Shalimar by Guerlain
Claudia Azalde on her grandmother's signature scent
Welcome back to Journal Olfactif, Health Gossip’s olfactory arm. Today, artist + writer Claudia Azalde offers an ode to her grandmother’s signature scent — named after the Persian Gardens of Shalimar.
Shalimar by Guerlain
A string of blue-toned saltwater pearls are being pulverized by the hooves of a miniature golden pony trotting along the lip of a giant clam shell. A beautiful song that hasn’t been heard for fifty years emerges from a lucite music box; a serenade played by a bevy of marzipan harps. They enter a perfectly made-up mouth and slide right down the cavity of her swan neck. The chamber is warm, with a cream-colored love seat covered in pin-tucked sateen cushions the color of champagne and teddy bears. A glass orb hangs suspended in the middle of the room on a gold chain, the bottom of it covered with the silkiest mink you’ve ever seen. It is a scent with an aura of established poise. Something to wear if you are all dressed up and you know what you want.
My grandmother’s perfume collection was an object of intense fascination for me; as a child, I would stare at her perfume bottles for what felt like hours. She had two blown glass bottles on her sink, one baby pink and one baby blue, with tall stems and tasseled atomizer bulbs. On a display shelf were rows of tiny decorative bottles from all of the big players — Guerlain, Chanel, Yves St Laurent, Kenzo. There were Jean Paul Gaultier bottles shaped like women, a vintage Avon bottle shaped like a head of lettuce, the classic Lou Lou by Cacharel in its opaque plastic sky blue and deep red bottle. I don’t think I was very impressed by the way they smelled but rather the objects themselves, relics of 80s decadence. When my grandmother fell ill and the house began to get cleared out, all of the perfume was given to me. (Unfortunately, some of their aura might have been lost in this change of ownership.) I can still picture them on the shelf in the large pastel pink bathroom, standing on my tippy toes to catch a glimpse.
