I want to smell like an old woman

An exploration of the perfumes of Guerlain, from a personal point of view.

This is a guest article by my wife about her exploration of the perfume house Guerlain. Expect more original content from me soon. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this break from normal scheduling.

I

I can remember every single bottle of perfume I have ever owned, right down to a tiny sample of Guerlain’s Insolence which I stole from my friend’s mum’s bedroom when I was barely a teen. These perfumes were contraband in my household as a consequence of my father’s disapproval of all things aiding and abetting feminine artifice. The only smells I associate with my childhood home are wood polish, the dirt from our garden and the chamomile of my mum’s deodorant which still to this day makes my nose curl. Insolence could not have been more emblematic of everything my father hates about perfumery. Sickly sweet and artificial, it was unlike anything I had ever smelt. The sensitive, melancholic resignation of Guerlain’s classics Après L’Ondèe and L’Heure Bleue enter their teenage rebellion phase.

Come 2023 I am all grown up, getting married and finding myself half-heartedly looking for a perfume to wear on my wedding day. Nothing I sampled seemed to rise to the occasion. I drift towards Guerlain. Before work I stopped off at my local department store. Both Liu and Jardins de Bagatelle appeal to me. They stood out against the pinkness of the more recent floral releases.

“What do you think of these?” I asked my colleague.

"You smell like an old woman," she said, after giving my arm a sniff. "That one smells like toilet cleaner," she added, presumably referring to the aldehydes in Liu. To me they felt sparkling.

"I think I like vintage perfumes," I said, not feeling very sure of myself.

"Oh no, I can’t stand anything like that. In my day my mum and all her friends would wear Youth Dew." She gave a little shiver.

A modern perfume it is then. But almost everything I tried felt flat and hollow - characterised more by an absence than anything else. I finally settled on Guerlain's Aqua Allegoria Nerolia Vetiver Forte.

"That’s the one," said my colleague.

Despite the very long name, it is undoubtedly a good perfume. A sharp, metallic, cologne-like opening settles down into a smooth, round centre of figs and rose on a base of almost savoury vetiver. It disappears altogether in only a couple of hours, almost as fleeting as the day itself.

II

The first time I smelt Nahema I physically recoiled. It smelled tangy and metallic, like blood. I put it back on the shelf and forgot about it, disappointed. But nothing else showed up so a few weeks later I went back for more. Rose is the quintessential flower, emblematic of femininity itself. But rose perfume had never really appealed to me. This time I sprayed it on my wrist.

"What do you think of this?" I asked my colleague, again.

"Oooh, I’m not sure I like that."

"I think it smells like blood,” I told her.

"It does smell quite sharp, like copper," she said. And I got on to scrubbing shelves.

As I was scrubbing I got a draft of something beautiful. I stopped still and looked around, my attention focused, before I realised that I was me. I took off my rubber glove. A soft, pink, pillowy, lipsticky rose doesn’t cover it. Red velvet and sunshine. Happiness, but hints of that piercing metallic sharpness in the background, subdued for the time being, but letting its presence be known.

Considered by Jacques Guerlain to be his masterpiece, Nahema failed to achieve commercial success when it was first released in 1979. (1)

"The name Nahema comes from One Thousand and One Nights and the story of twins Mahené and Nahema, who while identically beautiful had very different personalities, the first was gentle, docile and conciliatory while Nahema had a daring, indomitably fiery character." (2)

I gave my husband my wrist.

"I want to eat you," he said.

Venus vitrix.

"It smells like something an old lady would wear," said my mum.

III

At this point I'm beginning to question what is wrong with smelling like an old woman. In all other areas the vintage and the antique is brought back, respected, incorporated. Perhaps it is the subconscious association with old, failing bodies, perhaps not quite adequately washed. Vintage cars, vintage clothes, vintage interiors, music from the 60s onwards all have their place, sure, they may go out of style for a time, but even the most hideous trends make a comeback.

There is something about smells and it's affect on us that cannot be put away in the attic under a dustsheet, or turned off like music. The line between where the fragrance ends and the scent of the body begins can't be drawn so clearly. Its gradual, like the approach of death.

So off I trot to my local Frederic Malle counter to try the modern legend Portrait of a Lady which, after having been released in 2010, has reached classic status. With great anticipation, I give her a sniff. Like a true Victorian heroine, this rose feels inhibited by convention, yet is pulled reluctantly forward into modernity by incense and a red berry note that smells, dare I say it, cheap. While Nahema maintains her structure, feeling self assured enough to withhold her beauty, maintaining her sensuality below a hostile opening, the rose in Portrait reveals herself at once. By comparison, she feels diffuse, her notes veering off into different directions.

If I had to sum up Nahema as a perfume I would say that it presents rose in abstract, in its entirety. Yes, the idealised rose. But the sanguineous, metallic opening depicting its thorn, not shying away from the flower’s ability to cause injury. It recalls Inana, a progenitor to Venus and Aphrodite, a goddess not just of love and sensuality, but war. The goddess who screamed at the gates of the underworld that she shall make the dead outnumber the living.

"Well, if you want to think about it conceptually," said my husband.

Yes, I do.

IV

"A beautiful perfume is one which gives us a shock: a sensory one, followed by a psychological one." (3)

So said Edmond Roudnitska, a man considered to be one of the most important perfumers who ever lived and the father of modern perfumery. (4)

Speaking on the current trend for gourmands (as far as I can tell, perfumes which smell like things you eat) Ulrich Lang, founder of the perfume house Ulrich Lang New York, suggested that their popularity has been spawned by world crises: "they want to have something really cosy and cocooning." (5)

Again, my mother weighed in.

"What about those Miss Dior perfumes your sister wears? She puts them on first thing in the morning and by the time she gets here after work she still smells perfectly pleasant."

Pleasant?

I don’t think I want to smell pleasant. Shock is much more in keeping with my character. I guess, as with other forms of art, there are people who are content with pleasant. I am not one of them. Why, if I can walk around wearing a masterpiece, would I go around wearing the olfactory equivalent of a Jack Vettriano?

We don't like to think about our grandmothers as sexual beings. Understandably so. And we want the past to be comforting, too. But beneath the cardigans and the lace, the china and the scones, there lurks the fumes of a sophisticated, red-blooded womanhood that, I think, scares us.

References:

(1) https://persolaise.com/2020/03/guerlain-nahema-jean-paul-guerlain-1979-smellfie.html

(2) https://www.guerlain.com/uk/en-uk/p/les-legendaires-nahema---eau-de-parfum-P014311.html

(3) https://aestheteslament.blogspot.com/2011/02/well-said-edmond-roudniska.html?m=1

(4) https://www.fredericmalle.co.uk/perfumer/edmond-roudnitska

(5) https://beautymatter.com/articles/will-gourmand-fragrances-hit-sugar-peak