I pride myself on my memory, but this photograph contains three irritating gaps. For the life of me, I can’t be sure when I first smelled Jicky, where I bought this perfume bottle, or what kind of dinosaur this is.

My first bottle of Jicky was only seven or eight years ago, but I smelled it long before. *Someone* wore it. So meeting this Guerlain classic again prompted one of those sweet rushes of recognition and yes, but it wasn’t followed up by the details. It must have been a stranger, a chance meeting with someone who struck me as fabulous, fascinating, but I can’t put a name, a face, an outfit, or even a city to them. Just that beautiful citrus herbal lavender over dirty warm vanilla, and a fleeting impression of a smiling tiger.

The modern version has a bright opening; this 1930s vintage has been transposed down an octave or two. There’s no glass-reverberating soprano in its bergamot, but a clear mellow tenor over a warm baritone purr of old civet. The sort of voice that drops, and you know you are in all kinds of thrilling trouble.

I think I bought this little cut glass and silver bottle at an antiques stall in Preston market while earning lousy money stamping numbers on files in a government office the summer after I left school. I reclaimed it when I found it hidden among my mother’s stuff after she died. Turns out she’d lifted this small treasure along with my pearls from my college room. For decades I’d felt guilty about my careless loss, now I’m just sad to have found yet another example of her petty cruelties. It’s good to finally reconsecrate this bottle with kindness and beauty, using it to house an incredibly generous gift from @bgirlrhapsody (thank you! thank you!).

Don’t worry, the ground glass stopper has proved itself against evaporation before.

Oh, and I did my research: the dino is an animantarx ramaljonesi, or “living citadel”. Just one example of this Cretaceous herbivore tank has been found so far, in the Cedar Mountain Formation in the western U.S. Fitting company, perhaps, for something so longlasting, rare, and special as this Jicky.

originally posted 2 July 2019