![]() We want our oudhs and our green chypres our fresh, perennial florals, our taut, brisé incenses, our classics: the dignity, and poise, and people-distancing respect those categories of scent can induce: the elegance. I suppose in scent terms, to quite a large number of perfumists reading this, the thought of stepping out of the house, sweet, smothered and vanilla-drenched, in an aura of yellow, angelic sweetnesses, into the dark and fur-coated night might seem horrendous. Those tiny flecks of beautiful vanilla you see suspended in custards and yoghurts that so entice the air and the buds concentrated miniscule dots of aphrodisiacal pungency, flowing out knowingly, and coolly into the lactic, surrounding deliciousness… I have long been obsessed with this note: not the cheap, synthetic floriental vulgarity of all the current, pink, booblicious, cheap thrill nasties, but rather the vanillin-specked, dark glistening pods fermenting within their sweet odour in the sun the beans I saw up close and learned how to grow on my stay on an organic vanilla plantation in Indonesia, that ultimate vanilla odyssey,which, for me, was like a dream come true. The combination of these aromas, plus the letter-stamped knowledge of where they came from, filled me with an instant luscious high on this rainy afternoon in October, as I have always – naturally and instinctively, even before I had been to any of these places – loved the life-affirming voluptuaries of the tropical: ylang ylang flowers frangipani, coconut milk, pikake – but in particular the scent, taste, and emotion of vanilla. Even more excitingly, in a light brown manila envelope as well, were some freshly cured vanilla beans from Madagascar, lying enticingly as though they had just been bought from the market in Antananarivo in their new paper bag and somehow found themselves awakened in Japan. ![]() In it was a bottle of freshly distilled ylang ylang oil called ‘Ylang Ylang Compte Goutte’, a heady, extravagant liquid coloured a light apricot-orange that was deliciously, pungently exotic. A small parcel arrived in the post yesterday from a friend who has just been to the island of Réunion. ![]()
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