Paul Delvaux La Canape Bleu, 1967

Created by Pierre Guillaume and launched in 2008, Louanges Profanes is one of my favorites among the glassy architectural Parfumerie Générale line but you don't read much about it. I love the complexity and technical skill of M Guillaume's compelling portfolio, the unexpected notes dropped in for artful drama and effect. I fell for PG 19 because of the lily note, something I adore in scent, a note sacred and profane, whorish and pure, light and dark. Here it lies, still as death upon a bier of fragrant wood, enveloped in smoke and odiferous resins, the air piquant with orange-licked jasmine and the glow of beatific skin. This is a scent of praise, olfactive religious abstractions in a secular setting. The name literally translates as profane praise, a scented prayer of sorts, redolent with holy suggestion and convent echo.  There is of course a contradiction inherent in this succinct and enigmatic title, an idea of appropriating sacred inspirations and blending the themes into one of light, shadow and temporal invocation.

Paul Delvaux The Annunciation

M. Guillaume has married symbols with decorum and intrigue. The Madonna Lily of the Anunciation, ceremonial frankincense and styrax offered up to gods above, (literally per fumum – through smoke) and lignam vitae or gaiac wood, rumoured to have been used in the building of Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant. The final touch is neroli, that marmalade and burnt sugar note, extracted from orange blossom once woven through the hair of brides as a symbol of purity and virtue.

Shadows Paul Delvaux 1965

The fusion is heavenly, an atmospheric journey from light to shadow.  The neroli is sunlight cascading through patterned glass across a waxen floor, catching the sculptured petals of lilies as they slumber in woozy motes of light.  Resins and balms pay homage to millennia of supplication; words, song, anger and love carried upward on silent smoke. The wood is everything: floor, house, fuel, cross, coffin and pyre.

Paul Delvaux The Office of The Evening 1971

I am not a religious Fox, despite two near brushes with death, but I am aware of faith, one’s need to seek external succour and incandescence. I register my survival to being tough to kill, but if I’m really honest, the endless days and nights of tests and snowy wards created a small need in me to believe in something other than sheer force of will. Throughout the centuries we have believed in the power of prayer, supplication, praise and hope.  Holy and secular collide violently in the modern age; both reek of hypocrisy and repeated folly. Louanges Profanes feels talismanic in this abrupt and erroneous time, a rosary of odours, something to ponder, inhale, embrace and adore.

Paul Delvaux Tout les Lumieres (1962)

From a technical point of view it is an elegantly assembled woody oriental with floral flourishes. But as always with Pierre Guillaume it is so much more than that. I imagine if you shone light through his fragrances, they would refract beams like prisms. Louanges Profanes plays with light, masking and revealing elements as materials settle on skin. There is obscurity and melancholia at work in the mix; this was inevitable given the gathering of ingredients at the olfactive table.  But this is why I love it, the wistful warmth and beauty of the composition reminds me each time I wear it that even though a room may be empty the walls have seen lives come and go. Lights dim and darkness falls. Louanges Profanes is undoubtedly an unorthodox perfume, but it is lit through with grace and ambrosial offering. I find myself drawn more and more to its eccentricity and fragile beauty. It soothes my profanity and that is enough.

Notes: neroli, hawthorn, white lily, incense, bezoin, gaiac wood

– The Silver Fox, Contributor and Editor of The Silver Fox

Disclosure: From my own fragrance collection

Editor’s Note: I chose to illustrate the Fox  review of Louanges Profanes with the surrealist paintings of Belgian painter Paul Delvaux (1897-1994).  Delvaux's work combined classical perfection with an erotic and troubling atmosphere, much like this PG 19 and others in the Parfumerie Generale Collection.-Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief

Louanges Profanes PG 19 by Parfumerie Générale  (image via olfactorialist.com)

Thanks to the generosity of OSSWALDNYC we have a generous spray sample of Louanges Profanes for one USA reader. To be eligible, please leave a comment about what you enjoyed about The Silver Fox's review and your favorite Parfumerie Générale perfume. Draw closes July 23 2014.

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