Meet the Staff: The Sketchbook
· Blog Home
· Profile
· MySpace
· Contact Us
· FAQ/TOS
Older Articles
· Beauty Notes: Shu Uemura Compact Brush Set
· Tech: New post preview feature part 3
· The Mnemonic Sense: Perfume Kismet (Part 1)
· Beauty Notes: A Drop of Rain in the Desert
· The Library: Me Talk Pretty One Day
· Beauty Notes: Too Much Liquid Liner
· Culture Notes: John Lennon part 2
· Fashion Notes: Momma Needs a New Handbag
· Fantasy Web Find of the Day: Vanessa Bruno LBD
· Culture Notes: John Lennon part 1
Comments
Archives
· Beauty Blog (2003-2004)
· Fashion Blog (archive)
· New Releases Blog (archive)
· Beauty Articles (archive)
· April 2005
· May 2005
· June 2005
· July 2005
· August 2005
· September 2005
· October 2005
· November 2005
· December 2005
· January 2006
· February 2006
· March 2006
· April 2006
· May 2006
· June 2006
· July 2006
· August 2006
· September 2006
· October 2006
· November 2006
· December 2006
· January 2007
· February 2007
· March 2007
· April 2007
· May 2007
· June 2007
· July 2007
· August 2007
· September 2007
· October 2007
· November 2007
· December 2007
· January 2008
· February 2008
· March 2008
· April 2008
· May 2008
· June 2008
· July 2008
Recent blog posts:
Links
Barneys
refinery29
The Sartorialist
Jargol
Perfume Shrine
Ambre Gris
Polyvore
The Fashioniste
The Powder Group
LA-Story.com
Dain's Literary Attempts
Colleen's Beading Blog
Colleen's Adult Acne Blog
The Beauty Blog Network
Eponym Blog Directory.
TBF Project:Blog
Posted by Dain, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 1:23 PM (Eastern)
No perfume review I have ever read has proven to be accurate. And lest anyone rise up to make war, what I mean is, when you spray a perfume and sniff for yourself, that experience is yours alone. Perfume blogs such as The Perfume Posse, Perfume-Smellin' Things, The Scented Salamander, and Bois de Jasmin do this far better than I ever could, all due respect. But. No matter how evocatively and eloquently written, you only come away with a sense of what it might be, and the fact remains that perfume, a very vague and personal thing at its best, is something you can only know if you try.
That brings us to the subject of Part 2: style (substance is covered in Part 1). Style, in perfume reviews, consists of something known as "purple prose", a kind of heady lyricism. When it is good, it is very good. But, as Strunk and White put it, "rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating" (p. 72, The Elements of Style). What's worse, many reviews tend to piggyback on each other, so a researcher is baffled by a battalion of opinions that more or less agree with each other, and is bound to resent their own experience rather than realize that there is no authority but one's own. Why does this happen?
More than anything, I am amazed by how much of perfume appreciation is purely imaginative. This is not the same thing as our sense of smell. We smell a rose in Yves Saint Laurent Paris, we smell musk in Narciso Rodriguez, and even within the gradations of compositional complexity, it is fairly straightforward. But past the physical impressions, are dreams—mixtures compounded of memory and desire. People flock to Chanel No. 5 because Marilyn Monroe wore it, because their mother wore it, because it's a bottle of Chanel, because it makes them feel elegant and sophisticated. None of these things, I must point out, are actually real. They are associations, memories, impressions, and aspirations (respectively). That perfumes are capable of moving us to such profound ecstasies and aversions is a testament to our imaginative powers, perfumer and perfumed. The best perfume descriptions are concise but pithy one-liners, rich in evocation, perhaps, but well aware that all perfumes leave limited impressions*. A waft of Chanel No. 5 smells expensive and classic, rose-and-jasmine-and-aldehydes: these are the impressions that nearly everyone will have. Everything else, is in your mind, and your mind alone.
It is not a bad thing that so much of the style depends on the wearer's imagination. Not at all. That is the real power of perfume. We all dream different dreams with the same potion. But that is the real reason why I find perfume reviews kinda, sorta, useless. It is not that other people's experiences lack visionary potency, it is only that they are never mine.
On the other hand, there are perfumes that strike like lightning, how and why is sometimes a mystery. Without purple prose or fancy labels or exotic bottles, it explodes into a sort of divine radiance on your skin. Does it have good reviews? Bad reviews? A legendary history with an even more legendary perfumer? Or associations with celebrities? Is it love at first sniff or the kind that grows with better acquaintance? Is it more appropriate for spring or summer? Is it familiar or strange? Do I really care? Perfume appreciation comes with all of these trappings, and yet they cease to matter if the perfume has that magical quality of... of? It is hard to describe. It feels great. Like true love. Like an epiphany. Kismet.
Ultimately, that is all I'm looking for. Perfumes I really, truly love, just because. Perfumes for quiet, contemplative moments, for sexual empowerment, for outright "I'm a bitch, fuck off", for being a real lady with impeccable, mysterious chic. I am my objective is terribly practical. Perfume kismet is difficult to describe or attain, but I will try to detail how one goes about the search in Part 3.
* I have noticed Luca Turin tends to do this.
Labels: chanel, philosophy, the mnemonic sense
subscribe
in a reader
Post a comment (NO SPAM)
Links to this post:
Create a Link