I vividly recall the moment that my sense of smell became very special to me. Some twenty years ago, I was struggling for early childhood memories; fumbling through the early 70s to better understand my relationship with my father. A man who was mostly absent and then completely absent just a little later in my life.
From hamster cages and tom cat indiscretions in my gym kit to my grandmother's bars of Camay soap and the childhood craze for scented erasers, I'd always loved smelling things. But nothing could prepare me for what struck at that moment.
Like a punch to the side of the head, my father's personal smell physically appeared to me. A day's sweat in a polyester shirt. Oil from the factory on the Slough Trading Estate in which he worked. The tiniest remnants of Old Spice fighting against the stale smoke of a Pall Mall cigarette. All experienced as I sat on his lap at the end of his working day, my head pressed against his hairy chest, vegetables boiling nearby.
It was there and then gone instantly. And I suddenly understood the power of our sense of smell - what a truly great gift it is.
A little while I ago I realised that some of the scent compositions of perfumer Pierre Bourdon had a particular significance to me, most notably 1981's Kouros. I find it terribly difficult to talk about Kouros without revealing far too much of myself. Kouros is a psychology session in a bottle for me. It grips my formative years in the manner of a very stubborn, very beautiful man with ripe, 10pm armpits. I stole daily spritzes from my older brother's bedroom in the early 80s before I owned my own bottle. He's now dead. I recall my first visits to gay clubs in the Midlands and the North where Kouros and Ralph Lauren's Polo literally hung in the air above the dancefloors, along with amyl nitrate, perspiration and possibility.
Kouros is the smell of the ideal man. It is the smell of sex.
I was given a bottle of Cool Water as a gift in the 90s and therefore felt I should love it. So I did until I realised that I didn't like it at all. And then came to despise it for what it's done to scent over the past couple of decades. I respect its greatness but I don't want ocean freshness. I hate calone. That I prefer the smell of petrichor, puppy breath and mossy logs to chemical cleanliness says something significant about me, I hope. I'm not sure what...
Monsieur Bourdon provided another scent sensation recently. I wore 2000's Biotherm Aqua Fitness Pour Homme for quite a few years and I loved it. It elicited a great many compliments. It was citrus and wood cleanliness and never made me feel like I was beachcombing or picking a limpit from a groyne. Its blue glass flacon and bright happiness were suddenly stolen from me when it was discontinued after just a few years. I read that Bourdon's Live Jazz for YSL was a close match and a good friend who shares my love of scent bought it for my birthday last year. One spray transported me back to an old favourite. It's not exactly the same, of course. But there's enough mint, grapefruit and light wood blended into a composition sufficiently similar to plug the gap of a loss.
Bourdon's final compositions were for Frederic Malle. He's now retired. French Lover gives me a smug smile. I don't love it but I can see a master at work and clearly observe the individual pillars of frankincense, vetiver, cedar and iris, all connected by garlands of genius. His Iris Poudre seems to suit my current tastes more closely. Like a Julian Fellowes dowager in a large wig thrust into a Hoxton drinking den, it's timeless and contemporary, tasteful, classy and panderingly dumb...
Ask for your friends' advice and you'll discover that everyone's a psychologist these days. Thank goodness for my sense of smell.
[By ANDREW]
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