Aromascope

Ghosts And Phantoms

By Donna Hathaway

This is about two fragrances I wish I could review and then tell you where to get them – but they are nowhere to be found, or are impossible to obtain even if they are technically still available, or are otherwise out of reach for mere mortals like me.

I have in my possession a tiny sample, nearly gone, of a limited edition perfume, Ghost Deepest Night, originally released in 2002. This is not to be confused with Ghost Deep Night, which can still be bought on discounter sites. I ran across a description of it a couple of years ago in my ramblings through the various online merchants’ sites, and I knew when I read about it that I had to have it. It seemed to be the closest thing yet to my long-departed Holy Grail, Jean LaPorte’s L’Eau des Merveilleuses, truly a marvel of composition, a symphony of mango and vanilla. (Before you who fear fruit and vanilla together wonder why that would be a good thing, please remember that Jean LaPorte discontinued his eponymous line to create L’Artisan, and then moved on to found Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier. Jean LaPorte does not create cheap fruity-florals. Ever. Sadly, the original LaPorte scents did not continue on when this happened, a great loss in my opinion.) When I first smelled this in a boutique, I thought it was the sexiest fragrance I had ever smelled. The vanilla was dark and complex, dangerous even, and not in the least foody. The mango was not the watery, fleeting top note found in so many fragrances today, from drugstore body wash to mainstream designer perfume. No, it was the buttery, seductive, perfumed living fruit, fleshy and seductive. I wanted to wear it, roll around in it and devour it, all at the same time. I felt like a different person when I wore this perfume. For a while it was my signature scent, back when I believed in such things. Then it was just…gone.

Anyway, since I could no longer find it, some years later I was delighted to discover that Ghost had come up with a mango and vanilla fragrance, with the addition of “jungle” notes, hence the name. I had not known much about Ghost, a fashion and fragrance line that has never really caught on in the U.S. in a big way. (Their Deep Night from 2001 also has vanilla, but the fruit notes are apricot and peach – nice, but no match for mango in my opinion).

Many people in the U.S. don’t know this, but the most popular fruit in the world is the mango. Grown in the tropics and warmest sub-tropics, it comes in hundreds of varieties, and the ones we have been accustomed to in the stores, good as they may be, are mere shadows (ghosts, if you will), of what they can be, as the very best ones are never sent out of their countries of origin due to various factors, including trade restrictions and the fact that they simply cannot be shipped, being too fragile and soft. A perfect mango, fragrant and silky, is the finest fruit I can imagine eating. The difference between a stringy, fibrous ‘Tommy Atkins’ supermarket mango and the real thing is like the difference between freshly squeezed orange juice and Tang®. Another thing many people are unaware of is that they are related to cashew nuts, and also poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac, source of the hellishly irritating volatile oil urushiol, and some sensitive people cannot eat them due to allergic reactions. Usually this is only a burning around the lips, like when you eat too much raw pineapple, but it can be more serious. (Things that have a little bit of “sinister” in them always intrigue me, and fortunately I can eat all the mangoes I want with no trouble.) The fact that mangoes contain tiny amounts of the irritant may explain why they are so addictive.

So what is Deepest Night like? At first, it seems to be a simple mango and vanilla scent, with the vanilla just a bit sweeter at first than the L’Eau des Merveilleuses vanilla note. The mango is plump and juicy, though not quite as prominent. Thankfully, it is definitely not the watery travesty I was dreading. It is not as “big” a fragrance as the other, which could be a good thing under some circumstances. The Jean LaPorte stuff could take over the whole room; it was exhilarating and expansive, almost dizzyingly heady. Deepest Night is quieter, more secretive, and aptly named. As it develops the vanilla becomes darker and less sweet and more like what I remember of the old LaPorte perfume, or like the much-lamented older Comptoir Sud Pacifique vanilla was. (I bought the original version of CSP Tiare several times, and loved every minute of wearing it.) There is a leafy greenness to this fragrance as well, just peeking out from the lushness. A hint of spice – my favorite cardamom as far as I can tell, due to an almost complete lack of available information on this perfume – rounds out the sumptuous feel of this scent as it dries down. It does not have the sillage of the LaPorte but stays close to the skin, like your own seductive secret, waiting for someone to come closer…

Ghost has come out with a whole haunted house full of “special editions” like Summer Dream, Sheer Summer, Summer Flirt, Anticipation, Serenity, et cetera, and I am sure they are all very nice, but I want to go back to the jungle. When I smell Deepest Night, I can hear the rustling of unseen things in the undergrowth and feel the sultry air of a tropical night. Take me away!

Image source: “Mango II” by Jeanne-Marie Derrick, West Indian Art Studio, jeanne-marie.com; escentual.co.uk

14 comments June 26th, 2007