Tony Marcus On Perfume’s Old Notes With New Relevance

A single drop of essential oil from just one flower can hold hundreds of different scent molecules. A single flower can be as complex and layered as a great perfume. I am a city person, so I see a flower in terms of perfume. I walk past a flowering bush and am struck by a golden, delicate, fleeting beauty. “Ah,” I’ll say. “That is a nice perfume.”

I get blasts of other people’s perfume. The harsh dry scent in men’s changing rooms. It is so artificial it could be off-planet. And there is a base note that lots of people wear; something like a wet, sticky forest floor. It comes, in part, I think, from Jean-Claude Ellena’s vintage Hermès. I get sugary clouds from my fellow city dwellers and dark emanations of Catholic or Byzantine incense. I like all of these scents. But none could pass for that moment when you walk past a flowering bush and the air is full of such sweet, exquisite notes.

I have been wearing Rain Cloud by Lyn Harris for her Perfumer H. I know Harris’s work from her time as a perfumier at Miller Harris. I didn’t notice Rain Cloud when it was released in 2016 but it saved my life in Naples this summer. Every time I was overwhelmed by the heat and the density of the streets, I went to Rain Cloud. At first it made me think of Chanel No.5 because it had that ‘abstract floral’ sparkle, the golden halo. But the dryness of Rain Cloud absorbed all my heat and discomfort. And maybe I sensed, just for a moment, a single drop of transparent dew. Here is Perfumer H’s own description:

“A humid rain cloud of sultry white florals. Ylang ylang absolute (Island of Reunion), vetiver, angelica grain and vanilla bourbon in accord with a fresh garden bouquet of jasmine (Egypt), orange flower (Tunisia) and cassie (France) with iris absolute (China), resting on a bed of white musks.”

The ingredients belong to the old French perfumes. Same for Chanel’s Comète, the most recent (at time of writing) of its Les Exclusifs de Chanel range. I have seen a review that describes Comète as an “iris perfume”. Which is a little reductive but it does have an iris presence or aspect. And despite being a traditional ingredient, iris creates a space which feels modern. The effect in Comète, no doubt thanks in part to the work of perfumier Olivier Polge, is akin to a turning cloud of weightless powder. Comète has a cherry note which is contemporary. The perfume opens with a dry cherry and a biscuit-y almond before it gets all classy with sparkling floral shards. And they come on like a handful of jewels. Like a flower, but not a flower. The perfume pays homage to nature, but is not nature. In the past, Chanel has used the phrase “abstract floral”. Here is its description:

“Luminous and intense, a fresh cherry blossom accord is caressed by sensual notes of iris and heliotrope. An intense floral ‘stardust’ scent with a powdery, musky signature…”

I don’t know the smell of cherry blossom, but I didn’t get blossom until an hour into the perfume when the cherry note returned, or maybe I just felt it again. This cherry seemed weightless, drifting in the powder of the perfume. It was a floating cherry, a falling blossom. I have never visited Japan to see the cherry blossoms and the symbolism of the petals as they fall. But I have visited Japan in February, when the flights are cheap. That is plum season. Japan’s plum blossoms are not well known in the West. I meet people who dream of going to Japan to see the hanami, aka when the cherry blossom falls. Never the plum.

Last February at Tokyo National Museum I saw an exhibition of seasonal Japanese paintings. Most of them showed a tree or a branch covered in buds and blossom. Some paintings dated back centuries. And I thought,“Oh that is the cherry blossom then?” Wrong. I was wrong.

“They are ume,” said my partner. “Not cherry.”

Ume is the Japanese word for plum. The plum is the first tree to blossom after winter and its blossom is a symbol of life, return and rebirth. I spent ages looking at these beautiful paintings. I loved the old traditional paintings on silk scrolls. And in most of them, blossom aside, there was also a little tubby green bird.

“Cute,” I said.

Uguisu,” said my partner.

The uguisu (Japanese bush warbler) is a little green bird. They appear in Japan at the beginning of spring. I’ve read about them in Lafcadio Hearn’s books about Japan, first published in the 1890s. The uguisu and the ume are the beloved symbols of spring. Later that day I went to Yushima Tenmangu shrine, around the corner from the museum. The shrine has 300 plum trees. A squad of little uguisu were hovering around the petals and eating the flowers. And I wanted to shake the other tourists standing next to me and say, “Do you know what you are looking at? This is one of the quintessential images of Japan. It’s been recorded in art for centuries. This is not just pretty blossom, this is an essence, an essential happening that has been noticed and loved in this country for thousands of years.”

Comète Les Exclusifs de CHANEL brings together a contemporary combination of traditional iris notes and modern cherry

There are plum perfumes. A discontinued Tom Ford Plum Japonais obviously has a following as it sells for high prices on second-hand sites. And the top note of Quentin Bisch’s Nomade for Chloé is plum. But I am more interested in gentle petals at the moment. And I still think it’s interesting that I only noticed the uguisu in real life because I’d been looking at the paintings. I had to see the art first. But when I did see the little bird that afternoon I did feel or sense the beauty of the world. And I don’t know if I’m ‘on trend’ or just following a personal like, but I have been looking for perfumes that have been looking at nature. Chloé’s Atelier des Fleurs makes a big statement about being close to nature and close to flowers. I looked at Chloé Iris by Steve Guo from the collection. This is what Chloé has to say about the perfume.

“Whilst exploring the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, Steve Guo discovered Iris x germanica and its beautiful, complex scent. Its memorable scent made such an impression on the perfumer that he wished to interpret it as the incomparable Iris Perfume.”

I have never been to Morocco so I don’t know iris x germanica. I have to take Guo’s word for it that this perfume pays a debt of love. It’s certainly iris in texture. Iris creates the powdery feeling. Both Chloé Iris and Chanel’s Comète offer a soft cloud and light it up with glints and accents. Although the Chloé is darker than the Chanel, it doesn’t have bright or morning notes and its colours are silver and grey. There are no golden floral glints (actually there are, but they are hard to see) and it is a gothic fragrance, a cool mist. The iris flower takes its name from the ancient Greek or possibly an older word for rainbow, because some iris petals have the colours of the rainbow. Iris was also a goddess, the messenger of the gods. She moves between worlds. Oscar Wilde used Iris as an image to pre-figure death in Dorian Gray1 when Sibyl Vane (who will die shortly) becomes aware of a great cloud of iris. I found something similar in a 1920s gardening journal.

“Iris, it will be remembered,” wrote Elma Loines2, “was the daughter of Thaumas and the ocean nymph Electra, the messenger of the gods and personification of the rainbow. And in our springtime garden we find her again our link between earth and heaven.”

I have been thinking about Chanel’s L’eau formulation. Chanel says it is “the freshest and most contemporary version of No.5”. One thing L’eau does have is a sensuality that is very No.5 and either floral or part-floral. It pays a debt to nature but it is not nature. It is perfume. I have a similar feeling about the opening of Gucci’s A Chant for the Nymph, which is a gilded or baroque flower; it really belongs in one of those Venetian palaces. When I was in Naples this summer, I saw the Roman statues they discovered in the earth beneath Italy. The same ones were marvelled over and studied by the artists of the Renaissance. I saw those pure marble figures (they are all in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli). They are also close to nature, but they are not nature. I suppose thinking about art and nature is a very old way of looking at the world. But I’ve been doing it. The blossoms in Japanese art, the essences in certain perfumes, all seen through a mist, like Iris, the goddess who dissolves.

1. You will find the overwhelming cloud of iris in chapter five of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Published in the July issue of American periodical Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine.

2. The Loines quote is from Landscape Architecture Magazine, April 1921, Vol. 11, No. 3. Published by the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Comète Les Exclusifs de CHANEL

Collages by David Lock. Taken from Issue 73 of 10 Magazine – RISING, RENEW, RENAISSANCE – out NOW. Order your copy here.

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