'Between a rock hyrax and a festival': a pleasantly pungent Papillon pitstop en route to Rockaway Beach

Back when I wrote my 'not a review' of Salome by Papillon Artisan Perfumes - which featured the perturbed reactions of my friend Lizzie and her children to the perfume's thoroughly 'unnecessary' behaviour on my skin, to wit, that I shouldn't really be encouraged to wear this, especially not outdoors - Liz Moores expressed an interest in smelling Salome for herself on my skin, to see if I did indeed amp up the skank factor, as Liz's own skin does. And it wasn't long before a suitable opportunity arose, for I found myself bound for Bognor Regis and a 'boutique indoor music festival' called Rockaway Beach, and realised that Papillon's HQ was only a short squirt away up the M27. So I arranged with Liz that I would pop in on Saturday afternoon for a quick pitstop en route to the coast.

It is well documented - also in my own 'okay, let's call it a review for once' of Angelique - that Liz lives in splendid isolation in the middle of the New Forest. Well, isolation only in the sense of proximity to neighbours maybe, for the household is quite populous, comprising a shifting kaleidoscope of up to five children and (extremely) assorted animals.

The first thing to mention about my visit is that Liz gives good directions. Sat nav is positively superfluous when you are armed with such safety-conscious and meticulous instructions - including a current assessment of the degree of obstructive vegetation that might be compromising local signage:

"On this bend you need to turn right (signposted as a dead end IF you can see the sign which is battling with nature). BE CAREFUL HERE as it's a blind bend!!!"

Papillon HQ, where you are never more than 6ft away from a perfume bottle

I forgot to mention that I was a bit late getting to Liz's house, on account of roadwork-related lane closures on the A34 south of Newbury. Consequently, my first words to her after 'Hello' were - in a for me uncharacteristically ungrammatical blurt - 'I have four unreasonable demands I hope that's okay toilet cup of tea may I fill up my water bottle and charge my phone thank you where is the toilet in fact?'

A few minutes later, I was comfortably perched at the island in Liz's vast kitchen, while Liz's partner Simon put the kettle on, Liz cut me a piece of gooey chocolate cake, and my phone charged quietly on a cable reel normally used with the lawn mower. Over tea, I was treated to a smartphone tour of son Rowan's collection of 'monster' images. Well, in fairness some of them may have been his older sisters, but the more we swiped through, the blurrier our definitions seemed to become.

After tea, we adjourned to the living room, which was equally vast and notable for its squashy sofas, comfy jumble of cushions, and occasional stately Bengal threading its way through your legs. At this stage in proceedings Liz sniffed me wearing Salome, whose delicate powdery trail she likened to the way the scent played on her eldest daughter Jasmine's skin. I was quick to point out that Salome had been on me for seven hours already, and promptly reapplied it so that Liz could experience it straight out of the starting blocks in all its raunchy splendour. 'Oh okaay, now that is rather funky!' she laughed. We chatted about some samples I had received lately, and about the different ways natural materials and aromachemicals behave in perfume compositions, eg how relatively predictable a synthetic ingredient is compared to a natural. We agreed that they both have a role to play, and indeed the Papillon range of fragrances seems to gravitate 'naturally' to a 50/50 ratio of each.

Next up, I had a tour of Liz's studio with its floor to ceiling shelves laden with glass bottles and metal canisters of perfumery ingredients. Some of these were thematically grouped according to the perfume they go into, while others were part of Liz's extensive library of materials. A number sported intriguingly oddball names like 'Bornax' and 'Okanaul'. Okay, so I made both of those up, but trust me when I say that the correct names (which I can't immediately bring to mind) were every bit as random. I do remember another bottle that was definitely called Pink Lotus, and which smelt beguilingly of Toffos.

Source: Twitter

I got to sniff a selection of raw materials, including some of the ones that went into Angelique, Tobacco Rose and Salome. I was liberally anointed with African Stone - and not just hyrax, but styrax, castoreum and red bitter orange, mimosa and Turkish rose, plus a foresty number named after the area in France where I accidentally fetched up in a nudist camp. I also had two different mods on my arms of White Moth, a tiare-centric work in progress, and of course the recently refreshed application of Salome! If the truth be told, I was a bit pungent by now, veering to pongy possibly, but I didn't care...

Liz also showed me her stack of notebooks, full of handwritten formulae and jottings about her impressions of different materials, both on their own and in various accords. It was reassuring to see that her work bench bore the scars of battle in the form of numerous marks, scratches and stains(!), as I have managed to strip the polish off my dining room table in a couple of obvious places due to accidents while decanting...;(

'Piccadilly patio': the cat wanted out and the dogs wanted in

Then we were looking out of the window at one point onto a patio area behind the kitchen - specifically because Jicky the cat had escaped and was sloping off towards the clothes line, prompting Liz to ring Simon and ask him to go and catch her (I told you it was a big house!) - and this was the trigger for Liz to tell me a bit about the creation of Tobacco Rose. I admitted right off the bat that while I admire Tobacco Rose, I find a bit prickly/fuzzy and austere, and neither upbeat nor sultry - nor particularly feminine. It's quite haylike on me - and kind of autumnal - and that's as much as I could say about it, other than the fact that I am leaning ever more towards Salome, the surprise grower of the range for a former hater of animalics!

Me being quite haylike on hay, c1974

Liz could understand why Tobacco Rose might not have clicked with me, and explained that it was a perfume with which she had wrestled for a long time, scrapping and tinkering in an endless and at times furious cycle. For by her own admission, she had been in a bad place in her personal life at that time, and the catalyst for Tobacco Rose had been the combination of this inner turmoil and the sight of the trees ranged around her house and the carpet of autumnal leaves on the flagstones of the patio. I think she may have mentioned that it was also windy and/or raining - and even if it wasn't, in the interests of pathetic fallacy I think we can reasonably add some turbulent weather conditions into the mix. So, short story short Tobacco Rose was created in anger, as it were - or an ongoing state of emotional upset - which got me wondering whether the finished scent embodies that conflicted mood at its heart, and whether that is why I didn't bond with it. Liz also lobbed in the observation that if she cooks when she is in a bit of a strop, she reckons that her dishes actually taste different. Which interesting notion is probably fodder for a whole other blog post on its own. ;)

And before we left the studio, because I had been swooning quietly over the scent strip smeared in this, Liz very kindly scooped some flakes of eye-wateringly expensive orris concrete into a plastic bag for me. I have since decanted them into a plastic container that originally had ear plugs in it, given to me some time ago by DJ and blogger Ron Slomowicz of Notable Scents. I knew it would come in handy some day.

Then having retrieved my phone charger, but forgotten to fill my water bottle, I followed Liz on a quick tour of the snake collection, which - in case anyone wants to avoid them - was just to the left of the cockatiels in the hall. They are housed in a sort of filing cabinet system the family refer to as 'racks', and Liz pulled out a few drawers to see which scaly residents were out and who was in - as in under their little platform to the rear of each drawer. Cleo was out but I am very pleased to report that Phantom, the ueber-creepy white Royal Python, was firmly IN, and out of sight. I also noticed a bottle of Hoegaarden on the worktop to one side. Who knew that pedigree snakes are partial to the odd beer?

From Papillon HQ, it was on to Bognor, though not before I had stopped to photograph this wonderfully vintage petrol station in the next village.

The Rockaway Beach Festival is held at Butlins, which has come a long way as a holiday destination since its Red Coat and 'hi-de-hi' days, though if you ask me my honest opinion, not nearly far enough, haha. I was staying offsite in a very traditional B & B, so much so that I got ticked off the next morning at breakfast for inadvertently taking the communal jug of orange juice to my table, and spilling a drop in the process. Meanwhile, the band I had come to see (The Monochrome Set) and its merchandise team had rooms in the two main onsite hotels, memorable for their whimsical touches of nautical imagery and 'towel animals'.

Photo courtesy of Caryne Pearce

The Monochrome Set were playing the Centre Stage, in an auditorium that was disconcertingly reminiscent of a channel ferry, but without the slight rocking motion and dedicated lounge for long distance lorry drivers. But it was afterwards, over a takeaway pizza in the reception area of The Wave Hotel, that the Papillon story continues...For it was here - notwithstanding the fact that we were eating - that I invited the band to smell the remnants of neat African Stone(!) as well as Salome, which was about six hours in now on the second application of the day, and partially washed off by a pre-gig shower. Yes, Bognor may go down in history as the first time I have tried to un-perfume myself before a gig rather than the reverse.

Butlins with its distinctive meringue peaks

The band duly sniffed both the remnants of Salome AND the African Stone, intrigued by my explanation that it was the fossilised excrement of the rock hyrax, an animal I tried to big up by likening it to a robust yet endearing variant on the guinea pig. They continued to chew thoughtfully on slices of the family size pepperoni pizza several of us were sharing, and didn't bat an eyelid - or flare a nostril in disgust.

Now my wearing of actual African Stone may have been a lifetime one off, but in the light of this rock 'n' roll nonchalance in the face of the ne plus ultra of poo, I plan to wear Salome to the next gig without a backward glance...

Segregated scent strips in the festival programme

Papillon Perfumery Angélique: reprising the notions of the 'suggestible schnoz' and 'unrepresentative squirt'

An animal-loving perfumer piqued the toys' interest

This is not the post I had planned to write next. It is not even the one after that, or the one after that again - in fact I never intended to write about Papillon Perfumery's Angélique at all. And maybe I still won't, or not very much.  There are numerous bloggers who have done far more eloquent justice to this softly elegant scent than me. I am, however, conducting an interesting experiment with two samples of Angélique right now, so I feel I should log my thoughts more or less as they occur.

But first a few words about Liz Moores herself, starting with the fact that it takes some considerable discipline to remember to put the 's' at the end of her name.

So yes, Papillon Perfumery was launched just the other week, with Liz Moores' (note careful placing of apostrophe) trio of scents - Tobacco Rose, Anubis and Angélique - available exclusively in Les Senteurs (in the UK) and Indigo Perfumery in Cleveland, Ohio. Liz has, however, been gradually building up a following in the perfume community on social media networks in the run up to the launch, engaging (sorry, that most annoying of words just slipped out!) in a completely natural and 'regular' way with bloggers and perfumistas. This is in stark contrast to the more pointed tactics of some PR people, who bluntly ask you to collaborate with the companies they represent, or who send you a Facebook friend request, only to fire off an invitation to 'like' a brand's page about two milliseconds after your acceptance. Even though I have often never heard of the fragrance house / distributor / pop-up shop / trade fair / bar of artisanal soap with trailing olive foliage motif in question. Nooo.... Meanwhile Liz is more likely to chat to you about mowing the lawn or the fact that the bananas are on the turn in the village shop. So refreshingly organic was Liz's approach to creating interest in her upcoming fragrance line that Nick Gilbert felt moved to devote a whole post to the success of her marketing approach.

'Would you like some Mr Muscle with those?'

Moreover, Liz is what my late mother would have termed "an absolute hoot". She is charmingly unstuffy and informal, glamorous and flamboyant, with boundless energy, a supreme ability to multitask, and a bee-stung pout to die for. She operates her perfume company from her "open house" home in the depths of The New Forest, a location so remote that you are lucky to have Internet access a couple of hours a day, and where it is a matter of conjecture whether the aforementioned village shop will actually stock the item of which you have just run out. You know you live in a far flung spot when you instinctively check the best before dates on staples such as pasta and tinned food. I should also mention that Liz has five children, including a floating graduate daughter and a baby (for a while I seemed to be continually stumbling across additional offspring on Facebook - typically pictured holding pets or interfering with the printer - but I think I have logged them all now). It is worth noting that all the children are commendably named after flowers and trees.

And yes, let's not forget the pets...there's a tabby cat called Jicky, a pure white cat called Miss Golly Gosh, and a visiting cat called Hero (at the time of writing); there are two retrievers, umpteen "snakelings" (Liz's word) - including a fat pink "ivory morph", which looks like a disconcerting cross between chicken fillets and a Pirelli tyre, or an extruded frankfurter that went a bit wrong. Oh, and not forgetting two tawny owls, one of them called Freckle. As Liz explains:

"If you've never taken a selfie with an owl, you haven't lived."  

Then there are horses, though not in the house, as far as I could gather. There used to be chickens, which mostly succumbed to a fox, while the remaining one, Cherry, died a while later of natural causes. In short, Liz presides over a vibrant, tumbling, Noah's ark of a household, and how she manages to run a business at the same time is a minor miracle. Well, the children do their bit, to be fair. Her little boy has been pressed into service tidying up her studio and doing a spot of clerical work. If you ask me, positioning chores as fun is absolutely the way to go in modern parenting.

But back to the experiment...this involves a vial which Liz Moores sent me a month or two ago, and one which arrived  the other day, to help me check out my theory that different samples of Angélique may smell different. This whole notion was prompted by my experience in store at Les Senteurs the other day, when I sprayed my skin from the tester of Angélique and (at last) found the opening to be more iris-y - in line with what I took to be the general view - and less aquatic-metallic-angelica-y than on my very first trial from the original vial I received. Though this watery opening chimes with Tara's finding in her review on OT:

"There's a gorgeous spring-like, dewy freshness at this opening stage that is no doubt due to the champaca." Tara goes on to note - of the perfume's later stages, I infer - that "there's a feeling of melancholia about it too. It's bittersweet, like a smile tinged with sadness."

Strips of candied angelica ~ Source: redmoor.net

To recap, in my initial sprays from the first vial - and without any reference to the notes - I thought I was dealing with a sparkling bright floral, but one which was blended with a flinty, watery facet that smelt like angelica. Angelica is a note with a slightly offbeat, spiky quality, so I seem to have got Tara's melancholic vibe from the outset.  Whereas in Les Senteurs my first spray from the tester went straight into the fuzzy, powdery iris and mimosa accord, which is what triggered the idea of conducting a side-by-side sample test back home.

I can now report that the new sample smells just like the tester ie quite intense, soft, powdery, and noticeably iris-y from the off.  It has the wistful quality of an Après L'Ondée - or a L'Heure Bleue that has thankfully gone easy on the heliotrope. What is more interesting though is that I have now sprayed the first vial on several further occasions, and each time it gets more and more like the tester in store and Sample 2 and less like my intial impression of angelica rather than iris.

Following repeated testings of Sample 1, the difference between its successive openings has now progressively morphed (not unlike the Moores snake) from "90% more like angelica vs iris" to 40% to its current (comically low!) level of around 10-20%.  I am now so befuddled by the whole business that I have got to the point where I don't even understand my own percentages, so please don't ask me to clarify. When I compare it with Sample 2, I do still detect a slight difference between the vials even now, though it is becoming harder and harder to put my finger on. A less fuzzy, more lucid aspect maybe?

Source: muminboden.se

But what of those early sprays from Sample 1, which had reminded me a little of my first exposure to an angelica note, in FM Angéliques sous la Pluie? That also has cedarwood in it, but is more manly and plangent - I'd go so far as to liken it to the olfactory equivalent of the Moomin Groke, a big lumpen grey gloomy hulk, but in a good way - you know, like rolling fog in Northern California on a November morning. I really don't wish to overplay the FM analogy though, for while Papillon Angélique also has a poignant facet due to the angelica and cedarwood, the mimosa mitigates it with a much more cheerful, springlike vibe.  And though I can't actually pick out the osmanthus, it is doubtless contributing to the warmer, more gourmand character overall - at no point does Angélique stray into full-on funereal, cryogenic or overly carroty territory like some other famous iris scents.

Anyway, to answer that question I dived back into a post of mine from 2009 that few if any readers will remember, I don't suppose, entitled "A Probably Preposterous Notion - The Unrepresentative Squirt" (I was big on capitals back then).  In it I puzzle over why I initially thought Guerlain Idylle a run-of-the-mill fruity floral, only to later discern its pretty rosy musk accord and see resemblances to Narciso Rodriguez for Her and JHAG Lady Vengeance. Having given the matter due consideration, in that post I dismiss the notion of suggestibility, ie that I might have been influenced by the opinion of other bloggers who had drawn this comparison with NR for Her et al - because I was aware of that view at the start when it came off to my nose as a more indifferent mainstream scent. So in the absence of any other theories, I defaulted on that occasion to the apparently preposterous notion of the 'unrepresentative squirt' - check out the post itself for further specifics and some rather silly imagery about pooling musk molecules and bottom feeders in vintage scents.

So in that case I knew of the generally received comparison with those other musky scents from the outset, but couldn't see it at first. Here, I had an open mind to start with, but by the time I got to London, I was aware of 'the iris opening faction', as it were.

'Those are LIME NUTS, obviously' ~ Source: ocado.com

Now even if peer influences were not at work in the Idylle instance, I do have previous for being easily led. Witness, for example, the 'shamelessly suggestible schnoz' incident with the Le Labo City Exclusive Baie Rose 26, which the SA mistakenly told me was Tubereuse 40. And for a few moments, white floral overload is what I smelt!  Or the time as a kid when my father swore blind that my pistachio ice cream was in fact lime, because he knew I hated pistachio as much as he abhorred waste.

And then, just to complicate matters, Liz messaged me to say I hadn't dreamt the angelica note after all!:

"You're not imagining the Angelica note, it's definitely there, but I didn't use Angelica to achieve it", later adding: "I always get Angelica in the top notes."
It is kind of Liz to give me the credit for detecting the angelica note, but even now that I know angelica to be officially in the composition, I may still have been imagining it, simply because the name Angélique sounds like angelica. In other words, I may have been smelling with my brain rather than my nose. Which adds another layer of suggestibility to proceedings, this time for the angelica note itself!

More toys get wind of this perfumer-cum-animal whisperer

So suggestibility remains a possible explanation for these variations along the 'iris-angelica' axis. But there is another possibility which may shed light on the 'unrepresentative squirt' conundrum and blow out? / confirm? my molecule-clumping hypothesis. It turns out I may not be going mad by getting different notes coming to the fore in successive sprays, for in our most recent exchange Liz alludes to the fact that Angélique may be a bit of a shape shifter in itself anyway...

"It changes more than any perfume I know. I literally smell different aspects on different days. One day the orris note is more pronounced and another day it's the cedarwood. A few days ago I wore it and the osmanthus was huge. It's a weird one but I liked it for its weirdness!"

So who knows what exactly is going on here?  Personally, I'd like to run with Liz's kaleidoscopic take on Angélique, which makes me feel no more bonkers than usual. And however Angélique presents to your nose, if you are after something in the general territory of 'pale and interesting angelica-cum-iris with a powdery, faintly fruity vibe and a tendency to toggle between facets with no prior warning', look no further. You're guaranteed hours of entertainment trying to figure out what you are smelling, and a lot of pleasure in the attempt. And I may yet have my own osmanthus moment.

Oh, and a quick PS about the name of Liz Moores' perfumery. Speaking as someone called after a genus of brush-footed butterflies, and whose blog handle is flittersniffer, I was always going to have a soft spot for a brand called Papillon! ;)


Have you ever experienced variations in how a perfume smells from spray to spray, and if so, how have you explained this phenomenon? Nasal suggestibility, an inherently shape shifting scent, or a 'shake before use' malfunction, which may or may not be related to point 2?

And can anyone tell me if I have missed any of the Moores family pets?  I feel sure there must be a brace of gerbils tucked away somewhere, and possibly also a pet bat, rat or wombat.