https://www.vogue.co.jp/magazine/2021-7
Hitting the news stands on the 28th !
NORDIC CEDAR + TROPICA by MAYA NJIE (2016)
After a blessedly long sleep that refreshed the senses and washed away some of the strains of the classroom and the repressions of office politics this week, I woke up this morning to a piping hot cup of Earl Grey tea and a new package of perfume vials from London. Maya Njie is a Swedish independent perfumer and designer of West African heritage who lives, and has her own studio on the Isle Of Dogs on the Eastern Thames: the collection, released in 2016, consists of five fragrances. Concise; delicately mellow, with what she describes as ‘nostalgic, addictive trails’, I particularly like Tropica.
It is not easy to combine pineapple and coconut in the same perfume without it becoming tacky. Here, in probably the best example of a tropical fruit perfume I have come across, an opening accord of fresh piña colada, deliciously fresh and photorealistic, needn’t overstay its welcome: the perfumer sensibly withdraws the luscious tropicalia gradually and lets the scent cede almost imperceptibly to a warm, but gentle, iris, Mediterranean fig and light sandalwood/cedarwood accord; an unanticipated further fruit element of rhubarb – often used in Swedish cakes – that is is energizing and relaxing simultaneously (all of the scents – also comprising Tobak, Les Fleurs – read as ‘casual wear’ to me; mood boosters with aura).
Another very traditionally Swedish component used in the range – essential as an ingredient in Scandinavian confectionary, in hefty and noticeable proportions, is cardamom oil, which graces the beginnings of both Vanilj and Nordic Cedar, two perfumes that are described as being closely related: the former the more gourmand (‘the less feral, slightly sweeter and more softly spoken sibling’). I like the forthright, less sugared Nordic Cedar more, a warmly woody scent that opens with a healthy spiced rush of cardamom and cinnamon, before softening down to a very skin-centric snuggling ambergris, cedarwood and musk scent that is unobtrusive, sensual; pleasing up close.
Filed under Flowers
SOME PERFUMES BY PERRIS MONTE CARLO FOR FRIDAY: YLANG YLANG NOSY BE (2014) + ROSE DE TAÏF (2013) + TUBEREUSE ABSOLUE (2017) + JASMIN DE PAYS (2019) + MIMOSA TANNERON (2020)
On Bibi’s recommendation, I decided to stop off briefly at Nose Shop, Yokohama on my way to work yesterday to have a quick sniff of some of the perfumes by Perris Monte Carlo, a well regarded perfume house whose wares I had somehow deliberately neglected – probably because of the overly patterned gold flacons that don’t really appeal to me aesthetically. I had imagined they would be too loud; thick; synthetic.
In fact, this high quality line of scents may be bold and unhesitant, but most of the perfumes I smelled yesterday were also quite rich, well-crafted and impressive. Tubereuse Absolue is fantastic – a proper, full on, head-turning trumpeting tuberose that combines all the Greatest Hits of the flower in one bottle; you get the green biological aspect of Carnal Flower in part of the opening act but also the buttery nightgown fabulousness of every other niche or classical tuberose you can think of in the mix. This is a DECLARATION ( I was certainly not going to be spraying this on to go to a windowless classroom yesterday afternoon (it’s still such a horror!), but the sheer exotic splendour of this number will certainly have me going back to try it again on skin. Rose De Taif, a dark, concentrated rose, is also very full-bodied: a crimson affair, dense and inchoate, impressive, but something about it didn’t quite grab me (is there some shrill citronella in the mix with all the roses that was bringing me down?) Likewise, the ylang ylang perfume in the lineup piqued my interest initially in some ways but proved ultimately indigestible. Meaning ‘big island’ in Malagasy, seeing this name on the bottles of both Patchouli Nosy Be and Ylang Ylang Nosy Be gave me a slight pang – as I wrote in a post long ago, we were once on the verge of going to Madagascar, D about to hand over money for our extremely expensive air tickets from Japan, when we decided to cancel at the last minute because of a giant swarm of locusts that was blighting almost the entire nation and could have turned the journey into a nightmare. We were going for the vanilla – but ending up going to an organic plantation in Indonesia instead. Still, although – I was quite shocked to read this – the island off the north coast is now off limits due to violent attacks on tourists – it is not possible to go to the famed ylang ylang distillery in the now aptly named town of Hellville as you might get killed, something I would be passionate for as I do love this note – we can but dream.This perfume though – odd, ambery, spiced and offputtingly aquatic in places – doesn’t work for me. Too complicated. Too many elements. And I don’t need the cardamom. I still believe that there has never been a perfect ylang ylang perfume (discuss) : for me, the best use of this creamy yellow floral probably remains as the chief player in Nº5, but I have never encountered an ideal, fully realized solo performer. No one ever quite fully captures it. The patchouli was quite good, as was the Vanille Tahiti – solid, monothemed elixirs – but not exciting.
More impressive for me was Jasmin De Pays. It is interesting to see how artists, perfumers, can evolve and be unleashed when released from the restricting commercial pressures of giant behemoths. And yesterday I could immediately sense, internally, a feeling of unshackled liberation in the new work of Jean Claude Ellena in this recent joyful and unbridled floral. Yes, the Hermessences were very exciting for perfume freaks when they first came out – before we were drowned in so much niche in the intervening years we could no longer see the wood for the trees. At the time, all these exclusifs from the major French houses were watched closely by every overexcited fumehead such as myself because they represented a potentially exhilarating luxury alternative to the mainstream, some polished unconventionality, something soaringly unique, but in eventually always hewing to the pallid transparency that seemed to be required by the French leather giant in all the uninspiring perfumes that came out one after the other such as Le Jour D’Hermès. Kelly Caleche, Voyage etc etc etc, for me at least there was always an unpleasant, metallic wanness; something sharp and glassy that got on my nerves.
Previously, in his earlier, more full and orchestral phase, the perfumer had been freer, less constricted, making such gorgeous perfumes as Van Cleef & Arpels First, Sisley Eau De Campagne – so original, so green and perfect in summer – as was his Eau Parfumée au The Vert for Bulgari which I still wear on lazy Sundays, and the incredibly beautiful Eau Du Navigateur for L’Artisan Parfumeur, one of my personal holy grails. In La Haie Fleurie – a honeysuckle jasmine that was so bounteously romantic it made your eyes water, Mr Ellena, as with First, painted with much thicker brushstrokes, yet still always preserved a certain elegant mystery, delving into his great love of jasmine (as a boy, he would actually gather and distil lroses and jasmine in the fields of Grasse – the man couldn’t possibly have better credentials in this regard), so I was delighted to smell his jasmine for Perris, which is FULL ON. A Total Flora. Jasmine, with jasmine, jasmine, and then more jasmine. Indolic, sunny, full, with just hints of clove and marigold/tagetes, Jasmin De Pays is a somewhat straight and linear soliflore (possibly too simple), that nevertheless has an air of summery triumphance. Similar in impression to Serge Lutens A La Nuit, that perfume feels slightly flat in comparison with Jasmin De Pays, which is more rounded : robust: and full of light. Like his other recent creation for Perris, Mimosa Triannon, which is a brisk and ethereal French country side road take on mimosa wedded gently with rose and hawthorn (with some nods to the strange coolness of Mimosa Pour Moi), but fluffier; less melancholy, quite poetic, I need to go back and give some of these a proper blast.
Filed under Flowers
almost
Our landlords and ‘Japanese parents’ had their vaccinations yesterday at a specially designated centre in Kamakura. At 80+ they were prioritized, and ours are a long way off despite the encroaching Olympics, but our neighbour to the other side is about to get her shot too, and this opened a fissure of clarity and hope into the fog of suppressed hysteria that embodies everything here, conjecture crystallizing to reality. I am happy and relieved they are protected.
I have been quite tired recently from work and the amassing of everything in my veins : not especially creative or perfume minded, more in the mood to absorb passively. I watched the Halston miniseries and read a painful autobiography – a brilliant, if very bruising book called Once In A House On Fire by Andrea Ashworth that D handed over solemnly once he had finished it. The tears started flowing when I reached the end of it myself yesterday evening, and continued when I was cooking, listening to Side 3 of my record of Bjork’s Vulinicura Live, which I think is one of the most beautiful things I have ever bought. These tears felt cathartic, fresh, cleansing – there was buildup.
On Saturday morning I suddenly found myself craving something chypric, with patchouli, and sprayed on some Orion by Terenzi; sharply aromatic with a pineapple top note I rather enjoy, although the final note of oudish white musk on my skin left me dissatisfied. Not so on clothes ; the next morning I smelled what I had been wearing the day before and had that thrilled feeling when you know you really want to EMIT that precise smell when you go out.
I ended up reeking. When we walked to the shops to buy vegetables for dinner, bumping into the Mitomis on their way back from their injections, I was wearing some Rose De Siwa, sprayed on a sweater; on me it is flamboyant and a bit too pansyish perchance, but it formed an interesting contrast with Orion. I had a little Histoires De Parfums Noir Patchouli sprayed on my trousers, and some Spirit Of Dubai Majalis – a Turkish rose glinting aromatic, as well as another – Ajmal? – that was rich with dates, cinnamon and labdanum. If it was all a bit much, I didn’t think so, even if, as I teared up uncontrollably to Bjork’s ode to willing unravelling, Undo, it occurred to me that in the later stages of all these perfumes, though nice, enjoyable, and perfect for an unseasonably cold misty day( and D had complimented the assemblage as a whole), something wasn’t entirely right. Close —- but no cigar.
Filed under Flowers
HALSTON
Halston was the legendary, infamous and 70’s iconic American fashion designer that most British people have never heard of. On Saturday night, When I started watching Netflix’s latest large-scale-reconstruction-of-a-key-person-or-moment-in-gay-history-oversaturated Ryan Murphy creation (the next is going to be Jeffrey Dahmer)
D came in and said ‘Who?’ He didn’t recognize the name. More importantly, the slightly miscast Scottish actor Ewan Macregor, who plays the man himself, admitted in a New York Times article on the series that he had never heard of him ever either. Despite his ‘legendary status’ among fashion historians and cognoscenti of the ins and outs of the end of 70’s discotheques, the designer simply didn’t make an impact in the UK, at least not in my generation’s consciousness. Halston’s archrivals Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, of course yes. Hugely (and surely the bottles for Obsession took some inspiration from the Elsa Peretti designed bottle of Halston’s signature fragrance? -I don’t remember it being on the shelves of the department stores I scoured maniacally as a teenager. A flacon like this would have caught my attention. I have never smelled it.)
Ryan Murphy productions/ affiliations (Glee, Hollywood, American Horror Story, Hotel, Pose, The Assassination Of Gianni Versace) are always big, melodramatic, campy, technicoloured, no-expenses-spared sentimental artifices that draw you in with the subject matter, splashy mise-en-scène and homosexualist titillations (he is never afraid to show handsome naked men going at it down a back alley or in the gallery at Studio 54, the only reason I had heard of this designer because Grace Jones mentions him a few times in her brilliant autobiography on the disco era, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs). At the same time, despite the gangbusters, maximalist approach and imploring politicitizing, his series can sometimes transmit as a little bit shallow: hollow.
Acting-wise, I thought Krysta Rodriguez was good; believable as Liza Minelli, Halston’s plus one and best friend. The beautiful Rebecca Dayan was also effective and real, a convincingly late seventies model, muse, artist and all round fashion inspiration as jeweller Elsa Peretti, swanning around the offices exquisitely in Halston’s creations.
Halston himself, however, struck me as rather one note. Too dry and brittle. As though there was nothing inside. A nicotined encasement, ‘moody and snappy’: ‘fey’. I have nothing, in principle, against actors ‘playing gay’, as all acting is acting – playing another human being – and after all, it is usually the quickest ticket to award success, so who can blame someone wanting to jump on the oppressed sexual minority bandwagon and play a tragic gay? A limp wrist here (so many cigarettes smoked mimsily in this saga), a feminine toss of the head there….this is why Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Sean Penn in Milk, Matthew McCanaughy (is he really running for the Texan senate?), Jared Leto, Christopher Plummer and so many more all scooped up Oscars for their depictions of gay men, a topic ‘the academy’ seems to hold dearly, but which I personally sometimes find limiting, even patronizing. Although a seed of truth is sewn into every stereotype, a bit of flamboyance needn’t necessarily end up in fag-handed caricature, even if – according to those who knew him – Halston was rather affected, a complete re-invention of his original Iowa boyhood self; his phoney Manhattan Mitteleuropa accent an immutable part of the whole shebang.
At the time all of this was going on I myself was just a child dancing around my bedroom during the Disco Era to my Abba and Blondie and Shalamar records and so wasn’t an active participant in all this withering decadence and excess (the series does work well as an advert against cocaine: how boring it all looks, how exhausting needing that to just get through the day). I did absorb it all greedily though through the television and the radio, from school and just living, and ‘Halston’ does a pretty good job I would say of recreating the outfits, hairstyles, and general vibe of that decade, although in general I must say that they never, with their heftily priced costume departments and overprocessed ensembles, quite nail the flicks and the gungy feather fringes, the glitter and the gloss – it always looks somehow too neat ; the 70’s, in England, at least, surely grubbier, hairier.
Still, even if atmospherically there are some lacks, ‘Halston’, as a whole, is still fascinating, engrossing. For me, just witnessing how an artistic talent and persona can whip up a cultural frenzy and then be tossed aside when the muse is poisoned by reality and commerce; the fickle rise and fall is enough to keep me hooked. Episode 3, ‘The Sweet Smell Of Success’ is also required viewing for any Perfume People who are interested in seeing the genesis of blockbuster perfume back in the day – the eponymous first fragrance was extremely successful in America and the reason the company was able to stay afloat for so long once the designer’s star was on the wane, Calvin Klein stealing the cultural mood with his Brooke Shields ‘nothing gets between me and my Calvins‘ scandalous jeans commercials. We see how a representative from the fragrance company responsible for coming up with and making the scent visits his New York premises on 101 East 63rd Street week after week with test vials of olfactory components, judging his reactions to them, trying to get him to genuinely include some of his own inspirations in the blend; important associations he recalls from his childhood; the fierce rejection of initial bottle ideas: the snobbish horror he feels that ‘his fragrance’ will be promoted and constructed by Max Factor, a mass market brand that Halston practically spits on with appalled shudders. He simply won’t budge or put his name to the perfume unless it is done his way (ironic: later he loses all rights to his own name, but at the dizzying heights of his fame and infamy his signature logo was everything). Overridingly, one thing that definitely comes across throughout the series, despite the stress and neuroses, is the man’s unwavering belief in his own taste. Going from 1960’s fame in creating Jacqueline Kennedy’s iconic pill box hat, to successfully riding the wave of a later, completely different zeitgeist, takes real talent and steadfastness : outright rejecting his backers’ initial ideas for a perfume, he continued to stick with his guns, selecting an unusual and asymmetrical glass blown sculpture that Elsa Peretti had created, inspired by sea shells she had collected near his beach front home. Considered unproducable in a factory, Halston stood firm, declaring it was ‘that bottle or nothing’, a stylish and hypnotic flacon which was an intrinsic part of the perfume’s appeal for a great many people aside the smell of fragrance itself: leading it to immediately start ‘flying off the shelves’ and instantly become one of the ubiquitous, essential super hits of its day.
Filed under Flowers
NEAR DEATH BY SCENT : : : FATHOM V by BEAUFORT (2017)
My friend Peter in London emailed me the other day.
“Since I wrote, I have been on what I’d call a total perfume bender. To blow away the staleness of 3 months of lockdown I am manically demanding a whole wardrobe of new smells. I had a lovely afternoon in Bloom Perfumery in Covent Garden a week ago trying everything they had in citrus, green or vetiver (sorry I know it’s not your favourite but I am addicted). I came away with a gorgeous citrus, Mandarino di Sicilia by Perris, and a towering EVIL green, Fathom V from BeauFort – which deservers a whole chapter of its own, disturbingly morbid and funereal, like being smothered in a pile of putrefying lilies, almost unwearable. I keep having to have a sniff.”
This morning I received an addendum:
“I must just add a follow up. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES try Fathom V or wear it anywhere you can’t immediately wash it off. I had to destroy my bottle. It was so evil it affected my mind. A little spritz in the shop, fine. Super green, stays lovely and sharp for a few minutes. Morbid, yes, extreme but wearable. But when I wore it out a second time for a walk, the fumes seriously upset my psychological balance, the oakmoss (or some camphorous synthetic) and lily making me feel ill and plunging me straight into a state of DESPAIR, no other word for it. Not despair through association but it felt like a direct link from the scent opening up a well of pure misery. I could hardly drag myself home and just wanted to give up by the side of the road. Somehow I got home scrubbed it off, washed my shirt and jacket and threw the whole bottle away. Didn’t recover all evening and my mood was seriously low until I woke up the next day back to normal. I would just avoid it altogether. Pure evil. Not taken so strongly against something in years.”
I don’t think I have ever heard of a more visceral hatred of a perfume and felt I had to share ( reading this made me laugh out loud). I have actually never smelled Fathom V myself, though I have written about other perfumes by this house before: the reviews on Fragrantica are also varied and fascinating enough to make me want to try it just for the splayed, garish lilies; the musty-old-flower shop-down-a-back-alley-in-London vibe; the oceanic rage. It sounds almost mesmerizing. At the same time, after reading of Peter’s profound disgust at the very deepest cellular and spiritual level (his experience almost comes across as a physical and mental poisoning), I definitely would approach this very daunting sounding perfume with the highest levels of trepidation.
Filed under Flowers
3 ATOMIC ROSES : :: ROSE SIWA by MDCI (2006) + TRESOR VINTAGE EXTRAIT by LANCÔME (1990) + ATOMIC ROSE by INITIO (2019)
There is perfume for a private day out. And then there is perfume when you want to be noticed : to explode in the public realm. Particularly as Burning Bush, Big Perfume can be spectacular : I remember a lost couple in Tokyo from New Zealand in pursuit in Shinjuku shouting ‘Follow that hair! Follow that perfume ! (Giorgio’s Red, in Parfum and edp, people raving about my smell all night); Poison, Rogue’s Flos Mortis:(could I even stretch to Amarige……?) …… they all pack a delirium punch.
In Liverpool, back in the North, they are already having ‘social experiment ‘ raves to ‘see what happens ‘ epidemiologically (isn’t all this a little too soon?)….. In this picture you can see thousands of maskless party people, no hand sanitizer allowed inside in case you are secretly bringing free vodka into the club- all dancing ecstatically, let in to the space on condition they can prove that they have been vaccinated ( I understand fully their need to do so; I also can’t wait to go mad to music again in a room full of people, but you do have to wonder if this is all slightly – or in fact extremely , insane……)
If I do go out in a costumed context in a bacchanalian situation at some point in the foreseeable future though I have a secret urge to try a combination of vintage Tresor Parfum and Parfums MDCI’s Rose Siwa. A ravagement of roses. I would imprint myself on the ravers’ cilia and nose brains for eternity : the rich cedarwood musk rose of the vintage parfum a perfect launchpad for the neo- YSL Paris that is Francis Kurkdijian’s genius outlier for the usually more pretty and elegantly sedate niche brand MDCI : soaring violets and roses like the Laurent classic from 1986 (?) strafed gleefully with vivid lychee : I know that the scents would interlock stunningly to the point of mind alteration.
Alternatively, or even as a final revelation of my three acts, I might select, samples secretly concealed, a few moments of Atomic Rose by Initio – a steroidal tribute to Diptyque L’Ombre Dans L’Eau and a forceful roserush of Bulgarian, Turkish and hedione over vanilla and Egyptian jasmine that could be a fatal, strobal trip just over the edge
Filed under Flowers