"she smells like 2am"
the allure of the party girl perfume
This isn’t about the ‘it girl,’ an archetype that has been discussed to death in the past few years, but the party girl or rather the Platonic ideal of the party girl. She has a resurgence with Charli XCX’s Brat last summer when seemingly everyone was trying to give off the impression they spend their nights doing cocaine while simultaneously embodying the pilates health supplement princess, trying to be all the trends at once with very mixed success. There were mixed opinions about whether we should think messy partying was ‘in’ again or whether it was crass or problematic to be glamorising it. I don’t care really, I want to talk about the smell of the 365 party girl.
To start with I wanted to go back in time to the party girls of yore. Whenever I think of the term ‘party girl’ I think of all the modern references, Studio 54, indie sleaze, Paris Hilton, but I also think of things like the Moulin Rouge, lavish parties at Versailles, powdered wigs and greasepaint cut with sweat. Histoires de Parfum’s 1889 Moulin Rouge, as the name suggests, embodies this perfectly. It’s a scent which smells overwhelmingly of old-fashioned makeup, of iris scented lipsticks and powder compacts but with a perfect amount of patchouli to give the scent some earthy bite. It also has a note of wormwood in a nod to absinthe which gives it a slightly unusual quality which also stops the scent from being so straightforwardly pretty and powdery. Putain des Palaces by Etat Libre D’Orange is another old-school party girl scent, the name meaning ‘palace whore’ and aiming to evoke the debauchery of French aristocracy before they lost their heads. Again, with powdery florals and a decent dose of musk and leather to give it some dirt. Similar in inspiration is the infamous Bal à Versailles, with a note list as long as your arm meant to conjure the scent of sweaty bodies under silk and brocade. My grandma went through a phase of wearing this and I have a vivid memory of the bottle sat on her chest of drawers. To be fair she was a glamourous party girl till the end, never going anywhere without her bleach blond hair in curls and piled on top of her head, long painted fingernails, and eyeliner put on with a trowel.
As established with these three grand dame party girl scents, there often needs to be something slightly grubby in a party girl scent, something that reminds us of the person sweating beneath the makeup and sequins or suggestive of the wafts of smoke from an ill-judged drunk cigarette. There’s an alluring undoneness to the party girl which is part of her enduring appeal of effortless cool. Night by Akro is a perfect example of this. It’s meant to be an olfactory rendering of sex and I supposed it could be, but the strong rose scent undercut by cumin screams sweaty club to me. It's brilliant, it really does smell like sweat covered over with a perfect rose perfume. I have a sample vial I like to take out and smell sometimes to appreciate but to me personally this is slightly unwearable. It’s for party girls braver than I.
Nightclubbing by Celine, Jasmin et Cigarette by Etat Libre D’Orange and Hot Couture by Givenchy are all in the category I fondly call ‘sexy ashtray,’ but in quit different ways. Nightclubbing is inspired by the famous Paris nightclub Le Bains Douches which had its heyday in the 80s and 90s. It’s heavy on the smoke and Celine say it’s meant to be “somewhere between the scent of crimson velvet seats and the sensuality of the nape of a neck fragrant with vanilla”. Jasmin et Cigarette is as it sounds, jasmine and tobacco, but it has an apricot note that stops the jasmine getting too indolic and the tobacco from getting too ashy. This perfume has absolutely zero sweetness to it, so it stays strangely light despite its mix of typically bombastic notes. Finally, Hot Couture is wonderfully trashy a mix of raspberry and orange with vetiver, pepper and musk that smells like a kiss on the cheek from a girl who has just smoked a cigarette and applied a fresh coat of fruity lipgloss. There is no tobacco or smoke listed in the notes so it’s probably the combination of earthy vetiver, pepper and musk that gives the perfume that smoky quality, but it’s definitely present. It’s a scent that smells like the most fun girl in the club.
My memories of nights out are based around scent. I remember the perfume I wore on my first proper night out when I was eighteen. It was the same perfume I wore on nearly all my nights out during my first year of university. I used to alternate between two perfume oils I bought from an Etsy seller whose shop is now sadly closed. They were in little glass vials I had to dab on my wrists and neck in small drops but my god they were potent. The first was called Black Rose and was heavy with rose and cocoa notes. The second was called Absinthe and smelled like you would imagine, all sugared herbs and wormwood. Clearly, I thought myself a bit of a bohemian on my nights out despite being dressed in H&M skinny jeans and my old Clarks brogues I wore to sixth form. When clearing out my bedroom at my parents’ house years later I found the nearly empty vial of Black Rose and the smell was an instant trip back in time to Tesco Everyday Value vodka and shots of Sourz. While the smell was still objectively pleasant the associated memories nearly made me heave – a hazard that comes with the party girl perfume is the possibility of that scent being forever associated with vomiting. Perhaps it’s wise to pick a scent you wouldn’t mind losing.
Cherry perfumes have really had their moment in the past few years and while we might be getting over it by now I do think they capture the party girl essence pretty well. There’s something about the sweet and sticky yet tart fruit scent that screams club to me. Maybe it’s because they’re usually loud scents that can fill a room or maybe it’s because they make me think of an ill-advised fruity cocktail or the dregs of red wine drying at the bottom of a glass. Cherry is the scent of lipgloss and lollipops bought from toilet attendants, something in it embodies the fun of a night out. Lost Cherry from Tom Ford is the obvious pick here, but two other entries into Tom Ford’s cherry series might be more interesting b-side picks. Electric Cherry is muskier with a hit of jasmine and Cherry Smoke injects some of that smoking-area funk alongside the cherry. I must give a mention to Bitter Peach from Tom Ford too: peach mixed with rum, blood orange, and vanilla gives alcoholic peach-ring candy. To be honest any of Tom Ford’s perfumes with the vaguely risqué names would be good, aside from Fucking Fabulous which smells like baby wipes in a leather handbag which, while it could fit the party girl theme I guess, is genuinely repulsive.
There are a number of perfumes that evoke the process of getting ready for a night out through notes like lipgloss, lipstick or nail polish. It’s true that sometimes getting ready, a little drunk and blasting tunes, is one of the best parts of a night out. The Pink Bedroom by Marissa Zappas, with its notes of lipstick, orris, strawberry and strawberry syrup, deftly creates this hot pink mise-en-scène of slathering yourself in strawberry body lotion and a well-loved lipstick before heading out for a night of too many cocktails. Girl of the Year by Thin Wild Mercury also gives a similar, but darker, vibe with its lipstick, incense and leather notes. The brand says it’s an exploration “into the private enclaves of the woman” which I think encapsulates the pre-night out bedroom pretty well. I imagine getting ready with incense burning before slipping on a leather jacket. BORNTOSTANDOUT is a brand that I find simultaneously intriguing and slightly off-putting, they have some really interesting sounding scents but their names sometimes make me roll my eyes (Fig Porn…. what does it mean….). However, Angel’s Powder seems to be your standard airy, sweet, sugary vanilla fragrance but with a top note of nail polish. The prospect of sweet vanilla and that addictive solventy smell is super intriguing to me. A final shoutout in this category is Another 13 by Le Labo. This has no odd notes, instead being a mix of mainly musk and pear, but for some reason this triggers a sense memory for me of being a child and sitting in my parents’ bedroom watching my mam get ready for a night out. To me it smells like a mix of makeup, perfume, hairspray, and that smell hair gets when it’s been heated with straighteners. Simply no other scent captures the pre-night out feeling like this one does for me.
Discotheque is a candle brand who came out with perfumes last year all based around club and party culture, often reminiscent of the club culture in the later twentieth century. They’ve garnered quite a lot of popularity, being featured in Dazed Digital and selling out of their sample set online. However, what I find interesting is that there is so much nostalgia for the club culture of the 70s/80s/90s, often by people who have only experienced the things that these scents are referencing through aesthetic Pinterest posts or TikTok videos. Meanwhile our present club culture is dying, with the Night Time Industries Association reporting that UK clubbing could be “extinct” by the end of the decade as nightclubs close at an alarming rate. It appears we are interested in the bottled essence of parties of the past but not the partying we could be doing right now.
Obviously, there are so many reasons why nightclubs are closing like this, decades of austerity and its aftermath has not been good for businesses or the disposable income people need to enjoy those businesses and this is not the forum to get into all of that. But the desire to smell like but not be the party girl surely also has something to do with the present desire to make every kind of identity into an easily achievable set of aesthetic markers that can be slipped on and off depending on what is in vogue. The reputation Gen Z are getting for puritanism also plays into this. Young people just aren’t really going clubbing to the same extent anymore but they’re still fixated on what it used to be, disappointed by their experiences in the dying nightclub industry not living up to the image they had of club culture. By using a perfume that captures the essence of the party girl in scent you can slip on that identity and not only forget that our current nightlife scene might be a bit sad but also escape the unsavoury elements of the party girl. You don’t have to smoke because there’s a wisp of tobacco is featured in the notes list. You don’t have to sweat your makeup off because there are soft animalic undertone already there. You can have all the cultural cachet without doing anything risqué.
What is there left to be said? I’m not sure. That it’s odd that we are nostalgic for things we didn’t experience? That it’s nevertheless cool that scent can evoke such places and spaces? That despite not being a party girl myself I hope that nightclubs can find a way to survive as I do love to occasionally shake my ass on the dancefloor? What is certain though is that I will continue to wear perfumes that make me smell like a chic ashtray while I sit at my computer and write my PhD thesis this year.
The quote in the title is taken from one of my favourite songs ‘Sister’ by She Wants Revenge which happens to be the perfect ‘getting ready’ song.