The Black Narcissus

The gourmand is a genre of perfumery I have generally gone off. But smelling this rather delicious perfume at a Fujisawa ( Fujisawa !) department store last week, and then trying it again today – but only on paper …. …..I know in one’s bones that there is something about this rich, cherry benzoin vanilla ( something like a Lutens Louve meets Guerlain Shalimar via Moschino Moschino )that I can’t quite deny.

I know I need it.

When you trawl the lists of fragrances that are released in the names of the rich and famous, it can be startling to discover how many ‘celebrities’ – from pop stars, to actors, to hand puppets (Miss Piggy, ‘Moi’) have released, and continue to release, celebrity fragrances. While some singers – Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez – have reams of editions of fragrances in their rosters, appealing to their young fan bases who can possess and then spritz on their own skin their ‘idol’s perfume’, some other perfumes released by well known people and entities are somewhat more baffling and unexpected: AH by Anthony Hopkins, E by Princess Elizabeth Of Yugoslavia, Milk And Cookies by Andy Kaufman; Zombie by Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark; ‘Hello’, by ….. Lionel Ritchie.

Unlike the original fame-linked tie-ins with perfume houses, where starlets in the public eye could make a deal with a fragrance manufacturer to benefit both parties – the original ‘Catherine Deneuve’ with Avon was said to be a magnificent chypre, many still yearn for Cher’s ‘Uninhibited’ and ‘Spectacular’ by Joan Collins – the face of the scent need not even be alive any more in the current ocean of perfume overproduction to now release a scent: Judy Garland, Frida Kahlo, Whitney Houston, Elvis and Muhammed Ali (‘Round One’, ‘Final Round’ etc) have all had new fragrances come out recently; I have a perfume in my collection ‘by’ Marilyn Monroe from 1982 even though she died twenty years earlier. I have them by Madonna, Kylie, and Lady Gaga. And Forever Krystle by Krystle Carrington. I would quite like to get my hands on Amphibia, by Kermit. And yet somehow, despite the fascinating, ever-proliferating list of celebrity-related perfumes, the most interesting to me, in some ways, is ‘Penhaligons’ Highgrove Bouquet’, by the just coronated ….King Charles III.

Created in tandem with perfumer Julie Pluchet, who spent a lot of time at the gardens of the royal estate at Highgrove in Gloucestershire studying the plants and flowers that bloom there in summer – in particular, the scent of the tilia petriolaris, or weeping lime trees (linden), whose pungent perfume is said to not only dominate the entire gardens in summertime but also permeate the house inside and therefore the mainstay around which Charles wanted the perfume to be founded, the scent is very pastoral, almost fey (the linden flower note was created artificially in the laboratory with ‘headspace’ technology to capture the precise scent of the botanical effusion, some of which comes across in an ever so slightly chemical ‘air freshener’ aspect to the perfume – very potent on skin, that nevertheless links nicely to the mimosa and tuberose main theme requested by (the then) Prince Charles, working with Penhaligons to achieve his desired, very English, effect) – the main characteristic of the perfume – unabashedly floral and romantic – laid over a very dainty and pleasant lavender and geranium cedar accord in the base, and a touch of skin-close, unthreatening, white musk – rather charming.

With a percentage of the profits of this perfume going to charity (and the gardens open to the public: I would quite like to go, actually, as I love perfumed, trailing wisteria and the like – D and I were wandering among roses and peonies, blue cornflowers and wisteria just the other day in Ofuna Flower Gardens) – the existence of Highgrove Bouquet delineates, quite well I think, the preoccupations of the eccentric new king – mainly ecological and architectural preservation, but also a desire for community and a pluralistic inclusivity – all which I completely agree with. Its very existence is slightly intriguing. The royals have always worn perfume – Queen Elizabeth wore possibly the best perfume ever created, L’Heure Bleue by Guerlain; Prince Harry has been said to have been taking Van Cleef and Arpels’ First with him to therapy sessions to help him deal with his emotions connected to Princess Diana; William is said to wear Blenheim Bouquet (which D sometimes wears), also by Penhaligons – yet you don’t expect them to actually come out with a perfume of their own. I quite like Highgrove Bouquet, therefore, for this anomalous fact, and for its highlighting of a flower that doesn’t get used very much in perfumery, linden blossom- a strange, dreamy, pollenous scent. Sometimes we all need to sit under a weeping tree in a garden and have a moment.

As for the coronation itself on Saturday, though we hadn’t planned to necessarily watch it (I knew I would see all the fors and against later in the newspaper and on social media; it has been interesting reading about the very differing attitudes towards the event, all of which I understand completely : given the dire economic situation of the country, with people unable to eat, it does all feel rather callous and tone deaf to be holding an event of this nature but then again, centuries of tradition are hardly just going to be thrown out of the window, there is an inevitability to this which it seems almost pointless trying to thwart, plus most people, myself included, if they are honest with themselves, are at least partially fascinated by all the pomp and regalia that you don’t get to really see very often; it’s all very complicated )….. and so in the middle of Tsujido, a boring place to be, on Saturday evening, where we had just been to a travel agent’s to book extortionately priced tickets back to the UK for the summer, after noodles in a cheap chain restaurant, and with cans of beer and whiskey highballs from the convenience store, we decided to just watch it casually while walking back to the station on my iPhone.

It was one of those real ‘expat’ moments, where Japanese people were walking by obliviously and we were the gaijin watching the unfolding formal ludicrousness on the screen with all the often deathly dull chorales jarring strangely from the phone speakers on the inner suburban streets and neon lights (I would find that one minute I would be genuinely impressed by the whole affair, the composition of the scenes, the ornaments and costumes as beautiful as angels in a Giotto painting, some of the choral work quite exultant, but then laughing out loud at the camp and awkward stiffness of it all – I thought Camilla was probably drunk – at the very least, she was very fidgety and grinning as though on gin; many of the participants didn’t look right in their regalia at all and I felt that Charles just looked embarrassed to be there – ashamed, almost, desperate to get it all over with the whole time though doggedly doing his part right (though he was probably just very nervous; I would love to have been able to hear what he and Camilla had to say about it all in private once back in their pyjamas). Some of the deep religiosity of the ceremony struck me as ridiculous; insulting, almost, as though Charles could be compared with Jesus Christ – but I also was relieved that nobody dropped the orb or had a heart attack or anything along those lines, that nothing disastrous happened, that there were no terrorist attacks or anything of that nature, and that some people in the country at least must have been having a good time (it’s a day off across the UK today, so there will certainly plenty of celebrating going on: the pubs at least should get a bit of a boost). It was also fun reading about all of the fashion successes and fails of the day – just as it was after the lacklustre Met Gala – Billie Eilish and L’il Nas X, and Jad Leto dressed up as Choupette, Karl Lagerfeld’s cat aside : – Penny Mordant looked atrocious, a failed Anne Boleyn via Marks And Spencer’s; Katy Perry, a pop star with a fair few celebrity perfumes herself under her big-eyed belt, dazzling in pink but blushingly unable to find her seat at the crowning because she couldn’t even see in front of her her hat was so big; all of it, whether you loved or loathed it, celebrated with Coronation Quiche and bubbles at local street parties, or furiously demonstrated against it, at least the coronation had everyone engaged.

(definitely a bit sozzled)

My own personal feeling is that, despite the obscene amount of wealth in his possession and all the privilege he has always been ‘entitled’ to, it can’t really have been easy being Prince Charles all those years in everyone’s shadow. The man is very far from perfect – just like the rest of us – which is what felt so wrong about all the ‘God Ordained’ crap at the ceremony as I don’t believe he was divinely cherry picked not even for one microsecond – it is just power grabs throughout history that get passed on to other generations – along with all the trauma and the emotional baggage; but at the same time, he does, ultimately, seem to be a rather intelligent, thoughtful person whose heart is basically in the right place. Unlike so many other people in positions of power, he at least gives the impression of wanting to instigate intergenerational, cross-cultural healing, to help young people grow, to improve the world in some way rather than just destroy it or just inflame. As king – no matter what you think about the institution – he has a unique opportunity, now, to intercede in governmental plans when he feels it is ethically necessary (to me, the tories are, in general, quite amoral, greedy, very cruel people only out for themselves; at the weekly royal meetings with the PM, Charles will thus at the very least be able to hopefully subtly influence decisions that will reflect on the majority, not merely the coddled wealthy and upper classes: this, in my view, is his true moral duty. And if he occasionally needs to just then hide among the wisterias and camellias and jonquils and royal rhododendrons for a while; sit reading poetry, sipping tea or whatever tipple takes his fancy, alongside the true love of his life, sighing among the tilia petriolaris, even dabble in perfumery as an escape; then who can really blame him?

N: We always bring each other a cup of tea in bed in the morning – whoever is up first.

D: You are a stickler for having the cup heated and not too much milk and the right cup etc. Tea can be so wrong when not brewed right.

N: If it’s not right, it is foul.

My parents have always had tea in bed, all their life – my dad is getting a bit shakier now, but still goes downstairs to make the tea in the morning and bring it upstairs to my mum with some gingernut biscuits. I think in Japan it would be seen as a bit slovenly and decadent to do this: here, you get up, go downstairs, and eat breakfast in the kitchen with the preferred beverage; not sprawled out deliciously in the sheets embroiled in the day’s newspaper.

D: My dad is the tea maker back home in Costessey. He also insists on piping hot tea – anything less, not worth drinking.

N: We both really like Ceylon, but I think you like it more than I do – I am just too traumatized by any kind of lukewarm ‘Assam/Kenyan/Ceylon English Breakfast blend’ type tea in a greasy mug with milk a la workman on tea break, which I just find overly malty and nauseating. I am super fussy when it comes to tea in a way I am not with coffee.

D: You are more into Earl Grey than I am. I like it occasionally but not as the staple. Ceylon is the boss.

N: Earl Grey works for me almost every time just because the bergamot cuts through and refreshes the brew and is delicious (and we have those fantastically cheap but really high quality Indian teabags from the supermarket that make a mockery of the need to always buy exorbitantly chichi French or English leaf from Seijo Ishii…..also, perchance a metaphor for the unnecessarily and ridiculously overexpensive niche perfume of these times: you really can get good quality without breaking the bank or going through the middle man). The Darjeeling from that import brand is really good too, but we only have that on occasion. It’s a special, once in a while, tea somehow, like Vietnamese lotus (trà sen).

D: I love that too.

N: For me, darjeeling has a very cool, austere, tannic refinement. I adore it when the moment is right – usually in the afternoon, for a moment of quiet mental refreshment (there is a comparative reticence to this tea; I have also always really loved the word, ‘darjeeling‘, for some reason.)

D: Darjeeling doesn’t work for me as a breakfast tea – it is too light.

N: I agree. Almost too dry and astringent after just waking up – although I suppose that is what makes it the ‘champagne of teas’.

In the late nineties I used to wear Bulgari Pour Homme, which had an ingeniously original light, guaiac/ darjeeling/ nutmeg flower accord at the top ; crisp as cotton sheets, laid over a clean and taut white musk; quite understatedly sensual, still really popular in Japan. Tea scents usually tend to focus on Japanese green tea- darjeeling is far less common. For that reason, Darjeeling Zero does feel very niche within niche.

What do you make of it? I love the aesthetics / packaging / the font on the label, and it is very interesting as a scent; almost coniferous/rosy for me, with woody accents and a strong twang of honeyed tannins up top. I don’t think it captures the sheer tranquillity of a good cup of darjeeling, but it certainly has bite. It reminds me a little of the Tea Tonique by Miller Harris you sometimes wear.

D: I agree – it has more bite than a cup of Darjeeling (the most simple but subtle of black teas), and there is something both moist and smoky at the same time in the opening – I know there are notes of bergamot and lapsang tea leaves – which would account for this. Overall, it’s woody but also clean and modern. I certainly like it a lot. It is different to the Pu’er Tea which I wear and which is my favourite of One Day’s intriguing tea range – that scent affords me a great sense of serenity. I think the ‘twang of tannins’ up top is a good way of capturing the opening effect of this one. (And yes the presentation is extremely pleasing. The font slays.)

I spent a lot of time as a child and an adolescent with my cousin Caroline. One year older, Piscean and ultrasensitive like me (a more outwardly confident and outrageous Sagittarius), both often to the point of being total nervous wrecks at certain points in our lives, we were whispering childhood confidantes, occasionally spending weekends together at our grandparents’s house, climbing trees in the garden, flicking through pop music magazines, ogling films, gossiping about school crushes… and though I was always the pale, skeletal goth vegetarian weirdo of the family and she thought, and still thinks, I am mad, she willingly let me re-enact The Cure’s Close To Me video one day at our house, shrieking hysterically while I shook her upside down in a wardrobe full of clothes as I poured bottles of water in through the head in the door to recreate Robert Smith’s spectacular fall from the cliff.

That, and the time we almost choked to death laughing, red faced as piglets, asphyxiating in disbelief as we watched the Mr Creosote scene in Monty Python’s Meaning Of Life, are memories we still come back to when we meet (I remember being upstairs at her house using the loo and hearing quite alarming, air-stopped sounds coming from the living room below where Caroline was hurriedly coughing and suffocating trying to rewind the video trying to get back to the gaggifyingly hilarious bit I had just missed; )

Though nowhere near as thick as thieves as we might have once been, we have kept in touch over the years, were only recently singing songs in the garden at my parents’ last summer with all the rest of the family, and still, with the ease of private communication that is Facebook Messenger, occasionally help each other through crises. She has been through hell and back recently, but is hopefully now coming through it all to the the other side to a more positive phase in her life – which is why it was so lovely, late last night, at an old antique shop in Yokohama, to stumble across her signature scent from the period that we spent so much time together – Red Door, by Elizabeth Arden – and in never seen or smelled before, for me, rare parfum to boot.

Me, Caroline, and Matt – a boy who I was desperately, passionately in love with at the time – and who I couldn’t tell anybody about – not even Caroline, and certainly not him

A photo taken by Caroline in Tudor Grange playground circa 1986:

Matt, my best friend, Helen, who was going out with him at the time (the pain! ); our friend Joanne standing obliviously in the middle; next to her, the girl who I have my arm around, my girlfriend – Jessica, who I now realize looks a little like a young Madonna Ciccone , and then, on the right, the Duran-hairstyled yours truly, attempting very unconvincingly to act like a boyfriend – what a mess !

With far more mainstream taste than me – I am sure she liked Chris De Burgh’s Lady In Red, a record I loathed beyond belief along all her Phil Collins and Richard Marx and which made me openly scream aloud in teenage disdain; loved Whitney, whose albums I would be forced to listen to and who I have always thought was dreadful foghorn bombast – I vividly remember her wearing Red Door one Christmas when The Bodyguard soundtrack had just came out and I must admit that it did smell perfect on her at the time, melding guiltlessly with the music … although she would also sometimes play records in her room at my aunt and uncle’s, five minutes bike ride down from our house, like Mister Mister’s Broken Wings and Bon Jovi and Level 42’s It’s Over and Peter Gabriel that I pretended to hate but actually liked.

Where we came together perfectly was a mutual love of True Blue era Madonna, swooning over Live To Tell and blasting out Open Your Heart into the empty sky beyond in a state of beautifully blinkered, suspended future; Kate Bush, particularly The Man With The Child In His Eyes, the summertime bliss of Scritti Politti’s Word Girl (Flesh And Blood); a huge penchant for Barbra Streisand’s exquisite Evergreen, which she would play over and over on her turntable……… Caroline is a true, bleeding heart romantic, a Princess Diana …source of so many of her woes and undoubtedly the reason why she loved films like Pretty Woman (I intended to hate it at the cinema when it came our but fell in love with Julia Roberts like everybody else, I couldn’t help it)….since she had always had a massive, hearthrobbing thing for Richard Gere in Officer & A Gentleman- with, unfortunately, a real life lookalike, later on, who completely broke her heart.

Red Door, Caroline’s perfume that embodies so much of that era now, is conservative; very American, and very eighties (people hate it on Fragrantica for its ‘smells-like-my-grandma’ vibe, others adore it for the convincing paired down opulence of its no nonsense construction; I am adamant, personally, that someone could still pull this off, particularly in the rather delightful extrait version I smelled this morning that loses some of the Sharon Goes To The Disco with David quality of the thinner (tackily reformulated) iterations, and concentrates things down to the glowful gritty, with a powerful, eugenolic, carnation tuberose orange blossom sandalwood, freesia honey cedarwood syrup medley by author Carlos Benaim – a perfumer with a very impressive resume (Quorum, Eternity For Men, Polo, Havana Pour Elle, robust floral scents like original jasmine heavy Carolina Herrera and the redoubtable Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds, as well as more recent niche creations for Frederic Malle, Nishane, and the gorgeous neroli masterpiece, Berber Blonde by Sana Jardin); the man is no fool, and certainly knows how to construct a solid vision. He knew what he was doing here as well, because Red Door was to become something of an indestructible megahit.

This is ultimately the problem with Red Door (I also always wondered what ‘Open The Red Door!’ was trying to suggest, although I am sure that thought never crossed most of Middle America’s mind).

The very issue is the solidity; the rigid self-assurance and lack of air and nuance, the blind arrogance of Reaganite America. Despite the big beating red heart of romance that definitely exists in the perfume – which I think could still work well, in small doses, at a wedding anniversary dinner or a date (and I did have some pangs this morning of nostalgia smelling it again), there is still an unthinking, quite politically unaware conceitedness in this perfume that belongs very much back at that time – though I bet you any money that you can still smell this in many homes across the United States and beyond : it has that tenure; that tenacity.

I will get back to perfume fairly soon, but in the meantime I can’t resist sharing today’s new vending machine photo.

Obviously meant to shock ( I witnessed a young Japanese couple gasp as they stopped momentarily in front of the ecologically sound, ultra new protein dispenser by Kannai station), dried insects packed into in a can , that are being quite seriously —while very self consciously super wacko —- promoted as a viable variety of stimulating snack.

I personally don’t have that kind of entomological curiosity. I could NEVER. Not in a million years unless actually starving. I am too instinctively repulsed. The crunching. The bits in your teeth (I have tried fried locusts here once and it left a mental greasy residue of permanent semi regret..), and I shuddered inwardly, on viewing the extensive push-of-a-button-edible insects and pupae – particularly at the sight of by far the most expensive item on the menu : a can of desiccated tarantula

I was going to write ‘a beautiful new way to wear perfume’ at first here but then realized that people in Japan have of course been wearing purificational powdered incense before entering temples and shrines, or before meditating, for hundreds of years.

Despite being a longtime lover of Japanese incense, I have somehow overlooked the tradition of incense for the body, opting for stick or coil incense in the house; sometimes scenting draws and cupboards with boxes of this ghostly, spiritually exquisite craftsmanship for its softly lingering memories on fabric, but, not, until now, ever having directly encountered wearable powdered incense that can be directly applied to the skin.

My first reaction on taking the bottle of Zukoh out of its wooden box and applying it to the back of my hand was something like wonder: a panic that it would run out too quickly when I was keenly aware of its olfactory power to root me in the here in now – it couldn’t possibly be more Kamakura.

The powder is shaken out gently from the apothecary bottle almost as though you were putting some ground cinnamon or cloves onto confectionery; it feels odd, at first, to be putting a dry, pulverized perfume on your skin rather than a liquid- though if you have ever used talc at all then this sensation will be familiar – but what is unfamiliar here is the deeply redolent and austere atmosphere of Japanese temples that surrounds you all at once upon application. I felt immediately grounded, calmed down, tranquillized.

Beginning very spicily with camphor-tinged tones of solemnifed cinnamon and cloves, the simple, but beautifully synchronized blend of ryunou-giku (chrysanthemum japonica), fennel, and a touch of ylang ylang gently folded onto a sandalwood and balsamic, dreamy ansoku-koh (Sumatran benzoin) base, Zukoh is definitely a very private scent – with sufficient sillage to intrigue passersby if you were to put on enough – but essentially meditational, skin-close.

Lovers of Mark Buxton’s Comme Des Garcons by Comme Des Garcons perfume from 1994 (now horribly reformulated) will like this – the spice-averse surely won’t – , but for anyone who wants to step out of themselves or their surroundings for a moment and enter a different sphere, to just breathe a little, I can’t recommend this enough. I will be going up to the Hinoqi store in Shibuya to investigate the brand’s other natural perfumes at the earliest opportunity.

The rules on mask wearing here are gradually, gradually, easing. The maskless are becoming more visible on buses and trains. On the streets. In shops and department stores (it still comes as a shock), but they are definitely still in the minority.

But where it really comes as a shock is in the workplace. At school. While we, the teachers, are instructed to still wear them – even though the powers that be upstairs now don’t; highly problematic for me and I am basically not wearing one, just have it under my chin to whip up just in case but basically can’t bear to wear one any more as I can’t breathe – some individual students who have also reached their limit in being permanently masked up – three YEARS of never showing your face! – are taking advantage of the new rule wherein it’s basically up to you. The vast majority are still complying – like teaching a room full of surgeons -but some are starting to go barefaced. And for me, it is psychologically quite discombobulating.

I have got used to eyes. Seas of eyes. But eyes are unique, and completely identifiable, beautiful, but they constitute only a relatively small part of the face. And yet with almost all students, I have only seen their eyes – they dutifully keep on their masks for hours on end, even where I have constantly taken mine on and off to drink water or have a break from the bondage – some for a couple of years; it is all I know. And so to suddenly see whole faces is genuinely shocking. I walked into a classroom and didn’t know who it was: the loss of mask can radically flatter a person’s face as a whole or do the opposite; sometimes I felt that faces were looming and melting before me like wax, features blobby and unexpectedly off-kilter (the mind adjusts relatively quickly, but it is still very strange); in other cases far more fine featured; in others, utter facial beauty.

I have been looking forward to this moment, because you realize how removed human contact has been; something vital has been missing. But at the same time, all these faces IN YOUR FACE will take some getting used to. There is a very vivid urgency to fast moving features; it’s like a whole new language I have to learn. Strange new territory.

Another collapse of face for me right now relates to an extended piece/photo essay that some of you may have read on here relating to a rare and secret Chanel perfume that I had the chance to smell while in Hawai’i.

I put up, and removed (twice) this article about my amazing introduction to the scent at a museum in Honolulu, which was commissioned by Chanel for the heiress and socialite Doris Duke (for the record; it was an unnamed, musty, deep woody musk aldehydic in the vein of Lanvin My Sin, a touch of the original Givenchy L’Interdit, with a hint of the warm spice of Nuit de Noël), a dazzling experience, but delving further into the philanthropist’s life story, the piece, as a whole, necessarily became much more immersed in sinister, murderous undertones, and for the sake of some individuals who were going to be quite inconvenienced by this, I decided to remove it. I may well put up an edited version up later, although that would be a shame in a way as it worked as it was (some of you may already have read it).

Integrity is very important to me, but I also had to tread carefully so as not to cause trouble. (Also, I don’t want to find myself mysteriously run over one night on a lonely path)

It’s hard to believe that just three weeks ago I was in Shangri-La. The former home of the socialite, philanthropist, horticulturalist and billionairess, Doris Duke, once known as the ‘richest little girl in the world’ after inheriting her father’s fortune in 1925 and leading an astonishingly varied and fascinating life (a jazz pianist, a surfer, an art collector, the list goes on), the beautiful building, with a Hitchcockian view of the crashing waves near Diamond Head, is now the Museum Of Islamic Art, Culture, and Design, nestled in quiet suburban neighbourhood of the city and available for guided tours only three times a week via the Honolulu Museum Of Art.

D and I were lucky enough to be given a brief private tour in the morning of the collection by the museum’s director, the lovely Leslee Michelsen, a sharply acute and knowledgeable art historian who told us, after greeting us on arrival (and wearing Diptyque’s Philosokos), that she had something to show me later in her office ‘that I might be interested in’ – a cryptic enticement that had me wondering.

Construction of Shangri La took place between 1936 and 1938, Duke having fallen in love with Islamic artefacts during her honeymoon trip to the Middle East and South East Asia with then husband James H R Cromwell. Wanting to escape the oppressive social requirements of Newport Rhode Island, the house was created as something of a hideaway and refuge – the only guest area being in a private bungalow beyond the swimming pool.

With its impressive – if overly condensed – variety of paintings, wall hangings, objects (including a lot of perfume bottles), jewellery, ceramics, sacred texts, calligraphy and important religious artefacts from a wide swathe of the Islamic world placed in every corner, the overall feeling you get from this privileged retreat is of taste, power and wealth: great beauty, if also a densely. monothematic torpor: almost a surfeit of beauty, wherein only certain areas gave you the feeling that you could really breathe.

((

In retrospect:

A cloaking, perhaps, of oneself in cultural ‘otherness’, in order to escape from the hell of the self?

Naively unaware of any of this backstory at the time, all of this has added a shocking level of new intrigue to my entire Hawaii experience (I was, after all, talking at the Doris Duke Theater named after her); deeper layers of mystery that at the time I was blissfully unconscious of – – there are instincts; but without context, you just walk, breathe, and watch…

Doused in a very singular atmosphere, and having reached the end of the tour of the property on that dazzling morning, with its view over the ocean disappearing from sight as we entered the museum staff offices, in my elated reverie I was about to be amazed by a perfume I had no idea existed.

The first surprise was a bespoke scent commissioned for the museum for the display of a centuries old Mughal carpet by a perfumer who had gone for a very rich natural rose and vetiver that I would gladly wear on a daily basis.

Excited to try this, I would have been happy to live it all there.

But there was still one unbelievable surprise for me to come.

“I think you are going to like this”, said the director.

“Doris Duke had Chanel make her an original perfume, for her private use only, and we keep the bottles in storage in the museum.

Would you like to try it? “

……

Er, yes…….( I had absolutely no idea)….

…

..

Just like Doris Duke herself, Coco Chanel of course also had a ‘complex’ past (she was possibly affiliated with the Nazis – an informant and spy code-named ‘Westminster’), and yet many of us still venerate her as a style iconoclast and the instigator of some of the most beautiful perfumes ever created (Picasso was sadistic towards women; Roman Polanski was convicted of sex with a minor.. …..what do we do with all of this information? Do we renounce all the art and other good that came with them? It is all subject for very valid debate). I love many Chanel perfumes, and was quietly electrified and attempting to keep my cool in such prestigious environs (I failed: my excitement seeped through my pores and invaded the atmosphere within microseconds, much to the delight of Leslee, who had probably been hoping for such a reaction – it was a fantastic denouement to a late morning spent in ‘Shangri-La’).

A private Chanel?

Nº19, as we all know, was Chanel’s exclusive scent, only made available after her death, utterly distinctive from any other perfumes in the impressive Chanel collection. Bois Des Isles and Cuir De Russie – equally tremendous works of art, are now a hundred years old and still, albeit adulterated, changed, available at Chanel boutiques.

An unknown perfume from this house’s archives, then (probably from the 1930’s) is a treasure absolutely not to be sniffed at. I was beside myself.

Would this Chanel I was about to try have a similarly specific, one-off character?

An unknown, aldehydic (or otherwise) wonder?

Would I be experiencing some magnificent, revelatory secret?

I would not.

Though nothing could diminish my thrill at having access to such a rare perfume, the moments between unstoppering the flacons and actually smelling the scent itself, loaded and momentous – hoping for and dreaming of a rare and exquisite gazelle – it was immediately obvious that this very potent extrait (they have vats of it) – nameless – which was a pity in itself in some ways even if in others it could be argued that the unlabelled anonymity of the perfume just added to its enigma – was not rarified and unusual enough to qualify as a ‘classic’ Chanel. It was merely a perfume of its time.

‘Doris Duke’ is (was? this had definitely deteriorated over the years as perfumes do) a musty, muffled, but resplendently confident perfume full of fur coats and mushroom aldehydes, animal musks, jasmine and roses, weighted down by the years of being kept in clandestine storage, heavily reminiscent of Lanvin My Sin, perhaps with a little Shocking, some original L’Interdit and a bit of Caron’s Nuit De Noel (“It’s just generic, of that ilk”) said D, rather unconvinced, later on, and he was right …… and yet with its deep character – and later, in the dry down, a certain gentle, woody vulnerability, this perfume still was very much its own inimitable beast.

Gobsmacked to then be offered to take some home with me, a wonderful and very generous gesture that had me barely suppressing my internal delirium, we all realized at that moment that there was not really anything to hand to transfer the liquid in except for a Hawaiian floral painted glass with a fitted lid, lovely in itself, that was there on a shelf in the office .

And this was what we then used to take back my sample.

Regular readers of The Black Narcissus can probably (though they will be groaning in their interior) imagine what happened next.

Yes.

As we passed through a cool atrium with one of the most valuable white and blue sacred Iraqi tiled walls in the museum, the smell of Doris Duke was suddenly so strong in the air all around us that I thought I was hallucinating.

What was happening?

It could surely (oh god no) only mean one thing..

And looking down onto the pristine floors I saw big drops of the perfume, sploshing all around me, my cup (of priceless perfume) literally overflowing…

Though probably the most outrageously extravagant thing that has ever happened to me (spilling an ultra rare perfume onto the floor of the home of the richest woman in America in an exquisite art space ), and a small, outrageously Baudelairian part of me finding it all bizarre and hilarious (thank goodness Leslee has a good sense of humour), of course another part of me, the main part, was wholly mortified beyond measure by this act of malfunctioning buffoonery.

I had gone beyond my usual irrevocable clumsiness into something more like blasphemy.

The glass was empty.

The perfume had seeped into all of the bubblewrap surrounding it – thoroughly – was dripping from my bag, and in many ways I felt like the most ridiculous person in the world, though nothing could possibly be more Neil Chapman.

The smell was tremendously strong. And not entirely pleasant. To me it was, kind of, as O Lover of Vintage, but an employee in the courtyard had already covered her mouth in dismay saying what the hell is that smell? the nitro-musked miasmas of a forgotten age rising up toxically and filling the atmosphere (the stratosphere) to the point where my friend and facilitator Christine – allergic to all my perfumes to begin with finally -put her foot down and said right that’s it, I ‘m calling you an Uber- you are not getting in my car ! retreating quickly to her vehicle after the director had been kind enough to give me another sample of the perfume in an old, brown just washed, essential oil bottle with no label. Which I screwed on very tight, and inserted carefully into a snug place in an inside pocket of my wallet.

I thanked her gratefully as we said goodbye at Shangri La’s gates.

And then we were gone.

Part Two

( The Haunting )

Back at our place, later, a self catering apartment called The Holiday Surf where we felt more relaxed than at the more expensive commercial hotel on the main Waikiki strand, I took out the still dripping, coagulating bubble wrap and the wet Shangri-La programme, all drenched in the hidden Chanel, and the smell of Doris Duke completely filled up the room.

“Duncan, it’s like she’s in the room with us!” I said like a foolish child (all reminiscences, obviously, now have new connotations; what felt like a genie being released from a lamp now has a more gauzy and sinister overlay).

A normal person would have thrown out the ridiculously reeking plastic.

After all, I still, amazingly, had a full essential oil bottle of the stuff for safekeeping and to take back with me to Japan (it is now kept carefully in one of my perfume cabinets). D was coughing from the fust of the fumes (some of those old perfume ingredients really haven’t aged well; literally and aesthetically), and yet I know from experience how much a ‘new’ scent can stamp an experience into time, forever (I first smelled Nuit De Noel in Los Angeles, bought from the miraculously wonderful Beverly Hills Perfumery, and one whiff from my vintage bottle and I am there straight again); the experience of preparing for Hawaii and then doing the events in reality had been so intense that this also felt like the perfect way to seal up the memories and bottle them. I inhaled deeply. I would live with Chanel Doris Duke. I placed the bubble wrap under my bed. I slept with it; put it in one of the hotel drawers (very selfish of me), let it totally permeate our surroundings until it became the very experience itself.

We would go out onto the balcony for a few hours, come back in – and she would be there.

Leave the slats open on the blinds, the moist breeze blowing next to my drying leis, and when we would walk in, the room was suffused with double perfume.

Five nights in, and our low level digs really began to feel like home.

We would get up, got used to the morning view of the apartments opposite and to the right – voyeuristic, rear window pleasure in watching other people coming and going, morning, afternoon and evening.

By now, the outer-aged haze of the perfume had dissipated, and what was left was much more pleasant; the soapy, gentle, almost lovable heart of this fragrance finally coming through; its tenderness (last night, walking down the hill in Kamakura, having worked on this piece in the daytime, I dared to put some of the scent on the back of my hand for the evening air; a little daunted, in truth – as though through sorcery, bringing the dead back to life.

It really did feel like a person.)

The question is of course, who?

Who was this person, who bequeathed all of this to later generations?

All the images hitherto in this article have been ours.

But I think it’s time now to take a look at Doris Duke herself, with some pictures from the archives.

Duke may have once been the richest women in the whole of America, but in truth, before going to Hawaii at the museum’s behest, I had never even heard of her. Wealth is not something I am obsessed with, I am no reader of Forbes magazine. I can’t comment on her life. It seems, in many ways, to have been an amazing one. In her philanthropical work she obviously did a great deal of good, through environmental conservation, funding medical research, child well being, and support for architectural preservation and the arts; she was a jazz pianist, she helped work for the soldiers in World War II, she was a a close friend of Jackie Kennedy Onassis – she paid for the building of a beautiful refuge in Hawaii, Shangri-La, where people can go to be educated, absorb culture, listen to the birds in the courtyards of plumerias, and dream. She did a lot. It is quite a legacy.

Yet it does also seem clear now, according to the compelling evidence on offer, in various places (even on the basic Wikipedia entry) that Doris Duke really did actually kill Eduardo Tirella. A man who was flourishing in his career, an associate of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, a renowned Hollywood set designer and aesthete, who was about to go on to do bigger things but had his head and chest crushed under the wheels of her furious car instead. Perhaps the billionairess just couldn’t bear for Tirella to leave her when she had already had several failed marriages; perhaps it all happened in a split second of blind passion and love/ hate rage (relationships between gay men and their beloved straight female companions can sometimes be extraordinarily deep rooted and complex, full of poisonous jealousies and possessive fury; it is not hard to imagine everything spiralling out of control). Who knows? Was his life undervalued because of his homosexuality? Was he just ‘some fag’?

I can’t say. I wasn’t there.

Who knows what actually happened?

What is very clear, though, is that Duke certainly had the power, and of course the money, to cover up the startlingly vicious and violent crime and get it ruled as an accident.

To silence the police, and then let the secret stay hidden.

And, with bitter irony, retiring to a place, called Shangri-La, of all things, whose dictionary definition is ‘a remote beautiful imaginary place where life approaches perfection’…

Dying in 1993, Duke was lucky to have the chance to live another 27 years after Eduardo Tirella’s death.

Cooped up with her art and her loyal staff and the knowledge of what really happened. Her paintings and her furniture; her possessions; her bottles of Chanel.