A Trio Of Bonkers Trips: No 2 (Belgium & France) - A "Drowned And Out In Paris" Sniffathon: JAR Parfums

I hope everyone had a good Christmas - the festivities passed off without incident here - well, apart from Mrs Bonkers Senior's and my failed attempts to saw off the turkey's legs with a paring knife mid-way through the roasting time. I am pleased to report that the bird did cook in the end, despite its semi-severed and floppily obstructive limbs, and Charlie Bonkers enjoyed the twin seasonal treats of cold turkey on demand and a warm slate floor in the conservatory. Unfortunately, the husband of one of the dinner guests was ill with the most virulent form of man flu on Christmas Day, so this morning - in my capacity as a one-woman "Soupe Sans Frontières" - I drove over to their house with a tupperware of leftover turkey and sinus-clearing spicy soup.

Now I feel as though the holiday is barely underway, but reluctantly I have to go back to work tomorrow. So I thought I would write up the penultimate instalment of the sodden Parisian sniffing report while the going is good...

JAR PARFUMS

After my chance discovery of the Fragonard Museum, I decided to seek out the Paris branch of JAR Parfums, the super-exclusive line founded by jeweller Joel Arthur Rosenthal in 1986. I was aware that Olfactoria had sniffed the range on her recent trip to New York, and as there are only two bricks and mortar sales outlets in the world, felt that I shouldn't miss the chance to try these perfumes myself, especially as JAR is widely considered to have created the "reference gardenia" scent.

I had jotted down the name of the street (though crucially not the number) from Denyse's walking guide to Paris, and clocked that it was just off the Place Vendôme. I headed for Rue Castiglione, and walked the entire length of it without spotting the store. So I popped into a shop called Valmont at No 8, which sold a Swiss brand of anti-aging cosmetics and the Il Profumo line of perfumes. I asked them if they knew where JAR was, and though the store was only a few doors down at No 14, they directed me to the Maison Kurkdjian boutique a couple of streets away, who promptly sent me back to the street I had just come from.

The reason I missed the JAR store is quite simply because it doesn't look like a shop. On close inspection you can just make out a single perfume bottle on display in the window, but it is small and easy to overlook. And then the plush, softly lit interior looks like a cross between a small salon at Versailles and the Sistine Chapel (the ceiling was covered in a large fresco of the sky shot through by a bolt of lightning). There was no till, no counter, no desk to speak of or shelf fixtures. The main items of furniture were a table in the centre of the room and a few ornate Louis XIV-style chairs (or one of the Louis's, certainly). On the table were a half dozen or so glass cloches arranged in a circle, and under each cloche was a scrunched up chamois leather impregnated with one of the JAR scents.

As I entered the store - or "perfume induction room" as it should perhaps more properly be known - a tall man got up from his chair at the back of the room and greeted me. I decided to come clean right away and explained that I was a blogger and that I was curious to try the line and take advantage of the fact that I happened to be passing one of JAR Parfums' only two branches anywhere!

"The gentleman" (I will call him that as I couldn't possibly refer to him as a sales assistant - his demeanour was more akin to that of a museum curator) invited me to sit down and take part in this highly ritualistic perfume sampling experience... He lifted each cloche in turn and I would trustingly stick my nose right inside it. In one or two instances he deliberately held the cloche further away from my nose, warning me that it might be too overpowering at close quarters. JAR famously doesn't publish the notes for its scents, and the gentleman remained pokerfaced as I wittered on regardless, telling him what I thought I was smelling. Most unexpectedly, he complimented me on my French. I thanked him, wanting to add that my French was really rather rusty at the moment, but didn't, because I could only think of the German word for "rusty" ("eingerostet"). : - )

NB I had deliberately not re-read Olfactoria's impressions of the range, so I really did enter into the experience with no preconceptions, other than an expectation that one scent would smell mindblowingly like gardenia... : - )

My off the cuff comments on the day are as follows:

FERME TES YEUX

"Dark", "sinister". It conjured up dank, disused cupboards and mould.

Verdict - Not A Perfume


JARLING

"Luxury soap."


BOLT OF LIGHTNING (as per the painting on the ceiling!)

"Carnal Flower, end of."


SHADOW

"Refined spices."


JARDENIA

"Blue cheese!!!" "Bleu des Causses!" "Bleu d'Auvergne!" "All the Bleu d'-type cheeses!"

At the moment of smelling this one, I had no idea that it was in fact the famous gardenia replica, while all I got was blue cheese. The gentleman was fascinated by this, because in his experience only the French get a cheese note here, while other nationalities of visitor do "read" this as a floral. Well, I studied French at uni, lived on The Riviera for a year as a student and used to work in a cheese shop, so maybe that predisposes my nose to have a Gallic take on Jardenia. : - )

Verdict - Not A Perfume


GOLCONDA (the original JAR perfume)

"The dentist!" "Evil clove!"

Verdict - Not A Perfume


DIAMOND WATER

"Falling into a bed of roses and being scratched by thorns." "FM Noir Epices".

And now that I have committed my thoughts to paper, I can afford to google a few reviews by others to see if they chime with my own reactions, and it seems I am in good company...first up is Luca Turin writing in the NZZ Folio:

"Gossip led me to expect something weird, and weird is what I got. JAR fragrances are uniquely shocking..."

And here's Robin of NST on Ferme Tes Yeux, the first perfume I tried, albeit I never got beyond the opening in this "ambient cloche environment":

"The top notes are downright unpleasant; it does improve as it dries down, but I found wearing it a somewhat disturbing experience."

And now finally I have been back to Olfactoria's New York report to see what she made of the line. Overall, she is much more positive, but then as we established at our recent meeting in Austria, she has "magic skin". Which presumably also applies to the skin on the tip and interior of her nose, given that she was also just sticking it inside the cloche and not testing on the usual sites of wrist and hand.

"My favorite was called Diamond Water, I also liked Shadow and Jarling. Golconda (Joey’s favorite) and Ferme tes Yeux were very interesting and I’m sure, given the chance to get them to know better, I’d love them too. I didn’t particularly care for Jardenia and the nameless, symbol only, one..." (Bolt of Lightning)

In looking for images to illustrate this post, I stumbled upon a fan page of JAR Parfums on Facebook, which quoted Rosenthal speaking of his distribution strategy:

"Part of the pleasure of perfume is where it comes from - literally the shop it comes from. If you can buy something anywhere in the world, as is almost always the case today, the pleasure and mystery of the source of the thing is gone."

Well, I agree with that up to a point - a very little point - not up to a two-sales-points-in-the-world point", for sure. But what troubles me more than the rights and wrongs of creating such an aura and mystique around its range in a bid to justify the high price tag**, is the stumbling block of the JAR range being so uncommercial in the first place. There's distinctive and original, and then there's downright weird. For me, at least three of the seven fall into the latter category and I only vaguely cared for two (Jarling and Bolt of Lightning), but I readily admit to not having a particularly discerning nose, plus I didn't try them on skin.

I do like the look of their jewellery though - which if anything is even more ultra-exclusive and -expensive. I spotted some nice pieces in the shape of a butterfly, an iris and lilac blossoms, but also this curious zebra, which on reflection sums up the JAR range for me.



(**I believe it is in the region of 320 euros per ounce for the pure parfum - the gentleman and I didn't broach anything as vulgar as the topic of price tags! Why, I did't even notice any bottles in the room, though there must have been some tucked away somewhere).



Photo of Rue Castiglione from flickr, photos of JAR store from yelp.com, Facebook and francescocatalano.it, photo of JAR bottle from boomerank.com, photo of cheese from keldelice.com, photo of JAR poster from thelondonseason.com, photo of JAR butterfly from culture24.org.co.uk, photo of zebra from tumblr.