Category Archives: Violet

‘Those are pearls that were his eyes: nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change; into something rich and strange………………’ SALARIUM + V from THE PERFUME LIBRARY by LUSH (2019) + UNDA MARIS from the Extrait De Musique collection by FILIPPO SORCINELLI (2018)

 

 

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Last Saturday I attended the opening of the new Lush megastore in Shinjuku, busiest station in the world; a throng of people darting and threading (to be more exact, gliding in various directions – there is a choreography; people rarely collide with each other here); emerging from stairs of stations, crossing en masse,  meeting and parting and entering and leaving the reefs of unknown buildings – the animation of Saturday; thrilling in some ways, that weekend rush,and yet you do have to be in the right state of mind for it – the sheer numbers of people filling up every available space, slipping and pulling you along.

 

 

 

 

It seemed to me as if half of the people on the streets were crowded into the four story brand new Lush store, opening that morning, in which an extraordinarily potent olfactory cacophony of bath bombs and soaps, perfumes, body sprays, cosmetics  (including a beautifully innovative sushi conveyor belt going round selling freshly made concoctions for face and body) gelled and glowed with neon signage, a hip, cosmopolitan crowd, congratulatory flower bouquets, and a range of fragrances currently exclusive to this retail space  (they are stocked as well at the flagship store in Liverpool, which will be selling my book at the Fragrance Library, with Shinjuku also hopefully to follow).

 

 

 

 

 

 

My companion for the morning was Catherine, a perfume lover like no other (this woman truly lives for perfume – I have never known anyone else quite comparable – she lives and breathes the stuff). We met at the station – or rather I retrieved her from one of the labyrinthine exits – so easy to get untethered and lost in this warren, which can be disorientating if you don’t have your wits about you or get pushed, led along in the wrong direction – and we busily, once doing the tour of the place – an entire floor seemingly devoted to bath bombs and soap; another for sundries, intriguing books and esoteric vinyl (Lush even has its own record label), oceans of face products and shampoos, became firmly ensconced on the perfume floor, where, alongside familiar Lush/Gorilla Perfumes classics such as Lust, Vanillary, Breath Of God, Imogen Rose, and Cardamom Coffee (one of Duncan’s signature perfumes), as well as many, many others – I couldn’t help picking up the Old Delhi station perfume oil, all cinnamon, clove and jasmine, from this section; Catherine fell for the hardcore indole jasmine blast that is Lust  – we found ourselves eventually more intrigued by the Perfume Library and its enticing range of perfumes from past and reworked to edgily brand new – that which perused, and smelled ad nauseam on each other, and on ourselves, and on paper strips until we were through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are shuddery vibrations to many of the more extreme Lush perfumes; like poisonous odorous flowers that forbid you to be touched. This comes, I think, both from the high percentage of natural essential oils that pervade the blends and give them a sense, almost, of being living entities rather than merely fragrance compositions, but also from perfumer Simon Constantine’s firmly idiosyncratic, almost waywardly fierce approach to making perfumes; perfumes with provocative names and sometimes quasi barbaric aromatic intensity that usually deliver on their promise. Some of the more virulently masculine scents in the range such as Smuggler’s Soul and Lord Of Goathorn are commanding and potentially quite erotically intoxicating on the right individual (but that individual quite obviously isn’t me – I can’t do burnt, smoky, or perfumes that remind me of woodcutters or Nicolas Cage chasing forest demons in the recent horror classic, ‘Mandy’). Still, they demand attention; they do feel alive. And much as I loved the name, Sweet Grandma

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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could only remind me of the Mother at the end of Pyscho – both Catherine and I exclaimed aloud how it smelled just utterly like mothballs; truly Gothic and ancient – naphthalene, when someone has taken out their winter clothes from storage and sits next to you on the bus :a becoated sarcophagus facing forward; hollow skull; eyesocketless; with a stroked and carefully brushed bun of  natty, flaxen hair.  Not having tried this one on skin  – which apparently has notes of orange blossom and rosewood as main features – I can’t comment on its progression or structuring, but I will certainly be going back to the store when it has quietened down a notch as I think it is one of the most singularly strange perfumes I have ever encountered in my life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The extensive wares in the Perfume Library vary in price, from standard niche cost up to the levels of Tom Ford and the like; Secret Garden, an intensely animalic and earthy perfume composed of osmanthus absolute, myrrh and immortelle was the most expensive of the line at 36,000 yen, while others (Cocktail, Assassin Remix, Two More Hearts) fell in between. Catherine was rather drawn to Death And Decay, which I have reviewed before – a light and slightly perturbing evanescence of lilies and powder, but though we both quite liked the violet cassie party girl vibe of Tuca Tuca, and the spriteliness of Pansy, it was V – a quite mesmerisingly velveteen violet perfume that hovers on the skin in a way I have never experienced before  (for me it was like a retreat from everything in the later afternoon light of lace curtains; sun still emitting warmth onto your cotton sheets but not enough to give you the sense of a complete and utter escape from everyday responsibility, just you and the sense of your body in the bed, and the soft bedclothes, and the violets  – downy, vanillic as a retort to the bitter green oddness of the top accord, which I find difficult, but not enough to prevent us from finding this perfume too singular to ignore – we both got a bottle); a mix of Ghanian ylang ylang, cedar wood, cinnamon, clove, and plush, plush violet flowers with the tang of the greenest violet leaf up top, V is a re-release of one of Lush’s first perfumes from 1995 especially for this event.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As is Salarium, a reorchestration of another original Lush perfume (though under a different brand name at the time) from 1989 that for some reason I find engrossing and addictive in its sheer saltiness and sexual intensity; although composed of oudh, neroli, oakmoss, and rose, you would swear instead that this is an eighties fougere along the lines of Drakkar Noir, with a dash of Kenzo Pour Homme ; like a cop from Miami Vice who has been brought back from the dead with mouth to mouth resuscitation after falling into the bay …..a scent that lashes and douses you in sea spray, leaving you strangely suspended. As usual, there is something that ambivalently affects me at the chest level in the initial spray, but the magnetism of the perfume is undeniable. I had to have it – and Duncan wore it the next day, leaving rock pools of planed and saline mistscapes in each room that he had been in, he leaving, again for Tokyo, a couple of hours before me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again, the train journey to Shinjuku. This time to film a scene for his new film, he with vast and heavy prop-filled suitcase in hand, me bringing up the rear later (the night before we had gone to a Thai karaoke bar in Yokohama to meet Michael, where an entire kickboxing team and their entourage had descended; fascinating, but as I enjoyed crooning Falling, from Twin Peaks, and Do you Really Want To Hurt Me? with a stranger, I was too tired; burnt out, actually; ; work has got progressively better as the term has gone on; more involved, but also more straining on my central nervous system; all the performing). It decentralises me, and the next day I woke up feeling subdued; you might even say subterraneaneousor at the very least just encased in my own self: : : needing solitude and space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Odd though it may have been, given the gloomy and rainy weather outside, the humidity oppressive through thick clouds, contrasted with the glassy ice gleam of air-conditioned air on the trains – I could feel it, from mouth down to my ventricles, that unnatural way of breathing, like snorkelling, which I could never do (always drowning in salt water immediately; I prefer to just dive down deep as far as I can with my natural lungs before returning to surface); the contradiction of moisture and dryness in the atmosphere complemented by my own choice of fragrance that day as I dreamed alone back up to Shinjuku, that strange hub of government, finance, pleasure, crime, and irrepressible energy; Unda Maris by Filippo Sorcinelli.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While it might be easy to mock such a self proclaimed aesthete and fashionista synaesthesiast such as this Italian renaissance man – organist, perfumer to the pope, artist – I do think that the perfumes from his extensive ranges – Unum, Nebbia, speak for themselves. They are refined; spectral, elegant. They let you dream. The Extraits De Musique, whose bottles are shaped precisely like organ stops, and whose fragrances are based on one particular sound from the church organ – are soft and inspired, variations on benzoin and frankincense and all other kinds of churchly resins just in different proportions to fit the musical note in question – are all very wearable, if not very affordable; in reflective mood I could happily wear several.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unlike Nebbia Spessa, another marine fragrance from this perfumer, which is an almost sensurround asphyxiation under water, the concept behind the fragrance exactly this – the terror, and awe, of the ocean – Unda Maris is a far more ethereal, gentle, and unearthly experience. Like being bathed in the sound of the organ  – I could say also the celestial chorus of Neptune, easily my favourite part of Holst’s Planet Suite, a piece I would listen to as a child at maximum capacity and be awed, subsumed, abducted by sea people (though that might be taking it too far);, nevertheless, the experience of wearing the perfume definitely bathed me in hush ; as sense of going under. If most perfume is a plus sign, a yang rush, then this is a benevolently minus yin submergence of benzoin and angelic frankincense with a photorealistic vision of a bay; not just the waves but the air and the clouds as well; like being transported to a different physical and mental reality; when D tried this on once I was almost derouted mentally as I kept actually feeling as though I really were on an isolated beach, with no sunshine; too saline and rock-beaten to cast off as merely an afternoon fragrance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the almost empty train car of the new Keio line, I found that the perfume, which I had applied quite a lot of (it is an extrait) put me in a state of peculiar tranquillity. In many ways not me – I do like marine fragrances sometimes, but they are more what you might call my perfumes for specialist occasions – this nevertheless is a scent I would consider buying as it seems to bestow a unique experience on me; the train carriage felt like an aquarium, I felt defleshed and cool, as if I were in some underwater kingdom, accessing caverns – my rib cages as coral – drifting slowly down the space inside, and look out at fishes and the undulations of anemones; the fruited notes at the centre of the perfume lifting the sea smells, while beneath, incense and almost dirty balsams played like body smell of the organist’s fingers on the keys; Debussy’s La Cathedrale Engloutie, or The Sunken Cathedral, which I also once played for a piano diploma almost thirty years ago to this day in a huge church hall under a crucifix; the deep resonance of the drenched, submersed chords as the drowned building continues, periodically,  to emanate its ghostly music

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The next day, I woke up to a bad cold; throat and ear infection, dizzy, and have been off work all week, in bed ( I cannot teach when not able to properly hear or speak). Recovering my energy, which all but disappeared after the franticness of the teaching week and overstimulated creative and sensorial shenanigans of the weekend, I have realized that this is something I need to curb, as I need to be more respectful to the limits of my sensitivity and realise that our natural inclinations towards hedonism require temperance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I feel as if I am bleeding out in all directions, and feel unanchored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though unwell, however ( I am recovering today, the rest has done me good, my chest is clearing, and I can taste and smell again – at first I had pure anosmia, a further ‘cowering into self’…..no longer fully sentient, the world around you becomes ever smaller and less important); a little guilty; but not really –  – – – – – – this is the first time in a long while that I have felt fully relaxed; even serene. Cloistered at home. But silent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed under Incense, Oceanic, Violet

the first time I ever smelled violets

 

 

 

 

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The first first time I ever smelled violets was yesterday.

 

 

It amazes me somewhat to write that sentence, since I know the smell of violets like I know the colour of my eyes, but that smell has only ever been in perfume or in Parma candies : a chemical appropriation thereof. For some reason I have never before, in this lifetime, come into contact with the breathing, fragrant flowers themselves.

 

 

Yesterday, walking in the cold, in the pleasant but mundane town of Fujisawa where I mostly work ( life has been quite dreary since coming back from Cambodia : it is as if I am shellshocked by reality and the drop in temperature and have had to try in vain to tame my recalcitrant, wayward inner spirit which just wants to live in dreams: :  a lot of turbulent and discordant stress of late being the result ) –  I did a double take when walking past one of the standard florists as my sight alighted on some pots with the label ‘nioisumire’; or fragrant violets ( the ones that live in the woodlands near our house have no smell : these flowers are doubled in petal, more bunched up, I think Parma)……..and as I leaned in, like Snow White, I could smell violets – just as I always imagined the smell to be : sweet, pretty, velveted, but with green edges and a breath of soil – and I had to buy them.

 

 

 

During my lessons last night – fraught; perspirated; overcompensating for my lack of enthusiasm with frenetic ‘energy’, while the students were writing, I came down for a few minutes to the teachers’ room. And, when no one was looking, I plunged my face into the paper-wrapped potted plant. The smell of the nestled, living flowers hidden within the paper was nothing less than thrilling : as if all the history of violets in literature, and perfume, were condensing in one true moment and I was smelling them in their raw and pristine state: delicate; beautiful ;  emotional.

 

 

 

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Filed under Flowers, Violet

PINK AND FLUFFY: : INSOLENCE eau de toilette by GUERLAIN (2006) – review II

 

 

 

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In my old review of Guerlain’s Insolence, I describe my first, initial memories of experiencing this pink ultraviolet vanilla with bemusement.

 

I can still see myself outside Yokohama’s Takashimaya on a cold winter’s night and actually laughing, so over the top, harsh, swirling and unwearable I found it to be.

 

And yet the other day, a beautiful, sun filled afternoon I spent by myself in glorious solitude scouring the junk shops in downtown Tokyo (heaven on earth when you are in the right mood and have been stuck down in the sticks teaching pre-examination classes for a solid month), I came across a full bottle of this luscious Guerlain little treat for just 1,400 yen (about twelve dollars, under ten pounds), smelled it again, and just knew on the spot that had to have it.

 

I now kind of think that I maybe do actually love it. Spraying it onto the back of my hand as the wind blew around me at Asagaya station –  the train delayed for thirty minutes by yet another suicide –  this sweet, irisian violet with lashings of hair spray and fruit formed a bunny pink halo of comfort  around me like the softest, most succoring blanket.

 

Dryer sheets; felt, fabric-softened baby grows, orange blossomed-vanilla;  love.

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Filed under Floriental, Gourmand, Violet

VIOLETS by BERDOUES, BORSARI, PENHALIGONS, BROSSEAU

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“As violets so be I recluse and sweet”

(‘Who hath despised the day of small things?’ Rossetti)

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This is the legacy of violets, in literature as in perfume – the retiring archetype: virginal, breast aflutter. The clasped idealist.

Nestled in their heart-shaped leaves, with heads downturned, these are the flowers that Diane Ackerman, in her passionate sensorial treatise ‘A Natural History Of The Senses describes as ‘burnt sugar cubes ….dipped in lemon and velvet’.

In truth, I can hardly smell them and am definitely slightly violanosmic. Duncan will say wow, violet, and I only get a slight hint of it, which is strange when my sense of smell is usually so sensitive. But since the flowers contain ionone, which we lose the ability to smell after a few minutes, the scent of violets does literally play a kind of hide and seek with our senses. This makes them, then,  the most elusive of flowers, toying with flirtation……………..Now you see me, now you don’t –  which for me only adds to their allure.

The Victorians, of course,  uptight prigs with desire leeching secretly from their tense,  oleaginous pores, loved them. As an antidote to the corrupting dangers lurking among the musks, civets and tuberoses, light violet toilet waters were deemed ‘appropriate’ Victoriana for young women to wear, with their tender, coy privacy.

And although I am not exactly the shy, retiring wallflower type myself ( except sometimes), I do occasionally have a yen for the taste and smell of violette. For personal use, my favourite violet to wear is definitely Caron’s sensational Aimez Moi, although I also, when the mood hits me,  enjoy the ironically chest beating leather of Balmain’s Jolie Madame in vintage extract. Recently in this cold weather in these hard, dizzyingly inexplicable times, I find I am also enjoying Guerlain’s paradoxically soothing, throw-all-caution-to-the-wind  Insolence. , a violet to end all megaviolets.

Violets can smell quite interesting on male skin – a refreshingly ungendered tonic. As a young man I was quite often drenched in Geoffrey Beene’s green violet leaf Grey Flannel as well as Dior’s violet gasoline Fahrenheit, although now in terms of more elegant and gentilhomme-centred violets I think you can’t really beat Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria Lavande Velours, in which Duncan smells  exquisite.

There are plenty of other violet perfumes out there on the market now that violet has made a (very minor) comeback, such as The Different Company’s garish  I Miss Violet, or Tom Ford’s anemic (and strangely hideous) Violet Blonde, but below are some more traditional, posyish numbers  and a couple of more modern, violet oddballs as well just for the sake of it- violets that smell mainly just like violets (if you can smell them), that go more for the eye-fluttering, classical route, but as usual with this flower, leave you wondering what is beneath.

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VIOLETTES DE TOULOUSE/ BERDOUES (1936)

Violettes de Toulouse, candied violet flowers preserved in egg white and crystallized sugar, have been made in this French city since 1936. The fragrance of the same name, presented in charming old-fashioned atomiseurs, is apparently made from true violet absolute extracted from flowers that grow on the hills outside. Taking 6000 lbs of violet flowers to obtain just 2.2lbs of essence, the scent of freshly picked violets is enhanced with other flowers (lilac, iris, and cyclamen), almond wood, and musk, for the classic, and pretty,  satin-ribboned posy.

VERTE VIOLETTE/ L’ARTISAN PARFUMEUR (200?)

Anne Flipo’s creation for L’Artisan has her trademark fleeting evanescence. Similar to two other of her creations, the beauteous Mimosa Pour Moi and the pale Jacinthe Du Bois, this is a delicate violet with very green top notes. It is perhaps to violet what Hiris (Hermès) is to iris – an alternative to the standard bleeding hearts, powder and musk, if a touch on the precious tip.

VIOLETTA DI PARMA/ BORSARI (1840)

For English people like me, ‘Parma violets’ are a confectioner’s curiosity that you either love or hate. They are essentially like sucking on little sugary, perfumed circles of talc. To say they are an acquired taste would be an understatement, but those of a certain generation remember them with nostalgia (they are still made by Swizzels of Matlow, a Derbyshire company whose ‘Refresher’ chews I developed an almost dangerous addiction to when a teenager, only stopping when my mouth was too sore to go on).

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The sad thing about the existence of these little discs of powdered confectionery though, with their simple, sucrose and synthetic violet flavouring, is that for those who know them, almost any violet perfume of the classical variety will just automatically remind them of the sweets, and thus smell cheap. I can hear the cry ‘Ooh it smells just like ‘Parma violets’ (done in a thick northern accent), as a British person sniffs a perfume such as this, though Violetta (Penhaligons) might still win the Swizzels trophy.

VIOLETTA / PENHALIGONS (1976)

Violetta. With big, purple velvet bows in her hair, she stares out with mourning, indigo eyes…

Emerging in 1976, when such a scent must surely have been deeply unfashionable (or maybe the vogue for Gothic horror, in movies like Carrie, was the inspiration?) this deliciously candied violet has made into her thirties, and is now apparently a cult, secret favourite of the dandyish Penhaligon’s man.

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VIOLETTE MENTHE/ BROSSEAU (2007)

Depressed Debbie Gibson.

This violet-mint is a strange little thing: powdery and fruity, but with a perpetual frown, like a cabbage patch doll with eyebrows drawn in angry felt pen. Amazingly my friend Laurie got the same on me – petulant teenage girl from the 80’s. We both loved it.

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DANS TES BRAS/ EDITIONS DE PARFUMS (2008)

A skunk pissing in a violet, this bizarre salt-floral-musk is seemingly an intellectual exercise from master perfumer Maurice Roucel (creator of Musc Ravageur) and like that fragrance it is a fusion of traditional, romantic ingredients and notes of sweaty warm skin. Dans Tes Bras (‘In Your Arms’) smells extremely synthetic, odd, but riveting: once the sour, mushroomy endocrines of the ‘violets’ fade, you are left with a very personal smell that is unforgettable.

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NOT HILARY SWANK: INSOLENCE by GUERLAIN (2006)

 

 

In its attempt to reach a younger audience, and to rid that most poetic flower of its timid, knees-clenched legacy, Guerlain audaciously chucked a synthetic neon-violet cannonball at department stores back in 2006. It was a funky, monstrous thing I immediately knew would be a flop (especially given the choice of Hilary Swank for the ad campaign, which to me felt totally ill-matched..)

 

 

But I was wrong.

Apparently Insolence has had its fair share of takers, and the scent now has its place assured in the Guerlain mainstream line-up, targeted primarily at a younger audience who will presumably later then grow into the illustrious stable’s grands classiques. Maybe it’s the sense of Guerlain’s Finest Moments  re-segued for the modern age (the marzipan of L’Heure Bleue; the powdery iris-violet of Après L’Ondée; the vanilla sexy of Shalimar, cleverly concealed within the caterwauling mix…) but it all felt so totally wrong yet ever so strangely familiar….

 

 

 

 

 

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On top we have:

 

pink, purple and red laminated ra-ra skirts of lacquered, lacquered violets (the eau de toilette famously beginning with an indigestible, raucous Indian hair spray note that really takes you by surprise): then, a back-of-your-throat sheen of plastic red fruits: red currants, red apples, and all manner of other synthetic fruits rouges whirly-gigging frantically about the glo-stick violets…..but if you survive the hilarious first ten minutes of Insolence, as  you careen about from all the scintillating lacquer that is pinking up the oesophagus, you can actually have a lot of fun with this party-crashing violet

 

 

( for me, in truth, part of the very enjoyment of this scent is that opening, as it does what the name suggests: shock, slightly, with its brash impudence. The ‘reformed’ woman of the eau de parfum, for which another perfumer was roped in to apparently smooth things over, and where everything is blended just… so to make this lady smoother and more palatable to a wider mainstream audience, is to me so….. bustily bourgeois: more wearable yes, and more seamless, but with a slight suggestion of feminized lobotomy – though that might be somewhat overstating it.)

 

 

In Maurice Roucel’s more ‘vulgar’ original edt, Insolence has a girl’s- night-out vibe: shrill, fun, and very loud in a slightly late eighties/early nineties manner. It gradually dies down, though, to a perfectly nice vanilla-violet perfume with softer, blurrier, gourmand edges, those traditional notes of the Guerlinade base, that really let you know that despite all the ‘acting out’ of the perfume’s foot-stomping opening, THIS IS A GUERLAIN,  and that the girl in question fully intends, at a pre-destined age, to follow unquestioningly in the faultlessly chic footsteps of her immaculate, Jardins de Bagatelle wearing maman.

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Filed under Floriental, Flowers, Perfume Reviews, Violet

In our melancholy twilight: LE DIX by BALENCIAGA (1947)

 

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I have had two full vintage bottles of Balenciaga’s classic Le Dix, both of which I gave to people I knew would cherish and wear it more than I ever could (there is still one small, perfect bottle of the eau de toilette upstairs somewhere for reference, but I myself am simply not built for this pallor….)

 

 

 

I adore smelling it on a woman so much more – on alabaster skin; a wrist concealed beneath a coat…..

 

 

 

 

 

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In vintage parfum especially, Le Dix is timeless and beautiful; an almost mournful scent of chalk-white powder, musk; and a cool, dust-laden quality like an old French library in November.

 

 

 

 

Haunting, sad violets (pale, thoughtful; quietly rapturous) are sorrowfully captured in the fading dusk, as light filters through thick, stained glass…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Such rarified feminine wistfulness was not destined to last in this world of ours, and one can see why Balenciaga would choose to freshen up and ‘purify’ Le Dix for the modern audience. In any case, the current version is quite captivating, a stunning violet aldehyde with sparkling citrus top notes that you should try if you like others of its type (as a cooler, more contemplative Nº5)…

 

 

 

The reformulation of Le Dix has a certain sparkling uplift, vivacious, elegant and great for the evening and grand events. But for pure poetry, the vintage  – so fine, so knowing and wildly introverted – is inescapable.

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed under Floral Aldehydes, Flowers, Perfume Reviews, Powder, Violet

THE DUSKY SLUMBERS: OMBRE MERCURE by TERRY DE GUNZBURG (2012) + LYS FUME by TOM FORD (2O12)

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Ombre Mercure is a woozy, classical modern – a salted, thicker Apres L’Ondée, diffused with the modernistic fumes of Violet Blonde, a touch of Une Fleur de Cassie, and some of the floral warmth of the first Gucci Eau de Parfum….

 

‘Reminiscent of loose powder, red lipstick and the classic chypres, it is especially designed for passionate characters’ says Mlle Gunzburg, a renowned makeup artist who released her first collection of fragrances last year, and I can quite easily imagine some people falling for this soft, gauzy perfume, which is definitely shadowy, as its name suggests, though not in the least mercurial.

 

Essentially an earthy iris butter with powdered violet over a ducksdown of patchouli, benzoin and musky vanilla, it is a very slow, drifting perfume, like mauve-reflected clouds in a painting. Seamless and unjarring; enveloping.

 

 

 

 

 

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What it lacks, though,  is that indefinable something, or ingredient – wit? – that would take it into the realms of the irisy sublime. On the other hand, its anchored slowness and immediate romantic appeal could easily make it someone’s signature.

 

 

 

 

 

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Lys Fumé is another immediately likeable perfume, though one that is not remotely worth its extravagant price tag. Having said that, it is an interesting take on the lily. Unlike many spotless, altar-inhabiting lilies, this is more like a lys of the underworld……….

 

As a part of the Jardin Noir collection, it succeeds in being, if not quite ‘smouldering’, then certainly, at the very least,  shifting and quixotic – a hip young Gucci-clad beauty sitting downstairs in some private members’ club, a bit unsure of herself, perhaps, but defiant. This perfume would rise in coils from her shoulders and slowly seduce.

 

 

The lilies are not smoked, as you might expect, but underlying the top notes of lily, mandarin and pink pepper, is a strange dusting of nutmeg and turmeric, an unusual note in a floral perfume that gives it a blurry, caliginous edge. A dollop of rum and a sultry base of styrax, oak and labdanum take this impression even further.

 

 

 

Lys Fumé is not as intriguing as I am perhaps making it out to be – like most Tom Ford perfumes there is something plasticky and self-conscious about the scent. At the same time, I can imagine being sat next to this girl with her fixed, restless gaze, and being intoxicated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed under Flowers, Iris, Lily, Perfume Reviews, Powder, Violet

BUTCH: JOLIE MADAME by BALMAIN (1953)

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Jolie Madame.

 

Or, SWARTHY Madame as I like to call her, as there is nothing ‘pretty’, petite or eye-lashed about this scent, coming as it does from a time (the late fifties) when women’s perfumes could be quite genuinely risqué and ripe, moving under surface, acceptable presences of civility.

 

I have never smelled this extrait as originally intended ( ie. on  a woman),  much as I would love to (WHY DON’T PEOPLE SMELL MORE INTERESTING?!!!!!!!!)  but I can quite happily tell you that Jolie Madame, in vintage parfum, can also smell quite wonderful on the right man’s skin, if he can take the dense, rich tuberose and jonquil absolutes, percolating down rich, and dirty with  leather  (I, of course, can).

 

 

 

 

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This gorgeously viscous floral accord, unusually accentuated with coriander and artemisia, remains throughout the long duration of the perfume, but is not the main theme, which is in fact an extraordinarily earthy blend of cedar, beaver, patchouli, leather, musk and civet.

 

Quite ‘PERVY Madame’, in other words.

 

 

Complemented by the rich floral entrance, particularly a thick, syrupy violet that floats on top of the perfume like a slick, Jolie Madame makes for a very intriguing scent :  an aphrodisiac liqueur, utterly uncontemporary,  but in my view all the better for it. Unusual, unforgettable, it is a perfume meant for warm spring days, a lumberjack shirt, and no deodorant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed under Chypre, Flowers, Leather, Violet

LOVE IN PURPLE : CARON’S AIMEZ MOI ( 1997 )

 

 

 

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‘Aimez moi‘: an insistent, clamouring plea.  Love me. 

But to whom?  A lover? An unrequited passion?  ‘Aimez,’ in the formal, or plural form of the French verb suggests the unknown.  Anyone –  a complete stranger; the world. And the first blast of engorged, extravagant top notes surely suggest the latter, this perfume reaching out with outstretched, desperate arms – all cards on the table –  saying LOVE ME, LOVE ME to whoever out there who will listen. There is an almost deliriously sweet intensity here- a greedy, peach-licorice violet, with lushly overladen uses of anise, vanilla and mint, that at this stage in the perfume quite simply either overwhelms ( you fall in love), or repels. It is certainly something of a love gamble….

Aimez Moi had been absent from my olfactory mental landscape for a very long time until a few weeks ago when I came across a very cheap bottle of the vintage juice at a second-hand emporium in Yokohama. I spied it there, unassuming under glass in its crappy, quite badly designed blue and yellow box, but the smell suddenly came flooding back to me in a flash…..me recoiling, when I first smelled it in a Japanese department store all those years ago, and couldn’t quite believe my nose. Yet here it was again, calling to me, and I couldn’t resist buying it ( having many other monsters in my perfumed closets to keep it company), and, as we walked down the street in the Autumnal sun I sprayed. And laughed. And then sniffed. Then sniffed again; and again; and again; inhaling continuously, more emphatically with each breath; my nose glued to my wrist as the purple yellow weirdness was transformed into an extravagant, velveteen violet that struck me as amazing and almost grotesquely beautiful. Compelling. And sighably tactile, like sun-drenched, indigo velvet.  A glorifying madness, like the first onburts of passion, that, likewise, does not last forever, for at the heart of Aimez Moi there is sanity, legibility.  The opening salvo of confectionery mercifully (or otherwise, depending on your dependency) mutes down, slowly,  to a delicately balanced anisic rose/violet, with whispers of blackcurrant and peach/vanilla:  a sweet entreaty to love that lasts for hours on the skin and is ultimately, surprisingly very wearable.  (The usual top to bottom progression is reversed here: rather than the more aphrodisiacal notes blooming later on the skin, as in a Guerlain, these are all brought out in the first moments, only to coalesce quietly under the perfume’s tender main theme later on.) In any case, amazingly to me, Aimez Moi has quickly become a favourite. A suffocation of pleasure. I have never really worn violets before, but soon after buying this perfume, as I walked out into the starry night in my patchouli-lined coat, having sprayed my Caron on liberally, I felt like Lord Byron, enveloped in a haze of romantic, deranged poetry.

And then, when sliding the door open of the local bar with a certain trepidation ( expecting to be thrown out smelling as I did ), I was really quite amazed to hear people I had never met before, saying out loud to themselves: “My God, what is that perfume? It is gorgeous”, looking at me with softened,  changing eyes.

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Filed under Flowers, Perfume Reviews, Violet

Dans Tes Bras by Frederic Malle Editions de Parfum

Like a skunk pissing in a violet, this bizarre salt-floral-musk is seemingly an intellectual exercise from master perfumer Maurice Roucel (creator of cult sensation Musc Ravageur), and like that fragrance it is a fusion of traditional, romantic ingredients and notes of sweaty warm skin. Dans Tes Bras (‘In Your Arms’) smells extremely synthetic, odd, but riveting: once the sour, mushroomy endocrines of the ‘violets’ fade, you are left with a very personal smell that is unforgettable.

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Filed under Flowers, Perfume Reviews, Violet