I spend part of each year in Australia and I've been meaning to try some of Teone Reinthal's fragrances, but it was the glowing reviews that Christi Long of Eau My Soul posted on her Facebook forum that finally inspired me to act. I have now been in Australia for five months on what was originally supposed to be a three month trip, separated from my embarrassingly large collection of perfumes and relying on the few samples and decants I bought with me. It was hard to pick as Australian-based Teone Reinthal knows how to spin a story around her scents and each one sounded like something I just had to try. Francois was a last minute addition to my sample pack selection but it has turned out to be my favorite from the collection.
It wasn't just the description of Francois, an orange blossom chypre, that drew me in, but also the notes: orange blossom, Calabrian bergamot, French rose geranium, Portuguese labdanum, Oakmoss, Sumatran patchouli, and Indian vetiver. The perfume is a veritable shipload of splendid ingredients from exotic ports of call.
I love to put on a fragrance and then have it immediately give that feeling of deju vu, we've been down this road before, and that is what happened when I put on Francois. Maybe it is because I am old enough to have a full lifetime of experiences to draw on that this reaction seems to happen to me more often these days. The path between our olfactory nerves and our brain is a short one and it has been proven that even those suffering from dementia can be stimulated by the reminder of a distant scent memory. In any case, when it happens it is always a joyful thing. Although the name, Francois, sounds very French, at first sniff I am transported to the Southern country roads of my childhood.
Visiting my Grandparent's small farm and its cozy house with a footprint no bigger than a three-car garage. Fields of green, the verdant earth, my Grandfather's tobacco spittoon; these scents are quiet background noise. Playing moonlit tag with a tangle of cousins, fireflies flickering in the inky sky studded with far away points of light. The adults gathered around a table playing card games and laughing. Magic nights built around a place one rung above poverty but bursting with life and magic.
The tobacco spittoon, a fancy name for what was usually an empty tin can with a picture of a red tomato on the paper wrapper or maybe niblets of corn, repurposed to catch my Grandfather's tobacco chew as he spit, was the most vivid memory that hit me when I first experienced Francois, and that is of interest because there isn't any tobacco note in the scent. What it does have is a beautiful note of patchouli, and I did a little digging. Patchouli is used to scent high-end tobacco products so maybe that's where I got this impression, or maybe it is just that it is a fresh green earthy scent, reminiscent of dirt and tobacco leaves. In any case, like magic this memory appears.
When I first spray Francois I smell the fresh bergamot. At the moment I have a lemon tree in my garden laden with fruit, and when I pluck the lemons from the tree the stems release a smell similar to bergamot, fresh green, slightly bitter citrus. Then I got beautiful wafts of pungent patchouli along with a mossy green warmness. Just as you can't make Southern biscuits without a dollop of baking powder, labdanum is necessary for a good chypre perfume. The labdanum can throw off many nuances besides the expected amber and resins. It can give hints of leather, tar, spice, and light tobacco. The patchouli here is gorgeous. It is very green, and verdant with the scent of rich humus, and I even pick up fruity aspects.
Francois hums along for some time, but after about three hours it's intensity gathers steam. The scent becomes more lush, and the labdanum is spicy and throws a warm glow. This brought to mind the analogy of a party. When you first enter the vibes are good and you know it's going to be a good night, but it starts off fairly quiet, scattered laughter here and there. A few hours in the place is hopping, with the din of conversation, bursts of laughter, and good humor radiating through the space. Francois never become too big or overbearing on my skin, but it does seem to build up to a grand finale before eventually beginning a slow fade to dark.
In addition to the memories that Francois conjured, it also made this song pop into my head. It's an old one from the 80s or 90s, and it's indicative of the music I grew up with in Texas; a mixture of Southern twang, Texas country, and rock. For whatever reason this song and the singer's gravely voice captures the mood that this fragrance imparts to me. Ms. Reinthal, the perfumer, may have pictured Francois as a more sophisticated character than I've painted here, but I hope she doesn't mind that Francois led me to revisit some old county roads.
Toene Reinthal's website is here and she ships worldwide.
NOT PERFUME RELATED:
In light of recent events I think most of us are being careful to ensure we don't say the wrong thing and are sensitive to others. Normally I would have posted this song without a second thought, but it is that Southern Redneck sound which at times can give the wrong message, so it gave me pause. So I did a little digging and I was delighted to find that Steve Earle, the performer and song writer, is a bit of a renegade in the country music world. He was raised in the South and today his music has the style we called Outlaw Country when I was younger, and in 2015 he put out a song called Mississippi It's Time, calling for the removal of the image of the Confederate flag from the Mississippi state flag. Here are a few of the lyrics:
Mississippi, don't you reckon it's time
That the flag came down, cause the world turned around
And we can't move ahead if we're looking behind.
I know this has nothing to do with the perfume, but it just seemed like such a happy accident that the song that spoke to me at the first whiff of Francois was by a singer who has a message so relevant in light of the events taking place in our nation.
Top photo from www.trnp.com.au website. Road photo: lifestyleoftheunemployed.tumblr.com. I purchased my samples from the TRNP website.
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