EAU DE NIL
She’s over-stressed, over-screened and over-scheduled. No wonder she’s over busy perfumes. Red’s Annabel Meggeson shares her new-found love for fuss-free fragrance
In praise of fuss-free fragrances
About six months ago, I couldn’t work out why I wasn’t reaching for my favourite perfumes any more. They had been with me for years, loyally providing the desired effect – flirty, focused, charged. Yet now, more often than not, they were making me feel queasy. In their place were a couple of new fragrances that had found their way home by osmosis, almost without me noticing. I thought about it. These newcomers were smaller, simpler, softer than the bold bottles and juices I had been used to. That’s when I realised. I didn’t have space for the old guard any more. Emotionally, I mean. The Fracas and Mitsouko and Sycomore of yore – those big, blooming perfumes that captured my dreams and aspirations in their deeply dynamic layers of wood, smoke and flowers – had been edged out by an increasingly busy and complicated life. I’m so full of schedule and stress and screen that their heady, seductive formulas were sending me over the edge. For the first time in years, they felt too much. It seems my craving for a more minimal experience is echoed in the perfume zeitgeist at large. The end of last year saw the launch of You, ‘a fragrance of relatively few notes’, developed for Glossier. Like the rest of this cult brand’s products, You was right on the money in terms of capturing – and commercialising – a prevailing mood. So much so, that the solid version followed a few months later this February.
And it’s no coincidence that CK One – the iconic 90s perfume that was championed as an antidote to 80s excess – this month launches a sister scent, CK All. As with You, it’s short on diffusive ingredients, long on ambroxan and musk, which instead stay close to the skin to provide comfort as well as simplicity. It’s a compelling combo for these crazy times.
If you’re in any doubt about the emotional impact of fragrance, consider L’air De Rien, a classic. It was created for Jane Birkin by perfumer Lyn Harris (of Miller Harris fame; now founder of Perfumer H), who says, ‘When I was making it, [Birkin] had recently split up with Serge and it was a really intense period of her life. I took her this complicated formula, full of all these ideas, and she immediately said she needed something much simpler.’ A perfume so minimal its name pretty much means ‘nothing’, was born.
More recently, Harris has been decluttering her lab and working with shorter formulas (ones with fewer notes than normal) across all of her creations. ‘My palate of ingredients is really reduced. I’m much stricter.
One of my new scents, Charcoal, has done really well [it was included in a major perfume exhibition at Somerset House], yet it’s very short compared to my other smoky fragrances. Ditto Mist, which is a lavender-infused oriental, but soft and minimal – like a very clean Jicky.’
Harris believes much of this has to do with our digital lives, which make us ‘so bogged down psychologically, we’re stripping back without realising’. Celine Roux, who’s head of global fragrance at Jo Malone London, agrees. ‘We’re bombarded from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed with info, images and endless digital demands on our time.’ (Even if that’s scratching our Netflix itch, right?) It’s part of the reason the Jo Malone customer is seeking simplicity, and Roux herself ‘actively seeking out’ perfumers who work in this style.
Her latest collection is English Fields, whose chicly minimal packaging attests to the simple, luminous formulas inside. But it’s not just about cutting through the clutter. The bestseller from the collection so far is Poppy & Barley Cologne, for which Roux requested an ‘overdose of musk’ to give it that intimate skin thing I mentioned above. ‘What this shows us is that increasingly, women want a relationship with the perfume, not the promise. They’re wearing the scent for themselves. It’s part of the self-care movement, as well.’ (Note: the new one from Michael Kors, Sheer, also features amped up musk in the base and is similarly lighter on ‘notice me’ top notes.)
For some people, this gentleness is found is fragrances which are more traditional in formulation, but very much about evoking straightforward happy places rather than, say, sex or power. Tom Ford isn’t exactly known for meagre ingredients lists, but Eau De Soleil Blanc, which features lots of notes, from pistachio to petitgrain, cardamom to coconut, is entirely uncomplex in its conjuring of sunshine and holidays. Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria Bergamote Calabria is citrus-y and refreshing and, in a timely twist, has been given a new, cleaner look – along with the rest of the Allegoria collection – this season, while Sana Jardin’s organic and sustainable Berber Blonde evokes the simple purity of orange blossom.
For me, until life gets a bit easier, I can’t see myself returning to my old favourites. But if I need soothing rather than souping up right now, so be it.
The time will come again when I’ll be shimmying down my front door steps in a cloud of dreams. Till then, let minimal scents keep me – keep us all – sane.
‘WE’RE STRIPPING BACK WITHOUT REALISING’