Dreams are made of this: Annick Goutal Songes review

Songes having a nice little lie down

I spent large tracts of the Easter Weekend asleep. There were no family gatherings featuring rack of lamb, Simnel cake, or egg hunts in the garden; no invigorating walks in bluebell woods, pub meals, or even chocolate binges - though I had a full complement of Lindt bunnies in the house, so goodness knows the opportunity was there. I did demolish a tottering heap of ironing, finally read papers from as far back as last Tuesday week, and appeal a parking ticket on behalf of an elderly friend, so the holiday was not wholly without accomplishment. But mostly I slept - and dreamt - and felt a curious yet languorous sense of disconnection from the world, which I sense is an inevitable part of the 'single household condition' (to come over all Camusian for a moment).

Token Easter concession of hot cross bun, plus mini-tsunduko of Ian McEwans

In one of the dreams, The Monochrome Set (my recent travels with whom were evidently still fresh in my mind!) were supposed to be playing a late night gig outside a ruined castle on top of a mountain. The craggy topography was positively Transylvanian in appearance, belying the Tewkesbury postcode on the band's itinerary sheet. The 'get in' - or 'get up', rather, in view of the vertiginous terrain - was hard going, on slippery ground and along unlit paths. I am not sure the band ever made it to the summit - I was onto the next dream by then anyway, about a defective glide rail in the cupboard under my cooker.

Val in the garden of the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis

I have waited till this post to mention it, but along with Naja, there is one other scent that is inextricably bound up with meeting Val and Chris in Augsburg. For on the Sunday I wore a sample of Songes edt - the conscious creation of happy associations with perfumes being a thing I increasingly do, rather than noticing after the fact that random fragrance X (not to be confused with the online retailer of the same name ;) ) happens to remind you of good time Y. In my book, deliberately orchestrating scent memories is just a logical extension of outfit planning, and it worked like a charm with Songes. So much so that on my return to England I felt I had to own it, notwithstanding the substantial size of my existing perfume collection!

Notes: frangipani, tiare, jasmine, incense, vanilla, copahu balm, pepper, ylang-ylang, vetiver, sandalwood, amber, styrax

I have been wearing Songes a lot in the last two weeks. During a recent visit, my brother asked me what my favourite perfume was, which I obviously batted off as a preposterous question to put to a diehard fumehead. ;)  Yet the more thought I have given it since, the more I have come round to the possibility of only having TWO perfumes, and of Songes being one of them...! For while there is amber and styrax in the base, which one could consider 'winter perfume' notes, the composition overall sits squarely in the 'sultry tropical floral' category, which is not exactly the genre for which one reaches on a dreich and drizzling day in February. That said, I would not restrict Songes to high summer and exotic holiday locations, and I don't say that just because we don't really have a summer here and I don't go anywhere remotely exotic. Okay, not the beachy, Bounty bar kind of exotic, say. Some might say a residential container park in Stuttgart is a bit 'outside the box' as destinations go. Or 'inside the box', even. Sorry, I digress...but yes, I reckon Songes also works nicely in spring: like a cuckoo pint it is buttressed by a curling sheath of greenery - a compelling blend of vetiver and what I can best describe as 'a jasmine note in tuberose's clothing', most notably in the opening. For I detect a dewy, faintly medicinal** otherworldliness that reminds me of Carnal Flower, which I also see as having wider seasonal currency than its name might suggest.

**(or more exactly, a scent that is somewhere between grass, Germolene, menthol, and bubblegum, and I really do mean that in the best possible way)

Oops, we are tired again!

As Songes wears on, the narcotic and sensual bouquet of frangipani, tiare and ylang-ylang starts to bloom on a pneumatic bed of vanilla spiked with just enough pepper and incense to keep things from ever drifting into apocalyptic Loulou territory. Rather, this is a sort of 'sexed - and slightly weirded - up' La Chasse aux Papillons crossed with Ormonde Jayne Frangipani, featuring echoes of Amaranthine's creamily indolic milk pudding. There is an air of innocence about Songes, but if you were to tear away the soft focus veil like a tangle of so much diaphanous clothing, you would eventually uncover its carnal core. You might well have got fed up with the tangle wrangling long before, mind! If Songes were a film it would perhaps be a more grown up version of Bilitis, that stylish and moody 'coming of age' flick, of which my memory, like the cinematography, is hazy, but as a geeky and thoroughly unracy teenager I do remember it as an aspirationally risque cult classic. Even the theme tune is seductively soporific, in a slightly annoying synthesised Vangelis kind of a way! ;)

The most respectable still I could find! Source: Abe Books

Actually, park Bilitis with its youthful lesbian overtones - seductively soporific is really where it's at in a nutshell. Songes could be the signature scent of the Lotos-Eaters (aka the gloriously named 'lotophagi' or 'lotophages') as they munched on their lotus fruits and flowers, causing them to 'sleep in peaceful apathy'. Here is an extract from the eponymous poem by Tennyson:

"Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory"

Source: Wikipedia

And that brings me back to another aspect of my association with Songes: if Bilitis is its gawky and not quite suitable film equivalent, 'On My Balcony' from the band's Platinum Coils album, would be Songes in a song to a 't' - or an 's'! The track takes as its theme singer Bid's stay in hospital, recovering from surgery following a brain aneurysm:

"Through the perfume of sweet velvet sleep

I glide into the afternoon"

As I mention in this early tour post, when quizzed about the lyric, Bid explained that his choice of the word 'perfume' was quite arbitrary, and he probably just liked the way the word sounded. Even so, the woozy cadence of the lines nicely evokes a state of dreamy torpor, scented or otherwise. There is about a 30 second clip here, which gives you an idea of the track's languid charm - not unlike early Genesis indeed.

And here are a couple of reviews, which serve to confirm me in my linkage of Songes to song!

"The tempo slows in 'On My Balcony', a ballad that feels like drifting down a tributary of oblivion." - From a High Horse

"One is lifted up to the gentle heights of On My Balcony, where, weightless, surrounded by a golden luminous haze, the concerns of the world float far below." - God is in the TV

And as it happens, at that eclectic asylum seekers' hostel-cum-hotel that was our base in Augsburg, my room had its own balcony! As did most of them to be fair, haha. Okay, and not strictly my own balcony - more like my own section of a communal balcony that ran the whole width of the building. But the decor of all the rooms - which were individually designed by an assortment of avant-garde artists - was very Lotos-Eaterish, come to think of it, in the sense of minimalist and surreal, and conducive to a state of peaceful apathy! Good job I managed to stir myself in time to meet Val on the Saturday night - you could easily sleep your stay away, which would be rather a waste of a visit to such a picturesque spot, though you would feel jolly rested at the end of it.

I will close this free association 'spacy review oddity' with some photos of the other rooms I find most Songes-like at the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis, starting with the one I was meant to have, Grande Dame. (All photos sourced from the hotel website.)

Things start to get more diaphanous with Innen / Aussen:

My own room, 4 null 5, also gives good gauze:

Before taking a fluffy turn with Zauberwald (note also fluffy bedknob):

And here is Maskerade des Lebens - complete with balcony and trippy mural:

So there you have it - Songes edt, the scent of an asylum seekers hostel / hotel, a fabulous fumehead meet up, a hospital in Tooting, a dodgy 70s film, and those legendary lolling sybarites, the Lotos-Eaters:

"To muse and brood and live again in memory"

Are you asleep yet...? ;)

Clove at first sniff: Tom Ford Private Blend Atelier d'Orient Shanghai Lily review

Source: 2010amovieaday.wordpress.com

There appear to be two main schools of thought about Tom Ford Private Blend Atelier d'Orient Shanghai Lily, to be referred to henceforward in this review as 'Shanghai Lily', 'it' or 'this one'.  One school sees Shanghai Lily as breathtakingly beautiful and/or the sort of perfume you might instinctively reach for on any given day in the absence of specific scent-wearing plans eg Victoria of Bois de Jasmin, Patty of Perfume Posse and Thomas of The Candy Perfume Boy.  Another school considers it to be one or more of the following things: unimpressive on card, pretty on skin if overly clove-y, and with an anti-climactic - to the point of totally absent - drydown eg Robin of Now Smell This and Victoria of EauMG.

I was really interested to read these two takes on Shanghai Lily, because I am both soldiers!  I first tried it in a big Tom Ford sniffing blitz in Paris last June.  As you can see from my scribbled notes, I thought Plum Japonais was a dead ringer for Shiseido's Femininité du Bois, I mistakenly thought there was grapefruit in Rive d'Ambre, and the most salient fact I jotted down about Shanghai Lily was that it was 'épicé' ie 'spicy'. (I assume I was taking dictation rather fast from the sales assistant at this point - I am not given to writing notes to myself in a foreign language. ;) )  Here I clearly fell into the same trap as Robin, because the card amped up the spicy facet at the expense of the floral, and I quickly moved on to other Tom Fords that were also new to me, such as Lys Fumé, Jonquille de Nuit, Ombre de Hyacinth etc.  It was Jonquille de Nuit in fact of which I ended up getting a sample from the lovely SA, who was actually called Tom Ford!

Fast foward eight months and I found myself unexpectedly bewitched by the Candy Perfume Boy's sillage when he and his soon-to-be-husband Nigel hopped onto the same train as me, bound for London and the international blogger meet up documented here. Shanghai Lily smelt so seductive on Thomas that, as you may recall, I even offered to marry him.

So on my return from London I was predictably haunted by the memory of Thomas's enchanting aura, and started to stalk eBay with a view to buying a sample of Shanghai Lily, which retails for a whopping £140 for 50ml.  In the end I decided to throw myself on the mercy of the manager of the Tom Ford concession at Harvey Nichols in London, playing the 'I don't live anywhere near a major conurbation with a Harvey Nicks in it, so would you be kind enough to send me a sample - I would be happy to pay for your trouble, thank you very much' card, which worked a treat.  I deliberately did not play the 'I'm a blogger, gimme swag' card, a) because there was a very real chance that that tactic might backfire and b) because I genuinely wanted to see how they would respond to me in my capacity as a regular punter.

Well, I say it worked a treat...initially the manager demurred, and said that they only usually send out samples as gifts with purchase 'for security reasons' - that old illogical chestnut - but that as an exception, they would oblige me if I would cover the postage costs of £6.

You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when I received another of those bombastically big boxes (pictured above).  See if you can spot the perfume samples nestling somewhere in amongst the packing peanuts!  But I am not complaining, because the samples comprised 8ml, which by my reckoning - on a pro rata basis - are worth a staggering £22.40.  So I am already quids in here without having even sniffed the thing again (I mean 'this one'.)

But very soon I did, and can report that on each occasion I still got the initial whoosh of clove of which Robin speaks.  Well, 'carnation' was what flitted through my mind, ie something spicy and sharp and a bit medicinal.  Crucially not old-fashioned, though, as in Caron Bellodgia, say.

During the opening phase, the clove acted almost like prison bars, behind which I could just glimpse this drop dead gorgeous, sultry, feminine floral with a twist. A bit like spying a beautiful dental hygienist out of the corner of your eye while you are trapped in the dentist's chair, tholing the administration of all manner of clove-based injectables. Then I would never have guessed Shanghai Lily had orange in it, as I now know from the notes, although there was a tangy facet I couldn't quite put my finger on, which may have been that.  In fact, true to form I really don't know what I was smelling, and can only begin to convey my overall impression of a teasing, coquettish scent - not unduly youthful, mind, yet gentle and tender - one that is soft and powdery, sherbety and sweet, ingenuous and devious, light and dark...er, all at the same time.

Source: Wikimedia Commons (via Gaius Cornelius)

Yes, the scent which eventually emerges from behind the clove is full of contradictions, and may be one of the most beautiful things I have ever smelt, even though I am quite at a loss to describe it.  For that there are the reviews above, of course. Then I found this entertaining description on Luckyscent, which explains how Shanghai Lily was inspired by the character played by Marlene Dietrich in the film Shanghai Express, who is euphemistically described as: 'a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast'.  At the same time, Tom Ford meant Shanghai Lily to evoke: 'caravans piled high with treasures, surrounded by a multi-sensorial abundance of opulence'.  Hmm, that might sound like a big ask of a perfume, and I wouldn't personally describe Shanghai Lily as 'opulent' in the way that Patou Joy or Amouage Gold or YSL Opium might be said to be so. It is spicy, like Opium, but in a softer and much less emphatic style. And is not fat or unctuous like those three either. Shanghai Lily is more in the register of a seriously roughed up L'Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons, say.

I then had recourse to the complete note list to see if that helped me unpack the perfume's progression at all, even in hindsight, and I can honestly say not really!  I do love labdanum, rose, pepper, vanilla, incense and gaiac wood, so I am not surprised I have fallen hard for Shanghai Lily. Actually though, I think it is a perfect fusion of sensual lily scents (which feature disproportionately in my collection - eg Serge Lutens Un Lys, DKNY Gold and Penhaligon's Lily & Spice) with the woody / balsamic orientals that are my overall favourite fragrance family (Diptyque Eau Duelle, Kenzo Flower Oriental and Bvlgari Black to name but a few).

Source: Luckyscent

SHANGHAI LILY

Notes: bitter orange, pink peppercorn, black pepper, clove, jasmine, rose, tuberose, vetiver, cashmeran, benzoin, castoreum, cistus labdanum, gaiac wood, vanilla and frankincense

Although like Robin, I was slow to come round to Shanghai Lily, we part company over the later stages of its development which do not feel 'a bit flat' to me.  Robin goes on to say: 'The clove lingers far into the dry down, but the florals fade far too quickly; what's left is basically a rather mild spiced wood.'.  On my skin, by contrast, at the drydown stage the clove has long since vanished and I get a sweetly vanillic, slightly smoky, yet still markedly floral finish.

Ludicrous layering experiment

Then on a whim the other night, I decided to see if I could recreate Shanghai Lily by layering Penhaligon's Lily & Spice over Cartier's Baiser Volé.  It was a car crash, basically.  Lily & Spice has lily, clove and vanilla in it, and the requisite dark aspect - it is borderline indolic in fact.  The darkness is marred, however, by its pellucid, almost aquatic feel - a bit like CK Truth, say.  Baiser Volé, meanwhile, has a similar snuffed out, pollen-y, sweet, sherbety quality to the Tom Ford, but smells more mainstream and Betty Boo-like.  It is very bright and in your face and brash by comparison, at least in the opening stages.  Yes, Shanghai Lily is not as girlish and fluffy as the Cartier, but nor is it as mature and diva-ish as Marlene Dietrich.  If it is suited to a woman who lives by her wits, I'd like to think this wasn't on an...ahem...professional basis.  But it most certainly has a lttle sultry kick, suspended somewhere between innocence and sensuality.  In my comment on Tara's evocative review on Olfactoria's Travels, I said Shanghai Lily might suit a 30-something on a mission.  Or a 50-something woman trying to recapture her youth...

Funnily enough, I do have a dress that might suit. ;)

Hmm...I haven't worn it since I was a 30-something, though!