Anna Karenina of Green Gables

I often help someone find a signature scent or create a perfume wardrobe for example by finding additions to their work fragrance that smells to safe for romance, or their romantic fragrance that doesn't feel right for work. Or an upgrade, for example when someone has been wearing the same favorite perfume for 5-10 yrs (not at all unsusal) and feel that they still like it... but have outgrown it. Then we look for something similar, for example the same heart notes, but something more complex or mature or dark added. As we walk through life our inner child often stays the same, but we go through experiences, challenges, times - that add shades to our personalities. Shades, depth, complexity. When you wear a perfume that is right for you, it will reflect many parts of who you are. Then you get that feeling of you just smelling like you because someone created a beautiful formula that defines some of your characteristics with fragrance notes. This is a very different feeling from "wearing a nice perfume" that lies on top of your skin like a pretty fabric. There is nothing arbitrary about what feels right. Not in life, not in perfumery.

Finding those perfumes that really match is not easy. The market offers an abundance that is over-whelming even to the most passionate and curious perfumista. But it is worth it, and once you learn how to navigate and recognize the patterns in your preferences it is not as complicated as it looks. For myself, I choose to ask for guidance so that I can find perfumes that I have not discovered where notes that I like have been used. I ask for stories about them and I ask for help to discover new brands. I don't look for someone to help me choose my perfume as I have trained myself now to translate thoughts and aspects of my character to notes and types of perfumes. If you feel unsure about such things, talk to someone who is skilled and really takes the time to help you find a perfume for the creative you or the you that wants something comforting or uplifting or mischievous or escapist. For a true perfume expert these are not strange questions. Choose the right advisor.

I am sure you have been in the situation where you just love a perfume that someone is wearing, you go buy it... and... anticlimax. It doesn't feel like you thought it would, it is not as amazing on you. You wonder if your mind and memory played tricks on you. This is not unusual. But it is a great reminder of two things - perfume is like a relationship - it is not about you and not about the other - it is about happens in between, in the space that is the together.

Perfume sensations are created in the meeting between a formula and a person's skin. And every person's skin is different. There is nothing objective about perfume. The other thing is - do not make hasty decisions. It does not matter how skilled you are, you just do not know what a perfume that is composed with top, heart and base will smell like in an hour of five on you. No one knows. The super-charming person who sells it to you doesn't know even if she or he is an expert and amazing. Take your time. Get a sample if you can. Get ten samples of ten perfumes with sandalwood if that is what you are looking for. Take your time. Apply the perfume, take a coffee and come back in an hour. And don't be disappointed if your friend's magic potion smells boring on you. Or different. Be curious. You'll find your magic potion, maybe there is just some little detail that needs to be different for you. Try to detect what the difference is - does it smell sweeter in him/her? Does it smell more flowery on you? Try to remember the difference and ask an expert.

Skin, painted by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema

I will give you an example. I have been wearing Ambre Narguilé for some years. Or to be honest, I bought it a few years back and wore it a lot during two years with mixed feelings. I adore this perfume. It is a masterpiece to me. But, I found myself often thinking that it was too overwhelming and not appropriate in many situations. And later on I felt that it lacked something for me to feel really comfortable with it, it was too sweet. It lacked integrity or a mature nuance. So in the last two or so years I have not been wearing it at all but I smell the bottle sometimes to use as reference when searching for similar compositions. Among perfumistas this fragrance is well-known. Still I have not met anyone that wears it a lot. Then comes a man. He says he really likes the perfume, I think "Really?" and feel how in my eyes he becomes slightly more like a baklava than Omar Sharif.

He introduces me to Serge Lutens' Ambre Sultan, and I am amazed because this - is the darker version of Ambre Narguilé that I have been wishing for.

Tillya Kori Madrash, Samarkand

Then he brings out another of his favorites, a completely harmless airy Gatsby cocktail party apple lemonade lunchtime careful kiss on the cheek sorbet and dancing on a meadow in a perfectly cut flowery organza skirt kind of story. Bois 1920, Sushi Imperiale. It smells like the first kiss on a summer day in 1939, followed by raspberries on a straw before looking at the wild horses and the sunset. Immaculate linen vest and smile like a young Sinatra though. It's Rat Pack meets Anna Karenina of Green Gables. I fall like a rock sliding down a rainbow of course and get instantly addicted to this potion. A couple of weeks later I order it from MiN. It is on its way as we speak. I can't wait. I will wear it like nothing else matters more than raspberries on a straw and immaculate linen vests and Green Gables are the perfect place to be flown to the moon and then share an apple stolen from the strange neighbour's tree.

   

I meet my friend for coffee again, he is wearing the darkest most intriguing strange thing thats smells like a love affair on the way to Samarcand and words that cannot be spoken. "What are you wearing?", I say. He answers, "You have it, Ambre Narguilé". It is a mystery to me where the carnal alluring notes disappear when I wear it. Same perfume. Completely different experiences. On me it is Christmas dessert and the Nutcracker, on him a secret night in Venice, a 19th century emerald shining from a décolletage at the opera. Forbidden. "Warn me?"

I have more examples, oh so many more. Of perfumes that surprise and confuse and alter as they evolve on one person's skin or another's. Of the infinite mysteries that create a love affair between the nose and the mind. This is one of the many reasons why perfumes fascinate me.

Come, let's dance!

Diachronic

During the last couple of weeks I have mainly been wearing two solid perfumes from Aftelier, Muse and Parfum Privé. Wearing perfumes by Mandy Aftel is so different from other perfume experience that I tend to wear them in phases, not mixing with anything else for a few days or weeks.

I am not sure exactly what it is that creates the particular feeling, if it is Mandy's hands or the carefully selected and treated (few) ingredients or like in these two cases - that they are solid. Probably a mix of these aspects. It creates a perfume experience that is just...different. Genuine. It has very little to do with the feeling of applying for example a commercial fashion brand perfume regardless of how nice it would be.

Solids are quite unusual. This is unfortunate, if you ask me, because to me a solid feels more intimate, more integrated with my skin. The application feels sensual and somehow, the word that comes to mind is diachronic. When applying a solid with my fingertips I feel like I am repeating a ritual that has been performed during thousands of years. There is something ceremonial about solid perfume and it evokes that feeling of a bond between scents and health. Like its an ancient ointment that will save and seduce at the same time. Add to this feeling the particular notes in these perfumes: lime, clary sage, labdanum and rosemary absolute in Muse - and bergamot, pink pepper, orange flower, osmanthus, pimento leaf, ambrette and ambergris in Parfum Privé - and you should be able to imagine the combination of sensual base notes and something that feels like it was made to cure practically anything a long time ago.

Could this be made by anyone other than Mandy Aftel? I don't think so. After having read Mandy's book and slowly discovered several of her creations I am starting to see what links them. There is just no other perfume like it. There are many amazing perfumes, but something that has been made by someone so dedicated to their craft, with their hands - becomes unique in the best sense of the word and very real. Dynamic. When I have worn these perfumes I always miss them when they start to fade.

And they make me want to listen to Regina Spektor and learn how to dance like Rachel Brice.

Alive thing… do you like me? Thoughts on Michelangelo, space, perfume and cello.

Today I am wearing Sepia. And I am listening to this (if you don't have Spotify try this), 'How to Organize a Lynch Mob' by Diablo Swing Orchestra. Let me tell you why.

About ten years ago I embarked on a plane to Florence. I had been studying Art History for a year and was profoundly disappointed with courses, teachers and exams that had almost entirely killed my passion for art. I got on that plane with a promise to myself, or two actually: to come home and speak Italian and to restore my love for striking angles, composition and color perfection. After a week or so I found myself on a train from Florence to Venice (ok, first I accidentally got on a train to Napoli but that’s another story) with the mission to see a painting that I had seen on posters on my way to school in Piazza Santo Spirito. Actually, it was not the painting per se that I wanted to see, it was the red color of the scarf that a woman in the painting was wearing. Most of that day was spent going to and then from Florence. I was in Venice just for a couple of hours but I did see the red color and it was one of the best and most important moments of my life. 

But my most mind-altering art experience in those months was not this painting. It was seeing Michelangelos unfinished giants. This experience will always be what really made art part of me and I have no idea if I will ever feel as many intense feelings in relation to art ever again. I hope I will, but I am not sure. Experiencing art is very personal, the places it shakes in our minds, the references it awakens. The exact details of why I was affected aren’t really that relevant to anyone else. But I will share one aspect of it with you and you will understand why I am writing about this here. It is sometimes said that there are two types of sculpturers, those that mold an object into an idea that they have, and those that carve out something that is – or not – in the stone. Michelangelo was one of those that perceived the stone as having its own predefined potential for some shape and he was just the person who brought it out. The giant unfinished statues are an example of this process. The stone did not allow him to do more. Watching them for the first time I was struck by how it was hard to tell the exact place where statue became stone and vice versa. I sensed beauty as well as frustration, strength and pain. I also felt a sort of dynamic that I have rarely perceived. As if the process was ongoing. 

A week or so ago, I received a collection of samples from Mandy Aftel’s Aftelier. I read Mandy’s book of course. Not read, read in the present tense as this is the only way that feels right. I read it slowly, as if I am having a slow conversation with it. I underline, go back, return… I have been curious about Mandy’s perfumes for some time now but in a way that I cannot quite explain, I have been waiting for the right moment to experience them. And I knew that I would know when it came. Because this is something entirely different than most olfactory experiences, and definitely different from most perfume experience.

It will take me some time to try all the samples because I want to get to know them thoroughly. Contemplate, go through different thoughts and pay attention to every detail. I am not sure what I expected. But I will tell you my first impression because it was undeniable and very concrete. I sense the care that has been invested in these perfumes. The thought, the poetry, the hands that have blended them. And then this: they feel alive. Not in some mumbo-jumbo metaphysical strange way. They just feel alive. Like those sculptures. They are not being blended anymore, they have been put in tiny adorable little containers and shipped to Sweden and nothing intervenes with them… but when I put them on my skin I have absolutely no idea what will happen. Or if the same thing will happen the next time I wear one of them. They seem to play with my skin and change constantly and I am not sure if I am choosing the perfume or if it is choosing me. If I am discovering it or if it is discovering me. Of course, I am playing with words here… What I am trying to convey is that feeling of an ongoing process.

A few years ago I worked with a theatre director on his communication and brand platform. He taught me something that has been very valuable and essential to me ever since. Apart from his work with the theatre he held courses and workshops with corporate clients from all sectors using the methods that the theatre uses to create teams. One of his key messages was that an ensemble is not about separate stars, it is about being an ensemble – and that – is created not through the excellence of one person or the other but in the space between the individuals. I think about this often. The importance of space. In communication, in relationships, in creativity. The process is not what is delivered from one point to another, the process is what happens in between. And that process is free, and unpredictable and redefines itself every second. Something happens when I wear Aftelier perfumes, and it just keeps happening for hours.

The piercingly beautiful string arrangement in 'How To Organize a Lynch Mob' with Diablo Swing Orchestra's cello master Johannes Bergion gives me that same feeling. As if it is played live every time I hear it, and I need to listen carefully because next time it might not sound the same. If you ever get to see this band live, cancel all your other plans and go. This ensemble sums up everything I have written tonight with their music.

The art of making something that has been captured... feel constantly unexpected. Space?

Montre-toi misérable!

There is one perfume commercial more infamous than any other. Chanels "Balcony" for Egoïste, produced in 1990, directed by Jean Paul Goude. Égoïste was created by Jacques Polge and is a woody spicy fragrance with sicilian tangerine, brazilian rosewood, coriander, damask rose, sandalwood, vanilla and ambrette seed.

Jean-Paul Goude was born in 1940 in Saint-Mandé. He is a graphic designer, illustator, photographer and advertising film director. His name became famous world-wide for the Chanel commercial but many people knew about him already before because of his collaboration with icon Grace Jones. He directed several of her videos and took many memorable photos of her. Their collaboration was at its peak in the early 1980's and their personal chemistry strong enough for her to become his muse and the mother of a son, Paulo. Paulo Goude has a band, Trybez. Here's a moment of their concert at one of my favorite places in the entire world - Paradiso. Rather crappy quality but still. This is his mother performing on the same stage.

Goude is a universe of inspiration and aesthetic joy. Explore his official website or check out the official documentary video So Far, So Goude. Right now, there is a restrospective hommage to his career in Paris, at Les Arts Décoratifs. Go if you can!

The music you hear in the Chanel Ègoïste commercial is Sergei Prokofiev's "Montagues and Capulets” from Romeo and Juliet. With this magnificent take on the complete version I wish you a lovely Saturday. Valery Gergiev conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

What does a G minor chord smell like?

I had a conversation the other evening about scents and music with a friend from Swedish band Diablo Swing Orchestra. Two of my favorite topics in life, so you can imagine my mind went all the way to eleven. (Sorry, musicians’ joke, some of you might catch the reference).

Music and perfume are related in so many ways, after all it is not by coincidence that the language of perfumes with notes and accords is taken directly from the terminology used to describe music composing. I don’t know how you feel about this, but for me the bond is much more profound and omnipresent. As with any language connected to any of our senses, I feel that the language that scents “speak” also has rhythms, paces, vibrations, textures that can be detected in music. Listening to music I associate the instruments, moods, transitions etc with scents and I feel instant affinity between certain fragrances or smells and songs. These associations are of course very personal and subjective, so any other person would be likely to make other connections than I do.  With some persons that I have helped find signature fragrances, or created fragrance wardrobes for, their music preferences have been a very valuable tool in the process after I felt like I grasped their way of "sense-translating".

I don’t know how many of you share this way of thinking. I’m guessing I am not alone in this and I would love to hear your reflections. So let me start this topic by sharing some of my reflections from the conversation I had with singer/composer/musician Daniel. These are not revolutionary thoughts or ground-breaking associations. Some are quite obvious, others less. But I do find the interplay between sound and scent very inspiring and helpful so maybe these reflections will be useful to some of you.

Daniel Håkansson, Diablo Swing Orchestra

Let’s take for example instruments. Drums, I love drums. I am perhaps slightly obsessed with drums. To me drums are resinoids, some woody notes and animalistic. Drums are never flowers in my mind. Never moving or floating. Other sounds, like for example a cello can have something very mobile, alive and almost painfully transient about it. For an olfactory exercise – here’s a mind blowing reference to play with:

Diablo Swing Orchestra – How To Organize a Lynch Mob

My associations are not always directly from music to scent, sometimes they go via color, texture and pattern. Details in a song will feel like white dots or like a string about to burst or like a sweeping caress. Some ingredients will share one of these characteristics. It is highly subjective, but completely unarbitrary. And just like instruments or accords can be dissonant, a scent accord can be in conflict. To me the smell of dissonance is sour or like bitchy little flowers.

I like to use music as inspiration for fragrance composing in my mind… This spring there is one specific bridge that I have crossed a gazillion times as it takes me from my work to my favorite coffee bar. Many many of these walks I have listened to the song ‘Undisclosed desires’ by Muse while creating a fragrance in my head. I used a poem to remember the transitions between top, middle and base. (If you google "Trisiagion et L'Ame" you should be able to find it if your are curious). I would like to make this fragrance someday so I don’t want to talk it apart beforehand. My point is this, sometimes a specific song brings ideas of colors, characteristics, tonalities, opacity or denseness etc… that can be directly translated to notes and in this process music can serve as inspiration, storyboard and reference.

Can scents be used as an inspiration tool for musicians? Just as music can be used to augment olfactory thinking, I am convinced that scents can benefit the music composing process. Scents work with the brain in a very powerful way. This has to do with the human anatomy, the passage between the scent and the brain is short and direct. I will look into this more so I can provide you with a better more thorough explanation but until then let’s just embrace this fact and the possibilities it creates. We have the obvious aroma therapeutic aspects, such as citrus as uplifting. But how can we go a step further? My idea here is that by surrounding yourself with mood scents you’ll be stimulated to balance the music you create or to add a certain atmosphere in a helpful way. For example when looking for a way to add softness or desire or savageness or depth to a melody. Say if you want to make the music darker, I am sure that incense or animalistic notes would help your mind find the way.

So, what about G minor? This was the question that triggered the conversation the other night, “what does G minor smell like?”. Take a moment to think about it and then I will tell you my thoughts.

G minor. This is where I go with my brain – the sound smells like a plant to me. Not a flower, not a spice, not resinoid, not animalistic. It is something that moves and lives. Like the strings on a guitar it stretches, vibrates. My first specific scent associations were the way that air smells between the lightnings during a thunder storm – wet, sweet, angry and vibrant. But also new. The idea that comes to my mind is vetiver. Solid but flexible, alive. Dark and light at the same time. Rooted and reaching out.

Thank you Daniel. For the music and for a great question.

Como busca el agua a la sed la estela de tu perfume

Bespoken life.

One of the most beautiful and enchanting persons I know, fashion journalist and author Karin Falk, had a birthday party yesterday. A party that was the perfect reflection of herself and her unique mesmerizing blend of sweetness, elegance, charm, style and... magic sparkle. If I one day (wishing) have some kind of perfume-making in my life she is one of the first persons I would want to make a bespoke perfume for.

Happy birthday magic person 

The party in itself was beautiful. For me, it was also pure ego-bliss as I spent most of the evening talking about perfume with Anders and David. I hope they were not painfully overwhelmed by my neverending discourses. I can't help it. Standing in that kind of setting, surrounded by all these Karin-kind-of-people, with fantastic playlists in the background and a candlelit cake-vaganza and neverending champagne...and then these two men ask me about perfume... It is almost too much. My heart went all...well, like this:

Photo by fellow party guest Karin Jacobsen

The conversation revolved around a new perfume for Anders. Anders is special so his perfume has to be also of course. He is one of the stars of Diablo Swing Orchestra, a band that creates music made of this world, other worlds and everything in between. Listen to the song A Tapdancer's Dilemma, you will understand, this man obviously cannot have just some "nice perfume". David, works at Swedish fashion brand Acne and his girlfriend wore a striking red folded envelope/clutch-ish pièce de conversation handbag that he had chosen for her. He was also totally in the zone when it comes to perfume talk. Isn't that just a really great quality in people?

So. Now I am looking for a special scent. Masculine but young, something that captures unusual width of heart and depth of soul. Warm but with integrity. Soft but strong. Solid but with a charming twist. Poetic but sharp. Infinite but present. Present but free. It will include amber, neroli and wood notes. Also definitely bergamot. And then something else... Animalistic notes for sure, but not sure which one. As you understand this is a challenge that I embrace with great enthusiasm.

I wish all parties in my life were like Karin's party. I wish all days in my life included searching for someones scent.

Life is bespoken. Cherish the people that remind you of that.