December 22, 2009

Marron Chic - Nez a Nez


I was introduced to Nez a Nez at Aedes De Venustas, which now carries the full line.  They gave an event this autumn as an opportunity to try the perfumes and meet the perfumers.  Their atmosphere of richly embellished darkness is very conducive to the seduction of scent impressions, along with the drinks and charm being passed around, and meeting other perfume enthusiasts busily engaged in the pursuit of finding something wonderful.  Happily, I at last met the Non-Blonde,  Gaia Fischler, who is  untiring in her soft-spoken enthusiasm for all things relating to personal beauty culture.  I tried about half of the full line there, and received a packet of fluffy feathers scented as samples to try later. As a  presentation for sampling, feathers work surprisingly well, since the feather holds the scent for a long time, like skin or hair,  and you can waft it before you like a fan.  In the interests of full disclosure, I will say they were very generous and gave everyone there our choice of a full bottle of perfume from the line.  Since I was on sensory overload at that moment, after I tried a number and was unable to decide,  I requested the assistance of those around me (particularly Gaia) and one of the designers of the perfumes (Stephane Humbert Lucas) to help me choose.  I came away with Marron Chic, which was the obvious choice since I am thoroughly brunette, and been around long enough to appreciate the pull of opposites in a perfume.  The reference to the look and flavor of the variegated warm and dark browns of a polished chestnut have a great appeal for me personally.  I associate well brushed, polished brown hair as particularly French in that most French women I have seen have that hair color, and use it to set the palette for what they wear.  Then also the traditional street vending of roasted chestnuts in Paris associates them with the typical French seasonal experience of autumn and winter.  The opposites joined in the scent are the initial strong icy cool sweetness of iris and violet, against a background of creamy warm cocoa, which becomes softer and more powdery over time and settles down into a slightly spicy nut-powder woodiness, once the iris has burned away.  Because of the joining of two such opposites in one scent, it is not an easy one or immediately seductive, but more a conceptual interpretation of autumn and winter embodied by the combination of a brisk, sweetened cold violet and iris with the powdery warmth of a creamy cocoa flavored aromatic wood.   Rather like coming into a warm wood-paneled room after being out for a long walk in the winter air and having a hot drink of cocoa while a few snow crystals melt on your clothes and eyelashes. There are citrus elements that impart a tang and unify the impressions into a composition that holds together strongly opposing forces of cold and hot.   The perfumes are indeed strong and dense as compared to for example, L'Artisan (which I find typifies the taste for transparent scents).  Marron Chic lasts for a full day, so it is a commitment to a certain frame of mind to choose this perfume in the morning, and it is definitely not one for an effect of easy prettiness, but rather of an associative and "interesting" cast.  It is a true unisex fragrance, and I can't picture it worn by someone in their twenties, though the stroke of midnight at thirty would be enough to carry this type of perfume if you have a serious side (while understanding that being sérieuse is far more of a compliment in France than it is here)...The notes listed are: top - kumquat, orange blossom, heart - karo karounde, violet, cocoa flower, base - benzoin tears, labdanum, roots of vetiver, cocoa beans.

Above photo, the Havana Brown Cat,  elegantly chestnut brown from tip to tail...they sound like great breed.
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December 14, 2009

Carnal Flower by Frederic Malle/Dominique Ropion


It might seem counter-intuitive to wear Carnal Flower, the tuberose and cut-grass extravaganza, in the depths of winter, but the darkest days highlight its brightness and light.  It's a lifeline to the energy of green sap flowering into thick white petals that truly enliven the grayest of days.  My rather simple and dark winter wardrobe is enhanced by contact with it because it has enough body to cling to natural fibers and give a lift when next I put on the scarf, sweater or coat, plus the ultra-smooth freshness is a neat contrast to the woolen thicknesses and the winter air.  It also hangs in the humid air of summer with loads of redolent grace notes unfurling slowly around with a delicious headiness that does not cross the line into too much in any sense.  Instead it invites you to keep reaching for more while keeping its distance enough to stay interesting to the nose without exhausting it.  It pulls off an appeal that is both primitive/instinctual and refined/elegant, which is not a trick well-played very often.

It's a surprise to find I am so enthralled because I've never been a fan of tuberose as a dominant note. So often it has affected me like the cloying, overwhelming quality of a lily in a closed room. Still, long after getting to the end of a small sample I found it lingered on my mind, so I got another, larger sample, and now realize it's one worth aiming for in full size, costly though it is.  This one is worth it, as a great example of the perfumer's art.  I see from the list of perfumes composed by Dominique Ropion that tuberose seems to be a predilection of his, a type of material that is both naturally dominant and malleable to subtle pushes in different directions that will directly lead into other notes of a perfume's composition. 

Editionsdeparfums says that Ropion used head space technology to capture and then analyse the formula of real tuberose, which must be why that sense of a living flower is rendered so realistically.  He then exaggerated certain aspects and married them to a soft musk that weds the perfume to the skin.  That is probably what keeps the tuberose from taking over and becoming overwhelming as it is often wont to do.  Instead it combines with an individual's skin tone in such a way as to bring the liveliness and grace of a heady floral into the personal envelope of warmth and character of the wearer.  Other very softly rendered notes, melon and coconut among them, act as stepping stones leading down to the musk.  Since this perfume came out in 2006, many have written about its particular lyrical beauty and addictive quality, and now I know from experience everything they say is true.

Above Blue and Green Music by Georgia O'Keefe
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December 6, 2009

12/7 - Advent - Anticipation - Looking Forward



The season of Advent ties in with many spiritual traditions, and our bodily and psychological cycles too, and it all comes down to the confident anticipation and belief that something truly good is coming soon.

There is a sense of excited expectation at this part of the year, with all the preparations and parties, and the scent of winter greens brought indoors, and the beautiful light of candles and fireplaces and the tiny ones used everywhere for decorations.  In combination with the crispness of winter air, the ambiance and scents often suddenly connect us to the energy and hope of our very young selves.  It's inspiring to think about possible resolutions to help us shape our paths for the chance of a fresh start.  It's getting down to the wire to the darkest days of the year, when there will be only about seven hours of day light, but as soon we hit that mark the days lengthen again and we know in our bones this means Spring is coming.  We all celebrate this one way or another.

In this part of the world, the Advent weeks are the heart of winter, and to my mind, all about coziness and nesting, contrasting with the bracing cold, the consciousness of the coming end of a year, and thinking about what is to come.  My personal traditional heart-of-winter scent list is made up of essences of balsam fir, black spruce, the incense notes of frankincense and myrrh, pure wax candles, cinnamon and clove and orange peel, maple syrup,  hot chocolate and whipped cream,  wood burning down in a fireplace, the scent of fresh cotton flannel sheets and the hints of perfumes past  that cling to the coats and scarves I pull out of the closet (CB Wild Hunt and Ava Luxe Moss).  Also wonderful is the comfort of a hot shower before facing the cold morning, especially if scented with a rich soap.  I'll make up small batches of a moisturizing and fragrant body oil with frankincense and many other elements  to impart a velvety texture to the skin, to give as gifts.  These are all mini celebrations that go straight to the brain directly from the nose, and help make the dark cold winter days into an anticipation and celebration of the turn of a new year.

Because it has turned so much colder, I feel it is safe now to bring out what I call the big guns of perfume in my possession, such as Opium, Poivre, Marron Chic, and Myrrhe Ardente.  They love the winter, and are brought out by body heat and unfold into the cold air in a such way that is mutually flattering to their composition and the person.  At home I can light a Guerlain candle of Cuir Russie to re-read the great old Russians. 

I think about the cultures that lived in long winter seasons and nights like Scandinavia and Russia, and how they used this time of year to paint their furniture and interiors with colorful patterns and nature motifs, and knit patterned wool sweaters, and sew quilts and write novels, and meditate in the steam bathhouses, and drink and party and endlessly discuss the state of the world.  These are also the people who go really crazy in the summer, loving it all the more intensely because it is so short.  Sometimes the wait, as in the season of advent, makes the arrival of what we hope for much sweeter.

I am grateful to Roxana of Illuminated Perfume for bringing us all together to share our stories of Advent, one each day.  It feels like we are all around a campfire with each voice, each personal connection to the power of scent, illuminated in turn.  I am glad too that Roxana makes and continues to focus on composing fragrances made with precious materials by hand, with thoughtfulness and refinement.  It is a great pleasure and beauty to smell the scent of California oak leaves captured in solid perfume, softly breathing out from the wrist or neck, even in the darkness and cold of winter.  The style and texture of solid perfumes especially suit the season, and I anticipate the new Chocolate, with great pleasure.
Illustration above from Roxana
Here is a list of the other bloggers participating:

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December 4, 2009

SAPE -- the Cult of Elegance, with Ineke Field Notes From Paris & Les Parfums de Rosine Rose d'Ete


Looking around the internet trying to find a certain kind of African music, I stumbled upon sites relating to a cult dedicated to elegance, known as SAPE (Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes).  The more I find out about this movement, the more I feel an affinity to the devotees.  It originated in the Congo, after the Belgian and French arrived with a distinctive style of dress and manners which were obviously very different from that of the native Congolese people. On close observation, it was seen that together with the brutal aspects of their colonialist culture, the French speaking Europeans brought a distinctive quality to their manner of self-presentation.  They set great value on personal elegance, along with a strict sense of grooming and appreciation of fine materials and  European workmanship.  This strongly affected the Congolese, who some say are the most naturally elegant people of Africa.  Some became fascinated by this particularly French style of charismatic self-esteem engendered by this highly mannered and stylish self-presentation.  The Congolese interpretation of these concepts morphed into something akin to a cargo cult, with serious followers to this day.  They have created their own version of living in close connection to extreme French stylishness, despite being surrounded by difficult conditions.

In the Sapeur societies  men vie to have the most elegant self presentation, couture clothing, and grooming (including fine perfume).  The devotees re-name themselves and invent gestures and walking styles to heighten the effects of what they wear. The Congo still suffers terribly and the people are in constant and immanent danger of the disasters of war, but the Sapeurs have spiritually migrated into an alternate universe.  They are pacifists, because it is impossible to pursue such elegance and engage in the chaos of strife at the same time.  I admire the interpretation of elegance as a motive and force for peace and pacificism in an area constantly under threat of war and daily violence.

I identify with this attitude and these goals, because I know that personal elegance (and especially the use of fine perfumes) can create a concrete connection to the glamor, romance and beauty of an idealized aspect of our culture and the past, even if the rest of the environment may not support such an image.

I found myself transported to both the season of summer and  the city of Paris by the use of two very alternate and opposite spectrum perfumes this past week. Both are intimately and conceptually connected to the lore of French elegance and style.  Les Parfums de Rosine's  Rose d'Ete (the Summer Rose) is a very pleasant and ambient rounded fragrance, with a pure yellow honeyed-rose, uplifted by tart apple, melon and linden notes.  Worn with a thin cotton shirt, it reaches into past associations of French style during its high floral periods of the turn of the last century and the 18th Antoinette aristo-milkmaid styles;  sophisticated and rustic at the same time.  Field Notes from Paris, by Ineke is for the city-dweller, drinking cinnamon dusted black coffee in a cafe in Paris while reading a newspaper with some good chocolate and caramel consumed in the immediate vicinity, while listening to smart, fast, complicated music,like Miles Davis.  The bergamot, cedar, wax, tobacco flower, leaf and vanilla give it a tailored quietness that sits well on an arm clothed in a finely knit wool sleeve.

Wearing these two fragrances over the course of the past few days gave me a sensory connection to the pleasures of a both strict and hedonistic culture I myself do not live in, but would like to, mentally if not physically, vacation in.  Perfumes offer this experience even if only vicariously, through the elements of style that specifically recall the details the legendary forms of French elegance.  I can have all this even while spending too much time in a florescent lit windowless room  dealing with a pile of papers.  So I worship at the altar of my own French cargo cult of perfume, which keeps me human in the midst of certain environments that would otherwise be a little too close to sensory deprivation.  The gods of French perfume throw me the lifeline of elegance!

Above photo of a Sapeur's dressing table from the wonderful photo essay by Hector Mediavilla :The Congolese Sape
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