The Great Gatsby is a novel by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, published on April 10, 1925, and is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922. An icon of literature, The Great Gatsby is ranked second in the Modern Library's list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. There is a film version that is very familiar to Americans that starred Mia Farrow, as the beautiful and desirable, but flighty Daisy Buchanan.
The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. It was a time when self made men like the character Jay Gatsby had as much money but not the ‘class’ and confidence of those who were born to great wealth.
Nick's modest cottage is next-door to an enormous mansion owned by the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is extremely wealthy, and no one seems to know much about the source of his wealth although rumors run rampant. What he is known for is hosting outrageously luxurious parties, where hundreds of people show up each weekend. "In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."
Henri Matisse
Although many of the guests are uninvited, Nick soon receives a rather formal request from one of Gatsby's butlers and finds himself embroiled in the party scene, although he claims to despise mindless entertainment. Jordan Baker, Nick’s female acquaintance eventually reveals to him that Gatsby holds these parties in the hope that Daisy, his former love, will pay a visit. It is also through Jordan that Gatsby asks Nick to set up a meeting with Daisy. We know the weather is warm and fine since Nick says "And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."
Erte
The reunion is ultimately successful: Gatsby and the married Daisy begin an affair.Daisy is portrayed initially as the spoiled and pampered wife of a man of her own social standing (her husband Tom is keeping a mistress of course). Of course she is lovely to look at and charming to be around.
Her voice is full of money,’ he said suddenly. That was it.
I’d never understood it before. It was full of money –
that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it…
High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl.” –Nick Carraway
Jay Gatsby purports to love Daisy and Daisy cares for him but in a haphazard naïve way and of course the question is does Gatsby love her or is he obsessed with her because she represents a prize for which he can never really compete. For upper class men, the woman one marries is of vital importance because she completes the "set" of things you must have in order to play the upper class "game." Gatsby knows that, and he knows that Daisy would secure his entrance into the "game" because she has the look, the attitude, the very *smell* and *sound* of money. After all it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said “the rich are different than you an me”.
She was born to it. Moreover, she has all the right physical qualities: beautiful, charming, and well traveled. Daisy is a symbol of wealth and class.
Daisy’s scented trail led me to the House of Chanel and the perfumed legacy of the great Coco Chanel that was bottled in twelve(soon to be thirteen) niche fragrances named Les Exclusifs. Ironically, the iconic Chanel No. 5 and other Chanel perfumes were first introduced in the 20’s, exactly the time the novel was set. It was not difficult to pick Daisy’s fragrance. I can hear her lilting voice whispering to her cousin Nick, “Of course you love my new perfume, it’s the latest from Paris, from a new designer named Mademoiselle Coco Chanel.”, she might say. “I picked it up while I was visiting the continent and stopped in Paris, at her shop on Rue Cambon, while I was being fitted for a darling little black dress. Oh and she lets her skin get brown in the sun. I won’t do it, even if it IS the new fashion. A bit low class don’t you agree.”
Daisy is used to the very best and 28 La Pausa fits that demand perfectly. It is a scent based on the oil from iris pallida (known as sweet iris), one of the most expensive materials available to perfumers. 28 La Pausa is named for a house Mlle.Chanel owned in the South of France” namely the villa on Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on the French Riviera.
Iris/orris is currently one of the the costliest ingredient to harvest and of course even if Daisy didn’t know this, it makes perfect sense that she would gravitate towards it, rather than, let’s say Chanel’s 31, Rue Cambon. The luxurious feeling of 28 La Pausa is quite compelling. The silkiness of iris is almost a fabric on the skin. The iris is set into the frame of white floral notes and musk that heighten the softness of the composition. If 28 La Pausa unfolded as a blooming iris, it dries down to a scent of warm skin and face powder. I believe it is the way Daisy would smell. While 28 La Pausa is elegant, it is really just an absolutely gorgeous Iris soliflores, and (like Daisy) doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. Its sillage is a bit fleeting but for me , like Jay Gatsby, I love it the way it is.
– Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief
Editor's Note:
I am now a resident of Great Neck, New York. As everyone who lives in Great Neck knows, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Great Neck, at Six Gateway Drive in Great Neck Estates — probably the Great Neck's greatest claim to fame. He lived here, in the 1920s, in a modest house, not dis-similar to that of Nick, the protagonist of his novel, The Great Gatsby. It is said that Fitzgerald modeled West Egg — the fictional town in which Nick lives, next to the mansion of Jay Gatsby, the epitome of Nouveau Riche gaudiness — after his own Great Neck and the atmosphere and lifestyle there; and he modeled East Egg, the town where Daisy and Tom live, after Great Neck's eastern neighbor, Port Washington, or, more specifically, Sands Point.
What fragrance would Jay Gatsby wear?