The Black Narcissus

crap

I do still ultimately believe that Amarige de Givenchy is fundamentally horrifying.

But what a thrill nonetheless to get a vintage extrait at a Fujisawa recycle mart for twenty one dollars eighty seven.

For a second on skin I thought I were smelling a rebirth of Guerlain Mahora.

Then, the ‘other ingredients’ – take a look on Fragrantica for Dominique Ropion’s Full Kitchen Sink – take over – and for me, just eight minutes in, tank the whole enterprise, with a cloggingly sweet and artificial, beseechingly sickly – if admittedly somewhat thrilling – overabundance.

I had a dream the other night in which a friend of mine was opening a bottle of Amarige – a dab on, not a spray.

And then I walk into a recycle shop and find the very parfum.

This would not even be in my top 200. But I am thrilled to have dreamt into being, psychically predicting its existence – one of the original Floral Perfume Monsters. What are the odds ?

Will report on the impressions on skin later – it smelled golden and smooth from the bottle – but we are NOT trying this thing in the workplace – no m’aam

Joy parfum is a troubling creature. D had to use pliers this morning to unscrew the broken cap – the red top of whose destiny I will come to later – so I could re-smell it. Phew what a whiff when I laced the back of my hand with its oily tincture so intense it almost smelled like old paint : the jasmine and rose essences boiled down to real civet, lacquered florals and micturous musk a real nose-wrinkler until about 45 minutes later when it began to smell like Familiar Joy. I always think that the knee jerk uncomprehending reaction to a fragrance ‘It’s very strong’ is for the perfume moron I mean newbie, but in this possibly dehydrated’s vintage extrait’s case, it IS too strong.

I needed to update my nose on the original Patou classic in order to be able to properly smell Eau De Joy, a fresher, more aldehydic and florally orchestrated variant released forty years after the original
Joy- in its heyday one of the top three selling perfumes in the world – that I found for ten dollars in that divine black and red that made my heart leap when I saw it on the glass shelf and which now is one of the first things I see when I wake up in the morning. Recently I decided to not just look at it while I drink my tea and read the newspaper but to actually wear it; just a spray on the back of my hand, surprised by how much I didn’t hate it.

Today, in comparison with the inchoate slick on my right hand sheening its chic, but filthy way into my conscious, , Eau De Joy smelled positively divine. Firstly, as the jasmine de grasse and rose de mai are so cleverly attenuated in the aldehydic glacial spritz borne of lily of the valley and a lovely, perceptible tuberose, which I hadn’t overtly noticed before until the side by side experiment – and what smells more like the living jasmine you smell creeping up summer trellises than the amphorae of macerating tinctures kept under lock and key in the dungeons of Patou – the perfume leaps from the skin unbound : vernal, indeed joyful. The musk is much prettier – something about the deep piss of old Joy extraits can induce a unique form of dread – but in this extraordinarily pristine edition there is a delicate, timeless , filigreed femininity that could remind one of Diorissimo, or perhaps Dior Dior.

Yes, in today’s match, Eau is very much the winner. But the parfum is still something I warily venerate. It’s just that this particular bottle has a very repellent anecdote attached to it.

Last year we suddenly became aware of a sweetly repugnant odour at the bottom of the stairs. ??? Was this our cat having another renal issue and not quite making it outside in the middle of the night ? Surely not – it smelled very different : not cassissy and feline, but overpowering, hormonal, malty – utterly utterly foul.

This waxing and waning stench was unfamiliar – and at first we couldn’t come by the source. Eventually the mystery was revealed when one sunny afternoon d heard some alien scratching sounds and to his great surprise saw a large mouse – or was it a rat? – that had made its domicile in a nest of rodential droppings and pilfered cat food behind a big pile of books – pungent as old hell – obviously we threw out all the soiled literature and the bookcase – as well as the very bottle of Joy you see at the top of the page that was part of the mousey’s home ( did it sleep on it at night ? How did it feel about the shiny black flacon and the Patou lettering and the faint traces of rose musk and jasmine that may have seeped out a little from the sealed perfume’s neck ?)

All I know is that d gasped; the cat came running down, the critter escaped when d opened the door (did it make off with the red cap as a memento of its short stay? I never saw it again and I know today’s tale is revolting and I probably should have just tossed out the parfum when it was smothered in mouse musk and wee but somehow I couldn’t : I just screwed down the top very very tight and then washed it precociously until it only smelled of polished Patou and then put it back on a higher shelf.

But how DID THE PATOU GET INTO THE POSSESSION OF THE MOUSE IN THR FIRST PLACE I hear you cry.

Well that is easy. As the clumsiest person in the world I must have knocked it off when lumbering down the stairs one day ( as I write this I am laid up on the sofa after a bicycle accident yesterday where I tore down the hill in the drizzle of the late morning and went skidding and flying off, bashing my cheery and hand and elbow and no ! my left knee ) : I am a dyspraxic fool who shouldn’t be let near anything really, especially vintage Patou perfume.

But we persevere. And we enjoy these old beauties. And by telling you about the ratatouille of wet cat biscuits and reeking mouse dung , you can see why – given the associations – I now vastly prefer the Eau.

We chop and change. Yesterday I was besotted. I was also this morning – these pictures are just outside our kitchen. But there is a reprieve, a moment of respite from the abricot fromage floral frais, where it lingers like a whisper in the foreground, and then the onslaught when you move past a pumping bush and feel sick

A perfect flowering tonight – a whole avenue for smell gazing – at its apricot utmost.

Reader, this stuff smells UNBELIEVABLE

On first look it could be any of the 80’s Rochas round bottled editions : Madame Rochas; Byzance; Lumiere – all of which are gorgeous perfumes. In fact, it turned out to be a particularly pristine edition of Mystere (less strange – you might even say sinister) than the dark soiled silvery murk that was housed in the asymmetrical original 70’s bottles I own; a smoother, more wearably smooth ambered version (this is the edp) that on this October Monday feels edgy and atmospheric – but soothingly perfect.

Excuse the absence!

My original review of Mystere:

MYSTERE by ROCHAS (1978)

For the record, I DETEST that perfume, and always have, but they must have nailed the headspace of something because I am GETTING it

The flight staff checking in the night passengers at Singapore Changi do look a bit weary and uninvolved. Which is probably why the buxom maquillaged woman weighing our suitcases didn’t seem to mind (in fact big-laughed delightedly, when I asked her my second question (the first being ‘it definitely IS an aisle seat, isn’t it?’)

YOU SMELL GORGEOUS.

—— Do you mind if I ask what perfume you are wearing ? It’s AMAZING.)

( It felt like being trapped, forever, in a perfect mandarine paradise – so orangey and fruity and floral and clean it immediately revealed my own scuzzed-out shame : it’s been a hot and sweaty day; I have eaten the most onioned and garlicked meal of my life and it keeps leaking out from me in various ways; at the Peranakan Museum this morning I suddenly realized that my citronella/ lemongrass/ eucalyptus citriodora concoction I had created for India as a mozz prophylactic – but then dengue is here too – had ‘opened itself up’ in the bag I have been carrying around for a week, creating a peculiar amalgamated odour that has diminished my Smell Security even further ).

Her Cloud, in contrast, as our luggage was moved along the conveyor belt, was immaculate : fragrantly GLOWING with citrus and tangerine and white flowers in a scent that she said wasn’t available in the airport but which she had bought in Malaysia. Lemon. Jasmine. A heart of ‘Big Strawberry’. Whatever that it is. But who cares about the note origins or what I always thought was something of a tacky US brand *- which it surely is ?— * when the results – in the moment, so instantaneously mood boosting for a nervous passenger as myself — were so indisputably sexy and ravishing ?