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blogs that consider perfume to be an emanation of fashion, and yet the principles governing these two universes are not fundamentally alike. Perfumes and fashion may go hand in glove and may appear together in public but they do not live together. The timetable for couturiers’ collections does not follow the same rhythm as the development of a perfume. Perfume, in fact, avoids the short-lived fate of fashion. Fashion is, by definition, something that will be out of fashion. Because hundreds of perfumes are launched every year, it would be easy to see this as a fashion phenomenon, for only a rare few stand the test of time. Once bought, most perfumes are used up and forgotten. Only perfumes that emancipate themselves from this constraint become ‘fashionable.’ With perfumes, time creates the fashion and engenders inclinations, and it does this despite the efforts of the Escada brand, which has opened up the way for short-lived perfumes by offering an olfactory novelty every year.
    This free association between perfume and fashion serves to stabilize a brand’s name, its signature. Perfume acts as a counterpoint to the transient enslavement exerted by fashion.

    Cabris, Friday 26 February 2010
    Trend
    The ogre economy needs feeding. It has a fierce appetite and refuses to tighten its belt. And yet it has no curiosity, is not attracted by novelty, and always wants to be served the same dish: trend. Its relationship with trend is both obvious and a paradox. In order to accept it, the ogre economy needs to be told the same stories – stories about ogres – over and over again, and to have trend pumped up with talk and magic rites and tests. Trend, on the other hand, likes to have competitions laid on, beauty competitions, all sorts of competitions, because it wants to be accepted. It has to be referred to humorously, even ironically – it’s not afraid of self-mockery. It surrounds itself with groupies and bloggers and chatter.
    Tocqueville anticipated the fact that, in a democracy, society would tend towards unified tastes. Trend may be the price we have to pay for democracy.

    Hong Kong, Wednesday 3 March 2010
    A bowl
    A bowl with a slightly trapezoid base and no embellishments; the concept of a pair of hands cupped to hold water. A serene shape, stripped of any opinion, without an author. A bowl with a pure design, drawn with one stroke of the pen. It is white in color, white as snow in sunlight, as a cloud in a clear sky, limpid and luminous. It stands out from the other bowls in the glass display case. Its outline and color are accomplished, and give me a feeling of elation. An object, as the painter Chardin wrote, ‘has an inner truth – I would say a resonance too – that we reach only through feelings.’ The description says simply: ‘Bowl, eggshell porcelain, Ming dynasty, XVth century, Museum of Art, Hong Kong.’ ‘Bowl’ – the practical implications of the object remind me of Kant, to whom beauty could exist only outside usefulness. According to him, an object cannot be described as beautiful. Every piece of pottery exhibited in this museum is a refutation of that very Western judgment. From terracotta to ceramics, in China as in Japan, pottery has always had an influential role in art and craftsmanship; so much so that some pieces have been elevated to the ranks of ‘national treasures.’ This bowl in itself is a definition of beauty.

    Hong Kong, Friday 5 March 2010
    Artificial
    ‘What’s that artificial thing?’ someone asks. The thing or, rather, things are white cubes, slightly larger than sugar lumps, dotted with black flecks the size of poppy seeds, and mixed in with diced apple and watermelon, and slivers of mango and orange – this is a fruit salad offered as part of the hotel breakfast. The ‘thing’: cubes of dragon fruit, a fruit with pink skin and white flesh that is very popular in Asia but, to us Westerners, has little taste. It is ignorance that makes us believe and announce