Best Wishes for the New Year!

From the good people at Hermès (who designed the above image and sent it) and from Perfume Shrine may the New Year be splendid for all of you!!

We will be back with surprises, the results of the poll and a lucky draw very soon. Stay tuned!

A Smooth Leather for the Tough 1930s: Lanvin Scandal

~by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

Though the fashion pendulum swung back to femininity, away from the androgynous styles of the Garçonnes towards a more traditionally feminine silhouette ~waists, breasts and hips caressed by bias-cut satin, bobs set in platinum marcelled curls~ the Thirties were in fact a much tougher era than the Années Folles. Perhaps all-out modernism can only occur in an era of financial optimism…


The France in which Scandal was born in 1932 was riddled with unemployment, political instability and financial scandals. In the wake of the newly fashionable psychoanalysis, surrealism delved into the subconscious and its disturbing images. From the 1932 Tabu by Dana to Schiaparelli’s Shocking in 1937, perfume names reflected these troubled times…
It is strange, though, that the house of Lanvin would be the boldest in naming its scents: the milliner Jeanne Lanvin actually launched her brilliant career by producing for her high society clientele the designs she had created for her beloved daughter – the house logo by Paul Iribe showed a stylised mother and daughter embrace. However, starting with the sensuous My Sin in 1925, on to L’Ame Perdue (“Lost Soul”) and Pétales Froissés (“Crumpled Petals”, perhaps a vague allusion to “damaged goods”), both in 1928, Lanvin launched a series of racily-named perfumes. A shrewd marketer, she was in tune with the zeitgeist. In the year following the launch of Scandal, the most resounding politico-financial scandal of the decade, the Stavisky affair ~in which several prominent figures were embroiled~ would rock France to its very foundations.


Was Scandal scandalous for its day? As we have seen in the previous instalments of this series, leather had already entered the feminine scent wardrobe a decade earlier. But unlike its Twenties forerunners Tabac Blond, En Avion or Djedi, and to a much greater degree than Chanel Cuir de Russie, Scandal plays up the animalic, leathery side of leather. According to perfume historian Octavian Sever Coifan, who commented about it on these pages, André Fraysse had also composed a “cuir de Russie” base (i.e. a mixture of different components for ready use in perfumery) for Synarome.
This is possibly the “cuir de Russie” mentioned in the breakdown of notes:

Top: neroli, bergamot, mandarine, clary sage.
Heart: jüchten (cuir de Russie), iris, rose, ylang
Base: incense, civet, oakmoss, vanilla, vetiver, benzoin.

Considered by many perfume lovers to be the ultimate leather, Scandal was admired by no lesser an authority than the late, great Edmond Roudnitska. It is one of the few classics he mentions in his book Le Parfum(Presses Universitaires de France, 1980), firstly as the prototype of a “fruity-aldehydic-leather” family and secondly, as a prime example of compositions that evoke rather than represent a note (which he opposes to non-representational perfumes such as N°5, Arpège, Mitsouko or Femme).

“Leather and tobacco”, he observes, “are already transpositions of natural elements since they undergo painstaking preparations which alter the initial odour.”

My own version of Scandal is a flacon of extrait, of which one third has evaporated. The aldehydic top notes mentioned by Roudnitska have all but disappeared, except in the first fleeting moments of application, with a slight hint of citrus.

What immediately dominates is, well, leather, with a stronger birch tar edge than Chanel Cuir de Russie, with which it shares several notes: rich, deep, smooth as a fine old Bordeaux or a single malt whisky, with its complex peaty-mossy depths – oakmoss certainly, possibly vetiver because of the earthiness. A sombre undercurrent yields a vaguely licorice-y tinge to the heart, in a moment of olfactory illusionism: is it the clary sage? The floral notes seem so deeply blended in that they don’t appear as such any longer, which could be an effect of the age of the sample – a common phenomenon in older extraits. In its pristine version, the aldehydic fizz lifting the dark wood-resin-animal base, churning through the stately cool iris, tender rose and flesh-like carnality of the ylang-ylang must made for an intoxicating experience.
As it is, though, it is still a compellingly complex, opulent leather.

Though Lanvin has recently re-launched a scent of the same André Fraysse series, Rumeur (there was also Crescendo and Prétexte), there seems to be no chance of their resurrecting Scandal, discontinued in 1971: British perfumer Roja Dove has appropriated the name which had fallen into the public domain for one of his own compositions, an opulent white floral. Lancôme’s 2007 re-edition of Révolte/Cuir, another animalic leather of the period, was quickly followed by its discontinuation, allegedly because it was too costly to produce.

Thus, the original Scandal seems condemned to the limbo of long-lost scents. The few drops remaining are all the more precious: a reminder of an age where to dab your skin in the scent of a flower-drenched leather would send an iconoclastic frisson coursing through well-bred salons…


Pics from the "Gosford Park" film by Robert Altman, set in 1932, courtesy of djuna.cine21.
Pic of the french film "La règle du jeu" by Jean Renoir from wikipedia.
Lanvin ad originally uploaded at cofe.ru

2007 in Retrospect: 13 Honest and Cynical Musings of a Perfume Lover

What I liked in 2007

1) So many lovely new releases were mainstream perfumes that could be actually had at a big store. From Infusion d’Iris by Prada to Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia by Estée Lauder through Hèrmes Kelly Calècheand Gaultier Le Fleur du Mâle, I found quite a few scents that I am thinking of upgrading into a full bottle in the future. There is something to be said for being able to purchase a decent perfume without having to jump through hoops or paying inordinate amounts of money on online auctions or sellers.

2) So many fledging or “smaller” (in terms of reputation or business volume, not value) perfumers have come to my attention in the last year and it has been a real pleasure knowing them and sampling their work. Although Perfume Shrine has shown an interest for the artisanal houses from the very start, it is encouraging to see that those perfumers have gained recognition and respect. We will continue to back up their efforts whenever they deserve it.

3) The vogue for “celebrity” scents has finally begun to show signs of waning. Although the releases have been certainly numerous, they have often gone out of the scene without making much of a bleep on the radar. This is what I mean by waning…I interpret this as a healthy sign, after whole seasons when there were sane people who were eager to purchase Jessica Simpson’s nauseating Dessert line! This will allow the few, decent and sometimes quite good fragrances that have arisen from this trend of emulating one’s favourite celebrity through olfactory terms to stand prouder on the shelf and be unapologetic for their till now declassé image.

4) The direction towards the new “chypres” away from the fruity florals of the past few years is a welcome relief. However, this is risky, because they might pose the danger of becoming ubiquitous themselves. In fact they’re about to…I can’t begin to note how many feature the “clean” patchouli base so prevalent among these new contestants: YSL Elle, Dior Midnight Poison, Gucci by Gucci, DKNY Delicious Night, Britney Spears Believe... Companies, take note!

5) Givenchy did the coup and issued decent, delectable re-issues of their classic fragrances in their line Les Mythiques. If only every house did it as well. Brownie points, good people at Givenchy: you have redeemed yourselves for the lapses of previous years which had turned a luxury brand into a run-of-the-mill department store name.

6) Perfume lovers are not that stupid after all. After a scandal on Ebay this past summer, when someone was revealed to be bying and filling up vintage empty perfume bottles with undefined juice and then selling them masquerading as the authentic thing, it was determined that people do pay attention. Some more than others; but that’s nothing new. At least, those who did had the good sense of community to alert other people to the scam. Justice hasn’t been metted out yet, because damages to disenchanted buyers haven’t been paid, but at least now people pay a lot more attention and are not that ready to believe that there is some huge vault of vintage treasures that someone out of the goodness of their heart is selling at moderate prices.

6) The huge readership of Perfume Shrine has shown yet again that they are here for the –hopefully good- content first and foremost and not for public relations or networking. I value that and appreciate it more than you know. Even you, numerous lurkers who don’t want to admit reading us regularly! Heartfelt thanks for the support, your interesting commentary and your valueable feedback on assorted scented matters.



What I didn’t like in 2007

1) The pretence in advertorials continues: from the Nasomatto manifesto for their scent for hysteria(!) ~which reminds me of 19th century “scientific” treatises focusing on abusing women~ to the By Kilian encyclopedic name-dropping of famous authors and oeuvres (to a zenith of excess!), there is a point of saturation when a little modesty and restraint might serve them better. The consumer becomes jaded or sceptical after a while and –dare I utter the word? - a little repulsed.

2) The prices of niche lines have escalated inordinarily. At this point one has to put a small mortgage on one’s house, car or favourite pet in order to be able to get the scent they have been craving. Surely, more expensive doesn’t automatically equate more upscale quality.
But the online business catering to perfume lovers has also gone upward in prices. Understandably, they need to make up for the costs. But somewhere deep, deep down it saddens me to think that people who would really love to sample an exclusive Serge Lutens have to pay upwards of 130$ for a bell jar that is 1/3 full, when the new, full one is available throughout Europe for –the comparatively meak- 100euros. For their sake, I hope prices go down.

3) Chanel decided to make it hard for their discerning fans to get Les Exclusifs. I have elaborated on this sufficiently in the past. But, to add insult to injury, they have withdrawn the small extrait de parfum bottles from the online shops and almost all the boutiques across the world (barring Paris ~and Harrods perhaps), making it very difficult to get what is essentially the best representation of their illustrious creations. On top of that, private sources that shall remain unnamed tell me that at L’Osmothèque there is a practice of recreating the jus from the rather recent batches of Chanel parfums and not the vintages from the start of the century. This is sad…

4) Lancôme also decided to abandon the plans for a complete revival of their long lost wonders. Cuir/Révolte proved too costly to produce, Climat is getting harder to get when it was widely available before, Sagamore and Sikkim are not the easiest to come by. Lanvin is comparable: Rumeur has been drastically changed and although very pretty in its recent incarnation, it is misleading to retain the old name. Scandal is not scheduled for re-issue. Ever.

5) Luxury seems to have lost its meaning. What passes for luxury is overpriced scented liquid that has an obscure place of origin and is only available at two doors tops around the world. I am sorry, but this is so bourgeois to want to have that just because of its above mentioned attributes that it self-evidently contradicts the élite approach of luxe.
What happened to the genuine enjoyment of something that you love for the associations it has or its intrinsic value? The privilege of time and the attention to detail that went into selecting it for a loved one? The intimate knowledge that you are wearing it in your own unique way on your own unique person that will never be the same as anyone else’s? There will come a time when luxury will be to wear nothing but one’s own natural skin odour. That will be a hard time for the perfume industry I predict.

6) Ava Luxe decided to take an indefinite break. Just when I was discovering her line and finding favourites, worse luck! Serena Ava Franco needed a break after filling order after order for her coveted samples: I can understand that it must have gotten on her last nerve after a while, not being able to do nothing much besides. I just hope she returns full force at some point.

7) I was not really surprised, but I was a little disillusioned to find that so many people (judging by comments left here and there on the Net) found the Nasomatto practice of not issuing notes for their ~variable in quality~ fragrances lamentable and even insulting. For once, I thought this was an innovative and trully liberating move; a course of action that would allow us to really smell what we perceive with our olfactive nerves and not what we have been conditioned to smell through advertorials about notes and accords, when in reality the actual ingredients bear no relation to them.

But I am asking too much, I know... It's cool, Dude!

Pics from allposters.com

Our Leather posts will continue next week with a review of a rare gem. There will be lots of exciting surprises too.

Enchanted Forest of Desire

Watch this wonderful commercial for the Lolita Lempicka fragrance I came across. Subtitled L'Eveil du Désir (the awakening of desire) it is centered around the sensual awakening of a young woman who enters an enchanted forest when the apple, fruit of sin and desire casts a spell on her with its fragrant message. I especially love the devious movement of the bottle, creeping up out of its own -seemingly- volition, like a poisonous vampiric little weed, entangling people in its wake in Jung-loaded imagery. Feast your eyes...


(uploaded by iccops)

Credits: Vincent Baguian/Bruno LeRoux (ouistiti.com)

Please visit again tomorrow for an assesment of the year in scent in my style and I remind you to vote on the poll at the upper right hand column.

Message in a bottle: Hyacinth and a Mechanic by Tauer

“Just a castaway, an island lost at sea, oh
Another lonely day, with no one here but me, oh
More loneliness than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair, oh”

By The Police, “Message in a bottle” (1979 Regatta de Blanc album)


(uploaded by 0belus0)

Swiss based niche perfumer and official Hall-of-Fame-sweet-person Andy Tauer had a brilliant idea: sending a mod of his new scent over to his fans all over the world, one sending the bottle to another, trying it out and leaving feedback on how it impressed them. A fun concept that takes us back to the core of all art: to communicate emotions, ideas and thoughts that are starting to take shape through a continuous intemingling of creative minds. Tauer is an interesting personality, as we have come to personally attest through this interview some time ago.

The bottle began its journey a few months ago from Boston, which was its first stop and like precious contraband it travelled hand to hand to various destinations. G was considerate and kind enough to think of me, sending this over on its journey. And from my hands it will also go to another perfume lover.

But what is this scent? According to Andy himself: Hyacinth and a Mechanic is "a floral scent, a bouquet of powdery lilacs, green hyacinths and gentle lily of the valley. A bouquet of May flowers, in the hand of a mechanic with an undertone of oily skin."
To me it was reminiscent of the Tauer style and yet not quite. There is the intense greeness of the beginning that reminds me of the stunning bite of galbanum in the vintage Vent Vert. In a way this is the feeling I got while reviewing Rêverie au Jardin, Andy’s lavender scent: the bracing opening, giving way to calmer proceedings. But where Rêverie melts into a cosy, musky powdery embrace, Hyacinth and a Mechanic remains intensely green with a higher pitch, a clean soprano note that sings sharply and crystal-like of spring flowers suspended into a chilled snowball, cascading white flakes. Contrary to his ambery, dry L’air du desert marocain and musky soft Rêverie au Jardin, which both exude a very earthy, grounded aroma, I seem to perceive more aromachemicals in this one that account for a more abstract and linear approach. I do not smell hyacinths from the flowershop, neither was this the intention, I believe. There is rather the impression of green flowers that have been growing on a flower bed that has been trambled on under a heavy boot.

Notably, flower notes in masculine perfumes have been a new direction recently, what with Dior Homme and its iris rooty accord, Dior’s Fahrenheit 32 and Fleur du Mâle by Jean Paul Gaultier. However, those remain into the realm of the unchallenging: although most men would be a little surprised not to find the classic wood or citrus notes they are conditioned to believe constitute the typical XY smell, they still retain the well-worn slipper familiarity. Tauer’s creation is definitely niche and proud of it.

The second element that became etched into my mind is that somewhere in the middle of this there are ionones, echoing violet leaves and spicy blooms; a sweetish coquettish note that you wouldn’t expect in a butch fragrance such as the name suggests. But then this is no butch scent. The mechanic in question is not rough, callused, smeared with black grease from manupulating the insides of a car. He is rather presentable and his jeans are worn, but not tattered nor grimmy, although there is the uncertain whiff of some honeyed, slightly urinous aroma wafting from afar: his leather gloves, his huge belt holding all the tools of his craft. The leather part seems pungent for a very short while, but not as potent as in his Lonestar Memories.

Last there is the surprising resiny base of someone sensual and rather spiritual behind the manual labour, a characteristic that never escapes Andy Tauer in his fragrant endeavours and is probably a reflection of his own sensibilities.
The staying power is excellent, sustaining the slightly oily residue on skin till the next day.

Hyacinth and a Mechanic is not in production, although I hope it will be someday. You have to wait for it to land on your shores, bearing its fragrant messages.
In the words of the Police:

“Walked out this morning, don’t believe what I saw
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore
Seems I’m not alone at being alone
Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home”.

Read how this all begun on Andy's site. You can read two other takes here and there.

Stay tuned for another post tomorrow and a recapitulation of the year on Friday 28th on my own terms.
Oh, and don't forget to vote on the poll at the upper right hand corner!

Have a Merry, Merry Christmas!

Perfume Shrine grabs this opportunity to wish everything good and important to its numerous and discerning readers: health, prosperity, creativity, luck and most importanly love from and to those who surround you.

May ~whatever your religious beliefs might be~ a little of the Christmas spirit showing the path of light into the heart of winter (as the original pagan festivity demanded) light your way and your lives. And may it bring some fairydust on the mundane and the grim...


And because we couldn't let this go without a perfume reference, please take a look at the Christmas "cookies" we discovered someone has been baking! Embossed with a Chanel logo no less!! Now, this is what I call The Perfume Spirit. May that one light your way as well...


Visit again for a surprise post on the 26th and other exciting things coming on.!

Pic of Chanel cookies by refworkinggermany/flickr

Vote, vote, vote!!!

Here at Perfume Shrine we value the opinion of the reader. Therefore instead of recapitulating the past year in scent in my own terms, I opted for the reader's perspective.
So, may I gently nudge you to see the POLL at the right hand column and VOTE!. I picked some of the most talked about scents of 2007, which in my humble opinion do fulfill a minimum of quality and vision, and I urge you to vote for your favourite from the list. I opted for 10 things that are mixed: men's, women's, mainstream, niche but not too obscure. They do not reflect specific personal choices, you have read about those this past year.

You have exactly one week to vote, as the poll ends on 31st December, along with the last whiffs of this year...
If you want to elaborate on your choice and the reasons, you are welcome to do so here, at this post.

May 2008 bring even more interesting fragrances!

Optical Scentsibilities: Bras de Fer

Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier has always had some tongue in cheek imagery for its presentation. And it stuck with audiences, if only for its unapologetic exploitation of the homosexual connotation of sailors, alongside its sweet lavender-ladden scent. The issue is well documented, in fact, as attests this book devoted to it. There has even been an exhibition about gay life on the high seas. In times when sea travel was taking forever, it was to be expected.
In one such advertisement stylized pouty sailors cross their arms in a bras de fer that has them glistening their muscles in a nod to 90s gay culture. Or is this a cliché?

Whatever it is, it's certainly not that original, as far as perfume advertisments go. The bras de fer idea had been already tentatively explored in Eau Folle by Laroche print advertisements as far back as 1970. Only the couple is not indicative of a homosexual rapport, here using a man and a woman. And the mood is much less mock-serious or pouty, but more exuberant, fun and casually flirty.
Now, this curious little hat does remind me of a cook on a ship! But maybe that's just my twisted imagination...

Pics from parfumdepub

The gift of endless dreams

Perfume Shrine loves to read. Loves to read all sorts of books. Especially those that have an inward afinity with what is not mentioned in everyday life.
And when on a cold, cold night, there is a classic which is being re-read that mentions scent in poetic terms, there goes a little inward smile. Especially so when the language upon which it is written is not the author's own.



Here it is from Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim:

"The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle breeze entering through the windows, always flung wider open, brought into the bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the betwitching breath of Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams".

Following posts will hold tantalising surprises for our readers and the continuation of the Leather Series. None of the run-of-the-mill holiday posts for us.

Painting courtesy of morflot.org

Cuir de Russie by Chanel: fragrance review and history

Whenever I think of Cuir de Russie by Chanel I think of a particular place and a woman I once saw. She is of Slavic features, quite old and she must have been beautiful at her prime. Now the fallen features speak of a splendour gone by, an existence that was once luxuriously pampered now reduced to wandering the busy, buzzing city sitting at the old derelict café that was Zonar’s up till some years ago. Situated at the city centre, amidst the crowded shopping district and face to face with an uber-luxe jewel shop (which in itself had been a traditional, picturesque ouzeri in a previous incarnation), Zonar’s had been for almost half a century the Mecca meeting point of local and visiting intelligentia.


And then like old civilizations, it withered and almost died…Abandoned, frequented only by the decadent and the nostalgically traditionalists. She was there, all right: mink fur jacket on her back, but almost tattered and yellowing at the edges. Antique gold bracelets that must have been family heirlooms from a Bosporus clan. Her hair coiffed in an old fashioned style that must have gone out of fashion about 30 years ago, her eye pensive and introspective. Her black croc bag, good quality, but showing years’ long wear. To paraphrase Poe, a "woman of the crowd"…

Cuir de Russie has this exact décadence avec élegance vibe that made an impression on me upon setting eyes on that woman.

In the words of Luca Turin:

“sumptuous leather, light and balsamic, forgoing any sugary compromise, Cuir de Russie regains its place at the top of this category, right next to the rather more jovial Tabac Blond. [...]Cuir de Russie is a striking hologram of luxury bygone: its scent like running the hand over the pearl grey banquette of an Isotta Frashini while forests of birch silently pass by”.

Amanda Lacey, famed London facialist, to whom this was gifted by Jacques Polge, put it in simpler terms:

“There's something about it that makes me emotional - it reminds me of Paris and of times gone by when people had an elegant approach to life. I feel I'm wearing a wise grand dame around my neck.”

Chanel's Cuir de Russie came out in 1924, a time at which the impact of Les Ballets Russes (1909-1929) was palpable. Russian émigrés having fled the motherland because of the revolution in 1917 had populated Paris and had lent it their own mark of decadent sophistication. Suddenly the exotic East, in which westerners classified the vast Russias since before the time of Peter the Great, became all the rage and the embodiment of everything forbidden and alluring. The datchas, the orthodox churches, the ballads on balalaikas, the Cossacks.
In the words of a critic of the times:

“nothing is more foreign to our tradition than those violent bursts, those frantic and intense dances, this instinctive frankness, this disproportionate imagination. The discordance is so brutal that one would be astonished by the tenacious favour that those people over there hold on us. The simple truth is that Russians fascinate us because they distrurb us”.

From the Commitée Colbert.


Coco Chanel herself would indulge sartorially into the craze for all things Russian, setting up the atelier Kitmir, which will later create the broderies inspired by Russian folklore for Jean Patou, himself the lover of the Grand Duchess of Russia. Coco also created the costumes for 4 ballets, one of which is Le Train in 1924; coincidentally the year Cuir de Russie is issued.

Inspired by Gabrielle’s own love for the exiled Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch (1891-1942) ~ cousin of Tsar Nicolas II~ and paying homage to Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Serge Lifar, protégé of Diaghilev, with whom she was friends, Cuir de Russie exploited an old theme with a modernist palette.

Legendary nose Ernest Beaux, guided by Chanel’s desires to dare, made women indulge in what is essentially a men’s scent formula, garlanding it though with sparkly, dry aldehydes and the eternal feminine flowers: jasmine (an abundance of it!), rose and ylang ylang; redolent of No.5’s own heart, giving a warm, honeyed aspect that contrasts with an icy element that enters and exits the scene like an aloof, declassé aristocrat ~in perfect accordance to what was previously revealed as being the idea behind it: the leather pouches for jewels.

The inclusion of rectified birch tar, supposedly along with styrax, gave it the brutish animalic touch of 20th century and the intelligent beauty of Constructivism arhictecture. None of the sweet, contemporary niche leather harmonies and further off the smoothness of Diorling {click for review}. Sublime cadenzas of amber and resin provide the warm but never too congenial backdrop hinting at a bygone luxury and perhaps a little smoking fetish, letting off a subtle hint of tobacco. Contrary to Tabac Blond however it weaves smoothness of skin and rounded contours under the dress that cloths the woman. This is supremely manifested in the far superior extrait de parfum concentration which, like all Chanel parfums, exploits the best of raw materials and gives the most luxuriant experience.

Notes: aldehydes, orange blossom, bergamot, mandarin, clary sage, iris, jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, cedarwood, balsams, vetiver, styrax, incense, cade, leather, amber and vanilla.

The current eau de toilette version, which had been first re-orchestrated by in-house perfumer Jacques Polge in 1983 (toning a tad down the harsher leather aspect), now circulates in the gigantic sparse bottles of Les Exclusifs range in 200ml, distributed at Chanel boutiques and very select doors. The extrait de parfum concentration is not easy to come by any longer (it used to be available easily on Chanel.usa), regretably, but it is definitely still being made, distibuted to certain boutiques and definitely available in Paris if you travel there.

Translation of quotes from the French, author's own. Pic of young woman in gloves by glovelover 2006/flickr. Pic of Zonar's from Naftemboriki. Pic of ladies in furs by Kchen/flickr. Pic of leather cases for jewels courtesy of wealthwood.com

Optical Scentsibilities: Memento Mori

Dior Poison "memento mori" ad, "all is vanity"

How could the idea of mortality be tied to perfume? There seems to exist a plethora of references to Eros and Thanatos in scented matters. From the ancient practice of accompanying the dead to their resting place with aromatic incense and the fragrant burials in Egypt's pyramids to the annointing of the body for weddings in India with comparable scented essences, fragrance holds a key to matters of mortality. Rituals using it aim either to somehow "defeat" it (marriage and therefore procreation) or to pay their respects to the unavoidable.
But it is rare that a perfume company uses images of death to advertise their products; in this case Poison by Christian Dior.

You don't get what I am talking about? Squint. Now look again with your vampire eyes...The image of a skull is looking back at you through the mirror, the bottles and the torso of the woman sitting in front of her dresser. See?

Images of skulls abound in art and are indeed a premium means of delivering meanings that have to do with the subconcious. From the skull and bones flag of the pirate ship to more sophisticated paradigms, like this one from surrealist Salvador Dali, skulls are there to remind us that nothing lasts forever and the inevetability of death is the only centainty in life.
Of course Dali chose to depict it through naked women forming the parts of the skull, which is an allusion to the other half of the equlibrium of Eros and Thanatos. The regeneristic power of sexual desire and copulation is man's only means of transcedenting death. This of course lies at the root of ancient mysteries and rituals, such as the Orphic or Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece.

During the Middle Ages, at a time when general lack of education swerved the emphasis of ecclesiastical catechy into iconography rather than scripture, images of horrible monstrosity became almost normal in the abodes of the holy. One only has to take a look at the gargoyles of late-Gothic churches across Europe to ascertain this. In this environment the notion of Memento Mori flourished; a typically simple depiction of a skull making an appearence somewhere along a painting, a psalm book, or a tapestry.

The habit persisted through later years and this painting of Jean de Dinteville (depicted at left) by Holbein is testament to it. If you look at it from the left and squint enough, you see that at the bottom of it there is an elongated form of something that does not seem like anything much, but in fact is a symbolic skull.

And how would this culminate in the above Dior Poison advertisement? Simple: the name Poison lends itself to imagery of Thanatos, through its connotations of its meaning and the fairy tale poisoned apple like its bottle shape suggests. Apple, a fruit full of its own connotations of sin and corruption!
Perhaps the advertisers want us to remember that just as their perfume can symbolically be lethal (and in copious amounts I am sure it can be!), it can also put a spin into the other half of the eternal duo: Eros.

Pics from moiillusions.com and nationalgallery.org.uk. Thanks to Sillage for bringing the initial Poison ad to my attention

Leather Series 8: The Garçonne Leathers of the 1920s (part 2)

by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

Tabac Blond was the opening salve of the garçonnes’ raid on gentlemen’s dressing tables. Its name evokes the “blonde” tobacco women had just started smoking in public (interestingly, Marlboros were launched as a women’s brand in 1924 with a red filter to mask lipstick traces). The fragrance was purportedly meant to blend with, and cover up, the still-shocking smell of cigarettes: smoking was still thought to be a sign of loose morals.
Despite its name, Tabac Blond is predominantly a leather scent, the first of its family to be composed for women and as such, a small but significant revolution. Though perfumery had recently started to stray from the floral bouquets thought to be the only fragrances suitable for ladies (Coty Chypre was launched in 1917), it had never ventured so far into the non-floral. Granted, there are floral notes, but apart from ylang-ylang, the clove-y piquancy of carnation and the cool powdery metallic note of iris don’t stray much from masculine territory. Amber and musk smooth down the bitter smokiness of the leather/tobacco leaf duet, providing the opulent “roundness” characteristic of classic Carons. And it is this ambery-powdery base – redolent of powdered faces and lipstick traces on perfumed cigarettes – that pulls the gender-crossing Tabac Blond back into feminine territory to the contemporary nose, despite Luca Turin’s calling it “dykey and angular and dark and totally unpresentable” in Chandler Burr’s Emperor of Scent. Like its younger sister Habanita (1921), Tabac Blond’s rich, golden-honeyed, slightly louche sillage speaks of late, smoke-laden nights at the Bal Nègre in the arms of Cuban aristocrats or déclassé Russian émigrés, rather than exhilarating rides in fast cars driven by the new Eves…

Not so Knize Ten, the 1924 fragrance composed by Vincent Roubert (who worked with Coty on L’Or and L’Aimant) for the Viennese tailor Knize. The Knize boutique was famously designed in 1913 by architect Adolf Loos, whose anti-Art Nouveau essay, Ornament and Crime, helped define Modernist aesthetics with its smooth surfaces and pure play on volume. The scent itself was introduced to complement the clothier’s first ready-to-wear men’s line and in its opening notes, it clearly speaks in a masculine tone. The leather, paired with bergamot, petitgrain, orange, lemon and the slightly medicinal rosemary, is as dryly authoritative as a sharply-cut gabardine suit. As it eases into wear, rose, orris and carnation throw in a gender-bending curve ~Marlene Dietrich (herself a Knize patron) may have well slipped into that suit… The leather itself is of that of the wrist-watchband or fine shoe rather than the pungent “cuir de russie” boot. But despite the richly animalic base – musk, amber and castoreum – hinting at bridled desires, Knize Ten retains the buffered, well-bred smoothness of gentleman who never felt the need to set foot in the cigar-smoke laden cabinet of Herr Doktor Freud…

His twin sister Chanel Cuir de Russie (also 1924) clearly departs from the butch Cossack boot and its birch-tar roughness. In fact, in an anecdote told by the composer Ernest Beaux to Chanel’s second perfumer Henri Robert, and transmitted to the third perfumer of the house, Jacques Polge, this particular “cuir” was meant to reproduce the delicate smell of the fine leather pouches wrapping precious jewel – another type of loot, as it were, than what the Cossack bore away on their horses. Cuir de Russie is a tribute to the impact of the Russian émigrés on the intellectual and aesthetic life of 1920s Paris -- Beaux himself, of course, was a Russian exile of French descent and Mademoiselle’s fashion house was peopled with elegant Russian aristocrats hired as sales assistants and models – as well as a radically modernist reworking of a by-then decades-old theme.

But more later in Helg’s review…



Photo by Irving Penn courtesy of ArtPhotoGallery.com, painting by Jack Vettriano Fetish, courtesy of angelarthouse

Leather Series 7: The Garçonne Leathers of the 1920s

by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

“She is a strong woman. Excuse – strength is not the word I am after. Women, pretty women at least, are never ‘strong”. I need a word that expresses energy, the quality that makes a man who speaks of ‘frail Eve’ – referring to the female sex – look like a fool!
Her neck is arched and tense. Tense also her features, her whole carriage indeed! Her demeanour is that of a duellist awaiting the attack!
Attack from whom!
From you, sir, and from me… from man, in general.”

“The Flapper – A New Type”, by Alfredo Panzini, Vanity Fair, September 1921
(from oldmagazinearticles.com)

As the “lost generation” returned from the trenches of World War I to civilian life, they faced a new kind of war: the war of the sexes.
It’s hard to realize nowadays the utter shock it must’ve been, for men who grew up alongside women in corsets and bustles, with huge flowered hats teetering on their long upswept tresses, to see them mutating into the cocktail-swigging, cigarette-smoking, car-driving, bob-haired, short-skirted breed Americans called “flappers” and the French, “garçonnes”. This second, much more telling designation (a feminization of the word for “boy” in French, “garcon”), was popularized by the eponymous 1922 best-seller (700 000 copies) by the French author Victor Margueritte. With its liberated heroine’s sexual escapades (including a lesbian affair), La Garçonne was deemed so scandalous that Margueritte was stripped of his Légion d’Honneur…

The Bohemian classes of the Belle Époque had already engaged in some gender-bending ~ the term “garçonne” was actually coined by the decadent late 19th century novelist Huysmans ~ but what occurred in the 1920s was an out-an-out, highly symbolic raid on masculine closets. Led on by Gabrielle Chanel, garçonnes shed the corset to adopt the more strict, practical and streamlined menswear styles, including the white shirt, suit and boater. Jean Patou provided them with sportswear to ski and play tennis; Dunhill and Hermès offered them leather motoring gear to match the luxurious interiors of their new, leather-upholstered cars; Hermès even produced flight suits for the fashion-conscious aviatrix.

And, of course, they began filching men’s eau de colognes – interestingly, Jean Patou’s 1929 Le Sien (“Hers”), shown at the Paris museum of fashion Palais Galliéra in the current “Années Folles” exhibition, is explicitly marketed as a fragrance men could wear, but produced for women. The same exhibition commissioned a (non-commercialized) perfume to embody the spirit of the Jazz Age, composed by IFF’s Antoine Maisondieu. It is, of course, a leather scent (for a review, click here).

The Cuir de Russie, as we’ve seen previously, had been around since the last quarter of the 19th century. But the 1920s and 30s would be the heyday of leathers from the spectacular 1924 double feature of Ernest Beaux’s Chanel Cuir de Russie and Vincent Roubert’s Knize Ten and Jacques Guerlain’s odd Djedi in 1927 to later renditions: Caron En Avion (1929), Lanvin Scandal by André Fraysse (1932), Lancôme Révolte by Armand Petitjean (1936) and Creed Cuir de Russie (1939), initially Errol Flynn’s bespoke fragrance, and LT Piver’s Cuir de Russie the same year. At least thirty houses launched their own versions of the Cuir de Russie from the late 19th century to the late 30s (the trend continued into the 50s), which bears witness to the enduring attraction of the note.

But the real turning point came about in 1919 with Ernest Daltroff’s epoch-making Caron Tabac Blond, the first leather scent to be directly marketed to women. Is it just by chance that the first perfumer to cross the gender boundaries of the “cuir de Russie” was himself a Russian?


To be continued.....


Pic of Marie Bell in Jean de Limur’s 1936 La Garçonne, courtesy of encyclocine.com

Shining Sunny Scents

Artisanal perfumer Laurie Erickson is the mind and soul behind Sonoma Scent Studio, a small but vibrant brand from Healdsburg, northern California, founded in 2004, which aims to cater for the customer who has become jaded with department store perfumes and is eager to explore a more natural approach. Although not strictly a line of natural perfumes (as she allows a small amount of synthetics, notably musks) Laurie does use a higher percentage of natural essential oils and absolutes than most without veering into the path of aromatherapy blends, but retaining the character of proper “perfume”: a scent that constitutes a whole; not just strings of voices that sound from in and out of a room, but rather a conversation of loving friends over a homemade dinner with good Napa Valley wine.

Laurie’s line is quite extensive comprising scents from different olfactory families, from warm Orientals to musk blends through dry woods and floral compositions. She first got inspired by the paysage of the Sonoma County with its oaks and redwoods, but also by her family’s beloved garden full of jasmine and roses. It was those blossoms that prompted her to source the best essential oils so she could enjoy floral scents year round and not just when the flowers are in bloom. Laurie however didn’t delve into perfume right away: she first earned a Bachelor of Sciences in Environmental Earth Science and a Master of Sciences in Geomechanics in Stanford University pursuing a career of technical writer. It is fortunate that her perfume business proved so successful that she decided to occupy herself with it exclusively.

In the 5 scents I tried I detected a common theme running through them, a resinous base of predominent labdanum and myrrh that gives them a deep resonance and a sensuous, slightly “dirty” character. The overall feel was that of scents that source natural essences; there is that familiar feel of non-perfumey ambience which I have come to recognise and appreciate. The onomastics somehow do not predispose one for a Californian meditative line, which is the only incosistency.

Encens Tranquille (quiet incense) is described as a meditative woody fragrance centered on incense, including notes of labdanum, frankincense, myrrh, cedar, sandalwood, ambergris, patchouli, oakmoss and musk. Deep incense, dense and dark, sobriety incarnate. There is the unusual tone of ocean and fish, if only for a moment as if a temple is situated on the seafront and you enter barefoot, with your hair still wet from a dip. And then a resinous explosion, murky, smoky. For those who are serious about their incense!

Champagne de Bois (forest champagne) is described as an effarvescent scent with aldehydic top notes, a heart of jasmine grandiflorum and carnation and a warm woodsy base of labdanum, sandalwood, cedar and musk. The opening is indeed sparkly, waxy, with a hint of flower which surfaces later. However the base of labdanum and cedar especially overshadow the blossoms rather too soon, suspending them in a mirage. It lasted incredibly long and seemed to grow more deep and dark with every passing moment.

Fireside Intense encompasses woods and resins along with a touch of leather and agarwood, evocing an evening sitting by a campfire. The scent truly captures the aroma of burnt coniferous wood, emanating from the mountains, embers glowing softly in the cool misty morning when the memory of the night has not yet been formed. Very dry and intensely smoky, it is a figurative painting of an American scene out of a Western film. It’s not the easiest to wear if you are working in an office with people who complain about fragrance wearing, but who cares? Fireside Intense has the rare gift of transporting the wearer to a more adventurous, quixotic existence where the men are ruggedly handsome, roasting salted meat and drinking inky black tea from a hip flask, gazing pensively over the horizon for new frontiers. I’m so there!

Ambre Noir (black amber) is the latest addition in the line. A dark amber with notes of labdanum, cardamom, red rose, woody notes, a touch of agarwood, myrrh, vetiver, moss and mitti. My contrapuntal impression of dry and sweet notes that come to the fore and then subside to the background, leaving a smooth impression on the skin after a while and lasting for hours, was unusual for me. I am not an amber person per se, I admit. And yet I love oriental perfumes, in which amber often forms the base! However, amber-centered scents are either too heavy, too thick to my sensibilities or too surupy for their own good. When I put Ambre Noir on the skin I feared that it would fall to the former category, on a sour whiff. But then I was surprised to see that it lightened up and a sweeter note emerged. A slightly powdery note that managed not to become cloying, which is an accomplishment in this category of scents, as previously mentioned. I am not completely certain that I would personally fit this scent, but lovers of ambers will find a balanced composition in Ambre Noir.

Laurie divulged to me that her bases, notably amber, are self-made and purposely drier than commercial perfumers’ supplies. Essences are diluted in pure perfumer’s alcohol for the eau de parfum concentration and natural fractionated coconut oil for the parfum oil base.

Jour ensoileillé (sunny day) is a floral jubilation, rich, warm and golden like a ray of sunshine on a lush countryside garden. Orange blossom, a little ruberose and jasmine marry their white synergy over a soft base of labdanum, sandalwood, ambergris, oakmoss and musk. The joy of the fragrance is contagious, as if a smile could be bottled and opened when the mood is grey and weary. The memento of summer into the heart of winter. A beautiful, feminine and exuberant fragrance with very good sillage and easily the prettiest of the bunch.

The rest of the line includes Voile de Violette (a violet and iris accord over a woody bottom), Rose Musc (a feminine blend of rose and musk on an ambergris base), Opal (a soft, vanillic clean skin musc I am personally very curious to try), Bois Epicés and Bois Epicés Legère (warm and cosy scents) and Cameo (a powdery feminine floral with rose and violet).

All the scents I tried reviewed above came in Eau de Parfum concentration, which is incredibly dense and lasting; much closer to parfum actually than most lines I have tried and therefore excellent value for money. A parfum version is available as well for people who want a closer to the skin experience that projects less. Additionally, body creams made with 20% moisturising shea butter and all natural oils (scented to the fragrance of your choice or unscented) are available.
Sonoma Scent Studio also takes requests for custom scents or all natural scents with prices varying according to ingredients used.
See details and contact on Sonoma Scent Studio site.


Leather Series will continue next week with iconic representations! Stay tuned.

Pic from film "Sideways" courtesy of athinorama.gr and Ambre Noir ad from Sonoma Scent Studio site

Leather Series 6: Kinky whiffs

By guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

“The glove (…) had retained a strong odour, this distinctive musky odour which the girl’s favourite perfume, heliotrope, sweetened with a touch of vanilla; (…) violently aroused by this blend of flower and flesh, he was overcome, with the glove on his mouth, drinking in the voluptuous pleasure of his memories. (….) When he was alone, he would pick up the glove, breathe it in, kiss it, thinking he still held her in his arms, his mouth on the nape of her neck.”

In Émile Zola’s 1884 La Joie de vivre (« The Joy of Living »), the sweetly-scented glove that sheathed the hands of aristocrats has ceased to be a prophylactic adornment to become a fragment of the desired body; indeed, it seems to be desired in itself… J.K. Huysmans’ A Rebours, which dedicates a whole chapter to the art of perfumery as olfactory fetishism practiced by his decadent anti-hero Des Esseintes, would be published the same year. Within its visionary pages, perfumery wrenches itself free from the representation of nature to evoke man-made environments in unheard-of blends…

The leather note, of course, is one such artificial scent, a hybrid of “flower and flesh” created by industry. It is strangely redolent of the human skin which leather approaches, both by its texture and by its proximity to the body of the wearer whose shape it retains…
Can it possibly be a coincidence, then, that leather scents and leather fetishism are strictly contemporary, born in the same decade of the late 19th century?
Check the dates: quinolines, which lend their characteristic smoky-tarry notes to most leather perfumes, were synthesized around 1880. The first recorded Cuir de Russie was composed by Aimé Guerlain in 1875; Eugène Rimmel launched his the following year.

Now, it was precisely in 1876 that French psychiatrist Alfred Binet coined the term “fetishism”; the leather fetish itself is studied in Austrian sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886).
Fetishism in general and leather fetishism in particular had of course existed before they were identified as such: the prolific French libertine author Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), for instance, was a famous shoe sniffer. But it was only when the study of sexuality became the province of psychiatrists that an attempt to understand “perversions” gave rise to their classification. Up to then, people had sexual tastes; henceforth, they would have sexual identities.

Of course, scientists only reflected the changing perceptions and practices of Western societies. In a world where commodities were becoming increasingly available and diversified, the sex industry had followed suit by catering to “niche markets”. From 1867 to 1864, the first kinky magazine, the sedately entitled The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, devoted its pages to the charms of corsets and high heels. Brothels offered specialized services, costumes and scenarios. In Sexual Selection in Man, British sexologist Havelock Ellis reports the case, in 1894, of a prostitute saying that “several of her clients desired the odor of new shoes in the room, and that she was accustomed to obtain the desired perfume by holding her shoes for a moment over the flame of a spirit lamp.”

Thus, leather entered the vocabulary of perfumery as a dominant note, rather than as a material to be treated by perfume, at the precise period in history in which “trickle-down perversions” – to reprise the term coined by French historian Alain Corbin – pervaded the very bourgeoisie to whom Messieurs Guerlain and Rimmel sold their Cuir de Russie. The name may have referred to the Cossacks who rubbed their boots with birch, and certainly bore a virile, military or equestrian connation. But the scents themselves alluded to more private passions.




Pic: by Félicien Rops, "Pornokratès" (1878), itself a scent-inspired painting:

“I did this in four days in a small blue satin room, in an overheated apartment, full of smells, where opoponax and cyclamen gave me a fever salutary for production and even reproduction.”

Courtesy Agoravox.fr

Denyse is the author of "Sex Game Book: a Cultural Dictionary of Sexuality" (Assouline, 2007)



Leather Series will continue, along with a couple of other exciting things besides...Stay tuned!

Leather Series 5: Cuir de Russie vs Peau d'Espagne

Among leather fragrances in the past there were two major schools of thought. Both sealed their era with their characteristic flair: the Russian leather types and the Spanish leather types. The two present their own idiosyncrasies, like spirited people who enjoy disagreeing from time to time and cut out their own decisive path in life.

Russian leather (cuir de Russie) scents have been inspired by the odour of leather cured in traditional tanneries in the vast steppes of Russia; steppes populated by the lonely silhouettes of silver birches like a page out of Tolstoy. The leather used for military garments of the Russian army and especially boots held a certain aura of authority and in its wake it brought images of hardship and virility; the latter in its etymological association with the Latin virtus, meaning virtue. Those were of course traits highly coveted by men who wanted to embody such images. But in the time of women’s emancipation in the beginning of the 20th century, when leather scents came into vogue, also by the fairer sex.
Birch tar is therefore the characteristic aroma that has been implicated in the makeup of Russian leather scents in the past. To soften dried leather they used birch tar and the fat of sea animals, which give off their own unique odour. Legend has it that Cuir de Russie was born when a Cossack warrior, galloping across the endless Russian steppe, came up with ‘the idea of rubbing his leather boots with birch bark in order to waterproof them’. Several modern Cuir de Russie scents merely draw their inspiration from birch, however, while using isobutyl quinoline instead to render the tar-like note. The recipe proved so popular that every house launched their own version from Piver to Le Jardin Retrouvé(1977) through Guerlain (1875), Chanel (1924) and Creed (1953).

Chanel certainly used birch tar in their Cuir de Russie enhanced by floral notes and aimed at women ~but serving admirably as a unisex scent. Recently it was repackaged in gigantic bottles of eau de toilette in Les Exclusifs line to be distributed through very select channels and is somewhat weakened.

Cuir de Russie by Louis Toussaint Piver was originally created in the late 19th century. Piver has this to say:

“Created at the end of the nineteenth century, the original version of this exceptional cologne has been adapted to today’s market. {re-orchestration in 2003 according to Osmoz}. Very “landed gentry” its fragrance is inspired from the leather smell of Cossack riding boots protected against the wet with silver birch bark. The entrancing and impossibly elegant smell of leather peppered with the tangy notes of mandarin and bergamot orange to leave skin feeling totally refreshed. Next come the wooden and spicy notes before these in turn give way to the aroma of honey. A fragrance that surrenders itself discreetly, unveiling its splendour all in good time and presented in a highly structural bottle inspired by the Russian constructivist period. Convivial, refined and yet never ostentatious. Absolute luxury”.

Worthy of mention however that the unisex Piver’s Cuir de Russie is listed as a 1939 scent on Basenotes.
The endearingly retro label depicts a traditional Russian dance in the snowy landscape, while the cap echoes the Cossack’s toque.

Koelnisch Juchten is {edit: is being debatable} the German name for Russian leather and the eponymous scent is still in production by Farina Gegenueber, the oldest German brand for cologne founded in 1700 by an Italian druggist. Much older actually than Muelhens (of 4711 fame), which copied the 'Eau de Cologne' recipe from Farina and allegedly invented a tale about how it came to their hands. Farina made his own Cuir de Russie (Russisch Leder) by Hugo Janistyn in 1967. For many, however, Koelnisch Juchten is how Russian leather should really smell like.
Others followed suit. A true legend was born!

Spanish leather (peau d'Espagne) has a fascinating background that goes back in history as well. In the 16th century, tanners used to scent chamois with essences of flowers, herbs and fruits and as a final step smear it with civet and musk. This was known as Peau d’Espagne (Spanish skin). Chamois is by itself a sensual material: silky, feeling wonderful in the hand, contributing its own leather undertone, providing depth and softness.

More specifically, according to Havelock Ellis:

“Peau d'Espagne may be mentioned as a highly complex and luxurious perfume, often the favorite scent of sensuous persons, which really owes a large part of its potency to the presence of the crude animal sexual odors of musk and civet. It consists of wash-leather steeped in ottos of neroli, rose, santal, lavender, verbena, bergamot, cloves, and cinnamon, subsequently smeared with civet and musk. It is said by some, probably with a certain degree of truth, that Peau d'Espagne is of all perfumes that which most nearly approaches the odor of a woman's skin; whether it also suggests the odor of leather is not so clear”.

For some it is this ancestral echo of the sexual stimulus of skin odour that accounts for its success. And for others it is a scent of profound reminiscence. One of the most touching ~and evocative of a lost memento~ tales comes from Peter Altenberg, the Viennese coffeehouse bohemian, according to whom

"There are three idealists: God, mothers and poets! They don’t seek the ideal in completed things—they find it in the incomplete."

Here he talks of a 1830 fragrance:

“As a child I found in a drawer in my beloved, wonderfully beautiful mother’s writing table, which was made of mahogany and cut glass, an empty little bottle that still retained the strong fragrance of a certain perfume that was unknown to me. I often used to sneak in and sniff it. I associated this perfume with every love, tenderness, friendship, longing and sadness there is. But everything related to my mother.
Later on, fate overtook us like an unexpected horde of Huns and rained heavy blows down on us. And one day I dragged from perfumery to perfumery, hoping by means of tiny sample vials of the perfume from the writing table of my beloved deceased mother to discover its name. And at long last I did: Peau d’Espagne, Pinaud, Paris. […]
Later on, many young women on childish-sweet whims used to send me their favourite perfumes and thanked me warmly for the prescription I discovered of rubbing every perfume directly onto the naked skin of the entire body right after a bath so that it would work like a true personal skin cleansing! But all these perfumes were like the fragrances of lovely but poisonous exotic flowers. Only Essence Peau d’Espagne, Pinaud, Paris, brought me melancholic joys although my mother was no longer alive and could no longer pardon my sins”.

By the late 18th century, when the vogue for strong animalic scents which had monopolized the tastes of the rich and powerful for over two centuries had subsided, Peau d’Espagne remained an exception to the rule of the floral nosegays and the light handkerchief waters used. And by 1910, Peau d’Espagne had evolved into a fragrance to be donned on one’s person, rather than merely as the aroma of little bits of leather for scenting stationery and clothing. So cachets and gloves get a smell not only of leather itself, but also of spices and flowers added. The recipe was enhanced by the addition of vanilla, tonka beans, styrax, geranium and cedarwood. A powerhouse! Many followed the recipe from the discontinued Roger et Gallet (1895)to Santa Maria Novella (1901).

One of the scents that bear the name of Peau d’Espagne , albeit tranlsated as Spanish Leather is by Geo F.Trumper. The note on Trumper's website seems to be saying that there is no leather note in their Spanish Leather, however. A little soapy, a little sweet, it has a slight barbershop ambience to it and provokes antithetical responses from people: some love it, others hate it. The notes include musk, rose, patchouli.
Another Spanish Leather is by Truefitt and Hill: softly leathery, with slightly noticeable spice of which black pepper is more prominent. And of course there is the Santa Maria Novella Peau d'Espagne: one of the oldest and also one of the most controversial but still in production. It has the strong odour of liniment ointment, a powerful ambience for an assured person...

Spanish leather scents threfore comprise notes that have traditionally been used to perfume leather instead, much as has been described above for the curing of chamois. Ergo we come full circle: the material that inspires the trend is absent and in its place there is the evocation it produced through the means of a loan, a metaphor for connotation. Bataille would have felt at home.

Leather Series will continue with a tittilating spin on just how leather scents evolved into erotic ethos! *wink*

Pics from osmoz and Gentlemans-shop

Leather Series 4: A touch of Regal Stench

by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

For centuries, leather and scent have gone hand in hand; and for centuries, that hand was sheathed in the finest of gloves… Like his predecessors on Western thrones from Catarina di Medici onwards, King George III (1738-1820) – the English monarch whose reign was interrupted by his descent into madness - shielded his regal nose from stench with a wave of a fragrant glove.

But things had changed in the realm of perfumery, and the strong animalic aromas favoured by his forebears had fallen out of favour half a century before he was born. Many still believed that the putrid miasmas emanating from cadavers, cesspools and the very earth were responsible for plagues, and that bathing, by ridding the skin of its protective coat of grime and immersing the body in hot water would expose one to maladies by opening up the pores. However, a change in sensibilities was drawing the aristocracy and the rising bourgeois classes towards lighter floral scents conjuring images of nature. Perfumes were no longer though of only as invisible shields: their poetic essence spoke to the very soul. Animalics were reviled and thought harmful: musc, for instance, was associated to the smell of excrement.

It is thus quite surprising to find that the first documented leather scent, now known as Royal English Leather was composed in 1780 for King George III by James Henry Creed at the height of the fashion for delicately scented colognes and powders.

Was the King’s master perfumer inspired by the flower-treated leathers still in vogue at the time? If so, he may have been the first to think of introducing a note not found in nature into the vocabulary of perfumery, a full century before the invention of synthetic aromatic compounds. Creed also seems to have been the inventor of an association which would persist up to the present day, the citrus-leather blend. “Seems to have been”, because the scent was apparently reformulated in 1805, at a time when stronger, animalic perfumes were enjoying a revival: at the outset, it may simply have been a floral hesperidic blend used to treat the King’s gloves…

Royal English Leather has none of the astringent bitterness we have come to associate with later, birch-tar based scents. Indeed, the leather note might have originally been created with styrax and castoreum, although conclusive info is not divulged.

Royal English Leather opens with a solar-sweet trumpet blast of the juiciest mandarin studded with cloves, peeled open in a study lined with leather-bound books. The mouth-watering citrus yields to a slightly soapy jasmine that can nearly be tasted, as though sipping jasmine tea – the tannic oakmoss produces the tea-like effect. In the dry-down, the scent subsides into a skin-like, salty leather drizzled with violet powder fallen from the royal wig… The merest touch of aristocratic stench pervades Mad King George’s bespoke fragrance: like its brasher descendants, from Eau d’Hermès to Miller Harris Cuir d’Oranger, Royal English Leather displays a virile disdain for the niceties of the floral-loving bourgeoisie. Leather scents, from then on, would firmly claim their elitist stance.


Portrait of King George III by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1780 courtesy of royalacademy.org.uk

Leather Series 3: Production

Rendering a leather note in perfumery is a challenge for the perfumer who must coax this difficult and cult note into submission to make it sing with the rest of the composition. Production relies on two different courses: naturally derived and synthesized in a lab. Both account for a potent aroma of smoky and alteratively drier or sweeter notes, characteristic of the cuir family.

Let’s see what is actually used.

The naturals:

Birch: Betula Alba, the tree known as birch, owes its name to the Latin verb batuere meaning to strike. It is no coincidence that the branches of birch have been used for corporal punishment. Traditionally used in tanneries in Russia, Finland and Northern Europe in general, its bark produces birch tar and resin, an intensely wintergreen and tar-like odour, which has been used in Cuir de Russie type of scents in the distant past. The oil is widely used in suede and leather tannery in Russia and the essence obtained from birch buds is used for hair tonics and some cosmetic products.

Juniper and cade oil:
Juniper trees produce dark viscuous oil (cade) upon getting burned which possesses a smoky aroma that reminds one of campfires in the forests. Also used in Cuir de Russie type of scents in the past along with birch. It additionally has an anti-mould property which explains why it is a prime material for the binding of books, surely prone to decay and deterioration otherwise.

Styrax: Liquidambar Styraciflua and Liquidambar Orientalis trees are used for their excretion of the sapwood obtained by pounding the bark of both varieties. L. Styraciflua comes from the Americas (in particular Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico), while L.Orientalis comes from Asia Minor. The essence used in perfumery to give a leather undertone comes from the Honduras and is purified with volatile solvents or through vacuum distillation.
Styrax notes are usually sweeter than those of birch when used for leathery notes.

Cassie: The bark of cassie, a tree that belongs to the family of mimosa, and the absolute from the flowers are also used for giving a deep, intense leather note in some perfumes based on natural essences.

Castoreum: The secretion from the glands of beavers from Russia and Canada is a very intense, repulsive odour that when highly diluted can provide a leathery scent to fine perfumery. A by-product of the fur industry, it has been prized in perfumery for its tremendous fixative powers and its deeply animalic edge with a dry quality that smells like real leather.

Another natural essence that can produce a leather note although not usually used as such is Myrtle. Because of its camphoreous, green, rather than pungent leathery aroma, it is not the preferred choice for rendering a leather note in perfumes; although it is used in tanneries for the curing of hides.

Last but not least, cistus labdanum can provide a leathery backdrop- in cases where a more smokey/ ambery note is required ~such as in Caron Tabac Blond, Serge Lutens Cuir Mauresque and Ava Luxe Madame X {click for review}.

It is important to note that natural perfumers can render leather notes in their perfumes through the combined use of different essences such as black tea, patchouli or tobacco in addition to the above; sometimes opting for ethically avoiding animal products (castoreum) altogether.


The synthetics:

The major revolution in the production of leathery notes in perfumery came in the 1880s with the apparition of quinolines, a family of aromachemicals with a pungent leather and smoke odour that was used in the production of the modern Cuir de Russie scents appearing at the beginning of the 20th century such as Chanel’s (1924) as well as in Caron’s Tabac Blond (1919), Lanvin’s Scandal (1933) and, most importantly, Piguet’s Bandit (1944).

The chemical name of the ingredient primarily used from the quinolines groups is 4-(2-methylpropyl) quinoline, commonly referred to as isobutyl quinoline. A colourless to pale yellow liquid, used in a dilution of 1.00 % solution or less, it possesses a fiercely potent odour profile described as earthy, rooty, and nutty, echoing certain facets of oakmoss and vetiver and blending very well with both. Isobutyl quinoline also has ambery, woody, tobacco-like undertones: a really rich aromachemical! Its character can be very well perceived in the above scents as well as Cabochard by Gres.

Another synthesized note is the suede accord: a much subtler, more velours deep feel in the realm of leather notes. Less aggressive, suede notes are created in the laboratory for modern fine perfumes such as Lutens’ Daim Blond and Donna Karan. The origins hinge on muscone in the past or a complex tactile evocation of suede through a secret formula for more recent examples.

To a lesser degree the safraleine aromachemical can add a leathery tinge to perfumes. Evident in isolate of saffron, safraleine has an interesting smell ~ a combination of shoe polish/black cherry/air conditioning refrigerating fluid.

Aldehydes and especially C10, C11 and C12 are also used in addition to other ingredients in leathery perfumes to round out the composition and make it smooth.

Last but not least, in an effort to find materials that would enhance or augment leather tones and provide a cheaper and more stable alternative to animal-derived castoreum for rendering leather notes, the US Patent 4528124 (Jul, 1985 Sturm et al.252/522) has been proposed as a solution. The compound having the structure ##STR2## is a known compound disclosed at Chemical Abstracts Volume 99, Monograph 139339e. As I haven't smelled this secret ingredient I cannot report back on its effect, but it worth mentioning.

The search for materials which can provide a more refined leathery and castoreum aroma profile apparently continues.



Next instalment will focus on a scent fit for kings.

Pic of birch forest, Birch Hill Fairbanks in Alaska by Jeff Breu courtesy of Google images

Leather Series 2: Scented Leather and its Origins

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to claim that French perfumery owes its birth to the malodorous tanning process and its nauseating smell of decay. Shocking as this statement might sound, it is nonetheless true.

Tanning requires the use of nitrogenous waste to cure hides, to make them fit to be processed for the items the aristocracy requested and to kill bacteria that would infest dead tissue. Even today in places where traditional tanning techniques are used, such as Morocco, there are big basins of human and animal urine and feces, along with various tree barks rich in tannin, where workers have to stand with their feet naked, immersed in this revolting liquid, stretching the shaved hides, making them pliable and soft. The smell is trully insupportable for the wandering tourist and it is not without intense distaste that one has to urgently seek solace in a scented handerkchief or a small bunch of greenery to relieve the nose from the malicious fumes emanating from those ponds of filth.

It was not that dissimilar back during Renaissance times, when treating hides followed this method, the atmosphere of which Atelier Grimal from the “Perfume” coffret by Mugler (based on the novel and movie “Perfume: story of a murderer”) tried to capture.
From Florence and Italy, a stronghold of the European commerce with the East and its aromatic tradition, perfumes came to France through historical personages of the Medici family and through an item of clothing: gloves.

The Gantiers, the Guild of Glovers that is, was one of the most important guilds in France. It was in 1268 that it was granted the status of corporation in Paris. It was later under Colbert’s economic management that the gantiers parfumers were awarded pride of place in the Six Corps; the six most powerful societies of the day. This allowed them to have access to expensive products from overseas. The production of leather goods took place principally in Montpellier, a town famous for its tanneries. It was there that Eau de la Reine de Hongrie (Hungary Water) was produced as well. Another centre for tanneries was Grasse. The two towns were economic rivals.

Catherine de Medici (1519-1589), Queen of France from 1547 to 1559 and mother to three kings, was a personality that hasn’t been reinstated historically-speaking yet. The stigma of murderess is still attached, as she used special mixes to get rid of her enemies and was implicated in the St.Bartholomew’s Night massacre. When she left Italy to marry Henri, Duc d'Orleans, she didn’t leave behind her favourite artists, poets and even her own perfumer, René le Florentin ~named Renato Bianco at birth. It was he who scented the gloves that poisoned Jeanne D’Albert, mother of Henry IV. Catherine also made use of poison rings: jewels that opened to reveal a hollow place that contained poison to be poured into drinks and food. Monstrous as the habit seems to us, it was nonetheless very common in the courts of Europe at the time and Catherine turned it into high art. René was the first perfumer to open shop in Paris and soon anyone who was anyone flocked to his door to purchase his offerings; scented goods and ~discreetly, following the tapestry that hid the secret passage to a chamber upstairs~ non-scented goods…

Leather products did not smell particularly good in their raw state. This was due to the tanning process. Tanning de facto involved less than pleasant smells (mainly urinous, used to make hides pliable) and tradition in many countries was to further aromatize the end product with fragrant essences to hide the manufacturing process off notes: In Italy they used musk, civet and orris butter introduced by Muzio Frangipani (hence "gants frangipani"), in Spain camphor and ambergris, in France orange blossom, violet, iris and musk were the usual essences prefered. It is worthy of mention that it is hypothesized that it is exactly this re-odorized smell that accounts for our perception of what leather smells like, in both sartorial and perfume terms.
Catherine, proud of her beautiful hands and a fan of opera gloves to keep them soft, in her desire to mask the smell of cured leather, liked her leathery garments to be scented with agreeable essences. There was also another reason behind the habit though: the dire need to bring something scented to the nose when crossing the streets of the times, which were in actual fact open sewers transporting human and animal waste to the rivers and ultimately to the sea. The improvement on sanitation in the following centuries was a welcome relief that diminished the need, but the tradition remained, having given European perfumery its kick-start.

The real craze for leather goods in the mid-16th century and especially gloves was allegedly imposed by Marie de de Médicis (1575-1642), queen consort and part of the Medici family. Lured by perfumes from Cyprus, the famous chyprés, she sent for her Florentine perfumer Tombarelli to come to Grasse, where the flowers were renowned, instructing him to capture their ambience in perfumed essences. It was thus that Grasse knew a rebirth in economical terms. Tanneries profited from the trend producing the famous Gants à la Frangipane, from the name of the Roman family of the 12th century. Thus the name “frangipani” enters the scented vernacular. The gloves were made by odorizing the leather with fresh jasmine flowers (in lieu of plumeria fowers) for 8 days and fixating the scent with the use of civet and musk.

Soon indigenous plants, such as lavender, Cassie, myrtle and lentisque (mastic) as well as those that took well to the mild climate (such as jasmine, rosa centifolia and Italian tuberose) started to be cultured for the expressed purpose of using them for harvesting their aroma. Grasse therefore gave priority to the scented part of the industry, while Montpellier remained more focused on tannery per se.
However when in the 1760s the French government raised taxes on hides considerably, the gantiers parfumers suffered a crush to their revenues; especially those of Montpellier naturally. Thus Grasse managed to outdo her rival, retaining the privilege of perfume capital for centuries to follow.

Even today the noble practice of scenting leather is echoed in the niche brand Maître Parfumeur et Gantier, created by the perfumer Jean Laporte, previously founder of L’artisan Parfumer. To this day, mr.Laporte sells scented gloves in his Paris boutique, fusing past and present into one fragrant stanza. The legacy of scented leathers has trully enriched our appreciation of fragrance.




Next instalment will focus on another aspect of leather in perfumery.

Pic of leather gloves Ledge by Paul England/Flickr. Painting of Marie de Medici by Rubens, courtesy of Wikipedia