“He was, by the way, the most liberally-perfumed man I had ever encountered. The scent announced his approach from a great distance, and lingered for many minutes after he had gone.” ~ The Grand Budapest Hotel
With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, and the long nights of winter still mostly ahead rather than behind us, it seems a good time to bring up this oft-desired bottle of fragrance in the event that anyone is looking for gift ideas. ‘Portrait of a Lady’ takes its name from the Henry James novel, and its scent from the incense that surrounds the base of a rose in some gorgeous Gothic cathedral. It is the exquisite stuff of dark nights lit only by candles and stars and perhaps the sparkle of freshly-fallen snow, when fire licks at the nose and smoky tendrils of incense trail in baroque fashion as fleeting as a Victorian man of mode.
My parents gifted me with a rose fragrance fit for a bright winter’s day in ‘Rose & Cuir’ by Frederic Malle. Its dirty, older, sexier cousin in the Malle line is ‘Portrait of a Lady’ – which is really only fit for the night. Since all of our nights are spent in right now, this would be a lovely way to generate a different sort of luxury in solitude. Too many people wear a scent for others when it should really be for the sole enjoyment of oneself. ‘Portrait of a Lady’ is that kind of decadence brought into potently fragrant form, and it was created by one of my favorites, Dominique Ropion, who is the mastermind behind ‘Cologne Indelebile‘ and ‘Geranium Pour Monsieur‘.
I’ve been flirting with this scent for years. At first it was too much – the name, the rose, the lingering potency – I wasn’t at the point where I could handle it. About a year ago, it whispered to me differently, or more likely I was just in a different head-space to appreciate its dark beauty. Since then, I’ve been fighting how much I’ve come around to it, and rather than wondering at my reticence I’m full-on embracing its seductive pull.
