you would expect), and practically spitting on the ground at the new Balmain – Destin or something, which smelled worse than a toilet cleaning product, which is the case with practically every perfume now by any major brand (ironically she was wearing a 70’s Ivoire I had brought in my suitcase, a beautiful perfume we both love, even if it came without a nozzle), but as we were lost – which is often the case – we somehow ended up in the main perfume department section of John Lewis.

Oh my god, the new ‘L’Heure Bleue’! I exclaimed, happy for once to not be late to the party for a brand new release when usually they take months to come to Japan or I just never get the chance. ‘We have to try it’.

*

It is boring to be purist for the sake of being purist, and I don’t think I am a traditionalist – and I like the rebellious nature of Delphine Jelk sitting down in the Guerlain headquarters and thinking fuck it, let’s be iconoclastic, let’s renew this bitch for the youth market. Let’s decimate this classic and see if the name resonates strangely with Le Youf (the ‘blue hour’? I am curious as to what this might mean for Generation Z or Y or whatever they are called; is it a call for ‘self care’ in times of inevitable depression? When they are feeling porny? Does it represent some form of Francaise Freshness?)

No matter what they had called this new ‘major release’ – I personally think L’Ocean de Guerlain, Fleur Bleue or L’Iris Bleu would have worked better with the right advertising campaign — and no, I have to completely disagree with some Perfume People who like the bottle. I think it is hideous, as are all the photos, which is why you are getting no picture to go with this post – but if you are basically going to make a Glade Iris Air Freshener with a prominent calone/ ozone top accord then you may as well go for the aquatic sales approach. The Wateries are apparently making a comeback with les jeunes – as are many things pre and post millenial of course. Those of us around the first time either weathered or actively participated in the Calone Crush – I myself went crazy for the most aquatic of them all, Kenzo Pour Homme, which I still think is genius, and D has a secret stash of quite a few of them, in particular Nebbia Spessa by Fillippo Sorcinelli – a brilliant olfactory work of art that makes you feel as if you are actually drowning it is so ocean realistic – but in general I do avoid them like the plague. To add that note to L’Heure Bleue though, of all perfumes, the powderiest of powderiest surely – do you want your cheesecake floating in algae filled brine, do you? To me it just seems the height of stupidity.

So what does this abhorrent aberration actually smell like?

Ok, let me tell you.

My brain smells things instantaneously, almost synaesthestically and I see three simplistic stripes here, just three things (I know there are nasty ingredients like ambroxan lurking in the base, but they are there to simply exacerbate the main atrocity, which comes together geologically like the three different colours of Colgate toothpaste).

There is a clear, perceptible, probably quite high quality, (lab messed with) natural/ artifical iris that probably could have been used quite effectively, were it not melded with a partycrass orange blossom note – that overused floral absolute that has lost so much of its original more mysterious erotica in recent years when combined with disgusting ‘vanilla’ – I just find it tacky and dunce-smelling now.

But imagine this dull and boring floral accord then shot through with acquatica – and probably some nod to the balsamic qualities of ‘L’Heure Bleue 1912’ – the new name for the original- but let’s just be happy they are still going to make it, I am not going to go there – a really horrible insistent, aqueous note than in conglomeration with the unedifying florals honestly smells worse than an industrial airport lavatory cleaner.

In two words?

Vile.

Ghastly.

And even when we had exhausted ourselves with nobly sniffing this rubbish on the tester card (just to give it a fair chance) and Helen had declared that she was just going to put her chewing gum in it instead, the noxious chemicals continuted to linger on my nostrils; a partially lobotomized mermaid I had given no permission to be lying in there.

The after- effects stayed for a long while; I never want to smell it again.

We have just got back from England.

I say ‘just’. Yesterday – but what is ‘yesterday’ or ‘last night’ when you are flying across different time zones, sleepless, then enter a narcoleptic fug for hours on end only to enter it again, headachey, the ‘next day’?

We have a nineteen year old cat, Mori, which makes travelling harder. Her one experience in a Japanese cattery or ‘pet hotel’- yeah right – was so traumatic for her (essentially just fed and kept in a small cage with other animals in the same space) that we have never done that again : we either have neighbours on a roster feed and check on her or – as we did this time – have cat sitters as she gets increasingly distressed being left alone and wails furiously on our return with various toilet revenges to follow at the sheer indignation of not being treated like a queen.

I don’t really like anyone staying in my house while I am not there. It feels invasive. I feel self conscious and probed – our collective hoarding a window into our psyches and predilections – not to mention the terror of the space smelling terrible with an unpredictable, ageing cat.

I of course took precautions. Incense, aroma sticks, small bowls of spiced pot pourris; we did a good clean up before leaving; the house felt bohemianly both haphazard but with its own aesthetic logic; the sitter, my best friend in Japan’s daughter, Lily, an arts student, surely intrigued by all the records, tapes, books, objets, pictures, perfumes ( she is an avid cat lover ).

The garden spaces too.

We have really cultivated the greenery of late – the voodoo tropical balcony ; the ‘bower’ out front with its entangled hydrangeas, wisterias and osmanthus ; our new area round the side, ‘Miami’ with its palms and banana tree and papaya; though it clashes with the landlord’s more minimalist requirements he knows how much we love it and lets us overgrow.

We had been warned about the camellia. My ever sensible friend round the corner, Sachiyo, who helps us out with all manner of crises — lost wallets, phones, malfunctioning washing machines – “You use too much soap !!” said she would never have one in her garden because of the ‘poison’ – something I have never associated with this elegant, regally unassuming flower

I associate the camellia – tsubaki in Japanese – with Chanel, sumo wrestlers – who wear camellia oil in their tresses – and Shiseido, whose nineties-y Tsubaki extrait ( above) I bought recently – as well as their ultra popular Tsubaki hair products – which is practically the National Scent Of Japan.

I don’t associate them with severe dermatitis, dizziness and anaphylactic shock, some of the symptoms that can result from coming into contact with the larvae or adult moths of the species

Arna pseudoconspersa, or tea tussock, a toxic haired moth that apparently has a yen for camellias, although our three shrubs have been growing nicely for the last eleven years without any incident or the least trace of the suckers and all threat of them had receded into a once heard factoid.

That is until we landed at Haneda airport, I got my internet connection back on and had a message from Melanie on our MoriSit Whatsapp group chat that she had an angry torso of itchy red spots spreading over her arms, chest, neck and legs as did a teenage friend of her daughter’s who had come to stay. The dermatologist she had panic rushed to asked if she had been in contact with any moths; M told me I should check in the front garden on our return.

Finally emerging from a taxi, so tired we couldn’t speak to each other; grimier and grubbier than I could possibly bear wearing the same clothes that were suitable for the cooler Autumnal morning in Paddington twenty two hours earlier or whatever it was but not for the muggier Nihon and the bipolar excesses of the British Airways flight which tended towards frigid – d was in hoody and three blankets throughout- but then suddenly reheated at mealtimes having me throw off my triple jumpers, I thought I was going to go mad with my grime and the misguided base notes of what I thought would be a fresh vintage Rive Gauche, so matinal and aldehydic and blue silver in the morning but so glandularly musky and feral a whole day later when melded with my jaded body chemistry, but my eyes, though very very tired, were still, luckily, able to see these creatures writing scathingly on the edge of a camellia leaf that we very nearly brushed past.

Clearly this was quite a dangerous public health hazard ( does anyone know how frequently this happens with camellia trees in Asia ? They are everywhere ) but we were simply too destroyed to deal with it there and then; desperate to shut out everything and everyone there and then and sleep – which we did on and off from 12pm to about 8 the following day.

We both awoke buzzing though with the dangerous awareness of those foul creepy crawlies sending hairs out into the air ( ‘burn them !, advised a Japanese friend – but then AI said no no never burn them as they release their jagged hairs into the atmosphere and down into your throat and chest where they can do some really serious damage (some individuals die in this situation).

So I called Kamakura pest control.

No. no appointments available. Maybe next week?

So I ran round to our J father and landlord, the 87 year old superhero you see above with Duncan in a self improvised Hazmat suit with a plastic bag over his head ( he had called Jiro, his son who is a professional gardener and works at the Meigetsuin hydrangea temple down the hill but he was busy elsewhere).

If there is anyone who is the precise opposite of a procrastinator it is Mr Mitomi; he once came round in seconds to bash down a nest of killer hornets that had taken a fancy to our roof – he is more feisty and energetic than most people half his age – and was raring to go to get chopping off the affected areas – that turned out, according to d, to have at least ten times the number of caterpillars on them than you see in these pictures. They were everywher ; no wonder I also had a mysterious rash just before we went away and was taking antihistamines ; these hirsute camellia multilegged insecto-vampiri were already all over the place and we didn’t even know !

G r o sss!

I would like to keep the camellias – they are soon to bloom and have far more flower heads than usual; they do have a certain prettiness, that though virtually scentless, confers some kind of sturdiness to the general proceedings, but the consensus seems to be that with a potential mothmaggeddon looming every year – and even if the garden will look rather bare for a while just when it was going into autumnal flourish – these prim shrubs, now home to legions of lethal grubs that will soon grown nasty wings, are simply going to have to be cut down.

As she usually is, Sachiyo-san was absolutely right.

‘NO CAMELLIAS!’

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.

For £125 you could buy a decent item of new clothing or even a low end niche : full bottles of non- high street fragrances rarely come cheaper.

There are a few I have my eye on – I bought d a small travel size Abel Miami Split for d on our anniversary — I know it will come in handy for a performance with its dazzlingly realistic fresh banana-ness — but it is also pleasingly wearable in and of itself : creative conceptual perfumery with a humorous wink.

I rather like it. The sandy, spiced undertow reminds me of Comme Des Garçons Cologne – one of our old favourites – and I am sure it will be an enjoyable wear for this coming summer in Japan and in England.

*

But liking something isn’t the same as loving something, and this Tuesday — pay day — I stole away before work to my secret treasure trove a couple of cities away — I hadn’t been in eleven months and after all the excruciations I have been through in recent times I felt I deserved a modest splurge – wondering if I might not find something that would exalt and thrill.

My hunch did not disappoint.

Besides a very old Y savon parfume — I love the louche seventies lounge bar of the box – this is more of an objet collectible than a functioning soap – I picked up a large Patou Joy edt for a friend ( as a joke I had sprayed on a pristine Eau De Joy on his wrist with a how about this for pissy expecting exclamations of horror rather than joie – but his reaction were the opposite : d is going to hand it over to him this evening )

;;;

((( but Joy is the very last thing I can get away with wearing myself (who can?!): I just adore that original black bottle with the red cap that I find extraordinarily visually beautiful so couldn’t possibly part with that precious flacon))

Aesthetics really do matter when it comes to The Perfume Experience..Luxury’ –/as it is understood these days — absolutely bores me to death as an idea and reality, but there is undeniably something luxurious; luxuriant about a fully successful marriage of the tactile; the visual, and the olfactory , not to mention the poetic and the intellectual – I want it all.

The current Guerlain packagings only give me mild pleasure when I see them stacked up with their preposterous prices and only so-so designs – I want to fall hook, line and sinker with the whole shebang. Merely being old and vintage of course does necessarily bestow the qualities I am talking about ; some of the seventies / eighties’ iterations are certainly too gaudy or froufrou clunka-dunka — but the zigzagging Grecian geometrics of the above classic sixties’ designs have always pleased me immensely; many Mitsoukos and Vols De Nuit have, and continue to grace my collection

( this VdN is olfactory perfection – it will go in no time the way I wear it ; no box, but who cares when it is only ¥2200 (£10) and captures my body and soul?) )

….Chant d’Aromes though, my god : is that really what I am seeing in the glass cabinet for just twenty quid ? A gobsmackingly good find ; that mirabelle plum, those delirious honeysuckles over moss… what a glorious creation!

D may not like it on me – he never does enjoy the Ma Griffe type of floral chypre – though he quite likes Calandre and Caleche, which were always more androgynous and softly clandestine ( thanks again Victoria for that lovely Eau De Calandre you sent recently … such a nerve cushion ..)

( also Rive Gauche – so similar to Calandre- possibly slips metallically into corseted lingerie though I think the eventual sandalwood / vetiver eventually render it convincing on me – : i couldn’t resist this vintage bottle let alone a slightly musty but still rather lovely Ricci Farouche for the equivalent of £1.50).

*

All very well and good.

But a Shalimar in the original purple velvet box…. and then a vintage L’Artisan Parfumeur Vanilia from 1978 in another case as well? — a truly lovely, exquisite ylang vanilla flower like a young honey bee alighting on orchid …. these are the very essence of perfect wearability on me and I could hardly believe my good fortune – and all for less than a 50ml bottle of Matiere Premiere with fifty pounds still to spare.

Contemporary Shalimars are fair enough, but there is something about the currently used leather/ bergamot clashes in the opening immediacies that induces a certain pituitary nausea. The older extraits, like this one, still have the lemon and baby powder inherent contradictions but are also chock full of all the Peru Balsams and opoponax and styrax you so desire, melding with the coumarins and vanillin: the last time I had one of these particular vintages was in Nagasaki about two decades ago, and I have been craving another bottle of it ever since.

I remember it was unbearably humid and hot; a bruised black and grey sky, pre-thunderstorm, the sky about to crack, and as we got off the overly air-conditioned bus and fell out into the Kyushu August broil I came on with an instantaneous splitting headache.

And yet in the confines of our hotel, I was in the middle of finally properly falling in love with real Shalimar; when it unfurled to the base neither of us could quite believe how incredible it was smelling on me : deeply sensual ; hypnotic; erotic.

Excitedly getting home on Tuesday evening with my haul after a rather gruelling day at work, d asleep upstairs, I changed out my teaching clothes and just sat on the sofa downstairs breathing it all in. Small helpings of Vanilia and Shalimar — not going to be profligate with these this time, I now know how hard they are to come by — but worn close together ….. …… ……………my oh my.

Yesterday was our 33rd anniversary.

If I didn’t have bursitis of the elbow – my god, what next ?! such a collapsing old crock …

I would write in depth. About this and a million other things, plenty of them perfumed.

But I can’t.

Suffice it to say, I came back late from work, we had sparkling and a midnight feast on the balcony, reminisced a little and agreed that we could hardly relate to the kids we were then but were glad to be the versions of ourselves we are now – crumbling skeleton included.

We got together on a June 17th. I was out with my friend George. D was out with his friend Elissa. We all danced to house music in the basement of King’s College Cambridge and then flirted and gravitated towards our future partners.

Heady days…

Congratulations to G and E – we will always have the same anniversary – down to minutes and seconds …

x

Fragrancing is an art form. But it needn’t necessarily be limited to aromatics suspended in alcohol. In Japan, nioibukuro, or scent sachets, are secreted on the person to give off subtle aroma. I once knew a man who smelled divine every time I encountered him- his cunning technique? A bottle of lavender essential oil kept in his jeans pocket.

I carry freshly plucked gardenias and jasmine in my shirt pockets or wallet as a natural soliflore; I use citrus oil infused Vaseline as perfume ; I even once dazzled a friend at the theatre wearing vintage Vol De Nuit while scratching the peel of a yuzu that was hidden inside my winter coat – her praise for the combined smell was far more effusive than for the stage production itself.

Teabags are a new departure for me — though I realize that I have just lied. A cheap but very beautiful and very bergamotty Sri Lankan Earl Grey once graced the interior of my bag and was almost disorienting to the senses it smelled so tea-y

— but I don’t think I have ever ‘worn a tea bag’ – or tea bags on my actual person before – not until last week.

It was an unusual combination.

In the morning, though I never wear ‘Fancy French Fine Fragrance’ – particularly not anything muskily, femininely poetic in the classroom, out of the blue on Friday just as I was about to leave the house and needing some kind of soothing, emotional crutch, I suddenly had a hard craving for Annick Goutal’s – sorry, I still say ANNICK because all mine are in the vastly preferable original frou frou balletic bouteilles — I needed the green hyacinthed and honeysuckled loveliness of Grand Amour (1996), a highly romantic take on Guerlain Chamade, figuring that if necessary I could open a window if it didn’t feel right – but it really did.

The perfume blessed my commute. I never usually wear it, but on Friday morning Grand Amour was the perfect companion; gentle but not insipid; fresh but not naff; possibly more androgynous than I had realized, limpidly ambrous with a magical throw.

Who needs more than that, I hear you holler.

Passing a herbal tea emporium nestled in Atsugi station mine nostrils did pick up the most perfect trail of tropicsl lychee. This shop provides iced coolers of their selections in glass containers and miniature taps – practically Caron urn fountains – and the green rooibos ‘litchi’ as they spelled it – which iteration of this fruit spelling do you prefer, aesthetically ?- was the promoted tisane of the day; gorgeous, really, both in fragrance and flavour, even if I doubted the naturalness of the vibrant L-fragrancing itself.

I bought a small mini pack of five teabags knowing internally how I was probably going to use them – ie not in a mug with boiling water – and the second I ripped open the paper envelope I was devoured by a slew of lychee odour that would rip off the head of Yves Saint Laurent’s much regretted Champagne/ Yvresse ( and without that perfume’s melting teeth and chypric decadence – instead just a subtle backdrop of green rooibos ). Doing damage limitation – and knowing I was a weirdo as closed the teabags in my upper suit jacket pocket I found myself stirringly intoxicated by the incredible duality of the wilting hyacinth Bulgarian rose of Grand Amour with a ravishment of subtropical Japanese lychee in the top — it was almost deranging to the senses and it is possible that one girl in the class may or may not have been stoppering up her nose with several fingers but somehow I still couldn’t remove it from my person: so lynched was I by the lychee.

D noticed the melange on me later and approved ; and so the next day I wore the same perfumes : Grand Amour and a bag of lychee rooibos, also to a theatre performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I am going to buy some more from the shop when I go there again this Friday – ( I also want to experiment with other flavours – imagine APRICOT). Call me a madman if you will, but dear reader, I tell you :: this was a floral, fruititious DELIGHT.