Efemmeral

One of three fragrances in the new Explosions d'Emotions collection by Bertrand Duchaufour for L'Artisan Parfumeur, Skin on Skin is a lovely scent. I have no explosions to confess, however.

This fragrance is intended to capture the contact of one person's skin with another's in a tumble of sex and passion, a "wanton embrace" says the ad copy. 

Perhaps the first clue that I should not expect anything too raunchy or abandoned is in the image chosen to represent the scent. The naked man and woman are posed in a stagey and disengaged embrace, she gazing into the middle distance, nary a hair out of place, lips pursed and one eyebrow arched. His gaze is on her, but not in a hungry way that suggests he's reading her moans and palpitations to guide or ride with her to the heights of passion, rather he gazes in a way that indicates his focus on her is as a plinth on which to display his biceps to best advantage… but the fragrance?

Let us spray…

My first impression is dry and dark: there's a slightly bitter saffron and a woody whisky. Also there from first spray is a lovely leather and suede that bring to mind the lived-in, body-warmed, and slightly sweaty saffron and leather of Etat Libre d'Orange Tom of Finland. 

As the prominence of all these initially assertive notes settles to form the base of the scent, the heart emerges, more puff than pulse and pump. On me there is a plush and powdery iris and a cloud of the sweet cosmetic violet rose so familiar to me from L'Artisan's own Drôle de Rose. My skin amplifies this rose, it continues sweet, prominent and persistent, but this was not so for other wearers who strained to detect rose on their skin. A shy line of lavender also weaves through, the deep and sweet purple floral of a Hidcote lavender, nothing camphorous or fresh. As the scent wears, an impression also comes of the rich sweetness of thick cream, a hint of vanilla egg custard and a clean powdered sugar. Perhaps these are the "skin effects" listed amongst the notes. 

For me the fragrance evokes feelings of comfort and care. Rather than a "wanton embrace", Skin on Skin evokes a shorthand contact between long term partners. It distills the adventures and mishaps of their lives together, but is exchanged at leisure in a time of peace, prosperity and safety. More corporate than corporeal, this scent brushes the back of a hand on the beloved's forearm, making a brief private connection in a public space. Darling… together… we… I adore you.

In Skin on Skin, all the elements are there from the beginning. They shift and settle, bloom and fade but it's all there at first spray. It's elegant, well composed, attractive. It speaks of affluence. Its personality is not strong enough to exclude it from any situation. It wears close, and although the rose was more radiant on me than others, it is not a diffusive scent. Staying power is good.

This collection of three new fragrances for L'Artisan gleam like jewels in their bigger, squatter bottles, with bigger, scarier pricetags. For Skin on Skin it's a like and admire for me so far, and I am motivated to give it a good few more wearings. 

Go in peace,
Sister Mary Magdelene, Patron Saint of Perfumers.

(re-blogged from Australian Perfume Junkies)

Ethyl Maltol. In such concentrations that my poor unsophisticated olfactory apparatus shuts down and won't register anything else.

Oh dear, I feel like a doddery old fool insisting I don't understand the music the kids are listening to.

AND they play it too loud. ;-) 

I shall persist. I shall not accept perfume generation gap. I'm sure that fault lies with me. Surely the youth of today know what's what? 

All self deprecation aside, I can pick a sweet sweet orange oil and something quite violet-like, maybe even a hint of violet leaf. There's something long, cool and pepperminty. Nose against the skin the effect is very sticky and syrupy, the sillage more ethereal - like the breath of someone who's popped a strong mint and a violet pastille in their mouth at once, savoured and then rinsed with raspberry cordial. I'm persisting... I have to try so hard with it to get something beyond the confectioners' sugar.

Just as it's hard to get to know anything beyond the superficial when talking with someone who's the life of the party, so it is with this: carapaced with a sugary floss that acts as shield and armour protecting complexity of personality.

Maybe that's the post-modern point. Scent is analogous to the in-public face we wear. It's meant to be a show, a façade. We save our real self (as is proper and special) for our intimates. What scent does the Angel girl wear at home?

Six hours in there's something pretty, spicy and powdery going on. Egoiste for teenage girls. With. Sugary. Floss.

How successfully this scent achieves its aim. I would not be at all displeased if a young person of my acquaintance favoured this scent. And I am grateful to it for being such a fine example of its kind that I learned a thing or two.

Like the flight of an albatross, this one. Such heavy molecules to become airborne - and it’s an effort - but after some lumbering along the ground and some ungainly flapping it finds my thermals and flies!

And there it is, aloft. Gliding for what seems an unreasonable time, this beauty is such a resolved whole it seems that evolutionary forces are responsible in bringing about an entity so fit for its purpose.

Its purpose? To soar. That it brings me pleasure through its being seems an irrelevant aside to its joyous existence. Certainly not all its aspects are uncomplicated or simply pleasing, but there is much simple pleasure herein. It rises far above mere prettiness; I would certainly not call it accessible.

That I am by turns and simultaneously aware of the details and the whole is a brilliant work of balance. I am aware of an effortless grace, of a creaminess, of a softness, of an intimate warm animal smell, of a distant elegance. From some angles I see that extraordinary wingspan, if I turn my head I catch the beaked profile or the curve of primary feathers, the tucked webbed feet that indicate this bird can (but doesn’t often) come to ground or water.

Always it appears a live, breathing thing. In scent, something like the smell of sweat on my skin after sweet debauchery.

A creation that brings me to tears with its sheer magnificence.

Wearing this scent I am a 1950s librarian in a specialist collection of rare natural history books. I walk amongst waxed wooden shelves where clouds of vanillic lignin exhale from the pages of leather bound volumes. There’s a hint of ancient adhesives, and glosses from the glorious illustrated plates. This stuff reeks of knowledge. With such marvelous scent commingling I feel comfortable, sexy, in control. Best worn with a vintage suit and catseye glasses, and with a readiness to “shhhhh”, but somehow no one has yet had the temerity to speak above a whisper.

Whip crackingly good.

This is my soul's scent in the way that Arvo Pärt plays my soul's music.

Here I am laid bare: spartan resilient resins, warm generous vanilla, spare beautiful florals flying out beyond prettiness. This vibrates celestial, best viewed from the perspective of 10,000 feet.

Whereas I remain endlessly curious for other scents, they are just that: other. They beckon with the intrigue of difference, the enchantments of conversation, the beguilements of beauty - the jar, seduction and stimulus of traits not native.

Here is my essence, my effortless source.

The silence between my heartbeats.