Hippie
I mentioned it earlier: I found a place to shop for ropes nearby and the best thing about it: They have a factory shop, open every first Saturday in the month. The bottom line: These people still produce ropes in Switzerland, which is hard to believe and in light of the ongoing de-industrialization close to a miracle.
Thus, under a blue sky, windows down, camera ready, my old Saab brought us to a place called Ossingen, 30 miles from Zurich, where a sales lady already waited for the perfumer (I send them a mail before visiting) and showed the best smelling hemp ropes you could imagine. I haven’t found the exact time and place in my past yet where this scent of hemp fits but it clearly evokes memories. It is not smoking hemp stuff, it is more the scent of my father’s garden where he used to tie up things with hemp ropes; or the scent of our cellar, maybe, where we would store apples and some vegetables over winter.
Well, be it: Saturday afternoon I became a proud owner of 200 meters lovely smelling hemp rope, 10 cents a meter, with a similar texture like the sisal thing, but much more authentic. Thank you, Anya…..which brings me to the end of this post. A last word on the hippie thing, brought up by Anya in her comment that found hilarious. When preparing the “Our perfumes in the press” internet web site on tauerperfumes.com, I realised that Luca Turin referred to “Le Maroc pour elle” as hippie scent in his Park Avenue review. I totally forgot about it, but now…the pattern is there again. Am I a hippie producing hippie scents? And….what’s a hippie anyway?
# posted by andy : 8:45 AM
9 Comments:
Ha ha, you old hippie! So Luca and I saw the hippie connection, eh? Well, since he and I are so intuitively linked, it must be true ;-)
Short definition of a hippie: someone who wants to change the status quo, believes in equality for all, and rejects most synthetic things ;-)
Short definition of a hippie perfumer: loves natural scents with a twist, either has you do, Andy with a touch of synths, or as I do, with a wild brief that allows me to yes, change the status quo of what people might expect.
At least that's what I've been told ;-)
A bit more: so many new perfumers emerging on the world scene, they're all hippies in a way.....the old institutional perfume houses are being challenged by the new rising class of perfumers, and the old way of making perfume is falling by the wayside as we develop new techniques, new aesthetics in our attempt to redefine the art to suit our sensibilities.
No more Youth Dew or Angel will be our rallying motto!
hehehe... and here's the fitting Luca Turin Scent Note in Folio.
http://www-x.nzz.ch/folio/curr/articles/parfum_engl.html
Enjoy... and let's change the status quo!
Andy, something was wrong with the URL. Here it is:
http://www-x.nzz.ch/folio/curr/articles/parfum_engl.html
I already had a good hoot about it on POL and in my group. It was inevitable, even dinosauers evolved, as I mentioned there. It almost seems as if he lurks on my yahoo group, and has finally caught up with the lingo, the concept, the art. I wouldn't be surprised. He so mortified himself in so many circles with the December rant, he had to kill his blog for some time. Two publications contacted me itching to do a nasty story on him, but I declined.
I actually felt he was going to come around, so that's why I didn't get a hair out of place over it all.
It's like Richard Nixon discovered that maybe hormone- and chemical-laden meat isn't so good for you, and those hippies might be on to something with grain-fed beef or veggie burgers. Boy, are my analogies dating me!
I do have to add, however, that he got so much wrong in the duft notes bit it isn't even funny. He's still confusing our art with aromatherapy blends which *are* meant to have a healing purpose, and thinks we're sold in health food stores! No, Luca dear, the price points are way too high, we're in high-end boutiques and specialty shops.
PS I wrote you two notes privately in the past day, one on Texas, the other on my two sites under construction, but I think I have your old email addy. Let me know if you got them.
Andy, your blog is chopping off the URL
Maybe you need to put it as a link on the main page.
Dear Anya
Yep.. I just realized that the link is cut. So here it comes again:
Folio Article Luca Turin
By the way: I liked his article very much. I thought his way of describing niche perfumes is perfect: "niche is what you hope others won't find..." I like his way of bringing things to the point very much. And of course, in order to bring things to the point, you have to sharpen the image and leave out details.
And thank you for your two links. I just glimpsed at them because I am trying to keep up with a lot of things right now.
Oh Anya! No more Angel or Youth Dew - ach, this would be a calamity (says the lady with a taste for the strong, heh!) How 'bout - more than just Angel and Youth Dew? It's not quite as convincing a rally cry, but you know, my heart doesn't fall at the sound of it ;)
That shop - all those spools of rope - looks charming somehow! And the choice of hemp rope is neat either way, but how cool to find a local maker. (Of course, I have my own local bias, so I understand the lovely appeal of that.)
I dunno about what "hippie" means, either. When I look at pictures of my childhood, I see my parents in them with little me in a never ending cavalcade of tie-dye clothing and homemade "peasant" dresses. But when I tell my parents how stereotypical hippie they were in those photos they protest. "No! We had jobs! We were definitely NOT hippies!" I think it is one of those things where the definition shifts depending on who you ask, heh. Because the first concert that I can remember my parents taking me to was a Jefferson Airplane (or Jefferson Starship? I can't remember all their name changes) and when I point this memory out, they just look pained and say, "But everyone likes that band, that's not a hippie thing at all." So Anya's definition, "someone who wants to change the status quo, believes in equality for all, and rejects most synthetic things," is one I totally get and agree with, but it sure doesn't work for them. To them a hippie is an unemployed social drop-out, which I find hilarious. Perhaps it's best to simply say it's an "Andy" scent, which is even nicer sounding than a "hippie" scent.
So you have a Saab....a wee bit of Sweden in Schweiz ;-)
200meters of lovely hemp rope? Wow, what a treasure;-) I would love to have some tarsmelling thin, hard twisted rope....tar smells sooooo good:-) On the hippie aspect I have nothing to add, to young for being a part of that period LOL.
As for Luca T, I surely hope he will get back to blogging - soon:-D
LOL, Katie, not matter what scent I mention, I'm bound to offend someone. I could change it to "No more L'eau d'Issey or Britney Spears perfumes" - how's that? Whenever these scents come up in POL and other blogs, I just breeze on by. ;-)
I wasn't rallying against the strong perfumes, just the modern ones loaded with harsh synths. You know I love many mainstream perfumes, and they tend to be those with a minimum of synths, or the softer, older ones, including the very strong Chanels and Carons.
Glad to see you "get" the hippie concept, even if your tie-dyed parents don't! We tagged the name hippie on the movement, but it's really a state of consciousness that embraces what I stated. In essence, never before had the world seen so many turn against the Establishment and seen so many decades of evolving change due that shift in consciousness.
So what do your parents wear for scent? You should turn them on to 'ol hippie Andy's creations -- yessiree.
PS I think your parents focused too much on what my ex called the "hippie scumbags" and they need to see the big picture of hippie elitists, high-tech hippies, and productive hippies ;-) We're everywhere!
PPS your parents were known as "weekend hippies" ;-)
Dear Anya, dear Katie
and here the final comment from the hippie himself. If I asked my parents (well, my mother, as my father died a long time ago) whether they were hippies.... no way!
But, fact is: They lived together as man and women when it was still illegal in Zurich to do so. Being still maried to his first wife, my father had to move to the canton of Aargau, where this kind of strange living together was legally accepted. There I was born, and raised, by an unmarried couple, he 20 years older than she, without being baptised until I was 16. I guess my parents changed the status quo by doing.....
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