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?!

The Italian Job: L'Erbolario Méharées review

Bologna ~ Source: Gaspa via Wikimedia Commons 

Right, so my last post was all about taking stock of my SABLE (Stash Above & Beyond Life Expectancy) and taking active hypothetical steps to cut it back to a more manageable / less haunting quorum of some 30 bottles.  That was on the Friday. On Sunday, I received this text message from my Lush Flower's Barrow-wearing friend Jane, who does the merchandise for my favourite band - who happened to be playing in Bologna last weekend:

"I remember you saying about buying you some perfume here.  We've just walked past an open perfumerie and I wondered what you wanted?"

Which prompted the following shaming exchange:

"Oh, I say.  It was a specific brand called L'Erbolario, and the scent is Méharées.  Will try to find more info - there is a dedicated L'Erbolario shop in the centre..."

"If you can find its address I'll look.  It isn't the one we just passed."

Source: Fragrantica

Thirteen texts later, I was trying to steer my GPS-less friends towards the L'Erbolario store like some kind of rudimentary air traffic controller:

"Okay, if you have a square, Piazza Roosevelt is the right hand side, Cesare Battisti is the left hand side and Via Ugo Bassi is the top side - does that help?  So if you are heading north on Cesare wotsit turn right when you hit Ugo Bassi and it is a couple of doors down.  Or ask someone? 'Dove Via Ugo Bassi per favore?'"

(Reader, don't try those directions - or that Italian - at home.  I mean abroad.  I sent my friend and her husband round what could euphemistically be termed 'the long way', however, they were very sporting about it, explaining much later in an email that if I hadn't made them go round the houses they would have missed some splendid architecture and that all-important tourist attraction of a public convenience.  So all's well that ends well.)

There was a disconcertingly long pause after the text with all the directions, but I knew there must have been an orienteering breakthrough when I received this tantalising query:

"Is it the 50ml perfume?"

Quickly followed by:

"Done.  21.5 euros and it was all so lovely I have bought a Patchouly for myself. : D"

Jane's husband in triumphant pose outside the store

Well, that was a turn up for the books, as my friend is vegan and a Lush / Gorilla loyalist.

Anyway....without further ado I will have to explain myself, won't I? - what on earth was I doing making a purchase of a full bottle - even by proxy - when just two days previously I had compiled a list of my desert island collection of perfumes...on which L'Erbolario Méharées was conspicuously absent.  In my defence, I did think of including it, but Annick Goutal's Musc Nomade pipped it to the one and only 'cosy or naughty musk' spot.

So the only way that I can square this latest full bottle acquisition with my conscience is that it was:

a) cheap
b) purchased in fulfilment of a prior request - you know, like a will you forgot to revoke.  Sure I could have said: 'No, thank you, I am really not bothered anymore' when Jane texted me in the first place, but that would have felt churlish somehow, as she was over there, in situ, and all primed to do this errand for me.
c) I did say I would reserve the right to change my mind, so I will hereby effect a straight swap with Musc Nomade, to keep the numbers square.
d) I am allowed to be a bit bonkers - on any front, really.

Reprising a) for a moment, 21.50 euros is ludicrously cheap for a scent that is in fact a very creditable dupe of Frédéric Malle's Musc Ravageur.  I was first introduced to Méharées by Odiferess when we met up in Manchester last November - she gave me a sample and some moisturiser infused with the scent that she had knocked up herself using a neutral base cream! Champney's eat your heart out. ;)  Odiferess positioned Méharées to me as a Musc Ravageur copy, and the likeness is telling - for a fraction of the price.  (About a fifth, based on a 50ml bottle.  Just checked Liberty's site and it is retailing for £105 there.) The resemblance also caused quite a stir on the Basenotes men's forum - and they don't take any prisoners as we know.

My Méharées starter kit from Odiferess

Here are the notes for Musc Ravageur:

Top notes: lavender, bergamot
Middle notes: clove, cinnamon
Base notes: gaiac wood, cedar, sandalwood, vanilla, tonka, musk

All we can glean about Méharées is that it features myrrh and sweet date.  It does have a fruity aspect, certainly, and a distinctly spicy kick to it, though I would be hard pushed to name names.

The best way I could describe the difference between the two is to say that Méharées is slightly lighter, cleaner and more vanillic, whereas Musc Ravageur has more oomph - more of an animalic undercurrent to it - but the resemblance is still very marked.  Méharées is at the cleaner end of what a friend of mine would perhaps term 'rude business' musks, but rude it remains.  This scenario is qualitatively comparable to Lidl's Suddenly Madame Glamour as a cheapo copy of Chanel Coco Mademoiselle.  The Lidl perfume doesn't have the same patchouli-centred depth and heft to it as Coco Mademoiselle, but the scent itself is eerily close.  Yes, for those of you familiar with the Lidl copies of mainstream fragrances, just imagine that if Lidl brought out a me-too of Musc Ravageur called 'Suddenly Seduction' (because the titles are never too obvious), it would be very much in Méharées vein.  They just couldn't afford as much of the raunch factor maybe, whatever musk molecule that might be.  And that may even suit some people.

Source: osmoz.com

I also tested Méharées against Les Parfums du Soleil's Soir de Marrakech.  My own mini-reviews of the latter (here and here) - some four years ago when I had a limited frame of reference - liken this one to PG L'Ombre Fauve and Tauer's LADDM. To me now, Soir de Marrakech is more vanillic and gourmand, with a dark fruity twist that could also be from dates, though I see none listed.  I now actually feel it is firmly in our Musc Ravageur territory, but with an amber/patch/vanilla undercurrent that does still evoke for me a more delicate interpretation of the barnyard earthiness of L'Ombre Fauve..

Source: darmima.be

For Odiferess's (considerably more deconstructed!) take on Méharées, hop over to her review.  She is also reminded of Chopard Casmir, which I can definitely relate to 'atmospherically', though I find Casmir too plasticky for my taste.  Méharées is in another quality league, I'd say, which is all the more remarkable at this price point. Unfortunately the shipping, even within the EU, adds about 50% to the bottle price, so the best way to bag this bargain scent is clearly to take advantage of a friend passing through Italy...;)

Oh, and you can tell how much I like this perfume, because I could be bothered to put both its acute accents in. And lately I have found accent insertion far too tedious, and have been gradually phasing them out and hoping nobody would notice.


PS I should also mention that I am off tomorrow for a week, attending some gigs in Germany, and hopefully doing some high end sniffing in Berlin, where I will have the most free time.  I am not selling the merchandise on the tour this year - my friends have assumed that role on a more or less permanent basis - but the job of part-time BlueTack removal operative (from the sample posters) is always open to me, plus I may be called upon to do a bit of ad hoc interpreting and translation. ;)

Roja Dove Scandal And The Thorny Issue Of Sillage Projection Projections

My friend came for lunch on Sunday, on her way to a blind date near her home in Lancashire with a man she met on the Internet (which seems to be the technologically savvy way to find a partner these days).

Obviously, she needed a spot of lunch to quell her fluttery stomach (I remembered to keep the raw onion component of the salads to an absolute minimum); then she needed a mirror for the frequent re-application of make up (it was a real eye opener to me to learn how many discrete cosmetic zones there are within the brow area!), not forgetting access to the bathroom for additional nose powdering.

And naturally she also needed a sympathetic ear to offload her mounting nerves about this imminent and momentous encounter. For Sharon had been chatting to this chap over the phone and by text for some six weeks before they finally agreed to meet. And I guess the date wasn't going to be blind exactly, as they had exchanged photos already (assuming he had selected snaps of himself that bore a reasonable degree of verisimilitude.)

Half an hour before my friend was due to arrive, I sent her the following text:

"Choose perfume with immense care. : - )"

This prompted an instant phone call, to tell me that she had already applied her chosen fragrance, and to challenge me to guess what it was. I reviewed her smallish full bottle collection quickly in my mind. Until she fell under my influence, her default/signature scent had been Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B, but I had since sold or gifted to her - or persuaded her to go to London herself to buy - a number of other fragrances.

"Er....as it is early doors, maybe Eclat d'Arpege - or a dab of DKNY Gold?"

"No!" she rejoined triumphantly, with a pronounced seductive burr in her voice: "I'm wearing Scandal!"

Okay, I thought, flattered that she would choose a scent to which I had introduced her, and which she had recently elevated to the status of new all-time favourite. Yet at the same time I was slightly concerned that this luxurious, animalic diva of a scent might be a bit of an overkill for late afternoon in a retail park near Bolton.

In the end we agreed that as she had applied the scent at 12.30pm, and the date was not slated till 6pm, there was ample time for this heady white floral blend to die down to a whisper. A "whiff" of Scandal, if you will.

By 3pm, my friend was getting antsy and was about ready to leave, to give herself ample time at her destination to scope the area, check out potential restaurants for later on, comb her hair, re-touch her make up, practise deep breathing etc. Before she left my house, though, she was keen to re-apply some perfume from my own bottle of Scandal. Now how many of her mates could offer a pitstop with such comprehensive facilities?

And so it was that, having already calculated the sillage projection purely based on a full application of scent at 12.30pm, I now had to estimate its likely projection factoring in a top up application at 3pm. I supervised this procedure, allowing a few very short sprays to the neck area and one on each wrist. Pronouncing my friend "good to go", I forecasted that by 6pm the scent would have dried down - perhaps not to a whisper exactly - but to a tone which could still be classed as sotto voce.

As it turned out, Sharon and her date both had the same idea about getting to the area early to get their bearings, and bumped into each other outside Next at approximately 4.30pm. Whereupon all my precisely calibrated projections suddenly went straight out the window, but from what I can gather, it didn't matter - she and the other party got on famously, and I am eagerly awaiting further bulletins.

Hmm, maybe I should offer my services as a "sillage statistical modelling consultant" to operators of matchmaking sites. Because a pretty face and a good personality are all very well, but there is clearly more of a science to this dating lark, and perfume may yet turn out to be its fragrant fulcrum....