This
past semester, I taught perfume history to 160 luxury marketing students. They’re 19, and when they sniff anything made before
the 1990s, most of them will blurt out “this smells of old lady”– although one
girl surprised me by identifying Mitsouko
in a blind-smelling exercise, and further still by telling me it had been her
first fragrance. But as a rule, their tastes overlap to a molecule with what
the market churns out. Aquatics they like – they pick Shalimar Souffle de Parfum over the original. Gourmands, they
adore.
The
yen for sugar is so deeply rooted that some experiments have demonstrated it is
literally an addiction. In 2007, a French team of researchers from theUniversity of Bordeaux showed that given the choice between saccharin-flavored
water and intravenous cocaine, 94% of their lab rats picked the sweet stuff: “The preference for saccharin was not
attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories
because the same preference was also observed with sucrose, a natural sugar.
Finally, the preference for saccharin was not surmountable by increasing doses
of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization
or intake escalation–the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction.”
As
I was preparing my lesson on Angel, I
suddenly wondered why the perfume industry had waited until 1992 to leverage
this addiction. Ethyl maltol (a cotton-candy flavoring ingredient) had already
been used in perfumery, but in minute quantities. Angel’s overdose of it was initially considered an aberration by
professionals, and even the public took a while to embrace it – the scent was
not immediately a blockbuster. It’s likely that until then, it had occurred neither
to perfumers nor to consumers that this type of note was a “licit” ingredient
in fragrance. Angel lifted the
inhibition. Once it became a success, the dam collapsed: sugar, caramel and jam
swept into the vats. And ever since, as the public’s tolerance for diabetic
coma-inducing juices grew, the glycemic index of perfumes has been escalating
in a glucose-driven armaments race.
In
an article I wrote for the French edition of Elle, I argued that the most aesthetically successful gourmands
were those that shifted the dessert menu onto classic fragrance structures. Anaïs Anaïs Premier Délice, for
instance, is actually a chypre: pear stands in for the fruity top notes, and
cocoa acts like patchouli. Candy by
Prada is an oriental with caramel added. Serge Lutens Rahät Loukoum extrapolates on the anisic-almondy floral oriental
construction initiated by L’Heure Bleue,
as does Lolita Lempicka. But how far
can perfumers go in this direction? When does a gourmand cease to refer to
perfumery and topple over into industrial flavoring?
Lolita
Lempicka is a fairly gutsy company, or has been up to now: though none of its
fragrances has had the same success as its first one, two of its subsequent
launches were attempts at doing gourmand creatively. The 2006 “L” by Maurice Roucel played on the
burnt, salty caramel tones of immortelle. The 2013 Elle l’aime by Christine Nagel and Serge Majoullier (not to be
confused with the 2014 L L’aime) turned
coconut flesh into creamy petals. With Sweet,
the brand breaks down and dives straight into the caramel cauldron.
Sweet is clearly aimed at my students’ age group: it
chimes in with their olfactory associations, which mainly come from candy,
toiletries or kiddie medicine, whereas to a more adult nose, it smells of lab-brewed
cherry-flavored syrup. Granted, it does what it says on the bottle – but then
so does Candy, in a much more
sophisticated way, because it maintains a classic structure. Sweet actually smells less sophisticated than some industrial
syrups. Short of diluting those in alcohol, it seems hard to go further down
the sugary path.
In
retrospect, the pioneering, cheerfully girly gourmand Lolita Lempicka now feels like the epitome of restraint,
tastefulness and maturity. Its structure is strong enough to withstand yearly
limited-edition variations while still remaining totally identifiable. Of
course, it helps that those variations are concocted by Annick Menardo, who
authored the original. Minuit Sonne is
the 11th such variation. It is not to be confused with the 2004 and 2005
Eau de Minuit, which lists amarena
cherry in its notes. But it might be identical to the 2012 version. Whatever.
Though
its glitter-bedecked bottle might leave your dresser (and fingers) looking like
you were mugged by a mob of 5-year-old girls on a sugar high, the 2014 Eau de Minuit tweaks the original just
enough to glam-goth it up. Annick Menardo has managed to make it chewier and
darker – you can practically taste the myrrh-laced, mouth-burning liquorish – while
opening up its heart with jasmine and iris. The woodiness of the liquorish,
iris and violet keep the sweetness in check; in a side-by-side with the
original eau de parfum, it feels more substantial and it is longer lasting. It
may be called Lolita, but it’s all growed up.
Picture
of a candy stand at La Boqueria in Barcelona sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
The phrase "the glycemic index of perfumes has been rising" is brilliant. Now if we could just get the industry to put a glycemic rating on each scent avoidance would be easier. ;-)
RépondreSupprimer-- Lindaloo
That's an idea! It's funny that my students will say a perfume is "strong" when it doesn't correspond to the type of scent they use, but never feel that way about caramel bombs like La Vie est belle...
SupprimerCute jeu de mots, liquorish/licorice. :-) As for strong, La Vie est Belle is one of the most potent, noxious things I've smelt in a long time. I tried it once from a bottle a friend gifted me with but had to get rid of it immediately.
RépondreSupprimerNo pun actually intended -- it's one of two British spelling for licorice, along with liquorice... You know I'm no fan of LVEB either, but I must acknowledge that though it isn't extremely original, it's still got a very strong, identifiable signature.
SupprimerIntriguing analysis! Coincidentally, I'm wearing Christmasy Annick Goutal Nuit Etoilee, which reminds me of their wonderful Noël candle, and wishing it were less sweet. I wonder if this sugar rush may also have something to do with economic unease making our times seem too edgy for more interesting perfumes. When life is uncertain, eat dessert first? nozknoz
RépondreSupprimerI adore that Noël candle too! I'm pretty sure I gave some to my mom last year, must dig them up... Nuit Etoilée wasn't my favorite Goutal, there was something very minty in the top notes that seemed to last forever on me. So I didn't pick up much on the sweetness, which much come mostly from the fir balsam.
SupprimerAs for the current yen for sweet scents, yes, probably has to do with the current economic climate -- needing something regressive and immediately embraceable.
A couple of my students also ventured that even grown women want to look like young girls now (their moms dress like them). So regressive notes make them go back in time, I guess?
As always you make me want it bad Denyse. I love the original and regularly gift it and its body products to friends. Total crowd pleaser.
RépondreSupprimerPortia xx
I'm sure you'd love it, Portia -- glitter and all. Especially the glitter!
Supprimer