The juxtaposition of several events this past weekend made
me start thinking about the concept of simplicity and how it applies to
fashion, art, perfume, and life in general. From Friday through Sunday I
participated in a holiday pop-up shop where vendors were selling everything
from taxidermied animals, high-end hipster clothing, chandeliers, crude wooden
shelves and knick-knacks, handmade chocolates, antique china and cactus plants
to various forms of jewelry and, of course, perfumes.
As I passed in and out of my area, I kept going by a display
by jewelry maker and metal artist Faris DuGraf, where one necklace particularly
caught my eye. On the morning of the second day I ended up buying it. It’s a
good thing I did because it turned out to be one-of-a-kind. I was particularly
impressed by Faris’s creations because they fall into the category of
“deceptively simple” – things that have clean and simple lines without being
bland, boring or consciously contrived to make an obvious statement.
After I’d bought the necklace and was wearing it, I
recommended Faris to a customer who was looking for a gift for her sister. The
customer seemed indignant that I would suggest anything from the pop-up shop,
saying “my sister only wears diamonds. She only wears REAL jewelry”. Of course
this immediately conjured up images of ugly, ornate, traditional, outrageously
expensive diamond jewelry, the sole purpose of which is to flaunt the wealth of
a woman’s male caretaker. This, of course, opened the worm-box question of what
“real” anything is. Is it real only if it costs someone’s life savings? Is it
real only if it conforms to the exact image of what one has been taught to
expect? Is it real only if it consists entirely of natural materials? Is it
real only if it is manufactured by a large corporation and sold in a large
retail store? Is anything real if you make it yourself, or does the fact that it is made by someone else lend a stamp of authenticity to it even if you could make something better? This question is just as valid for perfume as jewelry, so it made
me wonder what this woman would consider “real perfume” – what would her sister
wear?
The second phase of considering the whole concept of
simplicity came when I read a review of my new fragrance, Woodcut”, in which
the reviewer wrote, “Radical in its seeming simplicity ...”. I found these
words to be some of the most flattering that he could possibly have written,
because “seeming simplicity” is one of the hardest tricks of any trade. Doing
simplicity well is much harder than doing ornate. Playing a simple Mozart piece well is much harder to do than playing a fast piece with big, crashing chords.
There’s some sort of sweet spot where things are so simple that they’re
boring - a solid white canvas posing as
art simply because of its price tag, or the “solichem” fragrances like ambroxan
and Iso E that have been exploited for a while in the name of trendiness. At the
other end of the spectrum are the overly complex creations that end up being
just plain ugly. This is especially a danger in making natural perfumes,
because mixed materials can quickly create a “muddy” result.
Then there’s the other dimension of crude versus polished.
Sometimes crude can be beautiful, as in the case of natural, found objects that
are displayed as is. Other times, it simply looks (or smells) like an inexpert
or bungled job. At the polished end of the spectrum are creations that are so
contrived from the outset as to be embarrassingly obvious in their cleverness.
We all walk a fine line between the extremes, and everyone’s sweet spot at the intersection of all these dimensions is in a
slightly different place.
What’s particularly interesting is the observation of how
often we as artists unconsciously make a statement and don’t realize it until
afterwards. I didn’t create Woodcut with the idea of making an environmental
statement, but when I finally ended up writing a description of it, I realized
that it did make a strong statement. Einsof, in writing about it in his review,
amplified the statement and made me realize some things that I hadn’t thought
of myself.
Here are my questions for you: What "real" perfume would you equate
to “only wearing diamonds”? What is your take on the issue of simplicity vs
complexity and “real” vs “not real”?
Leave a comment and be entered in a drawing for a travel
spray of Woodcut.
[Necklace and madrone photos are mine; diamond ring and plastic cuckoo clock photos are from Wikimedia]
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