Sweet smell of youth

Can a scent make you smell younger,  or does your good old favourite spray give your age away?  This vexing question occurred to Crone as she sniffed new versions of grand old classics currently gracing beauty counters now. 

Thanks to a generous puthering of iris, Chanel No.19 Poudré is a softer and more, well…powdery version of the 1971 original.  Ah, 1971.  Biba,  loons (remember falling over those ludicrous, flapping 22 inch flares?) and the sad demise of Coco Chanel, just months after her 87’th birthday the previous year. 

A green and gamine chypre, Chanel No.19 (Mlle Coco was born on 19^th August) became the bra-burning kid sister to grown-up aldehydic floral No.5.  Nothing sissy about this - Gauloises-puffing intellectuals loved No.19  for its bracing, tomboyish edge. It seems an irony then, that this pioneering ‘youth scent’ should be powdered down for a post-post feminist generation raised on amorphous  fruity florals. But Crone reluctantly admits that pumping up the iris (powdery bit) has put No.19 back on trend in a beautifully suave, easy-on-the-nose kind of way

Around the same time as No.19’s launch, Crone discovered Guerlain’s magnificent oriental, Shalimar.  Created in 1925, the year of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts (Art Deco) in Paris, exotic Shalimar went perfectly with the ‘20s and ‘30s frocks Crone snapped up from Oxfam. (Can’t get them for love nor money, not even on Portobello these days!).  Crone’s beau de jour never failed to point out that the billows of vanilla reminded him of custard powder.  (Was she apple crumble of his eye? She didn’t stick around long enough to find out). Yet according to Guerlain nose Thierry Wasser, his 17-year-old neice found the original scent intimidating. Fair enough, beneath vanilla’s sweetness lurks a darker, more hormonal vibe.  Vanilla is, after all, an aphrodisiac - Jacques Guerlain used to say that he made Shalimar like an outrageously low-cut dress.  Wasser’s redesign, Shalimar Initial, is simpler, lighter, a little bit fruity and even more powdery.  It’s that iris riff again.

So the big question. If we loved the originals, will we embrace these new versions too? It’s been 85 years since the first Shalimar and 40 since No.19. During that time, many of the original ingredients used have now been restricted or banned.  So no, it’s not your hormones or failing sense of smell - your old favourite fragrance is almost certainly not what it once was.  Times have changed, too - and brighter, more vibrant new ingredients have given many old classics a new lease of life.  So can your scent make you smell  younger?  It’s worth a go…

• Chanel No.19 Poudré, 50ml Eau de Parfum, £61 available nationwide from July 15^th 

• Guerlain Shalimar Initial, 40ml Eau de Parfum, £37 available nationwide from August 1^st 

Liz accepts a lift?

Things are looking up for Liz. Think she's been photoshopped, too? 

Well, slap my thighs - 52 year-old Liz Jones has gone and had a facelift.  Gone is the familiar cat butt  scowl. Mooning out from today’s Daily Wail like a hyperventilating chipmunk are her newly wide eyes and preternaturally plumped skin. All courtesy of blepharoplasty, dermaroller, Botox and fillers, not to mention the lift itself.  Hmmm.  Let me get my calculator.  So that’ll be not a lot of change from £6,000, at my purposely conservative estimate.  That’s if she paid for all of it herself.  

For while she’s grease-lightening quick to bemoan the thousands she’s wasted on anti-ageing skincare -  ‘I used to spend £400 a month on creams and facials and nothing worked’ she trills - she’s curiously schtum about the price tag on her new improved fizz. And while she’s wagging a nibbled finger at the beauty editors she accuses of colluding with big name brands in the interests of advertising, Crone would love to learn how such a life-affirming newspaper feature actually came to pass.  Has Jones selflessly laid down her own flesh for a story?

But hey, that’s what she does.  Remember, this is the woman who sacrificed her marriage in the interests of truth and integrity and now has only four-legged friends to pay attention to her isolation, poverty, anorexia... Her emotional auto-evisceration is surely a lesson to us all. 

Don’t get me wrong, Crone’s all for sharing experience - it’s precisely what she’s done for the past 40 years.  Experience has, in fact, taught her that women who ‘do’ surgery rarely look younger, just tense and miserable about their age.  Surgery’s a high-maintenance programme. Liz Jones has now embarked on a costly process of Botox and filler top-ups which in time, may prove as great a financial burden as her extreme cream habit. Because there inevitably comes a point where reality leaves the house and takes with it the sense to see when enough is enough.  And while we're talking perspective - fix one thing and the rest looks odd. Jones has already noticed how crabby her hands are compared to that baby-smooth face…

So what’s next on her agenda?  Will she, like the French performance artist Orlan, embark on more shape-shifting ops in the name of her art?  Will her surgeon, Alex Karidis stitch her up with a perpetual 'Jack Nicholson does the Joker' grin? Oh, for the love of sanity,  give us the face cream…..

 Cat got your makeup?  The way she was 

Eye of the beholder

Oh, no Dell'Olio...

Couple of items in the Daily Wail caught Crone’s eye yesterday.  And she’s not just talking Nancy Dell’Olio’s braless beauties. Right below those untrussed puppies on the very same page, was a report that suggested women become invisible at 46. This bombshell comes courtesy of Clarivu Total Vision Correction, a lens replacement technique that corrects both long and short sightedness - a pesky visual oxymoron Crone knows only too well. Their poll of  2,000 women found that by the time we reach our mid-50s, many of us say we no longer attract admiring glances from strangers or compliments from blokes.  The rot sets in somewhere towards our late 40s, when a glitch in confidence isn’t helped by having to wear specs, the report states. 

So that’s the ‘soon-to-be-50’ Dell’Olio syndrome finally explained, then. A deficit in the chutzpah department is hardly the problem. Yet were she able to focus, she’d of course agree that after a certain age, uplift should come less courtesy of 6-inch Louboutin heels and more  from strategic underwiring.  The trim waist is enviable, granted.  But clearly visible nipples drooping over your cummerbund ain’t a good look, girl.  At least she’s had the sense not to flash a crinkly cleavage - if, in fact, she has one. Her toned arms could give Michelle O’s a run for their money and approaching their half century, the pins are more lissom that Crone's were at 12.  You might call this envy - but the thigh-high hemline looks desperately naff.  In the name of elegance, just because your bits are still loved up doesn’t justify getting them out for all and sundry. Thing is, Nancy has a truly beautiful face that’s often rendered invisible by her truly blinding lack of taste. Compared to the old tousle, the short hair is a chic move - classic and fresh at the same time.  Now she’s moving in more artistic circles, Crone would like to suggest Nancy lives up to her new role as muse by embracing that good old ‘less is more’ philosophy that always leaves 'em wanting, well.....more. 

Friend of Crone watching Murray v Nadal at Wimbledon has just squeaked she’s spotted Trevor Nunn in the crowd. Let’s hope Sunday morning tennis isn’t a feature of his courtship with Nancy. They’re oddly matched in the first place, but imagining her outfit’s a call too eye-watering even for Crone.