I will start by admitting that Past Me once said “Ho ho ho, who would spend over a hundred pounds on a pair of cashmere ‘Beach Pants’?” and Present Me not only owns the Beach Pants, but spent an extra tenner in order to get the Outnet to bring them to me within 24 hours. So when Byredo announced the launch of its Toile textile perfume, I clutched my sides and gasped “Tee hee hee! Who is going to spend the best part of fifty quid on posh Febreeze?” Yes, that’s me with my hand up, staring at the floor, feeling vaguely ashamed of myself for ever pretending that I wouldn’t be into it.
I love perfume in the way that other people love pop music, and everything Byredo makes gets me as giddy and obsessive as any One Direction fan. Also, the brand has always positioned itself as a holistic creator of scents - fragrance doesn’t begin and end with our bodies, it fills our lives. My first Byredo experience was with a scented candle, Cotton Poplin, which I think smells exactly like innocent, enthusiastic honeymoon sex in a Mary Wesley novel. Ben Gorham, the man behind the brand, started out studying fine art and chose perfume over painting. I think of his scents as tiny, vivid universes, intricately embroidered with complicated details.
There is a breed of Bougie Basic (I am you) who lives for Bibliotheque, the scent of Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face before she meets Fred Astaire, and another who is obsessed with Gipsy Water, which is available in a range of products and can therefore make you, your hands and your house smell like a charismatic cult leader. I’m huffing my own ponytail after spraying it with Mojave Ghost hair perfume, which (I think) makes me smell like a wayward Constance Billard runaway off to the desert to cast Wiccan spells on cute boys to get them to fall in love with me. Gorham knows that what we smell, and where we smell it, is a vibe and a mood.
Toile might be first cousins with my first love, Cotton Poplin. It claims to be ‘fresh yet illusive’ and it contains ‘the abstraction perfumers use to hush over dramatic flowers,' whatever that means. On first spray, I am a tiny bit disappointed, as it doesn’t quite deliver the narcotic, swoony hit I was hoping for. I give it a fairly revolting, Daz-style challenge: it goes on a Snoopy blanket that may have been caught in the no-man’s-land between my mouth and a forkful of cashew chicken. It goes on the cushion that I keep waking up on just before bed, as I come to when I realise that it is damp with drool. Finally, it goes on my own gross, unwashed forearm, which is fresh from my nearest rowing machine. It smells strangely absent, slightly silvery, and…yes! Like fresh laundry! Fresher than my own actual laundry ever does, in fact.
Slowly, subtly, I start to feel a bit more relaxed. I have transformed my home and my arm into an expensive hotel. It’s deeply calming, this nothing-y, fresh-sheet scent. While I’m sure this was not Gorham’s intention, if your attitude to life is a laundry-averse one, I reckon you could get an extra week out of your sheets with a quick spray. In fact, the launch has been perfectly timed because we’re right at the beginning of barbecue season. I can wear all of my dry clean only chiffon dresses without worrying that anyone is sniffing me and detecting last year’s onions! If you’re a smoker, a pet owner or just a very messy person with a fondness for obscure blue cheeses, your days of panicky window wafting are over. Spritz your cushions and clothing with Toile and you could be the next Mrs Hinch.
Like cashmere Beach Pants, Toile spray is more useful than I ever thought possible - I might have just about grown out of Febreezing my jeans, but I shall be spraying with impunity. Obviously I would never tell you to use Toile instead of washing your clothes - but in all honestly, if you made that decision, I don’t think anyone would be able to tell.
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