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mercredi 10 novembre 2010

My perfume course at the London College of Fashion, and other vignettes from the UK…


Knackered doesn’t even begin to cover it. Between my two-day, ten-hour intensive, dinners every night with my London friends and sundry business appointments, I didn’t even have the time to drop by Avery, a new perfume shop, or Amouage, which I’ve never checked out, but I did manage to bookend my stay with two unscheduled visits…

The first was when I went to drop off my luggage at my friend Laurent’s gallery on Savile Row. It’s three doors down from Norton & Sons, the tailor which provided the inspiration for Penhaligon’s Sartorial, so on my way to the LCF at Oxford Circus I decided to drop in and have a sniff. Fortunately, the unflappable and very charming young man who greeted me didn’t think I was off my rocker when I explained the reason for my errand : he amiably ushered me into the workshop. To say the place is smelly would be a far stretch, and teasing out the dominant notes truly does require a bit of imagination. Apart from the very noticeable ozonic/aldehydic smell of iron steam on cloth, and a smudge of bees wax on old wood, you really have to stick your nose on the various smelly items – the sewing machines, the waxed thread, the leather seats and wooden fixtures – to pick up the effects Bertrand Duchaufour exploited in Sartorial, but they’re there all right. And, not that I doubted his word for an instant, I did get independent confirmation of his visit, which the tailors had found quite hilarious. I ended up improvising a mini-lecture on the subject, whilst they continued stitching and cutting…

My second visit required every last drop of my energy on Sunday morning: I wanted to catch the Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and it was well worth it, with several of Leon Bakst’s spectacular costumes on show, as well as those designed by Picasso for Parade. Though there was a bottle of Mitsouko in a glass case – it was a scent Diaghilev was fond, apparently, of spraying on his room curtains – the main olfactory hallucinations that came to me were of Coty Ambre Antique and L’Origan, with their saturated, almost barbaric facets echoing the vivid colors and erotic forcefulness of the costumes, music and choreography…
However, as I exited through the gift shop, what caught my nose was a whiff of something that smelled suspiciously of Mitsouko… but wasn’t. The Ballets Russes perfume commissioned by the V&A to Roja Dove is more than a tribute to the legendary impresario’s favorite fragrance: it is pretty much a clone, with added spice. So much so that I spent the whole afternoon in a state of distraction, after having sprayed it on my hand (there were no blotters), as though I’d met an old flame who’d had some kind of cosmetic enhancement… I didn’t particularly expect "the world's only professeur de parfums" to come up with anything groundbreakingly original: he’s been very forthright about his source of inspiration, and most of the fragrances he offers in his shop (the ones only a single person can buy) are pretty much clones of classics, with more expensive materials. Still, I couldn’t help but feel upset: however tweaked it’s been, Mitsouko is still around and it’s still recognizably Mitsouko. What’s the point of coming out with a twist on it? Needless to say, my stash of vintage Mitsouko being quite sizeable by now, I didn’t make the purchase. A tribute to the Ballets Russes could’ve been so much more imaginative… But there you go. 

As for my course, this time around it was for young fashion students of the LCF’s study abroad department. Americans, Indians, Brazilians, one Japanese girl…
Unlike my course for adults, this type of shorter intensive is much more lecture-oriented, since the students are neither perfume aficionados nor industry professionals, and are basically discovering not only raw materials, but most of the classics. But I’m happy to say that several were quite good at recognizing notes and facets. Of course I’m always careful to pick things that they might be familiar with in real life – fruit, spices, the more common floral notes… The associations are often interesting: the point is not to recognize raw materials, but to link them to words and experiences. For instance, indol, which I present when we “dissect” jasmine, elicited “old clothes in a chest” (i.e. mothballs) and… “old people” (who do give them off). Unsurprisingly, ethyl maltol sparked off a chorus of “cotton candy!”.  Jasmine was instantly recognized by the Indians and Japanese – but the Japanese student was the only one to detect a tea effect in the combination of ionones and hedione, which I’d decided to test to see if Jean-Claude Ellena’s olfactory illusion in Bulgari’s Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert worked out when reduced to its most basic accord… She said the smell could be found only in the very highest quality teas. She was also the one who said that Mathilde Laurent’s incense-laden L’Heure Mystérieuse reminded her of several places in Japan…

But as a whole, all of the students were most sensitive to the memories and expressive power of notes and perfumes: it was the first time they fully realized that these could be used deliberately by perfumers to conjure a mood or an atmosphere. Touchingly, when I did an associative writing exercise with them based on Cartier’s Les Heures de Parfum, what came up were memories from home – after all, they’ve been away from it for a couple of months now, and I keenly remember the homesickness I felt when I went off, like they have, to study abroad… One young woman spent the two days, she told me, on the brink of tears because discovering this new olfactory dimension connected so deeply with her soul; one young man, after smelling Ambroxan, dreamt of an ex. 

It was a pity to leave them after only ten hours: the door had begun to open, and once they’d started talking, I’m sure they wouldn’t have stopped. That’s what scents do to people: they open up a new avenue for language. Connecting smells with words, using smells as we do words… That’s the whole point, isn’t it? And these young people got it.


P.S. Melina, you've just won a magnificent... photocopy of Jean-Claude and Céline Ellena's recipe. Email me and tell me if you'd rather I scanned it...

20 commentaires:

  1. Oh, how I'd love to have seen the Ballets Russes exhibit at the V&A. And to have taken your course, bien sur.
    -- Gretchen

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  2. I own Roja Dove's Unspoken, it's one of my favorites and I always get compliments when I wear it. I don't know much about vintage perfumes. Do you know if Unspoken is based on a famous vintage scent?
    Glad you had such a fun group of students!
    -Marla

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  3. Gretchen, the V&A exhibition was well worth seeing: the heyday of the Ballets Russes is such a seminal moment in the cultural history of the West... If I'd had more time I would have organized a visit for my students, which I sometimes do for them in Paris: a kind of "fashion in odorama" exhibition tour...

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  4. Marla, that's the chypre of the collection, isn't it? Or, as the Professeur de Parfums says, "chypré"... Well, according to him, Unspoken is meant to be a classic in and of itself since he included it with his other two in the same line-up as the greatest perfumes in history in his coffee-table book.

    Unspoken not a copy of anything specific, more of a general chypre formula of the era. Why not? It's like having a fashion line that does retro-style garments based on old patterns. Some of the "one customer only" perfumes he sells at Harrod's are more directly copies (of Eau d'Hermès, for instance).

    What bugs me most is that he places himself alongside Ernest Daltroff and Edmond Roudnitska in his boutique magazine as one of the greatest perfumers in history, when he doesn't invent new forms but works with old ones. The result can be very lovely, but to me it's like someone who'd paint Matisse or Bonnard-style pictures today: it can be decorative, but it's not relevant.
    That said, there's certainly a slot for this type of product since it's pleasant to own fresh batches of retro fragrances rather than hunting for potentially damaged vintage stuff.

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  5. Heehee, that's quite an ego, isn't it? Still, Unspoken is lovely, and the materials high quality. I do feel very retro and chic when I wear it, instead of my usual scruffy and, um, "eclectic"!
    -Marla

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  6. Marla, it's mostly good PR -- Mr. Dove knows enough about the history of perfumery to know better, I'd wager. Retro-chic is a good thing to be now and then...

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  7. Hm, yes, PoP strikes again.......
    Hugs to you Denyse! Nicola

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  8. eleven european mystics11 novembre 2010 à 15:15

    London is sublime! And your London fits the exclamation. As for the Roja Dove projects, I find them more than questionable.
    Shouldn't there be authorship rights on fragrance? I never liked the whole story of his approach to fragrance, and even if the results are fine, the ethics (and aesthetics) are not attractive.

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  9. EEM, there should be authorship rights on perfumes, but there aren't. And there would at any rate be a gray area between a perfume that springs from another one, as perfumes have always done, and the whole swamp where twists (a variation with a couple of things changed), remixes (cut-and-pastes of accords pulled from different products) and plagiarism fester... More than half of what's on the market would be pulled!
    I'm sure Mr. Dove has a sincere love of perfume and great knowledge of its history. I'm less convinced by the lines he puts out. But clearly there's a public for them, and many discerning people love them, so that it's more a matter of one's philosophy of perfumery -- mine is bringing the art forward and preserving masterpieces, not putting out variations on them.

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  10. Exactly. The grey area exists in any art, and nowadays even more so, but in spite of his knowledge and reputation, I wish more respect were paid to the authors, not just to the fragrances.

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  11. EEM, you and I both, but not everyone is Frédéric Malle...

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  12. Teaching your course sounds like a really lovely experience -- both for you and the students!

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  13. Aimée, I can't speak for the students -- though the feedback is usually very positive, I'm happy to say -- but certainly it's very gratifying for me. I only wished it lasted a bit longer, so that these young people would have the time to express themselves more fully: it takes a bit of time to foster the atmosphere that allows them to open up on such a novel subject.

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  14. Do you know which classic perfumes his numbered line are based on? I love 3 and 9 but would never use that much of anything as they come in enormous bottles.

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  15. London: and they come at an enormous price. Which is why after smelling them on strips (which I kept for quite a long time), registering an impression both of quality and of déjà-vu on several, I pretty much pushed them out of my mind. The fact that they only go by numbers mean I never got which is which straight. So, short answer: I don't remember.

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  16. Your class sounds amazing. It's just lately that I've had my eyes opened to scent and the effects it has on me. I ordered up a boatload of samples of vintage Guerlains and a lot of touted new fragrances and have had a heyday trying them out each day. Only today have I found that my music playlist tends to change with the mood of my fragrance. Musc Ravageur apparently pairs well with Nina Simone. Vol de Nuit brought tears to my eyes when I recognized it as the scent my grandmother had worn. Misouko straightened my spine on a day when I had to deal with an unpleasant customer.

    But I would love to be able to recognize the notes in the mix. I've definitely been changed from black and white "like, don't like" into the grays "interesting, unique, unusual, syrupy". Now I'd like to see some of the pixels that make up the picture. I'm frantically checking my wallet for enough change to get me to London!

    ~beth

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  17. Beth, I'd say you're already very far gone in the process of becoming "one of us"! Picking out notes is just the start: it's how they work together that changes everything. Hope to see you at my course one day!

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  18. Aimée, I can speak for the students, as I was one of them :). We all really enjoyed the course, and I must agree we would benefit from having carmencanada around for longer, the course is too short! I knew nothing about perfume though, so this was a perfect first step into the subject! And my room still smells like the swatches we received last week, which is lovely haha

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  19. Patricia, thank you so much for your words, and for dropping by! It would be great to have a "perfume 201" course, for instance, wouldn't it? I know those intensive are pretty intensive and a little rough on the nose - it's really a lot to take in at one go. 70 different things to smell in 10 hours!

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