May 6, 2020. Sorry for the hiatus. I’ve got a freelance editing job, and it kind of blew up in the last few days. I think it’ll be more manageable going forward. Fingers crossed, anyhow. A bit overwhelmed at the prospect of doing a news recap—I think the upshot is that we are all going to die, but at least we’ll have had haircuts when we do. I haven’t seen Kentucky’s Governor Andy in days, and I miss him.

And today I am wearing Misia eau de parfum by Chanel.

Once again I closed my eyes, reached into the Les Exclusifs (see reviews for Bois des Iles, No. 18, No. 22, and Bel Respiro), and this time I came up with Misia, one I hadn’t yet tried and knew nothing about. It’s always nice when a fragrance has a backstory to write about, and, my goodness, does Misia have one. Misia was released in 2015 as an eau de toilette and rereleased as an eau de parfum in 2016. It was composed by Oliver Polge, son of Jacques Polge, Chanel’s longtime in-house perfumer and nose behind many in the Les Exclusifs line. All the Les Exclusifs have names that are significant to the life of Mlle. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, and if I were on the marketing team working on the line, I’d have held up a finger in the meeting where they decided to name this one and asked, “Are we…sure about this?” Here’s what the Chanel website says about Misia: “Named for the art patron Misia Sert, Gabrielle Chanels [sic] confidante. Evoking the air of a theater backstage, this exquisite scent features a feminine blend of May Rose and Violet, intertwined with a hint of leather. A truly inspired and distinctive creation.” (The second finger I would have raised in that meeting would have been over the word “confidante,” as we shall see). Misia Sert was a Russia-born pianist and, indeed, an art patron, who conducted a popular Parisian salon in the late nineteenth century and posed for Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. She met Chanel in 1917, and they became very close—as Wikipedia describes “Both women, convent bred, maintained a friendship of shared interests, confidences [again!] and drug use.” Most sources I read say that they were likely sleeping together and were definitely shooting up morphine together, and among the things the Nazi-collaborating/-banging Chanel confided in Sert were her business plans—during the damn occupation of France—with her Gestapo lover, Hans Günther von Dincklage, who was a senior intelligence officer reporting directly to Goebbels. Chanel’s perfumery business, Parfums Chanel, had been funded by Jewish businessmen Pierre and Paul Wertheimerin 1924, with Chanel herself retaining a ten percent interest in the company in exchange for licensing her name. She spent years trying to get control of the company, and when the Nazis imposed their Aryanization laws on France, she and von Dincklage attempted to use them to seize the perfume company from the Wertheimer brothers, who had fled to New York in 1940. As Hal Vaughn wrote in his book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War, Chanel and von Dinklage “calculated that if Hitler prevailed…Chanel would control an Aryanized Chanel No. 5 perfume company. The rewards to her would be immeasurable.” They ultimately failed, as the Wertheimers had foreseen this possibility and taken steps to prevent it. Still, the Nazis awarded Chanel wartime profits from the sale of her perfumes, making her incredibly wealthy. In 1941, she disclosed the whole plan to her “confidante,” Sert, who, okay, was not specifically a virulent anti-Semitic, Gestapo-fucking German agent, but apparently she didn’t have any kind of problem with it either, as she remained close to Chanel for the rest of her life. According to Newsweek, “Late in life, going blind and addicted to morphine, Misia made drug runs to Switzerland with Chanel…When she died in Paris in 1950, Chanel laid out her body on a bed of flowers, a work of art at the end.” Fragrance blogger Kafkaesque is so affronted by the name that they could barely write a review of the fragrance itself: “paying tribute to Misia Sert, the woman Coco would shoot up with? What’s next, an Exclusif for men called “Hans Günther” or “von Dincklage”? How about naming the next one “Abwehr,” for the Nazi military intelligence spy agency that employed her? Or “Bendor,” for the infamous, raging anti-Semite, pro-Nazi duke that she had a long relationship with? Misia Sert, indeed. Pah.”

Still, Kafkaesque pulls through, and says, “On a purely technical basis, Misia is done very, very well, demonstrating a masterful balance in the notes and in the scent’s overall vibe that impressed me.” Victoria Frolova stays out of the sordid history behind the name and describes it thus: “Imagine a vintage silk purse that still holds the aroma of violet bonbons, rose scented lipstick and rice powder. This, in a phrase, is Misia. Tender and romantic, the fragrance settles on skin in a soft powdery layer.” Luca Turin, always already completely out of fucks to give, gives it four stars and reports that “it smells good. In the broader context of modern perfumery, this is not a given, rather something to be grateful for.”

Fragrantica lists these notes for Misia:

Top: Aldehydes, lychee

Heart: Turkish rose, Grasse rose, raspberry, peach

Base: Leather, tonka, orris, violet, amber, vanilla, powdery notes

I’ve been trying to find time to write about Misia since Sunday, so I have actually worn it three days in a row, giving me much more time with it before sitting down to type than I get with most fragrances that are brand-new to me. I was expecting at least a version of the classic Chanel opening—a punch of citrusy aldehydes that sets the tone for the experience, a little like having Quentin Tarantino’s or David Lynch’s name appear the opening credits of a movie and knowing what you’re in for. It wasn’t there at all—I don’t know what Fragrantica is talking about. Instead it is very violet-forward, in a way that, as many reviewers have noted, does smell like vintage lipstick (Misia is also the name of an orangey red shade of Chanel’s Rouge Coco lipstick). It evolves to add a strong rose note, reminiscent of, but much nicer than, Frédéric Malle’s Lipstick Rose. Towards the end of its life it smells uncannily like my Aunt Debbie, which is to say that it smells uncannily like Chanel No. 5 a few hours after it’s applied—which is the part of Chanel No. 5 I actually like. All in all, I like Misia a lot and will get some use out of this little vial, though I don’t find it compelling enough to shell out $200 for the full 2.5 ounces, even if that money will go to Pierre and Paul Wertheimer’s descendants, who, despite Mademoiselle’s best efforts, now own the Chanel empire in its entirety. —Lisa Whipple