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Posted by Dain, Friday, October 26, 2007 12:26 PM (Eastern)
If rose is the queen of flowers, then tuberose is surely the vamp. Unabashedly feminine, though I am not an advocate of a strict masculine/feminine divide, a man cannot wear this. I own the mass-market offering from Michael Kors, a voluptuous white floral wrapped in incense, but I have been dreaming about getting my hands on a bottle of Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle for ages. It is odd to say this about perfume, but this is pure S&M, like a very icy but very beautiful woman (see above). An odd note of something like gasoline assaults your nose, quite appalling, but even as you reel off-balance from the reek, it suddenly fades to a faint menthol whisper, and "the strange rubbery heart of tuberose" (plus a hint of leather), stunning in its perfection, silky and exact, is a sucker punch. You begin to embrace its opening notes, knowing what comes next. Subtle, it is not; interesting, certainly (the straight juxtapostition of the overtly artificial and the overtly natural, like collecting blooms in the Mexican jungle next to the freeway); but it is surpassing gorgeous, the kind of perfume that exudes such sex appeal you will catch men in the very act of sniffing, their eyes rolling in disarray... [laughs]
I always think of that scene from The Magic Mountain when I wear this, the one where he is staring at the corpse of his stern, unhappy grandfather, and he smells the tuberoses piled on top of the coffin.
It is available for purchase only in Paris, and through mail-order in Europe—if someone is willing to ship me a bottle, I'd be eternally grateful.
Labels: michael kors, perfume, serge lutens, the mnemonic sense
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