Perfume: Personal or Political?

I can never convince myself that perfume is just a harmless pleasure, wrote Susan Brownmiller (Femininity, Paladin Grafton Books, 1986). In her book, she writes about the trappings of femininity, the way us females build our popular image with silly clothing and dangerous shoes, affected postures and layers of make-up. Brownmiller excoriates the perfume industry, blaming it for robbing women of self-confidence by making the olfactory masking of our “natural” female odours almost obligatory. I take on board everything Brownmiller says, but I just do not concur with her stance on perfume. The wearing of perfume is a natural development of our link with the world of plants, never a tenuous one. The scented stuff emerged in the hot spots of the Middle East – witness the many references in the Bible – thousands of years ago. Trade and travel slowly shifted those pots and jars to the Mediterranean, from where they crept unrelentingly northwards and westwards. Around a thousand years ago, the denizens of the northwest began to leave their land-based lives and move into towns and newly forming cities. These places were unsanitary and formed only of social and economic necessity. For centuries, the upper classes strove through stink and squalor with the aid of “nosegays” or floral bunches, and pomanders, oranges stuck with cloves, not to “perfume” the carrier, but to help block out the surrounding smells.

In a contemporary world where we have come to accept public squalor alongside private luxury, I wear perfume in the same spirit as the denizens of the past. Sexual allure is the last thing in my mind as I rove about the urban landscape in a cloud of scent; blocking out the traffic exhaust fumes, the reek of putrid drains, uncollected rubbish and the thousand other miasmas emanating from I know not where. Yes, there is a little “cover up” involved, but no more than is involved with the wearing of clothing – has this ever been dismissed as “dishonest”? On that note, I carry the torch for Eau Dynanmisante by Clarins, a glorious, heady bouquet of “patchouli, petit grain, rosemary and white thyme”, having worn it for twenty years and will probably do for twenty more. A perfume expert would be able to explain in detail how these ingredients work together to make Eau-D the vital stuff that it is but alas, you only have my word for it….