What fragrance would these Oscar winners wear?

You do realise this is a post from the storehouse, don't you! What I mean: Oscar weekend came and went by the time you'll be reading this and I have no idea what fragrances the Oscar winners and nominees for 2008 chose to wear and if they were their favourites, but it had seemed a great idea to me last week. The Yahoo movie page must be filled with all the details about the winners by now (hope my pics did them justice) and the world will be abuzz with the fashion choices of the celebrities. Perfume Shrine couldn't ignore this little bonfire of the vanities...

In a way it's become unglamorous. Like Julie Christie exclaimed:

"It's product placement now. 'Who are you wearing, from where have you borrowed your jewels?' I don't know where the 'glamour' is in admitting you've borrowed your jewelry, or you've been put together by a stylist. How about not wearing jewels? Would that be so terrible? And what's wrong with fakes? They glitter, that's the point, isn't it?"

Herself she proudly wears two antique rings of unidentified make.


I have to admit she does have a point! For someone who is so level-headed about it, despite her enormous body of work and being a 60s icon, I was always curious to find out what fragrance she wears. This is one of the most famous and popular Perfume Shrine projects. Alas, she has never divulged. And so we are left to our own devices to choose one for her!
It's rather interesting that a famous Dior commercial, J'adore ~with Charlize Theron dropping her clothes one by one entering that mansion~ is directly inspired by a famous Julie Christie scene in the film "Darling". But this is not the fragrance I would imagine Julie to revel in. For her very feminine personality I imagine her in something sensuous, deeply floral loaded with reminiscences, like Estee Lauder Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia. Or Boucheron Femme.

Marion Cotillard is such a cute gamine face that I bet one of those petulant but nice, perky fragrances with a little twist, would suit her to a T.
I propose to you (and her!) Passage d'enfer, an incense executed in watercolours, the savoury/sweet Pleasures Delight or the ultra-cosy Amber Splash by Marc Jacobs. Her own favourite however is Après l'Ondée, which is so wonderful melancholic...
However her role in La Vie en Rose would demand at least some identification with the character of Edith Piaf or -am I very unimaginative in suggesting this?- some rosiness. For her ethereal physique and sprity spirit I would love to propose Un Zest de Rose by Les Parfums de Rosine as a fitting scent.

When it comes to Cate Blanchett, one is spoilt for choice as she has expressed fondness for a whole array of perfumes from the enigmatically mossy Aromatics Elixir to crowd pleaser gourmand Burberry Brit, to the more individual Mure et Musc by L'artisan and Kisu by Tann Roka.

Ellen Page and Laura Linney on the other hand are entities unknown to the demystifying of their fragrance choices world. The former is very new in the game, while the latter is probably not much in the celebrity watch radar to register as an endorser of perfumes. But she did grace the Donna Karan Gold party launch and I would think that she grabbed a goody bag or two. Which might serve her rather well: What do you think?

Men nominees and winners are even more difficult to assign fragrances to. Basically because, despite their outstanding thespian qualities, three out of five are either too unglamorous for such concepts (Tommy Lee Jones) or too immersed into their own little indie universe (Daniel Day Lewis, Viggo Mortensen). However, there are some established favourites for two of them: Zino by Davidoff for Johnny Depp whereas George Clooney has admitted to a predilection for Io Carthusia and Green Irish Tweed.
Which is rather fun.

I don't know if these tidbits of info add or detract from these Oscar actors' and actresses' allure, but you're free to suggest what they should wear in your opinion! I am looking forward to reading your views and comments on Oscars' night.


Hold the press (just saw this!): please take a minute to check The Non-Blonde for witty and pithy commentary on the Oscars.

Pic of Daniel Day Lewis courtesy of Moviemarket. Pics of Julie Christie and Mario Cottilard originally uploaded on MUA. Pic of Johhny Depp sent to me by email unnacredited.

I'm back!

It has been simply fab albeit tiring. The Quiz is closed and thank you for your participation and your very clever guesses! It was a joy skimming through them.


Please check back later for an announcement on the winner and a post for the day which I hope you will find fun!

Sailing off for a bit...and a Quiz

Poised like a lady with a trunk between travel and work, so there is no review or fragrant article for Friday. But that does not mean that I will neglect Perfume Shrine! The agenda is filled with things to experience and I am looking forward to sharing some of the fascinating things that will fill my next few days, upon my return.

In the interim, to thank you for the dedication which you have shown and the impressive pick up in hits, I have a LUCKY QUIZ for you which will demand your creative guessing and which will award the winner with a decant of the precious fragrance in question.
I smelled it after a long time on a supremely elegant colleague, while we were having a spot of unruly weather these past few days, and it brought back all the wonderful feelings I had of it. I don't know why I had been neglecting it myself! It's from a well-known house, quite unusual, has been reformulated and ultimately discontinued (NB: it has no relation to the pic).

Cast your votes then (as many as you want! the quiz will run till I get back) and if Internet connection doesn't fail me, I will check back to perhaps give an additional clue and declare the lucky winner.

So the game is afoot! Best of luck!

Pic Lady with a Trunk by lemank/flickr

Almost a Miss ~Miss Balmain by Balmain: fragrance review

"Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes, I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what's mine by eternal right.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed. I know you well, I know your smell".

~James Blunt, Goodbye my lover

A name that combines two contrasting elements : the girly (Miss) and the chic (the Balmain house, the one who dressed Katherine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, and Brigitte Bardot, no less): Miss Balmain.
This fragrance by Harry Cutler is "girly" however only in the sense that it has an eternal playfulness in its intentions , not in its smell. Unless one is magically transported back in the 60's ~since this was created in 1967: the Summer of Love, the summer of anything is possible. And oh, didn't you love your defunct innocence!

However, chic and simultaneously quirky it definitely remains. A young gal with a mischievous animalisric wink, ready to drop her knickers at the sound of a good riff and roll on the fluffy carpet laughing the big O.
An "It" girl is donning her new nappa leather jacket of tabac-coloured smooth material (the castoreum ,leather and patchouli note) alongside her light=coloured mini skirt and kitten-heeled slingbacks with bright daisies on them (the fresh and prim coriander paired with aldehydes and citrus). She fumbles with her long, loose scarf at the neck, it bothers her, so off it goes soon leaving her young sternum bare (the smooth florals of gardenia and jonquil).

What remains is a younger interpretation of both Cabochard and Miss Dior ~at least the vintage compositions.
Miss Balmain is less strident in the opening to me, less potent in the drydown than either, but not less valued nonetheless. The shock is a mirage revealed in a tear: the girl is not promiscuous and comes from good stock.

Would it be something of a signature scent? Not for me, it wouldn't. Too difficult to pull off in hot weather or casual surroundings alongside girls with pierced navels wearing hoodies, despite its playful character. And for those occassions when one wants to stand apart and confirm one's aloofness and defiance one might as well go after the artilery of uber-feminine Cabochard or prickly Bandit. But for light amunition that is really more vulnerable than what one might think, I'd love to designate it to Penny Lane. Which is so very 1967...


(uploaded by nemivicious)

Pic of Lou Doillon courtesy of Hollywood celebrity pics

Lament for a Fragrance in Sepia ~Cabochard by Gres: fragrance review

“Headstrong” or “stubborn” is not the first thing that comes to mind when I contemplate on my mother’s personality. Yet it was the formidable, petulant perfume thus named, Cabochard, that had won her heart and ~along with Dioressence~ became her insignia. The Grecian-inspired fluted designs of Madame Grès which were cut directly on the body would have suited the Dorian drama of her beauty. Her dreamy flair for romanticism however betrayed appearences and made a fascinating juxtaposition with her bombshell fragrances. Thus the merest whiff out of her now almost empty bottle never fails to bring back poignant memories of my childhood with a Proustian rush. Talking about it dews my eyes like writing the obituary on an era: trying to recapture those sepia memories like a faded vignette is doomed to fail due to the fragrance being irrecovably changed.

Cabochard comes from the old French word “caboche”, meaning "headstrong" or "self-willed", according to the Petit Robert dictionary. It was Alix Grès, neé Germaine Emilie Krebs and formally trained as a sculptress, who opted for it, to accompany the independent nature of her couture. Alix Barton was her first business pseydonum. But she later took her husband’s ~Serge Czerefkov, a Russian painter ~ first name and with a partial anagram settled on Grès, opening la maison Grès in 1942, amidst the German occupation of Paris. Soon she was dressing everyone, from the Dutchess of Windsor to Marlen Dietrich and Greta Garbo.

The story of creating Cabochard
The credit into making Cabochard a success is attributed to Guy Leyssène, who met Madame Grès at a dinner part two years prior to the perfume’s launch, per Michael Edwards. It was Guy's suggestion that she should issue one because it was a profitable enterprise which all the other fashion designers of the times had embarked on. It took only a month for Grès to ask him to help her create her own perfume. {interestingly, according to history of fashion.com the first perfume was called Muse in 1946}. However, nothing is as simple as it might look. "Cabochard is a miracle of complexity […] the secret life of a Parisian woman with no age and no illusions" wrote Luca Turin about its scent in 1994 and its story is just as complex.

The perfume that was in works was a composition by legendary perfumer Guy Robert, called Chouda. Robert was young and under the guidance of mentor Andrée Castanié, then editor of L'Officiel de la Mode et de la Couture, had been introduced to Mme Grès in 1956. But it took a trip to India, the land of exoticism, which prompted Alix Grès to further her plans on the house’s fragrance. The visit had begun innocuously, invited by the Ford Foundation to assess Indian brocades. It was there that Alix Grès discovered water hyacinth: a flower she became enraptured with. It has a sweet odour, rich like tuberose, yet with a fresher top and slightly warmer. The experimentation of Guy Robert yeilded rich fruits: Alix loved it, however Chouda was almost exclusively used by her (only five litres of Chouda were ever made) as it was too flowery for the tastes of the 50s which veered towards classic chypres. She launched another fragrance under the pressure of public input: the mod of what was to become Cabochard, made by Bernand Chant of IFF, was received much more favourably and thus the plan to push Chouda was ultimately abandoned, although the two were issued almost simultaneously in 1959. It comes as a surprise that there were focus groups even back then, but it is a fact that puts things into perspective: public reception is (and will always be) the moniker of how things work in a sector that, although hinges on art, is also largely a business.


The story of the bottle for Cabochard, as well as Chouda, is also extraordinary in that it was the already made and discarded stock of Guighard, a small glass manufacturer later acquired by Pochet. They had made the bottles for another company who never bought them and in order to save costs, Grès bought all 500 of them for both perfumes. The difference was the little bow that adorned the pharmaceutical stopper: grey for Cabochard, green for Chouda. The Cabochard success (it sold 250 bottles in the first week of its launch alone!) secured numerous backorders to the glass manufacturer. In a way, the commercial success owed to the enthusiasm with which it was promoted by a commission salesman formerly working for Piguet (whose biggest seller at the time was Bandit). According to Leyssène the demand was so pressing the sales were doubled each year for the following ten years!

Scent Considerations: A Leathery Chypre Marvel
Cabochard utilised the same aromachemical with Bandit: isobutyl quinoline, a harsh green and pungent, dry leather aroma, yet fanning expensive, precious, sweet flowers over it. Inspired by the archetype it muted the smokiness until the drydown. Cabochard offers a capricious bitter orange opening instead, with the illusion of wading through wild bracken catching a distant whiff of clove and hairspray. The crackling leather, powdery afterfeel of face cosmetics was sustained for hours on skin, emitting grace and confidence in a similar manner to Chanel’s Cuir de Russie, although with rather more sweetness and less birch. To Gres it recalled a walk along a deserted Indian beach:

“the crispness of the early morning air, the warmth of sandalwood, a hint of far-off flowers, and the dry caress of sea breezes”.

The parfum sitting on the dresser of my mother ever since I can remember was so warm and rich than mere drops were enough to scent her hair and garments, retaining the essence of who she was into my heart of hearts. The eau de parfum in older versions is also exceptionally good, while the eau de toilette has a lighter but sharper quality.

The difference between the vintage and the recent re-editions can be traced back to 1984 when Beecham Cosmetics acquired British American Cosmetics, who had bought the Grès brand in the interim after Alix closed the couture house. To celebrate Cabochard's twenty-fifth anniversary, they changed the grey velvet bow into frosted glass, encased the bottle in a black instead of a black-and-white one and brightened the citrus top while also restraining the animalic accord. The 40th anniversary of Cabochard was celebrated in 1999 with a Bacarrat crystal flacon, designed by Serge Mansau and what seems yet another re-formulation which finally put the tombstone on one of the best in my opinion perfumes of the 20th century.

Official notes for Madame Gres Cabochard:
Top: aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin, galbanum, spice
Heart: jasmine, rosa damscena, geranium, ylang-ylang, iris
Base: patchouli, leather, vetiver, castoreum, oakmoss, tobacco, musk, labdanum, sandalwood

Pic of bottle from official Gres site