Re: The perfumery thread

[Nightjar]

The NHotW already has three official perfumes.

No other others will be tolerated.

Unless they are funny.

[Nightjar]

They, are as follows...

It Turns Out

Supertramp

Anti-Gravity

Par La Nouvelle Salle du Wendigo


Sheffield - London - Colchester - Dudley

[cosmictanya]

I was trying to be nice. I thought we could all discuss and share personal favourites, and what they mean. Recommendations. Or the opposite. Without any controversy.

[Nightjar]

Controversy just follows you around.

[cosmictanya]

Le Rivage des Syrtes is a lesser used item in my collection due it opening with far more fruity tones than I favour. In wine and scent I not only decline fruity notes, I have physically run from department stores and off licences when the quality is mentioned. This however is worth sticking with for its amber dry down and thrilling musky essence. Not a coincidence, the aptly named concoction always generates a positive response from lesbians.

[cosmictanya]

Now, Kiki (parfum extrait) is one of the finest creations in my possession. For a lavender lover such as myself, it was a glaring wound in my collection that I actually didn't like to personally smell of lavender. Until Kiki. Like the odd rose I have, Kiki takes lavender on a journey of discovery while remaining true to its heart. The hypnotic astringency of lavender can be a difficult fragrance but here it's nailed down with an unusually seductive quality. I had been in a minor car crash near Grasse, when my lovely driver Daniel was overcome by the lavender harvest and the joint we had shared in the fields. Even on that quest, I couldn't commit to a perfume, despite my flat and my laundry being drenched in lavender.

My mother and brother pursued this, knowing how conflicted I was about lavender based perfumes. For her 60th I arranged for a scented treasure hunt in Bergdorfs, and we all became friends with the man who organized the logistics - a beautiful Haitian nose with an orgasmic velvet voice and crystal cut taste. He had suggested a few remedies until he struck upon Kiki - a sample was approved without my knowledge, and the bottle was presented to me by him. A fabulous 35th birthday surprise.

[cosmictanya]

Shalimar. It's difficult to know what to say about a legend so I can only discuss my reaction to it. I was 12 and in a chemist with my grandparents when I picked up a bottle and found it repellant. After wandering around looking at other things I was drawn back and it made great sense to me. 

I think it was the first significant confirmation I had that I preferred an oriental and somewhat complex evening outlook on life. (Miss Dior as discussed is much more powdery). I explained this feeling to my grandparents and later in the day was given an exciting surprise - my gran had dashed back and bought me a bottle.

It's all flooding back to me now. It was raining heavily and it was a Friday. We were having fish which my grandmother always cooked on Fridays. She had a fishman (we always called him the fishman) who arrived fresh from the boat twice a week to offer his best catches to favourite customers. He had a lovely rural accent and always called/referred to her as 'my lady'. On cold mornings he would come in for a cup of tea and a slice of toast.

I wish I could cook fish the way she did. It's a taste I'll never enjoy again. When I was in Munich for a meeting I met a lovely young man whose mother had died when he was a teenager. We bonded enormously over the loss of specific dishes from our lives, cooked in specific ways by special people. We've become firm friends and I've been invited to his wedding to a wonderful man. Normally I say no to wedding invitations but I've accepted this one.

[cosmictanya]

Now, a slightly angle on fragrance, but no less important for that. Drawer liners. I will only use Nantucket Briar from Crabtree & Evelyn. It's a clean and soapy but dignified and 'Kennedyesque' chic scent, and they don't need constant replacement so they're a great budget buy.

The pattern and colour scheme is also very pleasing. I do have other soaps in among the clothes themselves (and still others on ribbons for hanging in wardrobes and storage items) - there is a fabulous soap shop in Chefchaouen that provides almost every high quality and heavily impregnated and locally produced scented soap you could want. But Nantucket Briar drawer liners remain the base in all my drawers, and the glovebox compartment in my car. 

There is only one room under this roof that Nantucket Briar doesn't drift from the drawers in, that being my sons room. Despite his own appreciation of perfumery (Labdanum 18 as discussed is a love shared by us all) he prefers his bedroom to smell of eau de sports kit, and the boxes of liners I leave on the bed are placed back outside the door, sometimes with marker pen additions - drawings of spurting d*cks and messages that read '**** off mum'.

[cosmictanya]

Now, despite being born in the 1910's my darling grandfather was a modern man before modern men were invented. It was my grans bone of contention that she could barely push the prams of her children and grandchildren because he was busy doing it instead. 

He saw women and all creeds and colours as his equals without reservation. Having been born in his grandmothers celebrated Bombay brothel, to a halachically Jewish mother (she had an aristocratic Anglo-Swiss father I won't name) and an Italian father, he grew up around but was never part of the Raj set and abhorred their disgusting racism and casual profiteering, learning up close just how repulsive they were.

His cousin - blood via the unnamed source - patronisingly offered my grandfather a role as his 'batman' as some kind of twisted favour. The offer was declined. Many decades later I was sitting next to this noble reprobate (whose hands were under the table fondling my mother) and his horsey wife at a dinner when I felt compelled to tell them both what irredeemable scum they both were and excuse myself from the table.

I am enormously proud of his role in civil rights in that society, and for his incredible service in WWII. It upsets me more than I can say that the modern far right have cynically co-opted the sacrifices and traumas of that generation as a respectable cover for their rancid filth. My abiding lesson from my lovely, kind, charismatic and deeply generous grandad was the sheer tragedy of conflict and division, and the precious gift that life is - both your own and other peoples.

When he died a woman I vaguely knew got in touch to tell me about her night at the original Embassy nightclub with him. She said something very precious to me - she said 'your grandfather was the kind of man who makes a woman glad she's a woman, and despite him being twice my age he confirmed my impression to me three times that night'. Isn't that kind? I was enormously touched, and sent red roses to her own funeral.

Anyway he was always willing to take on worthy modern updates of life and style - one of which was the Calvin Klein classic 'Obsession'. I have his final after shave bottle, and use it in a similar way to Creed's Himalaya, but more sparingly - as a professional confidence boost, but in this case of a very personal nature. And I always wear Obsession on Remembrance Sunday.

I'm told by everyone who knew him that I was the greatest joy of my grandfathers life. I miss our pub lunches and visits to 'the flicks'. I find splashing Obsession about my person reminds me of my wonderful cosmopolitan/brave lineage from him, and cements the confidence required to face down anyone. 

[cosmictanya]

I was going to add my grans favourite perfume here but I just can't. It's currently too private. Suffice to say it's powdery and elegant. I keep her last bottle and sometimes spritz a wrist with it. I no longer apply it to myself and the pillow before bed and cry myself to sleep, imagining her hand in my own (which obviously remained devastatingly empty). It's long lasting and very special to me. I have a lock of her hair which I keep in her final compact, and when I open the lid the scent of this perfume fills the room and transports me to safety and security.

Perfume is such an intense experience. It's a whole world of emotion, hope, aspiration, memory, energy, eroticism, delight, desire, love, peace. There's nothing in life that can't be conveyed by perfume. I had hoped we could all share in the pure delight of incredible scents that make us feel our best, happiest and most confident selves. Or rewind the years in a way that nothing else does.

[cosmictanya]

The finest and headiest soaps in Chefchaouen. It scents the entire area. Very high quality. It's like going to heaven.











I have found it to be impossible to be miserable in the beauty and deep peace of this scented, sensual town. It's such a relaxing place I've long allowed my son to disappear from sight when we are there - off he goes to play football and run around nooks and crannies with the local kids, only returning to find me when it's time for a wholesome chicken and vegetable dish under the stars. Such a marvellous place - being intoxicated by fragrant soaps and fresh cooking, and the cannabis crop from the surrounding Rif Mountains. Being there is like having a beautiful dream you don't need to wake up from.

[cosmictanya]

It's hard to credit that I'm the only person here that wears perfumes and favours certain types. I thought this would be a buzzing place to share.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

I've never really been into perfume. It all smells like chemicals to me and sets-off flashbacks to the horror of eating Fry's Turkish Delight.

Also, if it's strong enough for other people to smell, it means one's put too much on. If it isn't strong enough for other people to smell, there doesn't seem any point in wearing it.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

Plus, they don't make perfume that smells like haslet.

[cosmictanya]

Well that is at least a point of view. Absolute bo**ocks but nevertheless a heartfelt position.

[Fangirl Three]

I thought about buying a perfume called Fresh Laundry once, which I saw reviewed in the FT, but I forgot which company made it.

[Nightjar]

Daz?

[Guest]

I used to like Pansy for men.



It was made by Lush.





Ooh, they've reissued it!

Or have they just reused the name?

[Nightjar]

Looks like a bottle of poppers or GHB.

[Guest]

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