Message in a Bottle
It may be hopelessly ‘80s of me, but I still love Opium perfume. I’d be wearing it right now if not for the fact that my boyfriend’s mother wears it too. Quelle horreur. Stripped of my signature scent, I decided it was high time to update my fragrance wardrobe, preferably with new, unique, expensive, hard-to-find scents that wouldn’t remind anyone I loved of their sister, ex-girlfriend or high school guidance counselor.
Now that I think of it, all of my signature scents had their heyday during the decadent ‘80s: Opium, Byzance and Salvador Dali. I know, I know: They’re the olfactory equivalents of sequins and shoulder pads. But I never took to the goofy, stripped-down scents of the ‘90s that smell like cucumber, baked goods or candy. Some people may have personalities that are so fabulous and complex that anything more than a light, ironic fragrance is overkill. But being fair and shy, with dry skin, I find myself drawn to dark, exotic scents that lend me gravity and intrigue.
Ideally, a fragrance should have an element of pure beauty somewhere near the top, some spice, some wood, something aromatic such as basil or bay leaf, and something rank (as in stinky) such as vetiver or civet lurking below the stairs to add excitement. The best perfumes, you see, always include a whiff of something nasty--scents that, unappealing on their own, provide contrast and drama. Fortunately for me, the new fragrances are on the whole remarkably complex and individualistic. You can still get a self-deprecating melon cologne in a plain brown wrapper, of course. And the foodie choices abound: Thierry Mugler’s chocolate-and-cotton-candy Angel is a bestseller, as are the licorice-based Lolita Lempicka and Yves Saint Laurent’s Baby Doll, which smells like grapefruit. But despite the presence of novelty ingredients, the trend in fragrances has come full circle, from youthful, fresh and healthy to slightly demented and intoxicating. For a woman who takes her model of feminine maturity from the heroines in Almodovar’s farces, this is good news indeed.
My first stop on the road to a new identity was Apothia at Fred Segal, which carries many bizarre, idiosyncratic fragrances produced in limited quantities, such as Caitlin, billed as a “medieval” scent, with its overtones of apple, gardenia and sandalwood. Its creator is Caitlin O’Heaney, who manufactures it at her home in Los Angeles. I don’t like apples, but I admire the brazen strangeness. I’m equally impressed by Luctor et Emergo, from the Dutch designers People of the Labyrinths, which smells equally of vanilla, tobacco and grass and costs $180 a bottle. A more chemically reactive scent than most, it smelled subtle and woody on the woman behind the counter, while on me the vanilla came through like a stale sugar cookie.
Pressing on, at Nordstrom I found that fragrance is taken very seriously, and the friendly, well-versed salespeople are happy to make up take-home samples of any perfume they carry. At Neiman Marcus I got a lesson in how to apply fragrance from Adolfo Pena III, a very dapper gentleman who has been selling perfume for 30 years: the chest is the warmest spot on the body, and spraying scent there will keep it “alive” longer. Never rub the wrists together to avoid “bruising the petals.” And spray bottles, since their contents are sealed, will go longer without spoiling than open bottles--good to know if you scent yourself sparingly, or if you plan on collecting fragrances over the years.
A word of warning: Fragrance salespeople can be oddly judgmental and dismissive, like doctors with patients’ complaints. They often think they know what’s “best” for you at a glance. Being an ornery, uncooperative customer, I eventually ended up at Sephora in Sherman Oaks, where the scents are arranged alphabetically and the testers are all right where you can sample them unmolested. Still, it took me four or five trips to various perfume counters to narrow my selection to those scents I wanted to take home for closer examination.
Fragile, by Jean Paul Gaultier, was the first to engage me. The scent announces itself as being all about tuberose, which some people like and others don’t. I didn’t think I would appreciate this one, as flowery as it is, but as it dries down it turns intellectual, deconstructing itself through layers of orange, pink peppercorns, cedar and musk. I first wore it on an architecture tour in the first week of March, with a black postmodern dress by Marithe + Francois Girbaud (a flowered dress plus this intensely floral perfume would make me feel like a bedspread in a Motel 6), and I’ve come to think of it as the perfume of urban optimism. Not to mention that it comes in the most exotic package on the market: a “snow globe” full of eau de parfum--when you shake it, gold flakes drift down around the figure of a woman in a black strapless gown.
On two separate scouting trips to perfume counters I had saleswomen run toward me shrieking, “Be careful with that!” when my hand strayed toward the translucent red Lucite bulb that holds Issey Miyake’s new fragrance, Le Feu D’Issey (the red sprayer nozzle does look a little like a panic button).
“You won’t like that,” the first saleswoman insisted. “Not at all.”
How I love a challenge. Le Feu is a bizarre scent, to be sure--and, to my mind, wonderful. With notes of coriander leaf, Bulgarian rose, mango and something feral called “milky amber,” it smells like a cage full of nursing tiger cubs, or the smoke left after a genie escapes her bottle. This is what I will wear on hot summer evenings, with a tight red Hawaiian-print dress.
I have always wanted to wear certain men’s fragrances for their woody, leathery snugness, but in practice, this never pans out. Some women can pull it off, but on me, men’s cologne smells more seedy and rumpled than warm and cozy. So I was happy to learn of the re-release of one of Marlene Dietrich’s favorite perfumes, Bandit, by Robert Piguet, which has been “out of print” for 25 years. Bandit smells the way I remember horseback-riding lessons to have smelled, both feminine and masculine, like powder and leather. It holds up well during sweaty activities, making it the perfect tomboy perfume, if your idea of a tomboy is a movie star in breeches.
Then, out of the blue, I found my doppelganger in the new Christian Lacroix. In the packaging literature, Lacroix describes the scent as evoking his native Provence. Having spent a year there in college, I know there is something to that notion. In the summer the mistral blows and blows, driving some very relaxed people to the brink of madness. I felt this scent might do the same to me, slowly, on a warm day. The Lacroix smells of herbs and white flowers, incense spices, acrid cut grass and an animal lurking not too far away. I can imagine Lady Brett wearing this perfume to the bullfights in “The Sun Also Rises.”
My only failure came with Gucci Rush, which is very smartly packaged in a hot pink minimalist rectangle. I do believe that Tom Ford can do no wrong, but Rush contains the deadly combination of gardenia and vanilla--ambrosial to some, but after a couple of hours on my wrists and neck, it makes me feel like a candy apple left to rot under the bleachers after a ball game.
Strangely enough, the hands-down winner of the blindfolded boyfriend test (a romantic procedure, by the way, which takes days if done properly and which I highly recommend) was Gucci Envy, a not-so-new green floral laced with such seemingly old-fashioned notions as violet, magnolia and lily of the valley. Given that I missed the ‘90s entirely, this one clean and virtuous scent, in a bottle designed to look like a glass-sheathed skyscraper, seems like a good one to keep on hand as a bridge between my campy, decadent past and my ever-so-richly anticipated future.
