I will begin with her own words, as she describes the perfume herself:

This perfume takes its inspiration from Theophile Gautier’s Clarimonde, a story of extremes: austerity and opulence; sin and holiness; carnality and abstinence. Luban, the Urdu word for frankincense, means “the milk” which refers to the color of the finest quality frankincense – the milky tree sap that exudes from the cut bark. Oud, the dark, resinous and infected Aquilaria heartwood, is the most expensive essence in the world. To create the oud notes I wanted, I blended eight different varieties.

Oud Luban is a perfume of great highs and lows, with no middle notes. It opens with the fresh citrus top notes of the finest hojari frankincense, coupled with sweet incense and resinous notes of elemi and luban. This evolves onto the sweet balsamic notes of the faintly vanilla benzoin, the spicy balsamic opopanax, and the fine cognac-like notes of aged patchouli. Threading through the drydown, and softened by the resin, are the smoky choya ral and precious oud, which is intimate and softly animal like a lover’s body. This perfume is perfect for layering with florals — the oud brings an earthy richness that allows the florals to bloom on the skin.

Perfume notes:
Top: elemi, orange terpenes, blood orange, frankincense CO2
BaseBase Notes: oud, opopanax, choya ral, benzoin, aged patchouli

I find it sonorous, meditative and centering. Once it has released some of the top notes, so closely married to the dark base, moments of a fully celestial air waft up around me.

I love the idea of this as a base for florals, and tried a drop of Aftelier Honey Blossom perfume beside it. Oud Luban provides that dark background from which Honey Blossom shines out all the more.

It reminds me of the first times I listened to the story Clarimonde, as read by Joy Chan, whose beautiful voice I now identify with this story. Even when reading it from a page myself, her voice and intonation repeats in my mind.

It was at the time of year when the giant linden trees are in full bloom down the side streets around here, and the fragrance is held in the fog of early evening against the darkness of the night air. The words of the story became imbued with fragrance and darkness.

The intimate quality of Oud Luban acts like a personal memory that is yet tied to all the sacred things the ingredients are associated with. I imagine the young Romauld intoxicated by the traditional incense that uses frankincense and myrrh, and the lit beeswax candles and masses of flowers used on holidays. I believe the seductive visual and sensual aspects of the ceremonies entered into the soul of our narrator Romauld at a young age, as they did mine, as they are meant to do, and related back to all the old stories of saints and miracles, which is why he was so in love with the church and wanted to marry into it. Also why he was prepared to personally engage with the miraculous.

I believe he could sense that Clarimonde embodied the powerful elements within her own person and character, similar to those he had already lived with in the church. I believe she struck him so forcibly because he had been prepared to be open to that peculiar form of beauty mixed with supernatural power from his years of entering into the spirit of the church’s sacraments. He had also cultivated a powerful capacity for devotion, which attached to Clarimonde once he became aware of her.

The stories of the miracles of the saints, the artfully embroidered vestments and ornamented chalices, the incense, the music and singing, the golden gleams in the vast dark interior spaces, the stained glass windows, all the artful decoration of the most extraordinary and most beautified building interiors of the old cities, often contained much of the wealth of the past and the art of the culture. For so many centuries the artists had lavished all their skills on the interiors of churches.

Yet here was a person, “a young woman, of extraordinary beauty”, whose vivid color and perfection of form embodied all the principals of beauty the young Romauld was used to using to worship the sacred, in her own self.

Her gaze was imbued with affection, with personal attention toward him as a special individual that she chose above all others, almost like a vision of the Madonna, but with the added power of sexuality as an expression of all this wrapped into a personal connection to another human/supernatural being he could actually embrace.

Clarimonde appeared to be a goddess herself, come to life and gazing at him with full undivided attention. How could he not fall instantly and deeply in love with someone who embodied everything he had associated with worship so far in his young cloistered life? The incense surrounded him as he genuflected on the cool stone floor and the censers swayed around him during the ceremony marrying him to the church, just at the same moment he saw that luminous being Clarimonde, his alter ego in female form, from out of the corner of his eye, and he was instantly enraptured and entranced. You could say he was preparing for that moment his whole life, and his life in the church was even an aid to that preparation.

I can imagine the substances associated with the sacred, as of Oud Luban, as the basis for his intimacy and feeling for beauty. His associative sense of smell must have been deeply imprinted with the traditional forms of incense made of the finest materials available as a smoky gift wafted up to heaven, most often right at the moments of procession and display of sacred gestures and symbolic objects.

All was ethereal and transitory yet deeply connected him to spirituality and the extraordinary made real. Why would not a novice who believed in the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of the supreme being not be also open to the reality of other supernatural powers that could personify the powerful energies of life and love and liberty? Because he was not used to women, this one woman being all she was had all the more impact upon him.

The socially perceived decadence of the writer Theophile Gautier, was based on the idea that the worship of beauty for its own sake was essentially a decedent characteristic of a failing culture. I don’t know if we can still believe that, since now we know how beauty in this world is so difficult to preserve and to achieve in any form, whether natural or composed. Gautier was very attuned to beauty in all its forms, and he wanted to I think contrast the sacred and profane in this story, as their forms crossed back and forth across a fragile divide.

As I have written before, and as is well known, fully natural perfumes, even those of the best materials, are ephemeral by their very nature, not fixed in time, exceedingly precious, difficult to source for the best quality materials as they become more rare. The luxurious aspect is bound to the ephemeral nature, like taking a sip of wine that is exquisite and then is gone as it passes over senses in the mouth and nose.

Yet nothing of this natural world can hold the ephemeral nature of changeable beauty like the inherent strength of the wood derived Oud and Louban, the milky Frankincense of the ancients who used it for sacred purposes for thousands of years.

I agree with Scent Hive in the comforting nature of the perfume when used on its own. The mix with the high notes lends it an even more celestial air than it already possesses on its own, like a reach to heaven in physical form. Romauld seems primarily fixated on reaching heaven, by whatever means necessary, either by losing his body in the strictures and service prescribed by traditional religion or by abandoning all that to indulge body and emotions with Clarimonde.

It has been a delight to receive and try these perfumes creatively based on the story of Clarimonde.  Please read or listen to the story to get the full impact of what the perfumers and writers have done, and also for your own enjoyment. It is an engaging and sumptuous tale, especially at this Halloween season.

Please also visit Scentless Sensibilities, the Perfume Pharmer, and Scent Hive to get their beautiful words on the perfumes already released.  More perfumes to come from DSH and Ayala Sender, and writings too, with Beth Schreibman-Gehring and Jade Dressler.

Please scroll to parts 1-4 for more and a wealth of other links.

Above photo: a thurible, otherwise known as an incense censer, used in Roman Catholic ceremonies.  Next, the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral.

Right:  Delacroix painting that influenced Theophile Gautier deeply, Death of Sardanapalus

Disclosure:  all samples in the Clarimonde project were provided to me by the perfumers.  My opinions are personal and I  hope my biases are entirely transparent.

The story by Theophile Gautier  of Clarimonde, has appropriately given rise to a perfume that captures the vivid beauty of the story, Immortal Mine by Maria Mcelroy and Alexis Karl.

This perfume is rich and dense, and as it opens it reminds me of white smoke trapped in a honeycomb, causing drowsiness among the bees, so they lay quietly while the keeper siphons off the honey.

So it was for the young man, sleeping deeply after drinking the wine Clarimonde prepared each night. Something like the perfumed port made by LostPastRemembered, so that he won’t notice Clarimonde taking a drop of his blood each night to keep herself alive.  She knows she must continue to live because he still loves her, so to extend her life, perhaps into immortality, she does what she must.  Even after he becomes aware of what she is doing, he is so enthralled he realizes he would freely give her much more.  That would be dangerous indeed.

The wine, perfumed and sedative, gives incredibly vivid dreams — is he truly the voluptuary alter-ego of an ascetic priest?  Or is the self-denying priest’s life his deepest self, using dreams to warn him of the danger of losing his immortal soul?  When he awakes as a priest he uses wine in the sacraments, to unify people with God.  As Clarimonde’s lover he uses it as a connoisseur for pleasure and she uses it to gain some of his vitality, yet still in kindness to him because she knows he loves her and would not want her to die.

Immortal Mine dries down into a tobacco honeyed phase which lasts for a few minutes, then down to the vintage oud that holds the faint memory of the florals to itself closely.  Extremely sexy.  The central theme of this perfume is hypnotic attraction.  It sinks deeply into the skin, and is made with approximately 98% precious natural materials.  There is a hint of beeswax and  florals, but my favorite explanation of the ingredients of this perfume comes directly from Alexis Karl:

Soil from an unmarked grave.  One single drop of blood from a slain Wyvern, the sweet elixer of dying jasmine and fading neroli.  Amber found in ancient tombs of civilizations lost.  Longing.

Essence of smoke from the funeral pyre.  A cut of material form Bela Lugosi’s cape, the dust from a bats wing.  Wood resins gathered from the Forest of the Dead, Myrrh scraped from the cliffs of The Dark Realm.  Precious ouds unearthed from burning desert sands.  Wax dripping from black, white and pink  candles, ashes of a Phoenix, words from a dead poet’s mouth.  Rare herbs found in a cathedral’s forgotten garden.  Desire.

Indeed, as I linger over the last of the perfumed wine that fills my mouth with ambergris, musk, rose, honey and chocolate, that scent rising up from the back of my throat, I sink more deeply into the fragrant complexity on my inside wrist, and would myself seek to dream such vivid dreams of ultimate and Immortal Love.

Please try the recipe for the perfumed wine, and find out much more about the myth of the vampire at LostPastRemembered by Deana Sidney; it is a spectacular site.  Also please see the most enjoyable Tarlesio, aka  Sheila Eggenberger, at The Alemicated Genie, who has also posted on Clarimonde  – Blood and Kisses – and will continue to do so.  Monica Miller of the Perfume Pharmer  wrote me an engaging letter about her perfumes and lip stains for Clarimonde and will be posting about the other perfumers too: Mandy Aftel and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. Beth Schreibman Gehring at the Windesphere Witch and Trish at Scent Hive will also be posting about all the perfumes in the coming days.

Maria Mcelroy of Aroma M, and Alexis Karl, the collaborators on Immortal Mine are treating this Clarimonde Project as a special limited edition because the vintage nature of the ingredients are irreplaceable.  As necessary in times to come, they will produce modified versions of the perfume as the materials are limited in nature (that list!).  Their collaboration continues at Cherry Bomb Killer Perfumes.  Samples of Immortal Mine will be available for purchase by contacting them: info@cherrybombkillerperfume.com

Alexis Karl singing songs inspired by Immortal Mine.…

Monica Miller, who is the Perfume Pharmer, has written to me about her interpretation of the story Clarimonde in the form of a letter, on her site, and I have replied to her in the  comment section, and will add more now.  I found it right that she chose the letter form  because the Clarimonde story itself begins when the narrator says “Brother, you ask if I have ever loved…”  

Dearest Monica – 

I see you have made three fragrant things to interpret the story, two fragranced lip stains, and a perfume called Sangre.   I love that the fragranced stains are in a red carmine and deep violet.  One is like the blush of life, the other, like the turn of life to stillness, or dare I say the word, death.  I must say though the violet is actually the most flattering for me, personally, though both are beautiful and subtle.  It is lovely that both are fully natural, with shea butter,  using herbs for color and precious essential oils.  

Because the predominant fragrance in the violet is an incense and in the carmine red it is myrrh,  they bring these sacred fragrances up around the mouth, which relates to the cross between the sacred and the sensual in the story.  The fragrances are strong, and they sting a little on application, and then move in to the mouth to fragrance my breath, which as you say is only right when you think about the KISS of the vampire in the legends.  

As you know, Clarimonde herself in this story is not a steeped in blood kind of vampire, because she takes only the smallest of drops from the head of a pin and takes great care of her lover so as not to hurt him.  I found it telling that she salves the tiny wound with an healing elixir that causes it to disappear overnight without a scar.  Clarimonde is so affectionate, gentle, generous and kind, even though she is both a courtesan and a vampire.  This contrasts so much with the narrator Romauld’s Father Superior the Abbe Serapion, who is domineering, harsh and punishing.

Monica, you said you went to Catholic school for a little while, as I did.  I recall as a very young child the nun’s faces set off by their elaborate black and white starched veils,  around faces that were completely bare and unadorned.  For me, this was back at a time when women were very much made up, and the great beauties were Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor.  I think we both were, as most children are, very impressed by the sacredness of the things they wanted to impart, which made us both want to be either saints or nuns, or as you said, a witch, or even or all those things at once.  It all seemed magical yet real and attainable, then.  The sacred is so intangible and so are dreams, and Clarimonde herself, and the fragrances we love are also so ethereal yet affect us all deeply in a physical way.

Sangre is deep with with woods but with a flick of sweetness from the fruity top notes.  Wearing it with one of the lip stains is the fullest experience because then they both rise up around my face in unison and complement each other.  I appreciate the high degree of naturalness (98%) and the modern feel, in that it sinks deep into the skin and becomes part of me, enhancing a persona, rather than standing out away from me by itself, as traditional perfumes most often do.  It holds close to my skin and has a pleasantly relaxing, dreamy quality.  In dreams are when the most beautiful anima/animus may appear…

Wearing this perfume, Sangre, and these fragrant lip stains together, feel like my head and mind are wreathed in the sacred while the rest of me is within an aura of relaxation and olfactory warmth and subtle sweetness. 

I think the fragrant lip stains worn together with the perfume is an unusual and special combination, I know of nothing else like it.

Monica, you tell me that your interpretation of the story of Clarimonde relates in part to The Lovers, a symbol in Tarot.  When that card appears it can mean there is a difficult choice to be made.  In the story, the narrator believes  he must choose between the body and the spirit, or between his reason and consciousness or his dreams and the unconscious.   He has  a division in himself that is unbridgeable.   He is torn between madonna and whore, or choosing between abundance with pleasure or deprivation with virtue.  Either/ or, good or evil.  

We both know that we all have both in us and dividing them so strictly  is like trying to prune the soul, it only makes the other side grow stronger.  Betraying one for the other cuts a person off from vitality and the information about yourself that would be gained from listening to both sides.

The narrator is fascinating in that he does something many of us do, which is make a division that puts all beauty, youth, pleasure and love on one side and spirit, mind, morality, loyalty and purity on the other.  Then this battles out within him and he must betray one to have the other.  Gautier would seem to say he made the wrong choice when he renounces  Clarimonde.  It is tragic because he regrets it dearly, which shows he still has a big heart.

XXOO
Lucy

p.s.  Samples and full sizes of these Clarimonde lip stains in red and violet, with the perfume Sangre, are  available at the Perfume Pharmer site.

Please see the two posts just below for links to audio and ebook versions of the story Clarimonde, which inspired these perfumes in free downloads, and for the background to the group project. There will be perfumes by Mandy Aftel, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Maria Mcelroy with Alexis Karl, Ayala Sender and a perfumed drink by Deana Sidney.  The writers are Scentless Sensibilities, The Windesphere Witch, Scent Hive, Perfume Pharmer, Jade Dressler, and myself.
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It is now time to announce the winner of the full bottle of Sharif by Womo531.  Congratulations!  Please contact me at lraubertas at gmail dot com with your full mailing address for the FB of Sharif, generously provided by La Via del Profumo, a great natural perfumer, and also as you can tell from the posts below, in Sharif’s whiff of the sacred and in its elegant nature, related to the great courtier that our narrator becomes in his dreams, to be worthy of Clarimonde.
Above images and samples provided by Monica Miller for the Clarimonde project.

I see the story of Clarimonde and the properties of perfume side by side in an affinity of nuance, sensuality and even a reach into either romance or decadence, depending on how you want to look at either of them.

By chance and the gracious generosity of Yesterday’s Perfume, I was recently introduced to a set of vintage perfumes, and it’s a rich new world for me. The few vintage perfumes I have tried before, and these too, have had this burning heat to them. They seem to have an internal fire that evaporates the fragrance for even more warmth on the bonfire of body heat as they rise up from the skin.
 
I am so fortunate as to now have samples of the vintage form of the following classics:

Bal a Versailles, an old favorite I recall trying long ago and loving at first encounter but never finding again in the form I remembered until now. The warmth reminds me of candle wax, powder and polished wood in a well-proportioned high-ceiling drawing room that holds bowls of musk scented leaves, like potpourri. There is a mellow and lilting quality to the vintage form that seems lost in the more recent reformulation.

Youth Dew edp – I have heard so much about this classic. It was the American perfume that made Estee Lauder’s first fortune and a huge favorite of a generation. It has a bright amber energy that will wake you up.

Emeraude – the legend and memory of this perfume launched a million bad versions of itself that sold purely on the force of its original mystique and personality. The liquid has a green tint to it, and it has that classic, honeyed brandy tone, both bright and warmly smooth.

Primitif – new to me, the burning heat holds a fresh sweetness to its edge that implies an animalistic yet sophisticated air, something like the African masks people used to decorate their walls in the early 60s.

I find they all have a lot of heat to them that after their initial sharp individual tangy edge mellows down to an abiding warmth.  They throw a halo and aura around you that emanates from your skin.

At the same time, I found by chance and the search around the name that the story of Clarimonde had itself been presented in a film treatment where heat itself was a symbol of her power and the essence of the life force.

It was filmed in a short version for a television series by Ridley and Tony Scott.

This interpretation of the story is as condensed and deep as a haiku. It uses an extremely beautiful pair of actors as the couple, and in this version they reflect each other. Clairmonde in this seems like the female version of Roumald. Both are tall, slender, young, pale, with short dark hair and dark eyes with thick lashes, vivid features, wearing long dark clothes that swirl around them as they move.

It is set in the countryside near Quebec in the 1850s, in winter. Deep white snow stretches for miles in every direction, with a tree line black against the horizon. There is a great use of the freezing cold of the environment as a force that acts on the few inhabitants who have to work hard to keep warm.

There is the feeling that love, warmth, pleasure and the heat of another are even more necessary in such a place. Though beautiful it is so cold and isolated it’s difficult to ever relax the tension of working very hard to keep alive, to keep the spirit and body togther.

Clarimonde appears as a force of warmth that counters all the cold discipline and isolation. She lives in a place that is the epitome of the warm interior, with large vases of flowers, art on the walls, a large ornately carved bed, luxurious carpets. She is naked beneath the dark furs she wears, which match her hair. Near her it is warm enough to undress and luxuriate in nakedness.

The couple’s meetings are presented as dreams, but then revealed to be true, with an internal war between opposites brutally resolved by blind faith that is a both a reality check and a betrayal. I highly recommend renting it from Netflix. The series is called The Hunger, Season 1, Disc 4. Terence Stamp introduces this episode, and David Bowie is a host of the series. The incredibly beautiful actress, Audrey Benoit, was a supermodel who later became a respected author.

The perfumers of the Clarimonde project are still busy at work. We are now joined by Beth Schreibman Gehring, who will both write and has made the tantalizing promise to prepare perfumed gloves herself. She has a pair of vintage white leather embroidered ones she intends to perfume. I think it’s high time the custom of perfuming gloves came back in full force. 

I understand that Mandy Aftel has decided to make a solid perfume, which I am looking forward to with great anticipation. I know she has a great affinity to the era and school of writing that Clarimonde came from. 

Maria Mcelroy and Alexis Karl are in the midst of perfume that is a cool breeze through the deep woods that Clarimonde and her lover pass through. 

Deana Sidney is preparing a perfumed wine of her own recipe based on a very old recipe for a Medieval/Rennaissance hippocras. 

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz is getting into something metallic and dark. 

Monica Miller has made a fragrant lip stain, both in red and purple, which reaches across the spectrum of energy to stillness, the appearance of life and death.

I look forward to more and will report the next developments here and on Facebook and Twitter. The writers will all link to each other as they come in. If you wish to be included in the Facebook group, please let me know. We are posting visuals and music and other sources of inspiration there. 

Please see the prior post for the links to the story, both audio and print, and for the Sharif FB give away to be announced next week.

Vintage perfume bottles above from a Brooklyn flea market,
Photos above from the Clarimonde episode of The Hunger, Season 1, disc 4
Vintage samples both purchased and gifted from Yesterday’s Perfume.

To announce this project there will be a give-away of a full bottle of Sharif, from La Via del Profumo, whose elegance, sense of restrained power and soulfulness I have written about before (for more  please see this post, which also speaks of the brightness and dark of Aftelier’s Haute Claire).  I feel Sharif relates well to this project, which references both the sensual and the austere.

The short story Clarimonde, by Theophile Gautier, as translated by Lafcadio Hearn, had a big effect on me as soon as I heard it.

I highly recommend a wonderful reading by Joy Chan on Librivox. Her oh so slightly French-accented Hong Kong British voice is expressive and increases the rich detail of the story.  This story full of sumptuous Gothic imagery is also available in a free download.

Theophile Gautier, author of the phrase “art for art’s sake”, close friend of Baudelaire, and Gerard de Nerval, and quoted by Oscar Wilde in Dorian Gray, was one of the original proponents of Aestheticism, a/k/a the Decadent school (and also a great animal lover).

I have enticed some perfumers and writers to this project who I  know will share my enthusiasm about this story.  The project which will run through the entire month of October.  I will post on it through the month, and the other writers will post as they are inspired to.  There will be links to each other as these post arise, and a Facebook group page where we can also share our thoughts on the story and our experience of the perfumed interpretations that arise from it.

We will all interpret this story in our own way. We are doing this with complete freedom as to form. The main thing is that we are all immersed and energized by the beauty of the story to make something beautiful ourselves. The fragrances may take the form of perfume as liquid or solid, powder, oil, fragrant drink or food, within jewelry, as room fragrance, or wherever inspiration may lead, including variations on a theme. 

I love stories that make me think of perfume.  I see this one through my experience of aromatic beauty as a sensual force and with more awareness of how ephemeral it all is, and how its transitory nature is part of it’s special beauty. 

Halloween is now one of the last interesting public holidays we still keep, and since this since this is one of the first vampire stories, an association with October in all its golden dying glory is the perfect time. I will be posting all month on this story and the perfumes and aromatic creations of the perfumers, and will link to the other writers who are participating.

I recall hearing Clarimonde for the first time walking the streets together with Dante, an Italian Greyhound, during the blooming of the big old linden trees around here, on a night with a big full moon, while heavily humid air held the fragrance and intensified it. Breathing in gusts of lively, lush beauty while moving through the luminous dark, hearing this story read by a beautiful expressive voice made a big impression on me.

I wanted to have perfumes to specifically embody this story. It is one of the earliest of the vampire genre.  In this case however, the female vampire feeding on the life force of the male victim gives so much back in terms of beauty, love, life, youth and pleasure that the enthralled victim is more than happy to give his very blood as the price that must be paid. 

This description of a vampire is not dark and awful, but instead all about sumptuous luminosity, a blonde who emanates light, who wears pearls that glow almost as much as her skin,  wearing colorful satins and velvets.  Her greatest craving along with the blood of life itself is a matching ardor from someone truly worthy of her.

This story is about a man who dissolves himself every night into a dream of a woman’s love so seductive and sensually detailed he is not sure that she is not real. For him, emotionally, nothing could be more vivid. He can no longer be sure what is real, or when he is actually dreaming or awake, or even what is truly good or not. There is both the tension of resistance and a sense of surrender. The story is one of opulence contrasted with austerity and self-discipline, so heightening the understanding of both.

The victim is a devout young man, who grew up in austerity, isolated from the world. He is meditative, prayerful, exalted in spirit, completely unbalanced to our modern eyes in that he is about to enthusiastically choose an entirely monastic existence. Suddenly he loses his heart and body through the vision of a beautiful womanly apparition, standing by in the Cathedral at the very moment he is vowing self denial and austerity for life.

Eventually he becomes aware that her vitality is enhanced and renewed when she consumes a little blood from him. After these sessions, she gives back abundantly with the most sensual experiences imaginable, providing both the means of great luxury and an intensely erotic and deep romance.

It made me think of perfumes that recall the details of the story, such as Avignon by Comme les Garcons, for the incensed ceremony in the Cathedral interior of the first scene between Romauld and Clarimonde. 

I’m also reminded of bright florals relating to the colors worn by Clarimonde, her bright gold hair, her inner light illuminating dark interiors, in contrast to Romauld’s monastic minimalism and austerity.  The orange flower in Madini Azahar or 1000 Lilies from DSH become yet more luminous against a dark background and well layered against the deepest darkest ambers, resins and balsams.

The give-away I am conducting for Sharif relates to what I see as the richly elegant side of the masculine narrator as he describes a nightly escape from a life of humility, solitude and extreme simplicity. He conducts this alternate life in a Venitian palace with the gorgeous Clarimonde.  There he exists timelessly as a proud and wealthy prince who thoroughly enjoys the privileges of leisure and beauty enough to match the imagination and vivid color of a romantic painting by Delacroix. 

Please leave your comment below for the give-away, which I will announce on October 16th.

The perfumers participating will be Mandy Aftel, who last I heard was contemplating a perfume for the hair or a perfumed body oil; Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Maria McElroy of Aroma M and Alexis Karl in collaboration, Monica Miller with a perfumed lip stain, and Deana Sidney of the divine LostPastRemembered creating and then writing about one of her imaginative and most highly fragrant food experiences.

Writers will be Scentless Sensibilities, Eyeliner on a Cat, Scent Hive, Perfume Pharmer, Jade Dressler, and myself. I will also open a Facebook group/page to give space to all the participants to share more about their process and interpretations.

For further visualization, our more contemporary decadent favorite, Alexander McQueen, in one of his most highly ambiguous luxury phases as in the above photos, please see this video from Elle of Fall Winter 2008.   I think this collection is exactly what Clarimonde would be wearing  if she was/is still around today….
http://youtu.be/qFTRQJxVWQI
Illustrations:  Gustave Moreau.  
Photo of Sharif by Nathan Branch

I think of vintage Caron Narcisse Noir, pale sweetness drying down to a dark dry wood, or a spicey Noir, like Noir Epices from Frederic Malle, which connects top to bottom with a stimulating layer permeating throughout down to the bottom dark base notes.

So Dark Romanticism goes on as strong as ever, unbroken in a seductive line from the nineteenth century French poets like Baudelaire and Rimbaud and the American anti-trancendentalists like Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Melville, connecting the big dark dramatic scary dots into lines between ourselves and the cycles of nature.

February 21nd will be the last day of FIT’s exhibition of couture Gothic fashion, and I can’t believe how refined and beautiful it is. It is worth making a special trip to see. The designers’ attention to the details of line and finish are an idealized version of the Noir frame of mind. The darkly elegant sensuality of each piece is breathtaking. One Alexander McQueen dress was inspired by his ancestor, Elizabeth How, burned as a witch in the 1600s (above) that looks like an evening gown worn for the flaming party thrown in honor of the exciting scariness of mortality.

Not to be missed are the jewelry and accessory cases in the opening room. There are antique pieces mixed with modern, including mourning jewelry of thick, perfectly carved vulcanite matte black chains. The Victorians wore them around their necks, symbolizing the graceful bearing of lengthy emotional slavery to life’s losses and regrets.
Not to be missed! Suitable attire to attend includes a Noir perfume…