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boorbibrimems – :
I have to agree with Norma Desmond here, His Mouth will taste of wormwood is the perfect encapsulation of the mood of this bitter, overcast, moonless foggy night of a fragrance. An unsettling, yet deeply moving experience, La Castiglione’s creator, Anais Beguine, has completely immersed herself in the muse of La Castiglione. There is a terrifying aloofness to the fragrance, a sharp, bitterness which speaks low, and slow, saying; “That’s close enough, come no closer”, the scent protects the wearer with the powers of a fragrant amulet. Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, was married young, became the mistress of Napoleon III, mingled and hobnobbed with Royalty and thus found her way to Mayer and Pierson, photographers favored by the imperial court, where she found a way to simultaneously give rein to art and narcissism via the invention of photography, having amongst other things, photographs of her ankles and calves taken (everyone knows the second thing the inventor of the camera did was to take a picture of his own genitals, or did he? I bet he did). So, she became, in essence, the pin up girl of 1856. The perfume reflects the distance of the muse and the voyeur on the other side of the lens, the stillness, the coolness, the fulfilment of restrait and a desire to spit squarely in the camera’s eye. Some say La Comtesse was a spy, and this rumour is captured in the unfathomable mystery of such an arrangement of perfume notes….. it is a heavy, yet sharp, helium light cacophony, it is a chimera, whilst the perfume celebrates one person, that person has interchangeable heads, many personalities, silent screeches and sub sonic chants which lure and confuse. You can smell liquorice, yet you cannot. You can taste wormwood, but you can’t, you feel enlivened, exhilerated, yet gloomy and irritable, unsettled and injured, yet healed. I have to say, it took me many months to grips with this perfume purely because of it’s crazy, mad complexity, which brings me to the alleged “madness” of La Comtesse. She wasn’t nuts, I assure you. Having had to fight for custody of her child in a time when women’s wombs were blamed for everything from the price of sugar to the black death, she fought like a tigress against what would tear most women apart. The darkness and bitterness speaks of her self imposed isolated as the summer of her life began to fade into autumn and eventually settled into the ice of winter. She allegedly locked herself up in her Paris apartment, painted the interior black, banished all mirrors and would only come out at night. So here we have the darkness, the ice, the bitter exterior which has worked it’s way inside, worm-wood, like a woodworm, burrowing through the psyche, leaving a brittle skeletal structure and a hell of a lot of dust. Dusty patchouli, which you can’t smell, myrrh and copahu which heal and soothe, citron for the zest of sunshiney youth, amber and cedar exuding the strength and confidence of a woman in full bloom. To my nose, the dry down never truly arrives. It falls from a cliff edge into nothingness, having clung by it’s bleeding fingernails to the granite cliff edge for hours and hours, when it falls, it falls silently, resignedly into an ocean of nothingness, turning to foam on the waves, like the little mermaid, with not so much as a sigh. Maybe it’s a combination of my age and a life lived on a rollercoaster, but I love this, I feel 100% the photograph of La Comtesse as she looks away from the camera into a hand held mirror, but her reflection stares defiantly into the camera’s eye. “You may not see me, but I damn well see you”. Bravo. A classic.
Andreq – :
Horror lovers, have you read “His mouth will taste like wormwood” by Poppy Z. Brite? It’s the first thing that popped into my mind when I sniffed La Castiglione: the same blend of cold eroticism, mysticism. supernatural.
I agree with wormwood, licorice and amber being the top notes. The drydown reminds me of a drawer full of make up, lipsticks in particular: creaminess with a hint of bitterness.
A perfume I’m sure La Castiglione herself would love; I definitely love it!
koka-gambo – :
Extraordinairy. La Castiglione kind of reminds me of sweet incense burning in an old wooden, dusty home. I barely call any perfume churchy, but this does fit the bill.
When I try to smell the sweetness, I get that citrusy, full bodied licorice and while I find licorice to be a very difficult note in perfumery, here it gives off the musty, dusty, sweet depth that binds the other notes together. When I try to smell the patchouli in it my nose interprets the blend like smoky, little-tingles-in-my-nose incense. Some mould, an old floor, like an old basement smell. Some warm binding amber in between. I smell church again. It truly takes me away into a completely different scenery. I pick out the wormwoods and it becomes spicy woodiness. The styrax makes this extra dusty and the myrrh fantastically creates the final puzzle piece to the incense feel.
In short, this is extremely complex to my nose, and I love it. It keeps me guessing and interpreting. Complex mouldy, churchy, dusty, spicy-woody incense soil. This is something exquisite. Truly unlike anything else.