In 1913, everything was for the best. Europe looked back on a glorious past and a bright future. Culture was at its peak, technology was developing at a dizzying pace: cars, airships, aeroplanes, electric trams, radio technology. What poverty still existed would soon be eliminated by economic growth, which had been unbroken and highly dynamic for decades. Disease would soon be conquered by advances in medicine and hygiene. There had not been a truly major war in Europe for nearly a hundred years. Certainly something flared up here and there, and certainly general staffs planned through all contingencies. But certainly no one would allow anything so old-fashioned-crazy as a war. After all, one was no longer living in the days of Napoleon! Pulsating trade and burgeoning industry linked the great metropolises of Europe, luxury trains shot back and forth at top speeds between Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, and those who used them First Class spent their days and nights, no matter what country they were in, in the latest Grand Hotels with French chefs and unheard-of amenities like electric lights and flush toilets. The whole world was European, and if there were countries outside Europe that might rival Europe in a hundred or two hundred years, China or Japan perhaps, it would be precisely to the extent that they would be able to appropriate European science, education, and culture.
Fine-nerved observers could see the cracks, contradictions, tensions, and chasms. The rising tide of nationalism everywhere; ideological racism and anti-Semitism; a lack of women's suffrage almost everywhere; a harsher repression of homosexuality than in the Arab world; workers without rights; unresolved nationality issues everywhere: not only in the Tsardom and Austria-Hungary, but also in Britain, which at that time still included all of Ireland (which was beginning to fight for independence). Then there were the huge armaments efforts, with the development of ever more lethal weapons; the cruelties and exploitation in the colonies, poorly concealed behind phrases of civilising mission. But there was probably almost no one who was not sure or hopeful that these underlying tensions could be defused, under the banner of enlightenment, progress, reform, reason, and science.
It was not enough to be a pessimist in 1913 to foresee in that splendid, vigorous year that it was already to be the summit year of the European world, a tipping, lastling, and turning year. One had to be a true apocalyptic to foresee even a hint of the whirlpool of self-destruction, the shrieking delirium into which the continent was to sink for the next forty years, how it would not be able to stop unleashing its energies, which had become immeasurably great, against itself to the point of fatal exhaustion.
As I love Europe, I often think of what it might look like today had the course been set in a different direction in 1913. If it hadn't been for the fact that the European economy didn't regain the strength of 1913 until the 1960s - trains in Europe, by the way, never regained the speed of 1913 on many lines. If all those who perished on the battlefields and in the camp hells, all those who went mad or were maimed, who had to emigrate, if instead they could have gone on loving, learning, dreaming, bearing children and working in Edinburgh, Metz, Königsberg, Thessaloniki and Kharkiv until they died full of life.
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Violette Précieuse, the precious violet, appeared in the Caron house in 1913. What its formula was originally, how the corsetted ladies and twisted-mustachioed gentlemen felt when this fragrance came to their noses, I do not know. Caron re-edited a fragrance of that name in 2017, which even the Parfumo editors couldn't figure out if it was based on the original fragrance or just echoed its name. What surprised and saddened me is that this beautiful 2017-ish fragrance, which I thank Sniffsniff from the bottom of my heart for sampling, has also been discontinued already. Even after turning over the entire internet several times, I couldn't find any trace of an offer to buy fresh bottles of it anywhere.
Violette Précieuse is a radiantly bright, as it were from the inside intensely violet glowing fragrance, which, if you twist and turn it a little, but can also emblazon in a June, powerful (a bit unreal) light green. The scent is perfect harmony, classicist weightless balance. Crystal-clear notes of lily of the valley, violet and raspberry span a perfect triangle, a scent mirror on which no dust can settle. No hardness comes from the wood, only firmness and structure. From the musk no softness, but only the necessary fullness. Violette Précieuse is a cool fragrance, but not a cold one. It is simple, but anything but banal; it is nothing less than soulless, oh no! - but it is with the utmost precision.
What the fragrance has in common with 1913 is that it is arch-European: the best of classic Western fragrance tradition, firmly anchored florally. An Apollonian fragrance: sensible and optimistic. It has something of accomplishment and self-assurance, a long history behind it. From abysses and nervous exaggerations, from decadence he wants to know nothing.
In other respects, Violette Précieuse rather points ahead to the 1920s, which the bottle's beguilingly beautiful Art Deco (perhaps my favorite design era) is based on: the pursuit of brightness and clarity, the aversion to flourishes and ornamentation. To be sure, the fragrance isn't necessarily bob, cigarette holder and men's suit; it's still too classicist and traditionally feminine for that (though it can work on men). But even less is he corset. What is it then? The perfect fragrance to go with the feathered browband and sexy Charleston dress of 1923. Or perhaps, after all, the elegant nudity of the Little Mermaid set up in 1913.
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