Scent and Subversion Read Online Free PDF Page A

nighttime, malignancy, eroticism. Famously dubbed the “film noir perfume” for expressing in perfume language that genre’s contrast between light and dark, white flowers and animalic musk, Narcisse Noir, like a femme fatale, gives the impression of being both beautiful and dangerous. Just as thick, honeyed florals rise up, the darker animalic base provides the necessary edge—the “noir” of the perfume.
    In
Black Narcissus
(1947), Michael Powell’s hypnotically beautiful film, nuns relocate to a convent in the Himalayas only to become haunted by the earthly delights of their pasts. The film’s namesake Narcisse Noir signifies an enticement to the world of sensuality that contributes to one of the convent dwellers’ undoing. Its outré personality led Chanel No. 5 creator Ernest Beaux to describe Narcisse Noir in one of his notebooks as
un parfum d’une vulgarité tapageuse
—a perfume of the most striking vulgarity.
    Top notes: Narcissus, orange blossom
    Heart notes: Rose, jasmine
    Base notes: Sandalwood, vetiver, civet, musk
Styx
by Coty (1911)
    Moody and dark, Styx combines L’Origan’s creamy gentleness with an incensey, spiced base. Its brooding quality befits a perfume named for the river that snakes between Heaven and Earth.
    Notes from
Octavian Coifan: Orris, vanilla, carnation
L’Heure Bleue
by Guerlain (1912)
    Perfumer: Jacques Guerlain
    Jacques Guerlain is said to have been influenced by the blues used by Impressionist painters when creating the melancholy L’Heure Bleue (“The Blue Hour”). L’HeureBleue refers to the twilight hour between late afternoon and evening, when it is neither totally day- or nighttime. This liminal hour brings out extremes in flowers: “the blue hour” is when they smell their sweetest. Composed two years before the outbreak of World War I, L’Heure Bleue also evokes a prewar, romantic Paris, before darkness descended upon the city.
    Sweet, spicy, and soft, with a warm base hinting of leather, L’Heure Bleue suspends a host of intense and suggestive scents in an uneasy but beautiful balance, just as the blue hour of the perfume’s name holds together, in a melancholy moment, the waning of day’s hopes and the beginning of night’s uncertainty. The almost confectionary sweetness of the perfume is balanced by the spice and sharpness of bergamot, clary sage, an herbal tarragon, and a prominent clove note.
    Top notes: Bergamot oil, clary sage oil, coriander, lemon, neroli, tarragon
    Heart notes: Clove bud oil, jasmine, orchid, rose, ylang-ylang
    Base notes: Benzoin, cedar, musk, sandal, vanilla, vetiver
Quelques Fleurs
by Houbigant (1912)
    Perfumer: Robert Bienamé
    A bouquet in a bottle, Quelques Fleurs modernized the nineteenth-century soliflore by combining so many floral notes into a bouquet that it is difficult to pick out the individual flowers. Not quite abstraction, but complexity and artistry. Citrus oils and leafy-green notes accent this bouquet, civet adds a touch of eroticism, and woods and vanilla and sandalwood add warmth and texture. Quelques Fleurs is a complex, fresh floral whose synthetic-smelling reformulation ironically smells more dated. (Because of its novel use of aldehydes, this is the perfume that Ernest Beaux studied before composing the multiple versions of perfumes that culminated in Chanel No. 5.)
    Top notes: Citrus oils, orange blossom, leafy green
    Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, lilac, ylang-ylang, carnation, violet, orris
    Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, civet, honey, heliotrope, vanilla
    Houbigant lays out the case for matching perfume to “frock” in this 1927 ad. I’m also intrigued by the “Things Perfumes Whisper” booklet of perfumes, beauty secrets, and Houbigant-perfumed sachets that you could get just for writing to them.

    Drawn by artist Raphael Kirchner, this 1913 ad for Lubin’s Chrysanthème was the first luxury perfume brand to advertise in the nudie mags of the time, including
La Vie Parisienne.
Lubin targets men