A Fragrance Psychologist Explains the Perfume Notes of Spring

Coco Chanel famously remarked that "a woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future." What she really meant by that is anyone's guess, but one man quite qualified to take a stab at is Dr. Joachim Mensing. "Fragrance and perfumes are offers for personal transformation, intended to bring us from our ACTUAL SELF – how we feel, closer to our IDEAL SELF – how we would like to feel," explains the former professor of psychology at the University of Freiburg, Germany, where he researched & authored scholarly articles about how fragrance, personality & mood are related. Synthesized into his signature Moodform system, he's been responsible for top-selling fragrances, including Davidoff's Cool Water. "Behind them is a secret wish to transform ourselves unconsciously, to give off a more feminine, more sensual, more dynamic or self-confident appearance than how we really feel. They also create a certain atmosphere and emotional setting."

Emotions, in particular, resonate strongly with our choices in fragrance because of the association with memories long tucked away in the deep-storage area of the brain, particularly those connected with feelings we want to re-experience again. "The fascination for a certain fragrance is hidden in our subconscious and linked with desires and moods that are difficult to articulate," continues Mensing."“To choose a perfume is a very complex situation that we can only explain to a certain degree."

In attempting to plumb the depths of this aromatic mystery, those in the know started by dividing fragrances into six main types or families: Oriental, Chypre, Citrus Green, Floriental, Fruity-Floral & Floral-Aldehydic, the last of which dominates with a hefty market share of almost 30%, thanks to bestsellers including Chanel's No.5 Eau Premier, J'adore (Dior) & Caleche by Hermés. (image)

When the nights are long and dark, we tend to reach for the romantic sensuality cozy comfort of Florientals. While they only constitute a market share of about 10-12%, this figure belies the degree to which we remain mesmerized by the intoxicating musks, vanilla, exotic resins & wood that characterizes spicy cold-weather staples such as YSL's Opium, Shalimar (Guerlain), Jasmine Noir (Bvlgari), Euphoria (Calvin Klein) & Prada's L'Eau Ambree. But, come spring, fresh-fruity florals like Clinique's Happy, Tresor (Lancome) & Calyx (Prescriptives) tend to bloom. "The wish for change, for spontaneity and to enjoy oneself are overwhelming," continues Mensing. "We want to live a more playful and frivolous life, we want to live our fantasies, be creative and also be provocative. Because we are more open to all environmental stimuli and more curious, our awareness is more differentiated and our nose reacts more sensitive. We smell with our emotional centre in the brain, which is the circuit of hormone production."

Hormones = thoughts of procreation = the focus of the fertility-centric holidays of Easter (bunnies, anyone?), Passover & Mother's Day. "Fragrances that express a joy of life and new beginning fit (spring) perfectly. Most people are surprised about their feelings and discover a new joy of life. They want to live more intensely and cherish life." Not to mention spritz on something Citrus-Green. "The combination with hesperidic notes like grapefruit, lemon, orange, lime and modern aqua notes creates a sensation of fresh, ozone and southern which our long-term memory associates pre-dominantly with Mediterranean climate sensation." (It's interesting to note that while citrus-greens have about 15% market share stateside & a much higher 18-25% share in Latin countries like Italy, Spain & Brazil.)

Some Citrus-Greens with a refreshing aqua note to consider:

Eau de Lancôme, Lancôme
Escale à Portofino, Dior
Energizing Fragrance, Shiseido
Concentré d’Orange verte, Hermès

Dr. Mensing's other picks for perfumes that sing of spring:

Life, Esprit
Orange Tonic, Azzaro
Daisy, Marc Jacobs
Chance, Chanel
Pretty Nina, Nina Ricci
Cherie, Miss Dior
Inspiration, Lacoste

- Lesley Scott

interview source: beautypress.com

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Marilyn Monroe & Chanel No. 5

Rather than say "nude", Marilyn preferred to answer with far more flair. "Chanel No. 5!" she exclaims flirtily on this snippet caught on tape during an interview with the glamorous uber-star. "Because it's the truth!"

- Lesley Scott

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Brad Pitt as the Surprising (in a Good Way) New Face of Chanel No. 5

Coco Chanel, Marilyn Monroe, Catherine Deneuve, Lauren Hutton, Nicole Kidman, Audrey Tautou...Brad Pitt?!

"What’s important to remember about CHANEL N°5 is how revolutionary this fragrance is," notes the newest male visage of the fragrance - for chicks. "When it was introduced, it broke all the rules." Indeed, perfumer Ernest Beaux, who had created fragrances for the last Russian Czar and was Chanel's first Master Perfumer, made a mold-breaking masterpiece in 1921 with No. 5 and its unusual blend of 80 ingredients. Mademoiselle was convinced 5 was her lucky mystical number & on the fifth day of the fifth month, a flacon of this fateful juice was presented to her - the fifth selection.

To pay proper homage, director Joe Wright was commissioned to capture the allure of No. 5 from a different vantage point: a man's.  "Each commercial resembles a short poem," explains Wright, who is known for Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and the upcoming Anna Karenina, as well as two Coco Mademoiselle commercials starring Keira Knightley. For Wright, No. 5 is "a phenomenon that continues to invent and reinvent itself." 

Wright shot Pitt in black and white and speaking directly into the camera, inspired by the much-simpler ads from the late 60s and early 70s. "I really admired the simplicity of the Deneuve ads," reveals Wright. "When you have Deneuve or Pitt, why would you need to decorate that?"

Or, for that matter, a fragrance on the level of a No. 5.

“It does not feel like a perfume that is designed to attract a male, yet it does. It is such an iconic perfume. So many perfumes are easy to recognize and associate with a time but you can't do that with N°5."

- Lesley Scott

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BCBGMAXAZRIA's New Fragrance, Bon Chic, Most Certainly is

When this arrived in the mail for me to try, I carefully unwrapped the box and took a delicate sniff. "Gorgeous top notes," I thought. (This is how I speak to myself in my head.) Actually, what probably went through my noggin was, "Damn, that smells 18 kindsa awesome!"

I promptly doused myself in it and prayed the drydown would live up to promise. For whatever reason, most fragrances don't work that well with my body chemistry and after the 20 minute wait-and-see period, I usually end up frantically scrubbing them off. My last "signature" fragrance was the gorgeous & voluptous floral Femme by Giorgio Armani. (Seriously, I would get stopped on the street, followed at times and asked, no demanded, *what* was I wearing??!!) This dearly departed chypre-to-rule-all-chypres still has a madly-disappointed cult following around the world, all of us hoping & praying daily that (a) the idiot-executive who ordered it discontinued is horsewhipped and then, for the rest of their miserable little life, forced to live in Dockers pants & wear one of those horrible antisceptic "clean" citrus scents from the 90s; and (b) that Maestro A. would bring the damn fragrance back again.

It's that good.

*sigh*

But I digress.

20 minutes had passed and automatically, I headed for the sink. My thoughts elsewhere, I turned on the tap and took a final, absentminded whiff. It still smelled...good. Off went the tap.

A keeper!

Technically: Top notes include Asian pear, black raspberry & mango; the heart contains pink peony, orange blossom & violet; the drydown is an opulent brew of cedarwood, sandalwood, vanilla & cashmere musk.

Non-technically: if you enjoy *full-on* French-smelling fragrances that ooze femininity & sexiness, snag your own bottle of BCBGMAXAZRIA Bon Chic 'cuz I'm keeping mine.

- Lesley Scott

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Donna Karan WOMAN: a Creative Fragrance Collaboration by 'em & for 'em

Taking ingredients more typical of masculine fragrances and enveloping them with nurturing white florals, Donna Karan and perfumer Anne Flipo recently collaborated on an interesting new blend of Haitian vetiver & Sandalwood wrapped in feminine orange flower. "I wanted to create a fragrance that would express the many facets of a woman," explains Flipo. "A celebration of their strength, passion, patience and tenderness."  Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid designed the flacon as an examination of "sensuality and infinity", itself wrapped up in an organic design that "gently balances upon itself." 

The campaign was shot by Inez and Vinoodh and features three fab femmes - one in her 20s (Karolina Kurkova), one in her 30s (Liya Kebede) & one in her 40s (Christy Turlington Burns) - chosen in part because of their individual commitments to women's causes & children's welfare...& in part for the obvious: they're all three of them ridiculously good looking. 

Purchasing info for Donna Karan WOMAN is at DonnaKaran.com.

- Lesley Scott

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It's Good to be Lady Gaga ... There's the Cover of Vogue (twice), the...

... fact you basically own Social Media with 28 million Twitter tweeps.

... power to tell a fragrance giant like Coty that of course you'd love to have a fragrance. On a couple of conditions. "You must want to lick and touch and feel it, but the look of it must terrify you. The fragrance is to be called Fame. It must be black." Oh, and one more thing - upon being sprayed, it must become clear. Otherwise, no signing on the dotted line.

"My God! That's Impossible! How can we do that?" reminsces the Coty suit in charge of the project in her thick French accent.  And now the company has a highly lucrative patent pending. "She was really behind the most important innovation in the fragrance industry in the last 20 years."

(And since you're wondering, it actually smells good. Very good.)

Now touring the globe with her extravaganza Born This Way Ball, it's a massive spectacle that the Mother Monster hopes will, like her Fame perfume, "break the mold of what modern touring is right now." Including no video screens and a "fortress" that lets her dance in the air - 50 feet up - above a rapt audience of 30,000. 

For the September 2012 issue of American Vogue, Jonathan Van Meter penned quite the interesting profile of Lady Gaga, nicely capturing both the atmosphere behind the scenes of the Ball & the ball - of contradictions - from her fame to her fans to *that meat dress* which was intended to show that beneath the skin, we're all flesh and bone.

Which reminded her of a disturbing cover image from the 1970s of the porno mag Hustler, depicting a woman being put into a meat grinder. "[It] really terrified me when I was a child. So I tried to spin all that into a space of humor and politics and sexuality onstage."

Including making an entrance in an alternate meat dress, suspended from a meat hook next to oversized slabs of beef. And while it creates a "transcendent moment" it also is a crowd pleaser: "My fourteen-year-old fans just really like the meat dress."

 

- Lesley Scott

(images: top & Vogue cover - VOGUE/Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott; pink hat by Stephen Jones Millinery; meat dress pix - source)

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A New LBD of a Chanel Fragrance: COCO NOIR

Gabrielle Chanel adored visiting Venice, especially in the company of Boy Capel, her one true love. What she didn't love: fussy frocks. Inspired by the striking juxtaposition of the city's strong lines with its baroque touches, she created what is arguably one of the most important contributions to fashion - ever: the LBD. "Before me, no one would have dared dress in black," Coco Chanel once noted about the way she transformed a traditional color of mourning into that everywoman-staple none of us today could conceive of living fashionably without - the Little Black Dress (which I wrote about here & included this shot of her groundbreaking dress being featured in a Vogue spread from 1926).

Her love of seduction over perfunctory exhibitionism, the luxurious over the vulgar, the intense over the bland norm most recently inspired the maison's Master Perfumer, Jacques Polge, to further explore this mysterious shade and translate it into a new Oriental fragrance.

(To learn about the HISTORY & "SECRETS" of CHANEL NO.5 fragrance, be sure to check out this in-depth piece I wrote.)

"For COCO NOIR," explains Polge, "I wanted to continue exploring an entire esthetic range of CHANEL perfumery, a range that distinguishes itself from the Florals, one that is illustrated by Bois-des-Iles and Cuir de Russie. I took it up with Coco. It’s what I like to call the CHANEL Coromandel culture, [which I showcased the history of here - along with more juicy pix] what you see and feel in her apartment. The night vision of the ‘Orient that starts and ends in Venice’ imposed itself upon me and that is where I wanted to go."

TRANSLATION:

TOP NOTES Grapefruit, Bergamot. "The spicy freshness of pink peppercorns and grapefruit tinges the top note with Tiepolo pink* (below) & gives it a fresh, light and lively momentum," explains Polge. *[Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) was an Italian rococo artist who painted prolifically for the European courts; his best-known works are the large frescos he created in Venice - and his name is now associated with a particularly luminous shade of the hue.]

HEART  Rose, Jasmine, Narcissus. A fleshy-floral accord that is "as disconcerting as it is elegant."

BASE Indonesian Patchouli, Tonka Bean, White Musk Frankincense, Sandalwood (to add warmth & tie everything together).

"Cedar imposes its lofty dryness on more expansive balms and rose geranium leaf, cultivated in Grasse, adds a minty touch to the opulent seduction of beautiful flowers," adds Polge. "The notes bring us back to the legacy and remind us what a fragrance owes women and what a woman owes herself...The night vision of the Orient that starts and ends in Venice imposed itself upon me, and that is where I wanted to go."

- Lesley Scott

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Chic Summer Style Inspired by Armani's Winter Getaway in the Mountains of Switzerland

 

While the beautiful people are engaged in the exhausting work of seeing and being seen in Saint Moritz, Giorgio Armani uses the time to catching up on his R&R several miles away in peaceful La Punt at Chesa Orso Bianco (Polar Bear House). And instead of busy Alpine chic, the designer looked East to Japan for more zen decor inspiration, opting for dramatic polished mohagany with accents of persimmon, burgundy & a rich, textured white for an overall feel that is elegant, but still has zing.

This cool, chic color palette would work equally well when it's hot out as crisp summer whites can make even the soggiest soul look a bit more fabulous and less of a sweaty mess. Tip: go for a monochromatic white or cream outfit (both top & bottom), then accessorize with rich hues of bitter chocolate, muted burgundy & curry spice. And top it all off with an appropriately woodsy scent; I love Hampton Sun Privet Bloom for its nature'y notes of lemon verbena, rose dune, sea grass & privet blossom.

(About the outfit: James Perse tee; Sandro Pirana pants; Marni belt; Paloma Barcelo sandals; Bottega Veneta cuff; Victoria Beckham bag; Stella McCartney sunglasses - all available at Net-a-Porter.com; Hampton Sun Privet Bloom - Sephora.com)

- Lesley Scott

(image of Armani's casa in the mountains by Roger Davies via ArchitecturalDigest.com)

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Now the Balmy Days & Sundays of Summer Come in a Flacon!

Picture yourself chilaxing in the cool grass, face up to the sky, dappled light flickering through the pale green of overhead branches. Artisanal fragrance artiste Ineke Ruhland - a classically-trained perfumer with an indie spirit - has now bottled this languid, lovely feeling of fragrant leaves and sweet-smelling flowers with her scent of summer: *Balmy Days & Sundays*.

"Green notes of foliage and grass are entwined with the sweet scent of yellow freesia, honeysuckle and rose," explains the San Francisco-based Ineke. " Let your senses awakened by this elixir of fresh botantical scents."

Top: Freshia, Leafy Greeens, Grass

Heart: Honeysuckle, Rose, Mimosa

Drydown: Chypre, Accent, Musk

Available at Ineke.com.

- Lesley Scott

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Amouage Opus VI is the Fragrance to Wear if You Defy Categorization, Transcend Gender & Generally Create Your Own Unique Narrative

The richest of journeys - be they on the page, on the big screen, or in life - tend to meander into memory a mosaic, recollections and fragments that create a tome, some parts hidden, some long forgotten, some as fresh as if they were just created. Amouage's Library Collection - which collectively draws on the allure of hidden treasures in a library, igniting the desire to discover & learn - delves into remembrances of romantic love for its sixth volume. Opus VI was crafted by the house's Creative Director, Christopher Chong, and inspired by the power we possess to erase and reinvent memories too painful to keep. "Traditionally used as a healing agent in folk medicine, Amber narrates a story of a tragic love affair, where forgetfulness is one's only comfort," notes Chong, adding, "personal memories are an eclectic and fragmented journey of our lives. They are a source of profound knowledge in the form of diaries and memoirs deep within the recesses of one's mind."

The fragrance itself conjures an almond-like undertone, with top notes of Frankincense and Sichuan Pepper adding intensity to the heart of Periploca, Cypriol & Patchouli. The base radiates with the opulent golden warmth of Sandalwood & Ambranum, rounded off with legendary fragments of woody, leather and cistus notes; the entire dry down effect of the scent, Chong explains, creates a fusion of disturbing elements and accords to re-invent the conventional Amber scent and simulate the turbulent sentiment of loss and confusion when attempting to erase a person's memories.

- Lesley Scott

(image at top: source)

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