Christèle Jacquemin Memory Lane photo by Nicoleta ©
The first time I sprayed one of Christèle Jacquemin’s fragrances on my wrist, last year, I knew I was experiencing something truly unique and powerful – and like catching a clear signal through static, all of her fragrances broadcasted to a deeply personal frequency that I immediately recognized and connected to. A multifaceted artist, Christèle Jacquemin is a world traveler, an award-winning photographer, and a gifted artisanal perfumer who created in her (so far) four fragrances a scented memory map, that unfolds with visuals paired with scent, for a deeply personal journal:
Impermanence: the harmony and tranquility of Jin Ze, a village in the suburbs of Shanghai (an Art and Olfaction Award Finalist 2020)
Underworld: the interplay between shadow and light, intertwined fears and hopes and fear, inspired by Barcelona.
Meandering Soul: the calm introspection of a midnight walk in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan
Memory Lane: the return home – inspired by Valliguières, a village in Southern France.
Christele Jacquemin, photo via Facebook
“Memory Lane is inspired by the collection of photographs I made in Valliguières, a village in the South of France where I lived until I was a teenager. I moved away from it very early in the hope of a rebirth, another, elsewhere. After more than thirty years of avoidance, it finally became clear that the only way to put an end to my old ghosts was to confront them. After these few decades, I got down to translating the feelings of my childhood into olfactory terms.”-Christele Jacquemin
Enigma, Return to innocence video still
Spraying Memory Lane on my skin, I had a very vivid flashback to the visuals of a song that was playing in heavy rotation, on MTV, in the mid-’90s: Enigma’s return to innocence – Julien Temple’s video clip which depicts a man’s life in reverse – starting with the forever-burn-in-my-memory sequence of the old man picking up a quince fruit, and rewinding back up to his baptism, as a baby.
Deeply moving, instantly relatable, with artistic sensibility and unexpected juxtapositions, Christèle Jacquemin Memory Lane is an innovative play on the theme of eternal return. The fragrance starts to flow in reverse, or at least in my game of perception game it does, with the top notes that settle on the skin immediately, balmy and endlessly comforting. Sepia tones of aromatic myrrh, with just the right amount of medicinal vibe paint a blurry childhood memory, recorded frame by frame: the old hands of a grandmother opening the squeaky door of an ancient wooden medicine cabinet, looking for her herbal remedies.
Christele Jacquemin photos, collage by Nicoleta©
In contra play with the wooden and balmy texture, a silky white construction blooms on the skin – the almost photorealistic meringue note, deliciously turning from wispy and silky clouds to ethereally light ghostly treats, that make your mouth water in anticipation of their imponderable delight. Playing even further on the childhood association game, bringing salty water to the corner of the eyes: reassuring arms are raising you up, up, up in the magnolia tree behind the house, for the picture you take there every spring since you were born. You smile for the camera, eyes squinted in front of the immensely bright April sky.
We fast forward (or backward) to an eerily vivid winter frame: the warm and woody scent of cloves summons the silhouette of a Christmas tree, with a bitter, almost sharp grassy and leathery nuance that cuts the tamed nostalgia out of the picture and ads nuance, nerve, and high pitched dimension. Hands deep in the pockets, stepping on the snowy, muddy path near the riverbed, you feel the red clouds of solstice’s dawn, hanging above you, cumbersome as a rain-soaked jacket. You enter the old stone church and listen to the sermon, breathing in the flickering yellow candle lights, trying to rhythmically smooth out the painful and disjointed feeling that you have outgrown your skin. The Saudade of an expat’s return home, between nostalgia and the slow and painful process of healing one’s ghost, is beautifully interpreted in the drydown in the juxtaposition of the sensual and comforting vanilla and dark muddy waters filled with the deep green, wet, woody notes.
Christele Jacquemin photos, collage by Nicoleta©
Christèle Jacquemin Memory Lane is “Proustian Madeleine gourmand” with alternating contrasting layers between the light-as cloud meringue vanilla and the dark oud and Nagarmotha. It’s complex, complicated, bittersweet, and ambivalent – like any return home.
Read my review of Meandering Soul here.
Christèle Jacquemin’s Memory Lane was awarded “best fragrance you never heard of” by Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief, and was included in my top 10 Best Fragrances of 2021
The perfume is made of more than 90% of ingredients of natural origin.
Notes: Essential oils: Clove, Cypriol or Nagarmotha, Magnolia flowers, Myrrh, White Oud or Crocodile Eaglewood, Parsley; Oleoresin: Green vanilla; Meringue
Nicoleta Tomsa, Senior Editor
Disclosure: Bottle kindly provided by Christèle Jacquemin, opinions are my own
Christèle Jacquemin Memory Lane, official brand photo
Thanks to the generosity of Christèle Jacquemin we have a 30ml bottle of Memory Lane for one registered reader in the EU, USA and UK You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what sparks your interest based on Nicoleta’s review of Christèle Jacquemin Memory Lane and where you live. Draw closes February 3, 2022
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