Scent and Subversion (27 page)

Perfumer:
Gerard Lefort

Nocturnes has all the hallmarks of a femme fatale perfume, but its restraint and subtlety mark it as a charming ingénue rather than a dangerous lady. A restrained, balanced, and yet multifaceted floral with a lot going on, Nocturnes de Caron could change the minds of all but the most stubborn haters of the floral category.

A combination of green notes, the freshest facets from florals (such as lily of the valley and rose), with a touch of ripe fruit and mandarin, Nocturnes gets a little curvier and more erotic with the introduction of rounder, fatter notes of vanilla, benzoin, and amber in the drydown, with a veil of powdery orris to blur and soften all the angles and curves.

Nocturnes starts off with an intense and gorgeous contrast between sharp green/fruity notes and the undertow of a voluptuous vanilla/amber base. The richer notes actually seem to rise up to meet the green beginning, only to disappear and rejoin them later after the florals have had their say.

Nocturnes’s spirit reminds me a bit of Ysatis, a lovely floral with a touch of coconut to fatten things up, or YSL’s Y. Its balance is my favorite part, managing to project “fresh and joyful,” with creamy warmth in the base.

As I’m sniffing my slightly sweet, slightly spicy/woody, gorgeously floraled hand, I wonder where all those well-behaved and yet still-interesting florals are now? There are
a few contemporary florals that interest me (Frédéric Malle’s Carnal Flower, Mona di Orio’s Carnation), but they’re few and far between. What with all the ouds and exotic notes out there in perfume, it would almost be more subversive to make a truly interesting floral. Or, you could just buy some vintage Nocturnes de Caron.

Top notes:
Aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin, leafy green, fruity note

Heart notes:
Lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, cyclamen, lily, orris

Base notes:
Vanilla, sandalwood, vetiver, benzoin, musk, amber

Perfumer:
Jean-Yves Leroy

If Vent Vert smells like the color green, then Nombre Noir (“Black Number”) smells purple. Jammy, plummy, woody, and rosy, with a specially sourced osmanthus flower and high-powered damascones—molecules that come from Bulgarian rose oil and can impart rosy, fruity, woody, and/or tobacco facets—Nombre Noir was Shiseido’s first Western perfume under the creative direction of Serge Lutens and Yusui Kumai.

In the drydown, the woody-rosy, lipstick-waxiness of Nombre Noir settles into a bed of powdery honey with a not-unpleasant little chemical kick.

Top notes:
Aldehydes, coriander, fruity note, bergamot, marjoram, rosewood

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

Base notes:
Sandalwood, vetiver, honey, amber, musk, benzoin, tonka

Perfumer:
Françoise Caron

In Michael Edwards’s
Perfume Legends,
we learn that Ombre Rose got its start as an old Roure perfume base, with a cosmetic note that smelled like vintage face powder. (Roure was a perfume school started by perfumer Jean Carles that is now a part of Givaudan.) “The fragrance of the original base has a very cosmetic note,” perfumer Pierre Bourdon said of Ombre Rose’s predecessor. “It rings a bell. That’s why it is so successful.” From there, Françoise Caron gave it a huge dose of coumarin (along with vanillin) to create a praline note. Perfumer Pierre Bourdon goes so far as to say that he considers Ombre Rose the first gourmand scent that was ever created.

One defining characteristic of postmodern texts is self-reflexivity—a self-conscious reference within the film, book, poem, or painting, for example, of its constructedness as
a text. Ombre Rose is the first instance I’ve encountered in perfume of self-reflexivity; it’s a perfume that reflects on its Perfume-ness. Where Balenciaga’s 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.

That reused Roure perfume 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. (I wonder if Ralf Schwieger, the nose for Frédéric Malle’s Lipstick Rose, was influenced by Ombre Rose. Lipstick Rose was constructed to smell, in part, like vintage lipstick—some say vintage Chanel, others vintage L’Oréal.)

Angela Sanders of the perfume blog Now Smell This wrote a post once about wit in perfumes. 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!

Top notes:
Aldehydes, rosewood, geranium

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

Base notes:
Vanilla, musk, tonka, cinnamon, heliotrope

There are some perfumes one encounters while sniffing through the twentieth century that don’t entirely fit into the style of that era. It’s as if the perfumer—in the case of Sophia Loren’s namesake perfume, unknown and unsung, as so many perfumers were—didn’t really bother to conform, and just did whatever he or she felt like doing.

Sophia is a little drugstore gem that is considered by many to be the first celebrity fragrance. It could be mistaken today for a $200 bottle of niche perfume, in terms of its quality and complexity. Caught on the cusp of the 1970s and ’80s, Sophia also smells like it could be a Lucien Lelong or Ciro perfume from the 1930s.

Although Sophia initially blooms with fresh, aldehydic florals and citrus notes, it balances its dry, spicy, and incensey qualities with its fresh, sweet ones. The voiceover in Sophia’s television commercial tells us that it is “the most female fragrance you’ll ever experience,” which is essentially meaningless when, thirty years later, one could say that leather, incense, and musk don’t exactly read as feminine.

This 1980 example is another in the genre of perfume ads that touted the newly liberated woman’s dual roles—in the boardroom and the bedroom—the latter role aided by perfume.

Top notes:
Aldehyde complex, bergamot, orange, spice oils

Heart notes:
Clove, cinnamon bark, jasmine, rose, orris, ylang-ylang, orchid

Base notes:
Musk, amber, vetiver, sandalwood, vanilla, benzoin, leather, incense

Perfumer:
Pierre Wargyne

As a woman who loves green fragrances, I sidle up pretty quickly to men’s green scents, as they often take greenness to an extreme that happens only rarely in women’s fragrances. In Drakkar Noir’s case, this green is sustained throughout, from the herbaceous top to its piney center, down to its mossy, patchouli base. A hint of spice radiates from its center, but its freshness is its predominant character. From a comparison of notes, the difference between the 1972 Drakkar and its more-popular, ’80s “noir” version is largely the addition of leather and patchouli.

Top notes:
Bergamot, artemisia, lemon, rosemary, green note

Heart notes:
Cinnamon, cardamom, basil, pine needle

Base notes:
Patchouli, moss, cedarwood, leather, amber, sandalwood

Soft, subtle, and warm, like a humid gardenia flower midday in some tropical paradise, Island Gardenia is a sturdy little rendition of this voluptuous flower. There’s not a lot of development to it, but gardenia is backed up by tuberose’s wonderful bubblegum and rubber note, with a touch of creamy coconut. For a quick gardenia pick-me-up that didn’t break the bank, Island Gardenia was a wonderful drugstore choice. I can’t vouch for the present-day version.

Top notes:
Green notes, coconut, peach, aldehydes

Heart notes:
Gardenia, tuberose, jasmine, orange blossom, cyclamen

Base notes:
Vanilla, civet, benzoin siam

There’s a happy and secure tuberose in Le Jardin, pulling the same tricks it often does in other more-expensive perfumes, but this time, without making a big deal of itself. The momentary menthol plus tuberose combination reminds me of a less-potent version of mentholated tuberose in Serge Lutens’s Tubéreuse Criminelle. Although no one would
mistake Le Jardin for Patou’s Joy, this little floral perfume manages to create a good impression on a small budget.

The fruit and green notes of Le Jardin’s opening are aerated by a subtle and charming spearmint note, made even more exotic with tarragon. This green, herbal aspect joins with buttery tuberose and light-green freshness from lily of the valley, and dries down to a powdery woody base with a smidge of spice, moss, sandalwood, and civet.

Le Jardin is a child of the ’70s much more than of the sweet ’80s, and an example of the kind of quality sadly missing from today’s drugstore fragrances.

Top notes:
Fruit notes, green notes, bergamot, spearmint, tarragon

Heart notes:
Jasmine, tuberose, cyclamen, lily of the valley, orris, rose, magnolia, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Cedar, sandalwood, moss, musk civet, amber

Perfumer:
Guy Robert

For their first fragrance, “Go big or go home” seems to have been Amouage’s perfume brief to perfumer Guy Robert, who called this fragrance the “crowning glory” of his career. Jasmine and rose are transformed into the Platonic Ideals of those flowers, casting off any dross, smoothing down their gowns, and flying up to the heavens in a purifying, religious ascension. As Amouage Gold dries down and the florals get more powerful, resinous myrrh warms them, and frankincense adds its cinnamon-like spice. The animal drydown pulls the perfume right back down to earth, with ambergris, civet, and musk melting with resins and florals into an animal/warm skin whisper.

A green aspect subtly merges with its lush, animalic base, and the slight cinnamon/incense of frankincense helps light up this perfume with a golden light from within, making the flowers feel even warmer and more opulent than they already are. Amouge Gold demonstrates the difference between couture versus a run-of-the-mill floral perfume. Seamless, beautiful, sensual, and heavenly.

Notes:
Rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, frankincense, myrrh, orris, ambergris, civet, musk, cedarwood, sandalwood

Perfumer:
Jacques Polge

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, my mother bought me a giant bottle of Diva in the crystal bottle with glass stopper. I would wear it occasionally, but it struck me as inappropriate, the equivalent of a fourteen-year-old in a pleated Emanuel Ungaro evening gown with plunging neckline.

Honeyed, creamy, spicy, and soft, Diva is at once fresh/floral and animalic/rich. The sweetness of ylang-ylang and jasmine are tempered with the soft-focus effects of orris, musk, and cistus (aka, labdanum), the resin from the rockrose bush that lends lush creaminess to scents. Patchouli, vetiver, and oakmoss add rough drama, while civet and honey (the civet more subtly than honey) add a touch of Eros to Diva’s ladylike demeanor.

One way of wearing such an outmoded scent like Diva today would be to put on a judicious amount early in the morning, with at least an hour for it to rest on your skin. (I have the parfum concentration, and one tiny drop has filled the air in a friend’s tiny apartment. Beware.) In the drydown, Diva retains its character while mellowing out enough so as not to scare your neighbors. Diva is like one of the big cats at the zoo: less intimidating, almost friendly while it’s napping.

Top notes:
Bergamot, aldehyde, coriander, rosewood, hyacinth

Heart notes:
Rose, jasmine, tuberose, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Patchouli, vetiver, honey, oakmoss, civet, musk, cistus