The obsession has struck me out of season. Suddenly (in the heat of summer, mind you!) all my tastes run to sables and pearls, and my nightly dreams include top-speed troika rides across the frozen Neva. For though wintertime is the traditional setting for my forays into the glory and grit of Romanov history, an anomalous surge of interest has surprised this reader's royal progress with a January in July.
This time around, all my fascination centers on the Romanov brides-- minor Germanic princesses offered up in matrimonial sacrifice to the Tsars. Bidding farewell to their tiny home palaces, forswearing eternally those nursery suppers of baked apples and rice pudding, one by one these
kleinen Prinzessinnen traveled 1,100 miles to be devoured whole by St. Petersburg. Their choice: to surrender, or to tame the ravenous beast with charm, cunning, and magnums of champagne.
One might question the heaviness of the task. After all, this was Russia-- a fairytale land where people set out bowls of raw sapphires and rubies for the idle, toying fingers of house guests. How dizzy the
Prinzessinnen must have felt, confronting such extravagance for the first time! But they acclimated fast, these hungry-eyed girls-- gauche lumps of coal eager to be changed into glittering diamonds. Relaxing into their newfound privilege, the faces above those rows of pearls soon grew smooth, complacent, coolly surveying the world as if it were just another trinket from Cartier.
Balancing (and sometimes enhancing) the sumptuous wealth of Empire was the Orthodox Church, to which conversion was a standard requirement of "marrying in". Whether they came to it early or late (in Maria Pavlovna's case, thirty-four years after the wedding), the
Prinzessinnen found comfort in the powerful emotionality of Orthodox ritual. Several took their devotion to the limit-- most notably Ella, the widow of the assassinated Grand Duke Sergei, who parlayed her mourning straight into holy orders. (No hairshirt for her, though; designed by Nesterov, her nun's habit was
haute couture.) Ella's sister Alix, the Truly Believing Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna, largely scorned Court luxury in favor of her
prie-dieu. But most found a way to reconcile themselves to Russia's extremes-- the sacerdotal and the sensual.
Which brings me to Incense Pure.
Most incense perfumes emphasize austerity above all other virtues, drawing the mind's eye upward to vaulted cathedral ceilings, where columns of holy smoke rise to kiss heaven. Ostensibly, the objective of the flight is to leave material reality behind-- to disavow the body and its imperfections in pursuit of a higher ideal. Incense Pure is one of the few which does not demand this sacrifice. It provides the soul with the hoped-for power of flight, but it also welcomes the body along for the ride.
Never before (except maybe in Michael Storer's Winter Star) have I encountered an incense perfume so sensual or rich. The very volume of resin in every drop is an extravagance, as if the perfume itself had money to burn. I imagine Imperial Russia smelling exactly this way -- like God and gold, like exaltation and ease -- and the
Prinzessinnen, resplendent in their gowns by Worth and Madame Brissac, smiling indulgently as if to say:
This? We breathe it every day.
Scent Elements: Frankincense CO2, myrrh EO, labdanum absolute, cistus oil, natural oakmoss absolute, aged Indian patchouli heartnote fraction, sandalwood, cedar, ambergris, orris, angelica root absolute, elemi EO, vanilla absolute.
My Big Fat Romanov Reading List
Azar, Helen (2014). The diary of Olga Romanov: royal witness to the Russian Revolution. Yardley, Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing.
Bokhanov, Alexander (1993).
The Romanovs: love, power, & tragedy. London: Leppi Publications.
Carter, Miranda (2010).
George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: three royal cousins and the road to World War I. New York: Knopf.
Chavchavadze, Prince David (1990).
The grand dukes. New York: Atlantic International Publications.
Crawford, Rosemary & Donald (1997).
Michael and Natasha: the life and love of Michael II, the last of the Romanov Tsars. New York: Scribner.
Finestone, Jeffrey (1981).
The last courts of Europe: a royal family album 1860-1914. New York: Greenwich House/Crown Publishers, Inc.
Erickson, Carrolly (2002).
Alexandra: the last Tsarina. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.
Faber, Toby (2008).
Fabergé's eggs : the extraordinary story of the masterpieces that outlived an empire. New York: Random House.
Forbes, Christopher (1989).
Fabergé: the imperial eggs. Munich: Neues Publishing Company.
Gelardi, Julia (2011).
Born to rule: five reigning consorts, granddaughters of Queen Victoria. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Gelardi, Julia (2011).
From splendor to revolution: the Romanov women, 1847-1928. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Habsberg-Lothringen, Geza von (1994).
Fabergé: imperial jeweler. New York: Abrams.
Habsberg-Lothringen, Geza von (1994).
Fabergé in America. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
Hill, Gerard, Smorodinova, G.G., and Ulyanova, B.L. (1989).
Fabergé and the Russian master goldsmiths. Moscow: International Federation of Artists/Beaux-Arts Editions.
Iroshnikov, Mikhail P., Shelayev, Yury B., and Protsai, Liudmila A. (1991).
Before the revolution: St. Petersburg in Photographs 1890-1914. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
King, Greg (1996).
The last empress: the life and times of Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia. New York: Citadel Books.
King, Greg (2010).
The resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson, and the world's greatest royal mystery. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
King, Greg (2006).
The court of the last Tsar: pomp, power, and pageantry in the reign of Nicholas II. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
King, Greg and Wilson, Penny (2003).
The fate of the Romanovs. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Khrustalëv, Vladimir M. and Kozlov, Vladimir A. (1997).
The last diary of Tsaritsa Alexandra. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Khrustalëv, Vladimir M. and Steinberg, Mark D. (1997).
The fall of the Romanovs: political dreams and personal struggles in a time of revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kurth, Peter (1985).
Anastasia: the riddle of Anna Anderson. Back Bay Books.
Kurth, Peter (1995).
Tsar: the lost world of Nicholas and Alexandra. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.
Lincoln, W. Bruce (1983).
The Romanovs: autocrats of all the Russias. New York: Anchor.
Lovell, James B. (1995).
Anastasia: the lost princess. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.
Mager, Hugo (1998).
Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Russia: a biography. New York: Carroll & Graf.
Massie, Robert K. (1967).
Nicholas and Alexandra. New York: International Collectors Library.
Massie, Robert K. (1995).
The Romanovs: the final chapter New York: Random House.
Maylunas, Andrei & Mironenko, Sergei (1997).
A lifelong passion: Nicholas & Alexandra, their own story. New York: Doubleday.
Maylunas, Andrei & Prince Michael of Greece (1992).
Nicholas and Alexandra: the family albums. London: Tauris Parke.
Perry, John Curtis and Pleshakov, Constantine (2002).
The flight of the Romanovs: a family saga. New York: Basic Books.
Radzinsky, Edvard (1993).
The last Tsar: the life and death of Nicholas II. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell.
Rappaport, Helen ((2009).
The last days of the Romanovs: tragedy at Ekaterinberg. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Rappaport, Helen ((2014).
The Romanov Sisters: the lost lives of the daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Richards, Guy (1970).
The hunt for the Czar. New York: Doubleday.
Richards, Guy (1975).
The rescue of the Romanovs. Old Greenwich: Devin-Adair.
Rounding, Virginia (2012).
Alix and Nicky: the passion of the last Tsar and Tsarina. New York: St. Martin's Press.
State Hermitage Museum and State Archive of the Russian Federation (1998).
Nicholas & Alexandra: the last Imperial family of Tsarist Russia. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Yemifova, Luisa V. & Aleshina, Tatyana S. (2011).
Russian elegance: country and city fashion from the 15th to the early 20th century. London: Vivays Publishing, Ltd.
Plus absolutely everything at
The Alexander Palace Time Machine, the best digital archive of photographs, resources, and historic texts about the Romanovs that I have ever seen. I would MOVE there, if they would give me a corner to pitch my virtual army cot.