Yesterday's Perfume

Parure by Guerlain (1975)

I  plan on traipsing through every perfume in my favorite perfume neighborhood: the Chypre-Floral Animalic hood.

This is no gated community, nor is it sorority row, the Upper East Side, Williamsburg, or Silver Lake. No, I think this neighborhood is  in Paris (maybe the Marais?) in the 70s. Chic but relaxed, without trying too hard.

A “parure” is a set of various items of matching jewelry. Sounds stuffy, right? Who wears a matching set of jewelry these days who is under the age of 80? The way I read it is more metaphorical: Parure’s notes, like individual pieces of jewelry, all add up to a well-balanced set. (Although it's a little "harsher" than Givenchy III, a green chypre, they both have that approachable, balanced cheery/formal quality.)

There’s the bracing and interesting green opening, the warm and sexy jasmine-dominated heart, and the dry, mossy and leathery dry down that butches things up. Not only butches things up, but makes them a little more formal.

 Think Charlotte Rampling with her unbuttoned button-down, or Bianca Jagger in what might be the coolest wedding outfit ever assembled: a white Yves Saint-Laurent-designed “smoking jacket” dress suit with floppy hat. Not exactly stuffy, but not cut-off jeans, if you catch my drift. Formality undone, or casualness slightly formalized.

Top notes: Aldehydes, citrus oils, thyme, galbanum, clary sage

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, lilac, lily of the valley, orris, narcissus, jonquil

Base notes: Leather, styrax, vetiver, moss, Peru Balsam, amber

The citrus and galbanum in Parure is bracing and bitter. If it were a drink, your mouth would surely pucker. It’s accompanied by the herbal notes of thyme and clary sage, which soften this brightness and prepare you for the sweet warmth of a gorgeous jasmine that shines like the sun within Parure's dry, mossy leather-fresh impression.

Soon enough, the “formal” part of the perfume announces itself: leather, moss, styrax and vetiver, with amber and Tolu balsam’s warmth echoing the jasmine. For a moment, there's an interesting caramel note that recalls Azurée and Miss Balmain, an evanescent gourmand quality in an otherwise fresh and moss-dry fragrance. Reminds me of being in the shade when suddenly a spot of sun hits your skin...The styrax and vetiver provide an incensey-woody scratchiness that provides texture to the perfume. Parure's balance of citrus, warmth and mossy-dry-leather is perfection.

Fresh yet interesting, crisp citrusy-leather chypres just make me happy. They’re the perfect warm-weather fragrance. (Empreinte is another one I can’t wait to wear when the whether gets consistently warm. Melon + sueded leather = yum.) Although Parure might seem overly green and austere at first, its crispness hides a warmth and good humor you'll experience if you get to know it. (Did I mention I love this perfume? And thanks to my perfume pal Heather for introducing me to this one last year!)

 

 

Intoxication by d'Orsay (1938)

As unabashedly vintage as a cigarette holder in the hands of a woman with a 30s-style “moon manicure,” Intoxication by d’Orsay lives up to its name. Its addictive and sharp florals — sexy and bright rather than dark and dangerous like Narcisse Noir, or verging on poisonous like Fracas — radiate like the rays of sunlight on a summer day.

I sought out Intoxication because a sweet woman I know named Tommie Jean told me it was her favorite perfume, the first one her husband bought her from Monnigs in Ft. Worth when he was courting her. I got curious and got me some.

After decanting a bit from the bottle for review, I sent it to her. Time disappeared between the years she wore it and the present, she told me. Even the sight of the bottle triggered memories and emotions. We’ve all been there, Tommie Jean!

I’ve read that Intoxication has been reissued, so  the following notes might be for the reformulation, although they could also be a partial list for the vintage:

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, mandarin

Heart notes: Rose, orange blossom, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, nutmeg, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Vetiver, patchouli, vanilla, sandalwood, tonka, musk, benzoin*

*

*

My impressions of the vintage: It starts off sharp, sparkling, and sweetly floral, with bergamot, aldehydes, ylang-ylang, jasmine, orange blossom and maybe a little hyacinth or narcissus. There's definitely some spice here, perhaps from carnation and/or patchouli.

I also got a clove or cinnamon note from Intoxication, and an animalic undertow made itself known pretty quickly. (It smelled like civet, to me. Mmmm.) The drydown is warm (ambery/vanillic), woody, spicy and animalic, without ever eclipsing that bubbly, bright quality of its top and heart.

Intoxication reminds me, in personality, of Revlon’s Intimate. What I said in a previous post about Intimate, I think, relates to Intoxication: there’s something playful and fun about its sexiness — something American, maybe, rather than French.

Whether d’Orsay was in fact started by a French aristocrat or a parvenue, it shares with Intimate a sort of inferiority complex: its investors “selected the d'Orsay name and coat of arms to create the aristocratic and luxurious image of a long-established French company...and even went so far as to purchase a castle as their headquarters." Ha! With Intimate, the ad even wears this insecurity on its sleeve: "Intimate...the fabulous new American fragrance that even French women are talking about!" Relax, guys.

If Intimate's movie star patron saint was Rita Hayworth, Intoxication's is 30s comedic actress Carole Lombard. I’m going to say it: I’m intoxicated by Intoxication.

* Notes and historical info on d'Orsay from Cleopatra's Boudoir

Perfume Intelligence says about d'Orsay: "Established by Count Alfred d’Orsay (1801-1852) a French-born dandy, said to be the 'most fashionable man in the most fashionable circles in the most fashionable town in the world: London.'
He dabbled in perfumery; the Parfums d’Orsay line was launched in 1865 using an original Count d’Orsay formula for a fragrance called Eau de Bouquet.' The company declined over the years. It was re-launched in 1995."

If you would like to read about "Count Gabriel Alfred Guillaume d'Orsay, the Chevalier d'Orsay born in 1801 to a baroness and general in Napoleon's Empire" — check out d'Orsay's website.

** Cute little Marc Chagall-inspired ad, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eden by Cacharel (1994)

I often complain that I hate perfumes that smell synthetic. This is (one reason) why I love vintage perfume, because for the most part, the ingredients are high-quality, and I know I’m not going to smell like a chemical stew someone threw together for Kim Kardashian.

 

But what if a perfume goes out of its way to smell synthetic? I can’t guess at the intention of Eden’s author, Jean Guichard, but I think that an aspect of Eden is too weirdly synthetic to have been an accident. Why, you ask, would a perfumer want the flowers in his garden of Eden to smell like overheated plastic? And lastly, why on earth do I kinda dig it?

 

Eden’s heart and base are classic 80s. It’s a big, gourmand/oriental/“fruitchouli” with amber, tonka and vanilla. But something very strange happens at the beginning. The top half of Eden smells like it’s made of hot plastic soured by green notes and herbalized by anise (from tarragon). These alien top notes join with their more earth-bound counterparts: a sumptuous floral heart (tuberose, jasmine, rose, ylang) that’s softened and fattened by orris and dries down to a fruit-sweetened mossy, patchouli, gourmand base reminiscent of Loulou, also created by Jean Guichard.

 

But no matter how beautiful the florals and base are, that herbal, hot-plastic note (which reminds me a little of unripe mango skin) announces a wonky, artificial and compelling accord that haunts the rest of the perfume. I found myself chasing it in my mind once it disappeared and the perfume became “normal” again. (Its fakeness is compelling the way a green apple Jolly Rancher is delicious. It's precisely because a Jolly Rancher tastes like a fake apple, an almost neon apple, that people like it.)

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, mandarin, green note, peach, tarragon, orange blossom

Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley, rose, ylang-ylang, orris

Base notes: Cedar, patchouli, sandalwoood, musk, moss, vanilla, tonka, amber (Haarmann&Reimer)

(Alternate notes from Perfume Shrine: Top: Mandarin, orange blossom, water lily, lotus blossom; Middle: Melon, pineapple, violet, mimosa; Base: Patchouli, sandalwood, vanilla, musk.)

Throughout the evening, I would sniff my hand to see how it developed on my skin. Through the warm and comforting base, as if peering down a well, I could smell the layers of flowers and fruit, singing clearly even hours into it. In the morning, however, there was that lingering, odd — again, even alien — greenness I could not place, there alongside the more familiar drydown notes.

 

Believe it or not, Eden was released the same year as CKOne. In a way, it was the beginning of the end for the 80s and their stink bombs. Just as Eden exited stage left  — apparently, it bombed, speaking of bombs — CKOne ushered in the era of cleanliness and androgyny. Out with the old, in with the new. The baroque, hyper-gendered stylings of the 80s were denuded with CKOne, and the scentless, sex-ambiguous body was laid bare.

 

Eden's wet, plastic, anise-licorice smell faintly travels through to the drydown, which is mostly classically 80s in its loud too-muchness. What do we make of this alien sour-green-plastic accord, though? What is it heralding or sounding?

I'm going to throw some ideas around. I'm not wedded to them, but Eden made me think...Maybe this artificial, even alien accord is one aspect of the 90s' repudiation of the natural. 90s scents attempted to get rid of human smells in order to make way, Octavian of 1000fragrances muses in a dystopian prediction, for a computerized generation preparing for a disembodied, virtual future. (To be more pedestrian about it: think of all the office scents spawned by CKOne.)

I think, similarly, some perfumers introduced strangely plastic notes to 80s/90s fragrances when they could have just as easily created  "natural" smells. Synthetic and unnatural were introduced as a virtue. (I'm not talking about synthetics in place of more expensive ingredients. I'm talking about the aesthetic choice to make something smell synthetic: think of Poison's sickly-sweet tuberose/grape bubblegum accord, or Angel's bizarre cotton candy/patchouli accord.)

Although Eden and CKOne would seem, initially, to be diametrically opposed, they've both introduced different versions of Unnatural. In CKOne's case, it offers up clean and androgynous as something to aspire to in the olfactory realm. In Eden's case, it sounds its first note in the key of "fake."

The Eden Jean Guichard has proposed for us is one that takes place in some post-apocalyptic cyborg future, after the Fall. (Doesn't androgynous Eve up there in the ad look like a CGI creation, lit by ghastly, fluorescent green, Cindy Sherman-esque lighting?)

In any case, Eden intrigues me. But I could never, ever wear this stuff in public!

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Some other thoughts on Eden:

In a case of bizarre synchronicity (I swear, Elena!) Perfume Shrine wrote on Eden at the same time I received my bottle in the mail. So strange — I'd never even heard of it the week before! She tells us there's the ubiquitous Calone* "water" note that is ever-present in 90s scents, and helps me figure out in part what makes this perfume smell so otherworldly: its water-lily and lotus notes. Of Eden, she says that it was positioned as the "first fruity-semioriental-aquatic." Bizarro.

* Calone: an aroma chemical that adds a “sea breeze” or marine note, and first used in large quantities in Aramis New West (1988).

 

And here are some very amusing responses from Fragrantica readers. Enjoy them. I did!

 

"This is horror in a bottle. I believed the hype and bought a bottle, sprayed mysef and on the way home on the bus I remember feeling almost sick from the most synthetic, most alien, most mouldery plasticy and cheap smelling perfume I ever smelled (owned). Obtrusive fly repellant smell. Makes me shiver only thinking about it."

 

"I saw Avatar and remembered this perfume. It's juicy, lush, mysterious and alien."

 

"One of the worst fragrance for women, ever created. Can't describe....pure horror !!!!!!!!!"

 

"Also the name Eden perfectly suits the scent - very green, warm, wet, luscious forest with white flowers - just like Eden."

 

"This is one of the strangest scents I've ever smelt. The opening blast is like an 'out of this world' kind of smell. Reminded me a bit of medicine too."

 

"This one is not for me. It's a pity, because it smells good on my skin but it's totally NOT ME. Too sweet, too heavy, too crazy."

 

"Each time I sniffed my wrist, I'd complain that my nausea was getting worse and my husband told me to stop sniffing, I'd tell him I couldn't help it. It smelled like millions of exotic flowers and fruit in humid weather with the smell of waterfalls nearby."

 

Perfume You Can Eat! Part One: Australian Musk Candy

It's a truism that flavor is as much smell as it is taste. Lose your ability to smell (anosmia) and out the window goes your ability to truly enjoy anything you ingest or imbibe. But how many people love smell so much — particularly the scent of perfume — that they'd like to consume it?

One hand is being raised high over here — and I know I'm not alone. People all over the world flavor food with perfumey ingredients (violet, rose, saffron, etc.), and there are loads of candies, syrups, and foods (mostly non-American) that are scented with things we normally consider for perfume only.

Tooling around Google one day, I discovered one such product I almost couldn't believe existed: musk-flavored Lifesavers. That's right — the Lifesavers you know and love (if you're American) through run-of-the-mill flavors such as strawberry, lemon, orange (and if you ever purchased "exotic" Lifesavers), maybe pineapple or coconut.

Made for the Australian and New Zealand markets, Musk Lifesavers (from Nestle) have a friend: Musk Sticks (from Black and Gold), like Twizzlers or Red Vines, only powdery — and flavored with musk.

I had to try these things, and thanks to a loyal reader from Down Under, Anne-Marie, I received my fragrant package in the mail. (The scent of these "musk lollies" was apparent before I even opened the box.)

If you've ever had Choward's Violet candies, Musk Lifesavers are similar, with the scent of cosmetic powder, rose, violet...and that unmistakable musky drydown you get from clean musk perfumes. Only you're tasting it. Weird, not for everyone, but I loved them!

They were a little chalky, and I think that they'd benefit from being in a smoother Jolly Rancher-type candy, but wow. MUSKY! My favorite part, almost, was that the flavor of musk stayed in my mouth for at least half an hour, perfuming my breath and making me feel as decadent as the dandy protagonist in Against Nature (Au Rebours). If you ever want to experience musk's drydown in your mouth, I've got the candy for you!

The Musk Sticks weren't as intense or subtle to me, but they were musky, and did have a nice chewy texture. An awesome commenter on Candyblog suggested using them to infuse vodka! Forget Appletinis, I want a Musk-a-tini! (Perhaps this bartender should have used some Musk Sticks in his Chanel No. 5 cocktail?)

Although eating musk candies might seem like the hifalutin shenanigans of a stunt-eating foodie, I discovered that for many Australians, musk lollies are what they ate as kids. It's as normal to them as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or Pop Rocks to Americans. Before you go and conclude, as one commenter did on a forum, that all Australian food seems based "on a dare" (and I'm sure he's referring to Marmite and Vegemite, two condiments I also love!), Americans actually used to chew Beechie's Musk Gum. Who knows why it fell out of favor, or why Beechies Musk Gum is now only available in South Africa? 

I'm still trying to find out what kind of (synthentic) musk flavors these candies, and what else we might be consuming that has musk in it. As Helg from Perfume Shrine reminds us in a great post on musk and civet (!) in food, synthetic musk is in almost everything we use, from laundry detergent to toothpaste to candy to who knows what else. (I love her historical anecdote that lore has it that long ago, concubines in China were fed musk-flavored foods so that their perspiration would be an aphrodisiac to their lovers. Sexay!)

Anyway, this is just the first in my "Perfume You Can Eat!" series. I'll intersperse reviews of perfumed food in between my usual reviews of vintage perfume. Be prepared for a review of lavender syrup; rose, sassasfras, and anise candies; civet coffee (Kopi Luwak); and lord knows what else. I'm on a roll!

Today, it just happens to be a musk-flavored roll.

Knize Ten (1924)

Now here's a leather scent.

 

Smoky, herbal, dry, woody, leathery...what other signifier of masculinity could you possibly want in a scent? A shot of testosterone, perhaps? Maybe the bottle should sport a hairy chest merkin?

 

But wait, there's softness and powderiness, a familiar accord also in Bulgari Black, which has a leather/rubber/tobacco/powder effect that is so incongruous and sexy. Was BB influenced by Knize Ten?

 

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, orange, petitgrain, rosemary

Heart notes: Geranium, cedarwood, rose, orris, carnation, cinnamon, sandalwood

Base notes: Leather, musk, moss, amber, castoreum, vanilla

(Perfumers: François Coty and Vincent Roubert)

 

It's my second day sniffin' Knize Ten and I have to say I have a totally different relationship to it today than I did yesterday. The first time I put it on, all I could notice was the leather, the toughness. Today? I’m picking up its floral nature, its softness, its freshness, and even some warmth and a smidgen of sweetness from the amber/vanilla in the drydown.

 

Knize Ten starts with a hot blast of birch tarry-leather, petitgrain* and rosemary, topping, so to speak, its bright top notes of bergamot/orange/lemon. Soon after, the woody-powdery center (sandalwood and orris) takes the perfume into a desert of dryness, while subtle aromatic cinnamon and spicy carnation provide a bridge to Knize Ten's smokey-leathery drydown. A touch of vanilla, amber and a menthol note (is the resiny, mentholated facet from cedarwood?) intervenes occasionally, but throughout, from top to bottom, a tough, tarry, smoky, rubbery leather is ever-present and my favorite part of this gorgeous leather classic.

 

Started in 1858 by a Czech military man named Joseph Knize (pronounced “kuhneesha”), Knize is a Viennese bespoke tailor/men’s clothing house that’s still kicking today. Knize Ten was released in 1924, the “ten” representing the highest handicap in polo, the chic sport whose images Knize used in its advertising. It’s been reformulated, I hear (this review is for the vintage) and may be a little less smoky or leathery, but it’s still supposed to be wonderful, and often on back order at LuckyScent. **

 

Knize Ten, like a young Marlon Brando, isn’t just macho. It’s beautiful. And it’s the touch of conventionally feminine notes alongside masculine ones that both soften and highlight Knize Ten's butch persona, the way Brando's feminine lips work with his whole masculine gestalt. (I had to say something about his lips. Sorry.)

 

I'd been waiting for a nice, dry leather, and I love Knize Ten.

 

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*Bitter, earthy, woody, and herbaceous, petitgrain is the oil from the leaves, buds and twigs of the bitter orange tree ( citrus Aurantium). Depending on the variety of the tree/orange, its blossoms are used to produce neroli and its rind, bergamot or bigarade.

* * I reviewed a couple Knize scents for LuckyScent recently: the incense-laden Knize Sec (1985) and the refreshing floral Knize Two (1978), which is reminiscent of Grey Flannel.

 

 

 

 

 

In Honor of St. Patrick's Day: My Favorite Green Scents

My Chinese sign is earth Rooster, so even though I'm not a sporty, outdoorsy tree-hugger (OK, well, I have hugged trees before, but chemicals were involved, and I digress), I express that earthy nature by being keen on green when it comes to perfume.

What is a green scent, exactly? According to my beloved Haarmann & Reimer Book of Perfume, green notes are "the youngest branch of the family tree" and:

"All in all, 'green' describes the fragrance conception of leaves, meadows, grass. The family is subdivided into fresh and balsamic, in light and cool notes of lemon and herbs of the green direction; and also in the soft, warm notes of natural odorants used mainly in perfumes of the chypre type."

Notes you'll find in green perfumes, which smell fresh, bracing, and outdoorsy: Galbanum, pine, leafy green accords, petitgrain, coriander, lily-of-the-valley, spearmint, bergamot, angelica, artemisia, citrus oils, juniper berries...

Below is a random list of my favorite vintage green perfumes. If you think I've left anything out — let me know! Happy St. Patrick's Day! It's time to get your green on...

Aliage Estee Lauder's sport scent that's so tart and refreshing I want to drink it.

Vent Vert This rosy-green floral smells so fresh you can almost see the bent, peppery-smelling flower stems that were crushed for your pleasure.

Silences What's that sound? The ghostly Sound of Silences. Proceed with caution. This one doesn't smile much.

Chanel No. 19 "Woody, oily, and vegetal, with muted florals and a hint of fresh cut leaves and watery cucumber, Chanel No. 19's song sounds like piano notes played with the damper pedal down."

Calyx Guava, grapefruit and a cheery freshness that's anything but bland. This one makes me happy.

Coriandre This rosey, herby, funky thing is pure 70s. Chic and weird.

Givenchy III "A green/floral chypre, Givenchy III is pretty much perfection. It starts off with a mouth-watering combo of green/citrus notes (galbanum and mandarin) and fruit/flowers (peach and gardenia), which add luscious candied juiciness to the dry, refined, and elegant greenness of this chypre. You almost forget its coquettish brightness as it dries down to a woody, powdery, spicy (sandalwood) and warm ambery base."

Weil de Weil "It starts off with a wonderfully bitter green accord — galbanum, leafy green notes, and facets from neroli and narcissus. Just as these tart, minor key notes sing out, Weil subtly evolves into something softer and dreamier, thanks to a plump gardenia note and a powdery — and almost rotten-sweet — hyacinth note."

Inoui by Shiseido Like a bracing walk in the woods, the green in Inoui veers toward the coniferous (pine needles, etc.)

Jean-Louis Scherrer This sexy green chypre is the epitome of chic. Not for the young girlies.

Ma Griffe Galbanum, gardenia...and cinnamon? It shouldn't work, but it does.

Diorella What can I say about this one that hasn't been said? My desert-island scent, it's fresh, dirty, and funky. A sparkling good time.

Bandit Mmmmm. Elegant, green, bitter, and smooth all at once. This green chypre is not for amateurs.

Cristalle "Bursting with a green citrus at the beginning and settling down into something light but warm and spicy on your skin, Cristalle reminds me a lot of Diorella, but without the funky, garbagey fruit undertones. Its dryness, in part from vetiver, gives it some olfactory texture, like scratched glass. In addition to oakmoss, the vetiver in Cristalle makes its drydown complex: woody, incensey, grassy."

Muguet des Bois Dior perfumer Edmond Roudnitska's favorite lily-of-the-valley scent: "No better lily note was ever made. It pushed the green note of the flower. As a lily note, it was magnificent. It was much better than the one I had made myself. I wondered how they had managed to create such a masterpiece in the Thirties, with so little means." (Perfume Legends, Michael Edwards)

 

Niki de Saint Phalle (1983)

Befitting a perfume that shows two entangled snakes on its cap, Niki de Saint Phalle is a heady green floral chypre that practically hisses and rattles its tail.

Sour, green, fruity and intense, the perfume smells like the collision between a lime, a peach, and rattlesnake venom. It bursts onto the scene like an olfactory grenade, and as it dries down (I visualize this poison elixir literally dripping down a wall), the florals snake their way past the hissing top notes, and the mossy, musky, woody base provides some respite (but not quite anti-venom) to the bracing beginning.

Top notes: Green notes, tagetes (marigold), Artemisia, peach, bergamot, spearmint

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang, cedar, patchouli

Base notes: Oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, olibanum, leather, amber, musk

Niki de Saint Phalle was a French model-turned-painter-sculptor-filmmaker-provocateur-perfumer who was influenced by Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Her most famous work is a sculpture garden in Tuscany called The Giardino dei Tarocchi (The Tarot Garden). Opened in 1998 after 20 years of work, The Tarot Garden pays homage to Tarot card symbolism, and its garish colors and found-object style construction informs the style of this extreme perfume. (She also did "shooting paintings," in which colors underneath a plaster canvas were not revealed until she used a shotgun to expose them. No shrinking violet, this one! Way to move on from a modelling career!)

I’ve picked up and put down Niki de Saint Phalle for a good year now (this draft was dated March of last year!) and I think the reason I can write about it now…is that it’s morning time! This is the first thing, besides my coffee, that I’ve taken in, and it requires an olfactory blank slate because it’s so overwhelming.

Every time I picked it up before, I just internally screamed, “Too much! Too sour! Too fruity! Eeeeeeeeck!” And this is coming from someone who likes the greenest of the green scents (Silences, Bandit, Aliage, etc.) I think the cacophony of green notes, fruit, spearmint and herbaceous Artemisia/marigold at the beginning just scared me off.

Now I’m more receptive to its nuances: the way the amber and olibanum hum their low, warm, sweet songs at the opening as the top notes are screeching; that spearmint adds an uncanny freshness that’s largely unfamiliar in feminine perfume (when was the last time you smelled mint in perfume?); and that the rich florals are almost guarded by the top notes, as if we’re thrown off the treasure by the snake-guards/top notes. (Or maybe the true character of this perfume lies in the top notes? I think so.)

A lot of floral chypres (and I’m not sure why this one is not categorized between green chypre and fruity chypre in Haarmann & Reimer) mellow significantly from their bright top notes to their chypre bases. Niki de Saint Phalle’s joyous and intimidating green/sour/sweet/floral freshness sings through the chypre base. It's there hours into the drydown, and as I'm sniffing my wrists now, I smell a mossy/woody green note kissed with a touch of fruit. Gorgeous.

Niki de Saint Phalle's greenness and sourness keeps it from being as dated as other fruity 80s scents, so if I were in a particularly jaunty mood, I'd put this on. I truly have an appreciation for this intense perfume in a way I didn’t over the past year. A perfect way to get ready for spring…

The above ad is courtesy of Pink Manhattan, and she has a nice take on this perfume, too. All other images are from I Am a Child of the Moon.

Ombre Rose by Brosseau (1981)

Ombre Rose can be translated literally as “pink shadow” or figuratively as a rose’s shadow. Both readings suggest that the rose scent in this Françoise Caron-composed perfume will be softened, and we will smell its shadow rather than rose straight on. Shadows cast darkness over things, shrouding them and making them mysterious and maybe even sinister. But pink shadows? Not exactly intimidating!

 

A perfect name, really, for what you’ll find inside. The rose in Ombre Rose is, in fact, shadowed by peach, orris, coumarin, musk, heliotrope, vanilla, and sandalwood, turning it into something at once powdery, gourmand, spicy, and woody. (It’s characterized as an aldehydic floral, but it seems more like a Floriental to me.) You can smell its influence on Loulou — minus the incense — but Ombre Rose has some crackle in addition to its sweet, soft, and confectionary simplicity. Its spicy, musky, and woody drydown is near-intoxicating.

 

Head: Rosewood, honey, ylang, peach

Heart: Rose, lily, iris

Base: Musk, coumarin, vanilla, sandalwood (From Michael Edwards' French Feminine Fragrances, a book which also provided me with Ombre Rose's historical information.)

 

Top notes: Aldehydes, rosewood, geranium

Heart notes: Rose, sandalwood, orris, lily of the valley, cedarwood, vetiver

Base notes: Vanilla, musk, tonka, cinnamon, heliotrope (From Haarmann & Reimer's Duftatlas)

 

To me, Ombre Rose is a comfort scent. It got its start as an old Roure perfume base with a cosmetic note that smelled like vintage face powder.* From there, Françoise Caron gave it a huge dose of coumarin (along with vanillin) to create a praline note. To me, this makes Ombre Rose nostalgic and gourmand rather than sexy. (In fact, perfumer Pierre Bourdon goes so far as to say that Ombre Rose is probably the first gourmand scent that was ever created.)

 

I wonder if Ralph Schwieger, the nose for Frederic Malle's Lipstick Rose, was influenced by Ombre Rose. It was constructed to smell, in part, like vintage lipstick — some say vintage Chanel, others vintage L’Oreal. The heliotrope in Ombre Rose, a note that can sometimes give off an almondy/Play Dough facet,

gives it a bit of a plasticky/synthetic character that I don’t mind. And maybe it’s here that, mixed with powdery orris, the face powder accord is born.

 

Ombre Rose (like Balenciaga’s Fleeting Moment) seems to be a self-reflexive perfume, that is, a perfume that reflects on its Perfume-ness. Where Fleeting Moment addresses, in its name, perfume’s evanescent nature, its character as a substance that by definition disappears as soon as you encounter it, Ombre Rose calls out perfume as a medium for memory and nostalgia by using, as its base, a vintage perfume formula that smells like vintage face powder.

 

If I want to trace the self-reflexivity further (and I do!) it goes even deeper. That re-used base was itself being self-reflexive: by reproducing the scent of face powder (rather than a flower or something “natural”), it’s commenting on its own status as a cosmetic but also on itself as an aesthetic medium. It reflects; it doesn't merely reproduce.

 

Angela at Now Smell This wrote a great post last year about which perfumes were witty and which were not. It seems to me that there’s something inherently witty about a perfume that calls attention to the scent of cosmetics, and to women’s relationship to the whole culture of cosmetics: the ritual, the aesthetics, and (let’s face it) the fetishization of it. What could be more fetishy than liking the smell of lipstick or face powder? Maybe wanting to smell it in your perfume and on your skin!

Ombre Rose holds within it all these different shades (or shadows?) of meaning. To extend the analysis even further, a "shade" can mean: 1) a reminder of something, 2) a subtle difference in meaning, and last but not least, 3) a ghost.

 

Ombre Rose is The Haunted Rose, a mansion** filled with different shades of meaning and spirits of scents past...

 

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* “The fragrance of the original base has a very cosmetic note. It rings a bell. That’s why it is so successful." - Pierre Bourdon on Ombre Rose in French Feminine Fragrances.

 

 ** The necrophilic resonances don't stop at the resurrected Roure base that became the foundation for Ombre Rose. Even the bottle was disturbed from its grave and revived for Ombre Rose: It was created in 1920 for a perfume called Le Narcisse Bleu. The moulds still existed for the bottle, so Bourdon and Caron went for it. The above image is from an eBay auction for Le Narcisse Bleu that's going on as I write this.

Jil Sander Woman 3 (1986)

I'm forging ahead with my Jil Sander Perfumes That Nobody's Ever Heard About* series of reviews, and the whole enterprise is seeming a little strange. Why write about perfume no one's ever heard about, or, to be more accurate, perfumes most people will probably never smell?

I enjoy reading food magazines, recipes, and reviews of restaurants I'll never visit, because I love when someone's words evoke a sense experience that I can complete in my imagination. It's fun to fantasize about what something might smell or taste like, and if I'm intrigued enough, I'll go ahead and try it out. (This has been true of almost every perfume that a perfume writer has ever written about with passion, for example, or every recipe I've read on Epicurious that tickled my fancy.)

Maybe after reading this, you'll give Jil Sander Woman 2 or 3 a shot.

Although they're in the same family — floral-chypre animalics (according to H&R) — JSW2 and JSW3 are quite different. Although JSW2 was more butch and leathery throughout, I never thought of it as a men's cologne but rather as a perfect unisex scent. JSW3's top notes are more recognizably masculine, but then it confusingly develops into a more conventional feminine chypre, lurching back occasionally to its "barbershop" scent from the top. (Jil Sander's fashion has always been androgynous, though, so even though you could call this perfume bisexual more so than androgynous, it fits in with her line.)

*

Top notes: Green note, bergamot, coriander, aldehyde, rosewood, bay

Heart notes: Rose, ylang-ylang, carnation, jasmine, lily of the valley, geranium, orris, tuberose

Base notes: Patchouli, castoreum, sandalwood, olibanum, benzoin, amber, moss, vanilla

Where 2 was all bitter green, butch leathery, and extra-arid dry, 3 starts off with a juicy galbanum-laced start, the pronounced masculine feel (perhaps) from the coriander, rosewood and bay leaf combo. In the several times I've tried this, I've caught a whiff of a narcotic white flower I thought was gardenia but must be some combination of jasmine, ylang-ylang and tuberose.

JS3's heart is gorgeous: it retains traces of the green, fresh top notes, and then moves to a powdery orris that transitions to spring-fresh florals such as rose and lily of the valley. By the time it begins to dry down, you feel you've been on a roller-coaster ride of personalities. As the fresh green opening hovers over florals and powder, its animalic base rounds it all off with with a mossy,  incensey, leathery, creamy sandalwood finish.

As much as I like Jil Sander Woman 3, it confuses me a little. Its pieces don't fit together somehow, or even clash in a way that makes sense (Must, Miss Balmain, etc.). There's something a little unfinished about Jil Sander Woman 3 that leaves me wanting, although each time I sniff my wrists I get something gorgeous. (Maybe it's unfinished/showing-its-seams in a deliberate, postmodern way?) If I remember that it was released in 1986, though, its androgyny seems ahead of its time. It resembles a scent you could find at Barneys now— niche and a little experimental.

Jil Sander Woman 3 is not, however, without its unreserved champions. The one person on Basenotes who liked loved it, Hillaire, had this over-the-top praise:

"I cannot think of another full-on leather scent that can I never, ever tire of. Even some of my other, wonderful, favorite leathers can be a little hard on my stomach... if over-applied. But this one... just gets *better*. It's a creamy, sort-of leather that isn't quite like suede. It's mild and medicinal at the same time -- medicinal, meaning it has a salubrious and restorative kind of *freshness*, which calms and focuses the mind. If it were a *place*, it would be an elegant, light-flooded, modern flat with modern classic furnishings by Le Corbusier, or Gropius... And copious bookshelves full of psychoanalytic and postmodern theory. If it were a *car*, it would be an eighties-vintage, "M" series BMW. White with cranberry interior. If you EVER get a chance to smell this sensual, smart, unisex masterpiece, don't pass it up!"

* No one besides Gaia from The Non-Blonde, anyway, and from Hillaire, the VERY enthusiastic Basenoter above who's into Jil Sander Woman 3.