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subtitled: games writers play with themselves when they have insomnia
One of the ways that I sometimes design characters is to go through my excessively huge stash of perfume samples and try to imagine who would wear a particular fragrance.
If you have a sufficiently wide and weird collection at your disposal, this can be a pretty fun exercise. For example, take Serge Lutens's Laine de Verre -- a perfume inspired by (and named for!) fiberglass, of all things. It has been described as "shards of glass wrapped in a cashmere sweater."
Who would wear such a fragrance? I have no idea, but I think it's an interesting question. Consider it long enough, and maybe it will conjure a character worth knowing.
Anyway, mainly because I'm suffering from a bout of insomnia (blame it on my foster dog: she woke me up at 3 am by caterwauling to go out for a potty, and now I can't get back to sleep), I thought it might also be fun to turn it around and speculate as to which perfumes certain Pathfinder Tales characters might wear.
NB: these are just my guesses, and I hope the authors won't be offended by my speculations as to their characters!
NB x2: I'm probably going to stick mainly to female characters in this exercise, just because I have much more familiarity with those scents. I don't know men's fragrances anywhere near as well.
NB x3: I will try to avoid spoilers in this thread, but obviously one can't consider perfumes without talking about the characters, so if you're very spoiler sensitive then you may want to skip the rest of my posts here. ;)
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I'll start with an easy one.
Vreva Jhafae - Pirate's Promise
As a high-priced courtesan with a wealthy clientele, my guess is that Vreva has quite a collection of perfumes at her disposal.
However, I would also venture a guess that she wears one of those fragrances much more often than the others, because in that line of business, it's useful to establish a signature scent in the memory of one's guests (brand identity!). And the one I would pick as Vreva's signature scent is a very easy call: by Kilian's Liaisons Dangereuses.
Why? Well, the name, for one thing. But actually this fragrance is not as dark or difficult as the name might suggest.
It's a lush, voluptuous, sensual scent built around red roses and ripe fruit: plum, blackcurrant, peach, and (for a touch of the exotic) coconut. There's a whisper of vanilla and spice, very understated, like a hint of gold brocade over red silk. The fruit and floral notes are not overly gourmand, but appropriate for a lady who recognizes the value of food as part of a long seduction.
This fragrance stays rich and sweet throughout, from first application until drydown. There's nothing spiky or off-putting here, nothing that would extend anything less than a honeyed welcome to Vreva's clientele. Liaisons Dangereuses is also quite pricey and, as an artisanal/niche scent, not commonly worn. It's unfamiliar, therefore intriguing. But those familiar with luxury would recognize its quality, which makes it a perfect fit for this character.
As for what Vreva wears in her off hours? Nothing, I'd guess. She strikes me as a character who's glad to put aside the artifice completely when she isn't working, and who doesn't wear perfume for her own sake, but only to complete a picture she needs to show the world. Eschewing it in her private moments might be part of how she separates her public persona from her true self.
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Another easy one (I think):
Zae - "Inheritance"
I don't imagine this wonderfully eccentric, curious gnome as being the type to wear perfume, at least not regularly. But I do think she'd really be intrigued by the CB I Hate Perfume collection, and would likely own quite a few of its samples.
CB I Hate Perfume does have a couple of wearable fragrances, but for the most part it's essentially a master perfumer's unconventional one-man art show. The collection explores questions like "can I capture the scent of a Jonny Quest episode in a perfume vial? What about the essence of the reading room in the New York Public Library? Can I conjure the experience of walking through a loamy forest in the summer?"
It is truly amazing to me that the answer to all of these questions is very persuasively "yes." All of those experiences have been captured in those tiny little bottles.
These aren't perfumes to wear, but they are experiences distilled into scent. I think that would appeal to Zae both as a gnome and as a follower of Brigh (because what an invention this collection is!).
So that's my guess for her. :)
One that was a little bit harder:
Oparal - King of Chaos
My first instinct with Oparal was to reach for the drawer of incense-based perfumes (specifically the Commes des Garcons incense series, and then even more specifically Incense Avignon, which is the purest rendition of cathedral incense I've ever found: frankincense and myrrh, smoke coiling up to ancient wooden rafters, layers upon layers of reverent history)... and then I realized, no, that's not right.
Because I don't think Oparal would wear fragrance to re-emphasize her status as a paladin. She might, and if she did then yes, it would be Incense Avignon for sure (because if that is not the most Iomedaean churchy scent imaginable, especially in a cold climate like Mendev, then I don't even know), but in my estimation that's unlikely. She doesn't seem the type.
A more interesting angle, I think -- and this is something that comes out more in King of Chaos -- is that Oparal sometimes doesn't seem to be entirely comfortable with her own femininity. A girly girl she is not; I truly can't imagine her spending a sunny afternoon on her day off wandering through the scent parlors of the city. But there's something about her that suggests she might want to. Or, at least, that she might be curious about the lives of women who do.
So my revised guess is that she owns maybe one or two bottles of perfume, and if she does, she never wears them, and they were most likely acquired under one or both of the following circumstances:
-- The fragrance is Golarion's equivalent of Chanel No. 5 or Shalimar: a famous, iconic Grande Dame perfume whose name everyone knows, but which actually very few women can wear with confidence (these are classics of the 1920s and not always easy to pull off today!).
In this case I imagine that it was a gift, not at all something Oparal would have chosen for herself. She might not entirely understand its appeal (these classics can sometimes be unapproachable to a modern nose), but she tells herself that the failing must be on her end and not simply that the fragrance is a poor match for her tastes. So she keeps it, perhaps out of sentiment for its giver, perhaps with the half-frustrated hope that someday it'll click into place and she'll become, or at least comprehend, the kind of person who can swan around in black satin and pearls and Chanel.
-- The fragrance is something that she impulsively bought for herself in a moment of weakness and which she loves but doesn't feel comfortable wearing openly, for fear that it might somehow compromise her no-nonsense public identity. So it occupies a semi-secret place in her personal belongings and she might be more than a little embarrassed if anyone knew about it.
In that case, I'd imagine she might choose something like L'Artisan's Mure et Musc: a refined, minimalist fragrance built around blackberries and a sweet, fruit-inflected musk, which I think would appeal to a Forlorn elf. It's sensual but subtle; this fragrance has a light touch and tends to stay close to the skin. I imagine that would be more appealing to Oparal than anything overtly aggressive.
Zernebeth - Reign of Stars
Zernebeth is a fun one. She has money, power, a lively interest in oddities, and absolutely no concern for what anyone else thinks. In terms of perfume profile, she's almost exactly the opposite of Vreva (except that they're both probably at the high end of the market): whereas a courtesan has to be primarily concerned with her clients' reaction to a fragrance, Zernebeth strikes me as a person who would intentionally seek out off-putting scents just to entertain herself with people's responses.
She also strikes me as the kind of person who has a very short attention span with regard to fragrance and is constantly seeking novelties. My guess would be that Zernebeth has dozens upon dozens of tiny sampler vials (none more than half used) and zero full bottles, and that she buys new fragrances on the basis of an interesting name, a brightly colored juice, or a weird reputation -- not so much for the perfume's actual composition or because she necessarily expects to like it.
I imagine Zernebeth as someone who buys fiberglass-inspired Laine de Verre and is then disappointed that it's not weirder. She'd get Etat Libre d'Orange's Fat Electrician purely for the name. She probably would buy the CB I Hate Perfume collection that I mentioned up-thread, and then she'd wear something that smelled like burning asphalt and skunky roadkill to a Technic League meeting and dare everyone around her to blink.
...then again, given that poor Zernebeth lives in the land of barbarians with horrendous taste, it may be that the only thing she can buy is Axe body spray.
And there, with that one I think I'm done talking to myself for a while. ;)
I'll start with an easy one.
Vreva Jhafae - Pirate's Promise
As a high-priced courtesan with a wealthy clientele, my guess is that Vreva has quite a collection of perfumes at her disposal.
However, I would also venture a guess that she wears one of those fragrances much more often than the others, because in that line of business, it's useful to establish a signature scent in the memory of one's guests (brand identity!). And the one I would pick as Vreva's signature scent is a very easy call: by Kilian's Liaisons Dangereuses.
Why? Well, the name, for one thing. But actually this fragrance is not as dark or difficult as the name might suggest.
It's a lush, voluptuous, sensual...
You totally nailed it Liane! Perfect from top to bottom. Well done indeed!
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Thanks!
But Vreva's an easy one, like I said. I aaalmost feel like that should be "no credit." Celeste would be much more challenging to pin down. ;)
I might come back to this thread later. If anybody wants to throw out names for me to take a stab at, I'm glad to try (again, noting that I probably can't do the guys, owing to my unfamiliarity with men's fragrances).
Also, whenever possible, I've linked to Luckyscent's pages for these perfumes in case anyone is curious enough to want to pick up a sample vial and see how the scent actually matches to the description. Lists of notes don't say everything -- the same ingredients can be combined for a drastically different effect -- so sometimes how something actually smells is not what you'd expect based on the written description.
I don't figure many people will be that into it, but you can get most samples for $5 or less, and sometimes it's worth the price to satisfy your curiosity (...says the person with way too many of these things).
I don't know enough about perfumes to weigh in, but I would say that Varian Jeggare is dandyish enough to be picky about his fragrance, and I suspect he favours scents with a lot of vanilla in them, as it reminds him of his library back home.
Varian does strike me as someone who would know a thing or two about fragrance. I don't know if I'd go with vanilla for him, although it's certainly a possibility. I'm leaning a little more toward tobacco and cognac as lead notes for him, though.
I'll give it some thought. If I even try any of the male characters, Varian Jeggare and Salim Ghadafar are tops on that list for sure. ;)
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ROUND TWO
Jendara - "Mother Bears"*
Trick question! Jendara doesn't wear perfume.
She's a single mother working hard to carve a life for herself in a part of the world that doesn't place much value on such fripperies. She doesn't have time for that. I can't imagine that she has the inclination, either -- if Jendara suddenly had an extra six hours per day, she'd probably spend it doing actual work, not developing a taste for silk undergarments and fine fragrance. Smelling of roses doesn't help you hunt boars.
I'm not willing to go as far as saying that she doesn't even own any perfume, though. I'd say there's an outside chance that she has a half-forgotten bottle in the bottom of a sea chest somewhere. It's probably 10 or 15 years old, dating back to a very different time in her life (my guess would be the starry-eyed young love phase with her late husband), it was probably a gift that a fellow pirate gave her out of captured booty, and she probably doesn't take it out very often, not only because she has no use for it in her life today, but also because it's a reminder of happy days that are a little painful to revisit now.
I don't have a specific guess for what that fragrance actually might be, though. Given that I doubt Jendara was ever interested enough to develop strong preferences of her own regarding fragrance, the scent wouldn't say anything about her personality. My guess is that it would probably just be something that was hugely popular in its day, but -- considering Jendara's geographical remoteness from any of the major civilized countries and probable lack of interest in keeping up with the latest fashion trends -- was a little dated even when she originally got it.
So based on that, I'll speculate that this hypothetical semi-forgotten bottle holds something like Golarion's equivalent of Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds (1991): a big white floral that was an absolute blockbuster on release, remains hugely popular years later, and is accessible enough (both in scent profile and popularity) to suit the role. It's a memorable, well-made scent with a personality big enough to fit a woman like Jendara, who most likely wouldn't be interested in anything shy or soft-spoken. At the same time, it is recognizably enough of an era that the fashionable elite of Oppara and Egorian would never consider wearing it today.
But as far as someone like Jendara is concerned, the disdain of fashion snobs might actually be a plus point, and in any case she doesn't wear this perfume. The scent itself barely matters. What's more important is who gave it to her and why.
(* -- I haven't finished Skinwalkers yet, and it's possible that my guess might need revision as I learn more about the character and/or if her circumstances change significantly between the web fiction and the novel. So this entry is based mostly on Jendara as portrayed in the web fiction.)
Salim Ghadafar - Death's Heretic
Almost as soon as I started to consider this character, one answer leaped out at me: Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain. Obviously. It could be nothing else.
L'Air du Desert Marocain is an interesting composition. It's a dry, spicy Oriental that harkens back to an earlier age in its style. This is an intense, complicated, powerful scent that can easily become overwhelming if not applied with care, which I think mirrors Salim's personality quite nicely. It doesn't make any attempt to be nice or accessible in its first impression -- there's no gentleness in its opening and very little sweetness until you get to the drydown. Instead it hits you immediately with a full-force gust of arid desert spice and resinous woods.
I actually didn't care for Desert Marocain the first time I sampled it. The intensity was overwhelming, and there's really no compromise with this one; you either accede to its presence or you don't. But on a revisit, the complexity and nuance of the fragrance won me over. This is a powerfully evocative scent, and what it evokes is the archetypal image of a dusty, sun-baked city of the ancient Middle East, all spice and exotic smoke and fragrant, carved screens of cedar and sandalwood shading windows overlooking the market square, with a whispery tumble of dried rose petals blowing over the flagstones.
So that one seems like a fairly easy pick to me.
Brea - "Armored"
This is one I'm really not at all sure about, but I love the story and the character too much not to speculate. This piece was so beautifully written that I just had to guess, even if the guess proves to miss the mark entirely.
My first thought with Brea is that her key note would be leather. In part, of course, this is linked to her profession: she's a mercenary captain and a fighter who relies on her armor, so naturally leather would be the obvious choice. But it's also because she thinks of her lover Deagan in fruit and floral terms (rose, jasmine, blackberry wine) and they're in opposition more than they are in harmony, so her own identity would most likely be defined by different elements.
However, I can't see her in any of the rough animalic leather scents. Brea's point of view shows an unerringly poetic sensibility, and even the rawest aspects of what she does have a certain beauty when seen through her eyes. Therefore I started looking at the gentler, softer interpretations of leather in fragrance. Kidskin gloves and suede, not rawhide or dirty musk.
The other consideration is that Brea spends much of the story concerned with keeping her emotions hidden and trying to read what others are hiding. Based on this, I guessed that she would lean heavily toward discretion in her perfumery choices: nothing big or bombastic with pronounced sillage, but rather subtler scents that stayed close to the skin and were noticeable only to intimates.
This combination of guiding principles takes us to Hermes's Cuir d'Ange ("Angel Leather"), a soft suede-like leather accented with a watercolor wash of flowers and sweet musk. It's often described as "ethereal" or "translucent," which I think is fitting to Brea's romantic, poetic worldview. The leather is the central point, but it's filtered through a slightly hazy lens, softening the reality that all this beauty rests on death.
I'm less confident about that judgment than some of the others I've made in this thread, but that's my guess for her today.
Another easy one (I think):
Zae - "Inheritance"
I don't imagine this wonderfully eccentric, curious gnome as being the type to wear perfume, at least not regularly. But I do think she'd really be intrigued by the CB I Hate Perfume collection, and would likely own quite a few of its samples.
[...]These aren't perfumes to wear, but they are experiences distilled into scent. I think that would appeal to Zae both as a gnome and as a follower of Brigh (because what an invention this collection is!).
Oooh. Yes! I think Zae would love to be able to tell some elitist noble, "Oh, aren't you kind. I'm wearing 'Invisible Monster' today. Thank you for asking!"
The Demeter fragrances collection would also be a favorite, for much the same reasons (but for a more modest budget). They're more bottled moments than scents.
Do you think Keren would be more difficult?
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Request for Jelani.
I feel like it's kind of cheating to do my own characters, but sure, I'll run through not only Jelani (who's only like 25% "my character" anyway!) and all the others real quick.
Helis - Nightglass
You can pick literally anything out of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Ars Moriendi series and be reasonably confident that you've matched to Helis.
As a student in the Dusk Hall, Helis doesn't have the experience to pick her own fragrances based on composition and doesn't have the money or time to develop that experience. So she's buying blind based on dramatic stories and compelling poetry, not so much what the juice actually smells like, and the best possible place for an uber-Gothy teenager to be enchanted by that sort of thing is, of course, BPAL.
That's how I did it in high school and that's how Helis does it in Nightglass. Hooray for being 14!
Velenne - Nightglass
Can't really talk about this one without getting into Super Secret Unpublished Book spoilers, but Nightglass-era Velenne is wearing a lot of Incense Avignon, for reasons of Nostalgia (and alas for poor Isiem, if he'd been able to make that connection he probably would have been able to save himself some angsting. Then again, when does that guy ever want to save himself angsting?).
That isn't actually her preferred perfume, though. Her scent shows up later.
Ena - Nightblade
Doesn't wear perfume. No interest in it.
Kyril - Nightblade
Kyril wears L'Eau de L'artisan, the signature scent of the perfume house L'Artisan Parfumeur. I really love this scent. It's a fresh, crisp green scent, accented with citrus, that calls to mind an orchard in summertime. Key notes are lemon, basil, mint, and sweet grass. It's got a light, natural brightness that I like a lot for Kyril.
Jelani - "Certainty" / King of Chaos
So: Jelani!
My take on Jelani is that originally she would have favored the scents you'd expect for a Thuvian sorceress focused on fire and earth: smoke, sandalwood, patchouli. Lots of incense and spice.
However, I also think that her preferences shifted significantly after she went to the Worldwound. First, it's probably pretty hard to get Thuvian fragrances that far north. Second, and more importantly, perfume becomes a way to find comfort and remember beauty in the face of constant, staggering monstrosity.
So my view is that she has a small collection of fragrances that recall memories she wants to hold close in that environment. She doesn't wear them to please anyone else, just herself, although she's not averse to sharing.
One of her scents is L'Artisan's La Chasse aux Papillons ("Chasing Butterflies"), a radiant, romantic springtime floral of linden, jasmine, mimosa, and lemon blossoms. It's beautiful and uplifting and sheer, not heavy or cloying in the slightest. If it's possible to capture joy in a bottle, La Chasse comes close.
Another is Indult's Tihota, a pure essence of vanilla that is exactly like breaking open a vanilla bean pod and breathing in its creamy sweetness. There's nothing else in that perfume -- just intense, perfect vanilla, rendered with the luxury of top ingredients. I imagine she would find that one comforting and likely wears it to sleep.
As for what Jelani would wear after leaving Mendev, that I don't know. I don't think she's especially wedded to any one particular signature scent, though, so very likely her preferences would change as her circumstances do.
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Do you think Keren would be more difficult?
I'm happy you liked the guess for Zae!
I do think Keren would be a little more difficult, if only because Zae was so easy that almost anyone would be harder by comparison. I also think it would be helpful to have a little more information on her character before trying to make a guess with any real confidence, which is my oh-so-subtle way of hoping that more stories about the two of them will be forthcoming soon.
But, that said, I do have a few thoughts on her, which I will try and include in Round Three. ;)
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Salim Ghadafar - Death's Heretic
Almost as soon as I started to consider this character, one answer leaped out at me: Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain. Obviously. It could be nothing else.
L'Air du Desert Marocain is an interesting composition. It's a dry, spicy Oriental that harkens back to an earlier age in its style. This is an intense, complicated, powerful scent that can easily become overwhelming if not applied with care, which I think mirrors Salim's personality quite nicely. It doesn't make any attempt to be nice or accessible in its first impression -- there's no gentleness in its opening and very little sweetness until you get to the drydown. Instead it hits you immediately with a full-force gust of arid desert spice and resinous woods.
I actually didn't care for Desert Marocain the first time I sampled it. The intensity was overwhelming, and there's really no compromise with this one; you either accede to its presence or you don't. But on a revisit, the complexity and nuance of the fragrance won me over. This is a powerfully evocative scent, and what it evokes is the archetypal image of a dusty, sun-baked city of the ancient Middle East, all spice and exotic smoke and fragrant, carved screens of cedar and sandalwood shading windows overlooking the market square, with a whispery tumble of dried rose petals blowing over the flagstones.
So that one seems like a fairly easy pick to me.
Wow, that's awesome!
ROUND THREE (subtitled: yep, I'm still here and still slightly bonkers)
Elyana - Stalking the Beast
"Confident" and "competent" are the two words that spring to mind for Elyana, who seems aaalmost too briskly efficient to indulge in such fripperies as fragrance. Besides, as a ranger, I doubt she feels the need to douse herself in artificial scent all that often. So my first instinct is to peg her as a "never wears perfume" sort. But if I did that, this would be a short exercise and not that much fun, so let's just say there's about a 25% chance that she wears a fragrance and run with it.
Given that hypothetical 25% chance, what would Elyana choose?
I discarded the floral options immediately. Nothing about Elyana says "flower" to me. Whether sweetly innocent or lushly seductive, floral just doesn't seem to fit this no-nonsense ranger. Likewise, I crossed off all the fruity and gourmand fragrances at once; I can't imagine Elyana goes around smelling of crushed raspberries or creme brulee.
Green and mossy chypres seemed to be getting a little closer to the mark, but none of the ones in my collection struck me as exactly right. They were too sharp, too sweet, too effervescently citrusy in the opening, always something that didn't quite fit my mental image of this character.
Until I got to L'Artisan's Mechant Loup ("Wicked Wolf"): cedar, sandalwood, honey, maple, myrrh. Perfect!
Originally marketed to men, Mechant Loup was quickly adopted by women who wanted to wear its sweet, smoky blend of woods themselves. On a woman, it projects a certain confidence: sultry and assured, warm but ever so slightly reserved. It was long said to be Penelope Cruz's signature fragrance, and it isn't hard to see why. This is a perfume that conveys strength and sensuality, the confidence born of experience, and a distinct lack of sugary excess.
So that's my pick for Elyana.
Bonus round: Daylah
I'm just throwing this one in here out of sheer delight that Drelm's soon-to-be wife gives me an excuse to match Calypso St. Barth's Lea to a character.
Lea is sweet sweet sweet. It's a perfect capture of vanilla and almond and crystallized sugar -- think of freshly baked amaretti, or light-as-clouds almond meringues resting on a white saucer next to a steaming cappucino. A cozy, cuddly, total comfort scent, Lea is not one that pairs easily to any heroic protagonist splashing through buckets of blood.
But as a signifier of innocent domestic bliss, it's pretty hard to beat.
Luma - "In the Event of My Untimely Demise"*
Luma is an interesting character to do this exercise with, because her self-perception in the web fiction and her responses to various olfactory cues provide some significant clues while also leaving a great deal in mystery.
In this story, she's a clever, capable young woman who is chronologically older than her siblings but still treated as the junior member of the family, and who is constantly conscious of that judgment and unsure of herself as a result (although significantly more confident in the company of others). She's a druid, but she's simultaneously a creature of the city. She's a scion of Magnimar's noble houses, but she's also the lone half-elf among her kin. So there are a lot of dichotomies even in these four short chapters, and it's fun to think about how those might be expressed through Luma's choice of fragrance.
That she wears fragrance seems little in doubt. She's too conscious of the cues in other people's perfumes not to, and as the daughter of a prominent society house, fragrance would quite likely be a routine part of her dress for formal occasions.
Therefore I think we can safely say she wears something. But what?
Presumably nothing built around spices, since Luma associates spiced fragrances with "old-fashioned matrons," and few young women choose perfumes they associate with older ladies. Likewise nothing featuring a heavy dose of frankincense, since she identifies that as her father's cologne. By this reasoning, we can cross out woody, resinous, and darkly spiced scents in general.
I think it's also safe to exclude the lightest, most girlish florals. Luma already struggles to be taken seriously and wouldn't choose a fragrance that codes her as any younger or less experienced than she is. On the other end of the spectrum, we can knock out everything that requires a great deal of confidence from its wearer to pull off. Luma does not, in this story, project the presence or polish to carry something like vintage Tabac Blond or the Mechant Loup that I picked for Elyana. With a few more years (and a few more levels), maybe, but not as portrayed here. She doubts herself too much to try for those.
That still leaves a wide, wide range of options, and it took me a while to settle on one that I liked for her. Really, I think there's a strong case to be made for any of the naturalistic (as opposed to impressionistic) fruits or florals, and I lingered over several citrus-based fragrances before moving past. A fair argument might be put forward for the green chypres, too, although mostly I felt that they were either too crisp or too ornate for this character.
The one I ultimately picked was L'Artisan's Premier Figuier, a vivid capture of the entire fig tree, from branch to leaf to unripe fruit, in scent. I liked the idea of using a cultivated fruit for an urban druid, and I felt that it suited what Luma might look for in a fragrance. Premier Figuier is uplifting and comforting, vibrant but tranquil, fresh and natural. The green notes are crisp and sharp, the fruit and sap rendered with a touch of milky sweetness. In part it reflects who she is (as I read her), and in part it reflects who I imagine she might want to be.
(* -- as with Jendara, I'm writing this solely based on the web fiction, and may need to revise my guess based on the character's development in the novel.)
Oh, that'll be interesting to see. I'll have to bump it up on my reading list now. :)
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Unnamed Ex-Gray Maiden - "Shattered Steel"
If the previous exercise was a challenge to work with a lot of information, this one is the opposite: how do you assign a fragrance to a protagonist who is literally faceless and nameless within the story, who thinks of herself as a dead woman or broken automaton, and who is defined almost entirely by what she isn't?
Pretty easily, as it turns out! I'm going with Chanel's Cuir de Russie, a classic (1927) leather fragrance that was supposedly (maybe apocryphally) intended to mask the odor of the wearer's cigarettes. I rather liked the conceit of hiding one's vices (weaknesses?) behind a facade for this character, but I think the scent suits her on its own even without that bit of background story.
The key note of this scent is, as you might guess, leather. It's a strong but polished fragrance, accented with faint traces of rosewater and orange blossom. One could easily imagine a silent-movie starlet wearing such a perfume, or a dominatrix on her night off. Even almost a hundred years after its debut, this fragrance carries an edgy glamour.
I like Cuir de Russie for our ex-Gray Maiden because it initially gives the impression of a single, forward note (and, as that note is a relatively brusque leather -- at least by the standards of women's fragrance! -- it's quite appropriate to our heavily armored sellsword), but then develops unexpected dimensions and flourishes of grace as it progresses. This fragrance is like breathing the interior of a pricey handbag that, a few days earlier, held an unexpected gift of flowers, or a pomander of oranges and cloves. There were blooms of beauty within that leather, once upon a time, and their scented memories remain.
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Varian Jeggare - King of Chaos
My great difficulty with trying to assign anything to Varian Jeggare is that most mainstream men's fragrances are just completely the wrong style for him. Too pushy, too brash, often too artificial (although these problems are by no means exclusive to the men's side of the aisle!). In niche fragrance the scents are more varied and so the options are better, but then the problem is that I'm not familiar with as wide a range of them. Thus this one was a difficult project for me.
(Side tangent here: It's my firm belief that the aristocracy of Cheliax and Taldor are deeply immersed in the world of fragrance, and that their less affluent imitators try to mimic them as best their budgets allow. Both of those cultures strike me as far too fond of luxury not to have developed a sophisticated market for perfumes. Therefore, whether or not Varian has any inherent affinity for fragrance, his social status probably mandates that he spend at least a little attention on that aspect of self-presentation, at least when he's in residence in Cheliax. And, since he has to do it anyway, his pride probably pushes him to do it well. Count Varian Jeggare would wear nothing thoughtless or ill-made.)
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, my instinct with Varian is to look at refined interpretations of tobacco, cognac, and leather, because those are the primary notes that I associate with a gentleman scholar who has an abiding fondness for books and whose natural environment is a tastefully appointed private library. Leather armchairs, a cabinet of fine liquors, a suggestion of smoke and of well-traveled chests carrying artifacts from faraway lands: these are the images I would expect that scent to conjure.
Diptyque Volutes EdP achieves it. This is a cherry- and honey-inflected tobacco fragrance with an opening burst of pepper and citrus that fades into a long, sweet drydown of iris, tobacco, and incense-rubbed leather. It's been universally described by perfumistas as "refined," "sophisticated," and "polished." Supposedly inspired by the perfumer's memories of the Egyptian cigarettes that elegant ladies smoked on the upper deck of ships going from Marseilles to Saigon, Volutes also works to convey the atmosphere of a Victorian expeditionary society's library, where the members might gather after their meetings for brandy and cigars.
But it's just a tiny bit too sweet on the drydown for me to be totally comfortable assigning it to Varian. If I could dial back the honey notes just the smallest fraction, then it would be perfect. On the other hand, would the fragrance fit if it were any rougher? I'm inclined to think not.
So this is one where I'm, let's say, 98% happy with the pick, and 2% wishing that I could slip out some of the cherry and honey notes and replace them with a bit more cognac or leather. But really I think Volutes is very close to the right answer, and I'm content with the choice.
Bonus round:
Radovan Virholt
I don't think Radovan wears cologne (although I might possibly have missed a phase during his early days when he indulged in the cheap stuff). I like to imagine that if he ever did in the past, it was because either his boss or a lady friend told him to, and it was probably really awkward and he might have felt pretty self-conscious about it, like wearing uncomfortably formal clothes that he was glad to shed as soon as possible.
Because of this, and because of my above-mentioned belief that past a certain point in Cheliax you're kind of socially mandated to do this, I'm going to be exceedingly delighted if (when? let's hope it's a "when"!) Radovan gets forced into fragrance. Few things are funnier than Radovan in an awkward social situation, and that's one that I would dearly love to see.
It has also been astutely pointed out to me that, left to his own devices, Radovan quite often smells of secondhand perfume. Which... yeah. Yeah, I suppose that is very true.
Keren - "Inheritance"
Earlier in the thread, I said that Zae was the easier of the two characters in "Inheritance" to match to a perfume. I think that's true for a couple of reasons, foremost that the entire story is from Zae's point of view, so we never get to see directly inside Keren's head. We only see her as Zae perceives her, and to the extent that Zae's perspective might be limited or inaccurate, that makes it harder to determine what might actually be most appropriate for Keren.
The other reason I had a hard time with her is that Keren comes off as just a fundamentally good person, and it's hard to capture that kind of genuine, unaffected sweetness in perfumery without veering into super sugar overload. I wanted something fresh and natural, not cotton candy with a sprinkling of watermelon Jolly Ranchers -- Keren might be sweet, but she is not a candidate for Aquolina Pink Sugar!
I started looking at naturalistic soliflores: single-note perfumes that try to capture the essence of a specific flower in as much depth and detail as possible. There's something about the elegance and simplicity of a soliflore that seemed to suit Keren; I liked the idea of florals for her, but didn't want a whole riotous bouquet. One flower, if it was the right flower, struck me as the correct choice.
But which flower? A rose, of course. One classic rose.
More specifically, Diptyque's Eau Rose, a fresh pink rose so vibrantly rendered that one can almost see the dew pearling on its green leaves. This isn't the near-black rose of a femme fatale, nor the crushed, velvety red roses that form the backdrop of Liaisons Dangereuses. Eau Rose is a meditation on every nuance of a single, perfect pink rose. It's refreshing in its simplicity, entirely straightforward, and lovely.
...and that concludes today's episode of "I have a snow day and this murder case is boring."
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Thanks!
But Vreva's an easy one, like I said. I aaalmost feel like that should be "no credit." Celeste would be much more challenging to pin down. ;)
I might come back to this thread later. If anybody wants to throw out names for me to take a stab at, I'm glad to try (again, noting that I probably can't do the guys, owing to my unfamiliarity with men's fragrances).
Also, whenever possible, I've linked to Luckyscent's pages for these perfumes in case anyone is curious enough to want to pick up a sample vial and see how the scent actually matches to the description. Lists of notes don't say everything -- the same ingredients can be combined for a drastically different effect -- so sometimes how something actually smells is not what you'd expect based on the written description.
I don't figure many people will be that into it, but you can get most samples for $5 or less, and sometimes it's worth the price to satisfy your curiosity (...says the person with way too many of these things).
These are brilliant. As someone who worked for an international cosmetics and perfume manufacturer in the fragrance QA department, I developed a pretty keen sense of smell for this kind of thing. Fast forward a few years to Vampire LARPing, signature fragrances were a must for each PC to help focus and center me as a player in a new persona. There are fragrances to this day that take me to specific scenes where a breeze wafted in just enough to flash the fragrance and lock it into my hindbrain.
Only the olfactory nerve runs directly into your brain, all other senses make a pitstop in other nerve bundles/spinal cord. It is a powerful sense that should not be underestimated in role playing. :-)
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Yay I'm so happy to hear you think so! I love nerding out about this stuff. <3
And it's reassuring to think maybe my guesses aren't too far off the mark, because I always feel a bit presumptuous speculating about other people's characters. I know exactly what my little dorks are wearing as they wander around the assorted horriblenesses of my imagination, but it does feel a bit like an exercise in temerity to extend that to others.
But I agree, it's a very powerful tool. There's so much that you can say about a character via fragrance choices -- personality, background, social status, relationships to other characters, all kinds of things.
I would like to hear your idea of Celeste... yes, she's a naga, but she takes human form regularly, and admittedly feels "different" while human. I think she would enjoy perfume. She may have to flick her forked tongue to truly enjoy it, but...
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Unnamed Ex-Gray Maiden - "Shattered Steel"
Exactly what Lissa said. :)
This is awesome Liane.
Do go on!
I would like to hear your idea of Celeste... yes, she's a naga, but she takes human form regularly, and admittedly feels "different" while human. I think she would enjoy perfume. She may have to flick her forked tongue to truly enjoy it, but...
I finally figured out the answer for Celeste this afternoon (after an embarrassingly long period of going back and forth between two totally wrong choices), so she'll be in the next round. :)
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Just how many of these perfume samples do you have on hand?
That's... uh... a good question.
More than 50 and less than 100? As of right now, anyway. I tend to order more of them whenever I'm between projects and casting around for ideas.
Actually it probably would be over 100 except I gave away all my Sephora sample packs when I decided that the last couple of years' releases in mainstream women's fragrance were hopelessly boring. So that knocked me back down by a good 35 or so.
I will say that at no time during this project have I missed any of the ones I gave away. None of these characters have been anywhere near that generic.
Are you first thinking of a character and then testing specific perfumes you think might be a good fit, or testing all perfumes and seeing if one of them reminds you of a character? What do you use to cleanse your palette (That's not the right term, I'm sure)?
If I'm just doing it on my own, then I'll either buy random sampler packs (Surrender to Chance has a fun one where you just buy X number of unspecified samples and they send you whatever they feel like sending, which is usually pretty interesting stuff), or I'll buy things that sound interesting based on their key notes.
I don't usually pick based on what I want to wear -- I already have more than enough in that collection! -- but rather on what I think is likely to spark an interesting idea, or a genre that isn't already well represented in my collection. For example, I don't have very many tuberose perfumes, so lately I've been picking up a tuberose or two with each order. If a perfume blogger whose tastes coincide with mine has posted a good opinion of a recent release, I might take a look at that, too. And probably at some point I'll try to expand my collection of men's fragrances.
Then it's a matter of testing them on blotter strips (since I'm not doing this with an eye toward wearing any of these fragrances, I don't usually test on skin) and closing my eyes and trying to imagine a personality to go with that scent. :)
Doing it the other way around for this thread (i.e., considering the character first and then trying to choose a fragrance to match) has been interesting, though, in the way that running an agility course in reverse can be interesting. It makes you look at the challenge from a new angle. I'm grateful to the authors for letting me play around with their creations in that way.
This is so awesome.
ROUND THREE (subtitled: yep, I'm still here and still slightly bonkers)
Elyana - Stalking the Beast
...Until I got to L'Artisan's Mechant Loup ("Wicked Wolf"): cedar, sandalwood, honey, maple, myrrh. Perfect!
Originally marketed to men, Mechant Loup was quickly adopted by women who wanted to wear its sweet, smoky blend of woods themselves. On a woman, it projects a certain confidence: sultry and assured, warm but ever so slightly reserved. It was long said to be Penelope Cruz's signature fragrance, and it isn't hard to see why. This is a perfume that conveys strength and sensuality, the confidence born of experience, and a distinct lack of sugary excess.
So that's my pick for Elyana.
Bonus round: Daylah...
Brilliant. Thank you for all the hard work on this. Most of the time Elyana probably would avoid fragrance, because she'd want to disguise her scent (same with Lisette). But when she would apply one I think you've nailed exactly what she'd use. Thanks for this!
And your choice for Daylah is perfect!
Most of the time Elyana probably would avoid fragrance, because she'd want to disguise her scent (same with Lisette).
HA!, I'm gratified to be right about that. :)
And yeah I guessed something similar for Lisette. (Former) assassins likely have a similar interest in not leaving an obvious scent trail. If I try doing an entry for her, it'll be in large part to consider what someone might use as a "special occasion" perfume in Golarion (since I imagine there are plenty of ladies who, just like ladies in the real world, reserve fragrance for use on date nights and anniversary dinners instead of wearing it every day).
ROUND FOUR
Jasilia - "Dune Runner"
Even before I finished reading this story, I was excited about the possibility of matching a perfume to Jasilia, because her character is so perfectly designed for this exercise. Scholar, adventurer, starcrossed lover, sister to the Ruby Prince -- Jasilia is a vivid personality, and there's plenty of material in these four chapters to get a sense of what she'd likely wear.
(As an aside, my guess would be that Jasilia is another of those characters who is mandated to wear perfume as part of her social presentation due to her elevated class, and not so much because it's what she would choose to do on her own. She seems like enough of an independent free spirit that she'd probably skip the fragrance for everyday life and reserve it for special occasions if she had the option, and who probably wouldn't choose such an opaque scent of her own accord... but royals gotta do what they gotta do, and the choice may not always be up to her.)
For Jasilia, I like Caron's Parfum Sacre. This is nominally a rose perfume, but it's a dark, dried rose behind a gilded mask of myrrh, cardamom, nutmeg and cedarwood. One can scarcely recognize the flower behind those obscuring veils of spice -- it's the complete opposite of the dewy, unadorned Eau Rose that I picked for Keren. Parfum Sacre unfolds as an intense and complicated tapestry of scents, heavy and rich as cloth-of-gold brocade. It is a fragrance fit for pharaohs and their tombs alike, and for that reason I immediately thought of it when reading Jasilia's story.
However, for all its richness, Parfum Sacre radiates a certain warmth as well. It's not quite as overwhelming or unapproachable as some of the ornate Orientals can be; it's a little more inviting than most of its type. I thought that aspect of it was appropriate for Jasilia, too, in light of her history as a princess who embarked upon a forbidden romance with a commoner.
Now, whether that fragrance continues to fit Jasilia after the end of the story, that's another question.
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Celeste - Pirate's Promise
This was a hard one for me, and that's because for most of the time that I was considering Celeste, I was going about it the wrong way. What it took me much too long to realize is that Celeste is probably not a woman who wears a single signature fragrance, and that any efforts to assign one to her were therefore doomed to failure.
Once I figured that out, however, everything else clicked into focus and the answers became obvious. Of course Celeste isn't someone who would have a signature perfume -- she's an explorer who makes her living as a ship's navigator (how's that for literally rootless?), a lunar naga still conscious of how uneasily she sometimes fits into human culture, and a former slave whose life has been shaped by a horror of shackles and a driving need for freedom. Moreover, her personality is passionate to the point of occasional hot-headedness.
In short, everything about Celeste suggests that she's someone who would view fragrance with enthusiasm and exuberant curiosity, but not someone who would adopt one specific scent as a signifier of her own identity. I think it's much more likely that she seeks out interesting perfumes as another way of exploring the world, and sometimes as a way of remembering cherished friends or heightening her moods. I imagine Celeste would buy fragrances from far-flung lands in the same way that someone might buy maps of unknown territories or curious pieces of art: to hold something new and wonder about something mysterious. I don't think she has quite as short an attention span as I imagine for Zernebeth, but I do think that novelty is as important to her as familiarity is. My guess is that Celeste isn't the sort to settle down with just one bottle. She's still experimenting, developing her taste, and having fun with flings.
A couple of the scents that I imagine exemplify her collection:
L'Artisan's Safran Troublant: radiant golden saffron brushed with a gossamer touch of rose and vanilla. This is a soaring, shimmering composition, warm and joyous as a June morning.
And another L'Artisan: Mimosa Pour Moi, a delicate, highly realistic capture of flowering mimosa, which seems to evoke extraordinary nostalgia from everyone who holds fond memories of blossoming, honey-scented acacia trees. This is another scent that I think of as "golden," but tinged with a little more green, whereas the Safran Troublant is tinted with orange and pink at its edges.
Both of these fragrances are lovely, uplifting, happy scents. They also tend to be somewhat evanescent; these aren't fragrances that will linger for days on one's skin. And, finally, they're strongly linked to specific locales -- saffron and mimosa are indelibly associated with the cultures and regions where they were first cultivated, and where they have long been prized.
All of these things factor into why I think Celeste would choose them. I don't think she would seek out difficult or overly grandiose scents; my guess is that she'd probably view those as off-putting or pretentious. I suspect her taste runs more toward light, charming, pretty fragrances, and that she wouldn't mind if those delicate scents proved to be fleeting. Further, I imagine she'd be drawn to perfumes that evoked specific moods and memories (always bright and happy ones -- there's enough pain in Celeste's past already) of places she'd enjoyed and people she'd liked.
But she's always visiting, never staying.
Iranez of the Orb - "Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver"
subtitled: probably my lowest-confidence guess in this thread so far!
This character has everything needed to bring out the big guns: she's rich, she's powerful (and, importantly, is not shy about flaunting it), she has access to rare and exotic materials, and she has a demonstrated taste for luxury. Excellent. I get to play with the ultra opulent choices.
From the beginning, I was looking for a powerhouse fragrance with a clearly defined personality, pronounced sillage, and a certain level of sex appeal. No soliflores or greens or light, translucent scents for Iranez. For this character, I wanted something sweeping and symphonic, almost too glamorous to exist outside film and fantasy. Iranez's initial appearance in the story is, I think, meant to intimidate the protagonists with a sheer thundering display of splendor, and I wanted to pick a perfume that would be in keeping with that image.
I also wanted something that was a little exotic, a little unfamiliar, as might suit an emissary from arcane Nex. That took out all the well-known classic scents; although Iranez certainly has the presence to wear Shalimar or vintage Opium if she wants to, the iconic perfumes are too familiar to carry the needed note of foreignness. But it's the right direction -- those smoldering, heavy-lidded Orientals seemed the correct type for this character.
However, I wanted to go just a touch lighter. As portrayed in this story, Iranez has no hesitation about ordering violence or walking through its aftermath, but she keeps her own hands clean and doesn't seem particularly eager to resort to killing if another option is available. So: not squeamish, but not a sadist, either. She isn't entirely direct in dealing with the story's two protagonists, but she does appear to be honest with her own agent, and she honors her bargains. And while she's quite comfortable putting her body on display, she makes no overt effort to use that to her advantage.
Thus, what we see in Iranez is a character who can be (and is) quite sensual, but who doesn't need to trade in sex to get what she wants. Who can use deception when necessary, but isn't a liar by nature.
So nothing too heavy-handed (that takes out Opium again!) and nothing with too much edge or forward aggression. I set aside a couple of my early picks just because they seemed to be too much claws-out for Iranez. On the other hand, I felt that her scent would need a hint of sharpness or bitterness to cut through its dense richness and add a layer of complexity, and I rejected the fragrances that offered nothing but musky, enveloping sweetness.
The one I eventually settled on (with considerable second-guessing) was Profumi Del Forte's By Night, White, a hot summer's night of a fragrance comprised of jasmine and powdery white musk wrapped around a dense, sultry core of vanilla. It is very, very 1960s Italian glam: Sophia Loren in a gauzy white dress on the beach, Gina Lollobrigida in red veils and gold cuffs as Sheba. A modern composition, but just a little bit retro in design.
I'm not entirely sold on that choice, but my feeling is that for Nex you probably have to go a touch retro-futuristic to get the right style, and that's the closest approximation I can come up with.
Jerrad Vishov - The Crusader Road
CB I Hate Perfume's Black March Water.
It's perfect.
...
...
...
(and, okay, fine, I'll explain my joke so you don't have to Google too much: Black March Water is the smell of wet dirt [with some elaboration, but that's essentially what it is]*, and Jerrad Vishov falls in the mud all the time.
* -- like, uncannily so, as with most of the CB I Hate Perfume collection. If you ever wanted to smell like mud -- really, really good mud -- now's your chance!)
ROUND FIVE
In which we begin to near the end of this project, at least for the time being.
I think I've got enough material for... oh, maybe one or two more rounds, and then I'll probably have to put the project on hold until there are enough new stories, and new characters, to support more entries in this eccentric little series. It's been fun, and we're not quite through yet. But we're starting to wind down.
Corvine Gale - The Dagger of Trust
Quick-witted, light-hearted, and irrepressibly irreverent in the face of danger, the young bard Corvine Gale seems -- at the time of this story -- like a natural match to Lostmarch's Din Dan, a tart-sweet lemon verbena scent touched with mint, peach, and white tea.
This is a bright, summery scent that conjures sprigs of lemon balm and peppermint floating atop a condensation-beaded pitcher of lemonade. It throws itself happily and headlong into the world, but like all citrus fragrances, it doesn't last long. Ten minutes, maybe thirty if you're lucky, and it's gone, leaving only a faint whiff of peach-inflected musk. It's effusive and breezy, laced with a touch of biting acid but sweet underneath. Accordingly, I feel it fits for a young bard who fills half of her carrier pigeon's urgent message with chatty gossip and then runs out of room to spell out "goodbye" (but who still includes the word anyway, and in all caps, no less).
I think Din Dan is a good fit for the version of Corvine depicted in these pages, but I also don't think this fragrance is going to suit her for long. It's a carefree, effervescent, young scent, and once she matures out of her bohemian starving-artist student phase and starts realizing some of her career aspirations, I would expect that Corvine is very likely to move on to something a little more complicated and a little longer-lasting. By the end of this book, she's already starting to shed the girlish persona who would wear this scent. I'm very interested to see what direction her future developments take, and I hope we get to find out someday soon.
Lady Charikla Neverion - "Passage to Absalom"
For this character, I waffled only briefly before settling on Etat Libre d'Orange's Putain des Palaces (and, well, I'll let Google Translate handle the title on that one, thanks. But yes, it means what you think it means. Probably).
Virtually everyone who reviewed this perfume upon its release said that the name did it an injustice, as the fragrance was much classier than the name suggested. (This is an unfortunate habit of Etat Libre's. Sometimes the outrageousness of their names works in their favor, generating interest and discussion. Other times, it's just shock for shock effect and does their creations no favors.)
And it's true: this is a much more elegant scent than its name might suggest. It's very much a boudoir fragrance, but a restrained one: violets and roses laid over soft pink leather, accompanied by a dusting of face powder and the slightly waxy scent of red lipstick. The powdery makeup notes are ones that many people associate with older ladies, and as a result this scent tends to create the impression of a mature woman of wealth, which is appropriate to Lady Neverion.
But even though the name is much blunter than the fragrance warrants, I don't think it's entirely inaccurate (as one reviewer suggested, a more accurate translation might be "high-class harlot"). Once past the initial sparkling sweetness of its opening, a dirty, musky undercurrent emerges in this scent. It suggests that the boudoir has seen some use, the powder's been reapplied a few times to cover sweat, and the red lipstick is more than a little smudged. The lady is not nearly as pristine as she might first have appeared. In fact, she's downright dirty.
Taken as a whole, Putain conveys the image of an attractive, slightly older woman with wealth and taste, but also with a seedy side that her impeccable makeup and outward refinement can't quite cover. It's what I imagine bored, aristocratic Taldan widows wearing as they re-enact Dangerous Liaisons among themselves and shamelessly take advantage of their manservants to while away their summer afternoons. For a variety of spoilery spoiler reasons, I think it works quite nicely for Lady Neverion.
Shadya - "Passage to Absalom"
I wanted to do these characters as a pair for a couple of reasons, but the biggest one was that I paired them both to rose-centric perfumes. One older, one younger. One muffled by opaque clouds of scented powder, the other lush but thorned.
Atelier Cologne's Rose Anonyme is my pick for Shadya. The rose is much more front and center in this fragrance. It's a deep red rose, verging on purple, shaded a little deeper with patchouli and incense*, edged with a ghostly bite of ginger.
Although the core note of rose is shared between Rose Anonyme and Putain des Palaces, the flower takes a very different character in each scent. In this fragrance, the rose is darker, sharper, washed of any overt suggestion of carnality, and left with all its thorns. The flower comes through rich and velvety, with not a speck of powder caked to its petals. It's a younger woman's scent (in my reading, at least), and probably a more impulsive one's.
The marketing campaign for Rose Anonyme spun a story about a daring female jewel thief who cracked open a safe, stole the priceless diamond within, and left in its place a single rose coupled with her fragrance for her male pursuer to find. While ordinarily I try not to let perfume marketing influence me too much (as much of it is based on sheerest fantasy and bears no relationship whatsoever to the actual scent), in this case I thought it was worth noting because it so perfectly fits Shadya's thievery-as-thrillseeking in the story. She, too, is chasing the glamorous fantasy, and it's not hard to imagine that a fragrance designed specifically to convey that mysterious, alluring image might appeal to her. If Catwoman wears roses, this is her perfume -- and thus I imagine Shadya would immediately buy it too.
At the same time, this is not an inexpensive perfume, and its use certainly would betray a thief who was stealing for the thrill rather than out of necessity. No one who's stealing to survive is dropping money on Atelier creations, that's for sure.
(* -- Incidentally, if you're looking to hone your appreciation of the different "colors" in rose scents and the distinction between a pure fresh rose and a slightly spiced one, sampling a blotter of Eau Rose alternately with one of Rose Anonyme is an excellent way to develop that perception. Separately, each one could easily come off as "pure rose," but when you try them side-by-side, it's apparent that they really aren't even close -- and they convey entirely different personalities.)
Is it wrong of me to wish for a novel where bored Taldoran widows re-enact Liaisons Dangereux now you've planted the idea in my mind?
And, finally:
Ellasif - Winter Witch
Serge Lutens's de Profundis is my choice for Ellasif.
This fragrance was inspired by Oscar Wilde's famous letter, which in turn was inspired by the penitential Psalm 130 ("from the depths I have cried to thee, o lord"). It is, in relevant part, a meditation on the importance of sorrow to art.
But the perfume is not sorrowful at all, except in the way that all beautiful, evanescent things must be. It's a glimpse of a shady forest glen in springtime: bluebells and violets, hyacinths and tiny white roses, all veiled by cool green leaves and trailing vines. There is a whiff of wood and incense, just enough to ground the composition, but mainly the effect is that of a glimpse into a wild, lovely fairies' meadow washed by rich blue shade. It's the olfactory equivalent of a haunting song played softly in a minor key.
This might seem like a strange choice for Ellasif. After all, she's a fierce, vital Ulfen swordmaiden, hot-blooded and stubborn. One might not expect her to be drawn to such a gossamer filigree of a perfume. But she's also a curiously fragile character in some ways: physically small, orphaned at a young age, acutely conscious of the precarious position she and her sister occupy in their home village of White Rook, and later out of her depth in the nightmarish icy fairytale of Whitethrone, where children's stories all come true, and where everyone other than Ellasif and her friends seems to be a creature of terrible magic. And at the end of the story, of course, she's lost almost everything.
So there is something to be said, I think, for a fragrance that speaks to that scouring of sorrow. Also, importantly, de Profundis is not a perfume that is difficult to appreciate. It's complex and beautiful in a way that enchants jaded perfumistas, but it's not forbidding or unpleasant to newcomers as some of those fragrances can be. One can know nothing about perfume (which is, I think, the standpoint from which Ellasif would approach it) and love this scent on first acquaintance. And it's wild and green enough that I think she wouldn't just dismiss it as some city lady's manicured vision of flowers.
Based on my understanding of her background and personality, I couldn't see Ellasif wearing perfume with the intention of being flirtatious or seductive. She doesn't think like that. That isn't who she is. But I could very easily imagine her wandering into a perfumer's shop in Korvosa (since we know she does have some appreciation for pretty things) and catching a wistful thread of de Profundis and being arrested in her tracks by the emotions it evokes.
For the right person, in the right mood, de Profundis could very easily have that effect.
Is it wrong of me to wish for a novel where bored Taldoran widows re-enact Liaisons Dangereux now you've planted the idea in my mind?
If that's wrong, then man, I don't want to be right.
I'd love to read that book. I'd never write it, because (a) Taldor; and (b) I suck at romance and all associated topics. But I'd surely love to read it.