Two Innovative Exhibitions in NYC

On August 15 and 16, the bi-annual Elements Showcase promises an innovative look at the niche/indie perfume world. Highlights include: over 60 exhibitors, a forum on fragrance as a design discipline, and three interactive installations. I am looking forward to perfume No.1 Beau-Bow created for Six-Scents by perfumer, Rodrigo Flores-Roux and fashion designer, Alexis Mabille.


http://elements-showcase.com/ 

Now through November at MOMA is Talk to Me, Design and Communication between People and Objects. The exhibition includes work by Sissel Tolaas, entitled, Berlin, City Smell Research. Seems she has bottled different neighborhood scents in Berlin creating an olfactive map of the city. 

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1080 

Photo:  Chichen Itza, Mexico

Holding Hands with Safran Troublant

Thank you Olivia Giacobetti for making things golden this morning.

It was a little more than a year ago when I first found Safran Troublant. I was helping a friend find a perfume for another discerning yet fragile friend who had gone through some tough times. I was at Bendel's upstairs at L'Artisan and as soon as I put Safran on the skin I immediately knew I had found the one. It is spicy and sweet for sure and hovering on top and throughout its body is a sweet dryness, that reminds me of hay and this dryness plays with its rose note. Then it gets all rounded out and thick with a creamy sophisticated Vanilla. 

Back to this morning, my 5 year old would not let me leave/pass the door without a hug, kiss and rub of the nose, upon release from the hug he said, "you smell like Vanilla", then more specifically added,"like vanilla ice cream", then he specified, the bad (scooped) kind, he prefers the soft serve generic Vanilla kind. It is no surprise that I was wearing Safran Troublant. Of course my son didn't know it but he was really talking about the depth and tension and movement that Troublant creates with its Saffron, Rose and Vanilla notes. My walk to the train was a little bit lighter as I cut through the heat of August with Troublant by my side. By the time I reached my destination Troublant was holding my hand.  

http://www.lubin-parfum.fr/

Layering Perfume: Hot in the City with Santa Maria Novella, Acqua di Cuba and Balenciaga, Paris: Honey and Violet

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The heat advisory brewing these past few mornings did not stop me from wanting to layer perfume. I've been thinking about it for a while, but I didn't want to rush in or force it in anyway. So when a kind of controlled synchronicity began to take over, I felt a sigh of relief. It's a perfect time to layer given the 90 degree plus weather we New Yorkers are experiencing. I mean you need some defense against the deluge of city smells that converge with this kind of heat. Enter Santa Maria Novella, Acqua di Cuba, its top citrus notes of bergamot and sharp lemon seem to burst out of the bottle. They quickly lift and mix with its thick delicious sophisticated honey heart. Its sweet earthy heart is incredible and for a few seconds it stunned me and I remembered my grandmothers skin-sweet like honey. Surrounding Cuba's sweetness is a very powerful powdery note that at first I though was too strong, but now it seems quite necessary. Its base is a long lasting, albeit a delicate leather note. It is in its dry down that Cuba becomes masterful, the honey and leather notes settle in and together stay at a low decibel on the skin lingering almost hanging on trying not to fall off. 


I started to walk down the street with Cuba on my skin, and I started to think about Balenciaga Paris, EDP. It's such a pretty fragrance. Steeped in violet. Simply, its green top leads you to its violet leaf and jasmine heart, and finally to its patchouli and cedar base. I was excited to see what notes might be altered or enhanced by combining two fragrances together that I instinctively thought might have a rapport. My experiment worked. Together Paris and Cuba bloomed.  The mix of violet and honey notes pushed and pulled almost becoming gourmand. The powdery note took on a super spicy quality. The leather note grew and became stronger, no longer delicate. On my skin right now the honey, violet, and leather are still speaking to each other. 

Anybody else layering?



Photo: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #3, 1977

Outside Looking In: La Maison Ogilvy

While in Montreal last week, I was hoping to get some time on the perfume floor at Ogilvy. It is one of the oldest stores in Montreal, its been around since I866, however my idea was quickly aborted when while walking down St. Catherine Street I realized a parade was clearly in progress. It was Canada Day. Ogilvy doors were shut. The photo above is a peek inside of its incredible interior, and the first bar I could see was L'Artisan, I can spot those bottles anywhere. And the band marched on.....

An Experience: Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle: NYC Boutique

These days, it's rare that I get the chance to wander around the city discovering or even rediscovering places. That's why the moments leading up to my visit to Frédéric Malle's Boutique were near blissful. I had somehow managed to exit the chaos of my (sweet) home, get in a cab and before I knew it I was on 61st Street with a few minutes to spare before meeting up with friends. It was a sunny day and it was early too, not many people out yet. Shops were getting ready for the day. As I walked by Creed its doors were literally open and their Original Vetiver, in its hunter green bottle was sitting in the window, ready. I approached 70th Street and without thinking turned left. The Frick. I put both hands on its tall black iron gates and and took a long hard look at its manicured garden with its lush water pond filled with waterlilies.


Upon entering Malle's Boutique, perfume was not the first thing on my mind. Walking into the store you are confronted by three tall glass columns. Each column has two doors that sit on top of each other vertically, and they can open separately. What are these? Well, turns out that these cylinders are an optimal way to smell perfume, and it is one way that perfumers present their perfumes to clients. The perfume is sprayed inside the column then the door is closed for a moment and then soon after your head can go inside the top door to experience the full range of the fragrance. Believe me it works.


Malle commissions perfumers to make perfume. The perfumers get to do what they want without limitation, then he works as an editor in the final stages with the perfumer. 


As I settle in, I begin to feel what might be important to Frédéric Malle. The Boutique is less a boutique and more like an artist's studio or perhaps a small art gallery. There is nothing sterile about it; Malle wants us to have an intimate experience. The perfumes are displayed in a way that makes them appear as if they are paintings hanging on a wall. Maybe we should see ourselves as collectors? There are no counters with salespeople standing behind them. Black and white photos of perfumers, I think I counted 12, who have created the fragrances hang on the wall. Most of them are still with us and one that I recognized is gone. So you can kind of create a flow, go to the Column and smell Le Parfum de Therese, then you walk over to the photo of Roudnitska (The Nose who made Therese for his wife), and look and wonder about him. Then you walk away and turn your head to right and there is a wooden carving above your head, or perhaps Margaret will grace you with her incredible detailed stories about what you are smelling. Or perhaps she will want to know what perfumes are interesting to you. It's fun, no?  Editions de Parfums is of course selling exquisite perfume with a few select ancillary products too, but inside its walls, if you seek it, you will find history, art, story, and aesthetic, all strongly woven together. Malle is not selling a glossy lifestyle the same way a clothing designer might, he allows us to wander and possibly understand the mind of perfumery, the work it takes, his love of perfumers, and with some of his perfumes, a desire to recall his scent memories. In a sense, the Boutique represents all that goes into making perfume.


Photo: Hanya Holm, Bennington School of Dance, 1938.

Snapshot 2: Dad and Acqua di Cuba

Today, I find myself thinking about Mint Juleps, especially the ones I made for my father. First I would prepare the simple syrup, then muddle the mint and add it to the syrup to create an infusion. Let it sit a bit. Pour the bourbon over crushed ice and slowly add the minty sweet syrup. With glass in hand, I would then hand my Dad a sprig of mint and he would neatly place it behind his ear, as his Father did. From a distance, sipping his drink he looked completely Roman. 

I'm looking forward to Santa Maria Novella, Acqua di Cuba with its boozy quality.

A Sketch: Scents and Sensibilities: The Invisible Language of Smell

I often think of  myself as a part of a tiny flock of kindred souls who walks around thinking about what and how we smell. I never would have imagined that a mass of humanity would want to go to an auditorium on a Saturday afternoon in NYC to hear various scientists speak about the fine tuning of smelling.  However, I was wrong. When I entered the auditorium at the New School there was a full house of eager people wanting to attend the World Science Festival. I was handed a program and a white envelope (care of IFF) with 4 smelling cards inside, and I quickly found a seat between two seemingly scientific couples, and we were off. There were 4 panelists, 3 women and 1 man.

I immediately wanted to hear more of what Sissel Tolaas had to say.

The program states that Sissel Tolaas's work focuses on smell, language, and communication while spanning science, art and industry. She has a lot to say about humans and their relationship to smell. When it comes to smell she prefers the perspective that there are no good or bad smells, just lots to smell, and Ms. Tolass says that we destroy our chances to smell everyday by living in our overly sanitizing-hand gel, deodorized and perfumed culture. She wants to bring reality back to what we smell, and from what I can tell she is focused primarily on our bodies as a source. I agree, let’s know what we actually smell like before we start dispersing all kinds of stuff on our bodies. She has studied and captured men’s sweat, actually men who suffer from panic attacks to see if she could detect what fear smells like. She then numbered and bottled their smell and somehow painted it on a MIT gallery wall so folks could come and smell them. When she did the same exhibit in China, Tolaas described a woman that came back every day to smell #8, she had fallen in love with the smell of a very particular sweaty panic attack ridden man.

Also enlightening on the panel were: Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist, who spoke about the potential of the science of smell, which is only been around for a couple of decades; Consuelo De Moraes, a biologist and ecologist who studies the complex role of chemistry in interactions among plants and other organisms. Yes, plants can smell!, Avery Gilbert, a smell scientist, entrepreneur and author, and lastly Juju Chang the very polished moderator of 20/20 TV news fame. When Sissel began to talk about how she was able to make human cheese  (as a starter she used mucous and other living body secretions) Juju just couldn’t take it, and kept on responding the way she said her 3 year old would, she repeated in her best 3 year old voice,  “that’s digusting, that's digusting, that's digusting".  Somehow I don't think that was the response Sissel was looking for.

I will leave you with the events Opening remarks and what was on our scent cards.

The Olfactory Bulb is the only part of the brain that sits outside of the skull. So our sense of smell is just sitting there waiting to trigger and fire. It is primal and evocative, yet we need to find a way to talk about it. Olfaction is stored in the subconscious. Smell is emotional, expressive and intuitive, but it’s not all about emotion it’s cognitive too, comparative and analytical. Smell is complex.

Yes it is.

The entire audience smelled these cards together: 1. Swiss Cheese/Human Feet, 2. Chicken Soup/dry powdered, 3. Musk/Galaxolide, 4. Tiari (a Tahitian flower)

http://www.sightunseen.com/2009/11/sissel-tolaas-scent-expert/