Of course, I now humbly eat my some of my harsh words above on sweet scents, with a review that surprised me as it may do some of you. The unexpected allure of India:
Kenzo Kenzo Jungle L'Elephant
This isn't the elephant in the room, nor is this the giant mammal in the jungle.
This beast commands the street, has its own palace and parades in splendour around the temple at the time of the festival.
This is the ceremonial Indian elephant. The Kerala pachyderm. Dressed up with somewhere to go.
From the very start of the proceedings the impression is overwhelming and impossible to ignore.
As if her enormous vanillic mass: metres high, tall and wide, were not enough there are her spiced up personal effects. The ornaments and adornments of our lady of Guruvayur.
Golden head shields - nettipattam - glistening with clove oil. Bells and necklaces studded with mandarins and nectarines rendered in amber.
Atop her convex back the mahouts, her faithful attendants perch precariously holding silk parasols aloft - muttukuda - embroidered with the perfume of ylang ylang, gardenia and heliotrope.
Swaying white tufts - vencamaram - and peacock feather fans - alavattam - slice the air with scents of cardamon, caraway and cumin all to the rhythm of an ambulant orchestra.
This is chaos transubstantiated into communal devotion. Personified in the glimmering deities some sons and daughters of the sahya carry on their circumnavigations.
This is spectacle beyond considerations of taste and and the partialities of prickly western palettes.
This is, like the sub-continent itself, a vast sensuous vista of the sacredness and vulgarity of existence laid out like a feast.
This is a moment to put aside discernment and discretion.
This is a time only for surrender.
***
A great fashion editor once remarked that 'pink is the navy blue of India'. So Kenzo's Jungle L'Elephant, for all I know, may be the eau de cologne of the sub-continent.
What to our noses is a great, brash, bold statement of sweet and spicy intent, may well seem as commonplace as cirise in a country where cardamon and cumin are mere condiments.
This is not a fragrance for the feint hearted, no caution has been exercised in the deployment of great discordant symphonies of notes from mandarin, clove and caraway atop the stave through a middle section of exotic flowers to dirty sweet vanilla made darker with patchouli and saltier by amber in the base.
It would be easy to dismiss this scent as mad self indulgence put together with a poverty of ideas.
How wrong. This incredibly amiable animal works to its own higher intelligence and a logic that is not circumscribed by notions of 'neatness' and 'politesse'.
Catch it while you can for it may soon be sadly extinct.
And on the question of gender?
I believe many of the pantheon of Hindu gods have neither sex, or both.
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Apologies all.
I seem to be experiencing on going problems posting to the forum at the moment - I'm not sure if this is just reflective of wider issues .
Following yesterday's vote I've been wearing Paco Rabanne La Nuit today and will report back in shortly.
Coming up now today's review and poll...
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Well, it's a game of contrasts here, at the opposite end of the scale from yesterday's sweet-natured animal, it's now time to meet a real beast:
Clinique Aromatics Elixir
No one was actually sure if she was actually British at all.
It might just have been that she was bossy, boozy, a bit of an intellectual bully and bloody bizarre.
What everyone knew was that the tweed wearing battleaxe had definitely worked across the pond as a biochemist or arboriculturist, well something botanical, anyhow.
And if you dared ask her about that smell that stood five feet before her it was so bold, she'd reply 'Brewers' Yeast: for the vitamin B. Keeps everything ticking along under the bonnet'. Which apparently was British: meaning the engine under the hood was running okay.
But you know, all the same, the accent wasn't right: more Bryn Mawr than Blighty if you ask me.
There was definitely still a little of that lab about her though, some people said she experimented to this day in an outbuilding round the back, away from prying eyes.
Yep, it definitely wasn't just the sour fragrance of fermentation, there was a sort of organo-chemical kick that she carried along with her too. I don't know, maybe asparagus maybe the smell of passing water after eating asparagus. Either way it was an unwieldy sort of a waft.
She'd bought the farmstead up near the woods, a damp spot nobody else much took a liking too, because it reminded her of that unspecified 'home' of hers.
She lived self-sufficiently after a fashion, collecting wood for the fire, scrapping off the bitter moss and leaving the fuel to dry in an old barn. Sometimes as winter approached and it got too wet up there for safe storage, she made her own charcoal to see herself through the cold months.
She never asked a soul for help.She relied on no one except herself.
Her garden was immaculate, her pride and joy, but she kept nothing she couldn't eat, or so she joked.
All the same a woman who took eggs and the like up from the village, her only concession to community, and was the nearest thing to a friend she had said there were often cut flowers - carnations or geraniums mostly, always red (like the out of joint lipstick she wore, sometimes mainly on her teeth) - in a plain vase on the bare table in the cold kitchen, where hearth and stove were rarely lit.
Over chamomile or sage tea she gave nothing much away to her confidant, apart from that infamous aroma (deepened inside by the patchouli oil she burnt. Only that when she went off in that station wagon of hers it was to teach science at some delinquent school across in the next county.
They only called her in when things were really bad.
'Never blame the children' she said 'it's always the parents, that's why they are, we all are, as we are'.
'They get me when the adults need the fright of God put in them more than the kids do'.
She smiled knowingly and sighed.
'The good Lord knows the smell of me would scare most people in this state from fifty feet out'.
***
Aromatics Elixir is one of the most disgustingly delectable fragrances ever committed to scent.
Everything is absolutely wrong with it.
It is too sharp, too bitter, too sage, too hard.
It has too much oakmoss, too much darkness in the patchouli, a too chemical edge to the aldehydes and too much dirty wood smoke.
Too much everything and then some.
It really is the tough spinster with a terrible past who lives on the hill.
But it is unspeakably wonderful at exactly the same time.
It works precisely because it shouldn't.
Just as according to the rules of physics the bumble bee shouldn't fly so according to the teachings perfumery this fragrance should never take flight, and yet the scent soars.
Rules 0. The Clinique All Star Bumble Bees 2.
Oh and as for the regulations concerning men's and women's perfume? Late goal. Anyone with a personality as big as this bold old gal has earned the right to fill a room with it.
I make that a three nil win for Bees and Elixirs.
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It's just before midnight, London. The lines are closed. Voting is over.
Tomorrow, Wednesday 6th February, she storms out in front, I'll be wearing....
Dior Dioressence
What will I wear Thursday 7th February? Choose from the following 10:
Bvlgari Eau Parfumee au The Rouge
Dolce&Gabbana D&G Anthology La Roue de La Fortune 10
Estée Lauder Sensuous
Dior Dior Addict
Estée Lauder Knowing
Gucci Gucci by Gucci
Dior Diorissimo
Caron En Avion
Caron Parfum Sacre
Or the newcomer... completing a trilogy...
Caron Narcisse Noir
Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!
You have just under 24 hours... starting now.
The next review is on it's way shortly.
In the meantime you can still catch my thoughts on...
Clinique Aromatics Elixir
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Well, perhaps it's a reaction to the brutal bitterness of yesterday's review perfume or maybe I'm just developing a sweet tooth, anyhow after a long delay I'm pleased to say 'Enter The Dragon'...
Cartier Le Baiser Du Dragon
She needed to forget Paris.
To put the diamond business behind her, pack her bags and pack away all thoughts of hard rocks, hard cash and most of all hard business men with their hard, hard hearts.
What better place could there be for a doomed lover than Verona? At least she wasn't dead she thought, that was something she had on that pair.
Yes, it was a trade fair, but as her boss had said - this was Italy, it was bound to be more fair than trade.
Then the dates came through. Who holds a jewellery fair in Verona on St Valentine's weekend?
The Italians apparently.
She wanted to cancel, but the tickets were bought and she didn't want another ticking off from on high. Her star was low and falling at work, she wasn't on her game they said, since, you know, since the split.
She arrived at Venice airport in a failing mood and the coldest winter the Veneto had known in a generation.
Her rooms were pretty but chilly and summer-ready sparse. Outside the air was so cold that her breath froze in it and the wind so sharp that it cut through her cashmere layers of comfort.
All she did was shuttle to and from the exhibition halls and her hotel, eating on the hoof or at home, drinking too much red wine too late at night. At the show, she could muster no sparkle to match the precious stones, no gleam to glisten and gloss deals as she would have done before.
Except, at one stand, where something of her lustre returned. A local craftsman presided, only here by means of patronage to promote the city's produce.
Here was an artisan, tanned even in the off season, with thick hands and thicker hair, shining even where it greyed at the temples. He spoke softly and tried to sell her nothing. And yet he had the only thing she wished to buy: a small golden broach in the shape of a dragon's head, encrusted with rubies and diamonds that gave its skin an immaculate sheen.
She must have returned to the see the dragon a dozen times, not asking once how much it cost, it was sure to be too much to treat herself.
At the end of Saturday's session she went back for a final fleeting farewell. The stand was packed away, the dragon and its master had disappeared.
Inside she felt as though she should weep, but didn't know why.
Resolving to walk back, whatever the weather would throw at her, she passed by the Old Castle high up on the hill and in its lea next to the river a ristorante, warm lights lit within.
Without thinking she went in. After the heat it was the scent that struck her first and then the thought that she hadn't worn perfume the whole trip, she never forgot fragrance.
Here was a warm cloud of gourmand steam. Of honey glazed meats roasting, and behind the soft yielding flesh a haze of the pastry chef's creation: gently bubbling caramels, melting dark chocolate preparing to fall onto choux buns, almond tartlets just crisping in the wood oven.
Lunch had finished, but she was welcome to take a seat and wait for the dinner service. She looked around her at thick silk wall hangings, crystal chandeliers and aged dark wood paneling and was about to decline her place amongst such luxuries.
She opened her mouth to speak and a voice, not hers, emerged up from behind a smoked glass partition, a head followed: it was the jewellery maker.
'But you must stay, dinner's not far away and the wine is good'.
He persuaded her into a seat, saying good bye at the same time to his colleagues from the business council.
She needed something to stave off hunger. He ordered biscotti di Prato and vin santo, apologising that she should be starting her meal at the end.
In his company she unfurled, she opened up to the warmth of his conversation. He ordered Amaretto with more playful apologies and cantuccini biscuits for the both of them.
The afternoon became a honeyed, slightly intoxicated evening.
She felt safe enough at last to ask.
'What happened to the broach? The dragon's...'
The jewel appeared.
'The Dragon's Kiss? It's here. I kept it for you'.
***
A wonderfully romantic fragrance with the savour and scent of Northern Italy, Baiser Du Dragon, is, like the best love affairs sensuous and consoling in equal measure.
The opening thrill, a mix of boozy Amaretto and sweet flaked almonds stays in place for the whole relationship.
As time passes and the affair solidifies into something more concrete the composition gains a rich wooden form with some patchouli that softer notes of caramel, dark chocolate and sweet amber can be draped on.
Though gourmand, the whole effect is sweet but not syrupy, comforting rather than cloying.
This is a nurturing, nourishing passion that smoulders with a soft intensity for a long while.
The eternal question? Man or woman?
Surely in matters of the heart we are all lovers.
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It's just after midnight, London. The lines are closed. Voting is over.
Today, Thursday 7th February, after a day of much conversation and controversy a winner with no votes, I'll be wearing....
Dior Dior Addict
What will I wear Thursday 7th February? Choose from the following 10:
Bvlgari Eau Parfumee au The Rouge
Dolce&Gabbana D&G Anthology La Roue de La Fortune 10
Estée Lauder Sensuous
Estée Lauder Knowing
Gucci Gucci by Gucci
Dior Diorissimo
Caron En Avion
Caron Parfum Sacre
Caron Narcisse Noir
Or the newcomer...
Serge Lutens Feminite du Bois
Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!
You have just under 24 hours... starting now.
The next review is on it's way shortly.
