Sonoma Scent Studio Nostalgie: fragrance review

Once upon a time women wore corselets & real silk chemises underneath their tailored dresses to work, painted their lips deep pink or coral and coiffed their hair à la choucroutte on a regular basis, before straight "blow outs" became the standard of westernised grooming. There was something equally mischievous and disciplined about their demeanor, reflected in their perfumes; as if beneath all the gentility and pronounced good manners there harbored untold family skeletons in the closet, secret trysts in the afternoon and a gambling streak hiding as socializing. Something is deeply attractive about that contradiction, not least because Mad Men made us believe so, thanks to stylisation to the point of art. It paid; not only people are hooked on 1960s fashion, they're hooked on 1960s-smelling perfumes as well, it seems. And here is where Sonoma Scent Studio Nostalgie comes into play.


Style & Comparison with Other Fragrances
Do you recall the opening of Van Cleef & Arpel's First? Everything denoting luxury, power, femininity, class and wealth was added into producing that powerhouse last-of-the-McAldehic clan; a fragrance as shimmery as the brightest yellow sapphires, as frothy as the sparkliest bubbly in iced flutes, as melodious as Jenny Vanou singing Dawn's Minor Key. I was instantly transported in those times, back when First's precious metal wasn't somewhat tarnished due to reformulations, upon testing Nostalgie. Laurie Erickson, the indie perfume behing\d that small outfit, Sonoma Scent Studio, operating off the Haldsburg hills in California, US,  managed to produce an old-school floral aldehydic quite apart from the mass; as she says "fragrances today are rarely composed with so many fine naturals". Nostalgie smells more expensive than it is (it recalls  Patou's classic Joy in the mid-section, with more woody accents), is full of vibrancy and came to me like a messenger of good news when the day has been nothing but gloom and no hope can be visible in the horizon.

Scent Description
The aldehydes are adding citrusy, waxy sparkle in Nostalgie but they're a bit toned down compared to classics such as Chanel No.5, with fine soapy overtones; an impression further enhanced by the discernible jasmine sambac. The peach lactone in the heart provides a retro vibe; lactonic florals have been byword for refined and graceful perfumery for many decades in the middle of the 20th century. The floral notes, ringing as wonderfully bright as little taps on a glockenspiel, are tightly woven together to present a tapestry of hundreds of tiny dots which, like in pointillism, seen from a distance blur into a delightful image.
The jasmine-rose-mimosa accord is classic (Guerlain Après L'Ondée, Caron Fleurs de Rocaille, Lauder Beautiful) and here treated as seen through a sheer green-woody veil. Erickson treats aldehydes with sleight of hand, as proven previously in her Champagne de Bois, but her every new release at Sonoma Scent Studio is more sophisticated than the last; I find more technical merit in Nostalgie.
The base of Nostalgie is all billowy softness, like most of the latest SSS fragrances, falling on a fluffy duvet, with subtle leathery nuances (probably from the mimosa absolute itself) and a musky-creamy trail which is delicious. However the aldehydic floral element is at no moment completely lost (if you're seriously aldehydic-phobic that might present a problem; if you're an "AldeHo" as Muse in Wooden Shoes calls it, you're all set). It is both long-lasting and drooling trail-worthy; it's parfum strength after all. This is a scent to get you noticed and to be asked what perfume you're wearing.

"Nouveau Vintages": A Trend to Watch
Aldehydic florals and retro "floral bouquets" (as opposed to soliflores which focus on one main flower in their composition) are knowing quite a resurgence, both in indie perfumers' catalogues (witness the stunningly gorgeous Miriam by Tauer Tableau de Parfums line, Aftelier's Secret Garden and DSH Vert pour Madame) and in niche brands, such as the divine Divine's L'Ame Soeur. It was about time; one gets a kick of fun out of something as frothingly tongue-in-cheek and sweet as Prada Candy perfume, but there are times when fragrance stops being an inside joke and should get its pretty rear down and start smelling ladylike & grown-up. In that frame, this rush of vintage-inspired fragrances is heartening. Nostalgie is part & parcel of this "nouveau vintages" clan and at the same time winks with the familiar Mad Men innuendo. Applause!

Notes for SSS Nostagie:
Aldehydes, Indian jasmine sambac absolute, Bulgarian rose absolute, mimosa absolute, peach, violet flower, violet leaf absolute, tonka bean, French beeswax absolute, natural oakmoss absolute, aged Indian patchouli, East Indian Mysore sandalwood, leather, vanilla, orris, myrrh, vetiver, and musk.

Available at the Sonoma Scent Studio fragrance e-shop.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Sonoma Scent Studio fragrances

In the interests of disclosure, I was sent a sample directly by the perfumer.
Photo of Greek actress Melina Mercouri at the Kapnikarea on Hermes Street, Athens, Greece in the early 1960s.

Perfume and the Perfumed: When Icon & Fragrance Delightfully Clash

Imagine the jaws dropped when Christina Hendricks, the one of voluptuous bosom, retro colouring and glamorous role in Mad Men, the cult TV-series, revealed some of her favourite things on People magazine, naming a fragrance among them: The fragrance was Premier Figuier by L'Artisan Parfumeur, a fig fragrance. It's quite usual to think of perfume in the way of a glamour accessory meant to evoke a specific image, but how can this astound us when a perceived connotation of a specific fragrance is shattered by its actual use; especially when it is by someone famous which we envisioned a specific way. For many seasons fans of the series imagined Hendricks oozing sex-appeal in something that was come-hither and ripe of the seductress, in the context of a 1960s classy one, not withstanding.

It's an automatic reflex to think of fragrance as a very specific symbol of self, the most pliable perhaps of all, since it does not evolve neither a sanctimonious financial overlay (like a condo would), nor an extreme make-over. Spray and you're good to go; or so the thinking goes. After all, we have been told that a fragrance wardrobe should be our goal, fitting scent to time & place and to outfit, not to mention our mood.

What happened with the above scenario is that we had pegged Christina a certain way: the curvaceous glamour puss and we -more or less- refuse to believe that she is a living, breathing woman with tastes of her own who chooses an outdoorsy, intelligent scent that is reproducing something that is not meant specifically for seduction, but for one's self. It might have helped that we saw a shot of Christina as Joan Holloway (office manager of the advertising agency Sterling Cooper) in front of a mirror preening, applying lipstick, with an array of glamorous bottles in front of her, one of which was the seductive Shalimar by Guerlain in one of the stills from the TV-program. Premier Figuier has its own special sex appeal, but it lacks the edge that a certain mythos over the decades has given to Shalimar. We have come to associate the actress with the role of the sassy femme fatale, as if she is incarcerated in her DD-cup and her cinched waists, smart reply hanging on rouged lips. And yet, her style is not without substance. On the contrary. But like in many cases of projecting a certain image in olfactory terms, it's another example where the mold is broken and we raise an eyebrow in surprise.



I hear similar pronouncements all the time perusing some of my favourite perfume-discussing boards: "Jackie Kennedy Onassis was the epitome of elegance, it all fits she wore Joy and Jicky". (But not only!) "Maria Callas was so loyal to Chanel, she must have worn No.5, her style was so timeless." (We'll never know for sure though the hypothesis holds water) "I can picture a chypre perfume on Katharine Hepburn". (and yes, she scored one or two, but not only!).

In our above exercise, Peggy Olson would wear the cool, brainy chypre fragrance. "Keira Knightley must have an endless crate of Coco Mademoiselle, oh look here, she says she only wore men's scents before!" (absolutely not true). Madame Sarkozy, previously known as Carla Bruni, is an Italian aristocrat who modelled for a hobby, so it fits she would wear something with a pedigree of taste and quality. (voila, indeed!).

I had the easiest time while composing my Vetiver Series picturing each and every one of the vetiver fragrances featured on the visage of some male actor (even though they did not necessarily wear said fragrance in real life): smart and facially rugged Hugh Laurie, alluring and insinuating Jeremy Irons, straightfoward old-school Gerald Butler, virile and seemingly cocksure Russell Crowe, suave but enigmatic Ralph Fiennes. Was I guilty of free-associating thanks to no more than the persona they project? Most certainly.


To cut a long story short, celebrities choose what they choose for various reasons, one of the lesser or grudgingly admitted ones being that they are people like us with their own set of criteria, tastes, memories and dislikes. But try to take that out of our heads? Not so easy...

And on to YOU: Are you guilty of associating specific fragrances to specific people and why? Share your thoughts in the comments!

*Note on picture of Christina Hendricks as Joan in Mad Men bathroom scene in front of perfume display: The AMC photo is from Season 3, Episode 3: “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency”. The fragrances tray includes for sure Houbigant's Demi Jour, a Lauder bottle (same shape as the later Estee but it's probably Youth Dew) and Intimate by Revlon.

Christina Hendricks photos via wikimedia commons, Huffington Post and Haircutting in High Heels