Scents and Suitability

Shapely bottle, celebrity name, tantalising elixir within. It's the time of year when thoughts turn to perfume, but with 163 new women's brands last year alone, how can you tell which is the one for you? The best way is to have one custom-made... welcome to Observer, the fragrance

Geraldine Bedell
Sunday December 19, 2004
The Observer

J-Lo has done it (twice), Britney's is big in Australia, and Paris Hilton's is reminiscent of frozen apples. All of them have produced their own perfume, an activity now more or less required for the serious celebrity. Donald Trump has one, though you wonder what it smells of - bad hair? self-promotion? - and even the winner of the US reality TV show Survivor, who is called Rob Mariano, recently launched a fragrance, Foreman, which was his job before he became a reality TV star. It is said to combine notes of juniper and clean sweat.

Clearly, the time is ripe for Observer: the fragrance. Observer - complex and fascinating and warm-but-provoking. Tradition and edge. Perfume-people are always talking about 'the story': we're good at stories. All we need is a bottle, and the stuff that goes inside it. All we need is a perfumer, to tell us how we smell.

I visit Lyn Harris, proprietor of Miller Harris, at her shop in Mayfair. Trained in Paris and Grasse, Harris is a nose, and was the first person to create bespoke fragrances in Britain. This involves meeting clients, talking to them in depth about their lives and interests, and then, over the next six to eight weeks, translating them into scent. It would, I think, be a fantastic present for someone special. Unfortunately, there's a waiting list of a year and a half and it costs £4,000.

Still, she's agreed to do Observer, the perfume, so I explain to her our qualities. I don't need to spell them out here, because they are also yours: suffice to say that they include high intelligence, vast erudition and fun. After this, we smell things - smells floral and oriental and spicy and mossy - until I feel a bit headachey. Lyn Harris also got headaches when she was training, but she can smell '24 hours a day now. I even smell in my sleep.' She is so highly attuned to smells that if she got close to your bed, she could tell you what you wash your sheets in.

British women, Harris tells me, don't know how to choose, or to wear perfume. We should spend a lot more time thinking about it, taking samples to test the 'dry-down', which is what you're left with after half an hour when the top notes have evaporated. And we should wear it all the time, like French women - on the school run, loading the dishwasher - and much more generously. We should wear it for ourselves, so definitely in the cleavage, whence it can waft upwards. We should put it on all the pulse points, the back of the knees and in the hair, which, she explains, is very porous. I buy a bottle of her Figue Amère (bitter fig) and start spraying it in my hair. People keep telling me I smell good, which may be a polite way of saying a bit overpowering, especially for someone who is only doing the washing-up.

This is of course the time of year when a girl's thoughts turn to perfume, partly because if you watch any television at all, it's hard to get away from it. Every 15 minutes there's a mini-movie featuring diaphanously dressed couples on beaches, incomprehensible until you realise it's a perfume ad. One of these - the Baz Luhrmann extravaganza featuring Nicole Kidman for Chanel No 5 - last three minutes and cost £18m to make. The frequency of these ads is not an illusion: 290 fragrance brands will have been backed by advertising this year, and the vast bulk of the money is spent in December.

This is because men who can't think of anything else to get will be in Boots on Christmas Eve trying to remember what scent you like. Boots has the largest share of the British perfume market, and does 50 per cent of its annual business in December, most of it in the last two weeks. The closer Christmas comes, the higher the proportion of male customers. They are not, by and large, perfume aficionados: according to Boots's fragrance buyer, Mary Green, their most frequently asked questions are: 'What's new?', 'What do you like?' and 'What did you tell me to get last year?'.

The 'what's new?' question has many answers. Last year, 163 new women's fragrances were launched on to the market (compared to 20 in 1980). It seems as though every market segment is covered, every niche filled with product. The trouble is, all the choice this offers doesn't feel like choice at all. The plethora of New, Sexy, Happening product in department stores and duty frees can feel as repellent as it does enticing. You don't actually need to know that Unilever owns Calvin Klein, or that the detergents manufacturer Benckiser owns Jil Sander, Marc Jacobs, Davidoff and Joop! to be aware that the 'story' these scents seek to purvey is only a small part of the reality.

What we are being sold is an idea of rare and precious essences distilled into beautiful bottles and exquisitely packaged. On our skin, we are led to believe, these tantalising and expensive scents will somehow alchemise, making us tantalising and expensive too. The reality is that marketing companies identify positionings and brief several fra grance factories who compete to fulfil the brief at the price. The product is picked by committee and tested against focus groups, then launched with a promotional spend of millions. And how much do these fabulous essences that we are so supposed to covet actually cost to make? No one will tell you.

Given, though, that most perfume launches will struggle in their second year, that the numbers of people involved in any project are enormous - that Beyoncé Knowles, for example, was reportedly paid $2m to be the face of Tommy Hilfiger's True Star - you can do the sums. Bernd Beetz, CEO of Coty (part of Benckiser), said this autumn that 'in our business, you have to essentially reinvent your portfolio every five years'. Why would you want to reinvent something that was really precious and special?

So the marketing is cynical and it results in a lot of guff. (Tuberoses picked in the morning, people will tell you seriously, smell different to those picked in the evening.) The most absurd journalistic assignment I ever had involved being taken by powerboat to a sandspit in the Arabian Gulf, plied with champagne and smoked salmon, and told about a new men's fragrance from Lancôme, the name of which I can't remember, not least because it never caught on. There are people who do this sort of thing all the time. The British press launch of Armani Mania took place at the vertiginously posh Hotel Splendido in Portofino, to which journalists were taken by private jet. I suppose after this it might seem bad form to ask if the stuff in the bottle costs more than 5p to produce.

Yet, despite the nonsense that surrounds it, perfume retains its allure, its promise of transformative possibility. Ever since the ancient Egyptians thought that the gods descended to earth in the smoke from burning incense, fragrances have had mystical meanings. The three wise men brought Jesus gold and two perfumes. The Prophet Mohammed said perfume had the power to wake the spirit; it is believed that the 11th-century physician Avicenna stumbled on the process of extracting scent from flowers while trying to isolate the soul of the rose for Islam. (Nice story, even if, like so much in perfume, a highly romanticised account of scientific procedure.)

The reason fragrance has such a hold over us is that, of all the senses, smell is at once the least understood and the most obscurely evocative. (David Blunkett was said recently still to be carrying around in his head the scent of Kimberly Quinn. One would like to know which perfume she had been using.) Current understanding is that the number of substances to which we are smell-sensitive is infinite. The same compound in different strengths may smell pleasant or revolting. According to Brian Eno, who collects fragrances, beurre d'iris, a derivative of the roots of iris (which will in fact end up making an appearance in Observer, the perfume), is floral in small quantities but 'almost obscenely fleshly' in larger ones, 'like the smell underneath the breast, or between the buttocks'.

A panel of women were recently found to be capable of distinguishing between armpit swabs taken from people watching 'happy' and 'sad' films. (Men were less good at this.) Women, according to Manfred Milinski of the Max Planck Institute, and Claus Wedekind of the University of Edinburgh, choose perfumes to amplify their own smell, but go for men with a different olfactory 'heritage'. Taken together, all this suggests that we communicate by smell without even knowing it. Countless studies have shown that if learning is done in the presence of a smell and that smell is present later, recall can be improved.

Even though the 2004 Nobel Prize for Medicine was won for the description of 1,000 genes for odorant receptors, we are only at the beginning of understanding how the sense of smell works. Enormous riches await the scientists who can finally explain how and why we respond to odours: not just from the $20bn a year perfume industry, but from medical applications (Chinese physicians already use patients' smell as a diagnostic tool); from agribusiness (pest management based on odour); even from warfare. Pam Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia has confected something she calls Stench Soup, which makes people want to vomit. The US defence department is understood to be interested in its use as a weapon.

While I am waiting for Lyn Harris to arrive at her formulation, I visit Les Senteurs in Belgravia, a shop dedicated to the kind of perfumes, new and old, that you won't get squirted at you in department stores. Here it is possible to potter for an entire afternoon, smelling testers, talking to the staff, working out whether you prefer florals, orientals or chypres. The chypres are deep, mossy, damp scents - Guerlain's Mitsouko is probably the most famous - generically named after Coty's Chypre, which was created in 1901. The chypres are much loved by people who know a lot about perfume: Chypre, of course, is French for Cyprus (rather than cypress, which I thought for most of the time I was researching this article) and the designation is obviously meant to evoke images of the birthplace of Aphrodite, rather than the more recent connotations of being pissed in Ayia Napa.

Les senteurs has been in existence for 20 years, but I suspect its moment has come. In the face of all the choice-that-isn't-choice, there is a desire among consumers to be consulted about our preferences, to be involved in the choosing, rather than presented with mass-customisation's slightly modified version of one-size-fits-all. What's more, we want to make these active choices in a place that feels cocooning, a sanctuary, rather than in the supermarket that is the duty-free mall. Connected with all this is a desire for authenticity. In Les Senteurs, you can buy perfumes like Caron's Narcisse Noir (Black Narcissus) which inspired a novel and a film. Serge Diaghilev's ballerinas wore it, and Gloria Swanson is said to have had it sprayed on the set of Sunset Boulevard. Now that's a story that really is a story.

As fragrance brands seem to be in danger of becoming commodities, a reaction is taking place: the personalisation of perfumes. This autumn, both Prada and Georgio Armani have launched commercial fragrances that will be stocked in department stores, airports and Boots, but at the same time they are also both offering scents that you can only buy in their flagship stores in London, Paris and Milan. The Armani Privé collection comprises four perfumes, each retailing at £120 a bottle, which are only available in Giorgio Armani's store in Sloane Street and in Harrods.

Meanwhile, Roja (pronounced Roger) Dove, a former Cambridge medical student who worked for 19 years for the great fragrance house of Guerlain, has teamed up with George Hammer, the founder of the Sanctuary in Covent Garden, and the man who brought Aveda to Britain, to create Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie in Hammer's Urban Spa in Harrods. Dove opened his doors eight weeks ago and aims to stock the best offerings from the finest fragrance houses, including many that are in danger of being lost. The lavish promotional brochure promises 'the Haute Parfumerie defies the contemporary notion of "spray and pray" to bring together the finest fragrance offerings within sumptuous, lavish surroundings. Roja's personally trained experts will be on hand to help each customer find their signature fragrance.'

James Craven of Les Senteurs and Roja Dove share the view that most modern launches are bland. 'Everything at the moment is a very watered-down vanilla,' says Craven. 'Next year I'm expecting watered-down pineapple. It's as if the perfumers are nervous about upsetting people.' Roja Dove thinks 'perfume has become debased over the past 10 to 15 years. The marketing brief is getting younger and younger: it's all for 18-25s. I don't know of any house that's creating perfumes for women over 30, and all the great perfumes are disappearing by stealth. Perfumers are frightened to take risks, but many of the great perfumes came about by mistake.'

The most famous perfume mistake (also the most famous perfume story) occurred during the creation of Chanel No 5, when someone - either Ernest Beaux, the perfumer with whom Chanel was having an affair, or his assistant - poured too much aldehyde, a petrochemical derivative, into the mixture. It is the excessive aldehyde that gives the perfume its fizzy top notes and much of its character.

So what makes a truly satisfying fragrance? 'Depth, warmth, an indefinable rounded quality,' says James Craven. 'A rolling smoothness about it, like holding an egg. It should satisfy all the senses and seem to have no beginning and no end. So many are jagged and rough. It should be adaptable to any occasion. And you should never be quite sure whether you like it: you should remain slightly unsure of it.'

Craven thinks that an educated nose can usually tell if the ingredients, both natural and synthetic, are of high quality. (Both are usually required: it was only when synthetic materials became available in the late 19th century that perfume acquired any staying power.) Lyn Harris says she can work out what's in a scent by smell: 'It might take a while, and there's no way I could tell to the last percentage, but I know what's in it.' But it may not be that the quality of raw ingredients is always reflected in the price.

Fracas, by Piguet, a tuberose scent that was introduced in 1947, was for most of its life marketed as a rather cheap product. Latterly, Madonna and Kim Basinger were taken by it (allegedly: you can't really believe anything in perfume) and it was relaunched in 1998 at $85 for 3.5oz. Conversely, Les Senteurs stocks Parfums de Nicolai, created by the granddaughter of Pierre Guerlain - simply packaged, not advertised, but high quality - which retail at £38.50 for a 50ml bottle of eau de parfum.

Even Trevor Tye, managing director of Prestige et Collections, the part of L'Oréal that owns Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Cacharel and Viktor & Rolf perfumes, admits: 'I don't know whether the cost of the jus [pronounced juice, the perfume word for formula] is reflected in the final price. I don't know how much a fragrance costs to develop and bring to marketplace. I don't know how much a nose is paid.'

Someone must know, presumably, but they aren't saying. There are between six and a dozen big fragrance manufacturers, such as Puig, the Spanish company that manufactures for Prada. Many of them started in Grasse, in Provence, and they still have factories there. But the fields of lavender and jasmine that used to surround them have been sold off for real estate. 'Grasse is a myth,' says James Craven. 'The perfume houses swear all their essences come from Grasse but you don't see the tuberoses growing. And if you visit the factories, everyone always seems to be having a day off.'

Givaudan is one of the biggest and most prestigious Grasse houses: they run their own perfumery school and claim that perfumers who trained with them have created one in three of the fragrances in the world today. They also have premises in 46 countries, including factories in Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Geneva, New York, Paris, São Paolo, Shanghai and Singapore. In the UK, their food flavourings business is handled in Milton Keynes and their fine fragrances in Staines. They don't want to destroy the mystique by spelling this out, but it's likely that with their 50 to 60 ingredients, modern perfumes contain ingredients grown in industrial fashion all over the world and made in factories pretty much anywhere.

If there is a perfume in your stocking this Christmas, the chances are it will come in pink packaging. Pink by Lacoste (a make that was only available in discount stores a few years ago, until it decided to reinvent itself) is one of the big hits of the season; others walking off the shelves at Boots include Gucci's Eau de Parfum 2, Eternity Moment, Ghost and J-Lo's Glow. They're all pink. It's also likely it will smell quite like pastry. The success of Angel by Thierry Mugler, which was launched in 1992 with notes of caramel, chocolate and vanilla, has led to a trend for fragrances more usually associated with baking.

It is also unlikely actually to be perfume. The market doesn't want strength any more, apparently, preferring eau de toilette or eau de parfum. Inevitably, there are no real rules about what qualifies as perfume, but the generally agreed position is that perfume is simply jus in alcohol, where the alcohol is usually 96 degrees proof. (The jus being so thick and oily, it needs powerful alcohol to cut through it.) Eau de toilette and eau de parfum are also jus in alcohol, but topped up with water. Eau de toilette has 3-8 per cent jus, eau de parfum 7-14 per cent jus and perfume 20-40 per cent jus.

Some perfumers will tell you that different fragrances have optimum strengths, but for Roja Dove, the perfectly perfumed person will be wearing both perfume and eau de toilette (or eau de parfum). He demonstrates with Mitsouko: the squirt of eau de toilette hits me immediately, almost at the back of the throat, because 50 per cent of the fragrance leaves in the first 15 to 20 minutes. The perfume-proper smells much softer and more generous, because 50 per cent of it lasts 24 hours. 'The biggest mistake the British make is to think perfume is strong. In fact it's the softest fragrance there is,' Dove says. 'Ideally you want two, three or four pumps of eau de toilette across your body as a gentle background to support a little touch of perfume.'

It is time to go back to Lyn Harris, to see what she's come up with in her Notting Hill basement among her little alu minium phials of essences. At this point, I could really do with a scratch'n'sniff device, because although there is a broadly shared vocabulary for scent, it's at best vague and metaphorical. Anyway... the first thing to hit you from Observer for men and women (and quite forcefully) is a blast of bergamot and citrus - striking top notes suggestive of a capacity to surprise, of alertness and vividness, with some tarragon and red thyme to add what Harris calls 'a dash of wild complexity'. The middle notes, she explains, are quite spicy: pepper, pimento berries and angelica seed, reflecting activity, liveliness, engagement, and perhaps reflecting the provoking and challenging qualities of its inspiration. And the base is santal pacifique, beurre d'iris and Madagascan vanilla, providing warmth, accessibility and likeability.

I take it back to the office, thinking how wonderful it would be to have a signature scent - except that if you wear one scent for too long, you cease to be able to smell it on yourself. 'Over time,' as James Craven points out, 'the same scent inevitably loses a bit of its magic. Besides, the journey is more fun than the arrival. The signature scent is a beautiful and romantic idea, and most of our customers are forever looking for their dream scent. But as soon as they find it, the goal posts move.'

'Horrible,' says the first colleague I advance upon with my squirter, although she later admits she doesn't like any perfume. (Maybe she can pick up the between-the-buttocks smell of the beurre d'iris.) But a lot of people love it, particularly as it settles down on their skin. And that's as it should be, because perfumes mean different things to different people, and part of the pleasure of wearing them is not knowing what effect they will have. As I sit here typing this article in a cloud of Observer, the fragrance, I could have an effect on someone that could change my life. Unlikely, but it's a lovely idea.