Time Regained

In the world of perfumes anachronism is nearly always a bad thing. But lately, with the publication of books by Luca Turin, Chandler Burr and Mandy Aftel, there is growing interest in the fragrance formulas of the past. Some of this is mere curiosity, alloyed to a rather academic nostalgie for famous accords and revolutionizing synthetics; some is marked by the re-emergence of vintage dressing trends. In today's Women's Wear Daily, reporter Matthew W. Evans quotes fragrance development consultant Doreen Bollhofer as saying that, despite the stale state of creativity, perfumers can scout inspiration in fashion trends such as "formality and sophistication." Often these dressed-up trends evoke a long-lost world of distinctions, i.e., between day- and evening wear: casual, chic, and formal. The fragrances of yesteryear, by and large, were sumptuously layered compositions that mimicked the elaborate layering of the current fashion: underpinnings, petticoats, wraps, and hats, hats, more hats. Think of any of Aimé or Jacques Guerlain's masterpieces: Jicky, Mitsouko, Shalimar, L'Heure Bleue. They are intricately layered and detailed stories. Heck, L'Heure Bleue is a veritable Tolstoy novel! The fragrances of today – deriving from their ür-scent, Chanel No. 5 – are the talismans of upward mobility, i.e., lifestyle scents. They do not so much tell the perfumer's story as they do the story of a time period. E.g., Opium tells the story of the drug-fueled sexual ebullience of the late 1970s and early 1980s; Drakkar Noir, the story of fetishized money=sex Wall Street greed; and Polo – an interesting case study by itself – basically a retelling of The Great Gatsby ca. 1978. But in each case, the perfumer was telling the brand's scripted story, not his own. To borrow a term from the marketing lexicon, he was blending "to spec." And, with it, advertising was becoming life. The grassroots niche fragrance movement, with its momentum building for the last decade, may very well effect among the LVMHs and Gucci Groups of the world a shift back to the fleshed-out narrative of the great scents. How many celebrity scents can be launched for the pleasure of fifteen-year-old ingenues before the rest of the customer base wishes for something more; in short, wishes for a message, if not a short story, in a bottle?

Image credit: 35mm photographic still, Raoul Ruiz's Les Temps Retrouvé (1999).