English Spring Perfume

I have an ingrained mental connection between the feel and scent of the first Spring days and a personal idealized version of England, and its iconic scents and perfumes. My immersion into English literature over time, and the influence of English fashion and music in the sixties and beyond, has linked the idea of the beginnings, of Spring, with what it seems like Spring is "supposed" to be. In my and many other minds true Spring is Spring in England. I’m thinking of those fields of bluebells and tangled English gardens and paintings of streams flowing through woods with maidens floating surrounded by tiny fallen leaves on deep blue clear spring waters. There’s that appealing Celtic love of wildness combined with an equally strong love of coziness and cups of fragrant tea and sprigged muslin and subtle scents of youth and cleanliness. There is the reverence for careful polish and grooming and tailoring and formality, branching out into the rituals of men riding to the hunt in the rain. These qualities are well expressed in English perfumes.

It seems like the English prefer a traditional style of fragrance that grows out of a love and nostalgia for the countryside. I see a strong preference for woods and fields over the city life, and innocence and purity over sophistication and artfulness. I see a love of lyrical simplicity that doesn’t care much for ornamentation and artifice. English perfumes can often seem to reflect and express a certain moral character, of identifying wholesomeness, honesty, directness and health as beauty. Perhaps they link many English ladies to childhood memories and scents of the English garden or country home or the woods and fields, which are practically national symbols of happiness.

Established English “houses” such as Creed, Penhaligon's, Floris and now more recently Ormonde Jayne and Boadicea produce fragrances that connect to nature through subtle recreations of ferns, flowers, and herbs for ladies, or sometimes memories of a colonial past in India with sandalwood and references to leather and fine whiskey and tobacco as signifiers of gentlemanly masculinity. They seem to forswear the developmental idea of perfume and mostly start out as they mean to go on. Their public often shows a preference for the scent to remain the same from start to finish.

English men are arguably more famous for their fashion sense than the women, and the English Leather and men’s classic old formula cologne link in to a huge range of literary and visual and sensory references, embedded deeply even in American culture. After all, the early days of this country were so entwined with the British in every way.

I love many of the oldest formula Creed scents. Their clarity is uplifting and energizing. Many are like personal links to certain famous people of the past. They are like material embodiments of single discrete aspects of personality and fashion rather than a combination of many moods, as might be said of the French tradition in perfume. There is indeed something very nice about knowing that Cary Grant liked to wear Green Irish Tweed, and then wearing it yourself, and that the Empress Eugenie had a commissioned Creed fragrance that is still in production today, still accessible. There is that British respect for aristocracy and heritage that makes for part of the enjoyment of the perfume in their knowing it has held the Royal endorsement seal for ages.

Penhaglion’s odes to wildflowers and classics have a certain modernity too in that they are simple and clean and keep alive that Regency-ethos link to a swinging sixties London and the modern capital of eccentric and creative fashion that London has become today.

I tried three of the Boadicea The Victorious scents in sample form from Luckyscent, and find them as clarifying and bracing and focused as the scents of traditional houses of Creed and Penhaligon's and Floris, except the conceptual focus is on heroic personal qualities instead of named natural materials. I have Vibrant, Invigorating and Complex. I see this as part of the English tradition of striving for personal development into a lady or gentleman in the best sense of those words, thereby attaining beauty, power and attraction as a natural consequence. There is more of a developmental unfolding and a noticeable base, but they keep throughout that bracing air of the deep woods in Spring, the sap rising from the wet earth. There are notes of tobacco and vanilla in the base that connect to the wider world of scent references. I like that there are so many in the line and I aim to try several more soon. They are eminently wearable daytime fragrances, making a luxurious accompaniment to the ideal active, varied life.

In Ormonde Jayne I find more focus on the luxury and exoticism of travel to former colonial outposts such as India and the Middle East, and the Richard Burton explorer experience of letting your hair down for awhile with the encouragement of another culture that did not directly experience the influence of Victoria. Still it's filtered through the gentleness of a confident security and contemplative atmosphere in a cozy home base of careful English domesticity. Obviously I am being personally opinionated here, and perhaps this says more about me than about these perfumes, but I find that much weight is in the psychological and historical aspects of the English style of perfumery. These qualities affect and direct the creation of perfumes as much as the materials chosen to the taste of the particular culture. There's a lot to explore in English fragrance these days, and it seems to be moving into a renaissance that converges with a renewal of English fashion and culture.

The Smell of Ecstasy - at the Rubin Museum

Christophe Laudamiel, who I have written about before, continues to evolve before us into one of the most original and creative perfumers around. He gave a talk with the neuroscientist Stuart Firestein, who does research into the brain's olfactory receptors and how the sense of smell is processed in the brain, at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC, as part of their Brainwave series, linking science and the arts.

The Rubin Museum is in the former Barney's in Chelsea, refitted with vast amounts of sacred and mysterious Himalayan and Buddhist Art, displayed with lots of space and air around it, individually and beautifully lit and explained with extensive notes beside each piece. We are so fortunate to have received the gift of such rare treasures in this city. I would feel guilty about having these things here, taken outside of their natural context, except that I know the political situation is such that this museum helps to preserve these pieces. Otherwise it is likely they might be destroyed or hidden away. Considering the hostile occupation of these cultural cradles by forces that feel very threatened by the content of these works they are much safer here in NYC than staying where they were originally made. They created a contemplative and calming atmosphere in which to hear about the current research into the sense of smell and how the brain and body and nervous system react together.

One of the charming details I learned on that dark and stormy night (pouring rain and howling wind for hours) was that chemists and perfumers have studied and discovered that the essence of freshness is like the smell of sunlight drying clean clothes on a line. The sun bleaches, indeed decomposes the material, and releases the molecules that reach our noses as that quintessential fresh smell. Which is not, unfortunately, able to be reproduced by natural means, though there are man-made fragrance molecules that can approximate it, one of which was given to us on a scent strip. This is the aldehyde named C12, beautiful and fresh enough that it instantly lightened my mood considerably. I would like to get my own supply of this stuff and use it for the house and as a perfume in and of itself. It is amazing how accurate it is, and with what strength it concentrates that pure experience so as to put it in the forefront of your mind while you are taking it in. To me it is close to the smell of ecstasy. It is often used in very minute amounts in laundry detergents and soaps and fabric softeners, so this ecstasy is being doled out in tiny doses to those of us who do the laundry.

I learned that all smells are made up of comparatively few elements of the periodic table, H,C, N, O, S - that is hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur, and that knowledge of physics and chemistry cannot predict how they will work together. A new perfume formula has to be built physically, like a sculpture, or by trial and error of tasteful choice, because even a slightly different combination of the exact same ingredients will produce entirely different effects. I learned that more than four or five perfume elements cannot be analyzed by the nose and brain in a fragrance at one time, so more than three to five descriptions of ingredients are not included in marketing descriptions. The art is in the manipulation of the elements of the composition and there will generally be many more elements in a perfume than our nose and brain can read, probably about 80, or more than 300 if natural elements are included. The others are there to modify and tweak and enhance and distance the main ones your mind will register. It's like building the perspective of a picture to create a landscape. I learned that only 30% of the about 2000 scent molecules are in use on the market at this time, but that it may be that many more will be utilized in the near future for many more purposes than we do now.

The chemical vocabulary is very rich and could potentially get very strange in time. Laudamiel brought something he called Screaming Green which he used in his Scent Opera performed at the Guggenheim (which was performed in the dark with individual scent tube "microphones" for each audience member). The formulation was so strong as to be overwhelming on the scent strip given us. I realize of that of course these elements are created in different strengths for different purposes, and the scent strip with this one would be wonderfully pleasant if it was diluted about 500 to 1, but as it was it took over the world for me. CL needed it to be strong for the device he built to diffuse tiny amounts of the scent to the audience through individual tubes that released different fragrances he created as characters into the air around them, as set to special music by Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson. Even after 24 hours, I had to take this immensely strong scent strip out of my notebook and remove it from my vicinity completely because it was permeating everything and making me dizzy. It was obvious that it was a gigantic version of a wonderful green-ness like fresh cut grass, one of my favorite smells, but only if it were much diluted, and wafting in from about 40 feet away.

I learned that we have about 340 brain receptors for smell, as opposed to the many fewer there are for the visual or auditory senses, and that these receptors are the same as those that use and recognize such things as dopamine, and drugs like ecstasy, and that the cortex of smell is very close to the seat of the emotions (the amygdala) and that these receptors regenerate themselves if they are damaged, unlike other parts of body. This would imply that our bodies and nature find them to be of great importance to us, even if we do not yet understand exactly why. The olfactory tissue in our noses are neurons and actually part of our brains, extended a bit out into the front of our faces, so that we can take in the world of outside information through smell. It was confirmed that smells are actually molecules, physical matter that travels into our noses, and that we can be overwhelmed by highly volatile scents, which will cause the brain to shut down the olfactory sense. The brain will reopen the door to our sense of smell if you try smelling something entirely different, like the skin of your arm, or coffee beans, for awhile. (Nothing special as to coffee beans in this way, you can simply use the skin of your arm to refresh your scent palate, as the professional do, it's the change and difference that will get your brain to restart its perception, and allow you to move on to the next new smell).

It was mentioned that it can be exhausting to smell a lot in one day, as has happened to me, but that you can acclimate and adjust your smell stamina over time, and that professionals eventually do so and can smell different things all day without collapsing into exhaustion or anosmia. It's like learning a new language, or doing puzzles all day, for the brain, you get very exhausted by it but you can eventually exercise the brain to accommodate a full day of strong olfactory information, if necessary. We all know that you sometimes must acclimate to unpleasant smells, such as the Paris 1730 CL passed around on a strip, which he with his partner Chistophe Hornetz developed for the Suskind book and film Perfume. This was their interpretation of the smell of Paris at that time. Urine, smoke, ashes, sweat, bread, animals, this can be tolerated by our modern sensibilities in tiny doses but if you take a deep breath of it it will knock you back. The scent of the body as it ages was also discussed, how a baby or a young person turns over skin cells rapidly and their scent is more acidic and fresh, while aging gradually causes this process to be slower and give off a fattier, more basic smell. So it may follow you can keep the smell of youthfulness with fragrance if you choose well, and practice rigorous exfoliation. I am sure there will be many more perfumes made devoted to veiling the wearer in a cloud of the fragrance of the youth of a teenage girl.

The loveliness and excitement of youth is most seductive. Still, and being of a certain age myself, I enjoyed the reminders of the fullness of time imparted by the calm beauty of the old Eastern art surrounding us at the Rubin. The philosophy of working with rather than against the natural seasons of life, the joy and sadness of a mature depth of memory gained by experience, and the interesting patina of age was personified by the ancient Buddhas and angels and demons and depictions of symbolic heavens and hells. They imparted a softness and wisdom informed by yet another path open to the pursuit of happiness. We may also perhaps look forward to new fragrances created to honor the richness and exquisite sensuality of beauty available to us through archetypal scent memories, built over time, incorporating all the world's different cultures and the fully developed passages of both personal intimate and cultural histories.

This event was all the more enjoyable in the company of two perceptive and discerning companions, who both have very engrossing sites: Jade Dressler and Leah Strigler. If you try the links and read you will have the opportunity to enjoy their company along with me.

P.S. Try this experiment they had us do, eat something dense and small, like a jelly bean or a raisin, while holding your nose, then when you have chewed it enough to open it up, release your nose and breathe out. It's remarkable how much the scent of a food is part of its taste, possibly about 80% of it. It's like experiencing perfume in the mouth, through taste, which is closely related in the brain.

Above, from the Himalayan art exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Alice! - Roxana Illuminated Perfumes - Smell Me

O my goodness, now I recall that I was supposed to do this yesterday! Not feeling well at all, at all, and anxious to send this post on time, I have asked my friend Leah to help me out. She is never late.

I must say even though I myself am wracked with chills I can still feel the quickening of Spring in New York City. The aroma of fresh air clings to people and animals when they come in from outside.

Being ill sometimes feels like one has landed in an alternate universe.

I look forward to bounding through the grass of springtime when I recover, taking in the scents of freshly blooming plants and flowers. I look forward to seeing the film Alice as soon as possible!

Roxana of Illuminated Perfumes has made us a surprise and a prize, based on the theme of Alice, for correctly guessing the following:

GAME: What is the use of a talking about a perfume without smelling it? To be entered to win a sample of "Smell Me" please visit each participating blog and determine which character from the story each blogger has assumed. E-mail your guess to Roxana(at)IlluminatedPerfumes.com . Five winners will be chosen to receive a sample of the first edition trial of the fragrance. The game will end next Thursday at 10pm PST. In the meantime free samples will be sent with any orders of $25 or more placed in the next seven days. One gram vials will be available at Roxana's E-shop later today.

Here are the other four clues:

lluminated Perfume

Perfume Shrine

The Windsphere Witch

Perfume Smellin' Things

Aroma Therapy Steam Bathing

Moving into the worst phase of a heavy winter cold, I must turn away from perfume and go to essential oils as substances that are materially healing as well as aesthetically pleasing. There are many essential oils that are antiseptic and anti-viral, and so boost the immune system. Rosemary, peppermint, lavender, lemon, eucalyptus, cinnamon and pine are all easily available and beneficial candidates. Inhaling the steam of my homemade concoction of peppermint, lemon and lavender essential oils in hot water for five minutes helped me breathe normally again, which will help keep my throat from getting too sore. Once the water cools it's very good as a face rinse too, and the lingering scent is pleasing while it smoothes the skin (keeping it very light on the peppermint, of course). Having a pot of strong mint tea, allowed to cool a little so you can drink it freely, is aromatically intense while it works therapeutically to cool a fever. Drinking the juice of a whole lemon mixed with honey in hot water is also a moist fragrance that comforts. Interesting how these fragrances seem to have a healing effect while other perfumes can be irritating while having a respiratory infection.

All this miniature personal steaming makes me wish for the classical full body Turkish/ Hammam steam bath. This ritualistic bathing custom is moving into the West. The high concentration of North African people in the environs of Paris have lead to the opening of a number of fashionable Hammam steam baths there. They perform traditional treat-ments such as deep massage with rose petals and argan oil, which sounds good to me. There is also a tradition of very thorough exfoliation with a strong rub down using a special dense black soap, after which the custom is to rest and sip a glass of strong mint tea to recover. It sounds similar to the much smaller scale routine I am now using as a cold treatment.

I love this painting by Ingres -- his fantasy of a Turkish bath of the old school, where the women from a luxurious harem went together to spend time beautifying themselves.

Ingres was inspired by the letters of an English lady traveler (Lady Montague) who described her visit to the Turkish baths in 1716 in this way:

"I believe there were two hundred women there in all. Beautiful naked women in various poses... some conversing, others at their work, others drinking coffee or tasting a sorbet, and many stretched out nonchalantly, whilst their slaves (generally ravishing girls of 17 or 18 years) plaited their hair in fantastical shapes."

I agree that Ingres' representation of various imperfect but beautiful female bodies in this painting is visually arresting, and ultimately as comforting as the clean and aromatic steam that eases the aches of a winter cold. On a practical note, I recall that Red Flower offers a Hammam line made of organic traditional ingredients for home steam and bathing rituals that detoxify and beautify the skin.