Fragrant Delight
By CYRIL RAY
WHEN the Bolshoi Ballet was in London, one of our more smugly chauvinistic daily newspapers, gleefully reporting that Ulanova was buying scent and cosmetics here, made it quite clear that this was to be regarded as One Up to Our Side and the Western Way of Life. I can understand a Muscovite's sniffing appreciatively the scented zephyrs of Oxford Street. Five years ago, when I used to watch Ulanova footing it on her native heath, Moscow's top scent, both in price and in prestige, was named after Stalin's daughter ; 'Svetlana's Breath.' But too much should not be made of political analogies : are we to be taken as lusting after the French par- liamentary system because the shop windows of postal district WI, tarted up for Christmas, pro- claim that 'Fleches d'Or' is a 'part um e.tineelant comme tine pie re faillee,' and that 'Envoi' is `caressant comme une aile'?
Indeed, the geographical snobberies of this particular trade have their rummer consequences. Moscow girls ask you to bring them back scent from Leningrad, though it is made in the same State-owned factories that supply their own cor- ner shops. Apparently, the very name of the old capital evokes Petersburgian echoes in the still- provincial ears of Muscovites of gipsy music and champagne suppers with the girls of the Marin- sky. Meanwhile, French admiration for Ameri- can dash—and dollars—brings more and more names like 'Gin Fizz' and 'Cocktail' into the windows of the Faubourg St. Honord; Lentheric's 'Risque Tout' has become 'Tweed% and while the French manufacturers christen a new get-your- man brew 'Lasso,' British retailers plug it in their windows as 'un nouveau peplum.'
So, at any rate, in the smarter shops, over whose Christmas displays I have been twitching an amateur nostril and where, I was told, you can buy a couple of ounces of Jean Patou's 'Joy' for £24. This is advertised as 'the costliest perfume in the world,' but I am told, rather bewilderingly, that this must not be taken as meaning the dearest : in 'London's West End last year a couple of bottles of Dior's 'Diorissimo' were sold (this was told me in a hushed voice in more than one big shop) at seventy-live guineas apiece.
In Woolworth's, on the other hand, the accent is less on France than on the mysterious East. True, there is an eau-de-Cologne labelled 'qualite superieure; British manufacture,' and one of the most popular scents of all is 'Californian Poppy : the Perfume that Murmurs Love Me,' at one-and- tenpence. But the latest hit is 'Pagoda,' and Phul Nana, the Perfume of Romance, at one- and-ninepence, is as popular as it was in the days of Valentino.
Those were the days when the more worldly —and well-heeled—of us chased our Charleston- Analogies with wine are not entirely out of place : good scents are none the worse for a little bottle-age, so long as air and sunshine are not permitted to oxidise the fragrant and fragile liquid inside. There could even, I am tempted to gather, be vintage years, for the flower scents if not for the aldehydics, save that the bad years ing girl friends with Chanel Numero Cinq, as favoured now as it was in the 1920s, if in rather wider circles now than then. There is an in- formation centre for the trade in London called (I assure you) the Fragrance Bureau, where Chanel Numero Cinq is spoken and written of with the awe and respect, if not the vocabulary—`a light, floral, sophisticated perfume with an aldehydic top note'—that you and I might accord to a 1934 Lafite. would become bad stock. Imagine how the shop- assistants' hearts would sink as the suburban Circes came out with their little celluloid vintage charts at the perfume counter.
Notice, pray, that up to that point I did my best to fight a rearguard action for the time- honoured monosyllable 'scent.' But the battle has long been lost. The Times, a matter of months ago, admitted 'toilet' for 'WC,' high-ranking' for 'senior' officers and 'perfume' into one single issue of the paper at once. A sales-lady (and I'm sure I've got that right) said to me with a charitable smile, 'You'll forgive me,.I know, but "scent" is a word you'd use in a common little chemist's shop : we never use it here.'
At the Fragrance Bureau (and I assure you again that I'm not joking : look it up in your telephone book) they strike a more sophisticated note : the trade has always called it 'perfume; they told me, 'because the best noses have all been trained in France.' Well, I once took my palate to Bordeaux, but I still call the stuff 'wine,' and not yin.
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