Showing posts with label catherine de medici. Show all posts
Showing posts with label catherine de medici. Show all posts

Thursday, December 6, 2007

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

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Eau de Cologne from Chanel Les Exclusifs: fragrance review

Eau de Cologne from Chanel is just what the doctor prescribed for those lazy, hot summer days when you don't have the mental energy to think straight and pick a scent that won't clash with the humidity and the heat.

And it is now as good a time as any to dispel the myths around this type of scent named Eau de Cologne. Usually it is what men in the United States say they use. This is actually a tradition that has to do with avoiding the unpleasant connotations of the term Eau de toilette and not an accurate rendition of what they put exactly on their skin. Too many times you will hear men saying that and in fact what they use is Eau de toilette. The notion of why this is so undelicate a concept to grasp dawned on me after a discussion on the correct etiquette on asking to use a toilet in someone's house. I had been told that it's customary to say "bathroom" even if you're not going to actually bathe in there. Suffice to say that this particular delicasy of phrase has escaped my more sturdy european ears and we do use the term toilet aplenty. However faire la toilette is also the french term for preening and in that regard Eau de toilette fits in really well, as it is part of the ritual (hence the name of course).

Another type of mix up happens because Eau de Cologne is not just a concentration of a scent at the counter of any fragrance line, but also a special type of scent recipe, harking back to 1370 and the first alcoholic perfumed mix prepared for the Queen Elizabeth of Hungary. This got named Hungary Water and is still around today. However it took it a couple of centuries more, to become the Eau de Cologne that became famous in 1792 under the name 4711 Echt Kolnisch Wasser, after the homonymous town in Germany (Koln/Cologne) where it was produced. The house that produced it is called Muelhens (although now 4711 is owned by Wella), the name comes from the original address of the Muelhens shop and they claimed they got the recipe from a Carthusian monk nammed Farina who gave this as a wedding gift to William Muelhens. Its first name was "aqua mirabilis" (water of miracles) due to its stimulating, antibacterial properties that warded off disease and acted as a tonic. A different story attribues the origins to Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella in Florence (which was founded in 1612) where the monks manufactured the Aqua della Regina (water of the queen), made for Catherine de Medici who upon coming to Paris inaugurated the tradition of perfumery to the french capital. There suppossedly the recipe was copied by Paul Feminis and the vogue for eaux de cologne flourished well into the coming years. [You can read the history of Eau de Cologne on this link. ]

The classic recipe of Eau de Cologne includes bright citrusy notes of bergamot, petitgrain (the essence from the stems of the bitter orange tree) along with neroli and some fruit rind's expressed oil (such as lemon or orange), garlanded with herbs such as lavender and rosemary, the odd floral note (rose for instance, as is the case in 4711) and a light underpinning of a more sturdy base note that would anchor the scent so it doesn't evaporate into thin air too soon.

In Chanel's case the given notes for its new Eau de Cologne are:
neroli, bergamot, citrus, musk, vetiver.

Indeed as one sprays the succulent juice on the skin a burst of bright, sunny, slightly bitter citrus fruits explodes and envelops the wearer in a sunny vignette of times gone by. Like people dressed in striped maillots preparing for a swim in a cosmopolitan beach, eau de cologne always brings to my mind a memory of lazy languid summer days of yore when parents and granparents started for the beach with panache and straightforward style. Think those classic Breton matelots and you're there. Soon the whole sweetens and obtains a rounder neroli and musky ambience that is supported by a light yet sensual backdrop. It does not last too long alas, which is of course the nature of such fleeting things, like a quick dip in the refreshing blue waters, but it does provide so much enjoyment while it does.
The gigantic 400ml bottle is prefectly made for lavishing this on with reckless abandon.

Pic by Nick Moschos courtesy of eikastikon.gr

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