How French Women Do It (Wear Perfume, That Is!)

There is a huge market of marketing all things French to Anglosaxons and in that respect the title of today's post is in part taken off a popular "French lifestyle guide" aimed at Americans. Even though I have serious doubts about the factual veracity of both the "glamour puss" image of the French or the "gauche" approach of Anglos on all matters lifestyle (or is it?), there is something to be said about the interest that is generated about the use of perfume the French way in the hearts of fragrance lovers who devour all perfume advice with an insatiable appetite! In that regard I have amassed some excerpts from various sources which I will present to you in installments.

Allure Magazine recently published a beauty article called "French Lessons", by Judy Bachrach, focusing on perfume choosing and application rules. Even though most of the "rules" are field for heated discussion (especially since they rely on a certain national stereotype that seems to perpetuate a humiliating response in the American reader, following the trendy viewpoint of dumping on everything American), we thought it might provide fodder for discussion for our readers.
So here are the 7 Rules on How to Wear Perfume the French Way, according to Allure magazine:
1. There is only one reason, if you're French, to wear perfume. And that reason is seduction.
2. In France the scent you dab defines who you are.
3. A girl who picks a fragrance at 12 doesn't have to remain true to the scent for life.
4. There are times when you simply have to divorce your perfume.
5. Try not to wear the same scent as your mother.
6. Never leave home without it.
7. Never ask a Frenchwoman what perfume she's wearing. They don't want to share their signature scent.

On the other hand, even in books which rely rather on expanding the above mentioned social divide that lies between these two very different countries (and in general between Anglos and continental Europe), there are interesting tidbits about perfume use. The reason probably is that even though it's the French who made perfume the marketable good that it is, cultivating the fragrance industry early and seriously, it's really the Anglos who have a keen interest in fragrance, smelling it, owning it, collecting it and alternatively enthusiastically embracing it or shunning it with just as much passion.
Writes Helena Frith Powell (an author on the subject): "French women use everything they can to seduce men, including perfume. They’re mad about it. Most of them won’t leave the house without it. If you go into a perfumery in France once the sales assistant will offer to ‘perfume’ you. I can see why. Their men are equally mad about the way women smell. I once sat next to a French man at a dinner. Half-way through the starter he turned to me and whispered: “Your perfume is intoxicating.” As an English girl I’m not used to that sort of comment. It half made me want to throw up, but it also made me feel rather, well, intoxicating and seductive."

In Fatale, How French Women Do It by Edith Kunz, the seminal little guide into all things French which spawned a legion of similar style  volumes, (some more serious than others), there is a chapter devoted to French perfume use. In it, the author rightfully demonstrates how the habit of perfume wearing began in France as a temporary cure for a general state of filth and expands into describing the (supposed) French ritual of wearing fragrance for purposes of seduction. Even though the procedure isn't particularly novel ~bath soak in aromatic oils, followed by scented body lotion and scented dusted powder, with fragrance as an end note~, it does present a couple of interesting tidbits: According to Kunz French femme fatales apply perfume to the pulse points with a generously moistened cotton puff instead of fingers or the stopper (My own suggestion of a better way to do that would be to use a small silk handerchief on the stopper, which can then aromatize your handbag). As to where to put that perfume, perhaps the most famous quip comes from Chanel who suggested to a client asking "wherever you want to be kissed". Not to quench anyone's imagination, but there is a plethora of (unusual) key points to consider in your fragrancing ritual:

heels, arches and between the toes
the inner and outer ankle bone
behind the knees
the underside of the derriere
the pubic area and the navel
under each breast and between the breasts
the shoulders and upper arms
inside the bend of the elbow
the pulse points at the inner wrist
the back of the hand and between the fingers
the hollow at the bottom of the neck
all around the collar bone
under the chin
along the jaw line
behind the ears and on the earlobes
on the temples
along the back of the neck to the shoulder blades
around the hairline

If this isn't enough for your routine, I don't know what might be! Surely a loaded, decadent perfuming process, but one which would make one unforgettable. Whether that would be in a positive or negative light remains within the grasp of your actual perfume choice and one crucial detail, in the words of Powell "don’t overdo it, perfume has to give a hint of sweet things to follow, not knock your date out". Eh, bien sûr!

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Drapeau tricolore: Quintessential French Perfumes Selection, Stars & Stripes: 10 Quintessentially American Perfumes.

art illustration via makeupandbeauty.com

Serge Lutens Vitriol d'Oeillet: fragrance review & draw

"Sometimes he frets his instrument with the back of a kitchen knife or even a metal lipstick holder, giving it the clangy virility of the primitive country blues men".  This descriptor for Bob Dylan's style fits the newest Serge Lutens creation to a T: clangy, virile in a rugged way, disruptive, angry and unusual are all characteristics of Vitriol d'Oeillet (meaning vitriol of carnation); an uncharacteristic carnation fragrance which breaks the mould of old fashioned powdery florals of the start of the 20th century, offering a futurist angry woody floral. In Vitriol d'Oeillet Lutens alludes to carnation via intense, corosive pepper and lily and invites us to think of carnations of red, feisty under the intense sun of Provence, and at the same time of the London fog hiding a gentleman killer à la Jack the Ripper, who sports a carnation in his buttonhole.

There's something to be said about 19th century and its fixation with death & violence, a kind of violence beyond the funereal association so many people have with carnations. The ethereally romantic image of the era gets shattered when we read Honoré de Balzac for instance: Madame Cibot is a widow twice-over, when her husband Rémonencq accidentally consumes the chalice of vitriol he was intending for his wife (in Cousin Pons)...Oil of vitriol features in many a 19th novella, not just Balzac.
Two especially memorable scenes have the caustic sulphuric acid unceremoniously thrown on a face (the acid works by releasing acids from their salts, i.e.sulphides); namely in George Gissing's The Nether World (1889) and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Ebb-Tide (1894). Perhaps what inspired those writers into using vitriol in fiction scene stealers as an aussault (an aussault to injustice, poverty and degradation), as well as a metonym for realism (a late 19th century claim to the explosive!), is what inspired Lutens himself; a desire to break loose with preconceptions about how a carnation fragrance should be: pretty, prim, feminine, dainty? Vitriol d'Oeillet is nothing of the sort!
But there's something to be said about Vitriol being in tune with Moorish sensibilities too, of which Lutens has long been an accolyte. Blue vitriol is copper (Cu), green vitriol is iron (Fe), and white vitriol is zinc (Zn), all Hermetic references for the initiated. Sulphuric acid (historically known as 'oil of vitriol') was formerly prepared from green vitriol in a ritual that crossed into the alchemical. The Moors sold vitriol preparations as an antiseptic panaceia. There's this thing in Shi'ism called ta'wil, it's this idea where "you take anything back to its root significance, its original self". A cleanse going for the bone!

On the other hand, in late 19th century carnations were innocent, popular buttonhole flowers; Oscar Wilde was said to sport one and companies producing such fragrances were a dime a dozen, rendering the carnation soliflore a dominating fragrance trend of the Victorian era. The dandified character of carnation scents has persisted: from old-image Floris Malmaison to Roger &Gallet's ever popular ~but ultimately discontinued~ Blue Carnation all the way to modern-day retro Dianthus by Etro.

The opening of Serge Lutens Vitriol d'Oeillet is sharp, caustic as befits the name though not smelling of sulphur, without the dense powdery note that surrounds the rich floral heart of retro carnations such as Caron's Bellodgia. After all, clove, the main spicy component in creating a carnation accord in perfumery, is called clou de girofle in French, same as a pointy "nail". But despite the disruptive nails on a chalkboard of the opening of the new Lutens fragrance, the progression of Vitriol d'Oeillet softens gradually; much like Tubéreuse Criminelle hides a silken polished floral embrace beneath the mentholated stage fright. In Vitriol d'Oeillet's case Serge hides the heart of a lush lily inside the spicy mantle. Indeed it is more of a lily than a carnation fragrance, as per the usual interpretation of carnation in perfumery.

The spices almost strangle the lily notes under cruel fingers: black pepper, pimento, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, pink pepper with its rosy hue, paprika and clove; in Serge Noire and Louve the spices serve as a panoramic "lift" to the other notes, here they reinforce what was a hint in the flower. The woody backdrop of cedar is softening the base, but lovers of Serge's and Sheldrake's candied-fruit-compote-in-a-cedar-bowl will not find the sweet oriental they have grown to expect. Vitriol d'Oeillet is resolutely spicy, rendered in woody floral tonalities that only slightly turn powdery towards the very end.

To give perfume comparisons: If you have always found Secret Mélange, from Les Caprices du Dandy collection by Maître Parfumeur et Gantier (a fragrance which dared to mix cold spices and flowers and harmonize the accord with warm woods) quite intriguing, you have good chances of liking the jarring nature of Vitriol d'Oeillet. So might lovers of Caron's Poivre (which is vastly superior nevertheless) or of the dark, suffused imagescape of Garofano by Lorenzo Villoresi and E.Lauder's intense Spellbound. If you were looking for a classic, dense, feminine carnation floral or a minimal contemporary treatment oif the note such as in Oeillet Sauvage by L'Artisan Parfumeur, you might be scared by this violent yet diaphanous offering.

Oddly for the actual formula, since it's chartreuse liqueur which is infused with carnation petals and alchemically it is green vitriol which hides the greatest power, Vitriol d'Oeillet if of a greyish-lilac tint which looks someplace between funereal and alluringly gothic-romantic. The sillage is well-behaved, indeed subtle, perhaps because vitriol derives from the Latin vitrium, meaning glass, therefore denoting a certain transparency and lightness. Vitriol d'Oeillet is androgynous with great lasting power that seems to grow in depth, becoming a little bit sweeter and woodier as time passes.

Serge Lutens Vitriol d'Oeillet belongs to the export line, available at select stockists around the world and at the official Lutens site, 95euros for 50ml of Eau de Parfum. The limited edition engraved bottles depicted cost much more.

A generous-sized decant is available for one lucky reader. Draw is now closed, thank you!

What is it you find intriguing about the concept?

Historical Smells Recreated in a Library of Scents at Osmotheque USA

"To put smells in a historical context is to add a whole dimension to how we understand the world. Boston’s Back Bay, for instance, has at different times been filled with the smells of a saltwater marsh, a cesspool, horses, and car exhaust. Some smells vanish, new ones arise, and some shift in a way that tells a cultural story. The jasmine and leather notes of a Chanel perfume from 1927 help us understand the boldly androgynous women of the flapper era, just as the candied sweetness of the latest Victoria’s Secret fragrance tells us something about femininity today."

To that end Roman Kaiser, a Swiss fragrance chemist, developed "headspace" (a method in which the air around an object, usually a living flower, is analysed and the scent recreated in the lab afterwards) while Christopher Brosius (of CB I Hate Perfume and formerly Demeter Library of Fragrances) has used that headspace technique to recreate more imaginative smells, such as fur coats or worn paperbacks. Others have made this an organized goal in the form of an archive, a veritable library of scents to speak, such as the Osmothèque, headquartered in Versailles, France, which keeps a collection of historically important perfumes, in their original formulas, chilled in aluminum flasks in argon, an inert gas that won’t react with the perfumes like oxygen does, helping them stay stable over time. "Laudamiel is currently spearheading an effort to bring some of these perfumes to New York City, and has created an Academy of Perfumery and Aromatics that will represent the Osmotheque in the United States."

Christophe Laudamiel, a renowened French perfumer who has a daring approach to fragrance and was responsible for the re-enactment of the smelly scenes of the novel Das Parfum (which materialised into a collector's coffret for Thierry Mugler),  is taking advantage of recent breakthroughs in historical exploration for his curating the US-based "library of scents", such as having McHugh of Harvard Universiaty turning on his list of detailed formulas of perfumes and incense encountered in Sanskrit texts; often to intriguing results, as the wealthy Brahmins who took notes on those scents described them in positive and occasionally in negative light. For instance, one of the fragrances Laudamiel has reconstructed contains notes of clarified butter, milk, mango blossoms, honey and sandalwood, while another reeks of rotting flesh, smoke, alcohol and garlic!

Perhaps the greatest challenge lies not in recreation however, but in context: How the people of the time experienced those smells, rather than how they smell to us today, as evidenced by the somewhat lacking recreation of smells in the Jorvik Viking Center in York, England, which takes visitors into the experience of smelling a fish market or a Viking latrine. The challenge of integrating the historical experience into smell recreations is what lies ahead.

data/quotes from Courtney Humphries "A whiff of History" in Boston.com. Read it in its entirety here.

photo of arc in Artemis temple in Jerash, Jordan via wikimedia commons

Chanel Coco Noir : new fragrance (rumour)

In the context of keeping you up with the latest, we often present fragrance projects by renowned companies before their launch is official. We classify these under "rumour" on Perfume Shrine and accept that the finer points may be swayed this way or that way later on. Today we have news on an upcoming Chanel fragrance! [We have updated with the official confirmation & pics below, scroll down please].

The thinking behind it all
Coco Noir is the official name, which stands for the new flanker to the original Coco fragrance from the 1980s. Coco Mademoiselle proved so popular that another effort in a similar vein might prove a treasure trove. After all since Chanel No.19 found a flanker, renewing the brand, in No.19 Poudré, why not Coco once more? After all, Coco Mademoiselle celebrates a decade on the market and a new addition to the line seems to prove it's considered a modern classic: if sales and promotion/advertising are any indication, it certainly is.

A "Noir"?
The Noir moniker suggests a composition that would depend on mystery, danger, adventure...There are hundreds of "noir" (or "black") fragrances on the market, from classics such as Narcise Noir and Drakkar Noir for men, to modern cults such as Bulgari Black, Japon Noir by Tom Ford, Black Orchid (again by Ford), Back to Black by Kilian, Orris Noir by Ormonde Jayne and Encre Noire by Lalique; or less challenging, tamer offerings such as Bulgari Jasmin Noir, Crystal Noir by Versace, La Petite Robe Noire by Guerlain. There's something for everyone, since noir holds powerful fascination in fragrances for consumers, as we have already discussed in detail.

My money for the next Chanel therefore is on sophisticated notes that are making a come-back in general, such as leather, tarry-phenolic elements, incense, and darker "woods" (not forsaking popular patchouli) with skin-scent musks etc. The concept of calling something "black" is aesthetically a by-word for grown-up and I can't possibly see how girly, frou-frou things (fruity florals, sweet vanillas) could evoke it sufficiently. Unless they've forgotten what they represent at Chanel, which I hope they have not.

EDIT TO ADD: Official confirmation coming from Chanel directly one year later than my original prediction(!): Coco Noir is a new perfume launching on August 14th 2012 in the US and then internationally in September 2012; an oriental poised between the classic spicy oriental Coco and the modern luminous patchouli-laced oriental Coco Mademoiselle. 
[See? I told you I was not bull-shiting you!]

The concept

“Why does all I do become byzantine?” — Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel

The concept of Coco Noir by Chanel is inspired by the past, traveling, the Baroque,Venice at night and the time Coco spent in the mysterious city....the idea of Venetian velvet is a recurring motif. 
The perfume is composed by in-house perfumer Jacques Polge.
"For Coco Noir, I thought of Coco and of Coco Mademoiselle too, because it’s also part of the history. I wanted to continue exploring an entire esthetic range of CHANEL perfumery, a range that distinguishes itself from the Florals, one that is illustrated by Bois-des-Iles and Cuir de Russie. I took it up with Coco. It’s what I like to call the CHANEL Coromandel culture, what you see and feel in her apartment. The night vision of the ‘Orient that starts and ends in Venice’ imposed itself upon me and that is where I wanted to go.”        
~Jacques Polge

Here is the bottle above and the fragrance notes for Coco Noir by Chanel:

Top: grapefruit, bergamot and orange
Heart: jasmine, rose, red geranium, Indonesian patchouli
Base: Brazilian tonka bean, Bourbon vanilla, sandalwood, frankincense and white musk.

Edit to add mini review:

Chanel's Coco Noir is like U2's song When All I Want is You, specifically the lyric "all the promises we break". It is no doubt a fragrance to suit contemporary sensibilities, what those may be, but its woody backdrop with lots of austere, somewhat masculine notes (which is not a bad thing in itself) is betrayed by the obiquitous fruity top which brings a jarring sour, garbage-y nuance. 

Venice by night....the inspiration behind Chanel Coco Noir

Ormonde Jayne on the Continent: European Shopping Destinations in Zurich & Brussels

Osswald Parfümerie in Zurich was chosen for the Ormonde Jayne’s first continental concession on the prestigious Bahnhofstrasse. Osswald is an exclusive third generation perfumery that Ormonde Jayne’ owner Linda Pilkington first visited as a customer thirty years ago. Osswald has created a special area for Ormonde Jayne’s full range of 12 exclusive Parfums and Eau de Parfums within their boutique and the Osswald staff are delighted with the new range.

Ormonde Jayne’s second European concession is due to open in ten days on July 17 in Brussels on Place Stephanie at Senteurs d’Ailleurs. This will be the largest haute parfumerie store of its kind in Benelux.

In an impressive expansion from the existing store on Avenue Louise, Senteurs d’Ailleurs will be opening their doors in the stunning new Art Deco building opposite The Conrad Hotel next week.

 Ormonde Jayne’s exclusive Perfume Portraits service that Linda Pilkington recently launched with also be available in Brussels. This is the complimentary service that helps customers find their signature scent by smelling the raw ingredients of the perfumes.

The two new European concessions follow on from Ormonde Jayne’s launch of the new flagship boutique in Sloane Square that opened in November 2010 and the staffed concession in Harrods Perfumery Hall in February 2010.

news via press release