“Take a corner with each hand and lift your arms up, then shake it through with me to make waves.”
But the white linen sheet did not resemble the sea, instead it looked like a silk parachute being prepared for packing.
In this moment it smelt almost mythically clean, an advertising man’s dream of ‘daily laundry fresh’.
Then sensory sparks begin to fly.
With quick, brisk flicks of her wrist sharp, sizzling clove oil is dispensed from a tiny brown glass bottle via a dripping nozzle.
“He used to say that if you apply it straight onto the cavity this stuff takes the toothache away…”
Her voice has the friendly firmness of a primary school teacher and its volume too, though she is addressing a class of one adult across a spare bed in a box room.
“I’ve been applying it for years and still it’s never eased the pain.”
She laughs at her own remark, a little rebuke for even the slightest show of self pity.
As she does so her immaculate teeth gleam and you know it wasn’t any dental decay she spoke of trying to salve.
“Now, lay it flat and pull it tight…. okay, we can let go.”
She turns around and from a tall clear glass jar glistening on the window sill of the in-the-eaves room, she withdraws a handful of claret coloured petals.
At first you think them roses.
There may be some mixed in.
But as she throws them in the air, like a farmer sowing seeds for hens to feed on, first their corrugated form then the pepper of their scent reveals them as part of the carnation’s crown.
“Quickly”
She says, eyes bright, a sense of urgency crackling in the air around her.
“Bring your corners in to mine, then take two more and fold them into me again.”
“We are folding everything in, like a sponge cake mix, to keep the scent safe and strong, you see.”
“Why?”
You ask, almost in a hiccup, involuntarily.
“Clove for his cologne, carnation for his buttonhole. Clean musk for memory.”
She whispers more to herself than you, taking the neatly squared sheet off the bed as she does so and placing it in a linen box with her right hand as she deftly removes another identical item from the bottom of the pile.
A movement made almost automatic through repetition.
“Watch…”
And with two strong movements of her thin, sinewy upper body and arms she unfurls the fabric like a new flag in fervent weather.
“Now breathe.”
She commands.
Inhaling as dessicated petals from a past pleating session sail through the air, you find the odour nears overpowering.
The spice of cloves has just survived, the carnation with it is hot and heady, but the musk, a spotless dust wins through.
Looking at you, with her old ageless eyes… she smiles.
“That’s how it smelt the morning after.”
Clove, carnation, and hard fought clean.
That is how Bellodgia by Caron goes.
The original vintage is a survivor’s scent, that has unfortunately not itself survived reformulation.
It is a brave, bracing smell replete with assertive spice in a clove laden opening.
The pepper of carnations is then used as an olfactory stepping stone to a more floral core, with that most military of blooms as its signature note.
There are roses and violet and some jasmine to hold the whole together, but it is the carnation that you will remember.
Muguet appears, rather later than is usual, and signifies a gentle dry down into a sweet powdery
musk that has the air of the finest laundered linen in the days before industrial detergent took over the home.
It is sweet, slightly powdery, but never allowed to be entirely domesticated on account of the clove and red flowers that remain.
Bellodgia is a fragrant aide memoire on best writing paper, a jotting down of one the finest points of perfumery from an age now passed, when florals could be formidable and clove truly, but beautifully, combative.
Hold on to a little of the memory while you still can…
Thankfully, dearests, you did not ask me to write on Piu Bellodgia, the unforgivably thin, detergent like concoction that Caron have allowed to sequester the name of this great scent. Others have written eloquently on that perfume, so I will not.
Save to say that even though I am not as dismissive of all the latest versions of Caron’s that one is truly unworthy of both your time and the name it bears.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy.
The Perfumed Dandy. 
What wonderful imagery, Mr. Dandy. I loved that review. Clove and carnation seem to over-dominate my skin, but Bellodgia is one my earliest perfume memories. I’m pretty sure my mother had that faceted crystal bottle, though you have said elsewhere that other Caron fragrances were in the same bottle. I will have to sample Bellodgia again sometime, but I will be sure not to try the reformulation.
Dearest Lily
Perhaps if you go into Bellodgia knowing that what you’re going to get is a whole heap of clove and carnation the reality might not be as bad… a little like bracing oneself for pain!
Piu Bellodgia really isn’t worth even trying. The previous version in the art nouveau bottle of the 90s is not bad… but as you go further back things get better!
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have access to a whole range of old Caron perfumes so that we could find out which one it was your mother wore? For at certain times there were a few in that very flacon.
Perhaps it was En Avion, Poivre or, indeed, Bellodgia.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
PS We met this lady recently… I know you’re curious about such things…
You met her! I love the thought of that. I will be thinking of her now…and wondering.
Oh…I thought you meant you met her there…you mean we’ve met her here before in these pages. Now I think I know who you mean. 🙂
Dearest Lily
Just so… we’ve all come into contact with her, and quite recently too, though that time she was on tv and in her finery.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Oh my! How beautifully you write, I shall be returning here again 🙂
Dear Susie
The Dandy blushes at such kind words, and almost forgets his manners…
Welcome to the Dandy’s… do please make yourself at home.
If you’ve been brought here by an enjoyment of Caron perfumes, then you’ll find plenty of tales about them as we’re just reaching the end of a little summer celebration of the house.
If it’s love of perfume on general then I hope you’ll find yourself in good company.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Oh my! How beautifully you write, I shall be returning here again for more lyricism… This is a perfume that I have yet to experience but now I think I simply must. I love carnation when it smells as plush and red as it’s petals, I am looking for a fragrance that epitomises these slightly ragged, romantic blooms with sincerity. Would Bellodgia be where I’ll find it?
Dearest Susie
Thank you again such generosity.
Carnations are well represented in the work of Caron generally, vintage Bellodgia, En Avion and Poivre (all reviewed recently) stand out, but they are elsewhere too. It’s something of a signature for the house.
Sadly though, the vintage scents, becoming more difficult to find with time, are the best, so its always good to hunt them out!
It’s such a pleasure to find someone else as devoted to the oft-ignored and slightly out of fashion beauty of this flower.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Please excuse the double comment! I’m not in the habit of saying everything twice I promise. I look forward to spending more time here in future, for now it’s goodnight.
Aha, it is the “survivor of another age”, En Avion. “Clove for his cologne, carnation for his buttonhole. Clean musk for memory.” <<<That was the hint. I was thinking about Jolie Madame, actually, making soup and sewing the leather jackets or Baader Meinhof. But she is a totally different sort of survivor, one from the other side.
“for” Baader Meinhof youth. Typo. 😦
One of my mother’s perfumes that I only remember from the 1950s sitting on her bureau…
Dear Mary
Perfumes are gateways to the past of we allow them to be unlocked.
You mother must have smelt splendid in her vintage Bellodgia!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I loved the review Dandy… Mary and I have lunch often. When you come back to San Francisco you have to meet her.
Dearest Lanier
How lovely to hear that Mary and yourself and lunching companions… yet one more of the plethora of reasons why that trip to St Francis Town is a when rather than an if!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I like your reviews even though they are mostly for perfumes I do not know. But I have a feeling that through your writing I see a character who is significantly different from the image you’re building though other communications. The astonishing power of art? 😉
Dearest U
Intriguing.
Perhaps we are all of us more people than we believe ourselves to be…
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy