Scent Signals

Perfume: The Invisible Mask

Wikipedia, that font of online knowledge, says a mask can be used for protection, concealment, performance, and amusement. So can perfume. That's why I think of perfume as an invisible mask.

I'm unlikely to run around all day wearing my truest and deepest emotions on my face. I have to function in society, earn a living, and not rock the boat too much.

So I have learned to create and wear masks. We all have. Some of us are more aware of them than others, but we all have different masks we show the world at different times.

The concept of wearing a mask carries a negative connotation for some, so we call our masks "faces." We put on our game face, our brave face, our happy face to "face" certain circumstances and people. We even teach "faces" to our babies. We make a funny face, a sad face, a surprised face in peek-a-boo games.

I don't believe there's anything intrinsically bad about us wearing masks or faces. It's just something we do. Sure, people can try to lie through their masks, but that's why God gave us intuition.

What I love is that I also have that other mask - invisible yet powerful - available to me. My perfume.

invisible mask. it exalts the woman i am. proclaims the woman i want to be. lets me play the woman i may never be. all women to be loved and reckoned with.

With my perfume I can protect and conceal, or perform and amuse. And I don't have to match my invisible scent-mask to my visible face-mask. This invisible mask can be only for me, fulfilling only my needs, and have nothing to do with others. Or it can be all about other people.

I can use my invisible mask to lure or push away, to give clues to my true identity, or throw someone off the scent. My perfume can serve as an invisible talisman, a storm shelter, a costume, an amusement ride.

Maybe this is why so many perfume lovers say they wear perfume for themselves. They know the power of the invisible mask.

Here are a few of my invisible scent-masks. What are some of yours?

Talisman Scent-Masks: Femme de Rochas; Musc Ravageur; Angelique Noire; Jicky; Une Fleur de Cassie; No. 22

Storm Shelter Scent-Masks: Shalimar; Hypnotic Poison; Fantasia de Fleurs; Clair de Musc; No. 5

Costume Scent-Masks: Fracas; Bal à Versailles; Iris Poudré; YSL M7; Yvresse; No. 31 Rue Cambon

Amusement Ride Scent-Masks: Eau d'Hermès; Kouros; J'ai Osé; Cabochard; Muscs Koublai Khan

Butterflies of the Perfume Garden

While working on another article, I came across the poetry of Edmund Spenser, and his story of the life of a butterfly. It made me think of the life of a perfume lover. Those of us who love to sniff absolutely everything we can get our noses on, and for whom the selection of a Scent of the Day usually involves flitting from nozzle to nozzle. We truly are butterflies of the perfume garden. You might not want to know how the poem ends - something about a jealous spider - but this part is lovely. Happy fragrant flitting!

To the gay gardins his unstaid desire
Him wholly caried, to refresh his sprights:
There lavish Nature, in her best attire,
Powres forth sweete odors and alluring sights;
And Arte, with her contending, doth aspire
T'excell the naturall with made delights:
And all that faire or pleasant may be found
In riotous excesse doth there abound.
There he arriving round about doth flie,
From bed to bed, from one to other border;
And takes survey, with curious busie eye,
Of every flowre and herbe there set in order;
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly,
Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder,
Ne with his feete their silken leaves deface,
But pastures on the pleasures of each place.

And evermore with most varietie,
And change of sweetnesse, (for all change is sweete,)
He casts his glutton sense to satisfie;
Now sucking of the sap of herbe most meete,
Or of the deaw which yet on them does lie,
Now in the same bathing his tender feete:
And then he pearcheth on some braunch thereby,
To weather him, and his moyst wings to dry.

And then againe he turneth to his play,
To spoyle the pleasures of that paradise;
The wholsome saulge*, and lavender still gray,
Ranke-smelling rue, and cummin good for eyes,
The roses raigning in the pride of May,
Sharpe isope, good for greene wounds remedies,
Faire marigoldes, and bees-alluring thime,
Sweete marioram, and daysies decking prime:
[* _Saulge_, sage.]

Coole violets, and orpine growing still,
Embathed balme, and chearfull galingale,
Fresh costmarie, and breathfull camomill,
Dull poppie, and drink-quickning setuale*,
Veyne-healing verven, and hed-purging dill,
Sound savorie, and bazil hartie-hale,
Fat colworts, and comforting perseline**,
Colde lettuce, and refreshing rosmarine.
[* _Setuale_, valerian.]
[** _Perseline_, purslain.]

And whatso else of vertue good or ill
Grewe in this gardin, fetcht from farre away,
Of everie one he takes and tastes at will,
And on their pleasures greedily doth pray.
Then when he hath both plaid, and fed his fill,
In the warme sunne he doth himselfe embay*,
And there him rests in riotous suffisaunce
Of all his gladfulnes and kingly ioyaunce.
[* _Embay_, bathe.]

What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enioy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th'aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature,
To take whatever thing doth please the eie?
Who rests not pleased with such happines,
Well worthie he to taste of wretchednes.

Find the rest of the poem and others by Spenser in the
Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser (Volume 5), part of the Project Gutenberg series of E-books.

The beautiful Chinese paper butterflies were found years ago in a boutique in Dallas. Each one is hand-painted and hand-cut. I love how much personality they have.

Hermès Un Jardin après la Mousson: Jean-Claude Ellena Does Vetiver

I can imagine the scene at Hermès corporate:

Jean-Claude, it's time for another garden scent!

Ah, well, I have a vetiver I've been tinkering with...

Sounds divine. Where does vetiver grow? Haiti? No, no, not romantic enough.

Well, it's indigenous to India.

India! Parfait! Lots of warm, rich colors and spices!

Ehhhh, yes, well...

And so, we got an Indian garden - Un Jardin aprés la Mousson. A drowned Indian garden.

Let me take you on a little tour of this garden and its strange flood of notes.

In the first few moments on my arm, Un Jardin après la Mousson smelled like decaying skin and days-old flowers rotting in water. Seriously. It smelled as if I hadn't washed that patch of skin in days.

Then came a pepper note. Followed by a watery melon note. But not the ripe cantaloupe everyone talks about. A green, unripe melon. Unripe yet somehow mushy.

The whole effect was of a world drowned and waterlogged. This is not the after-the-flood rebirth of nature promised in the Hermès ad copy, but the days before, when everything is still feeling hammered and torn by the deluge.

As the scent developed, things seem to dry out, and I got a bitter, woody note, followed by a lemony vetiver mixed with tobacco. At a late stage, hours in, it was a washed-out vetiver with a bitter edge that kept crawling up my nose.

The tobacco went from golden and unsmoked to the blackened, tarry smell of a pipe bowl. And floating in and out of the vetiver-tobacco blend was that vague melon smell.

Melon notes tend to go very wrong on my skin, and it's possible that this scent was, for me, doomed from the start because of the melon. But I have to say, the other notes didn't do much for me, either. Although a nighttime walk in humid air did bring out a sweet and milky floral note that softened the vetiver and tamped down the melon and tobacco (the longose, I take it?). Back inside, in the air-conditioned air, the vetiver reasserted itself.

Jean-Claude, mon amour, if you wanted to have your way with vetiver, why not just come out and say so? This is ultimately what this scent is - a variation on the vetiver theme. If it had been marketed as such, I might appreciate it more. This whole business of linking it to a garden in India just doesn't make sense to me. That is just a theatrical stage, and the other notes merely supporting characters, for the star of the show: J-CE's take on vetiver.

In fact, a name like Vetiver d'Hermès or Hermès Khus would've fit the scent quite nicely. It would've saved people from having to try to make sense of the soaked-Indian-garden fantasy, and forced them to put aside their expectations of something rich and colorful and thick.

Other thoughts about Mousson: Quite masculine in feel. Not in the slightest bit "pretty." An ambient scent. Something you'd smell upon opening a door to the outdoors in a warm, humid climate. Not something I'd especially want to wear or smell on someone else. Minimal sillage. Smells richer on paper and on cloth than on skin. Pretty bottle that doesn't match the scent within.

Now, I know I should be impressed by the olfactory magic trick of being plopped into a soaking-wet place then taken to an acrid and arid place, and on a certain level, I am. That part is pretty darn cool. Kinda like a perfume science experiment. I just wish the magic trick smelled better.

The SAs at Saks crack me up. None of them liked Un Jardin après la Mousson, and one of them tried to excuse it by telling me that French people like "interesting" smells. I told her we/they like interesting good smells, and that I think this one was done with the American and Asian markets squarely in view (mostly the Asian market). Not because it smells bad. It doesn't. But because it is so non-perfumey. Sort of the antithesis of 24, Faubourg. And certainly the least perfumey of the Hermès garden trio.

Actually, if I were looking for a scent to evoke the feel of a garden after a deluge, "watery, vegetal and green," I think I might choose Olivia Giacobetti's creation for Andrée Putman - Préparation Parfumée. It has a boatload of personality, and conveys water and nature in spades.

Editor's Note added 08/02/08: Saks had the exclusive for a while, but now Neiman Marcus has this. The SAs there don't appear to like it any better than those at Saks, which cracks me up just the tiniest bit. Oh, and I edited the top of the article - using the intro I wrote for my Mousson post on PoL.

The Case for Burning Incense on Memorial Day

For many of us, Memorial Day simply means an extra day off from work, for which we are thankful. We often spend it relaxing with friends and family. But what we now consider a holiday has its roots in the soil surrounding our nation's war dead. Following the Civil War, many communities, northern and southern, decided to set aside a day to honor those who had died during the war. Early on the day was called Decoration Day, a day to visit and decorate the graves of dead soldiers.

The first-ever memorial day is said to have been celebrated by freed slaves in Charleston, S.C., but Waterloo, N.Y. gets credit as the official birthplace of Memorial Day. The town had a general, General Logan, who campaigned to make it a national holiday (which didn't actually happen until the 1970s). He liked to remind folks of the ancient Greek tradition of honoring fallen heroes with branches of laurel and flowers.

Memorial Day is now celebrated on the last Monday of May, basically so we get a three-day weekend out of it. Some veterans would prefer that it still be celebrated on May 30th as it was for many years, so that we downplay the holiday aspect and treat it more respectfully, less like a party day. They may have a point. Look at how many people die on our highways and waterways each year in Memorial Day weekend drunk-driving accidents. Perhaps if we treated it more soberly, we would have fewer deaths to mourn.

Me being a scent lover and this being a (mostly) scent-related blog, my thoughts lead me from mourning the dead on Memorial Day directly to incense. Incense is burned in many cultures as a way to honor the dead and offer prayers for their souls. Yet, unless your family (genetic or spiritual) uses it in this fashion, you may only connect incense with hippies. Even so, your incense-awareness quotient will no doubt be going up in the years to come.

Mexican Day of the Dead remembrances, with their candy skulls, candles, photographs, flowers, food, drink and incense on colorful altars (ofrendas), have already begun to seep into American popular culture. They're probably the most public displays remembering the dead (other than military salutes) that you'll see in this country. Los Dias de los Muertos (connected to the Catholic holy days All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day) blend indigenous cultural beliefs with Catholic beliefs, but have roots in even earlier traditions of the Celts and Druids. The two-day celebration falls on November 1st and 2nd.

I personally think the dead could use a little remembrance, and the gods a bit of propitiation, earlier in the year, so I hereby propose we incorporate incense into our Memorial Day celebrations. Doesn't have to be anything fancy; just light a stick of incense and say a prayer for the dearly departed. It can be something as simple as "Lord have mercy on the souls of the departed." Let the smoke carry your prayers where they need to go, as it's done for millennia.

In addition to smelling good and carrying prayers heavenward, incense can be used to energetically cleanse your space, to ward off evil, to attract the souls of the dead, and as an offering. The origin of the word "perfume" lies in incense. Perfume means "through smoke." It's easy to imagine our ancestors making their fragrant, smoky offerings to propitiate and thank the gods they knew.

Some Incense Favorites of Mine

There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of different types and aromas of incense. While I enjoy burning incense resin on charcoal, the way it's done in Orthodox and Catholic churches (minus the wildly swinging censers), it is messy and time-consuming, and requires careful tending (the charcoal likes to shoot off sparks).

Of course you can use this to your advantage as a meditative device when you have the time to take it slowly. The resin pictured here is made by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Massachusetts. It is highly fragrant and the scent lingers for days.

If time is short, and you don't want to fuss with charcoal, stick incense is better. You can burn a stick for a few minutes then stub out the ember and go. Incense cones aren't as easy to stub out, and usually don't smell as good, so I prefer the sticks.

Some of the most fragrant incense sticks I've found are made by Fred Soll's Incense & Etc. out of New Mexico. They call them resin on a stick, and they really are resinous and gooey. Their frankincense incense is one of the best I've ever smelled. You can find the line at Whole Foods and online.

I also love the sweet smell of nag champa incense, and the one by Satya Sai Baba is my favorite. I keep the boxes in strategic locations around the house because they're so wonderfully fragrant they act as sachets. Whole Foods also carries this incense, as do lots of little shops and online stores.

While I was living in San Antonio, I came across some incense named after the Holy Archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, et al), made by a New Mexico company called Sage Spirit. I still have some of it, and thirteen years later it still smells strong and sweet. That's some incense!

The Bhutanese incense in the second picture actually started this whole train of thought. It is a blend of about a hundred precious aromatic substances, including safflower, musk, saffron, nagi, and sandalwood. It says it is an offering to propitiate the protective deities. I have to say, it smells more "serious" than most incense, as if it's medicinal as well as an offering, and leaves a tobacco-like trail.

If you don't like anything churchy, sweet or medicinal, I would recommend the little sawdust logs by Incienso de Santa Fe which come in piñon, juniper, cedar, alder, mesquite, fir balsam and hickory. They smell just like a wood fire burning in autumn. If you don't have a fireplace or live where you can smell woodsmoke on the wind, these little incense logs will help make up for it.

Let Your Prayers Arise as Incense

I hope you'll join me on Monday, Memorial Day, by lighting your favorite incense and offering up a prayer for the souls of our war dead and all the others who've gone ahead into the greatest unknown. I know we'd like it if someone thought to do the same for us.

If you're worried that it's a little morbid, and I know some of you are, remember what the Orthodox Christians say - that the best way to ensure we live life fully is by remembering death (don't be paranoid, just aware).

If you don't read this until after Memorial Day, no worry, incense and prayer offerings are welcome at any time. We'll break out the copal, the traditional incense of Day of the Dead celebrations, when autumn rolls around, and in the meantime we'll be taking a look at some favorite incense perfumes.

For now, have a safe and wonderful Memorial Day!

You can find the monastery resin incense at the monastery website, here.

You can find the Archangels incense at the company's online store, here.

You can find the Bhutanese incense at this online store.

You can find the little wood logs at the company's online store, here.

Welcome to Scent Signals

Do you remember the fragrance your first serious love wore? Mine wore Aramis. For years afterward I couldn’t smell it without thinking of him. Thankfully, there were no horrible feelings associated with him or the scent. I’ve known men and women who can’t tolerate certain perfumes and colognes because of the flood of bad memories they unleash. No matter how long the relationship has been over, one whiff of the former lover’s scent and bam! - they're captives on emotional roller coaster rides back in time.

Scent molecules shoot straight up your nose and into the feeling center of your brain where they signal information. That’s why you get those powerful rushes of emotions and memories when you smell certain odors. Those molecules are saying, "Hey, wake up! You've smelled this before! It means this!"

Even if you've never smelled something before - like the odor of a dead animal - you can instantly know what it is and what it means. Fact is, your nose and brain can sort out some 10,000 odor molecules. Pretty amazing when you consider our taste buds can only taste four things - sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Think maybe your nose has something to do with your enjoyment of food and drink? You bet it does.

All of this makes odors, fragrances, and scents - the pleasant and the stinky - very powerful. Yet not everyone is fully conscious of the power of scent, and few of us seek to understand and harness it.

In fact, olfaction is often referred to as the "fifth sense" or the "forgotten sense" as if it were last on the list of importance behind seeing, touching, tasting and hearing. I'd like to change that. I believe that if we can tune in to the wonderful world of scent we can feel more present and alive and enjoy life even more.

Corporate America certainly thinks scent is important. It spends millions upon millions developing scent molecules it hopes will tickle your nose - where you live, where you work, and where you shop. So there's another reason to know about the use of scent - to better control your living environment and the choices you make.

In this blog I plan to talk about all sorts of "smellies" including the use of scent in relationships, scents in worship and ritual, scent in food and drink, scent in Nature, aromatherapy, even how we write and talk about scent. For instance, how DOES the "sweet smell of success" really smell?! Is it actually sweet? We'll see.

Welcome to Scent Signals, where together we can celebrate the amazing power of scent!