The personality of scent, essence or armour?

Have you ever considered how your choice of fragrance reflects your personality?

Marketing folk certainly do. There’s a reason why the sultry young Jerry Hall was once chosen to front YSL’s most exotic and decadent scent – Opium. Hall was the epitome of edgy glamour, spandex clad lover of Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry - uber-groupie. She led the life that we could picture only in the most vivid corners of our imagination, far away from the reality of trudging down a grimy high street to our local branch of Boots to pick up a relatively cheap bottle of (albeit wonderful) mass market scent.

From Bryan Ferry to Murdoch, oh Jerry!

This raises a question. Do we choose our scents to complement who we are or who we aspire to be?

I recently revisited one of my favourite scents, Antonia by Pure Distance. Reviewed back in 2015, my first experience of Antonia moved me. It felt like as if it had been created just for me. I described it thus:

“Antonia is a floral of cool intentions. She is an ivy draped ethereal character who conjures a rain sodden landscape of picturesque melancholy. Sap fuelled green florals are my favourite genre, capable of summoning the outdoors in, they evoke in me an otherworldly serenity that belongs far away from my urban life. Opening with the vivid green bite of galbanum, Antonia is uplifting and spiritual depicting spring’s abundant fertility in full force.”

Cool atmospheres and outdoorsy notes dominate many of my favourite scents. I feel both serenity and invigoration in earth goddess whiffs. The forest ritual lure of Ormonde Jayne’s Woman, the mountain stream chill of Clinique’s Wrappings and the mossy earthiness of Guerlain’s notorious Mitsouko, they all echo the experience of existing deep in the countryside.

Holman Hunt captures the rural Idyll 

Nowadays I’m a city dweller, living on the edge of Manchester’s central district, I neither see nor smell trees. The view from my flat features fashionable living in converted Victorian mills, immaculately dressed young urbanites heading off to long hours in offices and a brashly plastic looking tram stop. However, my childhood was one of wellies, cowpats and nature books. I led the country life and I can probably identify most things you’d find in a hedgerow. It’s likely that my passion for outdoorsy scents is filling a gap. Essentially, Antonia and her similarly green friends are taking me home. I’m aspiring to be me. 

Joseph models the view from my window

However, sometimes I need ‘not to be me’. And in those instances, I dress myself up in an alter ego. I am not, not will ever manage to be, a cool and calculating type. I am the polar opposite of a Hitchcock Blonde. There are times in your life when you could benefit from having a personality different to your own.  And right now, I need to be someone else.

I’m currently in the middle of a house purchase. The complexities of this transaction have been stressful. I’m far too passionate and direct to handle the process with the sort of cool and detached businesslike approach required to out-swim the shark-infested system.

One particularly bitey shark is the estate agent. A few weeks ago I had to visit her office to provide mortgage documents. After some testing encounters on the phone, I’d envisioned her as heavily made up with cartoon eyebrows and an air of someone who could throw a good punch in a pub. In reality, I’d got the image spot on. In preparation for our meeting I selected tailored black clothes, properly blow dried hair and ‘business bitch’ perfume. I was masquerading as someone else, someone capable of making a huge financial investment with success. Not, my techni-colour print clad, wonky haired and kindly self. My scent of choice was the Lanvin classic – Arpege. Nothing implies control more than a stern floral aldehyde.

It didn’t work. I’m still haggling my way through the complications of buying a very old house. But at least I felt protected by my formidable scented armour for one day.  If I ever get there, I will be returning to the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors. Perhaps I shall rename myself Antonia?

The Lure Of The Christmas Perfume Gift Set, Some Tips For The Festive Season

It’s that time of year, when we fumies are bombarded with emails advising us of ALL THE DAZZLING FRAGRANT STUFF WE CAN BUY when we really should be shopping for our loved ones i.e. Christmas gift set season.

If only Harrods sold penguins at Christmas..

When we signed up to the ‘yes, send me news of offers and promotions’ box at the online stores of our favourite perfume houses through the year, we forget about the chronic agony of repeatedly denying ourselves the joy that is buying a perfume + body lotion + shower gel + fantastically designed box etc.. that would render us unable to pay for other people’s presents.

Gift sets are an extremely good deal. Most of the mainstream houses offer at least one free subsidiary product for the price of just the perfume. This is especially useful if you are a lover of the ‘projection beast’. One Christmas I received a YSL Opium body lotion that when used alongside the perfume, could burn off the olfactory organ of a person half a mile away. It was a very pleasing present.

Niche houses are less generous at Christmas, probably due to the fact that not all of them actually create body or home fragrance products. Those who do however, should really join in the festivities and stop being scrooges.

Here is a round up of some of the best sets from the larger niche houses and mainstreams on sale this year. But before you take a look, consider your approach to the gift set season. I think there are 4 ways you can benefit from it:

1. Buy a set before Christmas but wait until you are offered a discount. For instance, last week Debenhams announced 10% off all beauty and fragrance effectively making an already bargainous set more bargainous. No doubt the other department stores will make similar bids for our custom. 
2. Buy a set in store after Christmas. In last year’s January sales, sets from YSL, Clinique, Lauder and Guerlain were all reduced by about 30%. You had to be quick to grab one though.
3. Buy a set from Ebay. This is a graveyard of unwanted gifts in January. You can pick up a set that might have been sprayed once or twice to test and then discarded in disgust by someone who was gifted something brilliant that was not to their taste. Used scent = cheap scent.
4. Lastly, you could sod it and just buy everything you want and worry about later when the obscenely greedy energy companies send you your extortionate January heating bill. At least you can scent your chunky knit jumpers with something beautiful as you shiver at home.

So here we go, more ways to spend your money this month:

Niche

Ormonde Jayne: The Sloane Square shop are offering a 20% discount on everything by phone and in store this Wednesday (20^th November). UK postage costs £8 so this would effectively make an £80 50 ml scent cost £72 by post or £64 in store. Plus if you go to shop between 6pm and 8pm there's a party with champers. Phone to enquire about International postage which they are attempting to make reasonably priced. Tolu, Ta'if, Ormonde Woman and Orris Noir are stunningly well crafted scents that I imagine would appeal to anybody. They are not challenging, just beautiful. To read my review of the marvelous pagan fantasy - Ormonde Woman, click here.

Belle of The Ball Gift Set in Orris Noir - £115

(reduced to £92 with the 20% discount)

Penhaligon’s: have a truly covetable range of gifts sets this year in beautifully illustrated tins, my favourite is the Gentlemen’s Miniature Collection at £35 including Sartorial and Blenheim Bouquet. To read my review of these two masculine lovelies, click here.

Gentlemen’s Miniature Collection

L’ Artisan Parfumeur: The ‘pop up’ style gift boxes of the season are a fine example of contemporary design in the perfume industry and a treat for those who collect the brand, however they don’t offer the grandest saving. This is a good option for those on a budget who are fond of purse size fumes:

Christmas Discovery Gift Set £35 with 4 x 7 ml vapo tubes of:

•Mûre et Musc 

•La Chasse aux Papillons 

•Premier Figuier 

•Nuit de Tubéreuse 

I’d rather smell of festival toilets than the death by Jasmine that is Le Chasse aux Papillons (Luca Turin gave it 3 stars so my opinion may not be definitive!), but the others are wonderful and it’s a collectible box.

Discovery Gift Set

A quick search brings up very little in the form of niche gift sets but an alternative is a large sample set which is huge treat for a fumie. The most diverse and exciting ones come from: Ormonde Jayne, Parfum D’ Empire, Le Labo, Olfactive Studio, Amouage, Les Parfums De Rosine, Scent On Canvas, Jovoy and Histoires De Parfums. To read my post on the Olfactive Studio sample set, click here.

A browse on their online boutiques will reveal the goodies. It’s useful to know that the French word for sample is Echantillons. Though I imagine that if you’re geeky and obsessive enough to read Odiferess you’ll probably know this already..

Mainstream:

This is where the real bargains are to be had.

Givenchy: I maintain that the original Givenchy Gentleman is the greatest masculine Patchouli ever made (not to be confused with Givenchy Gentleman Only which is scent nonsense). A set containing 100 ml EDT and 75 ml All Over Shampoo is available for about£56.50 at all of the main department stores.

Miller Harris: Yes, I don’t consider them mainstream either, but the range is being sold in Debenhams. For £60 you can buy a miniatures collection in either ‘Woody’ or ‘Citrus’. Woody contains 3 x 15 ml EDPs of: La Fumée , Feuilles de Tabac and Fleurs de Sel. All delightfull.

Estee Lauder: Queen of the gift set. They’ve released several desirable sets this year. Though be warned, I tested Youth Dew with my Mum this weekend (both of us wore it in the past) and we agreed that it is a reformulated shadow of it’s former self. That said, Knowing and Cinnabar are still projection beasts of the highest caliber. Knowing is an epic mossy/woody/aldehydic chypre, well worth a try if you love Mitsouko/Aromatics/Paloma Picasso etc.  At £39 for 30 ml of EDP and 100 ml of body lotion this is the one that I shall be hunting come January.

Acqua Di Parma: As always, are gifting us their full range of fumes in a quirky hat box style presentation with 75 ml tubes of shower gel and body lotion for the price of the just the perfume. £78 from all the big stores and online at Escentual. Grazie!

Other sets of note this year come from Cartier, Bottega Venetta, Carven (who have re-released the superb Ma Griffe in a pretty new bottle), YSL, BVLGARI, Guerlain and Hermes.

Now, get yourself on ebay, flog anything you can live without and start re-spending!

Review: Ormonde Jayne, Ormonde Woman - The Witch's Brew

Have you ever contemplated a link between perfumery and witchcraft? I presume it depends upon what your perception of witchcraft actually is/was. I’ve long held a fascination with the concept of ‘the witch’, indeed hailing from Lancashire, my county was famed for the notorious Pendle witch trials in the early 1600s.

A rather romantic depiction of the witches of Macbeth

Witchcraft was feared as an unholy power, an ability to charm something/someone, enabling it to flourish or to wither, or to cast some personal wish. This was thought to be achieved by some sort of devilish incantation, the aid of a ‘familiar’ (often an animal spirit form such as the ubiquitous black cat) or the use of a magic potion formed from all manner of herbs and voodoo-esque ephemera.

Ancient medicine relied upon the potent power of herbaceous plants to aid recovery. Nicolas Culpeper’s ‘Complete Herbal’ of 1653 gave ordinary folk advice about how to treat common illnesses with easily foraged indigenous plants, a practice that had been going on for many hundreds of years before the book was published. In the Complete Herbal, in addition to treating physical ailments, plants were also recommended to treat ailments of the mind or soul, much in the same way as they are used in contemporary aromatherapy and psycho-aromatic perfumery. Next time you spritz Penhaligon’s Lavandula consider Culpeper’s advice upon the lovely herb:

“Two spoonfuls of the distilled water of the flowers taken, helps them that have lost their voice, as also the tremblings and passions of the heart, and faintings and swooning, not only being drank, but applied to the temples, or nostrils to be smelled unto”

So it doesn’t just smell nice, it can also sort out untimely swoons and histrionics in the presence of your beau.

Equally, as plants could be used to heal, they could also be used to bring about demise. With no such thing as forensic science, a down trodden and abused wife could be rid of her violent husband with the careful administration of a poison over time, “Belladonna apple pie my love?”

Frequently it was the job of a woman to act as the village healer, midwife and general wise sage to whom others could turn to for help. It’s no wonder that during the religious confusion and superstition of the middle ages, she could be thought of as ‘against god’ in that she held the power to give or take life. As Europe was transformed into a superstitious and religiously vehement place during the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, the practices of a healer would no doubt be under scrutiny as devilish activity.   

My own maternal grandmother would have no doubt been tried as a witch with her use of folklore remedies. My mother’s coughs and colds were kept as secret as possible as my grandmother’s primary remedy for this ailment was to wrap her chest in brown paper smeared in goose fat, a grim cure. In her cellar brewed great vats of wines, dubiously created from anything, be it elderflowers or potato peelings. Containing curious detritus and cloudings they were possibly as poisonous as they were intoxicating!

Witches were thought to be able to create a potion, a substance capable of bewitching a person to an ultimate aim such as making them fall in love becoming fevered with amorous intention.  Dsquared borrowed this idea to market their line of ‘Potion’ fragrances, suggesting that the wearer become infallibly attractive as if under a spell. Dior of course utilized the idea of a witchy liquid in the creation of ‘Poison’, hinting at the notion of a dangerous seduction, the dark power of a woman. The apple shaped bottle recalls the poisoned apple that bewitched Snow White, the curse of a jealous vengeful hag. It’s glass was of a deep amethyst, a colour associated with spirituality.

Those who’ve read Patrick Suskind’s fictitious novel ‘Perfume’ will remember the protagonist Grenouille’s grand feat of magic as he seduced the crowd of bloodthirsty folk assembled to witness his execution. With an application of his masterpiece perfume (created from the skin secretions of beautiful young girls), he turned himself from murderer to angel, bewitching those who sought his death into a writhing mass orgy of heaven sent love. 

Which brings me to my favourite fragrant witch’s brew, Ormonde Jayne’s Ormonde Woman.

Linda Pilkington, Creative Director of the Ormonde Jayne line looks nothing like a fairy tale witch, with her expensively tailored clothes, bright eyes and lush mane of hair, she is a far cry from a hooked nosed hag. However, as a creator of potions she is a fine witch indeed.

Ormonde Woman, is a forest scent, loaded with earthly pleasures. It is reminiscent of being deep in the woods where the sticky saps and resins come forth from trees and bushes to grace the air with a pagan whiff. The dominant note here is grass, softened by a magnificently earthy vetiver. Indeed if Ormonde Woman holds the bewitching power of a love potion, the carnal act will most certainly take place outdoors, there are no satin sheets for the witch’s brew. This is ‘knickers full of ferns’ stuff.

A frolick in the woods

Grassy chypres can be a little cold and astringent but this one projects warmth from it’s ambery base, again adding a sensuality to the already heady concoction. We tend to associate a ‘sexy’ fragrance with the inclusion of grand indolic notes of tuberose or jasmine, perhaps amped up by a dose of animalic musk. This is the opposite. Ormonde Woman’s jasmine is barely traceable, in fact I can’t smell it. I imagine it simply serves to round off a little of the astringency of grass. We don’t need flowers, what could be more arousing than the smell of the forest, where all manner of life abounds in the flourishing vegetation?

The scent is famed for the inclusion of a rare note – black hemlock (or Tsuga). The word hemlock itself connotes witchcraft, as we associate it with ‘poison hemlock’ or Conium maculatum. This herbaceous plant, when ingested in high quantities causes death by paralysis, ultimately leading to respiratory failure, a fine way to see off your accursed enemy! I’d like to see IFRA contend with that one.. Luckily, black hemlock is an entirely different plant, in fact it’s an entirely harmless tree from the conifer family. I couldn’t possibly tell you what it smells like as the woody/grassy notes blend seamlessly into a harmonious brew where nothing ‘pokes out’ as unusual.

So dear readers, what is your opinion? Have you cast a love spell with your fragrance? Or do you use scent to evoke a spiritual meditation? I’d love to hear your thoughts..

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