Empress Josephine - Queen of Violet Scents
Picture, if you will, a lady with a sweet face, lips in readiness to speak any words of kindness, the lines of her smiles etched into the porcelain of her skin. She walks in the rose gardens of her home, Malmaison, that she has worked so hard over the years to furnish and garden to her tastes. Her name at birth was Rose, and she has worked endlessly with the famous gardener of Marie Antoinette, Pierre-Joseph Redoute, to gather and organize every variety of rose and plant she can.
And yet, despite her love of roses, this woman, renamed Josephine by the love of her life, the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, is dressed in violet silk. A gown of violet, a thin shawl of violet, dainty delicate violet silk slippers, and the famous Amethyst Parure adorns her neck, arms, and ears. As her husband has divorced her, she maintains the style of living that he commands as his ex-wife, but chooses the melancholy color of violets, and douses herself in the violet essences he once preferred to her more animalic musk scents.
This is Empress Josephine, who came from the dramatic technicolor vivacity of the Caribbean with its endless sugarcane fields and the cruelty of slavery in front of her eyes to teach her kindness and tolerance in the face of the ugliness around her. This woman, who came within a hairbreadth of losing her head on the guillotine, whose first husband repudiated her, then embraced her friendship as they both were imprisoned in the filthy, straw-covered prisons of the Reign of Terror. And violets are the hallmark of her personal fragrance. The color, both melancholy and elegant, marked her her whole life, and violets became the hallmark of her love affair with Napoleon, who covered her grave with violets.
These three scents, then, are the emblematic violet scents that Josephine would have treasured. These three are beautifully illustrative of her quiet charm, the sweet comfort she brought others, and the soft femininity Napoleon loved in her.
Balenciaga Paris - a more cerebral, quiet, powdery violet. This violet has been stripped of its candy like nuances to present the melancholy aspect of this flower. Pale, powdery, quiet of speech, after being forced to relinquish her husband for him to marry the Austrian princess who later deserted him, it is the scent of Josephine’s quiet salon in those first days at Malmaison , realizing the while she had lost her husband she had gained a measure of freedom from the eyes of courtiers. Smooth, comforting in its sadness, and contemplative.
Guerlain Insolence Eau de Toilette - a riotous explosion of raspberry, violet, rose, orange blossom, and fruits, meant to highlight the candied sweetness and levity of violet in the heart. A scent for the courtship of Napoleon and Josephine, where both dealt with tremendous emotional highs and lows of their affair and marriage.
Guerlain Insolence Eau de Parfum - the Empress of violet scents. A gorgeous melange of the most perfect, smooth, powdery violet, with iris to enhance the softness. This is the sweetest and most traditional violet scent of the three, and recalls Josephine in the majesty of her role as Empress, yet never sacrificing her charm.
Try one of these, and slip into the shoes of Josephine de Beauharnais, at whatever point of fortune she may have been at in her wanderings, and her tremendously varied life.