The Perfume Lover

by Denyse Beaulieu

  But what I really want to say is this: Bertrand, this isn’t my story. Not yet. The orange tree is there. But gorgeous as it is, there’s no one standing under it. My body pressing against Román’s, the scent of tobacco on his skin, his hand under my skirt … Duende should make me want to say a prayer and get my knickers ripped off, at the same time.

  15

  So now’s the time to bring back Habanita and all she stood for; that thing I lost, through the sheer exhaustion of holding myself ready for adventure, of being Carmen.

  I don’t remember the exact moment when Habanita started triggering migraines, nausea, anxiety. But it happened. There was a man, of course. The Tomcat turned up as strays always do when they sense there’s a home that’s open to them. With his messy shock of hair, long nose and craggy face, he was sexy in a mountaineer sort of a way. Nearly twenty years older than me, but didn’t look it: I suspected his enduring youthfulness came from the fact that he’d never held down a suit-and-tie job, or any kind of a job for very long, really. He’d been a ski monitor, a reporter, a stage manager for avant-garde directors. He’d sold vintage clothing and published a novel; when I met him he was writing screenplays for television.

  By that time I’d drifted away from my PhD into freelance journalism, writing profiles, travel pieces and columns for a trendy French left-wing monthly. I’d never really seen myself as an academic. Besides, there were just too many parties in the 80s, too many private views, too many movie houses, too many trains to take me across Europe – and journalism got me where I wanted to be, backstage, flitting from subject to subject rather than focusing on a single field. But it didn’t pay well so, when I got too broke to make the rent, my Siamese and I moved into the Tomcat’s small flat overlooking a leafy cobblestoned courtyard. When I cried because my best friend was pregnant, he said we could have a baby, and that he’d marry me. So I unlearned the way to Seville and stashed away my black bottle of Habanita.

  Bereft of my signature fragrance, I set out to find one that would reflect my new identity. In Habanita’s arms, I’d managed to sail past the power-suited 80s; by 1990, the likes of Poison and Giorgio Beverly Hills were starting to feel as trite as the shoulder pads I was ripping out of my jackets. Besides, one of the reasons I’d picked Habanita to start with was that it was relatively obscure. It felt like my secret, and meeting another woman who wore it was like finding a long-lost sister. So I decided to explore lesser-known fragrances from the same era. Reading a biography of Anaïs Nin, I found out that she’d worn a perfume called Narcisse Noir by Caron, a name already familiar to me thanks to my childhood idol Geneviève, who spoke admiringly of its best-selling Fleurs de Rocaille. I’d start with that.

  The Caron boutique on the corner of the avenue Montaigne and the rue François 1er, a short bus ride away from my new home, was a jewel box full of rose- and violet-smelling face powders, pastel-tinted swansdown powder puffs and giant 18th-century-style crystal urns with golden faucets from which perfumes could be poured into rectangular bottles of various sizes.

  Like Chanel’s Ernest Beaux, the founder of Caron, Ernest Daltroff, was Russian-born; like François Coty, the Napoleon of Perfume, he was self-taught. But while Coty decorated his chateaux in the style of the 18th century with a social upstart’s tastes in art that contrasted with the modernity of his products, Daltroff, who came from a wealthy family, was keenly interested in the contemporary art scene. The vivid, unnatural colours and violent contrasts of the Fauvists, as well as the olfactory memories of his exotic journeys, inspired a similarly vivid, unnatural palette, explains the perfumer Guy Robert in Michael Edwards’ Perfume Legends. Daltroff was unafraid to experiment with the new, powerful materials that more seasoned perfumers shied away from. The emotional intensity of his compositions, their sheer gaudiness, captured the very essence of an era when the avant-gardes, from Diaghilev’s outrageously erotic and exotic Ballets Russes to Picasso’s grinding up of traditional perspective, shattered the remnants of the 19th century. The house of Caron carried its own brand of Russian revolution into perfumery.

  It was the first time I’d set foot in a historic perfume house and discovered a series of fragrances composed by the same person; though my nose was still uneducated, I could sense a common thread: a dark powdery mossiness which I would learn later on was called the ‘Mousse de Saxe’, a base created nearly a century ago in Grasse by one of the unacknowledged geniuses of perfumery, Marie-Thérèse de Laire, who worked in the family company. Bases were mini-perfumes conceived to dress up new molecules that could be perceived as too harsh or unwieldy, and were incorporated directly into perfume formulas. The Mousse de Saxe had been elaborated around a mossy, leathery, liquorice-like material called isobutyl-quinolin. It was at once sweet and bitter, powdery and green, rosy and spicy, as bold as the vibrantly coloured Orientalist styles the couturier Paul Poiret made fashionable before World War I … I’ve since learned that the Mousse de Saxe was an inspiration for Habanita, but even without knowing it, I knew I’d found a fragrant home. The Caron urns were time machines carrying me off to the early decades of the 20th century, each drop of fragrance conjuring visions of a glamorous past. N’Aimez que moi (‘Love only me’) was given to their sweethearts by men departing for the trenches during World War I; En Avion was a tribute to the chic aviatrixes of the 20s; French Cancan was meant to draw in the American clientele in the interwar years with a name evocative of Gay Paree.

  I decided to stick to the scent that had prompted my visit and departed in a cloud of orange blossom laced with dark, dirty notes that conjured silk underpinnings shed during a particularly decadent party in some silent movie star’s Hollywood villa. The Tomcat took one sniff and vetoed Anaïs Nin’s Narcisse Noir – I smelled like the most popular brunette in a Pigalle brothel, he snorted – just as he’d rejected the lingerie collection I’d assembled over the years. He’d also vetoed my portrait by the photographer Bettina Rheims, taken to illustrate one of my articles: dressed solely in a black lace Merry Widow, I cupped my breasts, head thrown back, lips parted … Bettina had deemed it good enough to be part of her Female Trouble book and exhibition and to hang a print of it in her flat. But the Tomcat loathed it. So Bettina joined Habanita and the Merry Widow in the closet, and Narcisse Noir was forgotten. I guess I was grateful to the Tomcat for seeing past the man-eater image I’d been peddling before meeting him. Men don’t marry the Carmens of this world. They kill them.

  My next Caron sample, however, met with his approval. Farnesiana was named after Michelangelo’s Farnese Palazzo, the French embassy in Rome (and because perfume can be a form of prophecy, there would be a July 14th party at the Farnese one day, though not with the Tomcat), but also after the Acacia Farnesiana, a relative of the mimosa, with similar tiny yellow powder-puff flowers. It reminded the Tomcat of his summers camping on the Côte d’Azur with his parents in the early 60s: that was when he’d dated an English girl who’d gone on to become an erotic icon of European movies in the 70s, a memory he treasured. Farnesiana’s powdery, almost edible tenderness – it smelled of marzipan, violets and, more faintly, of anise – was like Habanita’s sunny side. It also reminded me, oddly but endearingly, of wet Kraft cardboard and of the Colle Cléopâtre whose almond aroma was so tempting generations of schoolchildren snuck a lick of it when the art teacher wasn’t looking.

  I’d found the scent that would take me to my wedding day, a good-natured affair in the city hall of our Parisian district: the Tomcat, a libertarian child of the 60s, had flatly refused a church ceremony. Until, that is, the Caron boutique manager slipped a sample of Poivre in my bag. I dabbed it on. The Tomcat grumbled it smelled like a dentist’s surgery. But something had stirred in the pit of my stomach. Though they exuded a similar powdery retro charm, Poivre was the polar opposite of Farnesiana. It didn’t smell of its eponymous pepper, but of cloves and the spicy red carnations I’d so loved in Seville. If Farnesiana cooed reminiscences of springs on the Riviera in dainty, Grace Kelly-style New Look fr
ocks, Poivre, like Ava Gardner in a foul mood, could slap you just for kicks. In fact, its eau de toilette version was called Coup de Fouet, ‘Lash of the Whip’. In French, something that gives you a coup de fouet revives your energy. But the kinky subtext suddenly brought back memories of a lover with whom I’d indulged in an experiment that had left me unable to sit – but gloating at my own naughtiness – for a couple of days … So I came home with Farnesiana’s hellcat of a sister. And that was just for starters. Coup de Fouet soon loomed over my two other Carons. I ignored the Tomcat’s grumblings: by that time, I’d nabbed a full-time job on a women’s magazine and spent most of my time at the office anyway.

  Then when Narcisse Noir beckoned with her over-ripe charms, I gave in. Hello Anaïs, Pigalle and the café Wepler where Henry Miller met the beautiful whore Nys – it couldn’t be by chance that the name of the sensuous, ravenous, sweet-tempered tart of Quiet Days in Clichy was encased in my own … Narcisse Noir’s opulent white bouquet harked back to my very first Parisian perfume, Chloé; it prefigured a continuing obsession with narcotic, milky, femme fatale blossoms. After the tenderness of Farnesiana, the toughness of Poivre and the sultriness of Narcisse Noir felt like declarations of independence.

  I’d opted for sexual monogamy but, clearly, I was no longer capable of being as faithful to a fragrance as I had been to Habanita in my more adventurous days. My senses craved the variety once afforded by the skins and smells and fantasies of the men I’d known, the places I used to zip off to on a whim because I didn’t have to hold down a job, the personas I used to try on as I moved through different cities and social circles. Perfumes were a low-risk substitute for those adventures, genies quietly waiting for my summons in their crystal bottles … Fidelity had never been my forte.

  16

  ‘No matter what the weather, rain or shine, it’s my habit every evening at about five o’clock to take a walk around the Palais Royal,’ writes Denis Diderot in Rameau’s Nephew. ‘I let my spirit roam at will, allowing it to follow the first idea, wise or foolish, which presents itself, just as we see our dissolute young men on Foy’s Walk following in the footsteps of a prostitute with a smiling face, an inviting air, and a turned-up nose, then leaving her for another, going after all of them and sticking to none. For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes.’

  It was in the very spot where Diderot had indulged in his intellectual libertinage that I found the scented seraglio that best suited my fancy. The Palais-Royal, a garden in the heart of Paris so secluded it is missed by most tourists, was where I went to speak to the witty, amiable ghosts of the 18th century. It was teeming with them, the rakes and the courtesans, the philosophers and the coquettes, the aristocrats and agitators, floating in the honeyed scent of linden tree blossoms, magnolias and hyacinths.

  In 1992, after a long spell away from my favourite haunt, I spotted a new boutique with a purple façade and black windows in the Galerie de Valois that looked as though it had popped out of some wormhole connected to the 1780s. This was the kind of shop Casanova might have opened to trick elderly aristocrats into thinking he was a powerful cabbalist. ‘Shiseido Salons du Palais-Royal’ said the storefront. I pushed the heavy glass door and wandered into the dark, cool shop. Stylized lavender astronomical motifs adorned the deep purple walls; a delicate spiral staircase ascended to the first floor. A sphinx-like sales attendant clad in a purple smock like those worn by the staff of great jewellers stood behind a marble counter, where four bell-shaped glass bottles were set next to a miniature 19th-century lion-footed marble bathtub in the Pompeian style.

  If the place hadn’t been so dauntingly quiet, I would have squealed when I learned who was behind this new perfume house: the man whose mysterious, violently geometric pictures of Kabuki-faced women with smoky cat eyes and thin, cruel scarlet lips against half-Japanese, half-Russian Constructivist backgrounds had fascinated me in my French neighbour’s Vogues. His ads for Christian Dior cosmetics had driven me to buy my first red lipstick on my first trip in Paris and when he’d moved to Shiseido, I’d shifted allegiance as well. But somehow, the fact that he made perfumes had passed me by. It was better this way; to discover them as though guided there by my ghosts …

  I had just entered the world of Serge Lutens.

  * * *

  Those bell-shaped bottles held liquid emotion. Letting Bois de Violette’s amethyst and umber tones unfurl from my wrist as I wandered under the arcades of the Galerie de Valois, I couldn’t quite decide whether I liked it or not, so unusual was its blend of oily, resinous, leathery woods inlaid with sweet shards of violets and bits of golden dried fruit. But I knew I loved it as you would a stranger who seemed to carry with him the mystery of his own world. And there was a world behind it; there was a story. Just as I, a woman from the snow country, had come alive to scents in Seville, Serge Lutens, born in the northern French city of Lille, had discovered the olfactory realm in Marrakech, where he’d settled in the late 60s.

  In an industry choking with too many launches and where fragrance had become a consumer product, the house of Serge Lutens rang out as a protest, a sovereign gesture of defiance: Qui m’aime me suive, whoever loves me shall follow me. It was raised on the foundation of his aesthetics and his persona – his ‘personal legend’, as Paulo Coelho would say, though I suspect he is no more Lutens’ favourite writer than he is mine. The fragrances were only available in a single shop, their discovery a ritual experience. The sophisticated stage Lutens set down revived the mystical couture atmosphere he had discovered when he came to Paris to work for Vogue in 1962.

  At the core of Serge Lutens’ stance was a violent rejection of the mainstream in general but more specifically of the streamlined, limpid style established by Edmond Roudnitska, the influential composer of the best-selling Diorissimo, Eau Sauvage and Diorella. Serge Lutens knew these well, since he’d been the artistic director of Christian Dior’s makeup line from 1967 to 1980. ‘With him, it is the start of a cleaned-up perfumery, with neither body nor memory, prim and proper and which awakens nothing in me. Perfumes have to belong to our roots, our sweat, our past and our very decadence,’ he explained to Annick Le Guérer in Le Parfum.

  To me, Lutens’ reintroduction of an archaic dimension in perfumery echoed the gesture of the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, unsurprisingly one of his favourite directors. When Pasolini adapted Greek myths and tragedies (Oedipus, Medea) and pre-modern narrative cycles (The Thousand and One Nights, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales), he sought to restore the ‘primitive’ gaze; to show the world as it was seen before Christianity or the Enlightenment. Lutens’ perfumes, with their vibrant palette of oriental aromas, were a similar move towards pre-modern conceptions of the art, albeit with the financial support of the Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido.

  In keeping with Lutens’ quest for the ancient roots of perfumery, the house quickly established, though he denies it – ‘they just came’ – its Moroccan-inspired olfactory codes: spices, predominantly cumin, dried fruit and the rich, leathery Atlas cedarwood. But Lutens’ style went beyond an exotic palette. He often asked his perfumers to take on difficult notes that had seldom or never had the starring role in mainstream perfumery, and to exaggerate their characteristics to the point of distortion. Iris Silver Mist, for instance, was the first iris soliflore in decades, namely because orris butter, which takes years to produce, is extravagantly expensive. It is mainly used for its powdery effect, but it also smells of wood, roots, carrots and earth, with cold, metallic effects and fatty whiffs of human flesh. The perfumer Maurice Roucel, egged on by Lutens, boosted those facets and went on to produce one of the most austere perfumes on the market.

  Muscs Koublaï Khan lurches in such a different direction you’d think it had been thought up by an entirely different author (and it was, indeed, composed by another perfumer, Christopher Sheldrake). But, in fact, it has the Lutens signature stamped all over it. Just as Iris Silver Mist over-saturates all the facets of iris including the less flattering
ones, Muscs Koublai Khan piles layer upon layer of animal notes to achieve a rendition of the legendary Tonkin musk encountered by Marco Polo in the Mongol emperor’s Chinese realm, hence its name. To some, it is one of the fiercest stenches ever to waft from a perfume bottle, and it does feature a cornucopia of feral smells: faecal civet, leather and fur-smelling castoreum, costus with its whiff of dirty hair, armpit-reeking cumin, ambergris with its saline, female notes, patchouli and its dank earth facets, as well as a wide range of synthetic musks. But despite this reverse-laundry list of pungent materials, Muscs Koublaï Khan doesn’t add up to a devil’s brew. In fact, it may be the fragrant equivalent of Ingres’ Turkish Bath as described by Kenneth Clark in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form: ‘In the middle of this whirlpool of carnality is [Ingres’] old symbol of peaceful fulfilment, the back of the Baigneuse de Valpinçon. Without her tranquil form, the whole composition might have made us feel slightly seasick. [But] after a minute we become aware of a design so densely organized that we derive from it the same intellectual satisfaction as is provided by Poussin and Picasso.’ In MKK, the figure of the ‘baigneuse’ is the crystalline rose and ambrette accord: a note of tranquil harmony rising through the animalic arabesques.

  * * *

  From the time I discovered the Salons du Palais-Royal, the bell-shaped bottles lined up on my bedroom mantelpiece, each new scent a yet-undiscovered room in Lutens’ olfactory palace. It would be nearly ten years before I met the man himself – a slender, sloe-eyed sylph with the light step of a dancer and a deep, velvety voice. That day he said:

  ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

  We hadn’t, I assured him.

  ‘Somehow, I’m sure I know you.’

  ‘Well … in another life, then?’