Scentzilla!

“Is jasmin, then, the mystical Meru - the centre, the Delphi, the Omphalos of the Floral World? Is it the point of departure - the one unapproachable and indivisible unit of fragrance? Is jasmin the Isis of flowers, with veiled face and covered feet, to be loved of all, yet discovered by none? Beautiful jasmin! If it be so, the rose ought to be dethroned, and the inimitable enthroned queen in her stead. Revolutions and abdications are exciting sports; suppose we create a civil war among the gardens, and crown the jasmin empress and queen of all.”

Charles Dickens in Household Words, 3 July 1857¹

Guerlain’s discontinued Jasmin, introduced in 1928, is a stunning example of what a soliflor can be. You can peruse shelves nowadays and find any numer of waters and toiletries labeled “jasmine,” but most disappoint the flower itself. They smell cheap, thin, and resemble the jasmine blossom about as much as a drag Bugs Bunny resembles a woman: only the naif Fudd is fooled by the ruse.

Jacques Guerlain acknowledged jasmine as delicate and substantial in his ode. Tender green leaves curl open; Fresh wild blooms litter the green spray with budding dots of color. Within seconds the whole composition is transformed into a yellow carpet of fragrance. The aroma bears a distinct creaminess that funnily calls to mind the texture of homemade pudding. (Cait, in her review of it at Legerdenez, aptly referred to a banana-like aroma to it.) Indolic and animalic tones spring gently from this fragrance. These tones smell of skin on skin, though Jasmin doesn’t smell skanky: She’s not a whore. (Or for that matter a wascally twansvestite wabbit.) Guerlain’s Jasmin is like Dickens’ beautiful garden goddess, a mysterious beauty seperated from others.

Alas, I must admit that I become a bit anosmic to parts of the scent quickly, unless I constantly “refresh” my nose. But that is only a word of warning when sniffing, not a warning against hunting the ol’ gal down for yourself. (The eBay seller, Dragonfly Scent Me is selling samples of the EdT, by the way.)

My thanks to March, who’s own take on this Guerlain classic can be read over at Perfume Posse.

¹Source: ‘A Romance of Perfume Lands, or, the Search for Capt. Jacob Cole”, by F.S. Clifford, 1880, p. 218

Images: Top photo taken by and uploaded to Flickr under a Creative Commons license by Laurence Shan. Filmstrip images compiled from the Looney Tunes classic, Rabbit of Seville, with Elmer Fudd’s scalp of red flowers replaced with yellow

Firstly, I have to share my excitement about the Valentine’s Day present I picked out for my husband. I wanted to get him something different, something new: a gift he’d never received before. He is in for the surprise of his life this year.

On February 14th, I’m going to give him The Clap!

However, if gonorrhea isn’t really your cup of tea but you’d still like to surprise that someone special in your life, nothing would bring a bigger smile to your Valentine’s face than discovering you shared a little syphilis with them. It’s so cuddly!

You give it with the confident knowledge that from now on, whenever they think of syphilis they’ll think of you…

… and Valentine’s Day. Or, as I like to call it,

V-D.

Moving along, then.

Snow, glorious snow. It’s both wonderful and disturbing in its quantity this year. The most recent rash of snowstorms dumped enough for us to really have some fun it it.

Not Fred, though. Oh no.

When he was younger, you couldn’t keep him out of the stuff. The last time we got great fluffy piles of it like this, he was only about 1 1/2 years old. He romped and frolicked in it with gleeful abandon. It took me, my parents, my sister and a neighbor kid to finally corral and contain him, and jerk him back indoors. (Yes, five of us. That’s one human to every 2 pounds of renegade dachshund.)

Now he’s old and cranky, and he was mightily pissed off at me for letting his yard become a crystalized wasteland. He did some of his, uh, business outside (and snorting indignantly about it the whole time) then ran mere inches back inside the door to piddle on the carpet. Bladder of RAGE!

It’s said* that Hell hath no furry like a wiener dog scorned.

He immedietly padded over to the cupboard for a cookie since he knew he deservered one. For his tribulations, you understand. A dog will forgive a great many things, but never, under any circumstance, should you be absolved of the sin for making him cold and wet. Chop off his balls, and he’ll gratefully curl into your lap on the way home from the vet. But cold plus wet? Forget about it. He’ll hate you until the spring thaw.
Onto actual perfume topics. Finally, right?

In this unusual cold, I’ve been wearing L’Instant Eau de Noel Iris Millesime for the past couple days.

The last time I tried L’Instant Noel was during more temperate temperatures, and it didn’t really work as well on me then. The base, specifically the vanillic element, encroached too deeply into the balance in the warmer weather. I liked it, just not enough to commit to a full bottle. Now that it’s this freaking cold, I can see why folks snapped it up like so many imaginary hotcakes.

The cool earthy tones of orris (iris) seem to reflect against the white winter chill well. Orbiting the featured orris are satellites of white floral notes that include jasmine, ylang, and magnolia. The base acts rather like a jewelry setting: It’s lovely and decorative, but ultimately shows off the sparkle of the showcase notes. Ambery wood and vanilla provide a steady static background for these notes to best shimmer and glow.

L’Instant smells of secret invisible winter blooms. The spring appears less distant; One only needs a spritz to figuratively coax hibernating iris bulbs to break through the frozen earth and remind oneself that the trees are only napping.

The staying power is ridiculously good on my skin. I share a single spritz between wrists and it lasts pretty much all day. However, most fragrances with a tangible vanilla note tend to stick like glue on me, so if anyone’s experience is otherwise, do share please.

(My other standby snow perfume, apparently, is Comme des Garcon Man 2, which positively sings more and more brilliantly the colder it gets. What an underrated, unusual gem it is on the “masculine” side of the fragrance counter.)

I have also been trying Jacques Fath’s Chasuble off and on for the past couple months. Or so. It took over six months to work up the nerve to crack open the still sealed bottle I found. Why would anyone have such goofy pangs of anxiety over than? Well, I’d been longing to try it for ages, and once I finally had it I was intimidated. What if I never find another bottle again? What if it was ruined? What if it was brilliant?

I’m both thrilled and sad to say that it is not ruined, and it is indeed brilliant.

I kept finding new little turns to it to appreciate, and can’t figure out what to say about it that will fully explain it. So, I’ll do what I always do, and empty out the cluttered junk drawer that is my brain. (There’s a lot of stuff in a junk drawer, but 99% of it isn’t really needed for anything in particular.)

I peg Chasuble as a wonderfully rich incense fragrance. On the top is a brief aromatic balsamic flash of mentholic pine that only slowly dims as the heat of skin warms the composition. The incense at its very core displays as unlit resin turned liquid over the middle period of wear. A peachy thread also runs through the heart, though it doesn’t disturb the incense. Rather, it filters in a brightly colored light across it. The peachy allusions quietly stream down as it dries, until it’s transmogrified into a different fruit altogether, reminding me of a cedar-plank baked yellow apple. The fruity element here is delicately laced into the other notes. On the drydown, rich woody and ambery vanillic notes emerge, and the incense finally feels lit, taking a slightly smokey turn. Chasuble wears as if in deliberate and meaningful ceremony.

It is a heady, swoon-worthy oriental fragrance. And it is as close to a personal Holy Grail perfume as I’ve ever gotten thus far. Which seems fitting. A chasuble, of course, is the vestament a priest or holy man wears during religious services. Being a rather irreligious person myself, Chasuble strikes me as a perfume nut’s ideal substitution for sanctity, when worshipping at the alter of fragrant revelation.

*I said it. Just now. Therefore, it is said, right?

Mitsouko parfum is one the best things I have ever smelled. There’s just something about it that melds intrinsically to my skin, and it is hard to tell where I begin and Mitsouko’s sensual chypre ends.

The notes are blended so superbly that it is a hard fragrance to pick apart bit by bit. A pyramid breakdown, as per Basenotes, includes bergamot, rose, jasmine, spices, peach, oakmoss, and woody notes.

As it wears, the tart top of bergamot and florals melts, rather than disappears, into a grassy green and spiced fruity heart. Mitsouko’s peach does not smell precisely like peach at all, but instead blows in a humid breeze from orchard trees hanging heavy with allusion. Drying down, the woody accord at the base continues the spicy chypre theme with a tiny note I’d describe as smokey vanillic. However, I also find a distinct animalic ping to the fragrance. I wouldn’t describe it as musky, since I find the animalic ping more at dog that rolled in something bad. Which sounds awful doesn’t it? It’s not. That naughty and very dirty dog magically lends Mitsouko an air of authority. And no, I don’t know why that is. I can only shrug up and say it just does.

All that formality would seem to make the fragrance a special occasion choice. However, Mitsouko is in such good taste that it is a whenever the hell you feel like it choice. You can smell opera gloves and elegance. But you can also smell a picnic barbeque in it - the sunshine, the grill in action, and paper plates with hot dogs and potato chips. Mitsouko fits in everywhere.

Image: Peach Blossoms - Villiers-le-Bel by Childe Hassam

The trick with trying describe Shalimar is that ultimately the only thing Shalimar smells like is Shalimar. Released back in 1925, Jacques Guerlain’s creation remains modern and unique, even to this day. The notes include bergamot, lemon, orris, jasmine, opopanax, patchouli, vetiver, vanilla, musk, sandalwood, castoerum and ambergris. If I were really forced to sum up its character, I’d say it was like gazing into vanilla through smoke-streaked glass.

There are a number of concentrations available, and I heartily recommmend that if you purchase any of those to seek out the older bottles instead of the newer ones, since use of the smooth bottles seems to be tied to when a more recent change in formulation occured.

My favorite concentrations lie at extreme opposites, the strongest and weakest versions, which I like layered and individually. The parfum is the superior form of Shalimar. The notes in the parfum curl around each other edgelessly, smoothly wrapping the wearer in its charms. I also enjoy the body mist, a light spray that wears as a bit buttery, and I like wearing it most by itself in summer, though layering it over the parfum is delicious during the colder seasons. I must admit that I cannot really carry off any of the concentrations at all - Shalimar is a poor fit for me. But I do enjoy it, and wear it anyhow.

The eau de parfum would probably be considered the closest approximation to the parfum, however I feel like it’s rougher in texture. The notes are slightly jagged in comparison to the gliding ease of the parfum. But, if the parfum is far too far out of your budget, I think the eau de parfum should prove to be the next best thing for most people. Sadly for me, the eau de parfum wears intensely WRONG on my skin, as I get a distinct and overbearing motor oil note from it. But this is not something everyone experiences, so don’t let that scare you off.

The eau de cologne and eau de toilette are versions that unfortunately escape my understanding. They seem Shalimar-esque rather than like Shalimar itself. The eau de cologne strikes me as comparatively brackish, though on some folks this wears as slightly leathery, so perhaps therein lies the appeal. The eau de toilette seems unbalanced to me, with an undue emphasis on the citrus notes, specifically the bergamot to start with. The dry down does retain an almost creamy lemon and vanillic aroma, but the overall life of the edt is shallow and thin.

If you’ve only vague memories of Shalimar, or have never really given it study, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of perfume history. There is nothing else like it, and you will be glad you took the time to sniff.

Image top by Frederick Sommer: Samothrace, smoke on glass negative, second state, 1964. Second image of Shalimar from 99perfume.com.