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Spring clean with a fresh, new beginning and two well-loved classics.
Haru tatsu (Spring begins):
The Japanese apricot, or ume, traditionally heralds spring in the land of the Rising Sun. With its elegant dark branches and blossoms studded with starry sta- mens, the Japanese apricot has signified the arrival of spring for so long that the word “ume” is a clue in haiku called a kigo that alerts the reader to the spring season as the poem’s setting.
And so . . . Ume. This spring, French soap boutique Mis- tral adds Japanese Apricot to its Nectar de Fruits line. The fragrance comes in a variety of products, including Mistral’s essential shea butter soap, so you can shower yourself in this unusual scent. Top notes are apricot kernel and orange; middle notes are apricot, nectarine, Japanese apricot blos- soms, and peach blossoms; the base note is a clean, fresh white musk. In all formats, this fragrance is a celebra- tion of life, rebirth, and budding prospects; it is a walk under blooming trees on the fullest day of spring. In Japanese tradition, the ume blossom has also been used as a protective charm against evil wear Japanese Apricot as a potion for personal rebirth.
The wonderful thing about spring is that it always comes again. Sometimes, in the wayfaring quest for the ex- quisite, we might overlook what’s right under our noses. Estée Lauder’s White Linen is like that: a classic, moderately priced, everywoman fragrance that, when it was released in 1978, began to make its way steadily to the top of the fragrance charts, perhaps eclipsed only by Chanel fragrances in both acclaim and sales volume. The parfum spray so permeated the late 1970s and early 1980s that it is imprinted on our memory of that era.
In 1978, women in the know usually sewed their own dresses, albeit from Vogue patterns. They fluffed their permed hair, spritzed on White Linen, and lip-synched “You’re the One That I Want” while the hi-fi needles bobbed in their maple-paneled living rooms. As timeless as the heady rose that appears in its top note, along with jasmine and muguet, White Linen is luxury in liquid form. With middle notes of violet and orris flower and base notes of vetiver and moss, this fragrance is fresh yet soft, unassuming yet lingering the melody of the spring of our lives and of our memories.
No discussion of classic fragrances is complete without giving space to “le monstre” the fragrance that, after 88 years, still outsells others by millions annually. Chanel N° 5 parfum plays Eliza- beth Taylor to other fragrances’ nameless, faceless starlets that are so easily forgotten and left by the wayside. Even the austere bottle design has prevailed where flashy flacons have failed. “Classic” is a title that cannot be assigned; it is simply what remains.
Coco Chanel’s favorite fragrance, which she helped perfumer Ernest Beaux design in 1921, was groundbreaking in its complexity. Fragrance composition heretofore had been a one-note song: you wore simply rose, gardenia, lily, or violet. N° 5, by contrast, has 130 ingredients, and was the first perfume to use aldehydes, or synthetic ingredients. Its top notes are commonly called aldehydic, with melodies of ylang ylang and neroli, and its mid-notes are dominated by rose and jasmine, while its bass notes are largely sandalwood and vetiver. Over the years, there have been various incarnations of the parfum, the newest being the Eau Première, but so far nothing has beaten the original. In it, Mme Chanel found just what she asked for: “un parfum de femme, à odeur de femme.” And so it is: beautiful, complex, enduring.
Mistral soaps & fragrances available at MistralSoap.com.
White Linen available at EsteeLauder.com.
Chanel N° 5 available from Chanel.com.
