The red carpet zoom awards season is upon us, and celebrities could do far worse than to don Tubereuse Nue, the new fragrance by Tom Ford. Even on a bare-shouldered number, just at home. For the vibe. Warm, fuzzy, sexy, this is a rich and thick textured number that smoulders – sweet with white flowers: tuberose absolute Orpur from India at the forefront of the perfume blended with lily, jasmine and Sichuan pepper over an ambery, suede-centred base of benzoin, cacao bean, styrax, tonka, musk, and a slight touch of oud, all the notes disseminated into a smoothness, redolent of the glamourpuss perfumes of yore such as Vanderbilt, Oscar De La Renta, and even Madonna’s Truth or Dare. As with Shanghai Lily, Ford brooks no airy, subtle transparency here, but fills up the flowers’ stamens to their brim with richness and suggestivity: only lightly lascivious.
Every year I read obsessively about the Oscars. And the Golden Globes – all the cinema prizes, I don’t know why. I like to keep up with it all, even if I haven’t been to a single movie theatre in an entire year. As the stars arrive, it’s always intriguing to hone in on their style choices, the ‘ensemble,’ despite the fact that – obvious general attractiveness aside for the most part – actors and actresses are often generally too conservative in their choices, and go with the consensus set up by their personal shoppers. The mermaid silhouette, the trains; the toned arms, the belaboured jewellery or for the men the standard tux – I very rarely personally actually enjoy how they present themselves because it is all just too much of a muchness – standardised wealth set to the fashion rules of the time.
This year, celebrities will be filming themselves at home. So different. No emerging from limousines and setting up a pose for the paparazzi. No ‘who are you wearing?’ No entourages. No packed together in the auditorium. I wonder if they feel bereft of the limelight, or just relieved? In its place, your dressmaker and makeup up and hair people simply coming over to the house after lunch, getting it all done in the living room, before setting up shop for the little camera lens on the home computer. Then, rather than all the smooching and schmoozing and hugging and air kissing at all the right after-parties, just ripping it all off again and changing back into comfortable leisure gear while grabbing some bubbles from the fridge and checking all the reactions and the buzz on social media. Was I in the Best Dressed or the Worst?
My vote for the former would definitely be for Josh O’Connor. I fancied the pants off Prince Charles in the recent series of The Crown (a sensation I found vaguely alarming) – his father, Prince Phillip wasn’t at all bad either. Although my favourite scene of the ‘historically inaccurate’, but utterly engrossing drama was when Princes Diana, played by newcomer Emma Corrin – who, like Josh O Connor won a Golden Globe award for best actor in a Television Drama – danced alone, sealed off from the rest of the world but not from her dreams in a mist-windowed studio to Elton John’s Song For Guy : just a tape in a stereo and her earnest, blue eyed naivety as she imagines a dazzling future, quite heartbreaking to behold; for me, only Prince Charles, in his less superficial rendering of the heir to the throne ultimately came across as anything approaching a real person. All others were embodied caricatures – impersonations. Effective, to some degree, in their somewhat fixed, Cluedo-like characterisations ( I quite liked Princess Anne), though the vinegary, mewled vowels of the ludicrous Royal Received Pronunciation they were all using distracted from the proceedings for me. Only the real aristocracy can speak like that. They still always sound completely ridiculous, but you know that those sounds are being emitted quite naturally from their ribcages. They were born into it. When overdone by a diction coach, for actors from a different class, it comes across as a parody. Only Josh O’Connor disappeared into his role, capturing not only the essence of his character, and the accent, but also the sheer frustration and fury and anguish of a person restricted by their public duty and not allowed to love. I thought he was brilliant. And he looks beautiful , too, in his Golden Globe clothes – outside the box; subtly flamboyant, but very elegant. These colours and fabrics, also, incidentally, are perfect for the new Tom Ford : just a few dabs somewhere on his person in this context would be unusual, ravishing.
Varanasi is a fascinating perfume. It smells like baking hot sun on a mud-cracked river basin; warm, dirty, vast in scope, human and poignant, with a tangible mysticism rooted in its theme: the holiest of Hindu pilgrim sites, where the funeral pyres burn continuously, forever, in an open-aired cycle of life of death. There is an ashen quality, like grey clay; incense; a smattered of spices; a thick centre of gurjun balsam, cardamom, saffron oud and spikenard over leather and animal notes that feels more ‘experiential’ than personal-sensual – very centred on an unfamiliar emotion – although the whole glows with a unification of ingredients that works. Peculiar, exacting, – it lasts a very long time on skin, and is somewhat linear, like an immeasurable panorama majestically rising up and then slowly fading from view: a curious scent that does feel alive with another person’s memory of a place I have never been.
I have never been to India. We would both love to go there, but there is just one thing preventing us. Our stomachs. Even Meo Fusciuni, the creator of this Italian perfume line, clearly very passionate about this work, cannot help mentioning in his travelogues some inevitable references to terrible illnesses, stomach cramps, shivers; quite frightening and hallucinatory sickness; almost every person I have ever spoken to who has been there, many multiple times, because they become addicted to something there that I want to know myself, say that although on certain occasions they will be fine, equally often they will not. Madame Persolaise and her consort go to India for months at a time, often without incident, others quite desperately ill. A Canadian friend of mine who has travelled through much of the country and loves nowhere better, tells me that such is her great yearning for the place, she accepts the ‘Delhi Belly’ as just a part of the general experience that for people not from India cannot be avoided. You move through it and move on. The pros outweigh the cons. I am still not sure, though. Having experienced true horror in Laos when I thought Duncan was lying dead before me in the middle of the night (out stone cold, unconscious, white as a sheet, naked on the hotel bathroom floor in Vientiane – see full story here), I am afraid of it happening again. Having suffered a different gastric flu in Cambodia, his body so hot in our hotel in Pnom Penh it was almost painful to touch, as well as my own terrible bout of incapacitating stomach illnesses in Java, where I couldn’t leave my hotel room for days, and was very weakened, I know we both have very delicate entrails and I have to always weigh this up against considerations of spiritual ravishment and aesthetic delectation. Hopefully I have not become a total coward and a bore, but I think the older you get, the less you are willing to put your system through it. Vietnam was fine – D pronounced the food there the best he has ever eaten and the cuisine that most suits him: our worst was surprisingly our travels through Mexico, which violently didn’t agree with us. Whatever oil is used in the food there simply didn’t suit – not to be too graphic, but the toilet bowl issues you usually expect from these travesties to the intestinal tract were quite the opposite in every place we went to there. I don’t think either of us could go for what felt like weeks. Bloated beyond reckoning. Duncan just eventually stopped eating.
Intestines aside (we both adore Indian food, and I have poor impulse control: what would I do, just eat crackers and try to resist it? I would be doomed), I know in my heart I would be ecstatically hyperstimulated the moment I arrived anywhere in India, a feeling I long for again. Like most people I miss travelling, the absorption of the newness making each day seem three times longer than a normal one, the osmosis through the skin membrane of the colours and the smells into your bloodstream and memorybrain, even if my recollections of all the places I have been in my life still percolate through my veins and flash into my mind’s eye on a regular basis – I have not yet reached cultural cabin fever. I am still ok for now, still fine with just Kamakura, but I know once the vaccinations are all done – so wonderful they are working – and the airlines are back up in the air with regular passengers, the wanderlust will naturally rear its head. We were once fairly recently on the verge of booking a trip to Chennai and Colombo; we quite fancy going to the Philippines as well. I wonder if we will after all make it to India. There is always that hesitation. I once knew some Japanese freshmen in my company who, in order to celebrate getting jobs and wanting to bond hard on a special trip together, went to Varanasi, where they jumped gung ho right into the Ganges and then spent the entire week violently ill in their hotel rooms. I don’t think I could go into the water myself, but I don’t doubt for a moment that witnessing, and smelling, the funeral rites, the continual cremations of corpses, done publicly day and night by the banks of the river, must in some ways alter your interior landscape.. “Varanasi is my India”, Fusciuni writes. “When you listen to Varanasi, imagine the water, flowing in the bowels of the earth, touching the roots of everything, nourishing our soul. Varanasi is an olfactory mandala”.
It is easy, from the outside, to be cynical about the ‘westerner’ being transformed by his fascination with the ‘East’. People ‘finding themselves’. I think of Julia Roberts in the unbearably vacuous Eat Pray Love. Spoiled selfish woman goes bindi and spiritual. A few garlands of saffron coloured flowers. Some people base their whole ‘new identity’ on a bit of hemp and souvenir shop Buddhas – it can get tacky. I have a good childhood friend who once got waylaid by an Indian cult for many years, but then luckily found her way out again, not that I think she regrets the experience in its entirety, as she learned a great deal from it; trinkets aside, learning and developing is ultimately for me what it is all about. There can be no doubt, also, that the fact I have lived precisely half my life in each cultural sphere – 25 years in both, and you can’t really get much more ‘eastern’ than Japan – has had a profound impact on my thinking and philosophy as a whole on life as well. In my case, I had to feel other ways of being: I can never, ever just accept one set of rules. What I have learned personally is that The East is powerful, but then so is the West. The intense fascination works both ways – Japan, like many Asian cultures, has long been mesmerized by the Occident, even if it cherrypicks what it absorbs into its own culture and rejects the rest. Precisely what I do myself with any culture. You learn from both, but see the faults. Extreme egotism in the west vs the apparent virtual obliteration of it here : it rends the soul trying to get to the truth of it all, which realities are ‘realer’ or feel more truthful to you as a person. Daily life, rituals, customs, all gets questioned and analysed – it frees you from a certain calcification of the mental arteries. English weddings, for instance, to take just one example, are far more fun and spontaneous for me than the ultra scripted, fake-Christian-chapel white dressed kekkonshiki that are planned and rehearsed to a microsecond and presented by a professional ‘MC’ who usually doesn’t even know the couple, blessed by a ‘priest’ who could be anyone (I have two friends in the underground cabaret and poetry scene who double as priests as well-paid weekend part time jobs; two hour jam-packed breathy events that to me feel just like being on a TV show (traditional Japanese weddings are different, more solemn and affecting, although most couples these days opt for the former style). Me and D, when invited, are usually just screaming to get out of them, as, the complete lack of spontaneity and the veneer of showroom commercialism – and the de rigeur, overly rich and heavy French cuisine which always has D running furtively to the bathroom, to me is not the ideal expression of love. The weddings I have been to in England begin with the ceremony (even if they are not Christian, the vows have usually been exchanged at least in a real church, with an ordained minister standing in front of the crucifix – in Japan it is just an empty decoration, a prop). Then, when the drink gets flowing, it gets more chaotic, the day gradually flows into evening, everyone dancing, and it starts to really feel like a celebration. In Japan, people don’t dance.
In contrast, I think British funerals – at least the Church Of England ones I have been to – feel insufficient; lack closure, the sense of a full taking stock of a person. A thirty minute time slot, with few or no personalized touches, no readings, another family waiting outside for their turn out in the car park, a quick cremation, with words from a religious person that don’t seem to fit the person in question, (who was not usually religious anyway), it can often seem just a rushed, a grim formality, a whole life processed in such a short time that to me it has almost felt like something of an insult. A crummy ending. I believe that people deserve more. In Japan, funerals are Buddhist; the deceased is never left alone; there is a wake immediately with flowers and monks chanting and incense constantly burning as the sutras help the spirit go on to the next life, and then the cremation ceremony, and the careful placing of the cremated bones – picked solemnly and carefully by close relatives with chopsticks and placed in the urn – as well as ceremonies held once every seven days for the next 49 days until the spirit is safely in the next world. I have always found it more respectful and appropriate. A proper send off.
Quite how I would feel, though, if I were by the Ganges, watching dead bodies float by, seeing the pyres burning with the recently passed, I don’t know. That would be a new step in a whole different direction. I might be transfixed, or horrified, I can’t say. Both. Fascinated, certainly. I could not watch a person self-immolate : but the Sati law was thankfully passed in India in 1987, meaning that the practice of suttee, whereby widows would sometimes climb atop the structure to burn with their husbands while still alive is no longer permitted. Whatever the cultural or religious origins, that would have been too traumatizing.
A writer for National Geographic, Pete McBride, in 2014 documented his feelings on being present at the ghat on the Ganges, where people had gathered to say farewell to their relatives :
“When you step off a wooden boat onto the banks of the burning ghat in the oldest of India’s cities and you weave through a maze of funeral pyres hissing, steaming, and spitting orange embers into an inky night and you feel the metronome clang bells vibrating inside your chest and a wave of furnace-like heat consuming everything in its reach, you realise how removed you truly are from the ritual of death. I’ve lost my fair share of friends and family. I don’t feel sheltered from the bony hand of death. But when I stepped on Varanasi’s famous cremation ghat, which runs 24/7, burning hundreds of bodies a day in plain sight, it dawned on me how physically distant most of use are from the departed. In the west, the dead are typically hidden away either to be beautified for a funeral or be cremated, depending on beliefs. Either way, bodies are rarely seen again. Some might argue it is civilised, clean, or perhaps just emotionally easier. Or maybe it is the modern world’s subtle way of hiding from the inevitable…
Funeral practices vary worldwide. Of those I ‘ve witnessed, few are as transparent and raw as the Hindu ritual on the banks of the Ganges River. The belief is that if a deceased’s ashes are laid in the Ganges at Varanasi, their soul will be transported to heaven and escape the cycle of rebirth. In a culture that believes in reincarnation, this concept, called moksha, is profound.
“…….At 4:30am the next morning, we returned. A blood red sun was rising across the river. Only one pyre was burning. The bells had stopped. Smoke was everywhere as workers meticulously collected human ash and bone fragments to dump into the river. Goats and dogs roamed freely and steam rose from the ground…. As I photographed, a teenage boy started shadowing me. After a few minutes he asked, ‘want to see my auntie?’ I looked at him confused. He explained that his family was about to cremate his aunt. I looked down on the lower burning deck, and saw the boy’s relatives surrounding a body draped in flowers, saying goodbye and offering final prayers. The boy proudly listed off the oils, herbs, flowers, and trinkets, that they brought to help his aunt on her journey. There was something beautiful about the process unfold before me – the rawness, the simplicity, the completeness.”
Varanasi, the perfume, is the first chapter in Meo Fusciuni’s “Timeless Trilogy”. And it does, I believe, capture something religious; human. I would agree with him that the ‘perfume has no compromises’: it tells what India left in his ‘mind, heart and soul’, a ‘visceral expression.’ I could not wear this myself on a regular basis myself – it is too……grave (while joyful); intense, though I did enjoy experiencing it all day on Sunday, quietly at home. It arouses something in me. I find it perturbing, serene and compelling all at the same time; and I look forward to experiencing the next chapter.
Sortilege —–‘incantation, magic spell, malediction, sorcery’ in French – is a classic floral aldehyde created in the late 1930’s by Paul Vacher (of Miss Dior, Diorling, Arpège, and a fleet of Le Galion perfumes fame). Of its time, of familiar mien if you know N⁰5, L’Aimant, Madame Rochas, the perfume extract that Duncan bought home for me the other night on his way back from Kamakura nevertheless has its own unique charm. While this format of fragrance almost always contains the following ingredients: rose, ylang ylang, muguet, iris and jasmine gemstoned and polished with aldehydes, usually pillowed with a more sexualised base of sandalwood, musk, vetiver and amber, Le Galion’s variant on the theme adds an extra abundance of of lilac, mimosa and narcissus, with a hint of warm labdanum and amber also in the base, which makes it perhaps sound very malleable, talced- feminine and soft in the usual Marilyn Monroe fashion (she, along with Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner, Bette Davis, and Grace Kelly were used in promotional placement pictures for the scent), but in fact, with its lilting skulduggery, ends up sweetly hypnotic.
Less pliant, and ‘giving’ than some of its predecessors and descendants such as Le N⁰9 by Cadolle, and Detchema by Revillon, Sortilège is cooler; more compact and aggressive, initially, prickled and immaculate, taking its time to bloom into a gorgeously rounded perfume not dissimilar to Givenchy’s L’interdit but more vivid, less morose. At this point, in the one hour intermission, you can certainly see where the perfume got its name: this is undeniable female seduction.
I will sorely miss Strawberry Field, the place we got this perfume, the source of many a cherished delight in Kamakura, and which unfortunately seems to be closing down as the lady who runs it is in poor health. Last time I was there, two people completely unfamiliar with perfume were presiding over her wares – everything half price now – meaning D can just pick something up on the way home like the Le Galion extrait pictured above – but it does look as if it won’t be there for much longer. Such is my affection for the place that it even features in the film I did for Moleskine Notebooks last January, one of the surrealer experiences in my life, in which a crew of Italians from Vice.com flew in from Milan just as the coronavirus was starting to take hold, and I had a weekend of pretending it was August in January and being constantly looked at and ‘positioned’ and filmed wherever I went – the clothes I had selected ( I had actually gone shopping and looked good) deemed not seasonably suitable for the shoot: I had to literally borrow the shirt off the Japanese cameraman’s back. Standing around in Tokyo, ‘modelling’; beyond ice cold, having a group of eleven media people invade my house the following day for the interview during which they photographed practically every corner of our odd and overpacked abode, causing mayhem in the street outside as neighbours found that they couldn’t park their cars because of all the extra vehicles, wondering what the hell was going on, it was all completely new and exciting. I felt like a star, and it was very illuminating in that regard: I got a tiny taste of what being a ‘celebrity’ would be like. and much as I know I couldn’t stand that kind of attention on a regular basis, with a big pinch of salt, it was certainly enthralling for just a couple of days.
One of the stops on the itinerary – so hilarious, being bundled into the van like fleeing paparazzi and speeding at the limit to the next designated destination each time as though our lives depended on it- was Strawberry Field, which the main organizer of the project – there had been several bungles – had misunderstood as being a literal field of elysian strawberries somehow dotted with perfumes, like a Dorothy snoozing in her field of drowsing opioid poppies, vintage perfume bottles half dug into the soil……was I to walk, daydreaming, through the fragrant beds of fruit and pluck perfumes from my bosom or was it else some kind of huge market just bulging with swooning vintagery that we would wander about it and take woozy pictures with me up close and personal with bottles of Yves Saint Laurent and Ricci? There we were, racing desperately to get there at the appointed hour, the Italian media on their walkie talkies to each other getting agitated about whether we would make it to il campodi fragole into time; one of the Japanese managers calling up sycophantically and hyper politely to placate the owner and begging her to stay open until we got there (financial incentives were eventually offered), frantically scoffing down the convenience store sandwiches that the runner had gone out to by in bulk as there had been no time to get lunch (we were all absolutely famished) – and yet the final destination was, in fact, really just a tiny and cramped (but very charming, if you like statues and mirrors and beads and ceramics and porcelain and knick knacks ) old junk/antique shop. Fortunately, the cameramen had a similar camp sensibility to me and loved it, immediately, and the proprietress in her ragdollhat; she graciously extended her opening hours; we filmed our little segment there, and it was a wrap.
I will miss many things about that place. It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t overly expensive either – plus she always gave me a discount. Gorgeous, boxed Guerlains and Patous, some Carons, many Chanels; I got my sumptuous Amouage Gold from there; several Mystère de Rochas, among many many other things I can no longer precisely remember; the beauty being that you didn’t only have to store up on the riches and troves that you wanted to accumulate for your cabinet, but could acquire new old novelties that you might never have encountered before, such as Fame de Corday; old miniatures, abandoned and unwanted eaux de parfum, and half used up extraits. It was a mine of pleasure and perfume education : and without it, I am sure I would never have been exposed to such a lovely creation as Le Galion Sortilège.
Last Saturday after work we met in Kannai, Yokohama. I couldn’t face another train journey home alone: that sad repetition : : go to work, come home from work, go to work, come home from work – half a person. It has been a dreadful term, a suppressed fear on autopilot, and I am beat. So last weekend we had a great evening wandering around Isezakicho, our second spiritual home – warm enough just about to sit outside in coats and scarves and have drinks, even if, later on, as the temperature dropped we found ourselves dinnerless with all the restaurants closed, as per the current law by 8pm; local neighbourhood associations zealously doing the rounds with clapboards and megaphones intoning to the ethnic minorities – Korean, Chinese, Russian, Thai – to abide by the regulations and close up shop; we ended up (happily) having last minute discount meal of spicy Szechuan dishes in plastic containers in the park, on a cold stone bench in an island of illuminated rocks.
It was unseasonably warm last week and I loved it. This week, the temperatures have dropped, there has been a continual gale level wind – unbearable, I have found myself shouting into it, at it – and we have both become sick. Not sick sick, I don’t think – no fevers, no obvious corona symptoms : but extreme ‘malaise’, certainly, tiredness; I have had a sore throat and a ‘compressed chest’ feeling in my left lung but then I do get that every year or so and can usually sort it out with a few days of antibiotics; D has had a bad headache which is now thankfully dissipating, but whatever the source of the lurgey we have definitely been out of sorts and achey and just wanting to nest in a properly heated room. Thursday morning I woke up and felt as though I was sinking into the mattress, anchored by my dreams into heaviness, and I knew – just a few seconds scanning the day ahead in my mind – that there was no way I would be able to do all the travelling, the sheer effort required for it all; the appalling contrast between the overly heated seats, and the necessary open windows whistling with ice cold winds, rendering me a human version of Baked Alaska, an uneasy combination of warmed roll and thawing vanilla ice cream. My most basic instincts told me no – no way. Nor could I face the school where I am assigned a room with a broken heater, nor the idea of my potentially bringing something into the school in Yokohama that has no windows. I do sometimes live my life like David and Goliath, I must admit, and David, on this occasion, elected to stay in bed.
I like the colours in this kimono material, particularly in tandem with the fur…
It was lovely to be in the neon of Isezakicho; the oddballs wandering, the sheer diversity of the unselfconscious demographic on the streets (this is a place without the ‘respectable propriety’ of other areas in the Yokohama region, and it feels so much freer; looser, more interesting); eccentricity flourishing left right and centre plus an entrenched sense of history. In fact, at Minato – one of the most quintessential Japanese ‘recycle’ shops I often mention – pictured here, – we ended up buying a framed antiquarian map of the nearby Sakuragicho bay as it used to be in the nineteenth century, lovely aquamarines and blues, as well as an old clock: I liked the typographic on the face.
When we got home later in the evening we realized that that this thing actually seems to have a palpable life of its own ; chiming and clanging at all hours (haunted?), so for now it has been covered in duvets and blankets until its wind up mechanism runs out – I leapt out of bed the other night when it started chiming at 4:30am and threw it again under its covers : it will either be mounted, fittingly, in our bloodbath disco toilet – or else just used as a prop in one of Duncan’s films. Or else discarded.
His latest, incidentally- for Kings Of Tokyo, ‘Lyon, France, 1968’, set to 60’s French chanteur Michel Polnareff’s heartbreaking song ‘Love Me, Please Love Me’, features a very lonely vintage bottle of Guerlain Vetiver, plus many changes of necktie, as he nervously gets ready to go out for a date but dolefully ends up in the cinema watching Pasolini smoking alone…………
Boxed Chanel extraits lie among the snakeskin and bric-a-brac: I couldn’t resist an almost full 28ml of you know what.
Neither could I this. Nina Ricci’s Farouche (1974) is not a perfume I could ever wear myself, but I am helpless in front of such red velours. Plus, the scent is elegant and beautiful (it is my Tokyo dressmaker friend Rumi’s favourite perfume of all time; Helen also likes this, though, so it might have to be hers at some point when I go home – – – mum, it wouldn’t suit you; I have you got you Capricci instead to be brought back in the ‘whenever suitcase’: this, and the Shiseido Suzuro).
Saturday night. Out as you should be. Wandering along, pleasantly spaced out and free, purchasing a curious book of Japanese cat pictures at an old book shop, as well as Mirko Buffinis’ compelling carnation violet Klito – which I reviewed the other day – plus a modern 93ml refill of Jicky, at Opal, and which smells exceptional on D; the definite pièce de resistance (so nice to just be out in a place you love, spending money on luxurious items you want to hold, and handle and stare at with pleasure rather than on just the basic alimentary essentials and your train pass) …… the original version of the classic Paco Rabanne Pour Homme – the now rare and sacred ‘yellow juice’ from 1973 so beloved on the men’s fragrance fora – made how it was meant to be – the perfume pristine and intact, wonderfully optimistic and aromatic; the sage note and the coniferousness beautifully balanced with the citrus and rosewood/lavender/tonka bean sweetish honey of the heart and inconspicuously erotic base; slightly more sweaty/animalic and rich – yet just as fresh – as the subsequent editions (though the Rabannes I wore in the eighties were also perfect; greener, the amiable soapiness, which is the main attraction for me, more at the fore). Recent airport editions I have smelled are fiendishly clever in keeping the basic persona of the original, immediately recognisable structure intact, but then your smell brain, sensitized, immediately senses an unwanted, irking component of metal chiding just beneath the surface. Hollowed. This version – the original – such a benign and lovely piece of work with its satisfying, herbal dependability; undemonstrative yet quietly outgoing – has no such cruelly subverted identity.
Violets can be pale and bitter. Unsugared, as perfumes they are often pallid and aqueous – scents such as Caron’s Violette Precieuse (reissue) that were centered around violet leaf, rather than the Parma-tastic flowers; Ann Flipo’s Verte Violette for L’Artisan; all demure and self-effacing. Even Aftel’s recent Violet Ambrosia, a delicately rounded fragrance with fuller edges, unexpectedly took the shyer, woodland route.
Mirko Buffini’s Klito’, which I picked up the other day from a discounter, is a Florentine burst in the completely opposite direction : full-bodied, sweet, slightly salty, voluptuous – an almost dizzyingly heady blend of aldehydic violets, rose, and cloves over ylang ylang vanilla and cedarwood that I bought on the spot after smelling it. I had to. Simplistic, it nevertheless has an exuberantly press-powdered heft and energy : a perfectly rendered real dose of passion and energy for a Saturday night (this would leave quite the wayward scent trail). It is the carnation and clove element that does it for me: I adore the combination of violet and spice. A whoosh to the spirits. (Have you tried any of the other perfumes by Mirko Buffini, incidentally? I have seen this line in department stores before, and D was taken with Haiku, but have never fully explored. This situation shall now be rectified.)
On the always appealing topic of florid Italian violets, last year – or rather the year before – I found myself in Florence for the opening of the Lush Perfume Library (which I couldn’t write about at the time because I wasn’t really supposed to be there). Despite the freezing cold rain that accompanied virtually every sodden footstep; miserable; it was ultimately an exhilarating experience – staying in a hotel by the Uffizi Gallery, and being overwhelmed by its treasures ; having a lunch at a very chichi high end restaurant not only with the founder of Lush, Mark Constantine, and the perfumer behind the (at the time exclusive to Florence) range of perfumes including Confetti, Nero and Sappho – Emma Dick, but also none other than Persolaise as well as some of the the head honchos at Fragrantica, Cafleurbon, The Perfume Society, and Basenotes. Exciting. It felt like a G7 summit. A little intimidating at first, but the organiser had brilliantly intuited that this particular hand-picked group of perfumisti would get along marvellously – and we did. Shots at local bars after hours, a great deal to talk about, skipping across the medieval piazzas in the moonlight, we had a whale of a time, and once everyone had gone back to their respective countries I then very luckily stayed on a bit longer – my parents arriving later on in the week as they had never been to the city before (I studied there as a twenty year old). We wandered the streets, and marvelled at the sheer magnitude of the beauty on display on every corner.
Confetti – referring to the confectionery placed on the tables at traditional Italian nuptials – is a profumo isterico ; a bizarre violet and bitter sugar almond concoction with a heart note of coffee and sandalwood that could make you retch and fall in love simultaneously : both stomach-churning and addicting. Using the same violently green and chalky violet used in the company’s cult classic V from 1995 – a perfume that is alluring in some ways yet unendurable; I remember Duncan and Michael inhaling it for the first time when we all met up of an evening in Isezakicho in a karaoke restaurant and them both grimacing with repulsion – “my god” ; some textural offness; a sharpness, like being stabbed in the stomach, that unavoidably induces brividi – the shudders; Confetti employs precisely the same violet accord – stored, presumably somewhere in the Lush vaults – but tempers it effectively with a rich, romantic rose, pear; acidic like pear drops; a strange note of coffee absolute and sandalwood and a general effect of poisonous almonds, all resulting in a peculiarly lush, velveteen, green and purple potion that I remember starkly experiencing at night as we were taken on a tour of the Palazzo Vecchio by a young English historian by the name of Rose who had collaborated with the Perfume Library on researching the relevant historical background to the perfumes..Entranced by the frescoes – interesting though the explanations were, in understanding what I was seeing- I was only half absorbing the historical details – always terrible at that subject at school – my mind wandered off, no matter the period in question – some sequestered homesick Austrian princess or other pining for the Tyrols hence the symbolism in all the beautiful wall paintings……. …..I just know that the perfume – a singular, strange scent that for some reason I now always keep next to my desk – was seared into my memory at that particular moment, forever.
Comparing vetiver essential oil from 5 different countries (and vetiveryl acetate as a bonus). All are beautiful yet distinct.
First of all, I am thrilled and honoured to write my first ever guest post here on The Black Narcissus! Thank you so much, Neil, for giving me this opportunity to share an exploration of a material that we both love: vetiver.
When I dove headlong into the world of perfumery 2 years ago, one of the first things I did was seek out a perfume-making class. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long or travel far to attend my first “art of natural perfumery” workshop, run by an aromatherapy specialist named Cher. It was a well organised, comfortable, eye- (and nose!)- opening experience and I got to take home a lovely blend of essential oils based on what I liked by scent.
I mention this anecdote not only because it’s an integral part of my so-called perfume original story, but also because that was the first time I had heard of vetiver, let alone smelled it. The word itself was pleasant, and rolled off the tongue – rather the lower lip – quite smoothly. Cher likened it to “a leather couch” and while I’m prone to influence by other’s setting of expectations, I also made a note to self that I smelled solvent and something metallic as well.
Sadly (or, that’s just the way it is), vetiver did not end up in my first “custom perfume” – a citrus-heavy rose composition to help me “focus”, as we were each asked what we wanted our perfume to help us feel. However, in my early days of experimenting with my own blends, I pegged vetiver as a leathery note, and was somewhat surprised when that wasn’t reflected in most of what I read about perfume. Rather, vetiver was often described as earthy, woody, or grassy. Sometimes, inky – which became my new association.
Eventually, I learned that vetiver oil is distilled from the roots of vetiver grass, and things started to make more sense. Perfumes that featured this ingredient, such as Le Labo Vetiver 46 and Comme Des Garḉons 2 MAN, initially reminded me of ginseng, another root. (Both of these ended up smelling “dirty” to me after the top notes had evaporated). Later, I would discover perfumes I liked in which I didn’t recognise the vetiver, although it was listed as one of the main notes – for instance, Atelier Cologne Clementine California and Rouge Bunny Rouge Incantation (discontinued).
It goes without saying that materials, especially botanical ones, vary in quality and characteristics depending on the source. The first vetiver that I bought was from Haiti, the world’s largest producer of vetiver. In fact, this grass is known to exist in at least 70 nations, although most do not produce it commercially. (1)
Like the classic computer game Minesweeper, in which clicking on one square reveals more clues in neighbouring squares, getting to know one kind of vetiver led me to others – and I say “kinds ” from an amateur, end-user perspective, but I really mean sources. They are all the same kind : the species Chrysopogon zizanioides, formerly known was Vetiver zizanioides. DNA fingerprinting has shown that almost all the vetiver cultivated outside of South Asia have been driven from a single genotype. (2) One clone to rule them all – yet vetiver plants grown side by side can be “strikingly different in colour, righty, flowering, and other features”.
Without further ado, how do vetiver essential oils from different countries smell?
(Disclaimer: I bought my samples in small quantities from reputable resellers in the United States and have not compared multiple oils sourced from the same country but sold by different companies. The list is arranged alphabetically. My impressions are limited to my own olfactory associations, so I encourage you to smell for yourself whenever you have the chance!)
One pipette drop of each material at full strength onto a glass slide. The Indonesia specimen is not a larger drop, but rather less viscous and more spread out. The India specimen is indeed a smaller drop. This also serves to illustrate how unreliable drops are when trying to proportion perfumery ingredients, and why weight should be used instead of volume. The colors are more sharply contrasted in this photo than they appear in person, despite adjusting the white balance.
Bourbon type
Bourbon vetiver refers to the type produced in the volcanic Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, which is generally considered to be of the highest quality, but difficult to source. My sample is actually a blend from France and Madagascar, “blended to maintain Bourbon specifications”.
This is so far my personal favourite. It’s steely smoky, round, richly nutty if I pay attention, and brings to my mind warm colours. It’s much less rooty, grassy and earthy than the other types. I’m inclined to use it in blends with rich, complex florals such as osmanthus, rose or ylang ylang.
Haiti
This is probably the type most easily found in perfumery, and derivatives including vetiverol and vetiveryl acetate are often obtained from Haitian vetiver. It’s more rooty and slightly inky, with more “cooling” connotations in the scent that are now remind me of liquorice root in a tea blend from Aveda that I loved many years ago. It also smells more woody and is the one I would think of to complement citrus notes, green notes, and “brighter” flowers such as jasmine.
India
As the origin of known vetivers around the world, India also produces oils from a wild type of vetiver grown in the northern parts of the country. Wild vetiver, or “ruh thus”, yields oil with an aroma very distinct from those of its sterile, “fragrant-root” type counterparts. What struck me most was the shocking green colour when I first pipetted out the liquid from its amber vial. The scent is an earthy, dull green – very vegetal, reminiscent to of the inedible parts of vegetables that have rigid stalks. It does not seem to be used in perfumery, despite the eponymous fragrance Wild Vetiver by Bentley (which cites vetiver essence “extracted from the roots of a bush that grows wild in Indonesia” on the brand website and which I have not smelled as of this writing).
10% captions of each type of vetiver essential oil. From left to right: Bourbon type, Haiti, India (“ruh kus: or wild vetiver), Indonesia, Paraguay and vetiveryl acetate ex vetiver Haiti.
Indonesia
This one smells harsh to me and reminds me of burned buildings (accidental electrical fires seemed more commonplace when I was a child) and burned coffee. After the initial blast of stale smoke has passed, I can detect a cooler, woodier scent that also hints at peanuts. Possibly even candied peanuts. I’m not sure if my sample is representative of Indonesian vetivers, which are produced mainly in Java.
Paraguay.
My Google search for “Paraguayan vetiver: in quotes yielded zero results. It remains elusive, as vetiver seems to be least known in South America. This may be the nuttiest of them all. When I first smelled it, I was reminded of something foody that I couldn’t quite place, and it took me several minutes to remember that the memory was of a canned peanut soup that can be found in Asian supermarkets, usually next to the congees. It’s very mild flavoured and can be eaten heated or chilled (in my childhood, I preferred the latter, as a refreshing snack in hot summers).
On skin, this vetiver oil dilution is earthy in a clay-like way, almost chalky. Not smoky at all.
The only other raw material I have ever thought of as “chalky” so far is mastic (also known as lentisque), and that is purely from smelling it within perfumes. I have yet to smell it on its own, but think it’s fair to hypothesise that these two ingredients might work well together. A couple of commenters on Basenotes have said that Tom Ford Grey Vetiver and L’Occitan Vetiver feature these notes in combination.
On the dry down, I’m having trouble distinguishing the dilutions of oils from Paraguay, Haiti, and Bourbon type. They have all converged into a stark woodiness with the grapefruit facet elevated.
Vetiveryl acetate
Credited with the success of many perfumes, and spotlighted in Escentric Molecules Molecule 03, vetiveryl acetate is considered a synthetic substance derived from the vetiver plant. It is fractionated from the steam-distilled vetiver oil and then acetylated, removing some harsher aspects of the essential iol. My sample was processed from Haitian vetiver.
Having high expectations, I was disappointed when I first smelled it. To my nose, it was barely a shadow or whisper of the essential oils. Very flat in comparison. Like a cardboard cutout, or at best a wax figure, in place of a live person. However, it does achieve the purpose of smelling more “refined”, conforming to the standard of woody vetiver. Being lighter, perhaps by way of relatively lacking depth, it also brings out some of the citrusy aspects of vetiver.
Those are my impressions so far, and vetiver remains one of my favorite perfumery raw materials. Ironically, I have not yet smelled very many vetiver perfumes or fallen for one, but the search continues! I would be curious about your perception either of the raw ingredients or any fragrances featuring this complex, wonderful material.
1. National research Council 1993. Vetiver Grass: A Thin Green Line Against Erosion. Washington, DC: the National Academies Press. https:/doi.org/10.17226/2077.
2. Adams RP, et al. DNA fingerprinting reveals clonal nature of Vetiver zizanoides (L.) Nash, Gramineae and sources of potential new germplasm. Mol Ecol. 1998; 7:813-818,
Feeling that I am turning a corner at the moment, I am in the mood for fresh and green.
A clean, verdant masculine rose blend wrapped in herbal grapefruit and sage, I imagined something chypric – hint of labdanum – a leafier Lumiere Noire: spine-tingling, maybe, like the original Envy by Gucci; or crisp and alert like Roseberry de Rosine ; icicle- bright, like the rest of Francis Kurkidjian’s ’s incomparably pragmatic crystallinity.
FK’s original A La Rose – a masterful archetype of its kind – is a very consummate, if prissily synthetic, taut summation of a prettily pink modern rose. It makes a mark. A ‘male version’ of this is hauntingly tantalizing; maintain the optimism of rosiness of the perfume but with a new vein of ligneous clarity and chlorophyll.
If the publicity photography shown above, disappoints, so does the scent. As with all perfume talk, though, this is very subjective. Reviewers on Fragrantica talk of pure roses doused in the dawn of dewy gardens , of a revitalization of the conceit of roses for men. Baffling. For me, the contributors who made comments along the lines of ‘but isn’t this identical to RalphLauren Polo Blue’? are far closer to the mark ((this release was apparently intended —-you might call it hack work —- for a less pricey ‘designer brand’ , then recommandeered and reworked under the niche house’s prestigious umbrella)). And it shows.
Despite a bracing, roseyish opening touch, L’Homme A La Rose is ultimately just a re-embraced sports fragrance, brash and overcomplicated, with no obvious beauty. I would genuinely love to smell this properly on another person – I don’t doubt for a second that other nuances might become apparent on a skin colder and more youthful than mine – but this is certainly not the ‘ideal introduction’ for the bi-curious man that all the hype would suggest. The fate of this scent strip – so utterly disappointing and entirely different from what I was expecting ( I have to ask you : what was your own biggest unbridgeable chasm in terms of what was stirred in the olfactory imagination by the incentivizing words that led you on – my own words included – and the grim reality that met your individual scent brain when you smelled it ?) – being tossed within one minute into a nearby rubbish bin – I couldn’t even be bothered to get to the middle stage – – — shows you everything I needed to know.
I feel like cooking one of those whole-day-to-make affairs where you get through a few albums on the stereo and do everything from scratch with all the chopping and peeling and frying and simmering so that you just get embroiled in it all and the house smells of nothing else. I am thinking a nice tangy borscht with beets, cabbage, carrots and pork, or else a bouillabaisse; white wine, dill; garlic, herbs, olive oil, butter; sour cream, and a generous teaspoon of saffron.
Since the beginning of 2021 we have sworn to each other not to eat in a single eatery until the virus is under control, and have been making food at home, leaving things to eat for each other during the working week. The excellent Kamakura vegetable market is right next to Duncan’s school, and he often returns with intriguing vegetables I have never seen before; black hairy carrots, dark purple radishes, bitter greens with crenellated surfaces. They often throw in some free radicchio or rucola as well; wasabi or mustard leaves; mountain potatoes.
Although I often need simple, even bland food – mashed potatoes, boiled vegetables served with some grilled protein – very traditional English – like most people I also love the whole gamut of herbs and spices. So much more than mere flavour enhancers and condiments, needless to say, spices are also vital botanicals with proven health benefits and rich histories that boost energy, the psyche, and the immune system at this stressful and depleting time we are living in (see also this piece I wrote on the power of essential oils). They are necessary. The new recently opened takeout Turkish kebab place, Zaza’s, in Ofuna, is drawing long lines of local people who have probably never eaten this food before and can’t get enough of the cinnamon, sumac, cumin and thyme-infused meat wafting through the air of the big market there; so filling and galvanising in the cold weather : you feel it heating you up from the inside, suffusing an aromatic warmth through your blood vessels. Delicious natural complements. Indispensable in winter. The sea faring trading ancients thought of spices not just as perfumes and culinary and economic necessities but also as medicines; the basis for the treatments given by Phoenician or Ayurvedic physicians: observably tried and tested remedies; as anti-oxidants to free radicals, as body vitalizers. Both paprika and cayenne pepper are well-known anti-inflammatories for inflamed joints; treating the swollen tissue from within – so I use them regularly in my food. Those with heart problems are sometimes advised to carry the latter with them at all times, as the chemical capsaicin in cayenne pepper is reputed to be able to sometimes nip an incipient cardiac arrest in the bud. Spices flood our circulation and stimulate our brains; there is a much lower incidence of Alzheimer’s in India precisely because of the great prevalence of turmeric in the cuisine – a hyper-health food I am not very keen on the taste of unless blended into a curry or a cardamomed masala chai, but which I do always keep a bag of as a cold antidote – I find it helps keep illness at bay.
Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and star anise (a powerful virus destroyer) I use copiously in my rooibos teas. D is the pfeffermeister, a pepper lover, sprinkling cracked pink, white and black pepper onto salads; I am the one more naturally geared towards the perfumed voluptuousness of saffron, saved usually only for particular occasions like today (Valentine’s). I have a real pull towards saffron, particularly with seafood : intrinsically aphrodisiac and sense-altering and without parallel in the spice rack; sublimating all the food around it with its stark yellow scent that smells like liquorice in concentration but like the warm breath of suppressed carnality in the desired concentrations. I have to restrain myself when cooking with it, as I know from experience that it can easily overwhelm.
The most expensive spice (along with vanilla), saffron is gathered from the deep orange threads that grow in the centre of the crocus sativus, painstakingly removed from the flowers and dried, then traditionally used in dyeing, perfume; food and teas for their perceived positively therapeutic effect on ‘melancholy’. Saffron undeniably has this effect: there is an instinctive immediacy to the smell and the taste that pulls you back through the looking glass into happier terrain. I am always fascinated by this; the fact that you can intuit a particular plant’s therapeutical magic before even reading up on it; you can sense and physically feel the intrinsic positivity of saffron, though just one inhalation. Known as ‘red gold’ in Iran, where 90% of the world’s saffron is currently produced, this precious spice has been used for tens of thousands of years across the vast majority of the world cultures via the spice trails, used medicinally for depression, insomnia, and reproductive issues; research is currently being done also into its potential usage as a drug to treat Parkinson’s – the crocetin that forms part of its natural essence a potential prophylactic for dementia. In the palaces of Knossos in Crete, where we went as a family in 1987 for our first ever holiday abroad – I vividly remember the exciting, blazing sun, and hiding in the cooler shadows behind great white stone – there are frescoes in the museum I may or not have seen, that depict crocus flowers being picked by young girls and monkeys for their uses by the deities; on the island of Santorini there is another walled painting of a Minoan goddess supervising the ‘gleaning of stigmas’ for the use in some ancient drug. Or possibly the other way round. Fear of the seductive powers of saffron made traders of the past wary of being fed saffron-laced Persian cuisine ; unwitting arousal caused by the ingestion of these tiny aromatic threads leading to lord knows what consequences: saffron clearly is arousing: not a psychological imagining, but a physiological response in the body. The Greek mythical origins of the substance confirm this : in the Crocus and Smilax myth, in which the standard priapically amorous youth unwearyingly pursues a beautiful nymph who eventually tires of the chase, the enchantress uses her bewitching powers to transform him immediately into a living saffron crocus, a flower whose radiant orange stigmas were held up vividly as a ‘relict glow of an undying and unrequited passion’.
In perfume, I find that proper saffron tints tend to be found mainly in Arab or Arab-inspired creations. Some of the sweeter, more balsamic attars infused with a dose of saffron can drive me doolally; a kind of cellular discombobulation where I melt into myself for a few seconds and come out differently. Although not one of my ‘regular ingredients’, I do seem to get a fierce craving for a saffron scent every once in a while – usually in early summer, when you can wear looser and less clothing and a saffron-laced perfume goes perfectly with sun-kissed skin. I remember I went to look for my Montale Velvet Flowers in May or June last year when this urge came predictably over me (the peculiar peach-blossom and saffron combination in that scent is very mood heightening when you are in the right frame of mind for it), but it had leaked; just an intense gunge of dehydrated perfume ingredients that I dripped, burning, onto my evaporated wrists nevertheless.
L’Artisan’s Safran Troublant, one of the most popular niche saffron creations, is a tad duskymusky floatily distant for my own use; Grossmith’s Saffron Rose, on the other hand, a truly gorgeous, rich and sense-drowsing opening accord of Damascene roses and saffron, cinnamon, myrrh, labdanum and oud that eventually tilts into more familiar agar territory but whose opening makes it a very desirable fragrance to own if you are a true saffron lover (it is a prohibitively costly perfume, but definitely one of the best saffrons I have ever smelled – do tell me any others that you would recommend). Byredo’s popular Black Saffron is also undeniably impressive – from about a mile away – but too acrid and hyperbolic up close. A dot here or there though, with a suede or leather jacket, and this scent can work alchemical wonders on the right wearer.
New Bavarian perfume house GCB’s Coeur Du Safran, by Günter Schramm – a firm, full-bodied saffron creation, in some ways has a similar feel to the swaggering, Swedish saffronbomb, but is less tarry, more gourmand in the manner of Mugler – and thus more approachable. Though more dense and sugar-spun than I am used to wearing, it is a nicely balanced upright saffron perfume blended with sandalwood, tolu balsam, benzoin and a touch of orange blossom/musk that, once we start going out of a summer evening again, I think I might wear with a black flannel open-necked shirt and just stride into the light. Like the aforementioned borscht or bouillabaisse, the saffroned tinctures of ancient India; that sensual, tantric aroma; if the perfume is concentrated on saffron, I have no doubt that I will find it fortifying.
My friend Emma sent me this old perfume ad ripped from an 80’s fashion magazine :
‘Je Reviens. It talks when you can’t’.
Interesting. It is true that this classic by the House Of Worth has mystique in its savory, aromatic melancholy; a plea that pulls on you from another realm that might mask a lack of enigma.
But here, these awkward his n her showroom dummies (batteries not shown), do not even seem to me to have the ability to speak in the first place.
True, they have grown skin; hair; slacks. Makeup. Learned some human gestures.
But the beauty of the perfume, in an indescribable sphere all its own, will surely be lost on each one of these static, anosmic, innardless models, in a strange and lifeless promotion created more than fifty years after the fragrance’s original release (will there still be adverts for La Vie Est Belle in 2060 ?)
Perhaps what is suggested here is that the perfume literally does SPEAK.
As in : “It’s Je Reviens on the phone”.
A blue, silent mouthpiece on the end of the line : a hissing emission of aldehydized iris, frankincense, oakmoss, narcissus…
