Smelling good is a potent sign that we have made an effort, we are intending to please, that erotic adventure (her fingers dropping with myrrh) may be on our mind but being civilised is even more so. As an eccentric Cambridge academic once observed to a friend-of-a-friend: "After a certain age, dear, a little lipstick is a kindness to others." As with lipstick, so with scent.
— From Scents and sensibility: the history of perfume at The Independent.
Thanks very much for that link. I never look at the Indie and so would have missed such a well written article. Only one thing didn’t quite strike the right note for me – iso e super, floral? Personally I have it pegged as velvetty, woody, incensey.
I don’t think they were saying it was a floral note — just that it intensified other floral notes.
Oh my lord. Is it a British thing, all the Shakespeare quotes and that…style? And this: “Coifan, unusually in the genre [perfume blogs], knows what he’s talking about instead of following the nonsense put out by perfumery PRs.” Wonder who he’s reading? No one but Coifan is my guess, since later he says Basenotes and NST have changed the whole business!
Who is this guy?
To answer my own question–here’s a few passages from a self-written (I’m guessing) bio of his:
He’s a columnist for the London Independent on Sunday and The Observer; writes about high-tech stuff for the Daily Telegraph; is cultural critic for the New Statesman; and keeps claiming to have finished a book about flying around the Australian Outback in a ricketty old Cessna 182, which will be out this winter ha ha ha.
He is a pilot, harpsichordist, snappy dresser, part-time consulting physician, red-hot lover and self-deluding old goat, but what he’s proudest of is playing the organ part in “A Whiter Shade of Pale” alongside Gary Brooker, who wrote the song.
Michael Bywater lives in a disintegrating 18th-century apartment in central London with a bad yellow-eyed woman, 86 pairs of spectacles and a wardrobe of fine Savile Row suits, several of which are paid for. He owns a pair of crocodile shoes and you would know him if you saw him.
His writing is extraordinarily British, but I don’t know anything about him otherwise. He’s certainly correct that if you want to read reviews by someone who really knows aromachemicals, your (blog) choices other than Octavian are limited.
Well, sure. But not knowing one’s aromachemicals does not equal replicating PR tripe.
Sorry for the grump. It just drives me crazy when print journalists make dismissive comments about blogs without actually, you know, reading them. Especially in this case, where blogs emerged as a response to the replication of PR tripe in the beauty magazines.
It does not drive me crazy at all — (my usual apathy, combined w/ the fact that I don’t think it does blogs any harm at all, if anything I think the defensiveness of print journalists hurts print journalism) — and anyway, after reading that article I’d be very surprised if he hasn’t read other perfume blogs. I am, however, driven crazy by the fact that they don’t know what a blog is. Basenotes is not a blog.
I enjoyed the article, it is great to read someone with such a positive and eclectic view of fragrance. Agreed with the notion of fragrance as “civilising” – trying to convince my teen son at the moment that it isn’t a substitute for showering. Although great news – my son prefers Guerlain’s Vetiver to Lynx. Yay, quality wins out over peer pressure.
Yes, thanks for this link! I particularly liked this bit:
“But it is a unique art: in consuming it, we consume it. A piece of music is still there however often we listen to it. A book can be read and re-read. Even a play or an opera can be revived. But every time a perfume, whatever its provenance, works its magic, it dies a little.”
Reminds me of Carmencanada noting that someday she will be a “Mitsouko widow”!
What a fearfully erudite fellow. Were all the Shakesperean references intended to illuminate or just to show what a jolly clever fellow Mr. Bywater is. Suspiciously clever I’ll warrant. Bit of both I shouldn’t fancy. Probably wears brown suede shoes. Good Lord, is that the time? Late again!