Perfumes and Fur part 2

Relating fragrances to the warm, cozy but also intimately erotic connotations of furs is a task almost too enjoyable to be entirely legal. Some of those fragrances had even originally been thought of in relation to fur wearing which puts them all the more so in the vintage zone of a modern consumer’s consciousness, accompanied by a pang of nostalgia for things one has not even lived through.
The aristocratic aura they exuded makes them the decadent assortiment that a modern woman can reappreciate with eyes anew, cut off from their luxuriant aspirations and focusing on the richness and muskiness of their juice. But the creation process hasn’t been easy. Drom fragrances perfumer Pierre-Constantin Gueros is the son of a Parisian furrier, struggling to come to terms with how to translate his memories into scent: “The smell of the factory and smell of the different leathers and fur—that’s really something I think I will remember all my life,” he says. “And when I say leather, I mean there are so many different leathers. Sometimes I’m frustrated because we don’t have the raw materials to translate this leathery aspect. It’s sensual, but not really animalic. It’s textural—like silk, like wool. It’s very difficult to translate that into perfumes. You have the smell in your head, but translating it is very complicated.” [1] Fur in itself is a material which holds fragrance extremely well (although it’s strongly discouraged by the best furriers in the field to protect the pelts), often for generations which manage to make a simple hand-me-down the object of adoration and an infinite memory capsule.

Some of the old creators had no special qualms and went along on instinct. Jeanne Lanvin, the classic milliner most famous for her enduring Arpège, was responsible for commitioning in 1924 a rare marvel that was alas discontinued in 1988; a perfume eminently suitable to and evocative of vintage fur wearing. My Sin (Mon Péché in French), a sensuous, unapologetic beauty was created by André Fraysse of Firmenich in collaboration with the mysterious Madame Zed, an obscure personage of Russian extraction that remains a mystery in the history of perfumery. Supposedly resulting after no less than 17 unsuccessful perfumes [2] from her laboratory in Nanterre, My Sin proved that a sinful name and a classy, yet daring smell, was all it was required in the roaring Twenties.Its synergy of heliotrope and aldehydes gives a powderiness that is simpatico to both the romantic floral heart and the animalic musky-woody base of musk, civet and sandalwood, conspiring in giving an aura of silent but powerful distinction.

However Parfums Weil is the most characteristic example of fur perfumes, being the perfumery offshoot of Parisien furrier, Les Fourrures Weil (Weil Furs), established in 1927. Furriers since 1912, well before they became purveyors of fine fragrance, the venture of the founder Alfred and his brothers Marcel and Jacques into perfume resulted from the direct request of a client for a fragrance suitable to fur wearing. Weil obligingly capitulated to the request and produced scents that would guarantee not to harm the fur itself, yet mask the unwelcome musty tonality that fur coats can accumulate after a while. The names are quite literal: Zibeline (sable), Ermine (hermine), Chinchila, Une Fleur pour Fourrure (A Flower for Furs)...
The very first of those was an expansive floral chypre, conveived as an evocation of the oak forests and steppes of imperial Russia and appropriately named after the animal there captured: Zibeline, the highest quality in furs for its legendary silky touch, its scarcity value and light weight. Zibeline belonged to the original fragrant trio line-up that launched the business of Perfumes Weil. Introduced in 1928, Zibeline was comissioned by Marcel Weil and composed by Claude Fraysee assisted by his perfumer daughter, Jacqueline. (The Fraysee clan is famous for working in perfumery: His two sons, André and Hybert were to work with Lanvin and Synarome respectively and the son of André, Richard, is today head perfumer at parfums Caron)
Zibeline was released in Eau de Toilette in 1930 but the formulations came and went with subtle differences and their history is quite interesting. First there was Zibeline, then the company issued Secret de Venus bath and body oils product line which incorporated Zibeline among their other fragrances (a line most popular in the US) while later they reverted to plain Zibeline again. The Eau versions of Secret de Venus Zibeline are lighter, with less density while the bath/body oil form approximates the spicy-musky tonalities of the Zibeline extrait de parfum, with the latter being more animalistic. The older versions of parfum were indeed buttery and very skanky, deliciously civet-laden with the fruit and floral elements more of an afterthought and around the 1950s the batches gained an incredible spicy touch to exalt that quality. Later versions of Zibeline from the 70s and 80s attained a more powdery orange blossom honeyness backed up by fruit coupled with the kiss of tonka and sandalwood, only hinting at the muskiness that was so prevalent in previous incarnations, thus resulting in a nostalgic memento of a bygone epoch that seems tamer than it had actually been.
Marcel Weil's death in 1933 did not stop expanding their perfumery endeavours; they added several other perfumes: Bambou, Cassandra and Noir.The Weil family was forced out of France by Hitler, so they re-established themselves in New York from where one of the first perfumes released was Zibeline with the quite different in character chypré Antilope being issued in 1945, upon return to Paris in 1946 when they also introduced Padisha. Sadly the multiple changing of hands resulted in the languishing of the firm by the 1980s and although the brand Weil has been in ownership of Interparfums (Aroli Aromes Ligeriens) since 2002 Parfums Weil is largely unsung and long due for a resurgence.

The smooth dark fur of a living animal –for a change- was the inspiration behind one of the most elusive vintage fragrances: Mouche by Rochas from 1947, created by none other than Edmond Roudnitska who worked for several of the Rochas thoroughbreds (Femme, Moustache, Rose, Mouselline). Marcel Rochas had a cat, named Mouche, which means “fly” in French and the idea to name a fragrance after his cat was both fun and original.
The scent came in the same amphora bottle shape as Rochas’ first creation, Femme, designed by Marc Lalique, but with the outer box with the lacy interlay shaded in turquoise rather than grey. Unfortunately Mouche was all too briefly on the scene: It got discontinued in 1962 and remains a rare collectible.

Lots of other perfumes have been linked to the opulence of fur from lynx, ermine and chinchilla to otter, shearling and karakul. Some of the most characteristic is the demi-chypre/demi-floral 1000 by Patou whose refinement, disconcerting and mysterious complexity render it a difficult but intriguing proposition; or the old version of Piguet’s Baghari, which was quite different and more daring than the more demure aldehydic re-issued. Or think of the words of actress and model Camilla Rutherford reminiscing of her mother: “My mother used to wear fur. Her scent was Cabotine by Gres, and sometimes First by Van Cleef & Arpels, and it would cling to her coat. I remember when she was going out, my sister and I would be pawing her because of the softness of her mink and the scents that came from it.” [3]
But even the most unlikely fragrances can have the most surrealistic connotations implicating fur and its mystique. In one such case of free association, Diorella has been linked to “a new fur coat that has been rubbed with a very creamy mint toothpaste. Not gel. Paste.” [4] Nor are modern fragrances excluded from this wonderful game of synesthesia between touch and smell, between silkiness and swooning. Dzing! composed by Olivia Giacobetti for L’artisan Parfumeur, encapsulates the circus in a bottle with its odours of the great cats, the sawdust in the ring, the leather whip and the cardboard partitions; a wonder which would evoke soft fur even in the absence of it and the perfect accompaniment of a man or a woman on a crisp morning. Muscs Koublaï Khän by Serge Lutens has a silky radiance, warm with the intensity of living beings effortlessly appointed the quintessential parfum fourrure for modern explorers into the terrain of carnal pleasures. And Miller Harris composed L’air de Rien for Jane Birkin (and all of us eventually, as attested by our opinions) to evoke her brother’s hair and her father's pipe, resulting in an animalistic, fantastically ripe and alluring oakmoss and musks blend that would have Guerlain wishing they had come up with such an avant-garde yet also strangely retro composition.
Fur perfumes will continue to hold their fascination for every perfume lover who has been leafing through sepia-tinged old photos with a sigh of unuttered contemplation.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Perfume and Furs part 1

[1]Perfumer & Flavorist March 2007
[2]Between 1924-1925, the house of Lanvin House launched NIV NAL, IRISE, KARA - DJENOUN (commemorating an Egyptian journey ), LE SILLON, Apres Sport (all of those were discontinued in 1926), CHYPRE, COMME-CI COMME-CA, LAJEA, J'EN RAFFOLE, LA DOGARESSE, OU FLEURIT L’ORANGER (discontinued in 1940), GERANIUM D’ESPAGNE (discontinued in 1962), friction JEANNE LANVIN, CROSS-COUNTRY, and MON PECHE/MY SIN (discontinued in 1988). (source: Tout en Parfum)
[3]Interview in the Dailymail.co.uk
[4]The Face Aug.2005

Vincent Price and Coral Browne photo by Helmut Newton. My Sin and Mouche ads through Ebay. Mouche bottle via Musee de Grasse. Zibeline bottle pic via cyberattic.com

L'air de Rien by Miller Harris: fragrance review

Jane Birkin piqued the imagination of thousands when she sighed heavily throughout “Je t’aime, moi non plus”, the Gainsbourg song that Brigitte Bardot had refused to sing and which the Vatican renounced as sinful. Her personality, her insouciance and her contradicting fashion sense, embracing tattered T-shirts alongside the Hermes bag which got named after her, made her an idol that contrary to most should be graced with a celebrity scent. And so it has: Lynn Harris, nose of Miller Harris, surrounded her aura with a bespoke which launched publicly to the delight of many.
Here at Perfume Shrine we were quite taken with it and decided to post our two versions of what it means to us.

Enjoy!

By Denyse Beaulieu

“I have never liked perfumes. I have always preferred to carry potpourri in my pocket. It was an interesting exercise in finding out what you don't like. All the things usually associated with heady, dark-haired women like hyacinth, tuberose and lily-of-the-valley made me vomit when they were enclosed in a bottle so this one is much more me – I wanted a little of my brother's hair, my father's pipe, floor polish, empty chest of drawers, old forgotten houses."

Jane Birkin’s quote in vogue.co.uk at the British launch of L’Air de Rien put me off trying the scent for quite a while. I love perfume, loathe potpourri, tuberose is one of my favourite notes and

never in a thousand years would I dream of smelling like Andrew Birkin’s hair – though I enjoy the films he wrote, such as The Name of the Rose and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, his hair is not, frankly, his most appealing feature.
It took the combined pressure of Vidabo and Mimiboo, whose judgment I trust, for me to dig out my sample. Both were so taken I needed to know what, exactly, exerted such a pull – Vidabo compared it to what an avant-garde Guerlain could be.
It took several tests to “get” the elusive L’Air de Rien, which truly lives up to its name… In French, “l’air de rien” can be said of something that looks insignificant or valueless, deceptively easy (but could be the opposite). It can also be literally translated as something that “looks like nothing” – perhaps nothing we know. Something completely new, then, which, intriguingly, L’Air de Rien turned out to be.
Never has a composition behaved so capriciously in each encounter. The initial dab from the sample vial yielded nothing but a rather mild musk sweetened by neroli. Then a spray from a tester bottle was an outsize slap of oakmoss. Thinking my sample has gone off or come from a defective batch, I secured a second: musk again. Second spray, different tester bottle in a different shop: oakmoss redux.

Curiouser and curiouser … I turned to specialists to explain just why the two star notes refused to sit down and play together. I first contacted perfumer Vero Kern. She ventured that the difference in result was due to the difference in application: spraying would produce a much more ample development. She also suggested I contact Lyn Harris directly, which I did. She promptly responded:

“As the creator of this fragrance, I do find it totally mysterious and magical. It almost seems to behave like a wine in the way it changes and evolves so much with age and on different skins. It is a very simple composition based around oakmoss, amber, neroli, vanilla and musk as Jane wanted and had to know exactly what was in it and I never wanted to deceive her. She completely loves oakmoss on its own so this had to come through the top notes as it does as you spray but also as the composition doesn’t have a lot of top and heart notes (…) Oak moss is the least tenacious material with the neroli and so this is most prevalent when you spray and then drops away on the dry down.”

Mystery solved? Hardly. Mystery is truly at the heart of L’Air de Rien –how such a short, simple formula manages to create such depth of resonance. Almost as though the stripping of most head and middle notes, to delve directly into base notes, echoed the depth of intimate memories – and Jane Birkin is nothing if not a repository of memory, that of her long-time romantic partner and Pygmalion, singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, whom she left in 1980 but whose songs she still performs. Indeed, in the eyes of the French public, she is still predominantly known and loved as the quirky, immensely moving English ingénue muse of the greatest French-language poet of the late 20th century…

L’Air de Rien’s heavy sexual gravity belies the sweetness of the musk-neroli marriage. The balsamic bitterness of the oakmoss sets off the dark, almost medicinal facet of the musk that can be found in Middle-Eastern perfumery – say, in the Tangiers perfumer Madini’s Black Musk or Musk Gazelle blends. It is the polar opposite of the more fashionable clean white musks of Narciso Rodriguez for Her or Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely. The ingénue has aged and weathered: she may slip feet dirty from wandering in dusty rooms or moist, rich gardens into scuffed, well-loved boots, no longer willing to seduce with a bat of her gazelle eyes, but on her own, mournful, timeless, terms. Or not at all.

By Elena Vosnaki

I will always remember Jane Birkin in French film of the 60s La Piscine starring Romy Schneider and Alain Delon: an erotic thriller of sorts, in which she ~long haired and surprisingly young~ moved her lithe limbs innocently doe-eyed. Her French pronunciation hilariously Brit ackward as she asked “Laquelle preferez-vous?” while rolling little pieces of bread with moist fingers into miniscule spheres, averting her eyes from Romy Schneider. This faux innocence has served her well in other roles too, such as the underneath conniving, outwardly gauche heroine of who-dunnit Evil under the Sun. In that one she even dons some other woman’s perfume to make her con more believable. We are talking about a character with perfumista clout, obviously. A scent starring oakmoss no less: one of the shining ingredients of L’air de Rien!

It is with the same mock innocence that L’air de Rien fools you into believing it is a simple musk fragrance. Musks of course have been a love of mine from ever since I recall first sampling one, a rite of passage. It was thus with a sense of exaltation that I put L’air de Rien on my skin. If nothing else it proved as unique and contradictory as the woman who inspired it. Like she said herself of her life:

"I don't know why people keep banging on about the '60s. I was very conventional because I came from a conventional family and I didn't go off with different people - I rather wish I had now, seeing all the fun everyone else was having"

If her perfume is meant to be worn “like a veil over one’s body”, then it is with Salome’s subversive power of being driven by a higher entity that one would do it. Only Salome wore multiple veils and here we only have a few: the notes of the fragrance progress so rapidly that one is confused as to the denouement.
There is cosiness and snuggliness aplenty. A strange feeling of humaness, as if a living and breathing human being has entered a dark, forgotten room in an old abandoned cottage in the Yorkshire countryside or the scriptorium in the The Name of the Rose; coincidentally among my most favourite novels (the film of course necessarily excised much of the esoterica of the book by Eco).
Like old parchment there is a bitter mustiness to L’air de Rien that gives a perverse, armospheric sexiness to the sweeter note of amber that clutches on to shadowy musk and oakmoss for dear life.

If you have secretly fantasized about having a roll on the floor of the dark kitchen in the murderous monastery of the above-mentioned film with a handsome young monk, then this is your scent. Literally nothing lay hidden underneath Valentina Vargas’ dirty cloak as she silently seduced Christian Slater with all the rough innocence of their respective youth and all the postcoital regret of the eternally unattainable.
Lacrimae mundi, tears of the world...


Click here for the famous nude scene from The Name of the Rose. Warning: Not office-suitable!

Pic of Jane Birkin and Charles Gainsbourg sent to me by mail unaccredited. Pic of Andrew Birkin from The Telegraph 2003. Artwork by Polish illustrator Zdzisław Beksiński courtesy of BekinskiOvh.org

Glorious stink

The ebb and flow of human taste and its modus operandi is an undecipherable commodity. What is considered appealing and desirable and what is not doesn’t obey any quantitative measure. Which of course accounts for trends, market research and lost fortunes in wrong assumptions side by side with the successful lucky guesses.
The same applies to smell and fragrance. More pointedly so when the aromas emanating from someone are of a more intimate nature.

Ever since the dawn of humanity homo sapiens has shared the biological fate of his ancestors in the olfactory field. His sense of smell has primarily directed him to opt for the healthy game and fresh produce and avoid the stale and rotten. It is also possible that it has directed him via odorata sexualis to suitable mates through which procreation might be consummated with the imperceptible help of pheromones, aroma materials that are emanated by individuals to attract. For millennia man has been content to do just that.

And then civilization came into the picture. In the great civilizations of antiquity such as Egypt, Greece and Rome, the desire to distance oneself from the animal nature and embrace the humane, as manifested in science, philosophy and the arts, has made man take measures as to maintain a level of cleanliness that is beyond the mere necessity of survival. All those civilizations have been very hygienic indeed, if we take into mind that there was no running hot water and no bubble baths in a million permutations.
Yet Herodotus talks about how the ancient Egyptians of his time bathed regularly shaving their body hair and even their scalps as to not let perspiration nestle in intimate parts of the body and fester bacteria (OK, he did not use the word bacteria precisely). How they had inward lavatories for their needs and how they took pains to maintain hygiene there. How they used sweet scented oils and incense to accompany the dead to their last dwelling place on earth.
The Greeks were by no means less clean. They too -living in a warm climate- had been taking regular baths using silver and golden basins followed by massage with aromatic oils of thyme and basil at every possible occasion, cleaning their clothes in the rivers with ash and aromatic herbs as described in the Odyssey and equating hygiene with sanity and longevity. Numerous are the mythological tales of gods and goddesses taking baths while mortals gazed hidden. It was Galenos who invented the first bar of soap mixing crushed flower petals, olive oil and ash from burnt logwood.
Ancient Rome was the apex of public baths, in which people of all ages intermingled and talked about state matters in elaborate buildings divided in unctuarium (where they chose the unguents with which they would groom themselves), the frigidarium (cold bath) and the caldarium (hot bath) and then on to the labrum for the final cold shower.
Even lavender that clean smelling herb is named after the roman word for bathing, because of its ubiquitous use.
The tradition of the bath as a civilization index is no more apparent that in Tacitus’ opus Germania where he mentions with some disdain that Germanians, considered barbarians at the time, bathed in rivers. At least they did bathe! Which is more than can be said for the squalor and filth in which Medieval Europe lived for centuries after the fall of Rome.

While Islam reveled in the luxuries of bathing (aided by the religious prerequisite to clean one’s head, hands and feet before every prayer, a phenomenon that occurs with frequent regularity throughout the day), western Europe inaugurated a practice of not washing up one’s body at all, for which the church can be found to be a great culprit.
Maintaining that mixed baths (as were previously tentatively explored) were corrupting the soul and that tending to one’s genitals might lead to impure thoughts, they condoned the absence of bath as a means of chastity while at the same time they traditionally equated holiness with the sweet smell of myrrh and incense. How those two could co-exist is beyond me, but this is not the only paradox one comes up against if one explores the matter further.

It was as late as 1750 according to Alain Corbin and his book “Le Miasme and la Jonquile”, which explores the adventure of sanitation and the desodorisation of society, that the élite chose to distance itself from the foul stench of the gutters and disease that were abundant in the crowded -by then- cities of France. A taste for the aroma of deer musk or of catty civet and of pure country air mingled in what was to become the height of French perfumery. The impression of cleanliness underscored by the reminder that we are all human, full of smells that could be perceived as disgusting in their pure state.
However perfumes seemed to be necessary still to repel the germs and bacteria through their cleansing properties as the tradition of filth continued, albeit a bit subdued: at least the clothes were as freshly clean as possible.
Louis XIV was said to have only bathed two times in his whole long life despite asking his guests and courtesans to wear a different perfume every day and the mere thought disgusts us today, earning a reputation of filth for Frenchmen which sadly has not been totally shifted if I judge by the miniscule pieces of sanitary paper that come out - one at a time!!- through the automatic devices at French toilets today.
On the other hand there was also an allure of the animalic and forbidden in similar practices when Napoleon infamously wrote to Josephine: “Je reviens en trois jours; ne te laves pas!” (I return in three days; don’t wash yourself).
The pair of them began a vogue for heavier smells as Josephine was madly in love with the smell of musk, to the point that her boudoir at Malmaison still has an aura of the aromatic essence present. Napoleon on the other hand preferred her in violets.

The Victorian age reveled in pure and simple smells as a contrast to the more decadent Empire style, using single floral waters (soliflores) for men and women alike. But it was the Puritans more than anyone else that began the hysteria for cleanliness with their desire to eliminate all traces of animalic tendencies from man. Sadly this is an insurmountable task, as the human body has to produce bile and bacteria to break down food which accounts for a smell that cannot be completely eradicated however hard one tries.
Indoor plumbing and hot water at the click of a button made taking baths an easy and swift procedure that is as an automatic reflex for today’s men and women as brushing one’s teeth. Technological progressions made the manufacture of industrial strength deodorants to put under one’s armpits as a necessity of every day life that is a god sent if you’re ever stuck up in a crowded underground wagon on a hot day of August. Perfumed products in an array of mind arresting variety are manufactured to lure as in and buy more, more, more…

And yet in all that progress we seem to have lost what has once been ours in ancient years: the conjugation of mind and body, the clean with the human.
The examples of complete perfume bans in offices in latter days, the denial of the sensual and natural in favour of the sanitized and deodorized has permeated every single aspect of today’s life. Everything around us is artificially scented with a chemical aroma that defies every law of nature. We scrub fanatically to remove any trace of human smell from our bodies and then we apply perfumed products that would supposedly give us back what nature intended to give us in order to attract a mate. We seek to find “clean” but at the same time “sexy” smells. Above all we do not want to offend. Being accused of smelling of body odour is the height of mortification for anyone beyond infancy. (since kids do not really “smell”; there have to be sexual hormones at play to do that…)
In an overcrowded planet that has no room for any more bodies, this was to be expected.
And this is what accounts for the recent resurgence of perfumes that aim to regress in the stink and funk of our human condition: from the goat-y magnificence of Muscs Kublai Khan by enfant gaté Serge Lutens to the dirty smell of Kiehl’s Musk eau de toilette and from the soft caress of a slightly sweaty body that has been active in human activities of L’air de rien by Miller Harris (with the collaboration of Jane Birkin) to the gimmicky Sécretions magnifiques by état libre d’Orange which recalls semen and blood (sounds the recipe for some tabloid article)…

It is clear that one yearns for what one is denied of. And the reason why isn’t very hard to see.


Artwork by Patric Boivine for CGnetworks.com