Hello, August. Happy August? Well, August. Our temps are still lower which makes life a lot easier. I’m re-entering less sugar (no sugar just won’t work right now). A fair amount of ice cream needed to be consumed when temps were … hard.
The back door has been open and I’ve welcomed butterflies, bees and yesterday an enormous (the biggest I’ve ever seen) dragon fly. Like 3 inches long. Sometimes the creatures come in, do a tour round the kitchen and leave. Sometimes, they get unsettled, can’t find their way out and need assistance. I wonder if they register human help.
Interestingly, a little coffee cart has popped up in the church carpark. Like what we really needed was a local place to get iced drinks – and then could sit at café tables or drag chairs into the shade. People actually come, get a coffee and stay to chat. It’s nice. It’s open around three days a week, but not Sundays, because people still do church here.
I noticed I had been rotating between different tuberose perfumes (along with Halston) and then when I mentioned wearing Fracas in a comment Tom wondered if I was planning to write about it. Well, no, but the two other posts I am playing with aren’t near done yet so… why not? Let’s talk, fairly briefly, about Fracas.
I’ll say straight off that it has taken me a looooong time to ‘get’ this perfume. Like, I think, three decades. I’ve tried it over and over in various places at various times and always felt sort of no, not me. I own different tuberoses (NVC Eshal, Divine, FM Carnal Flower, Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle in different sizes) and they tend to be in heavy rotation. I love tuberoses as flowers and used to buy stems at a street stall in Covent Garden, the only place I found them when I lived in London.
So, what finally shifted things? Well, at the very end of Portia and my mega sniff in London several years ago, after so much smelling and an afternoon tea, we did one more go-round in the Harvey Nicks perfume hall and I think one of the last things I tried was Fracas yet again. I’m not sure why. I know Portia made a comment about it which made me think ‘oh, just one more go’. Immediate response was still a no.
But, I came home after the trip up country and couldn’t get the fragrance out of my head. I mean I have a load of other tuberoses. I should like this, yes … So, I bought a sample. And it sat there, on my desk, forlornly watching as everything else got used.
Then, one day, I decided to try it yet again and that was the trick. Three decades lucky? I don’t need a bottle at the moment but that could change.
As noted from above, I have big tuberoses, loud tuberoses, idiosyncratic tuberoses. Where does Fracas fit in this?
This has a huge following. Mostly by women with outsized postures. Here, fashionista and muse the now gone Isabella Blow bathed in it. It was always posed that you either got Fracas or you didn’t.
Released in 1948, with Germaine Cellier as the nose, I imagine this was sort of shocking at the time – a post WW2 bit of a fragrance bombshell.
Fracas, as has been noted numerous times, means big noise, chaotic happening, etc.
Notes include peach, orange blossom, hyacinth, green leaves, Mandarin orange, bergamot, tuberose, jasmine, gardenia, osmanthus, narcissus, lily-of-the-valley, carnation, white iris, violet root, coriander, rose geranium, rose, musk, sandalwood, amber, oakmoss, vetiver and cedar. I think there’s a lot of sleight of hand in there too. I expect it’s been reformulated mightily since release.
On me, it starts rooty soft white flowers, and I do get the Mandarin. And the green leaves, interestingly. The middle bit is white flowers but rough (an interesting thought) and an undercurrent of dirt (both dirt as in soil and dirty as in pongy). The drydown feels like the fragrances has taken a deep, relaxed breath. That may be because my sample has been sitting around for a while or my usual proviso that perhaps my low body temp changes things. But, I get tuberose and sandalwood and not much else. Soft, feathery.
There’s no menthol and no rubber.
The bottle, while very simple, seems iconic to me and very tactile. Sadly, I couldn’t find a copy on the net to use here. Wiki Parfums is doing something weird here about wanting more info before I can use the site now and I am not sure I want to offer more info. So, that’s why odd pics on this post.
Here, it can be had for £100 for 50ml. And probably less if one looked around. So, not cheap but not stupid money.
There are lots of posts on Posse about it if you do a search. Going back a long while.
This one still perplexes me a bit for reasons I don’t understand. Maybe others have thought on why.
Currently, I am happy with my sample. I am glad I finally somewhat ‘get’ Fracas. Maybe I’ll invest in a bottle eventually… Oh, and I used to own Bandit, which I loved. Not sure why I never replaced the bottle when I finished it.
Pics: pexels, wiki, mine
Oh, I love Fracas right now, in the heat! Worn strategically, not a spritz as I’m off to the gym, but boy does it bloom outside when it’s warm. It’s not a friendly, anytime fragrance, but when I want it there is nothing else that will do.
That’s an interesting way to pose it: not a friendly, anytime fragrance.
I wear the living daylights out of Fracas! Body wash, bar soap, body lotion, dusting powder ( vintage- oh, so glam!!!) and scads of perfume.
At home.
By myself.
So I don’t get cordoned off as a potential hazmat site!
When I do wear it in public I am much more careful with the application- the dusting powder alone can be smelled from Jupiter!
But oh, so glorious.
It always reminds me of those blowsy, blonde widows in murder mysteries, set in 1930s England ( like Ermentrude Fanshawe Carter in No Wind of Blame by Georgette Heyer. Comfortable, well- upholstered, good hearted, with vestiges of their showgirl roots
I think the version I have in my sample is actually quieter than what you describe. or, it is just quieter on my skin.
Or… you don’t wear enough of it to choke a rhino!
Fracas was one of my buys from Jenners of Edinburgh. It was a fly by sniff & that opening grabbed my card & offered it to the SA without my consent I swear!
In the train home I ponged of grubby dancer chewing Hubba Bubba. Sweaty bubblegum. Fracas never even apologised for holding me to ransom.
In the end she went in the emergency fire sale to pay the eldest’s rent.
Whilst Madonna’s TorD is supposed to be a dupe from the memories of her mom, I find it easier to wear. Less attitude! I know Madge doing something less challenging. Difficult to compute.
Germaine Cellier makes Madonna look like Ann Blythe. (and I love Madge..)
Ah, those times when your purse knows better than your brain.
I love this and have a bottle- which I spritz on on cold winter nights. I wouldn’t wear it out.
I read somewhere that both this and Bandit (also by our sister Germaine) were created out of then commercially available bases that made reformulation a pain when they were no longer available. I would imagine that the original, worn in an earlier era where manically erasing anything resembling a natural body smell wasn’t so prevalent would take your head off if you were trapped in an elevator with it. I’ve often thought that Fracas was THE scent that brought on office scent bans.
I may have to go put some on right now..
If you wore it out, Tom, you’d have a trail of women nipping at your nether parts!!! !!! Remember when Neil Morris had me put El O in Fracas? The good and true women of this little burg were circling like sharks!
This doesn’t call out to me the way some of my other perfumes do. I am glad I have it — and maybe one day it will go, come on, get a bottle. But, not yet.
I wore Fracas in college when a girl on my hall gave me her large bottle. She was sick of it. I knew nothing about its notes or its reputation at the time. My favorite part was the icy green opening top notes of LotV and hyacinth. The actual middle tuberose part was not as fun to me, and in later years I found it too much for me. As my migraines got worse and more frequent, my ability to wear big bombastic white flowers or other strong notes disappeared. Even today I still love those opening notes. I also loved the black and fuchsia packaging.
The opening on mine is so good as well. I’m also intrigued by the very muted drydown. A good perfume for bedtime but you do need to wade through the rest of it to get there.
Heya Cinnamon,
That day was completely epic! The Harvey Nichs SA was such a handsome dude.
Fracas seems to skew bubble gum on me. I love it.
There are a vintage extrait and a modern EdP here. Both of which get irregular wears at different times.
Glad you finally landed happily with Fracas.
Portia xx
OMG!!! I’ll bet you wear the living SNOT! outta Fracas, Portia!!!
HA! Thanks Musette. I do like it (a lot) but TBH when I’m feeling BWF it’s usually Truth or Dare and Blonde that get the gong.
Portia xx
What is the extract like?
I would love to do another sniffa but maybe Paris and going to some of the independent shops (Nose, Sens Unique, even Jovoy) with cafe stops in between.
The extrait is so thick and rich it’s like wearing perfume treacle. It comes in a travel spray set but I use one of the spare bottles as a dab. It’s just too overwhelming spritzed.
That sounds like a plan. I do love wandering Paris.