Yesterday a big box came from France, and I expected a ton of fragrance samples. Opened it eagerly, and instead found these socks I had ordered as antidepressants while reminiscing about Pitralon. They look even brighter in real life, and are completely opaque. Now, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I am finding it harder and harder to live up to my red and purple socks.
My spirits always sink when someone picks me up at an airport or a railway station and the car turns out not to be a 1934 Voisin Aérodyne. Worse still, when the driver clears room for me at the front by throwing things into the back. To tell the truth, I’m not fond of other people’s cars even when they’re swank and spotless. I remember visiting the parents of a girlfriend many […]
Legend has it that when the young Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu finally heard the first chord of Tristan and Isolde at the Paris premiere of Wagner’s opera, he promptly fainted and had to be carried out on a stretcher, thereby missing the rest. Only a robust constitution saved me from doing the same when I first smelled Miyako. Or to be exact, while assessing a 3ml sample labeled with only a […]
The Different Company is dear to my heart. Their first batch of releases in 2000-2001 included such masterpieces as Rose Poivrée and Osmanthus, both by Jean Claude Elléna. Osmanthus, in its small and seemingly unbreakable travel bottle, kept me company on many trips. I used to spray it in the air when taking possession of a hotel room to feel right at home. I was transported back a decade when […]
I recently had a chance to ask Bertrand Duchaufour about his and Mark Buxton’s role in inventing the new style of perfumery typified by Timbuktu and CdG 2 Man . What was interesting to me was that they both worked in the same oil firm, Créations Aromatiques, when this happened, and seemingly hit upon the same ideas at the same time. I had earlier asked Buxton whether they collaborated, and […]
We just moved into a new house and found two stashes of soaps in a cardboard box that contained the random collection of things typical of carefully planned moves: unbreakable objects individually wrapped, no doubt to give coat hangers and bathroom mats an experience of cosseted travel rare in their austere lives. Now the bathrooms contain one each of Irish Spring and Mitsouko. The former was bought in bulk for me by TS’s mother when I expressed […]
While at Esxence I visited the stand of Turkish firm Nishane. There was a small crowd around the stand, talking animatedly and smelling the collection. I handed over my card, bagged some samples, and heard someone nearby call my name. It was a young man I did not know, who seemed very shy and nervous. He spoke fast, did not tell me his name, said he was glad to meet me, […]
I spent a full day at Esxence, the niche perfumery and cosmetics show in Milan. It ran in a weird part of town, both central and entirely new, full of tall buildings interspersed by newly named squares even taxi drivers haven’t heard of. Once near there you couldn’t miss it, though, with huge banners guiding you down a gentle ramp to an underground space. The first impression was that of […]
I had a minor epiphany recently. I was at my desk smelling fragrance samples sent by Style Arabia for my column, and samples sent by the Institute of Art and Olfaction to be assessed blind for their awards. The Style Arabia frags were mainstream, the IAO frags artisan and independents. After a while I noticed that I was getting an unaccustomed feeling from smelling the IAO samples: joy. There is […]
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