My Perfume Wardrobe: Frederic Malle’s French Lover
I’ve always had nicknames for the men in my life. In no particular order of importance or dates, there was The XX, Handsome, Moneybags, Prince Charming, Love of My Life, Man of My Dreams, The Good Doctor, Type A, and the fittingly minimalist Boyfriend, to name a few. It was as if, in burying their given names with the wife-and-girlfriend skeletons in their closets, I could re-stamp their birth certificate and write my name in the blank, “The Fated Love of Your Life.” I could create them as I wanted them to be, without the baggage of a past, without the fears and hurts that made some of them stumble, and others to fall.
Their nicknames were an aspiration I hoped they all would live up to, like anointing someone with a blessing or wishing upon the star you see in them. The Love of My Life would last a lifetime. The XX, who was an ex and then an ex-ex, would never let me go again. Handsome would stay handsome in my eyes forever, and Moneybags would, of course, lavish me with all things luxury. Nicknames can, in fact, tell more about the person who created them than the person themselves. They are the labels we adhere to people in our attempt to grow the tiny grain of truth we see in them. We drench it with hopewater and dreamrain, protect it from hurricane winds of change, and chant its name over and over. Sometimes it grows, and other times it shrivels to a crackle.
One of the nicknames I have never bestowed on anyone is French Lover. The nickname itself reeks of ephemerality and obscurity which don’t appeal to me, and conjures images of hidden trysts and secret hideouts which don’t put me front and center in the man’s life. But for others, taking a French Lover means their dream reel has become real. Books and movies alike regale the tales of American and French women empowered and rebirthed by their dalliances with French lovers. Even amongst themselves, the French revel in the idea, if not the consummation, of having a lover. They view the infamous “cinq à sept,” which is the 5-7 o’clock timeframe when the French meet their lovers before going home to their families, like the filling in macarons. It’s where all the flavor is. The rest of their lives may be brittle, cracking outer biscuits that hold their world in place but they also serve to sandwich the hidden lusciousness. They reason that, while the outer layers are colorful and shiny, there’s nothing without exciting the palate by adding the filling.
Not all cinq à sept’s involve married men or women. It can be single lovers who enjoy “libertine relationships” (so much nicer than the American “fuck buddy” term, no?) or harried parents who need a little alone time away from the kids. In these situations, your French Lover can also be your husband or boyfriend, and for those two hours, the sexual essence of your relationship crystallizes in passion.
The name French Lover carries so many stereotypical connotations that it seems unlikely that any French man could live up to the expectations. Still, as one man told me, “French girls want a man who has a good job, someone she can show off to her friends, and who is good in bed.” French girls simply expect good sex, along with all the requisite romance and passion that comes along with it. The key word here is “expect,” not “hope for.”
When I saw the row of cherry red boxes lined up in the Frederic Malle parfumerie on the Rue de Grenelle, my eyes immediately descended upon French Lover. In the minimalist, sterilized surroundings of the store, it didn’t strike me as clichéd, or dripping in Hollywood dreams or expatriot fantasies. The medium is the message, and Frederic Malle was saying that French Lover, in his terms, meant cold, hard facts. This was the French Lover of the cinq à sept, with its predetermined schedule, blatant sexuality and expectation of quality.
It has been said that the name French Lover was changed to Bois d’Orage for distribution in the States due to Frederic Malle’s concern for the political climate at the time (it was launched around the time “French Fries” were fleetingly referred to as “Freedom Fries” by political neanderthals). It remains Bois d’Orage, and is marketed there as Frederic Malle’s first male fragrance: “Pierre Bourdon (the perfumer), in an attempt to create the ultimate man’s scent, linked angelica to some of its natural complements such as cedar wood and vetiver. He then refined this accord with iris from Florence, spiced it up with pimento and galbanum, and linked it to a mix of patchouli, incense and musks that generated this unusual vegetal animality. Modern, eternal and refined Bois d’Orage serves a confident virility.”
At the Frederic Malle store, French Lover did not sit apart from the other fragrances, screaming “I’m for men.” In fact, it never occurred to me that it was a men’s fragrance until I read about it online. French Lover? Wouldn’t it make more sense that French Lover would be a woman’s fragrance, as in, “This is what you wear to attract a French Lover”? But then, I started wearing it…
French Lover is the fragrance of the post-cinq à sept. It’s what I want to smell like at 7:05, when I’ve stolen my lover’s t-shirt and I’m walking home. It’s his scent surrounding me, seeping into my thoughts and making me wonder when I’ll see him again. It smells of tenderness and kindness, masculinity and strength. It’s not the French Lover of dreams, with a silly nickname that makes me “hope for” a fantasy that doesn’t exist or a relationship that won’t end. It’s the scent of a real man, all warm skin and muscles, and he’s rubbed against me, rubbed off on me. We’ve blended together, and…
I’m wearing French Lover, and He’s wearing me.
