Perfume Pilgrim

For all those who couldn’t make it to the V&A this evening in London, I took copious notes for you and here is a brief summary of this wonderful lecture that Roja Dove gave. He ended his speech with a reverie of when he first realised the ”beauty of perfume,”  which he describes as “bottles of magical liquid.”

As a small child, he recalls his mother wore a gorgeous gold lame dress one evening and perfume which metamorphosed her into a “Goddess“. As she lent over to kiss him goodnight he remembered the scent of her face powder and perfume.

Interspersed with the powerpoint presentation and riveting talk, out came rare eye candy bottles. We were also handed scent strips by helpful assistants, inviting us to “synchronized sniffing.” This was a well prepared treatise on the history of fragrance starting with the meaning of per fumen, which refers to smoke. Six thousand years ago we were burning wood resins as a sacrifice to carry our prayers to the Gods, uniting heaven and earth. Most religions still burn incense, even if we don’t all know why. Frankincense and Myrrh were precious commodities traded far and wide. Still today the best luban comes from groves  owned by the Sultanate of Oman.

Kyphi was a fragrance found in the tomb of Tutankhamen and  previously, Dove had been invited to Japan to study the impact of some of the fragrances on the brain. Some did indeed had a sophomoric effect. He joked about giving six minutes for a 6000 year history of perfume, and then moved to Georgian England, when the sign of perfumery was the emblem of the civet cat. We understood from his description that some English gentlemen wore pure civet. ( phewi, my words but he used “feral and schatalogical”) Onwards to the early 20th Century looking at the first clothing designers who added perfume as gifts for their customers. Some of the designers he discussed included Poiret, Chanel, Jean Patou, Shiaparelli and her fragrance Shocking (with some anecdotes about underwear, honey and civet…), Rochas and Balmain.

Prior to Chanel becoming famous she sang and begged in bars. One of her favourite songs was about her dog called Coco and that is how she acquired  her nickname. We heard how Chanel no 5 had an accidental overdose of aldehyde, (which are actually a refraction made from the refinement of petrol) which caused the fragrance to sparkle and shimmer like no other perfume prior to that. From behind a large box he whipped out a super precious and rare box containing all of Chanel’s first perfume releases. Throughout the talk I detected sporadic jibes and what may have been some disparaging comments about the “detergent manufacturers” who own 3 of the 5 largest perfume manufacturing companies today. 

Some raw ingredients used traditionally in perfumery are still expensive today, but overall perfume is more affordable than some of the luxurious perfumes from the beginning of this century. For example a Guerlain bottle of Shalimar or Mitsouko cost the equivalent of a roughly a weeks wage! Still, Dove cited how much he recently paid for a kilo of Jasmine oil from Grasse £28,000 for a kilo which goes into one his own exclusive fragrances. The perfume Joy by Patou also still has jasmine oil.

One perfumer Dove seems to particularly admire was the late Roudnitska who created Diorissimo, Diorama and Diorling. We got to smell Miss Dior of 1947 with its fresh leather notes. We also viewed the ingredients of Diorissimo, (one of my own favourites which my grandmother, mother and myself wear -and if I remember correctly, Princess Diana too). It  is a sensual floral with Lily of the Valley, jasmine and ylang ylang, rosewood and sandalwood. He also showed us the stunning crystal decanter with the gilt bronze roses spouting from the lid.

Among fragrances from after the war which he looked at,  include Balmaines Vert Vert with its green notes and gabalnum as well as Jolie Madame, a leather Chypre, which we all got to sniff too. One of the few women perfumers of that time was Germaine Celier who created Fracas for Piquet, rich in Tuberose. When Dove moved on to discussing Balenciaga he quoted someone as having once said that if a woman walks into a room wearing Balenciaga, all the other women in the room become invisible! Le Dix was described as the scent of smelling a “woman through a thin cashmere sweater” We received a scent strip of this one too, my favourite of the night.

Another little anecdote about the name of a perfume came from the story of Givenchy’s L’Interdit (forbidden), worn by Audrey Hepburn. This is a sparkling floral with aldehydes, rose, jasmine, incense, coumarin and sandalwood.  The name came about because apparently she was always popping back for more, so the designer wrote a litte sign, prohibiting her from taking it away, which then became its name. Several more perfumes were discussed including one by Cabochard,  a spicy leather note, with labadnum, oakmoss and cedarwood. Towards the end he mentioned names I had never heard of including Fath, Heim and Desses. The one by Fath, Dove described as “one of the most remarkable fragrances the world has ever seen“. Our last scent strip for the night was of Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps, still a classic composed in 1948, containing rose, ylang ylang, neroli, gabalnum, vetiver with a wood base. This is the fragrance we weren’t allowed to smell until he said so, (but of course most of us could not resist or delay gratification for sooo long) until after we had resmellt one of the earlier testers and could then compare and perceive its “freshness, sweeping around the world, a moving scent.”

The final part of the delightful evening examined the cult fragrances of Charlie by Revlon and Giorgio. Some women in the audience could remember the queues at Harvey Nichols leading out the store and down the street when this fragrance was first launched. Roja Dove finished with the beautiful descriptions of how he fell in love with perfume, which I started this review with. To end with another of his quotes on the night, “Great Perfume makes you feel like a million dollars!”

All attendees received an Exclusive invitation to experience a complimentary fragrance consultation with one of Roja Dove’s personally trained fragrance specialists at his Haute Perfumery. I can’t wait to experience my own “voyage of discovery” to find my signature fragrance. Further gifts included the Roja Dove catalogue, a large black glossy ode  to several special perfumes, as well as the Beautiqe magazine for the British Beauty experts. Also, on the ground floor near the entrance, the Haute Parfumerie had a stunning display case filled with precious perfume bottles and all passerby received a spritz of one of the three new Roja Dove own brand fragrances. All in all a scent festival extravaganza.