The first scent opera is here!

"Most high-end perfumers spend months designing a signature scent they hope will stay on the market forever. Christophe Laudamiel, who wants to turn fragrance into high art, has labored for two years on 23 scents that will last for just half an hour. Mr. Laudamiel [..] is collaborating on a "scent opera," a new performance art that pairs music with a carefully orchestrated sequence of smells, some pleasant and some real stinkers. The opera, titled "Green Aria," will test the boundaries of scent art when it opens at the Guggenheim Museum in New York May 31."

Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurdsson collaborated with Nico Muhly to create music based on the scents, while Matthew Steward wrote the libretto and became the director. Alongside "earth" (moist and musky), "fire" (like campfire remnants on clothes), "crunchy green" (watery green thanks to cis-3-Hexenyl isobutyrate) and "magma" (tarry thanks to limbanol) expect to sniff such smells as vomit, feces, urine, rotten fish and burning trash (I actually have personal associations with burning trash and it's not always that vile; it depends on what trash you're burning I guess)

Alexandra Alter at online Wall Street Journal takes us into the creation of the first scent opera in an engaging article: a dream come true for the many sensorialists around who have always dreamt of a performance that would pair the visual and auditory with the olfactory! Ever since John Waters in the ultra-camp (and perversely very fun) odorama scratch n'sniff of Polyester (1981) popularised the idea, there has been the search for the perfect olfactory accompaniment to visual perfumances. Yet the critical issues of sensory overload (how are you supposed to clean the fog and start again?) and timing (not as easy as it sounds) have provided hurdles along the way. This time Fläkt Woods, a global ventilation company designed a box with pressurized steel canisters that will hold the scented crystals with the different odours because crystals produce more quickly evaporating scent than liquids or oils. (That's good to know when purchasing home fragrance acoutrements). In intervals, fresh air will be released from the special "microphones" so as to clear the nasal passages of the audience, preparing them from the next blast.

Christophe Laudamiel is no stranger to pairings of such a nature, being half of the duo who worked on the Thierry Mugler coffret that was inspired by the atmospherics of the best-selling novel Das Parfum by Patrick Suskind, subsequently filmed. In a no coinicidental string of affairs Thierry Mugler is sponsoring the new venture.

"In a darkened theater, audiences will be bombarded with smells, blasted in six-second sequences by a scent "microphone" attached to each seat. The scents tell the story of an epic struggle between nature and industry. Nearly five years in the making, the opera was conceived by Stewart Matthew, a corporate financier turned entrepreneur who co-founded Aeosphere, a "fragrance media" company, with Mr. Laudamiel in 2008."

Aeosphere opens its Manhattan office next month, while Laudamiel had been a tenant at the offices of Firmenich and a collaborating perfumer with IFF for quite a while.
A brave new world indeed!


Chrstophe Laudamiel via IFF. Pic of Polyester card via Jim Rees/Flickr (some rights reserved)

New online shop: Rei Rien

The new online shop Rei Rien caters to those of us searching for niche, mainstream, classics and discontinued scents, intends to augment its inventory slowly but surely and is shipping internationally.
Right now Rei Rien is offering a special sale (good throughout its first month of onlin presence) for its first customers to celebrate the grand opening. This discount includes the very new Sisley colognes trio which becomes thus quite fetching!

Scarlett by Cacharel: new fragrance

“Mon secret est à l’intérieur” , my secret is on the inside!. With that catchy phrase, Cacharel is taking a journey back to their roots with their newest feminine fragrance, Scarlett. The Liberty print design of the packaging as well as the concept of a floral evoking heroines of literature as well as Hollywood glamour (because of Scarlett Johansson) are testament to that desire. In that regard it will be interesting to play out since ms.Johansson has been the face of Eternity Moment for Calvin Klein for quite a while (featured even in a shot of her film "The Island") and now the face for D&G makeup (fortunately another L'Oreal subsidiary).



The three values of Cacharel have always been romanticism, audacity and freshness after all. The Victoriana of its Sarah Moon emblematic campaign is still with us after all those years and the retro touches of their porcelain bottles on our vanity are still objects of affection.

The fragrance Scarlett by Cacharel will incorporate a juicy citrus and pear prelude to a white floral heart of jasmine, orange blossom and honeysuckle anchored with tea notes, white musk and sandalwood. Much like their first foray with Anais Anais which relied heavily on lily this is ~apparently~ a return to less sugary compositions, a suprising aspect taking into account the fragrance is geared towards the 15-25 years of age demographic (a generation raised on very sweet perfumes). The perfumers for Scarlett are Honorine Blanc, Alberto Morillas and Olivier Cresp while the romantically retro flacon of japonesque floral designs in white faience/biscuit porcelain with coral insides was designed by Christophe Pillet.


Scarlett by Cacharel will benefit from an extensive advertising campaign starting August. Prices for 35 mL and 80 mL of Eau de Toilette, 35 and 59 euros respectively in major department stores, the fragrance launching in mid-July '09.

Pic of Scarlett Johansson via My Old Kentucky.

Histoires de Parfums news

Histoires des Parfums, the brand which we had reviewed lovingly here and included with great pleasure in our Leather Series part 12 (Modern Leathers)~and which Luca Turin apparently also appreciates~ is now being featured at L’Eclaireur in Paris (rue Boissy d'Anglas, 8eme arrondissement), a first for any perfumer brand. They're also been available in Le Printemps.
The brand was founded in 1999 by French gastronomer-turned-perfumer Gérald Ghislain after studying in ISIPCA and was soon succeeding into entering several concept stores (Quartier 206 in UK, 10 Corso Como in Italy, Gum in Russia, Série Noire de Lille at Cap-Ferret, Saint-Tropez and Toulon, France...). Twelve stories around authors of literature or emblematic dates come in bottles of 120ml of Eau de Parfum (15% concentration) for 130 euros each.
The new proposition of Histoires de Parfums is a kit-nomade of three 14ml bottles (about 0.5oz) of the scent one chooses for the all-inclusive price of 87$. Sounds like a nice idea. (They aldeady have one of the best value deals on sampling programmes around)




Also please check the blog of Histoires de Parfums with an interview exposing all you ever wanted to know about Gérald Ghislain and the brand.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Histoires de Parfums reviews


Cosmic Roger
by 1969histoiresdeparfums

Distant Cousins: Lily of the Valley & Lily ~part 2: Lily

Pensive garden, affectionate, fresh, and faithful,
where lilies, moon and swallow kiss.
Army on the march, child who dreams, woman in tears!

Adjectives like "astonishing" and "ravishing" may sound like hyperbole, yet it is enough for someone to have leaned once over an open, waxy petaled blossom of pure, gleamingly white and delicately flocked lilies to have stood transfixed.

Words fail one upon the sight, while the nose is mesmerised by its oleaginous, yet at the same time spicy interlay of softness, sharpness and intense femininity. Even John Ruskin in his lectures “Sesame and Lilies” designates the second one, Lilies, to the treatment of women in literature and lore. An allusion which brings an added dubious sub-layer in the common reference of lily white skin in rapper songs ~such as the hilarious “Pretty Fly (for a white guy)" ~ by the Offspring) and in street parlance!

The beauty of lily is at once as pure and as sensuous as the face of Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca"; its strong emition of scent in late summer makes an evening spent in a garden where it blooms an exercise in aching wonder faced with nature’s magic. And most astonishing of them all, among this plush, there raises its little head a small facet of horse stable manure (Luca Turin in a playful reminiscence while reviewing a lily fragrance refers to it as salami), enough to place lily in the category of the majestically strange, much like tuberose or jasmine. There's something awe-inspiring yet vulnerably tragic in the lily, like the Dresden-doll beauty of Vivien Leigh.

Lilies belong to the Liliaceae family, from which they take their name. The genus Lilium are herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs, comprising about 110 species with infinite visual variety. Lily of the Valley/Muguet (Convallaria majalis) on the other hand belongs to the Ruscaceae family (genus Convallaria), making them botanically unrelated to the former blossoms. Within the lily group there are several sub-varieties and contrary to the vernacular sayings equating lily with white, not all species are so. The following varieties are amongst the most prominent and beautiful: Columbia lily ,Tiger Lily , Easter/Madonna Lily ,the Goldband lily of Japan , the Amazon lily as well as the Stargazers, a popular and colourful subdivision of the Oriental lilies and the Casa Blanca Lilies (another Oriental hybrid).
On the other hand, the well-known Calla Lily (erroneously often misspelled as Cala) is not strictly a lily, since it belongs in the family Araceae. Generally Calla Lilies do not possess the characteristic heady odour of lilies nor do they have a potent odour profile in themselves, although the species Zantedeschia odorata possesses the strong scent of freesias. Vera Wang original perfume for women claims notes of Calla lily in its bridal bouquet. In perfumery, however, the lily par excellence is usually one in the Lilium family. And in this guide we will try to list fragrances which include the different varieties of lily.

Lost in history, the beautiful flower has even some interpreters of the Bible identify the Hebrew word Shoshannah as 'lily' in Song of Songs ("As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters." Song of Songs 2:2 (KJV), instead of the customary translation as rose.
The heady odour of the flower is usually rendered through headspace technology or dynamic purge-and-trap headspace analysis, which reveals the main enantimomer as R-(-)-linalool, while the alluring strangeness of lily is closely tied to high levels of p-cresol accounting for its animalic tonality. [1]
The suave and sugary scent of Madona/Easter lilies which is all the more intense as the hours draw on towards the night is evident in the classic Anais Anais by Cacharel, in the more billowed aldehydic Dolce & Gabbana pour femme (the one which is crowned with a red cap), and the suave, lightly green and tender Un Lys by Serge Lutens underscored by snuggly vanilla, painting the picture of a Werner Herzog delicate heroine. The floral sweet touch also offers an unexpected marriage of opposites in Passage d’Enfer by L’artisan Parfumeur. The scent of incense and lily mesh through the ecclesiastical tradition, overwhelming my memory with liles offered during Easter whilst frankincense is being slowly burned on charcoals around.

Tiger lilies with their wild patterns are evoked in the equally jungle-inspired print (leopard) on the cylindrical bottles of the sadly discontinued feminine By by Dolce & Gabbana. The ginger overlay of some of the varieties of the lilies makes a perfect accompaniment to the coffee and sandalwood notes of the D&G fragrance. Inpendent perfumer Yosh has no less than three scents featuring tiger lily: Wanderlust (a fresh bouquet with a whiff of incense and patchouli), Tigresse (a fruity floral encompassing figs and pomegranates) and Ginger Ciao (the creaminess of coconut compliments the sweeter aspects of lilies and ylang ylang)! Reportedly Baby Phat Fabulosity and Lucky Number 6 also feature tiger lily as a note, although I have not personally tried either. The fresh, sea-spray-like and photorealistic undertake by Edouard Fléchier for Frédéric Malle’s Lys Méditerrannée (Mediterrannean lily) is one of the most elegant lilies on the market today, injecting a subtle gingery facet on a precious musky backdrop.

White and red Casa blanca lilies are evoked in the soft, non aggressive and diaphanous treatment of Des Lys, a soliflore in the Annick Goutal line. For her denser, hypnotic Grand Amour, the majestic lily is paired to sweet honeysuckle, the oily emerald hue of hyacinth and a host of eastern promises (myrrh, vanilla, musk). The woody-ambery aroma chemical Karanal presents some lily facets, reminiscent of the treatment of lily in such scents as the glorious Donna Karan Gold which explores the waxy facets of Casablanca lilies ~especially in the rich and excellent Eau de Parfum concentration. While the alpha-, beta- and gamma- terpineol are used to render clearer lily notes.
In Pleasures Intense by Estee Lauder, the abundance of green and sweeter lilies give off a contrasting image of sharpness and sweetness, highlighted by fresher peony on one end and benzoin on the other. One of the best oriental lily renditions in a mainstream fragrance was unfortunately an all too short-lived and now regretably elusive version of Pleasures, called Garden of Pleasures Moon Lily. A limited edition from 1999 in a trio collection which highlighted facets of the original best-selling Pleasures (the other two included Peony and Lilac), it presented a soft, orientalised and subtly sweet ambience of gigantic white liliums with intense red stamens protruding provocatively.

Oriental lilies and Stargazers seductively emit their fragrant indolic headiness, close to jasmine, in other best-selling fragrances such as the kitchy White Diamonds by Elizabeth Taylor and the suave Lily & Spice by Penhaligon’s.
Last but not least, in order to train your nose into the subtleties of the diferent varieties, Ava Luxe has composed a trio of lily scents with different effects: the simple and greenish Lily, the traditional Madona Lily and the more orientalised Stargazer.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine:Distant Cousins part1 Lily of the Valley

[1]Rey Marsili, 2001
Painting of lilies by Amy Steward via lostcoastdailypainters blog. Pic of Vivien Leigh via Seraphicpress.com, stargazer illustration via create4u.blogspot.com