What perfume or fashion habits have you picked up from your mother or grandmother?

“My grandmother will not leave the house without perfect hair and perfect makeup and her splash of perfume,” explained actress Natalie Portman about her “new mom” fashion style. Portman always seems to be well-put together and elegant. Her photos in fashion magazines usually appear in the best-dressed, rather than fashion disaster columns. Still, I liked the quote and the accompanying photos of the movie star in a trench coat and black pumps.

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I have to thank my reader Jill for helping me discover the vintage perfume gem that is Nicky Verfaillie Grain de Sable. Jill contacted me to add a couple of fragrances to the Long Lost Favorite Perfume series I started to run on Fridays, and Grain de Sable was one of them.  “I had never smelled anything like it then, and I still pine for it,” explained Jill.  As it turns out, she keeps company with Luca Turin in her love for Grain de Sable. Luca called it an “obscure masterpiece” in his NZZ Folio article, and it was to him that I turned for help.

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In a Wall Street Journal article Frédéric Malle Finds the Perfect Chemistry the founder of Editions de Parfums talks about his attention to quality, love for New York’s Central Park and Friday night routines.

What’s your Friday routine like?

I might go to the movies if there is anything interesting. I try to see very good movies. I am an absolute sucker for the very stupid American comedies. I could have seen “Bridesmaids” two times. So I go very low. But on the other hand I love the genre noir. My oldest son is now trying to earn his living making movies. Since he was 5 years old, we have gone to the cinema together. I recently saw “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” with him. I thought it was very well-made.

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Smoky leather and green jasmine… The first time I smelled Coty Chypre I was startled by its wistful aura. For months before Chypre and I finally met I had fantasized about how dramatic and roughhewn it must have been to simultaneously set a new trend and to shock its contemporaries. But as I discovered, Chypre is alluring and harmonious, if not exactly well-behaved. I fell hard for its dark leather accord, which I subsequently spotted in Chanel Cuir de Russie, enjoyed in Robert Piguet Bandit and mourned in the reformulated Parfums Gres Cabochard. Finding Knize Ten is a flashback to the first time I dabbed a few dark drops of Chypre on my wrist and discovered that leather can be devastatingly seductive.

Knize Ten was created in 1924—just seven years after Chypre—by François Coty and Vincent Roubert, and it isn’t surprising that someone who loves the early 20^th century perfumes would be taken by it as well. (A perfume lab rumor is that Ernest Beaux also was involved, which makes Knize Ten one of the best collaborative efforts.) More unexpected is how well this gem has weathered the past century. Today the fragrances are reformulated on what seems to be a daily basis, and anything older than a year is likely to be altered. Knize Ten, however, has managed to survive more or less intact. As I’m writing this review, I have the current Eau de Toilette on one wrist and the 1950s formulation on another. The new version is wonderful.

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Reading The Perfume Lover by Denyse Beaulieu, the author of Grain de Musc, I felt as if I were following her on two big journeys. One was a personal journey into a lifelong fascination with perfume, and another into capturing the memories of a specific experience in perfume form. On the surface, it sounds easy—just tell a talented perfumer your story and let your scented memories unfold. However, I suspected that it may not have been all that straightforward. The language of perfume is subjective and elusive. What seems like a clear idea in your mind can be hard to grasp for other people. The most interesting part of The Perfume Lover is that despite these difficulties Denyse and perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour were able to pull together a beautiful and memorable fragrance. So, I asked Denyse to share with us how her book The Perfume Lover and her perfume Séville à l’aube, which will be launched by L’Artisan Parfumeur in July, came together.

by Denyse Beaulieu

“The pleasurable byproduct of wow.”  That’s how the legendary music critic Greil Marcus defines his writing. And since I started out as a jailbait rock critic during the punk era, whatever Greil Marcus says is all right with me. In fact, “the pleasurable byproduct of wow” strikes me as the best definition for both The Perfume Lover and Séville à l’aube. Bertrand Duchaufour’s wow came when I told him the story that inspired him to compose the fragrance. My wow was not only that he actually wanted to create a perfume based on my story, but that he allowed me to capture his creative process into words.

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