The Black Narcissus

https://fragroom.com/2024/11/08/sisley/

Reviews to get the heart racing and to search out the ones I don’t know ..

Anyway.

It is what it is.

I woke up this morning strangely full of energy, furiously pedaling in the beautiful sunlight down to the municipal gym in Kamakura where I worked out some of my frustration.

Afterwards I still felt like just cycling around this delightful ancient city with all its temples and meandering streets with bougie knickknacks and creperies, and wondered if I might not come across a cheap vintage perfume as a booby consolation prize.

Bingo. At a snooty little antiques shop behind the Enoden line was an extrait bottle of Ombre Rose, a soft, thickened, powdered, compressed gem of a beauty from 1981 by the legendary Francoise Caron that I am running out of and was very pleased to find a $10 replacement.

For those of you that don’t know it, Ombre Rose is a very unique perfume that nevertheless feels preordained and familiar. Some say it smells like baby powder but I don’t think so. The base is deeply musky; with vanilla, heliotrope, sandalwood, honey and cinnamon; the sloe-hearted rose at the centre licked with a hint of peach but freshened with Brazilian rosewood, and there is a saltiness rather than a sweetness to it that contributes a lot to its addictively warm enigma.

In my experience, the bottles in black and gold such as the one above – which I also have but have used up – are of the most haute qualité. A parfum vaporisateur in the same design I bought a year or two ago for next to nothing was also fantastically rich and spellbinding. Just a little is sufficient to swaddle you in scented cottonwool.

I was trying to repress myself from this kind of post but it has proved to be impossible.

My Japanese colleagues all felt similarly today; depressed and incredulous.

I was totally credulous, because I knew all along – y’all optimists on the left who didn’t realize this instinctively are the naive and gullible fools.

I understand precisely why he won. But am disgusted and sickened that it actually happened.

Hard to respect ‘Murica right now.

As the horror unfurls, I tend to my imaginary rose garden.

The Shiseido shop near our house closed down for good in August; no longer is there choice trash for the taking. I was getting so used to being able to just pick up glassware, odd trinkets, old Shiseido perfumes and cosmetics on the way home that I now feel slightly bereft each time I look at the shuttered metal on the shop front.

Still feeling rose-centric, I remembered yesterday that I hadn’t properly looked through the purple velvet sample box the lady at the shop gave me in the summer. I noticed that there were in fact four three quarters full roses in the vial bottles ready for my delectation. Though a little faded, but just a little, White Rose, Blue Rose, Rose Papameian and Rose Garden Yoshizumi are all rather precious.

White Rose is the most old fashioned (being from 1954). Apparently made of natural white Bulgarian roses, it has an aldehydic archaic musk drydown in the ilk of all the My Sins and Interdits of the past, but done more subtly – a hint of animal, but very ladylike. Papameian is rich cabbage rose with a sandalwood base; Blue Rose a more nineties, Turkish and ‘blue rose’ aquatic, slightly salty affair in a strength exclusive to Shiseido known as a nuance de parfum. I like it, but it can wait for summer. The best, in my book, is the Rose Garden Yoshizumi, which I can find no information about (it is different to the Rosarium range that comes up when you search for it online). This, hauntingly, reminds me of the rose gardens of my childhood and gives me heart pangs. I wish there were more of it; but what I do have will be used sparingly.

https://vimeo.com/dwhom/review/1026124512/e41e88bcd7

Georgia – hope you and Athena like this

Made on a whim day by the lake x

I was planning to do a full post on vintage soaps and perfumes and photograph them properly. Instead, I am craving Parfum D’Hermes so much I need to avail myself of what is likely to be a disappointment (old suds often are) IMMEDIATELY; have tossed all the Rouges onto the nearest book to hand for this lowly photo, and am going to have a scalding shower, followed by cosseted, powdered, bliss. Have a nice Saturday

everyone who knows me knows that i basically went insane after he came into power

my instincts have long told me it is going to happen again

may it not ;

but when it does, i pray for sanity,

and some deliverance

Rose basically doesn’t suit me. It goes sour. And yet I have been wearing nothing but rose perfumes for the last two months. How can this be?

Blame the Mustafa Center. Situated in Singapore near Little India, this bargain shopping Mecca features an entire megafloor of perfumes and toiletries that make me homesick for the place already. Because how can I live without the $2 roll on Yardley Rose deodorants I should have filled my entire suitcase with? Yes, the lavender ones we got were great too: very suave (especially ensembled with the talc and the hair pomade), but it was the roses that have fuelled my recent roseathon: roll ons that smell so nice under a sweater or shirt with just a spray or two of another rose scent on top for gentle complementation. English Rose is more classic Elizabethan red; London slightly sweeter with a touch of the original Bulgari Pour Femme; both at work and on weekends I have been pairing them with Dusita’s La Douceur De Siam, a perfume that has become a staple for me now ; while billed as a ‘tropical floral’ with frangipani, ylang and champaca layered over a little sandal, vanilla and a base of ‘Thai woods’, by far the main player here in the composition is a beautiful rose de mai that settles down to an accord that, on me, is at times reminiscent of vintage Magie Noire.

Other rose patchouli dry modern chypres pale in comparison. Wanting to re-acquaint myself with what is currently on offer rose-wise, yesterday I resampled Rose Of No Man’s Land, with its sheer rose raspberry ambroxan patchouli and found it acceptable, but wanting – a bit thin and miserly; I would probably choose Rose Noir over this or else just source out a vintage bottle of the gnarlier L’Artisan Parfumeur Voleur De Roses, which I used to wear with wild and dark abandon (happy Halloween by the way).

The new Diptyque- Rose Roche – well new to me anyway, was equally clear and minimalist – a rose patchouli that smelled like disinfectant – it must have been the lemon and ambroxan which came across like hinoki and cost a staggering ¥47,500 before tax – a fifth of many J-employees’ monthly take home pay. Granted, it had a certain ‘high quality’ superciliousness I can imagine coming across as a bit koolkat-sinister fashionista, but I have to say that I personally hated it.

Roses don’t, of course, have to necessarily smell naturalistic. I have been wearing a lot of current formulation Calandre recently (thanks Emma), which no one in their right mind would describe as a ‘rose’ (in fact it is a powdery, metallic mossed chypre very similar to Rive Gauche – very early seventies – they were both created by the same perfumer, Michael Hy – just less busy: warmer and more serene.) Yet the undeniable essence at the centre of Calandre is a lovely green, aldehydic, silvery rose that lays the enigmatic foundation for the other ingredients : a rose wrapped in grey velvet. Though the opening salvo of this modern edition is a bit ammonia nose twitchy compared to the sublime vintage, within a short while it softens nicely to recognizable Calandre – which feels completely like me. I love to just spray this one on a hoodie or track suit trousers on a cosy autumnal morning – and let the day roll.

Some roses can be too rosy and mouldering pot pourri, a bit too death in an English cottage. I couldn’t resist buying a bottle of Aoyama Flower Market’s Rose from the namesake florist in Yokohama the other day, for example, because I rather like the packaging, it’s cheap, and the top note is a very appealing rich Bulgarian essence that works as a lite spritz in the middle of the day. After that, though, it unfortunately sours up, as roses tend to – the Serge Lutens’ – Rose De Nuit, Fille De Berlin, Sa Majeste La Rose (which for some reason I have recently been yearning for again) didn’t in all honesty ever work on me for the very same reason. A bit soiled undies. Synthetic Prissy Missy Roses are also anathema on my skin and on the women who wear them; I do like a richer rose, however – like Perris Rose De Mai by Jean Claude Ellena – a gorgeous damascena and rose geranium elixir with a touch of immortelle and musk I would consider getting if they totally repackaged it (I just don’t like the bottle design at all, being an inveterate beige-phobe); but scent-wise, it has all the drama and depth, the plushness of a Guerlain vintage extrait of the glorious Nahema. Ultimately I like the deep romanticism of rose – which, miraculously, the cheap Yardleys do capture perfectly, especially with a little upper tier embellishment. Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times sometimes talks in her regular column of mixing up the economical – head to toe Uniqlo, say – but with one lavish and more curated item to elevate and intrigue proceedings. These last two months i have also realized you can do the same with scent – extend the use of an expensive rose – with a layered, considered mutual reinforcement of perfume.

This morning I was cycling past Muji in Kamakura and thought ‘GERANIUM’.

This is not an essential oil I use with any frequency. I don’t have a real affinity with that pungent minty green rose citronella the way I do a good quality frankincense ( there is a Japanese aromatherapy brand called Marks & Web whose Somalian essence is ethereal, translucent perfection- and deeply healing. On my very cut and bruised :swollen left knee after last week’s bike accident I used copious amounts at night neat on the area and was amazed by the results- the local doctor was too).

But that really pales in comparison with this morning’s derma-regeneration miracle while using geranium. The skin on part of my right hand was raw and grazed off, and because it has been difficult to keep dry – what with brushing one’s teeth and no longer feeling that I can legitimately get out of washing the dishes – it has been a bit wet, dark purplish and weepy.

Cue my instincts. The Giants Of Aromatherapy- Tisserand, Fosse, Lawless et al, always say that your body and mind will intuitively ‘reach’ for an essence in the same way you might crave citrus when deficient in vitamin c.

My body this morning said ‘geranium’. So I stopped off and bought a small bottle, checking beforehand online if it was supposed to be good for wounds. It is apparently one of the best. And smelling it from the tester bottle, my body gave its own immediate physiological approval and knew it was somehow right.

Back at home, I took a hot bath with about 15 drops of the essential oil; also applying some directly to each cut , as well as putting in a couple of packets of German apothecary powerhouse Kneipp’s Happy For Me Lotus and Jasmine : instantly mood boosting, I could feel, or imagined I could feel, the ancient sea salts and floral essences blending with the power of the geranium to get to some real inward business – I don’t always like the scent of pelargoniums, but today I loved it, a form of craving.

Perhaps more importantly, so did my skin.

I would say I was in the water for about 40 minutes. But upon emerging I looked at my hand and it was healing before my eyes at CGI speed – the dark red visibly pinkening and tightening – exposed flesh becoming brand new skin (I should have done before and after pictures). I am now letting it dry in the natural air rather than using any more bandages, thinking about applying some more before going to bed this evening. Honestly, I have experienced some aromatherapy miracles in my life but this was one of the most extraordinary.

Geranium-san. – I am SOLD