Pop Culture Fun: Olivia Pope of Scandal

I have a love hate relationship with Scandal, it is fun because it is fast, and never fails not to go to crazy town on the other hand because it is a Shonda Rhimes vehicle (trust me I know what I am talking about I watched Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice in the early years) it will naturally get caught up in the worst romances ever. In this case Olivia and Fitz aka "I AM THE PRESIDENT OF THE FREE WORLD AND I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT OLIVIA, NOW DROP YOUR PANTS!"

So I will leave my hatred of Fitz for now and focus on the legendary Olivia Pope who I really hope at some point finds a better man and stops living Pearl Jam's "Better Man" as her anthem for dating.

So where to begin in choosing Olivia Pope a perfume, what do we know about Olivia Pope, the incredibly tragic life in general, she always wears neutral tones, this woman rocks champagne and creams a lot, she has many a connection, and she is very good at her job. She is always about appearing cool and calm but we know under that surface she has many issues. As I thought about Olivia I realized pretty fast this was not someone wearing a traditionally romantic scent or anything loud. That quickly took away a lot of notes, I eventually settled on one note though that I felt would need to play a prominent role in perfume of choice: iris. Irises are cool, dry, and consistently calming in their effect in perfumes. But, as I thought about it more Olivia is a romantic I mean the
fantasy of her and Fitz on a farm in Vermont is most definitely romantic and utterly delusional. As I thought about modern fragrances I realized many just do not play with the tragic in their scents, so I felt that Olivia was going to be wearing a classic. I eventually came up with the ultimate tragic scent for me: Guerlain L'Heure Bleue. Oh it is romantic and sweet to an extent but the play of iris, incense, and amber in this scent has always hit a chord of sadness that has made it hard for me to wear. It is romantic but not what we now consider romantic. To me it fits perfectly Olivia's constantly act of strong and cool combined with over the top passions and desires and how in this case they are not balanced at all.

image provided by http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/04/kerry-washington-s-hair-evolution-as-olivia-pope-on-scandal.html and http://www.guerlain.com/int/en-int/fragrance/womens-fragrances/lheure-bleue

SOTD: Angelique Encens

I really did not think I would like Creed's Angelique Encens that much considering the first fragrance I ever tried of theirs was rather hellacious on me (Fleurs de Bulgare), but last night I received my swap sample of it and I was blown away. This is what I wanted Frederic Malle's L'eau d'Hiver to be, this is strangely beautiful comforting cool incense, it is white marble with blue veins come to life, in a way it reminds me of L'Heure Bleue, but this actually works on me. Really if I were to describe it, it is a combination of L'eau d'Hiver and L'Heure Bleue, but ironically timeline wise, L'Heure Bleue is the grandmother-Angelique Encens the mother-L'eau d'Hiver the grandchild, what is strange though is this scent seems to straddle luminously feminine and yet I can't help but want to say it is androgynous. What I adore is it keeps the beautiful delicate green note of angelica through out, surrounding it with wonderfullying dry incense and cashmere like heliotrope tinged vanilla. I suppose I expected the cold Commes des Garcon's Avignon, instead this is somehow this is unearthly and comforting. Thank you Marlene Dietrich.

image provided by artnet.com

image: Illusion by Louis Icart

Music and Scent: Pete Yorn's Turn of The Century and L'Heure Bleue

The story of this connection between scent and music begins with a relationship, one that is now sadly severed. When I was a child I used to go visit an aunt in the summers and winters, and the scent of her home was Guerlain's L'Heure Bleue. She was ironically anti-scent, except for her beloved used of amber oil and crushed amber resin, she burned nag champa incense routinely, and her home was located up in the mountains. I remember the first time I dabbed L'Heure Bleue on, I instantly recognized it as a familiar scent, but I could not place it to my memory. As I sat in my truck later on that day with the air-conditioning blaring (it was summer) the realization suddenly hit me, it was the scent of my aunt's home, I felt an ache as I always do when thinking of my aunt. This reaction to L'Heure Bleue is not unknown, for many the scent is the scent of nostalgia with deep emotion. The truth is I cannot wear L'Heure Bleue, I admire it greatly, and out of three greats of Guerlain* it is the one I can wear that shows its true greatness, but the sheer emotional quality of this scent is not something I can spend a day in, it leaves me feeling emotionally drained and in that mood to look over photo albums and tear up a bit. It is the scent of the past in all of its tender pain.

Listening to Pete Yorn's Turn of the Century is to be wrapped up in the loss of a relationship when catching the random glimpse of lover years later and remembering the loss vividly through the fuzzy haze of twilight. The story behind the song is wonderful for it is not based on a relationship of Yorn's but on a fictional relationship. A few years before Baz Luhrman would bring Moulin Rouge to screen, Yorn met Luhrman at a party, where Luhrman told Yorn about the lovers in Moulin Rouge, Yorn was so taken by the story, he ended up writing a song. It's funny but Yorn in the end, got a greater depth of emotion from Luhrman's story, than Luhrman would with his movie.

As much as L'Heure Bleue is a scent of emotional pain for me, it also instantly reminds me of a woman in fur stole at the turn of century in the evening, the evening light coming through the mist and giving everything that blue haze, tinting the tips of that fur stole. And here is where Turn of the Century and L'Heure Bleue meet, they both evoke this quality.

This is a live version of Turn of the Century, the only one I could find to showcase the song, I highly recommend trying to find a cleaner version to get the full feeling of the song:



image provided by artmagick.com
image: Evening by Samuel Palmer 1848
video uploaded by MphsQueen
*Shalimar and Mitsouko rounding out the trio.