"Patchouli" is said to be made of mummies, and it seems quite probable, from the fact that those venerable Egyptians were "put up" in spices. Little thinks that delicate young lady, little thinks that embroidered young man, as they finish their toilets with a drop of "Lubin", that they are suggesting to some of their scientific friends the Pyramids of Egypt!" wrote the New England Farmer in august 1860.
Early XIXth century, precious Indian shawls and fabrics were one of the most fashionable items of the day, perfectly adapted to the new styles which emphasized the antique high waist silhouette of the Directoire and Empire. These cashmere shawls were wrapping the sylphidian white mouslin silhouette of young women with pale complexion whitened by the (in)famous Lait Virginal, like ancient Egyptian mummies were wrapped with strips of white linen. The new fashionable shapes, soft and fluid, using a fabric already known by the ancient Greeks, were different from the heavy Venetian velvet of the Renaissance or the embroided French silk worn during the previous century. But they were also different for another reason - their unusual and fascinating scent. This was not really obvious until French and British manufactures started to mass produce in Europe the same type of textiles. They soon realized that a mysterious scent was the ultimate proof of the genuine origin of the fabrics. The same happened for the leather goods and the famous Cuir de Russie, as I explained in a previous article. Discovering the origin of the mysterious scent was quite an adventure and for the perfume industry it would be very soon a revolution.
But let's go back several centuries ago when Dutch, French and British ships were crossing the Ocean bringing precious goods from Asia. The ships were full with tea, coffee, pepper and many spices, fabrics, and musk among the most important goods. They were British and French, the later bringing sometime different goods as they managed the acclimatization of several precious ingredients in the 1770's in the Reunion Island to break the Dutch monopoly. But La Compagnie Française des Indes Orientales went bankrupt and was dissolved by La Convention in 1791. Among spices, pepper was the most important in volume and its powerful scent was also a "weapon" against insects. Musk was always a problem because of its very strong scent and the ability to impregnate the other goods with its fragrance. Because of this, sometime its presence was forbidden.
Traveling for many months on sea with such noble ingredients, the Indian fabrics slowly became impregnated with their scent. This property of some raw materials is called substantivity and today it is used to design the scents for detergents and fabric softeners. Several centuries ago, it was a special cachet of exotic and expensive fabrics. But with the amazing commercial development something changed - ships got bigger and bigger and goods were not always mixed as they were several centuries before. Fabrics were not always traveling with pepper in the same cabin and very soon there was a need to preserve them from insects. In fact, merchants were transporting their delicate fabrics with some leaves which were preserving them from intruders. These leaves were not really scented when they were fresh but with the high moisture on the ship they developed a fragrance which delicately impregnated the fabrics. Europeans were not aware of that until they started to produce similar textiles and could not sell them as genuine. The strange odor was considered characteristic and proof of oriental origin. It was only when the first shippement of dried patchouli leaves arrived in London, about 1844, that the long sought secret of the mysterious scent was revealed.
In 1826, dried patchouli leaves were brought to Paris from Bourbon Island and specialists started to study them for botanical classification and medical properties. The patchouli plant was first introduced in Paris in the Royal Garden (Jardin du Roi) in 1839 and they had to wait several years to see it blooming. It was described by Pelletier in 1845 and named Pogostemon patchouli. Soon, French manufactures learned to perfume their homespun shawls with patchouli leaves in close imitation of the Indian goods, because patchouli grows also in the Bourbon. They were now the latest fashion in Paris as the patchouli scent was known in the 1830's and was proposed by several perfumers like Lubin. This type of scent was totally new for the European noses as there was nothing quite similar, at least not used in perfumes. The scent of patchouli leaves, as it impregnated the fabrics for several weeks, was unique, but light compared to the essential oil, and perfectly fitted the new obsession for tobacco of the new generation.
The first olfactory reference for this ingredient in the 1830's was the scent of the shawls, delicate and mysterious. 140 years later, the reference for the hippies, grown up in the 1960's with synthetic fabrics, was the strong patchouli essential oil sold in small bottles in India.
Extrait de Patchouly was a type of perfume that literally drove crazy women and men in the Victorian times and some medical reports from the 1840's mention that some women could become instantly nervous or suffer from menstrual disorders. Up to 1890's these unusual effects on the female body and psyche were reported in many literary sources, as there was something sexual and forbidden inside this type of scent.
I understood immediately when I opened the 1893 Lubin bottle of "Double Extrait de Patchouly" that I've recently acquired. In less than 10 seconds my entire room was filled with the strongest natural musk scent, highly indecent and addictive, smelling like a true human presence.
The first patchouli perfumes were imagined to evoke the mysterious and unusual sensation of discovering those refined Indian shawls. It was not the discovery of a 10kg bottle of patchouli oil, accidentally broken in the lab.
Lubin, former apprentice of Fargeon, the perfumer of Marie Antoinette, founded his perfume house in 1798 and for the incredible scent that fascinated an entire generation he took inspiration from his early days. In fact, the new Lubin "Extrait de Patchouly" was built on the formula of a previous perfume, extremely famous in the 1790's, worn by Les Incroyables et Les Merveilleuses. It was the excessive musk perfume. If today, in the post-Angel era, a consumer says chocolate and cocoa and even "gourmand" when smelling a blotter with the new patchouli extraction, for Lubin, the patchouli leaves and the elegant shawls impregnated with their scent were smelling like the tobacco facet of the natural musk deer tincture. He literally imagined a perfume like the story of precious fabrics traveling centuries ago across the Ocean in the same "room" with musk, pepper and tea. Inside his perfume he put a floral accord very famous in the XVIIIth century with orange flower, tuberose and rose.
In fact, the light textiles impregnated during a long journey across the Ocean with scent are the representation of another process, more ancient. They were the strips of linen impregnated with the scent of the embalmed Egyptian body, but now the scent of patchouli preserved the delicate textiles exposed to moisture and insects.
What else is the patchouli scented shawl or the delicate muslin dress than the most authentic scentsorial representation of the gothic novels written between 1785 and 1830?
In the late XVIIIth century the Indian muslin became the most important element in the female dress allowing a dramatic change of the costume with the French Revolution. Before being mass produced in Europe, this was a luxury fabric as we can see it in the portraits of the era. Let them dress plain! Send the pannier dress to the Guillotine! Could you imagine a ghost in a large hoop petticoat and not smelling the fresh camphorous moisture of a grave? The female characters of the gothic novels, usually living in the Gothic revival castles, were all dressed in this new fluid and fashionable fabric, delicately scented with patchouli. The ghosts too, were wearing the patchouli muslin and this was also the scent of moisture, decay and caves creating a perfect and harmonious universe.
What is the contribution of this new odor, the patchouli note trapped inside the fine fibers of the muslin dress, in the development of the gothic imagination?
By the time they were written, nobody knew what patchouli is, it was not used by perfumers, it did not appear as a fashionable extract until the 1830's. It was simply a new odor that arrived from India through fashion, something that had no equivalent in Europe, something that was constantly around those who wore the new fashion items. The scent of patchouli was like a ghost, a presence you cannot define because you do not know what it is. It was a character as it is today when the entire spectrum of fragrances can be divided in two classes, with or without patchouli.
But there was the French muslin and the British muslin, there was the muslin for dresses and the Indian shawls. The economic changes brought by the French Revolution and later the supremacy of the British Empire in the Asian textile trade had an enormous scentsorial impact.
Before the Revolution, French perfumers started to produce an amazing product, first a powder and later a perfume, called Mousseline des Indes. Its formula shows another amazing story, it was a fabric traveling with ingredients from French colonies with a different olfactory profile from the British muslin.
Because the patchouli note is quite characteristic, unique, and so much related to a specific type of textile, the most important question is: "Did the Greeks, who bought the Indian muslin and gave its name, knew the scent of patchouli?
PS: To have an idea about the scent of Extrait Patchouly put a drop of Borneo on your hand and spray over it a very good dose of MKK (Serge Lutens). The original perfume is not sweet.
PS: To have an idea about the scent of Extrait Patchouly put a drop of Borneo on your hand and spray over it a very good dose of MKK (Serge Lutens). The original perfume is not sweet.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
