Shiseido Zen | Josephine Catapano, 1964

Josephine Catapano created just four perfumes during her career. She followed up 1953’s Youth Dew for Estée Lauder with Zen for Shiseido in 1964. Zen is described by Luca Turin as “a perfect woody rose”. It wears deceptively elegant, like a fresh-faced, no-make-up look that you know requires a full palette and very deft touch to achieve. A supremely affable blend of plum, roses and wood. Impossible not to love.

Shiseido Zen photographed against Japanese Chiyogami paper

Marie Antoinette’s Olfactory Legacy

It may be somewhat telling that on 1st November 1755, one day prior to her birth, an earthquake, which today is estimated as having been somewhere in the range of magnitude 8.5 – 9, known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake struck Portugal causing massive devastation and sending shock-waves throughout Europe which were felt as far as Finland and North Africa.

Way to make an entrance, girl.

Marie Antoinette by Christine Comyn