Zen Original

I don't believe I've spent a day without wearing a fragrance since I was a little girl, when I wore Avon's Sweet Honesty (in either the Persian cat, cupcake-shaped bottles or as a solid in one of their girly plastic broaches in various shapes of apples, bunnies, flowers my ubiquitous cat-themed everything), then Love's Baby Soft, or Prince Matchabelli (sp) Windsong, maybe a bit of one of the solid nature-themed scents my mother had in a light-brown rectangular compact from...was it Coty?...I remember one being called "Sweet Hay", my favourite one of the three. Scent-memories are intense! Although I wore several "cheapie" scents during my high school years, including Emeraude & Gloria Vanderbilt, I chose Zen when I was 16, and it was my sort of gateway scent to higher-end fragrances like Magie Noire, KL, Chanel 19 and Opium. I just purchased a bottle of the original Eau de Cologne "splash", which is mostly the scent I recall, although not nearly as mossy or as grey-green a scent as I recall coming from my (EDP) spray years ago. It also completely fades within an hour or so, likely containing mostly alcohol and water, but I just enjoy it while it lasts, wear it on the backs of my hands, while I wear something more tenacious on the rest of me. It's a dirty green floral, and I'm not sure if I feel the "zen", or I think I should because of the name, but it's really nice to revisit. I do sense a bit of the late 70s lingering in Zen...you know, a bit of Charlie, Halston, Chanels 5 and 19, Esteé Lauder's Private Selection, was it? Collection? Anyway, it conjures images of the teachers I adored in elementary school, and had wanted to emulate, with their turtle-necks and long necklaces, stack-heeled boots and bobbed hair like Toni Tenille...good stuff of good memories, this one. Here's a blurb from the insert in the box...maybe someone can figure out which elements they're describing? The "seed"? The "fruit"? Is there cardamom in this??: "ZEN finds its seed in India, its blossom in China, and its fruit in Japan. In India "dyhana" (ZEN) which meant "quiet meditation" was seen as a highly philosophical religion, but in China it came closer to the everyday life of the people and was regarded as a means of realising "stillness in movement." In Japan, it has come to manifest itself mainly in esthetic [sic] fields. Most art and culture of Japan is influenced by ZEN. The distinctively Japanese arts, such as NŌ drama, the tea ceremony, and painting, have ZEN at their base. It is the creative spirit of ZEN, and spontaneity of the ZEN practitioner which is responsible for the delicate raising and lowering of the tea ceremony cup, for the bold, unfaltering strokes of calligraphy, and for the great works of art and architecture abounding in Japan. This same lofty sensibility, and spiritual purity was taken by SHISEIDO as its motif in creating ZEN fragrance...a unique perfume expressing quiet, purity, and traditional Japanese beauty. The esthetic heart of Japanese culture can be appreciated through this exquisite fragrance by people everywhere in the world." Nice. I totally get it.

This is for the vintage cologne in the black bottle. Takeoff of aldehydes, hyacinth and oakmoss. I believe the hyacinth note is a "fantasy" note, woven of tuberose, jasmine and honeysuckle extracts. A faint note of methyl salicylate (wintergreen) enhances. Interesting slight rubefacience on my skin! Then a note of galbanum and some other green note-- maybe a clary sage?-- begin to darken the smell... a faint odor of roses participates. Then a surprising, faint note of sandalwood. Then a quality of narcissus and orange blossom. With time, this sensual mix becomes undergirded by orris, smelling of vintage cosmetic face powder. In far drydown, you're left with a lovely musk/amber skin scent, with a faint wash of spicy clove/carnation + wintergreen. The pronounced, "pasty" orris quality always prevents the floralcy from ever becoming too sweet and heady. ZEN very much seems like a souvenir of the Camelot Era in which it was created... It smells optimistic, forward-looking and "modern", in the 1960's sense of the word, a repudiation of the 50's, perhaps, but not yet Go-Go/Mod Sixties, however. It smells neither matronly nor little-girlish, not vampish or Victorian, but rather like an urbane, serious scent for an educated woman, age 30+, who is feminine, but with real political and social and international cultural interests... a Jackie Kennedy type, in fact. Or like Emanuelle Riva in HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR. Or Nana Mouskouri, or Anouk Aimée. Or Hiroko Matsumoto. Or Barbara Parkins. The ultimate scent for the "cool brunette" type. A most interesting perfume, not for everybody. Mysterious and soulful... very "Yin". Quite feminine, and I don't think a man could pull it off.

This review is based on the vintage pure perfume. Zen is a beautiful green chypre which, as I've discovered going through several of Shiseido's scents, the brand was very good at churning out in the 60's and 70's as seen in Mai, Koto, Murasaki, and others. Zen does bring to mind Fidji, though the citrus and florals and soapiness in Fidji sing a bit more. It also brings to mind some of the mossy, narcissus-ey greenness of Shiseido's own Koto. The old extrait I have of Zen is a well-balanced and complex iris-hyacinth-mossy-rosy-woody thing that feels earthy and grounded, though still like a fancy French perfume in structure. I saw a review online that compared the overall drydown of Zen to the originating idea behind Shiseido's Nombre Noir. It said NN was the drydown of Zen with a neon rose heart and I think I can see where that thought is coming from. Nombre Noir lightens up the dirt and earthiness with a lot of hedione, more of a muguet accord in the center, and it takes the rose note and explodes it with fruity damascones and osmanthus. Zen is beautiful and genre-gender-time-defying in its own right, and is also interesting to see just a bit of its DNA in Shiseido's long-discontinued fabled unicorn.

I wasn't even looking for it, but as i was passing the Shiseido counter in Macy's (in California), there it was! Original Zen! For a limited time. I sprayed a little on a card, then i did not hesitate and immediately bought a bottle. Oh, how it smells like Japan! I spent a month there in the summer of 1972, even spent the night with a Japanese teacher of mine in her family's very traditional home, with tatami and sliding paper covered doors. It smells of incense, woods, oakmoss, a hint of well behaved musk, and flowers. Yet i would not at all call this a purely floral perfume, perhaps more chypre floral. Everything is so balanced. I am ecstatic to have found it! They now sell it in a new black cylindrical spray bottle. But they also sell the old bottle as a refill, if you already have the sprayer. Even though i don't have the old sprayer, i bought the old style bottle, because it is so... so... Zen.

A fruity rose in the woods, shy violet, mimosa incense, poplar buds, paperwhites: these all come to mind as I smell Zen in EDC and more intensely so in EDP, which is less powdery and more unctuous. The aldehydes at the opening are pastel rather than saturated light, and there is a considerable earthy orris underpinning it. The texture is like running my fingers along the surface of brocade moss. To my surprise, there is a subtle smokiness further into development that reminds me of lapsang souchong tea, as if inhaling it from a tin, with a dry rosiness and sheer jasmine still stirring in the background. Translucent, with low viscosity, an ethereal aura: it all comes as surprise for a release from the 1960s. A moderately animal nature in its musk does impart some carnality, yet it's modulated to a tranquil level, not balmy, but watery. I find both the cologne and EDP to be beautiful.