The Black Narcissus

What is a perfumista ?
And do I qualify as one ? ( Do you ?) Although I write primarily on perfume/scent/fragrance and have even published a book on the subject, spend most of my disposable income on perfume, essential oils and incense, and like nothing better as a present or a bargain find or even a luxurious purchase; like to keep up to date with what is new by going up to Tokyo and having a good look/sniff around ( I do miss that ), am unjaded and delighted every time a perfumed postal delivery comes to the house – even if I am quite often disappointed by the contents within; not being one who is glued to the scentnewsfeed 24/7 to find out about every new release I fear it might disqualify me from being a true rabid and addicted fragrantista.

( three perfumisti : at the 2014 Jasmine Awards :

from left : The Black Narcissus, The Candy Perfume Boy and Persolaise ( Brian De Palma / Steven Spielberg / Martin Scorsese).

One thing I do know is that perfumed oases/ babylons such as the lush, unobtainable vale of temptations that is Luckyscent – for any non-perfumistas reading this, a website/ online Heaven of never-ending perfumes that you could spend hours, days, forever reading, ceding your finances until credit ruin in the search for The One ( like YouTube and its inexhaustible wellsprings of the familiar and the tantalizingly obscure : always a ‘you may also like’ to click on next, more overdraft deductions, there is always another beautifully described perfume you are yearning to try, and the obsessed perfumeholic will click and flex, waiting for the arrival of the next precious elixir to be untapped from the vial ; I do know some people in real life for whom all of this expense and insatiability veers dangerously close to an actual addiction; the hunt and the splurge the main act in itself: a feeling I have empathy for, but in reality have to some extent been able to resist.)

From Luckyscent :

From my perspective, this perfume would make quite a nice rose chypre for the budding young perfumista who wants to flash an edge of vintage while not being bogged down in the full must (that is not remotely how I see ‘old perfumes’ myself, obviously, and I will in fact be doing an interesting project with Art And Olfaction in August on the subject), .

But for the uninitiated neophyte, the full Guerlain Parure / L’Arte di Gucci, or even Sisley Soir De Lune, which in its first incarnation was a real rose patchouli chypre stunner ( I remember how amazing it smelled on you Emma, that brilliant night of karaoke) might just be too drenched, Rose-heavy; overpowering. In Perfumista, the earthier moss / spice / castoreum we might otherwise expect from a classic of the type is replaced with a more approachable, young, but for me slightly anodyne, insistent white musk that comes with the neo- mousse de saxe and the pleasant rose, making it gentler, more upbeat, but for the hardcore rose chypre lover, despite the fact that the perfume had input from some real Perfume Lovers, possibly not quite sufficiently vampish and gorgeouso for the very picky and exigent One Who Needs More.

Ironically, there are other perfumes in the House Of Lebreton that strike me as more suitable as new cravings for the discerning and extravagant niche collector – though these are quite reasonably priced – the suave abstract leather of L’Eau Scandaleuse, for exsmple, or the orris-heavy, waxen lipstick poisoned-almond that is the more fascinating Incarnata.

Arch as an odalisque, strange and coolly moreish, for the completist who likes every available shade in their genre of fragrance selection, from Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose to Martin Margiela Lipstick On – a scent I was once on the verge of buying until I thought more carefully of my monthly bank balance – scents like these are the very essence of what makes a true perfumista – those for whom perfume goes beyond an accoutrement or commodity, a personal signature, something to just ‘wear ‘: but turns instead – sometimes dangerously – into a full blown, hedonistically consuming obsession.

 

 

I don’t go all that often for lime, even if I have always loved the Sicilian citric thrill of the mandarin and lime opening accord of the classic Armani Pour Homme. I have never entirely taken to the ‘Gentleman’s Limes’ of the colonial tropics a la Penhaligons or Geo F Trumper for various reasons, one of them being that I don’t care for the darkgreenness of lime being combined with neroli, sandalwood or musk.

 

Lime on food is definitely blissful – with coriander on grilled swordfish, squeezed on Tom Yum Kun. It is also perfect in a cocktail. A slice of lemon is of course lovely in an iced gin and tonic but lime has the edge : cooler, more vitalizing.

 

 

 

 

On Monday night I met D after work outside The Bank in Kamakura, which we sometimes use as a rendezvous point : an old bank from the early twentieth century converted into a bar that is never open.

 

On this occasion it was, so we decided to go in for a quick G + T before dinner; the only ones in there, the shaded stone and the marble of the interior naturally cooling and quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I actually happened to be wearing two lime perfumes, coincidentally, having one of those wonderful days where you are enjoying life tremendously and your perfume choices are just right; rocking the sillage as you walk along in the gorgeous afternoon sunlight counting your blessings and loving how you have decided to scent your person ( as I write this I am miserable on the train in the heavy rain on my way to the school in Yokohama, but let’s go back just two days).

 

Montale’s Aromatic Lime has become such an annual staple for me that I recently acquired another bottle, just as a reserve. Although the opening couple of minutes are a little on the ‘perhaps too much’ tip – almost chocolatey, like a lime infused ganache; soon this deep, multilayered perfume of effective performance becomes the most perfect chypric patchouli base that is enjoyable by itself, sprayed on clothes,  or on one or two wrists but even better layered with other, lighter fragrances. For those who love Sisley Eau Du Soir and the like, this dry, highly long lasting faithful accomplice is essential; on Monday I layered it with my home-doctored 500 ml bottle of L’Occitane’s Eau Captivante, a fresh, slightly ozonic citrus/mint/basil to which I added copious doses of vetiver, grapefruit and lime essential oils, creating a refreshing, very lime-centred cologne that I have been wearing on a daily basis and loving ( and look at the colour of it! You KNOW I have been messing  with it, greening it ; sometimes you have to, if you want a perfume to capture its name)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am actually wearing Eau Captivante today as well, in my suit. Where I ordinarily would never have considered wearing anything sharp and zinging to the work place, one of the small advantages of this new Covid-19 pandemic era for the perfumist is that firstly, everyone is wearing masks, all the time (extraordinarily exhausting while teaching – at the weekends I am so depleted I can hardly move; all the exertion from trying to animate a sea of masked zombies with less oxygen than you actually need; I overcompensate by going overboard and arrive home a limp rag), but at least, with the windows open as well – even with the air conditioning on, not good for the environment I know but I vastly prefer it as air conditioning just truly doesn’t go with my physiognomy – I consider it the enemy; on the trains the breeze travels down the train so much better and comfortable than being openly refrigerated. As a result, I feel more free and easy about scent: whereas before I was always hyper aware of every last trace of base note or middle note left hanging in the air, now I am indifferent – and obviously it is the last thing that anyone is worrying about in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

Here in Japan, people are still wary: you have to be. There has been a rise in cases in Tokyo and Yokohama with the full reopening of the country, though it is nothing like the situation in Europe and North and South America (David if you are reading this in São Paulo, I hope you and your loved ones are safe; I love a crushed ice, lime drenched Brazilian caipirinha too, while we are on the subject..,,,,,,would love to make it out there one day).

 

 

 

 

 

Compared to our long, dark but safe sequestration in Kamakura for three months, I must admit that I myself have generally been enjoying the return to the ‘real world’ over the last month, overall ; both exhausted and energized simultaneously. Yet obviously, a greater pall still hangs over much of the earth for so many geopolitical and social reasons, not even taking into account the damage wrought by what is increasingly being seen as a truly dangerous virus that ravages the human body in so many ways and will leave millions of people with compromised bodies and health systems, probably for many years to come. It is genuinely scary,  and we are still in the tunnel.

 

 

 

 

Which is why it is so lovely, if you can, and are lucky enough to live in a place where the situation is relatively under control, to just saunter along, and try to forget about all of this for just one selfish evening ( having just purchased a vintage eau de parfum of Rochas’s beautiful Mystere from an an antique shop with your last money before pay day), on the way to a date with your other half, easing contentedly into the aura you have created with your scent choice lingering gorgeously on the summer air, lightly spiced, aromatic,vetiver, grapefruit and lime, to cut through the grime and the misery temporarily :  fill the air around you with a moment of lung-fuelling freshness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were two incidents at the Piramide Del Sol.

 

The first happened when I had a severe attack of vertigo attempting to climb one of the lesser lunar pyramids.

 

The second was more painful. I had stupidly crawled into the grass in order to get the best photographic angles of Teotihuacan, Mexico’s largest pyramid, in awe of the Aztec majesty  in the blazing hot afternoon sun.

 

Suddenly I felt hot shooting pains in my legs, an immediate, infernal itching on my thighs and calves. Without hesitating,  and in full view of other tourists I tore down my jeans to find my legs crawling with red fire ants. Batting myself hysterically not realizing how ridiculous I must have looked – man in cowboy hat in his underwear, arms flailing wildly and screeching, once I had prized off the incendiary critters from my leg hair I shook down my jeans with vigor in order to restore some dignity to myself before running, clothed,  up to a random Japanese tour group that was standing near by. Skin throbbing and smarting as I shielded my eyes from the sky, I asked the unperturbed lady in charge if she knew what was going to happen to me next.

 

 

 

’Taihen desu yo.

 

Sugoi netsu ni naru yo’

 

 

 

– said the woman, seeming to almost slightly enjoy the conveyance of this  news that it was going to all be very ‘tough’ ; that I was going to have a terrible fever and be bedridden for days…,.

 

 

 

Toxic ants  !

 

 

 

Fuck !

 

 

 

Making our way towards agitatedly towards the exits (“It’ll probably be okay”) said Duncan semi-reassuringly, imagining me writhing and sweatridden like a dirt covered extra in Apocalypse Now, burning up and hallucinating and generally ruining our holiday by perishing in the middle of it before we even got to our friend’s nuptials in Guadalajara, we encountered a laconic, muscular female Mexican security guard in mirrored sunglasses patrolling the perimeter as bored as death and cool as a watermelon. I decided to go  up to her for a second opinion in my rudimentary Spanish learned from Almodovar movies – although unfortunately I had never encountered the word ‘ant’ ; She peered down slowly at my pathetic self through her shades, gun in silver holster, as I jabbered on excitedly about poison and delirium and weddings – but was far more sympathetic and calming than the tour guide had been ::…….just go and lie down and drink lots of water, you will be alright, they are not so bad (I also happened – gracias a los dios – to have had a very effective Aesop lemon hand cream with me in my jeans pocket that I applied to the bitten areas liberally as soon as I had whipped off my Wranglers :  I swear it worked brilliantly as an antidote). The Officer seemed to know what she was talking about, in any case,  so I decided to take her word for it, calming down a couple of notches and deciding instead to just drink daytime beers to either forget about the whole thing, or else hasten my death as the insectoid venom coursed through my veins with the bubbles in the big windowed cafe near the entrance, dulling and sharpening  our senses beautifully with ice cold Coronas and staring out quietly at ancient magnificence. The bites were very itchy, and I felt a bit odd  (though that could have been incipient sunstroke) but other than that I was fine.

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

I don’t quite know what led me to start thinking about this ridiculously typical anecdote yesterday evening, but sprawled out blissfully in front of my projector watching Takashi Miike’s ‘Desd Or Alive’ I was unconsciously plunged into memories of hot fire and inflammation on spraying Abel’s perfume Red Santal onto the back of my hand: a flinty aridity of fleshless spice and desert sands that took me a few moments to recognize, until my memory found the link I was looking for : D’Humeur Massacrante – a long disappeared perfume I used to love  by L’Artisan Parfumeur. A dryness of furious nutmeg and paprika alongside sulphur like the flash of a match catching light, this was one of my favourites in the legendary ‘Mood Swings’ box from 1994 that Duncan would wear a quarter of a century ago as part of his sly artillery alongside other dry and spiced elegantly masculine perfumes such as Cacharel Pour L’Homme and Comme Des Garçons’ Incense Series Jalsaimer.

 

 

Red Santal, an all natural perfume from Amsterdam based house Abel, fits neatly into this category of sparse woody hotness, with a bone-dry moisture-sucked base of two kinds of sandalwood plus a hot tempered intro of cloves and black and pink pepper over ginger and thyme. I rather like it : longevity on the skin is not as powerful as a synthetic hybrid might be but there is a lucidity to the natural essences that works. Rather than the usual, lugubrious butter of the more typical, creamy sandalwoods, this is a brisk and energizing flame of controlled heat, moderately livid. : and inflamed.

 

 

 

As part of PerformIstanbul’s Stay at Home series, D Whom is offering ‘Three Rooms : Kitchen’ tonight at 9pm Japan Standard Time.

 

Our house is in absurd chaos, insanely messy, but I can assure you the stolen magnolias and lilies smell divine.

 

 

For last week’s inaugural episode, Bathroom, see here

 

 

 

 

For Kitchen ;

 

 

 

 

 

An interview with the delightful John Biebel.

 

 

https://www.fragrantica.com/news/Author-Neil-Chapman-and-Perfume-In-Search-of-Your-Signature-Scent-13784.html