"Re-envisaging" L'Artisan Parfumeur: Please Help Kirsten With Her Branding Project! (Plus A Séville A L'Aube / Travalo Giveaway)

The other day, I was surprised to receive the following email:

"Hi Vanessa

I am a student in South Africa currently doing a degree in Creative Brand Communications. I am doing a marketing assignment on the perfume brand L'Artisan Parfumeur...I am having trouble finding out insights into why people buy L'Artisan's products? I know they are a French niche perfume house and they offer scents that are unique, however, I feel that a lot of other perfume brands such as Serge Lutens, Diptyque, Lubin, By Kilian and Frédéric Malle also do this. I am finding it hard to grasp what L'Artisan's brand image is in the mind of the consumer. I live in South Africa and have never interacted with this brand before. Also South Africa's perfume market is quite different to the French market.

I would really appreciate it if you could shed some light! :)  Kind regards Kirsten"

Well, I must admit that Kirsten's out of the blue inquiry rather caught me on the hop. I don't believe I have ever given any thought to L'Artisan's brand image, though I am pretty familiar with the fragrances themselves. Reading Kirsten's email back, my first thought was to agree with her statement about L'Artisan offering a range of unique scents. Some of them are quite off the wall, even. But for me, her view that other perfume houses also have distinctive ranges doesn’t preclude them from each having their own brand identity and distinct place - or "niche" indeed - in the world of niche fragrance. But if that holds true, what exactly IS L'Artisan's brand image?

Before pondering the matter further, I wrote back to Kirsten, saying that I would see what I could find out about people’s perceptions of the brand, and that the best way might well be to involve readers of my blog. I asked her to tell me more about the background to the project, together with any information she had already gleaned.

Kirsten is preparing an entry for the D & AD 2013 student awards for creative excellence. The L'Artisan brief she has chosen is as follows:

“Re-envisage the L’Artisan Parfumeur brand for the 21st Century by creating a design solution for a new unisex range of scents.

Creative challenge —

Traditional French fragrance houses are steeped in a rich history of style and imagery. L’Artisan Parfumeur wants to break with this convention. Their latest collection is uniquely based around bottled emotions. Your challenge is to showcase this range by breaking the rules of conventional perfume packaging.

There are four scents, each capturing a different human feeling:

Scent a: Passion and desire. Sex and lust. Raw and physical.
Scent b: Perfect, sublime love. An interior emotion.
Scent c: Excitement and fear. Adrenaline, exhilaration and thrill.
Scent d: Elegant and dignified. Stormy yet still.”

Of course there are many other students the world over tackling the same brief, but as Kirsten took the initiative to approach me, she’s the “horse” I am backing who gets my help!

And following her initial desk research, Kirsten’s take so far on the brand values of the company is as follows:

"So far I have discovered that L’Artisan is a French niche perfume house that produces unique fragrances by mixing contradictory scents together. They are inspired by Grasse and nature. They refer to Grasse as a place that is ‘alive with fleeting emotions’ (definitely something there!). They also believe that making fragrance requires poetry, art, humour and stylish ingenuity. The brand has a kind of outlandish feel to it and they believe that their scents evoke emotions and memories that are extremely personal."

I wouldn't quibble with any of that, especially the term "outlandish". Or maybe I would be more inclined to say "quirky". On the L'Artisan website, there is actually a category of perfumes called "Les Insolites", or the "Unusual / Strange ones".  Yes, Dzing!, Fou Absinthe, Dzongkha and Timbuktu strike me as being towards the odder and abstract end of the spectrum, while the likes of Premier Figuier, Mimosa pour Moi and Fleur d'Oranger are more accessible and representational in style. And that very broad brush distinction may have a lot to do with the different artistic styles of the various perfumers, such as Bertrand Duchaufour, Anne Flipo and Olivia Giacobetti.

I would also say that when I think of the L'Artisan range I never do so in terms of the classic fragrance families of "chypre" or "oriental" or "floral woody musk" etc, and would be hard pressed to pigeonhole any of the scents in the range using those categories. So in that regard they have certainly departed from the traditional conventions of perfumery and feel fresh and modern and very much "their own thing".  That said, the store design and cursive script of the L'Artisan logo, together with its stylistic nod towards the Art Deco era, simultaneously give the brand a classically elegant feel.

Coincidentally, I received a mailshot from Luckyscent only the other day, offering sample packs featuring L’Artisan’s “Ten Most Loved (and Legendary) Scents”, though in whose eyes is not clear to me – Luckyscent themselves, L’Artisan? I imagine the latter. And what is the basis of either of the terms “loved” and “legendary”? Most talked about? Biggest sellers?

Anyway, the samples include Fou d’Absinthe, which is described as an “olfactory craziness” (confirming our quirky hypothesis – again, I am assuming this is L’Artisan copy), while other scents such as Premier Figuier are (as I posited above) almost photorealistic representations of the scent: “Green crunchy notes of the leaves, milky sap of branches, sweetness of fruit and woody notes of the trunk.” Now I also associate a number of the scents with a strong sense of place – capturing a travel experience in a fragrance, and Premier Figuier is also an example of this: “Evokes a nap in the shade of a fig tree in the South of France”. Timbuktu, meanwhile, is a “wild (there we go with offbeat again) yet sophisticated fragrance inspired by a journey to Mali in West Africa…”

Turning from the scents themselves to L’Artisan’s competitors, I guess L'Artisan must compete with a ton of brands from the more exclusive lines of Guerlain and Chanel to a plethora of smaller houses. If I had to suggest which other brands share L'Artisan's "broadly modern" vibe, I'd probably go with Parfumerie Générale, The Different Company, Byredo, Diptyque and Malle, also Le Labo, Ormonde Jayne, Humiecki & Graef and Mona di Orio - with the rider that some of these feel more spare and "clinically modern" in design terms than L'Artisan.  And  conversely, the brands I would not think of include Creed, Piguet, Les Parfums d'Empire, Lorenzo Villoresi, Amouage, Etro, Les Parfums de Nicolai, Maître Parfumeur Gantier, Floris, or possibly even Penhaligon's.

Then as for its degree of exclusivity, or "nicheness" - I mean within the niche market itself - L'Artisan feels somewhere around mid-field. Parfumerie Générale feels a tad more upmarket to me, as does Mona di Orio or Ormonde Jayne, though not by much, and this is a very subjective impression. I guess it depends how often you encounter any given brand in your own perfume shopping orbit. Yes, it may come down to some function of perceived “retail exposure" combined with price, maybe, or even the number of fragrances in the line.  At some level I haven't quite put my finger on, having too many scents may devalue the range - as with Creed (in my view), which also suffers from overly wide - and qualitatively mixed - distribution.

On this very point, here is a thought-provoking post by Perfumeshrine about L’Artisan’s place in the grand scheme of things, in which she speculates on whether the recent discontinuations suggest the house can no longer afford to focus as much on the more oddball favourites in the line, which may be slow movers. Though I guess it is a commercial business at the end of the day. Oh, and it seems that L’Artisan will be sold in Sephora shortly, which may take its niche reputation down a notch?

But enough of my thoughts about L'Artisan Parfumeur, what say you?

What attributes or values does the brand evoke for you?

To what extent are you interested in what L’Artisan stands for, or its position in the market – is it all about the scent?

How niche does the brand feel to you, and which other houses - if any - have a range with a similar feel?

And for good measure, any thoughts on the current packaging, or on any new creative directions in which it could be taken that would give it more of a wow factor / sense of drama?  (The brief does say that L'Artisan wants to break the rules of conventional packaging.)

NB I have checked out the pack concepts of some of the competing entries and a couple involve integral uplighting in the actual box!

Now Kirsten may have picked the short straw by choosing me to help her gain a better understanding of people's perceptions of the L'Artisan brand, because out of all the perfume blogs she could have lit upon, Bonkers is not one that attracts very many comments as a rule. So in a bid to rally people to the cause of her project, I am holding a L'Artisan giveaway!

Anyone who leaves a comment addressing any of the questions above about the L'Artisan brand will be eligible to win a decant of Séville à L'Aube from my bottle (if you don't wish to be entered into the draw, please say so).   It is open to readers everywhere, regardless of postal regulations! I fly in the face of postal regulations!  The draw ends on Sunday 24th February at midnight GMT.

UPDATE: In view of the number of people commenting who already have Séville à L'Aube, I am adding the option of a Travalo atomiser as an alternative, which will hopefully appeal to everyone!

Drawing of L'Artisan bottles from the company's website, photo of green bottle from the D & AD website, L'Artisan logo from thespiceloftproject.blogspot.co.uk, photo of Grasse from thalassoleil.fr, photo of Bertrand Duchaufour from magazin.e15.cz, photo of Mali from deahanmediaworld.co.kr, photo of Séville à L'Aube my own.

L’Artisan Parfumeur Séville A L’Aube Launch With Bertrand Duchaufour & Denyse Beaulieu: More Grey Matters - Or Lack Of Them…

You know another post must be overdue when you realise you have amassed no fewer than FIVE Farrow & Ball paint colour cards - all identical, but displaying varying degrees of dogearedness. A growing colony of F & B tester pots is another sure sign that you are losing touch with the real (as in the virtual) world. Another dead giveaway is the spammers who are all over your blog archives like a rash, sensing that your current posting hiatus means you are too preoccupied to notice their stealthy incursions.

Well, it’s true that I am somewhat preoccupied at the moment with more firefighting on the house front. Just this week, for example, the spectre of woodworm raised its myriad pinhole heads in the study, so the carpet laying there has had to be deferred for the second time (the first carpet arrived damaged!).

FIFTH COLOUR CARD NOT PICTURED

On the plus side, since my last post I have had a water meter installed, a sash window fixed and a floor levelled, and acquired a working fridge, a tumble dryer, microwave, pedal bin, broom, mop and toilet brush. Not forgetting the cutlery drainer. I have also erected a clothes line and a bird house in the garden, deep cleaned the kitchen cupboard doors and descaled the kettle. Oh, and the living room sofa is on order, the chimney sweep booked, and the finger of suspicion now points at a defective filling loop rather than a perished expansion vessel on the boiler. Which I am sure you are all as fascinated to learn as I was (not)… : - )

JOA'S WHITE AND LONDON STONE NOT PICTURED

So without further ado, I am trying to cast my mind back to the first week after the move, when I went down to London to attend the UK launch of L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Séville à l'aube. I was booked to attend the session with Bertrand Duchaufour and Denyse Beaulieu of Grain de Musc at 1pm on 25th July. The day dawned bright and relentlessly hot, and the back of my bargain Toast frock from T K Maxx was already drenched in sweat by the time I left the house just before 9am, so you can imagine what an unsavoury state I was in by the time I arrived at the Covent Garden store. Not least because I inadvertently went there via the corporate offices of L’Artisan in the city, owing to an unfortunate error involving my iPhone, my failing short sight and the London HQ address being in a VERY LARGE TYPEFACE right under the advert for the actual event. Instead of scrolling past the image to reach what I took to be the venue address, I should have ENLARGED the image itself to reveal the contact details of the Covent Garden store. Ah well, magnified hindsight is a wonderful thing... I might have known the day was doomed to go awry as soon as I got up and spent a good fifteen minutes hunting for a pair of shoes not firmly in the hiking boot family.

ARTILLERY LANE - NOT THE VENUE

So anyway, the staff at L'Artisan's HQ – who greeted my perspiring, breathless and baggage-encumbered figure with pained expressions of bemusement and concern – alerted their Covent Garden colleagues to my delayed arrival, and I finally turned up (even more bedraggled and sweaty, if you can possibly imagine that) at about 1.30pm - not so much fashionably late as "middle-aged confused".

When I entered the cavernous cellar in which the event was being held, Bertrand and Denyse were just wrapping up their talk?/Q & A session?/bit of both? (obviously I wouldn't know!), to a small group of half a dozen women. I didn’t recognise anyone, but I caught the name Katie Chutzpah, and inferred that the others may also have been drawn from the wider ranks of fashion and beauty writers rather than being perfume bloggers as such.

Because I was so spectacularly late, Justine, L’Artisan’s marketing exec, ushered me into a side room and presented the company’s upcoming releases, beginning with La Collection de Grasse, inspired by the "spiritual home of perfumery" - in particular the rugged hinterland behind Grasse itself, with its aromatic kaleidoscope of colour and scents.

The collection features an autumn and a winter candle, presented in chunky ceramic holders with a distressed metallic finish, which I learnt were made in a specific region in China - the only place in the world boasting that particular artisanal expertise. I am surprised I took in that little nugget of information, to be honest, because I still felt mortified about my address gaffe and was generally rather distracted.

Making up the trio of products in the Grasse range - and with a nod towards the town's tanning heritage - are some leather gloves impregnated with Mûre et Musc Extrême. These are part of a limited run of 100 pairs in sizes 6-8 (another surprise fact I retained – I never knew there were glove sizes till I encountered scented ones!)

The Grasse Collection is due for release in October, to be followed in November by L'Artisan's Christmas Collection, comprising boxed sets of candles and various permutations of his and her fragrances in handy 15ml sizes. The colourful stylised packaging takes its inspiration from the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, and the boxes are also available as gift packaging for any scent in the L’Artisan range.

I scribbled a few notes during Justine’s mini presentation, but mostly I just kept saying: “Nice!” to everything she showed me, the strain of the journey having rendered me all but inarticulate.

It was not long before I heard sounds of the party next door starting to break up, so I returned there and loitered with intent until an opportunity arose to greet Bertrand Duchaufour, whom I had met at the 2009 launch of Penhaligon’s Amaranthine, and to introduce myself to Denyse. No sooner had I started to explain who I was to Bertrand Duchaufour, when one of the few remaining bloggers cut across me, thrust an iPad in Bertrand’s face, and began what appeared to be an impromptu video interview - which struck me as a little peremptory and rude.

Not long after, Denyse announced that she was popping out for a cigarette and invited me to join her for a chat. Half way up the stairs to street level, I caught a beautiful cloud of Séville à l’aube and was reminded of how much I liked the scent. Once outside in the street, Denyse lit up and we had a few minutes shooting the breeze about topics as various as her luxuriant and variegated hair (which Denyse jokingly referred to as being “fifty shades of grey”, a punning reference to her recent commission to translate the erotic blockbuster into French!), middle age, insomnia, and the boy she met in Seville all those years ago, whom she hopes will one day stumble across the book...

When we went back inside, the attendees of the earlier (as in “on time”) session had all dispersed; Bertrand invited me to sit down and we carried on briefly chatting in French. I explained how Séville à l'aube has a powerful resonance for me, because of my own holiday there the last time I split up with a partner, some 17 years ago. And now here I am back on my own, my single state coinciding once again with a Seville theme! Bertrand agreed that that was a bit of a neat coincidence, and asked me if I had a question for him. A question? Why, it was as much as I could do to have found the venue in the end, so I blurted out:

“No I don’t – I just wanted to get here in time to say hello!”

It felt like an honest, but rather lame response at the time – after all, I am an interviewer by profession. And maybe part of me wanted to make up for the woman who thrust the iPad in his face by just enjoying being in his presence and not asking him anything, but in truth it was more a case of my not having given the matter any thought. Yes, I really was just glad to have made it down before everyone had left!

Oh, and my klutzy behaviour didn’t end with the lateness... I knocked over a row of L’Artisan perfumes with my shoulder bag – fortunately the domino effect was mysteriously self-righting at about the fourth or fifth bottle mark. Then shortly after I emerged blinking into the sunlight from the store's subterranean depths, I wandered into a branch of Hobbs, the primly classic clothing chain, and attempted to buy a sandwich; I had momentarily mistaken it for Marks & Spencer, of which (in fairness) there happened to be a branch next door.

HOBBS - NOT A SANDWICH OUTLET

So yes, the inauspicious day turned out all right in the end, even if I did look like a dishrag and completely missed the whatever it was, asked no questions, took no photos and forgot to collect a goody bag (assuming my partial attendance and uninquiring mind had not disqualified me from eligibility to receive one, as it may well have done!) But I did receive a goodbye hug from Bertrand, who declared my French to be “magnifique”, which was more than generous of him… : - )

For a properly documented account of the Tuesday session, check out Tara’s account on Olfactorias Travels.

Meanwhile, my review of Denyse’s book, “The Perfume Lover”, is here, and here is my take on Séville à l'aube.


Photo of Artillery Lane from Stacey Harris via Wikimedia Commons, photo of Grasse from G CHP via Wikimedia Commons, photo of Denyse Beaulieu from basenotes.net, photo of Hobbs from streetsensation.co.uk, photos of L'Artisan invitation and Christmas Collection from L'Artisan Parfumeur, other photos my own

California Dreaming: Another Bonkers Road Trip - The Scented Bit: Part 3

I was very tempted to call this post: "Visit To The* Scent Bar - 'I Should Be So Lucky / Lucky, Lucky, Lucky'...!", but editorial consistency prevailed, and this last instalment has defaulted to Part 3 of The Scented Bit instead. I know what, I will create a sub-heading instead...

Visit To The* Scent Bar: "I Should Be So Lucky..."

I believe I left off the saga at the point where I returned to my hotel in Venice from the Strange Invisible Perfumes store to select an outfit for my sniffing session that afternoon at the Scent Bar in West Hollywood. I had taken advice in advance from Qwendy/Wendy about dress code, because I was aware of that general neck of the Hollywoods being the affluent epicentre of LA. I didn't want to look too much of a hobo, though at the same time I knew I had zero hope of competing with the top-to-toe designer-clad "ladies who feebly push their lunch around their plate with a fork" brigade. You see them striding purposefully down Beverly Boulevard, long golden locks bouncing over razor-sharp clavicles like those flappy streamer things that smear rather than dry your windscreen in a car wash. They are invariably clutching six rope carrier bags in each hand - or five bags in each hand and one beribboned Yorkie - a pink I-phone cupped to one ear in the crook of a surprisingly supple elbow.

So anyway, Qwendy said the uniform at such events was pretty much de rigueur skinny jeans and T-shirts, adding - to put me at my ease - that she routinely flouted the trouser convention. Now I don't own any skinny jeans as such, but instead donned my least bootleggy Gap jeans, which are called "Real Straight" - see photo (legs not my own).

I teamed this with chocolate brown suede high heels, a chocolate brown lace trimmed cardigan and this T-shirt: perfume-themed, accented with a bit of bling, and a steal at £12 in New Look! Then I did my best to style my hair in the artfully mussed way to which I so often find myself referring on this blog, and jumped on the I-10 freeway, heading for the Scent Bar and the worldwide HQ of Lucky Scent...

Regular readers may have inferred from my many posts about road trips that I am not averse to a bit of driving. I do, however, suffer from parking phobia, and allowed an extra half an hour to scope the vicinity of the store looking for a legitimate parking spot. It took me 20 minutes of cruising round and round the block to spot a free parking meter associated with a space into which I felt comfortable manoeuvring my sub-compact - yet to my mind still rather large and boxy - car. And though I lacked the requisite quorum of quarters to pay for my projected stay, I was ecstatic to find that the parking meter accepted foreign credit cards!

I arrived at the Scent Bar a little ahead of schedule, and was surprised at how tiny and bijou it was! But they had maximised the available space all right: each wall was shelved from floor to ceiling, and on each shelf sat dozens of bottles of niche scents - all jumbled up together for the most part - though a few houses were grouped by collection eg Xerjoff from memory.

Qwendy was unavoidably held up and arrived fashionably late and full of apologies - or rather the couture version of "fashionably late" - which is slightly later. But it is a measure of how welcoming the staff were and how un-conspicuous I was made to feel, that I was perfectly happy to browse the rich layers of stock on my own until Qwendy was able to join me. I also had sporadic chats with Rachel and Steve, the two sales assistants, when they were in between serving the serious punters, who came not just to sip champagne (just one small flute in my own case, obviously) and "sniff till they dropped", but to...yes, strange to tell...actually conduct themselves like proper consumers and buy stuff...

And then Qwendy arrived, and there were rapturous greetings, as though we had known each other much longer than one phone call's worth and a mutual trip to the Post Office with our respective swap parcels way back whenever. As I expected, she was wearing a distinctive and stylish skirt-based ensemble, but we needn't have worried about our outfits, for there was one lady there in red Wellingtons.

So what did we smell? Oh dear, I was worried you might ask that... May I fall back again on my "Witnesses sought to a fatal car crash" excuse in trying to reconstruct a list of what we smelled, never mind an impression of said scents. As I recall, the majority of perfumes I tested fell into the "okay" category, with "possibly worth a retrial" in one tapering section of the bell curve, and "meh" in the other. There were only a couple of outright scrubbers in the "very thin bell end", so to speak(!) - as noted below - and only a couple I really liked, or which otherwise impressed me in some way.

HUMIECKI & GRAEF

(Rachel kindly fetched these out for me from under the counter? And that is a good tip in The Scent Bar - given that this is the shop front of Lucky Scent, you can ask for pretty much any perfume you want to try and they should have a tester tucked away somewhere...)

Askew
Skarb
Eau Radieuse
Multiple Rouge

GROSSMITH

Hasu-no-Hana (retro sneezy scrubber! Grossmith by name...)

XERJOFF

Modoc
Lua (tested on skin)

Notes: bergamot, orange, lemon, melon, Bulgarian rose, Florentine iris, pink pepper, lily, cedar wood, vanilla, musk

This was a very pretty floral woody musk, with many of my favourite notes in it, though I would probably lose the melon and swap the cedar for sandalwood. It is almost certainly not worth the money, mind you. I didn't even bother to inquire! Update - I just peeked at the Lucky Scent website - I was right not to bother to inquire!

BRUNO ACAMPORA

Musc
Jasmin (very full-on indolic jasmine, squarely and headache-inducingly in the A La Nuit, Jasmin de Nuit tradition. I would have to call this a scrubber, which in no way diminishes its authentic jasmine-ness. If it did, I might actually like it...)

NEZ à NEZ

Figues et Garçons

LE NEZ

L'Antimatière (cousin of SIP L'Invisible - in name only!)

KEIKO MECHERI

(Smelt on another lady's skin who was deciding which of these two to buy. The in-store consensus - we were all getting quite pally by this stage and sniffing one another uninhibitedly - was Peau de Pêche, which was deemed (relatively) more intense and interesting, on her arm, anyway.)

Peau de Pêche
Bois de Santal

L'ARTISAN PARFUMEUR

Traversée du Bosphore (tested on skin)

I could not better Boisdejasmin's summary of this one as a "take on violet-orris in a gourmand oriental manner". She goes on to say: "It is opulent and voluptuous, and yet the signature dry amber touch of Duchaufour lends it a surprisingly diaphanous effect." It was possibly too opulent and voluptuous and even a little scratchy to appeal to me on that warm, sunny afternoon, but the drydown was smoother and quieter, and I would try this again. Stylistically I was reminded a bit of DelRae Bois de Paradis, though it is a long time since I last tried that one - the L'Artisan strikes me as more wearable on the basis of this cursory trial.

BY KILIAN

Love and Tears (tested on skin)

Notes: bergamot, petit grain, cypress, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang-ylang and cistus. Lucky Scent also detects lily-of-the-valley and gardenia.

A completely OTT feminine white floral in the style of Fracas or Joy or Roja Dove Scandal, but even more so. Even more what? Even more everything. It has that molten perfumey quality conjured up by soft porn ads for motor oil. I liked it and thought it very well done, but couldn't quite see myself wearing it.

Qwendy, who is currently morphing from my evil scent twin and lover of darkly robust compositions to someone unexpectedly gravitating towards feminine florals, gave Love and Tears the thumbs up. We also had major new crossover territory in APOM pour Femme by Maison Kurkdjian, which may conceivably be the bottle producing Qwendy's blissed out state in the shot above. : - )

ANDY TAUER

Orange Star - no discernible Tauerade!
Rose Vermeille - Tauerade alert!
Carillon d'un Ange - as above!

So, after spending an incredible 1hr 40 mins in this small store, without feeling the least bit in the way, and given unlimited licence to take photographs, I said goodbye to the helpful staff and the charming Qwendy and drove back in the dark to Venice, navigating (rather well, I thought) by my rough sense of direction alone, as my GPS blacked out somewhere on Wilshire.

Visit To Ajne, Carmel: "The Road Not Taken"

My final scented stop on this trip was Ajne in Carmel, if you discount a fairly low key visit to a branch of Marshall's, where I copped for a bargain bottle of Juicy Couture Dirty English and promptly regretted the purchase (as you do).

I had a couple of morning meetings in Santa Barbara one day during the second week, and after doing some quick calculations, figured that if I really put my foot down on the 240 mile journey north I might just make it to the store before they closed at 6pm. To this end I opted to take the inland route, which is more direct but considerably less scenic than the famous coast road (Route 1).

Accordingly, on the afternoon in question I drove like a bat out of the proverbial hot place, parked up, and was outside the Ajne boutique in its pretty courtyard by 5.45pm, only to find the place in darkness and clearly shut. I have since made contact with the company, and found out that they had closed early because it was the night of their staff Christmas dinner at a location just down the street!

As I peered in the windows at the Louis XIV furniture within, I couldn't help but feel a sense of anti-climax, yet it was just one of those unfortunate things... If only I hadn't needed petrol and a comfort station at Kingsburg, pausing fatefully to examine the (to me curious) display of beef jerky, and choose a bar of confectionery with what now seems, looking back, to have been unnecessary care. Yes, if only I had shaved those vital 5-10 minutes off the journey, I would have bumped into the Ajne team in the act of shutting shop, and stayed their hand long enough to sample their latest releases and purchase a parfum petite of Printemps.

There again, knowing my track record with Ajne purchases, my "buy the smallest retail format available" resolve might have crumbled and I could have walked out with the half oz black heart flacon @ $200 instead of my intended mini, a fraction of that size. Though ml for ml, the larger sizes represent significantly better value. See - I clearly wasn't meant to be let loose inside that store!

That concludes the report on the Californian Road Trip - I am still trying to figure out if I am a closet travel writer who likes perfume or a perfumista who travels. You decide...


*NB The name of the store is "Scent Bar", but "I am going to Scent Bar" sounds so peculiar I can't bring myself to forgo the definite article.


All photos are my own except the perfume bottle shots which are taken (most fittingly) from Lucky Scent's website, the exterior of the Scent Bar (from Osmoz) and the photo of jeans from Gap's website.

Fragrance Blotters And Other Absorbing Matters

Regular readers of Bonkers know that I am much exercised by issues of perfume storage in all its aspects. I worry about condensation and heat, about leaky decants and warped boxes. Well, this week I have mostly been worrying about keeping my....paper whatya-ma-call-its separate. I can't believe I have been a perfumista-type person for more than two and a half years, yet until today I wasn't sure of the correct term for those paper tester strips you spray perfumes on in shops to try them. Yes, I have been mightily confused on this point, and some extensive googling has thrown up a bunch of alternatives, all with equal currency as far as I can tell:

FRAGRANCE BLOTTER
SCENT BLOTTER
SMELLING STRIP

I also found one or two mentions each of "perfume test blotter", perfume blotter", "fragrance strip blotter" and "touche à sentir" and "mouillette", though the latter two are of course French phrases not in general use over here - except possibly in very chichi circles. And what these things are NOT called are "fragrance strips" or "scent strips" - I can confirm that both terms refer specifically to those peel off flaps in women's magazines which are impregnated with a scent.

But come on...do you refer to these small, thin absorbent lengths of card - because they are more the gauge of card than paper, and of course sometimes they can be square (Chanel) or oblong - as "fragrance blotters", or even "smelling strips"? The very first phrase I came up with when I sat down to think what I do call them is "perfume tester strips", and that didn't come up anywhere in my Internet research. Terms like "fragrance blotter" and its ilk are simply not top of mind for me. Indeed, I would be more likely to use a roundabout locution, along the lines of: "Excuse me, have you got one of those paper strip thingies I can spray this perfume tester on, please?" But that may just be me...

Mind you, based on a cursory trawl of common search terms thrown up by Google Keyword Tool, it would seem that the public at large shares my uncertainty. In fairness, there were 91 global monthly searches for "smelling strip", but crucially NONE for "fragrance blotter", "scent blotter" or "perfume blotter".

Out of interest, I put the word "mouillette" into Linguee, an online dictionary, and it gave me this translation:

blotter (a special paper strip for testing fragrance)

So, you see, the Linguee people are not making any assumptions either about the public having especially high levels of blotter awareness.

Going back to the Google keyword searches, I suppose you might not expect anyone to be looking for these things at all, as they are usually provided in-store. Even on the swap scene, while a perfume swapper might routinely purchase decanting supplies, there is no obvious need to purchase blotters for home use.

But....and this is a big but....I think I have identified a gap in the market for retail sales of blotter HOLDERS. By this I don't mean the devices known in French as "porte-mouillettes", certain designs of which resemble the smelling strip equivalent of a kitchen knife block. And I certainly don't mean this curious homemade contraption fashioned out of clothes pegs.

No, I mean the little greaseproof?/tracing? paper bags/holders that I was once offered in a branch of L'Artisan Parfumeur in Paris to slip my smelling strips in. The idea is that they preserve the scent for longer and also keep the strips from cross-contaminating one another at the bottom of your handbag, which is the place the strips inevitably end up getting tossed when I go on a serious sniffing outing.

Now at the Roja Dove master class last year - about which I may do a retrospective post some time - one of my suggestions for improving the session was the provision of just such bags, in which to keep the strips Roja circulated of his semi-bespoke range. For these are very rare and special scents, and we all wanted to preserve our tester strips for as long as chemically possible, knowing that we were unlikely to encounter them again. But apart from that one L'Artisan store, I don't remember ever seeing such bags anywhere else.

That said, the principle of the protective bag is perfectly commonplace for other products - that is how you buy a French stick in the supermarket, for example. And let's face it, you're not even likely to have a load of loaves knocking about at the bottom of your handbag. And then you've got things like these eye shadow applicators, which come in an articulated plastic case with a slot for each sponge, a bit like an ammo belt.

Whilst separate bags would work fine, a single holder with compartments for each would be an ideal way to keep all the strips in one place for ease of reference. I also checked out artists' pastel boxes and screw organisers, but the compartments were not long or shallow enough. So the perfect "smelling strip organiser" continues to elude me.

Meanwhile, however, I tracked down a French supplier of "touches à sentir" to L'Artisan Parfumeur, and gave them a call. The first thing I wanted to confirm was the name for these individual test strip holders and it is "étui en papier cristal" or "étui cristal" for short. Predictably, these things are not sold in retail outlets, but only to perfume companies, though the chap I spoke to would have cut me a deal on 500 for 250-300 euros. Why, that is about 45p each! Gallic robdoggery of the first water!

So the search for a suitable "touchebag" - or bags - continues. :- ) And meanwhile, I have got a whole bunch of smelling strips stuck between the leaves of a plain notebook and I am hoping for the best.


Photo of "paddle"-style smelling strips from persephenie.com, photo of "arrow"-style smelling strips from whatwedoissecret.org, photo of improvised porte-mouillette with clothes pegs from bio-byte.com, photo of baguette from durobag.com, photo of make up sponges from blogger-index.com, photo of ammo belt from odsurplus.com.

L'Eté En Douce And The Gentle Art Of Stealth Perfuming

The other day, Mr Bonkers attempted to climb into an unmade bed - that's "unmade" as in stripped. In other words, no bedding had been put back on following the mysterious business of laundry processing, which is conducted in our house by a team of invisible and recurring fairies. I shan't specify who these fairies are exactly, but let's just say that I bear an uncanny resemblance to every last one of them. Realising his error, Mr B agreed under duress to help me make the bed first before getting into it. I use the word "help" advisedly, as bed making is largely outside his sphere of competence, along with buying the correct sort of aubergines, detergent and ham.

So I took one corner of the duvet and gave Mr B the other to hold and insert in the duvet cover. I had already got my corner all the way in, when I noticed that Mr B was attempting to stuff the top corner of the duvet into the lower corner of the cover.

"No", I said, "you have to thread it through and up to the other end."

"The wheresit?"

"Up there - a place known as 'the top right hand corner'." Sensing my playfully patronising tone, Mr B smiled, but continued to stab the top corner of the duvet into the opening of the cover.

"Well, I just thought you could maybe use a bit of nomenclature", I quipped.

Mr Bonkers laughed good naturedly, and said: "Well, I don't know what 'nomenclature' is, but it sounds disparaging!"

Whereupon we both collapsed in giggles, and moments later the penny had dropped and the corner was correctly despatched to its rightful corner.

Then last night I hatched a mischievous plan - based around the idea of detergent, indeed ...

Knowing that Mr Bonkers eschews all forms of fragrance, lovethescents jokingly suggested once that I apply a bit of cologne to his person while he slept - a practice known as "stealth perfuming". At the time, I thought that that was a bit radical and risky as pranks go, but last night I came up with a more subtle approach, and stealth perfumed the duvet cover with L'Artisan Parfumeur L'Eté en Douce. L'Eté en Douce is one of my most expensive "albatross" scents, bought in an impulsive moment by what Katie Puckrik recently dubbed the "pin the tail on the donkey" method, right before closing time in Bon Marché in Paris.

Notes: mint, rose, orange blossom, hay, white woods, and (shedloads of) white musk

As anyone who has read Perfumes: The Guide will know, Luca Turin famously compared L'Eté en Douce to "laundry-soap-on-steroids", and - despite a pretty linden note in the opening - this perfume is seriously spoilt for me by an insanely high dose of clean musk, exactly like washing powder.

There are three other things I should perhaps mention: firstly, Mr B has remarked that his mother's laundry smells fresher and cleaner than ours - he has even referred to our clean washing on occasions as "musty". Hmmm...those fairies may need a bit of a pep talk on pre-wash fabric softener procedures. Secondly, the last time I wore L'Eté en Douce (admittedly layered over a German body lotion with aloe vera), Mr B actually said I smelt quite nice. Yes, this is the second such instance apart from SJP Lovely - the unifying factor being the scent of soap. Thirdly, L'Eté en Douce (which roughly translates as "summer comes gently") was formerly known as Extrait de Songe ("extract of a dream"), before the clash with Annick Goutal's Songes prompted a re-think. So, you never know, maybe he would actually sleep better as a result of my little experiment...

Given all these facts, I didn't feel too mean therefore when I crept into the bedroom last night - Mr B having conveniently nodded off downstairs in front of "Amish: The World's Squarest Teenagers" - and sprayed his side of the duvet cover a few times with L'Eté en Douce (okay, maybe about 10 or so: mostly outside, a couple inside, and one on the pillow underneath the one he puts his head on).

This morning, agog with curiosity, I inquired how he had slept.

"Very well, thanks."

"Did you notice anything?"

"Like what?"

Which was my cue to come "clean" immediately about the stealth perfuming scam.

"Actually, I did...it was vile....well, not vile, but a bit too much."

"So....did you get a clean laundry smell, then?"

"Yes, and I couldn't work out how."

(I'm issuing those fairies with a formal warning.)

"But you had a good night?"

"I don't know, I was asleep."

On hearing the good news that I had sort of got away with it, I promised Mr Bonkers that I would not pull such a stunt again. And though I may have managed to "waste" a couple of ml in my spraying spree, the albatross remains firmly round my neck. Though on the upside, Mr B is now a competent bed making partner.


Photo of L'Eté en Douce from letsbuyit.co.uk, photo of laundry fairies from woodlandsenchanted.co.nz and artlandmark.com, photo of detergent molecules from elmhurst.edu