But at the same time, unless you’re feeling particularly ’80s throwbacky, you don’t want your sillage to be an entity. It should be more like the soft brush of a cat’s tail as it weaves past someone’s ankles than like a knockdown, slobbery greeting from an over-friendly dog.
— April Long writes about sillage in Elle magazine. Read more at The Fragrance Trail: How to Find Your Perfect Perfume.
All good and nice and I appreciate the simile of sillage as afterglow 🙂
only mimosas are NOT the same as silkflower (the fuschia pom poms she describes)
On another intriguing note (ha!): I find Duchaufour’s quote on “virtually all” of the top-selling scents in America and Europe have a readily discernible trail” the greatest debunking of personal chemistry imagineable. Agree?
Sorry, don’t really understand how sillage debunks the idea of personal chemistry?
Not sillage itself, the fact that it was immediately recognisable.
Oh, gotcha. Not sure I see the connection…you can be wafting tons of Angel and it still might smell slightly different on you than someone else, right? But also, saying something has a discernible trail doesn’t necessarily mean it has a recognizable trail.
Suppose so, though it invariably doesn’t really make a wild difference. I think some wear some things more successfully as in their way of doing it rather than the way they’re reacting to them in a chemical sense of the word.
Maybe it’s just me being foreign like Duchaufour and not native, but I think he implied by “a readily discernible trail” that it was what made people take notice and think “that’s the one!” (i.e.recoginsable). I could be wrong.
A really good article on fragrance from the mainstream press. I am not a believer in big sillage. I remember one Guerlain sales representative telling me that Mitsuko was Ms. Onasis’s signature scent, and everyone could tell the moment she entered a room because they noticed the scent’s presences. My thought, was that if this story was true, then she was wearing way too much.
I think of the 80’s big sillage scents as “disco scents,” designed to cut through the smoke and sweat of a hot night club dancefloor (and perhaps to make an impression on cocaine damaged nostrils?). Of course, that was also the error when people (at least in D.C.) wore bright red to announce their political affilliation and women wore big shoulders and hair. Perhaps the vibe was to create as much presence as possible, in all situations.
Your last sentence describes the 80’s in a nutshell!
Yes…power perfumes for power dressing.
Yes, it was as if the 80s was the decade there everyone thought they were a cat. “I’m BIG now, don’t mess with me!”
*snort*! Love it. But I always think I’m a cat. It comes from living with cats. 😛
Then your cats have failed to educate you properly. You don’t live with cats, you live for them, and they tolerate you! ;p
It’s Official: I am in LOVE with ‘throwbacky’!
xo
Oh, ditto! I was surprised Elle allowed it, but it’s great.
Written by someone who REALLY loves perfume – not necessarily a zillion, but at least one that makes her levitate with pleasure: THAT was my favourite phrase: )
Yes!
I haven’t read further than the fourth sentence yet:
‘There was a scent given to me by a boyfriend in college, its (and his) name long forgotten, that smelled exactly like mimosa flowers: Every time I applied it, I could see those fuchsia pom-poms—their resemblance to Dr. Seuss illustrations always a source of delight—blooming in the yard of my midwestern childhood home.’
Now, unless American mimosa smells identical to the mimosa used in perfumery (which I doubt very much), she is not telling the truth since perfumers always use French (originally Mexican) mimosa and everyone knows that the latter has tiny, fluffy, bright yellow powder puffs not ‘fuchsia pom-poms’.
*off to read more*
There she goes again:
‘In my twenties, I had a fling with lily-of-the-valley Dior Diorissimo, so evocative of that moment when the first hyacinth bouquets appear in New York delis in the dead of winter, like a promise of spring. ‘
Why is lily-of-the-valley reminding her of hyacinth? LOTV doesn’t smell anything like hyacinth. The fact that they are both spring flowers doesn’t really justify this strange association, imo.
*not sure whether I want to read more now*
She’s wrong about the mimosa, no doubt, and I don’t know why hyacinths remind her of lily of the valley! Or why she had no more than a fling with Diorissimo, one of the greatest perfumes of all time 🙂
I will read the rest of the article later, but, at this point, it seems to me to have been written by someone who really doesn’t have a clue.
Thanks for posting it, though, R. 🙂
She’s referring to silk flower, which yes, many confuse with mimosa (some call them by the same name) for some reason which is probably escaping us. I have even encountered this same mistake on a perfume blog some time back (& another one: heliotrope being confused with sunflowers, because the etymology is so similar).
I pointed that little mimosa error in my first comment above.
In the writer’s defence, I believe she’s comparing the greeness of hyacinth and of LOTV though, despite them being different (and different smelling) flowers. The old batches of Diorissimo do have an oily quality about them that might (just might!) make someone think of another green oily scent. I suppose….it’s hard to decipher where one becomes poetic and evocative and where one talks factually sometimes. Perhaps that’s the beauty of interpreting a writer’s writings.
I’m quite prepared to make an effort to interpret someone’s writing when they write beautifully, which, I’m afraid, is not the case in this instance. A journalist’s main job is to impart information in a clear and *accurate* (so no ‘little mimosa error’) way. The author was writing a magazine article, not an essay in a literary revue.
I have read that silk trees used to be included in genus Mimosa due to their similar leaf structure and seismonastic reaction to being touched, but they are now considered separate. But here in the eastern US “mimosa” is still the popular (if not scientifically proper) name used for the silk tree… just to keep things confusing! 🙂
http://www.duke.edu/~cwcook/trees/alju.html
… and even the “mimosa” used in perfumery is actually acacia, another once-affiliated branch of this sprawling tribe.
“The genus Mimosa has had a tortuous history, having gone through periods of splitting and lumping, ultimately accumulating over 3,000 names, many of which have either been synonymized under other species or transferred to other genera…” (Wikipedia)
Went straight to the end:
‘There’s a famous saying: “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.”’
There’s a ‘famous saying’?! It was Coco Chanel who said it. What’s wrong with attributing a quote?
*gives up*