Unhelpful Perfume Review: Jean Paul Gaultier Classique

My bottle of JPG Classique.

Time to revive my blogging! So here’s something easy so I don’t overthink it and give up before I publish the damn post. As a professor of mine once said, “Resist the urge to write perfectly.” Stupid right asshole.

I figure this is a good time to do an unhelpful review of one of my favorite perfumes, since I’ve been wearing it pretty much every day lately. I always choose a scent from my embarrassingly large collection for each theatrical role I play (unless other people working on the show have allergies, or I decide the character definitely would not have worn perfume; see Smitty from Cry Havoc). Because perfume is such a passion of mine, the synesthesia of having a signature scent for a role appeals to me and gives me a physical touchstone for both playing the character and remembering the experience fully later. I try to choose something appropriate for the time period of the play or at least referential to it in some way. I’ve chosen Jean Paul Gaultier’s Classique as the signature scent of Sara in Stop Kiss by Diana Son. I chose it exactly because it was wrong for her (more on that later), but also because it’s very 90s and a hyperfeminine caricature of a scent.

Now, the ads for Classique are like this:

Go here for this ad and an actually helpful review: 

http://perfumeshrine.blogspot.com/2012/04/jean-paul-gaultier-classique-fragrance.html

You know. Porcelain white teacup model breasts. Being creepily groped? Sometimes you get lucky and the model is in a gorgeously uncomfortable corset. Ugh. Ugh perfume marketing is such pretty garbage.

But that’s not how this perfume feels to me. It feels a lot more like this:

Yep, that’s the Titty Tree lurving on Schmendrick the Wizard in The Last Unicorn. Remember that scene? If you don’t or you haven’t seen the film, basically Schmendrick is a shitty wizard who is trying to escape after being tied to a tree and he tries to use magic to extricate himself but fucks it up because he’s a shitty wizard and instead turns the tree into a sentient and sexually aggressive busty old broad. Fuck, I don’t know what’s worse, watching that scene or trying to describe it? Anyway, to me, JPG Classique is that fucking tree. It’s a smotheringly sweet, floral powder bomb of a scent. It’s the older female relative who oversprays then plants smeary clownish kisses on you while crushing you to her ample bosom. It’s the inside of that woman’s purse, full of hard candies coming out of their wrapping, blush compacts, tissues, a spare pair of nude nylons, and perfume gone slightly off with age. It’s uncomfortably intimate, and reminds me of the smell left behind on one’s bra at the end of the day, a mixture of skin and sweat and the remnants of whatever scented products one wore. And yet for all that, it doesn’t smell dirty; the orange blossom gives it an odd freshness that reasserts itself throughout the day. It’s not delicate, like any of the models in its ads. It’s an almost insulting caricature of overripe and overwrought hyperfemininity that is also irresistibly cuddly. Despite my bizarre association with that weird-ass scene, this is a comfort scent to me. Because sometimes you DO need to be pressed to the headily-scented bosom of a mother archetype, even one that is kind of a scary mess.

Hey, Gaultier, instead of just re-dressing that saucy corset and garters bottle every season, why can’t we have a special limited edition shaped like a terrifying boob tree demoness who also inexplicably resembles a cock and balls? Terrifying or no, I’d buy it. Fuck you, I have a perfume bottle shaped like a skunk, you think I wouldn’t buy the dick boob tree?

So, why is this Sara’s scent, a dreamy but driven budding bisexual who is dazzled by the possibilities of a new home, new job, and a new love? She’s nothing like the caricature of femininity I have described above, but she does have a sweet and sometimes aggressively nurturing nature. I think that Sara could have seen the bottle of Classique on a New York department store counter on one of her first shopping trips in the city and splurged on it even though she couldn’t really afford it. I think it would have looked daring and naughty to a woman who just came from teaching at a Quaker school in St. Louis. It’s a protective scent, both a costume to project something older and worldlier than what she is and a cloak to keep out the chill of the cold city streets. I think it would have projected a sort of warm and motherly authority to her third grade students. Finally, Classique itself goes against the grain of the cool, often unisex, minimalist aquatics that dominated the 90s. I’m certain that her girlfriend Callie wears CK One; not a bottle she bought for herself but one her ex-boyfriend left in the apartment when he ran off with her sister. I’m hoping that Sara steers her toward the Bvlgari Eau Parfumée Au Thé Vert next time they go shopping together.

 

 

 

Unhelpful Perfume Review: Clinique Aromatics Elixir

Picture from Clinique.com

Teen Me was not terribly different from Adult Me. Lonely and depressive, with the obsessive shopping habits learned from my mother and the debilitating yearning for beauty learned from who knows where, I eventually came to haunt department store perfume counters as a self-comforting pastime. Actual purchases were infrequent, but my mother would splurge for me during the holidays or sales events. I used Clinique makeup and skin products for a while but my skin was resolutely acneic. My most vivid memory of the Clinique counter, however, were the fragrances. My first love was the seasonal Wrappings, with its golden Art Deco-ish bottle and aggressively fresh yet satin-like feel in your nostrils. It will have to have its own Unhelpful Review later. I know I had a bottle at one point but either it or my nose turned and we weren’t reunited until just recently after stalking the Clinique website last Yuletide for a new bottle. My mother bought me a Clinique Happy gift set, which I believe contained a full-sized bottle, a miniature, and a lotion. Again, perhaps I was just shit at storing my scents but this one turned too and I threw the lot away still nearly full. Smelling it since I am not sure what I ever saw in Happy (other than its sunny citrus popularity and my mother’s approval of it) and even when I wore it, it never felt like me.

But then there was Aromatics Elixir. I never owned a bottle. I’m sure my mother would never have agreed to drop money on it, anyway. She loves freshness and florals (which is odd because her favorite scent is Guerlain’s sweet and smoky oriental, Shalimar), and I distinctly remember her sniffing Aromatics Elixir, making a face and quickly returning it to the counter after declaring it repugnant and questioning why anyone would want to smell like it (remind me to do a whole preachy post later about never judging a scent by how it smells in the bottle). I, however, found it compelling and strangely addictive. So while owning or wearing it was out of reach, I surreptitiously uncapped and sniffed it at each of my Clinique visits. Its unctuousness reminded me of a bowl of green olives marinating in their own shining oil. It acquired a sort of Mediterranean luxuriousness for me (oddly, I found out later that it is indeed extremely popular in Greece). I had no idea what was in it or why it smelled the way it smelled, but the scent stayed with me. So strong is my scent memory of it that I could immediately tell the difference between my own heady memory and today’s post-IFRA (just Google it) version, stripped of its precious real oakmoss. It’s nonetheless wonderful in its current incarnation, and I am glad for the bottle I have (as well as the limited Velvet Sheer version I snagged on Ebay).

Although it is considered an American classic by perfume experts, popular opinion on it is divided and it has the unfortunate reputation (as many strong chypres do) of being an old fusty grandma perfume or something your weird art teacher would wear. Which is inherently sexist and ageist but there you go. I am 34 and I no longer give a shit about whether people think I smell like their grandmother or their hippie art teacher. Most of all to me this scent smells like witchcraft, both as a caricature and a reality.

I’ve always had witchy tendencies and they were intensified by high school, because when you’re already bullied and marginalized you might as well be bullied and marginalized for a colorful reason. I had two friends who were witchy with me and we delighted in doing things that really had nothing to do with witchcraft but would nonetheless read to other teens as suspect of it. At one point we made very evil-looking cigar boxes full of dried flowers, stones, and scribbled ephemera, secured messily with melted wax. They had no purpose other than to be brought to school and to cause people to talk. I loved mine and created it painstakingly from dried roses, torn stationery, and heavily scented wax from candles I probably purchased from the now long-defunct Wicks ‘N’ Sticks in the mall. While there was no magical intent behind it, I thought it looked very mystical and was quite proud of it. It was enough to convince most of our classmates, who already thought we were weird, that we were weird AND also definitely witches who were probably using these boxes for trapping souls or other nefarious purposes. Then everyone forgot and I continued to be bullied and marginalized for just being myself.

Aromatics Elixir smells like those witchy boxes to me. It smells like how I felt as a teen in the 90s. It smells like the witchy goth I wanted to be back then even though I was just a fucking nerd whose parents wouldn’t let her go to Hot Topic. It smells like the witchy goth queen I’d still love to be if I could stop being an insecure nerd for like one fucking second now that I’m an adult. It smells like I imagined Magick with a capital ‘M’ and a ‘k’ would smell when I first explored Paganism. It smells like an old rotting cabinet full of dried flowers and herbs and seeping bottles of tinctures and unguents. If this is an old woman’s scent, that old woman is a badass fucking crone who curses and blesses in equal measure with equal pleasure. It may be an American classic but it is dark as fuck and wears like an atomic cloud if you want it to (many bemoan its oppressive sillage but you can control this by how you choose to apply it). Finally, it reminded me of this scene in the Futurama parody of The Wizard of Oz. Because why go back to your teetotalling, dirt-farming aunt & uncle in Kansas WHEN YOU CAN BE A MUTHAFUCKIN’ WIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH??????!!!!!!!

Unhelpful Perfume Review: Alien Aqua Chic 2012

I’ve always threatened to do extremely subjective and unhelpful perfume reviews full of my own very strange scent associations, so here’s my first attempt with a scent I’ve been wearing almost nonstop this summer.

Alien Aqua Chic (the 2012 version) from Mugler is a lightened, summertime flanker of the pillar scent, Alien. I’ll have to give the original Alien its own review some time, but suffice it to say it’s one of my favorite scents of all time. First, because the name is damn awesome. Second, because it has a blast radius (sillage or the wake of scent that wafts as you wear it) that most perfumes any more cannot rival. Thirdly, it smells amazing on me.

Aqua Chic 2012 is nowhere near as nuclear, and indeed, that’s the point. Mugler has released several lighter versions of its powerhouse pillars, the idea being that you probably don’t want to suffocate yourself or anyone else with your scent when temperatures rise (WRONG), or you just generally want to feel refreshed. Last summer I started exploring the world of cologne-style scents you can just douse yourself with as a refresher without worrying about it backfiring socially. And I picked this up, sprayed it on, was underwhelmed, and proceeded to ignore it while gleefully soaking up cheap 4711 like an old European person.

I rearranged my perfume cabinet (yes it’s a cabinet) and dragged this one out with the other warm weather appropriate scents (we’ll talk about why the seasonal thing is bullshit later in another post). Ok maybe we’ll talk about it now. Gender in perfume is bullshit. Seasons in perfume are bullshit. Wear what makes you happy. But I chose my warm weather rotation not so much as an inviolable category but as an exercise in laziness. Summer sucks in Bakersfield. I want perfume that I can spray on liberally because it’s cooling and cuts the stink of myself and other sweaty, miserable people. And I don’t want to have to think about it too much or work hard in any way. This perfume meets those criteria and I’ve found myself wearing it for days at a time which usually doesn’t happen when you’re as deep into perfume whoredom/hoard’em as I am.

Again, I don’t want to review this for you in a terribly helpful fashion. There are a lot of other sites that will give you that. All you need to know is that Aqua Chic 2012 is a very powered-down version of Alien’s solar flare of jasmine, with ginger water thrown in. So on to the terribly unhelpful, totally subjective review.

I guess I could just stop there but this is what comes to mind when I wear this perfume. That bit in Watchmen where Dr. Manhattan fucks off to Mars. It’s like sitting on Mars, and it’s silent, and pink for some reason, and all of Earth’s nonsense is far away. The ginger gives the scent a sort of grainy or powdery texture. So if you could rest your blue ass in the sand on Mars, but then kick back your heels and manifest yourself a gingery, effervescent summer cocktail, it would smell like this. If Dr. Manhattan could chill the fuck out and stop being so emo for like a second, he could smell like this. Because gender in perfume and in the vastness of space and time is bullshit.

BTW I get a lot of compliments when I wear this so I’d like to imagine that people can somehow sense my scent association and are subconsciously just really drawn to that swingin’ blue dick.