The Black Narcissus

 

 

 

 

 

To my knowledge, no Family Marts ( Ofuna has about six ) sell perfume, except this one.

 

 

 

In a place so conformist, where the sales clerks repeat phrases learned in a book, it is odd that one particular premises bends the rules and sells fragrance.

 

 

I have bought Pink Sunset, a gender bending fruity floral, for men from here, and would do so again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amid the whirl of discarded samples and sniffing marathons for ‘Perfume’ ( final edits of the manuscript this weekend and then a courier is coming to the house to take it by hand from Tokyo to London ), I haven’t, perhaps understandably, been wearing quite as much scent as I might be in normal circumstances. For work, I have been alternating Roger Et  Gallet’s Tubereuse Hedonie and The Vert – both crisp, fresh colognes with undertones of sophisticate that are unobtrusive enough for me not to worry about offending anyone while sufficiently present for me to feel protected by perfume. Both go well, also, with my iyokan orange Vaseline that I made recently for starbursts of citrus and dust killing moisture when the powder horror of the blackboard chalk phobia strikes; other than that, at weekends it has been mainly Vol De Nuit.

 

 

After working my ASS off for months, teaching and writing, I felt I deserved a reward. Something extravagant I would love – a new perfume. Candidates have included Unum’s Rosa Nigra – a dense, rose peach confection I have been intrigued by ( ultimately ruined, after a couple of hours by a deal breaking endocrinic sandalwood note); Etro’s Heliotrope, which I might still get, and Laboratorio Olfattivo’s Kashnoir, an oriental that starts out all lemon and opoponaxy but gradates to a heavenly, tactile skin amber : I might ask for that one for my birthday – it would be gorgeous once the weather starts to properly get cold : right now it is still lingering in a strangely balmy, clement warmth.

 

 

One weekend though, I realized to my dismay that I was running out of No 19. This filled me with a certain anguish, as I only wear the vintage, which I used to find all the time here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

: thrown away like Coke cans in the trash I have got through so many bottles of the stuff, but those classic years of cheap vintage perfume in Japan have dried up : like fossil fuels, there are only so many flacons of this sublime fluid left and I have given too many of them away over the years ( no more ): wearing a 7ml I knew was there somewhere but couldn’t locate until we re-organized the first part of the collection I realized, when smelling how it lingered on the V-neck of a new woollen sweater, how indefinably sexy, haunting and elegant the final notes can be – an aura that hovers about me, makes me complete.

 

 

On a whim one free Monday afternoon I went into Tokyo to a old shop in an arcade I know that I thought might have some, and it did. It wasn’t cheap – but I bought the lot. And then yesterday, in Yokohama, I finally came across the beloved, coveted 28ml – bottles of which are becoming increasingly rare.

 

Though I should leave them virgo intacto with their waxen wreaths of papery sealage keeping their contents untouched ( I have managed to resist breaking open just one of them – I am like a tomb raider, wrenching apart bottle mouths), I can never resist smelling the contents, as each and every bottle is always quite different, revealing more hyacinth, galbanum, iris, vetiver- more leather – plus I find I don’t actually like the smell of the freshly released perfume : it is as if it is waking up from cryogenic deep sleep and has forgotten where it is, and WHAT it is. Like a good red wine, I find letting the fragrance breathe, coalesce and re-harmonize itself a way to reach a mellower, more cherished orchestration I can apply in the morning, quite liking its florality, but truly LOVING what happens on my skin a few hours later, when it feels like nothing less than an idealized augmentation of my soul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being something of a mutineer myself, refuting bullshit my entire life in order to find a way of living truthfully, I can relate to a perfume called Mutiny.

 

 

 

If only the perfume contained even an ounce of revolt or rebellion or fury – particularly at this precarious and dangerous moment in time. A pushing back AGAINST something : :  : a firm rejection. Fronted by the zeit-cool Willow Smith, directed by John Galliano on behalf of the fashion iconoclast Martin Margiela, you could be forgiven for expecting to smell something with at least a few microbeads of startle and novelty – a push in some exciting, anti-Nazi, ungendered direction. Something fresh. Unanticipated.

 

 

 

Instead, though not displeasing, what you get is something UTTERLY FAMiLIAR in the Flowerbomb mould; the thick vanilla candy floss that is the sediment in practically every woman’s perfume now ( though this is billed as unisex ), and something tuberosey, another recently prevalent ingredient — in the last Gucci, in Stella’s Pop, and the like: unthreatening, sexy, and there’s nothing wrong with these easy,  off the shoulder, Friday night drinks after work type scents with an eye to hopefully chatting someone up at the bar – the warm fragrance of all the current tropes placing you safely in the nose space of the contemporary acceptable. I only smelled this cursorily at the department store, and  who knows, it might smell very nice on another person, up close, when it melds properly with skin.

 

 

 

What irks me,  though, is the chasm between the ‘concept’ and the execution. It as if with perfume, now, the smell of the creation – the sole reason for its existence – feels almost like an AFTERTHOUGHT. We are not trusted anymore to respond nasally/emotionally to innovation ( I remember the shock of the new of Issey Miyake’s L’Eau  when it debuted, a similar fashion originator to Margiela, whose perfume- which I personally never actually liked – was still undeniably previously unsmelled. The smell ITSELF was the point : it encapsulated a new feeling: of leaving one decade and entering another; it felt futuristic. And the public responded. People DO like newness, originality.)

 

 

That intrepid, more avidly risk taking approach has long since been replaced with a bland temerity. So only the images, and the ad campaigns ever hint at something new ( but not really even then : what, actually, is mutinous about a blank pouting stare into the camera ?). The scents themselves are just like doppelgängers, dressed up in the conveyor belt of next season’s ready to wear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After months of intense industriousness during which time the house fell into a state of semi-squalour,  now the book is finished, D is insisting on a sprucing. Some of the perfume cabinets are in a parlous state of dust- crusted Ms Haversham, and so although my natural tendency in this utterly exhausted aftermath is to just lie about doing nothing except read about the state of the world in the New York Times or immerse myself mindlessly in Netflix (after six months of hardly watching anything, playing the piano or reading a single book), my other half is rightfully demanding we now set about restituting some dignity to my ramshackle collection of bottles, cleaning them one by one, shelf by shelf, over successive weekends.

 

I am so lazy by nature that I practically have to be dragged towards the perfume choked armoires with the wet cloths, but I must admit that my Vol De Nuit ensemble, which I keep next to my bed ( I found an EXQUISITE new boxed 14ml vintage extrait the other day which, with its ultra-powdered ambery vanilla iris dry down, took my love of this perfume to new heights of adoration ) now is something I can lie on my futon GAZING at, drawing power from its olfactory, visual, and artistic – almost SPIRITUAL – sheer beauty.

 

The main cabinets are still to be tackled – the ‘men’s section’ so dust-laden there might even be spider’s webs in there for all I know, but next weekend it will be time to de-dust all the Aramis, Azzaro, Givenchy Gentlemen and so on and so forth, the Chanels and Diors; plus the heady, sweet tropicalia of my white floral and coconut shelves.

 

 

When it is all done, I think I will be quite pleased to restore some order to it all, to know where certain perfumes ARE, for a start, because you can be sure that, with the dark clouds of fascism and bigoted hatred rising all around the world as we speak ( WHAT is going on?) sometimes you just need to retreat into dreams and sigh into your wrists; OR: embolden yourself with scented, inviolable armour………protections from all the  ugly brutality; gentle, incantations of unvisible artistry that are like sweet scented, sensuous buffers from the shock.