MAGGIE THE CAT IS ALIVE! I'M ALIVE!

Eau de Parfum

Elizabeth Taylor, violet-eyed icon, child star, adult temptress, movie star, LGBTQI ally, drama queen, perfume idol and force of nature. The title of this remarkable perfume are words spoken by Taylor playing Maggie The Cat, sexually restless on her hot tin roof, married to Brick, a man summering with his closeted homosexual love for his friend, Skipper who killed himself. Tennessee Williams’ three act play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had been a controversial sensation and the 1958 film was well received but also criticised for playing down Brick’s sexuality.

By choosing the clean-cut Paul Newman to counterpoint the provocative passions of Taylor the film has enough southern subterfuge and sex to set fire to the screen. Taylor was at the peak of her creamy, smouldering beauty when cast in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She was a true cinematic icon, the drama of her life, health issues and jewellery intimately woven into the variety of roles she played. Her life was lived out in the full gossip-craving gaze of fans from her child star days in National Velvet, an Oscar for Butterfield 8 playing an upmarket call-girl, A Place in the Sun, Taming of the Shrew, the glossy VIPs to marriage wrangling and slanging match of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the overwrought Suddenly Last Summer, Reflections in a Golden Eye, the disturbing Driver’s Seat and of course the eye-popping bling fantasy of Cleopatra, her Egyptian queen more a petulant, man mad Hollywood wife at a cocktail party than complex historical regent.

Fittingly, Marissa has composed a complex perfume in honour of Taylor’s Maggie, understanding that any perfume inspired by Maggie the Cat must have an earthy and magnetic allure. Taylor herself had a line of 80’s style power perfumes, big flowers, ambers and musks. Passion and White Diamonds were huge sellers and at the time the marketing campaign for Passion of La Liz in a Beverly Hills Grecian style pool, drenched in jewels, was the most expensive ad to date. There was even a magazine ad for Passion that used the famous image of Taylor photographed through curlicues of a bed end from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Marissa’s vibrant fizzing homage to Maggie the Cat mingles a post-coital boudoir ambience with a fabulously camp Bellini vibe of peach and bubbles, orris, violet (referencing Taylor’s eyes…) and ambrette seed with its unique vegetal muskiness and hints of pear eau de vie and pale powder. The champagne note at the top is delicious and adds a giddy party redolence that works beautifully with the overwrought intentions and seething emotions fermenting in Marissa’s stylish arrangements.

There have been times in Taylor’s life when she struggled as an actress; movies overshadowed by the addictive drama of her personal life. But she was a true star, part of a Hollywood system that set out to control performers and make money. Larger than life and a passionate ally to the gay community and close friends like Roddy McDowell, Rock Hudson and the tragic unrequited love she had for the beautiful Montgomery Clift.

With Maggie The Cat is Alive, I’m Alive! Marissa has gathered a collection of beautiful materials that oscillate between carnal languor, champagne soaked laughter and 1000 musky boudoirs, all tinted mauve and violet.

Composition:

• Champagne, Peach, Violet
• Sunlight, Orris
• Ambrette Musk, Oakmoss, Sheer Amber, Patchouli, Sandalwood, Castoreum

Perfumer: Marissa Zappas, 2023

inci list: alcohol, anisic aldehyde, benzyl salicylate, cinnamic aldehyde, citral, coumarin, eugenol, oakmoss extract