SERVIETTE
The knowingly named Serviette was created by Canadian perfumer Trey Taylor, who studied at Central Saint Martins in London and is now based in New York. Its vivid emerald-green packaging is embossed with a dragon, and each box contains an embroidered linen square to spritz and carry with you: a theatrical echo of the old habit of scenting fabric to ward off foul air and urban miasma.
Across the front, a Latin motto twines with perfect mischief: De gustibus disputari potest, or “you can argue about taste.” It is a tongue-in-cheek inversion of the classic maxim De gustibus non est disputandum: “there is no disputing about taste.”
Serviette takes its name and inspiration from the very British notion of U and non-U, a vocabulary of class-coded language that entered popular discourse in the anxious social rearrangements of post-war Britain. U referred to upper-class usage, while non-U marked the language associated with the aspirational middle classes.
The terms were coined by the linguist Alan S. C. Ross in his 1954 article on linguistic class indicators, but were popularised by Nancy Mitford, one of the notorious Mitford sisters, in her essay “The English Aristocracy.” Mitford’s essay turned Ross’s observations into a national conversation about class, snobbery, manners and the tiny words by which English society revealed itself.
In this world, scent was U and perfume non-U; drawing room was U and lounge non-U; napkin was U and serviette non-U. While the distinction is now dated, divisive and far less reliable, its residue persists. Certain words can still carry a faint charge of social uncertainty: invisible indicators of status, taste, aspiration and belonging.
The comic keystone of Keeping Up Appearances was Patricia Routledge’s formidable Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced “Bouquet,” and her tireless campaign to persuade the world that she belonged to a more elevated social order than the one into which she had so plainly been written. Her candlelight suppers, long-suffering husband, socially inconvenient relatives and exquisite terror of exposure made her both ridiculous and oddly recognisable. The joke was cringe-making because it understood something true: the anxiety of social performance, and the dread of being betrayed by the wrong word, the wrong room, the wrong family, the wrong name.
There are currently five Serviette perfumes: Frisson d’Hiver, Byronic Hero, Ruche, Sour Diesel and Priscus. They are quite different from one another, but share a signature style of cool clarity, wit and purpose. The collection moves through familiar perfume territories, but never lazily. Its elegance comes from expertly chosen materials, precise accords and the occasional unexpected note placed exactly where it will jolt the senses. Ice, khush, diesel exhaust, rhubarb and plum wine are among the more striking effects.
Trey Taylor has clearly spent considerable time thinking about how Serviette should look and feel, without neglecting the perfumes themselves. Olfaction is a fickle game, and launching a new brand is both exhilarating and terrifying. Serviette arrives with a seriously witty visual language, but the cleverness is borne out in the compositions. These are polished, curious fragrances with enough tension to keep them alive on skin. Somewhere in the collection, one of them is likely to catch, spark and refuse to let go.