Smell of the woman: 7 girlpower-aromas
Text: Ksenia Golovanova, author of the telegram channel Nose Republic
let the history of the relationship of perfume with the representation of femininity is rich, to this day, the authors of the concepts of fragrances often push the same levers: tenderness, fragility, or vice versa - femme fatale and aggressive sexuality. But there are also compositions created outside the conventional patterns - at our request, perfume critic Ksenia Golovanova collected seven samples of perfume free from prejudice.
Andrea Maak is an Icelandic artist who makes fragrances for women with strong opinions. In her portfolio there is a hemoglobin rose Dark, "Dark" - with blood on the cut, Coal, "Coal" - the bitter spirit of Charlize Theron's armpit from "Northern Country", and, of course, Coven, that is, the Sabbath.
This is the smell of a greasy land, which was turned over by a shovel: lumps are sewn with pale roots and seeds of forest weeds, and underground water is made at the bottom of the pit. If you watched the feminist horror "The Witch", whose heroine, a girl from a family of immigrants of the XVII century, wanders through the forests of New England and communicates with a goat named Black Philip, then barely breathe Coven, remember the final scene: midnight, forest glade, nude women slowly rise into the air, carried away by a common spell.
Translated from Sanskrit Issara means "freedom"; It sounds like the name of the founder of Dusita Pissary Umavidzhani, Thai, who lives in Paris. She knows about girl power firsthand: she composes fragrances, fusses from morning to night around her booth at exhibitions and confidently goes on stage for the harvest of perfumery awards.
The last emerald emerald air Issara is not marked - most likely because it did not bother to attend the ceremony, but instead trampled the grass of distant summer fields for a whole day, raising green pollen clouds with its bare feet. And although in the sense of the genre, Issara is a real, compiled wine glass according to the canons, otherwise it is a manifesto of freedom: from shoes, from the office and from the inevitability of winter.
In niche perfumery Francesca Bianchi, an Italian who lives in Amsterdam, snuck on cat's paws. The first cautious reviews began to appear in the middle of last year - mostly in the perfumery blogs and facebook groups, all as one wrote that the fragrances are “sexy”. Critics expectedly swallowed the bait: the names of the songs - Angel's Dust, Sex on the Beach and The Dark Side - hinted at every pleasant depravity, from which all these "sexy" legs grew.
But the same Sex on the Beach is as sexy as a log salted with sea water, which threw a wave onto the beach: it smells good, but deliberately seduces someone and does not think. The Dark Side is the same: on the “Dark Side” there lives a woman with complex and diverse interests - to history, antiques and medieval art. All this, erased in fragrant wood dust and sweet book dust, and smells like The Dark Side.
This legendary leather chypre was released in 1944: couturier Robert Piguet “considered” a shift in public opinion on gender, caused by the events of World War II, and released models with fake pistols and daggers to the podium. In support of his collection, Germain Selye, the first known female perfumer, made Bandit - the strong smell of rawhide in the clouds of bitter and prickly wormwood greenery.
This detached and self-contained fragrance entered the dead clinch with perfumery of that time, carried away, as it always happens during times of great human loss, seduction and procreation. The “gangster” was fascinated only by herself - with her cigarettes, leather jacket and her favorite car, where you can drive alone out of town. A curious detail: in some online stores this fragrance is still sold as a man’s.
The beautiful Grasse brand has trouble with naming, starting from the Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger itself, which it is as difficult for a nefranzuz to utter as a camel to crawl through the eye of a needle, ending with our “Powder of Freedom”. The name is confusing: lovers of makeup may decide that the fragrance is about the liberating power of cosmetics - a beautiful but incorrect assumption.
Poudre de Liberté about other powders: about those from which licorice lemonade is prepared, about fragrant spices in a kitchen cabinet and about wood dust in a clean and well-groomed arena. This is the smell of summer in the south of France - not the one where the yachts and the vanity fair, but the real village: without a make-up and bra, but in a saddle and knee-high boots.
In the perfumery language, the equality of men and women is as follows: Eau de Virginie is a cologne with a vigorous citrus head, that is, a classic "male" design, in the heart of which is placed the traditionally feminine chord of tuberose and mimosa. Title Virginie is the founder of Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger Virginie Rouge, the main feminist of Parisian perfumes.
In the past, brand founder Marjorie Oliber is a TV woman and worked for many years in the global television network CNBC, to whose logo, the iridescent peacock, involuntarily (as Marjorie says, “unconsciously”) the golden bird appeals on the brand’s bottles. On duty, Oliber traveled frequently, which she said was a favorite part of the job. As a result, the flavors of her, too, turned out to be postcards from all distant and beautiful places - Istanbul, Rome, Bali, and now from Africa.
Despite the name, in the "Savannah Heart" is more human than wild and animal: it is the smell of a comfortable camp in the middle of the African plain, where good coffee is brewed in the morning and served with a piece of rhubarb pie. Somewhere nearby this cake — or those who bring it — is licked by large musky cats, but the conversation with the camp manager (in the TV commercial is played by the harsh Boer beauty) is short: the animalica in Savannah's Heart is inferior to the scents of civilization.
Photo: Neiman Marcus, Francesca Bianchi, Aro-Mania, Imagine-Parfum, Beauty Frontier, Sens Unique, Olibere