SPIRITED AWAY
Evocative fragrances to whisk you off on an adventure through space and time
Our sense of smell has a primal connection to the centre of our brain. A bottle of perfume is a secret passport to another country, another time, another mood, taking us on a journey of the imagination. Marcel Proust, the author of Remembrance may be best known for contemplating the power of taste to crystallise memories, but he was also sensitive to the way a particular fragrance can be a portal to the past. ‘Like the nosegay which a traveller sends us from some land to which we shall never go again, come and let me breathe from the far country of your adolescence the scent of those flowers of spring among which I also used to wander, many years ago,’ he writes in Swann’s Way, likening scent to a means of time travel.
Consider a classic fragrance such as Chanel No 5, now approaching its centenary, which with a single spritz can whisk us back a century, immersing us in the champagne-fuelled hedonism of the Roaring Twenties. Or look to the house’s more recent Les Eaux Collection, which brings together both place and time by evoking specific sites that were important in the life of Coco Chanel, from the Normandy seaside town of Deauville in which she opened her first shop in 1913, to Biarritz on the Basque coast, where she settled two years later. For the latter, says the perfumer Olivier Polge, ‘I wanted to create a sensation on the skin as if each ingredient were soaked with water.’ A later addition was ParisRiviera, a fusion of jasmine and neroli from the Côte d’Azur, where in the 1920s Chanel spent days winding round the Corniche to Monaco and evenings entertaining Cocteau, Stravinsky and Dalí at her villa.
Maison Margiela goes one step further by assigning an imaginary provenance and period – typewritten on the label of the bottle – to each of the fragrances in its Replica collection. Designated as emanating from ‘Calvi, 1972’, Beach Walk features vibrant pink pepper and lemon alongside ylang-ylang, summoning up the sweeping bay of the Corsican town; bright-blue Sailing Day epitomises afternoons on the waves in Paros in 2001, where red seaweed and iris come together with ambergris; and the pink-flushed Springtime in a Park embodies cherry blossom in present-day Shanghai through layers of pear, blackcurrant and lily-of-the-valley.
Other fragrances can carry you off to the sun from the moment you inhale that first spritz. Hermès’ Un Jardin En Méditerranée was inspired by an estate in Hammamet on the Tunisian coast belonging to the late designer Leïla Menchari, best known for creating the house’s lavish window displays. Jean-Claude Ellena, who composed the perfume, wanted ‘to capture the scent of the garden, to bottle it, and offer you the power to open it at will’. Menchari’s garden was filled with summery belladonna lilies and mimosa; in the shade were dramatic daturas, and after dark the rush of night-blooming jasmine. He recreated the essence of a space ‘where plants are intertwined with history, where Greek columns stand next to tall trees, where thickets of acanthus conceal fragments of Corinthian capitals’. Ultimately, what he bottled was freedom. ‘Everything here is wild, the trees and the bushes, the light and shade; nothing is ordered, everything runs free,’ says Ellena.
Tom Ford’s Costa Azzurra combines top notes of fucus seaweed and cardamom, reminiscent of salty beaches, with fresh citrus from a heart of mandarin and lemon. Base notes of vanilla, oak and vetiver conjure up the maquis – the oaks, juniper pines and herbs entwined with evergreens and dense shrubbery that line the slopes down to the water. Even the blue bottle suggests a sea-glass relic washed up on the Sardinian shores. Louis Vuitton’s Sun Song, another ode to summer days bathed in golden light, showcases the vibrancy of orange blossom and lemon against musk; Byredo’s Sundazed is like basking in the August heat amid swathes of Arabian jasmine.
Meanwhile, DS & Durga, the cult Brooklyn-based fragrance house, curates a Spotify playlist for each of its scents to bring places to life still more vividly. Wear its Italian Citrus – bursting with bergamot, blood orange and violet – while listening to specially selected Mediterranean party tunes via the brand’s website, including the Italian singer Viola Valentino’s upbeat 1980 hit ‘Comprami’.
So, while you might not be able to venture on a sun-soaked summer break this year, you can at least embark on a tour of the senses, whether you are craving the romance of a European city break (try Tocca’s Florence) or the beauty of Greece’s beaches and fig groves (opt for Diptyque’s Philosykos). Even more ambitious virtual travellers should sample Tiziana Terenzi’s hypnotic Vele, inspired by the Vela constellation – proof, if it were needed, that a good perfume really can take you out of this world…