Niche line Histoires de Parfums created a limited edition fragrance (150 numbered bottles, each one signed by founder Gérald Ghislain) for Fashion’s Night Out earlier this month, and we’ve got 5 bottles to give away. Here’s a description of the Défilé New York (défilé de mode = fashion show) fragrance…
Lately I’ve been buying tuberose every few weeks to keep in a crooked, blown glass vase on my mantel. The stems are tall and plain, and the flowers look like plump stock or jagged-edged snapdragons. Sometimes the blooms even brown and tumble to the hearth when the night is too cold. But, oh, the scent. Orchids can keep the blue ribbon for beguiling appearance. Tuberose has it all tied up for fragrance.
I want to wear that smell on my skin, but I’ve had a heck of a time finding a tuberose perfume that suits me. I love the smell of Piguet Fracas, but on me it comes off like a girl scout wearing Versace. Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle is glamour in a silver cocktail glass, but too icy. Comme des Garçons + Daphne Guinness Daphne presents tuberose wrapped in enough incense and bitter orange that I love it, but I want more tuberose. Estée Lauder Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia is too Ladies Who Lunch. (I haven’t yet given Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower a fair try.) So when a sample of Histoires de Parfums Tubéreuse 3 L’Animale Eau de Parfum showed up in my mailbox, I yanked up my sleeve and spritzed it on…
To me, a perfume is not always sexy. It depends on the way people wear it and why they wear a particular perfume at that particular moment. Perhaps they want to seduce, maybe they want to feel comfortable or to reinvent themselves. With my creations, I am telling stories but the person who is perfumed with my fragrance can recreate their own story.
— Gérald Ghislain of Histoires de Parfums, quoted in Say it with Scent at Khaleej Times Online.
I never read a word by the Marquis de Sade, the subject of yesterday’s post, but French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is one of my favorite authors. I started, just as she did, with the Claudines, and eventually I worked my way through most everything else, and then I followed that up with a few biographies. That was many years ago now, and although I’ve re-read most of her books since then, some more than once, it’s been awhile. Last night I took out My Mother’s House and Sido, and skimmed through the sections where she writes about her mother’s garden, and I glanced quickly through The Vagabond and Chéri to remind myself why I so loved them.
Colette’s life, like her writing, was turbulent, passionate, and above all, unconventional. I know there was, at some point, a Claudine perfume — wouldn’t it be fun to smell that now? — but I have no idea what perfume Colette wore herself. If I had to assign her a perfume, it would surely be a heady floral — Piguet Fracas is perhaps too obvious, but it fits. If you’ll pardon the anachronism, Etat Libre d’Orange Jasmin et Cigarette would also work, although you’d have to amp it up: more (indolic) jasmine, more smoke, and maybe a hint of leather or some other animalic note in the base.
Histoires de Parfums has done something entirely different…
Once upon a time, I wanted to be an ‘intellectual.’ I imagined myself with a Franz Liszt haircut, clothed in jeans, ankle boots, turtlenecks and tight sports jackets. Apart from my intellectual appearance, I knew I’d need at least one doctoral degree, and I realized I’d have to digest every “worthy” book written. So, one summer, I decided to read the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. I started my project by reading two biographies of the marquis, and then I turned my attention to many critical essays and assessments of his writings.
After reading Sade’s critics and biographers, I was expecting to be shocked, astounded, thrilled and “enlightened” by his literary output. Instead, Sade’s stories of torture, his endless diatribes against religion, his sexual fantasies involving pain, incest, degradation, humiliation and murder numbed me. Reading the Marquis de Sade’s dully written, repetitive tales made me sleepy and after awhile I began to laugh heartily at the absurdity of him and what he “preached.” His philosophy didn’t appeal to (or interest) me. I was definitely not Sade’s audience (and, I thought, perhaps not “intellectual material” after all).
The Marquis de Sade spent almost 30 years of his life in one prison or another…
Another corpse flower has bloomed at Western Illinois U, & they're expecting 2 more... http://t.co/oRnROz6j (& they've got live video)