How to Wear Fragrance: On Perfume Etiquette

It might not come from a French-authored source, but in Karen Homer's adorable little book Things a Woman Should Know about Style, a whole chapter is devoted to fragrance use. The cover, sporting the famous opening shot of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's (based on Truman Capote's story) with an Audrey Hepburn in shades & pearls, hair on a high bun, is predisposing for classical, glamour tips for wearing your clothes with confindence and panache.

Leafing through the book's pages, I come upon such seemingly wise, but ultimately ill-gotten advice as "A bottle of perfume once opened will not last more than 6 months. At least not to a nose that knows".  And I find myself smirking a bit on behalf of all the perfume community's hunt for vintage treasures. But still, there are other nuggets of wisdom, which are charming and harmless, as well as the sound practical tips on opting for classics when in doubt ("Chanel No.5 or anything created by Guerlain before 1930 are your safest bets") or buying the fragrance you like at outlets at a discount.

A few of those hints of perfume etiquette sound like wise precautions in the battlefield of love & romance; even if a little less self-assured or defying as the standard perfumista is accustomed to: The author advises to stop wearing a fragrance if one's significant other doesn't like it. And cautions an even faster elimination of fragrance if it happens to be the same as your significant other's ex. Particularly if said partner is responding positively to its scent! Furthermore a partner's conscious move to gift a current love interest with an ex's fragrance is to be viewed with grave suspicion. For reasons of fairness, one's partner should be met with the same courtesy when choosing a gift for them.

If you're really romantic and happen to be travelling away from your loved one, it's a very poetic gesture to scent a card with your beloved's fragrance and tuck it away in your luggage. Opening up your suitcase upon arrival, a wave of nostalia will tangle its poigant fingers around your heart...

Moving into the realm of choosing fragrance for public wearing, Homer advises caution in the face of unisex fragrances (or masculine scents for women): "When you dress up for an evening, you want to smell feminine and not the same as the maitre d'. That said, for daywear, the classic unisex cologne Aqua di Parma has a fresh, lemony charm perfect for lunching in Tuscan gardens." And where would one be most likely to find a decent substitute for Aqua di Parma cologne, should one want to bypass the sameness factor? The author confirms my own experience that small off the beaten-track toiletries stores in France (and along some of the Mediterranean countries) can provide their local take of toilet water which is often exceptionally good and looks positively "exotic" to most people not native. Homer quips that the trick of "exclusivity" with local toilet waters however is not possible with quite the same subtleness in Spain or Italy, given the predeliction of male patrons for stronger, expansive fragrances:  Therefore, use extreme caution, "unless you want to smell like a teenafer boy's bathroom the night he thinks he's going to lose his virginity".

But perhaps the most controversial and ripe for discussion snippet is the tip on choosing toilet waters: "Rosewater smells of the faded grandeur of old actresses; lavender smells of your granny". Perhaps it's all a game of perfume associations...Or perhaps the greatest tip of them all is to just have confidence in yourself and good manners when applying perfume: less can be so much more.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: How French Women Wear Perfume

How French Women Do It (Wear Perfume, That Is!)

There is a huge market of marketing all things French to Anglosaxons and in that respect the title of today's post is in part taken off a popular "French lifestyle guide" aimed at Americans. Even though I have serious doubts about the factual veracity of both the "glamour puss" image of the French or the "gauche" approach of Anglos on all matters lifestyle (or is it?), there is something to be said about the interest that is generated about the use of perfume the French way in the hearts of fragrance lovers who devour all perfume advice with an insatiable appetite! In that regard I have amassed some excerpts from various sources which I will present to you in installments.

Allure Magazine recently published a beauty article called "French Lessons", by Judy Bachrach, focusing on perfume choosing and application rules. Even though most of the "rules" are field for heated discussion (especially since they rely on a certain national stereotype that seems to perpetuate a humiliating response in the American reader, following the trendy viewpoint of dumping on everything American), we thought it might provide fodder for discussion for our readers.
So here are the 7 Rules on How to Wear Perfume the French Way, according to Allure magazine:
1. There is only one reason, if you're French, to wear perfume. And that reason is seduction.
2. In France the scent you dab defines who you are.
3. A girl who picks a fragrance at 12 doesn't have to remain true to the scent for life.
4. There are times when you simply have to divorce your perfume.
5. Try not to wear the same scent as your mother.
6. Never leave home without it.
7. Never ask a Frenchwoman what perfume she's wearing. They don't want to share their signature scent.

On the other hand, even in books which rely rather on expanding the above mentioned social divide that lies between these two very different countries (and in general between Anglos and continental Europe), there are interesting tidbits about perfume use. The reason probably is that even though it's the French who made perfume the marketable good that it is, cultivating the fragrance industry early and seriously, it's really the Anglos who have a keen interest in fragrance, smelling it, owning it, collecting it and alternatively enthusiastically embracing it or shunning it with just as much passion.
Writes Helena Frith Powell (an author on the subject): "French women use everything they can to seduce men, including perfume. They’re mad about it. Most of them won’t leave the house without it. If you go into a perfumery in France once the sales assistant will offer to ‘perfume’ you. I can see why. Their men are equally mad about the way women smell. I once sat next to a French man at a dinner. Half-way through the starter he turned to me and whispered: “Your perfume is intoxicating.” As an English girl I’m not used to that sort of comment. It half made me want to throw up, but it also made me feel rather, well, intoxicating and seductive."

In Fatale, How French Women Do It by Edith Kunz, the seminal little guide into all things French which spawned a legion of similar style  volumes, (some more serious than others), there is a chapter devoted to French perfume use. In it, the author rightfully demonstrates how the habit of perfume wearing began in France as a temporary cure for a general state of filth and expands into describing the (supposed) French ritual of wearing fragrance for purposes of seduction. Even though the procedure isn't particularly novel ~bath soak in aromatic oils, followed by scented body lotion and scented dusted powder, with fragrance as an end note~, it does present a couple of interesting tidbits: According to Kunz French femme fatales apply perfume to the pulse points with a generously moistened cotton puff instead of fingers or the stopper (My own suggestion of a better way to do that would be to use a small silk handerchief on the stopper, which can then aromatize your handbag). As to where to put that perfume, perhaps the most famous quip comes from Chanel who suggested to a client asking "wherever you want to be kissed". Not to quench anyone's imagination, but there is a plethora of (unusual) key points to consider in your fragrancing ritual:

heels, arches and between the toes
the inner and outer ankle bone
behind the knees
the underside of the derriere
the pubic area and the navel
under each breast and between the breasts
the shoulders and upper arms
inside the bend of the elbow
the pulse points at the inner wrist
the back of the hand and between the fingers
the hollow at the bottom of the neck
all around the collar bone
under the chin
along the jaw line
behind the ears and on the earlobes
on the temples
along the back of the neck to the shoulder blades
around the hairline

If this isn't enough for your routine, I don't know what might be! Surely a loaded, decadent perfuming process, but one which would make one unforgettable. Whether that would be in a positive or negative light remains within the grasp of your actual perfume choice and one crucial detail, in the words of Powell "don’t overdo it, perfume has to give a hint of sweet things to follow, not knock your date out". Eh, bien sûr!

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Drapeau tricolore: Quintessential French Perfumes Selection, Stars & Stripes: 10 Quintessentially American Perfumes.

art illustration via makeupandbeauty.com

Perfume in public places?

Perfume Shrine receives lots of mail by fans, lots of it with questions to pose.
One of them recently rehashed that perennial subject of what personal fragrance is suitable for public occassions in closed spaces.

Dear Helg,

I have been reading your wonderful blog for a long time and want to congratulate you on your excellent work.
I have taken the initiative to delurk and mail you with a question pertaining to something that happened to me at the movies the other day.
I went to see Zodiac with my boyfriend and as we were sitting there in the dark, munching on our popcron, the smell of something at once earthy and flowery was coming my way. You know how terrible it is when someone who wears a completely wrong scent goes at the movies and stinks up the whole place. Well, this wasn't the case. Quite the opposite!
At first I thought it was a woman and tried to locate the wearer, but soon I realised it was the man sitting on the front row at my far left who was an "arts and crafts type", probably in his 30s, accompanying a similar type of girl. I couldn't discern more in the dark.
The scent was delicious, not in the sense that you wanted to go and nibble on the person wearing it, but in that it embraced his personality. It had some element of dirt to it, although I am terrible at describing these things.
I didn't have the nerve to ask him...but it has haunted me ever since. I tried to find out what it was to no avail.

Do you have any ideas what it might have been?
I'd be ever so grateful...

Best,
Aline

To answer this type of question would leave a lot to the imagination, as the clues I have to go on are not that many. However, I could hazard the guess that we are talking about a vetiver or patchouli infused floral, from the looks of it. Even a little musk could have been involved.
Therefore I would nominate Voleur des Roses by L'artisan Parfumeur, patchouli under a rose effluvium or maybe Rose d'homme by Rosine, a rich, round rose with earth still attached on the stems.
Since he is a young man I might also mention Black XS by Paco Rabanne, although it features a sweet fruity note in there as well. This has a good chance of being the culprit though as it is more commercially available. Diesel Green might also be the one.
Another more obscure probability might be Gregory by Fresh scents by Terry that combines patchouli with ylang ylang and leather. I hope the reader does find the answer after sampling those, although I am sorry I can't be of any more assistance.
If you, dear readers, have any more ideas, please let us know in the comments.


However this issue has a flip-side as well. How utterly disgusting it is to enter a cinema theater and be bombasted by the smelly fumes of someone who has overdosed on something inappropriate...something with a monstruous sillage or something too invasive in its volume. Like -say- Angel or Giorgio (remember that one?).
Why would anyone stink up such a confined place? Or a restaurant or an elevator or any of those public places that demand a degree of restraint and noblesse. I am sure you all have horror stories of being cooped up in a car with someone who did this...

It seems to me that people who are guilty as charged do not always realise the power of their olfactory fingerprint. They aim here and there regardless of the consequences, simply repeating an atavistic process of habitual spritzing of something that has taken their aura for granted. Something that might have been quite good in moderation, something that might have even elicited compliments, had they been more discerning in application or suitability to the circumstances. The familiarity that breeds itself upon years or months of continued use might be the cause of that. In that regard there is a strong case to be made out of switching perfumes now and then, to make your nose more sensitive to nuances and volume of the notes.

Other times it is just the issue of something being too weird for public use in the first place. I can personally cite my own case with Etro's Messe de Minuit. It is a slice of apocrypha, a little sage-ladden incensy thing that trasnports me, but would I venture out with it on my person? No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to get people into thinking that the old manuscripts I may handle in the library have found a way into my pockets! I am not the nipping kind. And why would I want to project such an image?
On the other hand, this borders on a limitation of the defensive shoulder-pads that a personal scent might warrant to the wearer. Acting as the personal space around one that needs to be breached by those special ones that the wearer allows to.

On another occassion, many years ago, I was myself seating at the theatre, waiting to watch a play by Racine when the toxic fumes of something quite sharp, intensely medicinal and simultaneously sweet in the background reached my nostrils which quivered with apprehension. It was so potent, so pervasive that it etched itself to my memory making me hating the almondy trip of Hypnotic Poison for the longest time. It took me several samplings to discern the differences between the eau de toilette and the eau de parfum. It dawned on me that I had smelled the one, while I could like the other, after all. Hypnotic Poison was re-instated in its gourmand pantheon that merits its numerous fans. I even contemplated getting a bottle at some point; an idea that never came into fruition, although I am not rejecting the possibility in the future.

And sitting down at a restaurant about to have escargots in wine and tomato sauce, I was fumigated by Angel's wake, worn by a young woman dressed to over-kill with big hoop earrings in silver, really heavy black khol and jeans down to there. Maybe there is too much attached in the visual when judging something on its olfactory attribues; maybe the two are not easy to separate and it's an anthropological thing. I don't know, it has taken me years of observation and I still haven't come with a conclusive answer.

What I do know is that when you go in a restaurant or at the movies, please be kind and consider wearing something that won't make other people wish they never ever ventured there. Maybe go for Voleur de Roses or Black XS. Used in polite moderation. And leave people having a longing to smell you again and again...


I would be interested in your comments as to what would and wouldn't be appropriate for use in confined public spaces.

Pic sent to me by mail unaccredited.