I Know What You Did Last Summer ~the Perfume Edition

In a feverish summer stroke of genius Ayala of Smelly blog aided by the ever resourceful Gaia of The Non Blonde came up with a project more substiantial than simply a list of summer favourites: here you will find assorted creative minds proposing scents for almost every summer eventuality, in essence the ultimate summer scent wardrobe! Perfumes which you can take or leave, arguably, yet these lists are by no means exhaustive and are intended to give a little nudge into finding your own special fragrances for this summer. So, have fun and tell us what your preferences are for your own summery occasions!
I have been hearing how this summer has been rather cool for most of Western Europe and North America so far, but let me tell you in the Hellenic land of the Gods, it's never a summer without a mean case of the heat (and inevitably the hots!). We have been having cloudless skies ever since May and temperatures above 32C for 2.5 months now and you can see lightly bronzed, slick bodies aplenty on the beach and in the streets, so I have pretty much adjusted myself in the fragrance department pretty well by now. Here are my preferences! (click the links for reviews)

Hitting the beach is but a stone's throw away and even if not dipping in the cool Aegean waters, just inhaling the iodine-rich smell of the sea-spray is invigorating. We used to count our summers by how many swims we had taken when we were children (much like others did by counting how many ice-cream sticks they consumed), but nowadays I find that even a leisurely walk on the sugar-spun sands adds a special something to my day. When I go for a swim I prefer to pack Dior Bronze Monoi Gelée in my little nécessaire, a perfect monoi smell (tiaré and amyl salicilate) which I put on both body as a moisturizer and on hair. It wafts deliciously, isn’t photosensitive and never clashes with my trusty La Prairie sunblock.

Sailing is another typically Greek expedition for summer and apart from afternoon lazy fishing we also discover many unchartered, unreachable from tourism beaches that way! (I call this heaven, don't you?) For lounging on the deck you can't beat the light and refreshing vetiver and light smoke of Chanel’s beautiful Sycomore; it even takes a subtle chocolate nuance when in the sun! The iodine aroma of Goutal's Vetiver is more hard-core, reminding me of days seeing workers doing metal-working on large boats, the fiery metal-induced sparks bursting all around mingling with the scents of tar and salt.

Al fresco eating in summery tavernas ~often right after that sea dip, hair up with a silk scarf and body wrapped in a Pucci-printed sarong~ demands something uncomplicated. If I had opted for only the monoi gel I follow with a spritz of my purse-sprayer of Malle's Carnal Flower. Its green tuberose along with the subtle coconut touch is the epitome of summers outdoors (and would also be fabulous for a summer wedding, but more of that on a seperate article). For a warmer feel I have been also using Tauer’s Une Rose Chyprée and Chanel’s Bois des Iles parfum a lot.

If it’s a Bar-B-Q I am attending (Greeks are infamous carnivores, but we also roast our seafood to great aplomb) I can get away with a smoky little something: lately that’s Encens Flamboyant from Goutal’s "Les Orientalistes" collection.



Jet Setting is another option. I try to travel light and bring few key pieces that match each other in multiple combinations, usually in the palette of white-red-blue. My suitcase has room for vintage souvenirs, foreign editions of books I've meaning to hunt down and of course new local fragrances! Two scents which are comforting and non obtrusive on airplanes and trains are Vanille Galante by Hermès and Bois d’Iris by The Different Company. I am also flirting with the limpid, coolly spicy Un Jardin après La Mousson.

Walking around town visiting open-air book fairs is one of my favourite past-times: The view of all the titles stacked neatly beside each other, the exhibition cubicles all identical creating a long uniform line of knowledge and the smell of new paper and freshly printed ink is intoxicating. I don’t want to compete with them, so I choose the complementing Messe de Minuit by Etro which really comes alive only in the heat of summer.
Sometimes there's even a school band performing! If I am only out shopping and walking I pick Guerlain’s Vétiver pour Elle or Diorella: elegant and exuberant! And if there’s a heatwave, nothing but the most bitter green chypres will do: vintage Shiseido Zen, Silences by Jacomo and Piguet’s Bandit.

Siesta napping in a cool room while the heat blazes outside is one of the great comforts after a hot morning. The lazy, languid feelings evoked are perfectly encapsulated by L’Artisan’s Extrait de Songe (re-issued as L’été en Douce), a scent of dry white cotton, smooth sheets and the hay nuance of coumarin. (come to think of it, if you can locate a bit of the African Dreams home oil of The Body Shop to put on a burner it’s just as clean-cool). For an upscale indulgence I bring out the cool Iris Pallida by L’Artisan.

The fun fair is brash and weird and I love the illusions in the mirrors chambers or the terror train: Dzing! by L’Artisan with its cardboard and zoo animals' aroma captures the warm, yet strange atmosphere perfectly.

Cinema in Sicily, Naples and Greece is often an open-air affair during summer evenings, big yards with fine peeble, rows of seats across the silver screen and gigantic vines of honeysuckle, ivy and jasmine garlanding the perimeter. There’s a nostalgic air about it, either watching Stromboli with Ingrid Bergman or Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and I like to bring out my most romantic scents: Grand Amour by Goutal exploring lilies, honeysuckle and hyacinth, Molinard by Molinard, a cherished gift of that special someone with jasmine under green and fruity accents or Chamade by Guerlain with its blackcurrant buds and hyacinth heart.

A big night out in the big city demands a different, sexier approach and I have curiously gravitated towards ambers and spices lately: Perfumerie Generale liquorish Cozé, a tiny dab of Ambre Sultan on pulse points or Opium Eau de Toilette over my navel so it wafts upwards. I also love the honeyed sensual smell of Une Fleur de Cassie by F.Malle and the silken polish of Tubéreuse Criminelle by Lutens .

I am leaving you with Loukianos Kelaidoni's nostalgic song Summer Cinemas about the passing of youth:


Please check the following participating blogs for more ideas:

Smelly Blog, Legerdenez, The Non Blonde, I smell therefore I am, Scent Hive, Savvy Thinker, Moving & Shaking, Bittergrace Notes

Vintage pic found thanks to The Non Blonde, Santa Monica Pier 1920 from Dr. X's Free Associations. Pics via culture.ana-mpa.gr, athens-gree.com, montesorri.gr, photonet.com, and Life mag (Greek billionnaire Stavros Niarchos on his sailing boat)

More news on the upcoming L'Artisan Havana Vanille

We had mentioned the new fragrance from L'artisan parfumeur, Havana Vanille, unveiled during the London Sniffa last week the other day, (along with news on the upcoming Bois Torride by Guerlain) but more information is slowly being revealed.
The upcomiong in-house perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour's creation will encompass interesting notes that conspire to create a vanilla out of the ordinary. If L'Artisan's pre-emptying Vanilia is a study in ethylmaltol (the smell of cotton candy) and its girly associations of ice-cream cones at the fair, the latest vanilla will incorporate essences of leather, rhum, tonka bean and helichrysum (immortelle or everlasting flower) along with dried fruits, elements which seem to tilt the creation into the realm of almost a Lutenesque composition! With Havana in the title you would expect something sultry and tobacco-laced. And indeed the concept and notes evoke the atmoshere of Cuba with the tobacco plantations and the rolling of leaves which young women do on their moist thighs (The humidity helps the leaves retain their elasticity). It would be interesting to see the interpretation of something that is essentially a rather "thick" concept translated into the diaphanous treatment of a Duchaufour formula!
The use of a luxurious real vanilla absolute, much like it also stood for luxury in Hermes's Vanille Galante last season, seems to point to a new sensibility that eshews the sacharrine tonalities of vanillin in favour of more complex natural materials. Something tells me we're going to see more of these complex vanilla scents from the higher end of perfume companies soon.
As usual the new L'Artisan fragrance will be presented in both 50ml and 100ml bottles of Eau de Parfum.

Notes for L'Artisan Havana Vanilla:

Top: leather, rhum, clove, dried fruits
Heart: narcissus, immortelle/everlasting flower, tonka bean
Base: Mexican vanilla absolute, smoky woods, musks, balsamic notes

Edit to add: A full review is now uploaded on this page.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Upcoming releases

Pic & Notes translated from the Italian (extrait.it) by perfumeshrine

The winner of the draw.......

......for Tubereuse Criminelle is none other than Lucy Fishwife!
Please email me using the email on profile (under head banner) with a shipping address so I can have this out in the mail soon.

Thanks everyone for your enthusiastic participation and till next time!

Drapeau Tricolore: 12 Quintessentially French Fragrances

"How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?" General Charles de Gaulle had infamously querried. Growing up one of my best friends was French. Her name was Marianne (coincidence?) and she was living in a Paris banlieu: We met in the summers vacationing, we exchanged cards and film-stars-stickers in the wintertime. She brought our family gorgeous stinky cheeses that cemented my life-long appreciation for them, we brought them handmade olive oil soaps and mastic liqueur; and between summer siestas and hot days skulking we came to know each other's culture in passing. I learned that the French are a sensual more than sexual people: They buy their fruits and vegetables every day (fondling them, like us); they like to satisfy their eyes, but also their touch and their tastebuds in everything they do. The cliché wants them to be dirty and if the Paris metro is anything to go by one can't blame that notion, yet much as they have legends of The Great Unwashed (Napoleon's note to Josephine "I am returning in three days; don't wash!") they also have recipes to aromatize said juices! (The tisane recipe of orange, rosewater and mint the French lover hands down to his American young mistress in bed in "Le Divorce" by James Ivory: "That's something you would never have found out in Santa Barbara" he tells her naughtily).
But what constitutes Frenchiness? In the mind of the American it has always stood as sophistication, but this really only stands for Parisians. And not as expected: French women often go for a thrift thrill at Zara and gloat on finding the perfect little outfit for less than 100 euros! They wear mainstream and high-street brands unapologetically and shop at department stores.
My own culture has been very influenced in the political and intellectual fields by France. Yet France is as much the Breton seaside with the matelot tops and its mussells as well as the Gitanes-smoking existentialists and the urinous paths of the clochards in Paris; the sole meunière with its bland ~to my Greek buds~ taste and the tangy blackberries growing on each side of the Loire valley. It's Midi and the characteristic familiar Mediterranean herbs (thyme, oregano, rosemary) picked by hearty housewives cooking a mean coq au vin, but also the Route des Vins d'Alsace (the Wine Route)!

Compiling a list of perfumes viewed as French-smelling, I had to eliminate many classics. Surely Paul Parquet's Fougère Royale for Houbigant (1882) and Jicky by Guerlain (issued in the same year as the Exposition Universelle and the Eiffel Tower, 1889) are beacons in the history of perfumery, but they were not as popular with the French themselves as other scents. The French are an elfin people, small, usually brown-haired and quirky, not blond and athletic, so anything Wagnerian can be safely left behind; nor are they Joan Crawford shoulder-padded and hollowed cheekboned; therefore Mitsouko and its Japonesque homage was out. By the same token the pale sunlight of Après L'Ondée (1906) reminds me more of northern climates. Miss Dior and Cabochard have now changed to the worse... And although France has traditionally been a very advanced country in the intellectual stakes, it is also conservative in its mentality, much like many of the older nations in Europe: People want to feel special, but not to be too different from the other respectable society!
Paris by Yves Saint Laurent seems like an obvious choice, yet its rosy embullient appeal transcends cultures. Same with Soir de Paris by Bourjois, especially popular with American women, and Narcisse Noir by Caron (initially a US hit before establishing Daltroff's knack). In the end I went for an arguably idiosyncratic list of French perfumes which satisfy my inner exploration of what "smells French".
Here it is for your enjoyment.

Amoureuse by Parfums DelRae
Technically an Anglosaxon fragrance (inspired by the Victorian boxwood trees on San Francisco), but executed by a masterful French hand (Michel Roudnitska, son of Edmond and responsible for Noir épices & most of the Del Rae line), Amoureuse is a sublime indolic, "dirty" floral (jasmine and a little tuberose) touched by honeyed sweetness and a ginger zing, that you can picture on someone as fortuitously vulnerable as Jeanne Morreau. It oozes femininity, frank sexuality and inner power like few other modern florals (Manoumalia perhaps?).

Bal à Versailles by Jean Desprez
If there was a void of great French orientals that didn't took you to the gardens of India in the manner of Shalimar, but kept you within terra franca, Bal a Versailles (Ball in Versailles) would be it. Unusually for the second half of the 20th century (1962) issued by the perfumer himself, Bal smells like afterglow ~spent, content and animalic, its citrus opening cascading into a cadenza of rich florals, fanned on opulent resins and golden balsams.

Bel Ami by Hermes
The citrusy leather modern classic of 1986 is often overlooked in its unusual pepperiness and floralcy under the smoky woods (cedar and sandalwood) and the animalic vanilla, which make it raunchy and assertive at first, refined later on. Named after a novel by Guy de Maupassant chronicling the rise to power of a manipulative journalist, Bel Ami has always striken me as the perfect masculine choice for a genuine French lover. Someone like Michel Piccoli of Le Mépris, Belle de Jour and The discreet charm of bourgeoisie. Can you think of anything more French?

Cologne à La Française (Institut Très Bien)
Small children in France ~and all along the Mediterannean~ often have their hands "washed" and their clothes sprinkled with Eau de Cologne. This cherished memory I have has undoubtedly contributed to my appreciating fine fragrances later on. This particular ~recently discontinued~ cologne by Pierre Bourdon bears its nationality proudly as a crest and its lemony goodness is akin to the optimism felt on a bright summer's day. I like to think that it smells like the one (American born) Jean Seberg casually splashes on her nape in Godart's A Bout de Souffle under Belmondo's watchful eye.

Hypnotic Poison by Christian Dior
Annick Ménardo went for the gourmand idea inaugurated by Angel, yet proposed a novel approach: the plummy, bitter almond heart poised on coumarin radiates like a poisonous apple of temptation (cyanide smells of almond) while the heliotropin is a distant wink to Après L'Ondée . Although Angel can be smelled everywhere in Paris, so it can in several other metropoleis (London, Athens, Miami...). Hypnotic Poison (1998) is just this side of being subversive without straying too much.

L'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci
Paris was liberated and hope was brimming in the air; the world was ready for light-hearted optimism after the austerity of the WWII ravages. Francis Fabron was thus commissioned to create the first Nina Ricci perfume in 1948 capturing exactly the "air of the times". The Lalique doves almost kissing on the top of the cap (designed in 1951) symbolised the romanticism that Paris has always stood for in the collective unconscious, preparing us for the olfactory equivalent of delicate Chantilly lace. The scent's tender clovey-carnation and peachy heart seems strung by fairies (especially in the vintage version), given a boost by benzyl salicylate, effectuating one of the most memorable scents of my own childhood.

L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain
From the Impressionist paintings that Jacques Guerlain was inspired of, to the elaborate pattiserie tradition that the French have been going to extremes for (see Vatel), everything in L'Heure Bleue (1912) is redolent of French Belle Epoque: the orange blossoms of the South, the Meditarranean herbs with the spicy anise overlay of rustic bread and the woody violets flanking it, as well as the paradigmatic sillage left behind it, enforce L'Heure Bleue as one of the masterpieces of French perfumery. Its wistful contemplativeness feels very Parisian to me.

Musks Kublaï Khan by Serge Lutens
Named after the bloodthirsty warrior of the steppes and created by Christopher Sheldrake in 1998, the shocking reality is this purring cougar smells soft, luminously warm and inviting in a special, "dirty" way, thanks to intense cistus labdanum, castoreum (rude hide) and civet essences. It shares the barnyard quality with the otherwise mossy musk of L'air de Rien by Miller Harris and several parfums fourrure. Despite its reputation of "the armpit of an unwashed camel driver" (perhaps due to the dirty hair note of costus), my personal perception of it is highly erotic, a view which the many French pilgrims of Les Salons du Palais Royal, where it's exclusively sold, seem to share.

No.5 by Chanel
Is No.5 French-smelling? Does the Pope wear a hat? No list would be complete without Chanel's icon of 1921 by Ernest Beaux, simply because it is emblematic for the perception of French perfume throughout the globe. The image of the little black dress with a single strand of pearls and two drops of No.5 is not especially francophone (it's more of a WASP image nowadays), nor is the touristy "baguette under the arm and tilted beret" cartoonish notion. Yet whether you like its soapy aldehydic bouqeut of intense ylang-ylang and jasmine over a musky trail or not, No.5 has accomplished what the Eiffel Tower has as well: to be considered an instantly recognisable French hallmark!

Nuit de Noël by Caron
The mysterious Mousse de Saxe (Saxon moss) base, with its cool and dark, animalic edge rich in musky and vanillic aromata (it's said to include geranium, licorice, leather, iodine and vanillin), and its jarring 6-isobutylquinoline (leathernote) produce a rosy-woody-powdery fragrance with a raw undercurrent that stood apart even in an era filled with outstanding perfumes (1922). Guy Robert praised it thus: "If a woman were to enter [a crowded theatre] wearing Nuit de Noël, all the other women would become invisible".

Une Fleur de Cassie by Editions des Parfums Frédéric Malle
I recall seeing farmers collecting gum from the cassie tree (acacia farnesiana) for use as gum arabic substitute in Australia, their agile hands working effortlessly. Known as Cassier du Levant in the South of France, the scent of cassie is rich in benzaldehyde, anisic aldehyde, and a violet-smelling ketone, rendering the essence sensuous and shadowy fleshy like the contours of a soft feminine body through gauzy garments. Cassie has been harnessed in several renditions from Caron's Farnesiana to Coty's La Jacée through Creed's Aubepine Acacia, but nowhere is the flesh-like honeyed richness, from bark to thorny stem to sugary-spun blossom, best interpreted than in Dominique Ropion's masterpiece Une Fleur de Cassie.

Vétiver by Guerlain
Simply put the scent of the French bourgeoisie, a classic that smells respectable and always pleasant in all situations; the passe partout that opens all doors! It seems there's nary a banker, broker, lawyer or well-to-do doctor in France who hasn't got a bottle of this citrus woody with refreshing vetiver notes of Jean Paul Guerlain in their bathroom. Although Eau de Guerlain with its provencal herbs accord is just as French, Vétiver (1961) caught on more, due to its erstwhile virile profile. A bit hacknayed thus if you're actually French and in France, it stands along with Dior's Eau Sauvage as the classic of classics in the great masculines pantheon. Its feminine counterpart is exceptional too!


Please add your own suggestions on French-smelling perfumes!

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Stars & Stripes ~10 Quintessentially American Fragrances

Painting "La Liberté guidant le peuple" by Eugène Delacroix (technically commemorating the July Revolution of 1830) via Wikimedia Commons. Jeanne Morreau in Les Amants via cinemoi.tv, J.P.Belmondo via artscatter.com, L'Heure Bleue photo via Tangled up in L'heure Bleue

I have been a little swamped with working on some article deadlines and have delayed my posting (thanks for your understanding), but do check back later for an article celebrating the Bastille Day about quintessentially French perfumes and essences.
I will also reply to all your interesting comments shortly!

In the meantime, you can check the Gulf News article "A tradition that lingers" for some ideas on what is considered the olfactory heritage of Arabia.