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

Leather Series 10: Les Gamines

As far as leather scents are concerned, the image prevailing in the first half of the 20th century was either one of emancipation and amazonesque flair or of luxurious leather goods and upholstery of posh venues catering to the tastes of the upper classes. Little by little something emerged from the fashion and cinematic world: a new frame of mind that distanced itself from the more traditionally sexualised images of the 50s a la Marilyn, but also patently different from the emancipated flappers of the 20s. Talking this over with my friend Denyse, she suggested the Gamine term and we pondered on it in order to describe the evolving cultural sensibilities in relation to fashion, olfaction and art in general.

Generally the term Gamine (feminine to French gamin) is translated in English as "urchin" or "waif". But despite its use in the English vernacular ever since the middle of the 19th century (appearing in Thackeray) it only approximated the French equivalent in the mid-20th century gaining popularity through various strata of society. The gamine has to be sort of a tease, but good-natured; a young sprite of a woman that will wink at you and be a little mischievous. Never too sexual or femme though, never aggressive, ultimately never dangerous in the Freudian sense.

It is an accepted fact that the modern iconography of popular culture derives its idols from the matinee as well as the fashion glossies. Early exempla of gamines could be argued to go back as far as Louise Brooks or Mary Pickford, but to me the former was too restless and independent for the tag, the latter too sweet and accomodating. Maybe Paulette Goddard in Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin is closer to the notion.

The optical, if not auditory, resemblance to the word “game” alludes to playfulness and naughtiness , which is transpiring through the iconic cinamatic gamines of the 50s such as Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron or Jean Seberg (especially in her Bonjour Tristesse and À bout de souffle roles). Interestingly, the musical that made Leslie Caron famous was preceded by a stage production in which Gigi was played by none other than Audrey Hepburn; personally chosen by the author, no less, the indomitable Colette, whose Claudine series of novels also wink towards the subtly sensual gamine.

Hepburn had been described by Don Macpherson as “overpoweringly chic” citing her “naïveté which did not rule out sophistication”, such as in her role in Funny Face. Thus she inaugurated a trend and a new perception in elegance. All those women were the pioneers paving the way to the waif look of 60s British models such as Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, manifested in their “swinging London” image.

In the spirit of this new sensibility, fragrance trends followed and the piquantly feminine aldehydics and pretty, powdery florals of the early 60s attest to that seguing from the floral chypres of the 50s. Leather scents were never very popular in those days, due to reasons already discussed when revising the vogues of the 1950s, with only the most noble and suave among them denoting luxury and tradition, such as Doblis. However, there is at least one that could be classified as the arch-gamine one: Miss Balmain by Pierre Balmain, a sister scent to Jolie Madame, much younger and lighter in spirit.

Perhaps the dark Rennaisance angel that is Diorling could also crop her hair into a pixie cut and with butterfly-shaped sunglasses atop her head send you a naughty kiss across the room when no one is looking.

I contemplated long and hard whether the precursor to this phase was Cabochard by Grès, issued in 1959. In the end I decided against it, not because the fragrance is not insolent, audacious and mischievous, because it is. But because Cabochard has a certain exoticism and gravitas that seems to be dragging down the featherlight load of the gamine, imbuding it with expectations beyond its capabilities. Only a naughty and light leathery scent would fit the image I have in mind when thinking of those icons. Yet Cabochard is such an emblem in the pantheon of leather fragrances and such an utterly ruined recomposition that it merits its own obituary following this post.

Pic of Audrey Hepburn from Audrey1 fan site, pic of Jean Shrimpton from Vogue.uk