Orange, Rosewater & Mint Tisane in Le Divorce: Erotic Recipe for Women

James Ivory has long been considered the most "British" of American directors, at least going by his Ismail Merchant collaboration (usually with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in screenwriting/adaptation), which has produced such delicate cinematic gems as Room with a View, The Remains of the Day and Howard's End. In 2003's Le Divorce, however, he tries his hand on the old cultural war between Les Americains et les Français, instead, based on a novel by Diane Johnson. A weak link in Ivory's formidable record, mainly due to an indecision as to what his main focus will be, the film nevertheless produces interesting and subtle little snippets of the cultural and ideological chasm between the two nations in high style and an all-star cast.

Kate Hudson as Isabel Walker is an American film school dropout who jets off to Paris when her pregnant step-sister Roxy (played by Naomi Watts) is abandoned by her French husband. Soon, Isabel has a scandal of her own when she falls for an older French man, Edgar Cosset, who's related to Roxy's cheating husband and is a far-right politician. Totally out of her waters, the nubile, originally hippyish Isabel lets herself be metamorphosized into a chic butterfly, through the sophistication-adding tricks of a bob cut, soigné makeup, co-ordinated wardrobe, an Hermès red Kelly 28 bag given to her as a gift (really, a stand-alone character in the film, a status symbol prop made into powerful allusion), intimate trysts following elaborate four-course meals, and racy lingerie brought for the sheer pleasure of getting out of it.

There all sorts of clichés too, accounting to French character assasination, mainly involving cheating Frenchmen, conservative French women, manners & propriety above essence and a contrasting augmented sense of sincerity on the part of Americans as opposed to the Europeans, which involve a pleiad of secondary characters (but true stars, such as Glen Close, Stockard Channing, French legend Leslie Caron, Jean Marc Barr, Matthew Modine etc). If you have been to Paris, it's also a trip down memory lane, as besides the Louvre and the final, downspiral kerfuffle at the Eiffel Tower, you will recognize beautiful Parisian locales such as Cafe de Flore and Le Georges.

But the most characteristic scene in Le Divorce~well, for us fumenerds noticing such details anyway~ takes place when Isabel's older French lover hands her down a secret erotic recipe in bed, telling her to drink it before lovemaking to make the love juices smell fragrant: "That's something you would never have found out in Santa Barbara!" he tells her naughtily (You just want to bitch slap him, that's how smugly he delivers the line!).
A stereotype though it might sound, as liberated and sexually free the American woman is, catering for her lover's pleasure in such a subtle way is not considered the norm. This special tisane symbolizes a favour to the male, a preparation in anticipation of erotic ecstacy, a foregone conclusion, a subjugation of the feminist to the concubine, recalling how Chinese concubines were fed  deer musk so as to make their bodies exude fragrant fumes from every pore when stroked by their lovers...

Of course there are hundreds of erotic recipes for potions, ointments, unguents and powders to enhance the sexual act. The recipe in Le Divorce involves a special tisane, brewed of mint leaves in orange and rosewater, sipped before the sexual act. The herbs and essences chosen are not random: Apart from their health benefits and aromatic properties, imparting a delicious fragrant steam when sipping, they balance the hormones and open the mind for the pleasure of the senses. Mint is easy on the stomach and excellent for steadying the nerves and for nausea. Rose hips are the seed pods left behind when the rose blossoms fade in autumn. Their sweet and sour tonality is very enjoyable in tisanes, giving a refined, feminine taste. Coupled with orange, coming from the peeled rind of the orange fruit itself, the taste is sweet and bracing, balancing the other ingredients and providing a sensual rounding.
This is an easy recipe to make by yourself, adjusting the ratio of plants to suit your own taste. Just peel a ripe orange, boil the rind with some mint leaves (or a mint teabag) and a rosehips tea bag and you're good to go! After all, in the movie the exact measurements are pointedly never given and there is a sense of received irony when Isabel asks for exact directions as to when to drink and how much. Like French seduction, spontaneity goes further than a pre-planned go-by-the-book approach...



pics via wwcinemastyle.blogspot.com and toutlecine.com

Perfume and Fur part 1

Upon relating perfume-wearing to winter it’s natural to think of fragrances as warm and enveloping as a fur coat of the softest mink or the whitest sable. Sultry, luxurious and rich in slowly-evolving notes, those fragrances are rivaling the opulence of furs and their superior warming properties.
There is a fascinating term for down-and-dirty in French: "parfum de fourrure" (par-fehm –de-fou-reeh-rr or click here to hear how "fourrure" is pronounced), which means “fur perfume”, to denote not a fragrance meant to be literally used on fur coats (as fur gets dried by alcohol and is sensitive to several materials anyway), but rather a perfume to be worn when donning a luxurious fur coat, usually in the evening amidst smart company. Natural fur has a catty odour, which can become rather musty when turned into a coat that’s stored in the closet, and this necessitated the use of scents that would help “mask” this problem. In fact Claude Fraysee, the creator of fragrances for parfums Weil, celebrated furriers to begin with, was said to have created “parfums furrure” specifically at the request of a client. But we will revert to that later.

The sociological implications of furs are not to be sidetracked when considering this particular olfactory vogue which flourished in the beginnings of the 20th century, well before PETA and animal-rights-movement. In regions where extreme temperatures necessitated fur-wearing for months on end, such as Canada and Russia, fur-producing countries, that aspect was minimal. In Russia specifically fur does not hold a great implication of luxury, as even the poor wear it –albeit in poorer quality incarnations-to escape the cold. This is perhaps the sanest use of fur devoid of any aspirational nuances. In other parts of the Northern hemisphere however furs emerged as an emblem of luxury, ever since antiquity. They became especially prized since the Romanov dynasty’s decline and the subsequent stories of princess Anastasia escaping in the West (finally put to rest after the DNA examination that proved she was part of the Bolsheviks’ shootings) which fueled the imagination of millions. Numerous are the literature texts in which a mysterious lady with a Russian accent, decked in furs and art-deco jewels, is referenced. The baroque style of the Russian court who was in close diplomatic contact with the French gave rise to a vogue for fur coats and stoles; particularly welcome covering the by now naked shoulders of women in 20s filmsy charleston-dresses or 30s evening gowns that left them all too cold for comfort.
But fur was also heavily eroticized starting with Leopold von Sacher Masoch’s “Venus in Furs”, in which fur performs the role of exalting his heroine’s, Wanda von Dunajew, almost supernatural façade and is then copiously referenced in the Berlin cabaret scene and classic film noirs.

And who can forget Charles Baudelaire when in Un Fantôme II Le Parfum (from "Les Fleurs du Mal") he rhapsodised another kind of fur, much more intimate and impolite, almost untranslateable ~the odor di femina, the musky smell of a woman's sex:

Reader, have you at times inhaled
With rapture and slow greediness
That grain of incense which pervades a church,
Or the inveterate musk of a sachet?
Profound, magical charm, with which the past,
Restored to life, makes us inebriate!
Thus the lover from an adored body
Plucks memory's exquisite flower.
From her tresses, heavy and elastic,
Living sachet, censer for the bedroom,
A wild and savage odor rose,
And from her clothes, of muslin or velvet,
All redolent of her youth's purity,
There emanated the odor of fur.

~translation fleursdumal.org

In the 1970s, silver fox was de rigeur in advertisements and VIP pics accompanying the Glamazons of the era. Fur coats ~stoles especially, as they are so much easier to wear and more dramatic to use~ became standard luxury evening-wear to the point that designer Ciara Bonni declared them in the early 90s a cliché ~the most expected garment to wear over an evening gown and therefore not chic.The animal rights movement in subsequent years has attached a stigma to fur-wearing, an act of vanity ~which it so often is. Although “ecological” man-made fur is proposed as an alternative, the truth is they do not feel in the least as soft and on top of that their fibres are made from materials that do not disintegrate fast enough, rendering them ~ironically enough~ quite unecological. Still, fur-wearing is laden with some well-deserved guilt nowadays for ethical reasons, even if it involves vintage pieces which are the only ones I would use myself. Nevertheless it has been making a quiet come-back in fashion for quite some time. But the above small history of fur proves it wasn’t so when perfumes were specifically built to compliment it!

The naturally catty odour of fur lent itself effortlessly to perfumes which are rich in animal ingredients such as castoreum (often used to render leather hide notes), musk and especially civet. Natural civet comes through the impolite secretions of a small animal’s perineal glands, produced spontaneously and amassed in a process not harmful to the animal, although surely quite irritating! The advent of animalic notes after years of demure Victorian floral waters was coinciding with the vogue of the roaring Twenties for everything forbidden, dangerous and dark. It wasn’t since before L’ Empire (the years of Napoleonic reign) that musk had been popular and after more than a century past, it was the perfect occasion for its return. The success of opulent, somnobulent Orientals such as Tabu and Shalimar paved the way for braver and “dirtier” escapes in fragrances. Fur perfumes had been born!

To be continued..... Perfume and Fur part 2

Pics: "Pola woman" and Charlotte Rampling photography by Helmut Newton. Carolina Herrera in furs by her mother, designer Carolina Herrera. Theda Bara the Vamp via seraphicpress.com

Romancing the Ripe

Widespread is the knowledge of Napoleon's famous erotic line to Josephine, "I will return in three days, don't wash!" (“Je reviens en trois jours; ne te laves pas!"), which inspired even the famous name of a Worth perfume, Je reviens. But little do people realise that he was not the first one to appreciate the ripeness of a female body's natural aroma. It was another French figure who had the historical privilege of uttering a comparable phrase in the throes of erotic passion to his beloved centuries ago: Henry IV of France, who wrote to his mistress Gabrielle d'Estree: "Don't wash my love, I'll be home in eight days".
Interesting to note no doubt that transport as well as beliefs concerning for how long one could sustain themselves without a bath had changed accordingly through the course of more than 2 centuries.
Henry IV of France was reputed to have such a ripe smell himself that his intended, Marie de Medici, keeled over upon meeting him.
But a predecessor, Henry III was also reportedly excited by the animalic essence of the female body: he fell in love with Mary of Cleeves after smelling the odour of her just removed clothing. Of course the circumstances upon which she had removed the clothing and what he saw might also have contributed to his infatuation no doubt.

According to Alain Corbin, social historian and author of The Foul and the Fragrant, Baudelaire was in part responsible for transforming the scented profile of the woman.

"The perfume of bare flesh, intensified by the warmth and moistness of the bed,replaced the veiled scents of the modest body as a sexual stimulus.[...] The woman stopped being a lily; she became a perfume sachet, a bouquet of odors that emanated from the "odorous wood" of her unbound hair, skin, breath, and blood.[...] The atmosphere of the alcove generated desire and unleashed storms of passion".

As we had noted in a previous article on Perfume Shrine named "Glorious Stink", the matter of fragrancing the body or not, the ritual of bathing and the perceptions concerning cleanliness have been at the eye of the turmoil of civilization since antiquity. Fragrance can only be an additional veil upon the essence of the body itself. In the words of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, "you feel how external fragrance stands upon your stronger resistance?"

Henry Miller was even more explicit when he progressed the onomatopoeia of Baudelaire's "muskiness of fur" using its proper name taken from the vernacular:

"With the refinements that come from maturity the smells faded out, to be replaced by only one other distinctly memorable, distinctly pleasurable smell" and he goes on to suggest the female genitals as the source of the ambrosial aroma. "More particularly, the odor that lingers on the fingers after playing with a woman, for if it has not been noticed before, this smell is more enjoyable, perhaps because it already carries the perfume of the past tense".

It is obvious that the natural smell of a sexually mature body held great fascination for men for centuries and it is even more confusing juxtaposing this belief with today's standards of hygiene to the point of the sterile. All in all, the print of a civilization often revolves around the use of soap and water and this is none more apparently ironic than in the examination of sophisticated societies.

Illustration by Steve Murray, courtesy of the National Post.

Ava Luxe Madame X: a fragrance review

There are some perfumes that sing of female emancipation, of confidence, cool and the power of the go-getter. They are high brow at all circumstances, they are professional yet elegant, the mark of a successful woman in all areas. They have class, sophistication, refinement and a je ne sais quoi that sets them apart and makes them the object of admiration.
Madame X by Ava Luxe is not one of them.

Instead it recalls all the carnal knowledge that has a primitive root in out psyche, the call of the wild, the chase, female surrender, complete abandonment in the open arms of hell. Like an erotic adventure in a distant bruised past it has the rare ability to entice with the memory of the basest and lowest one has ever been to and actually had fun out of it. To call something sexy is a cliché and we do not condone clichés at Perfume Shrine, at least to the measure that is within our abilities. Madame X has none of the mysterious aura of a femme fatale nor the coolness of her calculating demeanour. She is no Bridget Gregory /Wendy Kroy from "The Last Seduction", as played by Linda Fiorentino, cool as a cucumber and only acting vulnerable in order to get her case made, improvising with the same black goal all along.
Madame X is a vulnerable woman, all open for the plucking, a little mature, a little pained and you have to approach her with the fervour and candour of a considerate lover, that for reasons of his own would be willing to explore the possibilities of reaching God.




Her trail of soft, deep, sensual labdanum in all its erotic permutations blooms on the skin, coupled with the slight fresh pepperiness of coriander. The initial impression it made mingled the spicy jolt and sweet richness of Cinnabar combined with the depth and raunch of amber, vanilla, sandalwood and the civet accord of Obsession. I do love both of those perfumes so the association was not simply interesting but positively mesmerising. The leather is so soft it almost makes one shed a tear of longing, while the lasting power is good although the volume at which this gem projects is low and discreet.
The viscous consistency of a drop of parfum upon my skin held the fascination of the imaginary prototype virgin in Grenouille’s pursuit for perfection. I can be brazen and say that it has captured my heart and draws its strings as we speak. Were I a man I would fall deeply in love with the mature person that would only spontaneously raise her legs for a reason only she herself knows, allowing me to harvest her most precious essence: Madame X.

Madame X is described as a "sheer ambery veil of labdanum and leather that wears close to the skin but lingers through the night" by its creator and comes in Parfum and Eau de Parfum concentrations.

Official Notes: Coriander, Acacia Farnesiana, Freshly cut hay, Jasmine, Rose, Labdanum, Leather, Incense, Patchouli, Oakmoss, Civet, Ambergris, Castoreum, Sandalwood Mysore, Precious Musks, Vanilla

You can purchase samples or order directly from the Ava Luxe site here:
Ava Luxe index page

I know I for one am eager to explore more of her creations.


Pic of Charlotte Rambling originally upoaded on POL. "Last tango in Paris" comes from Brando fan-site.