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MY OWN PRIVATE AMERICA,
by Fabienne Antoniewski

 

The first time I discovered the smell of America was probably with Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew. I say probably, because it was around the time (in the late 70’s) when I had only just started to methodically memorize everything that wafted past my nose, and it was also around then that I got to know Aromatics Elixir (Clinique), Alliage and Cinnabar (Lauder), which all enchanted me…
But if Youth Dew has stuck more firmly in my memory than the others, it’s because of its name, first of all. A name that was practically unpronounceable for the French teenager I then was, someone who, just to be different from everybody else (a specialty for that age group… and for the French, who love to think of themselves as “cultural exceptions”) had taken German and Russian in high school. Above and beyond its olfactory identity – which I used to associate more with the style of an era than with a cultural or geographic feature of perfumery – I was struck by Youth Dew’s image. America in the 50’s & 60’s, with its attendant ideas of power and freedom. A (practically) unfettered vision of over-the-top femininity: the pin-up aesthetic right down to the tips of your painted fingernails…
Estée Lauder, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and a few others kept the myth going ‘til the late 80’s, with Giorgio Beverly Hills as a kind of apotheosis. Those bold, brassy perfumes were ahead of their time – bling-bling before the word had gained currency – and it took me almost 20 years to realize that that kind of perfumery – which I used to find a shade too arrogant – could have character and self-confidence, and above all, that its exuberant, uninhibited trails had brought new blood to the Old Continent.
In France at that time, the “chic du chic” was located somewhere in the midst of the Guerlain-Chanel-Dior Bermuda Triangle. It’s not that we didn’t have our own “heavy-hitting” perfumes, but Paris was still the center of (our) world!




 
Later on, I confess, I ignored most of what the New World had to offer in olfactory trends… The overdose of flowers, the arrival of aquatic mixtures, the calone fad… When the fragrance police dictated in the 90s that the only good scents were ones that were practically non-existent, I was bored to tears! And not just with American juices… The distinction had practically faded away: perfumery had become uniform on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving in its wake everything that, IMHO, had any panache or style. Worse than that, another thing lost in the wake was the French fantasy of our own supremacy in terms of “good taste”, olfactory signatures and expertise.
In retrospect, I’d say that my image of American perfumes went from a cross between Pretty Woman and Wonder Woman to a vague elevator-fragrance sensation: an invasion of shampoo, bubble bath and shower gel smells (though all top-of-the-line of course)!
I have to admit that I have a hard time understanding the imperatives of late 20th-century perfumery. Not in economic terms, obviously, even a 3-year-old could understand those, but culturally speaking. The idea of designing fragrances that can please everyone, on both sides of the Atlantic and even on the other side of the planet, seemed (and still seems) completely absurd to me…

 

  
 

 



 



  
Luckily, the early 3rd millennium has shaken things up a bit. While olfactory blockbusters still dominate the market, another current is emerging. So-called “niche brands” have multiplied – first in France, then in the States. Targeted too narrowly, perceived as amateurish, with no economic future… except for the incredible hype surrounding them, they came across as a sort of experiment in perfumery, and nobody was betting on their future. For fervent fans of atypical juices like me, though, they’re like a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. I’ll skip over the many accusations that have been leveled against them, some of which even have a grain of truth, but that’s for another day. What is undeniable is that the niche brands really have shaken things up, creatively speaking, by offering fragrance houses and designers a new territory for expressing themselves. Finally, an alternative!
But that wasn’t the only good thing about them, and that’s precisely what I’ve been getting at.
By focusing on the cultural and artistic specificities of perfume, respect for individual tastes and the possibility for olfactory expression on a microcosmic level once again, niche brands have contributed to scaling back the eternal rivalry between perfumes from France, America and elsewhere, while at the same time influencing the big houses.
Indeed, the initiative of Sniffapalooza – a fragranista group founded in New York that has now gone worldwide – bears witness to this desire to break up the divisions between sectors and brands, and to get back to thinking of perfume as something purely creative. A collective of amateurs, of intelligent consumers, ready to consider perfume with an open mind and to exchange information at intensity levels ranging from vaguely curious to absolutely passionate, that’s what we’ve been accused of! I’m not up to the task of establishing a “Top 10” of American niche brands, but when I see what brands like “Le Labo”, Demeter and Bond n°9 are doing, and when I put into perspective Lauder’s work on Sensuous, or Tom Ford’s on Private Blend, I’m less worried about our olfactory future, or the borders and cultural barriers that once divided us. I know that I can cross the Atlantic “on a whiff,” and find girls just like me over there, with whom I can share – even with my not-so-fabulous level of English, but I’m working on it – my love of fragrance. In this month of November, 2008, when America seems to have turned a page in its history, it affords me even greater pleasure to be able to say that…




Fabienne ANTONIEWSKI
Fragrance journalist

From marketing to journalism, the world of cosmetics and fragrance has been the common thread in her career for over twenty years.
A frequent contributor to Elle magazine’s ‘Beauté’ column since 1995, she reconnected through her writing with one of her first loves: perfume.
Helping readers smell and dream, inventing new scenarios, putting feelings into words; she aims to evoke the most intimate and emotional facets of a fragrance, the better to resist reducing it to a banal consumer product.
She still considers that defending the artistic side of perfumery and encouraging creativity and the search for meaning and quality is one of the main points of her profession.



also ...
in this special USA issue
Edito: Karen for President... click here
BORN IN THE USA: a shining moment for American Perfumery... click here
The American (Perfume) Campaign... click here

For a "USA" Quizz... click here