Recommended Reading: Custom Scents for Dead Celebs

If you skip all the vanilla-is-sexy-talk and hidden-advertising of some new celebrity scents, and go straight to the very bottom of this article, you will find a few ideas that famous noses have come up with in response to Marian Bendeth request to "If they could choose any deceased personality and create a custom blend for that person".

While I had hard time connecting to most of the ideas brought up by these noses (Marlene Ditrich wearing a woody floral with strawberries, and an aquatic floral for Marie Antoinette!), one idea particularly caught my attention - Maurice Roucel brief for Julius Caesar's fragrance:

"(Julius Caesar) was a true sportsman overseeing the Olympic Games (...) I would want this to be the smell of a winner (...) I feel the Mediterranean Sea and the Olympic Games, where laurel-leaf and olive-leaf crowns were handed to the winners as symbols of masculinity(...) It would be an aromatic fragrance centred around an essential note of laurel leaf. Then I would add outdoorsy notes based around woody scents -- chypre (sandalwood), oak-moss, fougere (fern-like) -- with touches of spicy, herbal and fresh essential notes of rosemary, basil, thyme, hyssop and artemisia".

Perhaps I am too biased, being a natural perfumer, to understand the rationale behind using aquatic notes for a fragrance for a lady who wore wigs as high as her palace, and has been the one to dictate fashion trends, including wearing plenty of violet, orris and musk.

Perhaps I also need to hear more specific notes in order to fully understand how a scent will smell, rather than just fragrance categories. To me, the particular notes make all the difference in terms of being able to smell a scent in my imagination...

I would love to hear what you thought of those briefs, and especially - what do you think of the idea of Jesus wearing a powdery floral comprising of heliotrope, violet, orris and woods (also Maurice Roucel's idea, which most likely will mean that I would wear this perfume, regardless of my religious views or non-views).