Category Archives: Flowers

It’s hard to believe that just three weeks ago I was in Shangri-La. The former home of the socialite, philanthropist, horticulturalist and billionairess, Doris Duke, once known as the ‘richest little girl in the world’ after inheriting her father’s fortune in 1925 and leading an astonishingly varied and fascinating life (a jazz pianist, a surfer, an art collector, the list goes on), the beautiful building, with a Hitchcockian view of the crashing waves near Diamond Head, is now the Museum Of Islamic Art, Culture, and Design, nestled in quiet suburban neighbourhood of the city and available for guided tours only three times a week via the Honolulu Museum Of Art.

D and I were lucky enough to be given a brief private tour in the morning of the collection by the museum’s director, the lovely Leslee Michelsen, a sharply acute and knowledgeable art historian who told us, after greeting us on arrival (and wearing Diptyque’s Philosokos), that she had something to show me later in her office ‘that I might be interested in’ – a cryptic enticement that had me wondering.

Construction of Shangri La took place between 1936 and 1938, Duke having fallen in love with Islamic artefacts during her honeymoon trip to the Middle East and South East Asia with then husband James H R Cromwell. Wanting to escape the oppressive social requirements of Newport Rhode Island, the house was created as something of a hideaway and refuge – the only guest area being in a private bungalow beyond the swimming pool.

With its impressive – if overly condensed – variety of paintings, wall hangings, objects (including a lot of perfume bottles), jewellery, ceramics, sacred texts, calligraphy and important religious artefacts from a wide swathe of the Islamic world placed in every corner, the overall feeling you get from this privileged retreat is of taste, power and wealth: great beauty, if also a densely. monothematic torpor: almost a surfeit of beauty, wherein only certain areas gave you the feeling that you could really breathe.

((

In retrospect:

A cloaking, perhaps, of oneself in cultural ‘otherness’, in order to escape from the hell of the self?

Naively unaware of any of this backstory at the time, all of this has added a shocking level of new intrigue to my entire Hawaii experience (I was, after all, talking at the Doris Duke Theater named after her); deeper layers of mystery that at the time I was blissfully unconscious of – – there are instincts; but without context, you just walk, breathe, and watch…

Doused in a very singular atmosphere, and having reached the end of the tour of the property on that dazzling morning, with its view over the ocean disappearing from sight as we entered the museum staff offices, in my elated reverie I was about to be amazed by a perfume I had no idea existed.

The first surprise was a bespoke scent commissioned for the museum for the display of a centuries old Mughal carpet by a perfumer who had gone for a very rich natural rose and vetiver that I would gladly wear on a daily basis.

Excited to try this, I would have been happy to live it all there.

But there was still one unbelievable surprise for me to come.

“I think you are going to like this”, said the director.

“Doris Duke had Chanel make her an original perfume, for her private use only, and we keep the bottles in storage in the museum.

Would you like to try it? “

……

Er, yes…….( I had absolutely no idea)….

…

..

Just like Doris Duke herself, Coco Chanel of course also had a ‘complex’ past (she was possibly affiliated with the Nazis – an informant and spy code-named ‘Westminster’), and yet many of us still venerate her as a style iconoclast and the instigator of some of the most beautiful perfumes ever created (Picasso was sadistic towards women; Roman Polanski was convicted of sex with a minor.. …..what do we do with all of this information? Do we renounce all the art and other good that came with them? It is all subject for very valid debate). I love many Chanel perfumes, and was quietly electrified and attempting to keep my cool in such prestigious environs (I failed: my excitement seeped through my pores and invaded the atmosphere within microseconds, much to the delight of Leslee, who had probably been hoping for such a reaction – it was a fantastic denouement to a late morning spent in ‘Shangri-La’).

A private Chanel?

Nº19, as we all know, was Chanel’s exclusive scent, only made available after her death, utterly distinctive from any other perfumes in the impressive Chanel collection. Bois Des Isles and Cuir De Russie – equally tremendous works of art, are now a hundred years old and still, albeit adulterated, changed, available at Chanel boutiques.

An unknown perfume from this house’s archives, then (probably from the 1930’s) is a treasure absolutely not to be sniffed at. I was beside myself.

Would this Chanel I was about to try have a similarly specific, one-off character?

An unknown, aldehydic (or otherwise) wonder?

Would I be experiencing some magnificent, revelatory secret?

I would not.

Though nothing could diminish my thrill at having access to such a rare perfume, the moments between unstoppering the flacons and actually smelling the scent itself, loaded and momentous – hoping for and dreaming of a rare and exquisite gazelle – it was immediately obvious that this very potent extrait (they have vats of it) – nameless – which was a pity in itself in some ways even if in others it could be argued that the unlabelled anonymity of the perfume just added to its enigma – was not rarified and unusual enough to qualify as a ‘classic’ Chanel. It was merely a perfume of its time.

‘Doris Duke’ is (was? this had definitely deteriorated over the years as perfumes do) a musty, muffled, but resplendently confident perfume full of fur coats and mushroom aldehydes, animal musks, jasmine and roses, weighted down by the years of being kept in clandestine storage, heavily reminiscent of Lanvin My Sin, perhaps with a little Shocking, some original L’Interdit and a bit of Caron’s Nuit De Noel (“It’s just generic, of that ilk”) said D, rather unconvinced, later on, and he was right …… and yet with its deep character – and later, in the dry down, a certain gentle, woody vulnerability, this perfume still was very much its own inimitable beast.

Gobsmacked to then be offered to take some home with me, a wonderful and very generous gesture that had me barely suppressing my internal delirium, we all realized at that moment that there was not really anything to hand to transfer the liquid in except for a Hawaiian floral painted glass with a fitted lid, lovely in itself, that was there on a shelf in the office .

And this was what we then used to take back my sample.

Regular readers of The Black Narcissus can probably (though they will be groaning in their interior) imagine what happened next.

Yes.

As we passed through a cool atrium with one of the most valuable white and blue sacred Iraqi tiled walls in the museum, the smell of Doris Duke was suddenly so strong in the air all around us that I thought I was hallucinating.

What was happening?

It could surely (oh god no) only mean one thing..

And looking down onto the pristine floors I saw big drops of the perfume, sploshing all around me, my cup (of priceless perfume) literally overflowing…

Though probably the most outrageously extravagant thing that has ever happened to me (spilling an ultra rare perfume onto the floor of the home of the richest woman in America in an exquisite art space ), and a small, outrageously Baudelairian part of me finding it all bizarre and hilarious (thank goodness Leslee has a good sense of humour), of course another part of me, the main part, was wholly mortified beyond measure by this act of malfunctioning buffoonery.

I had gone beyond my usual irrevocable clumsiness into something more like blasphemy.

The glass was empty.

The perfume had seeped into all of the bubblewrap surrounding it – thoroughly – was dripping from my bag, and in many ways I felt like the most ridiculous person in the world, though nothing could possibly be more Neil Chapman.

The smell was tremendously strong. And not entirely pleasant. To me it was, kind of, as O Lover of Vintage, but an employee in the courtyard had already covered her mouth in dismay saying what the hell is that smell? the nitro-musked miasmas of a forgotten age rising up toxically and filling the atmosphere (the stratosphere) to the point where my friend and facilitator Christine – allergic to all my perfumes to begin with finally -put her foot down and said right that’s it, I ‘m calling you an Uber- you are not getting in my car ! retreating quickly to her vehicle after the director had been kind enough to give me another sample of the perfume in an old, brown just washed, essential oil bottle with no label. Which I screwed on very tight, and inserted carefully into a snug place in an inside pocket of my wallet.

I thanked her gratefully as we said goodbye at Shangri La’s gates.

And then we were gone.

Part Two

( The Haunting )

Back at our place, later, a self catering apartment called The Holiday Surf where we felt more relaxed than at the more expensive commercial hotel on the main Waikiki strand, I took out the still dripping, coagulating bubble wrap and the wet Shangri-La programme, all drenched in the hidden Chanel, and the smell of Doris Duke completely filled up the room.

“Duncan, it’s like she’s in the room with us!” I said like a foolish child (all reminiscences, obviously, now have new connotations; what felt like a genie being released from a lamp now has a more gauzy and sinister overlay).

A normal person would have thrown out the ridiculously reeking plastic.

After all, I still, amazingly, had a full essential oil bottle of the stuff for safekeeping and to take back with me to Japan (it is now kept carefully in one of my perfume cabinets). D was coughing from the fust of the fumes (some of those old perfume ingredients really haven’t aged well; literally and aesthetically), and yet I know from experience how much a ‘new’ scent can stamp an experience into time, forever (I first smelled Nuit De Noel in Los Angeles, bought from the miraculously wonderful Beverly Hills Perfumery, and one whiff from my vintage bottle and I am there straight again); the experience of preparing for Hawaii and then doing the events in reality had been so intense that this also felt like the perfect way to seal up the memories and bottle them. I inhaled deeply. I would live with Chanel Doris Duke. I placed the bubble wrap under my bed. I slept with it; put it in one of the hotel drawers (very selfish of me), let it totally permeate our surroundings until it became the very experience itself.

We would go out onto the balcony for a few hours, come back in – and she would be there.

Leave the slats open on the blinds, the moist breeze blowing next to my drying leis, and when we would walk in, the room was suffused with double perfume.

Five nights in, and our low level digs really began to feel like home.

We would get up, got used to the morning view of the apartments opposite and to the right – voyeuristic, rear window pleasure in watching other people coming and going, morning, afternoon and evening.

By now, the outer-aged haze of the perfume had dissipated, and what was left was much more pleasant; the soapy, gentle, almost lovable heart of this fragrance finally coming through; its tenderness (last night, walking down the hill in Kamakura, having worked on this piece in the daytime, I dared to put some of the scent on the back of my hand for the evening air; a little daunted, in truth – as though through sorcery, bringing the dead back to life.

It really did feel like a person.)

The question is of course, who?

Who was this person, who bequeathed all of this to later generations?

All the images hitherto in this article have been ours.

But I think it’s time now to take a look at Doris Duke herself, with some pictures from the archives.

Duke may have once been the richest women in the whole of America, but in truth, before going to Hawaii at the museum’s behest, I had never even heard of her. Wealth is not something I am obsessed with, I am no reader of Forbes magazine. I can’t comment on her life. It seems, in many ways, to have been an amazing one. In her philanthropical work she obviously did a great deal of good, through environmental conservation, funding medical research, child well being, and support for architectural preservation and the arts; she was a jazz pianist, she helped work for the soldiers in World War II, she was a a close friend of Jackie Kennedy Onassis – she paid for the building of a beautiful refuge in Hawaii, Shangri-La, where people can go to be educated, absorb culture, listen to the birds in the courtyards of plumerias, and dream. She did a lot. It is quite a legacy.

Yet it does also seem clear now, according to the compelling evidence on offer, in various places (even on the basic Wikipedia entry) that Doris Duke really did actually kill Eduardo Tirella. A man who was flourishing in his career, an associate of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, a renowned Hollywood set designer and aesthete, who was about to go on to do bigger things but had his head and chest crushed under the wheels of her furious car instead. Perhaps the billionairess just couldn’t bear for Tirella to leave her when she had already had several failed marriages; perhaps it all happened in a split second of blind passion and love/ hate rage (relationships between gay men and their beloved straight female companions can sometimes be extraordinarily deep rooted and complex, full of poisonous jealousies and possessive fury; it is not hard to imagine everything spiralling out of control). Who knows? Was his life undervalued because of his homosexuality? Was he just ‘some fag’?

I can’t say. I wasn’t there.

Who knows what actually happened?

What is very clear, though, is that Duke certainly had the power, and of course the money, to cover up the startlingly vicious and violent crime and get it ruled as an accident.

To silence the police, and then let the secret stay hidden.

And, with bitter irony, retiring to a place, called Shangri-La, of all things, whose dictionary definition is ‘a remote beautiful imaginary place where life approaches perfection’…

Dying in 1993, Duke was lucky to have the chance to live another 27 years after Eduardo Tirella’s death.

Cooped up with her art and her loyal staff and the knowledge of what really happened. Her paintings and her furniture; her possessions; her bottles of Chanel.

After all the extreme overstimulation of the last few weeks, I am ready for a bit of downtime and quiet. The new term has begun, and that is my focus. I feel like calm. No music. A lot of sleep.

And yet I am not quite ready for something as anodyne as L’Eau Papier.

A nutty ‘rice-steam’ fragrance with musk, sesame, and mimosa essence from Grasse, this is a gentle, skin-warm whisper of mid-tempo olfaction that will work for those who like ‘peau’ perfumes; but which for me just isn’t sufficiently silent and papery.

Jasmine sambac is my go to happy note when the sun is bright and the mood is clear. A big fan of the sambac/tuberose combination found in Heeley’s Jasmine OD (Bubblegum Chic) and Dolce & Gabbana’s Velvet Desire, I was happy to rediscover A Fuego Lento (‘slow burn’) again recently from Argentinian brand Frassaï. Perfumer Rodrigo Flores Roux (Tom Ford Jasmine Rouge, Arquiste Flor Y Canto) is a master of this genre of contemporary white floral : tight, fresh and clean (despite the listed notes of civet, suede, and tolu balsam – indoles tamed but present, civilized, the flowers still genuinely romantic), and this is something I will definitely be reaching for in the coming late spring and early summer months.

A gorgeous sambac is the headliner in A Fuego Lento, made a little tarter with some blackcurrant up top and greener with a touch of flouve odorante, or sweet vernal grass, and a more bodied orange blossom, for anchoring, in the heart. Although there is nothing complicated to write about here – I don’t think this perfume is exquisite, as such, never straying any further than its own natural, dreamily gentle comfort zone – but for me, that is precisely why it is lovely. It is just what it is meant to be. Easy and light. Sensual. A simple, well made sambac jasmine/white floral melange with a comforting, sillage that floats close to the body : pretty much the perfect daytime floral.

Of course, men in woods.

But it isn’t that often that you actually smell a woman walking by softly encased in a perfume of warm woods, at least outside of Japan, where this more stress-levelling form of aroma, reminiscent of hinoki wood onsen tubs at hot springs, or sandalwood incense, is thankfully becoming more common. Elsewhere, it’s virtually all fruity florals still with fake vanilla, yahdy yahda which gets so very, very, tiresome and predictable. Sometimes I just yearn for a much bolder, more riveting, boisé sillage to drift by my consciousness: a different, less cliched sensuality. One that doesn’t make me roll my eyes.

The seventies were full of ingeniously complex, inventive, and truly perturbing woody chypre perfumes such as Lancôme’s Magie Noire, Shiseido’s Inouï, and Rochas’ Mystère; perfumes that I adore, and that beguile, but can also almost frighten, with all their lichens and oakmosses and sassafrilla barks and scary patchouli roses lurking underneath- so it is easy to understand why the dark aspects of sorceresses apparent in these fragrances might be offputting to a younger Instagram Tiktok generation taught only to be cute.

Woodiness in feminine perfumery didn’t just grind to a halt in the seventies, obviously. The groundbreaking Feminité Du Bois by Serge Lutens for Shiseido from 1992 was the first ever women’s cedar based essence and was hugely influential, resulting in countless imitations such as the lovely L’Enfant Terrible by Jovoy, not to mention Dolce Vita by Dior, which I always personally found sparklingly lacklustre in comparison to the Shiseido. We had Armani Mania, Givenchy Organza Indecence, the Neela Vermeires, where sandalwood usually plays a vital role, the (overly) stark woodiness of the Byredos, and, of course, the legendary Le Labo Santal 33, which put woods very firmly back on the map for anyone who was interested (I have only ever smelled this icon once here, though, on a Japanese male artist friend of mine, who wore it brilliantly), but even so, for me, there is always room for more.

Ormonde Jayne Woman is another modern woods classic by iconic perfumer Geza Schoen (also the creator of yesterday’s feature, Molecule 01 +Iris) which has now been on the market for over twenty years but with its reputation as a sensual mood booster is still going strong.

A soothing, cozy, wood perfume based on an unusual central note of black hemlock spruce absolute, I actually used this scent in my scent workshop (it was featured in the official catalogue) as an example of how women’s perfumes need not subscribe to the central, overly prescribed tenets of ‘how to smell sexy’. With coriander, cardamom and grass oil over an emotionally empathizing ambered sandalwood, vetiver and cedarwood, Woman (though I wear this happiliy) is a very homely, intelligent perfume that works equally well when with other people or by yourself on a forest walk.

Mysore sandalwood from India is something I miss. I remember when I posted once, may years ago, on my favourite sandalwood perfume ever by Crabtree and Evelyn (read here for a full sandalwood odyssey) and Tora and I bonding over how much we loved and missed it. The Australian version used in many contemporary perfumes due to its easier availability, just isn’t the same – and neither are the synthetics.

Maher Olfactive’s Waking Dream is an intricately composed Mysore sandalood/ iris and amber triad, which settles eventually into a tranquillizing synergy you can sink into – Ida Meister’s detailed review of this perfume on CaFleurebon can’t be bettered so I will leave that here, but this definitely another wood scent that embodies the theme of today’s piece: that woods, when divorced from an ambroxan/fougere/citrus aggression, can have an entirely different, ungendered, intriguing dynamic.

Aqua Dos Açores is a brand from Portugal whose inspiration for its perfumes comes from the Azores island chain. While their ocean inspired Azul was a little too abrasive/aquatic for my tastes, the peculiarly fresh and fecund tropical flower fest that is Flores reminded me of Hawaii the second I smelled it (while actually in Hawaii)- almost as though it was capturing something – hot tendrils and moist air – as it happened.

Canto, the newer release, is an entirely different kind of scent – less the islands themselves than the ships that are travelling to them. Guaicwood, carnation absolute, cabreuva wood oil, fir balsam and benzoin grace a mellow and natural smelling sandalwood with a delicate whisk of saffron and pepper that becomes very rounded and legible – the kind of scent that bestows calm and confidence and could become a daily signature. My friend Aiko has been borrowing my bottle the last few days – her response (‘I loovvvvve sandalwood!’) precisely the response that I was hoping for as I knew it would suit her busy – but yoga-loving self. Adventurous, but very instinctive, in her scent choices, I somehow knew that she would gravitate towards Canto. The days when she would wear popular, scintillating pink fruities, are, I think it is safe to say, probably in the past.

So back to reality.

There will be no dripping white florals, such as DSH’s nectarous Cross Pollination, a lovely bedtime orange of island breezes I shall wear as a private reverie scent, in my workplace today (though I am sorely tempted). No lush stinking tuberoses. No floating plumerias. But there may be neroli – I have made some delicious new citrus handbalms with oils that I got in Hawaii to slip inside my suit jackets, and I do like pairing those up with a touch of Matiere Premiere’s Neroli Oranger, a personal favourite that smells fresh and clean and optimistic and which I think is going to be my scent of the day.

But what about something anti-intuitive, like Escentric Molecules’ 01+ Iris? Could I possibly start wearing this one a little later in the term?

A bottle of this perfume was kindly sent to my event by Scent Bar LA, and I immediately registered it as something I could wear (and commandeered accordingly). While the ‘Molecules’ alone by themselves don’t appeal, and I found the + Mandarin variant weird, the + Patchouli too biscuity and persistent (D wore it and I thought I liked it, then decidedly didn’t), the iris equivalent has a mellow and easygoing, benevolent vibe that I can imagine pulling off, particularly when inside I am feeling precisely the opposite. It is also improved upon, I feel, and personalized, if teamed up with a little essential oil of vetiver, a combo I have already tried and really liked for a taming/wildness compatibility.

What concerns me about wearing a scent like this – a very familiar accord to the 21st century nose, like a toned down Prada Infusion D’Iris/Vetiver but woodier, more transparent and perhaps manly, is not being able to control the projection of the perfume and feeling paranoid that I am somehow filling up a room with just one spritz when I can’t even smell it myself (the Molecules are, of course, famous for this very phenomenon: you become quickly anosmic, whereas for others your smell is never out of sight: is this what we want from a scent? To be domineering the airwaves with stealth and quiet resolution? Have you had any Molecule experiences of your own, in terms of compliments, aversions?)

I experienced something similar to this sillage conundrum when D wore the beautiful Poivre Samarcande by Hermès for a time around 2008. He could barely smell it on himself at all, and neither could I half the time, but during one night in the Schoeneberg district of Berlin, a stranger sniffed it on the wind from across the street and came rushing over to compliment him on how amazing he was smelling (when perceptible, I did find it really sexy as well, I must admit, though I did find the sheer unpredictability of its throw verging on alarming).

No. You have talked me out of it. It feels a little too risky for a school environment, even if its quotidian ‘rightness’ – I might actually feel a little too conformist wearing this in truth – would give one an air of contemporary competence. Social acceptance. Even trustworthiness (a feeling I probably don’t elicit drenched in Flos Mortis.) The iris and the wood are in nice balance: all is metallically aerated; suppressed to just the right iota. I feel probably that it might possibly even be quite sexy on me .

But not today.

You can’t help your taste.

And so, much as I often feel like a true outsider in what I like – and what I don’t, I have learned to just go with my own flow and wait for my flower to open: because when I am confronted with what I find personally to be very ugly, I just close up inside like angry buds. Waikiki Beach was rather like this : never have I been more disappointed by a place in all my life.

While grateful and excited to be there, dropped straight into the heart of things, across the street from the historic Royal Hawaiian Center, my heart sank quickly, clenched, as we walked along the street with its stunted decorative palm trees; Guccis, Pradas, American Cheese Cake factories, holidaying tourists in shorts and socks and saggy t-shirts; just as with Disneyland – I remember D in the Riki Tiki Room or whatever it was called.. politely staring in front of him years ago to endure the clockwork spectacle though he was dying inside from the aesthetic vacuum that confronted him, where I receive no pleasure whatsoever myself either; or ‘resorts’ – which are deemed beautiful by the vast, probably sensible majority, but whose furnishings I almost always detest (we are addicted to the Netflix ‘Love Is Blind’ series at the moment, an emotionally gruelling reality show in which contestants first fall in love with each others’ voices through a wall and then go on ‘honeymoons’ to see if the physical connection works out, potentially ending in acceptance or rejection at the altar.. – the cultural differences between the American, Japanese and Brazilian versions are beyond fascinating, but the ‘paradises’ they make love in on their very first night together are on the whole, to me, completely hideous, with their plumped up cushions and matching wallpapers and carefully placed silver pineapples (I have long believed, in my heart, that almost all ‘interior designers’ are actually blind); at least in yesterday’s episode, in which the couples in Brazil stayed in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, in wooden huts with minimal overload, surrounded by tarantulas, sloths and macaws, I could watch the scenery quite happily and even momentarily wish I could stay there – the vegetation – the vast, glorious, natural, unmoulded untethered vegetation that closed in on the glass windows of their love nests – and which was certainly the true star of the show.

The hordes all unthinkingly descend on Waikiki Beach but there is nothing to enjoy. It is all hotels and bars, happy happy reggae, convenience stores selling flip flops and beachballs and not much beach. Admittedly, the banyan trees, which feel sacred, clustered with invisible, hidden, ecstatic birds – huge roots hanging down in self-protection – provoke true awe, and these trees are to be found everywhere in Oahu (I now know the inspiration behind Avatar) – but incredulous as you may be to read this, I am sure that the beaches in Britain are actually better. Granted, there may not be palm trees, but in the north coast of Wales, for example, the Gower Coast, if you get the weather (and that is the problem), in full sunshine is completely dazzling. Spectacular. As are the beaches where we holidayed as a family when I was a child, down in Bournemouth and Cornwall, and the agrophobically beautiful, windful space and solace that can be had from strolls on the end-of-the-world beaches that are everywhere up on the coast of Norfolk.

No one is forcing you to stay just on one street in one district in one tiny part of one island in the chain of Hawai’i, though.

And my pretentious (I can’t help it), utter aesthetical horrification in that one touristy area began to dissipate the second we turned a corner and explored other blocks, on the very first night. Suddenly the plastic veneer of the restaurants and stores with their sickening fonts disappeared, and you were plunged into other neighourhoods with real buildings, mysterious contents; plants, trees; neon grocery stores, a sense of realness.

A couple of days later, after all of the hubbub, when Christopher and Christine drove us around the coast, to the east of the island, at sunset, past the velvet undulating green mountains that made my jaw drop, it was as if we were in another world.

Which we were.

We stopped off at – (at least I think it was) – Kailua beach; strolled towards the sands.

Or, rather, in truth, I let the others go ahead because I just wanted to immerse myself in the utter beauty I was experiencing at my own pace, as if in a trance.

Plumeria trees everywhere. Gorgeous, sprawling vegetation; birds twittering (the birds in Hawai’i! – they are so abundant and calm and in their own, glorious world) … I was finally getting the experience I wanted.

I was awestruck .

The beach was only a beach. Nothing else. Nothing manmade. No artifice. No contamination.

So dreamy, and beautiful.

…

Back in the city, on later days, all of this had seeped into the blood. You could avoid the tacky areas, explore.

Away from Kalakaua Avenue, which made me feel ill, the streets were wider; more organic.

Trees, succulents, flower bushes on every corner, in every nook.

And in this more hazily tropical context, some perfumes suddenly made a different kind of sense to me.

In smelling Dusita’s uniquely unusual Erawan, in the past, I had only been able to sense clary sage, an essential oil I am very sensitive to (it has psychotropic effects and its coarse, almost rancid greenness can make me shudder, even if I appreciate its vital role in fresh, chypric perfumes such as the original Miss Dior and Ma Griffe).

In the humid air, the poetry of Erawan, with its strange, jungle lightness, made much more sense; lighter, an ethereal buoyancy I hadn’t noticed before. The coumarinic liatrix, with a muguet/ petitgrain clasp in the top, all lift, but also hold the central vetiver Haiti/ clary sage at the heart. It is soothing, refreshing; enigmatic.

Under the tree, at that moment, I felt the perfume – and the perfumer – talking to my spirit directly.

Likewise, if the sickening pink and blue trash at Duty Free that goes for fragrance these days is like the perfumes at Daniel K Inouye airport: brash, chemical bouquets of tack that slur the soul, the cool earthiness of the extraordinarily elegant Sillage Blanc, a less talked about Dusita, but one that is essential for those that seek a touch of distance and aloofness and escape from all of that, is someone, at ease, unstressed, getting ready to go out at the top of their condo; post bath, in robe, about to dress, in white, for the cool evening outside.

If a tad strident in its potency (I recommend the tiniest amounts of this scent, in strategic places, as it lingers for hours), the beauty of the green, patchouli aromatic trail this perfume leaves – in the vein of Cabochard and other classics of its type but freshened in an unfussy, streamlined modern way with light florals bound with artemisia, Persian galbanum over (a less sweaty than those of the fifties), powdered leather and oakmoss – is unparalleled in the niche market, in a class of its own.

In Honolulu, I yearned for this person to leave their apartment once ready; walk from their doorstep into the evening light and let me swoon, on the air.

guest post by D

Our arrival in Honolulu had actually been delayed by a day (as we had fallen foul of an ESTA entry visa scam) and so the airport protocols had been a tad stressier than desired (= understatement). However, we sorted it out and the first day at the museum was a breeze with all the staff supportive and encouraging and the building itself attractive and relaxing with its courtyards and cloisters seen to fine effect in the blistering sun.

They certainly knew how to build attractive and sturdy structures back in the nineteen twenties. The Museum of Honolulu opened in 1927 and was designed to be a modern interpretation of a traditional Hawaiian building. It houses one of the most extensive collections of Asian and Pan-Pacific art and objects in America.

The perfumes sent through by niche perfumers had caused quite a stir among the museum staff, although Christine, the very person who instigated Neil’s participation in the Cross Pollination show, and head of Education and Engagement, is allergic to scented products and had been suffering the olfactory onslaught for over a month.

Aforementioned scents were stacked on a couple of trollies and my eyes immediately alighted upon the white boxes of One Day, Hong Kong-based perfume company, who had kindly contributed their tea range to the perfume workshop event, as I already know and use their Pu’er Tea fragrance. We settled on this as the perfume for me to wear (only very lightly out of deference to Christine) during the talk, as it is one of the most gentle and serene accords, soothing to myself and calming to Neil, who was nervous about talking in front of over 160 people. The top note of pu’erh tea is just a touch sweet, adding moisture and some enigmatic grace to a woody earthy middle and base of cedar, cypress, patchouli, frankincense and vetiver. It’s mellow and modern, yet also intriguing, and I love the way it develops on my skin.

Maybe the calm spell worked, as Neil pulled off his talk with aplomb…

For the workshop, we decided to come sans scents but after the events were done, I settled on Spirito, by Meo Fusciuni, a modern aromatic with a pleasingly harmonious aura of forest green – perhaps because my skin foregrounds the cedar and vetiver. Also, I love the way musk blends accords with a velvet touch and I am often drawn to scents incorporating musk. This was designed to be an evocation of Emily Dickinson’s meadow walks, though for me it is more sylvan and sensual than that might suggest.

An interesting thing happened as we waited for a bus to take us to the University of Honolulu campus to meet our friend Skyler. The bus was delayed by twenty minutes, so one of the people in the bus queue, a gent from El Salvador, struck up a conversation, immediately noting that we smelled great and pulling out a bottle of Tom Ford’s Leather from his rucksack, which he brandished with pride – and this without knowing anything about our reason for being there.

Though in rather different ways, I found both Pu’er Tea and Spirito to be refreshing scents for the Hawaiian heat.

With Christine now at a safe distance in mainland America on a business trip, I continued my scent journey by delving into richer, warmer territory, and intrigued by the name, I took up Patchouli of the Underworld by Electimuss, a very ambery, woody, leathery patchouli, with a sweet metallic opulence to it.

Neil said it was like a modern Shalimar and although not the kind of scent I would usually wear, I really enjoyed the middle stages where a certain spiced greenness emerges which was counterintuitively cooling. Is this the chill of the underworld asserting itself through the dense toffee opening?

This scent certainly has a charming sillage and though sweeter than I am used to, is definitely one I will be coming back to – perhaps in winter when Neil wears Shalimar – or Bal A Versailles.

We planned one final blast for the last evening as Skyler was taking us to a drag cabaret hotspot called Kat’s Closet in China Town. For this, we had prepared outfits purchased from Bailey’s Antiques, which specializes in aloha shirts that range in price from 20 dollars to 600 or 700 for the real vintage ones that hang from the ceiling, out of reach of most hands and budgets. The emporium has been frequented by many famous people, including Nicholas Cage (our vacations often follow in his footsteps it seems – Honolulu, New Orleans…) and had been recommended to us by our friend Christopher.

I managed to score an excellent $20 polyester chrysanthemum short-sleeved shirt – wholly 70s – which would go perfectly with the flairs and Cuban heels I’d brought. Neil picked up a rather more costly – but not extortionate given its splendiferousness – red sequined jacket for Burning Bush.

My all-synthetic, predominantly beige outfit demanded a manly 70s-esque number – Bon Monsieur by Rogue, purveyor of devilishly fine and dandyish confections (like Hove perfumes but with added twist and natty packaging), completely measured up. The citrusy, lavender facets of this soapy masculine scent helped to deodorize me with a gentlemanly clean but hopefully mischievously rakish olfactory vibe. (You’ll have to take my word for it.) A sartorial/olfactory combo I shall be revisiting with some relish.

After feeling (rather exhilaratedly) on the spot during the days at the museum I strongly felt the need to let LOOSE.

And so rather than throw away the flower arrangement displayed at the talk and the workshop, Burning Bush decided to go out for the night in the wonderful Chinatown area of Honolulu and wear it instead.

Our old friend Christopher – who we hadn’t seen for twenty years – picked us up for the evening : a gorgeously hot humid night ( had it not been for my get up – for once I was glad of the air conditioning ), on the road outside the second place we were staying at – the Holiday Surf Hotel, and drove us through the brutalist Honolulu architecture of downtown with all its lush tropical vegetation : an aesthetic I adore and became one with.

He couldn’t stay long, but delivered us to the evening’s rendezvous secret location – a tiny club in the Old Blaisdell hotel called Katt’s Closet where we were to attend a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Our host for the evening was another friend now living in Hawaii- Skyler, from our Tokyo cabaret network; frazzled in the big city before, now blissfully happy in Honolulu : we met in the secret location – invitation only – and proceeded through the beautiful old building to the venue.

Skyler was wearing Maher Olfactive’s Tempo Rubato ( literally ‘robbed time’) – a jazz term for improv – and on me, the what could be seen as overly ‘experimental’ overlays of stewed apricots, narcissus, leather, and a whole bunch of other ingredients was just not right. On S, though there was just the most perfectly controlled, delicately fruity sandalwood sillage that hovered exquisitely about their person for the entire, rather electrifying evening

As a great lover of red, I was more drawn to the more ‘difficult’, but for me more compelling, Sagan Dalya, based on perfumer Shawn Maher’s discovery of an unusual ingredient – the Siberian rhododendron. Floral, balsamic, coniferous., he combines this new essence with immortelle, honey and tobacco for a strangely addictive sweet deep medicinal blend that theoretically I should run a mile from, but that somehow ( perhaps because I came to really love the maple syrup licorice of Serge Lutens’ immortelle drenched Une Proie Pour L’Ombre and have become more accustomed to that nasal timbre) I am now very glad to possess. There is a depth. Heavy and rich – you feel yourself being pulled down inside this perfume. Also, I had spilled some costus absolute on myself a few days before, an essential oil I was smelling for the first time – an alarmingly dense, sweet essence similar to the feeling of Sagan Dalya, that I couldn’t get away from because it was all over me, getting stronger with the hours, as we walked in the city, along with oil of tuberose absolute that was intentional, sweating in my vest in the heavy air,……new smells all around us. unsure of some. but suffused with delicious saturation

The strongest flower scent was the fake plumeria piped into our hotel in Waikiki.

But there are flowers everywhere.

Plumeria flowers – real ones – drop slowly onto dense, spongey grass underfoot: big, silent pikake jasmine flowers – exquisitely fresh and coldly hypnotic -lurk in bushes. Inquisitive hibiscus, great banks of birds of paradise ; flowers I no idea of the name.

Tuberoses I haven’t seen in the wild, but they formed part of the lei I was given to wear at my talk at the Honolulu Museum Of Art- as well as puakenikeni and the most intense jasmine I have ever smelled; all placed around my neck in sheer sense derangement.

It was a very daunting, but also very exhilarating experience, that fortunately went well (I will write more extensively when we are back in Japan and I can describe it all more fluidly on my computer). I am way too self conscious to watch this myself, but here is the official link if you are interested :

https://youtu.be/5KGi6X-v9BQ

I met so many great people – also the next day at the workshop in the museum courtyard

The rest was mine : MINE ! to take home with me but logistics make that impossible. We are currently packing and taking back my personal selections : other bottles have been gifted to museum staff (who really couldn’t have been lovelier) and some friends we have here. Thanks so much to the brands for sending the perfumes – I will do more detailed features on the scents that were there later.

This exhibition was all about the flowers though, and it is flowers that I love, so quite obvious that the white florals that were there are coming home with me.

Tubereuse Trianon is a scent I once found at the flea market – a vintage original. This new edition is basically the same with a fresher coriander and rhubarb entree that is bright and head clearing – a good one for spring days.

Matiere Premiere’s Aurelian Guichard has a great predilection for Ambroxan (a characteristic I don’t share), but in French Flower, a buttery tuberose with the texture of Montale’s Intense Tiare, it kind of works. This is sexy and direct, and I might wear it for our last night on the town this evening.

The perfume that has really captured my heart on this trip though is DSH Tubereuse. Unassuming at first, compared to its brasher counterparts, this rich but subtly subdued tuberose accompanied my wrists out on a morning trip to get groceries at the corner store. I couldn’t tell if the flower smell was coming from the trees and hidden flora or my skin; combined with a pure tuberose extract I have been wearing in tandem, this lovely perfume has really got to the heart of it all.