Vital signs, and diving for Perles (de Lalique)

Ludlow, optimally fluffy and characterful

Contrary to all reasonable inferences from my latest (lengthy!) blogging hiatus, I am not dead. It would only be partially true to say that I sleepeth instead, though over the Easter weekend I did in fact spend 32 consecutive hours in bed: 14 of them awake and in the vice-like grip of a migraine, and the rest genuinely out for the count. But that is barely two days of my long absence. No, since I posted Part One of my US tour report - the rest of it will appear presently! - I have been unexpectedly working again in a three week stint of white heat activity that segued into a trip to France to sort out the house some more. A blog post may also be forthcoming about that eventful (and mercifully warmer ;) ) week.

Then on my return from France I hit the ground running in Airbnb mode, simultaneously hosting an acute medicine doctor providing cover at the hospital, and a scientific director at a well known pharmaceutical company. It occurred to me that had I been ill that night - rather than a little while after they had gone - one of them could have diagnosed my problem, while the other might have had just the pill for it! And then there was the 'ill'-timed migraine, from which I am slowly coming round, so I thought I would write a short post while the going was good.

And somewhere in all this blur of busyness, I rummaged in a perfume sample and decant drawer, and from its furthest recesses happened to pull out a small decant of Perles de Lalique, which I happily wore for five days' straight until it ran out. That degree of serial scent wearing is in itself noteworthy, and most untypical of me, but I think it has something to do with nostalgia for the early days of my perfume hobby, which it instantly conjured up. I have had that sample for eight or nine years at a guess, as part of a swap haul on MUA, judging from the handwriting - though whose handwriting in particular it might be is forever lost in the mists of time and gauzy musk.

Notes: bergamot, Bulgarian rose, iris, Bourbon pepper, Indonesian patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, cashmeran

Now I associate Perles de Lalique with Roja Dove, way back when I looked up to the man as the David Attenborough of fragrance, the go-to guru of our time, his ubiquitous authority marred only by the odd typo. I may even have thought he was a perfumer. You can tell this was a long time ago because the prices will have gone up hugely since, but I think you used to be able to have some kind of fragrance consultancy with him up in the sumptuous surroundings of the Haute Parfumerie in Harrods for a mere £50. Or maybe it was with one of his sidekicks? I simply can't recall, but it was certainly a lot cheaper back then, whoever it was with. I have just checked Tinternet and the price today for one hour with Benjamin, Roja Dove's 'Maitre de Consultation', is £150, redeemable against purchase.  Quite possibly a bargain indeed.

So anyway, I clearly remember reading interviews with several people who had had this profiling experience, all of whom had been 'prescribed' Perles de Lalique on the basis of their stated tastes and preferences. Which at the time I thought was a tad lazy, but arguably it is more a tribute to the crowd pleasing nature of the perfume than any lack of analysis on the M de C's part. I might well have come out of the process with the same result.

Perles de Lalique, for anyone whom it has managed to pass by, is a modern twist on a chypre, which I for one am glad about, as I tend to shy away from those retro, green, sappy, stabby numbers. Perles is very much a 'fluffy' rather than a 'spiky' scent (see my blog post on the distinction here), despite its chypre label. It isn't that I don't like a number of chypres on a case-by-case basis, much as I do dogs, but I also half expect them to take my eye out (as with the larger and more sabre-toothed end of the canine spectrum).

Source: eBay

Perles is soft and pillowy, with just an outline of a rose's vegetal and earth-stained stem in there somewhere, and in the far drydown I also detect shafts of something juicy that I am quite at a loss to pinpoint further. Now I have never claimed to be much of a perfume reviewer, but Ludlow the bear does a pretty good job of evoking the 'atmosphere' of Perles de Lalique simply by sitting there with the empty vial perched on his leg. He manages to exude the requisite character and approachability, teamed with optimal amounts of fluffiness.

Amusingly, in her original review of Perles de Lalique, Bois de Jasmin spoke of its 'consumptive pallor' - that's my kind of chypre, hehe - but revised her view more recently.

"Edit (May 2011): I revisited Perles de Lalique recently, and I feel that I may have been too harsh in my criticism. What seemed pale 5 years ago comes across as lush and opulent today. Is it because most new launches have gotten so attenuated? Or is it because I grew to love the modern chypre style? Either way, worth revisiting."

Similarly, in her review of the fragrance in 2016, Jessica of NST describes her rediscovery of this old love after a long interval as a 'productive mid-winter reunion'.

Which is all to say that Perles de Lalique is the sort of scent you might at first judge to be underwhelming, or merely forget about while it languishes at the back of a drawer, only to find much later that it absolutely hits the spot. For as well as catapulting me back to my early state of unalloyed wonder and excitement about perfume and its associated 'scene', it served as a comforting counterpoint during the hyperactive time I have had lately.

Though I still wouldn't drop $645 on the exquisite 'cactus' bottle of the extrait, which is now relegated to the status of a very scarce find on eBay.

As for what I intend to do with the empty vial of Perles de Lalique, that is a topic for another day, hopefully not too far away...!

My Funny Valentine: 10 Blessings And A Boyfriend

Now I know Valentine's Day was yesterday, but Bonkers is no stranger to retrospectives, and by the same token this is my 301st post, so as well be hanged for two delays as one, I say. I couldn't feasibly combine the giveaway with my Nanoblur post because the titles of cosmetic features are always so darn long. And I hadn't planned to do a Valentine's post at all in fact, but was moved to merge the celebratory draw one with a sort of a Valentine's post, simply because of the funny and heartwarming items I received in the post on that day.

For starters there were TEN sample vials of Belinda Brown's EDP version of her bespoke perfume Blessings, which I reviewed here in one of my recent Knightsbridge sniffing posts. I had sent an email to Belinda via her website, and was surprised at the generous quantity of samples that tumbled out of the Jiffy bag. The name of this perfume will always remind me of an expression used by a Pentecostal minister who was trying to encourage one of his congregation to look on the bright side and be grateful for the good things he had:

"You are not broke. You are just in between blessings."

This quote may be a little twee for my hardboiled sensibilities, but it makes me smile all the same, so when these 10 vials landed on the doormat I couldn't help but think: "Well, if I have been in between blessings lately, I am flush with the things now, that's for sure!

Right after I acknowledged receipt of the package, I had a surprise phone call from Belinda herself, who told me a bit more about the process by which she came to have her custom scent created by Roja Dove, and how it was gradually rolled out on a wider basis. For Belinda, Blessings (in its parfum version, certainly) conjures up the image of someone lazing on a yacht, and she also likened the scent to "a good bag" - in metaphorical essence that is, rather than smell as such.

The pomade which was the original inspiration for her scent was a bit like Vaseline in its consistency, but comprised a bewitching concoction of jasmine and vanilla that apparently made every other girl within nostril shot want to be her friend! I compared the EDP launch to a high street garment whose design has trickled down from the catwalks, and Belinda agreed that her scent had followed a similar path. Tara and I definitely smelt the extrait in Harrods; the EDP does smell unequivocably like a mainstream scent, ie less lush and tropical and more delicately floral, but it is still perfectly pleasant. Quite lemony to my nose in fact.

Here are the notes again:

Top Notes: Bergamot, Lemon, Mandarin
Heart Notes: Jamine de Grasse, Rose De Mai
Base Notes: Cedar, Sandalwood, Tonka, Vanilla

In overall quality and vibe - and even juice colour! - I was reminded of CK Beauty (which I note also has jasmine and cedar), but Blessings is more citrusy. I suppose I have only ever associated Roja Dove with niche/luxe releases up to now, but many other perfumers are known for a mix of niche and mainstream creations. So it is feminine and pretty, but not remotely luxurious in feel - which at a tenth of the price of the extrait you can hardly expect.

So that was a happy turn of events, and then my package from Ari of Scents of Self arrived, containing a purse spray of Kate Walsh Boyfriend which she had kindly custom purchased for me. How apt is that on such a day? There was also a decant of Un Bois Vanille I had bought to help swell her Valentine's fund - check out that funky insulation tape - the devil (or a sprinkling of scary skulls at any rate) really is in the detail!

Boyfriend is a unisex scent I have not yet seen in the shops in Europe, and that I have been wanting to try for ages. Some time ago now I remembered hearing positive reports about this scent, which is supposed to combine aspects of Kate Walsh's ex-boyfriend's cologne (they had split up, and she missed it) with floral notes more squarely aimed at a female wearer. I had a hunch that this was one of those quiet scents that are very "me", and that I wouldn't regret a blind buy, and so it has proved.

Notes via EauMg's review: dark plum, myrrh, night blooming jasmine, benzoin tears, skin musk, golden amber, vanilla woods

So I immediately applied it on both wrists and my first thought was: "Oooh, an oily Eau Duelle!" Yes, the rather sweet, oily, anisic, borderline boozy top note took me back a bit initially. My recent wrestling with Myrrhiad sprang to mind, for example, along with a jumble of unhappy memories of Lolita Lempicka and Kenzo Jungle L'Eléphant. This note faded somewhat after a bit and didn't even trouble me unduly at the outset. Maybe I am on the cusp of becoming a born again liquor and licorice fan.

My overall impression of Boyfriend is of a sheer "woody amber vanilla" skin scent, quite heavy on the vanilla, which is rarely a bad thing in my book, and with this background note of licorice or something of that aniseedy ilk. The amber emits a warm radiant hum or glow, like a one bar heater in a big room, and the texture is not at all powdery or fuzzy like L'Eau Ambrée, for example, another office-appropriate scent. Texturally it is more like regular Prada, indeed notewise I can see similarities in the anisic woodiness. As the vanilla asserted itself more and more, I was also reminded of Lacoste pour Femme, though the Lacoste is sweeter and more feminine:

Notes: Jamaican pepper and purple freesia; middle notes of white heliotrope, Iranian jasmine, hibiscus, Bulgarian rose absolute and ambrette seed absolute Himalayan cedarwood, sandalwood and incense

And finally, the plum note dimly recalled D & G L'Eau The One, though L'Eau The One had a darker fruitiness to it I think, and I gave my sample away in the end, so I don't want to overplay that particular comparison.

Notes: Bergamot, Mandarin, Lychee, Peach, Plum, Floral Muguet, Jasmine, Madonna Lily, Amber, Musk, Moss, Vanilla, Vetyver

Ah, but hold on a moment: "Floral Muguet", eh? Well, oddly enough, in the marketing blurb about Boyfriend reproduced on Now Smell This, there is a reference to "muguet floralcy". That involves both a bizarre word and a bizarre concept. What other kind of muguet might there be than a floral one, I wonder?

"In the fragrance creation process, Kate was inspired by the scent of a 'guy on a girl', and combined notes of amber and woods, with a bright floral scent that women love. The fragrance has a bright muguet floralcy with dark plum and myrrh on top, with night blooming jasmine."

So in summary, Kate Walsh Boyfriend is a radiant ambery, woody, incensey vanilla, warm, comforting, glowing thing. If you fell hard recently for Myrrhiad and it is out of your league pricewise, this might be worth checking out, strange as that may sound. And I don't know who Kate was dating before, but am confident this scent will make a decent substitute.


Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the readers of Bonkers about Perfume: regular, occasional, brand new and lapsed(!), for having read my blog in the past two and a bit years. I know a lot of people lurk here - though a few have de-lurked lately, also back channel, which was lovely - but anyone reading is welcome, including the vast majority who land here by mistake while looking for guacamole recipes or swingers' clubs in Cleveland.


Photo of white ghost and heart box from annethelibrarian via Flickr CC, photo of Boyfriend T-shirt from blogefl via Flickr CC, photo of mask from MadEmoiselle Sugar via Flickr CC, other photos my own

A Knightsbridge Sniffing Blitz With Tara Of Olfactorias Travels: Part One - Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie At Harrods

Following my visit to Les Senteurs, I jumped on a tube to Knightsbridge to meet up with Tara, regular contributor to Olfactorias Travels, loyal reader of numerous perfume blogs (including Bonkers!), and all-round good egg. I was very much looking forward to meeting Tara, because we had both separately met her co-blogger Birgit in person, and by the two of us meeting we were "completing the perfumista triangle", so to speak. As in drawing in its hypotenuse, type of thing. And I also wanted to thank Tara in person for the spontaneous gifts of perfume she has sent me over the past year. So did I actually thank her? Oh shoot, I don't remember! Tara, thank you for the Tauer and Dior samples!

We had agreed to meet at the side entrance of Harrods: I said I would be wearing my "good" ie sample-scoring coat, while Tara said she would be in a "dark grey wool" coat. In the heat of the moment, I forgot the words "dark" and "wool", and was flummoxed to find an assortment of 30-something women loitering by the tube entrance, all dressed in grey coats of various styles. It was Tara who spotted me in the end, and in my defence her coat was at the darker end of the grey spectrum, so we agreed to call it quits, and the coat "charcoal".

Tara is even more striking in person than in her avatar on Facebook, and having recently discovered the "Auto-Enhance" feature on my iPhone, which confers a lovely golden tinge on images and makes people's eyes look darker and more expressive, I can confirm that Tara is in fact an "Auto-Enhanced" version of Julia Roberts.

ROJA DOVE HAUTE PARFUMERIE

Introductions over, we decided to head up to the Haute Parfumerie on the fifth floor without further ado, following that tried and tested perfumista strategy of NOT leaving the best till last, for your nose will invariably have given up the ghost by the time you make it to the last stop on your itinerary. We spent a good while in Roja Dove's - "store" doesn't do the place justice - more like "boudoir" or "plush yurt", thinking especially of the inner sanctum area festooned with banks of plump cushions in jewel colours.

We browsed on our own for a bit, starting with Vero Kern's trio of scents: Tara knew I was keen to try these after reading glowing reviews of the line by Birgit. My expectations were quite low, not because I doubted that these would be exceptional creations - for everything I had read pointed to that - but because I felt they simply might not be my style of scent.

Well, I was most pleasantly surprised as it turned out - by ONDA in particular. It was predictably retro in feel, but I couldn't get over how smoothly blended it was - it didn't have the excessively powdery aldehydes that keep some classic chypres firmly anchored in the past. Rather, ONDA had the fluid texture of slippery olive silk, and reminded me of a "thinner gauge", less fruity version of Puredistance Antonia. ONDA definitely had at least one foot in the here and now, and if I had a sample, I would wear it.

RUBJ was more or less what I expected, and if anything even brighter and juicier. It was an exuberant, tuberose-forward, fruity white floral scent, if such a category exists. It was a little bit like a skankless Roja Dove Scandal crossed with Atelier Colognes Orange Sanguine. On balance, I don't think I would wear it - I might dare to do big florals, but probably not big fruit.

KIKI we more or less glossed over, because we both found the lavender note offputting, but I wondered if it might have had the potential to be a lavender-y Onda.

Next up, Tara was curious to take a sniff of IRISSS by XERJOFF, another rather pricy brand. Now you might think that a perfume with such a contrived collection of sibilant consonants doesn't deserve to be tested, but Tara is a big fan of iris, so we decided to overlook the self-conscious name. The opening of IRISSS was promising, then Tara had some concerns about the level of musk that seemed to be coming through, and I can't recall what her final verdict on this one was.

After a while, we were joined by Marcel, the SA in attendance that day. He took us through the latest Roja Dove releases (DANGER, RECKLESS, INNUENDO & AOUD) and drew our attention to another notable fragrance we might have overlooked on our own - BLESSINGS. Blessings is an exotic floral (more tropical-smelling than those notes suggest), originally created as a bespoke scent for a client called Belinda Brown. It was inspired by her childhood memories of Nigeria, notably a body cream called Stella Pomade. So delighted was she with Roja Dove's custom creation, that she felt it was too good to be reserved for her sole use, and asked him to produce Blessings as a limited edition parfum for her friends. Some time later, she collaborated with Roja Dove on the commercial release of an EDP version, which retails at the very reasonable price point of £75 per 100ml (vs £675 for 100ml of the LE parfum!). Blessings is well worth a sniff for fans of big white florals, and a trace of it still smells pretty on card, over a week later...

Top: Bergamot, Lemon, Mandarin
Heart: Jasmine de Grasse, Rose De Mai
Base: Cedar, Sandalwood, Tonka, Vanilla

Next up, Tara and I chuckled to ourselves as Marcel demonstrated the four new Roja Dove fragrances by lifting the chunky lids of each bottle and inviting us to sniff the insides. For here was yet another "perfume delivery system", to add to the list I compiled with the help of readers in a recent post.

I cannot truthfully remember much about the new Roja Doves, though the Aoud one was refined and elegant, and a far cry from the jarring medicinal quality of some of the bolder Montales. Aoud is the top selling perfume in the whole of Harrods apparently - I suspect by value. For the unit price of the Swarowski crystal-bedecked parfum strength bottle costs just shy of £500 - you would only have to sell one of those for every TEN bottles of a bog standard Versace or Gucci downstairs in the main perfume hall.

The AOUD only seems to be available in the parfum version, giving it an instantly exclusive feel, reinforced by the glitzy presentation. DANGER, RECKLESS & INNUENDO meanwhile (where does he get these names from? Answer: Thesaurus entries for RISKY or LIAISON?) are £295 for 50ml of the parfum and a whopping £195 for 100ml of the EDP. That is an increase of over 100% compared with the £95 I paid for my bottle of SCANDAL in 2008! Now I have heard of charging "what the market will bear", but - unless there has been a calamitous jasmine harvest or something in the meantime - that price hike does seem a little scandalous...

Although my impressions of the new Roja Doves are too jumbled to record, I will just list the notes for each, with snippets from the website description, because I know Tara and I did rather fancy at least a couple of them - though I think maybe not the one with the aldehydes, which was a bit more retro in the way I describe above. I have scribbled a note to myself to the effect that DANGER reminded me of MCDI Parfums Promesse de L'Aube (we also had a quick whip through that range!), but based on the notes I don't suppose it should really.

DANGER (rich, soft oriental - fresh, sweet, warm, and sensual)

Notes: jasmine, violet, orris

RECKLESS (sweet floral - sparkling, fresh, warm and sensual)

Notes: aldehydes, rose, amaryllis

INNUENDO (sweet floral - fresh, warm, powdery, and soft)

Notes: violet, orris, musk

If my beloved Guerlain Plus Que Jamais is no more, there may be comfort to be had in one of these, but a retrial on skin is called for rather than the ephemeral impression conveyed by "in-lid sniffing", or even testing on card.

I also introduced Tara to TRULY by Stephen Burlingham, which I had come across in Germany last year. Tara liked its cool greenness too, and (somewhat foolishly) I even got as far as inquiring again about the price of the different sizes. This is because Marcel told us Truly may not be long for this world, possibly because the other two scents in the trilogy (MADLY and DEEPLY) never saw the light of day, and Truly now looks a bit silly on its own. The dull chunky refill bottle seemed the most cost-effective option, which struck me as rather a sad state of affairs. For that is the thing about a visit to the Haute Parfumerie - you have to steel yourself to the fact that many of the perfumes you are likely to covet will forever remain an unobtainable dream - or at best, a glint in The Perfume Court's eye...

We ended up shooting the breeze with Marcel about our fragrance preferences generally, and he encouraged us to try a couple of the new D & Gs and Van Cleef & Arpels Precious Oud downstairs, which struck me as refreshingly impartial of him. We explained that we were both bloggers, and the name "Olfactorias Travels" seemed to ring a bell in Marcel's mind. He thought he recalled a lady called Birgit who had brought a party of people to the Haute Parfumerie, as part of an escorted tour of some top London sights. "She's a travel agent, right?" he inquired. Well, Birgit has many roles: wife, mother, blogger, budding author, resting pyschotherapist etc, but Tara and I were pretty certain that Birgit was not also a travel agent on the quiet, and put him straight on this point. Then we got to chatting about Twitter, which Marcel was quite keen to investigate, and as we said our warm goodbyes, I said I would look out for him on there.

Hmm, I have just had a look and there is a person on Twitter with the same name. However, judging by his hair colour and byline, which references fast food and alcohol (though not in a perfumery context...), something tells me it probably isn't the same chap. But I will keep checking in!

In Part 2: Tara and I go downstairs, brave the tester-toting SAs in the main perfume hall of Harrods, and do more than ogle the high end makeup...


Photo of Harrods from psigrist on Flickr, photo of Vero Profumo range from iiiparfum.com, photo of Blessings from blessings-perfume.com, photo of Roja Dove Danger from harrods.com, photo of Truly from Beauty Affair, photo of escalator from rjhuttondfw on Flickr, photo of Tara my own

The Perfume Diaries At Harrods: Part One - The Exhibition

Having nearly completed my current project, on a last minute whim I decided to go down to London yesterday, to look around The Perfume Diaries exhibition at Harrods and catch one of the few remaining evening events which have been running in tandem. The one I attended, "The Science of Scent", along with a brief encounter with Katie Puckrik(!), will be featured in a separate post.

In advance of the trip, I had read Nina's post on Now Smell This about the House of Guerlain event a couple of weeks ago, and was mindful of observing the implicit dress code. Nina had counselled "no denim" and "good earrings", and her vignette of the audience: "Lots of beautiful people, amazing shoes, Chanel handbags, men in makeup..." told me all I needed to know about the degree of sartorial effort demanded by the occasion.

Given that the most prestigious setting for an evening out in my town is a Pizza Express in a former Nat West bank, an acute wardrobe crisis promptly ensued. As is customary on such occasions, three possible outfits were submitted for Mr Bonkers' approval, and a grey linen shift dress swiftly chosen. In the spirit of full disclosure, the frock in question was a bargain in the Kookai closing down sale in Chester, moreover I have taken to deliberately wearing it backwards, as the official neckline is unflatteringly high and the back disconcertingly low. I knew I ran the risk that eagle-eyed delegates might spot the pockets facing round the wrong way on my backside, but I was counting on the distracting effect of the bright green chiffony cardigan I wore on my top half. Perhaps if more of Kookai's customers had taken the initiative of wearing its garments in eccentricly innovative ways, the store might still be trading.

On the earring front, after much agonising about the precise meaning of "good" (valuable?, classically elegant?, not of the "triple-tier cascading chandelier" variety, or J-Lo-esque gold hoops the size of dinner plates?), I plumped in the end for black lace butterflies purchased in Bruges on the Choco Chanel trip last December. These are the closest I have to signature "flittersniffer" earrings, though in truth if anyone had got close enough to me to clock their butterfly shape, they would have had a worrying chance of spotting the Kookai label inside the front of my dress...

At lunchtime Mr Bonkers ran me to the station, and during the two and a half hour journey to Euston it became rapidly clear to me that linen and long journeys do not mix. As well as saying: "Hand wash with a gentle swishing motion", the care instructions should read: "Do not wear for extended periods" and "On no account sit". After a quick foray into Zara to change some trousers bought in Germany the other week, I arrived on the fourth floor of Harrods sweaty, crumpled, travel-worn, and encumbered with bags and sundry paraphernalia (camera, notebook, water bottle, spare tights, new Zara trousers, copy of the Evening Standard, exhibition programme etc).

And already, a good hour and a half before the event was slated to start, people were starting to foregather, and one quick scan of the room was enough to confirm that the effort spent on my outfit selection was deeply warranted, even if the execution fell short of the mark. I bet half the room had only toddled round the corner from Belgravia and Beauchamp Place, instead of sitting scrunched up all afternoon in a CrossCountry train.

Yes, many of the audience who were now filing in thick and fast - and laying claim to the perspex chairs with upmarket carrier bags - exuded an air of wealth and self-assurance that is unique to the capital. There were patrician-looking men with aquiline noses and polished brogues, and their youthful counterparts in dark suits, with slicked back hair and oversized geek glasses. One young woman wore a clinging black sheath dress with a zip that ran the full length of her back, while others favoured tailored skirt suits in striking monochrome or jewel colours. Precipitous shoe boots and stilettos completed the look. However, I was pleased to spot a smattering of seemingly "ordinary people" like me, who had made a bit of an effort - a smart blouse here, a dressy necklace there - but who didn't look like typical Harrods customers, let alone people for whom it is their "corner shop".

Some readers might argue that this Balzacian preoccupation with outfits and scene-setting in general is irrelevant to the matter in hand, namely the exhibition itself. But the diverse and unfamiliar audience brought home to me the fact that the bit of the perfume world that I inhabit, the blogosphere, is just a tiny piece in the industry jigsaw. I couldn't help wondering who these people were exactly and what specific angle on perfume had prompted them to come. For I assumed they did all have one, and hadn't simply got lost on the way back from Juicy Couture...

I imagined that some of the audience might work in retail, advertising or PR. Others may have been perfumers themselves, representatives of trade associations or industry insiders of some kind. There may well have been a handful of perfumistas from the same blogs I follow, to whom I could perhaps have put a name if not a face. Others might have been beauty journalists or bloggers. Some may have been consumers who liked perfume well enough, but no more or less than handbags or scarves, and who were just curious to learn more about how it is made.

I found myself wishing that the programme contained a photograph of the audience, with one of those white silhouette diagrams next to it, with each person-shaped blob numbered and identified in the key below. You know, like in the Sunday supplements when they do a feature on "Fifteen Up And Coming Young British Architects" or "Who's Who in Independent Film Making Today".

After bagging a couple of seats for fellow fumehead Farah and myself, using some of my more bothersome belongings, I wandered round the exhibtion, in so far as the growing and rather noisy throng of people permitted. It was jolly hard to juggle camera, camera case, pen, notebook and handbag-with-important-valuables-in-it - looking back, the thought of someone harbouring pilfering designs on my handbag seems faintly absurd - so after a while I gave up on the note-taking and concentrated on the photography, even though I knew that I would never remember what was what afterwards.

By way of background, the idea of a perfumery exhibition was the brainchild of Emma Jayne Hockley, Perfumery and Cosmetics Buyer at Harrods. She chatted it through with Roja Dove, whose book "The Essence of Perfume" has already documented the socio-economic evolution of fragrance in print, and together they came up with a way to show "the chronological progression of scent in an exhibition that wouldn't be staid or museumlike."

The Perfume Diaries start with a display devoted to the raw materials used in fragrance and how they are sourced, together with an explanation of the perfumery triangle. The remaining displays chronicle the history of perfumery, bottle making and advertising from the 1800s to the present day. At intervals are little smelling stations, with frosted glass stoppers impregnated with different scents: the first with raw materials, the others with famous fragrances such as Bandit, Jicky and No 5, Nuit de Longchamps, Shalimar and Je Reviens.

The most iconic scents and bottle styles are given particular prominence, as Emma Jayne Hockley explains: "The fragrances featured in the exhibition have been selected for their impact on the perfume industry - perhaps for a groundbreaking and influential scent, an original flacon design or a shocking advertising campaign. Many are enduring classics that will never be forgotten and, indeed, some remain bestsellers to this day."

While the collection has enormous value as a historical and social legacy, Roja Dove's overriding motive in curating the exhibition is to stir the public on an emotional level:

"My hope is that The Perfume Diaries makes you lose your soul to the beauty and creativity that is the world of perfumery."

For myself, I am already sold on the beauty of perfumery, so in that sense he is preaching to the converted. However, I have never before seen so many exquisite bottles gathered together in one place. Some were sourced from Harrods' "brand partners", some from Roja Dove's private collection - there isn't one I wouldn't love to take home and treat with the reverence accorded to a sacred object.

So on the level of "transcendental, non-specific perfume bottle drop dead gorgeousness", I lost my soul completely, and in the heat of the moment the brand and fragrance names seemed frankly unimportant. Over on Basenotes, Grant Osborne adopted a much more business-like approach when compiling his own photographic record of the exhibits, so hop over there if you are interested in chapter and verse...


All photos my own (with permission from the organisers), except for the cover image from the programme shown at the top of the post

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.