Base Notes
When I was a wee lass I went to boarding school. I think it was the first time I became aware of stuff as desirable in a way that related to other people. Not that I never wanted anything prior to sleep away school: I liked shiny things as much as anyone - makeup and I were old friends, I liked pretty clothes and blown-glass horses standing on a sunlit shelf. What book bag one carried was socially significant. Hell, I got up and curled my hair before school every day, something I have a great deal of trouble believing now, and yet, I remember it. I know I did it. There were trendy girls and not, and I knew I was Not. But I don't think I had yet had a moment where I looked at someone else's stuff and coveted it, pined for it. Mostly, if I had enough to read I was happy, though envious of the more petite and socially graceful.
But in boarding school there were girls with money, girls who brought their own rugs to the dorm, girls who had more shoes than I had novels, girls who liked New Wave, girls with Good Jewelry, girls wearing those Guatemalan woven hooded shirts with the pouch in the front, girls who collected vintage dresses. It was a word of stuff such as I had never imagined. Some of it was healthy - choosing things to represent who you are and want to be is normal I think - and some of it was money substituted for love or peace (and it was still a lot more innocent than the mass marketed consumerism we live with today). It was a world before aspartame. A world before the internet and all the acquisitive impulses that has fertilized.
The first day I was there I fell in love with "American Pie"* as well as with the idea that you could hear of a song and track it down and listen to it - oh, this world before iTunes, where you had to look for old vinyl if you wanted it. And it wasn't long before I had a poster of Adam Ant, another by Robert Doisneau, a crush on Simon Le Bon, the beginnings of a fine collection of dangling earrings (come to think of it, I had those when I got there), a new opinion of the clothes my mother bought for me and a collage of words and images cut out of magazines hanging on my wall.
One of the things that lots of girls had that I had never considered for myself was perfume - my mother had perfume she rarely wore and yet cherished, my grandmother traveled in a terrible cloud of Opium. This was grown up stuff. Not for me. But the little bottles fascinated, the tiny samples of fantasy you could send away for. I ordered Tatiana - something about the shape of the bottle, the description spoke to me and I waited for it and adored it except that I hated the way it smelled. Hated it. There was another, something with roses, that provoked the same loathing.
It was a lesson that took some time to assimilate, that affectation is useless, that you can't wear it or be it if it isn't you. Scent is visceral.
Somewhere along the way I fell hard for Obsession and wore it it a toxic 80s cloud through college, alternately with Fendi and Chanel 22 and one or two others I think I owned for the bottle rather than the smell. The imagery of perfume advertising captured me far more than fashion did, this idea of bottled identity, projected personality, applied confidence, the way perfume allowed boys and girls to bridge the gap between each other, an excuse to move closer, a catalyst for the profound intimacy of breathing someone in, the way scent changes with time and sweat to define evenings, moments, memories. There was a boy in college I loved. We kissed once and the whole evening is scent-colored in my head, tied together with vanilla and amber and terror and hope and desert air. I think that might have been the beginning of the end of Obsession, that and I swear they changed the formula along the way. Much sweeter now, almost intolerably so.
Later I wore Fracas - which was worn in a book and I fell in love with it and found it and adored it for real, then Agent Provocateur.....then nothing for most of my 30s, except on special occasions. I tried clean scents, green teas and grapefruits, daytime scents, but they didn't stick. Mostly they smell like the detergent aisle at the supermarket to me, scent afraid to be a smell. They have no dirt in them, no life. I like dirt. Eventually I got rid of the old bottles - keeping just Fracas, Agent Provocateur which I still loved, and an old bottle of Obsession I never touch but still smile when I see.
Perfume was a branding idea in someways, a projection of what I wanted to be but was not quite yet and around the time I started therapy I think I stopped trying to project something - sexy! mature! confident! clean! professional! - and started trying to be it instead. Whatever it was going to turn out to be. I stopped wearing makeup regularly at the same time, and took up exercise instead, and casual clothing. I went inside my head, not to hide, but to do a little work. How could I assume an identity when I was actively trying to map my own?
I've come to miss it though, the enhancement of image, the mood interaction, the fantasy, the engagement of the senses. I have a much better idea of who I am now and it occurred to me recently that I want that again. Lipstick. Dresses. To enjoy the scent rising off my own skin. It's a flirtatious impulse obviously, but not just in a sexual sense. I have this desire to engage with the world more, to meet people's eyes, to talk to them, to hear them, to have my shutters open. To have gravity on my personal planet.
Which led to my falling down the rabbit hole into Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs. Some of you are probably familiar with them - the gothic perfumer. They have perfume oils with literary antecedents and florid atmosphere, fantastic descriptions and complicated associations. And they sell samples of most of their scents. Perfect for the mild obsessive on a personal quest.
It's a site that demands a certain amount of surrender to the inside of the creator's mind, and it overwhelmed me for a long while. Couldn't give in. I would try to pick out six to try and get confused by what was sample-able and what wasn't. How everything interacted. How to find something when I wanted it. So I would click away. But a few months ago, I wasn't overwhelmed, I was enthralled. I ordered a bit of this and a bit of that and was charmed to my toes by the story each perfume was crafted to represent. It is brilliant, almost performance art. Is this my story? Do I only think so until the reality of a scent hits my system? What do I like? Why? What am I surprised to like or hate?
I've been trying one or two every day - depending on how I like it or how long it lasts. I have dozens and dozens. I'm going to have elimination rounds. I'm on a mission. I'm having so much fun.
* While I was looking this up to add the link and reading about how Killing Me Softly was an inspired by American Pie, Killing me Softly came on the radio. Literally as I read the words. How spooky is that?
