Guerlain Shore's Caprice (1873): Perfume History & an Enigma

When Aimé Guerlain created an extrait de parfum for use on the silk and linen handkerchiefs of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in 1873 little did he know that he would be creating a modern day enigma. The scent has of course disappeared from the face of the earth and any remnant purported as authentic would raise serious questions in the minds of the sane collector, but the intricacies of its historical trail capture the imagination all the same.

 The perfume Shore's Caprice began its journey as patronage for la Comtesse Emanuella Pignatelli Potocka, something not unheard of for the venerable French house in the 19th century. The countess Potocka, born Emanuela Pignatelli and a descendant of pope Innocent XII, appears as a personality full of contradictions, Italian grace and Parisian flair, who was keeping a salon to awe the society of her times. De Maupassant was a daily visitor. Barrès, Bourget, Robert de Montesquiou, Reynaldo Hahn, Widor as well. In her position as the lover of a well known philosopher, Emanuella derived intellectual enjoyment from humiliating the philosopher in him, even though her personal conduct with the man was above board.

Emanuella Pignatelli, countess Potocka

But it is the use of Shore's Caprice a short 9 years later, in 1882, in a case of reverse engineering (just think of the literary inspiration behind the legendary Guerlain Mitsouko) that it becomes food for fantasy. It happened when it became the perfume worn by Julia Forsell, the heroine of art critic's and journalist's Octave Mirbeau's L'écuyère (the title translates as "the horsewoman", "the amazon"). The specific quote goes like this: "Une mondaine, qui l'avait vue chez Guerlain, achetant un flacon de Shore's caprice, s'en était fait une renommée". This comes smack in the middle of a full page describing Julia's habits and skills, which are many and eye catching.
It was not the first time that a novel would benefit from a reference of perfumes worn by its characters and certainly not the last. It's mighty interesting how the imagination of authors and artists has been captured by the free-spirited character of the horsewoman, featuring such proto-feminist types in their work. But it's also fascinating to compare and contrast Shore's Caprice with the iconography of another Guerlain fragrance, the classic Jicky (1889), which as a prototype fougère, has always had a touch of the androgynous. Jicky is advertised with fetching, independent women behind the "volant" instead of the horse, stirring their lives with the determination of a true amazon.

Octave Mirbeau

The information about Shore's Caprice deliciously contradicts itself, creating an intricate puzzle of theories and little corroborated data. Four years after the release of L'écuyère, Shore's Caprice is mentioned in a complimentary manner in a proto-lifestyle-manual, Louise Gagneur's Pour Etre Aimée: Conseils d'une Coquette. There it is referenced as a perfume inspired by the sea and its complex aroma, but is deemed especially fit for neutralizing the catty aroma of certain furs. This tidbit of perfume etiquette use (common in "parfums fourrure") would have passed unnoticed had I not recalled having read an interview of Jean Kerléo, back when he was head of L'Osmothèque, where he commented at length on the feel and memories of "marine" fragrances (i.e. fragrances that try to approximate the scentscape of the ocean) and saying that they oppose the ideal of the bourgeoisie "who do not want the scent of the sea emanating off their furs". Was the countess Potocka revolutionizing fragrance mores by opting for an intellectualized scent that would clash with what the society of her times would think of as "proper"?

Whatever the scent smelled of in reality (and how realistically the smell of the sea could be captured in a composition dating from the 19th century with all the technical limitations of the times) the very existence of the fragrance is undisputed. Just a few years back, in 2009, a lot of Guerlain bottles were auctioned to perfume bottle collectors, amongst them Shore's Caprice alongside Guerlain's Cuir de Russie perfume. The square bottle measuring 17cm tall dated from 1880, a gold-gilded encrusted flacon that was a special commission, labelled «15 rue de la paix Paris» after the older address of the French family business. On it there was a gravure of a woman with a flag, providing another cryptic clue to its character.

Leo Tolstoy

But perhaps the most fascinating tidbit of all comes from a fellow "perfumista" who had read in an -as yet unidentified, unrevealed- book that Shore's Caprice was supposedly the perfume bottle found on the night table at the deathbed of famous novelist Leo Tolstoy. Is "shore" not a name but the evocation of the sea, the eternal blue that the steppe-born Russian soul only dreamed of and never attained? What was its caprice and why did it appeal to Tolstoy in the first place? Guerlain holds the key to a precious mystery in its archives.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Guerlain perfumes, known and unknown, Fragrance history. 

Perfume Marketing & Prices: A One-To-One with an Indie Player, Tauer Perfumes

You may recall that last week's post on perfume marketing went down as quite engaging for readers, mainly -I hypothesize- because it dared speak (with a quote or two from actual perfume insiders) that Which We Do NoT Speak Of in perfumista-land, namely that marketing isn't necessarily the Big Bad Wolf in the perfume business but an important and essential component of the fragrance experience. The counterargument to the role of marketing has always been "but see how indie & artisanal perfumers do it without all this fake fanfare!" So in the interests of providing the views of -exactly- an indie perfumer on that score and prompted by this post of his on his personal blog, I asked Andy Tauer of Tauer Perfumes (a successful business "story" in the artisanal field, if there is one). What would Andy think? After all it had been ages since I last interviewed Andy Tauer.
So read on to find out (NB. Italics mine).

via scaryforkids.com
To all my Greek (or Greek savvy) readers: this is NOT intended as a mountza

Elena Vosnaki: Do you consider that marketing is integral to the promotion of a fragrance? Some people believe that marketing is something "dirty", devised to con and influence beyond a product's inherent value, but your small-time-marketing "story" which is tremendously successful proves that it can just be "the right push for the right audience". Do you agree with that assessment?

Andy Tauer: Thank you for this question. Let us first have a look what marketing is all about. Marketing is all about the 4 P: Product, promotion, place, price.
Product actually is the sum of a couple of things: The scent, the packaging, the emotions that we might try to transport through it, the flacon. When I started my venture, I was almost exclusively focused on one aspect there: The scent. Everything else was secondary to me. I did not even think about where and how I position my products (place), I did some promotion through blogs and tried to talk to magazines and to clients directly through my blog. I picked a random price that I figured is OK without worrying about margins and the chain of sales and logistics and else. Rather naively, I did a couple of things right. I was lucky, too.

After about 7 years in the business, I would dare to say that marketing is incredibly important when it comes to perfumes. Think about it. Nobody really NEEDS perfume. It is pure luxury. And at the end of the day, you want to convince consumers to pay a lot of money for something they can't see, for something that vanishes in front of their nose. Quite a challenge really. You mentioned "a perfume's inherent value": Basically it is close to nothing, for most fragrances. Be it 50 $ or 500$. In the end you pay for the margin of the retailer (50% of a fragrance's retail price), maybe the margin for the distributor (25-30%), the margin of the producer (10-20%), you pay for the publicity around a scent (free samples, ads, ..), the packaging and at the very, very end you pay for the scent (usually less than 1-2% of the fragrance's retail price. The more expensive a fragrance, the smaller the percentage of what goes into the scent). You bet that you need great marketing to push and pull.
Of course, some brands do it differently, and there are always exceptions, rare gems in the market, where the scent is actually more expensive than the packaging, where promotion is minimal, where prices are moderate and where promotion is mostly word of mouth. But then: You can't really grow beyond a certain level using this marketing model.

EV: A famous "star" perfumer has expressed a certain disdain for "perfumistas". Perfumistas went up in arms and went on to state that that'd be unwise on his part, as they (perfumistas) make up the bulk of his business anyway. Do perfumistas form the bulk of niche perfume buyers  indeed in your experience? 

AT: Let's first clarify the term: For me, perfumistas are perfume lovers whom you find on the blogs and forums, who exchange and discuss publicly, who are very keen about fragrances and who explore the universe of scent on a regular basis. They usually have a large selection and an incredible knowledge about perfumes. They spend a lot of time and % of money available on scents. They are not the average perfumery client who comes in, uncertain of what to get, who might need some help to find a new fragrance. Now to your question " Do perfumistas form the bulk of niche perfume buyers in your experience?" No, they don't. By far not. An educated guess might be: 1/4 of niche perfume buyers in my experience are perfumistas. For sure not more.

EV: As a creator and your own creative director, why is "splitting" bottles and buying/selling decants [i.e plain vials filled up from one's own bottle and sold at cost or little profit in the interests of sampling as many things as possible] detrimental to your finished work? You said: " [...]although you might not like it [...], bottle splits and doing decants is pretty much not good and you hurt the creator. It is actually worse than not buying a bottle. It is destroying the kingdom that we creators build around the king, the fragrance".

AT: You know... I do not want to point my finger towards anybody and I understand that in a world of little money and rising expenses for everything full bottles are out of reach for many. So, yes: I understand and am far away from blaming anybody splitting her or his bottle. Yet, from a creator's perspective, it hurts. It hurts because I do not only create a scent that I launch one fine day. As creator, I am constantly building on an universe, a brand universe. I put my scents in a context of values, and esthetics, and experiences. And these I try to communicate through everything that is around the scent. The flacon, the packaging, the hand written note, the way how and where you can get the scent. I wish consumers to experience these values, and I want that they can actually feel the difference, feel at home when they open my boxed scents, feel that I am grateful when they buy my products via a little card saying "Enjoy".
Getting a decant in a simple spray bottle is nothing of all that. It is like a stripped down to the bones scent experience. The scent is still the same, but everything else that I wish perfume lovers to experience is gone. I feel it would be better, from time to time, to just get one fragrance, instead of 5 splits.

EV: What constitues a "good story" in niche perfumes? Older more established brands have relied in status cachet, couture prestige and sometimes sheer lyricism (like with Guerlain's classics).

AT: A good story for me comes with a couple of attributes. Modesty is one of them. Honesty is another. Brands promoting their oudh banalities through exotic stories with little true elements behind are midterm prone to fail, maybe not commercially, but on other levels that might be more important.
A good story is also a story that does not need to bring in underwear, body fluids, or other elements that make you shiver rather than feel at ease. A good story may use strong elements but always stays on somewhat clean ground. A good story should always allow the wearer of a scent to continue building it. You do not want to imprison a perfume lover in a Mideast harem if he or she feels more like flying away on a oriental carpet. Thus, a good story is an invitation to dream and build the dream, yourself.

EV: What's your vision about the future of the Tauer brand in regards to marketing to two different demographics? (perfumistas/blog readers and wealthy patrons).

AT: I will try to serve them both, but maybe through different brands.

Smell of Books Sans Books?

I found the following spectacularly interesting photos on the Net concerning actual products "evoking" the scent of books. I thought you might enjoy them so I'm sharing. The outfit producing them can be found online at smellofbooks.com (non affiliated), they come in three nuances (kewl!) and they even have fitting descriptions for each one of them. Whoever wrote those has been following closely all our conversations online about scented matters...I'm just saying.

Classic Musty Scent: When was the last time an e-book made you sneeze? Probably never. It’s a scientifically proven fact that e-books lack the necessary “character” to trigger a strong physical reaction. Our Classic Musty Scent solves that problem. Your e-book reader may be new and made of plastic, but now your e-books can smell like vintage classics. Classic Musty Scent is like having the collected works of Shakespeare in a can.

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience? Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right? If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book. But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol New Book Smell. 

Scent of Sensibility: Women will love this specially engineered designer book aroma. The scent of violets, horses, and potpourri. It’s like living in a Jane Austen novel! What are you waiting for? Isn’t it time you curled by a warm fire with a cup of tea, your favorite e-book, and a can of Scent of Sensibility?

I'd be extremely interested to hear from anyone who has actually tried these in real life!
Apropos, what is your favorite fragrance evoking books? Share them in the comments.
Mine are Dzing! and VIP Room.

The Tyranny of Cleaner Living

I was talking to someone I hadn't seen for a while the other day. "This will give you cancer" she mentioned with an ominous forefinger referring to my perfume use. I felt like I was a 6 year old in elementary school, taught about the bad effects of picking my nose and tasting the boogers. It made no sense, though it appeared like it did. She was also misusing a lot of the words we hear brandished a lot in similar discussions: "chemicals" (hey, everything is chemical, including H2O), "nasties" (some of them do keep your products from rotting), "toxic" (well...).

I try to be an inquisitive person, rather than an argumentative one, though it often comes across like I am argumentative (all right, I might be just a bit), so instead of trying to win an argument with my long-lost friend I probed her with more questions to understand the stem of her apprehension and panic towards fragrance. Turns out she was apprehensive and panicked about a lot of  other things too, not just perfumes. Foodstuff, livestock, drugs sold at the chemist's, air pollution affecting her (nascent) asthma, whether her  skin would withstand the assaults of "chemicals" in just about anything sold over the counter, how her totally dropping the habit of the occasional fag with her infrequent drink when going out, once every three months, would result in gaining a pound or two, God forbid, how she would never again let a drop of alcohol pass her lips "because it creates fetus malformations", the fact that she had just bought a juicer to try to juice her organically grown carrots and alpha alpha sprouts, yada yada yada. My eyes would have glazed if my surprise wasn't written all over them like storm on a winter's day sky. What the hell had happened to the woman I knew?

via voicesofeastanglia.com

 This modern obsession with all things "natural" and "clean" isn't necessarily modern. It does always bring on shades of psychoanalytical anal fixation all the same: The idea of one's gut being full of accumulated dirt, a need to purge, the need for control, control on ones' self at first but soon expanding to include one's surroundings. There's a heap of masochism thrown into this controlling desire, where every deviation from the ideal (i.e. an unattainable standard of "clean") is considered a moral lapse for which one must atone through elaborate ritual. Enter the macrobiotic diets, the purging via detoxifying juices and coffee enemas, the tossing of anything remotely pleasurable and its substitution with unpalatable -and when you research it highly dubious- stuff such as rice crackers (rice crackers, man, can you think of anything more cardboard-tasting?!?), the ionisers in the office and the dehumidifiers at home, the eradication of bed bugs through ultra-expensive machinery using UV-radiation (why not just bring out the matresses out in the sun every week or so?), the elimination of anything paraben-containing from the bathroom shelf, the demonization of sedantary lifestyles and the condemnation of the occasional social glass of wine. It's exhausting. No doubt obsessive people derive so much pleasure out of it. It's like taking a massive crap; leaves you light-headed and out of focus for a while, forgetting about third world famine, war waged against people's free choice, rampant unemployment and the collapse of democracy as we know it. Yes, I can well see there's an inordinate amount of pleasure involved; but that doesn't mean I condone it or agree with it.

via https://blogs.monash.edu/presto/tag/clean-eating/

Maybe I'm not the target audience for this "product", because it IS a product, called "clean living". I see  (on the Net, not in real life, thank goodness) T-shirts with nonsese emblazoned on it such as "A clean living room is a happy living room". Come again? Or just look at Gwyneth Paltrow. She looks incredible, but somewhat unstable too, doesn't she? I wouldn't trust her with my offspring; she might try to give them rice crackers, for Pete's sake! When I peruse titles on Amazon selling clean living tips, the people on the cover are all invariably perfectly depilated, clean-combed, routinely in some variation of white and light blue or pink garment, with just the right tan and a whiter than white smile in a frozen "cheese" grimace. They make me shake my head, get convinced they're constipated and inwardly joke they're spanking each other on the butt for fun (something's got to give, right?). What's certain is they don't make me want to emulate them, like the advertisers and the lifestyle media battle to do, know what I mean?

Perfume is just the tip of the iceberg and my rant just a budding disconnect with the (misconstrued, I suppose?) Protestant morals that have swept over Europe and possibly the world thanks to the ill effects of previous policies. It's easy to target, because it seems frivolous and morally suspect (Isn't perfume routinely associated with sexual attraction and seduction?). It's also easy to place all the shortcomings of the modern world on the back of this little scapegoat, called perfume, and think that by ousting it out of the community, burdened with all our sins, we have escaped Nemesis and can go about our lives feeling much lighter as if we have taken a massive crap. Alas, as any classicist will tell you, things don't quite work out this way. Hubris is just around the corner.

"You can't see what I do, which gives perfumery a sense of magic": Perfumer Geza Schoen Shares

'In those days, it was rare to want to train as a perfumer. You were fully aware that it wasn't Karl Lagerfeld actually creating his fragrances but the role of the nose wasn't so clear'. [Geza] Schoen's father was an art teacher, and as a result he "was exposed to lots of weird things at an early age" and creativity was fully encouraged. Unusually, the young Schoen became fascinated by perfume samples and began to collect them, quickly teaching himself to identify the smells of each one blind. His formal training at the German company Haarman and Reimer took five years, in a class of just four students."

pic exclusively provided for Perfume Shrine: Geza Schoen on the left, with Thorsten Biehl on the right

AnOther magazine presents a documentary series focusing on international craftspeople, in partnership with discerning Egyptian jewellery house Azza Fahmy, and the fifth instalment focuses on Schoen and his fascinating world of niche perfumes (both for his own Escentric Molecules, the memorable blue Wode for Boudicca, the Ormonde Jayne and the Biehl Parfumkunstwerke GS lines).

"I think smell is the most powerful sense we have, and the most fascinating. It is also quite mystical – you can't see what I do, which gives perfumery a sense of magic."

You can watch the feature on this link. Text by Laura Bradley, Film by Stefan Heinrichs

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Iso E Super and Geza Schoen, GS03 for Biehl Parfumkunstwerke fragrance review.