Chronicling the scent of perfumes

Shocking is one of the many topics Beaulieu explores in a new and racy memoir,The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent.

In the book—call it a smell-all—she reveals how a sensuous love affair she had in Seville,Spain,later inspired Bertrand Duchaufour,one of the world’s most avant-garde,independent perfumers,to create Seville a l’Aube (Seville at Dawn). Duchaufour made 128 “mods” (industry-speak for versions) before he arrived at a final interpretation of that lustful night,which took place against a fragrant backdrop of orange blossom,blond tobacco and frankincense from religious processions.

Beaulieu,50,got her master’s degree in French literature at the Universite de Montreal before going to study semiology and literary history at Universite Paris VII Jussieu.

She’s been a corset-clad subject in Bettina Rheims’s erotic photography book,Female Trouble,along with Catherine Deneuve,Annie Lennox; she wrote hard-core erotica; published a cultural history of sexuality; and,not surprisingly,translated Fifty Shades of Grey into French.

In her new book,Beaulieu not only airs her dirty laundry,she gives lavish literary descriptions of perfumes. Into her heady narrative are woven many of the perfumers’ tricks used to arouse subliminal passions,to make us swoon,or to use her word,moan.

Perfumers use raw materials resembling dirty hair (costus),sweat (cumin),public urinals (honey),faeces (jasmine) and sweat (grapefruit),and of course there are actual animal notes (civet/musk). “Those notes are not perceptible per se when you smell a perfume unless you’re looking for it,” Beaulieu said. “That sexual,animal subtext is very much part of the seduction of fragrance because it’s actually meant to hook up with our bodies through the smells that our bodies have. Perfumers reveal nature’s dirty secret: that flowers are actually sexual organs.”

Not all early reviews of The Perfume Lover have been flattering. Some criticise the author for too much intimacy (Beaulieu describes being unfaithful to her husband,an affair with a married man and even seduction of a mailman). Others think there’s too much perfume technology.

Dedicated scent fanatics,however,can rarely get enough of the latter. And for people who don’t know much about the world of perfume,Beaulieu’s book at least opens a door to a mysterious salon of sensual secrets about its creation. “The disclosure of the creative process of a perfumer demanded an equally candid level of personal disclosure to balance it out,” she said.

“Perfume is spirit,” she said,of the substance that fascinates her. “When you distill flowers,you literally distill their soul. Perfume is the only form of adornment that doesn’t need a mirror.”