Let the Stone Weep Around Me: ‘Violette Fumée’ by Mona Di Orio

The 19^th of July was Mona di Orio’s birthday and bloggers and writers across the electronic ether again reminded us that the perfumed world is a far less interesting place since Mona’s premature death at the end of 2011.

I am the same age and feel the loss oddly. Sitting here in my sun-flooded Edinburgh kitchen, I simply cannot imagine not being here, doing this, creating, writing and I have nowhere near the talent and artistic power that flowed from Mona. The more I wear her creations, the more I realise how close to genius she was in her instinctual understanding of olfactive chiaroscuro.

Her perfumes oscillate between light and dark, illuminating the shadows but at the same time masking and veiling, keeping certain things hidden from us. This tilting of the light away from the face or main theme, of allowing us to see the edges and hinterlands of compositions; this is her legacy. No one understood the nuances of light and shade like Mona, you can smell the tonal shifts, feel the luminescence on your skin and the bruises of night. There are times when we all need drama, majesty and true luxury in our fragrances. This is when we turn to Mona de Orio.

I worry it is early to say this, and you must forgive any offence, but her premature death has also I think deepened an already very powerful sense of connection to Mona’s work. There is an aura of ownership and enhanced familiarity. The people around the world who have worn her scents feel her absence keenly and draw her creations around themselves like protective charms. I am aware of her loss each time I wear one of her beautiful creations. I am sure she would have been troubled by this sense of melancholia as her work was a celebration of life and nature it all its glory. But we sense what we sense. The poems of Plath, Lowell and Brooke, the films of Monroe, Dean and Jean Vigo, the music of Buckley and Morrison, the art of Basquiat and Schiele, the lives of Princesses Diana and Grace – we imbue these with a different colour of memory. Tragedy bestows nostalgia and absence reinforcing our connections to those that have gone before their time.

It is always bittersweet. At the peak or on the cusp of artistic or creative greatness, we can never really know how much was to come, how much glory was to follow. In the case of Mona, a parfumeuse operating at the peak of her powers, the loss is incomparable. Only those closest to her know what she was preparing to do. Jeroen Oude Sogtoen was left not only with the painful task of coping with the loss of a beloved friend and business partner but also the looming issue of continuance. How to carry on with the perfumed work with Mona gone? However he has managed very successfully to keep Mona’s memory alive while at the same time necessitating movement forward. Transition is painful and forces introspection and change, but it is necessary in order to survive.

Delirious Velveteen Rhubarb: ‘Miss Dior Le Parfum’ by Dior

Popcorn dusted in shattered fraise de bois…with a powdery crunch of pavlova. An amber note trailing like peach coloured sun across an evening floor. Roses drifting across honeyed skin. And then a hint of something more louche and trashy - the drift of rolling tobacco in a summer night street; patchouli rolling in bed with vanilla, laughing at the evening stars. These are memories I have of Miss Dior Cherie a twisted sugar-bomb wonder that Dior dropped into the market in 2005.

Now we have Miss Dior Le Parfum. Rhubarb and custard candies… pink and beige. Echoes of the original messed –up shattered wonder but with added grown-up knowingness. And I’m in love again. This is just a delirious, velveteen scent, plush and so indulgent. I go through phases of constantly spraying it over my skin, inhaling and sighing. It’s a sighing kind of scent. Generally, it’s private juice, for that just me time. Dimmed lights, a good book, some writing, rose-streaked night sky just starting to chill down. Silence and the cats roaming the rooms like bored naughty panthers.

I’m kinda late to this I guess. I wore the original Nagel scent and adored the riff on Parisian chic meets bubblegum trash aesthetic. The original was the perfumed personification of that gorgeous French teen girl you see on a bus or metro and think, does she just roll out bed like that? Tough and soft pieces of Lou Doillon, Ludovine Sagnier and Clemence Poesy thrown together with arrogance and youthful ease. Then she blows a fuck-off bubble, cracks up and gives you the finger. That was Miss Dior Cherie. Sweet sexy vulgarity that made you feel alive.

Sweet & Floured Skin: ‘Castaña’ by Cloon Keen Atelier

Castaña is Spanish for chestnut, a familiar nut with a singular smeared and floury taste. Sweet or savoury, chestnuts are very distinctive; an acquired taste like asparagus, anything caprine and pomegranates. I love them candied, cooked with game, ground, distilled, fried or simply roasted in their shiny shells. They smell of the earth, chthonic. Despite growing on trees, they seem more correct on the ground amid leaf litter and the colours of autumn.

I have a very specific memory of roasted chestnuts linked to a miserable night in Paris as a student in the early 90s. I was an early manny and as such, part of a vast network of often unpaid naïve student slave labour, expected to appreciate the glamour of the city and the experiences being somewhat grudgingly extended to us and yet work ridiculous and demanding hours.  

My friend C and I didn’t go home that Christmas and the guy I’d been seeing brushed me off like snow on his shoulder. We lived off Boursin, horribly cheap wine in plastic bottles, baguette and C’s miraculous garlic-laden macaroni cheese she managed to conjure up on a hot plate in her little room. God knows where our money went. We look amazing in the photos, so on clothes, booze and cigarettes I guess.

One evening we were in the Marais, after a few hours of pastis on a chilled terrace, wandering the Place des Vosges, one of our favourite places, vibrant by day, shadowed and eerie at night. It was drizzling and the streets were mobbed with shoppers, bags crashing into us as we moaned to each other, over-dramatising as only petulant, slightly pissed English students could. I was never dressed properly for any weather, thin t-shirts, ripped jeans and a cricket sweater that had seen better days. More rent than tourist. I’m sure it was all horribly deliberate. The photos demonstrate a smug knowingness I hardly recognise now. I always had a fag in my hand no matter what the weather.

Everywhere we wandered, peering in at windows and dodging manic cars and raging klaxons, we could smell roasted chestnuts. It’s a very distinctive smell, unlike anything else, soft and inviting, wrapped in milky smoke. The little Dickensian stands emitted its heat and glow into the saturated evening. I wanted some, badly. The smell made my stomach howl. The marchand des chataignes was from Marseilles, his singsong accent, blurring his vowels like Mireille Matthieu. I remember begging him for two bags as I only had enough for one. Whatever I said worked, he waved his black-smutted hands at me and muttered joyeux noel…smiling through the rain. I shouted joyeux noel back and ran to find C, who was standing in a doorway, angrily trying to light a crooked damp cigarette.

The smell of those sweet hot chestnuts, split and crisp, reeking of the newspaper cones the seller had made himself has stayed with me forever. Ink and floured nuttiness, sugared starch, but most of all, a scent of streets, of lights and rain, traffic fumes and exhaustion. I am very wary about eating roast chestnuts now. I see the vendors, smell the whiff of cracking burnt shell, the ooze of sweet inside. But I’m not sure I want to actually rekindle that particular memory. We walked for miles as we always did, Rue de Rivoli, Louvre, Chatelet, Gare de Lyon, Bastille, back to our rooms. In the morning I remember my fingers smelled of fire and sugar, the smudged newspaper tossed across the floor near my crumpled Gitanes.

I have cooked with chestnuts since, stuffed partridge with them, pan-fried them with sprouts, maple syrup and walnuts, made a sauce with them, mixed with prunes and Armagnac and poured it over venison. And I’m anyone’s pretty much for a quality marron glacé… If you told me I had a rare disorder which meant I had to spend the end of my days living off marrons glacés and honeydew melon, I would be a very happy Fox.       

However as a fragrance note is rare enough to stand out. Strange really, because it is a very distinctive note, warm and sugared, floury and woody-soft. They taste like they look. Snug and golden. There are hints of saffron, patisserie, spiced apple, sweet potato and artichoke. The texture is glutinous and dry, powdered and strangely sherbety. There are a few rather unusual perfumes that have taken chestnuts as a theme and done lovely things with them. Betrand Duchaufour has been creating perfumes for the Sersale Family at the Hotel Sirenuse on the Amalfi coast for a number of years now. I am huge fan of his hot, terracotta-infused Paestum Rose. But his melancholic and comforting Sienne L’Hiver is layered with notes of the earth: truffles, leaves, straw, coal roasted chestnuts, violet, woods and musks. The elements of wandering through forests, of trying to lose oneself, kicking at the ground, all around the odours of autumn descend and infiltrate the senses.

The other one is Aqua di Casta by Testa Maura, created by Corsican perfumer Xavier Torre. These are really beautiful intense fragrances, made with true passion and desire. Carticasi is another one, a profoundly resinous floral with ylang and rose but tempered with the weird brittle snap of mastic. Wonderful. Aqua di Casta is a homage to the chestnut trees of the Castagniccia Corsican highlands. Blended with pepper, wood and ginger it is a dry sun-swept scent, filled with the rustle of leaves and sound of coruscating summer winds.

The Reek of Truthful Desire: Les Parfums de Vero Profumo

I am not sure how sexual and graphic I will end up being in this piece, but it’s a long time since I have smelt perfumes this visceral and erotic. With me, perfume is a skin thing. Juice on skin. Ink on skin. Flesh as canvas. The body beautiful bores me. The body painted, anointed, dipped, carved, oozing smoke, indoles, musks, sweat, vanilla, hot petals, tears and leather. Now that’s interesting.

The incomparable Vero Kern is inseparable from her wanton and compelling fragrances. Once worn, they own and haunt.

Her Onda was the subversive and palpable hit of my poetry and perfume event at Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens on a late May evening of sun and sensuality. Séville à L’Aube by L’Artisan Parfumeur and Gorilla’s The Smell of Weather Turning also caused considerable ripples. But it was Onda as it name suggests that caused the biggest wave. I chose it as my scent of the evening to wear. I knew I would as soon as I smelt it in Bloom Perfumery in London moths ago. My flesh and garments were doused in the bitter-sexy tarantella of ylang, bergamot, honey, passion fruit, musk and woods. This was just the eau de parfum. I then anointed my pulse points and laced my throat with Vero’s skeletal extrait Onda companion. Pared down it may be - mace, vetiver, ginger and coriander – but it packs quite a salacious punch.

So on the night I radiated Onda with the subtlety of an erotic dirty bomb and smelt bloody gorgeous. Everyone I greeted wanted to know what I was wearing, leaning in like olfactory vampires to inhale, tempted in several cases to even lick me.

What I’m calling the sensual reek of Onda is something mainstream perfumery has been fleeing from for years. Skin, real skin, flushed and handled, lit with libido and longing, a blush of coition or just the promise of all the above to come. The French have always embraced this reek, the skank beneath the vanillic bouquet. Exploring in classical delicious formulae, the hint of something unsavoury yet intensely moreish lurking under jasmine, roses, iris, lavender and exotic balms. Animalic notes bringing the skin to the edge of disrepute.

Sadly the rise of clean scents, white musks and the weird crossover of detergent and towel notes into mainstream perfumery have caused a massive backlash against reek and skank. The world of ozonic and deadly locker room sport scents have laid waste to the decadent beauties that once sashayed their lascivious wares through international perfumery. The US mainstream market is obsessed with these clean smelling scents and the stickier neon end of the gourmand trade. (Although some fascinating small niche houses like DS & Durga, Slumberhouse and Kerosene are doing innovative and fascinating olfactory things in the US). Far Eastern tastes are generally more floral, the weather and cultural desires dictate a more feminine and accessible approach to scent. Another huge market is Brazil, where it is all about the fruit, in everything, shower gels, home scents, detergents and of course fragrance. The humidity and weather patterns often mean multiple showering, cleansing and therefore Brazilians love love love their fruit. It’s a tough market to break. No coconut, papaya, banana, kiwi, passion fruit, local specialties, it ain’t gonna happen.

I think however a secret yearning for reek and skank explains the ubiquitous rise in the use of Oud (agarwood) by nearly every major player, mainstream or artisan across the global market in recent years. Few have resisted its sweaty allure. Essentially Oud wood is the infected heartwood of Aquilaria or Gyrings trees. A form of mould, it parasitises the heart of its host and the result is both prohibitively expensive and well nigh on irresistible.

There is no denying the underlying armpitty and unwashed corporeal headiness that Oud brings to scent. But it requires quality and the right aromatic partners to reveal its true beauty. I love it with rose and iris, sometimes a dusting of chocolate. L’Artisan Parfumeur's Al Oudh is my favourite, followed closely by Francis Kurkdjian’s original Oud (which just burns out my synapses…), the fabulously foul Musc Koublai Khan by Serge Lutens and then Amber Oud by By Kilian which I am reluctant to like because as a brand they so blatantly signal all the exotic clichés of Oud I have come to hate. But hey ho, the skin likes what it likes.

Like many of us I would imagine, my first real introduction to mainstream Oud was through Tom Ford’s hirsute M7 for YSL in 2007. It was quite a revelation, created by the power pairing of Alberto Morillas and Jacques Cavallier, it really shook up the world and had so many people asking: what is agarwood? The rebooted 2011 version M7 Oud Absolu however is ghastly, a namby pamby pretender to the Burt Reynolds Cosmo Centrefold original. I liked the coldly burnished way M7 vibrated off the skin like varnished cello notes. It was oddly medicinal too, feral in its search for purpose.

The campaign reeked of sex too, shot as a full frontal of French martial arts champion Samuel Le Clubber; the guy was as hairy as hell and had his bits out. Not everywhere mind, some countries (well most actually) panicked and cropped him. The image was composed as an echo of the Yves Saint Laurent’s daring bespectacled nude campaign for Homme, his first men’s fragrance in 1971, taken by Jeanloup Sieff. 

But anyone who has ever worn Kouros by Pierre Bourdon, launched in 1981, will know that YSL is no strangers to skank. Kouros still divides, despite signs of obvious tinkering. The graphic civetty bathroom odour of aldehydes, wormwood, musks and lemon blended so outrageously with carnation, orris, leather and jasmine tipped a fougère into a piss-stained, backroom work of art.

Other great reek and skank perfumes I would mention include Schiaparelli’s gussety Shocking, the original Jicky by Guerlain, Germaine Cellier’s original knife-wielding Bandit and Penhaligon’s Hammam Bouquet, which must have been achingly beautiful before being gutted of its animalic roar and gossipy sexuality. I consider all of these prime examples of fragrances that once allowed us to truly explore the concept of the brothel beneath the skin. We all have a hankering for carnality; only some of us choose to embrace it as the blue hour approaches.

Poetry & Perfume IX- ‘Vita Nova’ by Louise Gluck & ‘The Smell of Weather Turning’ by Gorilla Perfume

Vita Nova

By Louise Gluck

You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the

   ferryboats.

Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same 

  feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,   

laughter for no cause, simply because the world is 

  beautiful,

something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.

Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.

And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into 

  the water;

perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial

sounds or gestures like

a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother   

holding out a plate of little cakes—

as far as I remember, changed

in no detail, the moment

vivid, intact, having never been

exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age   

hungry for life, utterly confident—

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green   

pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time   

not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet   

it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

It is the final verse of this poem that haunts me.

Vita Nova, (new life) was published in 1999. The eponymous poem, Vita Nova for me, looks at loss and memory. A lover gone. Childhood recollections surfacing as gestures and minutiae unfurl scenes and elemental images in the poet’s fertile, wandering mind. It is a poem that seems fragranced; sun, apple blossom, cakes, grass, tables and the promise of spring, the hint perhaps of rebirth, shift and change.

You saved me, you should remember me.

I find intense melancholia and uncertainty in Gluck’s airy depiction of a European childhood. Echoes of things vanished. It is a painterly scent, depicted in poetic small strokes laid down over a larger more resonant canvas. A little like Impressionism, the details shift, merge and finally coalesce into sharper focus if you step back and allow distance to settle between you and the language.

The Smell of Weather Turning is still the best piece of scented work from Gorilla in my opinion. I know Breath of God is highly regarded and quite rightly so, but The Smell of Weather Turning marked the beginning I think of a beautifully mined set of perfumed beliefs in English pagan and folkloric past. This obsession of Mark and Simon Constantine’s became apparent in the last set of new releases from Gorilla, or Volume 2 as Gorilla like to refer to them. With influences and inspirations as diverse as smugglers, Kerouac, Sikkim, English folklore, jazz, electronic surveillance and ancient barrows, Gorilla produced a startling and highly original selection of deeply wrought formulae. New packaging and a marked difference in olfactory style really set these new releases apart. They have depth and resonance beyond the bottle, that is rare in perfumery. Each scent is wrapped up in an olfactory mythology of its own. They are singular and divisive as all truly interesting things should be. 

I have blogged on The Smell of Weather Turning, it was a scent that really caught me unawares, causing huge emotions and memories to well up and overwhelm me. The scent is made form ingredients only available 5000 years ago: oakwood, beeswax, roman chamomile, English peppermint, nettle, mint and hay. This weird astringent smeared blend transported me back to my African childhood, standing in a dusty yard, watching a column of ants as the sky tilted and the air ran dry. The storm that followed was both utterly terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. Debris everywhere, and the most extraordinary smells. Loamy odours of smashed earth and shattered marigolds, drowned acidic insects and steaming soil.

The fragrance has druidic origins and is supposed to represent the scent of a landscape after a thunderstorm, the sudden scudding of clouds across the sky, rain fleeing. The sun appears and everything is warm again, safe.

My reading has always been deeply personal, influenced as we all are by our upbringings and olfactive influences as we grow, love and experience life. In my blog piece I mentioned Hardy’s Tess (one of my favourite novels) and the appallingly calm moment they come for her at Stonehenge in the early morning. This scene would reek of The Smell of Weather Turning hanging in the damp Wessex air as the police and Angel wait for Tess to wake, to take her away to face her terrible inevitable fate.

This strange poignancy is why I thought of it for Vita Nova. At once, green and medicinal, a sharp and inclusive promise of things to come and yet pervasive, forcing memories to rise and fall. A suggestion of spring, but a reminder too that things die and the heart stays forever broken in places. A scent that conjures landscape and elemental forces for a poem about emotions lost amid the delicacy of shattered memory. Both concern the emergence into light from darkness.

A new life. Can we truly ever really do that? Memories haunt and follow us. It is in their nature to do so. But we should embrace this. The Smell of Weather Turning is a profoundly elemental scent, tied to landscape and memory, notes that have purpose and resonance, possess reason. At first glance poem and scent seem worlds apart, but the almost claustrophobic blend of notes, cast across ancient skies and Gluck’s litany of rose-tinted obsessive recollections echo and blur across each other meeting finally in the final skin-shaking lines.