VRAIE BLONDE BY ELDO // L'EAU D'HIVER BY FREDERIC MALLE
Audrey Robinovitz talks discontinued Diptyque, yé-yé music and why perfume is better than olfactory art
Welcome to the first edition of Scent + Song, a new interview series by Vivian Medithi about perfume and music. Smell and sound are intimately tied to memory, and to each other; fragrances have "notes" and scentmakers work at perfume organs. A great perfume is like music you love: not something you know, but something you feel -- and we all feel a little differently. Today we’re speaking with Audrey Robinovitz aka @foldyrhands, whose taste and knowledge of perfumes consistently blows me away. Audrey also has her own blog exploring fragrances and notes: check it out here.
You’re into a lot of discontinued or older perfumes, stuff with reformulations. Where did that start?
I was really into the history of perfume and it's so hard, because perfume generally only has a stable shelf life of about five years, so vintage perfume has usually always gone bad to some extent.
Honestly a big reason I got into discontinued perfume is [Maison Margiela’s] Lipstick On, which was the first ever discontinued perfume I really loved. It was discontinued pretty recently so it was easier for me too, because it's not like it hasn’t been around for 20 years.
What are some of the discontinued scents that you searched for for a really long time before you got them into your collection?
This isn't a discontinued scent, this is my decant of Aldehyde 44 by Le Labo, which is sort of a cop-out. But it’s their Dallas city-exclusive and it used to only be available at the Barney’s that was in Dallas, Texas. And then Barney's went under. So for a couple years you couldn't find this perfume anywhere and then they recently opened a Le Labo store in Dallas, or maybe they put it in a Neiman Marcus, but the place where you could buy Aldehyde 44 came back into circulation. But for a while this perfume used to be really hard to find. And I was obsessed with it because I love aldehydes and it's such an unapologetic use of aldehydes, like they're not trying to hide it or [diminish] it.
This is Hiris by Hermes. I thought this was gonna be discontinued for a year because the sales rep literally told me it was, but then they rebottled it and brought it back. But the blue bottle that it came in, which is the older formulation, is really different from the newer formulations, the clear bottles. This is the older, blue bottle formulation, it's really gorgeous. It's [by] Olivia Giacobetti, one of my favorite perfumers.
These are maybe my favorite discontinued Diptyque samples. This one is Kyoto, from their city collection – not a city-exclusive, they did a normal city collection in summer of 2021. And it's inspired by Kyoto but it's not really that Japanese. It's almost entirely beetroot, which is just a really fun note you rarely ever see – you might see it in Comme des Garcons’s Rouge, but there aren’t many good beetroot fragrances.
This one is Florabellio, which got discontinued in the last year. I really liked it, but people hated this perfume. This is coffee and apple blossom. It's really weird, which I always like when Diptyque does weird ones, but not many people do. This one’s really hard to get because so few people liked it, there're not that many copies of it floating around.
I have a lot of discontinued Diptyque perfumes I'm realizing now. I have Eau de Lierre, which is a perfume from the 80s that Diptyque made–
Diptyque existed in the 80s? I think of them as extremely millennial.
You’d think it would be, but they were founded in 1964 and most of their perfumes they made back then were discontinued. L’Ombre Dans L’Eau came out in [1983]. Eau de Lierre came out in the late 80s and then they kept it going until the mid-2000s. It's an ivy note and so its whole thing is that it synthesizes the smell of ivy, which is really watery and crunchy.
Now, this is definitely my favorite. This is Kimonanthe, which was discontinued two years ago. It was made to simulate – and it doesn't really smell like this, because I’ve smelled what it's trying to do – the smell of zuko, which is Japanese incense powder for the body that monks would use to pray. It’s basically an incense and osmanthus perfume, and it smells [sniffs] fruity, like cough syrup mixed with incense. The osmanthus is so jammy, and it has this camphoric, eucalyptus note that makes it smell like Tiger Balm, cough syrup and incense.
Etat Libre d'Orange's Vraie Blonde // “Moi Je Joue” by Brigitte Bardot
In Audrey’s words…
The Scent: Vraie Blonde is one of French iconoclasts Etat Libre d'Orange's lesser known (and sadly discontinued) scents. Like an innocent starlet thrust into a world of debauchery, it combines fizzy champagne, aldehyde, and myrrh with a fruity, plasticine peach and boozy vintage cognac. Like the hyper-sexualized image of yé-yé girl Brigitte Bardot, Vraie Blonde walks the line between virgin and whore. At once coy and sleazy, this perfume wears like the sweat of a beautiful socialite wearing vintage Chanel No. 5 – rejoice coquettes and perverts everywhere!
The Song: Capturing Bardot at the height of her cultural influence, “Moi Je Joue” (me, i play) is a defiant anthem to acting bratty on purpose. Scandalous and chic, it's pulled from the same language of inexorably French style and Gainsbourg-esque male fantasy common to 1960s Paris. Spray Vraie Blonde on your fur collar and put this song on the turntable to unleash your inner it girl.
Talk about Vraie Blonde. What notes stood out to you?
The three notes that stand out to me are aldehydes, peach and myrrh. I usually don't love fruity notes, but this works super well because the combination of aldehyde and peach smells exactly like champagne.
It’s fizzy and fruity but also has that body alcohol normally has… like peach alcohol, it has a certain grainy quality. But what really brings it over is the myrrh, which gives it this tangy, almost – it's very sweaty to me. It smells like when you have perfume on and then you also are sweating. It has somewhat of a body odor undertone to it, a darker, sweatier undertone to it that's really cool. If it was just peach and aldehyde it’d be like “Okay,” that's been done before. But the myrrh takes it to the next level for me.
Could you maybe compare and contrast it a bit with some other aldehyde fragrances?
I'm obsessed with aldehydes and myrrh, or aldehydes and frankincense. And I've only ever seen that in Vraie Blonde and Incense Avignon by Comme des Garcon. Usually people have strong opinions on Avignon. I do really like it, but I think I like it for [different] reasons than people normally do. People are like, “Wow, super realistic frankincense,” but it's not though, because it has this element of aldehydes that capitalizes on the fact that myrrh in the right context smells really fizzy. So I would say [Vraie Blonde] is almost like Incense Avignon mixed with Chanel No. 5 mixed with fruity drugstore peach perfume like Ariana Ari.
The Bridget Bardot song, I was just digging it, I don't really listen to music like that often. Where did you first encounter that?
I was really into French New Wave as a teenager. It was very Guitar Girl lifestyle and the Pinterest blogs were all Brigitte Bardot anything. People usually associate her with being pretty, but she also has music, which was the whole reason she was popular in the 60s.
I think of “Moi Je Joue” as the emblematic song of the sleazy underage sex thing that was happening with yé-yé artists and Serge Gainsbourg. Which was crazy problematic but Serge Gainsbourg would make contracts with 18-year-old girls and get them to sing about sucking dick. But like that's the whole point, that's what the music was about. Everyone knew this, there was never a presumption that this kind of music was chaste or pure. It was super scandalous at the time. Even in something like “Moi je joue,” she’s singing, “I’ll play, I’ll do irresponsible things,” which in the 60s was kind of naughty.
I was looking at Antoine Maisondieu’s work researching Vraie Blonde, and it was interesting to me that he also did Jasmine et Cigarette and Eau de Protection as well as Tom Ford’s Velvet Orchid. Do you keep up with perfumers?
There are definitely two kinds or schools of perfumery in how perfumers show their hand. Some perfumers like Olivia Giacobetti, for example, who made Hiris and also Philosykos by Diptyque, you can totally tell because her thing is earthy, light, super realistic, delicate, old, twilight. And all of her perfumes are exactly like that, so she's totally carved out a really distinct perfumer’s voice in how she makes things.
But then also some perfumers get hired and just do the job for what they do. So all their work is wildly different in quality and it's not really worth it to seek out all of their work. I usually don't care about perfumers unless it's in the case of specific perfume auteurs, who make perfume that shares a really distinct language.
Vivian’s Pairing: “Moi je joue” by Brigitte Bardot & Kismet Olfactive’s Nostalgia
I first stumbled across Nostalgia at the Arielle Shoshanna boutique in Fairfax, VA, and immediately made it my signature fragrance. It’s a leather/rose combo that’s so timeless and sweet without being overly feminine. Once, my friend Nat told me I smelled like “a sexy church” while wearing it. The leather is complicated by suede and tonka bean, and a bright, herbal top note of anise helps liven up the perfume as a whole. My sister and I always say it smells like spiced apple pie, though when we told perfumer Shabnam Tavakol this at her lab in LES, she seemed less than enthusiastic. Nevertheless, it feels like a great match for “Moi je Joue;” sexy without being overtly erotic, sweet but not simple.
Frederic Malle's L'eau d'Hiver // “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” by Ryuichi Sakamoto
In Audrey’s words…
The Scent: Perhaps Frederic Malle’s quietest masterpiece, L'eau d'Hiver speaks in honeyed words of gentle reassurance and tender yearning. Capturing the powdery vanillic nature of heliotrope alongside iris, honey, and angelica, the composition itself wears so delicate on your skin you worry it might break.
I have a rule to only ever smell – much less wear – L'eau d'Hiver on days where fresh snow has fallen on the ground. This is not the kind of perfume anyone but you will notice, but rather, is made to facilitate a moment of quiet bittersweet reflection.
The Song: Ryuichi Sakamoto's theme to Nagisa Ōshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is in my eyes the exact sound of this perfume. Capturing not only its gentle and earnest nature but the crystalline, classical, and restrained yearning that lies behind its delicate snowfall and David Bowie's steely gaze. Masculinity at its most tender. The coming of winter incarnate.
[Perfume that shares a distinct language] is a great segue to talking about L'eau d'Hiver, because I was reading interviews with Jean-Claude Ellena and he talks about the idea of perfume being a language that he writes in. Like, “this verb [writes] is important for me.” And he also did Rose & Cuir, which is probably one of my favorite Frederic Malle scents and one of the ones that I would wear all the time, but that has a bit more of a forward quality as compared to L'eau d'Hiver. I was really surprised at how restrained it feels.
I hadn’t realized that he did Rose & Cuir, that’s interesting. Maybe what unites them is that they’re both very sophisticated. But exactly. L'eau d'Hiver is one of those perfumes that, if you smell it at the Frederic Malle boutique and you go from whiffing massive inhales of Carnal Flower and Portrait of a Lady, you'll be like, “Why am I supposed to care about this?” because it's really subtle and very delicate. It doesn't really smell good on the tester. When I first got into Frederic Malle I was like, “Whoa,” at the big ones that are super impressionable, but I didn't really think anything of L'eau d'Hiver.
What notes stand out to you, or make you think about winter specifically?
Heliotrope is a big one because it's so powdery. There's a really good candle by Diptyque from their holiday collection called Neige, which is almost entirely heliotrope and it's supposed to smell like fresh driven snow. I reviewed it briefly in my winter post on my blog. That smell is like totally winter for me, maybe because of L'eau d'Hiver. Oh pine? Totally winter. It's cheating because it's kind of Christmassy, but I totally think that scents like, Fille En Aiguilles by Serge Lutens, which is in my opinion the best pine fragrance – totally winter.
You paired this perfume with Ryuichi Sakamoto's theme to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Would you say that for you, perfume is cinematic?
If I had to think of a medium that I closely relate to perfume, it would be cinema, definitely over literature. Perfumes and movies, right, it's so obvious. The only thing that's missing for me there is smell because you get sight, you get sound. And sight, sound and smell are the ways that I perceive the world. But maybe it's also just what I’m most experienced in because I have done a lot of film criticism and studied that in college.
So, about “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” in relation to L'eau d'Hiver. The theme to Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is such a gorgeous delicate composition on Sakamoto's part. It's so tender, but there's also sadness behind it that also comes through in L'eau d'Hiver. It's very gentle and sweet, but it almost feels like the moment the first snow first falls but you know it's going to melt away. There's a sense that it's very fleeting. Both the perfume itself – it's very light and doesn't last very long on the body – but also that it's so delicate and feels so fragile. And I think that the careful piano work in “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” really suits that . And I associate it with it starting to snow in the movie scene, and it’s that poignant restraint.
Maybe this is me, but whenever I see a piece of art, which I really would classify L'eau d'Hiver as a piece of art, that shows so much gentleness and innocence, I also see it as an act of restraint, like there's something deeper underneath, some kind of longing that isn't fully realized. And I definitely identify that longing in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, classically gay, yearning subjects. They're both very delicate, very emotionally moving and very haunting. L'eau d'Hiver … heliotrope, honey and iris are the three notes. And the honey, it's childish but sweet, and earnest and very poignant.
Talk to me about perfumes as art versus perfumes as accessory or perfumes as fashion.
To be honest I'm not interested in olfactory art. I'm stealing this almost verbatim from my mentor, who’s someone who uses perfume and aroma chemicals in art installations, designed for humans, for gallery openings. And people will be like, “Wow, I see you're interested in olfactory art,” and he would always say, “I don't work in olfactory art, I work in perfume.” Which is really poignant. Olfactory art is very distinct from perfume as a gendered, historical, commercial object and I'm not really interested in olfactory art, I'm interested in perfume as a thing, a history of being bought and sold. And much akin to the way fashion can be art, some perfume is art, which is kind of oversimplifying it.
It's completely analogous to fashion in the way that how fashion is designed is artful. But there're also a lot of really problematic undertones to calling fashion Art with a Capital A because there's no one maker in fashion. It's a team of people, it's a collective, it's a group. And in the same way I think perfume is a collaboration.
It's not just the person who designs it, even though it's very easy to say it is.
Maybe when I said that L'eau d'Hiver was art to me, I meant that it is both a product and something that could stand as a work of art entirely divorced from market standards, which isn’t always true. I don't think that Ariana Cloud is a work of art. But I do think certain things, especially when perfume appeals to your emotion in a way that's really intimate, that is artistic.
Vivian’s Pairing: Frederic Malle’s L'eau d'Hiver & “i need you forever” by Psych ft. d0llywood1
Audrey talking about fresh snow instantly made me think of the art for “i need you forever,” a black and white photo of a street smothered in the stuff. Hushed, furtive, it’s as if Psych is whispering right in your ear so as not to wake your roommates. Even when d0llywood1’s verse comes in, skidding all over abstrekt and draf2k’s icy beat, her autotune acrobatics are restrained, careful not to shake up Psych’s snowglobe.
thanks so much for a great conversation!! so honored to feature in this amazing project :)