Sandrine Videault

It is not as through there are hundreds of fragrance artists, but there are some, and the passing of Sandrine Videault is a great loss to that small group.

Videault was a kind of anthropologist. She was born and lived on the impossibly beautiful tropical island of New Caledonia. In an interview with Perfume Shrine's Elena Vosnaki, she spoke of the indigenous tribe there, the Wallisians, who frequently rub perfumed pastes into their skin. She included some of their ingredients — Frangea, a white flower, sandalwood, Javanese vetiver — in her 2009 fragrance Manoumalia. She left some things the Wallisians used out, though;  most notably the hea seed, which she called “too rancid for the Western nose.”

So, we can see that Videault did assemble a perfume, not a reconstruction. A fragrance to be worn by Westerners on skin, to enhance, to make more beautiful, the wearer’s day. Is this art? I think it is.

So often, written descriptions of “olfactory art” seem kind of silly to me. It could be that all forms of  conceptual art have that in common. Perhaps they are better by far observed, or participated in, than read about. Videault composed olfactory art pieces as well as fragrances. Among them were an olfactory “happening” which included releases of metallic bubbles, presumably containing scent to be released when the bubbles burst, and “The Song of Senses,” an olfactory theatre with holograms. Both, I’d like to have seen.

Manoumalia, which I still have a drop of and am wearing as I write this, was a participant-observer fragrance, to use field-anthropology jargon. A student of the great perfumer Edmound Roudnitska, Videault knew how to construct a fragrance using naturals and synthetics, so although it references the Wallisians Tui-Tui fragrant paste, it is not the same thing.  Smelling the fragrance in its initial stages and in drydown, I perceive the unmistakable white flower essence, a little bit of rubber (common to tuberose) , a slight peppery quality in the middle, and the drydown just a hint of root and indole. On my skin, the fragrance is fleeting.

As is life.

I was happy that Sandrine Videault existed. I was waiting for more fascinating ideas and fragrances to come from her. But, like the Italian fragrance innovator Mona di Orio, she didn’t live long enough.

When asked by Vosnaki what one thing she’d learned from Edmound Rodniska, she replied it was that “we know nothing.”

That is a succinct description, the beginning, of inspiration.

Photo of Sandrine Videault courtesy of Google Images. Image may be subject to copyright.

Thanks to Scented Salamander for some of the material here.

Two From the Tropics

When I was six, I moved with my family to Japan.

Like most children of that age -- at least way back then -- I simply accepted this and, in fact, saw it as an adventure. (This became even more adventurous when the plane lost an engine over the Pacific and we had to bunk on Wake Island for a couple of days, but I digress.) When we finally arrived in just-before-statehood Honolulu, at the rickety old wooden terminal with ceiling fans, a smiling Hawaiian girl came up to me and hung a lei around my neck.

In all my short life, I’d never smelled, or felt, anything so delicious. The flowers, just out of refrigeration, were cold and their petals were stiff. I’d never seen anything like them. They were white, and yellow and pink, and surrounded me with a fragrance I never forgot.

I realize now that this was my first perfume experience.

My mother put the lei into the little refrigerator in our hotel room. Each day of our stay there, the petals deteriorated a little more, browning around the edges, ultimately losing the freshness of their fragrance to a note of creeping rot, and when we left for Tokyo, she threw it out. I whined like a baby.

This memory came back to me when I smelled Manoumalia (Les Nez) recently, and again when I tried Amaranthine (Penhaglion) last week.

Interesting how, as the cold gray winter descends over North America, the perfume blogs and forums are all alight with tropical florals. We go from pining, in late summer, for the heavy ambers and musks of fall, and then out of nowhere comes this. Amaranthine, which seems poised to reinvigorate the staid old house of Penhaglion, was done by Bertrand Duchaufour. I believe it is his first for them. Manoumalia, the very definition of a “niche” fragrance, was made by Sandrine Videault, who lives and works on the Pacific island of New Caledonia.

Of the two, the Manoumalia is the more interesting to me. Tropical flowers are all about taking care of business -- the business of reproduction -- quick. This is the evolutionary reason for their strong and heavy fragrances. Manoumalia opens heavier than most perfumes end; sweet, almost like chocolate, but not too sweet. Videault, who was one of Roudniska’s last students, knows what she’s doing. More olfactionary artist than commercial perfumer, she designed this scent as a sort of tribute to the Wallisian tribes that populate her area, using a common shrub flower, fragrea berteriana, along with tiare and ylang-ylang, but then took it darker with sandalwood dust, vetiver, and an amber. (Most Hawaii leis feature frangipani, also the name of Ormond Jayne’s tropical scent, which I wrote about a few posts ago; it’s gorgeous, too.)

Amaranthine, which clearly is a commercial scent (although a very fine one) comes in quite a bit lighter and a lot greener. Looking at the notes, I see green tea, cardamom, freesia and banana leaf. There’s your tropics. I love not-quite-ripe bananas, with their nearly green skin. Smelling the two side-by-side, the Amaranthine has the “throw” and longevity which marks the use of at least some synthetics; while I don’t know this for sure, I’d bet that Manmoulia is composed primarily of natural essences.

Does this make Manmoulia better? Some would say so; not me, though, because I think they’re both amazing. My scent-eating skin loves the mixture of synthetic and natural best, as the synthetics work to “set” the scent, thereby making it last more than an hour or so, which is the fate of most naturals on me -- not that I’ve tried them all. Far from it. But even now, as I write with one on one hand and one on the other, the Manmoulia is nearly gone, after an hour, while the Amaranthine is still going. (On blotters, however, the Manmoulia is still almost as strong as the Amaranthine.)

So we’re all different. Different skin. Big news? No.

I haven’t been back to Hawaii since I was a child. It seems to be such a Resort Vacation Destination now. I know that there are back roads and undiscovered places and so on, but to get there, you have to do the packed-like-sardines/tin can/bus/hideous American airport thing, and I think I’d rather remember it like it was. New Caledonia, now, that’s another story. It’s been on my list for years. The one Pacific island I’m dying to see, and now there’s this beautiful scent from there, too...and, one day, I will.

Thanks to Perfume Shrine and Now Smell This for information on these scents.

Manoumalia’s notes include Fragrea Berteriana, ylang-ylang, tiare, sandalwood dust, vetiver and amber accord.

Amaranthine’s notes include green tea, white freesia, banana leaf, coriander, cardamom absolute, rose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, egyptian jasmine absolute, carnation, tonka absolute, musk, sandalwood and condensed milk.

Vintage Hawaiian shirt fabric image copyright Ron Chapple Studios. Used under license from Dreamstime.com.