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| A wonderful gift of vintage Le Galion Snob |
I received this bottle of vintage Le Galion Snob, likely from the early 50s, from one of the many angels on MakeupAlley's swap. My attempts to locate her real online identity to reference in this blog have been fruitless. All I know is that many years ago, she spent an unforgettable summer in Boston. Knowing I was from Boston endeared me to her, and so she reached into her extensive vintage perfume collection to gift me this bottle, which given my penchant for rose and tuberose, she recommended over my suggested Joy decant. She was right.
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| Vintage 1950s poster for Le Galion's Snob |
Snob has a haughty edge and a dark, heavy feel for a floral bouquet, due to the green top notes and spicy dry down that subtly frame this otherwise ornate floral: a bouquet of rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, carnation, lily of the valley, and tuberose. Paul Vacher, the perfumer behind the original Miss Dior and Diorling, created this overlooked fragrance from 1952, whose obscurity is due to a copyright antagonism with Patou as described by Perfume Shrine. A Basenotes reviewer calls Snob, "both lighter and denser" than Joy, another calls it "sprightlier." The initial aldehydis burst of bergamot, lemon, neroli, and hyacinth gives this floral its spright, while the musky, woody base of vetiver, civet, sandalwood, cedar, and a dose of tonka deepens the arrangement. I'd read Luca's gushing review of Joy, and had swapped for a 1980s bottle around the same time I tried Snob. My 1980s sampling was rich and floral, but somehow staid. Maybe I'd simply grown up in the sillage of Joy on too many women at church, fusing the scent in my mind with the expected. My sample of Joy felt frumpier than this practically antique bottle of Snob, which seemed to have come full circle in terms of sensory style.
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| Le Galion Snob, release 2014 |
Perhaps that is the reason Le Galion announced it would be rereleasing a full array of scents, including a revamped Snob. The new nose is Thomas Fontaine, and though the new bottle beautifully references the vintage bottle, it seems the composition will be more of a fruity-floral with a white musk base to appeal to modern tastes.
In the same way, MUA is doing away with their archaic swap at the end of 2014, much to my regret, for it was through strategic swaps that I amassed my library of perfume samples for next to nothing. MUA suggests users migrate to the new Swapidu, a modern site that supports connection to your other social media networks. Everything you list for swap has your avatar next to it, assuring others of your identity and personality, and becoming another part of one's interconnected internet presence, your personal brand. Yet my attraction to MUA was the mystery of connecting with incognito usernames and receiving their surprising packages in the mail, often filled with generous extras and unexpected gifts, inspiring faith in the kindness of strangers. Alexis Avedisian wrote a beautiful meditation on the slowly obsoleting Livejournal, where under pseudonyms and within secret communities, we had a different, at times more honest, way of communicating. Now, instead of being a place to escape my legitimate reality, the internet is where I legitimize myself. Rather than taking down my front on the internet, I perfect it. Rory Gory was constructed on the internet as a queer escape, but in time it has become my true identity.
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| Taken by John Bittrich of Ruby Ridge |
Right after I was gifted this beautiful vintage bottle of Snob, the perfect olfactory accessory to my vintage haute macabre look, I went to a winter solstice show in Somerville with Ruby Ridge and M△S▴C△RA. The obscure characters witch house bands used made them difficult to pronounce and impossible to search for on the internet; but they had the added effect of keeping these scenes secret and their players anonymous, contained within very specific communities online and offline. Our internet had grown up with us, becoming a professional space and a hyperreality. Anonymity was sought in dark clubs, where underground scenes lived, where raw emotions could be experienced honestly through heavy beats, colored lights, the scent of warm bodies. Online, I began to know who everyone was that I met: their digital trail was manicured to lead directly to the person they wanted you to see. Offline, in these dark, messy, creative spaces, I never quite caught the names of those dancing around me, but in these tangible realities, it became easier to be myself.
M△S▴C△RA - krystalMETH/alanWATTS
"I believe that if we are honest with ourselves, that the most fascinating problem in the world is 'Who am I?' What do you mean? What do you feel when you say the word 'I, myself'? I don’t think there can be anymore fascinating preoccupation than that because it's so mysterious. It's so elusive. Because what you are in your inmost being escapes your examination in rather the same way that you can't look directly into your own eyes without using a mirror, you can’t bite your own teeth, you can’t taste your own tongue and you can’t touch the tip of this finger with the tip of this finger. And that's why there's always an element of profound mystery in the problem of who we are." Alan Watts
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