The Dirty Dozen...
Let's talk dirty. No, you're not going to read a porn script (if such a thing exists), but my personal thoughts about fragrances which could be illegal in some not so old regimes for their unequivocally corrosive effects in morality and decency. And I'm not talking about jokes like Sécrétions Magnifiques or Al-Khatt, which rely solely on their shock value. I'm not talking about skank bombs either.
I'm talking about the kind of dirty which may suggest you the idea of smelling its dirtiness, but what it really does is messing with your mind. And dirty, when abstract, is only dwelling in our minds, isn't it?
For me there's body odour dirty and mind fume dirty. Or literal and evoking kinds of dirty if you like. And despite our relatively newfound politically correct attitude, I can't help but underline that body odours can be very exciting when done properly, and even stunning when they're emphasised by the right fragrance. If there was no use for pheromones after all, chances are that evolution would have extinct them a long time ago.
Dirty can mean either animalic or sensual amongst other things. It can also mean both. It always depends on which side of the spectrum you're standing at. And if you're not feeling animalic by wearing any of these fragrances, that doesn't mean that they don't awaken the beast in some of the bystanders smelling them.
Now, one could ask what's the point of smelling animalic in a society obsessed with cleanliness to the point of sterilising even our soul, and why there are still people looking for such fragrances? When I was a child, all you could find next to a washbowl was a bar of soap, an unscented olive oil one most of the times. And while it's still the same in mine, hand sanitizers in every form seem to have landed on almost everyone else's. Solutions, tissues, gels, you name it. Suddenly, every bathroom looks like an operating room, in the name of a germ-free world.
Don't get me wrong. I believe that the greatest invention of all times is antibiotics, but it's been quite a while since I last saw a soiled poppet or tyke enjoying being covered in dirt and her/his parents encouraging this behaviour. So, I'm inclined to believe that the ones who like and seek "dirty" fragrances could be doing so because of some yearning for an era when "safe" was not interminably shoved down their throats 24/7. Of course they can also do it for breaking the norms as an act of defiance, or even for pure arousal's sake, and that's what interests me the most. Please pardon my laughable attempts in trying to explain cognitive and behavioural principles, but since this is not a psychology forum, I hope you'll cope with them.
So, here comes my Dirty Dozen. Six for the ladies and six for the gents, as usual, cause disinterestedness is my middle name. I tried to include a magazine ad with every fragrance, but it was not always possible, thus I had to improvise in some cases.
Bal à Versailles by Jean Desprez (1962)
I don't think that Jean Desprez picked its name just because. Featuring nearly 700 rooms and a primitive, disastrous sewage drainage system, or having no toilets at all, if we're to believe the myth (I don't), Versailles must have smelled ehm...interesting during its heyday. Given that perfume allegedly substituted for soap and water during the reign of Louis XV and Louis XIV, I'm quite sure you get the picture. And Jean Desprez's tribute to dirtiness was not just Versailles. It was a Bal à Versailles! An occasion where a couple of thousands of otherwise civilised and multi layered dressed aristocrats, served by at least double as many servants, would dance fervently and improvise orgies maybe for days. With no soap and water. But drenched in strong soliflores nevertheless. No matter how appalling it may sound, it sounds equally exciting. Since it was Michael Jackson's signature fragrance, I can see that Jacko wouldn't feel out of place in such an enviroment. Especially if I take his "modest" costume choices under consideration. Bal à Versailles is dusty, dry, smoky and syrupy, and it can't stop moaning out of pleasure. And because we haven't smelled Versailles in all its glory, let's say it smells like the tour bus of Mötley Crüe burned to a cinder, after a fire bursted due to excessive body heat.
Is this perhaps a hint that modern "dirty" scents cant hold a candle to its luxurious debauchery?
Clandestine by Guy Laroche (1986)
Cloying, saccharine, mawkish and wonderful beyond words. The perfect embodiment of a drama queen, captivating everyone with her cheap thrills. Turning from playful to serious and from kissing to punching in a heartbeat may be difficult to live with, but there's not a single chance of being boring. Clandestine was a little brat who never was the world's most trustworthy person. Borrow her a dress and she'll cook wearing it. Borrow her a book and she'll use it as a notepad or a placemat. Borrow her your boyfriend and she'll shag him senseless (although this indicates a boyfriend not worth having). A little(?) irresponsible, yes, but in such a lovely way, that it would leave you no choice but forgiving her in the end, especially after the Ancient Greek Tragedy that would be performed in the meanwhile. Cunning? Check. Audacious? Check. Scatterbrained? Check. OK, I'll take her!
See? I told you she's a spoiled brat...
La Nuit by Paco Rabanne (1985)
What's the use of wearing a costly evening gown when you know that it will end up in shreds when you'll change into a werewolf? And why wear it on a full moon night? And why combine it with an even costlier fur when you're about to grow your very own? Because nothing exceeds like excess and howling at the moon is the epitome of cool, when it comes to nocturnal activities. La Nuit is not animalic, it's simply an animal, and not one to be tamed. If you let it come too close, then it's too late. There's no escape from its breathtaking beauty and charm. No matter how frightening a werewolf might be, there are still plenty of us vintage lunatics who will always consider her a magnificent creature.
Look at the angles of her face. Don't they have "You look delicious!" written all over them?
L'Arte di Gucci by Gucci (1991)
The cruelty of 1000$ suits and executive (as in execution) demeanours. It had the irresistible effect which attracts a moth towards the light and its impending doom. It's funny how it twisted the romantic idealisation of rose into an unhinged idolisation, inspired not by love but by awe. The ideal olfactory background for any case of a Stockholm syndrome manifestation. Only in this case the hostages taken would be not taken at all, but would have eagerly stepped within its realm of dismay and authority.
Ma Griffe by Carven (1946)
A protean personality, not unlike Roman god Janus, leaving you totally confused and unable to decide which face is which, since one of them is looking to the future and one of them is looking to the past. Its launch could't be any more symbolic, as it was introduced to Parisians by hundreds or even thousands of tiny, white and green striped parachutes, each containing a sample of the scent, that were dropped all over Paris. You can easily imagine how the city smelled like for some days afterwards, and how dull it makes any modern advertising campaign to look like. Its love for the transitions game lied even in its name. Ma Griffe means both "my talon" and "my label" in French, and Marie-Louise Grog-Carven (nee Carmen de Tommaso) never bothered to decipher it, although she's running through her 105th year as we speak. Its multifaceted and probably fickle character resulted in countless different bottles and probably formulations, but its earthy-dirty quality, like a soap bar in an outdoors latrine, was always there. Sometimes I can hear it scratching its box at night, trying to claw its way out.
A wonderful way to combine both meanings of Ma Griffe.
Parfum de Peau by Montana (1986)
This is a case for pondering over whether the bottle designer is as important as the perfumer herself/himself. Although we usually know quite a few things about the perfumers, we know virtually nothing about the bottle designers (or should I call them sculptors?). And I think that this is hugely unfair for artists like Serge Mansau. It's said that he was inspired by the spiraling trajectory of a falling sycamore seed, like a Futuristic study in elapsed time. And since time is relative, so was the bottle, presenting a different simulacrum depending on which angle you were looking at it. Sometimes I saw a promising hourglass figure and sometimes I saw an M.C.Escher's perpetual spiral stairway, leading concurrently to heaven and hell. Any resemblance between the said hourglass figure and heaven and hell is not coincidental at all. Although something as (seemingly) insignificant as a falling sycamore seed is always susceptible to the mercurial nature surrounding it, it always does what it was designed to do in the end. And Parfum de Peau never failed, not even once, to land on my inner sanctum. Parfum de Peau and words like discretion and subtlety were archenemies from the moment it entered our unsuspecting world, cause its tumultuous sultriness could not be restrained. Using the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in a perfume ad as its harbinger. When I first saw these eyes in a glossy magazine page looking through me, I was so mesmerised that my friend had to nudge me to bring me back to reality. But a small part of my heart has stayed forever in that moment in time.
Like forever...
Dali pour Homme by Salvador Dali (1985)
Allow me to describe it with someone else's review, which is one of the most vivid images that a written piece has ever invoked to my mind.
"It's 1977 and Margaux Hemmingway stumbles into her bathroom at noon after a night of dancing at Studio 54. She removes her panty hose and then peels off her panties. As she's doing this, she loses her balance and knocks a 12 ounce bottle of Babe cologne off of the shelf above the toilet and it falls to the white tile floor and shatters. Still slightly drunk, she tries to navigate around the shards of glass but steps on a piece. Her foot begins to bleed and she sits on the edge of the tub with a groan. She picks up the cologne soaked panties and wraps them around her foot. Once the bleeding subsides, she tosses the panties in the hamper, where they sit for two weeks, because she has fly to Paris on the Concorde in two hours to be in Paris for Fashion Week. When she returns, the hamper smells like "Salvador Dali"; a smell she doesn't recognize but finds vaguely intriguing yet off putting. A smell she doesn't recognize because it hasn't been invented yet."
No ad available, cause half-forgotten nightmares are not something easily sold. But I guess the above picture would suffice for its absence pretty good.
Eucris by Geo. F. Trumper (1912)
Aaah, the magnetic stale air of musty attics, where you're afraid of what you might unearth, but you still want to unearth it. No masculine fragrance will ever come as close to "Victorian" as this, and how could it be any different since it was launched only 11 years after the queen and her matronymic era ceased to exist? The squalor of 19th century London in an impossible combination with the English countryside surrounding it. I guess a word like "mælodorous" should be coined after it. Its bottle is the most old-fashioned fragrance vessel I've ever seen, and had I been not into perfumes, I'd buy it hands down if anyone told me that it comes from the dawn of the 20th century. It has a solid pewter stopper shaped as a crown for goodness sake! And yes Clive Christian, you shameless copycat, I'm looking right at you now! Last but not least, I think it's also a great example of British spirit (pun intended), since its name derives from Eucharis which is a female given name in Greek, meaning graceful. Ha! Eucris graceful? Good one lads! Oh, and it's also allegedly the signature fragrance of James Bond. And this alone is enough to send the needle of the lady-killer metre way deep into the red zone. It doesn't have an ad, cause I guess these same lads thought there's nothing to be advertised. You either go for Eucris or you don't. But here you go anyways.
Go Commander, go!
Davidoff by Davidoff (1984)
Davidoff's perfume department should have gone on a 30 years vacation after releasing this one, cause everything it launched thenceforth was a joke compared to this unapologetic roué's stentorian blares. And when "everything" also includes Zino, there's nothing more that I can say. I didn't find any ads of it either, but in this case, making one of my own would be impossible, since this toxic-green holocaust still has me stunned after 30 years. I only remember it coming in 125ml bottles, cause, you know, mayhem is always better when galore.
Jacomo de Jacomo by Jacomo (1980)
OK, we got it! There's apparently something named Jacomo involved in this...Although its vintage bottle colours always reminded me of a lightning in the night sky, it never managed to lighten the darkest facets of this ominous monolith. It's not that much of dirty literally speaking, but its smoky, shady and somewhat nefarious nature is the very essence of dark. And since "dark" goes usually well with "secrets", who wouldn't think that every dark secret has always a certain amount of defilement attached to it? It actually needs no such syllogisms to reach to a conclusion, for its dark magic starts working subconsciously upon first spray, which usually numbs your senses, if we're talking vintage. Since I wasn't able to find any decent ad from back in the days, I made one of my own, depicting everything it invokes in my mind.
I fancy to imagine it's me inside the bottle...
Russisch Leder by Johann Maria Farina (1965)
This is a very special case, and please, don't take anything about it for granted. This is not dirty in a lecherous or swindling way. This is dirty in a rather imposing way, the likes of leaving you no choice. Just like when you have to deal with situations that usually tear a man's soul to shreds, in ways which you would have most unlikely used, had these situations not occured. A truly and exclusively manly man's leather scent, with no stupid macho strings attached. It was my decorated in Word War Two grandfather's signature fragrance for almost 30 years, so any impartiality here takes a hike. But since perfumes and eroticism are always inseverable, here's an old ad which spits in the face of the stupid voguishness called politically correctness, and would have probably triggered picketing protests had it been launched nowadays.
The German text reads "The fragrance that awakens the senses", but I guess it would awaken some sort of judicial and law enforcement authorities too...
Gold Man by Amouage (1983)
It's just a very short step away from being vulgar. The step seperating it from being histrionic is already taken, since the latest Czar of Russia has chosen it as his signature fragrance. Or should I say highfalutin since it rhymes with the said Czar's last name? It redefines strong and heavy in a way that makes me snigger nervously, cause I have no idea how to deal with it. As for the way it smells, I'll take the liberty to quote myself.
"Well, it smells like myrrh and insense, mixed and burned to glorify Vladimir's grandeur, while he's trying to blow off some (testosterone scented) steam, by hunting civet cats during a state visit in Vietnam."
Surprisingly one of the least worshipped powerhouses, since it includes every aspect of a powerhouse in shedloads. Only this one is crowned with Middle Eastern cupolas and onion domes, although "King of Rococo" wouldn't be a bad idea either. It's also one of the very few niche fragrances that truly deserve the buzz around them. Not a good thing per se, but since there's no such thing as bad publicity, Succès de Scandale would make a perfect alternative name. Dirty Harry would be nice too. Good ol' Vladimir probably knows a thing or two about it. The ad I found was rather misleading about this beasts true instincts, so I decided to present it like an ancient king reposing in his last resting place.
Sort of beguiling, don't you agree?
So that was it. I'd really love to share your take on dirty fragrances, because it's always very enticing to try to interpret something through other people's senses and thoughts. I'm going to take a shower now, just to make myself clean enough for reapplying some of these magnificent dirt on me anew...
GothicHeart