A few thoughts on Olivia Giacobetti and IUNX

Do women perfumers compose scents in their own image? Is the question even relevant?

It is in fashion, where the fact of dressing people of your own sex implies a play with self-image (the feminine body you inhabit). From Gabrielle Chanel to Sonia Rykiel and An Demeulemeester, many women fashion designers have obviously developed for others a style they had initially invented for themselves. In the case of women perfumers, whose work is usually commissioned, and of who, like their male colleagues, very little is known, the matter is harder to settle for lack of information.

There are, however, some exceptions, when the woman perfumer in question launches her own line. Annick Goutal, who usually linked her new fragrances with the intimate, family circumstances that had inspired them, seemed to bottle a part of her own history. And now, as Olivia Giacobetti relaunches IUNX, she states that “I have put everything I love in it.”

Because, like Goutal before her, Giacobetti has a bit more media exposure, it is easier to detect a distinct consistency between IUNX and her personal culinary and sartorial tastes. In an interview she gave in March 2004 to the French magazine Votre Beauté, she speaks of her love for the Asian grocery store Tang Frères, its lotus blossoms and sandalwood soaps; for the sleek austerity of Helmut Lang and Jill Sander, and the simplicity of APC jeans and tee-shirt, Repetto ballerina shoes or The Banana Republic’s white shirts (under which she wears Victoria’s Secret lingerie)…

Spices and white cotton, minimalism and exoticism: the life of Olivia Giacobetti seems to be transposed in IUNX. Not so much as a narcissistic extension as through the atmospheric re-creations. Vaporous and impalpable even when they tend towards the gourmand[1], Olivia Giacobetti’s fragrances are like virtual environments conjured through a cloud of molecules, rather than the expression of a woman’s (or a man’s) personality.

They are mists of olfactory memory, ghosts of a time or a place in which the body is immersed, as though in a parallel life, rather than the reflection of the body itself in its vanity. Giacobetti’s own streamlined, discreet sartorial style seems to intensify her desire to retreat into olfactory-gustatory experiences in which she creates vignettes both intensely personal and so ethereal that they allow another body/imagination to slide into them. These fragrant displacements, much more numerous when the whole of the IUNX range was available, are currently restricted to three choices.

L’Eau Blanche: steam

“Water in the air, the mere presence of a white linen vapour
rising from white linen drying in the sun.”

The notes given are white linen, orris butter and teak wood. Of course, the white linen refers to Estée Lauder. But while the American fragrance plays on the blindingly bright and soapy thrills of its aldehydic effervescence, L’Eau Blanche only lifts an infinitesimal part of the hot iron on linen smell of some aldehydes, a molecular mist underlined by the metallic tinge of iris. The result is a hybrid of L’Été en Douce (L’Artisan Parfumeur) minus the linden flower, and of Hiris (Hermès) without the carroty notes. A scent by subtraction, almost a non-fragrance, which gently recedes into a white musk veil, which emphasizes the clean linen effect.

L’Éther: vibration

“L’Éther is the soft and warm smoke escaping from a resin fire,
a magnetic vapour, a breath of wood gliding on the skin,
pure and embracing.”

A dash of saffron warms up an evanescent rose on a bed of sandalwood (Giacobetti treated this rose-saffron-sandalwood accord very differently, in a much more gourmand style, in L’Artisan Parfumeur Safran Troublant). The spicy roundness of myrrh and the dryness of incense feel like smoke rather than the actual resin: the result is quite reminiscent of another L'Artisan, Passage d'Enfer, without the vanilla richness of the lily. A white musk base anchors the undulating wafts on the skin. Once more, this is almost more of a luminous vibration than a perfume.

Splash Forte: potion

“A crimson red water that warms up and shakes up.
A hot Jamaïcan water filled with wood and burnt spices.”

The first whiff irresistibly brings to mind the red fish-shaped cinnamon candies of childhood. It is an olfactory illusion: the mint and Jamaïca chilli pepper accord produces this burning-to-the-point-of-iciness effect. Apart from the listed bay rum, other spices can be teased out of the blend: cardamom, cumin, nutmeg. The astringency of cinchona (a bitter-tasting tropical bark) is softened by a musk base. A gutsy, almost drinkable composition, so burning that, oddly, it produces a cooling effect.

A word on the meaning of IUNX

According to the brand’s press releases, the Greek word “iunx” means seduction through perfume. My friend Helg, from The Perfume Shrine, confirms that this is a fantasy definition of which no trace is found in ancient documents.

In his book on spices in Greek mythology, The Gardens of Adonis, the historian Marcel Détienne writes that the word “has a triple meaning: it is a species of bird; it is also an instrument of erotic magic; it is finally a witch expert in aphrodisiac potions.” The bird is the wryneck (Jynx torquilla), called the “bird of delirium” by the Ancients for its incessant movements and strident cries (this is the bird depicted in the illustration to this post). It is by tying it to a tiny wheel that Aphrodite makes a potent love-charm; this first, divine iunx was reproduced by piercing a small wheel with two holes, through which strings are inserted; the wheel spins and whirrs along the ropes (see the picture of the French post). Thirdly, the magician Mintha, daughter of the nymph Echo or of Peitho, the power of Persuasion, is also sometimes called Iunx.

Mintha, mistress of Hades, the god of Inferno, is transformed into mint by the goddess Demeter when she boasts of being more beautiful than Demeter’s daughter, the new bride of Hades, Persephone. Which brings us back to fragrance. Under the innocence of her white shirts and ballerina shoes, Olivia Giacobetti, is wilier than she seems: through her art of the scented ethereal, she also knows the recipes of magic potions.

[1] For L’Artisan Parfumeur, Giacobetti has created much foodier fragrances like Premier Figuier, Mandarine Tout Simplement, Fou d'Absinthe or Safran Troublant.

Image: The wryneck (Jynx torquilla), also known as Iunx.