'Men and (wet) sheds': dipping into The Library of Fragrance in a focus group down the pub

Note the 'Drinkaware' presence of cycle clips

Following the arrival of a set of eight scents from the new Library of Fragrance collection (aka Demeter Fragrance Library) which launches in Boots today, I decided to host a mini-focus group at The Vine pub in Stafford this weekend. My (very loose) aim was to check out the brand's stated unisex orientation, and generally get some feedback on any aspect of these perfumes from my mates. The group comprised my friend Clare and her husband Tony, our painter friend David, and his friend Jim, whom the rest of us met for the first time that night, though we'd all been Facebook friends for a while. I wasn't expecting Tony to come along, so he was a 'bonus respondent', albeit tipping the gender split slightly into the masculine camp at 3-2.

For anyone who just wants to know the topline findings from the focus group - as clients are wont to do with real life research exercises - skip straight to the end. For a blow by silly blow account of what went down, please read on...

I should state right off the bat that despite being a researcher by profession, this wasn't a focus group in any meaningful sense of the term. I was voicing my own opinion for one thing - occasionally even before I asked the others(!) (which as everyone knows is highly irregular behaviour in a market research exercise). But I did at least pose a few market research-type questions about the whole positioning and marketing of the brand before we got stuck into the business of sniffing proper.

Where would you expect to see this range displayed in store?

Aware of the unisex premise, the group puzzled over this question, as The Library of Fragrance range clearly falls between the two genders, so in theory needs a separate area. We concluded that it might have its own display in a prominent place where people might fall over it - not even necessarily in the perfume section as such.

What do you think of the bottle?

The men in the group were particularly exercised by this question, and leapt straight in with comments about things it reminded them of - none of which were perfume as it happened. Tony said 'nail varnish remover', while images of Windsor & Newton's range of artists' supplies immediately popped into both David and Jim's minds. Clare thought it looked like 'reed diffuser bottles'. I am of course familiar with many different styles of fragrance bottle, including smallish rectangular ones like these, and am greatly in favour of smaller formats. To the others in the group, however, it didn't really compute as a perfume bottle, partly down to the shape, but also the size. Jim said he would have expected a bottle of men's aftershave to be a lot bigger. On the other hand, it was deemed too bulky to be construed as a handbag-sized perfume. I still think it is great that someone is offering a 30ml size, so it will be interesting to see what Boots' customers make of it.

Source: hobbylobby.com

On a more whimsical note, the coloured strips on the bottles reminded David of Monopoly, and he imagined amassing a whole load of perfumes in the range and inventing games on a Monopoly theme. Picking up the orange banded Amber bottle, he remarked: 'I could put a house on that one.'  (He was perhaps thinking of the aptly named Vine Street...) Oh, and speaking of 'picking up', the bottles are all labelled as:

'Pick-Me-Up
Cologne Spray
Vaporisateur Naturel'

Because of the layout - with the three terms listed underneath one another - we weren't sure if 'Pick-Me-Up' was an adjective governing 'Cologne Spray' below, or the American equivalent of 'Cologne Spray'.

The eagle-eyed David (spot the artist!) noticed that on a couple of the bottles, the text below the fragrance name was in lower case and employed commas, while on most of the bottles it was capitalised, with full stops, making for a punchier, more abrupt style.

"Simple, subtle, singular scents.
Each day. Everywhere."

OR

"Simple. Subtle. Singular Scents.
Each Day. Everywhere."

There was a strong preference for the lower case version, and the capitalisation of 'Day' in the bottle pictured above especially bothered people. 'It's a bit shouty', observed Jim.

Having discussed the packaging in a lot more depth than I was expecting to, it was time to start sampling the perfumes themselves. I had devised a handy map of a left and right hand and forearm. I thought that if everyone applied each fragrance to the same spot, we could critique them in an orderly sequence, as we would all know where to sniff. I was also assigned the role of presiding over the spraying, administering two sharp squirts to each person's skin to give as consistent results as possible. Nevertheless, there were considerable variances between group members in terms of how each perfume smelt.

So here is the feedback, in the order in which the scents were tested...

How did they all smell?

FIG LEAF

Only Clare (a major lover of the fig note in perfumery) and I recognised this as any part of a fig, and even Clare took a little while, though it ended up being her favourite of the bunch, and she took the bottle home with her. Here are a selection of comments:

Jim: 'If I sprayed this on in the dark, I would wonder what it was.' (Editor's note - Jim seemed rather preoccupied with darkness throughout the discussion, as you will see.)

David: 'This smells like the sort of varnish you used to be able to buy in the 60s, but can't get anymore.'

Those really are meant to represent arms, not rolling pins

I was concerned that they might have been smelling the initial blast of alcohol you experience with any perfume, but even though they revisited it later - when to me and Clare it smelt most definitely of fig leaf - the men in the group never made the vegetal connection, didn't care for Fig Leaf, and persisted in using vocabulary along the lines of 'lacquer' and 'tanning solution'. Somebody observed that their nose may have been confused by the shiny look on skin of the perfume. Sure enough, the scents all lingered on everyone's skin as a sticky translucent shine, and in the case of Tony in particular, seemed visibly to have darkened his skin where I had sprayed the scent. I admitted to the group that I couldn't recall that ever happening with perfumes before. The shine was long gone the next morning, mind, but persisted for the duration of our trials.

ORANGE BLOSSOM

This one initially proved more popular, and was considered to be 'more like a cologne'. It was variously described as 'pleasant', 'dry', 'orangey', 'citrusy' and 'quite sweet'. There was one comparison to 'lemon meringue'.

Jim: 'If I picked that up in the night and smelt it, I'd put the light on.' Praise indeed from Jim, the nocturnal operating, non-perfume wearer in our midst.

It was still shiny, however, and went quite indolic on several people's skin during the session, which put Tony right off. None of the men would wear this, but Clare - whose second favourite perfumery note is orange blossom - was happy to take this bottle home too.

Clare and Tony perfectly executing the perfumista's salute

RAIN

Jim: 'Now I would expect this one to be very shiny!' It didn't disappoint.

Beyond that, Rain didn't smell like rain to anyone, but rather of mint and the pith of a satsuma. Clare couldn't smell anything at all to begin with, but her anosmia was suddenly broken by the satsuma reference, and - whether or not thanks to the power of suggestion, who can say? - she could just about smell a slight acerbic orangeness from that point onwards. David also got a bit of the Indian yoghurt dip with mint, raitha. This perfume was quickly renamed 'Satsuma', and on resniffing it much later, Tony pronounced it to be 'really quite nice', though nobody said they would wear it.

Source: thecabbagebox.om

THUNDERSTORM

This is the perfume which people were most intrigued to try, and although everyone found the opening offputting (to put it mildly), it provoked a great deal of lively debate. Images came pouring out along the lines of 'wet leaves', 'wet moss', 'wet gardening', 'rotting leaf mould from leaves that you forgot to burn', 'dry rot', 'wet rot' and 'wet shed'.

Jim: 'It's the smell of taking up the floorboards and seeing what is really going on....'

David: 'Probing at the back of your shed...or sorting out your wood pile - you know there's going to be woodlice and wriggly things.'

Me: 'It's the smell of my Dad's old car coat that had been lying in his damp abandoned caravan for four years.'

Jim summed up the feelings of the group when he inquired: 'Do I want to smell of wet wood mould?' Much much later, when this earthy, patchouli(?) scent had quietened down, Tony said it was actually at a wearable point for a men's fragrance, however, in his view it had taken far too long to get there. This was the most challenging perfume in the selection and Thunderstorm was swiftly renamed 'Wet shed'.

Source: junbosea.net

FRESH GINGER

Clare's immediate response on sniffing this was to say it would make a nice room fragrance for a kitchen. Fresh Ginger was generally considered pleasant, and was one of the scents that smelt most differently on different people's skin, with additional notes of 'lemon', 'sherbet', 'almonds', 'pear drops' and 'Dolly Mixtures'. Tony described it as 'ginger Edinburgh Rock', while David thought it a 'bit Christmassy', and also like some kind of fabric conditioner, in a good way. Jim said he would also have it in the house - as a room fragrance again - and probably more in winter.

GIN & TONIC

Gin & Tonic was unanimously pronounced to smell of shampoo or bubble bath. One of the men mentioned 'Matey', which led to a brief nostalgic digression about bath time products from our childhood. I got a hint of lime, and then remembered how soapy Jo Malone's French Lime Blossom is, which could be why we were 'reading' this scent as being more like a bodycare product than an astringent aperitif. There was no discernible juniper, for example. Much later, after it had softened considerably, Tony announced that he liked it and would be happy to wear it, whereupon he promptly copped for the bottle. Someone else thought it would make a pretty room scent for a bathroom.

At this point, Jim started to engage in a banned activity we had previously dubbed 'nose buffing', whereby you press your nose deeply into one scent, then drag it down to another scent location, thereby risking possible olfactory contamination. We watched as he slid his nose from Thunderstorm down to Gin & Tonic, before remarking: 'I am having a bath in the shed. Perhaps that is why the shed is damp...??'

Once again, this perfume one went on - and stayed - shiny. 'I'm way the shiniest I've ever been', mused Jim.

Jim and David

SEX ON THE BEACH

I requested this one from Clare the PR lady specifically on account of its titillating name, only to find to my chagrin that Sex on the Beach is a cocktail, and nothing at all to do with salt, sand in every interstice and scratchy marram grass. The general consensus was that this perfume smelt of sweets, ranging from that traditional favourite of 'sherbet lemon pomegranate' to 'rhubarb and custard' and generic 'boiled sweets'. The imagery then moved to 'powdered orange juice you used to get when we were kids', while I was reminded of the sweeter end of the J2O fruity mixer range.

Source: fearing.co.uk

People found this pleasant, but not something that a grown-up would wish to smell of. We judged it to be another possible contender as a room fragrance, though we could see it appealing as a perfume to young girls. At this point in the discussion, I mentioned how some US-based readers of Bonkers had talked about spraying Demeter scents on their sheets, which the group heard as 'sheep', prompting much merriment.

AMBER

On first application, everyone got a big whoosh of vanilla, before the scent settled down into a distinctive amber groove. Jim admitted though that based on the name, he wouldn't have any preconception of how amber does smell. After the general consensus of the vanilla opening - and despite most people's recognition of amber as a perfumery note - this scent conjured up some quite contradictory images. Despite these differences, Amber proved to be my and David's favourite of the selection - David took a decant of this one home.

Tony: 'Middle Eastern incense; the souks of Baghdad; a belly dancer in Turkey...this is the sort of thing the sales assistants in the aiport at Dubai try to spray you with.'

David: 'Almonds, pepper, something a bit antiseptic - what they rub on you before they give you an injection? - or the kind of floor cleaner you add water to.' (Editor's note - he did really like this.)

Once everyone had tested all eight perfumes, Tony got up to get some more drinks. On his return, he announced brightly; 'So.... the bar lady liked Wet Shed, Amber, Sex on the Beach and Fig Leaf.' We commended him for gathering this bonus titbit of consumer feedback.

Source: redbubble.com

QUICK SYNOPSIS

For anyone who has jumped to this part - or who would simply welcome some attempt at a synthesis of our very Singular Discussion, here are the Topline Findings (sorry, I am really not feeling these capitals...):

- Everyone found at least one scent out of the eight they said they would wear - except Jim, who doesn't wear aftershave anyway, but nevertheless went home with a decant of Fresh Ginger on the offchance that a cologne-wearing urge might randomly come over him (in the night, presumably...;) ).

- In general, the perfumes were seen as pretty straightforward and borderline functional - there were several suggestions that they might make good room scents.

- The perfumes smelt slightly different on each person's skin - nothing new there!

- Layering is very likely a good way to add depth and interest to these scents - especially as you can buy four 30ml bottles for the price of your average 50ml designer perfume.

'Shiny, happy respondents'

There was no time to layer on the night - people were arguably a bit punchdrunk by this point - and the notion provoked ribald comments along the lines of: 'Sex on a beach on top of a wet shed.' and 'Goodness, you'd be so shiny if you did that!'

As I write, however, I am wearing Orange Blossom + Amber, and Fresh Ginger + Amber, and both are rather pleasant with - just as you would expect - greater complexity than either scent on its own.

Let's keep the focus group going! If you have had your nose in one of these 'fragrant books'- whether as Demeter in the USA or under the new UK name of The Library of Fragrance - do let us know in the comments.

Tony reviewing the right arm trio

'Hot orange': Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger ~ Néroli Blanc Eau de Parfum Intense review

The other week I was contacted out of the blue by Bloom Perfumery in London asking if I was interested - on a no strings basis - in sampling a brand they had just acquired, Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger ('in the country of orange blossom'). The company, founded in 1998, is owned by Virginie and Antoine Roux, who have a longstanding family connection to perfumery: Antoine Roux's great-grandfather, Victor, was a flower merchant supplying the perfumeries of Grasse. Bloom described the trio of scents, which are exclusive to the Spitalfields store at the moment, as "a simple, very French, collection of neroli straight from Provence".  Well, in this sort of weather - okay, it has been intermittently warm lately, says she looking out the window at dense cloud cover - I am rather drawn to perfumes featuring orange blossom, and 'simple' is never a bad word in my book, so I said "Yes, thank you" to their offer. Actually, it's not the latest fragrance collection Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger has released - this spring saw the launch of La Collection les inédits, which recently featured in The Chemist in the Bottle. Additionally, Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger offers a range of room fragrances, soaps and other body care products, all focusing on the scents associated with this part of France, such as rose, jasmine, lemon blossom, lavender and above all, orange blossom.

As the Rouxs (not sure about the plural -s, but no matter) state on their website (translation is my own): "Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger...a brand where orange blossom, recognised for its gentle and soothing virtues, is queen."

'Do I look a bit warm in this?'

Such an orange-centric range of perfumes got me thinking about my own personal associations with oranges, going back to my childhood. I remember 'hot orange', for example, a rather watery drink made by diluting orange squash. We were issued with thermos flasks of this warming but insipid stuff on school youth hostelling trips, to wash down the queasy-making spam sandwiches. By contrast, Haliborange tablets provided a gloriously intense hit of orange sweetness - the one vaguely 'medicinal' product I used to look forward to taking.

Then in the early 70s I went on holiday with my parents to Yugoslavia, and this photo of me in a woolly tank top standing in front of an orange tree forever sums up that holiday. It was unseasonably warm for April, and I must have been boiling. So there is another instance of 'hot oranges', if you will. To see the actual fruits growing on trees was impossibly exotic to my 12 year old self.  Fast foward to the end of the 70s, and I spent a year teaching English on the French Riviera, from where I made many forays into the hinterland, including to the village where Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger is based, and has a shop - La Colle sur Loup. For anyone not in a position to visit, but wishing to steep themselves in the ambience of Provence, I would heartily recommend La Gloire de Mon Père by Marcel Pagnol or the film Manon des Sources, which has some lovely footage of the area. You can't smell it though, which is where the Néroli Blanc collection comes in...

Suitably stonking bottle ~ Source: fragrantica

I have tested - and like - all three fragrances in the collection, but the edp and eau de cologne are relatively fleeting on me.  I should perhaps clarify that they are all quite different - not just in terms of concentration - and despite sharing four common notes: neroli, bergamot, rose and jasmine. My standout favourite was the Néroli Blanc Eau de Parfum Intense (henceforward to be referred to as 'Néroli Blanc Intense' or possibly just 'Intense' if I am feeling lazy):

NEROLI BLANC INTENSE

Notes: neroli, verveine, bergamote, jasmine, rose, cedar

I don't know if there are some key notes missing from that list - and I am not aware of either the verveine or the cedar - but my overriding impression of the Intense perfume is of a sweet, honeyed, juicy, jammy wallop of orange blossom, flanked by jasmine and rose, and resting on a pillow of warm, unctuous vanilla. It is hot, and it is bothered. Imagine the love child of Serge Lutens Fleurs d'Oranger and Van Cleef & Arpels Orchidée Vanille. It differs from the Serge Lutens in two key ways, namely that it is more vanillic, in a nuzzling, cosseting way, and it also teeters just the right side of indolic. Yes, Néroli Blanc Intense is sultry and exotic, but not out and out erotic. I checked the notes of the SL for comparative purposes - the addition of tuberose may help to amp up its vampish, orange bombshell vibe:

SERGE LUTENS FLEURS D'ORANGER

Notes: orange blossom, jasmine, tuberose, rose, citrus, cumin, nutmeg

Source: vaporizer-shop.co.uk

A 'big white floral scent with vanilla' of which I was also reminded - especially texturally - is Annick Goutal's Songes. So I dug out my sample of that and promptly fell in love! It has different floral notes: frangipani, tiare, jasmine, ylang-ylang (though ylang-ylang has a bit of a tangy orange-y facet to it). Crucially, it has the vanilla base that I detect in Néroli Blanc intense, though it is not mentioned and I may be making it up. And Néroli Blanc Intense also has something of the dreamy, soft quality of Songes - Songes is actually a tad quieter I might add, in case that helps people position the two along the diva spectrum. Songes melds with my skin more readily, whereas the Néroli Blanc Intense sits on my wrist like a big gorgeous hot shouty orange thing. Big and shouty, yet paradoxically warm and comforting at the same time, like Songes. But it is in a louder register all the same - it never loses its 'not quite indolic twang', if you know what I mean. Interestingly, both scents are a similar colour.

Another analogy I might draw would be with an orange-forward Lys Soleia or Mary Greenwell Plum, say. We are talking those kind of levels of projection and radiance and 'juiciness' and 'in your face-ness'. There are also echoes of Ajne Bloom de Nuit, which includes notes of flowering orange, citrus and rock rose, amber and sandalwood, but I don't suppose too many people will have tried that one, and my own memory of it is pretty distant now. I could also say that it smells the way I hoped Guerlain's Mon Précieux Nectar would smell, but that was a bit of a disappointing fuzzy mishmash on me.

La Colle sur Loup ~ Source: voyages.carrefour.fr

Aha - I just spotted the note list for Néroli Intense on Fragrantica, and it is more extensive, with added vanilla, sandalwood and fruits!

Top notes: orange blossom, Sicilian bergamot, mandarin orange
Middle notes: jasmine, rose and fruits
Base notes: cedar, vanilla, musk and sandalwood

I am retesting all three of the Néroli Blanc collection at the moment - they have been on skin for a couple of hours and the other two (even the edp) are indistinct blurs, sadly, so I shan't dwell on them. The openings were very pretty though, and other reviewers - as with Tauer's new Cologne du Maghreb - seem to have got more mileage out of them, so do give them a go if you get the chance.  The older I get, the more my skin seems to eat perfume.

So, the upshot of my testing of this trio is that I would love to have a bit more of Néroli Blanc Eau de Parfum Intense - a purse spray-sized amount, say. And the other surprise finding is that I am now dreaming of a bottle of Songes...

Source: vanitytrove.com

Madrugada Honey Bee: Review Of L’Artisan Parfumeur Séville à l’aube

I was just looking up the Spanish word “madrugada” to doublecheck its meaning – I know it is mentioned somewhere in "The Perfume Lover", but I am not sure if I could find it now! I knew it was the Spanish word for “l’aube” ie dawn, but had a feeling that it also meant “the wee small hours”, regardless of prevailing light conditions - and as far as I can tell, it does. “Rolling-home-after-a-party-o’clock”, if you will.

And whilst satisfying my curiosity on this point, I lit upon an intriguing Google search term suggestion (a topic so interesting in its own right that I was moved to devote a whole post to it), namely “Madrugada Honey Bee Lyrics”. I couldn’t resist exploring further, and discovered that Madrugada is in fact a Norwegian rock band, and Honey Bee a love song by them, fortuitously referencing perfume and a romantic clinch not unlike the one described in “The Perfume Lover” between Denyse and Román, which inspired the creation of the perfume Séville à l’aube. (Denyse was even wearing a “black lace shift”…)

A young man should be blessed with love
There's just flesh and fire below
This drunken, senseless reeling
Hands on my face
Some silk and lace
Sweet perfume kisses
For me

Well, now that is funny, for as I was racking my brain for a title for this post – after discounting “Navel Orange-Gazing” on various grounds, not least those of provenance - my mind flitted to images around the idea of honey and nectar, which are featured in Séville à l’aube. Blow me if Google didn’t go and serve it up on a plate, or drizzle it on my keyboard, even.

Now I said in my review of “The Perfume Lover” that my corresponding write up of the perfume itself would be short. By which I meant the actual perfume review part – as ever, the rest of the post will be what it will be... For Séville à l’aube is a complex scent, and in the “mod-by-mod” account of its development I was fascinated in particular by the gradual addition, subtraction and volumetric adjustment of the various notes. This was mostly by design, and occasionally because something that had been previously included in the formulation was simply overlooked some 25 mods later, say.

“African Stone? I made him (Bertrand Duchaufour) smell it the day I told him that, in Monsieur’s opinion, the scent wasn’t erotic enough. It was dropped between 63 and 90, though not on purpose – Bertrand just forgot about it. He’ll put it in again, but he’ll also experiment with civet.” (Editor’s note - not too much it would seem, thankfully!)

Also, I remember there being at least 43 separate materials in the formulation at one point. I can’t recall the final tally, but a lot more than my nose could ever detect, it is safe to say, so I will focus on my general impressions. It would be tough for me to deconstruct this scent in a way that does justice to the glorious interplay of its components, for Séville à l’aube is as fiendishly beautiful as olfactory sudoku...

What Denyse and Bertrand set out to do was to weave different notes into the composition to capture all the fragrant aspects of that momentous night – not in some dogged box-ticking way, but with the aim of creating a composition that far transcended the sum of its components. In her excellent review of both book and scent, Mals86 of Muse In Wooden Shoes has included a handy schema that lays out what the French might call (but probably don't!) “les grands axes” of the fragrance, ie its major scent themes and how they interrelate.

To take a specific example of this associative process or "olfactory riffing", while wearing the lush and “radiant” Mod 90, Denyse explains to Bertrand that it is conjuring up images of gardens for her – “memories of sucking nectar out of flowers” - which prompts the perfumer to explain how he works with words as much as with smells:

“…like that plaza full of orange trees in full blossom buzzing with drunken bees. From there you go to beeswax candles, from candles to incense.”

THE ACTUAL PERFUME REVIEW BIT (WHICH ENDED UP BEING LONGER THAN I THOUGHT!)

I will kick off by saying that I am a fan of orange blossom scents. They are cheery and uplifting and remind me of the year I spent teaching on The French Riviera. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I own four scents in this style: Penhaligon’s Orange Blossom Cologne (also by Bertrand Duchaufour - review here), Penhaligon’s Castile (also Spanish-themed!), The Different Company Bergamote and Jo Malone Orange Blossom (which have no discernible Spanish or perfumer link that I can think of!).

And even though there was a bit of tinkering after Mod 90, and the commercial release appears likely to be 128 or thereabouts, the finished article is also pretty darn radiant: on two consecutive occasions it lasted on my skin from mid-morning till bedtime - and as some of you know, I am not noted for my early nights. Now the Jo Malone above is radiant, and so for that matter are a couple of other orange blossom-forward scents like Elie Saab and Alien. But Séville à l’aube has more heft than either of those.

Also worth noting is that it flirts with indolic notes, but only gets to first base on the skank-o-meter. In that regard it has more in common with Penhaligon’s Orange Blossom Cologne than Serge Lutens Fleurs d’Oranger, say. Even the Jo Malone is more indolic to my nose. And this might well strike people as odd, given some of the action in the book - it did me. Now I know Bertrand and Denyse were trying to incorporate the religious aspects of the Easter procession into the composition, which would have the effect of toning it down, but I find it interesting all the same that the finished article is as relatively demure as it is!

In addition to its diffusive character, Séville à l’aube feels unctuous, rich and honeyed, yet simultaneously light and sherbety – there is a powdery, pollen-like quality to the scent which persists throughout its development, a “snuffed out” facet, which I imagine must be the incense – incense AND pollen, maybe? However, it is not the dank and crypt-y kind of Etro Messe de Minuit or even Bertrand Duchaufour’s own Avignon – think of it rather as “snuffed out nectar”, if that doesn’t sound like synaesthetic gibberish. The combination of orange and incense can be tricky to pull off; another orange + incense scent by Bertrand that springs to my mind is Baume du Doge (review here), but that is darker in tone, spicier and more woody than this composition. This incense is borderline fluffy - thanks to the honey/beeswax business it is almost gourmand, but with a citrus bite.

A belated word about the opening now! It is very green and a tad too sharp for my liking. Petitgrain frenzy at a guess. There is a word in French which merely means citrus – “agrumes” – but in my mind’s eye there is a sharp, acerbic quality to this term, which is exactly how the opening smells to me. It keeps the orange heart from being too sweet and cloying, which Denyse and Bertrand were keen to do, plus it probably nudges the scent a little closer towards unisex territory. To my nose, Séville à l’aube is unequivocably feminine, however, especially after the citrus blast has subsided.

There are so many notes in there that I don’t pick up on – the lavender, for example, the blood and tobacco notes I remember reading about in the book, or the civet that I also thought had made the final cut – I am not even conscious of the vanilla particularly, though I know it's there. To me Séville à l’aube is mostly about bracing citrussy greenness seguing into a voluptuous orange heart – it is “pulpeuse” - to quote the term a sales assistant used to describe Denyse’s “blossoming” physique. But that voluptuousness is leavened by the sherbety-pollen-incense accord – which is not unlike mimosa in fact, another flower associated with Southern Europe. Now, notwithstanding the felicitous title of this post, I don’t wish to suggest that Séville à l’aube is as honeyed as Chanel Beige or as MAC Naked Honey, for that would be wide of the mark. But there is a lovely powdery pollen thing going on here, and "to beeswax lyrical" for a moment, it stains your soul…

Yes, in “The Perfume Lover” Denyse talks about how she will know they have lit upon the perfect variant of the formulation. It will be so affecting that she will let out “the moan”, just as she will have done that sultry night, locked in Roman’s embrace.

Are you ready, folks?

Mooooaaaaaaaaan!!” (reaches for credit card – oh blow, the darn thing isn’t out yet. That was a premature...er...interjection…. ; - ) ) By the way, that silver (and not intentionally suggestive-looking) atomiser pictured is the leaky one I was talking about. Do not be fooled by its seductively sleek contours and burnished metal buffness!

Moving on, I just went to google the official note listing and fetched up this general description of the scent, courtesy of Denyse herself: "an orange blossom oriental with zesty, green and balsamic effects, with notes of petitgrain, petitgrain citronnier, orange blossom absolute, beeswax absolute, incense resinoid, Luisieri lavender absolute and Siam benzoin resinoid."

My own scent memories of Seville

Now I know this perfume is not about me or my own holiday in Seville, but inevitably I cannot help but think back to that time nearly 20 years ago, when I took myself off to Spain following the recent break up of a pretty tempestuous relationship. The fact that I ended up in Seville was quite unintentional, though. I had gone to visit a friend in Soria in the north, but it snowed the entire time I was there (in May!), so after five days of shivering in inappropriate outfits, my friend packed me onto a train to Seville, and I spent the remaining five days of my trip basking in the 90F heat, happily alone in a city I consider to be the most sensual on earth (that I have been to, at least).

This was long before my perfumistahood, but if I cast my mind back and try to dredge up some scent memories of my stay, this is what I come up with:

Apple cake glaze – every morning I would sit outside a café near the Giralda cathedral with a cup of tea and a slice of apple cake, topped with that patisserie glaze that is jelly-like and vaguely perfumed.

Bocadillo de tortilla de patatas – omelette bap, effectively, but doesn’t it sound great in Spanish? : - ) I had a warm one of these for my lunch every day, purchased from a kiosk at the entrance to the Maria Luisa Park, before finding a sunny spot to flop in for the whole of each long, scorching afternoon.

Aromatic grasses – my many hours spent lying on the ground meant that I got "up close and personal" with the grass and vegetation of the park, some of it spiky and far from benign (as evidenced by the painful rash I developed that necessitated an emergency visit to a pharmacy!)

Cold stone – the contrast between the baking sunshine outside and the cool dark interiors of the churches couldn’t have been more marked, and I vividly recall that cold, damp, musty scent of flagstones in the many churches in which I sought refuge during my stay (as much to escape the heat as to marvel at Seville's ecclesiastical heritage, it must be said!)

Horse droppings – a memorable tourist attraction is the guided city tour in a horse-drawn carriage, so it doesn't take much for me to summon up the pungent pong of dung (from desiccated to steaming fresh!), especially in the area by the cathedral (see my own photo in the previous post).

Hot night flowers – one of my earliest scent memories is of arriving in Minorca on a night flight and being hit by a fragrant wall of heat as I walked down the steps of the plane. It was my first whiff of a Mediterranean summer, and wherever you go in Southern Europe you get this beautiful ambient floral bouquet in the air, especially at night.

Bonus tactile memory!

I bought this skirt and top while I was in Seville, in wonderfully slinky fabrics of viscose and acetate. I wore them for a while, before shorter hemlines came into fashion, condemning the ensemble to languish in wardrobes since the late 90s at a guess. But I note in the press that the maxi skirt is making a comeback. Mine may in fact be a midi, but I am quite stunted in the leg department. And I believe the midi itself is pretty on-trend too! So the outfit may yet enjoy a second life.

So anyway, I shall definitely be buying Séville à l’aube when it comes out. It is a stellar fragrance in its own right, plus it already feels more personal to me because I followed its gestation in the book – like a birthing partner, you could say. Or a husband coming along to ante-natal classes, perhaps, for birthing partners may only be deployed at the foetal equivalent of the "last “mod”, so to speak! But I don't have kids, so hey, what do I know? : - ) And then there are my own memories of Seville – not quite at dawn, but I saw the wrong side of 3am a few times, as I wandered aimlessly for miles by the light of a slivery (and silvery!) moon – and these also reinforce the appeal of this scent to me. For Seville symbolises my newfound single state, when I felt more energised and comfortable in my own skin (once the rash got better, obviously!) than at any point in my life, even if the height of my tactile adventures in this magical place was a clingy fabric or two and some antihistamine cream.

And if, by my serendipitous choice of title, I can introduce fans of a Norwegian rock band to a great new perfume inspired by another distant madrugada, that will be a Random Act Of Kindness in the truest sense of the term. Cheers, Google... : - )


For further impressions of both book and scent check out these reviews by Nathan Branch and the Candy Perfume Boy on Basenotes. And here on Now Smell This is an interesting Q & A session with Denyse Beaulieu, talking about her book.


Photo of Seville at dawn by Turismo de Sevilla via Flickr CC, photo of Madrugada concert by Anika via Flickr CC, photo of honey bee by Vincent Ramos via Wikimedia Commons, photo of garden with orange blossom by Anual via Wikimedia Commons, photo of Baume du Doge from Eau d'Italie website, photo of Triana district and river by Gregory Zeier via Wikimedia Commons, photo of omelette roll from Wikipedia, other photos my own

The Magdalene Complex: Review Of "The Perfume Lover" By Denyse Beaulieu

I have been "playing away" with Denyse Beaulieu's new book, "The Perfume Lover". No, really I have. You see, I had been making slow but steady progress through Lisa Chaney's biography of Coco Chanel ("An Intimate Life") - I was up to Page 180 in fact - when a copy of "The Perfume Lover" arrived from Harper Collins. It was accompanied by a sample of Séville à L'Aube, the fragrance inspired by Denyse and the subject of the book, soon to be released commercially by L'Artisan Parfumeur. The perfume was nestling in folds of pink tissue in a tiny black pot in a drawstring velvet pouch. It looked like a miniature bottle of Lanvin Arpège, and there was something so cute and enticing about the whole package of book-plus-scent-featured-in-book, that I parked the Coco Chanel biography and dived straight into "The Perfume Lover" with a sense of eager anticipation. Haha - there's the first seduction scene of the book, right out of the box... : - )

Fragrance fans everywhere are predisposed to like a book about perfume, never mind one apparently named after us all. This is precisely because - as noted in recent blog discussions about perfume writing generally - there simply aren't very many books in print on this subject, period. And some of them are a bit dry and technical and over the head of anyone who doesn't have a background in chemistry. For example, I started to lose the will to live about a third of the way through "The Secret Of Scent" by Luca Turin, and skimmed over the more arcane parts of Chandler Burr's "The Emperor Of Scent".

So I felt that this book of Denyse’s, with its subtitle "A Personal History Of Scent", was going to be the ultimate perfume book I was looking for. A literary lemming, if you will. I knew in advance of reading it that "The Perfume Lover" wove Denyse's autobiography and “scent journey” into an account of the development of a fragrance based on one specific set of her olfactory memories – those of a romantic encounter with a Spanish boy in Seville, set against the backdrop of Easter celebrations in the city.

Several other aspects drew me to "The Perfume Lover": firstly, I have myself had a very enjoyable solo holiday in Seville in the spring, if not at Easter exactly, and can testify to the off-the-scale sensuality of the place. There was a heatwave that year, and the evening temperature still hovered around an ultra-sultry 90F. I should perhaps mention that I was twice Denyse’s age at the time she met Román, and stayed in a budget hostel somewhat removed from Denyse's stylish mid-range hotel. Also, despite stopping out till 2am every night in a fairly receptive frame of mind to any possibilities the night might bring, the only “something-on-skin action” I ended up with was a bad grass allergy from afternoons spent sunbathing in the Maria Luisa park, prompting me to "hotleg it" (quite literally!) down to an out of hours pharmacy in search of "un remedio antihistamino muy rapido".

Another thing which attracted me to the book was the fact that Bertrand Duchaufour was the perfumer who offered to create the scent that would capture Denyse’s passionate clinch with her young beau. He is very much the “nez du jour” at the moment, not least thanks to his recent critically acclaimed trio of scents for Neela Vermeire, so the chance to gain an inside track on his creative MO was too good to pass up.

And then there was the added appeal of Denyse Beaulieu (owner of the highly respected blog Grain de Musc ) being the author. I have not met Denyse, though a number of other bloggers have (eg Katie Puckrik, Persolaise, and Ines & Asali of All I Am A Redhead). Moreover, such is the immediacy of the blogosphere that we fumeheads tend to feel we “know” one another even if we have never met in person. So this perceived familiarity - on however slight and virtual a premise - lent a further piquancy and interest to "The Perfume Lover" for me.

And now that I have got to the end of the book – I am a slow reader, only managing a couple of chapters in the bath a few days a week! - I can declare that I was not disappointed by it. Bemused in places, maybe, wrongfooted, startled, and occasionally shocked - but not disappointed. No, I enjoyed and savoured every page, and would happily read it again some day.

But there is a caveat to come… for though I got the book I wanted, I got a few other books besides, and I think that this attempt to be “all perfume books to all men” may end up alienating all but the hardcore perfumista, though luckily there are still a lot of us in that category. Well, discounting any fumeheads of delicate sensibilities who may be even more perturbed than me by the erotic content, so not so very “hardcore” in that sense! : - ) But I am running ahead of myself….

Yes, I clocked at least four genres in “The Pefume Lover”. The central plank of the book is a factual, “mod-by-mod” (as each version of the scent is known) account of the development of Séville à L'Aube – complete with fascinating and sparky dialogue between Bertrand and Denyse (thoughtfully captured on tape).

These exchanges chart the evolution of their relationship and collaborative style as much as the technical nuts and bolts of the creative process, though that was also amply covered, I felt. There are insights into fragrance materials and their delicate interplay, as well as the way in which Bertrand adds notes – even in the smallest, most subliminal proportions - to ensure that every scented facet of the overall Seville experience is covered off: orange blossom, incense, beeswax, blood, nectar, pollen, tobacco, vanilla, ambient cologne smells of the crowd, and so on.

Another key strand to the book is Denyse’s autobiography, which evokes her early life in Canada and emigration to Paris as a teenager. The scents which punctuated different periods of her life are also tracked, from the Max Factor Green Apple of her childhood to the masculine Van Cleef & Arpels she associated with a student boyfriend, and beyond. It is a “coming of age” or “rite of passage” story in every sense of the term, including Denyse’s maturing interest in fragrance, and I found that theme of the book the next most interesting aspect. It might even count as two. : - )

Now, although it is technically part of the autobiographical genre above, the various references to Denyse’s sexual conquests in “The Perfume Lover” (Román was just the beginning...) put me in mind of an erotic novel, although the action is all based on Denyse’s own experiences. As early as Page 11 there is a clue that readers may be in for tales of more “lovers” than they bargained for...

“I am a scent slut…I have been exploring the world of fragrance in the same way, and for the same reasons, that I’ve travelled erotic territories, spurred on by intellectual curiosity, sensuous appetites and the need to experiment with the full range of identities I could take on.”

Several casual hook ups are mentioned in the book as well as the "main male milestones" in Denyse’s “menfolk journey” (The Tomcat, her ex-husband, and Monsieur, a married lover), and the erotic charge of perfume is never far from her mind. Denyse does in fact concede that she may be suffering from “The Magdalene Complex”, a reference to Mary Magdalene, who was at once a “fallen woman” and a bearer of perfume. Certainly, the alacrity with which our heroine seems to “fall” into bed with comparative strangers conjures up scenes from that saucy series of films from the 70s starring Robin Asquith, “Confessions of a Window Cleaner” (though in the present case, substitute "postman".)

Now I consider myself to be a woman of the world, and have been around the block a bit and whatnot, so I asked myself why the raunchy material in the book troubles me. I thought it was because I feel I know Denyse, and by and large, women don’t tend to discuss the gory details of their sex lives even with their close friends - or such is my experience. Then The Candy Perfume Boy and I discussed this issue at the recent "Leather Event" (of all places!) and he pointed out that we might not want to read this sort of lurid content whether we knew Denyse or not. So I guess it all boils down - or hots up, rather! - to personal taste.

And then the other genre in our smorgasbord is a history of modern perfumery, with lots of titbits and anecdotes about the major international perfume houses, plus accounts of Denyse’s meetings with individual perfumers and other industry notables. There are some water cooler stories in there, a smattering of chemical nomenclature, and a sweeping panorama of social history as it relates to the history of fragrance and its materials.

All this additional information was unexpected, and arguably extraneous to the matter in hand, though personally I found the content of these factual digressions mostly very interesting. My main issue with this ragbag of genres is the choppy and abrupt manner in which they are intertwined. One of many cases in point: one minute we are with Denyse and her childhood friend Sylvie, reminiscing about David Cassidy and the scents of the day such as Love’s Baby Soft, then suddenly we are catapulted back to 4th century Rome with Saint Jerome and his musk-wearing flock.

The jolt between genres pulls you up short, and can make the reader impatient for a resumption of the main plotline about Bertrand Duchaufour at work on Duende, as the prototype for Séville à L'Aube is known in the book. This thematic tendency on Denyse's part to go off on educational tangents even as we keenly await the final mod of the new fragrance, reminds me of how builders working on a major house renovation have an annoying habit of going awol for a fortnight because they have suddenly picked up another job...

In summary, I think this is a book which will appeal hugely to the perfumista crowd, though readers should be prepared for it to flit between every possible style of perfume book they have ever known – in a way that may seem jumpy or even random at times. If you surrender to the elegant and lyrical prose, and follow the story through its meandering yet rewarding chicanes – and if you can step over the odd pair of dropped knickers along the way without flinching – then in my view this is as good a read as Chandler Burr's The Perfect Scent (my favourite perfume book to date), and I was sorry to turn the last page and reach the (long and distinguished) list of Acknowledgments...

A short review of Séville à L'Aube follows in the next post!

All photos my own - the ones of Seville are from my holiday there in 1995 (can you tell? : - ) ).

APOM Pour Femme - And Another Bonkers Road Trip

For my 100th post I thought of doing a review of Ajne Calypso, on the basis that it is a perfume I love, and the most valuable one I own. Very little has appeared about it on the Internet, and I thought it might be fun to write the review equivalent of a Googlewhack, as my piece on Lidl Suddenly D'Or rather bizarrely turned out to be. When I started this blog at the end of last October, I would never have thought that the most viewed page would be one featuring a fragrance that costs just £3.99 for 50ml. So from that point of view it would have been fitting to have showcased a scent at the opposite end of the price spectrum.

But something else hijacked my attention this week, which felt even more apt as the subject of this milestone post: Maison Francis Kurkdjian's APOM Pour Femme. I received a sample in a swap the other day, and it really made an impression. This is partly because it is a lovely, if somewhat indeterminate scent, and partly because it sums up what has happened to me in the past two years, namely that I have incorporated fragrance into my daily life in a way that still surprises me. In short, perfume has become "A Piece Of Me", to give APOM its full title.
In naming the scent, that is not exactly what Francis Kurkdjian had in mind, though. As I understand it, he intended this soft, skin scent - the feminine counterpart of APOM Pour Homme - to be a fragrance you could transfer to your partner, presumably whilst snuggling up on the sofa. If Mr Bonkers got to hear of the rationale for APOM he would be appalled, as you might well imagine. The last thing he wishes to bring upon himself is the depositing of scent molecules on his person, whether deliberately or through an inadvertent affectionate gesture.

The notes for APOM Pour Femme which have been publicly released are:

Orange blossom, ylang-ylang, cedar wood

The description on Luckyscent has me baffled, mind, as do the reviews I have found elsewhere referring to this as anything remotely approaching a heady white floral:

"..the fragrance comes in a feminine and masculine version, both drenched in orange blossom as lusciously honeyed as a bite-sized oriental pastry."

I don't get honey or an oriental vibe from this, indeed if I hadn't googled the scent I would still be puzzling over what on earth was in it, as the notes are so subtly blended that not a single one is identifiable to my rather inept nose. There is a faintly powdery, faintly soapy feel to APOM, and the sense that it contains stronger notes simmering underneath that have been held in check. The net result is an elegant, restrained scent that leans towards the feminine side of unisex, but only just.

I would not compare it to Amaranthine, though both have ylang ylang in - APOM is much more muted and blurry - indeed the word "inchoate" springs to mind, probably for the first time ever. I do get a teensy resemblance to Penhaligon's Orange Blossom. But the orange here is so quiet and abstract that even this comparison doesn't get us very far. The slight soapiness could be due to the orange or possibly to an undeclared musk note. After all, old Francis did include a laundry product category in his new range, so suds may have permeated his creative thinking elsewhere.

I'd say APOM hovers agreeably and UFO-like over a no man's land between clean and soapy and "hint of sultry". Whilst it is gentle and indistinct, I can truly say that it is indistinct in a way I have never smelt before, in the same way that I find Byredo's Bal D'Afrique not to smell of its component notes particularly, and yet to be quite unique. So APOM Pour Femme is another such fuzzy conundrum.

The fact that I get a fuzzy conundrum rather than a big white floral may be attributable to my skin a) causing scents to "go splat" and b) amplifying cedar, thus taking the edge off any heady lusciousness.

Now although I was careful not to smear APOM on Mr Bonkers' person, I did ask him to sniff it on my wrist versus Byredo's Gypsy Water, which came in the same swap package. Of the two he preferred Gypsy Water: "That one is better because I can't really smell it."

Another thing to mention is that I am off early next week again on a Bonkers Road Trip - lasting nearly a month(!) - and covering similar ground (France, Germany, Switzerland), though I will be driving in an even bigger loop this time. There are plans afoot for a reunion of that redoubtable and cosmopolitan bunch dubbed by Wordbird: "Ladies Of Switzerland (Resident Or Visiting)", and Maurice the Mini has had new brake discs and two new tyres fitted in preparation for the long road ahead.

All of which means that I shall have to sign off from the blog for a few weeks, but any adventures from the trip - sniffing-related or otherwise - will be fully documented on my return.

And I shall of course be taking my sample of APOM Pour Femme along with me in my travelling packs of samples - for after all, like the world of perfume as a whole, it is a piece of me now...