This Week At The Perfume Counter: Guest Blogged by Elisa

Here's the thing. It's rarely much fun shopping by yourself. Just last night, a friend and I were talking about how maddening it is to visit the perfume stores alone: the vendors aren't always so patient, when not exceedingly pushy. They can sometimes take the fun out of it. There's safety in numbers. When you bring a friend, you feel more insulated, more understood, and you don't feel so bad when you ask the sales associate to reach for the precariously placed bottle on the back of the highest shelf.

I do have friends, thankfully. Alas, few here in town would jump at the chance to head for the discount fragrance store. Elisa and I live in different states, so we can't exactly make trips to the mall together. But why should that stop us? Like a lot of my online friends we email constantly about fragrance as if sitting in the same room, carrying on a conversation. When she wrote me this morning to tell me about her most recent visit to the "perfume counter", I decided to meet her there, if only virtually, by commenting on her finds. Here's to speaking from one self-contained bubble to another.

"I had a three-hour layover in Dallas yesterday," she wrote, "and found a duty-free shop with testers of a bunch of fragrances I never see testers out for anywhere. I had a total sniffing spree and it was great because the store was empty and the woman who worked there didn't harass me. I didn't try anything on, just sniffed from blotters, but among the stuff that was totally new to my nose."

We're starting with...

Two by Sonia Rykiel: Le Parfum and Rykiel Woman (Not for Men!)

With the exception of Rykiel Rose, which left me resolutely unenthused, Rykiel fragrances have never failed to impress me. Belle en Rykiel (2006), my first exposure to the line, is a favored go-to, mixing lavender, chocolate, frankincense, coffee leaf, and heliotrope in a way which still manages to surprise me each time I spray it on. Sonia Rykiel (1997) is a fruity floral done right, with nice woody undertones (sandalwood, cedar) contrasted against a dense medley of pineapple, currant, violet, honeysuckle, and rose--a chamber piece from the nose behind the operas known as Opium and Dune. Even Rykiel Homme (1999) satisfies, pulling a few punches in what at first registers as standard masculine fare. After the yuzu notes up top wear off Rykiel Homme evolves into a strange tug of war between fig, vioilet leaf, jasmine, nutmeg, vanilla and vetiver, a sort of dewy, less adversarial Habanita, fresh off the ciggies. I enjoy all of these, but as good as they all are, none prepared me for Le Parfum and Rykiel Woman, two of the nicer discoveries I've made in the past several months.

Le Parfum (1993) is seldom mentioned on the perfume blogs (see the link below for a rare exception), and unavailable all but online. It's quite a best kept secret for a fragrance which projects so forcefully. The notes are listed as hinoki wood, mimosa, passion fruit, osmanthus, rose, iris, tonka, ambered precious woods, and vanilla. The ingredients on the box list treemoss extract as well. Rykiel Le Parfum sits somewhere between Mitsouko and Mauboussin, with the overripe fruit of the former and the vanillic woody rococo tendencies of the latter. Oh but it lasts--and lasts. Hours in, the osmanthus, which up to then has been pretty bashful, opens a can of whoop ass, and the thing really hits its stride. This is one of those fragrances you can wander around in. It has a rich, creamy depth to it which makes many contemporary perfumes feel sheer and flimsy by comparison. It's also a lot sturdier, a warm but declarative scent, a melodrama played out in stage whispers. I wish I knew who made it.

I expected to like or at least appreciate Le Parfum. The shape of the bottle announced slightly off-kilter but classy intentions: not quite round, not exactly symmetrical. Aside from Belle en Rykiel, a solid cube of glass with a lucite top, the line's bottles have always struck me as counter-intuitive, more playful and inconsequential than the fragrances warrant. Even so, Rykiel Woman (2003) is a shock. Striped glass, crap lettering, and a black cap with naff gold studs hardly augurs high quality. More like high camp. And in fact, when first applied, Rykiel Woman seems like an afterthought. But give it time. Moments later, something amazing wafts up from the point of contact, subtle but emphatic.

From what I was able to find online, the fragrance was the brainchild of Rykiel's daughter, who'd opened up a section within her mother's boutique featuring more risque apparel and, um, accoutrements. A sign on the door read "Not for men!"--though, of course, it was, if only indirectly. What's a bullet without a target? The bent was cheeky sadomasochism; thus the gold studs on black background, de Sade by way of the Village People, with a detour into Danielle Steele. Should the abnormal size of the bottle (a whopping 125 ml) and its ribbed design be regarded as some sort of wishful thinking? Who cares. The scent is fantastic, like something and nothing you've smelled before. What keeps me engaged with Rykiel Woman is how close it comes to many fragrances I've known and loved, and yet none have had its strange, hypnotic diffusion, both there and not there, a real come on, with substance to back it up. Very few fragrances sit on the skin this way, speaking to the air around them.

The notes are listed as pink pepper, violet, date, jasmine, solar flowers (oh dear), bulgarian rose, black pepper, olibanum, agarwood, leather, and amber. I'm here to tell you I smell very little of all that, least of which, solar flowers, whatever the hell those are. The leather is practically subliminal, though I wouldn't call what registers suede, either. The overall effect is much too dry to signal the date, too smooth to suggest the pepper. Nor is it floral in the least to my nose. What I do smell is olibanum and a very soft, very well-played agarwood, making this one of the better olibanum fragrances I've smelled, cozy and resonant.

Rykiel Woman has a well-deserved cult status on the fragrance boards. That said, when I read "comfort scent," I'm skeptical. Me, I've typically found that a comfort scent means barely there, a meek suggestion of a thing, no bark, no bite. Spending time with Rykiel Woman, I understand the term. It does in fact wrap around you like a blanket, paying off in dividends hours later, with a curious stealth persistence.

I purchased both at Rei Rien for affordable prices (Le Parfum for $26, Woman for $40). Please note that Rykiel Woman also comes as an EDT. I've only smelled the EDP and am told they are very different. The EDT is apparently much more of a fruity floral. If anyone has smelled Rykiel Homme Grey and can tell me something about it I'd be eternally grateful. I'm also curious to hear about Rykiel Woman Hot, a limited edition flanker.

For a post on Le Parfum, see the Non-Blonde blog.

Madame Rochas

The Madame Rochas available today at outlet stores like Perfumania is probably a paler rendition of the original 1960 release. Still, it's lovely in a vaguely masculine way, smells both fresh and musky, can be had for less than thirty bucks, and lasts throughout the day. Madame gets knocked around by reviewers for its supposed resemblance to shampoo, and it does have that slight soapiness associated with many older perfumes. But it has enough complexity to make these accusations and comparisons beside the point.

Madame Rochas was designed by Guy Robert using a template made famous by its biggest inspirations, Chanel No. 5 and Arpege. During its development, it travels back and forth along the continuum separating those two. It has the honeyed floral warmth of Arpege, and diffuses off the skin similarly. It doesn't have the aldehyde overload of No. 5, but doesn't seem as aldehyde heavy as Arpege, either. Rose, Jasmine, Tuberose and Lily of the Valley mingle around in the heart of the fragrance, creating more than the sum of their parts.

The base notes interest me the most and, I think, determine what you're smelling throughout the lifespan. Orris root is said to be costly, and I'm not sure how an inexpensive perfume like this one can afford to use much if any, but it's listed in the pyramid, and the overal impression has the buttery affect you'd expect from its inclusion. Santal and musk are listed, too. Given that the former is expensive as well and the latter is unquestionably synthetic, it's pretty astonishing just how rich and textured Madame Rochas actually smells.

It was officially reformulated in 1982 by Jean-Louis Sieuzac and Jacques Fraysse. Sieuzac was the nose behind such greats as Dune, Opium, Fahrenheit, and Sonia Rykiel. Fraysse could be related to Andre (who created Arpege), Richard (in-house perfumer at Caron) and Hubert (who reformulated Arpege at some point). Madame Rochas, like so many other modern fragrances, has very likely been reformulated more than its manufacturers would prefer you to think. The so-called shampoo soapiness in question is nothing compared to some of the squeaky clean astringency of Bond No. 9's Madison Soiree or many more modern peers. For me, Madame Rochas is that rarity, an older perfume which, however different from the original, continues to smell good. More remarkably, it smells better by far than present day fragrances with retro-feel aspirations.

Dry Spell: Dreaming Dune

Last night, I dreamed I had a flight to catch—back to America, I think, from England or France or Peoria, Illinois. I was late to the airport, and it looked like I’d gone to the wrong gate, then, when I got to the right gate, the plane was pulling out, and though I managed to get on, I realized, once I’d reached my seat, that I didn’t have my ticket. The sky outside the windows was fearsome. Lightning kept perforating the black, rolling clouds, zigzagging in front of, then behind them. You could see a blinking siren whirring in circles way off in the distance. The pavement was slick with rain and various airport personnel were racing every which way across it: by foot, in little motorized carts, dragging luggage, plastic traffic cones, and last-minute warnings. Take-off was misery. The plane shook. Babies were crying. The drink cart emerged, then seemed to think better of it and retreated. The stewardesses scurried up and down the aisle trying not to make eye contact. A blonde with dark circles under her eyes glowered at me from over her romance novel, which was clearly just a barricade to hide behind. When finally the pilot came over the intercom, his voice was garbled, like the teachers and parents in Peanuts.

Nobody really knows where dreams come from. Most agree: to some extent, they represent the brain’s attempts to process information. But where does the information come from—and what does it mean, if anything? In ­­­­The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream, a book I’ve been reading, Andrea Rock explores various theories. The most compelling revolves around the notion that the various parts of your brain which get a real work-out during conscious hours go on standby when you sleep, regenerating, while others go into overdrive: you lose, for instance, your ability to establish logic-driven, causal relationships (B follows A, C follows B) and yet your imagination is more active than ever, churning out fantastic images.

Say you saw a striped cat sunning on the neighbor’s porch earlier in the day. Your dream removes the porch, makes your neighbor an astronaut, and puts the cat on roller-skates. In addition to all the data it draws from your daily life, your brain digs into its archives, rooting around for memories. This means, maybe, that your mother has baked you a cake for your seventh birthday, and walking down the street with it she trips over the cat, who is either totally inconsiderate or still adjusting to the sport. When you sleep, you experience a heightened emotional reaction to things. How sad: a cat on roller-skates has injured your mother. The cake is ruined. You cry. The cat cries. You and the cat notice each other crying, etc.

A lot of people don’t like this theory, preferring the idea that dreams work out crucial psychological phenomena from our waking lives and hold deep, transformative lessons, if only we can decode them. To these people, the cake represents childhood, the cat on roller-skates represents the passing of time, and the presence of the astronaut indicates a chronic inability to feel pain and happiness. I probably subscribe to the theory that dreams mean something, if only in a fairly random, obtuse way. But the events of the day have entered my dreams frequently enough that I believe what happens to you while you’re awake has the potential to happen to you while you’re asleep. So the fact I haven’t had a dream about perfume—not one, not ever—baffles me. My entire day is spent thinking about perfume to some extent and yet sleeping is a dry period.

Some perfumes try to replicate the sublimely associative phenomenon of dreaming (see Dreaming, Tommy Hilfiger, et al.). Images of shut-eyed women are rampant in fragrance advertising, depicting something between ecstasy and slumber. Yet the only perfume I've smelled which nails the unlikely imaginative space of dreaming is Dune, by Christian Dior. The contrast of aldehydes and benzoin is a startling one, odd and intriguing. The fragrance is dry but it feels as if the wind is blowing. Dust and sand swirl around, creating friction.

Dune is considered an oriental floral and yet it's like no oriental floral you've ever smelled. "The unusual fragrance carries a brisk briny scent, coupled with sea wind and the sandy warmth of beaches," the ad copy says. You're encouraged to picture yourself on the shore, hugging your knees as you look out over the water. But Dune is more like a desert, and the only water visible is a mirage. It's a slightly spooky fragrance somehow, something familiar and uncanny, like the visitation of someone from waking life in a dream. They appear in your bedroom and sit across from you on the edge of the bed, staring. They have something to tell you but you can't make out what it is. When you wake up, you carry the memory around with you all day, wandering around in a fog, as if it might have actually happened. It colors your entire afternoon.

The heart of Dune (jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang) is the only traditional thing about it. Above and below it, things are indefinitely shifting and settling. It has the persuasive power of dream and if the airport had a smell last night it would have smelled of Dune, the fragrance of missed flights and forgotten tickets from the unknown to nowhere.