APRIL OBSESSIONS
Crying in the art gallery, feeling like a mafia boss and drenching myself in honey. Oh, and I forgot this was in my drafts. Who's the April fool now?
Scents
April felt like a mess to me: Skies glowering with showers and chilly mornings abruptly oscillate to days of soul-soothing sunshine that makes London break open like a Kinder egg to reveal the treats inside. My scent senses similarly swung like a wind-whipped weather vein, circling around the olfactory wheel with two almost oppositional but repeating resting places.
The first two perfumes were for the lingering cold nights, forcing the persistent need for fur and crimson-tipped cigarettes. But wearing either of the following without that feels perverse.
I was invited to the ROJA boutique in London’s Burlington Arcade having no idea what to expect. I have a deeply anchored streak for judging perfume based on it’s bottle, and I have to admit that I was highly dubious about the brand’s smells based on the louche art deco packaging. Smelling through the fragrances felt like a submersion into a world of unfettered opulence that indulged something in me, scratching an urge deep down for an aspirational indulgent sensorial lust that is missing from so many faucets of modern life, including perfume. I left with Enigma, which according to my Mafia boss daughter friend smells exactly like a very wealthy Slavic criminal. It makes me feel like Margot Robbie’s beloved Naomi Lapaglia in Wolf of Wall Street: all brash self-confidence and no knickers in a Lambo. Maybe I’ll buy a lamé bandage dress to go with it.
Unfettered opulence finds itself in many forms across the W postcodes, and perhaps nowhere quite as potently as Harrods. Givenchy’s London Confidential is the latest addition to the brand’s La Collection Particulière and is an homage to the relationship between the brand’s namesake Hubert de Givenchy and Harrods, where he opened his first London store in 1971. “For me, the story was a blending of the British and the French culture,” perfumer Nicholas Bonneville told me. “I had an image in my mind of Hubert enjoying a cocktail in a British member’s club. Not like a spy movie but not so far.” With a blackcurrant opening evoking a cassis cocktail, before melting into a woody smokey tobacco laced with Damask rose, a faucet of patchouli and a Chesterfield leather sofa accord, this sticks to all my clothes like blackberry brambles and makes me wish I could be transported to 70s London wearing a draped halter neck dress whilst sucking on a Gauloise.
On to opposite side of the olfactory spectrum, a scent so simple yet stunning that it is nearing hallowed grounds for me: becoming a signature scent. Jil Sander sent me their Olfactory Series 1 with six unisex, minimalist fragrances created by six different perfumers, each focused on a simple olfactory idea captured over the crisp clarity of aldehydes. It’s no secret that love a honey note in a perfume, think it is criminally underused and rarely used well. I can’t tell if this is symptomatic of my name and main character syndrome, or simply a long standing love affair (I eat honey like very day). Named Miel - French for honey - the fragrance is an ode to the golden nuances of deep, dark Buckwheat Honey. It is rich and sweet like burnt sugar with a delicate floral emerging from below, an alien aldehydic chord and an indolic streak that creates something straddling naturalistic, synthetic and animalistic. Although distant relatives (if that) it reminds me of another absolute favourite, Marlou’s Ambilux, both scents radiating with a feral glow like afternoon light illuminating a burning haystack. And I just found out the perfumer of Miel is behind another one of recent loves, Gucci’s Muschio Mineralis.
(And as a treat, I’ll tell you a secret: my scent of the summer is layering Miel with the totally addictive Figue Érotique from Tom Ford. Mouth Watering.)
Beauty
If eyes are the windows to the souls, eyebrows are the windows of the face. Mine basically are my face, and so being able to keep them somewhat tame in a full time occupation. I have religiously used the same drugstore eyebrow gel religiously for years, I have been turned. Sync, a Ukrainian female-owned brand, invited me to an event for the new eyebrow gel. I did feel a little silly brushing my eyebrows into shape sitting at a table surrounded by beauty influencers but I am a convert (and if there’s one thing about me, I am a a creature of habit and loyalist through and through, so it’s practically biblical). I also swiped a bunch of lip liners, lip gloss and lip balms and since I left their launch event they have not left my side.
Music
Book
As book that has accompanied me throughout my life, it felt needed to reread Tracey Emin’s Strangeland ahead of going to her current show at the Tate. I first read it at 16 and it moved the tectonic plates of my inner world that witnessing her artwork had already set adrift. Her talent as a wordsmith takes you across various terrains of emotional oscillation whilst plopping you into anochaonristic stories from her life. From eerily detailed childhood memories to her tumultuous yet universally resonant teenage years with stories of dancing in clubs and suffering unwarranted sexual encounters, to the complexities of adulthood, love (romantic, familial) and her interior life as an artist, woman and strange strange girl.
I went to A Second Life (the aforementioned current exhibition of her work at the Tate) and cried. Literally as soon as I looked at the first artwork. I cried when I watched her talking about her abortions (I’ve also had 2). I cried when we walked through a corridor of photos of body 20 years ago and her body now, post near-death cancer, her red stoma oozing blood. I cried when my mum told me how my grandmother had had a stoma for the same reason - a hysterectomy - and that my grandfather had cared for her completely, washing her, cleaning her, changing it until her death. I love Tracey Emin. So, I end with that - the beautiful hand stitched quilt and the odd little story that first brought me to tears.
