Bonkers Does Barca: A Bijou Perfume Museum, Eight & Bob At Perfumeria Regia, And The Carner Barcelona Trail

Last month I spent three nights in Barcelona on a mini-break of such spectacular cost-effectiveness that I shall undoubtedly go again, just to feel smug about my holiday bargain, never mind the fact that the city is awash with visitor attractions. These include broad, tree-lined boulevards such as the famous La Rambla, Parc Güell with its "kimono dragon" standing sentry at the entrance, numerous other quirky and satisfyingly wavy structures by Gaudí, a dazzling palm-lined marina, the spiky, brooding squares of the Gothic quarter, not forgetting the curious Christmas log novelties that reminded me compellingly of Thomas the Tank Engine in a Santa hat. If I am totally honest, you could actually spend an entire weekend in Barcelona just browsing in the many branches of Zara, but I valiantly resisted the urge.

APPARENTLY YOU TAP THEM AND PRESENTS SPILL OUT - I REMAIN SCEPTICAL

For Barcelona is also a prime destination for the travelling perfumista, not least on account of its small but perfectly formed perfume museum, or MUSEU DEL PERFUM in Catalan. Housed at the back of one of a chain of niche perfumeries called Perfumeries Regia, you have to ask one of the sales assistants for the key and pay an entrance fee of 5 euros. I usually go out of my way to avoid fee-charging museums, but decided to bite the bullet and enjoy having this one all to myself for what was by no means an excessive entrance charge.

RARE EVIDENCE OF BONKERS SPENDING ON CULTURAL PURSUITS

And am I glad I did! The place was a veritable Aladdin's cave of vintage perfume bottles and other artefacts charting the evolution of perfume vessels - nearly 5000 of them all told - from the very beginnings of fragrance. As regards the exhibition of industrialised perfumery, the scent bottles were arranged (very loosely) by brand and chronology, or so it seemed to me - and to fully appreciate this arcane and somewhat bizarre collection you really needed to press your nose right up against the glass. As no one was looking, I did just that.

I noticed a couple of sub-themes (not all intentional) to the exhibits, eg PERFUMES WITH PROVOCATIVE BOTTLES OR NAMES. In this category fell the now controversial series of Golliwog perfume bottles, and a handful of scents with the amusingly unsettling names of ORGIA, SNUFF, GONG, COCAINA & ECHO TROUBLANT.

HERE TODAY, GONG TOMORROW

MORE SHOCKING THAN SHOCKING!

There was also a cabinet devoted to perfumes from different countries, one devoted to puffer bottles, and here and there, examples of arrestingly beautiful packaging whose inventor had truly thought outside the box.

Another thing that struck me forcibly about the collection was the sheer number of vintage brands of which I hadn't heard - these may even have outweighed the ones I did know, though it was a close call. I noted down a small sample of perfume house names that were unknown to me including:

CORYSE SALOME
COLGATE(!)
G DANFRE
CIRO
MISTINGUETT
MADELEINE DE RANCH
ZOFALY (not a high end wallpaper brand, as you could be forgiven for thinking)
MORABITO (not to be confused with an inner city district in Berlin)
MURY
LEGRAIN
JEAN BOUVAIST

After the sensory overload of the museum, where I must have spent a good three quarters of an hour gaping in wonder, I emerged into the body of the Regia perfumery, with its fine collection of contemporary niche scents.

I had rather shot my bolt, however, in terms of absorbing any kind of information - olfactory or otherwise. So rather than sniff any of the testers that were new to me (of which there were a goodly number), my eye was drawn to the curiously named scent, EIGHT & BOB. A pamphlet explaining the charming story behind this cologne - which involves the son of a French aristocrat turned amateur perfumer, Albert Fouquet, his trusty butler Philippe and a young J F Kennedy - was placed on the display and the full text is also reproduced here.

Sadly, the scent itself was not to my liking - a rather soapy cologne that put me in mind of Maison Kurkdjian's Cologne pour le Matin - but it gets huge props for the off the wall nature - and origins - of its name. I do urge you to read the full story!

EIGHT & BOB - ONE SAMPLE WOULD BE QUITE ENOUGH FOR ME, THANKS

Apart from visiting as many tourist sights as I could cram in in the time, there were two other things I had hoped to do during my stay in Barcelona: identify the statue in this painting of mine, which inspired my review of Carner Barcelona's scent D600, and visit the headquarters of the Carner perfume house itself.

Well, I kind of failed on both counts! I did visit some gorgeous parks, and scrutinised the feet of the many female statues contained within, but failed to locate THE ONE.

SIMILARLY SVELTE, BUT NOT WEARING ENOUGH CLOTHES, BASICALLY

Aborting the statue quest, I turned my attention to the Carner Barcelona trail, but though I spied my first Carner nameplate pretty smartly at the bottom of La Rambla, it was a red herring.

So I got out my map and pinpointed the offices of Carner on 600 Avenida Diagonal (the clue in the name D600, hello??), and hotfooted there by metro and bus, only to find them shut. Doh! Well, it was a Saturday, after all. Turns out that this address is the administrative office of the company, but there is no associated perfumery, like that time I went to the wrong address of L'Artisan Parfumeur for the launch of Séville à l'aube.

Not to worry, I thought to myself, and repaired round the corner for the crepe of my life and a cup of tea. Not even a crepe so much as a farinaceous mixed media food collage.

And finally, here are a couple of snaps of OTHER people posing with the "kimono dragon" at the Parc Güell. It was impossible to get near the poor creature, he was in such demand!

Oh, and one last snap of someone I met in the street...

Photo of Eight & Bob from roullierwhite.com, other photos 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