Shelley Waddington En Voyage Perfumes Frida / La Bruja

)

by: Ida Meister

While I confess to loving Lila Downs' and Salma Hayek's far more raw and elemental vocalizations of this popular Mexican folksong, how could I pass up rare footage ofFrida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, La Casa Azul?

Especially when the purpose is purely to serve the Muse: painter, revolutionary, feminist and fiercely potent Frida Kahlo, the larger-than-life inspiratrice of Shelley Waddington's brilliant and singular new fragrance?

No way.

I don't like to bandy about terms like brilliance and genius. It makes me exceedingly uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I feel so strongly that this fascinating perfume is sublimely odd, animalic, and honest—that I feel awed.

It's not going to be loved by the masses, perhaps—or even understood. Nor need it be; as any form of art or beauty lies in the eye/heart/soul of the beholder, so does appreciation of Frida: her art, her tempestuous and tortured beautiful life, her conflicts and highly self-critical gaze.  Her eponymous perfume. It may be likened to a violent highway accident or tragedy; one finds it difficult to look away, despite our savage emotions. It is a truly visceral perfume which gnaws at us and will not relent until we submit. We find ourselves wedged between its jaws.

And yet, we want to be.

Frida the perfume is a cacaphony of contrasts which truly works.

When Shelley states clearly that her intention is to capture the jolie-laide iconicism which is Frida, she means it. Every heaving, sweating, heavy-maned aspect of her. Frida the broken, the perpetually suffering [St. Lidwina of Schiedam would have been a good patron saint for her—the saint to petition when plagued with ongoing, relentless suffering], the untamed and restless soul who is passionate about everything. Her faithless husband, renowned painter and muralist Diego Rivera [twice her age, who betrayed her with her own younger sister Cristina; she married him twice], her beloved Leon Trotsky, multiple other lovers both male and female [including the wondrous singer, Chavela Vargas, who sings in the Julie Taymor film about her life].

Her vivid paintings reveal her own sense of unloveliness: the unibrow, the fearless unvarnished rebelliousness in self-portraiture. Unapologetic and flawed, she submits to her own eye and bloomingly depicts her love of home, of the natural world of plant and animal. Her own pleasure taken freely in a life of unending physical and emotional pain: so many surgeries which availed her of a poverty of relief [the result of a childhood bus accident], the fallout of which would follow her until her passing at age 47. Some say she died of pulmonary embolism; others suspect that it was a narcotic overdose and intentional. Whatever the cause, her cremated remains are ensconced in a pre-Columbian urn in her beloved Casa Azul in Coyoacán, now a museum filled with her personal artifacts and artwork.

“As I made this fragrance, I had to even think about Frida's blood and her ever-present casts and bandages,” Shelley informs us.

We can smell them. We can smell the limpid, watery fruits of her garden, her plants, her flowers. Her hibiscus lurking within lush tresses so often plaited in a coronet [a very German style, by the way; Frida's father was born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in Pforzheim, Germany]; the earth itself shimmers with heat, as does the air which surrounds her, close and intimate.

Tuberose is such a sacred/profane presence in Mexico, and much loved. Copal resin is part of ancient ceremony, melding with the church incenses so familiar in a predominantly Catholic country. We have ubiquitous tobacco—tobacco in cigarettes, cigars, often accompanied by strong drink, fervent discussion, dancing late into the night. Bar brawls. Domestic quarrels. Love matches.

Frida is never dry, it hums with a moist fecundity of the humours. It exists in the fluids of the body, our combined loving and malicious humanity with all its attendant deficiencies and shortcomings. Shelley asserts that she has used “a very high percentage of pure extraits, natural materials, and proprietary blends;” we don't need convincing. Our noses are well-aware and attuned to this evolving etude of resounding complexity, and we are grateful for that rare opportunity to smell the world of Frida via Shelley's nose. <3   Top notes: fruits, herbs and leaves of Frida's Garden. Agave. Green pepper. Heart notes: tuberose, hibiscus, cactus flower Base notes: light woods, sugar, oak moss, aldehydes, myrrh, frankincense, copal, tobacco accord, sexual animalic notes, musk, amber

Frida remarked of herself: “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best. I was born a bitch. I was born a painter.”