More on L'Heure Bleue

From the foreword of The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys, by Lilian Pizzichini:

"In the summer of 1912 the French parfumier Jacques Guerlain concocted a scent from musk and rose de Bulgarie with a single note of jasmine. He intended his new scent, which he called L'Heure Bleue, to evoke dusk in the city. The blue hour is the time when heliotropes and irises in Parisian window boxes are bathed in a blue light and the well-groomed Parisienne prepares for the evening.

"For the novelist Jean Rhys, the blue hour was also the hour when the lap-dog she saw herself as being during the day turned into a wolf. Dogs hunt best during twilight. Underneath our surface sophistication lurks a predator. Jean Rhys was always concerned with what lay beneath the top notes. In Quartet, her first novel, set in paris, a young female character, smarter and bolder than her heroine, is wearing L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain. Rhys's heroine absorbs the woman's scent as though in breathing it in she can capture her rival's self-possession..."


Though Jean Rhys published only a handful of books in a brief period of time, I've returned to her work more often than any other writer. I relate that strongly to her characters, always some poetic inversion of their author, always sad, alone but fighting against it, somewhat self-sabotaging, romantic but fatalistic, hopelessly dreamy, grafting onto the peeling, water-stained wallpaper of a Parisian flophouse images of high fashion, glamorous independence, the head over heels dizziness of ill-fated love affairs, all while remaining glued by inertia to the room's filthy mattress, waiting for dusk and perhaps a free meal.

Rhys herself was both fiercely independent and disastrously beholden to a series of not-so-charitable older men, the most notorious of whom was the writer Ford Maddox Ford. It was Ford who helped Rhys get published, which is to say organized. Her childhood in Dominica had ingrained in her a sense of elaborate languor bordering on laziness, at least as far as others were concerned. Getting her shit together was always a challenge for her, and I imagine a scattered heap of intuitively- if not technically connected notes and sentences before Ford came along, mixing encouragement with sexual attention. Naturally, he dumped her. Almost everyone did. People leave. Where's the motivation in that?

She was a woman of sharp observational powers, in possession of what seemed to be an inherently poetic sense of the world. The combination of these two attributes made for writing which is often so sad, so melancholy, so blue, that you think you can't get through it, so that the act of reading it replicates how Rhys must have felt about life and the world in general: too gorgeous and brutal for words. She is best known for her last novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, a reinterpretation of Jane Eyre. For me, her earlier novels are the strongest, the most unrelenting in their beautiful remorse. Start with After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie and work your way through to Good Morning, Midnight.

I was excited when The Blue Hour came out, because very few biographies on Rhys exist. After buying the book, I packed it in my bag for a recent trip to Italy. It seemed a good place to engross myself in Rhys' life, though her particular adulthood haunt was France. In any case, Italy is nearer than Memphis, and closer in spirit and tone. I've been obsessed with perfume for over a year now, relentlessly obsessed to some, and yet I had no reason to associate Jean Rhys with anything from that world and made no connection between the title of the book and the beloved Guerlain perfume. Reading the foreword on the plane was a moment of epiphany, because of course Rhys would have loved L'Heure Bleue. It makes perfect sense. It was perhaps the only fragrance for her uniquely lonely world view, but more than telling me something new about Rhys, the connection has opened my eyes about L'Heure Bleue itself.

Often described in a way which makes it seem sad and cool in an almost satirically quaint way, L'Heure Bleue is in fact magnificently, deeply melancholic, an unlikely, tense but simultaneously languid fusion of the medicinal and the floral, both edible and inedible. There is carnation against iris, itself enough contrast for a dozen perfumes, the warmth of tonka and vanilla working alongside a powdery detachment. It is spicy but sweet, powdery dry but dewy, a study in perfectly calibrated contrasts, so well blended that they cease to be contradictions; rather, a persistent sense of vaguely perceived oppositions precariously balanced into some sort of olfactory truce. This delicate balance is a wondrous thing, giving you the sense that to breathe the wrong way might send it all flying back into discord like dandelion fluff.

I went straight out to the nearest profumeria in Milan, where I purchased a bottle in EDP concentration. I need it with me as I read The Blue Hour, I decided, a ticket into Rhys's headspace. L'Heure Bleue reminds me of moments I've since had here in Lugano, Switzerland, where I've been staying for the last several days. A wall of windows in my host's apartment looks out over a parallel wall, higher and wider still, of softly sloping mountains. Buildings dot these, clustered at the bottom. Trees cover their angular reality with an illusion of cozy tenderness.

The city surrounds an enormous lake. I saw it up close as the train came in from Milano. I left Italy reluctantly, feeling somehow, somewhere, someone had gotten it wrong. I'd ended up in America rather than Italy, where I clearly belonged. My family came from Lucca over fifty years ago. What kind of mistake was that--and how had we paid for it? And now my life back "home" is so complicated, I reminded myself, that there's no getting out of it, and of course much of it I don't want to leave, making things more difficult, more confusing, more bittersweet. I thought of all I'd be losing in the imagined immigration back to Italy.

Lugano is impossibly pretty. There's a garden outside with a chaise lawnchair waiting for me as I write this. It's seven o'clock and the mountains have gone foggy, imbued with a faint cast of pale, powdery blue. They seem like an apparition, an embodiment of my conflicted feelings. My sadness has lingered into the visit. It got off the train with me. I stare out the windows into this beautiful landscape, seeing it through that sadness, and twilight, which should be descending any minute now, will erode the boundaries between this beauty and sadness even further, so that they seem one and the same thing, the differences between the two indistinguishable, something you can only live with, or through.

This is L'Heure Bleue for me. And, reading The Blue Hour, I think it was something like this for Jean Rhys, too. It's some kind of consolation, learning we have this in common.

Its Possible that I Smell Odd to Others

This week, as I arrived to the office in the morning, and walked past the receptionist, she remarked that I smelled nice, “like incense” she said. I stopped (of course I stopped, any conversation about perfume stops me in my tracks) and asked more specifically what she meant, since I wasn’t wearing anything “incensey” I was curious. She said, “well, it smells nice, like those incense sticks from Tibet, that you buy in the natural food store.” I told her it was actually a carnation scent, thanked her, and went about getting to my office and starting the day. I was wearing Ava Luxe Oeillet Blanc, a white carnation scent that I adore; it’s spicy, slightly powdery and a gorgeous carnation fragrance. I had no idea that I might smell like incense from a headshop to others.

A few months ago, I was in an elevator with a stranger. She said “what’s that weird smell in here, it smells like cleaning fluid?” I sniffed the air, I didn’t smell cleaning fluid, I suspect she smelled my perfume. Oh, God, I thought, she thinks my perfume smells like “weird cleaning fluid?” I was wearing L’Artisan Voleur de Roses.

A few weeks back, one of my colleagues was leaving the company for another job. I hugged her as she was all packed up and ready to leave the office. She said, “you always smell so good, yet so unusual….what is that you’re wearing…it smells like snickerdoodles.” I had to think for a moment, I was wearing Prada, which has a vanilla base. Snickerdoodles? I wouldn’t have thought that.

I saved the best for last. One day this spring, I was wearing Guerlain L’Heure Bleue at the office. My boss came around behind me so he could see my computer screen since we were making changes to a document. So, he was just a few inches away from me for a few moments. After we finished the document and he was leaving my office, he said “it smells like those Flintstone’s chewable vitamins for children in here.”

Thanks goodness I don’t really care what other people think about my taste in perfume. Well, I don’t care and I do care all at once. I know for sure that I don’t wear too much (overpowering) perfume because I’m very careful about that. I haven’t stopped wearing any of the above fragrances and love them just the same. It just strikes me as hilarious that perhaps I’m so obsessed with perfume that it smells entirely differently to me than it does to others who aren’t such, well, who are such perfume connoisseurs. If I was wearing Apothia Velvet Rope and someone said I smelled like a martini, well that would be expected. If I was wearing Serge Lutens Musc Koublai Khan and someone said I stank, well, that would serve me right! But when I’m wearing perfumes that seem to smell nice and relatively normal (all of the above scenarios are perfumes I consider “normal” enough for office wear) I find it perplexing. Is it because I know what a carnation perfume smells like, that I would never consider it smelling like anything other than carnation? L’Artisan Voleur de Roses – is it because I know its basically roses and patchouli so I only smell that and not cleaning fluid, which is what others might smell? It’s not that I go out of my way to wear perfumes that no one else is wearing, it’s just that I’m attracted to very specific perfumes and they aren’t usually the uber popular one’s. Actually, I did wear Thierry Mugler’s Angel for a few weeks in 1997 before it became the hit perfume of the decade. When it first came out I loved it. I still love it actually. It was so unique and stunning. But when everyone and her mother, sister and best friend starting wearing it, well, I just couldn’t do it. I have a bottle of Angel and like to wear it during the holidays because it reminds me of Christmas.

Anyway, to conclude this little ditty about smelling weird to others; I sure hope I don’t smell really weird….because I like what I like and it wouldn’t be me to leave the house without perfume. I’d rather leave the house with wet hair than sans perfume! But there are times when a non-perfumista nose picks up the strangest aroma from a fragrance I think smells like something else entirely.

And, just for the record, so you don't think I might actually smell strange, I get compliments most of the time....but there are the occasional off-the-wall comments.

Chamade: An Appreciation

Chamade was virtually the first thing I ever smelled at the Guerlain counter, though not the first thing I saw. It's possible to find Guerlain's greatest hits here at the mall, but don't expect anyone to pull them out and show you without being asked. When you do ask, the saleswomen do a double take, either because they've never noticed them before or have but can't believe someone's looking for them. Pink and purple, L'Instant and (My) Insolence sit right up front, bracketing Hilary Swank's toothsome smile. Samsara and Shalimar are stored below, behind glass, very old fashioned in their staid red and blue rows. Chamade is behind the counter. Its gold box nearly disappears into the wall, alongside Mitsouko, Jardins de Bagatelle, and sometimes, if you're lucky, Jicky, all similarly packaged. You can forget Nahema, and the masculines don't even rate an appearance. Where Champs-Elysees is placed depends on the whim of whoever happens to be bored on the clock that day, and how old she is. Its pink and gold markings straddle the fence of old and new. Of all the Guerlain names, Chamade was the most intriguing to me.

I've since purchased L'Heure Bleue, Mitsouko, Nahema, Coriolan, Vetiver, Shalimar, Habit Rouge, and Samsara, in no particular order, but only finally picked up Chamade this afternoon. Why I saved the best for last is something of a mystery to me. Something about Chamade convinced me I wouldn't be able to pull it off; whether the heady impression of narcissus or the overall potency of the fragrance, I don't know. At the time I first smelled Chamade it did seem overwhelmingly, inarguably feminine to me, of no particular age but of very definitively gendered. What gave? Mitsouko is arguably masculine by conventional standards, but L'Heure Bleue? Samsara isn't exactly butch either. I think my tastes keep expanding, and my nerve keeps building. I might not have worn Chanel No. 19 a year, or even a month, ago. I might have said, like my friend when he smelled Cannabis Rose on me, "Hmm, too girly."

Something's changed; probably, mostly my mind. Outlook is everything. The Perfume Guide helped. The idea of a Best Feminines for Men list, like everything else Turin does, isn't simply about itself, about the idea of better and best. It's about expanding your view. Once you've allowed that Mitsouko might be worn by a man, you inevitably question why you ever thought it shouldn't have been. What exactly about Mitsouko, and, by extension, any other fragrance, makes it masculine or feminine? Very little, it gradually seemed to me. That the Perfume Guide was written by a male/female duo who happened to be romantically partnered makes that process of re-evaluation even more interesting.

What I noticed right off the bat this time, picking up Chamade, is that, yes, there are florals. But once you process that, and move on, you smell everything else. Chamade is slightly oily, as Turin praised and others have complained. Inside that, or beyond it, you smell all kinds of things. Exactly what I'll leave to your own discovery. It's a favorite of mine and I enjoy the hard won right not to defend the position with detailed analysis. I love it more than anything because it waited patiently for me and, once I came around, held nothing back. It's as complicated as it ever was, and I'm a little less simple-minded.

Dandy of the Day: Vintage Mick Jagger

Well, no, certainly not now--but for a time, some time ago, briefly, during the sixties. When you look at Jagger these days, even in older pictures, it's difficult to see what he was; just as, when you smell L'Heure Bleue, it's hard to ascertain what exactly its impact would have been around the time it was released. You're told it must have been a phenomenal aberration in 1912, truly unusual, yet the overriding association, now, is a fussy elderly woman with a pink suit and a hair rinse to match, such that you don't really smell what the fragrance is, only what it recalls. In the sixties, Jagger specialized in a subversive renovation of the dandy aesthetic. Yes to ruffled shirts and Edwardian jackets. Yes to stovepipe pants and pointed shoes. Yes to long hair, yes to make-up on men, yes to painting vintage interiors with psychedelic colors, cultivated androgyny, easy virtue, yes all around. For many people, tearing down the boundaries of an established conservatism wasn't just a kick but a serious form of civil disobedience. A man can look like many things today but wearing make-up, as Jagger did in Performance, is still asking for it. Dancing as if a woman has possessed you and desperately wants out, as Jagger did on stage (see Gimme Shelter), is flaunting your perversion in a way that even gay men and maybe even women would find offensive today, because it frightens the horses, and gives the wrong idea, and no one will get anything, certainly not equal rights, if they don't work overtime to act like everyone else. Just say no to yes, in other words. Jagger hasn't helped things. On a good day, he looks like the establishment he once set about to overturn. On a bad day, he looks...rode hard and put up wet. Our dandy of the day is a snapshot from the near past. Try to see it clearly, without the goggles of conditioned disdain. In this photo, Jagger might be wearing Loulou, by Cacharel, the bottle of which, like the juice, recalls a practically ancient deco excess of style and luxury, beauty for beauty's sake. All yes, all the time.

Dandy of the Day

At the ribald age of three he was, already, inordinately preoccupied with twill and velvet and satin and brocade. By Six, he was reciting poetry--first Dr. Seuss, then Yeats. He wrote to Dear Abby at sixteen: "Why does the world at large seem not to care about the color red?"

"Specifically, Brick Red," he added.

Dear Abby did not respond.

He believes great, even obsessive care should be taken in one's dress and the dressing of one's friends. Enemies can fend for themselves, but he gives them enough rope. His appearance outside people's bedrooms at the break of dawn is not altogether unheard of. From the window, he makes discreet, attentive suggestions. Do not please inflict yourself upon the nylon green blouse, his eyes sigh. Even nylon deserves a better hue.

He wears Guerlain--specifically, L'Heure Bleue. It reminds him of a dense, textured sky. Over which: a field. Wind eddies through the grass, creating elaborate patterns. Birds fly overhead with the common sense to recognize that they are purely decorative. The rodents stay clear of the picture, out of common decency. There is a torte in the field which has not yet been discovered by the ants. He decides to eat the torte, the freshly-baked scent of which wafts in filigreed vapors up to his nostrils and straight back to his childhood, where a bed bedecked in twill and velvet and satin and brocade awaits his arrival.