madeleine my madeleine
Aug. 25th, 2004 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonI've been shopping around for a perfume over the last couple of years.
For a long time I wore Chanel No. 5. I started wearing it when I was fifteen, thinking that it was terribly sophisticated. I saw a magazine ad (I just searched the entire goddamn internet looking for it, but you'll just have to imagine it) featuring a black page with text that went something like this: "Halt! Who goes there?" "Shhh, don't say anything." "But who was that? It's too dark to see!" "Couldn't you tell? That was the General's woman!" And then a picture of a bottle of Chanel No. 5 at the bottom of the page. I wanted to be that mysterious woman who could slip in and out of military camps at night, past the guards, the favored one of the General, Karen Allen in her gown fending off the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark just waiting for the chance to yell at Indy for not rescuing her sooner, not that she needed rescuing. Yeah, I fell for the advertising campaign hook, line and sinker.
Then later I just thought it was funny that this death rock chick in her torn fishnets and shaved head wore Chanel No. 5, funny in a subversive kind of way, because people might smell my perfume and turn around expecting the General's woman and instead see glowering little me. Plus by that time it was the smell of me, and beyond that, it was the taste of sex, because when a lover kissed my mouth after kissing the rest of my body, I could taste Chanel No. 5 on his tongue. It was my own desireability, my own sexuality, fed back to me. I haven't worn Chanel for a few years now, but when I think of it, I never imagine the smell. I imagine the taste.
Fast forward. I'm allergic to a lot of scents, but I think it's nifty to have your own personal scent (I think I must think like a ferret). Many of my friends smell very nice. But I've yet to find something that I really, really like. Demeter's Holy Water came close--I want to smell sanctified!--but it fades so quickly, like so many Demeter scents do. Lately I've been wearing Gothic Rosary's Mayhem, meant to smell like bonfires and wood smoke, but it's just a little too powdery smelling for me. I was hoping it would be more like the smell of the Providence Riverfires in a bottle.
So today in the mail I received a package of tiny sample bottles (called imps) from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I had ordered six, and they threw in two extras for free, which was nice. I sniffed them all one after another, which resulted in my nose having no idea which was which. But since I spilled some of Queen of Sheba ("Her scent is a bounty of golden honeyed almonds and a whisper of African and Middle Eastern spices.") on myself while opening the tiny bottle, I thought I would try that out for an evening. Oddly enough, as it's mellowing, it reminds me of Chanel No. 5. But because every scent carries its own association and words have power of evocation, I am much reminded of the smell of Breyer horses fresh out of the package in the late 70s and early 80s (they changed the plastic formulation sometime in the 80s. I'm sure at least one or two of you readers knows what I mean.). My very favorite horse was Sheba, Queen of the East. She looked like this, only much prettier, with more subtle shading around the eyes and muzzle. She broke her hind leg and my dad tried to glue it back to gether with expoxy to no avail. I taped her leg back on with bandage tape from the first aid kit and taped her other legs to match, declaring that she was now a world famous race horse, in addition to being a fabulous desert-bred Arabian, just like the Black Stallion. As a kid who had to switch elementary schools partway through and had a rich life of the imagination, I can honestly say that this horse was one of my best friends growing up. And yes, I know it was really a hunk of plastic, but I was quite the little animist as a child.
So this Queen of Sheba perfume, while it's probably too sweet to be a regular perfume for me, is sending me into fits of very different sorts of nostalgia between its actual scent and the name. I am looking forward to trying out the rest of the scents I ordered, if I can stand the sensory overload...
For a long time I wore Chanel No. 5. I started wearing it when I was fifteen, thinking that it was terribly sophisticated. I saw a magazine ad (I just searched the entire goddamn internet looking for it, but you'll just have to imagine it) featuring a black page with text that went something like this: "Halt! Who goes there?" "Shhh, don't say anything." "But who was that? It's too dark to see!" "Couldn't you tell? That was the General's woman!" And then a picture of a bottle of Chanel No. 5 at the bottom of the page. I wanted to be that mysterious woman who could slip in and out of military camps at night, past the guards, the favored one of the General, Karen Allen in her gown fending off the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark just waiting for the chance to yell at Indy for not rescuing her sooner, not that she needed rescuing. Yeah, I fell for the advertising campaign hook, line and sinker.
Then later I just thought it was funny that this death rock chick in her torn fishnets and shaved head wore Chanel No. 5, funny in a subversive kind of way, because people might smell my perfume and turn around expecting the General's woman and instead see glowering little me. Plus by that time it was the smell of me, and beyond that, it was the taste of sex, because when a lover kissed my mouth after kissing the rest of my body, I could taste Chanel No. 5 on his tongue. It was my own desireability, my own sexuality, fed back to me. I haven't worn Chanel for a few years now, but when I think of it, I never imagine the smell. I imagine the taste.
Fast forward. I'm allergic to a lot of scents, but I think it's nifty to have your own personal scent (I think I must think like a ferret). Many of my friends smell very nice. But I've yet to find something that I really, really like. Demeter's Holy Water came close--I want to smell sanctified!--but it fades so quickly, like so many Demeter scents do. Lately I've been wearing Gothic Rosary's Mayhem, meant to smell like bonfires and wood smoke, but it's just a little too powdery smelling for me. I was hoping it would be more like the smell of the Providence Riverfires in a bottle.
So today in the mail I received a package of tiny sample bottles (called imps) from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I had ordered six, and they threw in two extras for free, which was nice. I sniffed them all one after another, which resulted in my nose having no idea which was which. But since I spilled some of Queen of Sheba ("Her scent is a bounty of golden honeyed almonds and a whisper of African and Middle Eastern spices.") on myself while opening the tiny bottle, I thought I would try that out for an evening. Oddly enough, as it's mellowing, it reminds me of Chanel No. 5. But because every scent carries its own association and words have power of evocation, I am much reminded of the smell of Breyer horses fresh out of the package in the late 70s and early 80s (they changed the plastic formulation sometime in the 80s. I'm sure at least one or two of you readers knows what I mean.). My very favorite horse was Sheba, Queen of the East. She looked like this, only much prettier, with more subtle shading around the eyes and muzzle. She broke her hind leg and my dad tried to glue it back to gether with expoxy to no avail. I taped her leg back on with bandage tape from the first aid kit and taped her other legs to match, declaring that she was now a world famous race horse, in addition to being a fabulous desert-bred Arabian, just like the Black Stallion. As a kid who had to switch elementary schools partway through and had a rich life of the imagination, I can honestly say that this horse was one of my best friends growing up. And yes, I know it was really a hunk of plastic, but I was quite the little animist as a child.
So this Queen of Sheba perfume, while it's probably too sweet to be a regular perfume for me, is sending me into fits of very different sorts of nostalgia between its actual scent and the name. I am looking forward to trying out the rest of the scents I ordered, if I can stand the sensory overload...
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Date: 2004-08-25 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-26 07:41 am (UTC)weird, I just noticed that my links in this entry are gone. they were there last night...
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Date: 2004-08-25 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-26 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-26 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-27 11:08 am (UTC)I'm trying out another of my new scents today and it's making my face itch, even though it's not on my face :( It's called Cathedral, I guess I am allergic to religion.