The Lipstick Page Forums Beauty Blog: What's in a name? What's in a name? Posted by Dain, Tuesday, July 26, 2005 2:23 AM (Eastern) I was writing a review of Guerlain's Samsara, created in 1989 by Jean Paul Guerlain, and I wrote: "It is a great name, from the Sanskrit word for the relentless and illusory cycle of life, from which one desires liberation, or moksha—an idea first developed during the Upanishadic period. (source: my Intro to World Religions class.) Which makes me think that the name, though it sounds well, is the result of careless and ignorant naming. Samsara is undesirable in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, so it's kind of funny to name it after a glamourous perfume. A snooty French man must have thought himself very clever to come up with this name. : )" So, out of curiosity, I looked up what the offical Guerlain stance is on Samsara. In Sanskrit, Samsara means the eternal cycle of life. It is an imaginary place, sacred and mysterious, where the Orient and Occident meet. Samsara is the symbol of harmony, of absolute osmosis between a woman and her perfume. It is a spiritual journey leading to serenity and inner contemplation. The bottle, in the sacred red of the Orient, echoes the figure of a Khmer dancer in the Musée Guimet in Paris, her hands folded in a gesture of offering, expressing plentitude and femininity. The stopper evokes the eye of Buddha, a symbol of meditation that leads to detachment and supreme enlightenment. Uh. No. That is categorically wrong. The only thing Guerlain has right is that samsara means the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. It certainly has nothing to do with the meeting place of East and West. "Most of these traditions, in their evolved forms, regard samsara negatively, as a fallen condition which is to be escaped" (source: Wikipedia). And osmosis (on a different note) is the process in which molecules passively diffuse across a membrane. You can use it in a metaphor, such as, "learning by osmosis", which means that knowledge is acquired through no effort of one's own, but... it has nothing to do with sillage. Really! Isn't that silly? It's a total load of crock from start to finish. Not that there's anything wrong with wearing it, copy or no copy, if you like the scent (the consummate floriental), but it's amazing what companies try to pull sometimes. I've given my bottle away. I have horrors over ylang ylang anyway. Image from http://perso.wanadoo.fr/imagesdeparfums/. 0 Comment(s)    Email this post Rants, raves, and musings on all things cosmetic. Profile | Current Blog Site Feed (Atom) Previous Articles ·· L'Artisan Parfumeur ·· Summer music... ·· Serge Lutens! ·· A couple of cheap thrills... ·· Illness... ·· Balenciaga Cristobal ·· Shaving... ·· The Blog Trend ·· Bobbi Brown ·· I was in a rather pissy mood... Archives TheBroadroom.Net's Beauty Blog (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 Links Colleen's Adult Acne Blog Fashiontribes Daily