Gold

Percy is not in a good position at all - and he is facing a problem. In March, he had a "cheap scent" come from the USA, which has an embarrassing name.
In his Industrial Style hipster-like furnished loft on the 8th floor of a new building project in Frankfurt am Main with a view of the skyline only selected fragrances in ultracool flacons make it in the normal case. He gets recommendations for good fragrances in one of Frankfurt's upscale perfumeries, where he has been a regular customer for ten years.
Now Percy corona-conditioned in the last months often had boredom. There was a lot of idle time in the home office and also an incredible amount of free time. For this reason he registered in a perfume forum. There he read about an almost magical fragrance that makes the hearts of all possible and previously impossible sexual partners beat faster and ordered it. And what happened? The goddamn stuff hit.
Yet it's a rather crude, simple scent. Sandalwood and patchouli, spices. Lots of cinnamon Moss in the drydown. There is also some musk. Some herbs. Old school in a good way. Kind of democratic.
A "Héritage" for tough guys? A "M7" without oudh? A pheromene fragrance without hormones?
Percy has been using "Sex Appeal" for four weeks. In that time, he's cheated several times on his best-ager dating app, where you can enter your preferred scents under "special preferences." When Isolde visited him a week ago (with a negative Corona test, of course!), he wasn't wearing Clive Christian No. 1. And when Florian, 53 (and a cardiologist who's been vaccinated since January), spent the night at his place the night before yesterday, it wasn't the latest Kurkdijan scent he'd sprayed on himself either. Berthold, 58, the smart literary critic who is friends with Luca Turin, was also lied to by him. To him, he didn't spray himself with "Timbuktu," which he had originally claimed.
No, it was the El Cheapo hero "Sex Appeal" every time that made such a lasting impression on his contacts that they want to personally pick up the bottle of his fragrance the next time they see him.
"You, if I'm ever with you again, I want you to spray me from head to toe with your scent," Florian asks.
"What was the name of that stunning scent you had on last night?" asks Berthold via signal messenger. And Isolde desperately wants the spray for her son (31, happily married for four years, clerk at the Sonnenberg district court). "The boy is such a wimp. He needs a real banger perfume that will make him grow a few chest hairs. Maybe then I'll finally have grandkids!"

Percy is desperate. That's what he gets now.
The only thing that helps is to flee forward: he will block Isolde, Florian and Berthold.
Delete the dating app. Shut down his profile on the perfume forum.

Of "Sex Appeal for Men" he has bought up all the bottles available online. Eau de toilette and after shave! Whatever. He wants it all. He needs it all. Both in Europe and the US. He's also ordered fancy glass vaporizers... He's going to decant "Sex Appeal" into them.
And if anyone ever asks him for his scent secret again, (which is to be expected), he will reply that his scent is custom-made. "Comes from Athens and is called Kirjakos," he will say.
Such a sly dog, that Percy.

My special tip against too much "bad vibrations" !
Clean your aura, Dora!
(Short - Commi):
Your aura, the energy field around you, can not really absorb stress and negative vibrations at the moment and needs to be cleared up?
Jacomo, the perfume company from Deauville in France, has produced a wonderful fragrance that will make you smile again.
Grapefruit in the top note makes you fresh and just blows away negative energies!
In addition, numerous scientific tests prove that the scent of grapefruit is virtually rejuvenating:
Men appreciate women who smell like grapefruit at least five years younger...- (but this is in my opinion no advantage at all, just a 'fun fact' , which I did not want to leave unmentioned).
"Aura de J. " was composed by Eduard Fléchier, the creator of "Poison", so by a top perfumer. And you can really tell that "Aura J. ". Here was someone at work, not just lovelessly thrown together a few molecules, but a master of his craft, who has given real thought.
"Aura J. " is a fruity, floral fragrance, but just not a boring, conventional fruit salad - Fruityfloral! The fresh opening with grapefruit is followed by a charming, complex weave of mimosa and honeysuckle, two delicate flowers, which are given a special, distinctive touch by sandalwood and heliotrope, as well as musk.
In addition, "Aura" as the bottle color clearly shows, is a bright, yellow, friendly fragrance with a creamy base. A silky, light veil surrounds you when you wear it.
Completely different, by the way, from "Silences", the brand's tart, green classic, also completely different from Thierry Mugler's much newer product, also called "Aura", which I personally don't like as much as Jacomo's scent, which seems more harmonious and softer, as well as less "chemical" than the iridescent green Mugler.
Who is looking for a cheap, floral, really nice fragrance with a certain something, should give the Aura fragrance from Deauville, which is still available in remaining stocks online, a chance.
(For fun, I just did an online test to determine the color of my own Aura. The result will amuse Pollita in particular : LILA.
Was actually also clear. As a convinced and committed feminist, it could not be anything else with me).

Which statement applies to you the most?
a. I want more validation and recognition, personally and professionally.
b. I need more variety and more freedom. Boundaries are suspect to me.
c. I like to take on challenges.
d. You've mistaken me for your masterpiece (song by Celeste: Not your muse)

What are you looking for? A "social scent" or a "private scent"?

The social scent is the perfume that supposedly suits you best depending on your circle of friends, workplace and current fashions plus advertising. Maybe it is also the fragrance that is currently most hyped and which you do not want to "diss", because you fear that you then piss off with the "opinion leaders".

The "private scent" on the other hand is the one that corresponds to our own ideal image, that is, the perfume that best reflects our ego according to our ideas.

On International Women's Day, 3/8, you may be wondering if perfumes can make any difference at all when it comes to our psyche or even our place in society.
My point is that perfumes have great symbolic power.
At the beginning of the emancipation movements in the 20th century, in the "Roaring Twenties" for example, women suddenly dared to wear tart fragrances. The famous chypre perfumes emerged, but also the legendary "abstract florals" like Chanel No. 5.
With the tart, new perfumes, women signaled that they wanted to be independent and autonomous, because just citrus oil-and-bergamot in combination with patchouli and mosses had previously been reserved for men.
And even today, "chypres" in their original form are not fundamentally suitable for the masses.
Most new launches continue to take place in the field of fresh, fruity-floral perfumes, gourmands and "Florientals", although a trend towards so-called "Neo-Chypres" can also be discerned in the niche.

In 2011, Rochas, which was then owned by Proctor and Gamble, launched the fragrance "Muse", which was supposed to refer to the legendary "Femme".
(Today, Rochas fragrances are produced by the company Interparfums.inc. Their portfolio includes Boucheron, Lanvin, Mont Blanc, Lagerfeld, Jimmy Choo, Van Cleef&Arpels, among others).

"Femme" (1944) is a prototype of the fruity Chypredufts and is considered a masterpiece. For me, a wonderful "private fragrance".

"Muse" (2011) unfortunately not.
Production was discontinued, but you can still find very cheap remnants on the net. From many users*innen the fragrance is described as "delicious".
However, I have an ambivalent relationship to fragrance descriptions, which are "Yummy"" or even "treat".
(By the way, I also do not feel "cuddly" as a desirable category. If you're looking for a "social scent" for your professional life, I can't recommend sweet-cuddly scent messages anyway)

"Muse" was composed by Jean-Michel Duriez and is "fruity-delicious", sweetish.
If "Muse" had to be assigned to a music genre, shooting star Celeste from England would not come into play, even though her song "Not your muse" inspired me to write this comment, but pop music from Brazil.
If "muse" needed an occasion, it wouldn't be a visit to the opera, but an afternoon in the fruit section of a supermarket.

"Muse" is a "floral", a cocktail with banana and vanilla. The fragrance is pleasing, not extravagant, but somehow quite charming.
By the way, Duriez created a very similar perfume in 2006, "Sira des Indes", also here you notice a banana component. The top notes in both fragrances are loud, carefree and youthful. While "Sira" presents Indian spices in the course, "Muse "becomes a little sweeter in the drydown.
"Muse" can therefore not tie to "Femme" by Roudniska, even if the creators would have liked so.
Why at all is the "successor fragrance" of "Femme" called MUSE?
A muse is understood to be a source of inspiration for a male artist, a woman who is supportive.
When you open the packaging of "Muse", you read, "Une muse sommeille en chaque femme".
Means: A muse slumbers in every woman.
FOR REAL?
Doesn't sound very avant-garde.
But there are more recent opinions on the subject of the muse.
Francine Prose, in her book "The Lives of the Muses: From Lou Andreas-Salomé to Yoko Ono," writes that there was always a certain pattern when the title "muse" was ascribed to a woman.
In her opinion, it is a stereotype that muses are victims of famous men.
Francine Prose argues that being a "muse" in the 19th and 20th centuries was a way for women to explore avenues they never could have without their relationships with "great" men.
What role model the people in charge at Rochas had in mind when "Muse" was composed in 2011, I'd love to find out.
Banana, frangipani, vanilla. Friendly, fruity, adapted.
This muse would look good in a Hawaiian shirt. In said fruit department in the summer.
All in all, the fragrance lacks independence.
You can twist and turn the concept of "muse" on any level you want: a muse seeking validation and recognition (see point a.] at the beginning of my comment) shouldn't be on familiar ground, but should boldly create new, individual art on her own.

And what perfume are you wearing today, on International Women's Day?

1. "It's a kind of magic..." - because even though there is no such thing as natural lily of the valley oil, many think that the scent that wafts towards them from a bottle of "Lily of the Valley" or "Muguet" is totally natural.
Unfortunately, it isn't. There is no such thing as natural lily of the valley oil.

Here's an example of a simple base.... oh no, too long, 19 chemical compounds in the simple base formula alone according to Louis Appell. It contains, among other things
Hydroycitronellal, Hedione, Linanol, Alpha-Terpinol, Geraniol, Heliotropin, Benzyl Salicytate...etc. etc.

What makes up Isabelle Doyen's "Le Muguet" isn't on the packaging or online, but my nose tells me she used a lot of hedione and heliotropin, because the scent isn't that typically "lily of the valley" at all.

2. Lily of the Valley - a song by Queen from 1975:

"Wars will never cease,
is there time enough for peace,
but the lily of the valley doesn't know....

Freddy M. - what a performer, what a voice. And what a talent!
Would a lily of the valley scent have suited him? Maybe it would, since he named a great song that.


3. On 5/1/1561, a sprig of lily of the valley was presented to the French King Charles IX.
Here, according to legend, began the triumphant advance of the little flower as a symbol of spring.
Yes, the king, quite a guy, (but who really knows - and when is a man a man, folks?) loved the fragrance.

4. "Labor Day" in France coincides with "Lily of the Valley Day." Blimey, the French again. Work and amour toujours united.

5. Lily of the valley is poisonous, by the way. Do not eat! Wash your hands after tying or serving a bouquet.

6. We call them lily of the valley, the English "Lily of the Valley", the French "Muguet".
Therefore, "Le Lys dans la Vallée" cannot be translated at all as "The Lily of the Valley," but only as "The Lily of the Valley." This is then the name of a novel written by Honoré de Balzac in 1835, which is said to have autobiographical features. "The Lily in the Valley" tells the story of Felix de Vandernese, a high school student whose passionate love for Henriette de Mortsauf, 20 years his senior and married, went against the conventions of the time (-and today?- ).
A lily of the valley doesn't explicitly appear in the novel, but I just wanted it mentioned.... - so the thing about different names in different languages.
(The issue of "ageism" = the discrimination or unfair treatment based on a person's age - of course not...). -

7. Kate Middelton's bridal bouquet was lilies of the valley, back in April 2011. was she wearing gloves? I wasn't watching live.

8. Can another lily of the valley fragrance knock "Diorissimo" off its pedestal?
No. Period.

("Muguet de Bonheur" by Caron is too soapy, "Lily of the Valley" by Yardley is too fleeting, Molton Brown's "Dewy Lily of the Valley& Star Anise" ... well, unfortunately there's anise in it, Penhaligon's "Lily of the Valley" from 1976 was - ugh! - (and the shop is owned by Puig, they also produce the fragrances for Zara, which is great in principle, but the clever shopper should know that), "Spring!" by Essentials claims their fragrance is "spring in a bottle", which I can't verify, but the bottle can be used as a vase, which then holds lily of the valley, "Lily of the Valley" by Woods of Windsor is nice, low budget (also available at Douglas), Yves Rocher also has a Muguet, plus there's a good lily of the valley scent from Russia by Novaya Sarya.)
And the "Le Muguet" by Goutal that is supposed to be the subject here?
The can not keep up with Diorissimo at all, because it is much duller, becomes rather powdery in the drydown and is not as spring-fresh as the brilliant Roudnitska.

9. Why think about lily of the valley in the middle of winter?
Luca Turin says, "I have a thing for Diorissimo when it snows."
Sometimes he just has cool lines. Found it thought-provoking.

The Goutal Maiglöckchen can be worn year-round, in my opinion. By anyone, anyone, anyone who loves that floral, special touch. Charles, the King led the way.

Making a choice, by the way, is not only important to me when it comes to lily of the valley perfumes.
That's why I'm currently downsizing my number of bottles. Call it downsizing, does it still spark joy.... You know the drill.

10. "The state of indecision about what we love - as caused by an excess of choice, the difficulty of ascertaining one's own feelings through self-examination, and the ideal of autonomy - prevents passionate attachments and ultimately obscures for ourselves who we are in ourselves and to the world. "
(From the wise book by Eva Illouz, "Why Love Hurts.")

Why do I like this quote so much? Make a guess.

But what I would have to say in conclusion... takes less time than a cigarette:
Everyone should be allowed to wear lily of the valley. Whether it's Freddy, Charles, Luca or Kate.

For this commentary, I use a text written by Serge Lutens himself for underpinning and explanation. It is entitled "Monde arabe" and can be found in the book "Les Parfumeurs: Dans l'intimité de grands créateurs de parfum", Harper-Collins, 2018.
Unfortunately, since no German translation is available yet, I'm doing the job myself. Here I am largely dispensing with the original quotations in French, because this would make the commentary unnecessarily cumbersome. Anyone who understands French and is interested in perfume should pick up the above book. It is a fantastic source of first-hand information. This is because it is not narrated by a blogger or conjectured by a perfume critic, it is always the perfumer himself/herself speaking.

I don't know what facts of Lutens' life you already know, so forgive me if I bore you with some biographical info that was new to me personally. Because, in fact, I didn't know that Lutens grew up in Lille in the north of France and had his first experience with the world of cosmetics in a hair salon, picking up hairpins off the floor and sweeping them. He does not reveal in his text how he then came from Lille to Dior in 1968. In 1980 he joined Shiseido as stylist and make-up director. There he designed flacons, later he was sent to Firmenich for further training, where he received a perfumery education that still enables him to create perfumes today. In the 90s there was a crisis between Shiseido and Lutens. He left the group.
In 2000, he opened his own perfume house, the Palais-Royal in Paris.

"Today we count 80 different fragrances among our collection, most but not all of them developed by me together with Christopher Sheldrake, with whom I collaborate during every single stage of the production...sometimes for years. It took us 12 years to make 'Chene,' for example." (p.135)

How long Sheldrake and Lutens sat on "Bourreau des Fleurs" I don't know.
The pyramid initially suggests a simple fragrance. Only three ingredients are mentioned.
That's a good thing I like it when perfume houses do without to come up with extensive information about the ingredients, because then we, the critics (whether professionals or amateur critics like me) can no longer practice in working off and rehearsing the pyramid, but must align our texts differently.

"Bourreau des Fleurs" is a multi-layered, spicy fragrance that leads back to its roots, which Lutens himself describes as an "imaginary landscape in which he spins in circles." At the heart of his work, he places an examination of "the woman" par excellence:
"All these women are the woman, my invented woman, magical, with magical powers. One might think that my imaginary landscape is going round in circles. For the contempt I take revenge. I take revenge on women. I take revenge on the woman herself. My life is a story of revenge. I am the mistake. I make up for it and I make it worse. Because you can't make up for something without making it worse. I love, I seduce, and at the same time I hate and destroy. Without this violence there is no creation." (p.130)

In "BdF", one senses an almost magical herbal hexenaura at the beginning, a brew of various spices already familiar from other creations by the Lutens/Sheldrake duo.
Something "Ambre Sultan" flashes, a little piece of Marrakech, a place that has great significance for Lutens, since his ethnic roots are there, although he grew up in Lille.

"When I discovered Morocco, I knew that the Arab world had not yet been embraced by French society. Hence my choice. To return. To stay.
I was in permanent contradiction with French society and the violence of this new world I discovered suited me. And I haven't changed. I still find myself in contradiction. So I'm still here. That justifies my loneliness, first in Paris, then here, in Marrakech." (p.132)

The licorice herbal spice potion gives way in the heart to a note that I personally usually find problematic in perfumes, but which seems masterfully crafted in "BdF". It is the strawflower.
"If you manage to get past your initial disgust, then things get very interesting. Disgust plays a big part in my way of conceiving the story of a fragrance. The disgust and the words." (p. 131)
"A perfume isn't a single smell after all, it's not a vanilla cake, it's a whole cosmos. That is literature then!"

Just like a literary text, Lutens sees perfume as a fundamental means of artistic expression.
"My intention is to touch people. If perfumery didn't touch anyone, it would be completely uninteresting." (p. 136)

"I'm not interested in happiness. When I open a book about happiness, I close it very quickly. It bores me. I'm not interested in happiness. What I'm interested in is the process of creating. Creating something." (S.137).

The strawflower is called "Immortelle" in French, meaning the immortal. In "BdF" it possibly refers to Lutens' mother, whose first name was Fleurisse. For him, the mother remains a person he could never grasp.
"The psychoanalysts....they've all gone mad because I can't get better. It's impossible. I need this image of a woman who replaced my mother in the beginning...without a woman, I croak."
Maybe that's why the strawflower seems so soft and homey to me, so fitting in "BdF".
But it weakens toward the end, giving way to a light kitchen smell that reminds me not of charred wood but of an oriental stew with herbs.
The flowers, in my perception, were not trampled or broken (as the name suggests), but slowly cooked.

"I need this permanent image of a woman and I keep reinventing it with every perfume and with every name I choose. The names of the perfumes of my house perpetuate a dialogue with this woman...Death is very present in our conversation, but it never has a sad aspect."

Lutens ends his text with a poem, which I quote in the original French text:

La mort, c'est gai, la mort,
c'est aussi une femme.
Une femme qui vient me dire bonjour.
Elle est tres élégante.
Elle est immortelle.
Elle a de beaux jours devant elle.

And now a discussion from a feminist point of view would certainly not be unexciting.... - rarely has a perfumer so clearly and openly declared his basic theme: "Cherchez la femme!"