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Had I been presented with the brief for Frédéric Malle Lys Méditerranée—a summery vision of lilies by the sea—the first thing coming to my mind would have been idyllic visions of semi-tropical locales in full bloom, and indeed, no perfume calls summer to mind like Lys Méditerranée. Only, this "Mediterranean lily" is not true to its name at all, for the lily is, though powerful, a fleeting presence before the onslaught of seawater, the impression of nothing but water, taken out of its element (hah!) by mere decorative hints of the aforesaid flowers.
A familiar description, this is, and you'd be forgiven for immediately expecting yet another aquatic floral like the ones you can buy anywhere these days—including the drugstore. It was a smell that had never existed before, but were actually a mere riff on Coco Chanel's infamous sound-byte, a put-down of perfumes that smelled like something familiar (notwithstanding the complexity of many everyday "single-note" smells). Rather than the mineral aldehydes that dominated the 30's, however, the smell of the 90's was the cool and gentle pressure that is the sense of water flowing on the skin, only made cerebral rather than tactile, chemically realized. Enormously popular once—and still holding strong in the realm of masculines—ubiquity has now stripped this genre of all such evocative power, the web of associations that make up the very soul of a perfume.
So water in perfumery died before it ever really began, mainly done in by its very own abstractness—novel but infinitely replicable. Lys Méditerranée may owe some of its heritage to its 90's predecessors, but sidesteps the same sad fate by being much, much more literal. Simply put, Lys Méditerranée is seawater. Not bottled Evian, but bilgewater. This water you would not want to drink, for it is not entirely clear and so salty that it leaves a gamy, bitter taste in the mouth, the taste you feel when a wave knocks you over and you get a big mouthful and noseful of brine, with traces of scraps of seaweed sticking to hair and skin.
A seaside holiday in a bottle, if there ever was one, but if most tropical fragrances and white flower scents are pristine adverts in glossy travel agency leaflets—designed to stir the thirst for fantastic and exotic escapes— Lys Méditerranée is a sensory panorama of an actual day at the beach, including unglamorous details like sunburn and sand in certain sensitive places: because even during summer, when the sun shines, flowers are in bloom, and the water beckons, no one ever fully manages to get away from the business of dealing with their lives and the attendant annoyances.
And yet, aren't your private memories—not the carefully edited photo albums you later share with your friends—all the more precious for those "imperfections"?
Lys Méditerranée is unquestionably a masterpiece, and yet I sometimes feel that aquatic undertone, as textured as it is, is too unsettling for quotidian wear. Luckily, there is an alternative in Hermès Vanille Galante—a sister if not a twin to Lys Méditerranée where the soapy lily, dandelion-puff vanilla, and the aqueous contribution of melon come together in much the same patterns, only Vanille Galante feels domestic: the Totoro to Lys Méditerranée's Mononoke Hime.
Labels: frederic malle, hermes
11/25/2011 [0]
Mansfield Park is probably the least liked of Jane Austen's novels and the one most likely to disappoint fans of the "light and bright and sparkling" Pride and Prejudice. (Let us not speak of the film adaptations and flash-in-the-pan "chick lit" that posit Austen as a purveyor of Regency bodice-rippers. Ugh.) Fanny Price, its heroine, is fragile, sickly, diffident to a fault; as one writer on AUSTEN-L once put it, she "kisses the whip." Raised from childhood to remember that she is the poor relation, housed at Mansfield Park, her uncle's house, on sufferance alone, she tolerates all manner of slights. Her one overt act of rebellion against the patriarchal authority represented by Sir Thomas is to refuse Henry Crawford, the wealthy rake her uncle wishes her to marry. Modern readers may have trouble understanding what a radical act this would be for a teenage girl in Fanny's position in 1812, despite the harshness of her uncle's response, and despite the uncharacteristic sharpness of her objection: "I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself." In the meantime, for nearly the full length of the novel, Edmund -- Fanny's first cousin and the secret object of her affections -- is uninterested in Fanny, and a bit of a tedious prig to boot.
In other words, as a love story, Mansfield Park is a disappointment. But most of Austen's novels are not truly or primarily love stories. Mansfield Park is a Cinderella story, in which idealism triumphs over cynicism, pure motives over mercenary ones, and the low are brought high. Austen skilfully renders the pain of low self-esteem, neglect, bullying, and unrequited love, but ultimately she raises Fanny to her rightful place in the family hierarchy, properly appreciated by her uncle, clear of her vicious Aunt Norris (perhaps the nastiest character Jane Austen ever wrote), and allowed, at last, to marry the man she loves.
The extremely high-waisted gowns women wore in Austen's era tended to puff out at both front and back, making their wearers look pregnant and hunchbacked to modern eyes. For simple white dresses (Fanny Price would not be highly ornamented), let us turn instead to this high-waisted summer dress from Comrags: girlish and sweet, but actually wearable.
Never mind the chunky sandals contrasted with the Comrags dress; there's precious little about Fanny Price that's playful or robust. These Maloles flats are all fragile femininity, almost too spun-sugar to be real, and I can only imagine how easy they would be to wreck. On the other hand, how absurdly pretty are they?
Like Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Mansfield Park includes glimpses of the military, in the person of Fanny's rather one-dimensional brother William. Above, nodding to both the peacoat and the spencer, a sober yet feminine cropped design from Smythe.
Jewellery figures in a minor subplot in Mansfield Park, although Freudian critics have had a field day with its image of two gold chains, one too thick, one "just right." Both rustic and delicate, Cathy Waterman's tree pendant brings to mind Fanny's (and Austen's) Romantic influences, her rare rhapsodies about nature, her identification with the country.
A while back, Now Smell This hosted a silly but entertaining discussion about what fragrances Austen's heroines would wear: Diorissimo for Elizabeth Bennet, Après l'Ondée for Anne Elliot. No one mentioned Fanny Price, but the moment I smelled En Passant, I knew this was Fanny's fragrance: lilac blossoms, heavy with rain.
Labels: cathy waterman, comrags, frederic malle, jane austen, maloles, most wanted, olivia giacobetti, smythe
4/20/2009 [7]
Unlike Dain, I was an ignorant fragrance noob before this year, and in many ways still am. Blogging about perfume has been not so much an effort at educating other people (who am I to do that, after all?) as a record of my own enthusiastic yet clumsy explorations. For other, more seasoned entries, read Dain's entry here, or check out the other Retrospectives:
1000fragrances
Ars Aromatica
A Rose Beyond the Thames
Bittergrace Notes
Grain de Musc
I Smell Therefore I Am
Legerdenez
The Non Blonde
Notes From the Ledge
Olfactarama
The Perfume Shrine
Savvy Thinker
Tuilleries
For years I wore single-note fragrances, if anything: most of these are now of little interest to me, although I retain a soft spot for Demeter's Gin and Tonic; it smells like Christmas at my grandparents' house, when my martini-drinking grandfather was still alive. My first "proper" perfume, a couple of years ago, was Tocca Stella, an uncomplicated thing despite the list of notes -- aquatic topnotes, musky drydown, orange, orange, orange. It claims to be blood orange, but for the real bitterness of blood orange one has to go to something like Fendi's much-mourned Theorema -- of which I just tracked down a full bottle (yes!).
Much of what I've learned has come directly from Dain, although I've also done plenty of lurking on the sites linked above.
What amazes me at the end of this year is how quickly the nose develops when you start smelling a lot of scents. After six months of exploration, I can now detect the orange in Organza Indécence; Bulgari BLV Notte, which I adored on first sniff, so much that I considered buying a full bottle before my mini was empty, is now oppressively sweet and heavy; I use words like "animalic" and "vetiver" with something approaching confidence, which I would not have done a year or even eight months ago.
Anyway, enough babbling; here is my Top Ten of 2008, the perfumes that I either fell hard for, learned from, or both.
1. Mitsouko. Funny that even in this 1938 ad, Mitsouko is presented as something rather harsh, haughty and forbidding (if I read the image right), because it has never struck me as a difficult perfume. Mitsouko was what gave me an inkling that fumeheads might be on to something, since before that, almost everything smelled unpleasantly "like perfume" (read: alcohol and fake flowers) to me, and I imagined nothing complex would ever work on my skin. I put on a sample of the EDP, thinking "this is interesting, but not for me", and then, a couple of hours later, spontaneously noticed that I loved the way I smelled. Mitsouko is an odd thing on me, chameleon-like, sometimes hinting at white flowers, sometimes at spice cake; usually it's recognizable as Mitsouko, though, a spiced-peach glow, the light that shines through autumn leaves in the late afternoon, in perfume form.
2. Bandit. On my skin, Bandit EDT is indeed (as Luca Turin calls it) a "dark and fresh" fragrance, reminiscent of under-lit streets and deep green leaves after an evening rain, no flowers, no fruits, no sugar. Bandit says "do not fuck with me." Bandit is really the ideal thing to wear out to small-town bars where unattractive and overly persistent frat boys follow you around; Bandit makes me feel like I can kick ass. Bandit might also be the first perfume I encountered that truly was not sweet.
3. Tabac Blond. I have only a decant of the extrait, but I think this is the sexiest perfume I own; I'm sharp-nosed and flat-chested, cleavage-in-a-bottle scents like Fracas make me feel silly, but Tabac Blond is dark, warm, a bouquet in a leather-bound study, half-hidden in a cloud of cigar smoke. Alas, it has apparently been messed with so much that even the recent version I like may be gone any minute.
4. Theorema. I still have an affection for gourmands; they work well on my skin, unlike most fruity florals, which tend to become loud and aggressive, projecting syrup for miles. Theorema is that marvellous thing, a grown-up gourmand, bitter orange, nutmeg and cream; why, why was this ever discontinued?
5. Iris Poudre. I thought I disliked aldehydes. I was wrong. Hell, I thought I disliked perfumes that smelled "like perfume", and I was wrong about that too. Probably the most "traditional", "ladylike" fragrance I've fallen for, so far.
6. Songes. I loved this on first sniff, but was sure I would tire of it. I haven't. It's sweet, yes, but it has complexity and balance; vanilla, banana, dark chocolate, and that full, blooming jasmine over all. My favourite comfort scent, by far.
7. Bois des Îles. I haven't had the greatest luck with Chanel scents; so far, they've all had a forbidding smoothness, too perfect, too luxurious, nothing to reach out and grab me. Bois des Îles is the exception; it is so strongly, recognizably sandalwood that the aldehydic touches are decorative rather than definitive; Tania Sanchez described it as being like No. 5's brunette sister, and I think she hit the nail on the head. It hints at gingerbread in the drydown. I could wear this all winter.
8. Vétiver Extraordinaire. Swoon. The most dusky, fresh, woodsy vetiver, without the fresh citrus-y touches of Guerlain's; I'd happily wear this myself, yes, but on a man it would be absurdly sexy.
9. Une Fleur de Cassie. I have a huge crush on the Frédéric Malle line; I've yet to smell one of these I disliked, and several of them (as you see) I adore already. To me, this one smells like a young cousin to L'Heure Bleue; that same almost-edible floral sweetness, lightened, freshened, and utterly radiant. It's nearly impossible for me to describe Une Fleur de Cassie; it's more of a chord than a succession of notes.
10. Lolita Lempicka. A certain lack of taste on my part? Maybe. But my skin seems to absorb most of the Angel-like super-sweetness in this fragrance, leaving only licorice, 7-Up fizz, baked apple, and a touch of salt. I couldn't decide on first wearing whether I loved this or hated it. Now I'm confident: it's love.
What next? I have entered a masculine/unisex phase; I love Le 3ème Homme and wear it frequently, Caron's Pour Un Homme has persuaded me that I actually do like lavender, and Dain has promised to send me a decant of my other Guerlain love-at-first-sniff, Jicky. Also, I think I shall have to buy a bottle of Mitsouko at some point; I've found a Canadian distributor I like (Enchante Perfumes) and I'm very tempted by the tiny bottles of parfum.
Labels: annick goutal, caron, chanel, fendi, frederic malle, guerlain, lolita lempicka, perfume notes, robert piguet
12/29/2008 [2]
Yes, pace Eliot, it is.
It is pretty much endless stress, is what it is, endless paper-writing and exam panicking and what on earth did I do with my October, I swear I saw it somewhere, and also it's cold and grey and it rains too damn much and did someone say it was snowing yesterday? Goddammit, not yet.
Accordingly, since I lack the mental space to come up with a coherent post, here are a few unrelated things I've gone nuts for lately:
I tried DHC's Deep Cleansing Oil in the summer and thought "hmm, nice, but I could probably just as well use regular olive oil." Except...not. Regular oil is so much messier, is the problem, and doesn't rinse clean the way this does (yes, this goes on like olive oil, but rinses very clean; such a great gimmick). I gave in and bought a full-size bottle; it takes 1-2 pumps to wash my face and the 70ml bottle ($11) lasted me about three months, so the 200ml bottle ($24) should last me quite some time. It does not "deep cleanse", but it cleanses, much better than Cetaphil in my opinion, and without stripping. This is a cult beauty product that deserves a bigger cult.
Dain sent me a sample of Frédéric Malle's Vétiver Extraordinaire, and I have a crush. It's clean, warm, dusky, fresh, without the citrusy-sweet topnotes of Guerlain's Vetiver. I am happy to wear it myself, but if I smelled it on a good-looking man, I think I might swoon. Alas, it costs the earth and I lack a man to whom I might apply it. Another time.
I bought NARS's Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Forbidden Red a while back and then didn't wear it, since I lack the courage to wear red lipstick all the time. Also, it smudges easily on first application, which led me to think it was a smudgy product. No. Once it sets, it stays put for hours, through multiple alcoholic drinks (ahem), through pretty much anything except excessive lip-licking or greasy food. It is fantastic.
Forbidden Red is a brick red, best suited to people with warm undertones like mine, but of course NARS makes other colours. I need another red like...well, I don't need another red, but I kind of have my eye on Walkyrie.
Labels: dhc, frederic malle, nars, notes
11/18/2008 [3]
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