The Idol and the Replica

How funny and sad it is to come upon the original and the reproduction, the inspired and the aspiring, to spot a déjà vu! When idols take their place in the pantheon, mere mortals can only aspire to get some of the fairydust, with a whiff of something fragrant atop.
Lindsay Lohan recently posed as Marilyn Monroe, replicating the series of photographs code-named "The Last Sitting" (1962) by Bert Stern, for the New York magazine. "Last Sitting", because six weeks after she had posed, Marilyn was found dead due to -apparently- a barbiturate overdose which remains a mystery to this day. We hope that won't be the case with Lohan, although who can bet their neck on it?
Reportedly Hugh Hefner was so impressed with Lindsay Lohan showing it all as Marilyn that he wants her to do the same for Playboy.

We won't be mean and won't wish her good luck in the replica career. After all, a short perusal of the photos in question, especially contrasted with the original ones {click here to compare}, proves that apart from the ample bosom, miss Lohan, sun-damaged skin and all, is a poor substitute for the intrisically feminine guiles of Marilyn, but perhaps she is too young, too reckless and might grow to learn.

However olfactorily speaking, this gave me pause for thought. Thoughts run to the fragrance profile of the two women.

Marilyn immortalised her signature scent when she replied to what she wears in bed to a cheeky reporter : "A few drops of Chanel No.5". But that wan't all. What is less well-known is that she also enjoyed Joy by Jean Patou and the tuberose daredavil Fracas by Piguet. That leads me to believe that she consciously designated an erotic role to No.5, obviously the drops hinting at the extrait de parfum; a role that is manifested through No.5's marriage of aphrodisiac ylang-ylang and warm musk with the spike of soapy-waxy notes sizzling throughout. This shows both calculation as well as consiousness of the role of perfume as amunition in the seduction stakes. This is the stuff of dreams.

Lohan is famous for her fondness of Child perfume oil, buying five bottles at a time, a cult favourite by Apothia made of pikake essence and little else. Blogdorf Goodman does quite a decent job of delineating its history here.
It's ironic that Lohan won't be able to immortalise this fragrance, despite the name that firs her behaviour, because it has already gained notoriety thanks to Jennie Garth who uttered the famous line "it drives men gaga". Plus all the 20somethings in Hollywood are known for wearing it as you can see in Perfume Shrine's celebrity perfume list. Lohan also wears Coquette Tropique, another favourite white floral fragrance worn by numerous other starlets as well. So her chances of making a particular fragrance be forever associated with her are dim and left to the future. She can at least hope.

Like many things in modern life, there is something forced and coerced about the whole affair which detracts from the intimacy and tension that accounts for the stuff of legend. A fabrication instead of spontaneity and a fad rather than a choice for a reason.
Like New York Magazine succinctly notes:

"In the first session, Stern persuaded the entourage of stylists to leave him alone with Monroe. The shoot thus took on the symbolic (if not the actual) contours of a liaison. The rise of the celebrity industrial complex has rendered this sort of tense pas de deux all but impossible. At the Lohan shoot, the crowd included Lohan’s manager, her security guard, and her younger sister, Ali; a makeup artist and assistant, a hairstylist and assistant, a stylist, a manicurist, a sentry to watch the borrowed diamonds; Stern, his manager, and two photo assistants. Lohan and Stern worked in an adjoining room, while the rest of us hovered outside like groupies at a backstage entrance".

Perhaps for something to gain the credence that only the patina of time can give one needs to wait several years. Even almost a few Saros cycles in some cases...

Pic of NY Cover courtesy of celebitiot. Pic of Marilyn Monroe originally uploaded on POL.

Cosmic Harmonies

When Solange Azagury Patridge came out with her first perfume, Stoned, I was curious to sample it. It-jeweller to the London stars Elton John, David Furnish and Bella Freud and creative director for Boucheron, Solange had all the makings of a hip-celeb in her respective field and the news of her launching a fragrance seemed like a nice idea for someone who had obviously good taste and an eye for imaginative design in jewellery. Then I learned the name of the scent: Stoned. It recalled images of Amy Winehouse, not of glamour. Let's just say it wasn't very appealing, even though I belatedly found out it was simply named thus for a girl who likes stones. Heftily priced/prized ones, that is...
Later on I found out it actually had finely milled diamond-dust in it. And on the heels of that, the price. OK, by then I was ready to hate it! But surprisingly it was not a bad perfume, this smooth oriental, even if lots of the money asked went to the bottle and the diamond dust. Stoned took a year to break even, business speaking, which in light of the above hardly comes as a surprise, does it.

Now Cosmic came to the scene and it was rumoured to be a modern chypre. This got me in a mode of at leasting wanting to try. Both Solange scents were developed by Lynn Harris of Miller Harris, which to me ensured at least a standard of quality ingredients and concept.
The name Cosmic is taken from the Cosmic zodiac jewellery collection by Solange in which each piece is unique.
Of course again the bottle and the name suggest something that is otherwordly to what is actually hiding in the bottle: a likeable green velvety skin-scent. What I mean by a skin scent: not that the fragrance reminds of the smell of your-skin-but-better, that alloy of synthetic musks that is so favoured in very recent perfumery. No, I mean that it stays close to the skin and doesn't project like some extraterrestrial entity that has landed on you proclaiming its scheme to conquer the earth. It's too well-mannered for that.


According to Solange:

A shooting star falls to earth revealing its meteoric and potent charms. Following on from her parfum Stoned, Solange has thrown her imagination out to the furthest corners of the universe and created the exquisite Cosmic-- an intergalactic liquid jewel enclosed in a star-faceted silver orb. The bottle's shimmering surface glints and winks from every angle, literally a Cosmic addition to every girl’s dressing table.

Cosmic is a modern Chypre that weaves together a milky-way of magical essences, combining Solange’s own sweet candy accord with an airy top note of bergamot, sparkling aldehydes and galbanum. The heart of the fragrance beats with classic blossoming rose, jasmine absolute and rare iris. Base notes of earthy vetiver, opoponax from Peru, myrrh from Somalia, and sweetly addictive vanilla add layers of sensual aroma. To further embellish these earth-based substances, Meteorites have been specially ground down to create a fine Stardust for the fragrance. The heady combination of essence, cosmos and ether simply takes you out of this world...

Cosmic by Solange goes into its own little twists and turns keeping a smooth harmony in which it's hard to discern particular ingredients, they're weaved in tightly. Initially there is the herbal hit of galbanum with a minty overlay of aldehydic sparkle, seguing on to a smooth lightly sweeted heart of soft heaps of flowers. One would be hard-pressed to pinpoint their little heads. The sweetness reminds me of ionones (gamma-methylionone, alpha-ionone)and mint leaves on a cool champagne sorbet, melting into a serene moment to yourself. You might be contemplating the stars or wondering how your lucky stars might help you actually buy this indulgence.
In a way Cosmic has traces of both Satyr by Armando Martinez and Alice in Wonderland by Konstantin Mihov, two indie perfumers which have been featured in these pages; and perhaps also a shade of Maboussin, another fragrance issued by jewellers.
In Cosmic the smoothness and sweetness are rounding out the initial jolt of galbanum and are beautifully accompagnied by the persistence of a little resin and earthy notes such as vetiver and patchouli like a basso continuo you find yourself noticing more and more.
I call this success, don't you?


Cosmic notes
Bergamot, Galbanum, Rose, Jasmine Absolute, Iris Absolute, Patchouli, Vetiver, Labdanum, Opoponax, Myrrh, Vanilla

Cosmic comes in a silvery metallic star-embossed bottle of Eau de Parfum 50ml/1.7oz and retails at 200 euros or 285$.
Cosmic is available at First in Fragrance and Luckyscent.




Following posts will feature lots of surprises and articles inspired by my trips. Stay tuned!

Pic of moons sent to me by mail unaacredited. Pic of bottles: Stoned on the left, Cosmic on the right, from official Solange site.

Jacques Polge for Chanel

A clip with Jacques Polge, in-house perfumer of Chanel, in which he explains the necessity of perfume.
You can also see the procedure of securing the neck of the extrait de parfum bottles with thread and a wax seal, properly called baudruchage (the coiling of the silk thread),barbichage and brossage (the following steps into securing the neck and seperating the ends of the thread). The whole process might take up to an hour.



Please check back later for the first blog review of Solange Cosmic.

Clip through Captain Lucas Inc.

Montana Parfum de Peau: fragrance review

On an ordinary morning on an ordinary weekday in Paris this past June, a rumour started to ripple through the mirrored design studios, the gilded, glossy magazine offices and the cramped workrooms of the French fashion industry. "Have you heard?" whispered voices ominous with impending ill news."The police found a body on Rue de Bellechasse this morning." "Have you heard?" they whispered, "about the death of Wallis Montana?"

~ Marion Hurne, Node Magazine Australia August/September 1996

Parfum de Peau, also known as Montana de Montana, as was its original name, is usually described as sexy, assertive, dirty, and sultry. It is all those things! But it is also tinged with tragedy as it was inspired by style guru Wallis Francken and the strange androgyny of her public persona. Together with Claude, they formed a weird couple and this is a weird perfume that can be easily imagined to be worn by people who love making a statement.
Almost unsufferably potent and single-minded in its assault, Parfum de Peau was given to me as a gift when I was a teenager. I wonder if the gifter was trying to tell me something. Because this zest has stuck. Did I always project a certain drama? Was that drama merely a plea for attention like every dutiful teenager does? All I remember is behind its bursting, blinding fruitiness peppered with spice it taught me what a furry little animal smells like when it’s hot and it lies dead on the street and one has the strange craving to go pick it up and lull it to sleep. There is the bitter and sweet odour of Thanatos which weaves such a strange net to lure us into a false sense of security.

Claude Montana, “king of the shoulder pads” and butch leather-man wearer is half-Spanish, half-German and began his career as a jewelry maker that got him recognition through Vogue coverage; that in turn helped him settle for a job at cutting and grading leathers at McDouglas, a Parisian firm in 1970. It would take some shows at Angelina’s Tea Room until he would start his own company in 1979 designing Amazonian, emasculating clothes for women. Those caused some ruckus with their inferred image of being reminiscent of Nazi uniforms. The Constructivism risus sardonicus that runs through his collections animates gyrating proportions with the addition of a peplum over narrow, wasp-waisted skirts. He greatly admired Mme Gres and Balenciaga which comes as no surprise. That kind of trapeze designs with the emphasis on shoulders and the power with which a silhouette moves in them was both reflected and bouncing back in his personal life.

His 1989 admission "I'm like a battlefield inside, a mass of contradictions" merely confirms the rumours of erratic behaviour and troubled inner life. He had married his muse, the German-American angular model Wallis Franken, 18 years after meeting her, when they were both 43. She, already a mother and a grandmother, always striking, always rail thin, knew all about the strange affairs of Claude. That warm July day, three years before the tragedy, she “gave up and yielded and went to Susa on foot to the monarch Artaxerxes”: she went on to be a wife ~"Oh, you know, cooking in the kitchen, fixing the dinner, lighting the candles..."
She was decked in an organza pant suit and white cowboy boots on that day. She was a vision.

What happened still remains a mystery: Wallis fell out of the balcony. Pushed or not? Out of her own accord or due to drug intoxication? The grim underbelly of fashion life in ne plus ultra Paris was just a hair away from being revealed. But it never did. It remained an agreement of silence: hushed, whispered in corridors but never out in the open.
What remains is one of her last public performances as an extra in the Madonna clip Justify my Love shot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino at Hôtel Ritz in Paris. I can smell the atmosphere in those rooms ~they reek of Parfum de Peau; they reek of contradiction and need; they reek of the desire to transcend death.

{Warning: uncensored version; unsuitable for office enviroment!}

(uploaded by nicubuleasa)

Parfum de Peau was originally composed in 1986 by Jean Guichard (Fifi, Deci Dela, Obsession, Loulou, Eau d’Eden) and was later reformulated with synthetic castoreum by the great Edouard Flechier (Poison, Tendre Poison, Une Rose, Lys Méditerranée, C’est la Vie). Not to be confused with the second feminine perfume of the house, Parfum d’Elle (1989) in a similar, shorter bottle.
The original Montana de Montana came in a breathtaking, award-winning helix-shaped bottle designed by Serge Mansau, inspired by the swirling fall of a winged sycamore seed as seen by a strobe light. It was encased in a cobalt blue box in both Eau de Toilette and Eau de Parfum versions.
The older versions had a packaging with the name Montana writ big, while the newer versions have a silhouette torse recalling the bottle on the outside of the box in orange, with the name Montana in smaller script underneath it.

Notes: green note, pepper, cassis, plum, peach, cardamom, ginger, rose, carnation, sandalwood, jasmine, tuberose, yalng-ylang, narcissus, patchouli, castoreum, civet, vetiver, olibanum, musk, amber.


Collage of Wallis Francken originally uploaded by Superchic1966 at Msn groups. Pic of ad from parfum de pub.

A poem ouverture...

As I was thinking about perfumed matters in general and Parfum de Peau in particular (whose review will run shortly, check back later on!), with its very relevant maladjusted story behind its creators, a poem by a well-loved voice whispered to my ear...

The Satrapy

What a misfortune, although you are made
for fine and great works
this unjust fate of yours always
denies you encouragement and success;
that base customs should block you;
and pettiness and indifference.
And how terrible the day when you yield
(the day when you give up and yield),
and you leave on foot for Susa,
and you go to the monarch Artaxerxes
who favorably places you in his court,
and offers you satrapies and the like.
And you accept them with despair
these things that you do not want.
Your soul seeks other things, weeps for other things;
the praise of the public and the Sophists,
the hard-won and inestimable Well Done;
the Agora, the Theater, and the Laurels.
How can Artaxerxes give you these,
where will you find these in a satrapy;
and what life can you live without these.

~Constantine P. Cavafy (1910)

Originally uploaded on this page.