Amouage Perfumes

nce upon a time there lived a sultan. He was very sad because his land was once renowned for its riches and especially for its heady perfumes. But now the bazaars were empty, and the perfumers, one by one, had packed their chests and departed to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

But one day he had an idea. He would hire the most famous French perfumer and bring him to his palace. He would ask him to bring the art of perfumery back to his land. He would ask him to concoct something absolutely breathtaking, full of spices, incense, and attars so rich that whole fields of roses would be used for one precious vial.

The French perfumer came. He admired the palace. He listened to the sultan's sad tale. He stepped into the laboratory set up for him and went to work.

Three weeks later, he asked for an audience with the sultan. He brought forth a small crystal bottle. When he unstopped it and held it under the sultan's nose, the sultan almost fainted with joy. From the bottle flowed the scent first of roses, then of Provence herbs--all classic scents in the French tradition--but then it changed its tune ever so slightly. Suddenly, the sultan could smell the desert night, the cool breeze under a hundred flying carpets. He could smell the musky scent of Scheherezade as she lay in her silken bed, frankincense rising from a censer behind her. It was the answer to his dreams.

The perfume markets began their trade again. Artists and craftsmen competed to mix the sweetest fragrances, the richest oils. The French perfumer went back to his land, with a thousand camels, five hundred chests of jewels, and one hundred golden lamps, full of perfumed oil. The sultan rejoiced and breathed in the fragrance rising from beyond the ivory walls of his palace.

******
Okay, maybe there weren't a thousand camels, but this story, in its bare bones, is all true. In 1983, the Sultan of Oman asked Guy Robert to revive the Arabian art of perfumery, no expense spared. Guy Robert is the "nez" of French perfumery. He concocted Amouage Gold for the Sultan, what he called "the crowning glory of my career."

And I own it! I bought a bottle of it off ebay when I discovered that its 24% lead crystal bottle and 24K gold top (for Gold for women) was being discontinued. It is truly a thing of beauty--both bottle and scent.

Amouage Gold for men (left) and women (right)

I must admit that my favorite Amouage scent is Jubilation XXV and not Gold. XXV is just about the most perfect thing I have ever smelled. It is an incense scent but full of the heady smell of a fruity wine as well. It's a man's scent, but I long ago decided that gender does not play a role with regards to the nose. At least not for me. When I wear it, I swear I'm at the market place in Oman at dusk, surrounded by candied dates and scented resin. I only have a sample vial for now...Amouage is a pricey brand, and for good reason! You can smell the amazing quality of their ingredients. But this makes them prohibitively expensive. My Gold bottle was a steal. Someday, though, Jubilation XXV will be mine.

Fun in Beantown

I'm just back from a conference in Boston, and tomorrow I head to California for Thanksgiving with my family. Here are just a few fun photos from Boston.

This is an Egyptian kitten mummy, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

A Greek bowl, decorated with a painting of a boy fishing
- notice the octopus hiding out of sight.

A Chinese porcelain dog - Eastern Han Dynasty, 2nd C. AD. I love his mouth.

Me, in Cambridge's Colonial Drug Store - they have over 1,000 fragrances!

Okay, so it was really cold, and I discovered that the collar of my coat could button all the way up.
I was then told that I looked like the ironclad USS Monitor, from the Civil War. See below.

That's the Monitor, on the right, firing at the USS Merrimac (Confederate).
At least I look like the Union ship.

At Least I Can Still Smell - Sniffing Après L’Ondée

For the last two days I've been plagued with eye pain, and I finally saw the doctor today, even though my student health insurance doesn't kick in until Friday and my short term plan ended on Monday. Isn't that just Murphy's Law?

Anyway, right now I can't even walk outside because the wind feels like knives in my eyeballs, and the sun is too bright. Ahhh! Get me away from this fresh air and sunlight! But, should I lose all vision, at least I've been training my nose for the last few months. I'll smell my way around. (But really, I should be fine.)

Since I find myself with limited amusements, let me jot down some of my thoughts on the last perfume I smelled, Après L’Ondée by Guerlain.

From Bois de Jasmin

Après L’Ondée is not one of the classic heavyweights from Guerlain, which include L'Heure Bleue and Shalimar - these are powerful, heady perfumes. Meaning "after the rain shower," the fragrance begins with the a watery note - hard to describe, but once you smell it, you'll know it. The top notes I smell also include iris (a root-like scent), thyme, and sage. Just imagine you plunged a bunch of herbs under cold water and are holding them up to your face. Better yet, imagine you're standing in a herb garden after a rainstorm.

Then I get violet - a very purple and tiny smell. By "tiny" I don't mean the smell is faint but that it smells tiny, delicate, miniature. Sweet, too, but in a small way, not in the expansive way of sugar and vanilla. Like a petite candied violet.

I wish Après L’Ondée stopped there for me. I would be in love with this melancholy scent if it did. Alas, on me it finally develops into Eau de Baby Wipes. Once in a while, amidst the smell of infant hygiene, I get a whiff of something herbal again, only to lose it.

I also wish I loved this scent for a sort of silly reason: I want to like the house of Guerlain. I am secretly afraid that I will despise every one of their fragrances (I also do not like Shalimar). Will I then be denounced as completely bourgeois? What if I actually like Britney Spears' Fantasy instead? As a developing perfumista, I am educating my nose. I have samples of other Guerlains to try yet, as well as exclusives niche fragrances. But this brings up the question of how we learn taste: is it based on our own likes and dislikes, or on what is deemed "tasteful" by others? How does this work with food and wine? Do we naturally like caviar and truffles or do we because we learn they are "sophisticated" foods?

Maybe the test of natural affinity vs. pretension is whether we abandon our old likes entirely or not . . . I do love foie gras and escargot, but I also love a good mac 'n' cheese. I also have a secret place in my heart for junk Chinese food: mmmmm, Orange Chicken. What do you think?

A Serious Case of the Pretties

Today I bought Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette - not because I think it's great film (although it is fun to watch) but because it is so so tooth-achingly pretty!


And although Kirsten Dunst gets to wear the most amazing gowns, what I love even more than all the feathers and lace and silk shoes are the beautiful French pastries. Especially the multi-colored macarons. I don't even love the taste of macarons, and yet I have hunted them down all over the net and calculated making them over and over again because...well, because they're pretty!!!

I also stumbled upon the website TheFrock.com, where the most amazing Victorian and Edwardian and Flapper frocks can be found. Why don't we dress this fabulously anymore?

Can't you just imagine stepping out of a carriage, with this little ensemble? You're on your way to the opera, one hand on the arm of your beloved, the other grasping your diamond- encrusted lorgnette. Your name might as well be Baroness Orczy.

The thing is, you can PURCHASE these frocks! I mean, they might cost you a pretty penny - around $2-5K - but it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Okay, maybe they are. But a girl can dream, right? Never mind the fact that I will have no occasion to wear these things. That never stopped a true lover of the Pretty.

But, in the order of actual prettiness one can buy, my first full bottle of perfume arrived today. I wish I could say it were a Serge Lutens exclusive fragrance, in a bell jar, or - better yet - a bottle of Amouage Gold. Those darned bottles are made out of 24% lead crystal and gold! Sigh...

No, no. It was something much more down to earth: Sarah Jessica Parker's Covet. I heard it was being discontinued and, since I seem to be one of the only people who find it a wearable scent, I quickly snatched up a bottle of it from eBay. On me I smell citrus and lavender, followed by chocolate and musk. The musk lingers for a nice long time, and it is one of the first perfumes that I experienced that mmmmmm with when I smelled it on my jacket a few days later. So, yes, today I have had quite an attack of the pretties. Can't anyone else relate?

Figues Fraîches

I was at a small gourmet market this morning and saw these smiling up at me:


I had to take them home. Then, of course, comes the delightful dilemma of figuring out what to do with them. In the end, I didn't feel like fooling around with panna cotta or tart dough, so I took the path of least resistance:

They're nestled in some Greek yogurt, drizzled with honey, then sprinkled with walnuts. I think figs are highly under appreciated here in the States. In my parents' orchard we have several fig trees, but it's been so long since I've had fresh figs. I didn't realize I've been missing their tender, mellow, date-like sweetness.

I now also have a hankering for fig fragrances, though I have yet to sniff one. I have a feeling I'll like that figgy note. Two prominent fig fragrances are L'Artisan Parfumuer's Premier Figuier and Diptyque's Philosykos. I find it interesting that both fragrances are supposedly rather "green" smelling, since the notes involve not only the fruit but also the leaves and sap of a fig tree. If anyone has ever picked figs, they'll know that a milky sap oozes out from the stems.

But...I'd rather just have the fruit, please. I find I'm attracted to perfumes that are slightly edible - not too foody or sweet but evocative enough to hit that space in the brain that hums "mmmm" happily to itself. Then a fragrance is sensual enough to involve more than just one sense.

There is no fig flower fragrance to conjure up in perfumery, however. In Chinese, fig is "wu hua guo," literally "fruit without flowers" - the fig has its flowers on the inside of its fruit - what's known as an "enclosed inflorescence." Here's a meditation on this hidden fertility, as well as on sweet fig flesh, by D. H. Lawrence. Who better to wax poetic on such themes?

Figs

by D. H. Lawrence

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,

Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,

And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.

Then you throw away the skin

Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,

After you have taken off the blossom, with your lips.

But the vulgar way

Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.

Every fruit has its secret.

The fig is a very secretive fruit.

As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic:

And it seems male.

But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.

The Italians vulgarly say, it stands for the female part ; the fig-fruit:

The fissure, the yoni,

The wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre.

Involved,

Inturned,

The flowering all inward and womb-fibrilled;

And but one orifice.

The fig, the horse-shoe, the squash-blossom.

Symbols.

There was a flower that flowered inward, womb-ward;

Now there is a fruit like a ripe womb.

It was always a secret.

That’s how it should be, the female should always be secret.

There never was any standing aloft and unfolded on a bough

Like other flowers, in a revelation of petals;

Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples,

Shallow wine-cups on short, bulging stems

Openly pledging heaven:

Here’s to the thorn in flower ! Here is to Utterance !

The brave, adventurous rosaceæ.

Folded upon itself, and secret unutterable,

And milky-sapped, sap that curdles milk and makes ricotta,

Sap that smells strange on your fingers, that even goats won’t taste it;

Folded upon itself, enclosed like any Mohammedan woman,

Its nakedness all within-walls, its flowering forever unseen,

One small way of access only, and this close-curtained from the light;

Fig, fruit of the female mystery, covert and inward,

Mediterranean fruit, with your covert nakedness,

Where everything happens invisible, flowering and fertilization, and fruiting

In the inwardness of your you, that eye will never see

Till it’s finished, and you’re over-ripe, and you burst to give up your ghost.

Till the drop of ripeness exudes,

And the year is over.

And then the fig has kept her secret long enough.

So it explodes, and you see through the fissure the scarlet.

And the fig is finished, the year is over.

That’s how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit

Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day.

Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret.

That’s how women die too.

The year is fallen over-ripe,

The year of our women.

The year of our women is fallen over-ripe.

The secret is laid bare.

And rottenness soon sets in.

The year of our women is fallen over-ripe.

When Eve once knew in her mind that she was naked

She quickly sewed fig-leaves, and sewed the same for the man.

She’d been naked all her days before,

But till then, till that apple of knowledge, she hadn’t had the fact on her mind.

She got the fact on her mind, and quickly sewed fig-leaves.

And women have been sewing ever since.

But now they stitch to adorn the bursten fig, not to cover it.

They have their nakedness more than ever on their mind,

And they won’t let us forget it.

Now, the secret

Becomes an affirmation through moist, scarlet lips

That laugh at the Lord’s indignation.

What then, good Lord! cry the women.

We have kept our secret long enough.

We are a ripe fig.

Let us burst into affirmation.

They forget, ripe figs won’t keep.

Ripe figs won’t keep.

Honey-white figs of the north, black figs with scarlet inside, of the south.

Ripe figs won’t keep, won’t keep in any clime.

What then, when women the world over have all bursten into affirmation?

And bursten figs won’t keep ?

Odds & Ends & Skin Chemistry

I've been spending afternoons babysitting my niece and evenings editing a patent my dad is working on for a large Japanese camera company. It turns out it doesn't matter much that I don't have a science background - the English is so terrible that it's enough that I simply correct grammar and language (e.g. replacing "quantized" with "quantified" and "time slices" with "time periods").

One interest I can pursue during all this is my obsession with perfume. While I watch Tori or correct text I am always bringing up my wrist to my nose for a sniff, checking the development of some scent on my skin. What I've discovered today is that a perfume that appears gorgeous on a scent strip can be disastrous combined with my skin chemistry.

Remember Fracas? Sparkling tuberose and loveliness? While the tuberose came on strong in the first few minutes after spraying, I began to detect another note . . . drying saliva. Now, three hours later, the thing has evolved into full-on restaurant bathroom freshener. I have scrubbed with soap, and yet I am still enveloped in a cloud of Glade. And this is just with one tiny spritz from a sample tube! The sillage (radius of sniffability) is ridiculously strong. Please, someone, just put me out of my misery.

A Perfume By Another Name . . . Wait, They All Smell the Same

Allow me to continue to geek out on perfumes. I am having a boring streak in perfume sniffing. For the last three days I have worn Flower by Kenzo, Lolita Lempicka, and Chanel's Coco Madamoiselle. Besides from very slightly different floral notes they all smell so boringly similar: sweet saccharine powder with a touch of vanilla or musk.

I think I have narrowed down my stereotypes of perfume, divided by gender:

For Women
Old Lady - aldehydes, e.g. Chanel No. 5
Bombshell- gourmand, sugar, and musk (see above)
Hip Young Thing - lychee, citrus, tea, e.g. L'Occitane's White Tea
Hippie - incense, neroli, patchouli, e.g. Ormond Jayne's Orris Noir

For Men
Cab Driver - MUSK, e.g. too many to specify
Frat Boy/Clubber - aqua notes and pine, e.g. Cool Water, etc.
Old Boy's Club - polished leather, smoke, bourbon, e.g. classic Polo
Cowboy - rugged leather and spice, e.g. Stetson

I got a kick out of the notes in Britney Spears' perfume Fantasy: red lychee, golden quince, kiwi, cupcake accord, jasmine, white chocolate orchid, musk, woods, and orris root. "Cupcake accord" - it doesn't get better than that. And why "red lychee" and "golden quince"? All lychees are red. And quinces are yellow. Period.

I did just send for a sample of Parfum D'Empire's Fougere Bengale, supposed to evoke India under British colonial rule with notes evocative of a tiger hunt: straw, horses, tobacco, musk, etc. Isn't great how we get to romanticize imperialism, now that enough time has passed so people won't be so damn sensitive about it? Bring on the safari hats and gin and tonics!

Retail Therapy & Sniffing

So I've moved into a house my parents own in Palo Alto - the tenants had unexpectedly vacated the place, leaving it to me and my sister. My sister, however, is out gallivanting in Italy so I have this 3 bedroom place to myself for now. Without furniture. This was incredibly depressing until I realized that I could use the empty master bedroom and its mirrors as my fitting room, post-shopping.

I've also indulged in a bit of perfume sniffing today. I finally got down to smelling three fragrances I've longed to try: Agent Provocateur, Agent Provocateur Maitresse, and Fracas by Robert Piguet. If you sense a theme, yes, there is one. I won't elaborate.

Agent Provocateur surprised me. I suppose I forgot that it was a chypre. It is supposed to be an in-your-face scent of seduction. To me it smelled like money, which could be seductive . . . but instead of saying "come hither" to me it said "I am expensive and sleeping in crisp sheets at the Chateau Marmont." Its dry down on my wrist was a pleasant woody musk. Chandler Burr, New York Times perfume critic, mentioned "black plums on hot skin," but I'm not feelin' it.

AP's Maitresse began promisingly enough, sweet and musky, which I love, but it evolved ultimately into an overwhelming powderyness, which I associate with suffocating in an elevator when certain uber-coifed older ladies enter.

Fracas, thank goodness, did not disappoint. It is a tuberose so strong it knocks you off your feet - but it is exquisitely beautiful. Roja Dove, in The Independent, described it as smelling "like very, very hot flesh after you've had sex." Well. I think of tuberose as the scent that makes me say, "That - what is that? I've smelled that long ago in a garden after dark. I'm so happy to smell it again." I think I must own a bottle.

And then I did some unplanned sniffing. While in Bloomingdale's I was handed a strip of John Varvatos. Ugh. Cloyingly sweet and way too much like a knock-off of Thierry Mugler's Angel - marshmallows and weirdness. I will never understand all the rage over Angel. I had to scrub it off my wrist after trying it on, kind of like I have to do now with Maitresse.

Birthday Pause: Puffs & Perfumery

Yesterday I turned thirty - and, actually, feel very happy about it. I think it has something to do with being a perpetual student, since as one I feel as though I'm in a constant state of not-there-yet. I'm always under someone's supervision, always the student in a student-teacher interaction. So, turning thirty for me has signaled that I am actually an adult and could and should demand some respect.

But on to other heraldry of my adulthood! I am happy to announce that....I have finally attempted and succeeded in making pate a choux! (What did you expect, a pregnancy announcement?) After years of thinking I could not do this, I finally got out the piping bag, the non-stick baking mats, and mixed the panade. Here are my pretties. Aren't they oh-so-pretty?

These I filled with fresh strawberry cream, but I am actually preparing to make a croche em bouche for my & Molt's 30th birthday bash. Then they will filled with pecan pastry cream, dipped in caramelized sugar, and arranged into a wreath - with a spun sugar nest on top. See, I'm an adult. I can make croche em bouche, damnit!

I've also been obsessing about perfumes lately, probably borne from the old-fashioned but romantic notion that a woman should have a signature scent. Now Smell This is my absolute favorite fragrance blog - I could spend hours reading it, and do! So, for my birthday, Molt bought me the sample set from London perfumery Ormonde Jayne.

The set includes samples of the whole line. So far we've tried Osmanthus and Ormonde Man. I was dying of curiosity over Osmanthus, since I've been searching for the Chinese gui hua flower ever since our trip to Taiwan last winter. It's a flower that's dried and used in fragrant sweet tea and dessert soups, such as this one below (enjoyed in Shanghai), with sweet rice balls with rice mead and gui hua (the yellow specks are the dried flowers):

Here is my interpretation of Ormonde Jayne's Osmanthus:
Opening - grapefruit burst (not so much pomello), green herbs
Dry down - sweet honey and cotton
Base - a sweet, cherrylike pink floral, water, and honey
It doesn't remind me of gui hua at all, unfortunately. Or maybe fortunately. I told my mom that if I smelled like gui hua I'd be a bowl of rice balls. She laughed and said, "Probably." So, OJ's Osmanthus to me is an elegant, well-dressed floral, very pretty, polished, and restrained. Not me. But! I will be trying Champaca soon - this is based on the magnolia flower, called bai lan hua in Chinese. They sell it hooked on wires in the streets of Taiwan (and throughout Asia) so drivers can hang it in their cars. It is a luscious fragrance. Ormonde Jayne mixes Champaca with the scent of basmati rice!! I can't wait to try it.

Some incredibly fragrant flowers I've sniffed (or eaten!) in China, Taiwan, and Thailand:

Gui Hua (Osmanthus). My aunt has a tree in her backyard.
When the flowers drop off the Chinese call it "golden rain."

Bai Lan Hua (Champaca). I was given a blossom at a restaraunt in Thailand - which I promptly put in my jeans pocket and forgot. Later my entire suitcase was redolent with the creamy white fragrance - it is that powerful, and beautiful.

Qi Li Xiang (Orange Jasmine) - translated, the Chinese means "Seven Miles Fragrant." We took a bike ride in the Taiwanese countryside and rode past a hedge of these flowers - it was amazing. I plucked a sprig, and it's still in the book I was reading at the time (Olive Schreiner, From Man to Man). Alas, it is fragrant no more.