The Perfume Lover

by Denyse Beaulieu

  It was only in the late 19th century that a fragrance family we’ve come to think of as specifically masculine was introduced, the fougère, (the ‘fern’) named after Houbigant’s Fougère Royale, believed to be the first fragrance in history to use synthetic materials. Fougères are built on a framework of bergamot (an aromatic, peppery citrus), geranium (a rounded note from the rose family, but fresher), oak moss (earthy, green, mossy) and a synthetic called coumarin, initially extracted from the tonka bean (but made much more cheaply through another process), which smells of tobacco, almond and hay. They often incorporate aromatic notes such as lavender and therefore fall within more masculine olfactory codes.

  However, the oldest perfume to have been continuously manufactured since its launch in 1889, Aimé Guerlain’s Jicky, broke gender boundaries from the outset by oscillating between the fougère and the sensuousness of a fragrance family that was not yet called ‘oriental’. Its very name expressed its hermaphrodite nature: it was the nickname of Jacques, Aimé Guerlain’s nephew and assistant, but also of an English girl Aimé had proposed marriage to. The girl’s parents refused and Aimé never married, or so the story goes.

  At first, it is said that Jicky, with its non-figurative name (the first one in the history of perfumery) and ground-breaking combination of lavender, coumarin, geranium and herbs, was considered too revolutionary by Guerlain to be sold to women, though it also boasted floral and sweet balsamic notes, including another new synthetic material, vanillin. When men rejected it, it was offered to women, but it only encountered its public on the eve of World War I, once they had become more accustomed to abstract compositions saturated with synthetics, and just as they were ready to move on from the frills and flounces of the 19th century to Paul Poiret’s corsetless Orientalist garb. What Guerlain didn’t anticipate was its success with men, who adopted it along with the 1917 Mitsouko, so that, in the 20s, the company had to add the heading ‘women’s perfumes that could also please men’ to its catalogues.

  Jicky was, and still is, shared by men and women: any perfume that can boast among its wearers both Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot or Roger Moore and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis either suffers from serious gender dysmorphia or sings with the voice of an angel. What’s so interesting about it is not only the fact that its notes bridge what we’ve become accustomed to perceive as the olfactory gender divide, but also that it reconciles the extremes of the clean-dirty spectrum. For centuries, lavender was the olfactory sign of cleanliness: a cultural fact sealed into its very name, which comes from the same Latin root as lavare, ‘washing’ (lavender was used by laundresses, called lavandières in French). Whereas its dominant base note, civet (a substance extracted from the anal gland of the civet cat), smells faecal in its undiluted form, in minute amounts it imparts a suave, velvety richness to compositions. Classic French perfumery has always excelled at conjuring the smells fragrances were meant to cover up …

  The olfactory codes of the 20th century became settled around World War I. Men were offered scents that conjured either cleanliness (Yardley’s Old English Lavender or Mennen’s Skin Bracer) or manly activities (the leather-smelling Knize Ten, by the Viennese tailor Knize). The first masculine fragrance that alluded to seduction came out in 1934: the ads for Pour un Homme by Caron depicted either a Greek statue or a gentleman in top hat, white tie and tails. But it still smelled of lavender.

  Women, on the other hand, started filching masculine scents in the 20s just as they raided the masculine wardrobe in the wake of Chanel. Caron led the way there too, in 1919 with Tabac Blond, dedicated to the new breed of cigarette-smoking, car-driving garçonnes. Chanel followed suit in 1924 by offering them Cuir de Russie. The smell of Russian leather, from the birch tar Cossacks rubbed their boots with to waterproof them, had been known since the 18th century. It was a fashionable way of treating leather, and seems to have first appeared as a note in fine fragrances in the mid-1800s. By the 20s, it had become the scent of the zeitgeist. Paris was teeming with White Russians; Chanel herself was surrounded with them, starting with her perfumer Ernest Beaux. She was friends with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, the composer Igor Stravinsky, the dancer Serge Lifar; between 1920 and 1923, she had an affair with the Grand Duke Dimitri. Russia inspired her collections. She borrowed the peasant blouse; she worked with furs; her fabrics were adorned with Slavic motifs by the embroidery house founded by Dimitri’s own sister, the Grand Duchess Maria. As for leather, it was traditionally associated with masculine pursuits (cars, aviation, travel), the very activities the 20s garçonnes appropriated, and thus became the olfactory emblem of the emancipation of women.

  Chanel’s Cuir de Russie is actually a variation of N°5. Its warm, slightly oily note is punctured by the fizz of the aldehydes; these thousands of pinpricks infuse the iris into the leather. Propelled by aldehydes, the iris drags all the other floral notes with it: jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, orange blossom … That is the genius of Ernest Beaux’ composition: the subtle feminization of the leather accord, carried out in the same manner as Chanel’s hijacking of male sartorial codes.

  * * *

  Throughout the classic era of perfumery, feminine perfumes would continue playing on the range of notes that were considered appropriate for men (leather, wood, citrus, aromatic herbs). Or rather, those notes were considered appropriate for both genders until the early 80s, when powerhouse fougères like Paco Rabanne pour Homme and clear-the-room florals like Poison exacerbated the gender divide, though the pendulum swung back in the 90s with the deliberately unisex CK One or the genderless L’Eau d’Issey. Today, with niche houses refusing to label their scents masculine or feminine and a small number of mainstream masculine launches venturing into floral territories (most notably the remarkable Dior Homme, conceived by Olivier Polge for the then-artistic director of Dior’s fashion line for men, Hedi Slimane), the masculine/feminine cursor is a little harder to set. But outside of the aforementioned niche brands, the market is still gendered, if only because the products have to be packaged, advertised and placed on one side or the other of the aisle. The entry-level male fragrances are more apt to be labelled ‘body spray’ than the wussy Frenchified ‘eau de toilette’ (cue sniggers as teenage boys joke about ‘toilet water’). Since boys marinate in these noxious potions, predominantly redolent of synthetic woods and amber, those are the notes that become encoded as ‘male’ in the first throes of teenage mating rituals, while girls douse themselves in candied concoctions like Aquolina Pink Sugar or Vera Wang Princess, thus perpetuating olfactory stereotypes that owe nothing to our genetic makeup.

  * * *

  No one is immune to gender categorization and, despite my taste for ambivalent blends, there are certain notes that make me feel as though I am wearing male drag. For instance, I can’t come to terms with Bertrand’s first proposal. The soapy lavender and orange blossom combination draws it towards the fougère family and that’s too masculine for me: his part of the story, not mine.

  The story of my perfume is both masculine and feminine, of course. A woman in the arms of a man; the fleeting moment when they come together, and the memory of that moment lost. It is also the story of a man and a woman learning to speak each other’s language to translate words into scent. Traduttore, tradittore, the Italians say: ‘translator, traitor’. Is what’s going on in that lab a covert war of the sexes?

  11

  If I know men, I’d say this one was sulking. I’ve been here for a full five minutes and Bertrand hasn’t said a single word since he’s sat down to pour alcohol into the mods he’s prepared for our sessions – ‘mods’ being perfume industry jargon for the successive modifications of a scent-in-progress. Perhaps he’s a little cross at having to spend time on a non-priority project. He’s leaving for Madagascar in forty-eight hours and he’s got more urgent tasks, for which he’s actually getting paid, by actual clients. Still, when I walked into the L’Artisan Parfumeur boutique, where for some reason he was dealing with a customer, he greeted me
with a happy, friendly smile. I guess it may not have been very clever of me to waltz in crowing I had a sample of the next Serge Lutens, especially since every woman in the shop demanded to smell it on the spot. It probably didn’t help either that it was a leather scent, like Bertrand’s autumn launch, which, being inspired by a journey to Istanbul, also features a prominent leather note. Was I subconsciously exacting my little revenge? When I showed up for our last appointment, he’d forgotten to write it down and we couldn’t work, so I just dropped off a Spanish book I wanted him to read.

  He hasn’t even offered me a seat. I shift my feet as I watch him dip the blotters. The first two mods didn’t really speak to me and I’m a bit wary of what’s in store. At last, he waves me towards a stool. We jump straight into mods 3, 4 and 5.

  ‘I’ve toned down the incense and the aldehydes. We’re forgetting the soap and lavender, we’ll see about them later. I’ve focused on the floral note. Green. Nectar. Pollen. Narcotic. Indolic. I’ve played on lily and jasmine. They suit the theme.’

  N°3, with its cologne-like effects, is the core of the three new mods: it’s an orange blossom in the top, heart and base notes. In other words, they all contain materials that say ‘orange blossom’ throughout the development. Perfumery materials evaporate at different rates because their molecules are of different sizes: the smallest ones need the least heat to fly off into the air, which is why, for instance, the citrus notes of cologne dissipate very quickly since citrus essences are composed of tiny molecules. The largest, like musk, sit on the skin for hours. So the development of a perfume is like a relay-race: when a material evaporates, another material or another accord (notes that are ‘played’ at the same time, like a piano chord, and create a different effect combined than individually) takes up the slack to continue the story. The consistency in the development of a fragrance rests on the interplay between top, heart and base notes.

  N°4 is more floral, more indolic and spicier than N°3; its spiciness introduces the lily we spoke of during our last session. In N°5, the amber, wood and musk have been amped so that the scent is no longer as much of a floral. But I can’t smell the incense. There’s a whopping four per cent in the formula, Bertrand informs me, but apparently it’s absorbed by the orange blossom because they go well together.

  ‘When you wear it, you’ll notice pretty obvious skin and blood effects.’

  Blood? How do you even produce a blood note in a perfume?

  Bertrand explains that blood’s metallic, warm, mineral, salty and rusty facets are rendered through different materials: specific aldehydes, incense, salicylates … The latter generally have a sweet, balsamic, slightly salty ‘solar’ odour: in Europe, some salicylates were once used as sunscreens until more effective products were found and thus have come to be associated with the smell of sun-heated skin. But Bertrand finds that iso-amyl salicylate also has something matte and metallic about it, like blood. He’s kept the costus from the previous mods to produce the effect of veins under the surface of the skin.

  ‘You can’t smell veins through the skin, can you?’

  ‘Of course you can. Skin smells the strongest where veins run just under the surface. Here … and here,’ he says, touching his pulse and his temple.

  ‘I’ve never noticed that.’

  I’m tempted to go and have a sniff at him to find out.

  ‘Well, when you smell a woman there…’

  ‘… which I haven’t…’

  ‘… which you might have, for all I know … Well, in those places she’ll smell a bit like warm leather and sheep. Costus conjures that effect. Raw wool. Greasy, dirty hair. It’s got a lot of negative connotations in perfumery, but it shouldn’t. It’s such an amazing product!’

  Bertrand rummages in his refrigerator to pull out a phial of costus, does his strip-dipping number and hands me the stuff in a ten per cent solution. I brace myself for a waft of rutting ram but all I’m getting is a rather pleasant, faintly fatty-waxy odour.

  ‘I can’t smell much.’

  ‘You can’t? You’re scaring me!’

  ‘I thought it would be more powerful.’

  ‘It’s soft and muffled, but if it’s too strongly dosed it can destroy a product, because it gives off a mutton couscous effect.’

  ‘Still, I can barely make it out.’

  Bertrand thinks about this for a second.

  ‘You may be anosmic to it because it smells of yourself. You can’t smell your own referent.’

  How glamorous. I’ve just been told by a top perfumer that I smell of mutton and dirty hair. Note to self: change shampoo brands. Now let’s go back to the blotters, shall we?

  I’m not sure about N°3: too bright, too cologne-like. N°4 is turning into a lily. N°5, with its warmer, ambery-musky notes, is pretty sexy and that’s the one I’m drawn to the most, but what’s it got to do with my story? In fact, what is it exactly that made Bertrand see a perfume in that story? I’ve never asked him in so many words. I do so now.

  ‘Simply the story. I told myself that associating incense with blood and orange blossom would be a challenge.’

  But how does he deal with the fact that he’s working on another person’s experience? When he did olfactory travel sketchbooks like Timbuktu or Dzongkha, he’d actually been to Mali or Bhutan. He knew what they smelled like.

  ‘Stories are pretexts. I start the perfume before leaving. I adapt it and complete it afterwards. The smells you discover on trips can be very striking, but they’re usually negative. Un-ex-PLOIT-able. You go to a market, you get hit in the face by smells of dried fish, durian, fresh coriander and mango. What do you do with your dried fish? With durian, which smells like baby shit? So you tell the story your way.’

  Oh. And there I was thinking of him as an explorer gathering swatches of exotic landscapes to stick them in a bottle.

  While we’re studying the development of the three mods, I start telling him about my next perfume course in London: I intend to do a comparative study between his interpretation of tuberose and that of another perfumer. As soon as I’ve said the words, I realize I’ve just wedged my Louboutin sling-back firmly between my molars. Bertrand scowls.

  ‘It’s so annoying to see there’s a bunch of tuberoses coming out at the same time…’

  He’s right: the perfume world is barely emerging from a tuberose tsunami as we speak. He shouldn’t be surprised, though. If an idea is in the air, more than one perfumer is bound to get it.

  ‘Well, that pisses me off! I’m fed up. What do you have to do to be unusual? Truly unusual?’

  You can’t be too unusual, I venture. You need to please at least a few thousand people. So you can’t veer too far off the charts.

  Soon, we’re egging each other on into full-blown angst. We talk about the way luxury giants are killing off the art of perfumery; about the paucity of truly original ideas; Bertrand is even saying, shockingly, that the dream is gone for him.

  ‘What about you?’ he asks. ‘Are you still moved by perfume?’

  Actually, I am, every now and then. But I understand how he feels. Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth it to add another product to the glut. We speak for a while about the depressive phase artists go through periodically: the moment when it all seems pointless. It’s all about breaking down the language we know to find the possibility of another language, I suggest. Like in that Leonard Cohen song that says there’s a crack in everything: that’s how the light gets in. But you have to go through that destructive phase first. Force the crack open. Bertrand nods.

  ‘It’s probably a natural cycle, like plants.’

  ‘And right now you’re in the humus, decomposing!’

  Well done. Now I’ve got us both depressed. He needs a holiday and he’ll be taking one in a couple of days. I’m not, and I’m eyeing the nearby Pont des Arts with a wistful gaze. Still, the fact that this guy, who’s at the top of his game, is willing to disclose his doubts makes him that much more likeable to me. I’ve been around enough
artists to know he’s behaving like one right now, even with that sulk about the competition breathing down his neck … time to clear the air about that.

  ‘Anyway, that new Lutens leather doesn’t have anything to do with yours.’

  ‘Yes, it does. And that’s what pisses me off.’

  ‘At least the beauty editors will have their work cut out for them: they’ll be doing a leather theme next autumn.’

  ‘That’s just it. Being part of a theme, that’s what gets on my nerves.’

  I must be doing this on purpose.

  ‘I guess the toughest thing we learn as we grow up is that we’re not unique,’ I add dismally.

  Just kill me now before I go on sabotaging this session.

  ‘Exactly,’ replies Bertrand. ‘Knowing you’re not unique. But at the same time, it’s stupid to think that way. It’s egocentric. We’re not unique. We’re here to serve life, not the opposite. Life isn’t here to serve the individual. Never. You understand?’

  What started me on this riff? I’m beginning to suspect that just as he’s depressed by the idea that whatever he comes up with, he won’t be the only one to come up with it, I must deal with the fact that, to him, my project is one among many, albeit one he took on of his own accord. Whereas for me, it is unique: the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me as a perfume lover …

  Those three slender strips of paper I’ve set on his desk are gangways thrown over the sinkhole we’ve been skirting. It’s time we got back to them. I sniff the blotters in turn. The clove-laden lily in N°4 is merrily chewing up the rest of the formula: Bertrand thinks the eugenol – the clove note – slices too much into its volume.

  With N°4 out of the running, we compare N°3 and N°5. Bertrand thinks all the different effects – green, mineral, animalic, salty, narcotic – come out better in the former. The base notes, he says, are freer to express themselves in N°3 because N°5 has got twice the amount of musk. As a result, it’s the fullest and the most powerful of the three mods, but the sensuous effects of N°3 are crushed: musk wraps the notes beautifully, but the wrong dose can also smother them.