10/14/2023
Marieposa
33 Reviews
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Marieposa
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Gas lantern nights in sepia
In the light of the gas lantern, my blurry shadow fuzzes on the cobblestones. The sounds of the day have long since faded - the rattle of streetcars mixed with the clatter of hooves and the occasional rattle of an engine. Looking up at the night sky, I watch the fog flocculate into tiny crystals. They settle on my forehead like delicate powder. A whiff of my perfume rises from my warm coat, garden carnation, vanilla, and a hint of rough grasses. The bag in my hand is still brand new. Soft black leather. Matching the shoes with the small heel and the strap. I had to save up for it for a long time. My hair is damp from dancing and night air coolly hits the run in my art silk stockings. In the sleeve of my coat the long satin glove has slipped down a little. The lining lays it cool and smooth on my upper arms.
I wait for the sound of your footsteps on the empty street, but muffled by distance, I can only hear echoes of music, voices, and laughter as I slipped out the door, leaving nothing but a rosewood-colored lipstick rim on my whiskey glass. In my mind, you put your arm around my waist like that night when we trudged through the snow accompanied by the lights of the big city, snacking on glazed chestnuts from the pretty box with the velvety bow.
Whether you will follow me, I do not know. But maybe it does not matter at all. The moment is mine. The night is mine.
**
Wearing Tabac Blonde always feels to me a little like looking at my own face in sepia from an old family album - framed perhaps by a short water wave, as was fashionable in the 1920s, and with a restrained smile in heavily made-up eyes that contradicts serious lips.
Something about this fragrance is so incredibly close to me, corresponds to me so much, and yet this is not me, not my time, rather an illusion of a yesterday that probably never existed. And already arise image in my head of this woman in flapper dress, which I could have been under different circumstances, at a different time and whose fragrance now always accompanies me for a day.
When Ernest Daltroff composed Tabac Blond in 1919 in extrait form for Caron, the house wanted to make a reference to "the new woman", which was characterized by emancipation and independence. Symbolic of this for Caron and Tabac Blond was "the smoking woman." A tribute to women (and their daughters) who had ensured that the social and economic system did not completely collapse during the First World War and who had to support a whole generation of physically and mentally damaged men after the war. No wonder, then, that these women fought for their right to vote, refused to be deprived of the opportunity to be educated and to pursue a profession, and went beyond the boundaries of common norms in their leisure activities - which included smoking in public. Accordingly, it is of course just as ridiculous to reduce the type of new woman of the time to smoking, drinking party girls as it is to assume that Tabac Blond is a simple tobacco fragrance.
The eau de toilette is considerably younger than the extrait, and unfortunately I don't know exactly which decade my vintage bottling is from. It is a soft, powdery-floral leather fragrance whose ambery base may have inspired Knize Ten Toilet Water (1925), whereas the velvety iris can already be found in Chanel's Cuir de Russie Parfum in 1924. Clearly more defining for Tabac Blond, however, is the combination of leather and garden carnation, which is more transparent and delicate in the EdT than in the other versions and allows this very own blend of vanilla and smoky, nutty purring vetiver to shine through more strongly, which in turn was taken up and perfected by Molinard in 1924 in Habanita (1924) Eau de Toilette. In Tabac Blond, it acts more as a link to transition to Caronade, that typical dark-amber, creamy base that smells a bit like glazed chestnuts and that links all the old Caron fragrances together.
Although the EdT version is more delicate than its sisters, with the powdery-floral aspects a bit more prominent and leaving room for additional facets, it still retains the signature blend of creamy leather, nutty-mossy Caronade and smoldering darkness that makes Tabac Blond so unique.
Dear Trollo, thank you so much for always so generously sharing your vintage treasures with us so that I could get to know this beauty.
I wait for the sound of your footsteps on the empty street, but muffled by distance, I can only hear echoes of music, voices, and laughter as I slipped out the door, leaving nothing but a rosewood-colored lipstick rim on my whiskey glass. In my mind, you put your arm around my waist like that night when we trudged through the snow accompanied by the lights of the big city, snacking on glazed chestnuts from the pretty box with the velvety bow.
Whether you will follow me, I do not know. But maybe it does not matter at all. The moment is mine. The night is mine.
**
Wearing Tabac Blonde always feels to me a little like looking at my own face in sepia from an old family album - framed perhaps by a short water wave, as was fashionable in the 1920s, and with a restrained smile in heavily made-up eyes that contradicts serious lips.
Something about this fragrance is so incredibly close to me, corresponds to me so much, and yet this is not me, not my time, rather an illusion of a yesterday that probably never existed. And already arise image in my head of this woman in flapper dress, which I could have been under different circumstances, at a different time and whose fragrance now always accompanies me for a day.
When Ernest Daltroff composed Tabac Blond in 1919 in extrait form for Caron, the house wanted to make a reference to "the new woman", which was characterized by emancipation and independence. Symbolic of this for Caron and Tabac Blond was "the smoking woman." A tribute to women (and their daughters) who had ensured that the social and economic system did not completely collapse during the First World War and who had to support a whole generation of physically and mentally damaged men after the war. No wonder, then, that these women fought for their right to vote, refused to be deprived of the opportunity to be educated and to pursue a profession, and went beyond the boundaries of common norms in their leisure activities - which included smoking in public. Accordingly, it is of course just as ridiculous to reduce the type of new woman of the time to smoking, drinking party girls as it is to assume that Tabac Blond is a simple tobacco fragrance.
The eau de toilette is considerably younger than the extrait, and unfortunately I don't know exactly which decade my vintage bottling is from. It is a soft, powdery-floral leather fragrance whose ambery base may have inspired Knize Ten Toilet Water (1925), whereas the velvety iris can already be found in Chanel's Cuir de Russie Parfum in 1924. Clearly more defining for Tabac Blond, however, is the combination of leather and garden carnation, which is more transparent and delicate in the EdT than in the other versions and allows this very own blend of vanilla and smoky, nutty purring vetiver to shine through more strongly, which in turn was taken up and perfected by Molinard in 1924 in Habanita (1924) Eau de Toilette. In Tabac Blond, it acts more as a link to transition to Caronade, that typical dark-amber, creamy base that smells a bit like glazed chestnuts and that links all the old Caron fragrances together.
Although the EdT version is more delicate than its sisters, with the powdery-floral aspects a bit more prominent and leaving room for additional facets, it still retains the signature blend of creamy leather, nutty-mossy Caronade and smoldering darkness that makes Tabac Blond so unique.
Dear Trollo, thank you so much for always so generously sharing your vintage treasures with us so that I could get to know this beauty.
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