Posted by Robin
on
19 March 2010
A quick reminder: there are less than 2 weeks left to enter the Prix Eau Faux! And now on to the poll…
1. What fragrance are you wearing today?
2. Name a fragrance you were so sure you would hate that you weren’t even going to try it, but for whatever reason you did try it and you loved it.
3. Name a fragrance you were convinced would be perfect for you, but you hated it.
4. What’s your favorite (print) magazine?
5. What’s the last (good) movie you watched?
Answer as many or as few as you like. And my answers…
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Posted by Robin
on
18 March 2010
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…
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Posted by Kevin
on
17 March 2010
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…
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Posted by Robin
on
16 March 2010
Voyage d’Hermès is the latest from perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena at Hermès. Reportedly he wanted the unisex fragrance to say “It’s calling to me” rather than “It reminds me”; that is, Voyage d’Hermès — unlike the Jardin series — is not intended to evoke any particular place or time. Hermès is calling Voyage a fresh musky woods, but so far as I know they have not released a list of notes — presumably in keeping with the intention that “this perfume would not smell of a kind of wood, a flower, a particular raw material, but of the unknown in all its glory”.1
In the event, Voyage d’Hermès does not remind me of any specific place, but it does remind me of other Jean-Claude Ellena fragrances, so much so that it’s tempting to see it as a voyage through his career, with nods to the heritage of Hermès along the way. The opening is green-ish citrus, rather dry and very tart — think of the grapefruit + lime peel citrus in the opening of Un Jardin Sur le Nil (minus the mango) or Eau de Pamplemousse Rose. In Voyage, the citrus sparkles over a generous dose of black pepper, and possibly some ginger as well, and I’m probably dreaming but I would swear that for a moment or two, there’s a flash of green tea (Bvlgari Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert). Whatever might be in there, the early stages are lively…
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Posted by Angela
on
15 March 2010
Last week at the invitation of my perfume-loving friend, Diana, I assisted at a presentation on perfume and gender for the Gender Studies Symposium at Lewis & Clark College. The presentation was in a long, stuffy room which soon filled with students. Most wore jeans and hoodies. One sat cross-legged and knitted.
Once the room quieted, I asked how many of the students wore fragrance. A few hands crept up. “What do you wear?” I asked. The students hesitated, but one of the men volunteered he liked the Burberry scents. Another man admitted to Axe. A professor said she’d been wearing China Rain perfume oil for years.
A little later in the presentation, we handed out cards spritzed with fragrance for the students to guess, without knowing the name of the scent, whether the fragrance was marketed to men or women…
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