Valrahmeh

When I was sick as a child, we always went to Dr. Landau. He had a small practice at the Blvd de Courcelles, and from his waiting room you could see the Parc Monceau. I always found this particularly interesting, especially because of the children playing. But we never waited long, because Dr. Landau was already almost 70 years old and only received friends and acquaintances, so that you could always get right to it. Dr. Landau came from Dresden, fled from the Nazis in 1938 and later finished his medical studies in Paris.

His French sounded strange, his German too, my father told us it was Saxon. While a French doctor has no problem writing his patients a whole bar of antibiotics and paracetamol booms on the prescription, Landau always relied on the "self-healing powers". My mother still can't pronounce the word.
Although my permanent disease was to house a streptococcus colony in my sinuses from October to April, Dr. Landau was unable to hunt these annoying beasts down with an antibiotic. He prescribed mud packs and inhalations. Including a product called Pérubore.

One dissolved a bubble tablet Pérubore in hot water, got a towel over the head and had to inhale the vapours. Pérubore smelled for me as a child gentle and powdery after a vanilla, exotic tree from a distant magic forest of the Incas.
I couldn't get enough of it and inhaled it at least twice a day. It had, as it was written on the package, a high percentage of Peru balsam. Not that I knew anything about it, but the exotic word Peru balsam, the creamy vanilla balsam scent and my leisure hours under a dark towel condensed into a pleasantly tired and soft childhood memory.

I later bought Pérubore and was horrified: the soft bubbling tablets were replaced by soft capsules containing a piercing lavender eucalyptus oil, horrible.

My beloved Pérubore seemed lost forever.

Until recently, at the Bouteille perfumery in Cannes, an advertising lady from Atelier des Ors gave me a splash of Lune féline. I thought I'd be catapulted at the speed of light to Dr. Landau and my inhalations.
But what I smelled was even finer, more intense and even really elegant. My already gentle, sweet children's Peru balsam was ennobled with excellent vanilla, rounded off with wood and some cinnamon.

I have grown up long ago - and my Pérubore has grown with me and is now called Lune féline.

It is still a gentle, tired, soft fragrance, but at the same time it has something very precious and elegant about it, which is probably due to the wood. Something dark, quiet, emanates from him, only I am no longer sitting under the towel, but under the starry tent, it is warm and there is no breeze. It could be in the quiet villa of a French plantation owner in Indochina, I swing quietly in a hammock, from the upper floor a light smell of opium blows over, which connects with the smell of Styrax from the small Buddha altar on the ground floor.

It may be that a cat looks out from behind the bushes on the banks of the Mekong, in whose eyes the moonlight is reflected.

Actually, I only wanted to buy the diptyque candle "Maquis" on Saturday, when my favourite perfumery "Guide me oh thou great redeemer" was drumming at me. All of a sudden I realized: I had gotten into the wedding of Meghan and Harry. The perfumery ladies had stopped working and stuck in front of an I-pad stuck between Sisley lipsticks.
Only one elderly lady I know turned to me: "I have often met Princesse Grace of Monaco in my life," she said, "that was a different league.
Since no one paid attention to us, she stuffed two handfuls of luxury samples with my candle, "for the summer," she said conspiratorially. And Sunshine Women was there several times.
I've always wanted to try that. Would it suit Grace or Meghan more?
And why does it trigger so many emotions?

First of all, Sunshine Woman is an outstandingly handcrafted composition, which first in the second cycle, then in longer, precisely calculated time intervals, always puts a new twist on the parquet. First harmlessly citric-mandelious, then currant-vanilla, then the tobacco crawls out, then the whole thing combines with jasmine, patchouli to an overall picture.
And what's that supposed to mean?

I think it has to do with the dreams of a carefree life and the idea of a holiday paradise. For the cocktail on the Caribbean beach wind in the hair on the cruise ship woman type Sunshine Woman is certainly a revelation. And conjures up exactly this lightness in everyday life.

Since my childhood I have spent the beach days at Cap Ferrat or in Villefranche. During the high season, bathers lubricate themselves with sunscreen so much that streaks often form on the sea water in the afternoon. The united Pampe from Monoi Tahiti oil over L´Oréal to Lancaster on all bodies in my periphery smells rise, which are congruent in the harmony with Sunshine Women - all the more if under the parasol still smokes. In short, Sunshine Woman triggers my beach legs on the spot.

When I wore it on the weekend in the crowded bus in Nice, surrounded by mostly English tourists, it almost made me sick. I thought everyone had to smell it, think about rancid, leaked sunscreen and feel disgusted.
It wasn't like that. It's all just an idea in your head. Like most perfumes. I guess Meghan would look better than Grace. Grace could have worn it on Jamaica in 1955. But who knows?

The King is in Marly. He values the privacy of his pavilion when he can no longer bear the hustle and bustle of the courtiers and the constant complaining of the noble ladies in Versailles: Sire, it's pulling through the roof, Sire, it's raining through the windows, Sire, the firewood is too damp...Yes, yes, Versailles is a dump full of pitfalls and inadequacies.
Of course the king is not alone in Marly at the weekend, in smaller pavilions around him a selected company may accompany him. The nobles almost fought each other to come along, they held flowery begging tirades to get hold of a weekend pavilion near the king.

Unfortunately, it's only March, and it's cold. The King wants it to be summer. Everything has to listen to him, including nature. Le Nôtre is already pruning the park, La Quintinie the fruit and vegetables. Who makes March summer?
I want a greenhouse, screams the king, not just an orangery. I want it to smell in there. To oranges! To pears! For berries! I want bee hum and redcurrant jelly.

The nobles are frightened, Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie, directeur des jardins fruitiers et potagers des maisons royales, is the last hope. He has to come to Marly in the middle of the night with lots of orange trees, honey jars, fragrant jelly and wizened pears in his luggage. But he also brought some fresh fruit from his new greenhouse.

Gold, says a valet, gold must go with it. He's the king!
And so hundreds of oranges are hastily pressed in a pavilion at night, redcurrant jelly distributed everywhere in small bowls, gold tinsel placed in a cedar wood bowl, pear compote cooked with honey. A kitchen boy waggles a towel and mixes the smells. Now the king can come.

You blindfold him, he loves games like that. And then he enters the summer pavilion. A wave of fresh orange juice scent sloshes towards him, he is led around, tender honey notes join the orange juice, something soft caresses his nose, it is wood, it is wax, it is fresh pear compote....

When he tears the blindfold from his eyes, small gold particles fall down on him. Perfect, says the king, perfect. A truly royal summer day. I want to have the scent in a bottle.
Sire, says Baptiste de la Quintinie, that would challenge the gods. You can have an artificial summer day with gold tinsel if we work on it all night long. That's all I can do. Maybe in 350 years.

PS The small company "Atelier des Ors" is located in Marly. And the bottle is adorned with the symbol of the Sun King, including gold tinsel, even for bourgeois perfume junkies.

Calice Becker has put together many scents that give off a delicate tea aroma. I once read in an interview that Calice Becker comes from Russian parents and grew up "next to a samovar". And now I wanted to smell the tea of all the teas from the tea specialist.

So off to Tanagra in Nice. I had probably underestimated that even where wealthy Russian women throw their money on the counter, they don't sell a Kilian every day. The consultation was correspondingly engaging. After at least 30 minutes I went home with my head buzzing, a cloud of "Liaisons dangereuses" behind me and a bottle of Imperial Tea in my pocket.

No, I wouldn't buy Imperial Tea, the stuff smelled like a swollen tea bag that had been stretched too long and into which a lunatic had fired tons of jasmine blossoms.

Sprayed on again at home - and already I was of a different opinion.

Hmm, tea. Tea. Tea.

It's kind of elegant. Fancy, kind of classy. In my mind's eye, a few foot-mutilised, tripping servants appeared, handing the "Lord of the 10,000 Years" in the Forbidden City a wafer-thin porcelain bowl. With tea in it that smells the same. I wanted to smell like that, too. Rarely, but somehow every now and then. The fateful have-wanted reflex had set in.

And now I felt like the kind of woman who always gets the wrong man. Reason speaks, but you don't follow it, although you know exactly: It's not great, it takes me out, it's completely superfluous, I don't even really like it, I don't need it at all.

I still want him.

What can I say? I bought it. Since I had no desire to deliver myself again to the tirades of the saleswoman and to accept her embarrassing expressions of gratitude ("Ah, Madame, you have an exquisite taste" and to add in spirit: "No, I have not, I have rather a sock shot to buy for 200 euros this swamp broth") I ordered Imperial Tea over the Internet. Horrible... I know.

I have transported the stupid little box, which is lined inside with red polyester silk with the cheap key, all Talmi made in China, into the barrel.

The bottle, on the other hand, is ingenious, beautiful. So's the perfume. At least once in a while. It doesn't last long, smells like a swampy tea bag, doesn't change - and is completely superfluous. But I do think it's good that it decorates my collection. And it's easier to care for than the wrong guy.

Lipstick Rose is not a perfume, but a liquid memory. If you use this fragrance, you don't just want to smell good, you want to redeem a return ticket to your childhood. When Mama came back to the nursery in a roaring evening dress to kiss goodnight, saying, "Papa and I are going to the Verdurins tonight, Geneviève's taking care of you, I told her to give you a warm chamomile tea." And already the beautiful and noble mummy had scurried away to fulfil her social obligations in a Paris salon. And suddenly you're sitting alone on the bed, somehow empty, with a listless nanny who's already adding up tonight's expenses. And suddenly there floats, high above, like a chamber note, a single fragrance. Not Mama's penetrating "femme", but something waxy, rosy, tender... it was her lipstick, the expensive, soft, cyclamen-red pencil from Lancome, that now crawls into her nose. Mama hasn't completely disappeared, her lipstick smell has remained and looks familiar and comforting. And you put your head in the soft pillow, because mum will be back tomorrow, only her lipstick exudes so much certainty.

Oh, Lipstick Rose, your secret is the beeswax that has been mixed with rose, violet, some vanilla and the fleeting substance of memory to create a nostalgic, sticky and sometimes tiring odour paste. But in his own way, genius. Ralf Schwieger is a chemist who became an alchemist here. He has put together fleeting memories of his childhood or of his first own lipstick into a fabric that can be sprayed on his wrists. That's what you gotta do first.