A Newport Pagnell near miss, innumerable bees briefly reprised, and my failure to crack the 'Givenchy Code'*

I fully intended to write a post about the pros and pros of skincare products in tubes - actually I did just think of a con - and no, really, I promise it will be more interesting than it sounds. But I was away for the weekend, and having always been more of a closet travel writer at heart than a perfume blogger I feel compelled to tell you about my trip instead. There is a bit of a perfume theme to this tale, which I'd like to think isn't too flagrantly peripheral or shoehorned in, but you must be the judge of that.

So yes, I have been to visit the last surviving friend of my (sadly not surviving) mother, who at 91 is even more elderly than 'my elderly friend', aka ex-Mrs Bonkers Senior. I have featured my mother's friend in a couple of posts already: for example, on my last visit she kindly gave me a cast off bottle of Magie Noire and O de Lancome. P, as I shall henceforth call her, lives on the edge of The Cotswolds in a picture book cottage with her one surviving corgi.

The journey down should have taken an hour and a half and ended up taking three. For I was listening with such rapt attention to Paddy Ashdown's fantastically articulate answers on Question Time that I sailed down the M1 and inadvertently ended up at Newport Pagnell, which is really not something you'd want to do by accident, let alone on purpose. It's not that the Sat Nav didn't try to get me to turn off sooner, but I had already marked its card at Rugby, where it said to turn around and go back up the M1 the way I had come. So when it suggested I come off at every single subsequent junction I assumed it was having another of its funny turns - and that it just wanted to go home, basically. I decided to ignore it and keep my eyes peeled for the turn off to the big town nearest my friend. Then promptly became mesmerised by Paddy Ashdown and forgot to watch out for signs. Not that it would have made a difference if I had, for the signs are on the M40, and I was on the M1. Maybe the Sat Nav had been trying to tell me as much in its own cryptic and inflammatory way. But Newport Pagnell jolted me out of my navigational stupor, and I eventually manage to tack cross country to P's village.

Fortified by tea and lemon cake, we spent a pleasant afternoon sitting in the conservatory, listening - I kid you not - to the murmuring of innumerable bees. 'I know they say there is a world shortage of bees', P remarked, 'but not in my garden there's not!' P needs to take things steady, as she has spent long stints in hospital in the past year, following a series of falls. I thought she had stumbled over her corgi - corgis being notiorously low slung trip hazards as dogs go - but it turns out that that was some years previously. These falls were precipitated by less colourful causes, which I signally failed to record.

But what I did do for the very first time, was ask P to tell me the story of her life. It took four hours, and was absolutely fascinating, full of twists and turns that soon had me scurrying for pen and paper to jot the key points down. I knew she and my mother had been old friends in Northern Ireland, who lost touch after they moved back to England, but found each other again when P's son spotted a letter in The Times sent in by my mother  - not such a strange coincidence as you might think - my mother was forever writing to The Times about this and that, almost to the point of it being a sport, and every now and then one of her letters made it into print.

Here then are a few interesting facts about P:

- Her father was a big cheese in coal - or should that be a 'big lump'?

- P first met my mother through a neighbour whose son fell out of a tree, and who asked to use her phone to call a doctor (in the days when phones were far from universal).

- She lived in a house called The Wooden House, which burnt to the ground. (Accident waiting to happen, I hear you say.)

- The upside down ostrich on the wall belongs to the corgi, but he cannot be trusted not to savage his own toys.

- P's grandson played Simba in a much acclaimed production of The Lion King on Broadway.

- A family member is married to a Havers!

- And best of all....P was a code breaker at Bletchley Park during the war! I tentatively asked her what she did exactly, and obviously she couldn't tell me, as this was  all highly classified Secret Squirrel stuff. Which doubtless explains the wraparound shades she was wearing.

- P always opens a banana from the bottom, so of course I had to have a go.

But, despite having paid such careful attention to the narration of P's life, I completely forgot to inquire about the story behind the perfumes on the dressing table in the spare bedroom where I stayed - which featured in my 'through the keyhole' post about the way other people store/display their fragrance collections. The perfumes in question are Floris Elite and Eau de Givenchy - now that I am home I realise that the latter is in fact a women's scent:

Givenchy Eau de Givenchy edt 

Notes: bergamot, spearmint, tagetes, greens, fruits, honeysuckle, jasmine, lily of the valley, tuberose, rose, cyclamen, orris, musk, cedarwood, sandalwood, and moss.

Floris Elite

Notes: top notes are bergamot, virginia cedar, grapefruit, juniper and petitgrain; middle notes are fir, lavender and bay leaf; base notes are amber, oakmoss, musk, patchouli, vetiver, cedar and leather.

By an odd coincidence both were launched in 1980. The Givenchy perfume is definitely vintage, though I am not sure from what year.

Yup, I can't believe I didn't ask P if I could test either of them, though that does rather give me a mission for next time...

Do you ever find yourself distracted from perfume sniffing opportunities by other absorbing pursuits?

Does it ever get to the point where you question your perfumista credentials? 


(*With apologies to Dan Brown)

A paler shade of black: vintage Lancôme Magie Noire - my '80s cat's pyjamas scent, and other cat/perfume crossovers

My eBay purchase

It's over four years since I wrote a post about my lack of 'long term perfume loves', or what might perhaps better be called my decidedly chequered perfume wearing cv / career, before I was struck down by sudden onset perfume mania on 28th January, 2008 - ooh, it's my anniversary tomorrow!

I do commend that post to you if you weren't reading Bonkers back then, not least for the gallery of photos of a Greek national flag-themed T-shirt dress which becomes progressively more holey over time...Much like Greece's finances, for that matter.

In that piece I wrote about my 'fairly indifferent, casually monogamous relationship' with fragrance, and also drew up an inventory of the perfumes I had owned from my youth up until the date of my epiphany, grouping them by category - it really didn't take long as there were so few overall!:

- Unsolicited presents from boyfriends
- SA-driven impulse buys at airports
- Purchases prompted by a wish to be vaguely in tune with the Zeitgeist
- Purchase prompted by a wish to emulate my very cool lodger, Caroline

And finally, and most significantly...

- Purchase prompted by a wish to enhance my pulling powers during a decade of peak opportunity

Lancôme Magie Noire

As I mention in the post, the reason this is significant is because I somehow managed to light upon Magie Noire with no reference to outside influences as far as I can recall. And because I really thought I was the cat's pyjamas in this witchy oriental chypre. Given my aversion to civet, which was pretty entrenched until relatively recently, it is quite remarkable that I should have found such a forbidding animalic scent so bewitching.

But bewitching I found it, and to this day Magie Noire has haunted me - like one or two men from my past indeed! - as 'the one that got away'. I say 'got away' because the fragrance has predictably been reformulated on two occasions: 1986 and 2005. I think - though my memory is fuzzy - that I would have bought the 1986 version in the so-called 'mushroom top' bottle, quite possibly in the very year of its re-release. The fact that the perfume was created (in 1978) by a trio of perfumers (Gerard Goupy, Jean-Charles Niel and Yves Tanguy) and that it has a very long 'kitchen sink' kind of note list, brings to mind the scene in Macbeth with the three witches, lobbing yet another faintly disturbing ingredient into their bubbling cauldron.

'Sabbat' by Tony Grist via Wikimedia Commons

Notes: bergamot, hyacinth, mimosa, galbanum, blackcurrant buds, raspberry, iris, jasmine, lily of the valley, narcissus, rose, tuberose, ylang ylang, honey, patchouli, sandalwood, cedarwood, oakmoss, amber, labdanum, musk

Fast forward to last year, when I was given a cast off (mostly used) bottle of Magie Noire by a friend of my mother's. From the mid-90s, it hadn't aged quite as well as its owner, who is IN her 90s, but it was not off as such, and its rich, pungent, mossy, funky brew was unmistakable. I can't say I have worn it since - or not until the other day. Well, it would be nearer the mark to say it wore me, but I wasn't sure if this was because it had become so 'stewed', as it were. And the wearability of Magie Noire in my mind was almost by the by, for at this point in my perfume 'j***ney' the fragrance had taken on an iconic status in my mind, and was symbolic of my starting out on my own: first job presiding over a multi-million pound empire of coleslaw(!), first house, not first love exactly, but a major one.

The bottle I inherited from my mother's friend

And so it was that on a whim I started googling vintage bottles of Magie Noire on eBay - there were a few, one with a buy it now price of £89.99(!), albeit that was 100ml. However, it looked an even more evil colour than my 'stewed' bottle from the same era. My eye was soon caught by another bottle, the juice in which was the colour of pale straw, like the precise shade of pee we are encouraged to produce as a mark of optimum hydration. Its lack of excessive maceration looked too good to believe, and in a cynical moment I even wondered if the seller might have watered it down or even filled the bottle with 'modern' Magie Noire. Though you would have to be pretty determined to prise those black plastic shoulders off to do the swindling deed.

Source: Pinterest

Also, there was a photo of the label on the base, which matched the one on my mum's friend's bottle, bar the coding. A bit more googling led me to a blog post about carbon dating vintage Lancôme bottles, and I was able to verfiy that the bottle on eBay was from 1991. It had presumably just had a less rickety life than the one I owned, secreted in dark wardrobes and drawers perhaps, rather than living it large on bathroom windowsills or sun-drenched dressing tables. And obviously I made up the 'carbon' bit, but it does carry on our noire theme...;)

I was also amused by the byline in the eBay listing:

'Opened and spayed twice, so completely full'

Which reminded me that I need to book Truffle's op soon - once she has had the procedure, I doubt that she would want to go through it again, mind. And this unexpected cat imagery rather fits in with my cat's pyjamas scent of course. ;) Magie Noire does have the personality of a black cat to my mind - you know, a black, witch's familiar kind. It has that sensual feel of sleek fur, with an animalic underbelly - think muddy paws that have recently scattered cat litter, hehe...Then the green, sharper aspect (which is reportedly more pronounced in the edt that I have), conjures up cat claws nestling in between paw pads - retracted, but ready to be deployed at a moment's notice. The chypre facet also evokes that 'en garde' stance which cats adopt - with an arched back and fur standing on end - which phenomenon I have just learnt is called 'piloerection'.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Really and truly, Magie Noire is so far off anything I should like really - it's in the same vein as Cabochard (though lose the leather) or Ormonde Jayne Woman maybe, if you were to recast that as a vintage scent and added a civet-y base. I am puzzling over why I should have liked Magie Noire when I was so young, but of course our noses were more attuned to diva scents in the 80s - this was before the aquatic tsunami engulfed us and washed all our filth-forward scents clean off the stage. I mean I also wore Ysatis around the same time, which seems overtly animalic to me now. And the tuberose fright wig that is Giorgio Beverley Hills was also riding high, flanked by the fearsome spicy duo of Opium and Coco Chanel. So bombastic 'elevator clearers' were very much the thing in that era, just as we fell prey to a zillion frumpy fashion disasters and pottered round the house weighed down by a head full of Carmen heated rollers.

Anyway, if you are curious to read a real review, Victoria of Boisdejasmin has written a corker on Magie Noire, perfectly capturing its dark, brooding character and chypre-oriental duality.

Pukka pale straw plays (very) golden (shower?)

So I bid on the bottle, and won, and it arrived yesterday. The plastic is 'out of the box' shiny and new, and the juice as pale as advertised. The fill level is a good 25% lower, mind, and I assume the seller did not spot it under the shoulders. I am not going to make a big thing of that, because I have enough for my own needs and feel that it is still a bargain given its mint condition. The scent itself is lighter and fresher than my 'stewed' bottle, but unequivocably genuine. So I wrote to the seller to advise her about the fill level and also to inquire about the bottle's history. She offered me a box of Cerruti Image body lotion to make up for the missing perfume - which is kind of her, but I am as well stocked with body lotion as I am perfume! - and also told me more about how she came by the bottle:

"Yes the perfume is from my grandma's collection - she has over 60 perfumes that she has collected over the decades - really, very nice taste. Unfortunately due to age a lot of them are stale so we're only listing useable ones currently and going though her vast collection. Over 70% were completely unused - she had a habit of collecting and going though phases. She's still with us but we're slowly clearing out her house, as she will be moving into care in the next few months."

It's funny to think that I bought my original bottle of Magie Noire a number of years before this lady, who is someone's granny! I refuse to designate this as an old lady's scent, however, even if I am moving inexorably along that particular travelator, teetering non that delicate cusp between cougar and care home, as I like to think of it.

And finally, I will sign off with these cryptic lines from the Procul Harum classic track, a mangled nod to which features in the title of this post - there is arguably a small oblique commentary here about the acceptability of musks...

"If music be the food of love
Then laughter is its queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean"

1920s ad for Ipswich Hosiery Stockings Or IPSWITCH, should that be?!

Long Term Perfume Loves - Er....No - Just This T-Shirt Dress!

When I met Jan Evoud Vos, the founder of Puredistance, in Holland last September, I asked him what colognes he had worn before creating his own range of perfumes. I remember being struck by his answer, namely that he had worn Chanel Antaeus for the past 30 years, and currently toggles between that and his own scent, M. 30 years? Antaeus must be impressive stuff to inspire such unswerving loyalty. And 30 years is such a very long time compared to the paltry three years of my own interest in perfume - serious interest I mean, as opposed to my fairly indifferent, casually monogamous relationship with fragrance down the years.

So I decided to write a retrospective post, examining my chequered perfume-wearing past prior to my epiphany in January 2008. I shall look for any patterns in the fragrance styles I was drawn to, or reasons at least for why I wore what I wore. There is certainly no long term perfume love to mention, and I have owned so few bottles between the ages of 18 and 48 that it is possible to call each and every one of them to mind. I will group these scents by "reason for acquisition" rather than listing them in chronological order, though that would have been easy enough.

Unsolicited presents from boyfriends

Nina Ricci L'Air du Temps
Halston Woman
Chanel No 5

SA-driven impulse buys at airports

Lancôme Trésor
Thierry Mugler Angel
Estée Lauder Intuition

Purchases prompted by a wish to be vaguely in tune with the Zeitgeist

Cacherel Loulou
CK Eternity

Purchase prompted by a wish to emulate my very cool lodger, Caroline

Givenchy Ysatis

Purchase prompted by a wish to enhance my pulling powers during a decade of peak opportunity

Lancôme Magie Noire

And that is it!! Magie Noire is probably the only purchase I made without reference to outside influences, and the only scent that truly "spoke to me", and which I wore because it made me feel fantastically alluring. This is doubly curious(!) because of the presence of civet in the composition. Although I have recently come round to animalic notes a bit, it surprises me that I should have liked Magie Noire in my youth - or Ysatis for that matter. I have managed to acquire vintage samples of both scents and the civet note is quite pronounced. They will have of course been reformulated since, however, so maybe it is the more modern synthetic musks that my nose finds disagreeable.

Are there any discernible patterns in my "scent cv"?

I think not, though the position is slightly skewed by three of them having been gifts. That said, my two favourites - Magie Noire and Intuition - were both orientals, my hands-down favourite fragrance category today.

Do I own any full bottles of these today?

Yes, I rebought Intuition at the start of my hobby, the 2001 bottle having long since gone rancid on the bedroom windowsill. I felt that a fresh one should serve as the cornerstone of my new hobby, for this was the only scent I owned when sudden onset perfume mania struck. I should point out, however, that I now count this purchase amongst my early mistakes: I liked Intuition because I had virtually no other reference points in terms of oriental scents, but I find it a bit annoying now, like Stella spoilt with an overdose of grapefruit.

Apart from Intuition, which others do I not like very much anymore?

Probably all but Ysatis and Magie Noire, notwithstanding the presence of civet in both. Trésor and Angel might be all right from a great distance. L'Air du Temps is a "lesser worse" carnation scent, but the note leaves me cold. Loulou is a migraine-inducing abomination, No 5 too aldehydic and sweet, and Halston I have no recollection of at all, though nothing I have read about it in reviews suggests that I would have liked it much, though I was very fond of its donor.


So I am curious to know whether anyone out there has worn a particular scent for 30 years - or since they were a teenager, say, so as not to exclude people on ageist grounds.

And for those of you who only discovered perfume relatively recently - and I know there are a few of us - is there any rhyme or reason to what you used to wear before your conversion to full-blown perfumista?

And finally, I may not have a long term perfume love, but I do have this T-shirt dress - photographed down the ages by three different boyfriends, rather fittingly in Greece on each occasion! I loved it so much that I have been known to wear it all day, go out to dinner in it in the evening, sleep in it, and get up the next day and repeat the procedure. You may be pleased to know that my long term T-shirt dress love is about to be slung...

Top photo - Santorini (1987)



Nisyros (1992)



Tilos (1996) - am hoping you can't see the cellulite at this resolution!



Bedtime wear only (2011)

Photo of Halston Woman from yesterdaysperfume.typepad.com, photo of Magie Noire from ebay.co.uk, photo of Intuition from perfumela.com, other photos my own