Ode de Parfum

I've come to realise that I approach my search for a perfume the way that many women search for a man.

My first perfume relationship was with Estee Lauder's Beyond Paradise. I was 16, it was grown up and exotic, we stepped out together and I felt fabulous and adult. Then, after two years of passionate romance, we drifted apart and didn't see each other for some time. Recently we caught up again, but it just wasn't the same. I felt the awkward mix of sweet memories of the past, along with the understanding that we were just never going to have the same relationship.

For years I never really gave the whole thing much thought, but then, as I noticed more and more that my friends had their own special perfumes, I suddenly became aware of my own lack of a serious fragrance relationship. At first, it was just at the back of my mind, but slowly and surely I began thinking about it more and more. I am a modern, independent woman, and yet I couldn't get past the feeling that I needed a perfume partner, to support and define me, to be with me through the hard times and the good.

And then I realised. I was obsessed with the search for a signature scent.

And so I wandered into a perfume shop in Hawthorn with the vague idea of purchasing a Diptyque fragrance. Two of my dear friends wear Diptyque, which put me onto Tam Dao, which I rather enjoyed. I was almost tempted to get it, but decided that wearing her scent would be confusing and slightly embarrassing for the both of us. So I wandered in, met the whole range and, more or less on impulse, walked out with L'Eau. I was giddy. It was like nothing I'd ever had before. I was totally in love. For two weeks I was like a schoolgirl, waiting to get home so I could put it on, smiling every time I caught a whiff from my wrist...and then I went overseas. And for some reason, when I got back it was all different. It seemed a stranger to me. I wasn't sure whether I'd changed or it had, but it all felt wrong. I pushed it away. I felt betrayed.

I needed a rebound. But, chastened by my experience with L'Eau, I tried a new tact. I tried internet speed dating. Armed with a new website (theperfumedcourt.com), I wandered around, read profiles, and finally decided on some potential perfume dates. I started out with several of the Diptyque range. Surely, I thought, there would be something for me here.

It wasn't to be.

L'Autre physically repulsed me with its overwhelming smell of body odour, Oyedo was far too infantile and sycophantic, and the others - Opone, Do Son and Eau Lente, were pleasant enough, but I didn't want to see them again. Olene was quite sweet, enough to see a few times, but there was never any sparks there.

I tried a new tact. I found a perfume manufacturer called CB I Hate Perfume. The guy who founded it, Christopher Brosius, says on his website: 'People who smell like everyone else disgust me.' This, I thought, was the perfume house for me. With scents like Burning Leaves, and story perfumes like Mr Hulot's Holiday - ah yes, here, I would find my one, true scent love. It would be unusual, mysterious, and oh so right for me.

Nope. Mr Hulot's Holiday made me feel unwell, Burning Leaves failed to crackle and sing, Greenbriar 1968 smelled like dirt, as did Black March...nothing was working.

I was getting desperate. Was something wrong with me? Was there something about me that just refused to let me find a perfume relationship? Was I doomed to be perfume celibate?

I wandered into Myer and found the Chanel counter. I felt a little awkward, going to the village bicycle, but I felt that with its years of experience, Chanel No. 5 would be able to teach me something. Alas, no. The most chic perfume of all time smelled rubbish on me. So too did Caron's Tabac Blond, which I'd decided by its description (leather, tobacco), would be The One. It wasn't.

So now I've started going a bit mad. I even, to my great personal disgust, found a website suggesting perfumes by star sign, and ordered some of the ones suggested for Aries (notes of ginger, pepper and bergamot were suggested), but I'm not overly hopeful.

What do I want? God knows. I know the traits I like in a perfume - spiciness, sharpness, richness, a bit of fire, but I've never found one that puts these into practice the way their site profiles say they will. Surely it's not so hard. I know heaps of people who've fallen in love at first smell, and kept the same perfume all their lives. Is it too much to ask to find a fragrance that makes me a better person?

After all, all I want is true love.

Curiouser and Curiouser

A friend of mine recently, when confronted with yet another conversation beginning with 'Hey, what if we did a version of Alice where...', responded by wailing 'Why can't anyone just do a traditional version?!' (He's on a personal mission to prove that Lewis Carroll wasn't out of his mind on drugs, or trying to rail against modern mathematics (thanks New Scientist for that particular theory), but merely writing a clever, absurb story with memorable characters and witty wordplay).

Which got me thinking. I've never seen so many versions of anything as I have of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.' What is it about that book? A law lecturer (back in my wayward days of studying something useful...ha) once told me that Alice was the most-quoted book in the world (excluding, apparently, the Bible and Shakespeare), and that writers of law textbooks had a bizarre obsession with starting paragraphs with wrenched sentences akin to: 'Like Alice, the new law student can feel baffled by the hurrying rabbits, the smiling Cheshire Cats and the shrieking queens of the Wonderland that is contract law'.

I personally have been involved in a theatre production called 'Alice: Nightmares in Wonderland', whereby Alice fell into a criminal underworld, where the Cheshire Cat was a sultry hooker, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee became a corrupt politician with multiple-personality disorder, the Caterpillar a pot-smoking hippie, and all the references to cakes, flamingos and bottles became drug references. (I was Alice. Back in my young, innocent, law-studying days).

A brief wander through the internet reveals version after version:



An 'Alice in Waterland' series from DA user Sugarock99 (view more at her gallery here).



Annie Leibovitz's designer Alice series.



Harmony Nicholas' 'Jabberwocky' series (see more here)



DA user Auriethepixie's fashion-inspired shoot (Original link here).



Charles Blackman's version.



American McGee's Alice (the computer game - Alice is in a mental hospital, has to defeat the evil queen to save her sanity).



And this amazing series, which I can't find on the net any more, to my great irritation - it's this amazing futuristic, steampunk version of Alice. The Cheshire Cat is a huge industrial blimp, with a red LED readout saying HELLO ALICE. Amazing.

So what is it about Alice that makes it such a popular choice for interpretations? I think the answer is complex.

Firstly, humans seem to be especially attracted to reasonably linear, journey-format stories which parallel our own lives - where a character finds themselves somewhere new and strange (birth), is confronted with a series of challenging situations, meets a host of characters, some of whom are determined to aid them, some determined to cause their downfall, and eventually leave, a little older, a little wiser (death).

Secondly, humans like to Find Meaning In Things. The eons-old 'What does it all mean?' question leads us to search for God, for love, for tradition, and ritual, and all those other things which allow us to feel like we're doing something positive and goal-oriented in the maelstrom of our existence. Alice, because it is quite surreal, lends itself ideally to the Search for Meaning, precisely because, on its face, it seems to have so little. It's the ultimate dream made text. One could readily say 'Well, really, what on earth is this? A girl falls down a hole, has an extended trip, talks to animals and then wakes up again. What the hell is that about?' To which the reply might be: 'Well, if you consider the Rabbit as a metaphor for the marching on of time, and the human desperation to use it efficiently, and for the Industrial Revolution and how machinery has enslaved us...' - it's really no wonder Alice is so popular - because its events and characters are so surreal and absurd, it's practically got a big glowing sign over it saying 'Analyse me! Make me meaning! Find some deeper truth in my words!'

Thirdly, because it is SO well known, it practically presents a blank slate for artists to tell us a new story. Because we know all the characters and plot so well, the potential for surprise is extreme. Wonder is easier to evoke when you are subverting expectations, and because Alice is so laden with these, they are easier to manipulate. It's like a child at a parade, waiting for Santa to come by on the float - we get ready to point and say 'There it is! There is the March Hare!'. So when we see a version of Alice set in a new place, we get our pointing fingers out, reading to find the characters we know and love hiding in other disguises. The moment when we discover that the White Rabbit is masquerading as a speed-addled junkie in white lycra, who can't sit down because she's too jittery (another element from the show I did), we experience an 'aha!' moment of revelation - we have caught the character despite their disguise, and we feel as though we have solved a little puzzle.

Perhaps I'm over-analysing. Either way, Alice, it seems, is here to stay (forgive the awful rhyme).

Now, I'm off to consider in my own mind whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies.

S