Scent and Subversion Read Online Free PDF Page B

Lanvin’s Scandal, a tobacco scent whose sweet floral notes could be said to reveal that it doesn’t have the courage of its tobacco convictions, Tabac Blond’s tobacco and leather notes aren’t upstaged by florals. It starts off with ylang-ylang and leather, and moves into a wonderful, powdery, yet sharp smoke note that continues to sing through to the vanillic, clovey, spicy, and warm drydown.
    Habanita has a comforting, more-legible tobacco presence, and if you want a shocking tobacco scent, look no further than Bandit’s badass wet-ashtray-meets-leather-and-isobutyl quinoline. But in terms of projecting dark, sultry, and yet refined, you can’t do much better than Tabac Blond.
    Denyse Beaulieu of the wonderful perfume blog Grain de Musc has written that historically, Tabac Blond for women was “meant to blend with, and cover up, the still-shocking smell of cigarettes: smoking was still thought to be a sign of loose morals.”
    Top notes: Leather, carnation, linden
    Heart notes: Iris, vetiver, ylang-ylang, lime-tree leaf
    Base notes: Cedar, patchouli, vanilla, amber, musk
    Notes from
NowSmellThis.com.

The colonial figure of the “blackamoor,” usually depicting an African man in a turban as a servant, flourished in popular ads, films, and even decorative items like lamps up until the 1970s. In this 1927 advertisement, two highly stylized blackamoors carry a bottle of Shalimar on their backs.

Fragrance Fantasias
Shalimar, Emeraude, Chanel No. 5 (1920–1929)
    L uxe and decadent with a hint of the disreputable, the feminine fragrances of the 1920s join the Eros of floral notes with the Thanatos of animal-sourced notes, along with tobacco notes evoking the woman of questionable morality who smoked. In short, they redefined femininity outside of the innocent floral. This was the decade of Lanvin’s My Sin; Molinard’s Habanita, originally made to perfume cigarettes; and the groundbreaking Chanel No. 5, created so that women could smell “like women,” and not roses.
    A 1920s advertisement for Un Air Embaumé (“Balmy Air”), by Rigaud
Chanel No. 5
by Chanel
(1921)
    “A woman must smell like a woman, and not a rose.”
    — COCO CHANEL
    Perfumer: Ernest Beaux
    Perfumer Ernest Beaux got many directives from Coco Chanel for the design house’s first fragrance. Among the qualities Chanel No. 5 was to have: tenacity, versatility, and abstraction. “On a woman,” Chanel said, “a natural scent smells artificial. Perhaps a natural perfume must be created artificially.”
    For the other requirement—that it should be a perfume no other perfumer could copy—Beaux complied by using ingredients so expensive that few could have copied them even if they had wanted to; for example, jasmine from Grasse, France; Rose de Mai; and superior ylang-ylang.
    What marks Chanel No. 5 as a landmark perfume, however, is its 1 percent overdose of aliphatic aldehydes, the chemical that lends sparkle to fragrances and has been described as fatty, watery, tallowy, like the scent of a snuffed candle. Beaux wanted to use such a strong dose of aldehydes “to let all that richness fly a little.”
    Bathed in the golden light of musk and civet, with the crisp edge of aldehydes like the faintest touch of cinnamon or burnt caramel, the florals in Chanel No. 5 come alive, alternately spicy, gourmand, and sensual. Vintage Chanel No. 5 is draped in fur: feminine elegance and restraint plus an animalic extremity. Who knew that an animal lurked beneath its elegant exterior? (See Rallet No. 1 on page 35 to read about its influence on Chanel No. 5.)
    Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, lemon, neroli
    Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, orris, ylang-ylang
    Base notes: Vetiver, sandalwood, cedar, vanilla, amber, civet, musk
Emeraude
by Coty (1921)
    Perfumer: François Coty
    This drugstore classic is considered by many to be the inspiration for Guerlain’s Shalimar. Initially sharp, aldehydic, and citrusy-resinous, this comforting and