Maartje Verhoef and Clément Chabernaud by Alasdair McLellan
A friend handed me a sample of this [Valentino Donna] last month. Sweet, almost cloying, but in a way I kind of like - similar to a mall brat or a hey-I’m-so-popular girl scent. Perhaps for someone much younger, they’d think it was sexy, feminine, and the ideal scent to let linger on sheets. On a late-30s woman, it smells a little try-hard, unoriginal. I still like it though; it makes me feel a little foolish but in a good way.
The sample card says:
“An Italian chypre fragrance with a sensual, luminous feel. The surging bergamot reveals the powdery radiance of iris pallida and the voluptuous femininity of rose essence. Enveloping leather notes blend with vibrant patchouli to underscore the bold signature.”
Strange to read the word “vibrant” paired with “patchouli.” There’s a first for everything!
Notes: Exotic Woods, Black Amber, Patchouli, Night-Blooming Jasmine, Vanilla Orchid
Sometimes, when I read about perfume and the notes, I wonder about the semantics of the marketing - what on earth does “Exotic Woods” even mean to a consumer? I don’t think it means even half as much as “Amber” or “Patchouli” - however even the ‘notes’ need to sell a fantasy so “exotic woods” has crept into the lexicon, and when you google what this *actually could mean* you just come up with a plethora of fragrances also selling “exotic woods.” I have an instinctual knowledge of what this means (atmospherically spicy, woody, aka sexy scents), but getting a cold definition is difficult, perhaps due to the marketers’ selling of a fantasy but more likely, nobody wants to reveal their secret ingredients. Stripping away those stories from perfume sure is a bummer.
That being said, Nest’s most popular fragrance, Midnight Fleur, is chock full of “exotic woods” and it smells pretty heady, heavy and incredible. I’m reminded of bold ‘80s fragrances - and with a Reagan-esque man in the White House, perhaps that’s apropos. What’s next, big shoulder pads? Just sayin.
(When I was in elementary school, all my teachers wore super heavy scents like Poison and Youth Dew, even Shalimar! I don’t think it was until the ‘90s that these bursts of spice were deemed improper (cK One is still sold, you guys!), however nowadays it seems like everything is permissable. I’m fine with that, to be honest, but I know many perfume haters who are *not.*)
Midnight Fleur opens like an explosion of femininity, but in no way immature or youthful. It is the scent of a thousand flowers drenched in amber, it would go well with coffee and a cigarette, a freeze-dried hairdo and skin-skimming sheath. It’s part nude hose and spiked heel; both vintage and here is the future. Fragrantica says it’s “moderate,” I’d give it a firm “heavy.” Beautifully balanced, it is one of my favorite scents in recent memory.
I became a “pet parent” last year, well - more accurately, September of 2016. I take a ridiculous amount of pictures of my dog, I think about her all the time, I worry about her health and wellness and happiness (dog walker, pet insurance, BarkBox subscription, everything - check). I have always been an animal lover, but this is the first pup of my own, as an adult. We’d had pets growing up, but a childhood family pet is different - you’re not truly responsible for the life and livelihood of the little critters, you coexist under someone else’s roof and if things go bad, (hopefully) an adult or parent will pick up the pieces. Now that weight rests on my shoulders, and it has been thrilling and lovely, but also anxiety-inducing and heart-wrenching and “dear God, what have I done!” has entered my mind more than a few times. Falling in love always means there will be a falling out of love, aka a death, looming in the future, and these sorts of emotions and horrible thoughts are amplified when you suffer from anxiety.
But for now, each day is a blessing with her. Perhaps that is one of the more gentle lessons about love and anxiety - whether it be a person or a pet - that you make each day count because loss is somewhere along the timeline. I sometimes wonder if normals have this same thought process? I constantly worry about loss, using words like “I can’t imagine” which is absurd considering I imagine it really quite frequently.
So within the anxiety of love and loss, there is this gift, where we see the forest for the trees, and we take in moments and know their worth. For that I am grateful. And one of the things that endears me to this silly, wonderful, lovable pup is her smell.
Growing up, our family dog had a very strong scent of a sporting dog. He most often smelled like the proverbial “wet dog” - that rank, fishy, dirty dog smell. I’ve been around other people’s dogs and they never struck me as smelling particularly good; they smelled like dogs. And I realize this is a personal journey of scent - to love the way your own dog smells. I realize this is because I love her and am bonded to her. But when you kick that logic out, I gotta say… my dog smells like sunshine. She smells like dried hay, clean feathers and homemade blankets. Sometimes I feed her salmon or tuna and she is a stinky little mess, but when she’s sleeping, curled up in a ball, she smells like a kitten (we even call her Kitty). Her paws don’t smell like Cheetos, they smell like saltines. Sometimes her ears get borderline offensive (which delights me to no end, because an unassuming dog being insulted by “you’re stinky” is hilarious to me), they have a stench of honey and puppy-body odor.
I know mothers and fathers love their babies’ smell, that we find our partners’ odors to be appealing and sexy, but I hadn’t read too much about falling in love with my dog’s smell. Does this make me a weirdo? Sure, why not. I’ll take it. *smothers face into pup’s fur*
It is one of the oldest fragrances in the world. Nicolas Baldovini’s team at the Institut de chimie de Nice (CNRS/UNS) has just discovered the components that give frankincense its distinctive odor: two molecules found for the first time in nature, named “olibanic acids” by the scientists. Their research results have just been published online, on the website of the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
It is mentioned more than twenty times in the Bible, where it is one of the gifts offered by the Three Wise Men. Frankincense (also called olibanum), one of the world’s oldest fragrances, is a gum resin that exudes from the bark of Boswellia trees, which grow in countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It has been used for more than 6,000 years by every civilization, from Mesopotamia to the present. Regularly burned during religious ceremonies, it contributes to the very particular smell of churches. Despite its long history and the large amount of research dedicated to it, the exact nature of the molecules that give frankincense its distinctive fragrance surprisingly remained unknown. Read more.
The summer of stink has come and gone: the much-anticipated and literally deadly (smelling) Corpse Flower had a 3-hour wait in Denver, while The New York Times hit the streets with a perfumer and a sommelier, sniffing out trash, taxis and… toilet. Eau de toilette takes on a whole new meaning as IFF perfumer Céline Barel mentions that the superluxe fragrance they’re huffing has “fecal” notes; the daring and provocative note “makes the fragrance literally irresistible,” she says. And it’s true: that “fecal” note actually gives sexy fragrances their depth and sensuality – either in the form of indole or a variety of other animalic notes such as glands from the civet cat, musk deer, castoreum from beaver – all contrived to elicit les responses dangereuses.
Sometimes referred to as “skank” or “body funk,” these perfumes have probably crossed your mother’s dresser once or twice – in their original incantations, Guerlain’s Shalimar was blessed with nether-region odeur, the classic Shocking by Schiaparelli was created to smell like a woman, post-coitus and way post-shower, and even that “grandmotherly scent” Chanel No. 5 exploded with indole. The note appeals directly to the libido, almost like a deep, dark pheromone, so perfumers can essentially create the scent of sex and sell it too. It is the bottling of an aphrodisiac, one that you don’t necessarily even consent to sniffing – it will find you and waft up your nose, sans permission.
Covered by other notes so as to be a little more front door than back, the fragrance usually doesn’t necessarily evoke excrement, but it is lurking underneath. It’s a trademark of white florals in order to attract pollinators: jasmine is a rather popular natural culprit of indole, and even beloved orange blossom and tuberose are guilty of the gutter undertone. On a molecular level, it also has a lot in common with horse sweat. As a fragrance opens, it might smell sweet and fresh – if indole is used sparingly, it smells nothing like waste. If the molecule is used in high concentrations, however, it smells like… well, feces; some people even find it smells like “tooth decay.” Christopher Brosius, creator of CB I Hate Perfume, says, “To me, it smells more like dead flesh – and in high quantities, it gives me a headache and is downright repellant. However, broken down in fractions, and used well, it can be very, very attractive, sensual and human – a deep skin-like quality. If you cross that line, the scent loses its elegance and becomes unendurable.”
It’s in the small traces that the note gives a fragrance complexity, earthiness and that truer humanness; author Denyse Beaulieu paraphrases Dr. Paul Jellinek’s The Psychological History of Scent: “Though repulsive when smelled out of context, these subtle hints of the naked body were most frequently encountered in the act of love and therefore carried positive connotations.” Because it smells like sex, but also like life and death, perhaps indole is the most existential of the notes – and aren’t all flowers inherently sexual as well as morbid? We smell flowers as they are dying. We see flowers as they are boldly attracting pollination. Why wouldn’t they also smell of rot, waste and decomposition?
Neurologist Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell & Taste Research Foundation has a more Freudian take on the matter: “we like different odors, even ones that might be ‘disgusting’ because we admire what we create.” And by create, he does in fact mean, your fecal output. In terms of self-absorption, “olfactory narcissism” may be the root of our desire for this uncouth note. How much you like the smell, of course, is dependent on how much it reminds you of your own – or, to put in even more of an ick factor, how much it reminds you of something from your childhood. Perhaps trace amounts of a molecule that reeks of waste reminds you of a simpler, sweeter time rather than the last time you ravaged a partner. Either way, you are more drawn to a perfume with indole than without.
The range of brain-baffling rude scents - sweaty, musky “skank” scents, a word we’re most used to hearing in Mean Girls – give sex or nostalgic appeal through a variety of pungent smells: sweat (cumin), body odor or urine (grapefruit), fecal matter (white florals). They evoke the most sincere appreciation for nature – both in botany and anatomy. While some may turn up their nose, others embrace the stinky: the Corpse Flower garnered tons of visitors in both Denver and Chicago with its anticipated “limburger cheese, feet and rotting fish” odor, a natural emission to attract pollinators (apparently dung-loving insects are all that will do for the extremely choosey Corpse Flower) and people were legitimately bummed when the Chicago flower did not deliver in its grossness. And among perfume connoisseurs, unpleasant notes are an art form, the antithesis of a commercial product, a sign of an adventurous and skillful nose. Plus it doesn’t hurt that the arbiters of all things chic, the French, have been dousing themselves in sexy, elegant malodors for centuries and love it. Luckily for the olfactory anxious, a little indole goes a long way and perfumers know it, so you can inch your way in and smell just a little risqué rather than a whole lot raunchy.
JJB: Anjelica, you remember things in such beautiful detail in your memoir, and now I’m going to ask you to remember a whole lot more. When we met, I was 11, you were 8, and your perfume was Blue Grass.
AH: Blue Grass. Wonderful, Elizabeth Arden, with a sketch on it of a small child riding a horse with its mane tumbling with blue roses.
JJB: Admit it, it was the horse that got you…
AH: It was a maiden on a horse, and maybe she was sprinkling the blue petals. But it was a lovely image and I liked the clear, fresh scent of Blue Grass. It was the first perfume my mother ever gave me.
JJB: Did we go and buy perfume at Woolworth’s in Galway?
AH: Undoubtedly. My favorite was—it was in a dark blue bottle…
JJB: I don’t remember
AH: No, it was really important. You know what, I think I might even have the bottle. Can you hold on a second?
JJB: That’s typical. A bottle that’s almost 60 years old?!
AH: Yes. Hold on: Soir de Paris! Soir de Paris! In the cobalt blue bottle.
Soir de Paris perfume.
JJB: Oh my god. And we got it at Woolworths?
AH: It was in the exalted dish, the one furthest away from your creepy crawly little hands, where they could watch you, because it was really quite expensive.
Joan Juliet Buck interviews Anjelica Huston on Yahoo! Beauty in the article BFFs Anjelica Huston & Joan Juliet Buck Reminisce, from July 2015.
Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass is still available. I actually was just researching Soir de Paris for a history of perfume I’m working on - pretty sure the original is extremely rare, notes available to read here.
Have to admit that I did miss the scent of different things; the inside of the space station is pretty neutral, like an air-conditioned room. Smells of food or people or the different scents of the modules were really all you’d notice or get used to. It was interesting to me that the different station modules did have a different smell to them (none bad, just different); you could float through different parts of the station with your eyes closed and tell where you were just by the smell or feel of the place.
“From my childhood I recall days spent home sick from school, trying on my mom’s clothes and watching television show after television show. I remember spooning out chocolate or tapioca pudding from the box - tapioca, a word no one uses anymore. The smell of the house, damp and distinct. The aroma of old indigenous L.A. houses, even inland ones, comes from the ocean twenty miles away, a hint of mildew, but dry, too, and closed up, perfectly still like a statue. I can still smell the barest trace of gas from the old 1950s stove, an invisible odor mixed with sunshine streaming in from the windows, and somewhere, eucalyptus bathed in the haze of ambition.”
