I have created a new blog devoted to my short stories and writing not related to fragrance. Including a novella I’m currently working on, SOMETHING DARK IN THE FOREST. Do check it out. https://storyboards39151279.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/something-dark-in-the-forest/
1957
On Sunday, Chanel was the look. But on Saturdays, in 1957 in the town of Los Parros everyone dressed casually, unless of course you were going downtown or into Hollywood to see a movie. Then you dressed up. But on Saturday’s little boys wore blue jeans rolled up at the ankles and tee shirts. Little girls wore pretty much the same thing, freed from the flouncy petticoats and ribbons that were the fashion for school days. Dads wore casual slacks with silky Hawaiian or bowling shirts. Mom’s wore pastel peddle pushers and crisp white blouses with pearls. But on Sunday, at church it was a fashion show.
Marjorie was determined to get this right. She was not very domestic, she could barely sew, was not too handy with a Hoover, and she had a very small repertoire for making dinner, but her husband Bob didn’t seam to mind, not yet at least. They were just married and had just moved to Southern California from Red Bluff for his work. She didn’t know any of her new neighbors yet. But since joining the Los Perros Southern Baptist church she had come to recognize a two couples from her street. Now into the second month of attending church they were on nodding terms. The wives were always dressed like movie stars. Sporting what looked to Marjorie like real Paris fashions. Dior, Balenciaga, and Chanel seemed to be the mode of the morning sermons. Marjorie who was astounded by their taste and style, just wanted to catch up and fit in with her new neighbors. Nobody in Red Bluff dressed like these women. She looked at the second-hand sewing machine setting on the kitchen table which Bob bought for her that very morning. She was determined to get it right.
She picked up the MacCall’s pattern and studied the image of the two women on the front of the envelope that held in its pocket the dress pattern. They wore two versions of a tweed suit in white with black braiding piping the cuffs pockets and running along the collar down the front and along the hem of the jacket. Classic Chanel, just like in the Vogue magazines Marjorie had been collecting since she was a teenager. She loved fashion but on the streets of Red Bluff there wasn’t much call for it. She chose the Chanel suit because it looked simpler to sew than the Dior or any of the other patterns, she had seen at the fabric store. She’d picked out a nice cream wool tweed and a simple black braid and some rather pricey gold buttons. She was determined to get it right.
It was well after midnight when she finished. Bob had made his own dinner and she had gone without, as she struggled with sleeves and darts and all manner of things that didn’t make sense to her. He had kissed her on the forehead sometime ago and gone to bed. Just exactly when that was, she wasn’t sure. She was too wrapped up in the pattern that looked like the plans for a rocket ship. It didn’t matter, she was determined to get it right.
She put on a nice but plain black silk blouse and shimmied her hips into the straight line of the wool skirt. She struggled with the zipper as it caught on her slip and then some loose thread on the inside of the lining. It jammed half way up. Tears punched her eyes and shimmered there threatening to spill on her cheeks. As well as being stuck, the zipper was crooked. She pushed her arms into the sleeves of the jacket and took a deep breath and turned to look at herself in the mirror. Her tears broke over the bottom lids and cascaded to her chin. Her sob was so loud she covered her mouth to keep from waking Bob.
The hem of the skirt was wildly crooked, and the lining was peeking out on one side. The shoulders were lopsided, one being higher than the other. One sleeve was an inch and a half longer than the other. Marjorie ripped the jacket off and tore the seam of the zipper to get out of the skirt. She was determined to get it right.
Bob found her the next morning at seven A.M. slumped over the table sleeping on folded arms, the crumpled suit her pillow. They didn’t go to church that morning. Instead Bob drove Margorie into Hollywood. He bought her a wonderful lunch at the Brown Derby and took her to see a matinee of Funny Face at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Marjorie who had been sullenly quiet all morning burst into tears when Audrey Hepburn made her transformation from Greenwich Village bookstore clerk to Parisian fashion model in all those fabulous Givenchy fashions.
“Honey don’t cry.” Bob said as he put his arm around her, she crumpled into his shoulder.
“I should have bought the Givenchy pattern.” She whimpered.
***
1957 by Chanel from the Les Exclusifs line smells to me exactly like the 1950’s. You can bet your bottom dollar that I know what that smell is all about. It is soapy, clean and upstanding in it’s sparkling Madison Avenue glitz. For years I have expounded my theory that the smell of Palmolive dish shop was copied from No.5 in order to make it more appealing to the American housewives of the Suburban sprawl. I grew up in Los Angeles of the 1950’s and 60’s and Chanel was the aspirational brand then just as it is now. But back then that aspiration was pure and clean and dreamy. Not as it is today when many of us aspire to Chanel for all the wrong reasons.
In the fifth decade of the twentieth century soaps and hairsprays smelled of the influence of Chanel in America. It was as if the thought of Paris glamour could be found with in the bubbles that floated up from the kitchen sink after dinner. Chanel No.5 is locked into my scent memory as the fragrance of not only my mother, but my aunt and my grandmother too. They lived for Chanel.
1957 pops from soapy bubbles as it opens in its aldehydic and musky glory. With a sprinkle of warm pink pepper like the pepper corns from the huge old sunburnt pepper trees of my Southern California childhood. It is bright, clean and arrestingly comforting.
Orange blossoms from my youth in the Inland Empire waft across the middle of the fragrance with hints of Jasmine and honey. A very thin hint of honey like one would get from a fresh warm piece of toast with a thin layer of honey slathered over it on a Saturday morning during Summer vacation. Olfactory tendrils of jasmine drift in and out in a summery shimmery dance. And the musk goes on and on throughout the mid-notes into the dry down.
Here in the last phases of the eau de perfume there is a dry powder supplied by a delicious orris root. That floats in the air just like fresh flour when a baker is making croissants. It mixes well with the white musk, a scrubbed clean cashmiran and a dry woody cedar.
Some have said that 1957 from Chanel, like the perception of the decade of the 50’s is boring. Bu to me it is not. Chanel’s 1957 is a melding of the American fascination of the French elegance of the fifties and the need make something as mundane as doing the dishes glamorous. Like all those commercials of my childhood where a housewife is dressed in her best pearls while she scrubs that greasy pan in a bubbling fresh sink that smells exactly like Paris in springtime. The Paris born of the imagination, of Hollywood and of her dreams.
4:45 PM, Paris, Summer, 1985
Slightly frayed but none the less beautiful the upholstery of the luxurious compartment number 6 sighed its familiar welcome to the Comtesse Lamoureux as she eased into it. The porter, nearly as ancient as she and by now an old friend set a Lalique crystal glass half full of Frapin Cuvee 1888 on the table before her.
“Merci Ramon.” She began to pluck off her gloves then delicately placed them on the table next to the cognac one upon the other as always. She looked out the window onto the platform of the Gare de Lyon. “This is a most important trip,” she said softly. “for both of us.”
“Qui Madame la Comtesse, the last run of this great train.”
She smiled. “I think for a change, tonight I shall take a late supper in the grand salon.”
Ramon bowed and left the Countess looking out the window toward the patch of fading afternoon blue where the iron station opened onto beige Paris and the south.
The coach barley lurched and began to inch into the last journey of Le Train Bleu.
The great iron and glass roof of the station opened as the train picked up speed and Paris slid away, like so many playing cards falling from a gaming table. The countess was transfixed on her reflection in the glass. What she saw there was no longer familiar, it was a young woman, herself sixty years in the past on her way to Nice for the first time.
***
She was not the most beautiful girl on the Côte d’Azur but perhaps the prettiest to arrive in the middle of the années folles. As she stepped down onto the platform of the station in her Chanel summer whites. The fragrance of the south hit her like a new lover’s scent. In fact, she had come south in the mad flush of new love. His name was Pete, he was an American saxophone player who had captivated her one night when she and her boyfriend of the moment René, had stumbled upon the Casanova Club. There he was. The most beautiful black man she had ever seen, playing the most beautiful music, she had ever heard.
Pete never called her by her first name that summer of 1925 as they romped the Côte d’Azur from Marselle to Menton. He simply called her “Countess”. Sleeping till four in the afternoon after nights of Jazz and cocktails. Romping on the beach at dawn. Caviar and eggs for breakfast. By the last days of September, She was ready to give up everything for him.
He went back to America that winter. Sporting a bruised heart she went home to Pairs on The Blue Train.
***
The trip south the winter of 1939 was to escape the cold of the city. But not long after her arrival in Monte Carlo, things began to look grim. People were heading south not to escape winter but to try and outrun the fear of what was coming to Paris, what was devouring Europe. She stayed on to help friends and then soon strangers as well find refuge. After the fall of Pairs that summer of 1940 her villa in the hills above Monaco became a meeting place for young men and women of the Resistance against the German occupation and the Vichy government.
His name was Axel Barre. He was first and foremost a freedom fighter and secondly, perhaps the love of her life. He died in a ditch, executed by a German firing squad.
***
At 56 she was the picture of polished, poised, elegance the summer of 1961. The train trip south was marred by nothing except the incessant snoring of the man in compartment number 7. The Countess sat up all night with cotton stuffed in her ears trying to read “Heaven Has No Favorites”. It was useless. Each time he ceased his rumble she closed the book, put out the light and removed the cotton from her ears, he would start up again.
The following morning she went to an early breakfast in the Grand Salon and found herself sitting across the table from a Monsieure Jean Lucien Dubeau. He said good morning and from the timber of his voice she knew at once that he was the cause of her sleepless night. She gave him a scowl, he gave her a dazzling smile, a wink, and ordered a bottle of champagne for both of them. They were married in a miniscule country church near Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat the following Spring. She never really got a good nights sleep from then on.
***
On this final journey of Le Train Bleu the Countess sat up all night thinking about the journey behind her and what little of it remained before her. It had been a good ride for the most part. There were many things along the way she had enjoyed and much she had endured, wild young love gone wrong, A world torn by war and loss, and finally the love of a good man whose ashes she now carried to the villa in the blue-green hills above Monte Carlo.
As she stepped from the train onto the platform in her black and white Chanel suit the fragrance of the south enveloped her like the warm hug of an old friend.
***********************************************
L’Heure Bleue created by Jacques Guerlian in 1912 has come to symbolize the end of the Belle Epoch in France just before the beginning of World War I. It has been called a farewell to a romantic era, a melancholy remembrance of things lost to time, not to be found ever again. The cap on the bottle is an inverted heart that symbolically captures that past in perfume form from the bottle it encapsulates thus preserving within its transparent heart the memories of lost love and departed friends.
All of this is true. But for me there is more, something deeper in L’Heure Bleue. It is the perfume of a complete lifetime held in memories of youth and the passing of time into maturity. It is not melancholy as one would expect such memories to be, but rather reflective of life, a contented quiet and very personal joy.
Who can wear L’Heure Bleue? Anyone who has the daring to be in a space beyond the ordinary. Someone not only with an appreciation of history by someone who also has a past both intriguing and perhaps slightly tainted with scandal. A past worth writing about in a diary one hopes to be found fascinating by others if found at all. In short it is suited to both men and women of taste and sophistication.
It opens quite classically as one would expect such a perfume of this vintage and from this particular house to do. Notes of anise, coriander, neroli, bergamot, and lemon spark and fizz but momentarily like the flicker of old movies, a editing of cinematic notes mixed with music, that quickly collapse into the unfolding beauty of the middle composition.
Here we get the classic powder and Guerlainade that was established with Jicky in 1889. The bergamot, rose, tonka, vanilla. Jasmin, and animalic and resinous accords make up this signature, a DNA of the house so to speak. It is a kind of Jicky through the looking glass. Notes in the middle comprised of Rose, cloves, Jasmine, tuberose and Geranium hit my nose with the most power. Undertones of ylang ylang and violet play supporting roles to this old world glamour. This phase lasts about three to four hours.
In the dry down we get the full force of the powder and seduction there in of this fragrance that lingers well into the sixth hour. The animalic accords are here along with the swirling hypnotic benzoin note. This combined with the iris, vanilla, sandalwood, and vetiver create an incense accord that is incensual (if I may create a word that sums up my love of perfumes that are smoky, exotic, and mysterious) This is where the fragrance carries its key to our memories. It is as magical, romantic, and epic as a journey to the Cote Azure on the long lost Le Train Bleu.
For the first time since she had arrived in Rome Helen Rivers felt good enough to get out of bed. Her husband and son had gone off for a day trip to Florence with their Cornell Alumni tour group. She was left on her own to recuperate from the bad cold that had hit her almost as soon as their plane from Seattle touched down on the tarmac at Fiumicino International.
It was an almost warm sunny morning that February 14th 1999, and it was her 70th birthday. She would be spending alone until that evening when Earl and Mark returned. Her first birthday alone. She dressed quickly and while applying her rose petal pink lipstick she tried to think of what to do on her own in Rome. She was at a loss. Maybe just wander?
At the elevator on the 5th floor of the Excelsior Hotel she saw the two burly young men who stood guard to the entrance to the south wing of the hotel. They had been there for two days now standing guard, handsome young men, one blond the other black. They nodded to her for the first time.
“Who is staying on this floor with us? It must be someone very important to have you boys here day and night.”
“Sorry Ma’am, we are not at liberty to say.” The blond said in a buttery British baritone.
“Oh, I see,” she said with a wink in her voice. “If you did tell me you would have to kill me. Just like in a James Bond movie.”
The black guard looked at the carpet before him and tried to suppress a smile.
The elevator door opened, Helen stepped in and turned to face the two men in the little marble and gilt lobby. She smiled. “I bet I can guess by the time I see you again just who it is. Have a nice day.” The blond man winked at her.
“I bet you can’t.” he said as the elevator doors slid shut.
After a light breakfast of coffee, croissants and a juicy Blood Orange, Helen stepped from the porte-cochère of the hotel onto the once very glamorous Via Veneto. She turned left to stroll down the curving avenue past the American Embassy into the heart of Rome. She took a deep breath and for the first time in a week realize that she could smell things again. Rome smelled like the most fabulous open air restaurant in the world. A delicious mix of fresh bread, roasting Osso Buco, spices, herbs and roasting coffee beans. It was intoxicating, and for the first time that week she forgot all about her cold.
Helen wandered and simply surrendered to let the city surprise her. The Quirinale Gardens she found quite by accident and they in turn lead her to the Trevi Fountain. From there she went north along the Via dei due Macelli to the Spanish Steps where she refreshed herself with tea at Babingtons Tea Rooms. She found the windows of Bulgari on the Via dei Condotti and admired the baubles safe behind bullet proof glass. At the Via del Corso she turned south until she reached the Piazza Colonna, she sauntered west through this, the political heart of Rome then south again to the Piazza di Pietra where she was astounded to see encased in a 17th century Papal Palace the facade of the eighteen hundred year old temple of Hadrian. Now instead of a Roman God, it housed an ordinary bank.
She had been walking for quite some time and the cobblestones beneath her marshmallow white tennis shoes were beginning to make their impression on her tender soles. Somehow it didn’t matter. She had to see what was around the next corner.
She stumbled upon the baroque and very theatrical Piazza di Sant’Ignazio. It was magical in the noon light. And along the southern side of the piazza was the glorious Chiesa di Sant’ Ignazio di Loyola with an open door that lead into whispering darkness. Inside she found the amazing trompe l’oeil ceiling that created the illusion of a dome over the center of the church. She sat in a pew looking up in wonder at the near photo realistic illusion in paint and plaster.
After lighting a candle in memory of her mother Helen left the church, she was getting hungry and decided to head west to find a cafe. There was a slight curve to the street and as she walked along it an astonishing sight slid into view. It loomed in epic magnificence brilliant in the sun between the dark walls of the five-story tall canyon that was the Via del Seminario. When she reached the end of the road the walls of the canyon fell away to reveal the Piazza della Rotunda and there sanding as strong and eternal as it had when the Visigoth Kings Alaric and Genseric both spared its destruction for its beauty stood The Pantheon. The temple to all the Gods built by Marcus Agrippa after the battle of Actium and rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian.
Helen was awestruck by the only completely intact temple standing in Rome. Its sixty-foot-tall columns of red Egyptian granted soared to the pediment they so gracefully and effortlessly supported. The dome, the largest until Saint Peter’s was erected a thousand years later floated above the thick walls of the round building creating the top of the perfect invisible sphere it encased within. Church bells around the city began to peal. As a bus load of tourists filed past her all looking up just as she was, the sounds of the half full piazza fell way. Time melted around her and she could hear the heart of Rome beating in her ears. Feel it within her body pulsating in time with her own heart. The spirits of two thousand or more years past though her in the blink of an eye. She knew in that moment the eternal connection to history that was the city of Rome, a connection to life, death, and love. This was the best birthday present she had ever received. Rome!
After what seemed to her a very long time but was in fact less than a few seconds Helen took a step toward the temple. She walked up to the third column that stood directly under the R in AGRIPPA carved deep into the pediment above. She reached out to touch it lightly with tips of her fingers. It was not cool stone but warm to the touch having all that morning absorbed the heat of the Italian Sun. Helen raised both arms and embraced the column in a loving hug. Being that the circumference of the granite columns are 15 feet Helen was more or less plastered arms wide against the side of the column. She stood there eyes closed listening to the building tell her its story.
“Thank you for being here.” She mouthed the words. “Thank you for….”
“Ma’am are you alright? Do you need to sit down?”
She ignored the voice and pressed her cheek hard against the stone.
“Do you feel faint?”
Helen opened her eyes to see an young Italian tour guide with her group crowded up behind her. All eyes wide upon her. The young woman looked very concerned.
Helen’s smile was warm and confident and her eyes began to fill with tears.
“No I am fine, thank you. I just need to make it real.”
***
The aromatic citrus spring beauty I find in Acqua di Parma’s Mirto di Panarea is simply stunning. Created in 2008 this fragrance is one of my favorite in the Blu Mediterraneo line of the house. A line created to evoke the islands and parts of Italy that are drenched in that very special light that kisses the Mediterranean between Gibraltar and Tel Aviv. Such places at Sicily, Tuscany, and Taormina are represented in the Blu Mediterraneo line. In Mirto di Panarea we are taken to the second smallest of the eight Aeolian Island in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, and one of the most beautiful in the chain, Panarea. This woody aromatic fragrance is perfect for spring and summer, or in the winter months when you need a bit of sunny warmth it is a perfect spritz-cation that will carry you to the hills and shores of Italy.
It opens in its top notes with the signature of its name, Myrtle, and this marvelous woody note is complemented by, bergamot, bight and sunny. Lemon tangy as a sip of Limoncello from the Amalfi coast. All is topped off with the favorite cooking ingredient in Italian food. Green herbaceous basil. A feast for the nose indeed and all in the bright brilliant opening.
How could it be any better. Hold on for your olfactory vacation is just beginning. The mid notes are of Roses warmed in the late afternoon sun. You know that scent of roses in summer, natures spike of glamour to the season. The rose is gorgeous and this is in turn wrapped in light subtle wafts of jasmine all lifted by a sea breeze accord that whispers come with me to where The Nereids sing their siren song as they have for the ages.
The dry down is a sunset over the waves of what remains of the myrtle, flowers, and citrus. A piney and resin rich Mastic adds depth to a green juniper. These notes combine with a dry cedarwood and add a warm glow to the final touch of golden honey like amber.
It is a Roman tale of the sea gods and mortals meeting on this beautiful island where time is forgotten and something magical could happen on a warm sleepy afternoon. A scent that you can nap in under a bright yellow umbrella. A perfect vacation scent that works extremely well for everyone. I can’t imagine it not being a summertime favorite. Day or night it is the kind of scent that will carry you though the day, it has a depth that defies the usual warm weather fragrances and last about eight hours on my skin. This is one of the fragrances that I find I like to reactivate about half way through wearing just to get that brilliant opening a second act.
Mirto di Panarea is of my favorites from the house of Aqcua di Parma, when you wear it, everything looks brighter, more intense, more real.
My Mother Ellen Bay on whom the story above is based, on her way to Rome February 13, 1999 .
February 14, 1929 – May 25, 2017
love you Mommy dearest.
When the light hits just right at sunset, Hollywood Boulevard looks like a 70mm strip of celluloid unspooling with memories of the Golden Age of the movies. As dawn breaks in the high bleak valley between the distant eastern peaks of Mt. San Jacinto and San Gorgonio the rays of the Sun race westward toward the Pacific. About seventeen miles before the sea the morning sun slams into the ivory top of the Deco step pyramid that caps Los Angeles City Hall. In its faded splendor at first light the old building that cradled that famous last shot in Mildred Pierce eclipses the modern Manhattanized towers that surround it. By noon when the summer sun is baking the City from Boyle Heights to Santa Monica beach the City Of Dreams is more alive, more exciting, more dangerous than any femme fatale that every walked the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel. Los Angeles is a city of hidden treasures. A city that only shares its veiled beauty to those who take the time to look past her endless prairie of post war tract houses. The very prairie which at midnight from the top of Mulholland Drive becomes a jewel box of lights more spectacular today than they were when James Mason told Judy Garland that all of the city below was hers when her star was born.
It is the city where I was born under the shadow of the walls of M.G.M. The city that gave me my first taste of life in the false lush simi tropical green that would be gone in one summer were it not for the water it syphons from the north. The Los Angeles of my infancy the major exports were Airplanes, Oranges, and Movies. As a child, my grandmother would take me to Clifton’s Cafeteria in downtown L.A. and there in a fake redwood forest I would eat strawberry Jell-O with wiped cream wrapped in a day dream of Johnny Weissmuller swinging through the trees. There were trips to the Alligator Farm in Buena Park, to the Huntington Gardens, the L.A. County Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits which have bubbled there for hundreds of thousands of years. Who knows how many Saber Tooth Tigers lay entombed in its sticky goo? Then most wonderful of all, were the high walled movie studios full of secrets and the old movie palaces that lined Hollywood Boulevard filled with escape.
Every Friday night and Saturday afternoon I would go to the movies. They were my textbook of life. They taught me all about history, religion, and love, Hollywood style. Everything a kid in L.A. needed or wanted to know. To me Andrew Jackson was Charlton Heston, David and Bathsheba were Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. Marylin Monroe was cotton candy and lipstick glamour yet somehow sad around the edges. And Elizabeth Taylor? Well, she was not only the Queen of Egypt but Queen of Everything. In the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater I would wander among the hands and footprints of my personal Gods and Goddesses. At ten my hands fit into Shirley Temple’s hand prints. By twenty they fit perfectly with Clark Gable.
As I grew older and began to explore Los Angeles on my own I began to put my Movie star fueled ideas of the world into perspective without losing the dreams. This is when I began to realize that the Spanish words and world that Los Angles grew out of were so very important to the fabric of the city. A major part of what made it so magical. Real History. Then there was the architecture. I began to see the beauty of the unique way in which Los Angles embraces the architecture of the world. The revelation was clear, all of Los Angles is one mega backlot. You can find the walls of Babylon at the old Firestone Tire Company. In Beverly Hills, Italian Villas snuggle up next to Elizabethan country homes. The Japanese gardens in San Marino. Hong Kong re-imagined in Chinatown butts up next to the glorious Spanish Revival cathedral that is Union Station. All at once in one epic sprawl, all of it is tacky, beautiful, insane, and wonderful. Knit together with freeways and festooned with imported Royal Palms. A city like no other on earth. The city where the past is tomorrow.
I have not lived in Los Angeles for a very long time. I miss it often and sometimes I will pop an old movie into my DVR that will take me back to different times in its history from the 1920’s to today. Some of the images I see of the city tug at my heart and whisper to me “come home. The dream is still here.” That opening shot in “Strangers When We Meet.” In particular, reminds me of my childhood. But something is always missing in my movie visit to Los Angeles. The smell of the place in summer. It was the most unlikely mix of smells that could make up a memory, but it is none the less one of the strongest and dearest memories I have of the place. In the summer, the scent covers the city in a loving embrace. The smell of honeysuckle and jasmine, white flowers, and Max Factor red roses caresses by the hint of a Santa Ana wind from the north. Burning Eucalyptus leaves and sharp Italian cedar. Wet freshly mown grass. And everywhere the smell of entire Orange trees from the blossoms to the waxy leaves. This is complemented by the slight burning of carbon monoxide and dangles in the smog, and the clear clean nearly antiseptic sent of chlorine from a million swimming pools.
It is the smell that takes me home.
*******
The new fragrance by Etat Libre d’Orange was inspired by a novel by Chandler Burr and in fact shares the name of the book. “You Or Someone Like You.” The fragrance came into being when Etienne de Swardt, founder of Etat Libre d’Orange read the novel and called Chandler Burr to ask if he could make a perfume based on the book he had so loved. He wanted to base the perfume on the setting, Los Angles, and the narrator Anne Rosenbaum wife of a powerful Hollywood film executive. The story revolves around her resulting transformation when she is asked to create a reading list for the head of a studio. That leads to an unexpected interest from screenwriters, agents, and producers around town. A Hollywood book club is formed where Anne blooms in the process. Then when a religious crisis in her husband’s life occurs when their son journeys to Israel , Anne is challenged to save her marriage.
(CHANDLER BURR)
For Chandler Burr who not only wrote the novel but was also the New York Times fragrance critic and author of “The Perfect Scent” and “The Emperor of Scent” this was both a challenge and very exciting. Over the course of the creation of the scent it became tremendous learning experience for him. The experience was so profound he has noted that he feels that he should have made a fragrance before becoming the critic for the New York Times. For the creation of the scent Chandler as creative director for the Eau de Parfum teamed up with perfumer Caroline Sabas and together they came up with “You Or Someone Like You.”
For me this is an extremely emotional fragrance, moving and nostalgic. Chandler Burr says it is not Los Angeles stuffed in a bottle but to me, it is like coming home to my long-abandoned home town. It carries all and more that I wrote about above in the memories and feelings this fragrance brought up for me. It inspires me to dream of spring and summer in the city of angles. A spring that comes in February and a summer that ends in November. It is a uni-sex fragrance that carries in it the DNA of classic citrus colognes of the past. Yet like the city of Los Angeles it is layered with facades of modernity over a historical base. There is in “You Or Someone Like You.” Elements of the sage brush of this Hollywood hills baking in the heat, of tropical flowers and swimming pools, high above the exhaust clouds of the 405 freeway. Peeling eucalyptus bark and dyeing orange blossoms and the wonderful scent of night blooming jasmine. All it comes together in “You Or Someone Like You” in a bright opening. It carries and holds for me this feeling, this L.A. sensation all the way through the fragrance to the end. Yet it does evolve as it goes along from the “morning” of the fragrance all the way through to the “evening” and finally into a “magic hour” drydown. It swirls, rises, and falls in intensity only to rise again on my skin. I found this aspect of the fragrance to be delightful.
For those to whom such things matter about a fragrance, it projects at about six inches, the sillage is soft. The longevity is substantial, being that is an eau de parfum over an eau de toilette it lasted on my skin nearly to eighteen hours. And even then, the next morning there were faint traces of it. It wears best for most in spring and summer, but I’m sure that I shall be visiting “You Or Someone Like You” in fall and winter for a brief trip to my past, to the land of the lotus eaters, the place where dreams are manufactured and Hollywood Boulevard at sunset looks like a glittering ribbon of celluloid.
(CHANDLER BURR TALKS ABOUT THE FRAGRANCE)
Ivory white in the moonlight the poplar trees in their winter nakedness seemed to be leaning in over the road that lead away from town. Reaching their arms overhead to hide the moon from view of anyone under their cover. The effect was that of theatrical branch shadows cast down upon a platinum ribbon of concrete. Edward Henry Porter the forth pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator pushing the British engine into a well-tuned purr. The headlights of the 1959 Silver Bentley Continental S1 reach though the night all the way to the curve looming ahead next to the entrance of the long-abandoned Newport estate known as Wicker Hill.
As the car took the tight curve at 47 and a half miles per hour the tires screamed, the high beams flashed across the old lion gate that blocked the drive up to Wicker Hill. Edward laughed contemptuously as he pushed the peddle to the floor heading for 80. The leather seat next to him still smelled of Sage Benton of the Newport Benton’s. that smell precisely being of her crushed geranium corsage and spilt rum from the flask in her Mark Cross purse. To Edward, in fact, it reeked of her silly, spoiled, entitled Bryn Mar bitchiness which when pressed she insisted was merely “being cute”.
She was drunk more times than not and only then would she show just how rotten money had made her. Tonight, was the capper. She had mocked a busy boy and called him a dirty Mick to his face from the center of the dance floor where she was doing a sloppy rhumba with Carl Everett. Another example of monied inanity. Incensed by her outburst Edward left the dinner dance with her stumbling and calling after him. In the car, she opened her flask to take another drink.
“What’s the matter Eddie Honey? Aren’t you having a good time?” Edward snatched the flask away spilling most of the liquor on the leather car seat and the rest on her Ceil Chapman evening gown.
“Eddie my dress! You’ve ruined it. Daddy is going to kill you!”
“Get out of the car.” He said just loud enough for her to hear.
“What?”
“Get the hell out of my car!”
He was through with her, with the country club, with Harvard Law, and most of all with his parents mansion on Belleview Avenue. He couldn’t stand any of it. Of the privileged life that had always seemed somehow wrong but everyone told him was so right. So them, so him.
When he reached the New England Turnpike he turned the Bentley south toward New York. By dawn he was driving over the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey. Once he reached New York he realized it was much too close to Newport. Where he was going had to be somewhere far away. Where he could be free, write like he always wanted to. Someplace where people did something with their lives, where there was a different beat. The clip of the tires on the concrete seams of the road seemed to match the beat of his heart. The Beat. The West, The Beat. The West.
A week later Edward sat in a sunny window of Vesuvio Cafe on Columbus Street. He had found a job as a door man at the Hungry i. As good a place as any in San Francisco to begin an alive life. He was finally going places, the kind of places with the kind of people he belonged to. The Beat was in his soul. The only thing he had left of his past was the 1959 Silver Bentley Continental S1. He would have to sell it soon not that he wanted to. But for the first time in his life, he needed the money.
*** *** ***
Bentley For Men Intense was created as a flanker to Bentley For Men in 2013 by perfumer Nathalie Lorson for the prestigious British car company Bentley. Lorson is a prolific nose who has a massive number of perfumes in her credits. She has designed for everyone from Lalique, Encre Noire to Yves Saint Laurent, Black Opium. In fact, she is the nose behind every fragrance in the line for Bentley.
(NATHALIE LORSON)
So, I was intrigued to try a fragrance from this house to see how it stacks up against some of her other fragrances and against other automobile perfumes such as Jaguar, and Ferrari. (Porsche is out of the running as I have not yet tested it.)
I must say I am pleasantly surprised in some ways and not so much in others. First off, the bottle is simply amazing, elegantly heavy glass on a luxurious level. Beautiful silver topping of the top fourth of the glass with the Bentley winged B logo deeply etched and very hefty silver cap. The design echoes the lines and beauty of a Bentley, just as it should. Here the house has trounced its competition in Jaguar, Porsche and Ferrari who’s bottles overall are a disappointment. The bottle is smart, sleek, and chic. Simply put, the chassis is classy.
What is under the hood? Well this is where it gets interesting. At first sniff I was sold. As well, on initial wearing is was humming along quite nicely. Then on my second outing in my new Bentley For Men Intense there were some potholes in the tarmac. Then on the third through fifth test drives it was much the same thing. I loved it some of the time and I was sometimes put off by it. What can be the problem? The only thing I can say is that it dances between something brilliant and gorgeous and then slips at other times into a kind of ho hum slump. Dust in the carburetor? Or maybe it is simply the driver?
1959 BENTLEY CONTINENTAL S1
Let’s concentrate on the good things, on the best test drive, today in fact. Bentley Intense opens with a great peppery African Geranium that is speckled with, black pepper. This makes it sharp and attention grabbing. Which is what fragrance houses want their top notes to be. (the notes that sell a fragrance to the average customer) But that isn’t all, added in is a rich, boldly thick dose of incense. Intense incense if fact gives it elevated wings. I loved that combo of the incense match with the overdose of pepper and geranium. A stunning opening.
This opening that becomes almost boozy lasts 30 to 40 minutes before it evolves into the cruising speed of mid notes. The lux interior of the Bentley automobile in perfumed notes. Super fine, highly polished Leather of the highest quality. The kind of leather you can sink into for a nice long ride is enhanced by a leathery aromatic clary sage which adds a sexy depth. Labdanum is brushed over these two notes bringing in a fine combo accord of even more leather steeped in an amber like wash.
The dry-down is an exceptionally fine with noticeable dose of patchouli, and silky sandalwood finishes off the base with cedar shavings giving it a kind of somber aromatic heat. This ride is indeed smooth and well-appointed, leaving Jaguar and Ferrari in the dust. (Of those I have sampled at least.)
So that is Bentley For Men Intense when it is purring along on my skin on a rainy day like this. So, what is the problem. Why am I of two minds about this EDT? Perhaps is it simply the season in which I am testing this fragrance. Early Spring. On the sunny warm days, Bentley For Men Intense battled with my skin until well in to the late middle notes where it finally ran smooth. But on a rain cool day like today it works beautifully. So, the lesion I have learned thanks to Bentley For Men Intense is this. Some fragrances really do fall into seasonal boxes. When I love Bentley, I am very much in love, and when I hate it, I am reminded of Rita Hayworth in “Gilda” when she says to Johnny Farrow, “Hate is a very exciting emotion. Haven’t you noticed? Very exciting. I hate you too, Johnny. I hate you so much I think I’m going to die from it.”
Well, lets not get that dramatic, I’m not going to die from this fragrance. But, with Bentley For Men Intense, it’s, what else can I say? A classic love/hate relationship. And at this moment, I love it.
A thick blue mist clung to the tall trees like uncarded wool and muffled the predawn calls of the forest birds as they fluttered and fussed themselves to wakefulness. It moved slowly, lazily, like a taffeta silk encased courtesan through the lower wilder gardens making its way up to the chateau of Versailles. With cool fingers it caressed the cream-colored stone and pressed against the wavy glass of the windows. There it condensed into impersonal tears and sensuously slid down the glass to puddle on the windowsill. At one glowing window the little puddles reflected the candlelit room within the palace. A tiny image of the scene within shimmered in the puddle of the only room in the palace where the occupant was awake. The Sun King was up before the Sun.
Louis XIV King of all France was sitting up in bed. Beside him gently mumbling in her sleep was his mistress Madame de Montespan. He paid not a note of attention to her and had completely forgotten to wake her to send her off before the courtiers were to arrive to Rituality wake and dress him. The thing that held him in rapt attention, that had kept him awake since three in the morning was pinched between his thumb and index finger. A 115.16-carat blue diamond. It fascinated him by its uncut beauty. The story of its travels and how Jean-Baptiste Tavernier had brought it and along with it many fabulous tales from the court of Shah Jahan, the Emperor of Mogul India.
He turned the diamond this way and that to see how the light from the candles danced a merry minuet within the stone. The King threw back the bedclothes and slipped into his brocade robe then walked to the window. He held the diamond toward the blue misty imperceptibly brightening eastern sky to study it. He squinted his eyes and tired to pierce the heart of the diamond with his mind.
“Your majesty, this stone is but a pale shard in comparison to the beauty of India.” Louis recalled the voice of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier when the afternoon before he had presented the king for a certain price the priceless stone. “There are colors in India unknown in the west, the music of the court is like nothing you have ever heard. It is like the universe is singing with golden bells and flutes of sandalwood and ivory. The women are unsurpassed in beauty and grace. The cities are vast and teaming with vibrant excitement. In the midst of all of this cacophony of smells and sights and sounds there is the great Taj Mahal. An edifice of such sparkling splendor that I am left with nothing but a melancholy whisper in my heart when I think of it.”
The King smiled to himself and pressed the stone against the windowpane and moved his head toward it as if he were about to look into a spyglass. The world took on a violet blue hue. Cool and calm and of such beauty he wanted to live within the diamond forever.
There he stood his face pressed against the window lost within the magic of the stone.
“You shall be my symbol of France, of the enduring monarchy that shall last forever.” He said softly to the stone. “You shall bring glory to my rein and prosperity to my people.”
“And how will I do all of that? I am just a woman.”
The king startled turned to see Madame de Montespan sitting up, her knees drawn up to her chin, arms encircling them. She was sleepy eyed and smiling.
“Indeed, how shall you do all of that my dear.” He put the diamond in his robe pocket and patted the pocket for luck.
“Come now my dear, the courtiers will be here any moment and you must be gone. After all there is my wife to consider.”
“What do you have in your pocket?” she demanded coyly.
“Nothing of consequence.”
“It’s that diamond. Oh, Louie please let me hold it.”
He laughed and walked to the edge of the bed and handed her the diamond. Her eyes danced across the stone in glittering madness captivated by the stone.
“Louis may I have it. Will you give it to me in a necklace or on a pin? Oh please!”
“No… I am the State, and this diamond is, in essence the heart of France. It belongs not to me but to France.”
“Oh! You are hopeless!”
“On the contrary, my dear. I am filled with hope.”
At that moment, the door to the King’s chamber silently opened just as the King leaned down to kiss Madame de Montespan. Three aristocratic heads of the King’s bedchamber peeked in. Eyes widened, the three heads then retreated and very gently closed the door. The royal dressing would have to wait.
***
Neela Vermeire Creations with perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour have over the years since the House was launched created perfumes that are inspired by India but with a French Flair and chic. The new fragrance Rahele (2016) is no exception. Travel is what Rahele means and this fragrance was sparked by three 17th Century French travelers to India. Jean Thévenot, Francois Bernier, and the man responsible for bringing the premier crown jewel of France to King Louis XIV and what became finally the Hope Diamond, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier.
Rahele is a foral woody and earthy fragrance that rises to an interesting level of stylish sophistication. It is bright, pure and ozonic to my nose. It does remind me of travel, that wonderful smell you experience when you first exit an international airport and breath in the air of a strange foreign city. It has a blend of both Western Europe and the Asian sub-continent. It is fluid each time I wear it. Some times I am in Paris and other times I am in Jaipur.
We begin our trip with a bright almost ripe yet on the edge of green mandarin. Cardamom which falls on the spicy side complements the citrus. Then from Ancient markets comes the once rare and precious spice note of cinnamon. I love how this plays against the slightly metallic violet leaf note in the opening.
The midway point of the trip with Rahele is a pure lush Indian garden after the monsoon. A peachy exotic Osmanthis is surrounded by the reddest of rose, a velvet rose in fact and completely devoid of thorns. A fleshy sensual magnolia note hovers above this garden, It is moist and nearly dripping in the heat and there in the heart of this rises up a sweet almost hypnotic jasmine. The kind of jasmine that lifts the senses in the night. The earth below is introduced with purple notes of violet and rooty dry Iris. At this point the flower notes shimmer and move forward and recede in the most interesting way.
When we reach our final destination in the base there is a somber smooth finish of patchouli leaves that are packed in layers of oakmoss, silky aromatic sandalwood and resinous crisp cedar. This nearly finishes the perfume but all is not over. The dominating note here and what constantly rises though out the fragrance is a refined supple leather note. It never over powers the perfume but rather carries the perfume in subtle grace. It seems in the first hour to suddenly die, yet by hour two and beyond it returns to tease and tantalize for many hours to come. It in fact it undulates on the skin. This is pure magic and quite interesting.
Indeed, subtlety is the hallmark of this elegant fragrance. By no means is Rahele ever overpowering or demanding. It is suggestive, intuitive, and lightly sensual. A perfect fragrance for both discerning men of taste and chic women of elegant refinement.
(photo above and below from Fragrantica)
(Neela Vermeire)
The dead never return.
On the morning of March 27, 1964 Marie-Anne Lefèvre was started to see her husband in the small café in Megève. After all he had been dead for five years.
Claude was in the resistance during the War and it was his job to report on possible Nazi collaborators. He had mistaken Marie-Anne for a woman he was assigned to follow. He tailed after her expecting that she was going to meet her German lover at the Ritz, when in fact she was simply going to 31 Rue Cambon behind the Ritz to buy a bottle of perfume for her mother. As he followed he tried to ignore the sway in her walk and how her chestnut hair bounced as it caught the late Autumn sunlight. When his mistake became clear to him that he was after the wrong woman he followed her to the Place de la Concorde where with clever machinations around one of the fountains he managed to bump into her causing her to drop her shopping bag breaking the bottle of Sycamore. He took her back to Chanel and bought her a new bottle. Within the month, they were married.
Since the end of the War they had lived a life of small luxuries and great charm for 15 years in Paris on the Rue d’Édimbourg. It was an exciting time they shared, He a leading actor in La Comédie-Française and she with her little art gallery L’oeil d’or on the Avenue George V near the Café Francis. It was a whirlwind of openings both theatrical and artistic that keep their relationship alive and vibrant. For each of their passions gave them an exciting day away which afforded a meeting in the evening filled with shared stories of glories and sometimes disappointments. Equal but separate lives that encompassed love without suffocating it. Then quite suddenly in the winter of 1958 Claude became ill. Within mere weeks he was gone.
Marie-Anne stayed on for the next five years in the apartment on the Rue d’Edimbourg until at fifty-eight she decided she had enough of the lights of Paris. She sold the gallery to a young assistant and transferred her life to the small ski resort of Megève. She moved in to a modest Chalet near the Résidence Maeva Le Mont d’Arbois. It was a quite solitary life of reading, a little writing to friends in Paris, afternoon walks and always the café in the morning for café au lait and croissants. And every day, each day without fail she thought of Claude.
But this morning her somnambulistic existence was shattered. The trip bell over the door chimed, there was a shiver of cold air on her cheek as the door swung open. A crunch of snow encrusted boots as a man walked past her where she sat, his coat brushed her shoulder. There was the conversant smell of Eucalyptus, pink pepper and vanilla. His smell. She ignored the olfactory recognition and continued to read her book as her coffee cooled.
The man ordered his coffee and even though he whispered his voice, a warm baritone nearly filled the room, It tugged at her right ear and she looked up from her book. At first, she only noted that he was a handsome man of about fifty-two. Well-proportioned and of medium height with wavy black hair that was slightly silver at the temples. She looked back down to her novel. The scent of the man grew slightly insistent and blended with the smell of roasted coffee beans and fresh warm pastry. She looked up again, he was sitting facing the window as the sun broke through the clouds momentarily while the snow fell beyond his profile. It was Claude’s profile almost to the exact slope of his forehead down to his strong neck and prominent Adam’s apple. She starred only long enough to drink in the sight of this man who so resembled her love, her Claude. She pulled her eyes away and let them rest on the page of her book without reading a single word.
She sat there until he left without looking up again. The trip bell rang and the door swung open, a blast of winter air and then it swung shut with a dull crunch of snow and old wood. She looked up again and watched as he walked across the square and got into a black Mustang. Sleek and wild surrounded by Peugeots, Ferraris and Citroens it rumbled a steamy exhaust and the red glow of its taillights winked. It was strange and beautiful and seemed to be made of sacred fire. When he drove away, Marie-Anne looked back down to her book. She re-read the top line on page 156 then closed the book.
Maybe she would see him again. But she hoped she would not.
* * *
Someone asked me recently how I would compare classic fragrance to what is being made today and I immediately thought of Bruno Fazzolari. He is one of the new perfumers of the last five years who is on to something wonderful. A creative process in perfumery that is both modern and classical at the same time.
I first met Bruno at the SF ARTISAN PERFUME SALON 2013 where he was launching his line. I was immediately taken by the beauty and sophistication of his work, especially in Au Dela. His work for a new perfumer was eons ahead of everyone else at that event. What I smelled in that particular fragrance was a time machine to 1947. I was smelling a timeless new perfume by Christian Dior. I was smelling a master’s work. Lighting in a bottle, and I knew I was there and very lucky to witness the birth of a star.
(BRUNO FAZZOLARI)
What Dior did in fashion by bringing glamour and yards of fabric back to the forefront of fashion after the horrors and austerity of World War II was to create the “New Look” a term coined by Carmel Snow of American Vogue to describe the romantic new movement of the mid-20th Century. Bruno Fazzolari in a very real way in the early 21st Century, is doing what Dior did. He is creating the “Nouveau Sens” in perfumery. He is bringing romanticism and glamour to the niche market in a way that is both classic and modern. And I for one could not be more thrilled.
In his new fragrance, Feu Secret I find the magic has reached a new level of beauty and artistry. It is a dry and warm beauty. Opening with dangerous and bitter touch of hemlock which is punctuated with a sharp jab of green Spruce. This is a fleeting tease to the arrival of a warm burning leaves note of the most amazing eucalyptus. A smell I grew up with in Southern California where in the summer the Eucalyptus trees seem to give off a smoky smoldering scent.
The middle gets even better. A light spice not leaning toward ginger is provided by a turmeric note, spiced up with pink pepper. But here is the kicker, Iris. This note that usually takes on a lip stick, Max Factor quality is this time not in the back-stage dressing room on the dressing table waiting to go on at all. No, this Iris is wrapped up in that burning eucalyptus and the combination becomes the sacred heart of this fire. The supporting base notes of Himalayan cedar, burch tar and a rich thick as butter vanilla round out this fragrance and bring it all home in style.
It is completely wearable for any occasion from day to evening, Full enough for the colder months but certainly something I would wear in the height of summer, that fire, that smoke is so perfect for the season.
So to answer my friend who wanted to know what I love that is both modern and classic, J’dore Feu Secret. And I adore the work of Bruno Fazzolari, the master perfumer of San Francisco.
The screams of the horses where horrifying as they plunged into the cavernous canyon. Lily Chu’s British protector had pushed her ahead of himself at the last moment of their dash across the rope bridge. The force of that final shove sent her into the side of the mountain and she fell in a bruised heap within a sheltering crevice. The pursuing Chinese solders could not see her from the opposite side of the gorge where they had shot the support ropes of the suspension bridge causing its collapse.
Lily didn’t move. Some instinct within her held her plastered into the crevice holding her breath. She could hear the Chinese talking loudly and laughing on the other side. Slowly she counted to ten as their voices trailed away. They were leaving. The wind chaffed her ears. Only then did Lily realize that the Nepalese men must have fallen to their deaths with the horses.
“Is it safe? Are they gone?
No one answered. It was cold and silent save for the very faint sound of the laughing Chinese. Lily’s hand covered her mouth in horror. He had fallen with the Nepalese and the horses. She was utterly alone on the side of a frozen mountain in Nepal.
“Hey…HEY!” an urgent horse cry ravaged the wind. “Lily?”
“Oh, my God! Where are you?”
The rising sun’s rays were creeping down the walls of the mountains as she scrambled out from the crevasse onto the narrow horse path. The bridge was gone and only two ropes dangled over the edge of the precipice where once the bridge had been.
“I’m just hanging around waiting for the coast to be clear.
She dropped to her knees and crawled to the edge and looked over the side. There, hanging onto a few wooden cross slats of what remained of the bridge was the British Agent. And hanging on to his back was Atash. Far below the river raged having long moments before swallowed up the men and horses and carried them away.
“Atash, climb up over me and then you and Lily can help me up. Hurry I don’t think….” Before he could finish Atash was scrambling over him up to Lily’s outstretched hand.
“Come on Jim” Atash called out to his friend as he and Lily reached down to help him up.
“So, that is his mysterious name!” Lilly thought as his fingers just reached hers.
“Yes, come on Jim you owe me that perfume bath you promised me and I can’t very well have it without you?”
He laughed as the morning sun hit him square in the face.
The ping of lead on rock ricocheted into a sorrowful echo. The three looked back down the gorge to see a lone Chinese solder at the far bend. He must have been the last in line and looked back in time to see the three survivors.
“COME ON!” Atash urged.
Jim was up and over in a flash, grabbing Lily and Atash they dashed and dogged a fusillade of bullets to the next bend that lead to higher ground and the interior of Nepal.
***
Lily stood next to the little duty free shop in the Lukla Airport. It was closed. Locked inside there were bottles of perfume lined up along the back wall. Lilly laughed. “Who would have dreamed that in this backwater there would be Chanel, Dior, and Tom Ford and… that it would be closed.” She really wanted to freshen up if only with a spritz or two of perfume.
“Religious holy day Miss.” Atash said looking in with her. “I wear Savage Miss, It is very popular here in Nepal.”
“Come on Miss Chu” Jim said. We have to say goodbye to Atash and get on board before the weather changes. Its a long flight to Jaipur.”
Lilly looked out onto what passed for a tarmac and a very short runway that ended on the edge of a cliff. A small single engine plane quivered as like a dead leaf as a gust of wind hit it from the side. “Isn’t there another way to get to Jaipur?”
“To India? No, not from here. Don’t worry only one in six flight are lost on takeoff out of Lukla.”
Twenty minutes later Lily Chu rapped in her mink up to her chin sat huddled next to Jim as he guided the rickety plane down the runway at break neck speed toward the abyss. She grabbed the sides of her seat as the asphalt slipped further and further towards its unforgiving end.
“Pull UP!” She screamed. “We’re running out of runway!”
Jim let out a whoop and grinned as he pulled the stick towards him at the very last second. Everything solid fell away beneath the plane as it bounced into very heavy turbulence and began to climb hesitantly towards the misty blanket that hid the Himalayas from view.
“Well Lilly next stop Jaipur, unless we hit the mountain hidden somewhere in that cloud.”
Lily squeezed her eyes shut.
“Oh and by the way, my name isn’t Jim.”
At a window next to the Duty Free overlooking the runway a man stood watching as the plane disappeared into the clouds. He walked to the ticket desk and bought a one way ticket on the next plane to Jaipur.
***
Tom Ford’s Musk Pure is one of four of the 2009 Private Blend White Musk collection. To me it is something of a cliffhanger. What do I mean by that? Well it starts off rather generic fresh and boring and with a very acetate vibe radiating out in the opening. That I did not like at all. In fact, I thought my sample had gone off and turned. I was going to dismiss it and wash if off but got distracted by my morning routine and headed out to the Post Office to pick up a package from Paris. Thus, I forgot to give it the heave ho
At about an hour into the life of the fragrance I noticed while standing in line at the Post Office that a warm and wonderful scent was wafting about me. I wondered what the woman in front of me was wearing and was about to ask her when I realized that it was my perfume that was delighting my senses. . I am glad that I ended up unintentionally giving it a chance to bloom on my skin. At that point when it began to reveal itself I was hanging on every moment of the development not sure just where it was going but hooked never the less for the duration of the adventure. A real cliffhanger!
The fragrance opens with the top notes of Bergamot, pepper, and ylang-ylang. Where that acetate accord came from I can’t say unless the unfortunate smell is the result of those three notes? Who’s to say? I could just be my skin chemistry saying whoa wait a moment. If you too get that accord…wait a moment. The mid notes are where the magic comes in. Sambac Jasmin, Lily of the Valley (Muguet) a beautiful Oris butter that radiates warmth when it mixed with a golden bee’s wax note. I was simply stunned at this point and drove home in a delicious cloud.
As beautiful as that first radiation that enveloped me was it was nothing compared to the dry down. This immensely gorgeous beauty last a ridiculously long time. I put it on at 8 am and it is now 10 pm and the dry down is ripe, warm, and hypnotic. This is NOT your typical laundry fresh musk. Here the Musk is baked with benzoin and a rather woody rather than vanilic tonka bean. I have spent the day discovering my wrist pressed to my nose repeatedly and smiling in delight at what this perfume does. It is enticing, delightful, and mysteriously compelling. It leads me on and on deeper and deeper into its warm beating beautiful heart.
Musk Pure might just be my most favorite Tom Ford Fragrance. To me it is a day to night scent because the longer you wear it the more complex and mysterious it becomes Perfect for winter and fall in my estimation. As for gender, marketed to women in my view it works for both sexes. With glowing balsamic, woody accords at the end that just make this one so very memorable.
LUKLA IS A REAL AIRPORT IN NEPAL AND CONSIDERED THE MOST DANGEROUS IN THE WORLD.
HERE IS A VIDEO OF A TAKE OFF ON A GOOD DAY.
LILY CHU WILL RETURN….
Bonjour Tristesse the 1958 film is from a novel by Françoise Sagan and was published when she was only 18. This stylish film is one of Otto Preminger’s best. The French New Wave has influenced him in his opening shots, but only on a visual level. This is pure Hollywood on ever other level. The melding of the two styles works perfectly and begins by setting the stark mood in stunning black and white widescreen shots of 1958 Paris. The present is painted in shades of grey and silver,
where Cecile portrayed by the beautiful Jean Seberg moves aimlessly thought her pointless upper crust Parisian life. Only when she encounters her father David Niven later in the evening does the past seep in on the edges of the Cinemascope frame in vivid color and finally takes over moving us from the present to last summer on the Riviera. The device is used several times as we move from past to present and finally at the end of the film it creates a stunning effect once you know what suddenly happened to Cecile and her father last summer. The thing that changed everything forever and allows Preminger’s camera to linger in the last frame of the film on Jean Seberg as she wipes away the make-up from her perfect face.
David Niven is perfectly cast as Raymond the aging playboy father of Cecile. He has the cool style and humor of a man who can’t commit to any woman and treats his daughter like a playmate rather than his child. His particular talents as an actor are that he seems to be playing the “David Niven” character in most of his films but here in `Bonjour’ as he often does in so many roles he makes a nice little twist on the “character”. He catches you off guard to wrench his and the audience’s emotions and prove once again what a good actor he is.
The French actress Mylene Demongeout is delightful as Elsa, Ramon’s summer plaything. She thinks everything that happens to her is “Brilliant!” when in fact most of the time it isn’t at all. She is “Brilliant!” in the role.
At first Deborah Kerr also seems to be playing her role by rote but it is just a ruse to set us up for her fall. As does Niven she too digs deeper in to her persona as Anne Larson and carries the film to its surprise ending. She is a joy to watch as a film actress and here she is particularly wonderful.
Jean Seberg who with her short cropped spiked hair is the heart of the film. The emotional lens through which the audience experiences the unfolding story. In certain shots reminded me of Sharon Stone in her youth, Seberg had that kind of blonde goddess look that Miss Stone possesses. She was only 19 when she made the film and in the hands of her director she presents us with a sensitive and spellbinding performance as Cecile. She is at once a teenager in turmoil and a young girl on the verge of becoming a woman. This is a delicate high wire act that the young Miss Seberg executes with charm and elegance. She is fascinating to watch and just right for the role.
The subject matter is even today a little shocking and indeed this is one of the films of the 1950’s that put the sin in Cinemascope. Despite the restrictions of the day or because of them filmmakers of that time were challenged in ways they are not today. Challenged to be inventive and insinuate things that we were supposedly too innocent or too naive to know happen in the world. Those filmmakers knew that the imagination is more vivid and titillating than what they might show. It was good that the antiquated production code of the Hayes office crumbled in the 60’s but with its passing we lost a whole vocabulary in film. Here is a wonderful example of the meeting of the Movies and 50’s cinematic innuendo that serves this delicate story to a tee. I think “Bonjour Tristesse” is `Brilliant!’
***
I find that Cecile is at times very grown up and at others a typical teenager filled with angst and petty jealousy. What perfume would she sport? Well for a young girl like Cecile who wants to be all grown up but still has a taste for sweeter fragrances only one will do. Le Dix by Balenciaga. Created in 1947 this Aldehyde Floral (Some call it a Chypre Floral) by nose Francis Fabron is a mature yet playful fragrance. Joyful and yet there is a dark sexy undertow to it. It contradicts the expectation one has for an aldehydic perfume by being more grounded and earthy than one would expect. And then there is a vanilla fruity ambiance that meets with the florals to make it into a scrumptious invitation to come in closer, close your eyes and brush your lips next to the ear of the wearer. You almost want to lick the skin when smelling it. If Cecile wore it there most definitely would be a Lotiaesque air about her yet without guile. Like when a little girl puts on her mothers perfume just to smell grown up.
Perfumer Franics Fabron not only created Le Dix (The Ten) but is most famous for creating for Givenchey L’Interdit and for Nina Rici L’Air Du Temps. Three masterpieces of the late 40’s and early 50’s. Each of them should be rediscovered and enjoyed L’interditi and L’Air du Temps can be found in newer forms but you have to go on a hunt for vintage Le Dix.
It opens with top notes of aldehydes, coriander, peach, bergamot, and lemon. this is the fruity young opening that would capture Cecile’s attention. The bubbly sweet champagne cocktail that she might sip on the terrace overlooking the French hills tumbling into the Mediterranean Sea. With the rising heat of the southern afternoon the bubbles subside and the mid notes arrive, Lavender, a dry and very grownup Oris Root, (Lush and rich this adds a dusting of powder to the fragrance) and it mixes in with rose, ylang-ylang, and that very French note of Lily of the Valley. Here the fragrance moves away from the playful and toward a slightly more austere glamour. But his is just foreplay to what comes in the magnificent dry down. Pure dark sensuality and danger are introduced with a dose of Civet. The exotic woods of Peru Balsam, Sandalwood and layered over with a rich thick amber and then the huge vanilla and tonka bean bring in a frothy swirl of delectable deliciousness. Finally, around the 10th hour is settles into a lingering warm skin scent bolstered by white musk and vetiver.
Le Dix is a ten for me, a classic that I feel works as well today, as it did in 1947. If you like a floral that borders on a chypre with a fruity fresh edge then may I recommend it? It will work well for most women from 18 to 81 and in some cases, myself included for men with a daring and delicious sense of fun. Wear Le Dix and you will be brilliant.
SCENTS MEMORY 