Pop Culture Fun: Donna Clark of Halt and Catch Fire

It's been awhile since I fell in love with a character and also thought that I could perfume them.  After watching the first season of Halt and Catch Fire, I firmly had a lot of love for Donna Clark by the end of the season and also felt that I could perfume her. Like Mad Men, Halt and Catch Fire is an excellent period piece, and that period is the 1980s. The attention to period really helped in the choosing of perfumes for Donna. So spoilers and pop culture fun ahead.

Donna Clark is intensely intelligent and thoughtful woman who finds herself frequently putting her needs and passions aside. That is how she first begins in the series, she is married to Gordon Clark, a fellow computer engineer. What you mainly get is that Donna is a harried wife which is compounded by the fact that this woman has a brilliant brain but unlike her husband, Gordon, is getting no recognition for it. They are both working jobs that are somewhat menial to their skill set, considering we find out that years before they had to tried to create and market their own home PC, but had failed. Still Gordon at least gets respect in his field, Donna on the other hand is a woman who frequently has to sublimate her creativity and passion with the role of caretaker and the glue that keeps her family going. Under all of this though is someone who is a romantic because as much as she wants to ignore it Donna still intensely wants to be driven and creative. I think at the beginning of the series Donna is probably wearing, the romantic Paris by Yves Saint Laurent, I think it is a scent gifted to her by her mother. I can see it is as a gift given with the hopes that Donna remember that she has passions and that they are worthy of consideration.

Paris by Yves Saint Laurent, is one of those great icon scents of the 1980s, romantic and powerful, it demands attention, but the attention is of a troubadour variety. If you can get older formulations you can smell a uniquely strong sandalwood and moss in all that powder, violets, and roses. It may be romantic and pretty but there is a rather steely intelligence beneath it all.  Donna's nature fits qualities of Paris up to the point when she hits on her boss, Hunt Whitmarsh, after spending months of dealing with being ignored by Gordon, his drunkenness, and erratic behavior. She is at the point of wanting very deeply to be seen for her intelligence and sensuality and Whitmarsh, a childhood friend, has been playing to those needs very expertly in his physical gestures and statements to her.

The moment her overtures are rejected by Whitmarsh, I think Donna probably would have thrown out Paris. In fact for the time after that I think she probably would have worn nothing especially as she contemplates the dissolution of her marriage. By the end of the series though I think Donna would have picked herself up something new. In fact I feel she would have gone out and done this for herself. She has been creatively revitalized by leaving Texas Instruments, she has been involved in a creative endeavor that used her intelligence and skill, and she has decided to do something daring with her career. We can even see a change in her style with the launch party of the home PC, an elegant cut black sheath dress, richer toned make-up, and the reddening of her hair. I think she is going for something completely new and that suggests she is a force to be reckoned with, her choice Paloma Picasso by Paloma Picasso.

Paloma Picasso is one of the big chypres of the eighties, yet it had elegance and refinement that does not put it on par with the other releases of that era. Oh it is big but the bigness is utter class and sophistication. The oakmoss is daring and forward but there is a tempering to it with the right animalics, when spritzed with a light hand the wearer is surrounded by sense of earthiness and splendor. This is not vulgar. Donna is a not vulgar but she is daring and Paloma Picasso fits that attitude and confidence.


First image from www.pressherald.com
Second image from www.parfumdepub.com
Third image from www.washingtontimes.com
Fourth image from yesterdaysperfumes.typepad.com

SOTD: Paris by YSL

So for the last few years I have tried to be seasonel in my life, buying produce that grows in the season, wearing clothes that is seasonal (This probably sounds silly to someone living outside of California), and wearing my fragrances to go with the season. Yet, I am right now hitting that moment when I all I desire to do is throw out my sweet heavy orientals, it was about this time last year I was constantly wearing Infusion d'Iris. So now you are probably wondering as to why I am being stringent with myself with this whole fragrance thing? Mainly because I have a lot of perfumes and I would like to think I put them to good use at one point and if I do it seasonaly then I am making a tiny significant dent in that large stash of fragrances I wear. But today I cannot do it, so I am putting on that gorgeous in your face violet rose scent, Paris. This is the eighties fragrance that always stops me because it doesn't smell dated to my nose and because when at the non-niche fragrance counter it always smells unique. It seems no one decided to copy it.

And a favorite song of mine, When The Stars Go Blue by Ryan Adams

image provided by artnet.com
image: The Rose Garden (display: II) (I) by Sarah Jones 2007
video uploaded by Boatv2

SOTD: Paris by Yves Saint Laurent

So the news is going through the blogsphere and the rest of the world that the designer Yves Saint Laurent has passed away, in honor of him today I am wearing Paris. The man helped to contribute to perfume history immensely with the creation of Opium and Paris.

Quote: Fashion isn't just to decorate women, but to reassure them, give them confidence- Yves Saint Laurent

an advertisement for YSL's Paris:

image provided by artnet.com

image: In the Pink by Claude Ronald Bentley 1986

quote provided by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Saint-Laurent_%28designer%29#Quotes

video uploaded by tylw

Me, Marie Antoinette, a boudoir, Bal a Versailles, and Sophia Grosjman

I suppose this all begins, with that reviled and misunderstood historical figure, Marie Antoinette, I've never been overly fascinated by her or quite understood when looking at paintings why she was considered so physically beautiful. When I was 13 though I read a biography of her and did come to feel that she had been maligned (she was not an innocent and was extravagent, but so was all the other rich folk of the time). Yet, within the last year or so, their has been a great hubbub for Marie Antoinette from film to perfume. Many bad things can be said about Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette film, but this can be said the opulent costumes of the period are gorgeous, Kirsten Dunst (who I don't usually find very attractive) makes a beautiful Marie Antoinette, and the heady over the topness of the period is lavishly conveyed.

What captured me the most was the unbridled feminity of the boudoir scenes; the powder, the pink, the picking of the shoes, the pastries, and the fact that it was an area cut off from the world of men. The one scene where we see a man enter Marie Antoinette's boudoir is where she is seducing her lover (this is her place of power), when outside her boudoir Marie Antoinette is quite subdued to those around, but in the boudoir her feelings are far more apparent and she is confident. I admit I walked away from the film wanting a boudoir, no I do not preach feminine submissiveness, but I loved the idea of having an area where my feminity was heightened, where what I felt was attractive was extravegantly on display, where because I was in my little temple dedicated to me that my sexuality was completely under my control. I suppose this is an idealized boudoir but I couldn't help but love the concept. After the film, I went home determined to create an atmosphere of unbridled feminity, I took a bath and lit my most opulent rose candles to create the boudoir atmosphere. This all leads to scent which then leads to perfume. There is nothing so telling or extravegant as the display of bottles of perfumes and Marie Antoinette was involved with this as well. She had her own perfumer, many have tried to re-create her perfume (in fact a re-creation came out last year), many have been inspired by her while creating a fragrance. Now enter the perfumer Sophia Grosjman, she is known for her over the top voluptious extravegant compositions, and I have come to the conclusion one of her scents is the epitomy of Marie Antoinette for me: Paris. Paris is a fragrance dedicated the powdery operatic marriage of roses and violets, the notes are not demure but rather what is considered delicately feminine is turned into the bombastically feminine, it is the scent of the boudoir. Yet, now enters the classic scent of Bal a Versailles, this scent should be the scent to evoke Marie Antoinette, but in fact it rather at least in edt concentration, evokes furs and incense. So I nominate after all the inspired scents of Marie Antoinette and the costly recreation of her scent, something all together different for what I really think evokes her: Paris.