Monthly Archives: May 2013

This isn’t the elephant in the room, nor is this the giant mammal in the jungle.

This beast commands the crowd, has its own palace and travels in splendour in the streets around the temple at the time of the festival.

This is the ceremonial Indian elephant. The Kerala pachyderm. Dressed up with somewhere to go.

From the very start of the proceedings the impression is overwhelming and impossible to ignore.

As if her enormous vanillic mass: metres high, tall and wide, were not enough there are her spiced up personal effects.

The ornaments and adornments of our lady of Guruvayur.

Golden head shields – nettipattam – glistening with clove oil. Bells and necklaces studded with mandarins and nectarines rendered in amber.

Atop her convex back the mahouts, her faithful attendants perch precariously holding silk parasols aloft – muttukuda – embroidered with the perfume of ylang ylang, gardenia and heliotrope.

Swaying white tufts – vencamaram – and peacock feather fans – alavattam – slice the air with scents of cardamon, caraway and cumin all to the rhythm of an ambulant orchestra.

This is chaos transubstantiated into communal devotion.

Personified in the glimmering deities some sons and daughters of the sahya carry on their circumnavigations.

This is spectacle beyond considerations of taste and the partialities of prickly western palettes.

This is, like the sub-continent itself, a vast sensuous vista of the sacredness and vulgarity of existence laid out like a feast.

This is a moment to put aside discernment and discretion.

This is a time only for surrender.

A great fashion editor once quipped that ‘pink is the navy blue of India’.

So Kenzo’s Jungle L’Elephant, for all we know, may be the eau de cologne of the sub-continent.

What to our noses is a great, brash, bold statement of sweet and spicy intent, may well seem as commonplace as cirise in a country where cardamon and cumin are mere condiments.

This is not a fragrance for the feint-hearted.

No caution has here been exercised in the deployment of great discordant symphonies of notes from mandarin, clove and caraway atop the stave through a middle section of exotic flowers to a dirty syrupy sweet and massively vast vanilla made darker with patchouli and saltier by amber in the base.

It would be easy to dismiss this scent as mad self indulgence put together with a poverty of ideas.

How wrong.

This incredibly amiable animal works to its own higher intelligence and a logic that is not circumscribed by notions of ‘neatness’ and ‘politesse’.

Catch it while you can for it may soon be sadly extinct.

I believe many of the pantheon of the Hindu faith some gods have neither sex, or both.

Can you guess who that fashion editor was and to what exactly she was referring?

The clue’s in the review.

Happy long weekending.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

Dearest All

As you will know by now, The Dandy had a dashed lovely day out in the Park on Sunday last, well The Gardens to be precise and Kensington Gardens at that.

Thank you all to those of you who suggested some scents that might go with my humble snaps.

Perhaps the wisest proposal was that such sublime scenes of nature required no man made smell to assist them. Too true.

However, The Dandy was ever one to throw caution to the wind and so this week I am presenting some 25 scents to go with those same scenes and today we have the third wave…

1. Blossom and Children

One of the pleasures of London Parks in Spring are the children running everywhere, released from winter housebound hibernation.

Something though The Dandy has never understood is why children in so many parts of the world are so ill treated when it comes to fragrance.

Why should the wee ones wait until their teenage years before being introduced to the olfactory arts? And must their first rung on the perfumed ladder be some awful cup cake meets cotton candy car crash?

Happily in the Mediterranean, they have a much more civilised approach to the scenting of the young.

Merry cirtus and lavender “baby colognes” abound, ludicrously cheap and luxuriously plentiful in their tall plastic litre bottles.

In its concentrated form Agua de Colonia by Alvarez Gomez is the very quintessence of an aromatic elementary education.

Just as good for grown ups, who should be able to pick up a gentle green geranium hidden there too.

Delicious, served cool and in generous portions.

2. Orangery

From the Eighteenth Century onwards it has been the possession of an orangery that has marked out people of quality from the general crowd..

Places to promenade and entertain as much as to cultivate, they are nevertheless essentially palaces of fruit.

JoLoves Green Orange and Coriander is an Empress amongst citrus perfumes presiding over one of the most palatial of all orangeries.

A thrillingly realistic impression of the honourable orange in early season it has so much zest it can be tasted as much as smelt.

It is the olfactory equivalent of the first freshly squeezed juice of the year, a perfumed explanation of why an orange house, or scent at least, is still a necessary adjunct to anyone of fashion.

Zing! Tang! Bravo!

3. Palm

A palm tree in London in Springtime?

It could only be in a Palace Garden! And indeed so it is, in the formal gardens of Kensington Palace.

Inevitably, especially with the sensational colours of the floral surroundings, one thinks of The Tropics of exotic flora and fauna and, once again, fruit.

But it is still only May, so let us be enraptured by a perfume that is, to The Dandy’s way of thinking, a sublime synonym for the transition of Springtime into early Summer.

Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Lys Soleia by Guerlain opens with a bouquet of blossoming lilies and not a too little tuberose, before long though things have begun to heat up with a heart that is more ylang ylang, tropical fruit medley and even a hint of palm tree itself.

The time for tea is over, this is a commendable concoction fit for the cocktail hour.

4. Rosebuds

Now, in all honesty, The Dandy‘s not even convinced at this distance that these are rosebuds.

I’m sure that there were thorns at the time but everything now seems to have become corrugated leaf and Royal Palace.

Not to fear, for while the flowers themselves are yet to arrive it is never to early to be thinking of roses.

Indeed Van Cleef & Arpels unfairly underrated Feerie is an expert rendition of how the flowers of spring give way to the great blooms of June.

Starting all Parma Violet, the sweetness yields to a luscious rose that in The Dandy‘s imagination is a midnight blue as improbable and beautiful as the perfume’s flacon.

An occasion perfume worthy of a May Ball.

5. Trunk and Tree

Spring is not all gentleness and flowers.

It is , to The Dandy‘s eyes, also the time when the great beasts of botany reawaken.

Deciduous trees, the living dinosaurs of The Plant World, are all around returning to life.

The smell of dry wood and bark is in the air.

Soon they will be surrounded (one hopes) by the bees, bringing their excitement, their buzz, their honey.

Serge Lutens Miel de Bois is an impressive implication of the nectar harvest to come as the year transfigures the seasons. 

In it solid wood stands for the passage of time and honey is a cipher for the ephemeral fruits of labour.

A perfumed paean to nature’s permanence and the passing nature of plenty.

So, there we have the third quintet of scents to follow on from my weekend photographs.

Just ten more to come ‘twixt now and the end of the weekend!!

If you’d like to take a peek, why not spend a moment perusing the complete album of The Perfumed Dandy’s Sunday In The Park.

Any additional suggestions as to scents would be gratefully received.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Dandy should point out that he received samples of this and other JoLoves perfumes from the company, though this was in no way be means of exchange or commercial agreement.

Honesty, however, is always the best policy.