Shalimar inhabited my grandmother’s bathroom forever, always half full, its unmistakable baccarat blue stoppered bottle, so very French, enthroned at eye level in the center of its glass shelf. Although I do not recall her ever wearing Shalimar (its dark, balsamic-vanillic scent would have been all wrong for her, the elegant bottle fit right in with the blue-grey Louis Quinze reproduction furniture of her bedroom.
Grandma’s domain was the Upper East Side and she did not often venture out of it. But certainly she made an exception every Christmas Eve, when she and my sweet-natured grandfather would take my brothers and me to see the Christmas windows across Midtown. Looking back, I sometimes wonder why a Jewish girl from Brooklyn would, year after year, take her grandkids to see Christmas dioramas. I think perhaps, like that Shalimar bottle, Grandma relished the glamour of it. She loved a good display.
Our trajectory was always the same. We would start at Altman’s and Lord & Taylor, working our way up the tasteful monochrome white lights of Park Avenue to the old Lever building, with its children’s indoor playground decked out with oversized baubles and mysterious wrapped boxes. The pinnacle of the evening was Rockefeller Center, where, greeted by illuminated angels harking heralds, we would each be given the small fortune of a quarter to donate to Santa Claus, and watch the skaters beneath the enormous tree while the inevitable Salvation Army chorus caroled nearby. It was absolute magic.
Some of the most trenchant evocations of those Christmas Eves are brought on by familiar smells of the time and place: the smoky, yeasty aroma of the pretzel vendors, garbagy steam coming up through the subway grates, the odor of damp wool from my blue and white Nordic mittens, car exhaust, the perfumes and aftershaves and colognes of the hundreds of passersby, mingling with cigarettes and unraveling into separate snatches of leathery Aramis, the cold mink smell of Chanel No 5, piquant Calandre, and my Grandfather’s comfy Old Spice.
But chiefly, there was the complicated fragrance that characterized my grandmother. “Queen Bee,” as she was known (not without some asperity from certain quarters, it must be said) was quite a looker in her day – a dead ringer for Rosalind Russell in her forties, with perfect ivory skin, large dark eyes and the greatest pair of gams between Prospect Park and Astoria. She favored Joy. I suspect that was because it was considered both chic and pricey (and Grandma was a bit of a diva) rather than any particular liking for it. Yet neither this nor the famous bottle of Shalimar are the scents I associate with her. Rather, it is a combination of her particular hairspray (Aero-Lak: hilarious name), lipstick (coral, brand unknown, kept in beautiful silver filigreed tubes in her bathroom), and, always, the smooth, violety animal smell of her leather gloves. Grandma was never without gloves.
There is no single perfume that evokes her today. Serge Lutens Daim Blond has some elements of Grandma Bea in its musky soft suede, but its execution is too modern; Ava Luxe Midnight Violet, with its facets of high-quality leather and ebony violets, comes closer, but is too outwardly sensual for my Brooklyn-born Grandmother. Gucci Rush, for the hairspray aspect and Malle Lipstick Rose, if dabbed on an old Bill Blass silk scarf she used to wear, emit poignant sparks of memory. But none of them, separately, hit the mark.
Later, after my grandfather died, and Grandma’s aches and pains grew worse, her medications more frequent, her loneliness palpable and frustrating, the Christmas Eve tradition had long passed. When she died some 15 years ago, I remember my mother asking me if I wanted her bottle of Shalimar, still half full on its glass shelf. I declined, because it had no meaning outside its habitat. And there was not much of Grandma Bea in that bottle.
Long before my beloved FAO Schwarz moved from its evocative gold and glass kingdom to the faceless black building that now houses it, before the elegant Bonwit Teller became another Trump monstrosity, and the air was still thick with pretzels and roasted chestnuts instead of the sickly-sweet smell of candied popcorn, there was a New York City that enchanted my little girl self. At the center of it was my indomitable, glamorous, sandpaper-voiced grandma, who smelled of makeup and expensive clothes, and who was the epitome of New York on Christmas Eve to me.
Merry Christmas, Queen Bea.
Lauryn Beer, Guest Poster