fume: guerlain's mitsouko
hasty, hopping in while trying to make dinner and after 48 hours of not enough sleep. but i have to say something here to myself about this!
damn, where do i start with this one. so shalimar blew me away early on in this most recent bout of fragrance sampling. and i totally fall for the guerlain hype in general, finding the old bottles and nearly 150 year all-in-the-family pedigree and historical context for their most famous stuff glamorous indeed, in a world with little of that left in the mainstream. of course, i'm late to the party and the family sold the thing to moet henessy louis vuitton or whatever, and much reformulation and the cheesy contemporary touches like flankers and whatnot has occurred in the last 10 or so years, alas. supposedly LVMH got wise to the whole "buying a revered name, gutting it in hopes noone will notice because it's just perfume, profit!" not working in this case, and some better faith re-reformulation has been going on in the last 2 years. i ramble about this in the most facile way just to give background to how dizzying falling for guerlain in general as a historical concept only to be disappointed the more i learned in these breathless last couple months has been. and the "guerlain-ade" or whatever 'fumers call it, that "a ha!" recognizable foundation in so many of their major works, didn't seem to be working for me--it's not that it isn't lovely, because it is in an old fashioned way, but it just wasn't for me. vol de nuit was just so overwhelmingly old fashioned POWDER and l'heure bleue has that vaguely toilet-and-toilet-cleaner thing real florals so often have to me...so by the time i got around to this i wasn't expecting to fall in love. i figured it'd be like the others aside from shalimar (which i love but is hard to wear in everyday life), where i'd admire them, recognize them as "lovely", while immediately sensing i am not.
and it seemed that way at first. i still get a vaguely blue-toilet-i-can-tell-should-be-flowers-and-probably-is-for-normal-folk thing at the top, and some powder, but neither aspect comes close to being at the dealbreaker levels of vol de nuit and l'heure bleue. also, especially with vol de nuit i felt like maybe i could've gotten over the powder if there'd been something else there to love, but i couldn't find anything else. here, the opening has those things i don't care for but muted, and furthermore, as it goes on the changes are astonishing, yet never brash or cinematic "notice me". the whole thing stays subdued, subtle throughout, yet uncannily emotionally powerful. i was surprised and pleased, hours after putting it on and noticing the way it would silently shift over and over every time i sniffed my elbow, saying to Robert "this perfume is making me sad but i like it!", to find other reviewers online describing it as melancholy, a rainy-blue-day-mood-type thing, introverted but poignant, and--maybe my favorite--"if someone asked me what a perfume meant to smell like ghosts would be, it'd be this". yes! it's not anything like amouage opus vii (so green and brash at first then quietly, after everyone's left the party, stunning), but the powerful way they both can make one feel intensely but the emotion itself is a private, subdued sadness sort of thing, is remarkable. opus vii is a top 3 perfume for me, and of my top 3 it's the most unusual in that it can do that, alter my mood in a way that seems negative but isn't, that feels true, honest. mitsouko has the same shocking-but-quiet power too, but without the bandit-like bold posturing brassiness--it isn't confident at all (not insecure either though--more like it's too wrapped feeling what it feels to even be aware of the outside world or how it comes across to it), it's just depth and blue memory, wallowing and a faint sort of invisibility song. it's for feelings you get once in a while alone that most of the time you have to push aside to get around in the modern universe. but deep down, they're still there hanging out alone, even if 99% of the time forgotten or ignored. it's the feeling of having something beautiful then life-alteringly sad happen to you, and going about your life because you have to, but more subdued forever in a subtle, not-noticeable-to-the-naked-eye way, a little dented, part of you meanwhile permanently stuck in a quiet place alone feeling everything that past life did to you, over and over in the forest clearing that's the inner chambers of the heart/head (in this regard, it reminds me a little of why that pj harvey song "silence" kills me sometimes). no one can tell except you what you've been through and remember. contrary to the gloss of motivational posters, it makes you a little fainter, softer, slighter. but immovable.
i LOVE it. i haven't been this obsessed or haunted by a perfume since...well, maybe ever. opus vii is much more contemporary and the mood itself isn't exactly the same one. but they both create a moody atmsophere for me like no other perfumes have, and they just so happen to be moods i know so fuggin' well. they are like long lost kin, and i feel most like myself when i smell them. now to do the running around hassle of figuring out which exact formulation i sampled, and how/if i can order more.
damn, where do i start with this one. so shalimar blew me away early on in this most recent bout of fragrance sampling. and i totally fall for the guerlain hype in general, finding the old bottles and nearly 150 year all-in-the-family pedigree and historical context for their most famous stuff glamorous indeed, in a world with little of that left in the mainstream. of course, i'm late to the party and the family sold the thing to moet henessy louis vuitton or whatever, and much reformulation and the cheesy contemporary touches like flankers and whatnot has occurred in the last 10 or so years, alas. supposedly LVMH got wise to the whole "buying a revered name, gutting it in hopes noone will notice because it's just perfume, profit!" not working in this case, and some better faith re-reformulation has been going on in the last 2 years. i ramble about this in the most facile way just to give background to how dizzying falling for guerlain in general as a historical concept only to be disappointed the more i learned in these breathless last couple months has been. and the "guerlain-ade" or whatever 'fumers call it, that "a ha!" recognizable foundation in so many of their major works, didn't seem to be working for me--it's not that it isn't lovely, because it is in an old fashioned way, but it just wasn't for me. vol de nuit was just so overwhelmingly old fashioned POWDER and l'heure bleue has that vaguely toilet-and-toilet-cleaner thing real florals so often have to me...so by the time i got around to this i wasn't expecting to fall in love. i figured it'd be like the others aside from shalimar (which i love but is hard to wear in everyday life), where i'd admire them, recognize them as "lovely", while immediately sensing i am not.
and it seemed that way at first. i still get a vaguely blue-toilet-i-can-tell-should-be-flowers-and-probably-is-for-normal-folk thing at the top, and some powder, but neither aspect comes close to being at the dealbreaker levels of vol de nuit and l'heure bleue. also, especially with vol de nuit i felt like maybe i could've gotten over the powder if there'd been something else there to love, but i couldn't find anything else. here, the opening has those things i don't care for but muted, and furthermore, as it goes on the changes are astonishing, yet never brash or cinematic "notice me". the whole thing stays subdued, subtle throughout, yet uncannily emotionally powerful. i was surprised and pleased, hours after putting it on and noticing the way it would silently shift over and over every time i sniffed my elbow, saying to Robert "this perfume is making me sad but i like it!", to find other reviewers online describing it as melancholy, a rainy-blue-day-mood-type thing, introverted but poignant, and--maybe my favorite--"if someone asked me what a perfume meant to smell like ghosts would be, it'd be this". yes! it's not anything like amouage opus vii (so green and brash at first then quietly, after everyone's left the party, stunning), but the powerful way they both can make one feel intensely but the emotion itself is a private, subdued sadness sort of thing, is remarkable. opus vii is a top 3 perfume for me, and of my top 3 it's the most unusual in that it can do that, alter my mood in a way that seems negative but isn't, that feels true, honest. mitsouko has the same shocking-but-quiet power too, but without the bandit-like bold posturing brassiness--it isn't confident at all (not insecure either though--more like it's too wrapped feeling what it feels to even be aware of the outside world or how it comes across to it), it's just depth and blue memory, wallowing and a faint sort of invisibility song. it's for feelings you get once in a while alone that most of the time you have to push aside to get around in the modern universe. but deep down, they're still there hanging out alone, even if 99% of the time forgotten or ignored. it's the feeling of having something beautiful then life-alteringly sad happen to you, and going about your life because you have to, but more subdued forever in a subtle, not-noticeable-to-the-naked-eye way, a little dented, part of you meanwhile permanently stuck in a quiet place alone feeling everything that past life did to you, over and over in the forest clearing that's the inner chambers of the heart/head (in this regard, it reminds me a little of why that pj harvey song "silence" kills me sometimes). no one can tell except you what you've been through and remember. contrary to the gloss of motivational posters, it makes you a little fainter, softer, slighter. but immovable.
i LOVE it. i haven't been this obsessed or haunted by a perfume since...well, maybe ever. opus vii is much more contemporary and the mood itself isn't exactly the same one. but they both create a moody atmsophere for me like no other perfumes have, and they just so happen to be moods i know so fuggin' well. they are like long lost kin, and i feel most like myself when i smell them. now to do the running around hassle of figuring out which exact formulation i sampled, and how/if i can order more.