Perfumes I've Loved - Part One

II est de forts parfums pour qui toute matière

Est poreuse. On dirait qu'ils pénètrent le verre.

Baudelaire

(There are strong perfumes for which all matter

Is porous. One would say they go through glass.)

Some of my favourites.

I've loved so many perfumes, but especially vintage scents. In fact I probably get as much pleasure from perfumes as I do from reading. But perhaps it's just that, as a writer, I love stories, and so many fragrances have a tale to tell that - like all the best stories - reveals itself slowly. 

My go-to site for finding out about scents and their history is Fragrantica, and I link to it often on this post, but there are plenty of serious perfume blogs out there, if you care to look for them.

The first perfume I really became aware of was Lentheric's Tweed - in its original formulation, which dates from the 1930s. The later reformulation was a thin imitation, but my mum wore the original, sparingly because money was tight. 

Every Christmas my dad would buy her a bottle of the 'eau de parfum', beautifully packaged, in a little bottle with its characteristic 1950s wooden top. I remember the excitement of going with him to buy it, a day or two before Christmas. I have a few old bottles of it still, acquired here and there online, and although vintage scents like this can take a while to settle down on your skin, give it time and the true scent emerges. It reminds me of my pretty mum. After she died, all her best clothes still had a faint scent of Tweed. A woody, earthy, oakmossy, spicy scent and - yes - something of the scent of heather, which suited mum down to the ground.

Scents, loosely, fall into two categories - those in which chypres predominate (Tweed is one of them) and floral. So many modern fragrances, especially those to which celebrities lend their names, tend to be flowery. No bad thing if they're made with genuine flower oils and essences, but chypres are a lot more grown up! My aunt, whom I loved, wore Coty's Chypre back then, and as soon as I could, I begged or borrowed a bottle and dabbed it on too - another warm, dry, woody, mossy scent and not too expensive in the 1950s and 60s. 

I would just love to get my hands (and my nose) on one of those beautiful old bottles of Coty's Chypre because I know the scent would not just go through glass, but through time as well, carrying me back to my childhood and teenage years - but this rare vintage scent is fiendishly expensive. Even the empty bottles are little works of art. 

That's the thing about good elderly scents - even though they may smell a bit odd at first, those are just the so called 'top notes'. Most old scents, made with precious ingredients, will survive. Give them time and most of them will reveal their true selves, the scents of the past. As a historical novelist, I think that's another reason why I like them so much. 

During my twenties, I spent money I could ill afford on perfumes. 

I acquired - I've no idea how - a bottle of something called Fleurs de Rocaille, launched in 1934, but although I was intrigued by it, it didn't suit me - far too sophisticated for the person I was back then. I also loved Je Reviens by Worth - another old scent, a floral this time, but with a glamorous musky base and once again, nothing like the miserable modern reformulation. But it was an unlucky scent for me. Every time I wore it, my love life went disastrously wrong, so I began to avoid it! 

Penhaligon's Bluebell was my favourite when I was a student, generally a prized birthday gift and not something I could afford to buy for myself. I have an old bottle in my collection and still splash it on from time to time in spring, but it's a springtime scent in more ways than one, and seems too young for me now. Still love its distinct fragrance of hyacinths though. Another scent my mother loved - a floral this time but a spicy one - was Blue Carnation by Roger & Gallet - a true clove carnation scent. I remember wearing it myself for a while, so it must have been affordable back then, or perhaps I borrowed mum's, but it is, alas, long gone and the few surviving bottles command truly eye watering prices these days, even on eBay. 

In my twenties and thirties, Guerlain's legendary Mitsouko - another chypre, fruity and delicious and mysterious - was a revelation. For a while I could appreciate it only by going into the perfume departments of expensive stores and dousing myself in it - then walking about and inhaling it. I still love it. It's a long lasting scent and even the cologne, liberally applied for an evening out, will be with you the following morning, a faint but evocative scent, like a memory of something wonderful. 

Later, I was lucky enough to acquire a big beautiful bottle of the eau de toilette on eBay and I'm still working my way through it. (The eau de parfum is even nicer if you can find the vintage version.) It never loses its potency. It is, I have to admit, rather too powerful a scent for everyday use - and those with allergies might not like it at all - which probably explains why I have quite a lot of it left.

I spend so much of my time sitting at a desk, working on a PC, inhabiting other worlds. Sometimes I just like to wear the scent that suits what I'm working on. Mostly, you see, I just wear it for me. Perfumes for which all matter is porous. What a wonderful, uncanny thought that is.

  

Vintage Lanvin

 

Next time, I'll write about L'Heure Bleu - my all time favourite. You may even get a poem as well.

PS All my content is free, and free of advertising. But if you like what I write, then maybe you would enjoy one of my books! There are links to most of them on here. 

The Scent of Blue

I remembered this poem when I posted on a Facebook thread about vintage scents. I love them, and have a small collection. The better the scent, the longer it lasts. You can sometimes find bargains on eBay, and these old perfumes last a long time. I have a very old (and very large) bottle of Mitsouko, that still smells wonderful, given a little while to settle on the skin, My favourite, though, is Guerlain's l'Heure Bleue. 

I wrote this poem years ago, published it in an anthology, and put it on an old blog too, but when I went in search of it online it had disappeared. So here it is again. 

THE SCENT OF BLUE

A concert in Edinburgh, years ago.

She manages to find a single seat,

sees a famous conductor,

silver haired, sharp featured like some

bird of prey, but smaller than you would

expect in evening dress.

On his arm a thin woman,

taller than he is, strides with

striking face, her hair a cloud of

grey blonde curls.

Not a young woman but a

diva surely, inhabiting her clothes,

inhabiting her skin with such confidence.

She wants to be like that some day,

longs for self possession

and she remembers the scent of her,

musky, mysterious, a heavy, night time

scent, flowers after dark.

The scent of passion.

The scent of money.

The scent of blue.

 

She searches for the scent for years. 

Her mother wore Tweed.

Now she wishes she could

open a wardrobe door, and

smell the scent of Tweed, her

mother’s plain sweet scent,

almost as much as she

wishes she could tell her mother so.

 

As a girl, she wore Bluebell,

fresh and full of hope, or

Diorissimo, like the lilac she once

carried through the streets,

on her way from meeting a man

she desired and admired,  thinking

Girl with Lilac, still so young,

self conscious, not possessed.

 

Later, she tries l’Air du Temps and

Je Reviens (always unlucky for her)

and Fleurs de Rocaille but they are

none of them the scent of blue.

She wears Chanel, briefly, with dreams of Marilyn,

loves to watch her, loves to hear her voice,

soothing as chocolate but

Number Five is not her scent,

never suits her, never will.

 

She discovers Mitsouko.

Some tester in some chemist’s shop somewhere.

An old, old fashioned scent,

syncopated, unexpected, not to every taste.

Whenever she wears it,

women ask her what it is,

I love your scent they say.

How strange the way scent lingers in the mind. 

How strange the way scent

changes on warm skin.

On her it ripens to something peachy,

mossy, rich and rare.

But it is not the scent of blue.

 

She loses her heart.

It is an affair of  telephone lines

more profound, more sweet and

bitter than Mitsouko,

a sad song in the dark,

and the colour of that time is blue.

 

Afterwards, she searches through

Bellodgia, Apres L’Ondee,

Nuit de Noel, Mon Peche, Apercu

until drawn by nostalgia

she finds Joy,

dearly bought  roses and jasmine,

a summer garden in one small bottle.

She marries in Joy.

But she wears Mitsouko

and she forgets the scent of blue.

 

Older, she discovers Arpege,

Not just rose and jasmine but

bergamot, neroli, peach, vanilla, ylang ylang,

one essence piled on another like the

notes on the piano she used to,

sometimes still does, play:

love songs mostly.

Oh this is not a scent for the young.

It is too dark for that

a memory of something  lost,

an unfinished story.

This scent has a past.

 

She sees him across a room.

Another woman ushers him,

this way and that, makes introductions,

a little charmed the way women

always did flutter irresistably around this man.

It used to make her smile the way

women flocked around this

wolf who walked alone who

belonged to nobody but himself.

And never will.

 

She is wearing Arpege.

Not a scent for the very young,

vertiginous as the layers of time between.

With age comes wisdom,

but as when mud is

stirred at the bottom of a  pool,

memories bubble to the surface.

Not wisely but too well they loved.

Now, they are waving across the

chasm of the years.

They speak, in measured tones,

they speak and walk away,

they speak again in careful words, that

every now and then

recall the scent of

 

It will not do.

Only in dreams

can one innocently recapture that

first fine careless

 

So much more is forgotten

Than is ever remembered.

And the clock insists

let it be let it be.

 

1911

One summer evening

a young man observes the way

twilight closes the flowers,

whose scent lingers on the last heat of the day,

the way the light goes out of the sky,

painting it dark blue, how

soon the war will tear this place apart.

How soon all things resort to sadness.

 

In a new century,

She finds among jasmine and rose,

vanilla and violet,

a dark twist of anise, like the

twist of a knife.

First last always.

The scent of the diva.

The scent of passion.

Fine beyond imagining.

She sees it is essentially

sad, sad, sad, a

sad scent:

L’Heure Bleue.

All things come to sadness in the end.

The beautiful bitter foolish scent of blue.

Catherine Czerkawska