Andy Warhol on Perfume

I have just stolen this off Yesterday's 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."

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


I love piece. I love how he has a discipline about giving up a certain perfume for the purpose of future reminiscence.
He really describes so well how the memory just stops the second the perfume is removed... I know sometimes when I'm walking around downtown and I catch a whiff of my mums, now discontinued perfume in a crowd my nose sniffs around hungrily wanting the memory tape to run its course. I'd probably follow them down the street if I could identify the source.

Supporting the habit

 http://yesterdaysperfume.typepad.com/
I love this woman's writing. She's funny, and doesn't go on with the purple prose, straight to the point. I love that its both entertaining and informative.

 "This glorious leather chypre starts off with a wonderful fresh/bitter herbaceousness combined with a very prominent body odor note from cumin. Please note: the cumin here doesn't suggest just your run-of-the-mill body odor, either. The BO note in Aramis is the smell of a man's arm pits who's been exercising for a while and possibly hasn't bathed in a couple days. It has that almost metallic sharpness that accompanies the aroma of an especially ripe pair of pits. Jarring — but sexy, in the way that smelling the body odor of someone you're attracted to can be both repellent and erotic."

Aramis by Estee Lauder (1965)

I love how in the perfume world you can just be like YES I love the smell of a sweaty armpit, what's YOUR problem? Stinky stinks is a blog topic for another day...
 I'm so blindingly jealous of her vintage perfume collection too. I often wonder how perfume junkies afford their habit. I can see that she's soliciting donations - and why not! Its better than stealing your nan's VCR.
Personally, I feel this duel emotion, like nothing is more exciting for me than the knowledge that new perfumes are in transit and will be arriving on my doorstep soon, meanwhile I experience great guilt every time I drop a wad of cash on some new stinks. I've limited myself to $90 a fortnight - which isn't that much considering I don't drink or smoke or buy expensive clothes or buy my lunch!
I love buying presents for myself - it's like Christmas but better because I don't have any laden anxiety that I might unwrap something that I don't like but will have to pretend to like in front of some obscure aunt, and will have to use it conspicuously in front of her for the next few months. My parcels always come in at 9 am or so on a Saturday. I literally leap out of bed. Through bleary eyes, I sign whatever the courier waves in my face, and then I spend a good long while playing with my new toys. Perfume is actually pretty nauseating on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning - but like a kid insisting on having birthday cake for breakfast, I just don't care. Then I get back into bed and thrust my perfumed wrists and elbows under my husbands sleeping face and order him to sniff me and give a nuanced commentary and comparison.

So, in an attempt to economize and not end up with full size bottles of perfume I don't even like in the end - I just purchased three vintage perfume samples off of trademe (ebay in New Zealand)

It was a choose three off the list kinda deal. I picked:

L'Aimant by Coty 

Orient Parfums - Which I actually know nothing about and cannot find any information about it online but it is vintage, oriental and inherently mysterious. It ticks all my boxes.

Soir de Paris by Bourjois - I was told by a Tabu collector on fragrantica: "the scent is just exquisite.The kind of perfume one would be careful with - it smells so precious, so well balanced, like a beautifully rendered piece of baroque music by The Academy of St Martins in the Fields."

I love Tabu, it will always be my classic favorite but the girl who sits next to me at work doesn't seem all that impressed I suspect... Might have something to do with the fact that she exclaims "I can smell you from here!" while fanning the air or "I don't want to get too close to you in case some of your perfume gets on me!" She's subtle for sure. I'm thinking I ought to migrate to something more work friendly. Dousing myself with Tabu seems to have totally crossed the line to downright offensive. I don't mind, any excuse to buy more perfume is fine.

Everything used to be better

I find it hard to write about NEW perfumes because I find 99.9% of what is out there to be totally uninspiring and completely banal (Serge Lutens aside). The shop ladies at Smith and Caughey's probably know my face by now, one of those sample sniffers who never forks out. What is passed off as perfume these days is really nothing more than a body mist. Especially cheaper celebrity fragrances that have such poor sillage and longevity, they really sum up our consumer culture at the moment - immediate gratification and an attention span of about 10 seconds. Most start off pleasant enough, those fruity-florals that hardly knock your socks off - most consumers will only be giving a few seconds of attention to each fragrance before another sample is being sniffed, they can't afford for anything to be too bold, especially when the younger crowd are buying them on name alone. So what if the scent hardly lingers? They're cheap enough to re-apply and re-buy.
 The grand dames of yesteryear: Poison, Opium, Youth Dew - Could they get away with them now with all their excesses and barbed edges?

 I love visiting these ladies. I sprayed Opium on my wrist last week and went to the library - that's my favorite place to try on a perfume, there's something about the ambient temperature in there and something about those old pages. Its quiet too, so long as I hightail past the noisy bogans and teenagers using the free computers. I feel like I can really get to know a perfume in there, like I can really pay attention to the shifting layers. What amazes me, when I try out a classic, is how the notes really shine out, one by one, they strip back, ohh cinnamon! Oh - Patchouli! Every few minutes its a totally new stink.
They were all trying to convey this sort evil vibe, of forbidden pleasures, drugs, sex - even Angel's cotton candy sweetness had a dark decadent heart - while the top note was cotton candy - its more a gluttonous bulimic binge than childhood trip to the fair. I truly believe that for a perfume to be truly great it has to convey something about humanity; death, sex, drugs, addiction, all the best perfumes have a hint of something repugnant. Maybe why all the complex perfumes lend themselves to the colder seasons and the introspection that accompanies.
 I imagine that women used to put a lot of thought into their signature fragrance, about a certain  persona they were attempting to construct be it mysterious, powerful, professional, assertive, sexy - there was a certain intentionality there, a commitment.

Fast forward to 2013. Or look outside your window! Here is a new stink by Givenchy, it's called Play.

 It looks like something I'd be embarrassed to own. It certainly doesn't look expensive, which it is, at least way more expensive than it should be. The problem with it, for me, is that a smart phone or an mp3 player is a banal, mass produced object. Their marketing department seems to have been like 'what do kids like?' music! They took it really literally and just ran with it.
The banality doesn't stop there though.

Look at this image. Just LOOK AT IT. I'm picturing it in my mind. Crowded party at a New York loft apartment. Everyone is rich and or famous and or supernaturally attractive. Two beautiful people scan the scene - their eyes lock, wordlessly one motions to the balcony, the other follows. Without exchanging names they find themselves secluded from the party. He reaches into his coat pocket and retrieves his Ipod, he nods in her direction and offers her the right ear bud. She accepts. Silently, they listen to Nicki Minaj on random shuffle.
That sounds like fun, said no one ever. And it smells utterly generic to boot. Play is NOT playful. I've noticed with so many of these fragrances, they smell flatly flowers at first, then poof its gone, leaving only a slight musk/sandalwood base, because they're the least offensive base notes available. You have to stick your wrist right under your nose to detect them.
Look at this poster from the same house, Givenchy in 1984 for Ysatis

That looks like a party I want to go to. First off, looks like the secret orgy society from Eyes Wide Shut AND they're playing chess. Second thoughts no, I don't really like chess.

I wonder where its going to go from here? Maybe all the interesting juice will be manufactured by indie labels and everything else will smell like Glade air freshener. Probably. How else can it go? Even if Etat Libre d'Orange went ahead and made a GG Allin celebrity fragrance, there's no stopping this train, and no one would get the joke - the people have voted with their dollars, this is what they want.

Someone elses shit: "Royal Fern" - An Excert from The Secret of Scent - Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell by Luca Turin

This is my favorite passage from this wonderful book and I shall dutifully transcribe this scene:

"Some say Fougère Royale is to fragrance what Kandinsky's first abstract gouache of 1910 is to painting: a turning point. What made Fougère Royale so special in 1881? It made used of a freshly minted synthetic ingredient called coumarin. To be sure, coumarin was contained in many natural products available to Parquet. But to have it pure, and cheap, allowed him to use a big dose and to get a different effect altogether. I am sitting across the desk of the osmothècaire waiting to be summoned down to the cold room to smell Fougère Royale. At last he appears, and we trundle down a flight of stairs and along a corridor to the cold room, where row upon row of unprepossessing, opaque aluminum bottles of different sizes are stored. The whole affair looks mundane until you read the labels: Émeraude, Iris Gris, Ambre Antique. It is like being taken to a corner of a zoo and allowed a glimpse of sabre-toothed tigers. The assistant finds the small bottle of Fougère Royale, dips two smelling strips, hands me one and keeps the other for himself. He's smelled it a hundred times, but I have noticed professionals go through this little sharing ritual. Is it because fragrance memory is so figurative, and they welcome a reminder? Is it a small stolen pleasure? Whatever, it has the feel of a brief communion, a quick pipe of peace inhaled in the presence of something great.

         

Here it is at last, under my nose. The Fougère dynasty has spawned vast numbers of familiar fragrances, almost all masculine, notably Brut, Azzaro Homme and the elusive Canoë. All are angular, soapy and quite unabashed. I imagined the founder of the line to possess those virtues in undiluted abundance. It makes the surprise even greater when  Fougère Royale starts the way some Bruckner Symphonies do, with a muted pianissimo of strings, giving and impression of tremendous ease and quiet power. It does smell of courmarin, to be sure, but it is also fresh, clean austere, almost bitter. This is the reference smell of scrubbed bathrooms, suggestive of black and white tiles, clean slightly damp towels, a freshly shaven daddy. But wait! There's a funny thing in there, something not altogether pleasant. It's a touch of natural civet, stuff that comes from the rear end of an Asian cat and smells like it does. Suddenly I understand: we're in a bathroom! The idea here is shit, and what's more, someone elses shit, that faint shock of slightly repellant intimacy you get when you go to the loo at someones dinner party and smell the air. Small wonder Fougère Royale was such a ssuccess. At a distance, he who wears it is everyone's favourite son-in-law; up close, a bit of an animal."

What makes a slut? - Rebelle by Rihanna Review

I'm not a snob - if I like the juice I'll buy the scent, celebrity fragrance be damned! Its been a particularly sunny and humid summer this year and I needed a signature frag. I wanted something that smelt like that magic mix of fake tan, sweat, and reef tanning oil. I went to the perfume counter and told the woman vaguely that I wanted something that smelt of 'coconut' she directed me to Selena Gomez - nice to know that even in my late-20's I look like I'd be down for buying something marketed for tweens (it actually wasn't terrible, by the way!). I don't really fall in love with summery fragrances, they're like a little fling, all the most complex scents shine on cold weather and linger on scarves, leather jackets and gloves. Summer is all about the sniff, sniff, yum factor. The shop assistant brought out Rihanna's range - I was incredulous about it until I sampled - yes, it was exactly what I was after: alcopops, coconut oil, chocolate. Smells like holidays I can't afford.

 The juice itself is not bad at all for a celebrity frag. Its not what I'd call complex, but its not trying to be, its warm and sweet with good quality sillage and impressive longevity and when I wear it people say I smell good but don't ask any more questions. That's pretty much what you come for, something nice and functional, not something that makes someone stop in their tracks and say "Oh my GOD what are you wearing?"

Her website announces that its made celebrity stink history, fastest selling of all time. This has to be due to more than name and marketing alone - it is a good scent.

I was pretty shocked when I read reviews calling this one 'slutty'. I'd file this one under wholesome holiday fun - Is that a genre? More like delicious daiquiri's with tiny umbrella's - rather than a bicardi breezer.

It got me thinking on what exactly are the characteristics of a "slutty" perfume - and as an aside - fucking hell its the 21st century, when is anyone going to hip to the jive that "slut" is a made-up concept invented purely to police female sexuality. Women, let's not reclaim it, lets just let it die. That being said - I'm still going to critique, perhaps for the benefit of future cultural historians.

"I have an interesting mind but I want to smell like a slut to be totally honest." — Lady Gaga

I've been asking around and generally it seems like what makes a so-called slut perfume is that sweet crowd-pleasing, inoffensive fruity-floral combo - maybe that's the key, as Jessica Cutler  said: "Sluts are the nicest people in the world. They're people pleasers!”
 Celebrity fragrances in general are tarred with the same brush. I wonder how much of this is just a projection of the type of image that these young female celebrities project? I'm sure that Jean Carles, the nose behind Tabu, the so called perfume for whores, would find Paris Hilton for women utterly demure and banal. By contrast, Tabu is unyielding intense, complex, sharp, offensive to many.
Rihanna sang "Sex in the air, I don't care I like the smell of it" the music video is a soft fetish extravaganza - I'm imagining the logical real smell of it all would be something that most would actively avoid: duct tape, dried saliva on hot skin, the shit-lube smell of anal sex, wet dick, sweat, piss, an unexplained tang of blood. I suppose that's the facade. We all suspect the same thing, none of its real, it's all a fantasy and it's all for show. A real crowd-pleaser indeed.
As usual, slutty doesn't mean anything at all, its just an insult tacked on to anything that has been deemed uncouth or undesirable and associated with the realm of women.

Breaking the Tabu

Back in the anorexic 90's when I was a child, and the early 2000's that was just more of the same we loved our 'clean' smells. The type of scents that had previously been reserved for cleaning products were now the latest offerings at the perfume counter. I remember my first perfume loves: that harsh lemon-rose of Tommy Girl, and his wholesome all-American models who looked like they walked off the set of Dawson's Creek 

Ralph by Ralph Lauren, more of the same, every teenage girl had this on the go, the floral simplicity of Fire and Ice Cool by Revlon (Not Charlie - Revlon's disco-diva subsidiary), and the cold, strict, chilled lemon vodka dominatrix Donna Karan for Women - I wear this one at work sometimes when I feel like being really serious. A scent that I did not come across at the time but deserves honorary mention under that aesthetic is L'eau d'Issey by Issey Miyake. 

This could easily be an advert for a new shower cleaner! ^
 
I have really strong memories as a child of being around my mum's female friends. They seemed even larger than regular adults with their big hair, bright pink glossy lipstick, sequin cardigans, stirrup pants with pumps, and strong, dominating perfume, all competing with one another. I don't know the names of them but they were the real beasts of the 80's, laden with spices, animal mimicking musks like civet - not the tame white musks of today, heavy oppressive woods, brittle aldehyde's, the flowers were not polite roses or lily of the valleys but big mean rotten ylang ylang blossoms. All the scents specifically designed, it seemed, to torture children and make their eyes water.  The memory of my mum rushing off to work will always be a heavy handed application of Fendi - she always said that it 'settled' through the day, but all I got was the boozy blast.
But digress! This entry is about Tabu by Dana. When I was a youngin, my friends and I would hit the cheap perfume section of our local Big W. Where all the old big hitters are left to rot, only purchased by older women. There were the Lavender waters by Yardley, and the sensible mum cum nan Laura Ashley types like Tweed: 

At least 5 of those 20 something views are by yours truly. 

Our favorite perfume to sniff and giggle over was TABU.

 We couldn't believe that any woman would purposely pay money to smell of THAT. It was so wrong and over the top, it smelt so intensely of incence, spices, vanilla and benzoin. It had that old-lady stink to it, and it was a cheapie - it cost less than $20. The image I had of a Tabu wearer was a boozy, cigarette smoking, middle aged woman at a pub, too much make up and too much cleavage.  This is certainly not how I feel about it now! I was a teenage know it all. 
In my 20's I am absolutely bored of the clean scents, I like them, but I'm not compelled towards them, one of my favourites is one of my era, Angel by Thierry Mugler, maybe the only evil sillage monster of the 90's that I can name, and at least SOME of the pleasure in wearing it is in forcing its cloying sweetness on everyone on a cramped bus ride to work on a humid day.
Recently, I was on a coach trip with my parents and we had a good half an hour break. I ran over to Farmers department store to sniff things. This time I made a bee-line to the old cheap dust collectors, wondering if that old beauty would still be there - she was! I lightly sprayed on the inside of my arm. I had read positive reviews recently and I was so intrigued to see how my sense of smell had matured and how I'd perceive it now. How things can change! I read that Tabu was designed in 1932 by Jean Carles and he was rumored to have been instructed to create a perfume for whores. Although I'm certain the formulation has been changed I can see why this perfume would have been controversial at the time, there's so many things going on at once; those sharp citrus top notes and spices -reminiscent of primitive preservative techniques and insect repellent, then the heart (which I personally love the most) where jasmine, ylang ylang, cloves, cinnamon, civet and vanilla battle it out, and finally the gorgeous base of musk, oakmoss, leather and benzoin. I imagine Emeraude, Shalimar and Tabu at a party. Emeraude is a quiet blonde sipping her drink all night, Shalimar and Tabu are besties, Shalimar is a classic beauty who flirts all night, tells interesting stories and smokes like a chimney, but Tabu is the real bad girl - she'll fuck your boyfriend for fun, spike your drink with e and consider it a favor, and be sitting at your kitchen table by morning, streams of black kohl running down her face - lets face it, she's probably mentally ill, but she sure knows how to party. No wonder I imagined a boozy older woman wearing this one - she's probably still wearing it to the bingo hall every Friday night to remember the good old days. 
When I got on the bus I thrust my arm under my mums face and said "Smell it!" she screwed her face up and said "That is disgusting!" I said, "It's Tabu!" she told me a senior lady called Betty who used to work at her office part time recently died at the age of 87, her signature fragrance was Tabu. I thought: I bet Betty was a good time! 
See that's what I secretly love about Tabu, it honors all the bad girls that have come and gone. A little nod and a wave to Betty. I wonder, one day when Angel has gone past passe and retro, to the verge of being discontinued, if a quirky vintage lover will give this old lady juice a try, "I heard all the strippers at the turn of the century wore this one," she'll say, and her friend will reply "that is bollocking disgusting, don't you dare buy that and wear it around me!" but she will anyway, because that's just how she likes to roll.