It is our great pleasure to show you what's just come off the bench and to encourage you to shop online at our website on www.lenoeudpapillon.com or come visit us at 36 New South Head Road, Vaucluse in Sydney, Australia. Otherwise you can catch us day and night on +61413140994.
How To Apply Perfumes And Scents
To begin with, I would like to acknowledge Ethan Archer, a hobbyist perfumer,
who stopped past the Studio early this week to exchange ideas about perfume and
he was seeking some of the materials I use in perfume, having given him a
sample of my white ambergris some weeks ago. I began reading his blog
thereafter and it is a good read. You can click through here - https://ethanarcher.com/
One of the articles I read was on how to apply perfume and I
thought I would add my own two cents worth, though his article is pretty
comprehensive.
Here are my recommendations:
Perfume for me is first and foremost there to pleasure myself. I have never
applied a scent that didn’t appeal to me unless of course I consider the pheromones
I once bought which I was told if I massaged them into the opposite sex, I
would perhaps secure myself a lover. In the end they seemed to smell of very
little but wax and eventually she tired of me rubbing her shoulders knowing
full well what I was trying to do and instead forced me to watch a Virginia
Wolfe movie and stroked my head like I was a pet cat until I felt like gnawing
my arm off to get out of there.
So, like I said, scent starts with my enjoyment first. Then of course, I hope,
it pleases others. Few things for me are more enjoyable than smelling something
pleasant and new on a person who is smiling or being sultry. Either or.
That being said, now let me break down how I choose to apply perfumes and
scents. I break them into three components.
1. Body perfume in solvents (sprays and atomisers)
2. Body oils and massage oils.
3. Candles and room sprays.
Body perfume in solvents
By this I mean dissolved in perfumer’s alcohol, like we
would normally find in a department store. These I use in the following way.
1. Wrists – by far the best place to put your perfume because its far enough away
that the intensity of the perfume does not give you a headache from coming on
strong. The wrists heat and the perfume comes up towards the nose. We use our
hands often and bring them to our face more times than we care to admit (I
think I once read that we do it more than 200 times a day). Therefore, you will
be getting a whiff of it throughout the day.
2. Behind the ears. This is my second favourite place and the one that works
best for intimacy. It is a sort of “you made it” place. If you are smelling it
on someone else, you are intimate with them. If you are letting someone smell
it on you, you have dropped your guard and are in some circumstances, vulnerable.
All positives to my mind.
3. Clothes. To my mind, this is one of THE best places to put perfume after
your own body. I have come back to t shirts where I sprayed Amouage and a week
later it was still sitting in the laundry basket and still smelling EPIC. I
have had the same for sweaters I put away at the end of the evening only to
find they still carried the scent two weeks later. This is a fabulous way to
extend the longevity of a scent.
4. Hair. The same way that clothes fibres hold the scent, so does your hair. Hair
also warms up as the day progresses so you will continue to offer it up
throughout the day.
5. Pillows and bed sheets. One of my favourite places to use
perfume is in the bed. The linen will keep the perfume lasting longer than skin
and of course, if you have visitors, they will have something to remember you
by on the pillow. Remember, scents have that lasting impression on someone, and
it’s best never to divulge what the scent is, it keeps them coming back. That
goes for married couples too.
In order to make these scents stay with you throughout the day I recommend our
5 and 10ml atomisers here. PERFUMES
AND ATOMISERS – Le Noeud Papillon Of Sydney | The Self-Tying Bow Tie
Specialists | Made In Australia
6. Home furnishings and the car. Again, just more ways to
entertain your nose.
Body & Massage Oil
This is a tricky one. I have ruined sheets and two duvets by using the wrong
oils and this can be very frustrating. I have done the same with a number of t
shirts but thankfully so far, touch wood, never on bespoke suit.
Finding colourless oils is key. However, for example, a contact in Dubai sent
me a perfume oil which was yellow in colouration. Suffice to say, I rarely use
them near clothes.
To combat this, and contrasting to perfumes in solvents, I rub these oils in vigorously
to ensure that are in the skin and not on my clothes. Oils seem to last a lot
longer on me and have a stronger scent. Therefore, I would not put them behind
my ears but on my wrists, on my chest and occasionally downstairs depending on
the environment.
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The photo is from Vernon Thomson, it serves as a reminder that even when our customers aren’t shopping us, it doesn’t mean to say that they don’t love our product – and so I don’t take it personally when you are all quiet.
And so I wish to tell you an anecdote on Lockdown Sydney.
Yesterday I cut my own hair for the second time, this time it wasn’t just a trim on the sides and I was really trying to give it a good go – but I butchered it. And now I have the right side of my head looking pretty ordinary and I am contemplating shaving the whole thing off and starting again.
I don’t mind lockdown. I don’t think it affects me like it affects others. I usually go between my Studio and my apartment which are 500 metres apart. I ride my bicycle more. I now have two electric bikes I’ve built. I’m proud of both. They are to my mind little works of art and allowing me to lower the mileage on my car, lower the cost of my petrol bills, I no longer get parking fines and I am faster in traffic to the city than if I went by car.
The downside is I run the risk of having an accident. I’ve had a good run too, but I was thinking on the subject of calamity and tragedy yesterday as I wrote out my daily affirmations. I thought to myself how lucky it was I hadn’t had an accident. I use my hands every day. I need to be able bodied. I thank my lucky stars I’ve not had a bad accident for over a decade. Touch wood three times. Then two days ago outside my apartment block I witnessed a fifteen year old whizz past me on an electric skateboard at an alarming speed, he was on the straight from Vaucluse on a major road, in the middle of the road, in the lane closest to the oncoming traffic. He was at the speed I ride my e bike down the hill. No helmet. Skinny guy. No t shirt. He was basking in the glory of our spring sunshine and blue skies. It was the weather we live for here in Sydney. Then something orange in colour seemed to break off on the underside of his electric skateboard and he was flung to the ground and hit his head on the grooved concrete patch of road. I was so alarmed. I looked around and saw that the road was near empty owing to covid. Normally it would be peak traffic with the school run outside Kincoppal School. I jumped out of my car and ran toward him. He got up and was startled and he stumbled around, seeming like a chook with no head. I ran towards him and as I got near him, he looked to be falling again. I could not say whether I caught him before his fall or whether he got his own feet. But I managed to get him to the ground. He tried to get up. I told him to lie down. Then I waved down the cars that were now coming towards us. They stopped. Both lanes. It was a great moment. They seem to understand what had happened. A couple from one car and a man from a second came out. The boy kept trying to get up. I kept telling him he had had a bad accident, to stay still.
I rung 000. I don’t think I have ever had to call them since the mid 90’s when I chased a burglar out of our family home’s garden. It took forever to answer. Then a lady asked what service. I said ambulance. She said hold the line. I could hear her ringing ambulance. No answer. Longer, no answer. Still longer it rang. No answer. “What the fuck do you guys do over there?”. I was really quite alarmed. Concurrently one of the other guys that was assisting was also on the phone to 000. “They can’t get through” he said. I called Rose Bay Police station and thankfully a constable answered, and they sent out some squad cars.
There were enough people around the boy now. I excused myself as I was late to pick up my daughter from school. I was rattled by what I saw, and it was an omen of how fragile our veneer of a working functional city was. I had read in the Sydney Morning Herald that our health services were already stretched. I’d had an economist friend tell me that Woolworths was now struggling with logistics to deliver stock to supermarket shelves with a portion of their workforce in quarantine and their logistics team having no special treatment for vaccinations. Concurrently I had received an email from Australia Post saying they had a two-week back log of parcels to clear because they had the same problem.
Welcome, I thought, to the post pandemic world. We needed to vaccinate this city post haste but even then, what were the time lags in getting back up and running. And what happens when the vaccines no longer work? What if it was me on my bike that had that accident? With the ambulance taking its sweet time. The lady at the end of the phone of the ambulance had said when dispatching – has the person been in close contact with COVID? Have you had symptoms of COVID? Have you touched the person ? Nobody is to touch the person and do not ask the ambulance to attend to him until they have put on their PPE ? Oof, I think it was such a wakeup call.
Add to this another conundrum. We had been running LOT sales to move out older product and to generate cash during this unusual period. But I had noticed that after the initial enthusiasm, the tide was turning. People were literally running out of money or being extremely cautious with their spending. It was occurring at a time that we were investing more of the proceeds of sales into new product lines and it caused me to halt a few new projects I was hoping to undertake.
Life has a strange habit of delivering important messages right when you think you have got it all worked out. I was of the assumption that when the website slowed last year, that it was time to focus on the local Australian market and wind down the website. When the Australian market went into lockdown, I made a concerted effort to ramp up the website and approach our overseas customers again. Unfortunately, as I see it, both are now quite affected. The result will be that we invest less in new designs and it signals further cost cutting to come. As if we hadn’t trimmed up enough as it were.
Now, I am of the belief that my product is the litmus test of what’s happening in the economy. But I am told that every business thinks they are… But to my mind this is the reasoning – you shop bow ties and neck ties when you are confident that all your bills are paid, that you are looking forward to wearing something nice, that things seem to be on the up. I know my own spending feels that way. But now, sadly, it seemed like things were not going my way despite having been told by friends that I would always have market for what we did…
No, nothing is safe anymore. You will be forced to play out each day as it comes. Don’t get complacent. And that boy was a reminder of just how bad things can get if you get into a jam. The ambulance won’t be rushing to help you. The hospital may give you COVID. Your income stream could be wiped before your eyes. I could hear the boy crying that his pelvis was aching. I could see him feeling dizzy with a headache and the side of both his temples grazed and red with blood. Oh my, we could be in for a pickle. So my advice to all of you is stay safe and if you don’t feel up to spending any money with us, I totally understand.
Oh and about the boy - I randomly bumped in at the service station to the couple that I left him with. They said he was fine, bruised and battered but fine. Let's hope that's also a favourable outcome for the whole city.
As always, you can talk to me by Whatsapp +61413140994
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Welcome to 2021 - the year of living dangerously, either you will adapt or you will not survive. Our foray into perfumes has not only been thoroughly enjoyable but it has begun to be fruitful too. Just today we got another round of great feedback and it's really a mandate to continue exploring this new product range. We use only the best ingredients in our perfumes and try to steer clear of synthetics unless we absolutely have to use them.
The result is a unique experience and our customers have been very happy and that's really all that matters. Anyway, you can see what we are up to on our Instagram or else come and visit us at the website.
When I was taught art history years ago I was shown how artists, especially with memento mori art, would pass comment on the subjects of their portraits by leaving hidden messages, like skulls, in their paintings. And then also the complex relationship of love/hate between the artist and his patron. I need you money but I don’t want to be told what to do etc.
I never thought I’d be in the same position. Winston Churchill is a controversial character. Personally I loved him, flawed, like all human beings, but not ashamedly, to my mind. And I love that he promoted stoicism in the people. There is a lot I don’t love about the English, like bad teeth, but there’s also so much I do love about them – that WWII stoicism being one such thing.
I asked resident artist Peter Howard to paint me a young Churchill – who was handsome as far as I can tell – in Africa where he was a war time journalist and still a bow tie wearer. I always found that part of his life fascinating. So I wanted a stoic message for lockdown but with colour and youth from Africa. I got this portrait instead. At least he got the jumpsuit right. Peter said he didn’t really want to paint Churchill and got flack from some of his buddies. So my guess it, somewhere in there is a hidden message to the patron. I am still looking for it.
Thanks Peter.
Some evenings I spend on the internet thinking about things I might do once this storm has passed but let us face the music, it’s unlikely to happen any time soon. Lately to stave off boredom from lockdown in Sydney I come to work and when I am not cutting, packing or sending or, dare I say it at the detriment of my own reputation, spruiking my own wares, when all that is done, I make perfumes and research things on my iPad whilst I listen to music and contemplate what the fuck happened to our lives? This tiny pissant of a thing really has wreaked havoc on our overprivileged Sydney lifestyles where we gaze at the harbour, at ourselves, at the blue horizon from white sandy beaches and generally just live better than most other people in this world. We live so well that I often wonder why so many people suicide in this city. In fact not far from our Studio is one of the most popular sites from which people take their final trip, jumping off the cliffs to a rocky watery death at the base. You often hear sirens every day heading up there either to prevent one or to clean up the mess. It never gets reported you see, because suicide seems to beget more suicide so they conveniently leave it out of the papers and instead publish a line at the bottom of news article which would indicate suicide by suggesting you can call Lifeline if you are in a mental storm and can’t find a way out.
Assuming I manage to stave off depression and get through this unusual time I have planned in my adventures a trip to Madagascar. It’s name reminds me of the way Whoopie Goldberg as a hyena insisted on the name ‘Mufasa’ being repeated in the wonderful first version of The Lion King.
Why Madagascar ?
Well about 88 million years ago it broke off the land mass of Africa and now resides about 500 kilometres east off the coast of modern day Mozambique. It’s about 590 million square kilometres of land that has been evolving on it’s own without the interference for much of that time by humans. So much so that 90 per cent of it’s flora existing exclusively on this rich island, an island which is the fourth largest in the world. There are over 14,883 species of plants that evolved here exclusively which makes scientists refer to it as the 8th continent. To the right of Madagascar is Réunion and Mauritius, to the left is Comoros. But it is much much larger than these other three.
It was first populated by Austronesian peoples that arrived from present day Indonesia by canoe. It is today populated by about 19 recognised ethnicities but it is the Merina people that have dominated it’s culture and have in the past been the ruling class of people.
Well, frankly, you know how I love the French and everything French, well, they had a big impact on the island. Madagascar was once a colony of the French until eventually it sought it’s independence in 1957.
But it’s the French that have added a great deal of influence in the island’s rich history. The people in fact either speak French or Malagasy, the native tongue. It was the French that brought a lot of the agriculture to the island. Though they had been trading in the area since the 1700’s, it was in 1896 that they formally annexed the island and sent the existing royal family into exile. Then they set up cultivating it for cropping and it is the agriculture of Madagascar that fascinates me as much as the place itself.
Madagascar, you see, is the largest producer of quality vanilla pods in the world as well as another perfumers great asset, Ylang Ylang. And I wish to talk about these both within the context of perfume. And it is for this reason, rather than any other, that I wish to visit this place which has me curious not only about it’s history but what might happen to it in the future if it is not given great stewardship.
Madagascar is home to 26 million people which is the size of the Australian population, but you never seem to hear too much about the place in the news. It is made up of roughly 19 different ethnicities and in the north east much of that population is described as Betsimisaraka. These people cultivate much of the land which is heavily involved in a variety of crops from rice to pineapples, avocados, bananas and more - but one of the biggest gross revenue producing crops is Madagascan vanilla. It represents over 850 million US dollars of the countries trade and roughly 30% of the global 2.5 USD billion trade of vanilla each year. But, more importantly, it is the most sort after. Madagascan vanilla is the considered to be the most premium vanilla you can source, known for its often smoky bourbon-esque aroma which is unlike all other vanillas.
The process of cultivating vanilla is also painstaking and requires a great deal of labour. The production in vanilla, which comes predominantly from the north east, is also not very accessible to those that wish to visit. From the capital Antananarivo you must take 2 flights, a 2 hour speed boat ride and then 30 minutes in a canoe. The reason that this remote location is so good at producing vanilla is precisely that, it is remote and has not been deforested significantly by agriculture, thus creating a perfect milieu in which to produce this rare and sort after commodity. The north east coast is a near perfect mixture of native rain forests, coastal breezes that hover around 25 degrees Celsius with constant humidity and good quality soil that the vanilla orchid thrives.
But just because the vanilla orchid thrives in this region does not mean that you can harvest vanilla in great quantities. I have been trying to find a similarity to the production of vanilla and I cannot. I feel it ought to be it’s own analogy. I believe there is a firefly that comes out once every thirty years and has 12 hours to mate and then dies again. Something like that. Vanilla, whilst not quite as romantic, is similar in that vein. The vanilla orchid is a vine that usually wraps around another tree, it can grow almost 300 feet long. In order to produce the vanilla bean the flower must be pollinated. Since vanilla (Vanilla Planifola) is not native to Madagascar, this is problematic. You see, in Mexico there is a specific bee named the Melipona bee which specifically is able to access the very difficult to reach stamen of the vanilla orchid, and the only natural way to harvest vanilla is to have this bee pollinate another vanilla orchid is for that pollination to occur precisely within the 12 hour period that the vanilla orchid becomes receptive to pollination. Can you imagine this? You wait a whole year for a flower to appear and for it to then become fertile for a twelve hour period requiring a one single type of bee which can do the job? This already must give you an indication of why vanilla is so expensive to produce.
But in the neighbouring island of Réunion during the mid 1800s a young slave boy named Edmund Albius found a way to use a log very narrow stick and a sharp knife to cut open the male and female parts of the stamen and allow them to touch ever so gently so that they might flower without the assistance of the bee native to Mexico. This was the beginning of a business which today would be so lucrative that people would smuggle it, kill for it, and create a group of people in this region called Vanillionaires whose sole source of income is the trade of pure Madagascan vanilla.
Today this region of north eastern Madagascar produces over 4 tonnes of vanilla orchid beans which are processed in the region before being shipped around the world to make food products, perfumes, alcoholic beverages and so on. The price, which hovers currently around 400 usd a kilo but which can go for as much as 800 usd a kilo depending on cyclones and other natural events, is the biggest driver of the local economy, providing jobs for many small farmers because of the labour intensity involved. It allows small farmers to have a thriving income from work which is intense for only a short period of the year.
The job of the farmer is to ensure that as soon as that flower blooms they are working to ensure that each pod is split and joined and they spend a great deal of time marking each pod with either a serial number or a particular marking to that farm because there is a great deal of stealing that occurs in these parts. In fact, so much so that as recently as two years ago a large group banded together to hack apart with machetes a small band of criminals known to steal vanilla.
Once the vanilla pods have been fertilised the green beans are only harvested when they are near rotting. This is the best time for the vanilla bean in order to give off it’s wonderful aromatics. From there they are dried and cured in the sun in order to further enhance their aromatic properties. All in all, from the time the green bean is harvested until it is a brownish blackish prunish looking bean ready to ship is roughly 9 months.
Of course, I love vanilla in my ice cream, rum and cake, but my fascination with Madagascan vanilla was on a visit to a perfume factory outside the hills of Como. When I was leaving the with the team at the that I was commencing work with I noticed in a cabinet a small vial of a perfume which was made for Chopard and titled “Madagascan vanilla”. I asked for a small sample and was allowed to take one. I could never bring myself to wear it, it was so rich and beautiful I would often leave it in my drawer and just occasionally have a whiff. That was at the commencement of 2020.
Towards the middle of 2021 I begun my journey into making my own perfumes. It was a series of events that lead to it. Firstly, a lady arrived at my Studio one day and offered me her services to make candles. Which we did. They were great. But I didn’t have much of a hand in designing the scents. Not enough anyway. Then one day my brother turned up at the Studio and suggested for me a new business proposition - bespoke perfumes using a friend of his that was tinkering around at home. I liked the idea but felt it was a lot of work and then offered him all my connections for him to do it himself, he declined. A few weeks later whilst looking for essential oils for my candles at a business named New Directions in Sydney’s Marrickville I was introduced to a man named Don. He was so helpful, and was explaining to me everything I needed to know. A week later I met with Dimitri Weber from Goldfield & Banks and we discussed everything from Boronia flowers from Tasmania which bloom for just three weeks in a year to sandalwood from Western Australia, to the vanilla he used in his latest fragrance Silky Woods. To say I was hooked would be factual. From that day onwards there has not been a day I haven’t done something with a scent, not a day I have been able to stay away from spraying a perfume. All this was coinciding with my new 5ml and 10 ml travel atomisers that were being developed. I was enveloped in scent.
But what is vanilla to me with regards to scent? I didn’t really understand the impact of vanilla in perfume until I started making it myself. Once I had the perfumers alcohol I needed along with my essential oil collection I started realising that there was an art form to making perfume that reminded me of writing and producing music - something I have a little knowledge and experience of but would hardly consider a talent.
Perfume on the other hand didn’t seem to be quite as difficult as making great music. There were not so many perfume ingredients that you need to get through in order to understand the art form. Citrus, fruit, musk, oud, wood, root, floral - these were the main ones that came to mind as I was going into my basic formulations. It was Dimitri and a blogger by the name of Jeremy Fragrances that showed me what vanilla was to perfume.
In good perfume vanilla is like white ambergris, or sandalwood, or musk - it is the anchor of the perfume. It makes such a wonderful ingredient because it has carrier properties that allow the other ingredients to work their magic. It has the ability to be a top note, a mid note and a base note in perfume. Which basically means it smells going on, it smells going through and it leaves something behind for tomorrow.
So in my experiments I found a video on YouTube about making a vanilla tincture. This is where you split the pods open to scrape out the vanilla beans and then you marinate them in perfumers alcohol for 6 months. So of course, what do you think I did next? I ordered in Madagascan vanilla beans of course. And around this time Sydney went into lockdown for the 2nd time and suddenly I found myself like some madly enthusiastic Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in the book Perfume where I was spending every moment outside of my regular work pouring over badly written notes with very loose measurements as I made one recipe after the other trying to get my head around this art form.
Now, for years I have been using the wonderful work of Hermes, Creed, Serge Lutens, Frederic Maille and many more in order offer our customers when they open their packages an emotional experience. The web can be impersonal, but when you have a whiff of something that was directly sprayed on your product, that was hand made, hand packed, with, as if often the case, a written note - this - this was chance to make the web very personal. And it worked. The number of times customers wrote in from around the world to ask me what I had sprayed has passed the two hundred mark. It is a wonderful way to get otherwise ghost like international website shoppers to become friends of the company and to make them understand what it is you seek to achieve.
So now here I was tinkering with sandalwood, white ambergris and vanilla to anchor my perfume recipes that were part spice and rum, part fruity, part citrus, sometimes exotic like Champaca and Boronia. And all this time I am building up more and more ideas about what constituted my own favourite scents. I would log onto the website Fragrantica and look at the notes or watch a YouTube tutorial of the colourfully Hawaiian shirted Roja Dove who in 2011 set out to make a fragrance company that was now the darling of England. And it was in these videos and in my own experiments that I stumbled along the other great Madagascan ingredient that I have come to love, Ylang Ylang.
Ylang Ylang is produced in quite a few countries around the world but Madagascan Ylang Ylang is also highly regarded, though perhaps not quite as much as it’s vanilla.
To derive the essence of a fragrance there are a few methodologies but the main two are to steam them and distil the oil or to use a solvent to extract it. In the former, they are known as essential oils, the solvent based ones are known in the industry as absolutes. Vanilla, because it is a seed, is often extracted using a solvent, such as the tincture of perfumer’s alcohol as I described above. Ylang Ylang on the other hand belongs to the former, it is an essential oil derived by placing the yellow flowers of the Ylang Ylang tree producing a scent that is known to be like a smooth Jasmin floral note. The plant is known as Cananga Odorata and it becomes harvestable as a flower only after the 5th year of planting. It takes between 4-6 kilograms of flowers to create but one litre of Ylang Ylang essential oil. Like vanilla, Ylang Ylang is not native to Madagascar, in fact it was first found in South East Asia, but thrives under the same climatic conditions as vanilla, near the sea, near the rainforest, good humidity, even temperatures and a fertile soil - to produce a scent which is often referred to as “rocket fuel” in perfumer or the big “whoosh” like the bubbles in champagne.
Most of the production of Ylang Ylang in Madagascar is on an island off the coast called Nosy Be. But it also occurs in the nearby Comoros islands. It is also produced in central and South America and of course it’s native South East Asia. In recent years it has been gaining in popularity in both perfumes and candles. And there was a reason I was chasing it myself. And this is it, Creed Virgin Island Water.
Now there are so many scents that mean something to me but Creed has particularly had an impact on my life and for two of its scents mostly. Virgin Island Water and Aventus. The latter I have discussed before but to a lesser extent have I talked about VIW.
It was my first Creed scent. I believe I bought it from menswear retailer Harrolds in Sydney’s CBD. It only took one whiff. I’ve never looked back. For me Virgin Island Water is the greatest summer scent that has ever been created. Yes, I’ve tried the ones from Tom Ford and the ocean fresh scents from all the major brands but still, nothing has ever come close to that first whiff of Virgin Island Water all those years ago. There is only one thing that comes to mind whenever I think of it and that is Elizabeth Shur and Tom Cruise in the Bahamas as part of the movie Cocktail. What a period film, what a wonderful bit of cinema were those scenes set to the backdrop of the Beach Boys song Kokomo. Yes, that is pretty much all I think about whenever I smell it. Summer. Sex. A Pina Colada. And what is one of the secret ingredients apart from the white rum backdrop ? Yes, you guessed it, Ylang Ylang.
So now I wish to wind up this blog post and thank you for all listening and I hope that there was some fascinating content somewhere along the line and I hope I did not weave into this post too much of my own personal experiences related to Madagascar but you can probably understand now why I am so itching to get there. Itching to take that flight to it’s capital, those two additional flights, the speed boat ride, the last leg by canoe. There in these noisy streets where music plays and colourfully dressed men and women trade vanilla and have their own lively music, to sit having a glass of spiced rum (I hope they have it there) and to be invited onto a family farm to watch the splicing of a pod, this to me, with or without my Elizabeth Shue, with or without a pina colada or a waterfall by which to make love, this would be my Kokomo. Madagascar, may this wretched fuck of a thing called Covid 19 pass soon so might get to you. And please, until then, look after yourself.
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| a woman sorts vanilla after drying and curing |
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| a green vanilla orchid |
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| splitting the vanilla pod to allow self fertilisation without the need of he melipona bees of mexico |
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| ylang ylang flower |
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| a map of Madagascar and the area from which vanilla is cultivated |
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| locals in the village of north eastern Madagascar |
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| Sorting and grading vanilla |
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| Ylang Ylang |
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| Ylang Ylang |
Have you ever had a lover who wore cheap perfume or the
wrong perfume and its lingering remnants on your linen made it almost
impossible for you to resume relations? I have.
Have you ever had a perfume that was so intoxicating that
you could sniff the back of her neck for hours and wish you could never leave that
moment, content, spent, wanting to be nowhere else but right there. I have.
That perfume she wore, it was Aventus. And for years I stockpiled
it and used it everywhere so I could no longer associate it with just her and I
could attach it to other memories. It was more of a masculine scent I believe,
as they ventured into making one for him, one for her. But she wore the male
version. Maybe that had something to do with it, like when a woman wears her
boyfriend’s work shirt as a shirt dress the next morning, something that was
more common in the 80’s I believe.
It was a few weeks back as I was watching a perfume bloggers
YouTube channel that I was finally able to work out that lingering part of
Aventus that made it so irresistible. Long after the citrus notes were gone and
even when they were on, there was this background scent, something I could
never quite put my finger on, which made it always so inimitable to my mind. It
was, according to the blogger, the fact that they were using real ambergris.
I remember in the Creed store one afternoon when the sales assistant was
selling me their magnum bottle, she said “this is a good batch, a good year, it’s
hard to get the ingredients each year you see.” I have no doubt in my mind that
she was referring to the ambergris specifically. The rest of it, the citrus,
the ylang ylang etc, I haven’t had any issue finding 101 versions of it all
around the world.
So, what does someone do when they have a lockdown going in
Sydney and the wedding market has all but vanished again? That’s right, they
don’t curb their expenses and shutter the doors, instead, this dim wit goes out
and starts accumulating every different essential oil out there so he can start
making perfumes in his office.
In truth, I started before the lockdown. It was Dimitri from Goldfield &
Banks coming in to show me his range of Australian based perfumes that started
my odyssey. He had explained some of the unique and wonderful essential oils that
are derived from Australia that are used in the most luxurious scents in today’s
perfume market.
The parcels trickled in from Amazon, Ebay, overseas websites
and local distributors of essential oils and absolutes and with each passing
day I was able to isolate those smells that I had come to love in my favourite
perfumes and with plenty of time up my sleeve it was no different to learning
how to cook a brand-new dish, like my mandelli di seta pesto pasta I wrote
about in lockdown 1.0 last year.
Now the ambergris arrives. A tiny white tube filled with an
oil of white ambergris that has been sitting for three years in a cupboard by a
man who specialises in Australian ambergris. I mix it into some perfumer’s ethanol
and voila, I have finally found that thing which eluded me for so long, the
final kicker that made Aventus the rock star that it is. It is the black truffle
of perfume, that ingredient which brings things together, that substance that
makes the sum greater than the parts. And not surprisingly, it is often
referred to as floating gold.
But what is ambergris? And why do humans respond to it so well?
In Moby Dick the author Herman Melville devotes a whole chapter to ambergris to
discuss its merits, but it is tongue in cheek remark that appeals to my sense
of humour when he writes that if only fine ladies and gentlemen knew that what
they regaled had started its life in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale.
It’s true. But it’s still not exactly known what causes the
ambergris to form in the intestines of the sperm whale, and it doesn’t occur in
all sperm whales.
The modern theory is that ambergris is formed as a white
sludge like substance in the bile ducts of the sperm whale’s intestines to coat
the beaks and pens of giant squid which cannot be digested but need to be
pushed out as faecal matter. But another theory I have been told is that the
peaks and pens pierce the lining of the stomach, and the whale heals those
internal wounds by producing ambergris as a putty which then forms as a scab
and eventually gets passed through the rectum.
However, all of it is still very much a grey area. Some believe, for example,
that the largest bits of ambergris that form are so large they can’t pass
through the rectum, so the sperm whale vomits it out the front. What they do
know is that some of it can get so large that it ruptures and kills the sperm
whale in passing it.
Harvesting the ambergris is usually done in two ways, either a dead sperm whale
is cut open and the ambergris pulled out (which is not the best way as this
tends to be black ambergris which is not as sought after) or else the ambergris
floats to the surface (hence floating gold) and it bobs around for a good period
of time undergoing what is known as ‘photodegradation’ and in doing so it
gathers up the notes that it is famed for, namely - marine, animalic, sweet, earthy,
musky. The best stuff, I am told, has been bobbing around for 20 years at sea
until it washes up on the beach. And like truffles, they often use dogs to help
find it.
Ambergris is found in many locations but most of the commercial
volume is harvested from the Caribbean whilst other locations include Scotland,
Madagascar (also a wonderful source for ylang ylang and vanilla), China, Japan,
India, New Zealand and Australia. Of course, you will find it practically anywhere
a whale might swim past and the currents that may pick it up. In fact, this
year in February a group of fishermen sold a 120kg piece of black ambergris in
the carcass of a sperm whale off the coast of Yemen. They sold it to a merchant
in the UAE for 1.5 million USD and totally improved the riches of the entire village.
Floating gold indeed.
I will tell you this – I have come to like ambergris on its
own, diluted to 3% in alcohol – but it’s not my favourite. It reminds me of my
grandmother or grandmothers in general, perhaps even those old people who come
to the door and open it and all that musk from their home hits you and you can’t
wait to leave. That’s the worst version of it of course. And that might sound
rather off putting. But then, truffle for me can be off putting is its on its
own. I need the pasta, I need the butter, I need the olive oil. You see, for me,
ambergris is like that base you use in cooking a sauce, it’s your butter or
cream, it is the thing which lifts the entire dish and brings it all together.
I love scrambled eggs for example, but scrambled eggs with some cream and
butter on the toast with some parmesan cheese – are you with me?
Speaking of which, that brings me to King Charles II of
England. His favourite dish was eggs with shaved ambergris. And it doesn’t end
there for ambergris in food. The Turks have used it in Turkish coffee and the
Europeans have used it in hot chocolate. It’s also been used in rum liqueurs
along with things like orange peels, almonds and cloves. In Ancient Egypt they
burned it as incense, whilst in modern day Egypt they use it to scent
cigarettes. It has been used for a remedy for colds, headaches and epilepsy, has
been carried around as a ball to help stave off the Black Death during plagues
whilst the Chinese consider it an aphrodisiac and refer to it as ‘dragon’s
spittle fragrance’.
In its use in perfume, that is a whole other kettle of whale. At the height of
whale hunting approximately 50,000 sperm whales were killed each year which
made ambergris more readily available in perfume.
According to one website Queen Victoria’s favourite perfume
was called Fleurs De Bulgaria which featured Bulgarian Roses, Bergamot, Musk
and you guessed it, Ambergris.
I could wax lyrical all day about what it does to perfume
but mostly I will reduce it to this – it is a top, mid and base note. It is a
fixer, meaning it helps every other essential oil or odour in the perfume help
stay on the skin and it carries it for longer. It also helps project the
perfume too. Really, if I had to break it down into a food analogy: it’s like
black truffle, butter and cream. You can’t really go wrong with it; you just can’t
go too long with it.
In the end, most human beings will never get the opportunity
to smell ambergris on its own. It is so highly sought after and there were so
many implications for trading it that the market for it is usually sewn up by
the big perfume houses. In recent years it has come back into fashion, but
because it’s so expensive, most of the new fragrances us a synthetic chemical
called Ambroxin which is intended to be a replacement for true ambergris.
Anyway, I just felt the need to share this with you all, and I hope it helps you on your own journey into scents. The next two notes I wish to write about will be vanilla and ylang ylang, so stay tuned.
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| A piece of white ambergris |
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| King Charles loved his ambergris with eggs |
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| Queen Victoria loved her Fleurs De Bulgares which included rose, musk, and bergamot |
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| A piece of black ambergris harvested from the carcass of a dead sperm whale in Yemen sold to the UAE for 1.5M USD |
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| The largest pieces of ambergris found |
So many interviews these days start with something like this: “I am waiting in my hotel and it’s 3am on zoom and Robert De Niro is running late, somewhere in New Jersey. My make-up and hair are all over the place but it’s worth …..” Blah Blah Blah.
Then also, it’s all about celebrity. “In his new role as ….
For the Netflix original series … And he says, looking back on his career” Blah
Blah Blah.
I will not start this interview in this manner.
Freshness is something we all crave. One on one, we crave
that too. Personal. Personality. Dedication to craft. Scent. Touch. A story. A
commitment to a journey. I love these things.
Dimitri Weber is these things.
Dimitri Weber is someone I might liked to have been. And it
is possible I might have had his life if I’d chosen his field for a career.
Who is Dimitri Weber? Well, I did not know until a few weeks
back. A woman walked into my Studio and exclaimed “Oh, you are open, I was
always wondering what was inside. I love your windows.”
Most of the people who come past our Studio with the doors
closed consider it to be:
a)
A drug front.
b)
A bordello for the rich
c)
A massage parlour with happy endings.
We are of course nothing of the sort. I just don’t like
humans interrupting my work and I like to deal with people one on one – which –
now let me reference it back to my opening paragraph – I find personal,
refreshing and having the human touch.
“You must meet my friend Dimitri, he is French, a perfumer,
you two would get on so well” said the lady.
“Okay, I would love to.”
Dimitri was hard to get in touch with. In fact, he was so
hard to get in touch with that I had on that last time the thought which I
sometimes get when dealing with other businesses like “are they in fucking
business or what?” . I really get frustrated. But the old maxim “patience is a
virtue” held true on this occasion, I let it sit for a bit and I got a text
which said he was off to source materials in Western Australia and would call
upon me when he returned.
He did call upon me. It was worth the wait. The first thing
I will tell you was that he was meticulously dressed in a casual way. A plain
coloured wool like weave bomber jacket. A mandarin collar shirt in a light blue,
black jeans, leather sneakers. A neat beard. Enough hair that he did not quite
look middle aged but might get there soon. Simple. Elegant. The way some men I
have met in Parisian wine bars dressed. Nothing too much, but not boring.
By contrast, I stood in my phenoms, my Air Jordans, a sweater
and a kerchief. I was cutting silk later that day.
Let me not waste your time. I am here to promote Dimitri’s
product, not talk about what I wore today…
The DNA of Goldfield & Banks is simple – take Australian
native flora and make exotic scents with a story in what is a most crowded and
difficult industry to find your spot. But that’s exactly what Dimitri is
crafting – a niche all to himself. When was the last time you heard of a
company specifically focused on Australian botanicals to deliver a uniquely
Australian scent?
The last time for myself was when I smelled Naomi Goodsir’s
Bois D’Ascese . I was in the midst of a bushfire and felt alarmed. I immediately
conjured Norman Lindsay and his Springwood house filled with beautiful women
and an imminent bushfire and then I was on the set of Picnic At Hanging Rock as
the girls walked further along those rocks and vanished never to be seen again.
That is what scent does – it tells a story, or it reminds
you of a story. Goldfield & Banks, from the outset, seems to have already
crafted that for themselves. Only 4 and a half years old, they first started
making their batch stock in Melbourne and attempted to make it all in
Australia. Now they spend their time finding the best materials from the
Australian landscape and then sending the materials to Europe where they become
exceptional perfumes.
Since Joseph Banks first arrived in Australia and discovered
more than 80 species, some of which are named after him, Banksias, we have come
to find unique smells in this country that our fellow Australians would know by
smell but have never had the privilege of being able to spray on themselves as
a cologne.
Dimitri is making this happen. Rare timbers from the Daintree
Forest in Queensland, rare Sandalwood from Western Australian deserts that died
over 100 years ago and have been sitting out there in the sun ageing ever
since. Rugged, rustic smells which are highly sort after not just by Dimitri
but by his competitors in Europe as well. He said to me, but I won’t mention
which big names he references, that a good deal of top end European noses seek
out Australian organic matter from all over the country to make the smells that
we then buy back as the most expensive perfumes.
As I go through the range with Dimitri, he hits me with the
first one. It is his most popular. Pacific Rock Moss is its name. Let me be
honest, I am now going to refer to the marketing materials he gave me because I
don’t have that ability to name it by notes. Here it is: Australian Coastal
Moss, lemon Italy, Sage, Geranium, Cedar Wood Virginia.
For me it is a day by the sea with something extra. You
really go get that feeling of being by the ocean. I look up at Dimitri. I ask
him if he can go for a walk with me when summer arrives, there is a scent that comes
up off the cliffs. I can’t identify which plant it is, but the aroma is so
distinct that it is arresting, and I persuade him that it needs to be a perfume.
He agrees.
Then Dimitri offers me his latest perfume, Silky Wood. I don’t
know what the notes are, it’s brand new, but my nose says vanilla, wood, spice,
rum, brown sugar. It’s different.
Dimitri leaves me with a number of samples in a lovely tester box which
presents beautifully.
Of all of them the ones that stand out are Southern Bloom,
Bohemian Lime, Pacific Rock Moss and Blue Cypress. But, and I don’t wish to sound
like a sycophant, they are all good.
I want to impress upon you this point in conclusion – when
was the last time you heard of very unique Australian materials being turned
into uniquely Australian scents done well and beautifully presented? I say
never really. Not a full range anyway. This is why I want you to try Goldfield
& Banks and make up your own mind. Don’t trust me, buy the tester pack for
$30 and make up your own mind. That’s all I am asking.
You can see Dimitri’s range here. And yes, there are already
celebrities wearing it, but can I be bothered telling you who – no, I can’t.
Wishing Dimitri every success.
LNP
Tied ‘er myself. You killed it. Elegant, perfect shape and dimensions. The cummerbund fits perfectly. I thank you for your patience and going the extra mile. I couldn’t be happier with the tie. Hopefully my tying technique does your art justice. I’m quite pleased with it. Thanks again Nicholas. You’re a true artist and a gentlemen. I’ll reach out in the summer time to get the boys handled.
There is no question that these are the finest ties the world over. From the cut, the lustre, the fullness, the fold, dare I include the hardware and the packaging? Exquisite takes on a while new level of meaning when you behold ties in person. It is akin to receiving a box of the world’s finest chocolates. You want to stop, stare, to hold that moment forever. Yet, in an uncontrollable urge, an instant, you find yourself devouring them not just with your eyes but with your hands. That is what is is like partaking in Le Noeud Papillon.
Simply the best bow ties in the world. Truly distinctive, Nicholas makes bow ties that simply can't be obtained anywhere else. Beautifully made and substantial, these bow ties are not for the beginner. They can be challenging to tie, but the very best bow ties usually are.
LNP designs and makes the most exquisite bows in the world hands down. The silks are incredible, the craftsmanship and attention to detail is phenomenal. I stumbled upon LNP by happenstance about a year ago and it has truly become an addiction.
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