Victoria: 2669 posts

The National Post ran an interesting article last week on perfume and literature. Perfumed prose: On finding fictional fragrance inspiration in a bottle reviews the recent crop of books where scents play an important role: Joanne Harris’s Peaches for Monsieur le Curé, Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People, Margot Berwin’s Scent of Darkness, and Kathleen Tessaro’s The Perfume Collector.

“Then as now, perfume marketing and press releases often read like fictions — fragrant flights of fancy constructed to capture the imagination with a good story. But olfactory auras around characters and plot also recur in literature, as seductive and suggestive alchemy of words and smells — from Ovid and Proust to Faulkner and Zola. To read the rest, please click here.”

One of my favorite novels in which scents influence the plot is Tom Robbins’s Jitterbug Perfume. It combines an intricate plot, humor and clever perfume references. Irresistible!

If you’ve read any of the novels mentioned in the article, how did you like them? Do you have any favorite works of fiction with a perfume twist?

Photography by ginnerobot, via Flickr, some rights reserved

As a young ballet student I used to bristle whenever people said, “oh, ballet, it’s so lovely and pretty,” after I had just danced in excruciating pain. Later, it dawned on me that a dancer has to make something difficult seem weightless and graceful. If you see a swan sweat and strain, then she didn’t succeed in her craft. Perhaps, that is the reason I look indulgently upon the prettiness of Repetto. It’s about a ballet fantasy of pink slippers, tutus and Sugar Plum fairies.

Repetto is a French company that successfully made the cross over from professional dance shoes to everyday ballet flats and much more. There is now a line of clothing, handbags, and of course, fragrance. Repetto perfume launched earlier this year retaining the same ethereal aesthetic of the brand. It even involved Dorothée Gilbert, a Paris Opera Ballet prima, to star in its campaign. You can see the lithe dancer spraying on Repetto as she gets ready to leave for her rehearsals. A few shots later she adds a generous spritz on her neck just as she’s stepping onto the scene.

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If London is your destination this summer, don’t miss the fascinating new exhibition titled Fashion Rules. Held at London’s Kensington Palace, it will allow visitors to take a peek at the royal wardrobes. From the gowns HM Queen Elizabeth II wore in the 1950s to the couture pieces of her sister Princess Margaret and Diana, Princess of Wales, it spans several generations of famous dresses.

“These three women were perhaps the most high-profile dressers of their time,” says the show’s curator, Cassie Davies-Strodder. “Whatever they wore was photographed by the international press and seen worldwide. The influence they had on fashion was bar none, and from a historical perspective, we felt it was critical to highlight that.”

The exhibit will featuring 21 couture dresses, in addition to film and photography. Notice the dress made for the Queen’s trip to Pakistan. Not only is the dress cut modestly, following the customs of the country, it uses the colors of the Pakistani flag. The only question that remains, what perfume did she wear?

Fashion Rules is open now through the summer of 2015 at Kensington Palace in London. For more information, please check hrp.org.

Methyl anthranilate probably doesn’t sound all that delicious to you, and if you were never friends with chemistry, it might seem downright scary. I promise not to give an organic chemistry lecture here, but please bear with me for a moment. Methyl anthranilate is both fascinating and mouthwatering–this molecule occurs naturally in some of the most fragrant fruit and flowers, from Concord grapes to orange blossom, from mandarins to gardenias. And also in tiny wild strawberries, fraises des bois.

Also known as woodland strawberries (Fragaria Vesca L.), they are only as big as your pinkie nail, but their flavor is so intense that a fistful of berries will perfume an entire room. They smell of caramel, orange flowers and muscat. When you taste them for the first time, you realize that this is what every strawberry flavor tries to imitate.

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“A poor man’s jasmine” is ylang-ylang‘s unfair moniker, but to me, it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Ylang-ylang essence, obtained from the fragrant flowers of the Cananga odorata tree, shares some facets with jasmine, but it’s even more dramatic. The icy cold top notes of wintergreen are contrasted with the apricot jam sweetness in the heart, and the whole smells more luscious than a flower is allowed to be.

Enter Diptyque Eau Moheli, which not only promises to give us a new ylang-ylang interpretation, but also features a refined new version of this classical perfume material. Several years ago, Givaudan, a company that manufactures fragrances as well as many of the raw materials used in flavor and fragrance blends, started a project on the island of Mohéli in the Comoros. The quality of commercial ylang-ylang oil has declined over the years, and the idea behind Moheli’s project was to regenerate the production of ylang-ylang. The result was a high-grade essence, with nothing poor about it.

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