I RECENTLY appalled a friend of mine when I told her how much I had spent at a
boutique for perfumes.
Her exact words: "I actually blinked."
This from a girl who does not bat an eyelid at designer outfits tagged at over
$1,000 and shoes that cost the equivalent, or more, of an iPod.
I thought $400 was not that big a bill for a 100ml bottle of liquid pleasure
and a clutch of wonderfully scented candles, which, by the way, were discounted
at 40 per cent.
But I guess it is all a matter of priorities.
I am more likely to sport a bargain vintage frock than the latest high-fashion
threads. I balk at spending more than $80 on a pair of shoes.
But my one indulgence is scent.
My curiosity was first sparked by a rather cheesy novel I had read in secondary
school, Johanna Kingsley's Scents.
While I only vaguely remember the book as a pulpy read, what entranced me was
its setting, in the perfumery business. The story taught me about the Nose, not
the anatomical feature but the nickname the perfume industry gives to its most
important occupation.
It refers to a man whose olfactory abilities are so acute he can instantly
identify a scent. Not only that, he is able to arrange scents in such
combinations as to create liquid gold in a bottle.
The book led me to my first perfume revelation. I had decided to buy a perfume
as a sort of extension of the literary experience, and settled on, in a now
forgotten piece of teen girl logic, Chanel No. 5.
This is possibly the most famous scent in the world, the first perfume to
employ synthetics called aldehydes in its composition. It was created for
French fashion designer Coco Chanel as a signature fragrance for her boutique.
But my encounter with the perfume was a disaster. I detested the cloying rush
of ylang ylang and jasmine immediately. It was like being pummelled by flowers.
That was my first lesson in chemistry.
For that is what perfumes are all about, literally and metaphorically. They are
complex chains, constructed meticulously down to the last specific molecule.
Despite their scientific birth in petri dishes, perfumes come swathed in pretty
flacons and draped in wreaths of flowery language that aim to create a mythic
experience for the buyer.
Because ultimately, the chemistry that bonds a scent to its devotee is
inexplicable. Whatever the science that goes into the creation of a scent, its
success or failure finally depends on a mysterious alchemy that happens when
the molecules meet a buyer's nose.
That reaction is instantaneous and instinctive, as I found out. Instead of No.
5, I ended up falling for the lesser known No. 19. This iris-based scent was a
cool, clean bath of clarity after the overwrought frilliness of No. 5 and it
was the beginning of a lifelong affair with the pleasures of perfumes.
Nina Ricci's L'air Du Temps and Estee Lauder?s Pleasures were girlish guilty
pleasures with their soft florals. Calvin Klein?s Obsession For Men was a more
appealingly full-bodied scent compared to the overly sweet version for women.
Then I discovered boutique perfumers like Annick Goutal, Serge Lutens and
L'Artisan. Their perfumes were towering symphonies compared to the pleasing pop
ditties that were the commercial scents from fashion labels.
My passion has also been fed partly by books as I sought to identify its
various aspects.
One of these was Patrick Suskind's darkly funny Perfume (1976), where the Nose
also happened to be a psychopathic murderer whose ambition was to build the
perfect perfume by distilling the essences of 12 virgins.
The book was a swoonsome love affair with smells both good and bad. The
author's considerable literary ability and writing style was wholly bent to the
purpose of describing smells in all their infinite variety and effects.
Then there was Chandler Burr's entertaining The Emperor Of Scent (2003). This
non-fiction account of scientist Luca Turin and his controversial theory of
smell was another great behind-the-scenes look at not just the secretive world
of perfumeries, but also the byzantine corridors of scientific research and
publication.
Part of my fascination with perfumes comes from the fact that it is the product
of this seemingly contrary intersection between the orderly logic of the
scientific world and the frivolous excess of the fashion world.
Perfume devotees consider a well-made perfume a work of art. But cynics might
see little sense in shelling out $188 on what is essentially air.
But the perfume industry has built a US$20 billion-a-year business by luring a
consumer to spend money on an ephemeral experience that literally evaporates
upon consumption.
One could argue that, in essence, is the nature of art.
What is theatre but a fleeting encounter in a proscribed space and time? What
is music but a collection of sound waves within a defined temporal span?
Similarly, a perfume offers a pleasurable sensory escape which takes one out of
the boundaries of daily routine.
Like art, it is a luxury good which can only be consumed once society has
already addressed the pesky issue of survival.
So go ahead and take a deep breath at perfume counters. That is the smell of
the good life.
