Farewell, Caution, Part 1

Quilt Piece by Tama Blough

The other day I found a bottle of perfume in the downstairs closet that I had no idea was there—and not just any old bottle of department store perfume—no, it was a vintage 1980s bottle that is both rare and pricey. Of course, finding a bottle of perfume that I didn’t know I had either makes me sound like a perfume shopaholic who has so many bottles that I’ve lost track of what I’ve bought or like a woman who drinks a bit too much wine and then shops online and when the packages arrive quietly stashes them out of sight to keep her embarrassing habits a secret from both her family and herself. But neither of those things are true. Really. I swear. What happened was this. 

I was clearing out the mailing supplies—small shipping boxes, bubble wrap, and lots of padded envelopes—from the closet in the guest bedroom where I had stuffed everything four years earlier. Because I had decided to keep some of the envelopes and some envelopes were in better shape than others, I was checking each one as I sorted them into two separate piles. Then I suddenly noticed that one of them was much heavier than the others and had a large bulge in it. The envelope was unsealed so I reached in and pulled out box that looked like this: 

I knew immediately by the box, which looked to be in mint condition, that this was 1980s Adieu Sagesse from the Patou Ma Collection. So I quickly opened the box to see what exactly was inside—it could be anything, really—it was just a box, right?—and people reuse boxes all the time, right?—but what I pulled out was a full spray bottle of Adieu Sagesse EdT, which also appeared to be in mint condition. I stared at the bottle in disbelief because even though I had absolutely no idea why this bottle of vintage perfume was stuffed into an unmarked envelope in a downstairs closet, I knew all about this fragrance and had even worn many times before thanks to a couple of friends who had shared some with me. 

Adieu Sagesse was originally one of three fragrances that Patou released together in the early twenties that reflect the three stages of love:

Amour Amour (Love, Love) was a rose fragrance created to represent the first moment of love. 

Que Sais-Je? (What Do I Know?) was a light floral created to represent the moment of doubt, when your heart hesitates. 

Adieu Sagesse (Goodbye Wisdom/Farewell Caution) was a spicy floral created to represent the stage when you abandon hesitation and surrender to desire or, as the ads put it, “for moments when the heart rules the head.” 

Of the three, Adieu Sagesse is the most well-known and is considered to be one of the great carnation fragrances of the past. Ooh, did someone say carnation? Yes, I’m just obsessed by carnation fragrances and with perfumes that feature that note. There’s something about the subtle spiciness of the carnation note that I find very uplifting and also perfumes that feature carnation seem to meld with my skin in a way that makes the perfume feel as if it was natural part of me rather than some other scents—however beautiful—that remain on the surface of my skin like oil floating on the surface of water. And because I just, unreasonably, love so many carnation perfumes, even though Adieu Sagesse is not my favorite carnation perfume of time, I have wanted to have this classic in my collection for several years. But the last version of Adieu Sagesse that was any good was from the eighties, which is what makes it both hard to find and costly, so I never really expected to own it. 

For a moment I envisioned a perfume fairy godmother—who just happened to look exactly like Glinda the Good Witch in the original movie The Wizard of Oz with her enormous pink dress, wings, and sparkling crown—waving her wand to conjure up a bottle of vintage Adieu Sagesse and then send it off to my guest bedroom in Berkeley, California for me to find one day. But then I wondered if this bottle was even mine at all. There was one person who might know, I realized, and that was Brooke. So I quickly texted her. And, yes, she knew the story—or at least most of it. And once I got her explanation, I realized that the name of the perfume, Adieu Sagasse, perfectly fit the tale of how this perfume came to be hidden away in my closet for four years because there was a moment when the two of us—Brooke and I—really did throw caution to the winds. 

It all started when I met Tama Blough, which is itself a story. You see, back then I was writing a novel about a chocolatier and I wanted the story to include a lot of different smells—sensual details really helps writing come alive, I think. But smells are very hard to describe because we don’t have a very large vocabulary for them in English. Eventually, I ran out of ways to describe the divine fragrance of chocolate. So one day, in desperation, I went ahead and Googled “smell of chocolate.” To my amazement, one of the sites that turned up in my search was called Now Smell This. When I checked it out, it turned out to be a perfume blog, which had a large archive of posts with perfume reviews and announcements about new releases. There were also long comments sections on the posts where people discussed the perfume that was reviewed or announced and just chatted about what perfumes they were wearing, buying, thinking of buying, testing, or even trading. 

Oh, all the intriguing and sometimes strange perfumes everyone wrote about! There were perfumes that smelled of wood smoke or frankincense or myrrh, of hay or wet earth, of tomato leaf or carrot, of menthol and tuberose, of coffee, tea, chocolate, nuts, and spices. And there were so many brands I’d never heard of, from trendy niche brands like Serge Lutens and Amouage to small, independent perfumers, like Andy Tauer and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, and small brands I had never heard of, like Parfums Delrae (everyone was obsessing over Bois de Paradis back then) and CB I Hate Perfume. I instantly became furiously curious and as soon as I could, I set off for downtown San Francisco with a list of perfumes to track down. Can you be dying to sniff something? Why, yes, it turns out you can. Although I didn’t find everything on my list, I came home with samples from Barney’s and Chanel, which I delighted in testing and wearing and reading reviews of, but which only further inflamed my curiosity. I had—as perfumistas say—fallen down the rabbit hole.

After that I read the NST blog religiously every day, including all the comments on the posts. And I realized then for the first time that you could own more than one perfume and could, in fact, have a whole “wardrobe” of perfumes to suit every occasion, the time of day, the weather, and/or your mood. I also learned that you could have perfume friends, who called themselves perfumistas, to talk with about perfume who wouldn’t judge you for your decadent, frivolous, self-indulgent passion.

I noticed that there were certain commenters on NST who seemed to chime in every day with multiple comments, some of them even sharing bits of information about their personal lives—family members, jobs, where they lived, what other people thought of their perfume obsession, and even which part of the USA—or the world—they lived in, so I began to form some ideas of who these people were . Eventually I began commenting, myself (under the alias SuddenlyInexplicably, if you must know). 

Then one day one of the regulars who herself called “Tama” posted in a comment section that she was organizing a San Francisco “Sniff” for Bay Area perfumistas and we were all invited. Even though I normally didn’t meet up with complete strangers, I could not resist this invitation. Arriving in San Francisco’s Union Square at the designated time, I found Tama—her real name—standing in front of Barney’s wearing a name tag and holding a stack of paper. She was a large older woman wearing a bright red flowered dress, with colorful tattoos on her arms and legs and gray hair highlighted with streaks of bright pink and blue.

Tama Sniffing with Perfumer Yosh Han

Her larger than life appearance fit well with what I knew about her favorite perfumes, which were over the top, sensuous floral perfumes like Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower, a bold and stunning white floral focused on tuberose, and vintage Joy by Patou, an extravagant blend of roses, jasmine, and other costly ingredients. Every perfumista has their own story about how they fell down the “rabbit hole” of obsession with perfume, and Tama’s story was that the perfume that got her started with her perfume obsession was Secrete Datura by Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier. While visiting the perfume department at Nordstrom’s she was drawn to bottle with a frosted bas-relief figure of woman with long hair and flowing drapery. When she sprayed that fragrance on her wrist, she was so utterly captivated by the perfume that she had to sit down. She would later categorize Secrete Datura as a “narcotic floral,” saying:

“When I wear this at home, I swan, I lounge, I become languid. When I wear it into the world, I swan, I cast glances at handsome men with half-lids, I appreciate the blue sky. I live.”

So, I was surprised when Tama handed me a stapled set of papers along with a name tag and spoke to me in a curiously dry, blunt, almost business-like manner. “This is the agenda for the day. And this is a map of all the Union Square perfume destinations in case we get separated.” I saw that she had a full-eight hour day planned out for us, with different shops expecting us a particular times, and then to wrap it all up, a dinner followed by a swapping session. But before I had a chance to say anything about the long day ahead of me, Tama gestured toward a woman with masses of dark curly hair and red lipstick, who wearing a chic blue and white t-shirt, jeans, and stylish flats. “Oh, here comes my friend Liz!”

Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.

by Nina Zolotow

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