My mum always had a bottle of one of the early Guerlain fragrances in her bag and wafted a trail of old-fashioned, complicated scent in her wake. That heady, old-school thing for mysterious, sexy women. My grandmother was a Guerlain woman too—hers was Shalimar.
— Sophie Dahl, author, model and granddaughter of Roald Dahl, talks about her favorite scents at the Wall Street Journal. Thanks to Kevin for the link!
I too love Sweet Peas –I remember a section of gravel road I used to travel almost every day there was an old hay field and at the edge there was a steep slope down to the ditch next to the road . Late in spring it was thick with wild sweet peas : white to pink to light purple and they smelled fantastic! My parents knew the older man who owned the field so I felt I could get away with stopping and picking a handful…well, almost everyday while they were blooming. One time I gathered a bunch of seeds hoping that they would grow in the flowerbed at home….they just wouldn’t take in a nice flowerbed but they would thrive on that rocky, dry ditch by the road.
However, the corn flakes and fish in the beard description about made me hurl.
We have a farm stand near by that sells sweet peas…I’ve never grown them.
I also love sweet peas. At our house growing up, there was a small spot of them and I was always excited to see them blooming each year. Decided to try some from seed a few weeks ago (too late here in SD for planting, of course) but I see a few buds coming through!
She’s very cute, but a bit twee, which is a little strange and disconcerting since she is over 6ft tall. Her recent cookery programme on BBC1 was slated mercilessly in the press. I watched one instalment: it was quite bad – lots of dainty little dishes for when you’re relaxing in your pretty boudoir. Ugh! Who leads that kind of life? (Of course, I wasn’t brought up on Pouilly-Fuissé.) Give me Jamie Oliver any day – genuine, delicious, robust food (his current Jamie Does programme is pure joy; I’m salivating just thinking about it).
I have somewhere in my files an old ELLE article where famous people listed all the ‘important’ smells in their lives. That kind of thing is always fascinating, isn’t it?
LOL —“relaxing in my pretty boudoir” —no kidding, that is soooo far from my life that I cannot successfully conjure an image—as soon as the “pretty boudoir” is there and I’m imagining slipping my feet into pale peach feathery mules….I hear the dryer buzzer go off, the dog whining to go outside, someone is calling “mommMMMM! and I think I hear the UPS truck coming up the driveway…..I should say however, that the arrival of the UPS truck brings the delightful prospect of a perfume delivery—so it’s possible this fantasy can be saved….. 😉
Ha! Your life looks exactly like mine! (well, except that in mine, the cat has dashed outside and need to be caught, someone left the TV on upstairs but is watching a movie on the downstairs TV, my kids are raiding the fridge, the DH is yelling that he can’t find his wallet, keys, or glasses. . . Calgon, take me away! Or Shalimar.
at least your cat is outside….mine’s probably hacking up a nice furball right on the beautiful white wool carpeting in my fancy boudoir….but it’s nice to know that my CEO isn’t the only one who can’t find a darn thing….he never even attempts it anymore, just says he’s not a “good finder” but since I always know where things are, could I get it for him? …..uh-huh, sigh…
Roseanne Barr did this hilarious bit about all the men in her life sharing the erroneous belief that a uterus is a GPS/homing device that can find anything lost. (I.e., it’s not just YOUR husbands!)
my CEO actually has had the temerity to suggest that because I have breasts, that I therefore have a natural proclivity for cleaning up pet vomit and baby poop….
I have never forgotten that Roseanne Barr stand-up bit…it was hysterical.
Funny to connect the woman in the YSL Opium ad with *any* cooking show!
She’s very ‘wholesome’ now. And so thin!
Ah, she lost weight and became more ordinary, though still very pretty (if a bit of a giraffe!). Indeed, we in the UK have been (over)exposed to her tryingly dainty cookery show.
Holy….! I didn’t even recognize her as the pale, flame-haired Opium odalisque! Kind of disappointing actually. She was much sexier with a few extra pounds on her (er “stones” in the UK, right? :P).
She used to be quite… lushly shaped.
perhaps all that dainty cooking isn’t as delish as she’d have us believe!
I ordered a bottle of Shalimar cologne…I’m not sure what’s going on but the smell is not working for me. It’s from ebay, so I dont know what kind of life the bottle had, but it is just horrendous. I went to work yesterday evening with the smell of old house that someone has smoked in for 20years, and baby powder. What makes it worst is the fact that I didnt even spray it on, I sprayed it on to a piece of fabric just to get a feel. Maybe I’ll be going to the mall for a spray of the edp.
I’ve never got on with Shalimar: much too much vanilla for me.
However, my very first grown-up perfume was Jicky (a million years ago).
I have read that Shalimar is essentially Jicky with an overdose of vanillin added. I don’t know that the other ingredients are exactly the same, but certainly if I smell Jicky and imagine a wallop of vanilla added, the result would be very close to Shalimar. Personally, I have always found Jicky not quite vanilla enough. Something in between the two might be nice.
I still struggle with most of the classic Guerlains in any concentration but parfum or parfum de toilette (which they don’t make anymore, pdt was apparently an 80’s thing). Still can only wear the teensiest drop of Shalimar pdt at a time, and the weather has to be right. (Love Shalimar Light, though.)
Funny they don’t mention her grandmother being Patricia Neal..
Just as I’m reading the comments my SO asks if I know where the car keys are!
Shalimar Eau Legere is the way to go for daily wear, tho I usually wear it to bed…hard to find unfortunately.
My sweet peas got a late start, so the buds keep falling off in our hot dry Santa Anna winds.
Yes…there must have been a time when Neal was more famous than her husband, but no more.
soooo very jealous of your roses….I’ve given up on roses as a result of pervasive rust, blackspot and japanese beetles…..oh and deer. Gradually my extensive rosebed is giving way to hardy and apparently unpalatable, perennials.
Thrips, leaf eating caterpillars, rust, blackspot, drought, wind….I wonder why sometimes…
yup….you spray and spray and spray (killing brain cells the whole time) and just when you think you’ve got it made—keeping the disease and bugs at bay….fat buds ready to burst into fragrant bloom…..and you look outside first thing in the morning and there stand the deer, happily chomping each delicioso bud from the bushes…..it’s enough to make you burst a blood vessel. I had 50+ varieties, so quite a few less than you….and still it was a full time job. don’t know how you do it!
I live in a small town. There are deers out in the field just beyond the railroad tracks, but it’s rare to see one wander in, so so far, I’ve been lucky. I just planted 6 new roses. Just hope I don’t kill them before the deers decide to wander by…
Seriously, Daisy (and E)… the amount of chemicals needed to maintain roses seems not worth it (not that I have that kind of garden). And doing it organically seems like it would be a full time job.
And are you telling me Roald Dahl was married to Patricia Neal?
I just love sweetpeas. The most delicate petals, if that’s what they’re called, and the colorings are to die for gorgeous! On the 1st of my 2 solo trips to paris, I bought 2 bunches of sweetpeas for my hotel room and they made me feel special for the duration of my stay. Even though I was out all day, I still got to enjoy them every morning and evening.
I haven’t been able to get them to grow out here in NJ. Summers are just too brutal and I’m never around long enough to give them proper watering. I’ll just keep trying to sow seeds at different times of the year until I find one that they’ll like.
“Before I was a non-meat-eater…”
That sounds so twee I want to just… roll my eyes. Please.
I’m just curious about what mum’s early Guerlain was…
Re: your previous comment about roses. I don’t know where you live, but here I the Gulf Coast where I live, many people believe that roses do not do well. This is not true; you just have to select the right varieties. I have about 50 roses in my garden (my screen name might have given you a hint), and I rarely spray. When I do, I try to use product acceptable for organic gardening. I found a copper-based fungicide that is good for blackspot (the biggest disease problem here). Caterpillars I deal with by squashing them.
I have mostly antique varieties, which do well in warm climates with little or no spraying. I use an application of organic fertilizer in the spring and I water them if it gets dry (I use soaker hoses). I prune as necessary. If you choose sturdy, low maintenance varieties such as china, or tea roses or some of the tough modern shrub roses, they are not much more work than most non-blooming shrubs. I have very few Hybrid Tea roses as they are the real high maintenance types–I call them diva roses.
Last year we had a very hot, very dry summer, and I watched so many of the things I had planted in the spring die one by one. I lost 12 azaleas, two abelias, a butterfly bush, an althea, and so on. Not one of my roses died from the heat or drought, even though we had water rationing and I could not water as much as I would have liked. Then this past winter was very cold for us, and I lost more shrubs (poinsettias, plumbagos, etc.) Again, my roses survived.
I realize this is a little off the subject of perfume, although maybe not, as antique roses usually have wonderful fragrances. It is one of my favorite subjects, though–perfume, roses, chocolate, cats, music, art, and Blue Bell ice cream.
Oh you sound like a fellow Texan! Are you a Rose Rustler?
Yes, I am a Texan; no, I am not a rose rustler. That is, i buy my roses retail–although I would be interested in going along on a rose rustling outing if I knew how to get in on one. I am actually rather new to growing roses, as I have only been at it for nine years. I very quickly became convinced of the advantages of antiques over fussy HTs. I have bought many of my roses from the Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, which has had a lot to do with the renewal of interest in antique roses in Texas.
I used to grow sweet peas; they are among my very favourite flowers.
I used to get my seeds from R. Bolton & Sons Sweet Peas, in England. They’ve been developing varieties of sweet peas for over 100 years. No website, and few mentions online, you have to contact them the old-fashioned way, via mail, ask for a catalog, and send a postal order in pounds for the amount. Your order arrives so promptly, it makes your head spin.
They have so many different varieties of sweet peas, it is almost impossible to decide which to get… and I had the mother of all sweet pea plantings: a 75 foot long, 7′ tall white fence along the street. It was the most glorious, beautiful thing ever! Of course, I had the occasional person who stole blossoms, but they were always replaced by more.
We lived on the Canadian prairie at the time, a brutal environment for any flower, what with the dry heat and strong winds, but my English sweet peas weathered it all.