Scentzilla!

Our windstorm blew in snow (fun) and then freezing rain (not so fun.) The electricity repeatedly flickered and shut down, and each time popped on again within minutes, luckily enough. So we were able to run around outside playing in the snow knowing that we could always retreat to the comfort of a warm electrically heated house. We so rarely get snow here in the Portland area that it was a real treat.

I’m going to put off talking about S-Perfume Lust until later, because this windy weekend I have been almost exclusively wearing Jean Desprez’s Bal a Versailles. It’s the subject of a post made a little while back at Perfume-Smellin’ Things, and that post reminded me just how much I love wearing it. It may not have the cool cache that some of the more modern fragrances seem to carry, but Bal a Versailles will forever be chic.

Desprez is said to have used more than 300 ingredients to construct this scent, which sounds like a “hey, let’s just throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks” apporach to perfumery, but the result is a steady, smooth masterpiece. The construct is formal, but never stiff or unfriendly. It gilds the senses in its golden glow, and indulges the nose with a refined vision of earthly delights.

My favorite aspect of Bal a Versailles is its circular quality. As the fragrance develops, notes seem to fade off, only to rise again. To experience it is to open a travel brochure of smells. Roses, orange, orange blossom, and jasmine fill my nostrils with the first spray. Then warm woods with soft balsalmic spices push forward into vanilla and patchouli . Broad notations of amber and incense, musk and more musk, unfold. And then we start all over again, surreally spiraling amongst the flowers and trees, riding waves of indoles and ketones. It is sexy, but not vulgar; Rich, but not gaudy.

So many of the newer oriental fragrances seem to be playing in an AM station monotone.Yet here is old Bal a Versailles, an oldie from 1962, playing in Dolby Digital surround sound. But it never overwhelms, and never blasts too loud. This scent endures as a classic, yet it is timeless. I don’t feel like I’m wearing an antique when I don my eau de toilette. In fact, I feel hipper and certainly more sensual wearing Bal a Versailles than I did when I was testing out, say, the newer Calvin Klein Euphoria. Catching lucky stray whiffs of my own sillage every now and then only adds to the sensation of glamor.

Bal a Versailles is available in many concentrations, and you can’t go wrong choosing it in any form, depending on preference and budget.

Top image of Bal a Versailles by Janine Wesselmann, from dcrpublishing.com. Second image of Lulu by Richard Ely.