Van Cleef & Arpels Collection Extraordinaire: news

Van Cleef & Arpels, the famous jewellers their dragonfly brooches on the jacket lapel of every BCBG woman and their Alhambra bracelets on my very own wrists, are launching their own "niche" line: La Collection Extraordinaire. Each of the six uniformly designed bottles is created by a different nose, much like L'Art et La Matiere boutique line by Guerlain.


Nathalie Feisthauer is the author of Gardénia Pétale, a warm and opulent composition. Randa Hammami (of Cruel Gardénia fame) created Orchidée Vanille while Nathalie Cetto is the nose behind Lys Carmin (red lily). Antoine Maisondieu and Emilie Coppermann are respectively the authors of Muguet Blanc (white lily of the valley) et Bois d’Iris (iris woods), while Marc Buxton plays with chiarroscuro and spices in his Cologne Noire.
The line will be available in September in bottles of 75ml for 130 euros each.

Les Secrets de Sophie by Guerlain: new fragrance

We had discussed the possibility of a new exclusive feminine Guerlain fragrance when talking about their new Voyage Collection trio as well as when presenting the new mainstream of the house Idylle. Apparently the new Limited Edition is called Secrets de Sophie (Sophie's secrets), a sweet violet-tinged girly white floral and comes in a VERY girly bottle of 60ml Eau de Parfum designed by Sophie Lévy which the ever gracious Karin forwarded to us. The company offers a choice of the colour schema on the flacons, accordingly coded Secrets Noirs (black), Secrets Poudrés (pink) and Secrets Nacrés(ivory) (NB: all flacons containing the same fragrance). I am itching to wonder whether the contents will reflect the Hello Kitty packaging, but I won't for now. Soon though....

Launch is predicted for June at select Guerlain doors and the price will reach 300 euros.





Bottles from top to bottom: Secrets Noirs, Secrets Nacrés, Secrets Poudrés.
Click to enlarge.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: the new Idylle by Guerlain, Collection Voyage

Kypre by Lancome: fragrance review & history

What do we really know about some of the vanished perfumes of yore, scattered among ruins like Grecian columns which rest on their side in huge heaps, elbowed down by the gusts of Time?
Some like the metropoleis-named Paris Paris, New York New York and Milan Milan by Madeleine Vionet, the portfolio of Soeurs Callot or Guerlain's Ai Loe and Mais Oui by Bourjois are the stuff of hushed discussions among the initiés.
Liisa Wennervirta just happened to be the proud owner of some Kypre by Lancôme, that most obscure of the perfumes tagged with the august classification of chypre; its very name closer to the Greek spelling of Κύπρος/Cyprus, the island where it all began for those. She had the good grace to inquire about it and offered to send me some for reviewing purposes, no doubt curious as to what I'd make out of it, when the strike of bad luck happened: the precarious condition of the old bottle gave in and Liisa was frantically trying to salvage remains for posterity's sake and my own benefit. In her own words "I searched and from the general lack of anything, it seems that I have the last bit of Kypre in the world. Silly and scary at the same time!" Still my tentative review and thoughts today are testament to her admirable salvaging abilities, no doubt. Discussing with Octavian he threw the idea of neoclassicism, which prompted my choice of couture to illustrate the article today. That style was manifested in the fashions of Madame Grèe and Madelaine Vionet as well as the German ideal in architecture that would culminate in Leni Riefenstahl's documentaries.



Kypre by Lancôme along with Tropiques, Tendres Nuits, Bocages, Conquest and Blue Seal were among the first fragrances created by Armand Petitjean, a true pioneer, in 1935, and the first five were sent in time for the Universal Exhibition of Brussels of the same year where they gained double medals of excellence. With one fell swoop Petitjean had established Lancôme as a force to be reckoned with! In 1900 the pre-eminent perfume houses in France had been Guerlain, Roger Gallet and L.T.Piver. By 1940, the only remaining true French perfume houses were Guerlain, Caron and Lancôme!

It was especially clever of Petitjean to choose a French name which rolled off the tongue; also to break with the minimalism of packaging that had at the time become all the rage amongst designers who had imitated the cleaner lines of Chanel or had been inspired by the Art Deco style, with baroque presentations that evoked exotic paradises in no uncertain terms. Georges Delhomme, serving as artistic director and flacon designer, developed the glamorous bottles and boxes which make us dream even to this day. If Lancôme nevertheless is best known today for their skincare, it's due to its founder's wise words: "The perfume is prestige, the flower in the eyelet, but the beauty products are our every day bread".

Petitjean, despite his diminutive name which means Little John, was appropriately known as "The Magnificent One" ~always intent on creating an empire. As an former Coty export broker for Latin American and ardent student of François Coty's business acumen he envisioned his own house to be as successful. Reprimanding the Coty brand for eventually sacrificing quality for volume after Coty's death, Petitjean was determined to up the ante of luxury upon founding his own establishment.

The continuation was a virtual olfactory avalance: Black Label (1936), Peut-être (Maybe) and Gardenia (both 1937), Flèches (1938), Révolte/Cuir (in 1939, and re-issued as Cuir recently) and le Faune (1942). Rejected in his offer to be Minister of Propaganda of the government of Clemenceau, Petitjean worked in the training of a battalion of women ambassadors of Lancôme. The late 1940s saw Armand industrious as ever when he produced Blue Valley, Nativity, Lavender, Marrakech, Bel Automne, and Happy, while the original Magie (a rich oriental with a core of labdanum) was issued in 1950 and the original Trésor two years later, composed by Jean Hervelin. Envol (flight) and Flèches d'Or (golden arrow) came out in 1957. Several other fragrances comprised the brand's portfolio over the years such as Qui Sait, Sikkim, Climat... (space is limited here); but Winter Festival proved to be Petitjean's last. The year was 1959 and after his wife's death and his son's decision to see if pastures were greener on the other side, embarking on maquillage, Petitjean saw the financial situation of the company becoming critical by 1961. Destitute of a successor he squandered his fortune building a plant in Chevilly-Larue. When debt caught up with him, he had no choice but to negotiate a take-over. Armand Petitjean died on 29 September of 1970 having successfully sold his brainchild to conglomerate L'Oréal.

Kypre was according to some sources his favourite creation among his pleiad of scents and smelling it in hindsight it's not difficult to see how it's easy to grow fond of. Technically a soft leathery chypre, it presents a suaveness of character that is less strident than earlier leathers such as Knize Ten and less crisp or luxurious than Cuir de Russie by Chanel. Coming one year before their famous and unfortunately baptised Revolte/Cuir, it pre-empties the idea which would materialize in the latter with more conviction and more...leather! The two versions of Kypre that were handed me, one more intense in parfum, the other in diluée form and sieved through a scarf, give me the impression of a shape-sifting fragrance that provides an interesting encore just when you thought it had performed all it had to perform. The beginning surprised me with its almost aldehydic soapy and fresh embrace, copious amounts of jasmine and rose reading as a classical bouquet. Although no notes are available I detect some sweetness of violets (methyl ionones) along with the soapy, lifting the fragrance and feminizing it. While the feel of a classical chypre is firmly anchored on the juxtaposition of bergamot to oakmoss and labdanum, in Kypre the idea is fanned out on powdery, whispered tones that cede into a sort of ambery, iris and face-powdery background. Much like a neoclassical gown Kypre retains a certain allure of something that can be still admired and worn with pleasure even decades later.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Chypre series, Leather Series, Lancome fragrances and news

Grecian dress by madame Gres, via metmuseum.org. Pic of Kypre ad through Ebay. Pic of Kypre bottle and box presentation by Liisa, all rights reserved, used with permission. Kypre bottle with round flat stopper by allcollections.net

Frequent Questions: What is dramming and dramming bottles?

Sometimes dramming bottles or bottles for dramming units turn up and cause questioning among buyers. What are they? Perfume Shrine today aspires to shed some light.

Dramming is a term first introduced in the liquor business (hence Drambui, several hypothesize) specifically in whiskey distilleries as far back as the 15th century and dram might be derivative from drachma/δραχμή (Greek coin itself derived from δράττω, ie. grasp a handful) denoting amount of monetary value and thus specific volume. In some Scottish bars a 'dram' is taken to mean a large or double whisky and the fluid dram is one-eighth of a fluid ounce, hence "a small drink of liquor" (1713) [1] The term was also used as a an intransitive verb: 'To drink drams, to tipple' and as a transitive verb: 'to ply with drink'. Therefore dramming would be the practice of drinking drams of liquor. Free drams were passed around in distilleries to deter workers from pilfering.

On the other hand dram in the fragrance and cosmetics industryhas a different measure: a unit of apothecaries' weight, equal to 60 grains, or 1/8 ounce (3.89 grams) [2]. Dramming is meant for "refueling" as in "Thierry Mugler's star-shaped Angel bottle has a dramming unit with an airtight canister that contains 16.9 oz of fragrance" (incidentally that's about 510ml)—enough to refill the 2.6-oz bottle six times".
Dramming is defined as: "A technique for transferring a fragrance from a larger container to a smaller one. When stores have “dramming events” they are telling you that they have very large bottles of the fragrance, usually on display, that they will pour into a smaller one for you, usually in concert with special promotions". However please note the term "dram" in the decanting business (collectors who sell amounts of their own perfume collection) as well as the US medical field is a different still small amount: 1/16th of an ounce.

Guerlain specifically carried the brown apothecary style bottles in both Eau de Toilette and Parfum de Toilette concentration, as depicted here in both Shalimar (in PdT) and Jardins de Bagatelle (in EdT). Some of these bottles turn up online or in auctions and garage sales. Their original use would be to fill up samples for customers or refueling splash bottles at the stores. Due to sheer volume and unfrivolous presentation they represent great value for money for the collector interested in the perfume "juice". It is however worth keeping in mind that several alcoholic products by Guerlain such as mouth hygiene products for gargling, hair oils (stilboite) and muscle rub liquids came in seemingly unadorned bottles, so as always attention is needed when purchasing or collecting.

Other fragrance companies also use dramming units, such as for instance the Bond No. 9 New York Chinatown Dramming Unit valued at $3500.
Let it be said in passing that dramming bottles also circulate for popular cosmetics and skincare.

[1][2]Dictionary.comof Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008.
Thanks to perfumefanatic/POL for asking me the question in the first place.

Art Revered for the Sake of Reverence?

In the film “How to steal a million” (William Wyler,1966) the plot revolves around a prized Cellini Venus lent by the heroine’s father to a respected Paris museum; the minor detail is the Venus statuette was not sculpted by Cellini but by Nicole's grandfather, who is a forger! (Art frauds are nothing new) The audience is kept at such a distance thanks to technological systems guarding the art piece that no one can discern the truth.
Yet audiences and critics don’t want to see the sculpture itself, they insist in admiring its value. It’s a monetary value, to be sure, but, more than that, a value of prestige. The work of art is exalted not merely because it is beautiful, but because it has been globally tagged as beautiful. [Of course, if you missed that day at school, art history courses are available online to discuss this in more detail.]

On another real-life occasion a lady reading a newspaper exclaims “By Jove, a Guido Reni painting has sold for X million dollars! Who is this Reni, anyway?!” Another customer at the same café informs her he’s a famous painter. “But how did he manage to become so famous? Those painters have it good! Ah, he’s a 17th century painter, I see…”. And with that decisive tidbit read in the length of the article she returns to her coffee appeased.
What do these incidents teach us and how are they related to art and subsequently perfumery (a form of art for some)?


First of all any piece put on a pedestal is there to be worshipped, it isn’t asking or giving anything really. This is true with paintings and sculptures at the Louvre (your arms would fall off if you attempted to touch the Venus de Milo, such is the guarding!) but also of anything that has attained the status of “masterpiece” such as legendary perfumes (Shalimar, Chanel No.5, Mitsouko, Miss Dior, Cabochard…) Worshipping an art piece ~especially if we are not certain of its authenticity or its well-preserved state or if we do not instinctively like it~ transforms it into a fetish: we do not derive pleasure from it in real time but from the pleasure it had induced in the past! Perhaps to people whom we did not even know! Since the current Shalimar in production is but a pale spectre of itself, how much of this reverence is genuinely heart-felt and how much is cultural upbringing? And how poignant the line in another film is, "The Object of Beauty" (Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 1991) in which the rich couple debate whether to sell the wife’s Henry Moore sculpture, right until it gets stolen, whereas the deaf-mute maid admires it for its beauty rather than the value it represents voicing this immortal line: “It spoke to me; and I heard”.
In artistic terms, the phenomenon of feeling a pre-digested and codified emotion is called Kitsch.

Usually “Kitsch [is] defined as an aesthetically impoverished object of shoddy production, meant more to identify the consumer with a newly acquired class status than to invoke a genuine aesthetic response”. [1]

But in the words of Hermann Broch [2], Kitsch is not only a replica or a vulgar upstart but the entire Modern Art genre from Romanticism onwards ~the latter emphasized the need for expressive and evocative art work, you see~, since art is being made unto a purpose in itself and to be consumed as beauty. In other words, it’s being produced as a museum piece on a pedestal! Broch also accuses kitsch of not participating in the development of art, having its focus directed at the past.

Secondly, we note the graceful, forgiving halo of time. In our example of Guido Reni, if the painter lived, the lady would be livid on how he attained such selling prices. Now that he’s dead, somehow it is considered proper and justified to be famous and valued expensively. Reverting to perfumes, an old perfume is certainly viewed as better than a new release. Or isn’t it? This is especially significant if we notice that in the discussion there was no mention whatsoever of the beauty of Reni’s paintings, only the time-frame in which they were created and the fact that they still circulate. And there is also a kind of appeased class envy: if Reni was alive, there would be some, whereas now there is none. Additionally a crucial aspect isn’t pointed: someone sold the painting for X millions and therefore profited that amount. However that monetary aspect ~which is rampant in the perfumes auctioning as well~ justified via the values of perceived beauty and time elapsed is eluding the aspiring middle-class audience who is brought up to believe in humanistic values instead. According to that Kant dictum, values are intrinsic (thus beauty is a thing of its own and not “in the eye of the beholder”, otherwise there can not be universal masterpieces and the Mona Lisa could be equated with Lucy in the Field with Flowers at MOBA); or alternatively they are born out of a plane of existence more elevated than the audience’s own. Enter the sanctioned plane of the perfume critic who surely “knows”, therefore his/her opinion is more valid than one’s own experience. But that is also another manifestation of kitsch in the sense explained above!
This is why we read such statements as:

“I tried it [Douce Amère by Serge Lutens] for the first time last night and it did not work for me, sadly. Am I just not far enough along in this hobby to appreciate frags like this? Will I like it later? I can tell that it's well composed and appreciate it-- but I don't like the way that it smells”. [3]

And why blind tests between a cheaply produced perfume sur-mesure and a real expensive one do not always play out as one would have expected!

Virginia Woolf captured these problematics in her famous "middlebrow" discussion. [4]Whereas low-brows like that they like, crude as it might be or not (Emannuel Kant describes the direct appeal to the senses as "barbaric" which might be a wonderful reference when experiencing Dioressence, formally introduced as “le parfum barbare”! Think about it!), high-brows like what their elitist stance manifests into creating. Which leaves middle-brows: On the whole they are educated people who aspire into bettering themselves through the appreciation of art.
This indadvertedly reminded me of Philipe Martinet’s scorn on Ingmar Bergman[5]:

“He is the hero of that peculiar creature of our times -the wannabe, the pseudo, the pretend-intellectual who finds the incomprehensible to be profound, the obscure to be enlightening and the disgusting to be ennobling”.

Yet, editor Russell Lynes satirized Virginia Woolf’s concept in the article "Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow" [6], attributing the distinctions to a means of upholding cultural superiority and subtly lauded middlebrows in their zeal. His parodying of the highbrow claim that the products a person uses distinguishes his/her level of cultural worth, by satirically identifying the products tied to a middlebrow person, has a real and tangible significance in the world of perfume use. Are we better, more educated, more discerning, and more “in the know” because we appreciate an obscure niche scent such as By Kilian Liaisons Dangereuses? Is the effect even more pronounced and pointed as an external attribute because it costs a lot of money too? Does the trend of high-end exclusive lines within mainstream brands (Prada and Armani boutique exclusives, Guerlain Les Parisiennes, Chanel Les Exclusifs etc.), constitute an aesthetic middlebrow manifestation apart from a marketing technique?

Let’s also examine the instance in which an artist (a perfumer?) is invited to spend the day amidst bourgeois society, where he/she is bombarded with questions pertaining to inner meanings of art and philosophy, resulting in equating the artist with how once upon a time the court jester was regarded: someone to provide pleasure and some degree of the inner workings of life and art (Compare with the Shakespearean fool in "King Lear")

I do not purport to have all the answers, but the discussion is open to all and I welcome your input. Milan Kundera said it best in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being":

“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch”

May we all remember that when faced with a revered perfume!


Thanks to Angela of NST for inspiring this stream of thoughts in the first place.

Refs:
[1]Kitsch definition
[2] Hermann Broch overview
[3] MUA fragrance board quote
[4]Woolf, Virginia. "Middlebrow." The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays. London, Hogarth P., 1942.
[5]What the heck is art.blogspot.com
[6]Lynes, Russell. The Tastemakers. New York, Harper, 1954.
Pics of How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburna & Peter O'Toole via doctormacro1.info and Absolut ad via gone4sure.files.wordpress