I had been hoping to buy rivers of Khus – green tinted vetiver perfume oil – on arrival in India. This dream rescinded, it was still exciting to come across a gorgeous attar shop near the Sultan’s Mosque district of Singapore Arab Street.
On reflection. I could have stayed longer and strayed from my usual choices. There were some intriguing, unplaceable, rich and musky attars. And Santal Rose is possibly a bit too safe, ultimately : simply a fresh, artificial rose resting gently and peacefully over a more natural smelling sandalwood. But it is the kind of scent you might feel like rolling onto your wrists on an off day when you have nothing else to do – especially when combined with some of the calming, cooling sandalwood soaps and talcs I also acquired.
Khus is generic vetiver (I would still like a gallon of it). I hesitated : was this the same Javan essential oil you can get at any good aromatherapy joint in Yokohama or Tokyo ?
But I do trust my instincts (and above all my nose). And there was a certain coolness; a grassy pepperiness in this of unknown origin vetiver that goes beautifully with my much worn Guerlain Vetiver Parfum – now down to its last third. The two perfumes really do complement one another; the G adding citrus and herbal, guerlinadeish je ne sais quoi; the Khus lending a much needed -Parfum has a certain frigidity and aridity – warmer, anchoring depth
While d was off jade ring shopping at the Burmese jeweller’s for mother and for self (see picture above -everyone happy ) – despite the suitcases busting at the seams with my ridiculous haul of Singapore ‘unguents’ – more on which later: at a hushed Myanmarese cornermart across the hall, I discovered a beauteous – really really lovely — Jasmin body spray from the UAE – PERFECT for layering with the scintillating Jattars for my openly stated purpose of attaining Sambachood —and to which I eventually, after some rational consideration, was able to restrict myself to a paltry three 200ml canisters.
It has been a fantastic week on numerous levels. So forgive, in advance, a possible delude of random off the cuff posts. I have much to say, olfactively, personally, and armchair anthropologically – but for now, just let me unwind and soak up the final hours of equatorial sunlight. We are now ‘killing time’ at an outside restaurant in Jelan Besar – before later making our way to the airport later on for a very frill-less ( no entertainment; food nor even water unless you order it by credit card on the onboard monitor )— flight with JAL’s budget subsidiary Zipair : on a 12:40 eyeless flight back to Old Nippon.
But a quick question:
I am actually not sure about this.
Are you able to take aerosols in your suitcase on a plane ?
Yes. Before so generously being bought a delicious vegetarian dinner by a complete bunch of strangers who wanted us to check out what was their authentic South Indian cuisine
(excuse the haircut : the lady at the Burmese hair salon I spontaneously went to in a mesmerizing Myanmar building we entered near the National Gallery slightly overdid it and left me basically bald)
– before all those v welcoming shenanigans, I had made a beeline for the shop at Little India where last year I had bought an exhilarating, perfect jasmine roll on. Three, actually – two of which I gave away as souvenirs and then yearned for very quickly as I used up mine in next to no time as soon as I got back to Japan.
The smell of jasmine – deep, indolic- is everywhere in this area. From cheap agarbati incense sticks to the garlands sold on street corners, the smell of the flowers has an inherent putrefaction and deep sensuality to it, but also a death transcending joy.
And yet with the cheapness, yet the quality of it I have realized just what a rip off so many niche perfumes trumpeting their jasmine sambac content are when you could just wear this very gaily instead ( I tried many different jasmines last year while here, and I tell you THIS IS THE ONE.)
In summer I am a tropical whore. Switching between – and sometimes wearing several floral intoxicants at the same time – Heeley Bubblegum Chic (now Jasmine OD)- a heady tuberose / sambac / musk number I have always liked: the marvelously morbid mothball jasmine ointment room filler that is Lush’s ingenious Lust – now one of my all time indispensables, incredible at night in the heat, along with Montale Jasmine Full, Lys Soleia, Guerlain Terracotta Le Parfum – an almost sickening, if glorious, equatorial medley of tiare and sambac and tuberose and all the rest doused in an underbath of coconut and vanilla; the best of the bunch being a very pure and beautiful soliflore Hawaiian white flower i bought in the form of a vintage bottle of Gardenia by Forever Florals, which is divine. Starts off heady, but then goes gentle, still emanating, quietly but continuously,the essence of living flowers for the rest of the day and evening.
Attar Full is like this.
The first blast : even from a non alcohol roll on, is heady AF, admittedly – Too Much; almost blindingly sweet and fresh, the petallic hysteria of seething upper indoles almost too head-dazzling to initially bear.
Within minutes, though, the beautiful hypersoliflore settles down to the most perfect, wrist-lacing jasmine skin scent; a final accord. that would be the envy of any niche outfit – the perfected sambac. And at a twentieth, or a thirtieth, of the price of most dressed up dross masquerading as temptation — of utter value. Hence the six pack. Which might not be my last….
We are in Singapore. We are supposed to be in India. I was really looking forward to regaling you with scent takes from Chennai and Puducherry, the South Indian destinations of choice where we had booked dreamy looking hotels and spent at least a thousand pounds on vaccinations at the Yokohama Travel Clinic : rabies x 3, typhoid, tetanus cholera,, hepatitis A, Japanese encephalitis) but now we find ourselves in a place where you can drink the tap water and eat anything you like. Still, perhaps I should go around looking for a rabid dog mouthfoaming in eagerness to bite — just to test out our money’s worth.
‘’What happened?!!!’ I hear you cry.
We were denied entry. Our visa application rejected. After a week of dread and anguish, fearing a negative result after days of anally retentive administrative tedium ( the questions you have to answer are quite invasive – what is your boss’s telephone number ? how about your previous job – I had wanted not to tell work about the trip as in J eyes, taking an exotic vacation when you are slated for a year of absence for surgery next year would be deemed decadent). But boy do I need it: sometimes I walk for miles no problem through the exquisite architecture of Singapore’s 1920’s ‘shophouses’ ; earlier my leg gave way on the pavement and I went crashing down headfirst to the dismay of onlookers; just now a maid knocked on the door to bring towels – as it was already 11am after a few too many Kingfisher Strongs last night. I blearily ‘stood up’ in my underwear and simply cracked and buckled on to the floor like one of those plastic giraffes you had in childhood; you pressed the base beneath and the limbs collapsed.)
I didn’t want to answer all these questions. Way too fucking fernickety ‘(What was the name of your second pet? Where did you first have sex ? – no I am joking – but in seriousness, who knew you already had to know someone in the country to be able to go there? You have to already have friends in India who can vouch for your moral character —- Burning Bush naturally knows so such individuals —even though you have never before set foot in the place ? It is bizarre.
D did in fact know an art and media professor in Chennai, back from the days he was writing for an international magazine on youth trends but no: first they couldn’t contact him and became suspectful (a mutual sensation: all felt like a scam to us as well: was this even the legitimate procedure? Having being tricked by a fake visa to Honolulu last year and not being able to get on the plane has scarred us for life. There is now a permanent deep unease about traveling).
Because The Authorities couldn’t contact this man (they actually call these contacts up to check up on you. What are these people so paranoid about ?) we were then told that he couldn’t be a referee because he worked for the government. And so on and so forth.
(the Singapore entry took literally five minutes).
After wearily, receiving the email, finally, after three or four days of rapidly burgeoning stress and wondering if we would be able to go or not I suddenly heard d gasp out loud in the kitchen ‘What ?!DENIED?! and we had to mourn our Indian Fantasy and come up with an immediate change of plan to at least salvage the Singapore leg of the journey ( I was specifically coming back here for one night to buy a particular jasmine perfume I bought and loved last year).
After a cyclonic scramble to arrive sufficiently early at the travel agent’s after the great Raj Rejection of the previous day, and a three hour torturous procedure of transferring the invalidated flight tickets, we had a new holiday. Disappointed: but not really ( if we are really considered so undesirable as spies and international terrorists we don’t really want to go there either).And so we find ourselves, now, ensconced, quite happily, in our noisy if well located less luxurious hotel located, ironically, near Little India.
It is not quite what we were hoping for. But the budget has changed : everything is 1.5 times more expensive in Singapore than in Japan, and four to six times more costly than the Indus would have been, so the splurgability of the holiday has decreased somewhat: we were supposed to be allegedly staying in gorgeous looking hotels painted in beautiful colors with plant filled courtyards teeming with dengue-loaded mosquitoes in a corner of old Madras, but now instead have merrily serviceable urban digs near Lavender station and Jelan Besar – quickly accommodating ourselves to our little roadside nest in the fascinating whirl of cultures that is Singapore.
Yesterday evening, before randomly being bought dinner by a very nice group of Indians who happened, obviously, to be from Chennai, and who wanted us to try the famous dhosas we would now be unable to eat in proper situ,
I spotted it immediately, lurking in the corner of the cardboard box. And I just couldn’t possibly resist the paler lilac shocking pink (when I first saw it in the basket of ‘newly received’ perfumes at my haven of Kanagawa I assumed it was, in fact, Schiaparelli’s most iconic scent, Shocking, whose bottle it would be amazing to own, even if, in the suffocatingly fusty turned extrait I have, in a plain, square shouldered flacon, it smells like mouldering, asphyxiated fungi locked up in a spore drenched vacuum).
Still, beggars can’t be choosers. And I snapped it up for $20 (even though I am not supposed to be buying anything at the moment, ) happy to now have this in my possession, if merely for the fact that the surrealist-linked couturieuse always has a certain art museum twang and kink; the curving glass body-oddy of the flacons; the frenesie of the handwriting, once provocative, still allure.
Mmm.. While the box might appeal, the somewhat overwrought candlestick flacon and muffler are a bothersome fandango. This rarity may belong to the Metropolitan, and I saw the same only recently at a Man Ray exhibition in Hayama, but this contraption, I couldn’t quite bear to look at it every day. It would stay boxed. Wild Success – Succès Fou – would also fall into the same unlookable bracket (though you could perhaps use it as a doorstopper). ‘S’, visually, possibly seems a little bland in comparison, even if the edition below, which I would buy at the drop of a hat if I ever found them, does whet my collective appetite for a powdery, post hot summer bath à la Blanche Dubois.
On the topic of blandness. Lamentably, ‘S’, whose moniker suggests some secret agent lampooning you on a street corner, olfactively couldn’t possibly be more straight or muskily conventional (perhaps this was Elsa’s go-to for such situations; in case she ever needed a break from her zany moustachioed gatherings, and had to have an 11am meeting with her bank manager, say): a standard – if soft, becoming, gentle and bedroom lacy – variant on the Nº5 trope we know so well and have smelled so many times, as so many perfumes; so many, many perfumes in the fifty years following the still to this day unbettered Chanel who all copied that format it til the cows came home, often were. The Detchemas, the Interdits – the L’ Aimants and a million other drugstore challengers inbetween, all trod this rose safe jasmine musk aldehyde garden path to pliant, conservative femininity: the classic boudoir accoutrements in the picture above above nailing this sweet, talcumed essentiality of the genre quite perfectly. (All very nice, in other words, if a little disappointing – I must admit that despite the admirable freshness of the perfume, which seemed undiminished and brand new when I unstoppered it excitedly, it did elicit a certain drop in atmospheric temperature within me, an unspoken exhalation of ‘is that it?’).
Still, I am wearing S now, on my left arm, and rather enjoying it. It feels good; domestic, calming; reposeful. Even slightly dreamy, as an underwhelming typhoon winds it way down outside and we have a much needed nothingy, slobbishly quiet day in the house. Napping. Not making the bed.
I thought Gabrielle had been a huge flop, so was surprised to see this in a department store just now.
You know that deep down you must be an optimist when you still retain vestiges of hope.
But nope : a brief glimmer of gilded grapefruit soon turns sinus pinching and rinsey, leading to an immediate headache ( as in : two seconds in, behind the bridge of my nose being squeezed by noxious chemicals, the rest, the back of my brain flooded also, an incipient migraine.)
