Thought for the Day: Slow down, Little Bond

I remember when you were just a wee thing. You were crazy creative and always had somebody coming in and out of the house - Maurice Roucel, Michel Almairac, Aurelien Guichard. Everybody was your buddy back then. And you put your heads together and came up with wonderful things. Mostly. I still go to H.O.T. Always and Broadway Nite and think, wow, where does something like that come from? You had a sense of humor about the past. You were pretty irreverent. Big peachy peony lipstick rose. Big fat patchouli and cinnamon, like somebody told you about Givenchy Gentleman and with the balls of youth you thought, I can do that better - and, you know, you kind of did.

Oh but that mom of yours. We'd get together and suddenly we're making noise and she'd come stomping down the stairs into the rec room and she'd threaten to call my parents, or the cops or whatever. Seriously, the cops?? She was really kind of too much. She was really kind of way too much. She had big big plans for you. I guess she wasn't content with you being just kind of fun and silly and guilelessly overblown the way people who've just arrived in NY from small towns can be. The way you looked at NYC was really fun and refreshing. It was idiosyncratic. And maybe that didn't really fit with your mom's plans. Your mom always made me nervous. She was so overly protective of you I thought, this ain't going to end well. No kid whose mom thinks he's the most brilliant thing on the planet ever turns out so great.

Sure enough, now I look at you and I'm like, where did all the fun parts go? I think that mom of yours got to you and reined you in, after all. But who knew it would happen so fast? You're barely a teen. No more fun stuff. No more peeps over to the house. She keeps you busy, cranking ideas out, only they don't seem very much like ideas - not bright ideas, anyway. I mean, okay, I like Earth Day. It's not something I dislike. I'm all for marriage equality. I like mother's day, and father's day, and Saks is okay I guess, and Andy Warhol's funny enough, but who says you need to have something to say about everything? Who says you need to be all things to all people in every corner of the party?

Oh right. Your mom.

The truth is, your ideas are really lame now. You come out with a lot of them, sure, but they're all the same idea, and you don't have the right people around you anymore so maybe you don't see that. You're in every corner of the party and you're screaming there, and everyone moves to the other side of the room, because I guess they figure, why sit next to you when it's more pleasant not to? And that's a catch 22 because then you just try harder. More ideas. More screaming. More mom. It's just you and your mom now, and of course your mom thinks everything you do is BRILLIANT, and it doesn't sound like screaming to her, what you're doing, because she's talking even louder than you are.  So it's strictly folie a deux.

Example: That amber thing? Over three hundred bucks? Who do you think you are? And all these gew gaws you're gussying your ideas up with - the big vinyl flowers and such - don't really compensate for the lack of big ideas you once had and now sorely lack. You're covering the waterfront, but you're not Christo, Bond. You just kind of go to these areas and throw up a tent and you say, look at me, I'm artistic! And everyone else looks at you and they're like, so you pitched a tent. It's New York. Get over yourself.

You're pitching tents, your mother's pitching fits, and - listen, I'm going to let you go. I realized, halfway through writing this to you, that I'm bored. The whole thing bores me. There's no talking to you, really, and you've been boring for such a stretch now, and seem so excited about your boring self, that I don't really see a lot of potential for turnaround, for epiphany. Maybe I'll wait for your mid life crisis, little guy. But - oy - that's gotta be a big mess waiting to happen, the way you're going this early on. I was your biggest advocate at one time. I was like your mom. Now I just want you to go away.

Introducing: An Ultra Exclusive, Limited Edition Fragrance

We here at I Smell Therefore I Am have often asked ourselves, "How can one capture the idea of the emotion of the sensation of a bodily function?" That is a mouthful, and quite a lot to think about. Sitting in our little production offices, our thinking caps screwed on tight, we've also sometimes pondered the age old question, "How does one collect a substance whose production can only be stimulated from within?" These are questions prehistoric men tried to work out on the rough stone walls of their cave dwellings, and though many have asked themselves since, we at I Smell think we have come up with the most exclusive answer to this age old insoluble. We not only managed to isolate this substance, but have found a way to manufacture the stuff ourselves and to present it in the most luxurious manner possible, at the most pointedly expensive price imaginable. We gave it a French name, to make it extra fancy. Ladies, and gentleman, we present to you: Le Petite Fart.

An Industry Roundtable on Fragrance Conducted Anonymously by some of the Key Figures in the Field

MODERATOR: I want to thank you all for coming.

PERFUME BLOGGER: Before we start, I'd like to tell everyone how important I am.

INDUSTRY EXPERT: I'd like to do that too.

PERFUME BLOGGER: I'd like it to be on record that I was important first.

MODERATOR: Duly noted. You're both important. Maybe we should move on. We're gathered here today because I thought that maybe one of you--maybe all of you--might have something insightful to say about the state of modern fragrance-

Notes From the Regionally Marginalized: On Satire

From good old Wikipedia, some thoughts on the misunderstandings wrought by the centuries-old practice of satire:

"Because satire often combines anger and humor it can be profoundly disturbing - because it is essentially ironic or sarcastic, it is often misunderstood. In an interview with Wikinews, Sean Mills, President of The Onion, said angry letters about their news parody always carried the same message. "It’s whatever affects that person," said Mills. "So it’s like, 'I love it when you make a joke about murder or rape, but if you talk about cancer, well my brother has cancer and that’s not funny to me.' Or someone else can say, 'Cancer’s hilarious, but don’t talk about rape because my cousin got raped.' Those are rather extreme examples, but if it affects somebody personally, they tend to be more sensitive about it.'
Common uncomprehending responses to satire include revulsion (accusations of poor taste, or that "it's just not funny" for instance), to the idea that the satirist actually does support the ideas, policies, or people he is attacking. For instance, at the time of its publication, many people misunderstood Swift’s purpose in "A Modest Proposal", assuming it to be a serious recommendation of economically motivated cannibalism. Again, some critics of Mark Twain see Huckleberry Finn as racist and offensive, missing the point that its author clearly intended it to be satire (racism being in fact only one of a number of Mark Twain's known concerns attacked in Huckleberry Finn). This same misconception was suffered by the main character of the 1960s British television comedy satire Till Death Us Do Part. The character of Alf Garnett (played by Warren Mitchell) was created to poke fun at the kind of narrow-minded, racist, little-Englander that Garnett represented. Instead, his character became a sort of anti-hero to people who actually agreed with his views.
The Australian satirical television comedy show The Chaser's War on Everything has suffered repeated attacks based on misconceived interpretations of the "target" of its attacks. The "Make a Realistic Wish Foundation" sketch (June 2009), which attacked in classical satiric fashion the heartlessness of people who are reluctant to donate to charities, was widely interpreted as an attack on the Make A Wish Foundation. Prime Minister of the time Kevin Rudd stated that The Chaser team "should hang their heads in shame". He went on to say that "I didn't see that but it's been described to me....But having a go at kids with a terminal illness is really beyond the pale, absolutely beyond the pale." Television station management suspended the show for two weeks and reduced the third season to eight episodes."
For further reading:

Dorothy Parker (for example: "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B". See also: "If all the young ladies who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised." Can you imagine the letters Parker got for THAT from the letters of Yale alumni and...their wives?)

Gore Vidal (for example: "Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60." See also: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." And: "Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.")

Stephen Colbert (for example: "Now we all know that Fidel Castro dressed up like Marilyn Monroe and gave JFK a case of syphilis so bad it eventually blew out the back of his head." See also his address to President Bush: "Look, folks, my point is that I don't believe this is a low point in this presidency. I believe it is just a lull before a comeback. I mean, it's like the movie Rocky. Alright?")

Trey Parker (for example: "We're the guys who, if someone says you really shouldn't do an episode making fun of Scientologists, we say, 'Whatever.' Someone says, 'They might come to try to burn your house down,' and we say, 'We'll just get another one.'" See also: "We find just as many things to rip on the left as the right. People on the far-right and the far-left are the exact same person to us.")

Lenny Bruce (for example: "Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers, will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous when you think about it." See also: "Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God.")

Evelyn Waugh (for example: "He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich." See also: "Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.")

Fran Lebowitz (for example: "Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine." See also: "Humility is no substitute for a good personality." And: "If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.")

George Orwell (for example: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." See also: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." And: "Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.")

Oscar Wilde (for example: "Genius is born, not paid." See also: "The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated.")

Jonathan Swift (for example: "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." See also: "Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is crouched underneath.")

And who could forget Randy Newman (for example: "Short people have no reason to live." See also: "I love L.A.")

The above is an illustration of Dorothy Parker.

Are You a Perfume Blogging Snob? Take This Simple Test to Find Out!

Lately, I've noticed a certain level of stuffiness creeping into the sensibilities of several blogs I once thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Let's call them the Old Guard. They've been around a little longer than your average blog. They've been around, some of them, longer than this blog has been. And maybe it's me; maybe, when I first started reading them, I missed out on a current of negativity which was always there. Then again, maybe it's not me, and they've just succumbed to problems many people face in middle- to old age: paranoia, a feeling the world is passing you by, the sense that a younger generation doesn't pay sufficient respect to your wisdom and experience, crankiness, exhaustion, constipation.

Blogging can be lonely. Lord knows, if blogging were all I had going on in my life, I might very well be in a sad, sorry place. No one says blogging has to be a laugh riot or simply a ruse. Committing yourself in general, let alone to a blog, is serious business. But taking yourself seriously, too seriously, can be deadly. Your reader feels it. Other bloggers do, too.

You don't care about other bloggers, you say? Oh but you should. Every halfway committed blogger knows that readers are only part of the process. Minus relationships with other bloggers, you're in for an even lonelier row to hoe. Other bloggers can be an invaluable source of support and inspiration. To be sure, not all of them will be your cup of tea. Maybe you don't need support; only the right connections. Fine. But to assume you've made friends with the right bloggers and can shun the rest is a mistake only a truly silly, feeble strategist makes. Remember that blogger in whose basket you so delicately placed all your painfully laid eggs--the one with what you deemed such an "important following"? That blogger is now temp-ing at an auto parts plant in Iowa. She had mouths to feed. The one you wrote off, that uneducated, upstart blogger--the one who didn't know what she was talking about and was only clogging the arteries of internet discourse with needless fatty garbage? She has 15 thousand hits a day, and counting.

Where's the joy? For these bloggers, blogging seems to have become such a dark, unfriendly, unproductive place. The writing feels stale: its only reason for being is to serve the blogger's ever bloated ego. Remember that Monty Python sketch in The Meaning of Life? Over fed man walks into restaurant to feed ever more? Hilarity explodes. It's not always so funny, and if there's time to save these bloggers, perhaps we should try. Maybe it isn't too late. Maybe their egos haven't ossified and are still merely somewhat fragile. Maybe they can be broken and restored. Better yet, maybe these bloggers can help themselves. First we must recognize the signs of trouble. Here, then, are some of the more common symptoms of distress.

1. Do you lay awake at night, worried that the world will not receive your next missive soon enough?

Remember that one piece you wrote--the one about the relevance of the house of Lutens to world peace? Oh, let's not call them "posts" anymore. Posts make it sound as if anyone with a computer could do this. Reviews, dissertations, essays--anything but "posts". Make a note to yourself: tomorrow, on blog, stop referring to your life's work as "posts." Train yourself to vomit a little at the mere mention of the word. Does "posts" sound like the talk of a writer with a book contract? Tomorrow you must also write something which reaches the poetic grandeur, the historical sweep of that Lutens review. You must write something which advances your sense of alarm at a world gone haywire with the over-estimation of utter dreck. One blog reviewed Jontue the other day! Can you imagine? Why not review the contents of your junk closet? Why not review in loving detail the toilet cleaner in your bathroom cupboard? Oh, but what if tomorrow is too late? Who needs sleep, anyway? Someone in the provinces is checking her computer every ten minutes, hoping for a new post from you. There's that pernicious word again. Someone in the provinces is contemplating a life of prostitution and degradation. Without your regular guidance, what could possibly be the point of aiming higher? Must get out of bed. Must reach out immediately. Your public awaits you. It could mean the difference between life and death.

2. Do you have a book deal?

There are many things you could write. Where to start? You did get an agent, which is the first step. Books are important. That's the thing. Yes, you write a blog. Oh, let's not call it a blog. Really, isn't that like calling a Chanel handbag a fanny pack? The thing is, yes, it's true, you write this Chanel handbag. Yes, it's true, the success of a thing like your handbag--you have the numbers to prove it!--would seem to indicate that nobody much reads books anymore. Who needs a book when you've got a handbag? The thing is, just as those classic perfumes you admire have hit the dust, just as they are devalued if not discontinued altogether under the wheels of ceaseless forward motion, books have become practically extinct, a rarefied pleasure. The publishing industry indicates that only memoirs and self help books really fly off the shelves these days. It's one thing to have a book. You need one, of course, in order to command respect. It's quite another thing to have it read. In order to be respected a book must be noticed. Granted, you shall shout it from the mountaintops yourself, but how far can your own solitary voice be expected to throw, even with echoing factored in? The book must be read, or else it ends up in the bargain bin. What could be more horrible than a classic perfume in the bargain bin? It's like picking up a bottle of Sarrasins at Walgreens, between Snuggies and HuggieWipes. Eureka! In essence, your book must be Proust in the form of a Snuggie. Why, yes: a Chanel Bag with arm holes! A tome with the soft, supple ease of use required of a Huggie Wipe.

3. Do you grumble about all the little people, all those new bloggers sprouting up beneath the sprawling wisdom and authority of your big strong Oak of a blog?

Back in your day, a blogger had credentials. A blogger was someone who really knew what she was talking about. Yes, she loved perfume. She had a passion for it. But also an obsession, and to the point of near psychosis. Look at all these little seedlings. Where are their chops? They're sitting out there in, what, Peoria? In their little houses. At their little desks. It's not like you. Where, pray tell, is their psychosis? Where is the overflowing ashtray, that longstanding symbol of your wheezing dedication? Where are their book deals? Have they lunched with Lutens? Would Lutens, looking at his cell phone, vaguely recognize their incoming number before ignoring the call? I think not, and so do you. What do they have to say, these seedlings? Who gave them the authority to say it? What precisely inspires them to think that the world must hear their thoughts on every little perfume that flits past their consciousness? On top of this, they merely imitate you. They see how wonderful your dissertations are, and they try to emulate your magnificence. They cannot, of course. Can the little cat with a missing leg grow up to dance the polka? Can the trashy pop singer belt out Wagner at ear-splitting, glass-shattering decibels? They can no more emulate the Chanel handbag than the local butcher can, so why are they trying? You're a kind, patient person. You would let all this pass. But your commitment to excellence forces you to speak out. Don't all these little seedlings know that they're taking up the majestic Oak's water supply? Don't they realize how crushing the dessicated Oak's fall would be? You tell them for their own good. The world needs the Oak's health. Do they know how many people rely on the bloated oak's shade?

4. Do you count several perfumers and/or fragrance industry types as your closest intimates?

Just the other day, as you stretched out for just a moment to consider your book deal, the phone rang. It was some journalist--some woman--you can't remember who at this point. A lot of important people call. They're calling every day. They look to you for your unbiased insight, relying on your expertise. You know more than they do, and this they recognize. This particular journalist wanted to know your impartial assessment of what your favorite perfumer has been up to. That glowing review you wrote about his latest perfume. It made the stuff sound like manna from heaven. Why yes, you answered, it is, and I say that as someone who doesn't call just anything manna from heaven. When will it be available? asked the journalist. With a funny little snort you worked hard to make sound voluntary, you announced again the release date, adding that surely this journalist wouldn't have to call quite so often if only she read your reviews more carefully. The journalist answered, why yes, I try to read your reviews as carefully as possible, but they are so packed, so overflowing with insider information that it can be hard to retain all the data with any kind of permanent recall. I will accept that answer, you said, as long as we can agree that, while as women we are equals, your answer endorses the idea of my superiority over you as a fellow generic human being. Tell me, continued the journalist. What was the perfumer in question thinking when he created this lovely fragrance? What was running through his head? What are his private thoughts and dreams? If only we knew what he is thinking now, from an impartial, totally unaffiliated source like you. At which point, you placed your hand over the receiver and rolled over in bed to ask.

5. Is it important for you to be the first to report on some breaking development, even if it means making it up?

You would like everyone to know that you were the first to reveal the discontinuation of several highly esteemed fragrances. You make sure they know by reminding them they heard it here. It's sad--tragic, really--but the good thing is that your readers must acknowledge that the best place to hear bad news first is from you. Then again, not all news is bad news. You are often also the first to review the latest fragrance. The latest very important fragrance. Though, by reviewing it, you have virtually created its relevance, really. You were the first to ever wear perfume. Then you were the first to smell it. Just joking. You're not that elitist. You were merely the first to wear it and smell it the right way. Before you, people scarcely knew how to spray the stuff. Do you know how many people practically blinded themselves by trial and error? Of course you do. You know everything! You were the first to report on various rumors which never crossed over into fact. But your attention elevated them in a way which made silly issues of accuracy secondary. Your gaze upon these issues is itself a form of truth. If all else fails to impress, you were the first to report your own significance. Surely that counts for something in certain quarters.

6. Are you paranoid about challenges to your imagined throne?

People are out to get you. This post is a case in point. All these coded references. Here's what it is, you tell yourself. People are jealous. Remember when you were young? Younger. Remember when you were younger, and people in school made fun of your lisp? Oh how they mocked you. People can be cruel. What it was is, they were jealous, because you were different in an interesting way. Sure, it wasn't interesting to them, but only because they were so blinded by jealousy that they couldn't recognize how fascinated they should be. Alas, the good thing about a blog is also a bad thing. On one hand, you can hide your lisp. And you can puff yourself up in various ways no one can contradict. No one sees the books to dispute the numbers you quote. You can tell people you descend from royalty and they'll never know the difference. Were they ever to meet you, they might imagine that your lisp is merely an accent, the way royal people speak in your homeland of Selfimportia. You can tell them you get inside information the same way everyone else does, from the outside. You can hide behind any number of ruses which distort your imagined weaknesses into formidable strengths. The problem is, your readers can hide too. How do you know to trust they are who they say they are; how can you be sure they mean what they say? You know they can trust you, but how can you trust them? Soon enough, everyone is out to get you. What they want is what you have. A book deal. A Chanel handbag. Who wants a fanny pack? Who wouldn't want a Chanel? When you were younger, and the others bullied you about a lisp, you couldn't wait to grow up, not to get away from them, but to join their ranks undetected, so you too could be important. Now you're important and everybody's still calling you names. Soon you will be more important, which should put an end to that.

7. Do you make a lot of "distinctions"?

There is a difference between good and bad, and many distinctions in between. A Chanel handbag is preferable. A fanny pack is unfortunate. A book deal is success. A blog without one is a waste of time. Readers mean nothing unless among their numbers are important people. People are more important if other important people say they are. You are important but you could be more important, and you will be, eventually. Some fragrances are worth one's attention. Others are by perfumers you don't yet know or haven't been made to feel by important people you should want to know. Not every nose is worth knowing. Sometimes, you can make a real ass out of yourself cozying up to just any nose. Some things are worth saying. Generally, these things are being said by you. Other things are a little less worthwhile. If a writer has a book contract, he or she is a good writer. If he or she has an agent, he or she is almost there. A writer without either is like an artist who cuts off his own ear. How will he hear success calling with such a disadvantage? Here's the thing: the cream rises to the top. We live in a meritocracy. We all know that. Artists who haven't "made" it know that what they have to say isn't important or valuable because it isn't being said so often on TV that its genius is immediately recognized. In a culture where the best dancer on Dancing With The Stars can be relied on to win, only the truly great and worthy have a book deal. The truly profound have made the book into a Snuggie.

8. Do you condescend to your dear reader?

In order for you to truly be smart, your reader must be a little more stupid. While you like comments--thrive on them, even--you can't help pointing out in some subtle way how unlikely it is that you would make any such remark. You take the time to respond to each comment, if only to point out how unenlightened it is. This isn't a conversation, folks, you'd like to say. One has conversations with people of the same socio-economic status. It's only natural that, being above your readers, you will talk down to them. There's no malice in it. Is God malicious?

9. Do you review only the most expensive fragrances, believing that to do anything less would make you less like royalty?

Why of course. Only an inferior blogger would review anything anyone else could just as easily review. Who would read a book he could write himself? Does the Queen of England go to Chuck E. Cheese to whack the bobbing groundhogs over the head with those mallets? Does the President pass out eating potato chips in just anybody's TV room? Does a Kardashian get waxed just anywhere--and by that I don't mean any old place on her body? Does a patty melt stand up on the grill and say, Hey, you, can you keep it down, I'm burning my ass off over here? Did Marilyn Monroe marry just any Joe Blow goat-herder from Montana? Did Susan Boyle say, I think I'm good with this uni-brow, let's go public now? Did the little dog on whom you blamed your flatulence write a retort on an index card which read "Those who smelt it dealt it?" Royalty must be cultivated and enforced. There must be a sizable moat between the castle and the crap-dwellers.

10. Are you tiresome?

Increasingly, yes. Lighten up. It's only a blog.

Dear Chanel, I'm Sorry

When I called and told you the bottle of Cuir de Russie you sent me was busted up, I was sure you wouldn't respond. I'd felt so out of sorts in your shop. I mean, it was Rodeo Drive. People were being shown little belts and things at the glass counter like a belt is a rare delicacy or a highly treacherous surgical procedure.

It was such a weird, alternate reality to me; so much money was going around. Everywhere I looked people were talking but all I saw was cash streaming out of their mouths. I saw dollar signs in their eyes. The boutique was its own eco-system, its own complicated trading floor.

I pictured all these people hopping back into their Bentleys at valet parking, fists of Chanel shopping bags swinging pendulously in their hands, zooming off to Beverly Hills, home again home again, where the biggest, most pressing problem was the apparent stupidity of the Mexicans who were supposed to be cleaning the pool, who seemed never to have seen a pool before, and were going at it with hedge clippers. I hated everyone in the store, Chanel, and I couldn't imagine all shoppers being equal there.

Oh I was mad when I received my broken bottle of Cuir de Russie. It seemed to confirm my worst suspicions about you, proving your contempt for anyone who dared spend less than millions of dollars at your store. I cursed you. I spat bullets in your general direction. I called up my pagan friend to ask about hexes and stuff. What an offense to the name of Jacques Polge, I thought to myself. If he only knew how his perfumes and the people who love them were being treated. Being alive, he might not roll over in his grave, but he certainly would when he got there, if this state of affairs continued.

I didn't expect you to return my call, Chanel, because you'd gotten what you needed from me and moved on. Knowing that I'm a perfume addict you felt confident in the certainty that you needn't do anything to make it up to me. I would keep coming back regardless. When you get some of the bad stuff, you keep going to the shifty-eyed guy on the corner, because the shifty-eyed guy on the corner has what you need. He might sell you baby laxative once or twice, but he laces it with enough of the real stuff that you can't split hairs. I'm not saying you're a drug-dealer, Chanel. I'm just saying you couldn't be counted on not to take advantage of my need, if the way my Cuir de Russie arrived in the mail was anything to judge by.

Imagine my shock when your friend Francisco called from Rodeo Drive. Francisco was sorry and wanted to make it better, and instantly I was embarrassed for the harsh words in my last letter. Perhaps you didn't want me to go fuck myself, or Jacques Polge, or whatever. Perhaps you really truly cared, Chanel. Francisco seemed to think so. His efficiency was impressive. He got right on it. UPS showed up the next day to pick up the Cuir de Russie. The day after that, Francisco called again to say he'd received the damaged goods and would send a replacement bottle right out. And he did.

I'm not going to waste a lot of time grumbling about the fact that when I opened the package there were no samples or testers or, like, a thousand dollar gift certificate to be redeemed at the Chanel counter of my choice. I was so happy to get my pristine bottle of Cuir de Russie that none of that mattered. Don't get me wrong. It annoyed me, but I was remorseful and contrite, and knew I should be kind after my hasty overreaction to your original mistake. I sat the big fat bottle of Cuir de Russie on my shelf, right at eye level, and gazed upon it lovingly for several days. I took the cap off, standing before the shelf, and held the bottle up to my nose, sniffing myself into ecstatic trances of narcotic oblivion.

My faith in you has been restored, Chanel, and I now believe (I now wish to believe, again) that though I drive away in my jalopy and have only one little bag clenched in my fist when I leave your premises, though I drive off sputtering toxins into the environment from a vehicle which barely passes emissions when that time of year rolls around, and end up far from Beverly Hills when I get home, and the closest I come to a swimming pool is the puddle of muddy water left on my back patio by a recent rain shower, I am just as important to you as anybody else you sell your love to.

A Letter to Chanel Regarding Cuir De Russie

Dear Chanel,

Remember a few weeks ago, when I was out in L.A., and I came to see you, and I smelled every last one of your Exclusifs fragrances because, as I believe I told you at the time, I’d been reading about them forever, and had developed a love affair with them in my head, and didn’t want to be deluded, to be romantically involved with blinders on? I wanted to be sure. Did these Exclusifs warrant such reverent devotion? I wasn’t interested in your quilted purses (though I admit they seemed perfectly lovely and were in fact swarmed around by others in the store to the point of psychosis) or your dresses or frocks or whatever you start to call them when they get to costing that much. I thought the room off to the side (men with little walkie talkies; glass cases which seemed to be protected by laser fields) was just plain quaint; all those diamonds--is that what they were? I didn’t like that room most of all because it placed too many walls between me and your perfumes. It felt like going to see your betrothed at her childhood home for the first time just so you could fondle the spatulas in her mother’s kitchen drawer. What did spatulas have to do with anything?

Remember how I stood there, smelling and re-smelling? Remember how I held the bottles in my hand one after the other? I couldn’t get over how heavy they were, how solid. Glass bricks. And those magnetized caps! I should have been warned, I suppose, by the relative ignorance of your staff when it came to these fragrances. They were so busy running around chasing after quilted bags and glittery doo dads that they hardly had time to stop and answer my questions. Did they in fact have Cuir de Russie in stock? Hmm, they would have to go look. And look they did. I suppose. I waited. And waited. And finally someone popped her head out of some secret Chanel door to inform me that no, they did not have Cuir de Russie and that yes, perhaps it did indicate a certain degree of popularity. They expected more to arrive at the beginning of the following week, they said, clucking regretfully. Remember how disappointed I looked? Recall the shaky apprehension on my face? I didn't beg you to take down my address but I was more than happy and a little relieved to give it to you.

Early the next week, I wanted to know: had Cuir de Russie come in? I was impatient. I know, you said you’d call me, but I’d smelled the tester and been sent away with a sample, and all week I’d been obsessed. Guerlain said something about creating perfumes which smelled like the backside of his mistress. To me, Cuir de Russie was the ass of that mistress after riding horseback all day. The excitement of L.A. was peripheral, circumstantial to the real purpose of my visit: to secure Cuir de Russie and bring it back to Memphis with me, where I might love it and kiss it and hug it all over and call it my very own, oh boy. I didn’t want to bother you, Chanel, so I had your affiliates at Saks call you on Rodeo. I must have this mistress' ass rubbed in leather, I kept telling myself. Imagine my shock when the saleswoman at Saks was kept on hold for ten minutes and counting. I pictured frantic women racing around your multi-level layout. “Beaded useless trinket needed at the front counter!” “Rich woman trying on shiny earrings in the try-on-costly-jewelry-in-secluded-privacy wing!” “Quilted purse hemorrhaging cash on aisle four!” I was embarrassed for your affiliate at Saks, treated as if she were the ugly stepchild. Please, nevermind, I said, I was only kidding. I didn’t mean it. It was merely an experiment. With this, I walked away.

I stopped once more at Rodeo before leaving town. Weren’t you the guy looking for some of that stinky stuff, the faces of the security guards seemed to say. Whereas your sales staff couldn’t for the life of themselves remember me. Not that this troubled them even slightly. Until this visit, I never dreamed that quilted purses generated so much activity. Now I know what a serious business such items are. These people are in control, I told myself. They have handbags to sell and they set about selling them as if they were solid gold. This is good, I told myself, because people who shell out thousands of dollars for simple leather purses should absolutely, no question, be made to feel they are buying some luxurious rarity from the country of Googelholler. You did not have Cuir de Russie but promised to call me when it arrived. You’d call me in Memphis, you declared, and though I was dubious (when, after all, would the trade in quilted purses slow enough to allow such a leisurely call to be placed?) I expressed my gratitude and bid you adieu.

A week later, I received said call. “Mr. Whatsyerface, we’re calling to let you know that Cuir de Russie has arrived. We have reserved a bottle for you.” Hearing this, I must have tinkled ever so slightly down my pant leg. And listen, Chanel, don’t think I didn’t get right on that. I know what happens to a lousy little bottle of perfume when the big boys start crowding it out on the shelves. It’s a hard-knock life for perfume in a cut-throat quilted handbag environment. I gave you my credit card number and immediately began the effort to contain my excitement. You would only deliver the package to my home address. You refused to send it to my office, which was fine because, though it inconvenienced me, requiring that I stay at home to sign for the perfume, it bolstered my sense that you took my fantasy seriously, with the intent of rewarding my expectations.

Several days later, my package arrived. Please listen carefully, Chanel, because this is where our love affair ends. I knew when I took the package into my own hands that there was a problem. It rattled rather than rustled, for one. And I could smell the smoky florals and birch tar through the cardboard, as if you’d shipped it to me by simply pouring the juice into the box. Cuir de Russie: the splash bottle! The luxuriant perfume equivalent of boxed wine. Hesitantly, I opened the package. Here’s what I found. You’d stuffed the perfume box into one of your shopping bags, as you would at the counter, then folded the bag over. You placed the bag in the shipping box, then folded over several sheets of tissue paper to take up the slack. Here’s what the bottle looked like. The box, for one, was scuffed and dented, and soaked in perfume. The cap was off. So was the dispenser and the metal bib used to secure it. The label on the bottle looked like runny mascara. I appreciate the sample your staff threw in—-how very sweet of you, Chanel—-but would have appreciated a full bottle of Cuir de Russie, wrapped thoughtfully, with some amount of intelligence or forethought applied. Everyone appreciates a bit of rough, but runny mascara and torn stockings...not from you, Chanel. If I wanted hot mess I'd go downtown and pick it up out of the gutter.

Has anyone at your house ever mailed a package of perishable or breakable goods? I have to think even the smallest of children have, and you honor child labor laws, I expect. Has anyone in her right mind ever placed a glass bottle in a box without proper padding expecting it to arrive as if by some protective magic intact? Quite frankly, Chanel, my grandmother, who never learned how to open an email, sent me cookies with more thought put into their packaging than you put into the shipping of this 205 dollar bottle of supposedly luxury perfume, which arrived looking like something out of the remnant bin. My grandmother would have been appalled and mortified to learn that a box of crumbs, however tasty, had landed on my doorstep. You, on the other hand, are busy with the next quilted bag.

What do I want, mon cherie? Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure you can make it better. Of course I’ll call you, first thing this week, and try to work things out. The dissolution of a relationship is a sad, uncomfortable thing. Whatever happens, the honeymoon is over. I now know that the quilted handbags are your true focus. Your priorities are there. As far as you’re concerned, Jacques Polge makes pretty things to smell but he can go fuck himself. And the people who spend hard earned money on his fragrances can go fuck themselves too, or they can fuck him. Or they can simply fuck off. It’s neither here nor there to you.


Regretfully,
Brian

The Joke's on You: Moschino Funny!

There was a time when the humor and irreverence of Moschino (not just its line of perfumes but its fashion and its founder) were not entirely lost on its intended audience. There was a time when Moschino in fact had more of an audience on which to lose something. Who could forget the chocolate drizzled handbag—or the Teddy Bear dress? Plenty of people, it would seem. The Olive Oyl bottle of Moschino’s Cheap and Chic perfume was a statement at the time. Now, people tend to dismiss it as unintentionally tacky. Moschino injected the humorless, self-absorbed fashion scene of the eighties with wit and intelligence. While it’s true you wouldn’t actually often have occasion to wear a stuffed animal-infested dress out in public, couture has never been about reality or practical application. Moschino laid bare the central dichotomy of fashion industry practice; of course it was absurd that a collection never intended to be worn should conduct itself as soberly as a tax audit. It was as if Jerry Lewis, as the Nutty Professor, had started a line of couture dresses and sportswear, issued from a headquarters stationed in his lab. Unfortunately, the Italian fashion establishment felt Moschino was laughing at them, not with them, and denounced the designer as a talentless hack. This only made him more popular, his point more legitimate.

Moschino's aesthetic was exuberantly youthful and decidedly adult simultaneously. He was raised in a small town on the outskirts of Milan, perhaps shaping him from the beginning as an outsider with a close proximity to the heart of things but enough distance to view them objectively. His background was in illustration and (for Versace) publicity, so it was perhaps entirely logical that his approach would merge the surrealist audacity of Dali with the slapstick, crowd-pleasing sight-gags of Tex Avery. Moschino founded his line in 1983. Five years later, his Cheap and Chic range was introduced. In 1994, he launced what he called an Ecouture line, featuring clothes made from environmentally friendly fabrics and dyes. It might just be that the laughing stopped when Moschino died the same year, at the age of 44, the victim of that quintessential buzz-kill, a heart attack. His line has persevered, albeit with less fanfare and less imaginative marketing. His perfume line releases new product frequently. The fragrances are more interesting than they’re given credit for. Cheap and Chic itself is a brisk fruity floral, truly cheap and chic, making it, of course, exceptional and a play on words, a happy contradiction. Eponymously titled Moschino (1988) is a floral oriental which smells like Grasse by way of a headshop, another, more refined play on words. Cheap and Chic has had several flankers, as has Moschino.

The bottle for Funny! mimics the one used for Moschino Couture, extending a joke across two releases separated by three years and seemingly contradictory high/low designations. Moschino Couture is a warm, fruity floral with haughty gold cap, high-class scotch-colored juice, and velvet red ribbon sash. Funny! is literally its polar opposite, cool, fresh, and exhilarating, with silver cap, ice blue juice, and frayed satin ribbon, the cheerful country cousin to its big city counterpart. Funny! was created by Antoine Maisondieu, whose work with Etat Libre D’Orange (Jasmin et Cigarette, Encens & Bubblegum, et al), demonstrate his own refined sense of humorous elegance. He was the nose behind Burberry Brit London, Gucci eau de Parfum II, and Comme des Garcon’s Luxe Patchouli, all interesting, all arguably wonderful. Funny! combines Seville orange, red currant, and green tea, possessing an aptly curious spiciness (something of a punchline, a la pink pepper) and a resinous base which contrasts ingeniously with its effervescent attributes. It shares with Gucci II a rare quality in feminine construction, where buoyancy doesn’t mean vapidity. It is bold and declarative rather than timid and insipid. It has humor and a positive outlook on things. It’s cheerful without being air-headed, dense without being a dumb blonde. Most impressively for a citrus-focused scent, it persists, giggling in the face of summer heat. Funny it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves.

vintage perfume ad of the day: Calvin Klein Obsession

He put an Olympian in Times Square, a chiseled statue of muscle in bronze, towering over traffic and pedestrians in his tightie-whities, like a closet queen's dream-perversion of the fifty-foot woman. More recently, he pulled the same trick in Hong Kong, going even larger this time. Calvin Klein's ad campaigns have referenced homemade porn, street junkies, and the convoluted mating rituals of the genetically superior. Of all the eighties lifestyle brands (Perry Ellis, Ralph Lauren, et al), his used Bruce Weber most extensively, making the portly photographer of perfection a household name. Together they made anorexics out of fledgling sissies the world over. The ads for Obsession have been much maligned--the parodies on SNL became more famous than the spots themselves--but they were iconic and influential, permeating culture insidiously. They were exquisitely shot, impeccably coreographed, and totally, deeply silly. This one has something to do with a little boy who might be a girl (Klein's or Weber's remembrance of things past?), pining for the woman he or she might become, an athletic, all-American tomboy played by South-African-born supermodel Josie Borain. In an interview published this month, Borain, one-time CK favorite, offers a window onto the 80's scene for which this Obsession ad serves as something of a time capsule: ‘I remember it was at the peak when Reagan was in power and New York was cooking. Property was riding very high, the financial market was making millions and millions – people didn’t know what to do with their money. There was just so much money all over the place, and some of it trickled over into my pocket...’ The Obsession campaign, right down to the name, captured that moment of narcissism and entitlement perfectly. The ad in question plays out like Greek Tragedy, complete with supermodel chorus and spare, Aristotle-on-the-Parthenon-steps settings. Though its references to underground gay iconography were destined to fly right over the heads of the general viewing public, as with most CK ads the uncomfortable suggestion of something illicitly creepy came through very clearly. Now that Klein's creative control has left the building, we're left with six-packs and prespiration, and just how brilliantly conceived and executed some of this sublimely ridiculous top down design was becomes a little more readily apparent.