Yesterday's Perfume

Andy Warhol on Perfume

I really love wearing perfume...

I switch perfumes all the time. If I've been wearing one perfume for three months, I force myself to give it up, even if I still feel like wearing it, so whenever I smell it again it will always remind me of those three months. I never go back to wearing it again; it becomes part of my permanent smell collection...

Smell really is transporting. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting are just not as powerful as smelling if you want your whole being to go back for a second to something. Usually I don't want to, but by having smells stopped up in bottles, I can be in control and can only smell the smells I want to, when I want to, to get the memories I'm in the mood to have. Just for a second. The good thing about a smell-memory is that the feeling of being transported stops the instant you stop smelling, so there are no aftereffects. It's a neat way to reminisce...

I get very excited when I read advertisements for perfume in the fashion magazines that were published in the 30s and 40s. I try to imagine from their names what they smelled like and I go crazy because I want to smell them all so much:

• Guerlain's: "Sous le Vent"
• Lucien Le Long's: "Jabot," "Gardénia," "Mon Image," "Opening Night"
• Prince Matchabelli's: "Princess of Wales" in memory of Alexandra
• Ciro's: "Surrender," "Réflexions"
• Lenthéric's: "A Bientot," "Shanghai," "Gardénia de Tahiti"
• Worth's: "Imprudence"
• Marcel Rochas': "Avenue Matignon," "Air Jeune"
• D'Orsay's: "Trophée," "Le Dandy," "Toujours Fidèle," "Belle de Jour"
• Coty's: "A Suma," "La Fougeraie au Crépuscule" (Fernery at Twilight)
• Corday's: "Tzigane," "Possession," "Orchidée Bleue," "Voyage à Paris"
• Chanel's: brisk "Cuir de Russie" (Russian Leather); romantic "Glamour; melting "Jasmine"; tender "Gardénia"
• Molinelle's: "Countryclub," Demi-Jour" (Twilight)
• Bonwit Teller's: "721"
• Helena Rubenstein's: "Town," "Country"
• Weil's: Eau de Cologne, "Carbonique"
• Kathleen Mary Quinlan's: "Rhythm"
• Lengyel's (pronounced "len-jel"): "Impérial Russe"
• Chevalier Garde's: "H.R.R.," "Fleur de Perse," "Roi de Rome"
• Saravel's: "White Christmas"

— From The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) by Andy Warhol

(I think most people reading this will identify a little sheepishly with how long this list is, his perfume lusts becoming more and more obscure. I like the way he puts the perfume names in quotations, as if they were titles of books or movies. I wonder how Andy would have felt about Bond No. 9 branding his name into their perfumes. On a side note, Andy Warhol's syntax and deadpan style has a way of creeping into your own writing if you read his prose even for a brief time... Anyway, I'm touched and surprised by the King of the Hipsters' love of perfume — especially his love of vintage perfume!)

I Launched an Indiegogo Campaign for My Book

Dear Readers,

For the past four years, I've been collecting, sniffing and writing about vintage perfume on this blog. I've done it as a labor of love (as I hope is obvious!), and I'm grateful that I get a chance to pour more of that passion into my new book, Scent and Subversion: A Century of Provocative Perfume (Lyons Press, 2013).

As you perfume lovers know — vintage perfume ain't cheap. Even a decant of vintage perfume can be $20 for 1 ml; forget the rare bottles! I've spent a small fortune over the years collecting this stuff and sharing my thoughts about it, and if you've enjoyed what you've read here and learned about vintage perfume as a result, perhaps you could contribute to the fundraising campaign I've started on Indiegogo.

I'm almost finished with Scent and Subversion, but I still need to travel to interview perfume folks (in France and Germany), and I still need to acquire the remaining perfumes and perfume ads to complete the book.

Indiegogo is a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter. Using the Indiegogo platform, I describe the project I'm raising money for, provide a fundraising goal ($5,000) with a time limit (35 days), explain how I'll use the money, and offer "perks" for each level of contribution. Contributions start at $5 (every bit helps!), and each level is matched with gifts at that contribution level. There's also a video on Indiegogo that talks about Scent and Subversion and shows some of the gorgeous ads that will illustrate it.

If you're not able to contribute financially, I'd really appreciate it if you could consider forwarding this link to your friends, family or anyone you think might be interested in supporting the culture of perfume.

Thank you, and please check out Indiegogo!

P.S. That's not the real book cover; I'm not sure what it will look like yet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basenotes Interviewed Me About Vintage Perfume Collecting: Check It Out!

Lila Das Gupta of Basenotes recently interviewed me about vintage perfume collecting, my favorite perfumes, and my upcoming book Scent and Subversion: A Century of Provocative Perfume. Check it out!

And since 99.9% of you have no idea what I look like — there's a rare photo of me! (I hate getting my picture taken.)

Enjoy! Again, here's the link. I will update this neglected blog by the end of the week. I promise.

What Vintage or Discontinued Perfume Do You Want to Know More About?

I have a reader named Julie who is obsessed with Weil's Mollie Parnis. Mollie who? you may ask, as I did. Apparently, Mollie Parnis came out in 1978, and it seems to me to have orange blossom, maybe Persicol or some peach note, and perhaps vanilla, oakmoss and/or musk. (Emphasis on the "seems.")

I recently got my hands on a pristine mini of D'Orsay's Voulez-Vous perfume, a gorgeous green chypre with tobacco notes and a massive dose of civet. The Perfumed Court describes it as a green floral with some citrus, and  Gaia at The Non-Blonde says that it's a "haughty floral with plenty of green, hyacinth, rose and a light aldehydic opening" that dries down to "a powdery green with a touch of vetiver." Are we all kind of in the same ballpark? Ummm, I dunno! That's the beauty and frustrating thing about perfume: it's a wily thing...

I'm encountering more and more perfumes of the "obscure" or forgotten variety that I love and want to feature in my upcoming book on 20th century perfume, Scent and Subversion. But I want to be able to say something substantial about them, and I often find that when I have some notes to hold onto, I don't feel like I'm sinking into the "impalpable effluvia" of perfume (as Italo Calvino described it). I love perfume (obviously), my nose isn't half bad at detecting notes, but I'm not a perfumer or a chemist, so my educated guesses are just that — guesses.

Which brings me to the point of this post. I've enlisted the amazing Octavian Coifan of 1000Fragrances blog fame to sample a list of fragrances I'd like to get a better grip on. (For those who don't already know, Octavian is a perfumer, perfume historian, and writer who is not only able to detect specific notes/accords — both natural and synthetic — he's able to situate the perfumes in the context and history of other perfumes. He is amazing.) I've got my own list of perfumes, but I'm curious, are there any beloved perfumes you're holding onto that you know nothing about, even after scouring the Internet and books?

Tell me what they are, send me a 1 ml sample (if you have one) that I will forward to Octavian (is that not the best name ever?), and we'll both work on figuring out what the heck is in your beloved. Thank you!

Flashback: Perfumed Fans ("évantails") Used to Be a Thing

As regular readers of this blog know, I'm as interested in perfume culture as I am in perfume itself. So imagine my delight when I was reading one of my favorite blogs, World of Wonder, and came across this awesome excerpt from Arlene Dahl's 1965 advice book, unfortunately titled Always Ask a Man: Arlene Dahl's Key to Femininity.*

Mother to actor Lorenzo Lamas, this once Hollywood star-turned-advice- columnist/astrologer-paper-doll-maker (to read more about her, check out Bradford Shell Hammer's blog) provided a "useful" list detailing what Chic Is and What Chic Is Not.

Let's start with What Chic Is Not. It's not "Diamonds at breakfast." (Damn! I guess I'll have to clutch my pearls instead over my morning eggs and bacon.) It's also not "More than three colors in any ensemble" or "An aggressive manner." Among the things she thinks Chic Is: "A gay dinner hat."  "Taupe." And intriguingly — "Perfumed fans."

Really? In 1965? Perfumed fans seem like a thing from Louis XV's Perfumed Court era. A perfumed fan is also something I imagine a Southern Belle, back in the day, fluttering in front of her face while sitting in a swing on a plantation veranda. 

But I'm trying to imagine someone in Arlene Dahl's time (picture Joan Holloway from Mad Men, which is set in the early-to-mid-1960s) pulling out a perfumed fan! When would you do this? Wouldn't it look weird and unmodern?

Internet-trawling for perfumed fans netted some interesting information, though.

Perfume Intelligence tells us that from the 17th century onward, until perfume atomizers made their appearance in the second half of the 19th century, fans scented with perfume were one way of assuring you were in a fragrant environment. In the early part of the 20th century, many French perfume houses, including Rigaud and Parfums de Rosine, advertised their perfumes on perfumed fans. (See pics below.)

After the atomizer came out, perfumed fans became a means of advertising anything from funeral parlors (!) to champagne. I find it so interesting that perfume was once a vehicle for advertising homely, completely unrelated services and product. In my post on perfume nips, I discovered that even telephone companies sent out little plastic boxes of perfume nips to their customers! It's hard to imagine someone now handing you perfume as a means to sell you — I don't know — car insurance or something.

If you have any anecdotes or stories or information about perfumed fans and their use, do tell!

Perfume Quote of the Day: Italo Calvino's "The Name, The Nose"

"Epigraphs in an undecipherable language, half their letters rubbed away by the sand-laden wind: this is what you will be, O parfumeries, for the noseless man of the future. You will still open your doors to us, your carpets will still muffle our footsteps, you will receive us in your jewel-box space, with no jutting corners, the walls of lacquered wood, and shopgirls or patronnes, colorful and soft as artificial flowers, will let their plump arms, wielding atomizers, graze us, or the hem of their skirts, as they stand tip-toe on stools, reaching upwards. But the phials, the ampules, the jars with their spire-like or cut-glass stoppers will weave in vain from shelf to shelf their network of harmonies, assonances, dissonances, counterpoints, modulations, cadenzas: our deaf nostrils will no longer catch the notes of their scale. We will not distinguish musk from verbena: amber and mignonette, bergamot and bitter-almond will remain mute, sealed in the calm slumber of their bottles. When the olfactory alphabet, which made them so many words in a precious lexicon, is forgotten, perfumes will be left speechless, inarticulate, illegible."

Italo Calvino, "The Name, the Nose" from Under the Jaguar Sun

 

Please discuss, perfumaniacs. What does this mean to you?

Happy Mother's Day!

If you didn't get your mother perfume for Mother's Day, call her, tell her you love her, and/or reminisce about the perfume she wore!

Here's a post that could get you started...What perfume did your mother wear?

Perfume at the Movies: Narcisse Noir in Michael Powell's "Black Narcissus"

 

 

In Black Narcissus, Michael Powell's hypnotically beautiful film about nuns who relocate to a convent in the Himalayas only to become haunted by the earthly delights of their pasts, Caron's 1911 perfume Narcisse Noir is but one enticement to the world of sensuality.

For those of you lucky enough to have smelled the deliciously decadent vintage perfume Narcisse Noir by Caron,  the above clip from Michael Powell's 1947 film Black Narcissus depicting its disquieting effect  will make perfect sense. With its white orange blossom flower's pact with the devil and one of the lowest animalic base note growls in the history of perfume, Narcisse Noir is a reference perfume for those fetishized perfume terms "indolic" and "animalic" that make some perfumistas look for their fainting couches.

When the film begins, a group of Anglican nuns are asked to relocate to a palace in the Himalayas that was once the playground of concubines. They are to start a new order, headed by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr, below left), that will serve as a school and a hospital for the locals. Nevermind that monks who attempted the same thing previously failed spectacularly. "The Himalayas," says resident macho man and British overseer of the region, Mr. Dean (David Farrar), "is no place for a nunnery."

Amid the intoxicating natural splendor of the Himalayas is the artificial paradise, as Charles Baudelaire described it, of perfume. If the Himalayas is no place for a nunnery, then Black Narcissus is no perfume for one. In the above clip, a bejeweled, perfumed and bedecked local General (Sabu) removes his scarf one day during a study session at the convent. Redolent with Black Narcissus perfume he got "at the Army/Navy store in London," the scarf's scent bemuses Sister Ruth (the astonishing Kathleen Byron). "I don't like scent at all," she declares icily. To an inverse degree, the scent mesmerizes local bad girl Kanchi (Jean Simmons in unfortunate "brown face") who inhales its elixir, swooning in reverie. "Sister," asks the General, "don't you think it rather common to smell of ourselves?"

Common or not, resistance to all manner of sensual enticements proves futile. Almost as soon as they arrive, the nuns find themselves no match against their new home's haunting beauty. Memories of romantic and natural delights from their past threaten their dedication to the nunnery, to their vows of chastity, and in one nun's case, to sanity itself. But it's not just their past that seduces. Don't forget resident bohunk Mr. Dean, who is one of the palace's seductive features, along with the altitude, rolling greenery, flowers, and perfume.

An allegory for the failure of both British colonialism and its fantasies of "civilizing" natives, Black Narcissus is also about the power of sensual beauty over attempts to repress it. Baudelaire, who loved perfume and cosmetics as two of the "Flowers of Evil," would be pleased by a scene that symbolizes one nun's embrace of the dark side: the most dramatic application of red lipstick I think I've ever seen in the movies. As one reviewer writes, "It is enough to see the bright, red lipstick that Sister Ruth has put on to know that the apocalypse is near."

Perfume and lipstick as the downfall of civilization, or at least the harbinger of the occasion? I think I speak for many of us who say, "Bring it on."

(Thanks to my dear friend Jonno for introducing me to Black Narcissus and for grabbing the above clip. I should probably mention that although Sabu says that his perfume is Black Narcissus and not "Narcisse Noir," and Perfume Intelligence lists a few other obscure Black Narcissus perfumes — by Ahmed Soliman [1920], The Bacorn Co. [1915], Parfums d'Arys [1930] and Lotus du Noel [1930], I choose to believe that only Narcisse Noir could have elicited Kanchi's reaction and Sabu's devotion. Also, If you're concerned with what seems like the film's binary between natural/unnatural, natives/civilizing Brits — and you should be — also note that the film splendidly deconstructs this in dizzying, and probably unwitting ways. For one, by creating the "natural" Himalayas exclusively on a London soundstage, and by introducing the sensuality of native Sabu via the unnatural Western perfume he bought at the Army/Navy store. But don't get me started on poor Kanchi's face.)

 

My Book SCENT AND SUBVERSION: A Century of Provocative Perfume Will Be Published by Lyons Press

One spring night in 2008, I was in bed reading a New Yorker article by John Lanchester called Scents and Sensibilities. It was a meditation on the difficulty of conveying what he called "taste experiences" into language, as well as reviews of a couple books that did a splendid job of doing just that. One was a book about wine, and one — you guys know where I'm going with this — was a book about perfume by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, the magnificent Perfumes: The Guide.

I was transfixed by the elegant and funny writing Lanchester excerpted and tantalized by the possibility of smelling these perfumes Turin and Sanchez so evocatively described. I'd loved perfume as a child and tween, but my love had lain dormant for a couple decades despite my continued (desultory) purchasing and wearing of perfume. After reading The Guide, my Limbic System, like an awakened Rip Van Winkle, went on a zombie-like quest for braaaaains!!!!PERFUUUUUUME!!!!, and here I am, four years later, still obsessed by it.

As I continued to read about perfume in books (Chandler Burr's two awesome books The Emperor of Scent and The Perfect Scent) and blogs (Perfume Shrine, The Scented Salamander, 1000 Perfumes, Basenotes, Fragrantica, Grain de Musc, I Smell Therefore I Am, Bois de Jasmin, Olfactarama, The Non-Blonde, Katie Puckrik Smells etc., etc. look to your right for the others!), my perfume tastes focused on what could be described as Temporal Niche: vintage perfume.

Don't get me wrong, as I was collecting vintage, I was still sniffin' the new. There was my obsession with Serge Lutens' Muscs Koublai Khan, and particularly with this wonderful category I'd never heard of called "animalic." (Read this classic Basenotes thread to see why!) Etat Libre d'Orange's Sécrétions Magnifique blew me away with its skirting the "bleeding edge," so to speak, of what a perfume could smell like. And Christopher Brosius at CB I Hate Perfume seemed to have a restless, New Millennium urge to reset the barometer on smell to Year One, with his representational scents of Roast Beef, Old Fur Coat, and Burning Leaves. There were many, many others. Trust.

But there was, I felt, time to learn about the new. Turin and Sanchez made a compelling case against bad reformulations of classics, and waxed poetic about certain perfumes that, in their original form, were sublime. Vintage perfumes were disappearing, and I needed to smell as many as I could before I could never experience them again. Thanks to eBay, estate sales, Ye Olde Junque Shoppes, The Perfumed Court, and friends like Leslie Ann at the Miniature Perfume Shoppe and this blog's readers — some of these originals soon became mine.

I had so many a-ha, falling-down-the-perfume-rabbit-hole moments with vintage. A night of sniffing vintage Chanel No. 19 was revelatory for me, in that I realized that a well-made perfume is a Mute Invisible Cinema, with its own mise-en-scene, characters, atmosphere and narrative. Diorella was kaleidescopic in its strangeness and complexity. Narcisse Noir, Bandit and so many others showed me just how erotic and subversive perfume could be, their perfume notes and combinations a language full of stories. As well as being beautiful, these creatures held secrets about the women they were meant for and the culture they were made in, and I wanted to find out what I could. All this led me on my slightly insane quest to smell as much of 20th century perfume as I could, and to discuss how each decade's style reflected the culture it emerged from.

There have been times, including now, when the hierarchy of needs up there in the Madame Rochas ad have placed Perfume squarely before Food, Clothing, and Shelter. But here I am. Two cities (SF to NOLA), one agent (the patient and wonderful Gordon Warnock of Andrea Hurst Literary Agency who believed in this project), and one publisher (Lyons Press/Globe Pequot Press) later, and these years of perfume obsession are culminating in a book that will be published in 2013.

I'm excited about Scent and Subversion: A Century of Provocative Perfume. It will include descriptions and histories of over 300 vintage perfumes, decade by decade, from Jicky to Demeter's Laundromat (2000). It will cover drugstore perfumes as well as haute perfumes. It will have over 100 gorgeous and interesting vintage perfume ads I've been collecting over the years. There will be some history about perfume houses, noses, basic perfume appreciation glossaries, and essays about the history, sociology, and even philosophy of perfume. There may even be interviews with perfumers.

In many ways, Scent and Subversion is a feminist project as much as it is an aesthetic one, because I'm also interested in how women have experienced this art that has been (predominantly) dedicated to them. What does it mean to them? Why do they love it? That's why the comments on this blog, the conversations I've struck up with readers, and the friendships that I've formed around perfume have been invaluable to me. I've learned so much from every one of my perfume friends.

Scent and Subversion is a work in progress. I'm still collecting some vintage perfumes, and I'm still doing some research. I'll still occasionally blog, but I'm furiously working on the book now, so the posts will be less frequent. I may post a question I want to tackle in the book, and your feedback could help me formulate an answer. If any of you have suggestions — books you want to make sure I've read, vintage perfume you want to ensure gets covered (or that you want to send), ideas for the book, anything! — please drop me a line either in the comments section, or via email (yesterdaysperfume@gmail.com). Thanks to everyone who's chatted with me about perfume over these years. Y'all will definitely be getting acknowledged in the book!

 

 

Hear "Perfume Set to Music: The 'Sound' of Scents" by Harry Revel (1948)

I've reviewed Corday's lovely perfume Toujours Moi here on Yesterday's Perfume, but I've been wanting to "hear" it ever since I learned that composer Harry Revel translated it into music in the 1940s.

Revel had the synaesthetic inspiration to turn scent into melody when he caught a whiff of Toujours Moi on a Parisian woman. Apparently, it was only when he heard the Theremin instrument in the soundtrack of Hitchcock's Spellbound that he felt he was truly able to capture perfume's "ethereal quality."

I wanted to hear for myself how successful he was, so I got the 45, had a friend digitize it for me (thanks, Steeby!), and below are the first couple of Corday 'fumes-turned-tunes: Toujours Moi and Fame.

I'm not sure if I agree with the claim on the back of the album that "it is probably the only successful attempt to capture and reproduce...the 'sounds' of fragrance and scent." As fun and at times beautiful as the music is on "Perfume Set to Music," I don't see the correspondence between the perfume and the tune. Toujours Moi, for example,  is a seductive and sultry scent, and its musical counterpart? It sounds like the soundtrack to a Saturday morning cartoon, or the background music of an old movie. Interesting, but not perfume-like. Any Debussy piece, to me, sounds infinitely more perfumey.

Just listen for yourself. Do the tracks below for Toujours Moi and Fame sound like perfume to you? Or even those perfumes? Let me know! (One caveat: it takes at least two minutes to download the MP3 once you click on the link. Give it time; it's worth it!) And for your viewing pleasure and edification, I've also included a video of a cat playing a Theremin. It is awesome.

Download 2 Audio Track

Perfume Set to Music: The "Sound" of Scents (liner notes)

"The suite of musical sketches on this record is the result of a new and fascinating field of exploration by the British-born composer, Harry Revel. Inspired by the heady scents of the famous French Corday perfumes, it is probably the only successful attempt to capture and reproduce with musical instruments and human voice the 'sounds' of fragrance and scent.

Revel attributes the development of the sketches to a chance meeting he had with an attractive Frenchwoman in the bar of the Hotel George V in Paris late in 1936. 'The fragrance of her perfume,' the composer relates, 'transposed itself in my mind to a melodic theme. I was curious to know what the scent was and she explained that it was a famous perfume made by Corday — Toujours Moi. It occurred to me then that if one fragrance could inspire a melody there must be others that could do the same. Before leaving Paris I visited the offices of Corday and told them of my experience. They were intrigued by the event and suggested I visit Grasse, in Southern France, where Corday secures the oils and materials which go into the making of their perfumes. While in Grasse, and later, back in Paris, I spent many hours sampling perfumes and finally the idea for a suite became fixed in my mind. Before I returned to the States I had set down the first draft of a series of sketches which I titled 'Perfume Set To Music.'

MAGIC OF THE THEREMIN

"In the years that followed, I attempted to put the finishing touches to the sketches but was disturbed by my inability to score them in such a way that they would convey the actual ethereal quality of rare perfume.

It was not until I attended the premier of the motion picture 'Spellbound' and heard its magnificent score which employs the Theremin that I found the answer to my problem. The Theremin is a difficult musical instrument to describe. From it comes a sustained sound which is drawn out by moving the hands before the sounding board without touching it. The moment I heard its subtle tones I knew that in this instrument lay the key to the scoring of my suite.

Shortly thereafter, Revel completed the suite and the actual recording took place at the RCA Victor studios in Hollywood. Dr. Samuel Homan, who participated in the sound track recording of 'Spellbound' played the Theremin, with the orchestra and chorus under the direction of Leslie Baxter."